I sold a home in 2014; when i found it, it was dilapidated, in a remote location, close enough that i could visit my aging mother, but far enough away that i would not disturb the tenuous equilibrium that describes my family constellation. I nearly beat the grief out of myself from my father’s death painting its 2,000 sf. For a time, the prospects of peaceful coexistence with the delusional reality of middle america seemed almost possible, but much like the Borg hive, without complete absorption into the red white and blue warp and woof of mindless conformity - i would exist as an antibody within the body politic, subject to the phagocytes and histamines of hatred, innuendo and character assassination; in time i was repulsed like pus out of a zit head from the constant harangue of impending rapture. A personal delusion that anyplace on earth would be different, dovetailed such that i distilled 2,000 sf ft of sentimental tchotchkes collected over 50 years of wandering into a 10’x10’ storage unit and set sail for anyplace in the world other than middle america. My first destination was Paris, France, where i had convinced the love left within my self there lived a woman who possessed my heart, though i was to learn if “home is where the heart is”, Paris was not home; as beautiful as she and Paris are, they are not mine. I also learned that the heart does not break, it bends. I then followed my pif (French for schnoz) to Carcassonne, France where i contracted as expatriate day laborer posing as artist. While writing this now, i’m beginning to believe the only home, i’ve ever really enjoyed has been as artist, so insulting myself to you as being a poser rings hollow. However, the reality at that time was each member at the table was supported through their creative efforts while i, subsisted as attendant - a page within the royal book of hired guns. To earn a living by one’s work is not a hollow point, it is the definition of a burning hearth - home. I have fueled many hearths in my life, mostly as a wage slave, so it is not an indifferent pursuit for me to pursue creative work that is of my own choosing. My belief being that only through honoring what my heart hungers for will i find a place to be - easier said than done.
Paul Cezanne was a banker’s son, yet his work has had a greater impact on my understanding of beauty than possibly any other human, living or dead. So finding myself napping in the garden of his studio in a gentle rain under a canopy of trees he himself had had planted may be as close to heaven as i will ever get; is that home? To see with my own eyes the color of stones at Bibemus Quarry, to sit in the church where he developed his concepts of the sacred or sit on the floor of his studio drawing skulls he had pondered to far better advantage, forced me to question every pretension with which i’ve ever cloaked my own soul from the unflinching truth of beauty. I was more lost than i wished to be and no closer to home. Bob Dylan - “Gonna forget about myself for a while, gonna go out and see what others need.” While in Paris i’d magnanimously bought a pair of draw string pants in support of Nepal which had suffered back to back devastating earthquakes just prior to my arrival there. As my time in Europe was quickly approaching the limits of my Schengen Visa and with the aid of Workaway.info i contacted a school which seemed the most sincere and prepared to seek my better self in the service of others; instead i was confronted by the extent of my human frailty. My family had traveled through Mexico when i was 7, driving a Rambler station wagon towing a teardrop trailer; there were 6 of us, and for 3 months that was home. Compared to the Nepal i arrived at, the rustic Mexico of my memory was the land of milk and honey. My home in Nepal for 3 months was at the Eastern edge of the Kathmandu Valley in the city of Nagarkot. My room was at the end of a hallway on the 2nd floor which also contained 3 classrooms, an additional room for Workaway.info rent and a family of 3 who’d been displaced by the earthquake. At that time, there were 60 students registered at the school; some of whom to attend classes would walk 5-10 miles back and forth each day, up and down 30 degree slopes of the Himalayan foothills .
For the students and faculty there was a single squat toilet without any running water for hygiene; two 10 gallon urns filled daily for hydration. A second squat toilet with a faucet for washing was supplied by a 500 liter reservoir that was manually diverted from a 1,000 liter reservoir used for cooking laundry and watering the garden. The water supply was sourced from a half inch diameter hose fed from a depression in a stream running down the canyon that would dry up in the summer months and which also irrigated local crops. In addition to myself and the family in my hallway, the school housed the school owner, her grown-friend ward, a minor ward, a recuperating sister (gall stones), a displaced local shop owner, and up to four other occasional Workaway volunteers. As much as i’d have liked to change anything at all to the advantage of anyone i met, i feel as though my entire 3 month’s contribution would amount to reading English rhymes with students in pairs and spending money at local grocers who likely despised my spartan diet. In contrast, a younger stronger English vagabond nearly single handedly erected a sandbag house at some distance into the canyon and provided an entire family a home which will likely survive the next quake. The question in my mind remains whether my efforts and faith in literacy its capacity to improve the world evaporated with the inundation of corporate sound bytes driven by greed fueled by the fires from mountains of burning plastic in close proximity to the highest regions of our mortal world. The administrator who i had turned to for moral direction was and had been funneling much resource into the building and improvement of the local Brahma Kumari temple to which she was an adherent. Nor was this symbiotic relationship a one-way channel. I shall remember to my dying day how her guru, in his white garb arrived in the dark of night and dug up the elbow of a drain from the top floor patio into which the same diameter cup had dropped backing up all water from the laundry / kitchen / garden; retrieving errant cup, reinserting drain elbow and cementing curb before mounting his motorized steed and driving home with pennants flying; this was a home full of love, but not mine; Upon my departure, after 10 years of sobriety, i determined to drink again - my celestial ambitions having been reduced to fog by no one other than myself.
My next destination was not so easily determined, for by this time one could almost hear the shrill drumbeat of the 2016 United States presidential elections harkening the death knell of our species. I found myself seeking haven rather than conquest: romantic, artistic - even personal. My fortitude argued with my fear and i found the deeper i dove the less i found, or more accurately my reflection became dimmer and dimmer; the ego i had relied on to guide me to a creative places throughout my life receded further and further from my work. I know this, for i used what i’d always felt as a special gift from heaven injured from crass commercialism to curry favor with a portrait of the proprietors of a Hostel in the Andes where i had half-heartedly convinced myself i belonged. Fleeing the tightening noose, i sought the refuge of absolution female shaman in Uruguay - always the woman; thank g_d for woman. I found myself immersed in a land of memory - a Disney version of 1970’s NYC or San Francisco - full of the roasting meat of barbecue and wine. No small wonder that tobacco found residence in my cowardice, or she, g_d found a way to laugh right in my face; one can only hope she finds enough mirth in my waywardness to return me. For now, i sit in the aftermath of the U.S. 2016 democratic debacle, homeless - sort of in a California city where i had grown up, but i still have the audacity of hope. Enough so that i sit and write without an audience or any real faith that what i say may benefit our kind. What does it mean to be without a home? Stephen Hawking says we are doomed without space exploration with which to carry our DNA to other celestial bodies. How can we humans remove ourselves to another world with a straight face, when we’ve yet to figure out how to co-exist here on planet terra? And still i remain thankful - unrelated to the fact that today is a day in my nation’s history supposedly set aside to give thanks to the indigenous human beings who according to lore saved our forefathers from certain doom, while at the same time corporate goons are water cannoning those same saviors in sub-zero weather as my country wages war on any nation of the world who dares object to the empire which was once my homeland; will this make america gr8 again . ?
G_d in her infinite mercies will not let our kind perish in delusion and so we are about to come full face with the limits of our arrogance - death to the lot of us. Laugh it off, as you should - laughter being one of the few honest emotions left to our depraved, indoctrinated, consumer consciousness. We are about to be reduced to the fundamentals - molecules in suspension - the only thing missing will be the skin. Is it possible that from the dawn of our awareness and earliest shelters of sky and shade, we have pursued an inevitable conclusion to our shared history, arriving at a place where atmosphere and shade from our stellar light will become the only home left to us? I don’t know. I do know that what is found in a phone is not my family, and that anywhere on the planet i go will contain nothing more than those same conflicts i carry in my heart, as well as any love i’ve managed to fortify and grow. My life is over, except for the shouting; and though it be not much, these words i piece together and images i scratch into a paper, are all i have left to bring home to the fire, that same fire which warms me from the cold and lights the darkness of my fading vision - a vision which just now failed me in an effort to adequately braid cloth for a braided rug. Or is it that just like all mankind, i quit. Just now watching the master apply her experience, i cannot attribute my lessor quality braid to anything but lessor determination; she knew what was needed for the braid to remain flat, but my own ego dictated that a desire to “help” would be sufficient to contribute - a fallacy. Truth is, her hunger for a fine rug was greater than my hunger to help; otherwise i’d have taken greater pains to mimic the appropriate effort. Is my diminished capacity to deliver what was needed for a good rug any different than my inability to effect a useful solution to our onrushing calamities? Is her instinct to produce, guiding my fantasy that being understood by another is something all people look for in this life? Is it possible that my applied creative desires may yet help one person recognize that their lonely struggle to belong is shared by every other human? I can’t say, but i’ve tried.
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home - the sonnet
i sit in a room, though it’s not my home
my words in shadow - lamp on the left
my heart is at peace, not from echoing “om”
rather from hearing those many bereft
why such welcome from those who are without?
have they given their last bottom dollar
knowing the store’s empty from some great rout?
did poverty give them that deeper valor?
matters not with my hat on a hook - it is dry
and the winds could shift tonight while sleeping
to waken in morning by sky in my eye
the same eye where shadow made for complaining
be where you sit fully - it can be gone
faster the this planet you now live on.
jts 112416
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