a triptych 27 August 2012

She's a woman of certain age with panache walking her dog daily Sometimes near sometimes Far who I've come to know from random encounters here were we live for now this Geriatric Ghetto alone save for pets in our own cribs slowly by life abandoning us alone again at last finally blest by solitude

She's leaving can't stand the oven heat of late June through July heading for the mountains nearby but too far for easy converse and I'll miss terribly her outrageous hats and humor so raucous as mine

I told her I'd follow just to prove what the bored gossip about we She laughed and said i've had enough of men and then we agreed that marriage is for kids who know nothing the glory of living alone

We're Gringos of rich background now paupers rendered so by the rulers of us yet of the manor/manners born obvious to us we who know not golden spoons but earned credibility in the finishing school of hard times then fine unalloyed value extruded

120827 08:47 celibacy

after an oddly great number and long history of sanguine cars he knew nothing of the word until a nurse called him such as Sanguine [adjective] cheerfully optimistic and at time Sanguinity [noun] bloodthirsty thus explaining from a sidereal out of left field hitting him in the head a line drive explaining much of his confusion between mercy and rendering terror Until then he just though he loved bishops red shoes and socks Ferraris Italian National Racing Red colors denoting the unique screaming v16 double overhead cam at their highest revs through curves up hills down dales flashing across straight always exhaust glowing like the gates of Hell yawning expectantly The nurse then went farther saying; "You know you put it out and take it back in?!" Until that moment he'd though himself merely a hypocrite

1208271510 sanguine

From now looking back peering forward feculent meaning aggregate lending richness to what once was imagined/intuition rehearsed/reprised the nightmare of a fifty eight hour birth for me for her and then the hell was real unbearable but survived Now seen differently and prized

120824 1629 looking back
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

sanguine adj / sanguinity n
Word History: The similarity in form between sanguine, "cheerfully optimistic," and sanguinary, "bloodthirsty," may prompt one to wonder how they have come to have such different meanings. The explanation lies in medieval physiology with its notion of the four humors or bodily fluids (blood, bile, phlegm, and black bile). The relative proportions of these fluids was thought to determine a person's temperament. If blood was the predominant humor, one had a ruddy face and a disposition marked by courage, hope, and a readiness to fall in love. Such a temperament was called sanguine, the Middle English ancestor of our word sanguine. The source of the Middle English word was Old French sanguin, itself from Latin sanguineus. Both the Old French and Latin words meant "bloody," "blood-colored," Old French sanguin having the sense "sanguine in temperament" as well. Latin sanguineus was in turn derived from sanguis, "blood," just as English sanguinary is. The English adjective sanguine, first recorded in Middle English before 1350, continues to refer to the cheerfulness and optimism that accompanied a sanguine temperament but no longer has any direct reference to medieval physiology.

In the temple sanctuary of your heart 
where your soul resides it is easy to know 
Jesus asleep or awake for he is affable
familiar a brother a friend a confidant 
and like God also there the once-upon-trinity
as we'd say in Chicago da BOMB! NO the now 
quaternity for Mary's there too virgins ALL
awake in souls celebrations dancing bliss in
4/4 time

It's only a dream boys and girls right here in River City. But being an entertainer just like Him; I'm an equal opportunity host. 

Bring up the chorus swelling in the background silence. 
Stage lights from dim to high and see all of us those who adore you as you are.

We who you call saints or prophets of any and all names speaking many voices and languages one song a hymn of thanksgiving for you just as you are. 

I remember barracks at night the voices of intimacy unknown of men speaking in their sleep a random word here then there mom, mother, grandmother a dad here then their names of women spoken of or about stated randomly across the sea of sleeping men brothers to one another a different type of lovers

Honey i'd do anything to make you laugh Twirl gently before your eyes This way and that Zooming to the rafters for a smile or smirk Instead she' watch dad & me becoming frantic over the volley of antics enacted Then at other times one word curses 'whorehouse' 'thief' and some special ones for the Undertaker who rifled Walter Irvin's private room in our home looking for money to pay for his funeral unwelcomed a pick pocket in disguise The word disremembered preceded hissing sibilant then the invisible strike him immobilized 

Where's the Holy Spirit well you might ask For The Holy Spirit is all of it; the ground, air, sea, stars crown invisible everywhere the OM of god.

no fear don't shout just speak softy the wounds of your heart
we'll hear . . . you do know maidenheads grow back?

i'm no poet but it's all i got to see the glory you've got to see it yourself

120827 0743 easy quaternity 4M
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

Coincident with cellular telephones, capable of still and motion capture, are more public eruptions of violence by ordinary civilians and security forces. My political views are impractical and slowly receding into polite conversation. As in: do not ever discuss: politics, sex, religion or civility; seriously.

That applied, generally, to cocktails and dinner but now applies across the board thanks to G. W. Bush & Osama bin Laden in their contest of wills.

Now we have slavery to any person purporting to "Save & Protect."   Giving summery execution to our freedom to record anything; much less their use of unreasonable force against anyone or anything. We now live in a Police State dictated by tyranny. Between the rich who effectively defined their ideas of what we had become until the black stain of the individuals named above. They in my estimate were and will historically remain synonymous -- call & response.

I have a particular or peculiar awareness of  Bush et al aborting the monopoly laws regarding the hoarding of information. Thus enabling the loud and extremely vocal propaganda arm of the Republican agenda. Or merely their ideal that Greed is Good and selfishness best . . . well . . . maybe blest?

Amongst a few friends it is remarked that the current GOP ticket, if elected, will set back women's rights by one-hundred to one-hundred and fifty years. But then there hasn't been a clean election in one-hundred years, if not longer.

True of me, true of them, or they who are addicted to any agenda unreasonably zealous/fanatic; merely intolerant and exclusive to their definition and control. Expect to be crucified as either constituent or photographer of either gender or gender persuasions.

A free press thus a potentially fully informed electorate is dead and so is America.

Game, set, point and match to the duo above named coupled with Rupert Murdoch as: got you by your balls boy. . . .otherwise by your short and curlies.

I had at one time a Secret Service Pass to the White House. Didn't do me a bit of good while photographing the last Republican lunatic. Once discerned I put it and my 'professional' equipment aside; returning with an 'amateur' camera sans press credentials. Getting closer to Reagan than the insider Oval Office crew. While I watched them steam I acquired what was necessary and in turning away saw a white boy with his suit jacket spread to reveal two crossed Colt revolvers; a belt buckle. Presidents don't impress me, real people do.

Don't ever tell me who you think you are, show me. Power makes everyone crazy, me too. The difference is between giving harm or giving forgiveness unto those who harm

120826 0333 wild wild west out there
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

from a friend, life long, who I do not include in my general spread of people whose attention I solicit since she asks too many and pointed questions being the good child of Germany she is and not my wife though I longed for her
still do but don't have the time for loving just one but all of us

 At times I need reminding that not all share my sense of truths apparent. I live alone with the best companion and confident I will ever know in life; myself. Annie, my cat companion, helps in that she loves me regardless of my behavior, thoughts or dreams. It was for her that I aborted further medical attention returning home in agony, growing by the moment until, unbearable. At that I laugh thinking wouldn't it be wonderful for her to live off my corpse until someone noticed the stink saving her?

The dream I woke with is troubling in the extreme. Definitely not a nightmare but consideration of a complex symphony regarding economy, cause and effect, and what we face as the world population swells. 

Does the butterfly in Brazil moving its wings affect me? I think so for at some point yesterday I considered, briefly that the water we have, is all the water that will ever be. If I laugh about it saying that we're drinking pee recycled though a complex filter; mostly the agency of trees. And in Brazil the forest primeval are being harvested wholesale to make way for people to exercise many various and competing needs.

I have several personal concerns and regrets stemming from my childhood. The first is being false to myself in order that I survive the rigors of my parent's concerns I be able to function and thrive or merely survive in their absence. For the most part they parked me with my maternal grandmother and otherwise ignored me until I did or did not do something to provoke their attention; at which point the humiliation, pain, suffering was beyond mention here.

That is the past; remaining for me, a museum of experiences from which I derive a sense of our communal experience. The what & why. Concluding, in a humble way, how to fix that. Were it so simple to fix what took years to built. The issue of healing raises its head and there are no magic bullets; no wooden stake driven through heart of a dying corpse.

Seen in obverse/reverse the lessons learned are now obvious and good. An education superceding anything I could ever afford in University. What changed that? The choice to no longer be a victim.

M is an experienced and trained psychologist coupled with an extraordinary wisdom, vast beyond even my imagining; a colossus hugely larger than the Sphinx I call her . . . something she seems to take delight in my description of her. I mention this by way of preface to her illustration that all violations of a child's inherent intentions, exclusive of what or which family the child is given life, are rape. We as people individually should nor ought to be slaves to anyone or thing; yet we are.

Read closely the fine print finding the devil in the details for that status symbol you can't live without. Possibly I attempt to expiate being hung from the ceiling by my nose with either fish hooks or the fangs of a viper. For what? For using such time as remains of my life to more fully record my thoughts, inspirations and concerns. What I believe Steve Jobs meant when he said, "make a ding in the universe."

For long I stood immune from the chaos recorded via photography. When I taught it was not photography, still or motion, but the nature of perception; what I called then: 'seeing what you are looking at.'

Finding myself happily alone, save for Annie, my family dead or dead to me I adopt all others outside of my sphere of influence based upon the school of hard knocks. In which I believe I deserve a doctoral. Yet I know and have know many who deserve better than that. For what or why they confided in me, what I used to call confessional, sacred to me, their trust; I have impetus to continue this chronicle of personal evolution; nakedly transparent. 

In childhood my mind, consciousness or soul was like a mortar and pestle. The mortar being more a sieve, though which essential parts could pass leaving behind a body for them to molest. And this metaphor accurately describes my experience of witnessing life pass from the body of my beloved son; and all subsequent deaths since. I know not in this life were the soul goes after departing the package that carried it -- I think M knows better but won't tell me. Like God she allows me the grace of free will and finding a true direction/vocation; a what and why to live or die for.

We both, M&I 'preach' tolerance. And for myself alone, I intuit, I do not, never have, thought Islam an enemy but the other, which ever is cleanest hand, clasp in mine brothers spiritually. 

To close this discursive inspiration; what bubbled up top, this brew, were two words: Avarice & Usury which upon close examination explained much of the troubled dream to me.

These words, their definition, incarnation, use and abuse, were never discussed in my education. Yet define principal differences between cultures. But then, as I am too well aware, there are many significant gaps missing in the material presented in public schools.

Regarding education I no longer define myself by gender, education, or employment but being human and a citizen of the Universe; not one nation or another. The only bottled water I use is for my Lucky Bamboo, chlorine would kill it. Otherwise I filter tap water for drinking, etc.

Speaking of trees. Try thinking of yourself as the tree of knowledge becoming the tree of life; from one mustard seed many mustard trees can grow. Don't take life too seriously nor rush to the grave, no one gets out alive. As for bankers, I think they need to be restrained.

Be well, be excellent & be love

120827 00:53 dream
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved