beauty - an essay / the beast - a sonnet

This day began by locking myself out of where i live at 6:30 am and then waiting the hour and a half + for my hosts to wake; it is their one day of the week to sleep in - the error was mine, not theirs. I then lost 5 hours of the first version of this essay in this bitten off conflagration of a techno world, so why do my hosts seem hostile, or am i projecting my day’s frustrations into a mutable reality? Life is beautiful and everything to the contrary is pushing the rock up hill. I’m oddly at peace, given the violence to my day’s ambitions by my own hand - and there are books written about “intention.” Maybe i should be reading rather than running off at the keyboard. I don’t know what beauty is, even though with my training i’m supposed to be an expert. I do know enough to search for it, as well as be very wary of those who are certain about it and can describe its various states ad nauseam. I’m thinking that somehow it is connected to the empty feeling of recreating a day’s lost effort without loving encouragement - save my own, because sitting here rewriting this lost essay at the end of the kind of day i’ve had is about as beautiful as i have felt in a long time. Excuse me while i go and smoke the last cigarette of the day twenty minutes early - i am weak, but not too ugly to share what i feel; while it gives me great personal satisfaction smoking no more than six cigarettes a day, the beautiful delusion of non-attachment is simply postponed to each of those long awaited moments until the next fix. I will not take the time to finish this piece just now, for i have found it is necessary to impose a period of rest and distraction on myself so i may continue fresh each day with this dubious pursuit of the unknown, or attempt at understanding what cannot be understood; what i strive for is absorption into that egoless state where time does not exist. Speaking of which, where i live has a tradition of honoring the dead, and i find just now in the midst of my self pity, it is a very attractive idea. There are many i have known and lost and many i have lost and never known they were gone, but they all seem closer to me now than those i am surrounded by - more delusion. I wish much succor to all present as well as those in the aether, or wherever it is that we return to after this moment in this miraculous orb of vaporous molecules we call home.

During this festival of the dead, i am finding the honor, respect and awe brought to the process. Based on what i can see from my vantage point it is by and large far truer than any commercial versions available from the media. It is for me a privilege and honor to try and help confirm the beliefs i find and to fortify and enlarge the culture of those who believe. I find beauty in the faith of what is not knowable or quantifiable. Perhaps because i remember as a 2nd grader being brought into the multi-purpose room to witness the launch of John Glenn in the first extra-terrestrial launch from our then oh-so-abundant and powerful home planet. Unfortunately this passing magnificence was soon to be dwarfed by increasingly urgent and doubtful projects intended to punk one nation after another rather than augment and aid the unquenchable expansion of the human spirit. I also find beauty in this myopic limitation, for the alternative is to despair from the mindless arrogance of our species - the real challenge is to parse whether my observation is accurate or another delusion of a defective character and its hunger for aggrandizement. My heritage is an odd admixture of the best and worst of our species which provides me textbook manic/depressive exaltations from the grandiose to basest loathing of self, yet i live in this time which seems to increasingly demand clarity and purpose, not with just each step forward, but each breath - isn’t that beautiful. If happiness can be defined as the absence of greed, hatred and delusion would this logic not also apply to beauty - find what is not ugly and presto, you are in the midst of beauty¿ Therein lies the rub, available scholarship includes the too apt observation from Oscar Wilde - “Ugly may be beautiful, but pretty never.” Syntactically this can be construed to mean ugly can be beautiful, or pretty can never be beautiful - either case is useful, for William Shakespeare said it best (as always) “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Yet to know true beauty one must possess the capacity to embrace the most repugnant of images as worthy of the same fascination one finds in the glint of light off the most sublime of cheeks, or the spectacle of human architecture in the dome of her forehead - whoever “she” may be.

On the morning after the first night of the Dia de Muertos celebration, i stepped outside just prior to dawn; the typical bustle of a city-on-its-way was absent, and in its place lining three of the four directions at my corner as far as the eye could see, were cups every meter or so containing candles - all lit. The quiet impossibility of such an unexpected sight still awes me, though i have learned how much effort and waste was involved for the sake of greeting spectres who may or may not wish to be present at this earth-centric collective prayer. Is it the hunger of our species that defines the essence of beauty, rather than an immutable universal truth, more a dynamic of blossoming and decay inherent in the very physics of our universe - entropy. What is this hunger of ours to possess, either the manifestation, definition or source of that which one’s eye deems beautiful¿ Is it more indoctrination from the wizards of Silicone Valley; are they merely piggybacking on the church’s previous monopoly of all that is sacred with beauty at the core, whip in hand, shouting its cadence “Row, Row, Row!” Isn’t there chapter and verse for the “Beatitudes” in christian dogma? Would humans still be “oppressed by the figures of beauty” - Leonard Cohen, were they devoid of museums and the japing underclass of artists jockeying for a seat at the patron’s table? What concept would replace the sublime joy of waking up to the still sleeping face of your heart’s affection? As a man who has devoted his life to understanding the meaning of beauty, i find myself much less of an authority than i’d have ever imagined, that or not knowing is far more beautiful than i had been trained to believe. I am slowly becoming aware of beauty i never knew existed? What of the duality, is that concept itself an effort to codify the ineffable feeling one gets viewing lit candles at dawn after having comprehended the environmental degradation; the sleeping face of your heart’s affection though you know she’s about to leave; or the dichotomy of inconsolable joy that the death of a suffering loved one has provided them relief, while leaving you in grief? Is this why we proffer knowledge about the unknowable, to allay that sobering doubt that we exist, or that we do exist, but will never know why?

Is there any use for beauty, besides a tax dodge for the egregiously wealthy investor class? I can only speak for myself, but i would not have changed a thing in my life with respect to my own fixations of beauty, including the learning curve arcing from the cruel weight of ridicule for mine own and other’s earnest “pursuit of beauty to its lair” - Arundhati Roy. Is it simply a matter of degree, and the delusion of valuation from a pittance to “priceless” is more a function of what the market will bear, devoid of any valid measure or meaning¿ Do I know more about beauty for my efforts than the man who sweeps the streets of debris exuding from “the hole in our culture” - Leonard Cohen. Michel de Montaigne preferred the wisdom of the working class believing they had not suffered from learning how to think, and we can all see how much ‘merica’s chief exec, Mr. M.T. Suit has benefitted from his ivy league education. I now sit in a gallery whose exclusive purpose is the propagation of things beautiful, but i don’t feel improved, or necessarily relieved from my suffering. Possibly a result of my own discursive thinking; the objects themselves may not adhere my stringent, albeit arbitrary esthetic level of excellence, or Picasso was wrong and art whether understood properly or not, cannot cure the toothache. Cezanne had posited that in the future “a carrot when freshly apprehended, could cause a revolution,” but there is double entendre when one parses apprehend; i’m betting that Mssr. Cezanne as an ironic banker’s son was addressing the “getting and having” aspect of the produce market, more so than any assertion of a universal standard of beauty for objet d’art capable of fomenting worldwide revolution. The captains of industry have indoctrinated an entire planet on the fiction that time is money, yet i can honestly include moments spent in the company of Paul Cezanne’s paintings as amongst the most valuable in my life - go figure.

Then again, i’d jail the bankers; provide universal free health care; cradle to grave free education and a lifetime guaranteed income; not only because it is feasible and practical, but because in my mind’s eye it would be beautiful. Nor am i sure i would ever want to learn the meaning of beauty according to the patrons. No small irony there - i have spent a lifetime working toward a standard of beauty i’d hoped to be irrefutable and of value to the monied class, but have now precluded from ownership those same exemplars of taste and breeding because they represent for me the most base and vulgar in our civilization. It may be from luck or the intersection of perception and experience, but my creature within who knew me to be worthy of the cruelest self contempt has left the building, or like some existential “transformer” is now just a confused old man wondering where his friends and family have gotten to; mine is not really a pitiful condition, but certainly not worthy of contempt, at least i would hope not. Of all the ambitions i have come to know in my life, i feel remarkably fortunate to include the hunt for beauty uppermost in my quests. I don’t know if it is the etherial nature of beauty that i find most attractive or the immutable pleasure it provides in its presence. Nor am i much closer to the ability to create beauty than i was when i first caught its scent oh so long ago, yet anymore i’m not sure who is the hunted and who is the hunter, or whether it much matters. I am certain that our world would be much smaller without beauty or our ability to imagine it. Try as they might, beauty cannot be faked, or as Buddha had remarked “three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth. Maybe truth and beauty are synonymous, i don’t know. 

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the beast - a sonnet

I use to avoid my beast like the plague

now we just homies; it comes, laughs and leaves

but not far- close enough to hear, but vague-

one enormous tree where wind rustles leaves

though it never ruled, it made its voice heard,

loudly enough to drive others away,

or smart enough to keep me from the herd.

beastly nor fearsome- t’just seems to sway.

how long it had laid waste to so much

for little more than to just have been seen

an extrovert bigfoot wanting to touch

others, but knowing they are not so keen

past tense is fiction as much as future

tense; so love your hate minus the nurture 

jts 11/03/2017

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

fear - the essay / desire - the sonnet

“There is no fear for one whose mind is not filled with desires” - Buddha

We are born and almost immediately begin screaming, for what - another slap on the ass which caused our first breath¿ if that defines desire, i am more than prepared to renounce this world and its desires. There is much to be said for a calm mind, and there is much to object to about acquisitions - especially those we cannot afford, physically, financially or morally. Those whom i’ve known to have satiated their yen to the utmost, have not had the calmest minds if only for the constant fear of having those things taken from them or assertions disproved - be that beauty, strength or intellectual dexterity. I possess fear, and it has been for the most part as a direct result of attachment. What i physically possess fits into a 10x10 ft storage space, and most of those objects could be best described as sentimental detritus clung to like buoys, but amongst the flotsam and jetsam are 13, more or less, stone carvings that i have fashioned over my adult life - as well as a driftwood pipe holder i carved for my nonsmoking father when i was around 6. These carvings and miscellaneous objet d’art might be said to describe my remaining attachment to this material plane. However, were that true i’d hardly be sitting here looking to exonerate my sins on your dime. The truth is writing for me is a therapy which i value for its ability to laugh at my shortcomings and focus on my more positive inclinations. What else is left to us as a species, but to develop as creatures in search of purpose. When i began my art study, the life and work of Paul Gaugin captivated my imagination, not just for his ability to strip woman down to her most simple beauty, but also for his quest for truth. One stand-out painting of his was embellished with the following quote. “who are we, why are we here, where are we going.” In an age when creative success is defined by astronomic prices which often have more relationship to the artist’s capacity for social climbing than her/his contribution to the chain of Cezanne’s creative heritage metaphor this quote from Paul Gaugin was not a fashionable contemporary quip, but a marker on the trail for others with courage enough to admit they might be lost.

I know i am, lost. Not a bad place to be at 63 and aging quickly, for it can provoke one to fulfill rational fantasies like smoking only 6 cigarettes a day; imbibing no more than dos caballos of mezcal, and a dash of marijuana each day in my two pots of beans and rice. Being adrift can also inspire one to focus energies toward what creates happiness for oneself and relinquish those things that excite the mind. It would give me great satisfaction to describe nirvana in cogent prose, but alas i have no idea outside of what i’ve described. Nor is my mind tranquil, if anything stripped of the delusions of accomplishment and community which had occupied my waking life for so long, my only companion now seems to be the beast that i am. For example, i have searched many times on the “acclaimed” internet for an apocryphal statement by Franz Kafka - “if a man were to meet himself walking down the street, he’d probably turn and run,” I liked the quote when i read it 40 years ago, but didn’t really understand it until more recently. At the time it mirrored my badass costume from behind which, like the Wizard of Oz, i invoked images of fear and power because that is all i could see of the world. Now, thanks to the grim reaper’s stalking behavior, what do i care whether anyone wants to play with me? I care the same as i did then, but am no longer convinced that anyone can be persuaded about anything. I’ve mostly come to this conclusion because so few have been persuaded by anything i’ve ever tried; but more likely because so few have rung true for me over the course of time - including me for myself. Yet there are signposts along the way left by previous seekers, mostly snacks; i think this is because gorging on the road of truth can impede progress, that or those ahead know if you are not self-sufficient there is nothing they can give you that will suffice. What I have never found on the road of truth is: fear, hatred, greed, anger - all those commodities of our current culture which declares itself without shame, or irony - the zenith of civilization.

Well fuck that shit - hard. What a crock - so what if i’m afraid, am i going to ransom the pleasure of puzzling over a mystery of such an etherial and ever-passing wisps for the sacred rock of what - certain knowledge that i will live forever, which in some sects includes 70 ravishing beauties at one’s beck and call. (maybe those two should pool their resources instead of crusading against jihad, or vice versa). I am more afraid of closing my eyes for the last time and not being worthy of that sublime moment of a lifetime, or this instant for that matter. Mark Twain said “I’ve experienced a 1,000 horrible things in my lifetime, and some of them even happened.” If i am the beast all those fleeing from me will attest to, then i had better find a better channel for communication then the Rube Goldberg contraption a la Frank Baum which i managed to fortify myself with for the better part of my adult life - today is my 3rd day smoking 6 cigarettes a day. It seems to be enough to quiet the beast, the dilemma is which beast - that voracious wooly rebel ransacking all that which titillated and excited my young probing intellect, or is it the sanctimonious, severe, goody-two-shoes, that like Leonard Cohen`s - “the maestro calls it Mozart, but it sounds like bubble gum” mocks its own excellence or illusions thereof. I don’t know, i do know that Michel de Montaigne said about death to befriend it, to occupy your imagination with all that comes from that unknown and thereby remove the thorn of fear. This works with most things that are scary - get right up into its face and love the fuck out of it. But then it wouldn’t be called fear if it were that simple, nor would so many be so easily enslaved by its effects. It may be for this reason that psychiatry has been suborned to the darkside and made itself available to Guantanamo, facebook and the too-little-too-late “impeach the bum” talking heads. The more the outer world appears to change, the greater the need to command one’s own sphere above all others, or what Bob Dylan describes as the “greasy trail.”

It is now 12:56 pm and by design i will have my 3rd cigarette of 6 for the day at 1:30 pm. There is a perverse pleasure in running counter to that same abstinence i thrived on for a decade before my “fall.” Like all fears, the fear of restricting my beast to 6 a day was contrived and magnified by not taking the plunge and simply altering my behavior. Yet like all decisions - based on what criteria, even that delusional self talk which allowed for the “fall” included criteria that made it seem perfectly plausible to take up smoking after a 10 year hiatus. I do not regret the choice, because i like smoking - but i also enjoy being well and smoking is a dangerous past time. I was righteously turned out of the home at age 16, and spent my 17th birthday drinking competitively with an Irish las and a Scotch lad on a ferry between Amsterdam and London. I was emancipated in name, but am still attempting to re-familiarize so to speak. This is a more complex equation than some Pavlov’s dog variation that smoking reduction represents, and not. Because of my experiences i have developed a sense of self-respect that was born of William Blake’s paving stones of excess, but whether that long awaited self-regard is adequate to bridge the oceans of compassion we need between ourselves to survive as a species. I’m having a hard time allowing anyone close enough to find out. What does that tell you about espoused conviction and con - kidding, sort of. As was the case with tobacco re-initialization and the more practical reduction - so too it appears love may be. I can love all people, some more easily than others, much easier - but i no longer delude myself that my own love is meaningful to another, rather i am content to be as loving as i know how which includes the meditation of honoring in pencil tip an old curadora savagely betrayed by what later became the hipster doofus brigade, and this chant you are reading that i cast out into the rapidly evaporating aether, now being sucked into bitcoins for the enrichment of the same handful of human ciphers which have consigned our species to the dungheap of history.

Oddly, that does not frighten me - i have railed, cajoled and cheered ’til i’m blue in the face, but Orwell’s sage observation about sports and beer holds too true and it remains go Dodger Blue while the ruling class is hocking their next 3 generations into prisons for profit with nary a peep from the aggrieved. But i do not fear for them, anymore than i fear returning to star dust as my body decays and my name is forgotten while my life’s work become tchokyes of greater or lesser value gathering dust in the havoc of post human planet earth. I don’t understand why i am here, but i have done my level best to try and understand, including doing self-therapy of a kind in a vain effort to leave some signpost on this odd trail i now share with you. So what of that fear which i act on unawares, the dark one which Jung says becomes one’s fate if not welcomed into the labyrinth with all the other gargoyles and other pet monsters one accumulates over a lifetime of slaying dragons for that pretty girl who hands you heart back from out of your chest, while she walks away with a “real” dragon-slayer - kidding sort of. At this turn i’m not sure which holds greater respect from me - pretty girls or dragons. Perhaps like the beasts of my inner hell, i will befriend all the pretty girls and let them wander at will through my fantasies which for whatever reason have not entirely abandoned me. I can begin to understand why those further up the trail only seem to leave snacks, for it is god awful heavy dredging up something i hope will useful from this effort, or i just haven’t yet figured out how to leave a light line in the right spot with the right bait to bring me together with that fish seeking to have some fun with my odd ideas about fear and desire while leaving me whole - “they don’t let a woman kill you, not in the tower of song” - Leonard Cohen

“be not afraid” - Joseph T. Stevens 

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desire - the sonnet

i am a man with a lot of desire

i want love, peace, and dignity for all.

so how does my want create so much ire?

could be my want’s a “put” to the world’s “call”?

i have discovered much from my lacking,

what is essential what is incidental 

who is giving, who’s taking - who is king¿

what don’t figure is how they got such pull?

then again everybody knows - ‘cause they paying-

buying this - buying that - for what, for why

what i see’s a bunch of hunger and pain

from having what you can’t take when you die.

money is not the root of all evil

the root’s whatever ’tis that shames your will.

jts 10/20/2017

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

to be - the essay / not to be - the sonnet

“The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.” - Lenny Bruce

I am struck by the irony that i’ve lived in a time when the fable of “the sky is falling” actually has foundation in reality, and there is no boy crying wolf to be found. Many will still maintain what they declare is the sole truth of existence, but anymore i am finding fewer and fewer with questions about how exactly we have gotten into this painter’s corner we face. My drawing of Maria Sabina has become more of a refuge than any loving fantasy about the many beautiful women i have drawn these past few years. I am at a lost to explain why. When young, i was quite inquisitive about the parallel universe Sra. Sabina introduced to the many unscrupulous personalities riding the crest of post WW11 optimism. Near as i can tell, she had a fundamental reservation about why these characters were searching for god, rather than using what was for her, a medicine with which to heal. It is this misalignment of the fundamentals which seems to have a role in our current predicament - more irony that we are about to be anonymously incinerated by zealots at the behest of “their” god. I don’t know what god is or even whether i believe. I do believe there is good reason that the wisest of teachings stopped short of defining such mystical dimensions. Some descriptions i like are: the holiest prayer of the holiest sage barely touches the foot of god; the peace pipe is used to tickle the nose of god; “god is the inpenetrable.” - Albert Einstein. The sad truth is if we are not god, then there is no god. The whole notion of adhering to some prescription for divinity is fraught with  illogic. One is sanctified or one is not, how could it be otherwise. To believe if one only did this (fill in the blank__________) then one would be holy begs the question - what does the this refer to¿ Who is to say god does not want us all to do exactly what we are doing - destroying the human race, and thereby put an end to our species so that a more benign, less excoriating organism might take root on our magic orb and perhaps know peace, or that that hardy cockroach isn’t actually godhead who has allowed our species to congeal onto this current corrosive precipice simply out of boredom from having survived so long on the third rock from the sun?

Nor am i averse to the tenants of decency and wisdom found in all the scriptures which i guess makes me an Omnist - an omnist without a phone. I do not have much faith in the church of technology as it is, too much driven by the profiteers in our midst. In any exchange the one doing the taking does not hold nearly as much fascination for me as the one doing the giving, be that money, love or hate; but pound for pound it is that special breed of life that gives of oneself that completely intrigues me. This morning i had a funny black butterfly land momentarily on my tobacco smudged fingertips, i think i was as nearly touched by this as the text exchange i had with my Nepali love interest, both being miraculous in vastly different and implausible ways. As a re-reformed non-smoker the image of being touched by an ineffably delicate mariposa exacerbates my conflict about smoking, but confirms there are no condemned amongst us, only tense people. I only wish that i had within me a way to have given more to this winged creature who brightened my morning the same as i would hope to have with my young Nepali maiden. I do not know much about what is holy, but i’m fairly certain love is at the core, and if it is not - i know from personal experience love is a damn sight more fun than hate. Who doesn’t want to have fun; so just how does one go about loving? From what little i know, it begins by not hating which is a more complex concept than i had imagined when i first began my quest for unconditional love. If love is the absence of hate, also defined in Hindu scripture as “aversion,” what am i to do about all that to which i am averse - war, greed, cruelty? Yet these are concepts and definitions as much subject to the distortions of charlatans and usurpations of the unscrupulous, and as much a part of my own character as my hope for human survival. Is it simply a case of integration and acceptance of our own foibles? Could it be we might all be saved by admitting to our indecencies; was President Jimmy Carter truly the last leader of the free world when he copped to having “lust in his heart¿” This is where it gets dicey, how will that play out when i explain to my chaste maiden of the Himalayas that i am as struck by her beauty as her mind? Do i want to evaluate what i share with anyone predicated on how i imagine it will be received - that smacks of a level of manipulation for which i’m not interested, though i know well enough how it works, or at least well enough to feel it when it’s coming at me.

You see, fucking aversion - my own, and i’m swimming in it. Maybe that’s what’s really meant by water off a duck’s back. Do any of us have any real choice about what we are going to be? I choose love, because hate is tedious and foolish, while all of the best times in my life have been a direct result of love, including marriages, divorce/lessons, those christmases i compare to others, and most especially all of those people whose touch allowed me to more fully appreciate an itinerant mariposa in a foreign country. Can we make mariposas do anything, much less give love¿ That’s about as stupid as believing i have any control over the feelings of a young mountain maid. What little control i possess is personal and currently being mocked by my fantasy about smoking 6 cigarettes a day. However, i have learned something about being happy; i have found if i am patient with myself and allow for the time it takes to depict an image i enjoy, eventually something emerges that is oftentimes worth the struggle. If that is called art, so be it. Is that what it means to “be” - to look out over the horizon of possible choices and to gravitate toward that which seems to feel right¿ If so, what is the criteria one uses to define “right”? Would that be some magical result of our incessant socialization by parents, friends or ostensible rulers of the universe¿ I would not be the person i am without a measure of input from the world, yet the deeper i get into the miasma of our world and the further i am able to plumb the depths of my own darkness, the more i wonder whether choice is part of the equation at all. I can discipline myself until i am blue in the face, but that does not seem to affect the heart of any love interest i’ve ever known. I am beginning to doubt the conceit of any manner of efficacy knowing how diabolical my fears can be.  What is left upon which we might base our decisions - the will of the universe? If this is so, we are fucked big time. What is it Einstein said - “God does not play dice with the universe.” So we must have been betrayed by faith and its shills, our families are bloodied and broken, the money lenders are laughing at Jesus, and our mother’s womb - the oceans have become a piss-pot for the petrochemical concerns. Maybe Kojak was really on the trail, “who loves you, baby”?

What i have difficulty abandoning is the fight, not that gory bloodbath born of revenge for real or imagined offenses, but that Herculean effort to make one more line, to find one more flower .  .  . to feel one more love again. Is it really more like Jung’s quote “Where love rules there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking”¿ I am convinced there is not fuck all i can do about my demise - will or no will, so all those fucking vendors peddling that pig-in-poke of everlasting anything are about as welcome at my table as my last wife, bless her heart. Besides, what exactly is there left for me to be so all fired willful about¿ Do i make a full court press and act on my instinct to run that shy young thing to ground and subject her to my love fantasies dressed as romance? No, but that doesn’t mean i can’t send love her way because i admire her style, and want to reinforce her very understandable awareness of her allure. I’m not sure i have enough soul left to be mortally wounded as i have been, whether or not my misery was self imposed. I do know that the fantasy of any perfect anything is worthless and vain. We are squirming piles of biomass with a short shelf life, but we are also imbued with the capacity for self-awareness that permits us to question our very most sacred cows - love, family, pride, humility and faith. Could it be this doubt is our best friend. Lao Tzu says “make self confidence your best friend” which i also prefer, but if i had to have anything riding shotgun, i’d prefer a skeptic to some of the arrogant pricks i’ve come across in my trek through life. Still in all, if i have to be something, i would rather be myself, for it seems one has very little choice about not being, unless of course one is a suicide afficionado; however this vocation comes with a much shorter shelf life than those who persist in puzzling the mystery, or even those for whom it has never occurred to entertain a question.

“Now that you know who you are, what are you going to be” - McCartney/Lennon. 

Ah . .  that sweet myopia of youth; I have said that i was many things during my life behind that fucking mask of ego, and now all i can say is thank god for the stranger who never told me no, that shaggy shambling beast haunting the caverns of my wounded heart quietly healing each and every self-inflicted wound. Wounds which while attributed to every avatar to whom i’ve ever given up the reigns, but who also ultimately disappointed and betrayed me, often without ever having known of their blunder. There is no one on the planet who can ever be for you what you are for yourself, so for god’s sake, or tobacco’s sake or even the sake of Sra. Maria Sabina’s sainted memory, be kind to yourself because there is no one who can ever do it for you, not even if they could crawl into your skin and shake hands with whichever agent of the ego answering the door at the time. But remember this, when you are unable to recognize the person in front of you as asking, demanding or begging by whatever behaviors they command for whatever it is which may result in your feeling assaulted, overwhelmed, insulted or loved is likely related to that same part of yourself which only you can know, otherwise you have likely lived a pretty empty existence. We are a single species and each of is simply that reflection of the other which through the lens of our experience we are able to understand about the other. The more you can hear what others know and feel, will reflect your efforts to see into your own heart and to know why and how you do whatever it is that makes you who you are. The exceptions are those lacking empathy for other and who while able to conceive emotion have no internal register - the ciphers amongst us now commanding, and not surprisingly inculcating the emergent Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology with the same inability for awareness and compassion toward human suffering that has resulted in the current profit driven distribution of our world’s dwindling and increasingly corrupted resources by using power over the weak to control through force and fear - in other words our current world leaders. If you wish to continue to be whatever it is you have found suits your unique capacities and desires, i would suggest you include a way to help others do the same - to be whatever it is they want. I choose to be happy because it improves my odds of finding like minded others, like you.

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not to be - the sonnet

i was raised not to be, but to become-

a loving well-intentioned oversight.

but helps some believe that sweet kid’s a bum.

Is that from only seeing what’s in the light.

it’s possible to not be what you are

but the effort is great, and not worthwhile.

maybe for a while, but you won’t get far.

except maybe to amass a great pile.

of what - remains the question no one asks

why’s that - could be easier than asking.

our work world makes little room for more tasks

except those that feed the greed of our king.

still and all i’ll never stop not to be 

what i am, just to be’n another's tree

jts 10/13/2017

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

woman - an essay / man - a sonnet

I rarely know what subjects i will pair prior to writing; this morning i thought perhaps drunk and sober might be apt, but puzzling over some better idea of what woman means is much more appealing to me, though i can speak with greater authority on drunkenness. I enjoy both, and i’ve found that both can be quite painful when taken to excess. That might be said of nearly everything known to our species. However, few things inspire me to abandon my normal probity as liquor and women. I have occasion today to be repulsed by both, and not. Last week on my way back home, i stopped to pick up my paid-for loaf of sourdough bread, but unable to remember the pretty cashier’s name i remarked in my execrable Spanish “i forgot your name, because i was looking at your eyes when you gave me your name. “She laughed, and i was elated though mindful of my precarious circumstances. I know that giving offense to pretty young maids can be lethal within some cultures - even the one in which i live. It is something of a double bind in which man exists with respect to the fairer sex. For example, the home in which i reside is also a habitation for three pretty young gringas, having grown by two within the last day. The vibe is as unpleasant as i can remember in terms of simple amicableness. I try to parse my feelings in any case of tension to discover my role and rectify, because why not. The root of my discomfort may be as simple as rejection, but not from any forwardness on my part that i am aware of; the original resident (a dynamically pretty young woman) gave a party to which i was uninvited. 

Where she a man, that would be considered punk-ass behavior given we are two foreigners within a household of 4, 3 of which are over 60 years old. At 63 years old with 3 ex wives i have experience with some of the nuances of the mating dance and am extremely circumspect about reading “come on” from a woman, especially the young and pretty variety. So much so, on my way here i stopped and offered my apologies to the young baker who inscrutably nodded back with happy dancing eyes. I have enormous regard for the torments of the attractive, my mother and sister both being beauty queens. But i am a man in a world run amuck by leering demands for a salacious surrender to the wonders of money and its perverse relationship to love - that is not the kind of human i wish to become. I am erotic to a fault, but far more interested in the wonders of a sexually responsive partner, yet the intimacies shared by loving hearts between considerate partners is a mystery i mean to learn. I know that subservience has no role in human relations, but beyond that i have no clue. It was late in life that i acceded to the reality that love can be predatory, not the least of which, my own dark love. The more i accept and nurture that shambling beast rather than dress it up in manly homilies and chivalrous raiment the more readily apparent the parallel darkness of woman seems. In my zeal to take possession of those personal failings that would result in so much derailed love much less the holocausts of three domestic collapses the less inclined i am to pursue a woman that is anything but open and forthright - however even the ballsiest broads i’ve known had guile about them even if only to themselves.

So what of woman, would i ask her to be different. Is it a finely tuned sensitivity of my party giving housemate that discerns my unapologetic beast and simply wants no part of it as i do her conceits? To say there is no difference between man and woman and that equality is legislate-able is a conceit of the modern world when we are unable to codify peace and fairness, two keys to human survival. I am tired of being afraid of woman for her ability to break my heart, so i’ve learned to carry on with a broken heart. What confuses me about that condition is that i invariably become better for the damage. Is that the heart of woman - her capacity to find growth in destruction, therefore she breaks that which she loves just to make him better? I enjoy the concept of C.G. Jung where he channels the anima and animus of yore into plausible aspects of either gender, and then there is Hank Williams’ observation about woman “it’s better to talk with them, than to talk about them which may be closer to the root of my conundrum. As much as i enjoy speaking with the housemate, that explicit insinuation that her beauty is sufficient to presume an inability on my part to resist and which requires from her an outward state-of-siege behavior which turns party invitations exclusive is a tad pompous. I know this because of my own bloated anima that gets orgiastic about its inability to resist what  Arundhati Roy describes as the “pursuit of beauty to its lair” in my own work. Then again, it could be simple fear of that repugnant feeling of my own fury having been insulted; i don’t know.

I do know that without understanding we are doomed, so i try to commune with my peace and learn how to understand what others want and give it to them if i am able; as the good Dalai Lama remarked kindness is always possible. However, i am only just now coming to believe that my absence from all circumstances is not necessarily kind and to seek those circumstances and that woman who enjoys the company of me and my beast. A deep and close woman friend of mine once asked after yet another debacle of one sort or another, “has it ever occurred to you that people might be afraid of you?” How is that even possible to fear one so shackled by socialization that he could get himself in dutch with one woman for possibly being too shy and another for being too forward? What remains is there is no form of manliness which when conformed to, results in harmony, so i’ve taken Jung’s advice “privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” I also search for gender neutral language and behavior, not because i am so compliant, but because it would be bullshit to advocate liberty without seeking it for all people, creatures, places and things - the same for happiness, peace or nearly any other esoteric concept one would like to propagate in this profit driven miasma we inhabit. Woman and men are more effective together than either is apart, though it is well documented women fair better in solitude than the hapless, short lived male. Why is that¿ 

My father, g_d rest his soul, distilled his concept of woman down to a single question for her, “what do you want?” For all my protestations about self expression to ask another “what do you want?” strikes me as peremptory, pushy, and officious, though my divining rod quest using sensitivity as my pack mule is killing my mule. I have learned this much from my last three wives - what a woman wants you to know she will tell you, and what she doesn’t want you to know is indecipherable by and immune to any forensic examination or force of will. Men pride themselves on willfulness, but if your anima is a wilting lily, good luck in the blood sport of love. The cowards effecting women’s policy in the testosterone bubbles of D.C. and Wall St boardrooms believe their imagined dominance to be from will rather than the Naked Emperor charade tumbling down around their ears for no other reason than the lack of actual information they function with, believing instead what computer models tell them from data extracted by the mighty data mining apparatus which defines so much technology today. No model for human relations is valid without a deep and profound appreciation for the formidable will of woman. I am currently drawing the profile of Maria Sabina gazing across a valley comprised of rugged terrain and determined human habitation. Her expression is etched with pain and endurance while remaining utterly open to what it is she sees. For me to presume the content of her sight would be ignorant, but to beg any form of welcome to her patient vigil has given me greater peace and hope for the survival of our species than any lust i’ve ever run to ground, however ravishing she may have been. Only g_d knows the limits of that animated power of love which resides in the heart of woman; i most certainly have not plumbed her depths, but i’m trying.

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man - the sonnet

Out gunned, out fought, out thought - the lot of man,

yet like every other day, out he goes

to lie in graves from the battlefield plan.

The bad soldier does it still though he knows.

The fighter does not make war, he makes love

the more he understands, the more he makes.

A man won’t do much without a good shove,

trouble is, once going he ain’t much without brakes.

The one thing that makes his life practical

would be his mate - his love for which he lives

be that a purpose, a god, or more pull

you know he’s wallowing in what he gives.

a handful of men are thinking they won

by not using hands and taking a ton.

jts 09/29/2017

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

have - an essay / have not - a sonnet

apple, has just informed me that i do not have permission to save the document you are reading - fucking cheek. Clearly they are confused about what have means. Then again i could just be getting old and don’t know what computers are supposed to do, nor have i figured out what women want yet. I can say that i do have a computer i’m not so sure i want, and do not have a woman - if woman could ever said to be had - i’m pretty sure i want one. I thought i had a few, but they each clarified that presumption for me in their own unique fashion. I think i’ll have a cigarette, or it me - more confusion about to have or have not. Our world is being ground to dust by idiots believing that a piece of paper is adequate evidence they have the right to do so - why is that presumption any more stable a conviction than my own belief that a woman can be had. What if in some bizarro universe the idiots just never learned to want a woman and so did not have the advantage of being educated about why a woman can never be had. That really would be great wouldn’t it¿ All the world’s problems could be solved simply by teaching those idiots who have been substituting their desire to love a woman for world dominance. I don’t know fuck all about women, so i guess we're still shit out of luck. Who would have thought existence could hinge on some something so simple as knowing what a woman wants. I have a mother, however she is aged and while she would be thrilled to know i acknowledge such good luck - she is truly a miracle of creation - she most certainly would not describe knowing what a woman wants as a simple matter; i have learned that much.

True this - Bob Dylan is just now singing “ you’d be as happy as you could be if you belonged to me,” so it is quite likely given Mr. Dylan’s keen instincts distinguishing love-fact from love-fiction, we should be on the right track. Though there is still that issue of my computer depriving me of rights to save this file, and the fact that i am not online to query “the cloud;” what i do have, is problems, which in this world hardly makes me unique. I have a bed and a refrigerator, while not exactly mine, having access to them makes me increasingly unique today - how sad. Yet i can honestly say i do not have sadness, who needs it? I have time to do this, which as i age toward the void gives me an increased appreciation for each second, and get ready for this, creates great doubts as to whether i have time at all. It's been said, "make the time"; i’ve made a lot of things in my life, but i’d be a damn liar if I said, based on what little i can understand about Sir Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” that i have ever made any, time that is. By all accounts one’s word is something one wants to keep, yet the  current administration is actually capitalizing on Mr. M.T. Suit’s legendary prevarications to the tune of billions depending on who you blow as much as who you know. This essay does not seem to elicit peace which in these days may have become an even more pertinent issue to discuss, vis a vis - have. What i've learned is that i cannot give peace if i do not have peace. Just how does one go about having peace, unlike having a woman who can often be wildly diverse in her concepts of belonging, like ma. Peace however, that is more like a blood sport which requires no team, no permissions, no time - you just focus. Then again, is saying “i have peace” adequate to take possession of such¿ We’ve nearly established that those 6 men holding as much wealth as the bottom 7 billion humans alive have needed little more than a surprisingly similar assertion “it’s mine” - poof - ipso facto - welcome to the white ages.

What is not clear to me is how they got so many to agree to the difference between pilfering from the till, and the enforcement of such as anything other than an absurd bastardization of our marketplace. As much as the grinning baboons parading as commentary/corporate shills want to describe our lot as something other than a horrid ice burg gash in Starship Earth the reality is much more simple. They need us, we do not need them. Just as my heart’s hunger to have a woman is now where near enough scratch to turn the tide of love so too is the ruling class anything but deposed for no other reason than lacking a winning hand. Voila - poof - ipso facto - BOYCOTT the shit out of the lying skanks - and goosing the Dupont bottom line with toybomb decals is not depriving mr. m.t. suit of a thing. have your bliss, have your self respect, have your love, have your peace - all those things the chimera of consumer addiction have never nourished or manifested. The scrutiny you are enduring by some pencilneck geek’s concept of technological adroitness pales against the incomprehensible stupidity of apple selling a product that is not loaded with the finest dictionary immediately translatable into all human language. So if i can’t have peace, maybe i should shoot for patience - another blood sport which requires little or no visible means of support. I could probably get a lot more done, not the least most especially with regards my quixotic quest to the only worthy dream of any male worth his salt, to live in that land of milk and honey where i have a woman.

I’m a little confused, do we even know if it is possible to have a woman¿ i know what it is to not have a woman, so i picture myself half-way home. It was not having peace which has allowed me to learn what i don’t know about peace, though that is as close as i’ve gotten; i find the emptiness oddly comforting, even a little inspiring. I wonder how much i could learn by knowing less about other things¿ Funny that; if this were true, knowing as little as i know about woman, i’d again be halfway-home. I think we’re getting somewhere what if all the copious records collection of it-ain’t-none-of-your-business has caused the geeks to sit back and wonder about what they haven’t learned from their conspicuous consumer collection¿ Sadly, i could give a fuck - a personal defect. To have love in my heart is somewhat stymied by the attention necessary to devise a language with which to explain this to the haves who haven’t been able to divine what i would happily answer should they ever grow a pair and ask to my face. I’m suspecting the illusion that anyone can have anything is a myth - a fable woven by loving parents to jolly children who begin to wonder what happened to their mutts. Object permanence became a metric by which smart people found patterns, a scientific effort that was supposed to alleviate suffering but like many events involving fire and meat was hijacked by a family member looking for the fattest piece food. Look up the story of Bernais, nephew to Sigmund Freud first Scientologist to be cleared. This surveillance is bi-directional, and if anyone reading this doubts there was an unseen hand keeping this from you as long as possible, you’ve never met my agent.

What, you don’t think i could have an agent¿ Fuck you, go read some other body whimpering about what he can’t have, see what i care. You can begin to see why i respect my agent a lot, mostly when she takes my calls. Then again i could be lying and trying to inflate my numbers so i can have everything i ever wanted and wouldn’t have to rationally rant my sublimated defeats into semi-fictional commentary. It is now closing in on 3 hours that i have paid to better understand have. I like having a computer, and it doesn’t please me that apple may take back the three hours i used, but fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. I guess that’s why they are making the big bucks, because they can. I’ve seen it, rich and poor; loved them both, but if and when it comes down to it, would i sacrifice a cigarette butt to see a celebrity or spend an hour shooting the shit with my neighbor - hand’s down i’d say Miguel Angel. Those things i cherish have dwindled and dwindled more while Bob Dylan is singing “Congratulations, for making me wait, Congratulations, now it’s too late.” So i guess the paradox of being owned by that which is yours is one that will haunt, or hunt us to extinction. I have the pleasure of puzzling through this time with you - whoever you are. That is something that can never be taken away from me, and i’ll likely go around the barricade which prevents me from storing these fragile symbols only representing vaguely the pleasure of having had this fun with you. Thank you. 

“If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.” - Howard Hawks, channeling Ernest Hemingway 

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have not - the sonnet

being black is not a death sentence, but close.

murdered by a bunch of fucking haters

who don’t need guns - they can’t tell friends from foes

protecting ignorance using their fears.

let us kill all those with hate in their hearts!

But wouldn’t that be a hateful thing to do¿

And that rank odor of my hateful parts

i run from like the piquant ode d’poo 

maybe i’m war waiting for armistice?

maybe i’m peace and not waiting at all¿

maybe birth was enough to have everything?

and death just reward for having a ball.

I’ve not wanted a lot of what i’ve had;

were what’s left at peace, i’d be kinda glad

jts 09/22/2017

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

∞

future present - an essay / past present - the sonnet

I arrived at this present future moments ago - a gallery in Mexico whose owner like all artists of merit is searching for more time to work. My business model allows for adjustments, and our two purposes coincided. I am writing at his front desk awaiting the client who will offset such demands by buying his work - but that is in the future. I now know where to empty my bladder - always a future eventuality for those who are years’ challenged. My last drawing has left its mooring and for better or worse i bid thee bon voyage. As ever one would hope to end any 6 month relationship having learned something, but i fear my choice of subjects for my present drawing belies such optimism. What i was thinking about when i woke up today were the parts of the valley Maria Sabina looked at and whether i am capable of intuiting the profound expression in her quiet determined face. Ah well, no sense getting worked up, or as some might say “buying trouble.” If i am able, it will be done, and if not something close - meaning i’ll be foisted on my own petard of excoriating judgement about something i just spent 6 months loving. I have found that writing is an essential function of my creative process, and consistent with my unique right brain/left brain civil war. Just like the hunger to find a loving image to faithfully internalize, or regurgitate, or any of the other equally bizarre interpretations of graphic/plastic arts, writing nourishes me in ways that objet d’art are unable to. Each activity works for me as a lens to consider the manifest complexities of this life and therefore give better understanding to that interminable quest for self-awareness, for knowing the heart or mind of another is a virtual impossibility in this manifestation of spirit.

As much as i’d like to fancy myself immune from the opinion of others, its indelicate presumption festers and goads me to further growth, or greater clarity about the human i have become and am becoming. What is there to know about the caverns of one’s being, or are we collectively no more than that progression of snapshots the ruling class has compiled of us each supposedly aiding in the protection of ourselves from ourselves, but more likely some sort of elaborate “chutes and ladders” game resulting in our certain separation from time, independence, imagination, love etc., etc., etc. What fascinates me is how difficult it has been for me to arrive at even the barest of outlines of that celebrated unconscious our society’s experts have posited, expounded and even cured but never presented in any tangible fashion. I am often mystified that our mute acquiescence to surveillance amounts to more data collected about our behaviors than is readily accessible to ourselves unless you happen to be a system administrator with the “keys to the kingdom” and writable media or permission to transmit such as those demigod technocrats, from whose ranks the freedom fighters of tomorrow are emerging - Thank You Mr. Edward Snowden. The gallery has now been put in order for the day’s culture traffic and the owner has receded into his emerging future - the “table rasa” of fear every creative spirit faces when commencing that peculiar process in which artists of all stripes seem unable to resist. How the fuck does this pertain to future, past or present, you might be asking yourselves. If so you’ve just made my day. 

I’m of the mind there are not near enough questions in the world we inhabit. So much so, i’m horribly self-conscious about presuming on your time with assertions of any kind. Yet the question of what our world will look like in 50 years without having made the effort to establish a question beachhead in this world of knowns. But just like my 1st aerospace lead Doug W_____ so sagely opined too long ago, “it’s not who you know, it’s who you blow.” However keen his Machiavellian instincts may have been, he missed the orientation by about 180 degrees, and future of our world has been pinned to a pinnacle of successive ass-kissers whose seeming competence is predicated wholly on one’s ability to deliver on high while demanding the best from all who would follow. While writing this, it occurs to me how much hay could be made from what i don’t say, and that i would have to ask who the fuck cares. Mr. M.T. Suit is the preeminent  ass kisser, just ask his financier, Mother Russia, but what for me nails the logic of my admittedly dubious concept of our collective straits, is how this narcissistic baboon managed to garner so many hard bit, hard charging, hard up yankee razorbacks to pucker up and engage in such a carnal pyramid of fakeness. Then again he could be right, or left given his consistency, about me being a sore loser. If that were true, rather than stretching to do my best as an equal opportunity menace to sacred cows everywhere, mostespeciallymyown - i’d be asses and elbows on the “information super-highway currying favor by conjuring witty and acerbic repartee so much the rage in the talking head echo chamber that constitutes our current media stream. Instead, i’m questing to enlarge my contribution to those around me and at the same time utilize the fuzzy logic my “loving/doing their best parents” kindly beat into me during my wayward youth, and which i now allow as lead sled dog in a world that may forget what snow is in the lifetime of my brother’s youngest grandchild.

It is that world which compels me to consider such a threadbare topic as imagining the future. Nikolas Tesla “we may live to witness unimaginable horrors” This was prior to the collapse of NYC with the end of the twin trade towers. It is hard to accept there are millions of teenagers alive today who have never known a world prior to the current American Empire. It is the "corporate inevitability" which Arundhati Roy speaks of that sticks in my craw, for along with all the saber rattling and fake as fuck exhortations to fear we are at a nexus in time where the greatest transformation of our species could as easily, or is as easily transpiring as we speak. Your call. I was very fortunate to be raised in part by a thinking man who demanded the same from me - not to believe as he, but to use what mind i have to consider my world without being prey to others or preying on others. He was an existentialist which to sum is to be responsible in the same vein as Rumi’s quote “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.” I refuse to surrender to the self serving concept of our divided reality when there is so little difference between all of us. There is no mother on earth that does not have the biological hardwiring to help her child survive, even the emotional ciphers devoid of affect resort to the intellectual equivalent if only to remain in camouflage. What amazes me, is how easily we have been torn from each other. I am not amazed because i have not personally willfully, even cruelly separated myself from those who have professed great love for me, but after time and contemplation the murderous rage so close to our human skin abates and even the most heinous of betrayals in my life now inspire little more than a cruel indifference. What is truly amazing is how bad i feel for not finding some way to surmount that indifference with the flag of peace which i so vocally and cravenly pronounce as mine own.

What bullshit, for you see the charm of existentialism or any level of self awareness is not dissimilar to Gertrude Stein’s observation “there is no there there,” or even the “i am you as you are he and we are all together” of Beatle lore. The best way i have found to confront my own abundant blind spots, is to accept my resistance to admit the vilest amongst us as brethren - essentially it is my fault the world is as fucked up as it is. This personal unkindness is a double edged sword, for as deeply as i am able to peer into my own murderous abyss of rancor and befriend that beast, the sooner i will be able to dissipate those prideful, needless barriers to warm open heartedness which Mr. Leonard Cohen so sagely summed as “love is the only engine of survival.” Oddly the thorniest of anxieties pale compared to the challenge of being kind to oneself, especially if that self is intractable in penetrating the veil of personal darkness. If there is to be a future of any worth, it will not be from bombing each other into 'sticks and stone' battles over boundaries in some purulent oozing environment. Our only hope for a future worthy of the majestic mystery of this planet and its inhabitants is based on those whose memories that go back into our species origins. As much as it is good for any leader to stand and say “we put a man on the moon,” we have yet to hear a leader declare we have conquered war and are resolved to find ways to mend our oceans, heal our rivers and nurture our abundance. Until this happens we are no more than jesters for an evil royalty in a twisted court full of palace intrigue, inbred gene pools and riches that are believed to reside on servers in the sky. Fuck the cloud, love someone today - you will feel better.

Lao Tzu - “if you are depressed, you are living in the past; if you are anxious, you are living in the future, you will be anxious; if you are at peace, you are living in the present.

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past present - the sonnet

why does the past seem to happen again

and again¿ is sadness DNA made?

what made DNA¿ is it from heaven?

will we be more punished because we prayed?

one asked how we see past but not future?

i hope such questions will be remembered

while askers be fabric for our culture

if so, then our days may not be numbered.

however “past is prologue” has been heard

enough times to justify hard choices

to kill, to die - so we may cull the herd.

power behind closed doors - only voices.

what if all our pasts are the illusion

and pollution caused our real conclusion¿ 

jts 09/15/2017

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

∞