“There is no fear for one whose mind is not filled with desires” - Buddha
We are born and almost immediately begin screaming, for what - another slap on the ass which caused our first breath¿ if that defines desire, i am more than prepared to renounce this world and its desires. There is much to be said for a calm mind, and there is much to object to about acquisitions - especially those we cannot afford, physically, financially or morally. Those whom i’ve known to have satiated their yen to the utmost, have not had the calmest minds if only for the constant fear of having those things taken from them or assertions disproved - be that beauty, strength or intellectual dexterity. I possess fear, and it has been for the most part as a direct result of attachment. What i physically possess fits into a 10x10 ft storage space, and most of those objects could be best described as sentimental detritus clung to like buoys, but amongst the flotsam and jetsam are 13, more or less, stone carvings that i have fashioned over my adult life - as well as a driftwood pipe holder i carved for my nonsmoking father when i was around 6. These carvings and miscellaneous objet d’art might be said to describe my remaining attachment to this material plane. However, were that true i’d hardly be sitting here looking to exonerate my sins on your dime. The truth is writing for me is a therapy which i value for its ability to laugh at my shortcomings and focus on my more positive inclinations. What else is left to us as a species, but to develop as creatures in search of purpose. When i began my art study, the life and work of Paul Gaugin captivated my imagination, not just for his ability to strip woman down to her most simple beauty, but also for his quest for truth. One stand-out painting of his was embellished with the following quote. “who are we, why are we here, where are we going.” In an age when creative success is defined by astronomic prices which often have more relationship to the artist’s capacity for social climbing than her/his contribution to the chain of Cezanne’s creative heritage metaphor this quote from Paul Gaugin was not a fashionable contemporary quip, but a marker on the trail for others with courage enough to admit they might be lost.
I know i am, lost. Not a bad place to be at 63 and aging quickly, for it can provoke one to fulfill rational fantasies like smoking only 6 cigarettes a day; imbibing no more than dos caballos of mezcal, and a dash of marijuana each day in my two pots of beans and rice. Being adrift can also inspire one to focus energies toward what creates happiness for oneself and relinquish those things that excite the mind. It would give me great satisfaction to describe nirvana in cogent prose, but alas i have no idea outside of what i’ve described. Nor is my mind tranquil, if anything stripped of the delusions of accomplishment and community which had occupied my waking life for so long, my only companion now seems to be the beast that i am. For example, i have searched many times on the “acclaimed” internet for an apocryphal statement by Franz Kafka - “if a man were to meet himself walking down the street, he’d probably turn and run,” I liked the quote when i read it 40 years ago, but didn’t really understand it until more recently. At the time it mirrored my badass costume from behind which, like the Wizard of Oz, i invoked images of fear and power because that is all i could see of the world. Now, thanks to the grim reaper’s stalking behavior, what do i care whether anyone wants to play with me? I care the same as i did then, but am no longer convinced that anyone can be persuaded about anything. I’ve mostly come to this conclusion because so few have been persuaded by anything i’ve ever tried; but more likely because so few have rung true for me over the course of time - including me for myself. Yet there are signposts along the way left by previous seekers, mostly snacks; i think this is because gorging on the road of truth can impede progress, that or those ahead know if you are not self-sufficient there is nothing they can give you that will suffice. What I have never found on the road of truth is: fear, hatred, greed, anger - all those commodities of our current culture which declares itself without shame, or irony - the zenith of civilization.
Well fuck that shit - hard. What a crock - so what if i’m afraid, am i going to ransom the pleasure of puzzling over a mystery of such an etherial and ever-passing wisps for the sacred rock of what - certain knowledge that i will live forever, which in some sects includes 70 ravishing beauties at one’s beck and call. (maybe those two should pool their resources instead of crusading against jihad, or vice versa). I am more afraid of closing my eyes for the last time and not being worthy of that sublime moment of a lifetime, or this instant for that matter. Mark Twain said “I’ve experienced a 1,000 horrible things in my lifetime, and some of them even happened.” If i am the beast all those fleeing from me will attest to, then i had better find a better channel for communication then the Rube Goldberg contraption a la Frank Baum which i managed to fortify myself with for the better part of my adult life - today is my 3rd day smoking 6 cigarettes a day. It seems to be enough to quiet the beast, the dilemma is which beast - that voracious wooly rebel ransacking all that which titillated and excited my young probing intellect, or is it the sanctimonious, severe, goody-two-shoes, that like Leonard Cohen`s - “the maestro calls it Mozart, but it sounds like bubble gum” mocks its own excellence or illusions thereof. I don’t know, i do know that Michel de Montaigne said about death to befriend it, to occupy your imagination with all that comes from that unknown and thereby remove the thorn of fear. This works with most things that are scary - get right up into its face and love the fuck out of it. But then it wouldn’t be called fear if it were that simple, nor would so many be so easily enslaved by its effects. It may be for this reason that psychiatry has been suborned to the darkside and made itself available to Guantanamo, facebook and the too-little-too-late “impeach the bum” talking heads. The more the outer world appears to change, the greater the need to command one’s own sphere above all others, or what Bob Dylan describes as the “greasy trail.”
It is now 12:56 pm and by design i will have my 3rd cigarette of 6 for the day at 1:30 pm. There is a perverse pleasure in running counter to that same abstinence i thrived on for a decade before my “fall.” Like all fears, the fear of restricting my beast to 6 a day was contrived and magnified by not taking the plunge and simply altering my behavior. Yet like all decisions - based on what criteria, even that delusional self talk which allowed for the “fall” included criteria that made it seem perfectly plausible to take up smoking after a 10 year hiatus. I do not regret the choice, because i like smoking - but i also enjoy being well and smoking is a dangerous past time. I was righteously turned out of the home at age 16, and spent my 17th birthday drinking competitively with an Irish las and a Scotch lad on a ferry between Amsterdam and London. I was emancipated in name, but am still attempting to re-familiarize so to speak. This is a more complex equation than some Pavlov’s dog variation that smoking reduction represents, and not. Because of my experiences i have developed a sense of self-respect that was born of William Blake’s paving stones of excess, but whether that long awaited self-regard is adequate to bridge the oceans of compassion we need between ourselves to survive as a species. I’m having a hard time allowing anyone close enough to find out. What does that tell you about espoused conviction and con - kidding, sort of. As was the case with tobacco re-initialization and the more practical reduction - so too it appears love may be. I can love all people, some more easily than others, much easier - but i no longer delude myself that my own love is meaningful to another, rather i am content to be as loving as i know how which includes the meditation of honoring in pencil tip an old curadora savagely betrayed by what later became the hipster doofus brigade, and this chant you are reading that i cast out into the rapidly evaporating aether, now being sucked into bitcoins for the enrichment of the same handful of human ciphers which have consigned our species to the dungheap of history.
Oddly, that does not frighten me - i have railed, cajoled and cheered ’til i’m blue in the face, but Orwell’s sage observation about sports and beer holds too true and it remains go Dodger Blue while the ruling class is hocking their next 3 generations into prisons for profit with nary a peep from the aggrieved. But i do not fear for them, anymore than i fear returning to star dust as my body decays and my name is forgotten while my life’s work become tchokyes of greater or lesser value gathering dust in the havoc of post human planet earth. I don’t understand why i am here, but i have done my level best to try and understand, including doing self-therapy of a kind in a vain effort to leave some signpost on this odd trail i now share with you. So what of that fear which i act on unawares, the dark one which Jung says becomes one’s fate if not welcomed into the labyrinth with all the other gargoyles and other pet monsters one accumulates over a lifetime of slaying dragons for that pretty girl who hands you heart back from out of your chest, while she walks away with a “real” dragon-slayer - kidding sort of. At this turn i’m not sure which holds greater respect from me - pretty girls or dragons. Perhaps like the beasts of my inner hell, i will befriend all the pretty girls and let them wander at will through my fantasies which for whatever reason have not entirely abandoned me. I can begin to understand why those further up the trail only seem to leave snacks, for it is god awful heavy dredging up something i hope will useful from this effort, or i just haven’t yet figured out how to leave a light line in the right spot with the right bait to bring me together with that fish seeking to have some fun with my odd ideas about fear and desire while leaving me whole - “they don’t let a woman kill you, not in the tower of song” - Leonard Cohen
“be not afraid” - Joseph T. Stevens
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desire - the sonnet
i am a man with a lot of desire
i want love, peace, and dignity for all.
so how does my want create so much ire?
could be my want’s a “put” to the world’s “call”?
i have discovered much from my lacking,
what is essential what is incidental
who is giving, who’s taking - who is king¿
what don’t figure is how they got such pull?
then again everybody knows - ‘cause they paying-
buying this - buying that - for what, for why
what i see’s a bunch of hunger and pain
from having what you can’t take when you die.
money is not the root of all evil
the root’s whatever ’tis that shames your will.
jts 10/20/2017
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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