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.”

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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 / 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 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 are doing right now 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, confederate flags fluttering looking to bolster your cause and deny your fear through intimidation and brute force, or are you amongst the hordes immersed within the 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, enragement? 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 - is this freedom? There are parts of the world where i could be put to death for just 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, sort of: bedbugs - though rather than wish for my own early death - i did find myself face-to-face with a 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 choice. Am i doomed by this failing, or is life as William Blake describes - “ 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? Have my aged excesses been born of too little responsibly resulting in a physical vulnerability. Will i be delivered from hell if i were to reassume the harness of gainful employment and take the 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 rings of hell from a slow death by substances taken with my own hand?

How long will it be until humans are no longer allowed to ask such questions - how few in the audience even know or care of 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 docilly believing corporate overlords are waiting for nothing more than a “like” to then bend whole revenue streams at the behest of the “Liker.” And what of that, am i opposed to corporate overlords because i envy their viral freedom? Is my feeble protest 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 manner of 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 in your room?

Do i write this because i am free, or am i free because i write this? Talk is cheap, freedom not so much. When young, many are absorbed by distorted fantasies about others - their power, their age even their sex, yet from where i sit, freedom is no further than 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 far 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 have to eat.” - A. Nonymous. However, more often than not rather than share their freedom, the wealthy struggle mightily to deprive others of their rights to freedom - seemingly for no other reason than to have more of what the supposed “masters of the universe” already have 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 only chain known to our biosphere - end of life? How sad to come to one’s end surrounded by empty eyes - eyes seeing only those objects you covet as you prepare to abandon your freedom. If wealth is indeed a metaphor for freedom how is it possible that love is the only thing that grows when you give it away - is that not the meaning of freedom - the quiet personal decision to amplify good things as opposed to amplifying the lesser things?

“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 / home - the sonnet

I sold a home in 2014; when i 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 my 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 mounting 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 a 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 injured 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 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 or San Francisco - 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 a California city where i had grown up, but i still have 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 saviors in sub-zero weather as my country wages war on any nation of the world who dares object to the empire which was once my homeland; will this make america gr8 again . ?

G_d in her infinite mercies will not let our kind perish in delusion and so we are about to come full face with 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 the skin. 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 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 effect 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 can be gone

faster the this planet you now live on.

  

jts 112416

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 non 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 ever 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 at their wrist; or then frightening the same into believing they are independent free thinkers lacking only the 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

jts 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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 mean 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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the 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.

its 103116

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved 

∞

the drawing / i'm writing this without electricity - 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 a friend - my defect, not his. The blowback of this unfortunate event is that I am no longer seeking immigration to this nation of wonderfully determined individuals, for 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 those dying had been severely taxed after he visited 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. He is brilliant, sensitive and besotted; he says it is from wine; my sense is it is from grief - a deep profound unresolved hurt. It is his bravery and generosity of spirit which attracted me to him as friend, and it is my dearth of compassion which prevents me from plumbing my own misery such that I might understand his. So I reach out to you, the countless many facing your own 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 capable of, as Bob Dylan aptly described, “grinding 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 pledge allegiance 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, though the photo it was drawn from sits 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 end limits of an unrequited love; the drawing merely a bookend for a story never to be.

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 supplanted 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 another could see it as his right to place his hands on my person because I had asked 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 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 presumed 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 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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i’m writing this without electricity - the sonnet

I'm writing this without electricity 

And not, for it has just now returned

I liked lacking accessibility-

Writing in the same light Shakespeare burned- 

A separate syllable for each "e d"

Is not the only anachronism.

For a blink in time, i wrote as free-

a word yoked to interpretism.

Now the day wanes with a light unreal,

All electronic toys back online

Minus the joy of sharing a cold meal

Supplanted with computer toy whine.

I feel better about where we're going

Knowing an instant of our shared feeling.

its 092116

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