4 July 2o24
Two years ago to the day, my 4th of July began at 4:30 AM in Oaxaca, Mexico and ended at 11:oo PM in Bakersfield, Calif.; i returned to Oaxaca the following February 2023, no more free nor much wiser, certainly lighter, for on the return trip to the airport, my backpack was not transferred from point A to B and so i arrived in time for my departure to Oaxaca at LAX while my backpack/home of the past 7 years remained at Union Station, while i carrying a rucksack and the certain knowledge of my responsibility for that curiously disjointed synchronicity - is that oxymoronic ?
Today i continue to learn the limitations of attachments, especially the illusion of having expunged it from one's system. When i divorced my 2nd wife, i entertained a cheery delusion that my grief would be completed during the long drive from Sacramento, CA to Fullerton, CA only to learn that whimper was but a prelude. My thinking at the time was because this was not my 1st divorce, i might have learned enough about the process to expedite some of its lessons, no such luck. It seems recent events about my continued dislocation may enjoy the same concei.
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7 July 2o25
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. - Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)
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Thunder outside my window, back on the hillside of Buenavista, Oaxaca for the moment or next 12 days, whichever comes first · A year's lapse in this essay is as if i'd never ceased the struggle to make sense of nonsense over the course of the past 362 days.
*Apropos this writing thunder, moments ago, knocked wifi and electricity offline - we’ll have to wait and see how much the rtf remembers of this renewed effort ·
** And just like that - 1 hour later - power and wifi restored
"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom·" - Bob Dylan ·
*** Apropos this increasingly curious essay, Googol "a Ieye Overview" categorically states that quote is not found . .. but goes on to explain:
'Here's why this quote resonates with Dylan's overall message:'
I've been listening to Bob Dylan from the age of 12 or 13, i'm now - 'none of your fucking business', older than dirt, and i would never presume to say what 'Zimmy' is on about; i only know how grateful i him to have had 'his wisdom oozing out of my ears' when 47.2.0 rode 'its tired maga nag' back into my realm dragging the carcass of thralldom behind it like some fiend from a lost chapter J.R.R. Tolkien left in the aether.
Yet here is this disembodied, inanimate string of 0s and 1s conjured by a wet-behind-the-ears billionaire trainee explaining to me what "Dylan's overall message" is, and these mooks have that 'launch codes' - goodness me. Makes my wonder if Madame Paradox and her whelps "T'is and T'aint" haven't defected and secretly interning at Palantir, maybe hoping for some of that 'Honeymoney' Epstein bequeathed to Petey the 'Gr8 Pumpkin' eater, makes me wonder who's guarding Ghislaine's cell¿
Wednesday 9 July 2o25: resumed power outage from yesterday, ergo wifi and its 'stop barking app' and so enjoyed 4 hours of piercing yelps by the neighbor's hound. The paradox is i'm more judicious in my use in an effort toward Pavlovian 'Behavior Modification' than the land owner who'd abandoned the two dogs to their fates when she extended her week's journey to CDMX for a month. I was already noxiously sanctimonious about the dogs lack of shelter during the 4 week deluge when saddled by their sustenance; unclear in my own heart if it was umbrage with being presumed upon by a quasi-aristocratic, clearly-wounded, Art/Patron/Illuminati or intolerance with my own hubris of precipitous decision making in times of planetary turmoil¿ using an inverted 'A-Okay' forefinger-to-thumb-to-nose, aussie-fashion gesture "Fuck Knows"?
I've forgotten how much fun it could be to pour words onto a page in search of meaning; what i haven't forgotten is the World History 101 class at Fullerton College where i first heard the origin of the word essay 'to try', due to the exertions of Michel de Montaigne in 16th France, (for those like myself) possessed of peculiar learning modalities, that would be the 1500s in eurocentric historical records. 'flash of insight': (a word for which "A iEye" is unable to yield the result i seek, how curious¿ In my studies it never, or at least to my aging memory, never occurred to me that William Shakespeare and Michel de Montaigne labored in near synchronization producing some of the most formative thinking for our 'whitemanepoch' unbeknownst to each other.
What, you may be asking yourself, does this essay have to do with the mystery of freedom. "What's money, a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between does what he wants to"- Bob Dylan described as success, i would say the same quote well defines freedom - or part of its mystery.
14 July 2o25
Ma died in October of 2o24-five days from now she'd have been 95; i come from long lived stock. Of our last visits, i confided to her a trepidation about my plans to return to Mexico, her reply, "what's a matter, you scared¿" She was brash like that in an unkind way. This morning i am putting the end touches on a transition some 8 years in the making, it involves cessation of personal fictions, confronting specters, some rooted in ma's acerbic wit, some born of personal evolution. I'm vacating a location which has held a manifold of cathartic moments conflated with Bob Dylan's notion of success.
My nation is fighting for its existence as a free nation; i am aging, my family is evaporating, my work is coming into focus though its reason d'être is skewing from the cultural sea change flummoxing our world that ". . . Seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired an' it's torn. It looks like it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born. Hey Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know . .. " - Bob Dylan ·
And i'm at peace, not quite sure why. Keeping regular hours; breathing deeply down to my pelvis late at night helps much; may have even discovered the root of the degenerative osteoarthritis that has been hounding my steps since birth. I say that with some facetiousness and not, for i was fitted with an insert for a 'fallen arch' at age¿ 8,9,10 and learned much later that Leonardo DaVinci said "Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."
I'd love to write down how this writing process has magically expunged wounds from a parent who must have suffered greatly to behave the way she had; however my memory of her throwing onyx bookends from Mexico through my parent's window screaming about what a difficult birth i was, the same summer Pop euphemistically 'relocated' with the eldest brother and my Beagle 'Snoopy' disappeared give pause to the expression 'magically expunged', 'cauterized', maybe, 'lanced', possibly. Oddly, the feeling of having embraced a suffering child would be more accurate. On that note: Ma, and other ancestors participating in this humble chronicle of our species' paroxysms of growth, or 'if it be your will lord' witnessing the shudders our shuffling off this mortal coil.
delusional independence · a sonnet
"What ain't¿" he retorted to the aether
"What is air?" - asked from more playful times when
"Delusional Independence" was not
the pivot upon which our world could end
Reality tortas aren't so healthy
as they seem, nor dulcet tones a cure-all
for each discord. Is 'the bell' our body
and calm the frequency we need to call
Dame Paradox says paddle your canoe
Lao Tzu says 'ignore the voice of others
not their slave'; da Vinci 'inter-are' do. ..
"Drunkenness because we ain't connectors"
that this ode'll be known such it needs an
explanation would be as if you can
(˚ ㄥ _˚)
jts 15 July 2o25
http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
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