120922 08:31 Self Destruct
Ambition is never for something; it is to be something. My longing as author, is for us, writer/reader to have an interior life worth dying for.
At birth I began a long and uncertain course towards this moment; thinking now this moment the best ever. I think again and realize that the moments passed this moment, simply said; gets better that the last one.
“It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency.” --Thomas Merton
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." --Mark Twain
"The nature of a society is largely determined by the direction in which talent and ambition flow--by the tilt of the social landscape." -- Eric Hoffer
“When ambition ends, happiness begins.” --Toshiro Kanamori, 4th grade teacher
120922 15:12
At times I feel that the essence of what I intended to write is stated. In a sense: a loose armature such as Rodin would use to add clay upon to form a full sculpture; for example Balzac or St. John. Additionally I have rediscovered the sensual pleasure of reference dictionaries and realized that I'd better grab the OED in miniature with magnifying glass.
I tend to write in an inverted pyramid form -- top down -- important parts first then in descending order, though I rarely follow that to the "letter" so to speak. It is as I was taught or suggested by Carol McCabe who being a fellow journalist knew the form. Add to which she introduced me to Tom Wolf and Gay Talese thenceforth to an astonishing number of "black humorist." My initial attraction was to her self and smarts; we fell in love later on for which, as indicated, I have had no luck forgiving myself. Nor have I been able to ask her forgiveness for abandoning her pregnant. The child was aborted in New York, N. Y.
It was she who taught me to interview people, gave me an opportunity to begin writing a photography column and in general was able to take the stories I discovered and render them whole and complete to a prize winning degree. She also suggested that I write as I speak; I'm quick on my feet when there is an opportunity to engage someone who seems available.
In these pages I've begun to do what I long desired, to write, but it essentially remained buried in mother's accusations of being; "to stupid to get in out of the rain . . . etc., Inc."
Unaccountably Carl Sandburg comes to mind. He was one of many she ridiculed. I remain unclear about her interest in the arts; after all she did cry when Billie Holiday died. However she was brilliant at accounting, was multilingual and made sure that I was exposed to all the arts from a very young age. Including "Can-Can" on Broadway at twelve . . . I hasten to add that hers were not the only panites I admired. Of course as a result of witnessing "Can-Can" . . . not the original pantaloons but real briefs with ruffles too!
What ever you may think of my maturity by age; I don't ever want to grow up.
Her crimes against my sister and I were deeply extreme, far reaching and detrimental to our education since it is, as I recently discovered, in childhood it was impossible to see a sentence diagramed on a black board with white chalk and not go numb.
I have clearly stated my ambition mercerized in public as well as here. I touch and talk to everyone in my path through the days 'on the outside.' Otherwise I am here keeping house and writing. Oh yes! Researching the highways and byways of wisdom gleaned from quotes across time and all boundaries.
I am no longer contemplating either self destruction or concerned about cancer. Thank you for reading me and I hope either this touches you or someone close to you. Random acts of kindness my be the only kindness another will ever know in their life.
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.” --Lao Tzu
120923 02:33
God does not care how we adorn our bodies but our hearts. It is our mindfulness about others and ourselves that matters most. How we his children live in harmony not chaos . . . God is only a "He" in the generic sense since in our language He stands for all of us: Men, Women, Children; life itself. The periodicity the waking, the sleeping, the living and the dead. All life that ever was, is and will ever be.
I awoke with a title given in a dream; I cannot remember for reasons that are irrelevant to this dialog. Since it is not I who needs repair but all of us. We need to repair ourselves. If we do not there will no longer be life or love but silence . . . the silence of the Moon and stars. And since I saw the Starry, starry night I've loved Vincent Van Gogh . . . mom & dad took me to a massive retrospective of his paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of New York. When? When I was kneel high to a grasshopper. I remember the crowds and being held by both hands peeking between the knees of those adults in font of my eyes standing before me in mute admiration of not just The Starry, Starry Night but all his work. We knew then how to admire and worship genius then. Not merely the humble genius of Vincent but of God; for and of whom Vincent spoke.
"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed. "
“Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.”
"But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things."
"But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live."
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
"How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?"
“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream. ~
"I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse. ... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need."
"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."
"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day."
"I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners."
"It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colors, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important."
"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."
"One of the most difficult things to do is to paint darkness which nonetheless has light in it."
"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others."
"The way to know life is to love many things."
"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?"
--Vincent Van Gogh
. . . what part of Love do you not understand?
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved
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