Fishing Without Permission 2025. Acrylic on cardboard, 11 x 14"
Below is the first chapter of my upcoming book Poor Ronnie’s Anti-Ethnic Cleansing Almanac. I’m in the proofreading stage now, and have read the manuscript over several times. I like to paste a chapter here to search deeper for errors. Years ago when I began my foray into self-publishing, my graphic designer partner convinced me to get a print out of the manuscript and make edits from that. She knew from industry experience that editing on the computer was never thorough, and hard copy made all the difference professionally.
Something has changed after 20 years. I still print the hard copy and do several read overs with many corrections. However, these days I finish my proofread on the computer. In this case, here. The wiring in my brain has changed. Blogging and writing on social media has flipped the script, so to speak. I “see” mistakes clearer on a digital platform. Pretty neat. For instance, I thought the chapter below was complete, until I pasted it here from the InDesign document. Several more corrections were made. Some, very obvious.
The book should be available in late-March. Included will be 50+ images of subject-appropriate paintings made during the project.
“We are disenfranchised. Voting at the federal level must cease because it simply does not matter, and we have to stop being idiots. I have faith that universal poverty will reign once again, though not like it does now, with thousandaires collecting pensions, after making enough hush money at their jobs to maintain a trillion dollar budget slated for bomb factories and military fascism. 61% of deaths from Israel’s cowardly aerial bombardment of Gaza are civilian (December, 2023 statistic). Deaths proportionately higher than all wars of the 20th century. Yup, including the World Wars. If we still feel the need (force) to pay taxes to a rogue government (U.S.) supporting an Apartheid state (Israel), then that is your/my problem because we refuse to become impoverished.
Our paralysis is born of fear and quite understandable. We’re not heroes. Many of us can’t even bake a decent loaf of bread, let alone search and occupy free wifi hotspots. Furthermore, our ideas of poverty are often formed by what we see in depressed sections of cities where legislated annihilation has killed off imagination—while our tax dollars deny the poor preventative health wisdom, guaranteed housing, meaningful employment, they cover the retirement pension and prostate surgery for a three-star general killer of innocents.
Poverty can be very creative. In fact, it needs to be in order to thrive. One must become a full-time accountant, handy-person, butler, maid, beggar, dreamer, aristocrat of the spirit… It takes a lot of awake-time hours to avoid vicariously murdering children half a world away. Though it can be done. We were twenty-somethings not so long ago. Have we forgotten that a hand-to-mouth existence was doable? We were more open to love, more tolerant, more just. And poor! No insurance, no car payment, no mort(death)gage(pledge), no prospects actually, until they ritualistically appeared under official contracts with endless caveats to obey.
One big contractual double-bind: We must work to eat and afford shelter, while our labor is pick-pocketed every payday by federal and state governments. A 1.5 trillion dollar portion of the people’s earnings are set aside for the federal government to, among other grotesquely violent maintenances, allocate bunker-busting (school and hospital annihilating) bombs for an Apartheid regime, and corrupt state treasuries to fund NY governor junkets to the same psychotic ethnostate.
I don’t like it one bit. I don’t want to be responsible for ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The only non-violent way I can think of, in order to free me of the burden of contributing to the massacre of Palestinians, is to get poor, and quickly. Israel is killing 160 kids a day, and they’re using U.S. shrapnel weaponry gifted from the White House and Congress to achieve their maniacal goal.
So I’ve opted to figuratively divorce my wife until a ceasefire is initiated and the majority of Israeli, Hamas and U.S. governments stand in world judgement like Goebbels and friends at the Hague. Rose (my wife) isn’t ready to live with a joint income under $19,000, which is the poverty line for couples not wanting to buy in the double-bind of taxes to support foreign ethnic-cleansings. However, I can begin to scrub my conscience clean while managing a single life earning under $15,000/year.
Here is where the creative living ideas need to come alive and thrive. Fortunately, I am a competent cook, so I won’t starve. Brown rice is a nutritious and affordable base for meals.
Divorcée Rose has offered me a room in the garret and 40 square feet of studio space for $410 a month. But I’ll still need an income, and painting proceeds aren’t going to cut it. Therefore I offer my services as handyman, landscaper, cake baker—whatever chore I am capable of, I will do for you for minimum wage, transportation time included (it might take a while to walk to your house). Under-the-table pay of course. Under the killing table. If I can live like a cheap monk, while simultaneously loving Rose to live how she feels she needs to, then at least I can pretend the killers aren’t extorting a dime from me. I’ll live below the poverty line, a $15,000 and under lifestyle. That’s $1,250 monthly. I won’t partake in the same benefits of money that Rose gets into. I’ll bring a flask to bars and fill up on dry cereal before sitting down with her at restaurants. I’ll make birthday gifts like I used to when nobody expected me to receive more than I could consume. I shall walk more than drive, yet account for every penny when I choose the latter. While figuratively divorced, I can charge Rose for certain tasks that lie outside normal nuptial responsibilities (such as replacing a furnace filter outside of the garret), or foregoing rice and lentil dinner to prepare Chateaubriand and capers in the salad at her (paid for) request.
I will account for every penny earned and spent, a veritable Poor Ronnie’s Anti-Ethnic Cleansing Almanac.
It might be nigh impossible, but I’ll try with might and main. I just met with my pretend lawyer. Rose needs to sign some papers…”
