In any and all events it is shame to lay waste to a mind, body, much less a soul. Yet we hold the measure and means to do both wholesale unto extinction, ourselves and all life known, in the bargain. To aspire health, wealth and wisdom seem impossibilities in this time and place near pointless. In our brief history and culture, a thin and inconsequential veneer to our home, upon the marble we call earth. Within the larger contest of all marbles seen and unseen. Questing for life by our definition “divine?” Our bodies alone are filled with life inimical to our well being held in check by curious defenses at least 90% our responsibility and participation.
Our sense of peace and equanimity.
Do I protest the Factory Farming of our psyches or bodies? No. Since it is ideal, at least for me, to Love my Enemy and grant that enemy the right, no matter singular or corporate, to exist as I do. Free, whole and well. Call that Liberal to which I would quietly say, ‘No it is conservative of my sense the Truth spoken, immutable, by He who I call brother. And not He alone but for all the prophets of Freedom to be at all individual.’
In the final moments of our time together, my father choose to shred my right, in whole or part minuscule, to his estate based upon choices not inimical to me but to him. By choice and chance the list grew intolerable. He weeping sober myself silent gazing and grazing the content of his intention. My sole surviving daughter called a Nigger so offensive I fell speechless and not simply for my knowing we are all biracial stemming from an original pair most likely black in origin. Or that I provided him with no heirs to carry the ‘family name’ forward knowing too well my age and the tubal ligation of the bride of my youth; taste and choice in women thereafter.
For a lifetime before when questioning the origin of our sir name he’d say, “We’re from a long line of chicken thieves and barn burners!” And I when more nearly mature than before knew the name differently. And not for alone the Spratt who lived on Wall Street in the home of The Exchange property become; chased and badgered with the rhyme implying theft of alms for the poor who he, under Tammany, administered. Or the one who lived on Long Island holding and breeding race horses and slaves.
By inference or implication I knew we came from Vikings originally, possibly Berserkers, who raped, pillaged, killed, maimed and/or burned our victims. Then in a latter time settled in Scotland, Ireland, England when they were ignorant the collective “Great Britain.” Where the rhyme is recorded, initially, in A Child's Alphabet of Friends.
No. Frankly I am bored by heritage only fascinated by legacy. The bequest from generation to generation by deeds not fortune or fame. Mythology oft bespeak truths too fantastic to believe yet in simplicity remain a thorn in our sole; a stigmata in the soul.
If I weep now, for I do, the privilege of serving the Lord’s Blood in a pewter cup, possibly consecrated by a Spratt, Dean of Westminster Abby and buried in the vestibule. Curious. Lady Antonia Fraser confirmed my suspicions while I was the only photographer to ever get them together without bushwhack, she and Harold Pinter. He later allowed me access to the stage upon which I photographed a dress rehearsal for Trinity Repertory Theater an American premier, a play whose name escapes me now, so long ago it was.
A point of order and recent--at the moment--discovery: I might well be a fly, yellow jacket or mud wasp pollinating from origin either waste or glory. In any case I was never satisfied to record the light reflected from anything but seeing/seeking the glowing fire from within.
Let us now praise famous women/men who before us stood defiant and self-derived the obscenity called education provided vocational pap for nascent slaves to serve “divine rights” of Royalty or Politicians to so rule our lives.
And in the end of my quest regarding our sir name I fell fascinated by a legend or myth beneath the one in question: “Jack Spratt could eat no fat..” It was suggested that there was before a “Jack The Giant Killer.”
Farther I did forgive my father. In doing so became able to forgive myself the fury and welcomed my poverty as St. Francis did to his satisfaction.
Grinning to anyone who will listen I describe the lascivious imaginings of misspending his wealth indiscriminately fathering children with women of many colors and proclivities populating a world soon to be no more.
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