There was a time in my life that i could not contain myself waiting for summertime, yet as the vacations piled up i began to understand how little i appreciated from such freedom. It was not just the reality that for an instant from each year there was time entirely my own, but the resulting confusion afterward with so little in hand to reassure myself it was not a dream - one might even say an initial confrontation with socialization. The root for patience is from Latin patiens - to suffer. I’m not sure which i learned more from: having freedom, or losing it. Lao Tzu says, “Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Unfortunately this is rarely taught in elementary school, nor - apparently to our leaders today. If nothing is lacking, why do you resist the time it takes to read this; i would have to believe my words are too big, or i am using your most precious resource - time? Our world, and those "driving the bus" are using every tool at their disposal to deprive you of your patience - your ability to wait. Why is that? I’d like to say i have an answer - i don’t, but the question is more a part of why i have more confidence in Lao Tzu than Jamie Dimon. I often wonder about the behavior of those antagonizing peace on our planet - not the “so called” terrorists, but the thugs at all levels of leadership. For example, “austerity” seems to be a fashionable let-us-help-you-help-yourselves lie passing for wisdom from the captains of industry. On the surface it seems like a practical idea; i’m austere - living on lentils, potatoes and tomatoes so i can explore ideas like patience with anyone who might be curious. Where’s the harm. For one, i haven’t hijacked your life with debt or murdered your children in service of racial separation; i worked 47 some odd years years to buy back my summertime - so fond was my love, and long my patience. Two: i don’t demand you follow my example unlike those inciting you to kill so they may “earn” money from death and oil. Three: i don’t care what you do, when or where; unlike those who have yoked you to a handset they mine like diggers of gold for every word you speak, write when, where and to who. (note to the NSA spooks reading - get a life.)
You have patience, otherwise you’d not have gotten this far into an obscure essay on an uninteresting virtue: “Patience - A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue” - Ambrose Bierce, or maybe you are in some kind of despair; you are not alone. I see much suffering and despair - an aspect for my struggle to understand patience, but not how you might think. I understand patience mostly through my lack of it to achieve those things i want which cannot be gained without it - peace, love or a future for our species. I have no patience for those who bombard you with messages, subtle or otherwise about your pernicious "lack" of that commodity which they so very much want to help you gain. A passing irony might be that i could accomplish more with patience toward these haters who are hurting our existence with their greed, but it could also just be g_d; she likes to laugh; i know i do. What would i do differently with patience toward the haters - stop buying what i don’t need, check - give up my phone, check - educate, agitate, organize, check - love Trump . . . working on it, but that fuck makes it so hard. Hillary, i just feel sorry for her - like somewhere she heard Bob Dylan singing “they will crush you with wealth and power, Every waking moment you could crack,” and like Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” it is haunting every feature of her existence. Can you imagine what it must be like to be so close to history, only to find your ambition cost you every decent instinct you may have ever possessed - “Wife of Faustus.” In my heart i believe she lacks patience, where Trump never had a chance to become human. There are many amongst us horribly disfigured from a lack of humanity in the most important early years. It is this psychic brutality which our (civilization) exploits ruthlessly, and for which i strenuously object. Patience is our friend; those using your hard-earned pennies to convince you that without a phone the world will pass you by - not so much.
If anything letting the world pass by before you step into the maelstrom may be very informative, even healing. What if it's not knowledge that is streaming across the screen, but some molten form of language devoid of meaning. When i was released from my classroom just at the moment of summertime, the exhilaration lasted a very short time soon to be replaced by a certain knowledge that summer would end; the game was unchanged, for my impatience to fill every nook and cranny of my life without shoes or homework became the driving force occupying my imagination, or if you will, i began to wait for school with the same fervor i had waited for summer - unconsciously but with no less vitality. How many life events might fit this dichotomy: graduation, a job, marriage/divorce, retirement - death? Even the act of writing . . . Lucky thing this paradox may also be true for understanding; for example as painful as dissolution of any kind may be, awareness is often the direct result of disappointment, profound or otherwise - without the prospect of school in the fall, i may have never grown such fondness for freedom. Never having lost a love, i may never have learned the beauty of woman. Few things that do not require patience have much merit, or as our wiser ancestors might say - “easy come, easy go.” It is for this reason i listen when someone says, “if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not.” The difficulty is that we’ve been coerced to believe what the fashionable like to say “it’s all good.” What is often lost in translation is that pain felt by whoever first coined this unfortunate urban myth now used to excuse the decay of decency which results from the illusion that having more describes success. I am successful, not from what i have, but for what i choose to do . .
. . or not do. For many decades, my understanding of life was informed by the process of shaping stone. I erroneously believed myself defined by this skill, an ability which is ironically most active when in the absence of skill. To truly cut rock, one must listen fully to the stone and not to any personal conceit about what’s best for it. Some will cry “new age” fluff, though they’ve never struggled to yield form from what is only partially whole. The conceit that one might understand their medium from a shard of material pried from the bowels of mother earth, is nearly as bad as those visions capable of demanding mountains of rock be excavated for a bad copy of the “Venus de Milo.” The men and women responsible for the creation of the Venus are as far removed from my delusion of stonecutter as those scripting your internet traps are from Hedy Lamarr. The families fortunate enough to live in the culture responsible for creation of Venus de Milo were wholly invested in every aspect of its creation, from the quarry to its installation, and i don’t mean at the Louvre. “Best Working Practice” was dictated by the limitations of technology. Today we do not enjoy the patience which every participant in that creation understood, most especially those on the hoist, or their cousin whose fingers had been lost to a runaway load. We may never understand that connection to our work; yet there are intrepid souls amongst us who refuse themselves to the remote drone death conceived of and made manifest by the same cowards without the backbone enough to march into your fictive castle and shake you down at gunpoint - rather send their legal proxy, or seduce you with a bought-and-paid for media. Internet freedom is rapidly dissolving into a bait-and-switch swindle born in times when cons had to look into the eyes of their marks.
This minor technological glitch will shortly be resolved while you chat with your virtual loved one, for those oh so helpful souls curious about how to help you resolve the difficulties of modern existence will be able to match your expression with their database and provide you with the appropriate advertising of exactly what to buy that you lack in your expression - be patient - it is coming. It may even be in the new iPhone 7, why don’t you go out and buy it and find out if i’m lying to you like every other voice lunging out of the aether - patient or not, you’ll never know. How could you, what would it matter? For example, what if the haters were doing their very best and i was no more than a recalcitrant schoolboy anxious for summertime, and rather than obstinately ignore good advice to apply myself in every way possible to enrich myself using my unique perspective and thereby enrich the economy and all of mankind - would my perspective remain unique? Do you feel patient yet - yeah, me neither, for patience is nothing one can possess - the trials do not end, only our ability to adapt. Patience is only a tool without which we are played for fools by all those without patience. Whyselst would anyone be in such a hurry to amass such unrealistic strength that does nothing to effect an outcome no one can ever understand? While the fantasy of adhering to a strategy i have little faith in may be fun to pass the time, what the use in an uncertain future so full of promise and threat. There is much brilliance available to our kind - for the asking. But much like my own preoccupation with being released from the learning cocoon - release is best seeing from that side which one views “things.”
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recklessness / the sonnet
“Recklessness” is a sonnet with whiskey,
reading or writing - either is a loss.
One’s a guess from missing the other’s key,
yet abandon has made much from such dross.
Without misery there’s no reckoning;
despair will make us all impetuous,
or knowledge from the birth of suffering?
I don’t know, but things i’ve done have made chaos.
The question seems to be whether that helps?
Is a state without form of any worth?
Either’s like wisdom from a pack of whelps.
Proof would be in the pudding, or its dearth.
One cannot know until that line is crossed
between what is real and all what’s embossed.
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