I recently gained access to a music library i had thought lost forever when that computer died. Just now i pressed “play; Los Lobos “peace” is now playing; this after having a Temezcal in the Zapotec tradition. As a child of the 60’s, sweat lodges, hot springs and the mystical are not out of my realm of experience, so it is hard to disentangle one’s skepticism and indoctrination from ancient traditions much less not see that all “hot hot blazes come down to smoke and ash” as Joni Mitchell sings about. Yet what exactly is so concrete and beneficial about the world we live in? The metaphor the curadoro used for this cleansing experiance is rebirth; the scientist in me had to be chained and left at the door to the sweat lodge, because i wanted to welcome any kindness this stranger could conjure. Pain is not something i feel i can entrust any longer to the medical industry, not simply because the pain is so great, but because i believe it contains the lessons for my recovery - if that is what the universe wants for me. My own birth, based on my mother’s enthusiastic exclamations caused her extraordinary pain - a Frank’s Breech delivers a folded over at the waist infant, rather than that of the supine figure normally endured by most mothers. Sadly, i did not pray for her comfort today during my rebirth today, but i did pray for others - many others. Pema Chodron has said, and i parphrase “when things are going badly, think of others, when things are going well think of others.” What are the odds that the past two hundred years of medical development gets trumped by stranger in a strange land? I’d say they are about the same as the 3 billion human beings on our planet whose combined wealth is less than “six men” going to the door of “those same six men” and demanding a more fair split of the world’s bounty. I would pay a lot of money to see that childbirth happen, but alack, i fear my money is safe - sort of.
Something else Pema Chodron has talked about is the flux which we cannot escape even if we tried. If you take your own life for whatever temporary reason, your essentials revert to their origins - a little like changing shoeboxes, shoes is shoes. Even while you live sitting there wasting your time reading this your body is dying off and rebuilding itself until the day your focus vacates whatever seat your soul call home. As a child, i was terrified of losing that seat; “what will i do without my family”? this question would torment my early years late into the night too often. Life provides answers to those questions, and more; i am without my family - a condition for which the talking heads bemoan my sorry state, yet i have food in the refrigerator, a friend - maybe two somewhere on the planet, i’ve been deeply in love, and suffered its loss - more than once and i am going to die someday sure as shit. If it gets any better, i’m gonna have to give up writing and go back to my drawing just to contain myself. If i am experiencing and infancy from a rebirth - i like it. I can’t afford it as often as i want, but so what. Does anyone remember anything about infancy¿ It is peculiar that so little memory survives what the experts tell us are the most formative years of our lives 1 - 3 years. While at the same time we panic at the mere mention of dementia as though our minds and thoughts are the only true measure of the richness of our life experience. Then again if you believe that, you probably panic when you get locked out of your favorite social network, or g_d forbid the internet goes down. It is for these reasons and more i am rapidly losing faith in the conventional definition of success. The healer i saw today tried to help me which is a lot more than many doctors i’ve been treated by; employers who supposedly where helping me make a living; or even instructors whose marks were meant as a gauge of accomplishment for me rather than for themselves.
In China as i understand it, they have citizens grading other citizens - something we as humans have always done through gossip with the gifted rising in station while those indifferent to ridicule populating the lower rungs of society - at least until now. Somehow where gossip had been an open and free exchange of the dirt on others, it has became a closed loop system wher the bad/good shit is now hoarded on servers and sifted through as though it were gold. I cannot say what i was thinking in the first three years of my life, but i’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with gold. I wanted tit, i know that only ‘cause i still hunger for it though they fed me goat’s milk as an infant - something about allergies, but i think it had more to do with birth order. If the healer was able to bring me through the canal again and what your are reading is the squall of a new creature in our midst - we’re in worse trouble than i thought. But if we can begin to relearn what it means to be alive we may find different ways to approach our death. This time around i came out hoping for the health and safety of others, while my first go around i came out twice the size my host was expecting which is little like pissing off the surgeon as you are going under - not a good idea. She is still my mother and i wouldn’t trade her for nothing, event though somewhere in her soul she probably still rankles at the thought of my painful childbirth; still and all she was kind enough to make of me a man. My only wish might be that i wasn’t quite so proud, or perhaps of me she might be a little more. In truth, i wouldn’t change a thing about her, anymore than i would have picked different parents, a different life or a different day to die. To what end, Envy - based on what i know, or think i know. What manner of creature would i be to wish for something that is not in front of me just now? I prefer the semi-idillic notion to be searching my life for something about birth that might be useful to you - where’s the harm in that?
Then again, if i could have known ahead of time about the pain my birth caused ma, would i change anything¿ I can’t even say whether being folded at the waist during birth caused me pain - if it is not possible to avoid pain simply by the complexities of our ever changing world, what is all this bullshit about being afraid - afraid of losing your family, your wife, your country, your home etc., etc, etc. What of this concept of fighting - blood lust i think they call it? Has anything ever been solved by two persons, or two million persons fighting each other¿ As an infant, i was suckled on the destruction of the Axis, and the need to repeat the process with the communists. Today the leader of the free world is a fascist put in office by a Russian communist operative - where is the logic¿ If i am reborn free of fears and training about which this world has worked so hard to convince me, than is all that i now face something like each cell in my body that has died since the day of my birth - reluctant to die but ready for another to take its place and continue the work of feeding the carbon chain which if i remember is the point of our existence where nourishment becomes energy? that is a question. What nourishes all of us in this life¿ I’ve seen grown men laid low by hate, and i’ve seen the broken hearted sprout the wings of new growth and leap back into the fray. I cannot say i have not been miraculously healed by my visit to the Temezcal which is a healing of its own. There is no magic bullet as Tom Waits and many others have said, so why do we forget that simple lesson and search the world over for the fountain of youth. Did those explorers murder each other on the high seas, sponsored by the crown because deep in their hearts they knew salvation and a life ever after was as unlikely as my vain hope to be released from suffering without the common discipline of living a healthy life - fuck stress, eat fresh vegetables, be kind to yourself for no other reason than if you do not you will never bestow that on another. And this is the key point, regardless of how much you pray or practice good living you are going to die - oh boy . . .
. . . and i’m in no big hurry, pain or no. I would be satisfied to know by whatever channel, ancient abstruse wisdom or modern digital hocus pocus that one small thing i have done helped our species to survive a millisecond longer than the greedy, hateful irresponsible end which the ruling class has slated for us. I work very hard at expunging hate from my being because it is corrosive and unhealthy; what is more of a challenge is to open my heart to the cowardice of today’s leaders towards those they have connived their way into leading. I still have trouble with huffy shrews believing Ms. M.T. Suit’s snarky campaign was anything other than an aborted coup d’etat for the corporate brokers that bet on the wrong horse and lost bigly, but are still making out like the bandits they are - because playing both sides against the middle is profitable. So exactly why would i purge this morsel of hope from my chest - this shard of intention for the wellbeing of infants that have not been born. Because life is good, and if we survive long enough there may be enough babies born immune to the medical industry to parents too poor to afford book learning that has become classroom management in the guise of civilization - parents whose roots to the earth are deeper than the flickering screen and its promise of modernity. Am i reborn, no - do i want another life than the one i possess, no. It is hard enough to recognize friend from foe while holding onto a dogged determination to find something of worth in the souls of human beings who have sold their souls to a chimera of wellbeing proffered on the screen. Life is fucking hard, it takes effort to open your heart to the appalling senseless mayhem that is being used to frighten us all into conformance - a conformance designed to . . . that is the cruel hoax. We have established throughout history that we are a resourceful, loving and generous species, what we have not established are the personal limits of that capacity. Until we fight as hard as we do for all others as we have been fighting for our own self interest - we are doomed. But once each human being understands their personal wealth is based on that which is in their hearts finding a path to self expression when we may all of us be born into a worthwhile future of . . .
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death - the sonnet
There was a species called itself human
until it was forced to become extinct.
“By whom for why¿” you ask - “not by woman”
i’d have to reply “though she may have winked”
the entire species died without reason
makes perfect sense to other species gone
without cause to places without a sun
along with lessons about brains vs brawn
it proves that more is not always better -
death had visited much before they left
each one grievous - sometimes just the mother
mourned the day it was born after such heft
but herein told each life was special for
without each of them the whole was more poor
jts 01/15/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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