St. Francis loved poverty like a lover loves a wife. My sense, after long adoration of he and Jesus, I have been gifted with the ultimate lover: Poverty. 

Life is no longer mine yet simpler and each moment welcomed with joy as I will welcome my death by any means or measures. Even if it is an indifferent person talking/texting/sexting on a cellular telephone while driving, even my best friend Dave. My only caveat is a hope that they kill instead of maim me. I knew a Vietnam vet no arms no legs typing with a stick in his mouth? Perhaps I am being picky? 

Obviously I measure the treasure of life not by amount but quality. 

No one knows for certain why we die of Alzheimer's but I have heard that the Food Industry: Agriculture or Fast does not help anything accept their bottom line and making us addicted to things that will kill us.

The Food and Drug Administration, a governmental agency, Mitt Romney, Inc. doesn't want regulated; if anything he'd like it similar to a Free Market Economy. What I sense but us in the unrecoverable cesspool of debt called a recession but experientially like what my parents went through: a Depression. 

I have a quiet sense of disquiet about my life and M's. Our mutuality is ending at least I sense it so by death departed; Either, or, both. My random rouge remark about not going to hospice every again is taking root. The only exception being Lila for whom I gave my final blessing over the telephone in our last conversation. Love without expectation of results or praise or acknowledgement is astonishing yet even in The Presence of The Author of Love one does not take for granted but doesn't run about leaping, crying, singing at least not all the time. 

I think myself less than an ant upon the sidewalk of life; a living form self propelled that you'd not think or stop for a moment to step upon. Knowing from whence and to which or were I go I'm okay with that. 

Yet there is a remnant within me of the Warriors Creed, Today is a God Day to Die . . . meaning I might crawl up your leg and blind you then destroy you. Just business, my business, not your's. Many times in recent memory I've played "The Passion" no game over and over trading places with Judas, Jesus, John, The Centurion, Mary The Mother and so on. Too keep it simple stupid no matter what Jesus was he knew or so I have faith in what awaited him in Jerusalem. He knew what lay ahead: humiliation, scourging, the long walk, Veronica's Veil, the shit and piss at time of death; all of it. 

Arisen his resurrection in part or whole in us or for us. Makes no difference he being sent, inspired by or for God or possibly God him/her self playing a role; no matter how I slice and dice vivisect the scenario it comes out the same: okay. 

I'll miss the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, United States of America & M too. Harry Hudini suggested to his wife/lover that in death he'd communicate, he never did. So for me it is a matter of having and not having control and being at peace with my helplessness having enough sanity to prevail. I know what the accusation of Mental Illness means corporate, commonwealth, community and too me. 

Imagine, if you will please, Jesus walking the streets of Moscow preaching redemption or Aurora doing essentially the same thing yet no one listened saying He was mentally ill.

CULT: "the word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The word was first used in the early 17th century denoting homage paid to a divinity and derived from the French culte or Latin cultus, ‘worship’, from cult-, ‘inhabited, cultivated, worshipped,’ from the verb colere, 'care, cultivation'.[citation needed]
In the 1930s cults became the object of sociological study in the context of the study of religious behavior. They have been criticized by mainstream Christians for their unorthodox beliefs. In the 1970s the anticult movement arose, partly motivated by acts of violence and other crimes committed by members of some cults (notably the Manson Family and People's Temple). Some of the claims of the anti-cult movement have been disputed by other scholars, leading to further controversies.
Government reaction to cults has led to controversy. Cults have also been featured in popular culture."

Meanings/definitions change with time, application, events and misuse or abuse . . . have I made my point? What value do I have if I cannot question authority? I am not a priest, I don't want to be Jesus or Freud and know full well that in a profound sense we must become our own saviors in a time of lies, anxiety and systematic failure parading as answers. 

My sense of what I've done at hospice is unworthy of attention yet I get more attention than I care for, either praise or slander; my sense of value is common to all who volunteer since most if not all have been touched by grief. 

My world travel and exposure to many events, celebrities and common folk in birth living and dying means nothing to the people I volunteer to serve. That said unlike Virginia Theological Seminary who categorized me as another cipher, those who administer hospice could care less about me.

Accustomed to slander, defamation, suggestion and conviction that I am worthless -- unworthy of life it self -- an ant from beginning to end. It is not that 'they' my clients or those I volunteer for, client or administration, is unworthy of my love, talent, genius, devotion. It is merely that they and their agenda bores me. I am not a giant among ants, I am an ant among giants who would destroy my life simply because they can or feel they must. 

