comfort - the sonnet

I worked hard today, and I am sober,
however high - could even say unclean.
But I write for me - not you the reader 
- easier that way to say what I mean.

Poetry helps me find what that might be
- to learn at the end of a day helps
give reason to responsibility
and purpose for questions we had as whelps.

I look forward to my next drink, not for
comfort - I work for that, but to enjoy.
I may then no longer be sober, or
clean, but much less likely to have much ploy

Comfort and joy is what I have found here
may you each find such with so much to hear.

pain

As with death, on you my kind reader I’d rather inflict joy, love, even confusion - pretty much any other worldly plight than the scurrilous topic of pain; that I apologize only serves to point out my pain, not yours. Betty Davis, a mid-20th century American actress said “write about what you know, and for whatever reason, pain is what the universe wanted me to know. I won’t list my expert credentials, except to confirm my bone fides: out of the gate (so to speak) I was ass-first - “Frank Breech;” pneumonia before 12 months; eardrum broken by vandals - age of 13; this after stepping on a sting ray in Guyamas - age 7. I like to think of this time as the kindness of training-wheels from the universe, an acclimation rather than the whole-immersion suffering with which far too many in our world live daily - nor is my discomfort special compared to what many of who read this endure - I share so you may feel more comfortable laughing at my meager efforts for solidarity - what does that mean? If friendship can be defined by one who’d “divide the grief and double the joy,” I would become your friend. While on my magic carpet at keyboard central, I am listening to “Against the Wind” sung by no less than the infamous Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson of outlaw history - and I am weeping - for you, not me. I first heard this song during a time in my life when our species was balanced on the precipice between love and hate (yes as a matter of fact I had complete faith without question that love would, excuse the expression, trump all . . . like the angels of lore, we have fallen into the abyss of hate - my pain is pale compared to what fear I can only picture in most hearts - all I have to share is, “you are not alone.” .  . we may be, but you are not .  .

Pema Chodron, Thich Nacht Hahn; Dalai Lama, Pope Francis (G_d bless your recovering Catholic soul) amongst many other sages throughout our churlish history say we can make it if we would just .  . . Nor are their manifold imprecations all that different, each from the other. The common thread seems to be a moral courage I’ve yet to find, for they are far more brave, more correct and better people than I. Listen to them, please - don’t just listen, help them to achieve those ideas for which they have struggled and often sacrificed their lives during crucial times in our collective history - ideas which permeate our existing literature, religion, music and pretty much every decent thing we puny humans have ever created; but ideas with which we’ve never seemed able to cross the “goal line.” We have never faced such complete human finality especially of this magnitude even though roughly a quarter million people die daily - that for me is pain, and/or fear - emotions I often confuse. I feel faced with the Sisyphean impossibility of outrunning not only my own ignorance and blindness but the united and disciplined efforts of an army of highly financed - well trained and largely unconscious functionaries. Think Maginot line prior to WWII; at that time such a defense of France seemed like a good idea, not unlike the venal demand for fossil fuel give credence to poisoning our water tables by fracking gas out of mother earth. However, picture for a moment the surprise of those authorities trumpeting the security of the Maginot line precisely when Hitler’s storm troopers romped across the border 15 kilometers, north and 15 kilometers south of that impenetrable border; or what about the indestructible Titanic and her coterie of staunch supporters listening to increasingly dire reports while the death toll mounted. I picture a similar sort of pain for old people watching our world slip into death (yes as a matter of fact I am old). Old people know more about death if for no other reason than we are closer. This doesn’t mean we understand it better or have a better sense of its meaning, only that we are closer - old people are not your enemy - haters are.

Haters throughout history have seen your pain and found ways for that pain to profit them - that is wrong. We as a species are about to confront an epoch never before experienced in our history its twisted cavalcade of leadership. We would do well to learn how to recognize our leaders as those people sitting, standing or lying dead next to us, for as each day passes - passing days will become the only constant out of the tumult of our coming world. Our survival may depend on making each of those days a blessing though they be increasingly filled with carnage, unimaginable death and destruction. World leaders, our pampered pretties will continue to point their fingers at all but themselves - a dull rant which will fade with the electricity wherein civilization will once again depend on more than words for what it means to be “civilized.” Fuck thugs, fuck hate, fuck greed - be only present for any sense which provides you and yours comfort and some measure of love. Any other competing declaration is to nullify the immeasurable discomfort of death and disease; by nullify, I mean subscribe to the shrill screech of the omnipresent screen and its cowardly relationship with your pocket and its hard-earned anything. Nearly all monies created today are funneled to the human genome’s greatest traitor - the fucking capitalist. As I see our future, these pissant yutzes have made an industry out of sickness once they - the ruling class - saw money could be extracted from dying flesh or human suffering and commandeered by force of language your time, innovation and labor to pour the greatest measure of your souls into that beast they named “the economy.” Now as the oceans die, trees wilt - agriculture soaks up poison - these same “masters of the universe” are arranging their escape as though there was one. Humanity has/had a chance to create beauty and paradise on an oxygenated orb hurtling through space - we did not; that is pain.

Black/white, rich/poor, smart/stupid, even alive and dead are empty words we have developed to describe the hideous discomfort of what we have not yet learned about loneliness and fear. It doesn’t mean we are predestined to any outcome - especially an end based on profit which more and more is the exclusive purview of a handful of .  . . what’s the word I’m looking for . ? . . empty-suit-pencil-neck-geek-wannabe “Early Roman Kings” - Bob Dylan. We are an athletic species born of running game to ground because we lived amongst competitors with greater speed, strength and power where mental acuity provided an edge - not unlike the haters we live amongst today. It may again be a sort of intelligence which provides our species survival’s edge. What if emotional intelligence was used to recognize a path through the labyrinth of illusion created by our emotionally retarded ruling class? Rather than us being stuck in some planetary cave-in, a cave-in which we absolutely have the capacity determination and spirit to dig ourselves out from, we instead turn away from the same effete emotional ciphers who have reigned over our species’ demise and who now direct our excavation of what gets dug where while charging sips of water for the privilege of using “their” shovel. Quaint notions of mine, yours, ours, we, them no longer contribute to a more precise awareness of the singular reality we face - extinction, a very painful extinction unless we radically reevaluate what it means to peacefully coexist within our fragile oxygen bubble in the midst of much, much dark matter.

Were I wise, I’d figure out how to make you laugh at my pain - for any other’s joy seems to be the only medicine with any effect on what I’ve come to believe is a sickness of the heart rather than that of any single physical calamity. Do not misunderstand me - mangled flesh does ache. However, reality suggests our minds mostly comprehend pain in a linear fashion; another way to conceive of this principal is from an apocryphal, however gruesome workplace adage which states, “if you don’t like the pain of your injury, slam your hand in a door - you will soon forget.” Just now sojourners of the hostel where I stay are singing beautifully in the patio and I want to weep - not from pain, but joy; why is that? How can music so easily penetrate a wounded heart? What are tears and how can they inform our struggle to survive the onrushing existential pandemonium we face - “ready or not, here it comes”? What is it to endure pain, or more importantly transform it into some use, be that solidarity with suffering or pursuit of healing? Pain is not an imaginary condition, nor is there anything one can do to avoid that pain which is a part of living short of creating more for ourselves or those around us; I don’t know how to achieve this quixotic end. Writing seems to help, if only to create an illusion of understanding; altered states can be useful so long as they are not the track or your locomotion, just fuel for the fire. Mindfulness is more than a hipster-doofis euphemism to create meaning in a careless world - mindfulness seems to be the key for living with hideous discomfort; if one is able to accept pain for just an instant longer without qualifying it as evil, or an affront, or punishment, rather find ways to experience pain as a single facet within a ceaselessly changing environment. If we can begin to peer into pain’s darkness and learn what there is to know from discomfort, our susceptibility to hopeful influences may be lessened. By any account, if we do not throw off this yoke of hope, this “carrot on a stick” used to harness our kind to the depraved demands of those financial predators in our ranks by turning enslavement into insights about the fragility of our human condition, we may be unable to avert the digitized last gasp of a once promising species - that is pain.

my christmas heart - an essay · of sorts

.  .  . at 61 I’m supposed to set straight some punk fuck who arbitrarily throttled my account rendering me precariously vulnerable in a foreign land - fuck you. sitting there in your easy chair evaluating whether you are more real than I am is bullshit .  .  .  .

The beginning of my last essay “fucking banks” - lo it is Christmas 2015 and this essay is more interesting than anything I might elicit from such an easy target - like shooting ducks in a barrel. I’ve seen a woman who scares me, and considering my mother - that says a lot. I am not afraid in the sense of danger but how much love she might pull from my fragile existence. Laugh if you must but I am sitting in a room at the end of Christmas day in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador without my luggage, home or family - you are not. What I imagine of those readers infected by the “Santa” virus; you are surrounded by the wise constructs of a safe existence, and I am happy for you, even envious. I am, however, just now conjuring an imaginary future with a much younger woman whose voice I can hear as I write - other people collect imaginary friends, I hunt a fictional love to be found at the intersection of Mutual Feeling Blvd. and Reality Road. My room is in a hostel transformed from a villa which has been in her (she who would be Queen’s) family for 300 some years. My small room well suits my purpose but more resembles a monk’s cell rather than any manor house more suitable for such a lady as I am conjuring in my mind’s eye. It is now closing in on the end of Christmas Day - a full moon Christmas - however much obscured by clouds; my second day in this foreign nation; my backpack missed its flight - a backpack which is my home of record; estranged from family for reasons unclear to me, for reasons obviously my own. Here I sit fabricating nonexistent relations based on conjecture and fantasy - this not only describes a fragile existence, it is “diagnosable.” Still you laugh . . ho . ho . the fucking ho .  .  .

What you don’t see is the earlier conversation with Gabriel, a peripatetic intellectual who shared his sparse fare on Christmas day when he himself had little to nothing, or the chaperone to my love interest who sits where I’d like to, but with whom she will more likely wed - a more practical solution - still I pursue love which is real to me, and which ignites the reserve of passion enough to spirit me through the end of this existence. Did I mention the day before I left for this leg of my existential sojourn, I had a precancerous tumor frozen off my “fuck you” finger at the knuckle? Yet my travails are minuscule compared to the real suffering of those from war-torn lands seeking a world not run by avaricious sociopaths. It is an odd feeling to find that compassion for another’s suffering serves to blunt my own much less severe, but no less real concerns. It is odder still that sharing might somehow provide common cause and aid with which to diminish isolation and/or pain. There is an aphorism which states: “a friend can divide the grief and double the joy,” the simple logic of which I revere. In the days we are living it seems the only interests served by enmity and division amongst people are those of the ruling class. It is now the day after Christmas and my luggage has arrived from one of my actual longest nights after a 36 hour airline cluster fuck, $250 penalty, two missed flights and a flat tire in the car I hired to drive me 3 hours to my destination - praise g_d - she loves me. Again my difficulties are nothing compared to the cab driver and his palsied arm who because of my own inept planning had no address for the hostel, only a JPEG of the location relative to two major cross streets which proved inadequate. I want to believe our shared experience changing the tire on a darkened harried holiday road generated fraternity enough to ease some of the tension found only in the company of a half-deranged gringo. It is that chasm between belief and reality which I hope to bridge throughout the year and not become some vignette of a tormented holiday bandied about as entertainment for the world’s hungry strangers who have become “my family.”

Nor is unrequited love the horns of my dilemma vis-a-vis Christmas - I love the idea of people becoming radiant with others. My greatest regret not being “filthy rich” is being unable to lavish material gifts upon others - a frustration which has calcified into an existentially Byzantium balance sheet upon which certainty struggles. I try to buy more than I take, but again with the paradox which Bob Dylan states so succinctly, however left-handedly . “ . the more I take, the more I give / the more I die, the more I live . “ . My human defect seems to point through the hole in my heart when it clenches to know “how much” when there is nothing more - that exact instant where knowing for certain any claim on material objects is insane, yet I still use such attachment to prop myself up from fear and hunger - no shelter for a Christmas heart. While on my Byzantium balance sheet, my soul is filled with shame for being less than philosophical .  . ideas , anyone - please share; I’m not all that good at suffering and would really much rather, live in, and propagate love; social engineers seem to have their own ideas about “things” which usually involves some fee or another - which way the focus flows or as Leonard Cohen describes when it, “crosses the threshold and overturns the order of the soul. “ . meanwhile back on hwy 61, our world sizzles for little more than our silly sense of importance .  . .

As much as pain can serve to inform, one who cares of the suffering of others and encourage the root of compassion, so it would seem we must learn to take as well as our corporate overlords - those who through no fault of their own are little more than amoral emotional ciphers lacking empathy or any capacity for compassion. The predatory positions which these less unfortunate of the ruling class have commandeered for purely venal intent in our feudal economy has been made so much easier by our new “lord and savior” the silicon chip - g_d of Leonard Cohen’s “hopeless little screen.” Thank g_d Christmas is far more than a gift exchange used to goose the economy of these handful of haters, and much deeper than the religious orthodoxy used to substantiate the murder and mayhem of our soulless but very wealthy demi-gods of war. The kind stranger who shared his meal and enlightened my narrow self interest on Christmas day used an expression which has sadly become passe, “brotherhood.” Somehow this concept has been hijacked and parsed into some hideously exclusive designation which is defined by algorithm coded mostly based on the linear limitations of our new “Lord and Master,” and its ministers. The priest class cluster like their predecessors in Chaucer’s “Priest Tale” in similar pockets of the body politic not unlike their brothers in Chaucer’s story, only now they congregate in the fallen angel citadels of Redmond, Menlo Park and very shortly San Francisco. 

Like all spiritual upheavals, after the initial brush with awareness come rites necessary for each to recognize the other. In our era of enlightenment this can be seen by flailing fingers and waltzing digits, either signifying the enormous power of faith - which cannot be known, but which is now laminated amongst substrates - in some cases down to the atomic level. Is binary technology evil, and Christmas sacred - how fucking stupid would that be? For me, the act of giving , sits paramount - so I write. My fear does not necessarily abate with this futile but way weird fun responsibility, and thus far there is no indication that what I say has any bearing - lucky me. So I occupy the very middle of our human rut - smack dab in the middle between the tracks of what may become our sole contribution to the cogent DNA of this remarkable h2O infested superheated orb (90%)* comprised of Iron 36%, Oxygen 30%, Silicon 15% and Magnesium 13%. *(fucking “Lord and Savior ‘xptr’ ” says 90% but divulges 94% - go figure .  . ?) What is not discussed g_d knows why, how does the puny human composition of which we are comprised 98.7% - Oxygen 65%, Carbon 18.5%, Hydrogen 9.5%, Nitrogen 3.2%, Calcium 1.5%, Phosphorous 1% best interact with its closest neighbor, planet Earth. This question is as close to the fundamentals as any of us has gotten or will get - and one in 1,000 will give a fuck what that easy logic might yield - oh fucking well .  . 

¶ 6 : heretical, (or ¶ 7 depending on ALS), in some languages - hollywood thug - i’d be banished as boring - tonight, new year’s eve , new friends showed me how they celebrate new year in Cuenca - (conservative slug that I am, I sipped my provincial crudeness - not slowly enough) though I found the heart is not so much different wherever we be - each of us wants hope , love respect and care - we each of us have this capacity to provide each other - and soon there will be little choice. Our leaders have failed us to the extent that what is in place as civilization or common agreement will not suffice as a path to any future - our only hope is to forsake the horror and dishonor of our commonly held myths - “we are doing good” - WE ARE NOT - “hate is in retreat” - IT IS NOT and the must be stifled - “buy more and you’ll be complete” - BUY NO MORE; give what you make to those who care in exchange for what they can share - make much. We are now 1/6 into the new century - know this, SHIT moves fast and however much you may want to make way for your future to arrive - “toomany” who care not a whit for you or yours are, and have been, making decisions decisive to your future - decisions which as a dynamic rational human you would naturally wish to counter either vigorously or with the formerly quaint euphemism of “extreme prejudice. Lo, we all be distracted by the chatter of other broadcasts (hollywood thug, well-meaning hipster doofus or even la tres popular “i’m a chump and i hate everything”) we are loosing our life + charge as i speak and we are less and less viable as a species with each breath. Be it to no avail mi precioso amigos - revolt , rise up , love without reason - for it has become our only reason in this - perhaps the last of our seasons - ? - live long and prosper . Vulcan A. Nonymous

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts 5/1/2016

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

∞

peace

I have just woken from an afternoon nap; the disquiet of work is not yet deafening; the wispy tendrils of undiscovered-love are quiet and pain is not shouting; is this peace? The creative tension between whether to draw or write pushed me to the keyboard with it’s illusion of understanding, yet the fallow gurgle of color bubbling on the surface of the drawing-in-work is almost creating itself in front of my eyes. Is there a magic for compounds that were once together to again coalesce into some image of pertinence and meaning? Is the act of dialectic questioning a tonic to the terror of not knowing? Or can it be as simple as remembering how to breathe? The sun is dampened by the high clouds of the Himalayas; my lungs have cleared somewhat from decades of abuse; and I have come to accept the quizzical looks on people’s faces as they laugh at me, “ki bhan ca!”  The drawing continues to clamor for creative attention. Creative work is not so much different from the poor schmuck Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the Hades hill; only to get inches from the top so it can roll back down - over and over again. Constant creative tension disperses ego into mystery. Is that the nature of peace - the oblivion which creation has the capacity, but not always the kindness to provide? It is clear when there is no self between color, tone or shifting mass from Plato's 3 dimensional ideal, just consecutive decisions - an ever evolving where and how to smear, shear or grind closer to that moving target - beauty; it is as close to bliss as I have been - is that peace?

Why then does it at times feel like such a battle? How can so many extraneous unrelated discursive ideas intrude? How much difference is there between meditation and creation? Each requires an absence of will; the a subordination of distraction; a heart full of love, or whatever guise the loving heart cloaks itself in at the time - suffering, pride, lust - all those passing squalls of dissonance the chattering monkeys of the mind seem so adept at conjuring. Still none of these props comes close to nourishing the hunger that comes from searching for that precise application which Paul Cezanne described as not “clashing with nature (g_d)” - writing is no different. When conjuring a portrait, each soul tries to reveal itself; I try to discern that feeling or experience that is not easily shared but cannot be disguised or forgotten. It is for this reason self is an unwelcome companion in the creative journey - to remove all possibility of projection. It is the same trying explain an idea in such a way that someone may find their own experience in the concept and permit a kinship - then words are friends. My good fortune was to have parents with two distinct passions - literature and plastic arts. They applied themselves honorably, and in so set an example for what is possible through consistent effort - music unfortunately skipped a generation and I’m left to the eternal damnation of a tin ear. As with all tragedies the silver lining is my love and appreciation for beautiful music is reciprocal to my lack of capacity. Is that some sort of law of nature - what gets taken away is returned in some balanced aspect, true for love, kindness, and honor? If so we just need the patience and pluck to perceive each transformation.

I recently watched a clip of George Harrison - his last interview. He struck me as completely at peace, if anything somewhat anxious to be on with it. What was most vivid in his discussion was a determination to contribute something of value - not of value in the sense of what he George Harrison had discovered, but an exhortation to those of us left to seek higher ground. It was almost as though there was no George, rather someone who cared about people he didn’t know, nor ever would know; I like that. However, it still confuses me when compassion runs full square up against stupidity and bullshit. I am more comfortable with someone attempting a strong-arm robbery on me than being played. When an institution such as facebook sends me Halloween greetings after sifting my content for what can be monetized or traded with whichever corporatized government apparatus believes my irreverent contempt for trust-fund-babies-cum-nouveaux-riche-lords-and-ladies is analyzable, I chortle to myself. Where with interpersonal dealings, when someone presumes to take, I chortle in their face just for the pleasure I get from “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” - Oscar Wilde. It only gets dicey when, as just now, I read myself taking pleasure in someone’s discomfort, because that is real; it is a defect which is mine - a smug satisfaction at the expense of another which at another time in my life would be a torment, an imperfection subject to the shrill denunciation of self loathing but which today is no more than grist for the mill. I am determined to take no real pleasure other than striving toward better understanding through whatever existential lens I have at my disposal at that moment.

Lao Tzu said “if you are anxious you are living in the future; if you are depressed you are living in the past; if you are at peace, you are living in the present,” which again leaves more questions than answers. For example, writing that sentence takes me back to 1973-something and the emerging orthodoxy of Baba Ram Dass and his “Be Here Now" acolytes. I had come by an Irish Setter who was abandoned to her own devices in a barnyard because the Ram Dass ashram wouldn’t allow animals. In my 60's-flavored self-righteousness and solidarity with my new best friend, I agonized for her having suffered an externally imposed arbitrary spiritual regulation completely at odds with my no-holds-barred concept of freedom. I share this for the simple awareness of how little I have changed. I still chafe at oppression under the guise of orthodoxy - be here now - is still a fungible concept however correct Eckhart Tolle, Lao Tzu or Baba Ram Dass may be. Peace, however, is not subject to any criteria other than what can be found within the struggle of each human heart, creature, system or dynamic. I use a variety of realities to describe peace, for quiescence is not unique to the human condition. Take for instance the critical mass of a thermonuclear device - it is the peaceful resolution of contrary physics allowed to expand to their potential - just as the exhaustion of rage is subject to the limits of its fury. Peace is not the idyl defined by Jesus, Muhammad or Buddha, but rather a shifting condition somewhat akin to a wave one needs to paddle for to ride that much sought state of peace. Does that make any sense?

The art of calm has been and will continue to be developed by advocates from “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie; to “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius; to this humble 5 paragraph essay by nobody you know - yet we burn with passion, seethe with jealousy, weep in misery and laugh hysterically - why? Why must we struggle to either maintain, evolve or discover peace? How is it that our natural condition is so antagonistic to the state which so many strive to achieve through drugs, meditation, passion or force of intellect? Is it possible to be hostilely peaceful like the cartoon of the hippy and his peace sign T-Shirt shouting “you want a peace of me” or the way Richard Nixon’s peace with honor cashed in on the backs of 58,220 dead Americans - how about the American Indian holocaust with estimates of 95 to 114 million human beings murdered by disease, starvation and superior technology while my nation barely takes a backward glance in its headlong leap into further death and destruction - all the while screaming manifest destiny, exceptionalism or 9/11! Clearly my sense of peace does not come from a blind eye to pustulating injustice and ignorance; though the sadness I feel from plumbing these examples of hypocrisy is more of a tonic to me than that existential tic which pulls more alcohol from a bottle than wise; caves-in to stress riding in the gut and gorges on GMO contaminated comfort food; or wallows in some delusional state cowering from some command of an exalted promise of bliss by ___fill-in the blank___ etc . . . world peace will never arrive until personal peace is nurtured, shared, and/or taken. So by my lights you may find me in a backwater somewhere peacefully struggling to depict the majesty of a naked woman or typing ideas on how to survive the havoc of a handful of haters who will never know peace; may you not be one of them.

post script: this morning Paris was savagely attacked in an effort to be heard by a body of people whose families have likely been attacked in kind by imperial forces raining anonymous destruction from the skies above - war is over - we are our own enemy.

peace - the sonnet

I sit in Nepal and I am at peace-

still close to hurt and anger; could be mine

I feel - maybe warp and woof - my life's piece.

Still I wonder if I’ve crossed a line,

or if I care anymore where I am

but more about easing pain not my own.

What I feel is my own; I have no dam;

why seize debris? D’be like taking a loan.

I don’t know, but I can learn what you teach;

if you want to know more, I will no less;

if you want to take, I’ll move within reach;

if you want to win, I can become lifeless.

What’s not your’s to have is me on my knees,

for to own it, you must make your own peace.

the illusion of internetedness

Computers are now making decisions about who to kill without the aid of human oversight - to the extent this insanity exists, Steven Hawking has lent his name to a petition of world leaders opposing Artificial Intelligence for drones. Synchronistically during the flight in which I began this essay, the random films available included “AI” - a cute film wherein Pinocchio meets the microprocessor; and the latest from the Terminator franchise in which the former governor of California hams it up on camera for a gazillion(x) wad of $s. “Skynet” is unvanquished; I guess so some bean-counter-intern can practice squeezing cabbage from a turnip. I used to think computers were nothing more than an on/off switch to the Nth power, I’m coming to believe they are more of an effort to squeeze blood out of stone, with us being the stones. Originally heralded as the ultimate in labor saving devices for its ability to save labor as well as calculate Pi to googol decimal places, computers and their stepchild the internet are now the most lauded and overwrought purveyors of pornography our infantile species has managed thus far, (paraphrased out of context from a TED presentation by Clay Shirky). If computer power has enhanced our capacity and perception all that much, how is it no one is computing parallels between the increased rate of destruction of our planet with processor speed or computer memory? How is it possible to have such unparalleled poverty, corruption and war (and fuck Bono’s giddy shilling for ruling class about the any-moment-now party-line end-of-poverty bullshit). How can so many be kept in the dark from a simple addiction to an empty media stream?

Lest you believe me a luddite, this essay is written on a computer and will be published on the internet with little hope of ever reaching print - a great irony to use the same channel which is being used to oppress the best part of humanity with trite trinkets and baubles not dissimilar to what the Dutch paid for Manhattan. Today instead of costume jewelry, the invaders are using virtual puppet shows to captivate consumers, and as Albert Einstein said “manipulate the emotions of the masses and thereby control them.” Nor am I immune to the siren song - the illusion of not being invisible which Zuckerberg and company have so glibly foisted, spliced, conjured in their quest for amassing gobs of pelf at the expense of all which could have been accomplished with this communication technology or might have been developed had we not allowed ourselves to be bamboozled by a bunch avaricious pin heads posing as visionaries. It seems that the more complex our world becomes, the easier it has become for a handful of humans to twist larger and larger bodies of people into a predictable pattern, or at least so predictable as to monetize a keystroke or click of a button. I refuse to be consigned to the pale echo of myself which Zucky and company attempt to constrain into evermore rigid venues stripped of any of the joy and suffering which I prize as evidence of my existence.

While writing this at the eastern edge of Kathmandu valley in Nepal, I had to reconcile an irrational fear and unnecessary anxiety about change to the status quo of a tenuous domestic happiness against the reality of the addition of a calm and compassionate rocket scientist from Kazakhstan into my fantasy cohort of compassionate souls - ostensible champions to an underserved elementary school in semi-rural Nepal.  Shakespeare said truth is stranger than fiction, and of all the scenarios and the public notices I’ve viewed and posted on the “internet super highway,” or Zukè`s twisted toll road, my continued astonishment at the richness and complexity of the people I cross paths with and the challenges they face, dwarf any diluted silhouettes contrived by the lords of the data stream. Nor do I see the ham-fisted efforts of digital designers to fashion a narrow gauge description which fits their business model coming close to facilitating the nuance which comes from the skin to skin, breath to breath reality one gains listening, walking and sharing with those in our midst, and I have dear friends I’ve never met, or will possibly ever meet which without the internet would never have been possible. How can we who occupy this wondrous dying planet seize the initiative to exploit technology rather than each other. What irony that an inanimate technology with the capacity to amplify each voice and transform the fractured broken chorus of people kind into a pool of knowledge accessible to each and every hungry mind but is now used as no more than a goat’s bell apprising the lords and masters of our exact whereabouts and activity of each person yoked to a +/- 5v shackle.

Am I shrill in my denunciation of the waste and utter incompetence of current design and architecture of today’s computer interconnections, perhaps. Given the ability of the sirens of media to shout over any and all other voices than those specifically in lockstep with the infantile and grossly irresponsible concept that 1) being like them is a worthy pursuit 2) doing what they say will lead to a seat at the grownup’s table - I may not be shrill enough?

I haven’t written a word in weeks, if not months. There is nothing or anyone to blame, but sitting here searching for words to describe the multitude of experiences and emotions of this journey, I feel weakened. How does this pertain to an essay on the Internet, and why do emotion and personal expression seem so inextricably connected? I just about abandoned this effort to begin emails to people rather than an amorphous dialogue with readers of an indeterminate composition: that anything is "either/or" is part of the indoctrination to on or off species from an analog anatomy. 

It is now the next day and my toe is cringing from repeated soaks in saltwater for a hangnail - those funny contradictions, the painful cutting to a “V” of a nail edge that is throbbing to the contrary. I wonder if the tension is analogous to Leonard Cohen’s “bitter searching of the heart,” or when Lao Tzu says “pretty words may be ugly and ugly words may be beautiful”? Writing is an odd balm to the disquiet of sitting in the midst of another culture’s high holiday and knowing so little or being known so little. But somehow this all pertains to the internet, for the content we sift through like children at the seashore sifting through sand for treasures is not within the capacity of the “rainbow makers” of media to provide. It is only within each heart to process or not, to feel pleasure or not - just like the writing discipline for me wicks away the discursive chatter so easily mimicked in the 5 second pageantry scrolling from interminable flicks of the wrist. Nor is it lament I seek to share, but rather a demand on myself for more than the egocentric stroke from yammering on line, or fake feeling of contribution by believing you have more than anyone else no matter how much you give away. Yet oddly coming full circle to what it means to give, and whether this contrivance of broadcast upon which you read this means I have actually shared - you have something you did not have before. I care about that - and you didn’t have it prior to this point in your curiosity.

Is that enough to blow Hurricane Patricia the fuck out before she hits landfall making more rugged a whole lot of already rugged Mexican lives? There is the Lorenz Attractor which says if enough people actually were able to blow hard enough at precisely the correct moment as determined by scientific law the hurricane would cease; however that loving killjoy William Shakespeare got there first - “so near, yet so far. I have to say I’m riding with Lao Tzu on this, for the simple fact that I have no control over any other person. So while I may be willing to blow for the benefit of others, it is more likely the act of expunging my frustration with this semi-cogent diction of addlepation is as close to rabble rousing as I’m going to get. Besides, people mostly look at you as though you’re cray when you stand up in mixed company and declare “hey everybody, listen to Bill Nye the Science Guy and blow hard when he gives the signal”, but then for all you know, I’m hardwired into Google Inc, and have closely coordinated the time of release for this document based on a data feed of what makes people laugh mined from the “youtube” analytics. 

note: that derisive snort you just made is enough to avert, not Patricia but the hurricane forming on her heels which would have dwarfed Patricia in its savagery and intensity - I hesitate to say stranger things have happened. but then again I never thought I’d be duped into working for a smarmy Harvard non-grad for laughs because the rat bastard is too cheap to pay me my worth. go figure .  . 

jts 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission

all rights reserved

∞

family

At one time in my life - my fear of being away from my family was the only thing that bothered me about death. It wasn’t the unknown or cessation of life that disturbed me - it was the act of separation from what I believed to be the source of all good things in the world - mother, father, brothers, sister. At some level, past a deep denial of pain, I’m sure that feeling of good remains true - past deep, deep denial. Aided by a reaction formation to that discomfort, I spend a fair amount of intellectual capital attempting to cultivate brotherhood amongst all I meet. As part of this quixotic pursuit, I have found in similar proportion the same dissonance which I feel in the bosom of my family within the greater body politic. This correlation doesn’t auger well for any conceit about personal evolution or augment the objectivity necessary to write about a topic as old as Cain and Abel. For example, after my father, my greatest hero growing up was my older brother. He was Fonzerelli, Hans Solo and Che Guevara rolled into one, whereas pop just had an uncanny resemblance to 007. Laugh if you must, but in my mind’s eye my family suffered from great beauty, and me - great beauty because like wealth and friends one can never be sure if people hang or are hanger’s on, and me because I have the temerity to drag my cohort out into the light of day rather than afford each the dignity of privacy within which to consider issues of family or even beauty. In deference to this fair objection to a conceivably entirely conjectured affront - I apologize, but will press on as is my wont, fantasy or no. Of my earliest memories would be of my older brother, my hero, remarking to me “someone is gonna punch you in the face for your big mouth,” and he was right. The assailants name was Bill H____; I had been talking to his girlfriend at a party the night before, so when asked the next day if this was true, I said yes. In one swing, he broke his hand on my face to the degree the military wouldn’t take him; due to this self-inflicted injury he escaped service in Vietnam - an act of compassion, which was more synchronistic than intentional. 

My brother was drafted and inducted into the military imperial expedition known as Vietnam. He had the balls to tell the Army he would not go to Vietnam, so I went to break him out of the brig. Which did not become the revolutionary act I had pictured more - what's it look like in the belly of the beast. Still, they had captured my hero brother, so armed with a “Bantam Complex” - David and Goliath delusion writ small , I confronted the amassed superior forces of Camp Pendleton. They mocked my puppy dog heart; The spirit was willing but the flesh was unable to break my homie out of stir. I had seen done in TV and movies since first exposed to the boob-tube, but solidarity was all I could muster. The sad extent of my military campaigns consists of a failed breakout attempt and a life lesson which says if you make nice with another man’s woman, there’s a fair chance you might get punched in the face. I’m pretty sure my brother never knew about that lesson, or if he cared; what I’m not clear about is whether I got punched because he told me when I was young that it was going to happen? Having heroes can get dicey if you are not real clear about what exactly you want to happen and why. I wanted family, or more importantly the feeling of family - love. It took many, many years to distinguish one from the other. First, it has become necessary to confront the fact that what I feel is not necessarily aligned with what others feel. Keep laughing, for I am just about as dense as I sound. My good fortune is to genuinely love my family and by extension love all people-kind or at least those at whom I am able to stop snarling; what seems to elude me is that part of love which is mine? Keep laughing .  . cause’ I love you too . . . < written in France ; written in Seal Beach, CA > ma’s star is beginning to twinkle or as she stated so simply “I want to clunk out;” the oldest brother, my hero has a seething exclusive fury manifested by “don’t speak to me,” flavored with early school yard bully. It is difficult to hear and remain compassionate, but not so hard to understand nor difficult to imagine how he would believe shutting me out will make the pain go away - 

I embraced much the same fiction to facilitate my own effort for escape velocity from the family event horizon. Growing up, rage was the lingua franca; always attributed to the other, rarely embraced for having originated at one’s core - we were too civilized. My father was a man of discipline and outbursts of anger were not included in that discipline - small wonder I’m “mad;” I can’t even come clean without blaming some other body, even that of a dead man. Ironically there is no one with which to find fault. My parents did the best they could with what they had - exactly the same as my brother is doing the best he can with what he has. As I write this, ma is scarfing my last pistachios from France, and the small boy in me wants to run and snatch back my precious morsels — as though saving pistachio meat might preserve that French experience. The irony is that ma may be feeling those morsels contain some precious memory if she could only find the right one. As "little boy", I am angry and frightened but the "educated-striving-son" of my parents I wonder if my brother and I share similar fears or depravations and see them too clearly in each other for comfort? Ma is just trying to satisfy a craving, scratch an itch, fill an emptiness. How is it possible to harden one’s heart to such an honest hankering? It seems all of life is about seeking a successful strategy to attenuate hankering of one sort or another, be it family, booze, broads or the latest corporate labor-saving device. (talk about your oxymoron)- sort of like the “brotherly love” I have for my sister - the consummate broad - a beauty in the mysterious sense of the word - the inexplicable, inexorable - indelible. I have found myself on more than one occasion looking into some artwork I’ve made only to find my sister’s sublime expression asking I know not what, nor is it some incestuous taboo that I surreptitiously examine with you. Everyone sees the world from their crib of origin; I just consider myself fortunate to have lodged with striking characters out of the gate. One might say I am “oppressed by” Leonard Cohen’s “figures of beauty.” Of the artifacts I studied early on, Maillol’s sculptures defined for me a moderne classic quality - an influence recently reinforced while witnessing his Ode du Cezanne at the Louvre. Family and beauty are conflated for me with love which leads to more beauty unless otherwise cursed.

“By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give - that by means of beauty, beautiful things become beautiful.” - Socrates as quoted by Plato in “Phaedo”

Beauty nor family is enough, for there is so much ugly loneliness in the world that the flood of  cheap knockoffs which Corporate Inc. flogs as real are snatched up by a population starving for what only the human heart can discern - real love, real family, real beauty. Computers are attempting to parse the natural language of yearning found in infancy and within the cauldron of childhood so as to mimic some discourse which all the world hungers for - belonging. Even orphans know the difference between real and fake, why is that? Have I improperly conflated beauty with family; can the mystery of family be distilled? Is ugliness a key ingredient to family, what about violence, when one brother slugs another to seize the last dollop of peanut butter is that cruelty merely an echo of Cain and Abel, or a hook upon which some unevolved ad lackey for the corporate overlords to hang his cap of profit upon? Or is our family of [wo]man as Carl Jung perceived - a rhizome of sorts, residing just under the threshold of life, mingled in the soil with countless generations of human suffering and joy - an organic configuration of DNA - a complex of emotional impulses spinning in some convoluted axis of love, hate and hunger? That sounds poetic, yet is more substantial then the television novellas used daily to indoctrinate entire generations to whatever flavor of pulp fiction the ruling class cares to feed its population. I say “its” population in the full meaning of the possessive, for whatever illusions homies may have about the role of freedom and outlaw-hood, or fantasies the tea party fringe feel when they fondle their weapons instead of their women, there are few free-minded humans left with time or inclination to wage the sort of war necessary to liberate the human spirit from this sham culture posing as holy provider of food, shelter and spiritual sustenance. We have become a conveyer system of profit for a handful to harvest; we sleep-walk from cradle to grave well reflecting the fake food we eat and the rote learning that passes for understanding.

It may be time to expand any interpretation of family to include every living and non-living aspect of our world, to begin examining whether family as we understand it is only a primitive effort by a feeble species to respond to the vastness of a seemingly limitless sky anchored by violent surroundings; that the feeling of belonging our family constellations provide as a ready made group resembling each other in appearance, language and ambition is more like the comfort of a molecule within a larger anatomy. This alternative perspective begins to make sense when our world is viewed at a distance from the planet itself - a perspective hitherto unimaginable to earlier generations. Yet that newness does not mitigate the level of violence which open wounds of war describe daily by body counts and hysterical rhetoric used to justify the simple greed of a handful of human ciphers preying on the body politic all the while camouflaging its avarice as righteous prayer. The good news is like any of the plethora of organisms amidst the wondrous flora and fauna found on this moist orb in the middle of nowhere, we humans may be little more in the evolutionary chain than the vestige of tail which the coccyx in our own body describes. All of our struggle and strife may be no more than the closing of skin over a stump of bone which no longer contributes to the health and welfare of the planet - metaphorically speaking. However it is as plausible that our human joys and honest efforts to mimic the love of parent, the warmth of siblings within the honor of community may be enlarging the planet’s cerebral cortex and fortifying the brainstem and spine of this figurative mother earth with which to explore the greater universe and find our true family constellation amidst the boundless galaxies and worlds which we have barely begun to perceive - i don’t know . ?