I normally write on Monday’s, but just now realized that to ponder an essay about flux on Sunday would be apropos. By definition it is not possible for anything to exist, but in a state of flux; yet as humans we have conjured the word “stasis” and its appropriate definition, however false:
Stasis (from Greek στάσις "a standing still") may refer to: A state of stability, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other. Stasis (political history), as defined by Thucydides as a set of symptoms indicating an internal disturbance in both individuals and states.
As creatures with the capacity for language, but the inability to explain the whys and wherefores of our time alive, how is it possible to parse any part of that which we do not understand into equal and opposing forces¿ I can understand the desire for stasis - a respite from the storm, cessation of loving hostilities within the framework of marriage, or even a pause in the unending pursuit of answers to Shakespeare’s eternal question: to be or not to be. Has there ever been a stasis of any kind, a pause in any mountain’s erosion toward the inevitable valley¿ I don’t see how. And yet there it sits in our lexicon of language, which is often more than adequate to settle, at least, arguments in games of Scrabble. How many other words do we use that have no relationship to truth? “If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you.” — George Bernard Shaw. The truth, is i hope you’re laughing, ‘cause i ain’t quite ready to do the ever-after-two-step. And this is where it gets dicey, what good am i to you if i am not prepared to die for what i believe¿ Fucking paradoxes. Pema Chödrön uses the simile of flux within the universe to explain the futility of holding on to a closed heart - (paraphrasing) that circumstance which initially closed your heart has inevitably changed since you used it as an excuse to close your heart. Oddly one cannot understand that idea unless one has actually closed down one’s own heart. Is that the essence of change, simply pre and post prompts? Are there conditions that must be met in one’s own growth in order to grasp certain other concepts¿ How the fuck are we as a species supposed to transmit knowledge from generation to generation? Is all education conditional and only subject to immutable laws of organization¿ How can that be if knowledge cannot even be presented in a predictable sequence? Is this barrage of words gonna change any of the needless suffering in our world¿ If not, what will? Were i a day younger, i might have had some silly conceit of using this essay as a vehicle for personal change . ha . ha . ha .
This begs the question, from what to what. Just now standing outside smoking 3 of 6, i’d determined that the click on the keyboard from my longer nails was dissonant to my particular brand of autism, so i cut them and now type quietly enough to sooth my retentive state of denial. However it does provoke the possible irony of quiet keystrokes in a world where wunderkinds are worth multiple billions simply for their capacity to harvest a predictable cacophony of keystrokes. The acute reader will rightfully take umbrage with my mixed metaphor equating my not entirely private act of writing with the emerging science of bandwidth presence and social engineering. I was long-nailed joseph, now short-nailed joseph, though during the ten minutes of time on this 2nd paragraph, approximately 960,000,000 of my cells are now dead and replaced with brand new ones. If one were to expand that logically, how does one transform a self that is already ceaselessly transforming? There seems to be a fixation on permanence in our planet; i carved stone for 40 years in some convoluted reaction formation about mortality, and some declare _rump was anointed in heaven. What if our confusion about eternity is simply a question of perception¿ My particular eyesight has provided me a broad spectrum of strategies to manage visual acuity. What if perceiving eternity has more to do with the amount of clarity and openness we can experience each moment than any contrived notion we each might conjure out of the labyrinth of our human archetype? I was about to rail just now about googol’s chief scientist and his fixation on the transgenic uploading human DNA to a silicon matrix, for why rail¿ It’d be sort of like shaking one’s umbrella at the rain - don’t ya’ think? Just like early cinema was a slight of hand - many pictures seen quickly - so too we seem to want to blur and provide an illusion of mobility, rather than peer deeply into each moment you inhabit.
The framework of essays have a melody, but in the wrong hands (read mine own) can be much like the fiction of time, a sweeping minute hand registering favorably with whatever edition of socialization was supplanted within the blossom of our early selves. To stake out a position about change precludes discovery. Discovery suggests a state of unknowing which is not possible. It is the cudgel of conviction that blunts our capacity to peer deeply without ascribing value or judgement. The limits of perception are self imposed. I have read that humans have on average 12,000 to 70,000 thousand thoughts per day, however 98% of those thoughts are the same ones that you had the day before. Given the size and scope of the universe, and our unique capacity for reason aided by our senses, i’d have to say we as a species are seriously underutilizing our capacity for perception. Unfortunately the +/- 5v straw sucking your focus down the rabbit hole is diminishing rather than enhancing any vestiges of curiosity left to our kind, and i mean that in the nicest possible way. Fucking paradox, the slower you the more you see. At the end of Siddhartha by Herman Hess, it was the river passing which yielded Siddhartha a sense of change as it pertained to himself. I resist change, which makes no sense. The illusion of using stone carvings as a means of establishing a state permanence, is little different than climbing the highest mountain which was eroding the whole time you were climbing it and even while you stood at the pinnacle. I haver read that Rembrandt was fascinated by the changes to his face as he aged, that is the root of curiosity in my mind, but moreover a wonderful capacity to peer into the abyss. In the town where i live there is an older woman who sells fruits and nuts. She kindly asked “how are you?” I replied “older, thank god; how are you¿” i asked. “Younger, thank god,” she replied. “Please share with me your secret.” i asked. “I don’t resist.” she smiled.
There was a thread of wisdom across my screen this morning. The kernel i took away corresponds to Jung’s notion of the shadow. To embrace that which we repeal. I cannot retrieve a time in my life where i might have done things differently, but i can do things as differently now as i would have then. Am i making decisions today based on an effort to preserve the home in which i grew up? I was powerless to stop it’s disintegration. Have i been making decisions based on the same conviction for the past 50 years¿ There are very good reasons to look deeply into the place we exist, rather than clutching at a time, idea, or person whose entire cellular structure may have changed since you actually shared air together. I was raised by patriots, yet ma did look up at me without guile while the fox channel piped in like some sycophantic sibling, and asked - “Do you really think Trump is such bad guy¿” I was horrified, and not. Our individuation would not allow that debate. My own struggle be a good son had brought me full circle to the “he” she would change. She’s a crafty woman, so i’ll never know if that had been her plan all along. What i have gained is a kinder appreciation for her own unique dialogue with permanence. She is approaching her transition, and i with who she shared her childhood “inconsolable fear of death” cannot alter her path. What i have learned, is that she cannot alter mine. I would say to her now, “ma, that’s a good thing, don’t you see¿ If you cannot change my path, that means no one can change yours either. You are powerful ma.” About this time she might be weeping, trembling or worse yet - tossing tissues at me. What saddens me was not conveying clearly to her the she i found her to be. Ma was present during the same domestic collapse that affected all us. I’m not sure she was ever able to forgive herself, and i only say as much for knowing how long it has taken me to forgive myself.
And it is here in the melody we find the “crux of the biscuit” - Frank Zappa. .. forgive who, for what i ask. Once one has permission to consider the vastness of what we do not know about where we are, the tragedies and accomplishments we cling to shrink - the “so large against the sky, so small against the stars” late Leonard Cohen shared. When the not yet dead Jim Morrison sang “you cannot petition the lord with prayer” it later resonated for me with readings from Lao Tzu. Much of the wiser things i’ve read or learned are not so much concerned with the capacity to change one’s environment, but in understanding one’s relationship to one’s environment. When this practical advise is held up against what we’ve learned about the scope of our universe in just the past 50 years, much less the last 100 years, there becomes a great onus, to again try and understand, rather than to change one’s place in the much larger universe. My sense is the deeper we are able to peer into all the realms of our world the more real change we might find. Me, within the frontiers of my own skin, i’m doing good when i keep it to 2 shots and 6 cigarettes, much less attenuating my language around ma, whom i’ve known forever but have only begun to understand recently her somewhat remote humor, much less that which she wants. I know this, on any 10 trips to the store she will change her buying habits for everything but buttermilk. Her passing is not something i welcome, and not. My hope is that her infinitely pliable perspective comea full circle, from: inconsolable fear of death, to: the Valkyrie like bravery it must have taken to unmoor from a 60’s suburbia sham and to damn the torpedos, full speed ahead into a paradise or kingdomcome, whichever comes first - however hasty the timing of her decision may have been. I now know, she was being shadowed by her own internal dialogue as are we all no matter what lengths we go to to make the unconscious conscious. We are all different people, even from the people we were when we made the conscious decision to change. “Be like water my friend” - Bruce Lee, and even better “Don’t resist” - la Sra. Gaia de Donde yo Vivo.
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stasis - a sonnet
stasis is the trip you can’t ever take,
and because of that you can’t ever leave.
There are beings who’ve never ate aught but cake,
some whose fare is naught but beans; i believe,
not that i choose to, because i’ve seen it-
just about. there’r more on beans than cake,
yet here we sit in a pile of shit
being told “this is gonna change, but I’m fake.”
However, distribution wasn’t ever thus;
not that long ago . .. we took what we earned,
including kings - lot’s dethroned without fuss,
because justice ain’t aught, when you get burned.
To say there is a balance of power,
means you accept death, nor never cower.
jts 09/03/2018
http://josephtstevens.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e
∞
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