Jack Spratt

In love with God
it is not our’s to wonder why 
but to live and die for love
& we’re always crossing the River Styx
. . . in one way or another
. . . a lunatic I always look to see what the moon’s doing, Mother Luna

C. G. Jung, it is now obvious, has had a significant influence on what I’ve become in my wandering’s; never linear. His thesis is an attempt to integrate what the Sufi’s knew before there were books; making my admix of male and female one of the prime integrations of the psyche. Apparently I am as much woman as man by inclination and thinking. Knowing better now why we as children are essentially pets. . . .

It is my truth, not all truth, as a photographer become a writer I am, in a sense the mortar and life the pestle into which life has proffered experiences that make of me a strange being after all. 

Or. 

Should I say of myself I am more whole than I was yesterday given the nature and kind of events experience then. . . .wiped away by the advent of today's events which have yet to occur. Brother Sun & Sister Moon; St. Francis and St. Claire have yet to dance today. Or in another way, let’s say, to waltz around the clock. 

Long abiding, possibly dyslexic & misunderstood; I think Jesus said the poor and war will always be with us. Then that the meek will inherit the world. Men are solar thinking they can control the world by power and women are lunar knowing that they will eventually win by persistence. Neither one nor the other will prevail but together in equality we will have a prayer of survival. 

Many if not all my questions, or prayers, have been answered now. M is doing well but not up to par. As expected she is courageous, as I am for myself, facing the depredations of cancer; she has it and I don’t know yet. In any case life will go on with or without us together or apart my sense being our love for one anther is more meaningful than either of us can now know. 

Hemingway in his “To Have and Have Not” expressed the question differently and unsatisfactorily in comparison to what the title suggests . . . something on the order of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be.” To me these are parables stated in few words that I wrestled with long after first reading and by orders of magnitude, in my opinion, more complex than those attributed to Jesus. 

We have life in the sense and to the degree that we are able to define it differently than our parents. Most don’t,  accepting their parents definitions a definitive/final. 

The trials and errors of time, all life living combined, invoke alternate suggestions = ‘to have not’ in a era of change. Which for me and for many far wiser is the true nature of the universe: change, in the sense of continual growth or expansion. 

“To be” is essentially, at least alone as a statement is okay but to ask “or not to be” implies -- and this is my personal conclusion -- I am not comfortable with how we define and express love: relationship, the meaning and purpose of life . . . do I knowing this, move forward and attempt to define what I value or, merely accept the crowd’s conclusion?

I write for myself. What I write grew out of a personal journal essentially suggested as a method to achieve sanity in my grief for the death’s of my children. True of all change especially that caused by trauma: grief. Is the opportunity to go further than one ever imagined. The Chinese, historically spoke of crisis as opportunity not punishment. 

Kicking and screaming I’ve shared most, if not all, of my process. Or at the very least the most significant, if taken whole and without objection to rage, sexual revelations, etc., defines a process available to anyone in pain and suffering to be come “sane.” Inexpensively without the aid of crutches: church, state, science. 

Regarding my choices I’ve never been indifferent to anyone, though I might for cause ignore them. Anger, depression and rage have at times overwhelmed my essential choice not to be indifferent towards them while they appear to me to be neither hateful, loveable but merely indifferent to themselves. Moving between the polar opposites I’ve come to define myself with a sense of truth that I am able to live with and control by choice. Simply said, it is not what we say but what we do that matters. If we kill it is because of fear. If we love fearlessly we are what is love.

. . . Where I failed is that I was angry my children left me. In my pain and suffering I came to realize there is very much about life beyond my control or influence: I am helpless. Yet there remains that sense-think-intuit-feel about many things I can influence and change: my self and my perceptions. The rest is the wisdom to know the difference and get on with life. The Serenity Prayer expressed differently or applied to the truth of my life in flesh and blood truth.

My essential wealth and power is knowing I have enough. Would I do it over again? Yes for this truth I have; having me. My love of truth, not exclusive to me, is greater than the love of any power. “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”--Albert Einstein

120909 03:57 wonder
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved