Value

Cogito ergo sum . spirits with parents - parents which odds say cannot provide more than food and shelter for a violent childhood , if that . So how does value emerge as a fiction in a world drawn in such bold relief by poverty, despair and violence, or put more simply - how do you constantly fool 7 billion human beings into believing what they see on the screen is more real than what they experience in their lives . ? when the maintenance for the car that was supposed to be parked by valets bankrupts the single father; the tropical cruise to find the right husband costs half as much as a semester of school, or the evening of Reality TV becomes 24/7 for which the cable costs more than preschool much less the time away from family . ? We are now facing a " turnkey tyranny " which requires little from you more than brand name loyalty paid for with your freedom, health or possibly even the future of our species .

The people yoked to this media screen of unrelenting corporate marketing are not stupid per se, but we live in a world where the consolidation of data into the hands of a tiny number of people renders a massive disconnect between the real world and market concepts based on nothing more than Return On Investment ( ROI ) - The game of " Money Ball " writ large . Unfortunately for the human race and commerce in general these corporate products assume the infinite growth paradigm which commandeers everything in service of " The Economy " and in turn guts eons of human craftsmanship ; rules of conduct ; even that minuscule shard of personal time dislodged from the shackles of our former royalty by that spark of Free Humanity we'd been . The hitch and the irony for our new masters is we are their consumer fodder . People - a beast crafty enough to climb out of the crib; avoid the chains of pit bulls or pissed-off camels on their way to and from school to dodge bullies' knives; a teacher's cant or war and then find work enough to pay for that time it takes to memorize all the playa's data oblivious to the fact that as humans they will spend the largest part of their lives floating the elite on a film of pearlesque opulence only dreamed of by early pharaohs. Old people are then rendered into a steady state of decay medically preserving enough flesh for the morticians' final insult .

How is it possible that so many of the intelligent, feeling, decent humans I've met and will meet are effectively prevented from achieving a better life . ? Not only prevented but effectively diverted into a spiral of increasing pitch and agitation blunted by fatigue, entertainment and inebriation. At what point did the vision quest become a trailer in the movie theater, and our rites of passage the nightmare of cyber bullying . ? We are sickened by our own desires - The inclination for belonging and relatedness is tuned to coercion and exclusion because we are so much more easily managed apart than together . Of our instincts is the reflexive search for good - beer, sex, music - the multitude of ancient modalities for touching and being touched are lit up today like digital Bacchanals out of Dante's lowest rings . Food and family are now defined in the aisles of our "Supermarkets" which didn't exist 75 years ago - the same thing a Walmartarian will be saying about today's Supermarkets 18.75 years from now as she shifts her colostomy belt to make sure there's enough intravenous antibiotic to quiet the bacterial lesions pulsing close to the surface of her bare midriff .

Those who have "awakened" are little better off living on the fringes of a deteriorating culture and casting about for venues of approval marked by dress and orthodoxy of an often more strident tone than the insidious hum of the empire apparatus. But still the thread of value seems lost like a door whose key has broken off in the lock. Our knowledge is pinched and caught on the fly - snippets of sense; out of context and cast out like so much confetti or scribbled on a gutter with paint bought from the worlds wealthiest chemists. We search for what has always been the human instinct - love, but our tools are no longer born of loving application and lack the quality necessary to build loving things , or even defend us from naked hatred . That we have forsaken the wonders of understanding from each other for the silicon siren out of the ether illusion may harken to the inscription for our species' headstone on the radioactive satellite thrice removed from the G2V star at the center of the Solar System:

"Here lie the remains of a promising sentient life form born from the wavelengths of their G2V fireball - able to stride upon their closest satellite using buckets of fire and air to propel and protect their delicate corpuscles , yet this brief intercommunicating animation drowned in oceans of radiation of their own ignition - oceans believed to have once been their original nest . Rest In Peace ." 

Many voices are now raised against harm to the world Bob Dylan envisioned in his song to Woody: "seems sick an' it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn, It looks likes it's a-dyin' an' it's hardly been born." We humans are what define value not some statistical stratagem penciled on the cocktail napkin of a drunken industrialist whose only edifice is the systemic neutering of the remarkable human capacity for growth - the universe may or may not care whether our damp blue ball becomes a dank dead slab sizzling in orbit around a dying sun , but as certain as hate is weak , we are doomed if we do not stand on our hind legs now and do as we've always done - climb out of the crib; shake off the mad dogs; dodge bullies and take their weapons; lovingly build things and find heroes to love - hopefully heroes looking more like each of us than those pasty-faced cranks floating on nothing more than oceans of pearlesque opulence .

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Ma's Lessons

My Ma is a kind of mean old woman.

She is the sort there ought to be more of.

I know because i've done the best i can,

and still have not learned enough about love.

I know what it is, but not what it's not.

I have been so close that i was afraid

the reason it stayed was 'cause of a knot 

and far enough to know what i had paid.

In a world that can grind feelings to dust,

what i have learned about love is useful:

Find joy 'cause you can , not 'cause you must;

it's better to be , than thought of a fool.

Can't know if she's so wise 'cause i'm so dumb,

or i am smart because of her wisdom?

jts 4 December 2013
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suck it up sweet cheeks - the sonnet

It's sad to lose a job, worse still to lose,

so if when the ax falls, you opt to give up,

where's the good if that's what you have to choose?

Doubt me, ask the banker who messed it up.

Now is not the time to lament what ain't.

What you do now is stop what is bleeding;

get a brush and cover what has no paint

or paint over scribble that is breeding.

There will be time enough to send the bill

to those who have hijacked the public fund;

all can see whose fingers are in the till,

it's just memory lapse that gets rotund

Regard what's left of our humanity

and defend the future with dignity.

jts 12 February 2010
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Running on the Great Wall

It was Christmas  and I was in China

If not inscrutable, they can be mute

Many humans - what is the formula .  ?

Once a wall saved them, now they are the brute.

The thing about walls : they’re everywhere

and most people can be found on both sides.

That Christmas, it was fun to run mid-air

Can’t know what it means to future yuletides  

I know that holiday - I made no walls.

Still at the Great Wall; one is in or out -

For those who rule; I would be invader,

For those who attack, I am emperor

Little has changed since they made up countries,

They who would like to rule, use flags - not peace .

jts 12/25/11

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my friend Lyle

Or as Val would say " Lyyylle.!! " My first apartment was sharing a place with Val - Lyle would ride over on his Vespa; he always had cool shit like that. One time he and I went to irrigate his Marijuana plants at UC Irvine; we drove in his Henry Kaiser; it may be as close as I ever get to being an actual outlaw, though I have grown my own and even traded in the demon weed. Lyle was a man of his own design; he did not seek an approved role in life, he was an explorer. Like all explorers he was powerful - even legendary, but I was never afraid of him. As a kid, even though he and his brother could hit baseballs over the fence consistently, Lyle did not demand that everyone else should, or that you were less if you did not. He was decent early on in life and only grew more so as years went by. It wasn't until much later that I grew to appreciate what a kind man he had become.

Maybe a decade back, I was living far from where we grew up. It was an old home in much need of wiring expertise, he was the expert. About this time, I was finishing my Bachelor's in English and through conversation I had learned Lyle was dyslexic. What struck me about Lyle at that time was his feeling for people; he had an author's understanding for the motivations of the human experience, but Lyle's smarts were from the streets, not from academic training. His higher education came from the push and shove at the margins of conventional life, nor did he always ooze warm fuzzies. He could disappear from access and leave you wondering if he was swimming for the bottom or just blowing you off because he could. That is part of what made Lyle special - he was not fake, almost as though he didn't know that was an option. Maybe Lyle's heroic demons were there to match his warrior ways.

He did battle with things that break other men - betrayal, addiction - even the most profound of questions "the meaning of life." Lyle stared into the abyss and did not shrink, he did not sacrifice his own confusion for an easy answer, almost. Lyle refused to be categorized, yet he was the "common man." Not by today's meaning of some stereotype cutout, but the common that includes strengths as well as weaknesses - Lyle had empathy, and it was always a surprise to come upon it. Like most "men" Lyle did not wear his feelings close to the surface, rather they would peek out around a subject like a shy kid. True story: I'm making a statue of a woman that has taken many years to complete; early on while she was still looking at how to fit into the stone, Lyle came over. Because one often gets too close to something, I've found it useful to hear other people's take on works in progress. Lyle looked at it with some enthusiasm and said, "it's really neat" at the same time he was leaning over and peering under her forearm to see how it rested on her chest.

The reason I share this and why it is important is that it describes Lyle's way of experiencing the world - he was a poet, an artist. Many people have looked at the same piece, but few are drawn into the experience of finding the "woman" in the stone and how she carries herself. It is a level of awareness - a way of feeling the world that few possess, and I will miss that about him. Queen Victoria said "artists associate with all classes of people, and for this reason, they are the most dangerous." If this essay is read at his memorial - look around at the people you see and you will know that is true of Lyle as well. His friends were legion and he was loyal to them all; so much so I'd be surprised if each who knew him didn't feel at some level that they were his closest friend - I'm hoping what he felt toward me was as an ally in his war with mediocrity.

Some 10 years or so ago, we quit smoking together. Later I liked to tease him about the money that he owed me from that agreement - but it is more I am the one who owes him. For though I am breathing and he has passed, his courage and inspiration are of those things in life that have endurance, and I'd doubt seriously that I'm alone in this feeling. It was frustrating to not be able to return the same level of inspiration I felt in his company; I even threatened him with a beat down if he did not let go of the tobacco ( I don't think he was afraid ) - Lyle was a stand alone human being. There are so few left on the planet that are capable of living on their own terms, for me to have known Lyle and even to call him friend has made my life immeasurably better - how many of us will have the same said? May you rest in peace Lyle Jeffrey Sears.

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Election

 
My president is Barack Obama.
He took office after we were ransacked,
and made it better in spite of trauma.
For his trouble his name has been attacked.

We’re now two thousand years from Christ,
seemingly no closer to loving hearts
Using vile hate, our land they’ve tried to heist,
maybe to break us down and sell for parts.

All of everything does not change the fact
civil culture breeds a civil leader
" I will not comply “ can be done with tact,
for without peace, why be a crusader ?

The objective remains how to elect
leaders who’ll honor the people’s edict

jts  5 November 2012

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Family

How to write about family, warts and all, without sounding - bitter, hostile, selfish, or worse - fake? These are all the lesser traits that come from being immersed from birth in a cauldron of emotion sharing DNA and toilet paper ? Yesterday I wept at a memorial for a cousin, a twin - survived by two sons a twin sister, nephew and younger brother.  Their parents had died within years of each other far too early in their children's barely formed young lives, and I drifted away. Our "extended" family for these orphans was of little help, so 30 years later I sat mute at my deceased cousins' memorial, next to my mother and oldest brother, I am estranged to them. I doubt that I alone am in this modern maze of who, what or where are the remnants of childhood. The people I describe are not evil, nor without many redeeming qualities; so why is it that we as a species have become so impoverished in our ability to effectively provide the most fundamental human emotion of compassion for loved ones - and just who are "loved ones?"

The memorial service was in a Church, one of the "well-funded" mega-salvation centers that has come to characterize the business-end of today's spirituality, and I felt a benign appreciation for the comfort it surely must have provided to my cousins who had suffered too much too early. If I had different parents, I too might have found solace and family after mine own moved without forwarding address - kidding, sort of. I exaggerate, and maybe unfairly, for without my family's influence and memory, I'd have little reason to write this, to grow, or search for ways to improve the world, and redeem myself - all traits and ambitions I acquired within that cauldron of DNA and toilet paper. How does something so formative and nurturing de-rail? Where is it that jostling for the last scoop of peanut butter becomes lethal as Bob Dylan sings about brothers in Tempest - "they fought and slaughtered each other in a deadly dance." More importantly, how do we get back to the love and nurturing whose echoes and mirages seem to inspire so many dead-ends in human spiritual evolution?

It won't be from muting our expressions - "the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen" Leonard Cohen sings about, for each must be heard. In the case of parent and child, that person who grows up in front of another will never be right with the inequity of the relationship until the child can know and understand at some level the suffering of a parent; nor will a parent ever accept that their child is grown until there is nothing more to show that child, or that child is busy bolstering the crumbling edifice of the loved parent. Are siblings different ? those people who acquired the visceral knowledge of surprise, delight, betrayal from watching or evoking your gasps. Siblings or no, we learn of human response at the fountain of family knowledge - there is no superior anything, ranking is an illusion driven by the myth that any differences within a family are greater than marginal attenuations of the same chord. Whether you speak, shout or lack communication of any sort with your family , fact - we "know" more about them, and they us, than is comfortable, especially if one has survived the modern age by shutting down self-awareness - cutting oneself off from those dicey aspects of self that are less than appealing, or intolerable within some circles of society - lust, aggression, cruelty, cowardice. I mean how do you act when a sibling you know to have a cruel streak a mile wide turns all mealy-mouthed and friendly to old people and children - you want to shout, "run for your lives - you're gonna get creamed !" - right ?

Kidding, but what if this cruel family member becomes unrelenting and destructive toward you? Remember you're cut from the same cloth with the same "super powers", and just maybe you have found your own cruelty to be a defect - a useless inclination while the sibling, or siblings are so keyed to your perceived powers they battle a mirage? What can you do, stick around, fight back, what? It seems to be all about filling in the empty places using battles, food, drugs even substitute families. How many of us have gone in search of a replacement parent because ours is no longer available - replacement siblings, re-creation of a home long abandoned ? It's not a trick question; to my thinking there is no substitute for that magic of family, or - and this is important - what if all the world is our home and each other human is some shade of a family member remembered ? That means that if there was an interruption between you and your older brother - an unresolved conflict like a suppurating wound oozing pus and infection, then older peers in your world may unknowingly cause discomfort. However, what if these avatars of family became part of a personal quest for growth; a path toward equilibrium and balance? What if as an individual you have come to the belief that there is no wound that cannot be resolved, either through death or recuperation - that our existence more closely resembles the world around us with its constant circle of life - decay and rebirth? If it is the latter, you begin to see each human interaction as a page in your lesson book of the human family.

Whether you grew up in Foster Care, or your Mama was June Cleaver - the idea that your blood relatives are significantly more than a rehearsal for the countless performances making up a single lifetime is arguable; what is undeniable is that any effort made to understand a difficult family member; understand what a sibling is never having had one, or imagine what your parents want, or wanted - you will be a better person for it. My cousin Caron who through circumstance and happenstance was torn from my life years ago and has now taken refuge in the great eternal leaving much more than a grieving family, she has allowed me to view my own existence with more loving eyes than before I essayed my thoughts on family. Now I am grateful that a woman I knew as a child could touch me years later such that my feelings have become more recognizable. Now rather than sorrow, I feel fortunate to have been some shade in the world she lived - a memory of some kind, even if it was only as a source of discomfort that promoted the human instinct toward wellness. If there is a compassionate consciousness capable of transcendence, my hope is for Caron to know peace and for her family to hear her echoes of love evermore .

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