If i knew what truth was, i’d never be writing about it. So why use your precious time, or my heartache and confusion to pursue an impossibility? Without a greater effort toward truth than what is evident from today’s media, we may perish - not die in the sense of our puny human lives, but as a species. Your resistance to that remark may be the clearest indication of its accuracy, not dissimilar to the look of lost love in a dear one’s eyes. Your heart knows the truth, but your hopes and dreams resist with all the power of desire. I cannot change another’s feelings, anymore than i can alter our collective fate. So i’m faced with the choice of continuing on my way using love as best i know how, or finding some justification within myself or for the other. (psychiatric jargon - rationalizing). While infinitely more useful to seek one’s own responsibility in the decay of a relationship, it is also more painful - who wants more pain, right? What if truth is not found in right or wrong - but simply the ability to see clearly and accept what is evident? For example if the capitalists are successful for no other reason than a clear vision of people’s weaknesses; what if all the oppression in the world is from humanity’s fear of freedom - not the sort of freedom found in a mobs’s ability to dominate, but the freedom that comes from learning to hear one’s self and to then honor another’s hopes and desires as though they were one’s own? From a purely practical position, it makes more sense to expect good will from others, especially when anyone who has ever pursued a cherished dream would know there are enough internal doubts and demons with which to contend without piling on any fantasy of ill will from others; however, it is not practical to live one’s life preying on others and to than expect anything but a “reality sandwich” for lunch. The question gets back to what happens once the “look of love” is gone? If in that event i choose to become “right,” all the faults, reservations and quirks overlooked in the other while in love, become ample reasons to dethrone the “object of affection” (don’t get your knickers in a twist ladies - it is a euphemism) However, the truth about my euphemism is that it reflects reservations about my own indoctrination regarding women on pedestals rather than any lack of solidarity with any oppressed life form. That the accurate dialectics of enlightened feminist theory kicked over my lemonade stand in the process of my education, didn’t help, but what if she wasn’t wrong for extinguishing her “look of love”?
Right and wrong, don’t seem to be much help when searching for a way to recognize truth. What is of use? Are the clerics correct about an eternal nature defined by truth? I watched a computer animation of what it may look like when in about 4 billion years our galaxy, the Milky Way, collides with the Andromeda galaxy. The fact that an intelligence apparatus for an unnamed superpower republic in severe decay has foisted a “flat earth” hoax on hordes of undereducated frightened patriots who have surrounded themselves with proxy penises in the guise of ample armament makes it difficult to convey the enormity of such a collision. My first assumption watching this animation was of a molten cauldron of collapsed worlds, an assumption that turns out to be wrong. Our sun, because of its distance from our nearest counterpart Alpha Centauri and gaps in our part of the galaxy, we'll likely go unscathed - go figure. Truth, if it exists must be nearly as unfathomable, but no less unyielding in its reality; so how are we to visualize truth, and for why? Is the process, if there is a process as with the galaxy animation, a patient painstaking analysis of what is known using whatever accurate instruments we may have at our disposal? What if truth is more aligned with what the clerics assert - a timeless spiritual force shepherding us to a celestial afterlife worthy of killing and dying for? Of what use are our senses in pursuit of a spiritual reality, if we can more easily blame another for a loss of love than we would ourselves? I don’t know - I know the more i seek foundation in the heart of another for my own love the weaker my love is - what if g_d is no different. What if she, like the atoms within a scientist studying atoms at Cern, are simply g_d looking at herself? Rumi said, “you are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop.” Is it truth that i’m simply passing time until my next drink and that writing cuts through the tangle of solitude better than the sick feeling of searching for a community that is made up of other lost souls waiting for a drink? Or have i looked out over the horizon as best my scared scarred heart is able and am resorting with my best effort to help anyone with similar questions? Just as plastic has no analog on our planet, neither do the social networks posing as community. All the social gatherings i’ve ever encountered good and bad, fall into similar cliques as you might find within internet “groups,” with a singular distinction; regardless of cultural tradition, if there is a “shot caller” at the gathering - everyone knows who he, or she is. This renown is recognizable by dress, attendants, or just the flow of sycophants to the seat-of-power - in the virtual community people converse with each other through the “filter” of that seat-of-power, not around it as has been the habit of human clusters.
The obscuring of that filter has neutered our ability to pick and chose our conversations much less define their content. The insult of surveillance is simply an additional indication of the salacious despair of our technical lords and ladies. What else could describe a utility which when unleashed rather than enhancing human understanding has isolated us more and more from each other without rendering any deeper truths than saccharin memebytes made palatable by the delusion anyone will be changed by what anyone else posts. It remains plumage and coquetry, with another important distinction - we’re losing the capacity to feel, or more accurately losing the capacity to feel nuance. On the internet, it is not unusual to be chatting one minute and staring into aether the next. I am guilty and understand the complex demands of life. Take for example our fictional gathering and its “shot-caller,” were i chatting with someone one minute and found the next minute that same person knee deep in adulation with the shot-caller - that is good information about my companion's priorities. There is no similar gauge on the internet, if anything, the drive for anonymity and encryption only drives a further wedge into the personal responsibility necessary for integrity. Our deteriorating social fabric will not be made whole by hiding from each other, and i have no idea how to repair it. I know i do not want a corporate server sponsoring an avatar of myself - however well-intentioned. It is difficult enough making myself clear without wading through a minefield of algorithms. In the actual world, truth can often be found in what is not said, but with the deluge that is the data stream one begins to feel, if one doesn’t see evrything, something important might be missed. Could we have gotten any further from Frost’s “A Road Less Traveled” if we had burned his books in former Nazi Germany, soon to be Nazi USA?
