echoing though the pretty flowers and trees across southwest landscaping I hear the pleas of dogs beaten or tortured frisson's of concern vibrating through my heart to my soles naked upon the tile floors white. 

Helpless

Were it a child I’d bolt from the door in my boxer shorts and enquire why? My approach jocular but deadly for I would rend an adult or adolescent their abuse to not shreds but a greasy smear all that’s left of their theft of a child’s peace.

in the process probably dying of a stroke or heart attack but what other use is my life to me if not spent upon the defense of the helpless?

_____
Journal keeping is one of many ways to find sanity; prayer, meditation and contemplation come to mind as well. To become whole well and healed we need to become something akin to Jesus were He actually still amongst us to ourselves . . . I think so since I see Him everywhere partially, haltingly revealed in others regardless of age, gender or creed. Forget that. Religion has become a product; a blow up plastic party doll and who wants that? 

I would that all young old or in between learn to write. Start with: “Dear God, I wish no longer to live . . . a suicide note. God does house calls actually she/he is never absent but resident in your heart.

--------
I am in considerable pain now. Between over work the needs of too many ‘served’? by too few and miscues wrong injections, prescriptions neglected by them not me and interminable waits humiliate me I’d rather die. Yet in dying would humiliate them not by machine gun but simply entering their office waiting room and interviewing randomly find exactly how many have been there for hours? Then disembowel myself asking anyone with a cel phone to record the event for the nightly news. Even Fox Fucking You Deaf Dumb and Blind TV would suffice. 

. . . an afterthought were we in Cuba I might have a chance of not dying but living since they believe in free medical care. Is that really so bad? Better yet: could I not wire several  bankers jaws together and chain them to myself disemboweling them before myself? See the legislation enabling  bankers to give student loans without end, interest compounded to the point of bankruptcy those they purport to enable their medical education or is it merely the rule of scarcity giving the bankers control of everything including life and death?

120808 09:11 neighborhood   © 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120808 06:56 the crib

Between jest and sincerity I often cannot find the boarder or purpose to what I write or remember of this life lived. Despite everything the pain, the deaths of my friends and children, I remain sincere when I say I am the most blessed of men, or women for that matter.

This I know since I seek such blessing in the lives of others: all of them encountered in the ordinary days become extraordinary now.

The room remains scribed visually. I was alone the shades drawn there where chintz curtains I’ve seen photographs similar and typical of that time the early days of World War II. Beside my crib upon the wall I decorated the little flowers with my excrement drawn from droopy drawers diapers at my knees sodden and filled. The door opened and with joy I greeted the prospect of being loved yet I was not. She the mother of me seized me by the waist and began scrubbing furiously with my face and body the wall.

She’d been gone for hours and hours how can a 2 year old know the count? Years later she asked why I’d touched her cheek gently and then wept withdrawing my finger tips? By her accounting we were in transit between St. Louis and Springfield, Ohio by train and I sat upon her lap. Mute I could not then or now or forever articulate the love I had/have/will always have for her forgiven or not. If I speak of love’s enslavement I know better than most the degrees of acceptance, fate and terminal ends. And oh god how I weep for Daniel Pearl, even now. And the 6 & 60 million slain to say nothing of the author;

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
“I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
“Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.”
"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
"We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different, and yet the same."

--Anne Frank

Why?

For what did we live we disappeared in anonymous death?

I have many videos recorded in my head memories of her as I adored her when calm. Yet then and even know the touch of a woman sets me on edge. Yes and Yes and again Yes; I am unfit for human cohabitation. And still wonder why I did not become a sadist or masochist. She so often at Halloween time suggest that I dress as a girl while dad indifferent recited his misdeeds: the placing of brown paper bags filled with dog shit set afire and the door bell rang and he giggling in the shadows silently laughing as Mom, Dad, Jane or Dick stomped the fire out Spot barking hysterically.

Of life so far I have loved all of it attempting to get it, life, to love itself.

Best remembered I as an adult told mom I might be bipolar to which she replied, “We always wondered what was wrong with you.” I am still laughing.

I am at times overheated the rage incandescent fueling my rage to love and make love available to all life.

The art of writing is like music knowing when to stop and when to pause the silence between the words and notes. But now I am held in a love surpassing all description and a peace I wish for you dear reader. I know, I know it inappropriate to applaud prayer but please help me here should I be silent or put to sleep? I am actually quite gentle when held and petted by an appropriate owner. Not rabid but clean and just a puppy dog. . . . and I will love you forever just like God.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120808 03:53 riot
I have no need to incite riot since those who have stolen our lives do it by themselves. My spies, actually friends both of random or long standing, tell me there are incidents of spontaneous trashing symbols of pride like expensive cars in Germany. The others, coworkers, their children and on and on indicate by choice or declaration the end is soon upon us.

At the moment I would seriously consider castration a blessing to avoid the pain I’m in. I have the best physician available yet between her and her overworked staff things are falling apart for me in terms of attention, medications, and dismissal by fools in congress mandating self protecting legislation to hide their crimes with everything monetary.

Why bother?

For you, for us, the marginalized. Had I all the wealth I would dress in rags and ashes to survive what is coming, no prophecy but knowing the people as I do -- neither threat or promise -- inevitable.  The number of children dying daily has slowly diminished but not by nearly enough. I have a pale and once pretty face or so I’ve been told yet I identify with all life of any and all races, creeds, snakes and snails.

All indications aside I am not of/for/about God but something else I cannot identify yet by extrusion and the attention of a homosexual manager, a Nazi in his faux power to harass the elderly, I sense by becoming less and less consequential that I grow more insightful and less concerned for myself and Annie naked in the streets by his tender attentions than I am for not simply the elderly but all of us.

Pain and death have a begging middle and ending eventually death releases us from the mutilation by greed slowly marginalized into slavery. The greedy have used the method of slow strangulation keeping us by half, then thirds, quarters, then eighths sixteenths alive until now.

I wish I were clever enough to write this as science fiction or faction but I’m not nearly good enough to do than. At the same time knowing insanity too well by any evaluation or definition I wish I were wrong and completely out of my mind. Yet knowing Alzheimer's and dementia in all its phases degrees and kinds and eventual grotesque ending I know our eventual fate inevitable. We the meek will inherent the earth simply because we will have no identity and being unburdened by poverty pass swiftly through the eye of the needle impassable by wealth.

There is a place for us but not for them who will for now be eaten alive. Be kind to them for they know not what they have done, worst they don’t care. The power beneath or behind THE POWER are black arts, cooking the budget, the statistics concerning who can or won’t work. Then too there are the black armies of thugs. The kind who could burst into my front door and kill myself and Annie or make both of us drool or be mindless by injection -- instant heart attacks. In everything I write I write fully conscious that by the previous administration I could be called an “enemy combatant” and merely disappeared. Death is inevitable and it would be a kindness, perhaps, for Annie and I to self immolate on the Supreme Court steps? Or hang ourselves from the door knobs. How could I do that to Annie? We’ve had a brief but wonderful life together and as all love must end sometime why not now?

I sense our souls already saved and that is enough for me.

I’d give my stateroom on the Ark of the New Covenant simply that no one else suffer the horror ahead. Perhaps the young will learn soon enough to forestall the consequence of endless greed. If we stopped using credit cards the economy would cost 10% less in short time but at that we are sandwiched between two kinds of thieves: those who have and want more; and those who have not and want anything they can steal.

As for Annie, she’s a rescue cat, I guess I am one as well, who cares.

Could it be that I am a private scout for the dark wrathful army of God? Oh sweet Jesus driving a Lexus taking on an iPhone do I love to play with words.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

if i now weep for joy or grief it is for those who reading me left a trail or comment
In reality for me to write is merely a child scribbling upon the night sky moving stars
randomly in joy & this child has known living death isolated in the cold silent grave
life can be for those of us abused unconscionably arisen now in love and forgiveness 
those who tortured us healed in gratitude for your attention I will plow on striding galaxies
xoj 

120808 01:55 striding © 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

120807 23:00 personal

There was for me an astonishing level of stress within my practice of photography easily accommodated  given my childhood. My highest function or disability was and remains intuition. In my dotage I’ve been increasingly surprised that the other functions: thinking, feeling and sensing are now achieving parity.

Imperfect I am, as we all are, and I know this better by Jesus who amongst all the ‘prophets of God’ remains my ideal person. Nonetheless I work at not killing those who cross me at the same time, by nature, I am no killer but a destroyer of egos and can remain affable in combat. 

To myself I am chagrined at being unconscionably rude, cruelly & coldly & indifferently analytical. Do not ever test me since I may well leave you in shreds. 

Yet to my several muses who occasionally do remind me not to call myself a bastard I would differ as I do so God or Jesus or Buddha. 

In order to be a whole person I am convicted we must accept and integrate all of our true selves into a singular person. There have, historically, been several occasions when I simply walked away acknowledging the hopeless of compromise. My sense, when it comes to women, that instead of making love actually or metaphorically -- somewhat akin to a cake baking wherein I was the cement sand and gravel she was the flour sugar and frosting. I love ferociously and oddly never stop loving someone who I’ve abandoned for it is true of me that I am loyal. At that I conclude myself as of little good to those would use me to define themselves as better than they are. 

Here I will speak of M who in my estimate and esteem is vastly superior. To whose face I frequently acclaim her as my Impress and/or merely The Sphinx gigantic for which I am in comparison less significant than a fruit fly with only one life lived in one day while she is of eternity.

When I say, “I will follow you anywhere” she has replied on more than one occasion, “Oh dear?” in exasperation. 

But she & I are not the topic of my nattering this night passing soon into the next day.

I frequently, when alone, wear few clothes and thus am able to feel the vagrant breeze of God’s affirmations laughter or sighs. In winter more fully clothed the windows and doors closed I hear the wind shouting at times shrieking.

This evening during a meeting of The Dona Ana Camera Club, the topic being what was to be presented November 10th by way of topics for discussion at a symposium for amateurs who seek to know photography better. I was electrified to notice from the get go that God was more than near but about something I couldn’t imagine by way of coincident's so arcane that it would bore me and you to express or explain them to you . . . think of yourself awakening from sleep naked on I 5 in LA rush hour traffic with a Rhinoceros moving at one-hundred-ten miles per-hour in your face.  Instead of weeping and falling face down in homage the grace of God present I moved forward in equanimity.

I have no use for men of any kind or rank and would and do pick on women just for play. This woman in particular was flustered to put it mildly. Yet it was she who became prissy prim and stupidly asked of me to be gentle in what & how I proposed to teach. Initially it was to be portraiture but a last minute change was made. I was left to deal with “Creative Photography” W ever TF that means. Obviously if i can go face-to-face with anyone including God I am gentle in my observations regarding the creativity of others. It is a tradition amongst us now old guys who were taught by or predecessors. Passing forward the torch of truth, as it were, to the next generation especially amongst photojournalist. We are or were the wild children of photography incapable of merely calling someone up to talk about the why, what and how of them. Daniel Pearl was of my ideal with words.

I was soon dripping venom and suggesting that I should not teach anything as part of the symposium. It was like talking to, or so I imagine, Rupert Murdock about mercy and kindness -- impossible and pointless. 

Creativity is, when good, is too good to believe. And the prospect of being fucked with is terrifying in that my response is terminal. With all due reverence Jesus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it easy. I had lived a lifetime of being fucked over by the Bitch Queen of hypocrisy & bigotry Incorporated in mom.  For me to trust a woman she must of needs be capable of hurtling the moon and beyond flat footed.

I would not be so unkind to anyone as was unkindness done to me. Bonhoeffer and Jesus forgave as I have forgiven mom. But in the former case there were important causes to defend. In the latter, mine, nothing could be further from the issues they died for. My trashing's were simple stupidity/ignorance moving my mother to destroy me &/or my sister. Crippling us for lifetimes of dysfunction addicting us to dysfunctional people somewhat like attempting to talk a shark into not eating you and loving itself.

Add to which she was insane and allergic to alcohol. Dad confessed to me before he died that he then thought it sophisticated to have a drink before dinner, then wine and drinks afterward. By fascinated observation he would become blotto while mom ran screaming around the ceiling . . . i do know a few things about dealing with crisis and chaos. Things that would make Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death, seem a pussy cat -- merely a kitten. . . .I do not believe in Evil since not only do I know it within me but know better the intoxication of power expressed by those who rape and those who love. Those who rape do so because they can and know no better of themselves and we who love do so know that it is you who must give birth to yourself. The first instant and the latter long but worth the effort since we actually in death remain in eternity vital.

Why me? I’ve been trained in chaos & crisis to what end? To better heal those of us who were trashed; at least the ones who survived. Those are God’s job.

The point of this meandering maundering is that creativity is one way out of the Heart of Darkness. The Great prize you already have built in but seldom inhabited; exercised or exorcized. I never taught photography but instead the art of seeing what you are looking at with the genius you have. Photography like writing is merely a different sort of mentor -- anyone can do it -- I should and do know because of M & God.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved