Free intercourse is dialog

Women converse, men debate. Which gender would you rather engage in dialog? The first is attentive to both sides of any issue the latter is fraught with an agenda: I win/you lose? On equal footing with either gender I remain overtly male yet internally willing to play either role. 

By implication so is God, or what Lao Tzu called Tao. 

To me, if you, adhere rigidly to any one definition of God then you are blasphemous in that God can and is anything God wants to be while you are worshiping an Idol. Cults are defined rigidly and thus unworthy of my attention since I adhere to God who is personal, loving, kind, humble, gentle and forgiving. Amongst many other additional qualities I've yet to discover. At the moment however I am most impressed with God's willingness to allow, possibly accept, my spiritual dyslexia and attention to all the Prophets profiting thereby a wonderfully rich sense of Love. 

This is by need, or of course, for now until we meet face-to-face . . . again . . . or for the first time . . . or not at all. Since by nature, nurture and choice I choose making love instead of war. God does not kill men do. Yet I've seen the violence of women in many instances vastly more ferocious than anything a man could conceive of. The Lion King is dependent upon The Lion Queen to do the killing; Kings just make a lot of loud noise maybe, maybe not babysitting the kids. 

M&M are soon to die, perhaps today, tomorrow or in twenty years or so. We are equally conscious of death and the value of each moment precious yet tolerant of those who steal from us. 

As for me I love her to the degree and extent that I would go to Hell forever should she want or need me to. This equally applies to God. I do have unequivocally moral and ethic standards regarding doing harm to anyone. Over this sovereign self I must exorcize consciousness not conscience. Again, the first is fluid the latter is frozen. Merely, cold, indifferent and detached. Or. Idolatrous of slogan, a bigotry declared self-righteous, self-consecrating the right to destroy enemies. . . .real or imagined.

Be tolerant towards your self, or mindful as the Buddhist define it. Aware and self-correcting since man's laws are reactive -- be proactive towards you self and life lived in real time -- experiencing our time divine not hell. Any day is a good time to make love possible where it seems impossible; or at the moment of your death by any means or measures. Jesus paid the price of our freedom from fear of death indicating a seamless continuity of love.

120913 11:08 free intercourse is dialog

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Freedom/Free will/Choice

Choose your actions carefully confident and move forward. Not in aggression; but assertion you have the right God given to exercise Free Will. 

My choices are not for everyone yet few have my education by experience. Keeping my journal, now sharing it freely, I have become aware of what motivated my choices and can essentially, face-to-face help you as M helped me to heal indecision, ambivalence and confusion. When I asked why me she replied, "You are not a whiner." On another occasion when asked about, or suggested that, she counsel PTSD victims, she replied essentially similarly using if not the same words something akin. Add that she like I have encountered hundreds if not thousands of people on a personal basis: face-to-face. I am convicted by humor fluid and by ernestness rigid able to balance each appropriately.

In the democracy of death there is no debate passing as dialog. Neither God nor Nature do revisions of history. It is impossible to blame any one class of wealth or poverty for the current problem described as 'recession' or 'depression.' It makes more pragmatic sense to simply say of our current time; 'adjustment.' . . . to borrow John Kenneth Galbraith's conclusions regarding the last Depression. Yet the consequences were obscured by those who had money and the demands of a World at war. The problem of power is its use of force to maintain stability. We still have free speech and other liberties important to growth but are nearly a police state seeking control or safety.

The issue seems an imbalance between material objectivity and artistic licence to create new truths. The first codifies by law it's truth. While the latter implies other and newer truths possible. In times of economic crisis the arts are first cut from educational budgets. Truth defined is difficult to grasp without myth and metaphor or illusive ideas dancing like leaves in the wind. Connecting the dots is impossible if there are no dots! Thus we have those who are experts at control in charge in a collective monolog as to what & how needs doing. Nothing stands still for long without becoming subject to the winds of change.

Here I must of need use my life as example identifing with the poor yet coming from relative wealth absent from my savings account. Worse I'm White. Typical of my parents time were the words; "Children are to be silent not heard until a certain age." Implied or infired; that age never comes because parents give up their youthful priviledge reluctantly acknowledging their impending old age and death. It has become more difficult for 'children' to assume power since we now have a cult of youth controled by the collective power of those who rule and profit from exploiting youth. 

Women and men in the combat arms of military service face a potential of rapid and unrecoverable loss. Those I've known and followed respected everyone within their command conscious that as responsible leaders they must be replaced if fallen in combat. I did not advance above any responsibility above beind a Private yet I was respected as all above and around me. To shirk or milinger was impossible because no one else did and we were the best of the best by tests. 

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation" yet there are some who rise to positions of power and influence never realizing their limitations thus enforcing upon others failure. While hiding behind rank, badge or postures of ingnornace. This makes sense if you listen to veterans who knew what fraging was for: leaders who knew theory but were unable to force the enemy to comply. Veterans knew how to adapt, improvise and prevail. Therefore learning constantly from The School of Hard Knocks. Fully conscious that a leader addicted to theory would get everyone killed sooner or later. 

Under such circumstance widson is contagous -- walking the walk -- talk is left behind . . . as it should be. While whiners repeat slogans. Conscious people become aware of solutions to specific problems disabling them from a fully lived conscious life. Disablity like death is fact not fantasy, if you wish to lessen the blow think of your inhibitions or the scretes of you life's shame and guilt. 

If M&M have any answers it is not to questions but the process of perception and origin of thoughts. The capacity of others to fully live or merely exist. As stated we came from similar childhoods and learned early on to observe threats to our lives. Where some become passive others become violently aggressive resulting from such an education. Pragmatic politics in democracy is difficult but not impossilbe since it implies compromise towards what is possible versus ideal. Imperial forces all to the rule of one at the expense of the all.

“A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Not so good When people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him. But of a good leader Who talks little When his work is done, His aim fulfilled, They will say 'We did it ourselves.'”

“A mans excellence is like that of water It benefits all things without striving It takes to the low places shunned by men. Water is akin to Tao.... In all the earth nothing weaker than water, Yet in attacking the hard, nothing superior, Nothing so certain in wearing down strength There is no way to resist it. Note then The weak conquer the strong, The yielding outlast the aggressors.” --Lao Tzu

"If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a  knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it  from them." 
-- C. S. Lewis

120913 07:40 freedom/free will/choice

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Men are at times sweet extraordinarily so, like Aaron Siskind and Buddha, each thought of as i began my glide path towards sleep drifting on a pond filled with water lilies; Buddha on one, Aaron on another. Myself, just your average toad. 

Having held an 8x10 Kodachrome transparency, viewed closely, one can never be really happy with anything smaller. I last saw Aaron Siskind before leaving Rhode Island forever and we both laughed glad to confess our age and the disability to carry large cameras very far. I knew him from having been assigned to write an interview with he and Harry Callahan; both were teaching at The Rhode Island School of Design. 

Shortly after I began interviewing Aaron he chanced to mention, out of context with anything; not having made love with his wife since the birth of their 27 year-old daughter. Stunned. I said I had a conflict and had to leave abandoning the interview of either photographers I'd admired then and more now. 

It could have been that Aaron confessed this freely as I once did the death of my only two children; seeking answers to something troubling; a devastating loss grieved for. 

Possibly given my more than passing familiarity with mental illness, specifically bipolar issues, his statement could be attributable to that problem. In time since I've become aware of a pattern of receiving confessions unsolicited. Could it be some quality in me that prompts this from others? It is common for travelers to trust one another deeply since there is no accountability. We are all fellow travelers between birth and death. Otherwise it is common only between friends and mentors to be so candid and transparently honest.

In time we all age wearing out. Death becoming a welcome relief from physical and psychic pain. A wisdom earned by experience -- KISS -- Keep It Simple Stupid. Recognizing what we can change and what we cannot -- knowing the difference too intimately. Overwhelming at times.

Why Buddha? Because to me Buddha is more accessible than Jesus or Mohammad making complex issues simple. Add to which I now am shocked that what I wrote before sleep was partially answered in a prayerful dream and now consciously awake have recognized it an intensely personal question. Is it better, or easy, to die or keep on keeping on suffering? 

To know yourself deeply; the height, width, breadth, endlessness . . . at peace, fearless, stable or crossing life through days covered with marbles in mute dark confusion is to know chaos well. For me the idea of suicide has been a constant companion. An alternative to striking out destroying everything I otherwise could love finding solutions to my agony. 

Yesterday forgotten tomorrow impossible.

Momentarily I entered the truth of myself knowing immediately this equally true of others who did act out terminating all doubt. 

Communication in the information age has become, 'much ado about nothing.' Entertainment stirring the pot of confusion, consequential only in adding to the turmoil and craziness. 

Weapons were once simple now complex they are vastly more consequential killing many in a fit of rage. Words are important and can be lethal or seductive. I write seeking sanity in an age of anxiety. Seeking more now, not celebrity, acclaim or material reward; but seeing that I like many others can go either way to love or kill. 

Unlike all men, or history, known well; I accept the gifts of, whatever you call or think of as, God saying thank you moving on. Never educated in a formal way I am greedy to know all that I can learn about nearly everything counting best the days I learn something new. 

M, on occasion, when asked, says; "I believe God intended us to be friends." And what a friend she is to me and all of us. Since through me she has a voice available to anyone who can read. 

And as with God I approach M without fear and with immutable trust. She is not 'god' but like God inscrutable accept to my intuition and empathy which informs me that we are siblings; like children of God. Ignored, neglected, abused and abandoned by our biological parents. We pay close attention to the joy and sorrow of one another. For each of us death is near; knowing each parting as the last or possibly so.

In my lexicon success would be one person saved from self-destruction thus saving many hypothetically. My empathy is equal towards the slayer, slain, maimed, etc. It for this I live and write about.

Photography is now an avocation and writing a hobby. 

{note to myself} St. John The Baptist used water in recognition of Jesus, not oil. Christ, meaning anointed one, was applied long after: the murder of-the idea of-not the body of: Jesus. Water is our most precious and unique resource in the known universe.

120912 22:15 Aaron & buddha

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved