Eve came first and Adam after and from her

120921 19:14 longing

It seems now we all keep secret ideals and ambitions. Yet for me it is these 'goals' that I have eschewed and wonder why I'm talking about it? I can and have talked for hours with others individually who seemed curious about most everything -- not about me -- but about themselves and their sense and conclusions regarding current events: individual, community, global and then cosmic. 

Perhaps the last word describes my interest best: "Cosmic." Since for me all things living are interrelated. At times imagining us as cells within the consciousness of God or part of the whole body infinitesimal . . . at times, mostly benign at others: cancerous. I love individuals but not herds, the latter best describes how we are dealt with by those who purport to govern us.

120922 00:07

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.” --C. S. Lewis

Of some authors I am more attentive and others I persistently return frequently . . . especially in times of disturbance . . . creping from beneath the rocks of my intransigence. Whereupon I find the little yellow rubber ducky I play with in the bath tub amphibious a frog that can fly souring amongst the stars returning with wheels upon which I tow it around like a pull toy then it turns into something else altogether and tows me. 

Would it were so simple to explain to myself, much less anyone else, the relationship between myself and God. Lest you think I arrogate anything special about myself let me remind you there was one death -- sufficient & enough -- Jesus' sacrifice for us: you & me & all mankind . . . and i know his choice to die for us perfect. 

. . . not simply because my roots are buried deeply within what we all call Christianity but nearly equally within the others who also lived in abject curiosity regarding the sources of all things. 

I would know the evil with me as well as the joy versus pleasure issues merciful turned merciless for as he; C. S. Lewis said:

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” 
"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."
“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”
“Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”
"Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful."
"Morality or duty...never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others."

. . . and here i stop bewildered that I never saw the meanings he now seems intended, C. S. Lewis,  and remember Keith Miller's influence regarding why I have being and write more for you instead of my former -- and too recently abandoned -- self loathing and doubt. . . . 

Could it be that unable to walk upon water instead I am merely chuckling the bubbles beneath my naked feet lofting me levitated? Whoever said that God & Jesus never laughed? That either or both never played the Joker, jackanapes as well wept, weeping? 

. . . brief aside: were Jesus able to walk upon water then God was part of the fact/act/behavior since water is unique to us in all the Universe -- for now. I fell to pondering a seldom used resource: my considerable collection of reference materials -- now replaced, essentially, from my last flight away from someone I loved and continue to -- who put me into a punishing mode: silence. Silence like that which Merton spoke of assuaged by the tidal wave, what we now commonly call a: tsunami of God's response. Her silence was to me the most severe mode of punishment ever endured by me inflicted initially by my mother after she beat my beloved baby sister nearly to death. Mother presumed our innocent behavior incest. She had battered me from infancy and I sense, now, that the beating never satisfied her need of control and/or dominance -- again, I sense I was surrogate for my father who either drunk or sober was insensitive at least, at worst simply a fool. 

It is not unusual for a spouse to leave the formerly beloved at the advent of change . . . what follows is a significant to me list: Susan became an Episcopal Priest, a role I thought myself too stupid to qualify for, and had fallen to dismissal of, given my evenly divided nature between secular and sacred conservancy. In this confession I am entering the viscera of my being and finding the chemistry of synapse -- the how and why we are able to think. With Carol or Rosemary it was the punishment of betrayal the first by not including me in an essential choice to allow her daughter to live with us. The latter because she could beat me up with her mouth, invade my need for privacy; not simply to masturbate since with her I'd never had an orgasm not her fault but mine since had I had intercourse with my mother the same result would have become obvious; both terrified me by their violence. 

Least I wander too far away from where I was last evening before falling stupefied with exhaustion to rest awhile . . . the central locus of my consciousness is death . . . the why, wherefore, when and how informs my curiosity until now. Those who love and accept me as I am jackanapes and divine are those who tell me how well they apprehend me. Something I never was conscious of until in tears said; "I want my husband." I was never to my understanding her husband as I understood the definition; cultural, societal, Biblical or otherwise. Yet from the first rejection of my touch and or attention otherwise I'd been informed by word and deed that I was an interloper in her life and not equal. 

I will not voluntarily burn anyone at the stake. Yet I have and do when I transpose my consciousness into their shoes. I would immolate all of the parties involved to liberate you from your self denial and indifference, or mere slavish slavery to the authorities you worship and idolize. I never presume to judge or define my sense of your "lists." Yet I can, at times, touch the broken connection between who you are and where you can or could go given the effort to know yourself as well as I know me. 

Final reference to myself: I would frequently attempt to get mother to acknowledge me intelligent enough to write; then unconscious of what I would write about, but filled with fissions of fear that I'd write about our non-relationship; myself as her 'punching bag.'

As a man I've never been fully homophobic receiving more, "I want your to make love with me . . " from men than women. Sincerely I was honored by their attention and closed the opportunity saying so. It follows that I may have had a homosexual using my mother as a shield (fag hag) but it is irrelevant what people do with their sexuality . . . I . . . In fact. Am more concerned with their soul. Never in judgement since I know God well enough to know it is God's job to judge us in the end. Not mine. If it sounds like Jesus it isn't because I ain' Him. I am me and quite happily so. 

Microsoft Update--Reboot 03:20

While waiting I read Job: 3 "Job's complaint to God" . . . I would recommend it to you since we are in Deep Kimchee -- "Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good." --C. S. Lewis -- I use the word "Kimchee" not in deference to my beloved M &/or Lila but in homage to my father who occassionally used it instead of shit. 

I find the limits of space I invoke while writing indicative of how I began: writing a photography column for The Providence Journal in the early '70s. God or Susan's forgiveness, is to me now irrelevant since I've never asked for nor been given Carol McCabe's . . . and it is she who gave birth to me who now writes with ecstasy -- something she once indicated hating me for. May God richly bless you all and especially those women of my life. Knowing, for whatever reason, Eve came first and Adam after and from her.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved