fear - the essay / trust - a sonnet

It is all hallows eve 2018, and i could be afraid; i am not. There is nothing i can do to change the landscape of today’s world except what i am obligated to dig for the good of where i live - there is a lot to dig. Right now the owner assumes the lion’s share of tasks; it needn’t be this way, but that is the outgrowth of profit taking. Previously i could hold forth on fairness, equitability, sharing, cooperation . .. still could, but it doesn’t seem anyone cares to hear such anachronisms in this sophisticated hothouse we have assembled, for better or worse - ours. Where i live is analogous in many ways except perhaps the propietario, is benign and fair, whereas the profit-takers of our civilization - the mighty captains of industry have proven themselves closer to one of Bob Dylan’s villains.

Well, I had to go down and see a guy named Mr. Goldsmith 

A nasty, dirty, double-crossin’, back-stabbin’ phony I didn’t want to have to deal with

But I did it for you

And all you gave me was a smile

Well, I cried for you, now it’s your turn to cry a while

There was a 97 year-old woman shot dead in an act of domestic terrorism last week; i’m through with Mr. Goldsmith, and not buying what he’s sellin’; you may not murder 97 year old people and get a pass with “thoughts and prayers.” I have concern for those who survive and those who have lost dear ones. I pray for comfort from their desolation and pain; that it is transfigured into specific and articulate language denouncing violence and fury for the ineffective and cruel hoax that it is - “war is over” - John Lennon. The sad truth is found in an apocryphal quip of Franz Kafka’s - “If a man were to meet himself walking down the street, he’d likely turn and run.”

It is not only the country i was born to that suffers the sad truth of environmental degradation, it is also true for any indigenous mother fighting for clean water; desecration to the highlands of the Amazon where oil spill is cascading down the watershed; the single use plastic fabricators in the Himalayas where bonfire size heaps of plastic is now burnt directly into the highest regions of our petal like atmosphere - throughout our world the Mr. Goldsmiths are churning the environment into a killing floor robbing whole cultures the tranquility that is the human birthright. I cannot affect the minds of those greedy persons whose consumer addictions this delusional pursuit of status and wealth proclaim with their servitude. Whatever does not encourage my determination to find the “unified theory” of human cohabitation is dead weight, including the additional 5 cigarettes i now smoke daily, as well as the dubious merit of more agave elixir - the the good argument in favor never be far. It is no coincidence that in addition to “en vino veritas” the spirits have been known as “courage in a bottle.” Pema Chodron describes fear as the Oz behind the curtain of fury - the same fury that compelled a man to murder a 97 year-old woman - the same fury that would seduce my ego into proclaiming i have no fear in an essay about fear. For Pema Chodron, fear is what causes the heart to clinch, to shut down, to become hardened to the world, to resort to the glut of fundamentalism i hold in store when i have to lie about being afraid in an essay on fear. Though i feel the eel of ego squirming in prevarication, i say i do not possess fear. The further i gaze into the chasm i welcome as my passing, the more it resembles the imponderables of my world. How to elicit from each person you meet their highest self, i suspect saying “namaste” to each we meet is not enough.

And that is another reason i say i do not fear; though i have enjoyed no great success in my quest for universal brother/sisterhood, i continue to make the effort. I have enjoyed some small successes in greeting that avatar of myself as i walk toward my final transition and shuffle of this mortal coil. He’s not after all such a bad fellow. What has been curious is the circuitous route it has taken me. For far too long i believed others required what my avatar had convinced me was my reality, so i hoisted sail and set about rescuing humanity. It is true, if i saw a man coming toward me demanding to be rescued, i would take a step back and see what was blocking my retreat - perhaps not break into a dead run. The point is that by accepting this dark pleading soul of mine, it allows me optimism that i can find more ways to make other people’s worlds less heavy; though as Mr. Dylan has said “I’m not ready to pull down my hedges.” I strongly believe that if the man who murdered the 97 year-old woman last week in the synagogue had found a channel inside of himself to say “i accept your fear, you are in a frightful world,” he might have calmed enough to smoke a joint and watch another episode of “King of the Hill.” Laugh if you must but it beats the shit out of gazing into the fb abyss, or the state Leonard Cohen sagely described as “getting lost in that hopeless little screen. I don’t feel there is any percentage in fear is in part why i pay close heed to my comfort. Not meaning possession of vast wealth or opulent and well guarded compounds, with continental cuisine - but beans and rice with good hydration, some exercise and meditation with enough physical work to be honest while preserving enough elan to create - being open and candid with whatever aspect of my being that luxuriates in tobacco and alcohol, while giving fealty to my health. Along with learning my 6th grade teacher was a republican; finding out that the “Desiderata” was fraudulently released, shook my utopian rose colored glasses to the ground - without trust, fear has fertile soul.

I have trust issues, and that awareness has required great faith to peer into as deeply as i might the profile of woman. For practical reasons growing up, i had to delude myself into believing i was not afraid of my mother. This manifested as pigheaded stubbornness and obstinate independence, traits i fear my mother most admires. She is too old to get on the internet so i harbor no great fear that she would be reading this, what i do fear is that i may not love her as openheartedly as i would want her to have loved me - that as Frank Zappa has said is the “crux of the biscuit;” i do not love myself openheartedly, and so therefore do not love others so; that is scary shit, but fuck it, whaddya’ gonna’ do - as they now say in the white house. Part of the recourse one has when pursuing the Cerberus at our own gates is persistence, and as i resolve to love myself, i am empowered with love for ma, and all others as well as i know how, or learn to, or am taught to . .. The other equally important growth is the freedom of expression that is born of discovery. Think of it as being able to introduce a new friend which after the trials and tribulations of transgressions and forgiveness a mutual compassion has fruited from the fertile soul of a reality that has no webpage or socialized euphoria - just human relatedness. The flip side of trusting that people will accept your new friend - we’ll call him Kafka Avatar, is you are then obligated out of simple human courtesy to be as welcoming to all other’s avatars, including the murderous schmuck killing old people instead of self-soothing himself; smoking a joint and watching more episodes of “King of the Hill.” I pray for a president whose name i cannot in good conscience write down, but i pray the same for him as i do my mother, my family all those who have comforted me, and all those who have tormented me. Dalai Lama says good will gives one confidence, and he wasn’t lying.

It is now the midst of day-of-the-dead fiestas in Mexico. The sun is setting and the dogs are barking in the distance and just outside my window. I can see the slope upon which the conquest of the “new world” by the Spaniards was halted. My father is dead and i refuse to harry he or Dame Maria Sabina, hoping only that they are tripping the light fandango wherever wonderful spirits journey after this speck in time we call life. Yet the wounds of my lessons by Kafka Avatar are still fresh and darkness is descending like Leonard Cohen’s “You want it darker, we kill the flame.” I do not disbelieve what i know nothing about and read today valid arguments about the invention of language which said it was from the labyrinths of our emotional place within nature that language sprung describing the basics of the human experience - fear, trust, love, hate. These are emotions we are awash in, yet seemingly lacking capacity to discuss them without resorting to mayhem. I’m through with Mr. Goldsmith, i ain’t buyin’ that shit no more. We have every reason to be afraid, for it is a scary time for all of us. The courageous thing to do is what it would take to greet your avatar walking toward you on the street - a calm hello and warm handshake - all the while peering deep into your own interior and being very aware of each passing inclination and pulsation in your being without making judgement or reacting - to simply open yourself to the experience and try as much as possible to know you are simply the universe witnessing itself. This may not help much with the thrice married roller derby mamma of five living next door who has also taken a shine to your lawnmower, or the unemployed plumber who brings you all the back issues of “Anger Management in the 2nd Millennium,” but like the man said “try a little tenderness,” or was it the dame, what’s her name .  .. “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

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trust - a sonnet

i do not need all of your assurance,

it is more useful to carry my own,

and can be owned - defined as insurance

until the underpinnings have been blown.

more reasons i keep assurance as mine,

once i know what is wrong having done it

claiming the fault was another's, d'be lying

and holding to deception is bullshit.

so as the chief cook and bottle washer

of this Constitution, i trust myself. 

though warms me to the core you’d reassure

me about mischief by some absent elf.

again; here rests what i did, right or wrong

know this, ‘done me best, no matter how long.

jts 10/31/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserv

 ∞

new - an essay / old - the sonnet

It is past noon on the 22 October 2018; i sit in a new room for the 1st time since July 2017. I like it very much, though there was much consternation in the run up to the act. Odd that given how many new residences i’ve enjoyed in my long life; one might expect a normalcy of sorts for the process, yet it feels almost the inverse - that somehow a new setting reflects poorly on me as a human being. Some of that certainly is from socialization, and partly from having 3 siblings, none of which has lived in their respective domiciles less than 20 years - a combined total likely closer to 100 years than 75, but shit changes regardless of any effort to prevent it. For example, just now the AI-pseudo intellect of apple’s RTF text editor chastised my use of a comma in front my last “than” until i added a number behind it. That is more sophisticated than i’d have expected from a bloated, sloppy app from one of the world’s top five richest companies - like i said, shit changes. In the case of my new habitation, i am glad i rolled with the unknown. There is a large enclosed garden just down the slope from my ample patio. I have high ceilings and even a second bed in my loft, though how i’d ever manage to sleep in two beds eludes me. Just now i received a refrigerator from my enigmatically kindly Duena, so all that remains is is to register with the authorities of my new habitation - a not unique requirement to life in our modern world. Yet here i sit writing as i would had i never moved, for it is Monday and that is what i have deemed normal for Mondays, when i’m of a mind. One thing seems fairly clear, moving homes is no guarantee of new thinking or new stories - perhaps incrementally. The transition from my former abode was fraught with the anxiety, and existential angst. I remain unclear about how much was of my making, if any - a blissfully ignorant thought, however impossible. Aside from the emergent misalliance that is provoked when loyalties are rent asunder; there was a provocative claim to money not honorably gained. I hesitate to say someone stole money, because that is such sad echo to put out into an already sad enough world, but i am struggling to relinquish what i believe is a just claim to monies i left on deposit.

That there is a ruling elite positioning themselves to plunder money i paid into social security could certainly color my sense of umbrage at an egregious misrepresentation of facts in record. This personal controversy is contrasted against a very real learned certainty that to quibble over filthy lucre is a self-inflicted impediment to a free and clear future - go figure. Which part of the equation is actually new, the fact that greed impacts honest dealings, and has from the time of the first purloined sirloin, or that abandoning a quagmire to those who believe gain at any cost is a valid enterprise? What i seek is not so much justice, as the fruits of correct ambition using the trusty lens of the written word to tease insights from the abyss of my despair. Ha, fucking despair, who’s got time for that shit. I’m surrounded by enough honest labor to challenge the exploits of old. Where do i find in the days of yore keys to valid human effort that yields wisdom and guidance for all who seek it? That sounds like an innocuous enough desire - help others to help others. That is assuming it is true what Albert Einstein said “The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than rule.” It is an irony for me that i’m doing no favors for the people i thought to be friends by leaving them in a quagmire of greed, yet to take the steps necessary to separate them from ill-gotten gains would require measures that would surely leave them further removed from peace than they are now i’d imagine - fucking paradoxes, someone aught to get a gun as if there were a target for ambiguity. Or is it a function of the unknown that the only help one can expect is to face wholly and honestly failures, or miscalculations in PC terms, and to apply whatever learned adaptations fit in each new circumstance? I don’t know. I’m not even sure any longer i wish to be influenced by previous convictions when looking out over the horizon of possible eventualities.

For example, where i dwell is an ideal location for intensive permaculture experimentation, yet i am not owner, or even tenured guest and i am stating opinions as though they were facts - those who have known me over time would not be surprised. I just don’t have gas in the tank to fight any battles up a hill, nor am i any authority on permaculture. However the underpinnings of logic which permaculture, as i understand it, are based on - doing the most with the least effort; listening carefully to what the landscape does of its own accord and simply help it to excel. But what if it is not just the landscape one needs to read; what if it’s the whole history of the property that must be taken into to consideration, including the personalities, ambitions and complexities of the those who call this home where i am now in the process of transplanting myself¿ I just don’t know. Nor am i sure what is new about this circumstance vs my previous aside from the obvious - it is rural and not city; there is much space with nary a soul passing my window or a hint of any neighbor near or far. Am i the same person i was when i moved into my previous domicile? Is the concept of anything new a hoax; is it a fiction that we are able to alter our perceptions and behaviors to illicit new outcomes. As i remember from school, this question has been all the rage during certain religious epics - nature vs nurture, itself a variation of predestination vs free will. This recent assault on my wherewithal is not the first time in my life someone has taken advantage of my good nature, and yet i cling to cheerful optimism as pragmatically efficient the same as my father did, and likely his father before him, though i know little about my grandfathers, either one. I do know that payback is a motherfucker; karma’s a bitch - then you die.

So what is to be gained by seeking solutions to our kind’s perennial faults - greed, hatred and delusion, amongst others too many to count? Will it provide me long-lived habitation like that of my siblings? Would the right blend of interpersonal savior faire with business acumen allow me a strife-free existence free from betrayal and deceit¿ How does one devise such a blend of skills if that were true¿ Is it even possible to imagine something altogether new which when practiced produces peace and harmony - maybe “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? I try to apply logic to my life, such as pissing in a jug instead of flushing gallons each time i pass water - I cannot alter the waste and avarice being applied to the world’s water supply, but i can damn sure restrict the number of times i flush water down the drain - regardless of any offense my eccentricity give to conventional thinking. I am the anti-consumer and find little worth in shopping, but that is not a new behavior is what used to be called frugal - formerly a trait of character, but now consigned to the very unhip quip of “cheap.” I remember portable phones when the first came out some time during my second marriage; i also remember the young married mother who owned when she bolted for Las Vegas leaving the long suffering, but very patient father tending the two daughters, his own business and the household - while the portable phone was of no help in explaining the abandonment. Eventually there was reconciliation, but that was due more to the husband’s tenacity than any enhance communication option the gadget provided. For myself, during the collapse of my last marriage that we both had phones only enhanced the irreconcilable estrangement when her phone would not be answered for days on end - hardly an inducement to maintain such a shackle - she or it.

