roots - the essay
It’s 3:30 a.m. where i am now overwriting an essay about relocating that i wrote 7 years ago - ironically the central question of where to ‘be’ remains the same, (‘form i’m’ i.e. early onset dementia - contraction · appositive¿), in the same city where i’d formulated the original question re: relocating, though 1,000 of miles and years in between. Just at the moment i stand writing preparing to capture a stool sample, because the location i moved to-from where i was asking myself about where-to-be was a bust, in/out of the vernacular. The reason for the stool sample is in the short time i had been in the ‘returned-to’ Arcadian setting of my memory fantasy, my guts were in an uproar, and i wasn’t quite clear whether what i experienced in that location was emotional or biological, ergo: ‘test the hypothesis’. Sadly i could be ‘burned at the stake’ for such an heretical thought process in these days of Corporate Putschland, for the MAGA running dogs being quite so severe in their litmus testing of anything that might educate, agitate or organize the ‘prols.’ The other more pertinent issue for this essay is volition, whether its creation is the result of an aggregate creative tension, or the reaction formation ‘separation anxiety’, having just been denied access to the ‘internet tit’; and this is where is gets dicey, is this writing is a reflection of some tear in the space/time continuum¿ fuck-knows as is said down under in Auz. Back to roots - the ostensible subject of this writing · maybe William ‘the scribe of scribes’ was narrow in his long-lived hypothetical question - ‘to be or not to be’, might well have been better served by, ‘to grow or not to grow.’ ?
I’m beginning to feel as a pariah might, specimen jar by my by side; how much of my dysthymic affect is due to withdrawal from internet addiction; how much from an existential reckoning born of complaisant work habits gone-to-seed /(emotional denial of the real exigencies of ‘creative fallow time’), inhaling FOAS gas from the black plastic bag hanging up at my workstation shoulder to keep the night lights out of my new digs; or a simple bad habit - i d k. Whatever it was, has passed, as clouds do. This morning I garnered a dopamine fix from more easily ‘pinching off’ my last stool compared to yesterday’s torturous lucid dream state revisit with toilet training¿ After dropping off my final shit debt, i had blood sucked out of a vein by a kindly receptionist with whom i’d shared a laugh with when initiating this laboratory sequence - testing for parasites in water and my body; as well as ascertaining my general health condition as much as a blood panel can yield. Prostate cancer seems to favor our blood line, father and both brothers having been visited by the affliction, my PSA results thus far haven’t warranted a closer scrutiny: meanwhile ‘back @ the ranch’ my long estranged nephew lamented on the phone yesterday his mother, my sister has 3 years to live from a rare form of Palsy - 1 in 100,000 · NSP . .. writing resumed: 19 days later . . . water analysis of former bucolic fantasy/escape scenario domicile contained e-coli; my stool samples contained: Trophozoites Blatocysistis spp., Chilomastix mesnili of indeterminant duration that was not resolved entirely by sulfides, though a week later the ‘Doctora’ amended her regime to include a sulfide-based antibiotic; along with the most helpful lactobacillus-booster - And as i rinsed my laundry and surfaces of the fecal/e-coli/chilomastix mesnili contamination and looked forward to the therapeutic resource available @ the ‘community center’, my upper right canine tooth broke at the gum-line, BUT ‘it’ doesn’t stop there - the damsel neighbor contestant vying for ‘Mexico’s Got Talent’ woke me to what can only be described as caterwauling just far enough into my REM for how to jury-rig a salt pack for the exposed tooth root, only to have the contrivance drop out of my slumbering mouth hours later to fall onto the possibly still contaminated, but closed toilet seat lid while trying to re-infuse the saline solution during a pee-break that gave me enough bladder control to not pee all over myself while trotting for the toilet seat in time to discover the water service was off this particular Sunday; how about you - how’s your day going¿ he queried into the aether to no one in particular.
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Blah, blah, yammer, yammer . .. the underlying tension to this passing vignette was the certain knowledge while processing the complications of a broken incisor on a Saturday afternoon/turning Sunday morning in the semi-rural enclave i am trying to make home was the real understanding that the most effective tactical approach to surviving the ‘toxic’ reality of my circumstance would be to fast - autophagy. A spiritual conceit i desultorily dabbled in during my ‘dissipated’ wanderings as a Kafkaesque Hunger Artist/l’infant terrible in Manhattan assiduously aping the TV Roadmap that passed for an instruction manual to the culture wars in the post 60’s pre bi-centennial ‘merica of my youth. The forgoing paragraph/stream-of-conscious dreck is a self-conscious effort to blunt some of the self-serving ruling class terror-as-advertising-model being foisted on my born-in-nation that is currently attempting to extricate itself from the web of comeuppance it faces in the pre-extinction “a iEye” bubble scrolling across every screen on the planet.
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. .. All of which i am narrating against the backdrop of dissonance one finds on an ‘empty stomach’. Not entirely empty, for i’m also digesting the beaker of blackchocolatecoffee i had gulped at dawn before learning the tinacos were empty and the shit i’d passed in prelude to the turd remnants of the hopefully inert worm husks of my gut in preparation for the salubrious lactobacillus cocktail i so much look forward to. It is now just before Noon, water is on asshole is as clean as i can manage - all things being equal · which they clearly have not been. Did a mention my eldest stepsister died a week ago today, and amongst the stressors of yesterday was whether to seek a way to honor the tradition of saying ‘Kaddish’ for the departed in my world - her cousin had passed some 2 short months ago, and October will be the 1 year anniversary of Ma’s departure from her earthly woes. So it’s not for not while approaching my 72nd revolution around the sun that i would struggle quite so furosously to understand the ‘root’ of this mystery others describe as ‘life’, but which remains for me little more than a continuing mystery interspersed with intermittent bursts of brilliant illumination. Bob Dylan has said, amongst other things - “Ya’ always have to be prepared, but ya’ never know for what” has presaged much of the simple pleasures i’ve discovered during my short tenure alive. For example, i’ve found the ‘brilliant illumination’ i just alluded to has as much to do with previous preparation as with any intrinsic reality i may, or may not have stumbled upon. For example the ‘field day’ of synchronicity i’ve tried to delineate herein under the guise of a general inquiry about roots, is little more than more hacking toward the ‘source’ much like the just, dug-up stump i used as an excuse within which to inter-be the tiny sangha in which i am convalescing while postponed grief washes over my decrepit, though once fit frame. And just like cleaning up shit, or preparing for any unexpected event, the 2nd time is always easier to recreate than the 1st. I learned that fact by losing weeks of work with a single keystroke, or watching a nose or chiseled finger fall to the ground with a single misplaced stroke, ergo the useful homily about picking oneself up rather that remaining crumpled from the fall.
And still the reader may be asking, “what does this solipsistic diatribe have to do with ‘roots’¿ Filtering through the detritus, while attempting to develop cogent thinking to contribute to the commonweal without pontificating, rather enflaming the mental faculties of so many on “a iEye” autopilot - so much so they be unawares, i’m also approaching 40 hours without a meal; which is not to say without nutrition, for chocolate, coffee and the grain i drank to fool the lactobacillus supplement prescribed by the doctor was more than a continued battle with the blastocyst hominis infestation which while allegedly non-pathogenic has been described elsewhere as ‘mysterious’. The fact is this confluence of events: moving; aging; digging up roots; dying family; assimilation; breaking teeth; health; creativity; civic activism; maturation are all part of a larger continuum which cannot be fathomed only imagined. Whether it is a growing entity or adheres to biological fundamentals - who can say¿ I am blessed having been raised by parents possessing abundant curiosity which for the longest time i ignored as beneath my enlightened achievements, or veered from lacking the simple self-respect necessary to honor one’s own reasons. Today i must ascertain whether the dentist postponed my request for a consultation two days ago when the tooth broke, so as to infect the root and thereby gain additional revenue from a root canal which is in keeping with the allopathic health model of “care” as a revenue stream. Twisted thinking at best, but as Jung postulated: “A tree’s roots much reach down to hell if its branch hope to reach heaven.” - paraphrasing to be sure, yet the ominist thread of his archetypal conception is mirrored by Pema Chodron - “Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others . Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.’
Again, back to the essence of this effort, Roots, as our ostensible leaders rearrange the Titanic’s deckchairs, and BINGO¡ i believe i’m beginning to understand better how my own malaise has sucked the wind from my existential sails. At least when you’re in Ted Kosinski-land sp¿, and are clinging to the carefully ‘emulated’ fame-fiction posted by publicity farm teams; one is relentlessly pursuing the only escape available to the creatives of end-stage capitalism, the PAYOFF. Yet that nagging existential question, like some twisted “Tell-Tale Heart” harkening the impending conclusion to our shared delusion . .. raison d’être raison d’être raison d’être .. . The nihilists populating the ‘Rapture Sect’ of the billionaire class are fond of displacing their unaddressed developmental angst/inescapable cognitive dissonance for an unquenchable gluttony in the form of financial hoarding without foundation. For myself there is proof in the pudding which i inevitably discover echoing Dorothy Parker’s sage observation “I hate writing, but I love having written.” Regardless of the outcome of whether my tooth gets yanked from the perfidy of a closet bigot covertly excavating a living by destroying the aging root pulp of a foreigner, or the sonnet to follow this essay yields a moment’s respite to one’s mind seeking surcease from the relentless manipulations of a post-capitalist algorithm’s inevitable starvation from a lack of curiosity, matters not; i’ve done my best to reflect some small light in my corner of a dimming world searching for . .. . . . _________________fill in the blank ∞
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rootless - a sonnet
X / X / X / X / X /
Rootless is not available to our kind;
though rhizome has been used to describe us
it’d be fun to find the plant with that mind;
more on point to chat with such’d be a plus
yet tumbleweeds all flee this distinction
taking with them their knowledge of 'rootless'
Is that volition, or great imagination¿
i don’t want an answer, if it’s baseless.
Al-Qaeda claimed itself a base; and not
its model being dissolute, or amorphous.
A hydra’s similar - a polyglot
like the plant that could spout its own genus
Is that what it means to have roots - a home?
or are we more like Jung’s ‘smear - a rhizome¿
(˚ ㄥ _˚)
jts 11 August 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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