This, what I've just written, is torn from my heart, what journal keeping is for and all about; process. God nor Heaven is my goal since I believe both are process to ends as yet unknown and unknowable. I am enjoying the trip not the goal. 

Just attempted to call M for a 'reality check.' No M; just a machine; I hung up. Not knowing her alive or dead. I think for the nonce I'll keep crossing this dark room filled with marbles and attempt to keep my footing in truth: mine.

No one can buy me or pay my tuition. I think if you read me clearly you must find similar value within your self and life then live it. As a person I experience compassion for the slayer, the slain and the maimed plus all the grief left behind Aurora . . . and none for the politicians, judges and layers or the tits and ass or Chiclets wearing Armani suits judging the event in the court of public opinion. Fuck Fox especially but then too all the Televised 'infotainment news' media. 

Time is now precious to me. If you ask me for my shirt I'll give it to you but steal it and I will retaliate. Today is both the first day or last day of my life.

120912 12:22 wealth

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Your voice, a loud exclamation, a reprise of the small still whispering in your heart, is unique and a once-upon-a-time in history; as in forever thing. As self-portrait everything you've ever done is a rehearsal for THE VOICE within you sovereign and mutable but built upon the rock foundation of Self. 

True to yourSelf you will know no fear, no competition, no envy. Flowing in time infinite recreation, resurrection, reincarnation; the death of the day before and fearless of days or none to come. A snarky remark too be sure; at times I play squat tag with Jesus he's off I'm on the cross. Why? Because I love Jesus that's why. God is the root of my being and the Tree of Life holds many prophets: Mohammad, Buddha, Lou Tzu, Confucius and so on etc. My root remains the same simply God is The Tree of Life and when I or THEY die falling off out of vogue or favor I will simply recycle with them even if merely one cell within the magnificence of it all. 

I knew a woman who in orgasm would squeeze my tongue in laughter. I too laugh more-often-than-not in cerebral orgasm nearly terminal in terms deaded. When I laugh it is obscene. Annie sneaks up and nudges me in sympathy and when crying she wraps herself around my neck and head a living stole. 

However. At the moment. I am also conscious that Mr. Chuckles is about to invade my crib and maybe, maybe not, possibly so, tell me to get the flock out of Dodge. U know naked in the streets with Annie on a string our performing sexual gratuities for pocket change and worst of all no electricity to run my computers and write anything. I am well trained in Elder Abuse and he is the worst and should I ever find the legal complaint he pressed to me ten days afterward a neglected INSPECTION = HOME INVASION for a host of reasons like THE IRS and my beloved BOSS telling me I caused her a pain in the sit down . . . well I'll roll it up tight put it in his urethra and blow him up the size of Felix The Cat in Macy's Thanksgiving parade and tap his testicles with xylophone mallets playing Cohen's I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy chortling with the snark screaming. 

I am not a nice person and one should exercise caution reading or associating with me . . . 
@ the moment I am debating whether to ever return to hospice as a volunteer in the clinic or elsewhere. 

Death has as much to celebrate as birth -- part & parcel one gift with a beginning and end. If I have learned nothing in life what I wrote above is more important than my life. 

About your life: it is a gift no matter what abuse, rape, dismemberment or torture you have endured or will endure. It is not what came before or afterward but very simply to be your real self now; what you return to God for the Gift of Life. As with all love no reaction/demonstration is required but to respond to your true self is. . . . if not for "God" maybe because of God. 

120912 10:15 voices

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Creativity is most anything you do with love: make babies, cars work, Sistine Chapel Ceilings or growing familiar with the working of your mind and heart. Like sewing quilts. When passing mirrors or seeing myself in photographs I think 'oh dear how did I get to be such a high mileage worn out taxi cab?' Then I remember I am physically eighteen and have the curiosity of a three year old voracious as a cat. Or King David nakedly strutting into Jerusalem. Making love not the way of a maid with a man but the afterward daily hello! Ideally love becomes more simple: intimate-friendship-confessional-confidant & never ends. 

Love also is a process unending somewhat akin to why I write the way I do beating a path in the desert for you not to follow but find it possible to find yourself and be well. Whole. A sincere person whose values reflect what you want the world to be for others. 

LOOK IT UP!

You know the drill . . . 1 Corinthians 13 . . . i could rewrite it but it is perfect as is. I know IS the meaning and presence actual reality of IS yet the silent still whisperer says noting overt but nudges us towards ourselves not the IS . . . free will with the explicit emphasis on the first word is to become all that you are creatively and write that across the black night of indifference and oblivion in black ink across it . . . the IS. . . .is no it but personal energy expressed freely sans inhibitions  

Everyone knows the IS and petitions the IS daily sometimes asking for Escalade or Porsche cars, large bank accounts or your child's life spared from anything like wars with Leukemia or the best retirement benefits self granted to politicians who accept graft to  wrinkle laws to someone else's benefit and endless medical insurance guaranteed for life . . . Mr. Snark is leering over the top of my computer display chortling. 

Give some people or institutions a modicum of material power and they run away with your life, your wife, your children, your future, home, energy to warm or cool it with, everything life depends upon they profit from.

Creativity is not competitive with anyone but yourself and there is no end no boundaries no limits to infinity since to create is enough. . . . need i remind my family all of them, intoxicated with want and those with enough; everything we do is a self-portrait. Joy is the long unending Hello to your best friend ever yourself who will be with you for better or horror, in sickness and health, needing no wealth to hide behind and at that the self within dances with the IS. 

. . . more than enough

. . . sometimes especially now i wonder if what i write are/is captions for all my photographs? Those I destroyed and the published.

120912 0901 Creation is

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Finding myself on the opposition side is not uncommon yet loving my adversaries is. 

And what is love?

For me love is not fighting but respecting the other who has apparently a contentious nature based upon many different things, mostly concerns for their survival as they wish to be and have, essentially, always been. 

At a time passing from life to whatever is or will be on the other side of the veil of life holds no fear for me since it is ordinary of life to end. And from experience not theory I know many endings have been beginnings of something wondrous as I have wandered thru life. 

Not always better just different yet again seen through a child's wonder wandering aware finally that I've been taught the difference in job descriptions. Simplistic but it works for me. God implied at the Beginning of everything: conscious life and death; Don't judge the good or bad of experience, that's MY job. The in between is a wonder for we're told many things for instance the apple Jack ate saying hay! Eve this isn't an apple its a tomato and what's this about a snake? I play role play in my imagination all the time especially when in the company of people who bore me reciting my name and then smirking, laughing etc. as though they own me and I'm now part of their inventory: a thing not a person. 

Mornings I live on coffee and cigarettes until my stomach rebels and says you're going to vomit; EAT SOMETHING! It follows that I could if I wished to and had more breathes left along the attendant heart beats I'd play with creating a myth or play or movie or novel . . . that said; poems like T. S. Eliot's are quicker and distillations of a heady life.  

Returning to The Garden and along the long path leading from it; it seems to me somewhere along the way God said, "Vengeance is mine!" As judge jury and executioner God render's judgement at the end not the beginning or middle of life. If you have cared enough to read my writing, mostly conjecture and snark if not actual frustration with the oppositions to life, then you will know that I like God whoever and whatever God is is a friend. Everyone has one a self, consciousness or soul, yet few listen to it becoming ITs; objects in someone else's game of life. At going on seventy two I have finally begun to celebrate mine as friend, loveable and something akin to God who lets me know what's up doc!? Say something funny!

It is as though you're buying gasoline and a person carrying a gun on their belt walks in standing beside you wanting to purchase lottery tickets. You turn to her and ask about her unusually large gun not a revolver but one with an extended clip sticking out the bottom of it and ask anything about it. She states all the abilities of her weapon; how many rounds, what sighting laser like, knock you not over but at your size you'll flips in midair. 'Before crashing to the floor upside down inside-out dead meat.'

Modest frisson of terror curious as to what, why, how etc. does she have the authority to carry publicly a weapon of such power? To all other intents and purposes she's a civilian just another grandmother who is capable of loving or killing you, me, anyone or thing at whim. 

Should God be so capricious we'd all be in big do do since we all do silly things now and then. No. God waits until the end to tender render judgement. Humble, small and silent as the child I once was accepting the trashing's of or from everyone with rare exception. I remembered those best, the exceptions of people with the power to blow me away and apart known better for their kindness. 

I dedicate this to Jon LaVertu, R. N. who in leaving 'my' community for another remaining a friend who I hope will put me to sleep when I get, or am had, by Alzheimer's . . . I love my friends so. Pillow or plastic bag or injection I don't care: JUST DO IT! . . . pretty please with cherries on top and very hot fudge sauce.

To be on the same planet, in the same Universe, with such a treasure of a man is an honor worth knowing. We working separately have the same conclusions regarding those about to die. It is an honor to serve and be taught the value of life from the remains mere scuffed satchels abandoned the soul fled.

Be well & be aware that those you say goodbye to may never return; it's chaos out there. 

120912 07:17 finding

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

If as I am perennially curious then I am a threat to anyone or institution since it is my nature to be curious and record mechanically or by memorization whatever and everything I sense is of interest to me. This is today's revelation, ah ha, or merely another epiphany. 

Add to which I celebrate more my nearing death and liberation from what the world is and rapidly becoming a very deep cesspool of cupidity: Wealth & Power Incorporated into an institution, in and of itself, as righteous and normative. 

There is to everything an inside and outside face, or merely my sense & seeking of truth. Happily I did not fulfill the script of or by any source familial to become a cleric or priest. Reminding myself of the one seminary I attended for an introductory weekend tour. Upon arrival I encountered a man who asked what I did for a living? After informing him of my credentials he said; "Oh GOD! NOT ANOTHER PHOTOJOURNALIST!" Apparently I'd branded myself with the mark of Cain.

120912 00:04

Joyously I am no priest in any formal sense and disinclined to become one by self-ordination; though I do chortle at times when applying suntan lotion at the notion of self-anointing. Father Denis shouts when I say JC; "His name was Jesus! Not Jesus Christ!!" Apparently there is something apocryphal about the anointing bit -- I've yet to inquire about that -- were I priest I suppose I'd know but I love molesting words and concepts with my spiritually dyslexic molestations. 

I've always been charmed by women who smile at me, not necessarily when I capture their images with a camera. To combine the smile with kindness is devastating at least it formerly was since M as taught me to love her Sphinx like charms mysterious and fabulous. I would if allowed simply drink her presence mute awaiting her flicking smile and/or occasional word. If I lose her, a near probability, I'll give up entirely any future thoughts regarding women as love interest since in loving her I've come to know the Author of It. 

That said I fell into a cesspool of -- you know what -- at the behest of a wonderfully smiling blonde who requested captures of her friend's retirement. Or as I entitled the "take" her transfiguration knowing full well what the word implies. Fortuitously the set of five images sent to the appropriate authorities was declined by the blond's server. I receive a "You Know What Storm" declaring an involuntary surrender of my inherent copyright since anything I produce is mine, not theirs, if that were the case I might negotiate every opportunity to serve them. 

I have a modest licence to discuss this since none of them read me; which is well since I bridle at inhibition of any kind and apparently God doesn't mind my thoughts, the words of my heart, or the babies captured upon ponies by my eyes. 

In my two dreams of/about/with The Virgin Mary, quite mystical if I say so myself, she never allowed me the grace of her face. In consequence I seek her in all women regardless of any possible criteria. Obviously I bought Kenneth Clark's shot in the dark in parentheses (woman came first) and Adam was created from Her. . . .talk about a game changer yup!? 

Jung spoke of the difference between male and female as 51% versus 49% = 1%! To me the last sentence in the previous paragraph changes everything. Oui! . . . of course I am too well aware that Women are the most oppressed class of our species and have thoughts, conclusions and convictions why. 

Mindfulness indicates a reappraisal of my entire 'political' association with the corporation or business aspects of the hospice i serve. It my be I who kicks them to the curb. There is nominal 'safety' in that we have two where I live and as indicated I am careful about who I confess my closet writing and intents. "Ask and you will receive" in SPADES! 

. . . .I adore Google's Chrome for it's suggestive spell checker and think it okay their invasion of my privacy, of which we have none anyway. Besides, it's lightning fast. However I do bridle at all the pop-ups implying I need Viagra. Odd for a seventy-two year old man who still CAN! . . . and a smoker yet!

The most astonishing snark was handed to me when I suggested "fun" or "play" regarding the take on/of the retirement party. In concocting the latter sentence I am somewhat surprised that after forty five years of prostitution with a camera I still have fun and play with it instead of presuming it a financial arragement so I can get reelected or pay for my cocain habit. Or both as I sometimes thing of those in either addiction. . . . Possibly I should annotate my text with LOL! The anticipated difficulty with doing so would be such annotation would dominate everything I write. 

I will save The Creation and what I do with either camera or computer for another post/essay/column or blog entry. Save to say that I invested $10,000 to $12,000 enabling what I do with both essentially for the honor of volunteering at hospice. No shame in that since I should pay hospice for the priledge. Merely the rehearsal of my own demise would be a start. 

120911 16:12 inside-out

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved