freedom - an essay / tyranny · the sonnet

- dedicated to the Oglala Lakota, The Sioux Nation; their Ancestors; and to The Water Protectors @ Standing Rock

"A hero is someone that understands the responsibility that comes with freedom. “ - Bob Dylan

I live in a nation where my country[people]men allowed their presidential selection to be bracketed between a “bought-and-paid-for” Wall Street shill hell-bent to demonstrate her formidable will by bombing all opposed into the stone ages, and a “bought-but-never-paid-for-anything” Wall Street shill hell-bent on subjugating anyone or anything which does not attest his magnificence. I don’t have many heroes, not the “talking heads” suddenly possessing 20/20 hindsight, nor the unbent, unbowed progressive leadership which shipwrecked the ship of state; does this absolve me of my responsibilities as a warrior scholar? Were i more of either, the cowardice of Bismarck North Dakota sloughing off it’s share of responsibility for the travesty of justice being visited upon the Sioux Nation, their holy sanctuaries and the wellbeing of the entire planet, would instead be a proud exhortation: “Continue your valiant struggle for peace and autonomy", which you have so nobly demonstrated through commonsense, persistence and courage using only your open, loving hearts, Bravo! .  . alack . such a victorious essay will have to wait for a better opportunity. Does this mean The Water Protectors @ Standing Rock do not deserve loyal support, and loving admiration - i’d give a body part, if i thought it would make one brave soul on those cold front lines warmer. My responsibility is to find one other human being willing to struggle for the common good as the warriors battling “the black snake” of Crazy Horse’s dream have done by facing the combined corporate power of the international oil cartels and their lackeys in government - a struggle which has just resulted in a victory; however temporary - A Victory ! nonetheless .  .

How about you .  . are you one of those spiritually bankrupt souls, with confederate flags fluttering, looking to bolster your cause and deny your fear through intimidation and brute force, or are you amongst the hordes peering the flickering bars of scrolling text, shackled to the suspicion that somehow you might have missed the elusive secret of success which everyone else seems to have obtained so effortlessly? Aside from the bifurcated logic of an either/or fallacy, what are my responsibilities to you the reader - entertainment, enlightenment, engagement? A more accurate question might be - what are my responsibilities to myself - to be, or not; leave the world better than i found it; or like Leonard Cohen’s dew on a leaf, “leave no harm, nor ever will”? Yesterday i watched more movies than i’d seen in months culminating in Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. To manage my shame for such appalling lack of industry, i inoculated myself “in vino veritas” and “reefer madness - was that freedom? There are parts of the world where i could be put to death for even one such infraction, and other parts of the world which would happily condemn my soul to the darkest regions of hell for both - is that freedom? At the conclusion of my last marriage, my sense of defeat was so great that i became convinced my forgiveness would be born of abstinence; for a decade, i neither drank nor smoked - is that freedom? My father, may he rest in peace, was adamant that choice, any choice one makes, must be born by each individual - pop was a wise guy. Here i sit covered chest to chin with shingles - Varicella Zoster Virus - “chicken pops” - not my choice, and yet .  .  . research suggests this pleasure of the aged is precipitated by stress and/or a weakened immune system - both conditions solely within the purview of personal responsibility.

I choose to eat well and meditate routinely, combining calisthenics and tai chi; how could i have been attacked so effectively by something which preys on a weakened immune system or excitable mind? It must have come from a delusion, my own; it is all i can figure. What else could explain such a soulless malady seizing my world and making of me its slave - in such thrall as to be willing to claw my heart out for some small relief? No substance or emotion i’ve ever known has reduced my will to naught as easily as this nucleic acid mutant and its fucking protein coat. I’m not being completely honest: bedbugs inspired me similarly - though rather than wish for my own early death - i did find myself cheek-to-jowl with an unatural blood lust for the extinction of all bedbugs - a lethal fury so complete as to abandon my “all life is sacred” tenant; so much for my career as a “militant pacifist” - a regrettable, however reasonable choice. Am i doomed by this flaw, or is life more like William Blake described - “The road of excess leads to the Palace of Wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”? Do we in the United States have too much freedom, an excess that has made us lazy and susceptible to tyrants? Are my aged excesses born of too little responsibly, resulting in a physical vulnerability. Would i be delivered from this 'Bardo', were i to reassume the harness of gainful employment and take that job at “Widgets Inc.”? Has my deliberate boycott of every stylish consumer advertisement rendered me an enemy of the state and proud advocate of justice for The Water Protectors @ Standing Rock? Will an essay on “freedom” affect one unfree human being on the planet, or divert my path from Dante’s lowest rung of hell, due to this deliberate slow intoxication to death of my own volition?

How long will it be until humans are no longer allowed to ask such questions - how few in the audience even know, or care, about Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, or that the lowest rings of hell were reserved for those who’d take their own lives? Dante had, at one time, been considered part of an education in the classics; there are now college courses on the “TV Guide,” and this by a professor i highly regard. The ability to reason has always suffered from attacks by those whose fortunes are built on ignorance and fear; however we are living in a time when people are paying for their own shackles and docilely believe that the corporate overlords wait for no more than a “like” in order to bend whole revenue streams toward the “Liker.” And what of that, am i opposed to corporate overlords because i envy their viral financial muscle? Are my feeble protests nothing more than the plaintive wail of another bleeding heart liberal whining about trees in the forest being reduced to stubble? What if all of America begins to emulate the self-unaware bombastics of a man who feels the entire floor of a metropolitan high-rise is an appropriate domain for a 10 year-old child, yet thinks America’s below poverty minimum wage is too high? Will this selfishness make us “great again”? Our world, by all rational accounts is dying and there is nary a peep from the incessant whine of our “information super-highway.” How is it even possible that so many could be blinded from the realities of institutional betrayal at the highest levels of our leadership; are we so deluded as to believe a new car will suffice for a deteriorating moral compass - a broken guide which numbs us to the sufferings of anyone not recognizable as one of our “own.” How can a technology developed on the premise that more effective communication will break down barriers, have become so effective at isolating whole nations from each other, much less you from the person next to you?

Do i write this because i am free, or am i free because i write this? Talk is cheap, freedom not. When young, many are absorbed by distorted fantasies about others - their power, their age even their sex, yet from where i sit, freedom must be found within my own mind. Is this because i’m old and therefore know more than the young - not by a stretch. Many have died young knowing freedom much better than i, whether i live long or prosper much. I have seen the wealthiest chained by no more than a chimera - a certainty that their riches represent freedom - “life is like a shit sandwich; the more bread ya’ got, the less shit you gotta to eat.” - A. Nonymous. However, more often than not, rather than share their freedom, the wealthy struggle invariably to deprive others of their rights to such freedom - seemingly for no other reason than to have more of what those supposed “masters of the universe” have already, in abundance. Why is that? Is it possible that from the conceit of having tricked others into coveting objects, the rich have actually deluded themselves into believing objects will break the chain of our biology - end of life? How sad to come to one’s end surrounded by empty eyes - eyes coveting cherished objects representing imagined freedom as one recedes further from real freedom, that of breath. If wealth represents freedom, how is it possible that love is the only thing that grows when you give it away - is that not another meaning for freedom - the quiet personal decision to amplify positive opportunity as opposed to constraining liberty?

“The secret of human freedom is to act well, without attachment to the results” - Bhagavad Gita

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tyranny - the sonnet

how come tyranny sounds quite so whiny?

“YOU HURT MY FEELINGS, SO I’LL MAKE YOU PAY!

IF YOU WON’T OBEY, I’LL HIDE YOU FROM TV

AND TELL MY WORLD WHAT YOU WANTED TO SAY!”

why does tyranny need quite so much help?

“GET THE TRAITORS WHO DISOBEY - JAIL THEM;

THROW AWAY THE KEY - BUT KILL THE LEADER’S WHELP,

BEFORE IT’S SUNG OUT IN SOME FUCKING HYMN.”

what kills every tyranny known to man?

“THEY’VE REFUSED TO FIGHT? THEY’VE DEFIED MY MIGHT?

I’LL SQUEEZE THEM HARD; I WILL - THEY KNOW I CAN?

WHAT’S THIS! THEY DON’T COWER OR CRINGE? - NO FRIGHT!”

“OH FUCK.  . BACK UNDER THE ROCK I MUST GO,

BUT I’LL BE BACK; THEY WILL FORGET - I KNOW.”

jts 120516 

http://stoneartist.com

homeless - an essay / home · the sonnet

I sold a home in 2014; when i first found it, it was dilapidated, in a remote location, close enough that i could visit my aging mother, but far enough away that i would not disturb the tenuous equilibrium that describes our family constellation. I nearly beat the grief out of myself from my father’s death painting its 2,000 sf. For a time, the prospects of peaceful coexistence with the delusional reality of middle america seemed almost possible, but much like the Borg hive, without complete absorption into the red white and blue warp and woof of mindless conformity - i would exist as an antibody within the body politic, subject to the phagocytes and histamines of hatred, innuendo and character assassination; in time i was repulsed like pus out of a zit head from the constant harangue of impending rapture. A personal delusion that anyplace on earth would be different, dovetailed such that i distilled 2,000 sf ft of sentimental tchotchkes collected over 50 years of wandering into a 10’x10’ storage unit and set sail for anyplace in the world other than middle america. My first destination was Paris, France, where i had convinced the love left within my self there lived a woman who possessed my heart, though i was to learn if “home is where the heart is”, Paris was not home; as beautiful as she and Paris are, they are not mine. I also learned that the heart does not break, it bends. I then followed my pif (French for schnoz) to Carcassonne, France where i contracted as expatriate day laborer posing as artist. While writing this now, i’m beginning to believe the only home, i’ve ever really enjoyed has been as artist, so insulting myself to you as being a poser rings hollow. However, the reality at that time was each member at the table was supported through their creative efforts while i, subsisted as attendant - a page within the royal book of hired guns. To earn a living by one’s work is not a hollow point, it is the definition of a burning hearth - home. I have fueled many hearths in my life, mostly as a wage slave, so it is not an indifferent pursuit for me to pursue creative work that is of my own choosing. My belief being that only through honoring what my heart hungers for will i find a place to be - easier said than done.

Paul Cezanne was a banker’s son, yet his work has had a greater impact on my understanding of beauty than possibly any other human, living or dead. So finding myself napping in the garden of his studio in a gentle rain under a canopy of trees he himself had had planted may be as close to heaven as i will ever get; is that home? To see with my own eyes the color of stones at Bibemus Quarry, to sit in the church where he developed his concepts of the sacred or sit on the floor of his studio drawing skulls he had pondered to far better advantage, forced me to question every pretension with which i’ve ever cloaked my own soul from the unflinching truth of beauty. I was more lost than i wished to be and no closer to home. Bob Dylan - “Gonna forget about myself for a while, gonna go out and see what others need.” While in Paris i’d magnanimously bought a pair of draw string pants in support of Nepal which had suffered back to back devastating earthquakes just prior to my arrival there. As my time in Europe was quickly approaching the limits of my Schengen Visa and with the aid of Workaway.info i contacted a school which seemed the most sincere and prepared to seek my better self in the service of others; instead i was confronted by the extent of my human frailty. My family had traveled through Mexico when i was 7, driving a Rambler station wagon towing a teardrop trailer; there were 6 of us, and for 3 months that was home. Compared to the Nepal i arrived at, the rustic Mexico of my memory was the land of milk and honey. My home in Nepal for 3 months was at the Eastern edge of the Kathmandu Valley in the city of Nagarkot. My room was at the end of a hallway on the 2nd floor which also contained 3 classrooms, an additional room for Workaway.info rent and a family of 3 who’d been displaced by the earthquake. At that time, there were 60 students registered at the school; some of whom to attend classes would walk 5-10 miles back and forth each day, up and down 30 degree slopes of the Himalayan foothills . 

For the students and faculty there was a single squat toilet without any running water for hygiene; two 10 gallon urns filled daily for hydration. A second squat toilet with a faucet for washing was supplied by a 500 liter reservoir that was manually diverted from a 1,000 liter reservoir used for cooking laundry and watering the garden. The water supply was sourced from a half inch diameter hose fed from a depression in a stream running down the canyon that would dry up in the summer months and which also irrigated local crops. In addition to myself and the family in my hallway, the school housed the school owner, her grown-friend ward, a minor ward, a recuperating sister (gall stones), a displaced local shop owner, and up to four other occasional Workaway volunteers. As much as i’d have liked to change anything at all to the advantage of anyone i met, i feel as though my entire 3 month’s contribution would amount to reading English rhymes with students in pairs and spending money at local grocers who likely despised my spartan diet. In contrast, a younger stronger English vagabond nearly single handedly erected a sandbag house at some distance into the canyon and provided an entire family a home which will likely survive the next quake. The question in my mind remains whether my efforts and faith in literacy, its capacity to improve the world evaporated with the inundation of corporate sound bytes driven by greed fueled by the fires from mountains of burning plastic in close proximity to the highest regions of our mortal world. The administrator who i had turned to for moral direction was and had been funneling much resource into the building and improvement of the local Brahma Kumari temple to which she was an adherent. Nor was this symbiotic relationship a one-way channel. I shall remember to my dying day how her guru, in his white garb arrived in the dark of night and dug up the elbow of a drain from the top floor patio into which the same diameter cup had dropped backing up all water from the laundry / kitchen / garden; retrieving errant cup, reinserting drain elbow and cementing curb before remounting his motorized steed and driving home with pennants flying; this was a home full of love, but not mine; Upon my departure, after 10 years of sobriety, i determined to drink again - my celestial ambitions having been reduced to fog by no one other than myself. 

My next destination was not so easily determined, for by this time one could almost hear the shrill drumbeat of the 2016 United States presidential elections harkening the death knell of our species. I found myself seeking haven rather than conquest: romantic, artistic - even personal. My fortitude argued with my fear and i found the deeper i dove the less i found, or more accurately my reflection became dimmer and dimmer; the ego i had relied on to guide me to creative places throughout my life receded further and further from my work. I know this, for i used what i’d always felt as a special gift from heaven inured from crass commercialism to curry favor with a portrait of the proprietors of a Hostel in the Andes where i had half-heartedly convinced myself i belonged. Fleeing the tightening noose, i sought the refuge of absolution from a female shaman in Uruguay - always the woman; thank g_d for woman. I found myself immersed in a land of memory - a Disney version of 1970’s NYC, San Francisco, and/or Santa Cruz - full of the roasting meat of barbecue and wine. No small wonder that tobacco found residence in my cowardice, or she, g_d found a way to laugh right in my face; one can only hope she finds enough mirth in my waywardness to return me. For now, i sit in the aftermath of the U.S. 2016 democratic debacle, homeless - sort of in the California city where i had grown up, but i still cling the 'audacity of hope'. Enough so that i sit and write without an audience or any real faith that what i say may benefit our kind. What does it mean to be without a home? Stephen Hawking says we are doomed without space exploration with which to carry our DNA to other celestial bodies. How can we humans remove ourselves to another world with a straight face, when we’ve yet to figure out how to co-exist here on planet terra? And still i remain thankful - unrelated to the fact that today is a day in my nation’s history supposedly set aside to give thanks to the indigenous human beings who according to lore saved our forefathers from certain doom, while at the same time corporate goons are water cannoning those same indigenous saviors in sub-zero weather as my country wages war on any nation of the world who dares object to the 'franchising empire' that was once my homeland; will this make 'merica gr8 again . ?

G_d by her infinite mercy will not let our kind perish in delusion, thusly we are about to come full face to the limits of our arrogance - 'death to the lot of us'. Laugh it off, as you should - laughter being one of the few honest emotions left to our depraved, indoctrinated, consumer consciousness. We are about to be reduced to the fundamentals - molecules in suspension - the only thing missing will be our skin and its skein of appearance. Is it possible that from the dawn of our awareness and earliest shelters of sky and shade, we have pursued an inevitable conclusion to our shared history, arriving at a place where atmosphere and shade from our stellar light will become the only home left to us? I don’t know. I do know that what is found in a phone is not my family, and that anywhere on the planet i go will contain nothing more than those same conflicts i now carry in my heart, as well as any love i’ve managed to fortify and grow. My life is over, except for the shouting; and though it be not much, these words i piece together and images i scratch into a paper, are all i have left to bring home to the fire, that same fire which warms me from the cold and lights the darkness of my fading vision - a vision which just now failed me in an effort to adequately braid cloth for a braided rug. Or is it that just like all mankind, i quit. Just now watching the master apply her experience, i cannot attribute my lessor quality braid to anything but lessor determination; she knew what was needed for the braid to remain flat, but my own ego dictated that a desire to “help” would be sufficient to contribute - a fallacy. Truth is, her hunger for a fine rug was greater than my hunger to help; otherwise i’d have taken greater pains to mimic the appropriate effort. Is my diminished capacity to deliver what was needed for a good rug any different than my inability to affect a useful solution to our onrushing calamities? Is her instinct to produce, guiding my fantasy that being understood by another is something all people look for in this life? Is it possible that my applied creative desires may yet help one person recognize that their lonely struggle to belong is shared by every other human? I can’t say, but i’ve tried. 

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home - the sonnet

i sit in a room, though it’s not my home

my words in shadow - lamp on the left

my heart is at peace, not from echoing “om”

rather from hearing those many bereft

why such welcome from those who are without?

have they given their last bottom dollar

knowing the store’s empty from some great rout?

did poverty give them that deeper valor?

matters not with my hat on a hook - it is dry

and the winds could shift tonight while sleeping

to waken in morning by sky in my eye

the same eye where shadow made for complaining

be where you sit fully - it may be gone

faster than this planet · you now live on.

  

jts 24/1/2016

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved 

∞

the day after - an essay / the day before · the sonnet

This morning i woke at 4:00 am and i was afraid to look at my computer. The 2016 U.S. election had taken place the day before; i was in Uruguay, and i did not vote. For those with the need, you are welcome to blame me. My candidate was shouldered aside by a more canny, well-oiled political machine, but by this time my disillusionment was so complete her contrived strut to coronation rang hollow and was of little interest to me - in many ways repulsive. Now it is 5:41 pm and i am fatigued to the nether regions of my soul - that my flight back to my native land commences in less than 48 hours seems a minor inconvenience. So when the internet went down, i came to you to cry .  . actually my weeping took place in the pre-dawn hours just after overcoming my fear of news from an inanimate device actuated by +/- 5v impulses directed through scripting from a corporate keyboard which also heralded the dawn of a new age. Thankfully my tears came in quiet consolation with a kind woman i’ve never met, but greatly admire - thank you Zucky - you “empty suit”, you. In the intervening time between then and now, i persisted - weakly but with resolve. My exercise and mediation have brought some perspective, clean sheets and comfort. I am packed and dangling like a booger from an old man’s nose. But hazy from fatigue and a too early glass of wine with my friend the Shaman organ builder .  .  .  Now four days later - the hotel where i elected to spend the preceding night and from which i’d requested a wakeup call at 4:00 am failed - and the fault is mine; that i missed checkin by 5 minutes is small consolation for the cost of a replacement ticket. My reason to travel is largely to spend moments more with my 88 year old fading ma - and that is a decent motivation worthy of the replacement ticket. It has been said if you believe you’ve reached enlightenment, spend a week with your family. I couldn’t even make it out of Uruguay, before i felt flooded by the fury of failed family. It is difficult to frame my reasons without becoming sanctimonious and self-righteous - a multigenerational trait from way back.

Having secured an exit ticket, i had to request the change from my stalwart ride out of the airport prior to my arrival. My next email was to a brother staying in our mother’s home explaining the change so’s that they would not be concerned i had not arrived in the late evening as planned, and then began the 20 hour vigil. Toward the 12 hour mark when i went to check the flight out from, i discovered - the procuring agent, had not yet processed the ticket, nor had i heard from my brother. Ironically the capitalist machinery was asses-and-elbows helping me through chat, but not word one from my brother. My ride graciously shifted his schedule, so i knew if i could get to Los Angeles, i’d be able to get to ma. In the age of cellular phones, not owning one poses serious challenge, the land line having grown quiescent much like the Red Car rails of L.A. lie unused. All civil process are now expected to possess the yoke of wireless. Unable to call directly, my email request was my only accessible channel to apprise others of my change. I began scouring fb, email and others for anyone i could contact lest the brother in the company of my mother had no intention of reviewing emails - who’d want to when on vacation? I myself delete 95% of everything i receive, which given the election budget this cycle bought a lot of email. My dilemma was principally one of communication, for once the plane boarded there would be no way to apprise my mother and brother of this change - long story short, the same kind person driving me from the airport was able to make contact - the brother had received the email and simply neglected to apprise me. I’ve made much progress in de-socializing from the indoctrination of a human dynamic built on contention and self aggrandizement made manifest in the election of the newest “leader of the free world.” I seek different ways to perceive myself, however, all my self-discipline and good intention evaporated into a swamp of smarmy mental retribution, both real and imagined. I could feel my own soul at war with itself fleeing from the quagmire of hate that was once my family.

There is no place to flee, or more accurately i cannot change anyone but myself - there is nothing i can say to this brother that will ever inspire him to appreciate how little i had asked for and how much rancor i struggle to attenuate, nor will he ever know how grateful i am to him for his timely lesson. The night i began this essay just after the election, i woke to a dream of Leonard Cohen pointing his finger at my throat, and me yelling at him for betraying my good will. I tried mightily to understand how or what an image of this human hero might signify in my psychic life. My first take was that i was using my dream to chide myself for not having fought valiantly with my better nature to pursue this essay to the bitter end that very night, or it could have been residue from an incident weeks earlier where my deeply troubled vecino may have been actually calling out for help by attempting to throttle my neck for the egregious act of requesting quiet. I do know that in about 6 hours, if my ticket is cleared in time, i will board a flight back to a nation in turmoil and a brother who may feel justified for not acknowledging a simple request because my initial email used his snail mail name “Jimmy”, rather than the one he lives as; i just don’t know. I know today has been as much of “a day after” as anything the American abortion of its democratic heritage could be, but in an airport populated with other lives, the human beings i’ve encountered have been unfailing courteous, even somewhat helpful to my plight; that the girl on the helpline applied herself as much to my call for help as my own blood would not; through the prism correct existence, i owe each the same measure of recognition and good will - that is a lesson which seems to elude me far too easily for me to comfortably acknowledge.

Facts: ma has no call for concern about my late arrival. Whatever motivates another to be indifferent to a simple request is none of my concern. My obligation is to be as decent and mindful as my temperament allows, to utilize that lesson for any improvement i might achieve. And while it is true, i can change no one or force anyone to do anything, i’m under no obligation to encourage or participate in continued degradation of core human principles of simplicity, patience or compassion. If this provokes the profiteers of mindless plastic exploitation of our planet’s brilliant capacity for environmental stasis - so be it. That i refuse to hate another, even the haters, is my business not subject to interpretation - hate is weak, i’d rather be strong, a quality ma demanded from me, but which i believe partly frightens her about me. But here is the magic of my ma, i don’t believe it was my brute strength that caused her concern, but the inflexibleness which i resort to when backed into a corner. I have always perceived her persistent correction as a critique, where in retrospect i’m beginning to suspect she’d have preferred me to possess a broader repertoire of response to almost anything other than my goto self-righteous faith in “to best of my knowledge.” This recent election has drawn in high relief the limits of pundits of all stripes, while my own foray into self awareness draws clearly the limits of certainty, most especially my own. So what comes next (thumb to index finger circling the nose) - Australian for “fuck knows”? As much as i resist, at times i still imagine myself to have a roll to play describing this increasingly confusing reality called life.

There are, as one sage friend apprised, “barbarians through the gates;” Does this fiction obligate me to alter my own trajectory in favor of some common cause, violent, non-violent, doctrinaire or just anarchistic? I’ve never been much impressed by the actions of many in concert, but remain paradoxically amazed, astonished and inspired by the wide spectrum of magnificence manifest from seemingly unrelated individual acts of human accomplishment - who will ever forget the brass testicles of he-who-faced-down-a-caravan-of-tanks in Tiananmen Square? Is our very existence pegged to a single heart multiplied by 7 billion; is that any less practical than the ruling class objective for yoking 7 billion into a single income stream using only a +/-5v shackle to the wrist; or then frightening the same into believing they are independent free thinkers lacking only that one entrepreneurial discovery which separates peasants from the loftiest of CEO’s - even President of ’The Free World’. I am tired now, more tired than when i began this essay, but i feel better. Our leaders have demonstrated they are not; so how can one fiction, however venal and lacking in basic human empathy be all that dangerous. What i am hearing is a uniform repudiation of the hatred and mean spirited attacks inspired by fear mongering which catapulted the king of empty suits into the world’s imagination. My sense is even stronger today than when this occurred 4 days ago, as bad as things seem - logic of the real world dictates an equal and opposite force of kindness, love and decency waiting for the dawn of a new day.   

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the day before - the sonnet

there has never been a time in my life

when death was not hanging in the balance

though the atom bomb was made to end strife,

our world will die at the point of this lance

just our luck, warriors took their courage

with them when they were no longer needed

leaving battles fought over your suffrage

by tyrants wielding danger unheeded

laugh if you must - i fear it’s all echo

of a day when some things were still funny

we now must find joy from blow after blow

while so hot we pray it was less sunny

i've lived in a time when spring meant something

more than seasons of a world now burning

 (˚ ㄥ _˚)                       

jts 17/11/2016

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

∞

lessons - an essay / a student · the sonnet

My parents both made a living as teachers at one point or another - a happenstance that has made my existence infinitely richer; more so had i been a better student. Even today, at the ripe old age of 62, i still have trouble recognizing lessons; especially in the target rich confusion which defines our modern epoch. The reasons for this difficulty with seeing what there is to learn, are entirely my own - i’ve gotten that far, but i still have difficulty understanding this lack of clarity as irony or metaphor; i can hear my dead father’s voice just now - “either/or is a specious argument”; more likely, he’d have taken the Socratic path and simply asked “what if it is neither, and just plain old synchronicity?” Clearly, i come by an ironic prejudice honestly, but the seductive siren call to metaphor is my “Achilles Heel,” actually more of an Hephaestus gimp - the haunting ache of sciatica is just icing on the cake. Jalaluddin Rumi “The cure for pain, is in the pain.” Without getting into the morbid details, suffice it to say my 5 year sciatic torment has only been resolved by patiently and gently tearing internal fascia to accommodate a post surgical skeletal configuration gone bad - (kids, don’t try this at home). Having watched my mother remove stitches from the extraction of a sting ray barb i had found in the bay of Guaymas at age 7 gave me confidence in the old saw “doctor heal thyself.” Yet is this self care not consistent with all of human history prior to the rise of medical presumption born of Louis Pasteur’s discovery of the role of bacteria to infection? Healing and learning go hand and hand; however, just as everyone is not born to teach even though we each carry lessons with us to others - knowingly or unknowingly, so too we as a species have been blessed by healers, nor am i advocating on behalf of the medical industry which has sided itself with the profiteers gouging humanity into the dark ages. I’m addressing those souls who from whatever grace left to our kind bring warmth and awareness as their armament and love as their product. They are often outside any tradition, and likely as not would never lay claim to special gifts - a good indication that they are not adherents to the acquisitive free-for-all that defines the plundering of our commonwealth.  

It is not as though we are lacking evidence or resources adequate to a better understanding about those responsible for this world plundering. Never in our shared history have we been more capable of surmounting language barriers, cultural barriers even obfuscation by the faceless cowards responsible for so much havoc, yet here we sit, minutes on the “Doomsday Clock” away from nuclear anonymous incineration along with a 12 foot rise in ocean levels hot on its heels, and we are absorbed by the buffoonery of leaders who have demonstrated their disinterest in our welfare. If we don’t don’t demand better from our leaders, our existence will be short. What if they are not our leaders, what if our leaders are those amongst us who care and are not caught up in the shared fiction of civilization? Socialization hasn’t done all that much for me - i learned as much watching my father die from an inoperable hip fracture as anything i’d ever learned in school. He showed courage; he demonstrated compassion though his pain was tangible enough to touch. Watching my mother confront her mortality has taught me more about grace and self-awareness than any psychiatrist attempting to reformat my particular brand of crazy. If anything, i’ve learned more from avoiding the effects of government than i ever benefitted from stop lights or government’s “war on everything.” How is it even possible that war is considered as a solution today? Who do i go to for an answer to that question? Murder ceased to be an option for me once i understood everyone dies; how could i waste the effort for something naturally occurring? What i don’t understand is how little i understand about understanding. From what i’ve read, one’s ideas about something have little bearing on the act of being, yet mindfulness is somehow the key - is that what is meant by paradox? What of possessions - were did this attachment to objects develop? Were we born slapping away the mother’s tit to get a hold of the flickering screen on a telephone? Early on, i realized there was no other thing more important to me than owning my own time, yet with death as my next great adventure even that possession is rapidly receding into the horizon. 

It’s been said “time is money;” what i don’t understand is how the oligarchs have convinced my compatriots to sell theirs so cheaply, and so what if you have more money than Croesus and you are lost in your own skin. Of the many benefits of being born to educated parents, high on the list would be learning about Nikos Kazantzakis before i was out high school — if you don’t read, there is a movie starring Anthony Quinn called “Zorba the Greek.” As a young post WWII adolescent wandering into the shared hallucination that became the 1960’s, this story chases to the core the shared hallucination of our internet age; we are all alone, a reality which does not absolve us of the very real need to try and understand what we are isolated from and to learn as deeply as possible what autonomy means. Today, my internet is down, it has been for two days. Fortunately, i had weened myself from my phone months ago, so as an older person born to reading, when the fiction of human contact was yanked from my screen, i did what any normal person would do - i began reading milk cartons - kidding, sort of. What i carry with me in travel is Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching, with a forward by Carl Jung. What i discovered within 10 pages is as though new age rigamarole is more than echoes of bad acid trips; drug deals gone haywire, or homilies on impatience and poor choices. Is is possible that we’ve been lied to again - that the internet is not here to save us, but to delude us into believing we are something other than 7 billion individuals, each with rights and responsibilities to live as freely and completely as possible without causing harm to each other. That is a hard lesson to swallow when there are so many shouting that the path to freedom is only possible at the cost of another person’s freedom. Until we as a species fully understand that success is not one’s to own, but one’s to give in service, we are doomed. I could be wrong ask anyone who has told me what i must do, or can’t say. 

Having worked some years in the engineering field, i learned the 1st Law of Engineering for any important project is to identify the problem; the 2nd Law states - “10% of the work is done in 90% of the time and 90% of the work is done in 10% of the time,” and the 3rd Law - “the last thing to get fixed on any project, is blame”. In today’s world of problems, we are living in the midst of what The Military Industrial Complex designates as “a target rich environment”. Another pertinent expression is “long pole in the tent” meaning, what is the long lead item? In our world, that would be SURVIVAL OF THE SPECIES - some people will survive, many won’t. Who are those that will survive and why? The rich believe that their bunkers and hordes of cash will suffice; i’m thinking that sort of narrow vision is what has gotten us into this mess. It describes a lack of understanding or interest in the physics of the natural world - the interdependence which water flowing from the mountain snow pack to the ocean knows by the behavior what is logical, but which man’s arrogance believes otherwise - that somehow massive damming and diversion of this essential component can accommodate its poisoning ad nauseam which the excessively wealthy fossil fuel industry then pours on the dying embers of our kind - our life blood. Sort of like the thug who believes he can punk everyone in the neighborhood, but the supplier. What exactly does it mean to survive, when as individuals we’ve barely reached the threshold of self knowledge? In one of the quotes from the forward to the I Ching, Carl Jung elaborated on the paradox of this point, “I of course am thoroughly convinced of the value of self-knowledge, but is there any use in recommending such insight, when the wisest of men throughout the ages have preached the need of it without success?” One of our presidential candidates has stated “i could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and i wouldn’t lose any voters.” Thankfully this assertion was never put to the test, yet since this declaration on January 24, 2016 with an average of 1,000 gun deaths per month in the United States, 9,000 people have died; what does that tell you about the level of self-awareness in my nation? that the big “D” is the most self-aware man on the planet? G_d help us all.

“Is there a lesson here” you might ask? Don’t run for president if you are a self-aware, narcissistic sexual predator without a keen sense of when and what not to say? The fact of his eventual death is hardly the long pole in the tent; we’re all gonna die. However, do you really want your unborn generations facing the world he intends to leave by gutting all environmental research, and stacking the already weighted tax coder further in favor of the largely inherited wealth of the ruling class? Please remember, his children were raised under his influence in so far as an emotional cipher is capable of raising children, and do also remember these same offsprings will have more money than the budget of 5 western states; by the time this essay is published later today, that number of states will have become 6. How is one to cultivate a culture of concern for others in this swamp of conceit we call civilization? How is it possible, when as Carl Jung so clearly pointed out, people know what to do - know thyself - but choose not to? I’m at a loss but write because it pleases me to not have surrendered; in writing, i have no one to answer to for my flawed thinking but my own happy fingers. I may never know whether this conceit is of any service to anyone but those who benefit from scratching their heads as i wander in and out of my hermit’s cell checking my pot of beans. Caring has not abandoned me while my predilection for shared hallucination continues to haunt my steps and inform my confusion until, as has just happened, the opiate that is the internet blinks on and assuages my solitude with pretty pictures of empty homilies and defanged rancor across the pixels of my despair - feels like a slogan for which Master Leonard Cohen has sagely counseled against in writing - clearly a lesson i’ve yet to learn. But where is our “Tower of Song”? where is the nexus of our resistance to the unctuous arrogance of corporate stupidity - when will the population of earth learn lessons which are seemingly known only by those valiant Human Beings fighting for our WATER and our survival @ Standing Rock? 

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a student

Why do some people learn and not others?

Why are some lessons clear and some opaque?

Why do some lessons repeat for lovers,

and some have one shot to get past the ache?

Why is it so hard to share what you’ve learned?

Why do some lessons come with a teacher?

Why is some wisdom just from what you’ve earned,

and some found by sitting in a beach chair?

Can one pick and choose what one wants to learn?

Can one grow understanding like a plant?

Can one forget what was learned from a burn

or like weight - carried to doom by an ant?

I can’t answer any of these questions

but will chase their answers to their bastions.

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                   

jts 11/6/2016

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

∞

the drawing - an essay / poetry in the dark · the sonnet

Last night i was screamed at by an Argentinian in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was so beside himself that he placed his hands on my throat screaming “pinche puta” - I had knocked on his door asking him to turn down his television sound - he is not a bad guy, but I now have trouble considering him anything but foe - my defect, not his. The blowback of this unfortunate event is that I am no longer seeking immigration to this nation of determined individuals; i do not feel welcomed - my problem. What I face from my decision, is returning in shame to my own country and those in my family who are barely able to acknowledge my existence, much less sympathize with my confusion for having yet again angered someone. In solidarity with self-care I sought consolation from one of my friends here; I went seeking compassion, but learned instead that his estranged father had died days earlier. In the process of trying to understand what he was facing, I learned that his loyalty to dying family, was sorely taxed after visit with a fellow émigré, dying horribly disfigured from a burn accident. I’m at a loss as to how to comfort someone I know only by instinct, much less understand. My friend is brilliant, sensitive and besotted; he says from wine; my sense is it is from grief - a deep profound unresolved ancient hurt. It is his bravery and generosity of spirit which attracted me to him as friend, and for my own dearth of compassion prevents me from plumbing my own misery such that I might understand his. So I reach out to you, the countless many facing tragedies and pain seeking ways to relieve your own suffering, or for the luckiest of you, the suffering of others. You are not alone, nor do I believe this essay to be the end of our shared misery, after all we are on the “information super highway to hell.” I feel barely able, as Bob Dylan described, “grind my life out steady and sure,” so how would i deflect the shame my people would make of my return to a land I had once been willing to give my life for, but now will only feel loyalty to The Water Protector heroes of Standing Rock. The country of my youth no longer exists, much like the family of my memory. But this essay is about a drawing which does exist; it does so because I created it. It is not computer generated, but drawn freehand from a photo on a computer. Nor did I take the photo; it had been retrieved and drawn with permission from someone else’s story line - a story line I’d like to have become a part of, but must instead accept as the limit of an unrequited love - the drawing mostly a bookend to an internet-fueled fantasy.

Is the act of drawing enough? Can determined creativity supplant the rapidly evolving reality that interpersonal skills, so desperately necessary for the survival of our species, are being undermined by a narrow spectrum of self reference such that I could delude myself into believing a woman might understand my heart from drawings found on a computer, or that a neighbor might think it his right to place his hands on my person for asking him to turn down his noise? I don’t have any answers; guessing has become so convoluted by unknowns and distortions, I’m barely able to discern the pale outlines of my own being - much less know how I might, in a foreign nation, comfort an émigré from a different culture who I imagine is in denial about grief. I am imagining, or projecting my own suffering, but with concern. That effort to understand is for me the charm of drawing the human portrait, particularly women. It is as though in order to accurately depict the nuance in a woman’s face, I must find feelings within myself which understand, or correspond to what I see; I do not seek congruence which would presume knowledge about another that is impossible to know without intimate communication. As much as I seek that level of communication, it is rare for me; nor am I sure why. I do know that to clearly see someone other than myself is among the keys to compassion of which there is precious little left in the supercharged assertions of our mighty leaders hell-bent for the destruction of our planet. If I am able, through patience and determination, to process ever closer to the expression and demeanor of relative strangers; I may grow to see myself as one with all - to become more than an aging artist facing his demise, but one in solidarity with resistance to the completely unnecessary extinction of his kind. Pema Chodron says to face the pain of existential emptiness. I feel this condition of solitude is prevalent in our current material culture - to find a way to embrace and hold “just a second longer” the grief that consumes our lives is a welcome ability

I don’t understand entirely why, but drawing and writing give me happiness - a feeling of belonging that I’ve yet to find in any material object, social construct or spiritual adherence. It is the absence of self i am drawn to, the absorption found in consciousness outside of the shrill “I” which haunts so much of our physical existence - “I” don’t understand, “I” love you, Can “I” help you? - the seemingly endless ego one instinctively knows - just like a bad friend - means you no good. Is it possible to sever ties with that self-serving little puke, or would we become emotional eunuchs without the sea-anchor of love in a love-hungry world? The drawing i’ve just finished, or think i’ve finished and about which i’m attempting to describe, is not my first visit to this subject. It is not possible to describe why her features seem to me a universe, indecipherable, but obvious in her majesty. My previous efforts were hampered more by ego, and its incessant scrutiny. But with enough distance, and despair, it became possible to be merely the point of the pencil seeking an appropriate place to better describe beauty. Is that how all wholesome activity manifests - the instant where potential and awareness join in service of depicting a beauty we all intrinsically feel, or at least those not subsumed by delusions of permanence - the fiction that enough gold will buy you, or your bloodline, any spot other than the one foretold by your birth into this mortal merry go round. When i finally understood that no matter how lovingly, or accurately i depicted the face of my obsession, our fates would be forever divergent, i was freed from romantic delusion, or more accurately - my ambition was transfigured, and i became a witness to others for the simple joy of beauty - if it is possible for beauty to be understood any more than love.

If we don’t find a way back to a deep and abiding appreciation for both love and beauty free of the coerced commercialization which corporate consumer pandering has foisted on our lesser appetites, we shall be removed from existence by our own emptiness and greed. I find this tragically sad, for we are born in wonder, with an innate capacity for love, and easy appreciation for beauty, both traits we possess in abundance. Am i recommending all who read this take up pencil and paper and become absorbed by some expression which cannot be found by any other voice? I would say not, unless you’re crazy, or determined or both. Will it help you? Meditation and prayer are likely more suitable vehicles for personal growth, especially if you find comfort in the company of hordes. Our world knows, like a dying person, “something” is about to change very drastically; but once again the profiteers are one step ahead, so rather than serve the worker on the line giving her/his all in mind-numbing contribution to a system never intended for benefit to anyone but the owners, our spiritual leaders are charging prohibitive prices for services rendered and opening boutique yoga centers in Bali, training corporate executives in mindfulness, and cavorting with celebrities driven by some delusion if they pray hard enough, their narcissistic quest for pelf will be construed as offerings by whatever omniscient entity sent to sweep up the remnants of humanity. Then again, i may be just another hater venting my spleen rather than doing the hard work necessary to remain open-hearted; i don’t know. I know that by writing of my fears and concerns with some hope of creating a cogent thread of love, there is a chance what i say may be of some service to someone. Prose, like a bad drawing, readily shows flaws at a glance, so a reader will know whether what i say has personal correspondence and is of value, or gibberish. It matters not to me, for it is in the act of creating without attachment to an outcome in which i find salvation. 

Michelangelo had said of carving “every stone has a statue inside of it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it; ” Lao Tzu - “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” I have seen “The Dying Slave” by Michelangelo, and clearly he was a very wise man; he was wise to see the relationship of death to slavery and express it such that anyone could ponder the meaning of freedom, perhaps to see it as more than a jingo for football half-time spectacles paid for with your tax dollar. Freedom for Michelangelo, i imagine, came from the discipline of creativity. Carving is a reductive process. However, the act of drawing, painting and writing are born of a “Tabula Rasa” - blank slate. I’m not sure which is the more challenging, having done both. It may be i’ll never understand Lao Tzu, or be wise, which may have been his intention. However, i am fascinated by the creative process of accretion which somehow miraculously coalesces into a character or a train of thought recognizable and made whole out of aether. Lao Tzu also said “Do you have the patience to wait ’til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving ’till the right action arises by itself?” Writing and drawing provide me a platform on which to wait patiently for “my mud to clear”. It is not uncommon for me to pick up a particular pencil to make a particular mark, only to find it was not at all the right color or even the mark i wanted. By this example, a final drawing might be considered clear water; in which case i am learning to be patient and to not make lines simply from a desire to move forward, but waiting for the right action. Writing is very similar in so far as the next thought can only be written once the previously developed logic dictates further meaning - if that makes sense. For example there was a time i relied on outlines for both processes, drawing as well as writing. I needed the security of some sense of foresight about the work. I imagine it is residue from a socialization which advocates optimum outcome leading to success. Is it the same with life? If by acting from a predetermined vision - a structure within which we restrict our innate curiosity and awareness, are we not robbing ourselves of the freedom and joy found from simply being in the moment?

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poetry in the dark · the sonnet

"I'm writing now without electricity", 

and not, for that had newly returned;

t'was fun lacking accessibility-

writing with the same light Shakespeare burn'ed- 

A separate syllable for each "ed"

Is not the only anachronism.

For a blink in time, i felt not-dead,

but still yoked to 'existentialism'.

The day waned with a glimmer unreal;

All electronic toys back online,

Minus the joy of sharing the real deal-

Supplanted by the computer's toy whine.

I feel better about where we're going,

dwelling that instant in quiet feeling.

jts 110616

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

∞