connection - an essay / connect - the sonnet

Ray Kurzweil - “director of engineering” at googol predicts singularity by 2045: “Singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.” - Wikipedia. My mind balks at the stupidity of such an assertion. We humans have taken the paradise of a self-correcting ecosphere and plundered it to the extent there is serious doubt it will support life as we know it within the next hundred years. With few exceptions all of the promises made about industrialization by the ruling class have proven to be lies; how is it now that this latest promise of human salvation is anymore valid than those campaign promises of amerika’s current chief executive Mr. M.T. Suit himself¿ In our world today there are 8 men - 62 depending on the http:// pointer - who own as much wealth as the bottom 3.6 billion human beings, 2.7 billion of which live on less than $2 a day. Why are these arrogant pencil-neck-geeks not solving this obviously more pressing issue of human existence. Is it that they believe based on happenstance, wherewithal and mathematical capacity that the chimera of their left-brain perception has deluded them into believing themselves, like Icarus, in command of wings; or is it more akin to C.G. Jung´s shadow principle and their infinite hubris is just casting the shadow of Einstein’s observation about infinite human stupidity¿

My sense is this intellectual flailing resembles more the behavior of a flapping crane firmly gripped by the alligator - humanity being the hapless crane and the inexorable physics of ecological degradation being the alligator. These digital wizards who stumbled onto the means to lift the veil of misunderstanding brought about by the historical lack of communication between distant cultures rather than augment, maximize and open all channels between people have been guided by what Leonard Cohen described as the “venal chart.” This business model is so transparent my gifted nephew while still in high school was salivating with visions of sugar plum fairies in his eyes as he described the theory of “monetizing” keystrokes. My limited training with computers includes the acronym Garbage In; Garbage Out (GIGO) a euphemism which seems to have disappeared from the public lexicon in the superheated virtual economy, a marketplace which oddly resembles the fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” even more than ‘ole M.T. Suit himself. A great sadness for me within this sad existence is the near certain conviction that amongst those 2.7 billion human beings living on $2 a day there is a collective brilliance which far outstrips any avatar the digital wizards of oz could ever conjure given unlimited funds; unlimited time; and unlimited computing power.

The infinite growth paradigm upon which the ruling class bases its wanton destruction of our planetary commons is a hoax reflecting the same juvenile penis envy manifested in Moore’s (Postulate) Law about computing power doubling (on average) every two years. What good is such hubris without a purpose¿ To date the only tangible evidence is the ability of a smaller and smaller segment of the population to fleece greater wealth from more people simultaneously convincing said people they are getting a good deal. This deception is not the fault of those unfortunate few born into favored positions, for they do not possess the internal moral compass born of struggle, compassion and foresight necessary to seek a greater good. The fault lies with those who know better - those who have been betrayed for gain or claim misery to be the responsibility of others. Humans have been at this living shit for a long time and our history is rich with examples of right and wrong - if we allow a handful of empty souls to determine the fate of our future it is because we are not listening to each other - sharing what we’ve learned in our short 200,000 years on this planet. Instead reaching out and learning from people and cultures that was nearly impossible when I was young, we are paying corporations to determine what we see, who we communicate with, all the while paying cash to these same corporate ciphers to steal our expression and market our uniqueness as though it had been manufactured on corporate servers - that don’t seem right.

From the few entitled persons I’ve met in my wanderings, the one trait the privileged seem to share is a paradox between exaggerated self-worth and a dearth of self-awareness. Generalities are of little use, except to say anyone who accumulates more than they can realistically spend usually justify that excess with the belief it is deserved rather than just dumb luck, or in the case of up-by-the-bootstraps Horatio Alger success stories, the bitterness and armor necessary for such singleness of purpose seems to mute the internal voice which usefully asks ‘what is enough’¿ What is of concern to me - is the character of those claiming rights which they are apparently reluctant to bestow on others, most especially the wealth of knowledge we are contributing to, but not benefitting from. When I am in a public place, I tend to the extremes of morbid curiosity about everything and delusional invisibility, neither of which has any real analog on the internet. As to the former, it would take weeks of visiting websites to gain even a remote sense found in a stroll through an airline terminal, or busy urban promenade, and as to the latter, regardless of every profiler media drama ever concocted, or reams of data overseers may choose to collect about me; to believe that contrived avatar resembles my ragged wounded existential self any more than the barest outlines I myself am beginning to perceive after some 3 score years on the planet speaks more to the conceit of technology than any desultory laziness toward my own self-awareness.

My father held C.G. Jung’s concept of synchronicity in high regard, so it is not a complete surprise that when I went to research the precise definition of “desultory”, I learned the internet is down where I live. While the meaning of connection has morphed a great deal in recent years, the essence remains constant; it is mostly now a question of connected to what¿ Should the internet become unavailable forever, will the questions I’ve tried to consider in this essay become any less valid¿ My audience is already suspect with blogger registering an average of 175 to 275 hits day in day out - a complete fiction as far as I’m concerned. I figure the lords of googol are goosing the numbers, just like they fudge their taxes and as anyone who has ever attempted to communicate with the exalted purveyor of all that’s known in the universe, it is a closed circuit - just like trying to get someone on the phone at fb, or reaching one’s bank without a password or a phone. Right now the leaders concept of connection feels a lot like Bob Dylan’s “the cops don’t need you, and man they expect the same.” It’s no small wonder that when the kind woman said to me “I think you’re searching for a deep connection” I felt like weeping. The irony is of course death, the wall of understanding with which our world has fortified itself is the same paper tiger the ruling class is counting on to testify for them once “consciousness” has been uploaded onto the corporate servers after the lesser humans have succumbed to yet again, another empty promise; I’ll still be laughing though somewhere in the aether knowing in my heart GIGO. 

  

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

connect - the sonnet

It is a modern conceit to believe

addiction comes from not being connected,

as though anyone could ever even leave.

ask anyone still talking to the dead.

Yet birth makes no promise you will find love;

ask the wandering child from Syria,

or prairie dog shot by the haters glove-

hand covered fearing hypothermia.

What does it mean if one seeks to connect?

-that someplace inside can’t see what’s outside¿

If there’s in and outside - which to protect?

how does one ever know who’s on whose side¿

What if it doesn’t matter? We’re all one-

knowing oneself is to know everyone¿

jts 050817

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved 

∞

black and white · an essay / full spectrum - the sonnet

I did not publish my last essay “easy,” or its sonnet “hard,” because my macbook crashed to the floor in the dead of night, never to boot in the light of day again.* I’d owned the beast for 7 years across 4 continents which only begins to describe the amount of love, misery, fury and joy it carried with it into the aether. Hopefully we are too early in the Artificial Intelligence rollout cycle for my digital companion to have been too contaminated, and the only waveforms emanating from it’s off-from-on blackhole status, reflected more my humanity than the twisted code today's masters of the universe are fastening onto your brainpan. *(resurrected, but you'll have to read about that in another essay.)

+-+-+

I’ve had much time to think about this essay, for I'd been gun shy and self-conscious about writing prior to my computer’s demise; nor was it just the written word - my creative being seems to have been stymied. I´d like to draw up a list of all the whys and wherefores, but they’d all be 'dead horse' ghosts - resentment, fear, lack of _____ (fill in the blank). The longer i waited to recommence, the larger and more impassable the demon grew - sort of; or you might not have anything here to read. Eventually the utility of reading those thoughts which revealed my inane flaws to myself, became too tempting. I’d have rather laughed at you, but that would be cruel and likely not as funny. I’m beginning to suspect the root of my creative ebb has been from taking it “everything” too seriously, as though somehow my tired old mac crashed to the floor for a more sinister purpose than illuminating my lack of mindfulness. But this is where it gets really dicey, even if there was a demonic purpose in the cosmos responsible for ending the life of my innocent, if somewhat trusted ally - so fucking what. If we are in the midst of a holy epoch, like self-immolation, or damnation by a divine entity so myopic it would sanction or existence, as would the blasphemers in our midst - that sort of monumental conceit is laughable.

Computers, in fact, are little more than a gazillion off and on switches trained to hum on command, like any appointee of the ruling class  - all together now, “of thee i sing.” Nor am i immune to the siren of 'internetedness', for though i'd weened myself from the +/- 5v shackle a phone manifests, it took about a split second of the red circle with a slash through it on my screen to graphically impress the depth of my oppression. I considered life offline for the same split second, talk about your two-edged sword. We as a species, are chasing the point-of-no-return like it was the Superbowl with our team down by 3 - 30 seconds on the clock; all i could come up with in my existential 'computer-less moment' was, “how’m i gonna write without text edit”¿ Yes, it was worth it to stay online, even though i am in pain here and now sifting through my ignorance for some thread of logic that would encourage an unknown stranger, or cadre of strangers to train the digital lens back up our economic food chain; identify the villains responsible for war and sentence them Prometheus-like to have their livers consumed into eternity: 

sidebar - so you can get a feel for how far off course we've gotten, Prometheus - a Titan, was condemned because he tricked the 'Mero Mero god' Zeus into portioning the gizzards of purloined livestock to the lesser pantheon of gods, leaving the meat to nourish humanity - not one of the schmoes riding corporate limousines calling themselves Titans today gives a rat`s ass if you live or die, much less if your food is nutritious. 

Leonard Cohen described writing as what’s left after you delete the slogans, but in the same interview he also, g_d rest his soul, talked about the tyranny of posture by saying there’s a good thing to say about everything, if you’re on the "right side.” It is a paradox to me that those wreaking the most havoc today, are in the greatest need of kindness. War will not rescue us from ourselves - that is fact; the same sort of fact that you will die alone, even if you are surrounded by 7 billion other human beings dying that same instant. So what of kindness, how is it the wisest of our kind for as long as we have recorded our experience have said virtually the same thing Mr. Cohen framed so eloquently - “love is the only engine of survival”¿ How have we allowed ourselves to be so easily bamboozled into this corner of terror in a world full of magnificent grandeur¿ What have we accomplished by quarreling over scraps believing anyone can be improved by what they own¿ I don’t know; i wished i did, but like wife #1 was fond of saying, “wish in one hand, shit in the other; see which get’s fuller faster.” I learned a lot from her - mostly the difference between enough and too much, that and 'kindness is always possible' even if you have to walk away to make it happen.

Some things one cannot walk away from, one’s self, for example. Take the arrogant fools building computer profiles of person`s of interest, which in today’s political climate is everybody and nobody. The persons, LLCs or as i like to think of them, faceless cowards pulling on the levers of power determine who is scrutinized and to what degree. But what can they ever learn, and this is very important, to what end¿ I write with great difficulty, hoping my ignorance will bubble to the surface while i attempt to have fun with words. For me, learning who the fuck i am seems to be the only practical endeavor, for if i’m unable to recognize myself how would i ever be able to see another clearly? Social media provides the collusion/delusion of complicity against power by encouraging the assumption that, 1) what you post is recognizable, 2) what someone else posts resembles anything. Near as i can tell, it’s all emotional pornography. One of my defects is caring what someone else thinks, so now that our keystrokes have been monetized for the benefit of the ruling class, it is logical to believe that what one types has value to somebody. As a writer, this becomes a thorny issue for me. If the world of ideas is my sanctuary, how do i distinguish a thought of my own from a prompt; or whether that prompt is arising from a sincere effort to help me on my bumbling human way, or an intrusion from some psy-ops handler out of a “Contagion” experiment gone horribly wrong¿

Then again as Larry the door-maker might have said, t’was ever thus. It’s frustrating to think how little we’ve changed, yet how easily we are being changed. I made a promise to my father that i would never stop writing; he was a loving man - shortcomings and all. I’ll not lie and say that is why you are reading this, rather i’d share his sense of fun, which at its core is the most worthwhile aspect of the creative life. My good fortune has been in defining my own fun - like plumbing the depths of one’s own misery in public with little hope of finding anymore common ground than one might find parking cars in the Sahara. Then there is pain, the pain i create for myself and the pain depicted in our media for the sole purpose of inflaming passions. I can do little about the latter, but denounce it for its cowardice and its incompetence. That doesn’t make my self-inflicted suffering vanish, but it does help with the delusion that one can do nothing to help. Suffering is an oddly binary experience, or as Bill the house builder was fond of commenting 'if you want a particular pain to go away, slam your hand in a door and you’ll forget all about tat one.' There’s a sad element of truth to that joke - it is the temptation to confront greater pain that makes you laugh through your tears, but more importantly the inescapable fact there is always a choice. Not the lesser of two-evils fallacy used to buoy the latest ruling class democratic charade, but the kind of choice one makes to see light in the heart of darkness.

+-+-+-+-+-+-

full spectrum - the sonnet

“The electro magnetic spectrum is the irreducible constituent of all physical reality.” - Albert Einstein

 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

i memorized the above as a child;

googol says it is not a real quote.

could be - hippy days were pretty wild -

lots of nonsense, like begging for a groat.

people in different places and times

see different things - each no less true.

many threads'll run all the way through, like rhymes

uh-huh / uh-uh may’ve saved a caveman crew¿

from what, i can’t say - you know i don’t lie;

wouldn’t if i could - best left to experts.

you know the ones - “i know holy - here’s why,”

though their truths often come mostly in spurts.

now’s a good time to pull out all the stops

end greed, hate, delusion, ruling class props

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                        

jts 25/4/2017

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

∞

my friend Gary Cox

I had had an exceptionally good day drawing after a too long period of transition between studios, and g_d in her infinite wisdom chose this time for me to open a rare email from Gary’s sister: “Gary has diet.” I’m living in a foreign nation in new lodgings; it took a moment for me to register the full weight of this transcendental-typo. It was one of those sea changes that no matter how prepared one might be for the full impact, it remains unfathomable until much later. Gary had adopted me as a younger member of his family at a time when mine own was fighting against all odds for its survival while up to its ass in unidentified hostiles - like many of us in those days. Gary and his family helped me to graduate high school by allowing to couch surf in the apartment which he, and on occasion his younger sister, shared with their mother. This was an act of uncommon kindness during the aftermath of the 60’s cultural meltdown. Gary had already been to, and gone from the larger world having been a roommate with my oldest brother in the revolutionary heydays days of San Francisco - long before Google closed escrow on the last open hearts. Prior to this, Gary’s entrepreneurial spirit had ridden the crest of demand for handmade leather bags all the rage before the “vegans” excommunicated such bestiality from the quiet streets of 1960’s Hipster-Doofusville, turned Post-Modern Weimar Republic. Gary had the unique capacity for finding residence and then thriving in the “belly of the beast”, any beast. I attended my last semester of high school, working the swing shift in an aircraft antenna factory, while Gary spent his days painting fine art; I did not know at the time how much that experience was to influence my future.

The home where I grew up was creative, my mother - an art teacher, and myself having taken up sculpture while attending my last semester of high school in England. It was not unusual to see someone absorbed by painting; what was exceptional, was Gary’s ability to market his work to a broad spectrum of clientele, including the parlaying of paintings into flying lessons from an instructor in the apartment complex. Gary’s focus was well demonstrated in his zeal for chess; The apartment complex was on the takeoff runway for John Wayne Airport, so bantering which accompanied Gary’s very competitive character would cease while a jet would begin it’s ascent - there was a full minute lapse on either side of the aircraft’s passover when we could only stare at each other waiting for life to resume. Initially this interruption was very disconcerting, for one did not play chess with Gary unless on occasion, one was able to dethrone the master - otherwise you'd never hear the end of it. This intense competitive drive held true 40 years later while bow shooting paper plate targets; he with his handcrafted implement of destruction, and me with my store-bought. I was content just to have a fun with my old friend; damn if he didn’t nearly twist himself into a knot if he didn’t bullseye a goodly percentage of the time . . 

How he managed to be so generous to me; while maintaining such a singular standard for himself was one of the characteristics which challenged and has informed my ethos, seeming to weave itself through our friendship and into vast regions of my personal beliefs. After high school, I was told by an instructor, “Cal Arts is fine, but if you really want to study art, you have to go to New York City", So I left for NYC. Sitting here now writing, I am certain I’d have never been able to muster the courage to make such a leap had I not been exposed to Gary’s creative self-confidence or his ability to shift from competition to mentoring the way others change channels on their TV. In between semesters in NYC, Gary again provided sanctuary and a couch; by this time in his artistic arc, he’d found a deep kinship with Hieronymus Bosch. I felt superior and cosmopolitan. I was unable to recognize the courage and independence his interest reflected. Like two petulant “legends in their own minds,” what had been collaboration and a shared respect for art devolved into an unhealthy struggle for primacy. During this interval, i executed a still life of a kitchen window with bottle and odd metal object, and he a more fantastical landscapes only conceivable within a rich and verdant intellectual interior; another lesson where Gary lead and I learned, or more accurately, am learning. He did not care what others thought in any of the circumstances of his life, and there is much about his life for which I have no real awareness. This lack of awareness holds true for many lost friends, but for Gary it is amplified by the vast spectrum of his capacity and interests. 

Before our paths wildly diverged, I found him running a live-in carpentry concern out of a boat in a dry dock between the 3 Arches and former Robert E. Lee restaurant on PCH. Again from his keen sense of taste and inexorable industry he was handcrafting fine art tabletop mosaics from painstakingly recessing fine woods into a frame that would become veneered and I imagine, lovingly owned by many in the oh-so-tony recesses of what had once been the semi-eclectic, now wholly subsumed corporate quagmire of “Newport Beach - The OC.” By then, we were two evenly matched antagonists giving each other elbow room; I could only discern the faintest outline of the shaggy Sasquatch Gary was to become in his later years. It wasn’t exactly fear I felt, or even unwelcome, but a feeling of rich bursting bark from a huge tree in its early days; one knows there will be much shade from such a growth, but unclear which way to step. It was almost like being at the doorstep of an artistic Henry Ford just as he was switching on “the assembly line” except that it was more like a beautiful “Rube Goldberg Machine” about to be let loose into the rapidly fraying social fabric of the late twentieth century pre-neocon meltdown.

It was no real big surprise then, when after 30 years of silence, and with the aid of the kind offices of his loving sister Janis, I was able to waylay our hero in the wilds of Shaver Lake, CA taming the soon to be chagrined lions of patriotism and trumpist fascism defined by the presidency of Mr. M.T. Suit. Whether the hick lions in whose den Gary lived become tame won't be revealed by Gary’s death; I’ve played chess with him and know enough to read nothing from a temporary victory, or tempt fate with an easily acquired objective. Mr. Cox was a patient man. I believe in the bottom of my heart that many of Gary’s objectives will not bear fruit for years to come, but that the same fascist braggadocio trumpeted by hick haters who may, or may not have harried our hero in his last days, will fall like plankton into the yaw of Moby Dick to be swallowed up by a much greater purpose than is apparent in this temporal plane. Gary had the unique ability amongst humans to combine the very most dangerous inclinations of competition with noble objectives of openness and candor and the more useful, however fashionable, traits of feint and obfuscation into a rhythm of life. In the end the burden of disappointment and frustration may have been too much for one man to live with alone - my fault for not having provided greater support and cover fire to one so determined to live a life of dignity and humility while provoking growth and question within the greater body politic.

may you rest in peace friend - it was my privilege to know, and to love you like the brother you had been . . 

Joseph T Stevens

family / not-family - the sonnet

Family behavior could be imagined similarly to the genetic lineage defined by the DNA molecular form. It is customary in this age of “Child Rearing for Dummies” to emphasize a single generation of child rearing, when in fact any learned parenting style is derived from several generations each applying some blended variation from preceding themes. For example, family constellations wherein the father is a remote disciplinarian and the children are encouraged to fear him as a threat; it is very likely the grandchildren will perceive some level of danger from older authoritarian males regardless of how loving, or nurturing that grandchild’s birth father might be; sibling hierarchies too, will reflect patterns found several generations removed - echoes in a canyon where the original sound is no longer distinguishable; Multigenerational patterns of behavior become dangerous when it interferes with the vitality of humanity’s trunk. Our inherent biological imperative to replicate is confused by social systems antagonistic to the greater good when they blunt or manipulate the intrinsic human urge to learn into a distorted demand to believe. The branches of our species have begun to wither and die due to a lack of existential nutrition - the intangible comfort that comes from living a fulfilled existence manifesting in cultural foliage reflected in the higher attributes of civilization - art, literature and music. Today we are told the dreck that constitutes commercial success is the apex of our capabilities when all it represents is that which is sold.

We’ve become so removed from our roots, that we believe that a handful of wealthy citizens are the best representation of human capacity. Nothing could be further from the truth that every child born is capable of doing their best, and that the single best effort of any one child is the most noble, vital and worthwhile objective of any social system, much less by a group as complex as humanity. Imagine how differently our world might be were our forest populated by trees at war with themselves as we seem to be with each other. Could a Sequoia have ever reached it regal stature had it burned itself to the ground continuously for no other reason than destroying its enemy? Or is the Sequoia more of a reflection of divinity than all of our human clerics combined? The Sequoia organized itself cooperatively enough to transport moisture from lacy roots up through thousands of feet of dense pulp strong enough to support tons of mass and then out to remote vesicles of chlorophyll which are delicate enough to blow away in a strong wind. Is there any part of this magnificent living organism that would withhold nutrition or moisture from the rest just to be wet? Do you see roots choking off water or worse polluting the trunk with adulterated water? So why have we, a supposedly advanced creature, allowed a minuscule portion of our kind to seize our very prerogative; to distort our vision such that we are willing to murder our own kind for the benefit of a handful of profiteers? How have we allowed one skin tone to ascribe malevolence to another, or better yet encouraged one skin tone to prey on itself? 

Like it or not humanity is born of a handful of hardy beasts that found ways to cooperatively coexist in a violent world full of climate extremes, ferocious creatures faster and more wild than we and still possess the grace to achieve the finesse of the “Mona Lisa,” or complex arrangement of sound created by Mozart. It is because that was a time when we were closer our trunk; there was less dead wood from senseless excess; wars, believe it or not, were fewer and farther between. It wasn’t before WWI when civilian body counts became numbers used to inflame passions of the homeland. Prior to that time armies unaided by the “industrial revolution” required willing laborers eking out a living feeding warriors and arming professionals. Today the ruling class has you paying “The Military Industrial Complex” for the privilege of being defended from without, but murdered and betrayed from within. The only benefit of war - profit - now belongs to a handful of people from any country; at home or abroad. It is a shell game without the pea. You will never be safe and you will never find an end to war by fighting one another - not with them, not with your family, your homies or your spouse. As long as we acknowledge superiority of any other human being more than that honor you do yourself by making the highest contribution to the greatest number of people regardless of your own personal benefit, we as a species are doomed.

We have been indoctrinated to believe others are more important, therefore they, the big shots are entitled to possess more. We have been schooled to believe that violence is the natural order of the universe which is true, but if you believe a collapsing star is peaceful, imagine a mother’s fury at the death of a child as a razor’s edge and ask yourself how constructive that edge is gonna be before it is dulled. There is nothing that could compensate for the pain of loss from a loved one's death for any reason, much less murder or war. So why have we arranged ourselves as a society to lavish fantastic sums of wealth into the laps of a handful of people who have done very little but perpetuate more war? How is it healthy for us as a species to give our consent to be governed by those riding in limousines, helicopters and warships without an iota of return, except to those materially benefitting from the arrangement. Is it the fantasy that if you are loyal enough, or quiet enough or crooked enough, that somehow you will claw and scrape yourself up out the muck where you have been assigned as a root to provide moisture to those upper limbs of the organization; you’re a root and no pine cone is ever gonna give its seeds to you; or is it that your lot in life is being stuck out on a limb, when all you long for is the intrinsic coalescing identity that only a root can know; but if you suck up enough moisture and endure enough seasons, somehow your cone will produce a magic seed and get blown on to a fertile patch of the forest where with enough luck, your seed will sprout and if you’re not devoured as a seedling by a passing fawn or culled as undergrowth by the timber industry, after a few thousand millennia you too will be a towering Sequoia? 

One of the most tragic results in the ruling class war on learning is the loss of imagination to appreciate just how rare our existence is within the barely quantifiable vacuum of the universe - to fully understand how odd our predicament is as a species so reliant on moisture to stay alive, or how vulnerable our lives are to extremes of temperature. We are something like the bumpkin at the county fair seeing a hall of mirrors for the 1st time and unable to orient as our forebears had to in order to motivate through to the next valley before winter set in, or lake dried up. Our concept of cooperation is so stifled and deformed that we imagine a CEO or celebrity as a reflection of ourselves and confirmation of our hopes and dreams for love and caring rather than a cruel mirage by a bloodless carney who understands if he works it right, you might just pay him for a 2nd trip thru the hall. The irony of a tree metaphor in this essay is that we are now eliminating forests of trees to furnish some delusion of taste to some human being whose hunger has become so enflamed by addiction to sugar that all s/he knows is hunger - just so some snot born on “Third Base” can bullshit you into to believing he’s a home run, and if you play your cards right - he might let you kiss his ass. When in fact the woman sweeping the empty cups from the Super Bowel stadium after the game is closer to the dignity and nobility of the spirit which gay-Leonardo da Vinci was able to fathom from sitting in quiet with Señora Gioconda for many long years, respecting her without ever once having to grab her kitty. 

Leonardo da Vinci — “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- @

not-family - the sonnet

Not-family is an oxymoron;

By saying “that is your problem - not mine”

You blunt your ability for compassion

Thinking what is lost is easy to find.

If alone, are not all you meet the same?

Yet, as part of many are you too, not one?

Could a child know fierce without parent tame,

Where violence can only maim when done?

Is anyone not brother or sister?

What old person is not your own parent?

Harm a child is to kill your own future,

So what good is thick blood with bad intent?

Learn to communicate with animals;

It'll be their history after ours falls.

jts 012017 

http://http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

∞

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

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

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. 

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

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 

∞