6 August 1945 146,000 human beings senselessly murdered:
. . . and things have gone to hell in a hand basket from there .
I am not feeling as frisky as i was last night when i picked this topic after a good day’s work and the prospect of my daily jingle of mezcal, but what the fuck is better than playing with words when your honey is no where to be found¿ I resolve the former by spending my days drawing women’s portraits - momma didn’t raise no fool. We as a species are losing the capacity to act as agents of our own diversions. This is a natural outgrowth of our faith in a system which was purported to provide for all our wants at the mere cost of employment, your freedom intact by being allowed your own choice of occupation. Like writing an essay about fun on the 73rd anniversary of the first “anonymous” incineration of human beings is dissonant, the contrast of an empty promise of stability against the reality of a world leadership in denial of our imminent extinction is dissonant as well. I do what i can using fb to propagate information; you will have to make your decisions. I choose to have fun - my mother is in the later moments of her existence, and my inclination would be to bring my frolic to her bedside. I did for my father in his end days; it caused a ruckus, but gained his blessings. Pop was better at having fun than ma, besides ma don’t like no ruckus. So i wave from afar, and blow her kisses by way of weekly postcards. I fear it is all the fun she can handle; pa on the other hand could have more fun with a stick he found on the beach than most debauched executives i’ve known could manage with a limitless per-diem in a foreign land. Pop’s capacity for fun is more than content in a digital morass, it was a native resourcefulness that kept our tool cabinet limited to an ancient pipe wrench, sloppy crescent wrench, screwdriver and hammer. If it couldn’t be fixed with those tools, it likely wasn’t broken. When the TV broke, who cared - it just meant you got to pull the back of the TV off and yank all the tubes out to take down to the market to test. If that ain’t fun, i don’t know what is.
Of course my opposition to corporate conceived amusement, could certainly just be sour grapes for not being tall enough at 6 year’s old to ride on Disneyland’s Matterhorn, or it could be i have more confidence in your ability to devise your own fun than i have in any corporation’s ability to create any kind of fun. A little harsh, but corporations aren’t playing, why should i? There was an afternoon, long ago when we managed a cardboard box that once housed a refrigerator, and than sat at the bottom of “the bluffs.” I couldn’t say what was more fun, being out of the house in a strange neighborhood; being with a friend; or figuring out the best track to ride down the bluff once the carton got hauled up the 60 foot slope - couldn’t tell you how many trips we made, but i know we didn’t spend a dime for something i remember
50 years later. My experience with corporations is they always want to do more for less, and when i say “more”, i mean they want to sell more units for less work - a great formula for stock holders, but shit for the balance of humanity. The result is mediocrity for all, even the stockholders. The herd instinct necessary to work at Amazon, most especially the executive suites is almost too repellant to consider. I know there was a rock opera before creativity got sucked out of the genre; i just wonder why no one has written one for the executive suits of googol, or fb. I would think the court of Caligula tame in comparison. Who knew muckraking could be such fun¿ Lao Tzu says to keep your desires simple and your disappointments will follow suit. He ‘twern’t kidding. As much as i miss nesting - puttering in an old well-worn atelier is an ancient rite - i ain’t lugging to my grave half of what i was just 5 years ago - less as i get more simple. Same with my fun, if i can’t have fun where i am - pretty sure i won’t wherever i wander. Pop liked the pay-as-you-go plan - it’s the same for fun and women, if she don’t want me now, why would i believe she’d want me when i . . .
Ladies, that’s not a complaint; your notion of fun is truly the best. But truth be told, without your shopping addictions to fuel the fictive economy - the capitalist captivation would end - again with the paradox of dissonance. “The difference between being married and being single is like the difference between watching TV in black and white and watching it in color” - A. Nonymous. Case in point; i read this quote years ago and just now peered into googol looking for an echo - not a fucking thing. Any way you slice or dice it - zip, butkus. How can something become a repository of the human experience and not manage to incorporate a simple quote. It is because those tasked with populating the info super oneway not unlike the Eloi in H.G.Wells “Time Machine,” or workers at Amazon getting zapped back onto schedule with the wrist band that rat’s them out anytime they veer from their task have lost personal agency. Without the corresponding approbation of those deemed important to us, we are unable to navigate an independent course. That is sick. I had a blast with my friend that afternoon tumbling down a bluff in cardboard box, but i don’t feel compelled to re-create that event or even that relationship ad nauseam. While i’m a firm believer in what is repeatable, i’ve found myself in too many ruts to follow a single formula for anything, much less something as sacred as fun. And now just for fun, i’ll launch a monkey wrench into that logic. Within the most restricted can come the greatest liberation. For me it began as a time-management issue. Working full-time, because i am a man of faith and no bum, it was necessary to portion free time diligently toward my passion for carving stone. What i discovered is while it was a rigid in many respects, i was liberated from the yoke of accomplishment. I did not have to cut a single flake of stone, as long as i was having fun. For anyone who knows anything about carving stone, it is always better to hear what the stone is trying to say than impose some shape someplace it does not belong.
That’s fucking whacked, some of you may be saying, and i’d have to agree. But outside of the cost of tools and storage for those finished, i paid no one for my fun, and had the pleasure of really old company. The profiteers of pleasure do not enjoy such leisure and so suffer the pressure of creating diversion that you will spend a lot of money on. Regardless of excessive salaries at the highest echelons, those responsible for putting that smile on your vacationing face endure hideous privation and abuse in the process - how much fun can stem from such¿ Without question there are wizened corporate veterans amongst the ranks who find pleasure in such a pressure intense environment, just as there were certainly brokers who enjoyed remarkable adrenalin rushes during the crash of 2008, but the cost to independent human agency as regards fun cannot be overstated. I find fun in taking the obscure and making it more clear. The drawing i am working on is a total failure, yet enough of the subtle reality of this woman’s beauty can be nuanced to make even the failure an expedition into understanding the possible expression of one other human being through the medium of drawing. What corporate environment could i apply to and expect a favorable interview? That is the point - who defines what is fun, if not each individual human being. What possible good can come from a corporate civilization which demands that you be mediocre and that your fun be of their choosing¿ Like so many fun things, this writing effort is not one dimensional; it requires painful personal acknowledgement of the limits of speech, or my own facility, to convey meaning; without deliberate patience awaiting the pace, i could abandon all hope, yet if i listen and follow the clues stories evolve with purpose. That is enough for me, for now. I have taken nothing and made something and even sort of enjoyed myself. If you opened this blog expecting to find some pathway to the countless dead ends i have traveled in search of the holy grail of fun - guess again? (as he chuckles his way into the next paragraph)
Nikola Tesla - “you may live to see manmade horrors beyond your comprehension.” This statement was in response to an admiral at the “First Electrical Exhibition” in NYC-1898, commenting what a magnificent weapon Tesla’s radio controlled boat could become. What the admiral failed to realize was that Tesla was having fun at the admiral’s expense. Shit is going south in a hurry for mankind, and the stilted, pinched, cheap reasoning born of the corporate ethos just ain’t gonna provide the juice to get over the hill. Any system that is top-loaded with a bloated executive staff that can’t grab its ass with both hands is doomed. And today folks - that is the only game in town. There are lots of tribes making noise, but most i can see are just looking to take the place of their favorite antagonist. Try as i might, solidarity becomes more and more elusive - so just like whenever i get in a tight corner creatively, i let go. There is no pressing, there is no successful program that will magically remove the haters from office. It is down to each one of us to search our hearts and ask - what am doing, am i having fun doing it - is it harming anyone else - the very last concern should be whether it pays. To the many eyes rolling back in their heads saying into their cartoon bubble “he’s an idealist, commie pinko, LGBT sympathizer, renegade pagan - let him take off his rose-colored glasses, wake up and smell the coffee” to which i reply - fuck you, and i mean that in the nicest possible way. The corporate yellow brick road is gutting the human spirit of belief in itself. The man is foisting an avatar on you compiled from what you believe or independent keystrokes of your own volition, when they are no more than multiple choice questions on whether you prefer your anonymous incineration posted to your page for future generations or only - selected friends. I don’t know what planet you came from, but that ain’t my kind of fun, i want a warm hearted woman who will look at my failures and say “it is beautiful, but it don’t look a thing like me - let’s have a drink and your can start another one in morning.”
- <- chicken shit -
- misery - a sonnet
misery is not pain, but it can be-
anything can, if you are not careful,
but mindfulness might help to make you pain free
once you crawl past the need to eat ’til full.
but then you have hunger - though less anguish.
An empty stomach is easier when
you can use both your hands to reach the dish
but dining in a wheelchair ain’t heaven.
emptiness from lost love could be the worst
but makes no sense, cause love is yours to give,
and if you lost it, it ’twern’t yours at first.
Any love, is just what it takes to live.
To suffer is not a wise choice to make,
but letting go is nothing one can fake.
jts 08/06/2018
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e
∞
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