As i age and my once mighty productive output ebbs to a trickle like my pee, i measure the suitability of any domicile by how easily i am able to work; this partly explains why i had stayed in the company of people who would eventually betray their supposed friendship for a paltry sum. So including the installation of a refrigerator; as well as a jaunt to the local vegetable stand, i have managed a 5 paragraphs on an unwieldy topic of parsing whether there is any such thing as “new,” or we are all just delusional and feasting on the same hash, just with different fixings. I have learned something i never realized before, though the word could almost be called my personal motto - unwieldly is not unwieldly - it is “unwieldy”. Does confronting wrong thinking count as something new? If so that really calls into question my rock solid faith in the old french proverb, “plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.” I can speak for no one but myself, but for wrong thinking, i’m what might be described as a target-rich environment. Nor can i attribute any particular condition where my proclivity for wrong thinking crosses over to “less” wrong thinking, or even becomes right thinking, as though there were such a thing. I had thought about the home i was just sort of chased out of in much the high esteem i perceive my current lodgings. What has changed from my previous happy circumstance? Was it me or them or both? Would i want to prevent such change even if i could¿ Am i really in a new circumstance, or am i a different person in the same circumstance - just a different location? I can’t say just now, because i don’t know - i only hope that this new circumstance was as much fun as the last - because why not¿

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old - the sonnet

i used to think “old as dirt” was funny

now i am not so indestructible- 

no news to the sad whimpers in my knee

which one - is based on g-d’s good timetable

Old’s still funny, mostly if you ain’t dead.

today, this escapes any discussion-

replaced with a feeble manufactured dread 

lacking nothing, except some compassion.

Purchase-price for the eternal of young

includes your memory of those things past-

value, honor, what it means to belong,

and understanding you will come in last

ya’all win - anymore i could give a fuck

i’ll welcome my next breath as just good luck.

jts 10/22/2018

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserv

 ∞

wellness - the essay / illness a sonnet

Writing with a 36 point font is a concession to my vision - a necessary adaptation that permits me to track the words i write but interferes with the pace of thought. Is that wellness - a constant tradeoff between what is easily achieved balanced against adaptation? In the past week i suffered food poisoning such that i thought i was gonna die, or more accurately i took a hard look at the fact i am gonna die. Nor were the symptoms all that gruesome aside from a radioactive liquid stool i was afraid to expose to air for fear of killing the planet and all life herein. Compared to some maladies i’ve encountered this was even benign in so far as i could not eat, nor wake up from demon haunted dreams of subducting continental plates with prehistoric plant life feeding on my dream state. And as the universe is so fond of synchronicity this weeklong state coincided with the evaporation of a sciatic tangle that has plagued me profoundly for four years, across four continents and had forced me to seriously consider the value of my existence. So pernicious and insidious was this tangle that the inflammation created pus pockets in my groin that disallowed reaching my toes in a seated position without great pain. Willingly or not the effect on my gait was so persistent that the muscles in my right leg became enervated and began to atrophy from evading the pain - consciously or un consciously. And then spontaneously one day within the past two weeks the core of the tangle found its way back to stasis. It may have been from accentuating the horse stance i do daily as part of my efforts to remain supple and cheerful in the face of overwhelming odds, but there was no anticipating the contrast between the two states. So in gratitude, i now walk three circuits of the long block where i live and found a way within my addictive personality disorder to enjoy a single cigarette daily with my “caballo” of mezcal.

Is this wellness? I haven’t written in just about a month and have become mindful of the dissonance it creates for me - not the tormented driven anxiety which accompanies fatuous oaths, but like the phone call with an old friend you know is waiting to occur though you own no phone, better yet a visit that is on the horizon though too far distant to spy the mast - flat earthers not withstanding. The process of writing often holds for me solutions to problems that elude understanding using the blunt force of thinking - really such a crude tool for perceiving the more remote characteristics of our universe. Writing often seems something like a ouija board yielding threads and relationships like forms emerging from a fog. The wellness for me in such dynamic is the informative aspect. While a robust curiosity is a gem to respect and value in one’s repertoire of senses, perception and the capacity to reason is useful for its capacity to discern sense from nonsense, or as is often the case, reason’s remarkable ability to be wrong. With writing, while certainly not a perfect lens for peering into the labyrinth of one’s darkest recesses it beats the shit out of a witching stick, or trying to read the tea leaves of social media for a clue about the digital avatar you have become, or are becoming. My sense is searching for self on a server somewhere is as silly as it is dangerous - certainly not wellness.

In the deepest void of my sciatic despair, i believed that with the logical combination of diet and exercise it would be possible to untangle what had become tangled - is that wellness? I remember walking with luggage embraced in front of me like a pregnant woman, and thinking to myself, while not a cure, for some reason walking that way was less painful. And now we are full circle back to the inevitable paradox - does one live for relief from pain by whatever measure or means, or accept the reality of suffering? I don’t know. I know it gives me great pleasure to walk unhindered by a sensory presence of pain that had become closer to me than any one of my wives at their most loving. The forced fast of my food poisoning excursion reminded me how much i prefer svelte to the denial one gains from eating for comfort and wearing its pudgy raiments so proudly just like the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. There is so much of my life that seems predicated on denial, and not. I was once given a birthday card which read “Da’ Nile” is more than a river in Egypt. Clearly it was a pointed commentary concerning a mutual understanding about me, between my wife and her requisite gay friends. The irony being i was certainly in denial, but not about whatever it was they would snicker about between themselves; it was the fiction i’d contrived for people whose behavior did not match their expressions. I wanted to believe their words, but ignored the meanness of their behavior - that is not wellness. She subsequently abandoned me 5 days after i enjoyed an appendectomy for a perforated appendix - possibly the kindest thing she ever did for me - and there was much kindness in that messy human experience.

I quit drinking and smoking for 10 years about this same time - an equally interesting act of denial that was more from fear than any particularly earnest quest of good health. I refused to accept responsibility for my poor choice of companion - i equated her absence as punishment from the universe for excesses i’d been cautioned away from since the raucous 60’s gave way to the “greed is good” ethos of our rapidly shrinking future. I suppose at some level i believed the same about being assaulted by sciatica. I had gone from running 20 some miles a week for years to searching for some way to anticipate whether my next step would buckle my leg out from under me or send shooting pain throughout my lower extremities. My decision to drink after a 10 year hiatus came at the end of a 3 month commitment to a school in the foothills of Nepal. Again i would not accept responsibility for the fact i wanted to help people that did not need my help. More bullshit - i went to expunge my guilt on their dime and couldn’t hack the fact that i was more committed to helping myself than plumbing the realities of what they needed and whether i had it in me to give. Next stop South America where i was repulsed by the mercenary corruption made chic in Ecuador. Though acclimating to the possibility that every step for the rest of my life would be fraught with pain, i’d not yet reached a point in my wellness that i could see clearly the personal projection i’d made onto an entire culture largely based on unexamined fears and ambitions entirely my own.

And not, Uruguay is more progressive, and Ecuador is more reactionary, and externalizing conflicts one experiences in the course of a lifetime as political realities is not wellness. What i accomplished in Uruguay was to take up smoking after 10 years not. The thinking, if i can reconstruct it, would have been, if i’m gonna suffer, i may as well enjoy it. For a while it worked and i had a ball - sort of. I discovered myself a changed person. The gamble of fame or even awareness by another human being of what my work reflects about me, receded in importance to the actual acceptance of what i had given myself through simple discipline - the gift of self awareness, and destruction of ego. Just as my last wife was alluring such that i’d to look past the lack of emotional nutrition at our table, i’d conveniently ignore the very real likelihood that birds of a feather flock together. My own un-wellness may have simply starved her from our home. I don’t know, but i do know the experience of trying to draw as best as i know how what i see, has taught me much about personal limitations and flaws i could barely accept much less make use of in the creative process. Yet here i sit once again flogging the indecipherable; using the inept in hopes of rendering something cogent to anyone with curiosity - go figure.  

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illness - a sonnet

i came out ass first - some may have called that ill,

it’s just my dumb luck being sick when profitable.

are you not ill today due to your pill,

or well because you like to be tractable.

i like drinking more than the hangover

so i drink the way i live - quietly.

illness doesn’t know it’s not a flower

until you get a cup and told to pee.

you will remain ill until you are well,

you become well the instant you say so.

careful - you can die of wellness - a hell

known to anyone who’s known as fatso

it’s sad and lonely to have too much wealth

an illness best cured by losing one’s health

jts 10/08/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