Leonard Cohen - “I don’t give a damn about the truth, Baby except for the naked truth.” Is there any other truth than that which resides within our hearts. This morning i posted a video which seemed to correspond to my concept of the dangers of group-think, or more accurately the dangers of not thinking. On further research, i discovered the poster was affiliated with “Info Wars” - a site i consider divisive and self-serving. It is the re-telling of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” i aim at rather than being a tailor for the next monarch. The assertion and counter-assertion which embroils the oh-so-well-modulated internet is counterproductive. No reply i will ever make to a Trump supporter will dislodge that person from their conviction, for until that human decides there is no threat from without, s/he will never be able to see the demons consuming them from within. Noam Chomsky - “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” If our spectrum gets any narrower, we will be sipping our future through a straw. I do not subscribe to violence of any kind: mental, physical or spiritual; so how, as an avowed defender of the species, am i to dislodge armies, when googol barely allows 40 people to read my words; if you think googol is neutral, ask Bernie Sanders about that? The amazing lens which digital technology was supposed to have provided humanity is nothing more than a microscope hired-gun sold to the highest bidder to scrutinize the amoeba we have become to the ruling class. If we do not seize the technology and point that same lens back up the food chain to know the truth about our enemies, we will have allowed our existence to expire within a petri dish where we will have been experimented on, spliced into and made plump androids to be served up at the next new religious holiday celebrating NASDQ’s recovery; “I say it, so it must be so” - Bob Dylan.
Is there even such a thing as truth? The man i was 5 years ago doesn’t exist: 4 years, 3 years 2 seconds ago . . . I know damn sure i won’t survive to see our kind needlessly extinguished - so why bother? It is because of the magnificence of our world reflected through the beauty of our efforts. I have stood in front of a Cezanne painting transfixed in wonder at how he could have gotten so deeply into the essence of something, not just the color and light, but the actual “plink” of a ceramic cup or pitiless boredom of his wife - that to me is magic; i have felt similar wonder with Shakespeare’s awareness of the human heart, or Edith Piaf’s vocalization of pain. What might have happened with 7 billion human beings pursuing their capacity for such love to its fullest? I was raised in post-WW11 California; there was no San Diego freeway and one could still smell the dirt from dug fields that had not been depleted of its nutrients by the mongrels of our doom - Monsanto. Here’s a fact: all of the world’s food is grown in 2 inches (5.1 cm) - 8 inches (20 cm) of topsoil. Since 1974 1.8 million tons in the U.S., and 9.4 million tons have been sprayed worldwide - enough for 1/2 pound of glyphosate for every acre (.4 hectare) of arable land on the planet. Monsanto was recently bought by Bayer for $66 billion dollars. Glyphosate has been identified as a likely carcinogen, AND it doesn’t work - it only makes for bigger weeds. These are facts, and our president has signed an indemnity for our agent's of doom from prosecution - so if you get cancer from eating; brother that’s on you. Plastic - don’t even get me started on plastic. . . I have a few years left to me unless i’m assassinated for my beliefs. With that time i mean to cultivate love in my heart and peace around me. I will do this by writing, drawing maybe even carving some stone, not because i have anything important to share, but because it makes me feel good. It may be that all of our rational Western Civilization is as fake as this year’s American election; i cannot change that; what i can change is my feeling about it, so rather than be afraid, or saddened or any of the other inducements used to make me buy things i don’t need, i will use my time to develop my work such that someone i will never know might feel something good; it is all i have to give, and it will have to be enough.
Post Script - The entire body of work from Joseph T Stevens’ identified as “stone carvings” are subject to this caveat into perpetuity : owner or ownership entity will not have financial ties greater than 50% of their net worth contained in whole or in part within any financial instrument subject to, or controlled by the richest .01% (HNWI) of the planet’s financial apparatus. http://stoneartist.com
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lies - the sonnet
Good lies are sweet; the best lies are sweeter.
“I need you” was too sweet for my three wives.
Should i’ve said “i love you, make me better”?
I miss them - hope them well in their new lives.
The conceit they’d improve me was my own
Born of a faith my love was not enough.
True too, all they could see was what i’d shown-
A hurt boy hiding self-hate by being tough.
Did i lie to them by needing someone?
Yes and no - it was my self with the need
for a love i had sought from anyone,
but mostly found we all share the same greed.
i love you now without expectation,
for truth is not the heart’s limitation
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