111228 07:52

Were I a tree fallen in a forest bereft  of sentient hearing
would I have made a sound or merely succumb in silence?
The consciousness, I adore and call God, hears.

The center of my attention resides as much in the wise as the silent unknown. Their legacy is acted out in behaviors their progeny loudly proclaim.  Wonder. What would the actual return of Jesus look like? Would He thrive or be crucified by indifference or otherwise torn asunder?

The world into which we have being is rent with conflict and holds the ability to render itself extinct. We have the collective consciousness of what can turn the tide towards linear creation versus universal annihilation. 

Let Mikey, Jesus or God do it? Really!

We individually hold the divine within us. Some small particle smothered beneath fear, driving addictions for material wealth. Rituals of avoidance celebrated: theft, murder, rape enslavement applauded and institutionalized codified. Our hands, eyes, minds are all that God has to make a world in which love is possible. Not impossible.

Curious about who God really is I swim cross current through the rivers of other ideologies--conflicted in competition to prevail. And sense that it is we, here and now, who could become the prophets we followed to one another instead of killing another.

There are many wisdom books, none is definitive, addressing our current truth. Laws create more offenders yet kindness, empathy, mercy, forgiveness and compassion create and sustain life.

There is no all inclusive Brand Name for that.
Yet

111228 09:44

I wonder why hospice hasn’t kicked me to the curb or thrown me beneath the wheels of a passing bus. With each degree and kind of death I’ve experienced there the net result has been a rebirth newly configured. In this regard I’ve chewed on the rock of Jesus’ remark to Nicodemus about being “born again.”

I was recently given a cease and desist order from hospice not to post images collected there. The concern was voiced that it would provoke HIPPA equerries regarding privacy.

I wonder now, and while expunging the images so lovingly collected, at my peace. Nearly 24 hours later, absent any wondrous insights, I am convicted that it is the patients not the institution or myself that I care about. And at that, no matter what I photograph, it is like throwing marshmallows against a stone wall. The best camera I own is between my ears.

My memory is like a vault filled with images/videos, of what I’ve seen. Impossible to publish otherwise than describe. Yet in the process of keeping a journal since 1985 I’ve discovered that it is not me but WE who matter most. Photography places a frame around truth and freezes it in time. Time, being fluid, moves on and the evidence remains locked. Writing on the other hand invokes a fluid and expansive universe of possible directions.

I’ve been told; “If you want to write: read.” I don’t have any sense of success with writing or photography save in that with time, effort, maturity and more reading, I’m better able to discern the bits and pieces of potential that make more sense in a context outside myself. The best part being that the experience of joy is greater than anything I can share by way of ‘evidence.’

Being “Born Again” is something I am acquainted with. I liken the experience to a skipping rock. As wonderful and astonishing as they were, they never lasted. No one can sustain ecstasy forever. Joy--yes. Being a rock flung across the still pond of my silence, skipped once, twice and maybe a few more until entropy submerged my consciousness into the mirrored depths beneath my flight. Of late the rock has skipped and then disappeared--evaporated--ego become vapor.

Through my lies to others, worse to myself, I’ve stumbled and lurched into print; image or word. I do not want your acknowledgment of me. I do what I do because I want you to see yourself as precious and free; beloved of God with no should's or ought's. To know God we need to accept the height, width, breadth and depth of ourselves with acceptance then loving action.

--Horace
"Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth."
“He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.”

--Henry Miller (1891-1980)
"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written."
"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."
"Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal."
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”
“No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.”
“One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
“Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.”
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
"The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts."
"When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently."