love yourself here right now! . . . The Author of Life and Love does!

Lacking a formal education and no degree above high school I find daily that I love to learn more. Counting most highly those days when learning becomes transformative. A good bit more than information regarding a lifetime of moral and ethical prostitution to a Corporation at the end of which they show you out their front boor escorted by armed security forces. You suddenly realize your ardor was in vain and there is no gain in your retirement accounts since your are expunged before qualification to collect.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhsh! Don't ever irk the ire of those who employ you it may change your life into something more better. Remembering well the 4th Grade Colonel's wife both retired whom I described to a curious class her absence saying; "I just saw her flying past the door on a broom stick."

I received the nervous laugh sought.

. . . and then the fan began turning; "Don't you want to grow up and be rich?" As she clutched my upper arm with vice grip claws her purple died hair bobbing and rouge and lip stick spittle. Oh well, dear Mr. Potato Head had his persona mutilated by her rage and I stayed back a grade. However. Remembering now I did gain an early friend of comparable age to the witch/bitch who upbraided me. Mrs. Nelson, I'll never cease giving her gratitude for she believed in me though paid to do so for special tutoring. It is remarkable how easily we forget the gifts we had until we are on the brink of losing everything. And I suspect it was mom who nearly beat me to death, kicking and stomping my youth into hell. Who in fact mad dad pay the bill. Of dad, I can only say that anything I learned from was to foster his ambition to be unforgettable yet I love him still he was the fool and I am wise having lost the contribution to his ambition given his second son the little bastard I refuse to call a brother. Abuse of all kinds emotionally equivalent to rape simply by the nature of their impact upon our psyche: boys & girls.

I have no degree or sanctioned affirmation for what I do. Yet I do what I do in love and having been schooled in The University of Universal Hard Knocks am empathetic to those who like me suffer loss:
Name it, Claim it: it is your ticket to strength and I am but one stepping stone a path to the one who can heal you; YOURSELF!

Save and redeem yourself in any way you must since each of us is unique and has a genius for something. If I have any genius it for finding the good in bad people. And for this I am grate full to many including my personal sense and faith in God who is not religious, we are. 

I unwittingly, today, in a fit of joy misused and posted what I thought attributable to The Universalist Church: but in fact was hard line anarchism.

As the day wore on wearing me out I began to reconcile what I later learned reading Wikipedia, though subject to bias, what is not? The education implied through The Greenwich Board of Education was heavily influence by poor folk who couldn't afford private school . . . 

I have dishes to wash, clothes that have need laundering since six months ago. I am so in love with writing that I simply don't care. And have only a female cat companion who rescued me from suicide. Then the is M she did pull me from the brink of both suicide and insanity; both topic/subject/issue I know very well and can teach them extemporaneously. I identify with something Joseph Conrad wrote about writing but refuse to quote him. I'll quote myself. 

I will soon die of old age. Or. The list or perils are numerous; limitless, in fact. In three years, I wish it was more or that I could do more, not merely for the dying but the living as well. I learned that life is not a seamless continuity. That time is precious and so are you to me. While I once thought myself invincible or as stupid as it was suggested by my parents and life, and The Greenwich School Board. I am not any of the above nor are you. Or the Pope or President of the United States. We're all doing the best we can with what we have.

I have a curious mind. Both in what I inquire about and how I process the potential truths discovered. I will close here in recognition that this is a platform, a mission statement, the Rules of Engagement for all future conflicts with authority. Recently I discovered in my wandering wondering way that The Chinese Curse, mentioning ". . . my you come to the attention of the Authorities . . ." could in truth be you and me. After all is said and done are we cancer to be cured or individuals worthy of the attention we must pay to ourselves to know us better than that?

I am by nature, nurture, succor and learning profoundly religious. Yet I am equally aware that beneath the clown persona I regularly use I am equally, if not more so, a sophist for love. 

I role play the various characters in The Passion Play wondering exactly who was who, what was what and why? The role I return to most often is the most troubling -- mere conjecture -- but it could be that Jesus was in fact God role playing Jesus.

If I died this moment there would be no anxiety, the wealth of that thought, if my last will and testament is sufficient for me. Mom was brilliant, father was humorous yet I still wonder why I loved them so and still do they being forgiven, absolved and redeemed in my heart they are. Final/Final: I sense that the Passion Play works both ways and still wonder why we kill one another attempting to prove our version of Love/Good/God is better . . . the hardest part was that I never forgave nor accepted myself for feeling so abused and wanting to kill them in reprisal.

12110 21:07 learning
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

M&M, Will too soon be yesterdays

Divorce made in Heaven. 
The Divine Ms. M said no way José . . . have your ever had, or coincidently considered having, Jalapeño Ice Cream? Well Ma i gots to tell yah its some Yummy in da Tummy -- spice and the varieties of life is some gooood 4U2 :)!

In fact I realize in retrospect it was me getting the extrusion and very handsomely done by the Emerald Eyed Sphinx who in scything me cell by cell and putting me, Humpty Dumpty, back on the shelf. She's given me more reasons to keep-on-keeping on. Sorta kinda like Jesus said; "shake the dust from your sandals & move on bro . . . " Or/& Lao Tzu implied; another wise guy or prophet of another kind; "Get up and wipe the pie from your face and boogie . . . or . . . Keep on Trucking!

If the Lady says no, you gotta love her in any way acceptable  2 U & her. And thus the love affair is redefined and more viable then ever before as friendship more better defined. Since the confusion like The Smurf in Macy's Day Parade is down up, blown apart farting helium and the parade goes on and on death has no dominion in such love as ours. 

I consider God definable in the following way, with kudos to 3M Co. & their Post-It Notes. Add a bow and more than a nod to Les Krims and His Mom covered with them -- otherwise naked. 

What & why I write makes me laugh, not at M or God, of course, but at myself. The same antics I get into up to in grocery lines; playing with children, their parents, especially foxy moms and always the Checker or money snarf or Credit Card Wiper. 

Of course it has cost me money in groceries left behind but I don't mind since my life as I redefine it, moment by second, is so much fun! More often than not, since I shop with the poor, being poor myself, I remember now that the family behind me got that neglected Fruit Cake & banana bunch as a bonus for a second bow. I just love parting the curtains for the second and third bow with the audience hysterically laughing at my wake. 

Silent, the Sphinx, the very divinely delectable beloved Ms. M is easy to read. In her presence, I being the redundant fool, especially around her, that i am. Rehashed something I thought new, or clever, with whatever is left of my ego being in the presence of the present of God & Ms.M! Then by her Grammies know she already read it.

As per practice as usual sleeping only when tired or otherwise not preoccupied playing Post-It Notes or imagining myself have sticky face with either M or God sharing an ice cream cone; or whatever the lightning and thunder is electrocuting my attenuations/mind. . . .Never forget to exercise your mind! It pays dividends the Stock Market knows nothing about since they only play with material commodities and money gambling oblivious of consequences.  

Your mind being six pounds of tofu is nothing special but how you use it may keep you alive as long as I've lived. And intend to continue doing so should God allow--the creek don't rise--and someone in an Escalade don't run me over making a breathing flesh eaten dummy ala Vice President Bush and President Cheney of Howdy Dodgy Time TV fame; at least in my lexicon they the dummy and ventriloquist.

This is just another Post-It Note from the trenches of Real Life not that faux life on cable they make you pay for while giving you all the enema ads paid for by very rich wannabe Commander-&-Chiefs in a time of endless war between the poor & the rich. I don't even listen to NPR. They're having Fun Fund Raising Days and also talking about the war between politicians and we the poor cannot contribute; is than any excuse for the Depression we're in?

 . . . I ventured out in the dusk celebrating the closing of summer anticipating the coming of ice disproportionate to we the poor since many of us can't keep warm; being old and poor is difficult.

Somewhere betwixt and between then and now I wrote a poem . . . won't share it here & now but save it for another Post-It-note defining the holiness of love.

However like this dusk, The day & light, M&M, Will too soon be yesterdays and all time Sundays, a celebratory day of eternal rest? . . . some days are like that reminding me of how difficult it is to love a woman and others who near beat you to death and wonder now wandering into the night will I ever forget "Love your Enemy?" . . . since it seems in God i have none.

"Children show me in their playful smiles the divine in everyone. This simple goodness shines straight from their hearts and only asks to be lived." --Michael Jackson

121002 17:00 Lunch with M
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

by day Mary that is Merrily Passing by

I think most of us at one time or another are in love with ourselves/some not knowing the depths of themselves adorn their value of life with material things/easily acquired and displayed. Others/like myself and countless others/more whose lives and loves are/memorable instead lose all sense of self/in adoration of the cloud of unknowing/gazing with tear filled gratitude for all of/the starry dome above at night/and Mary's Blue Robe by day/Women are so much nearer to the light years distant knowing God/and I a humiliated male remain in supplication to both awomen 

amen

121002 18:25 by day Mary that is Merrily Passing by

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

little gerogie toilet wipe

In horrific reverence and terror for the election campaign, the most expensive in our history, I think we should rewrite the Constitution & Bill of Rights naming America something like GEED IS GOOD INC. 

Knowing as fact that lobbyist are now no longer suggesting legislation but dictating it for their boss who actually is THE GOVERNMENT, NOT FOR, OF, OR BY, WE THE PEOPLE 

oh dear God George W what have thou wrought? No longer wondering how to make a living to replace my retirement I'm seeking venture capital to make new fiber glass replicas of little gerogie toilet wipe forever failure and war criminal and his puppet master Uncle Cheney as public conveniences for coin operated use . . . I now think given this election I'll make a trillion more with the current Republican Offering: a real bell ringer, the corpse of the electorate, is spinning in its collective grave; the string that would ring the bell is lost! Depression & Panic! What Chuy Think Future Stepford Wives of America Breeding Stock Forever?

121002 20:13 little gerogie toilet wipe

©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

freedom fearless

Fearless of death, anyone or anything at my age I seek/listen/see the presence of God all the time now. Knowing not whether it is my end or beginning: surrounded by love.

Yesterday having completed my polemic against indifferent authority molesting my time, my life, my dwelling place, I wandered outside as I am want to do and saw Maria Sotto parking her car. In time, names, ages and places have become meaningless to me. So it seems that in love I wander wondering not about where or when or why I go.

And, She, Maria has and is a voice of reason and love to me. I sought her out and discovered that she too feels imprisoned by the abuse of power her; what has become a prisoner of war/death camp.

Earth, Wind, Water, Fire are the bottom up of my love of life so near ending why not this moment? 

A publisher of music--contributor to periodicals of mass circulation: one-time musician, painter, sculptor, photographer -- now author, poet, prose writer? 

Mutilated or not--it's what I got. 

All that I am: a tear drop in the ocean of ideas, ideals, icons, and idolatry. Many voices screaming buy: tires, bras, panties, turkeys, cars, politicians etc. All lies to me: since I have all that I ever longed for -- all my dreams come true -- reconciled to love eternal.

Yet, She, Maria is a voice slightly senior and beautiful in truth, confirming and affirming my convictions and apprehensions. 

And to think her first words were; "I thought you'd be prejudiced against me. . . "

Last to first, first to last I am not prejudiced towards even those who abuse me. Wondering at times if their behavior not provoked or invoked by the Author of All Life? 

And in time, with age, suffering many failures at love: impossible to make anyone love themselves or lend money. Or, even now especially, time & attention.

Why me? I am nothing special! Should I be the recipient of such love as is given? We are all the elements of the stars and cosmos unique as snowflakes and as special to God who invites us to be all that we can be . . . but, still, why me?

"In Heaven all the interesting people are missing." --Friedrich Nietzsche

121002 09:05 fearless freedom
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

SUMMONS here delivered to all politicians/religious leaders

SUMMONS here delivered to all politicians/religious leaders

"In our tenure on this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt." -Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980), p. 318.

"We designate by the term "State" institutions that embody absolutism in its extreme form and institutions that temper it with more or less liberality. We apply the word alike to institutions that do nothing but aggress and to institutions that, besides aggressing, to some extent protect and defend. But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care. -Benjamin Tucker, Address to Unitarian Ministers (1890).

"Anarchists, whose mission in the world is the abolition of aggression and all the evils that result therefrom, perceived that, to be understood, they must attach some definite and avowed significance to the terms which they are obliged to employ, and especially to the words "State" and "government." Seeking, then, the elements common to all the institutions to which the name "State" has been applied, they have found them two in number: first, aggression; second, the assumption of sole authority over a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double purpose of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundaries." -Benjamin Tucker, Address to Unitarian Ministers (1890).

"Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy. -Benjamin Tucker, Address to Unitarian Ministers (1890). 

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aggression

i pray to you St. Francis, in the communion of all saints, and you as brother to Jesus, please hear my prayer: I have reverted to a practice begun long ago: reading the Bible at first hour of light and this is my Prayer now: << Psalm 7 >> Let it be for us our truth, We the People of God, all children, knowing God variously and by many names; to be all tolerant ending all war. Amen.

121002 08:18 Summons

What is the sound of one hand? God applauding!

photo taken in Janey Katz scrap yard

Mozart would creep into my crib, apparently like his music suffused, into my childhood consciousness; he seems to be reincarnated in Annie (my 'rescue' companion cat) and all the woman I need at the close of my life.

Love is where it finds you, or you find it; but the finding takes a lifetime to trust . . . though that's just me so lost, for so long, in chaos.

God's love strums and thrums me like Johnny Cash in Folsom Prison, oddly or not so oddly dependent upon your perception or perspective, M was there, the only woman locked in a prison of men. And of M as God do I sing for both are all the love forever I need or can handle. I have problems enough 'having' myself in these closing moments of my life as I knew it.

To love and be loved is all there is; as measured by any standard of value. Second too it is friendship and health; the lesser of God's love. The last and least of my concerns as I face this new day after another extrusion experience.

Though I think I've given you my first consciousness of peace and love from the beginning. I still wonder if you might not be better informed. The process of keeping a personal journal is random association and listening to what bobs up, the messages buried in the mire and muck of life unconscious. 

What I sense is achievable = our collective higher consciousness. All life is conscious of God. Yet God remains, at least to human life, defined in hundreds, thousands if not millions: now billions of individual ways. Another sense I have, and value highly, is that our various and sundry sense of God's presence and present to us, life & love: various is the spice of life itself. 

I do not know 'how' to write but have learned from Mozart, both the composer and cat, from infancy to know what I like. The meter and measure of music, the universal language, admired by all; and understood for a very long time as the height of genius. We may know the formal structure of anything yet by experience, or doing life, do we learn the art of it.

Don't like pussies then any life responsive will do it to you since we by nature seem not responsive to ourselves. 

We are 90% healthy by what we consume or consumes us. What we desire or hate owns us and you can bet your soul and self on that.

I hear both Mozart and God in all music regardless of its violence or celebration of tranquility. Music and dance being the highest form of prayer inchoate: think of the not knowing where, who, why, what or when love is . . . it is not stupidity but ignorance . . . for even the 'dumbest' life forms respond to attention either hateful or loving.

In my experience: belief is thought & faith is experience. If concerning love/God the first is someone else's conclusion, easily understandable but easily forgotten. The latter is unforgettable. I do not love you because God told me to; it is my nature to love; as is true of all life. As for myself: I am no victim or slave to anyone or anything. . . .Except, perhaps, maybe, maybe not: LOVE. 

Judging by what I've read, and the behavior of others touched by grace, it is possible to become completely insane with love. Yet for me, now, I remember, while thinking of posterity falling off my posterior seated upon stacked telephone directories at four attempting to play the piano as dad wished me to be 'rich and famous' as Mozart the composer who used the piano as his principal personal voice.

I was incapable of proving my love to either mom or dad since they had none for themselves, even if only self-respect or esteem. It follows that I am not and could never be a musician aside from singing to Annie or while taking a shower -- laughting at myself -- but then I began to sense the music of words requiring no one to play them, no instrument, no orchestra, or greedy publisher like my family was. Instead I began more clearly, writing this, to understand that words need only an author and an audience of one. 

What is the sound of one hand?

For me it is the applause of God who acknowledges the silence of my love. Expressed by closely attending all life encountered with love; sometimes laughter at even death. My poorly rendered words are but summary of experience of God who being love expects nothing in return. Not even kindness and mercy to another; or all others.

Be not false to yourself and thus you will be no fraud or false to anyone. Laughing: I sometimes think God the greatest con artist of all cons; look up Shapeshifter.

We all learn differently. And of education in America, bent and contorted towards conformity, I'll have none of it. As the future generation won't. 

I refuse to quote or memorize chapter and verse of the Bible much less the words of Rumi or Shakespeare. That said, I do, however always remember the spirit and intent all three.

And I'll hum quietly to myself the doxology for those who persecuted me. For doing wrong, they done right; setting me free to extrude myself again. Dying literally and figuratively to the past and being reborn in the present looking forward to another new day or actual death; equivalent to me. How many good Jews must die for those who killed our savior? I am not a Christian but a SUPER JEW! 

Or more sincerely and humbly stated: Merely a savior of myself. Know thy self and be true to that and no man or institution will ever own you.

121002 05:50 Mozart
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Discovery: Life at seventy-two has become an ongoing journey of discovery: what is irrelevant and relevant? Yet in my statement of observation and intent I realize, that unlike my father, I have no delusions about being a legend in my own esteem/mind. 

Add to which I have become conscious of what people say and do in relationship to me and how these events have become "love notes from God." And then there is M. 

Like my dream of The Virgin Mary awaiting my visit to her pulsating pink quarts grotto M has changed the meaning and value of everything; not just life itself but all that is seen and unseen. More importantly the meaning of Love itself; between female and male, then all life, then the meaning of God. M specifically is the catalyst of what writes in this moment . . . & no body games M. At least not me, not now, not ever. 

Like my sense of God, M seems to lack an ego, which for me is a startling revelation since all my life has been in contention with what other's think success means versus absolute autonomy. Henceforth my life the short or long of it will be to fulfill M's commission to heal broken things and people.

I awoke conscious that Annie has taken the two bedside tables for her nest, at least recently and for now upon awakening I realized how very close we are. And then or now it occurs to me that M continues to nudge me this way and that gently lending me course corrections for what is next. A cyclone in the cesspool of what life actually is, not for me of course, but for all others. Do I live for me or as I did for Randy sacrifice my ambitions affirmed by those I trust to be the best or amongst the best photojournalist alive in our time.

To witness the depravity of slavery to authority is for me impossible not to respond and I remember now that it was Fritz Eichenberg who told me of the legendary Jew who upon recognizing his fate at the overwhelming crime against humanity lowered his trousers and moon his executioner. Merely an alternative to Jesus saying "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do . . . " Or something like that, close enough for me to act upon.

Laughing I realize that instead of a null point in a hurricane, an experience I know well, I was imaging consequences public that were in reality merely personal. Whether we define this between us, dear reader, if you are there or not, it is an Epiphany, Conversion, Being Born Again or what I've fondly come to call Extrusion. And again I am reminded of my 'spiritual/intellectual' dyslexia. Thinking now of the scripture--again approximate not precise--worry about nothing God will provide. And How!

My story is boring to me, common place, and my desire is for you to love yourself and your life: all of it! 

And for this there is no humiliation or death that I would avoid in fear that your life like mine be a full banquet of love. For having crossed the boundary between fear and peace the fear no longer is attractive or possible.

It is true of me, regardless this horny old goat, to see the nature and personality of Jesus the Savior in all women more readily than men; and so it follows that I am more a champion/advocate of women then men--or myself. . . .If Mary taught me nothing else she taught me to see Herself in all women first and then the feminine component in men last. 

Like Mary I could tell or teach many things derived from my life as lived no longer caring when or how it ends. Yet it seems incumbent upon me to make available you to yourself. Love is the Providence of that which falling like a mist becomes a tsunami of love for God for Life for all others including the man and the woman who most recently belabored me with their discomfort at my life it self. 

Metaphorically it is simple: connect the dots; child's play, and thank God for my childhood now. Imagine please that the Starry, Starry night above you, more visible in the Land of Enchantment, with all the stars brightly visible is a map or descriptive of a journey towards which you should be impelled since the dome and all surrounding you is available the map of love. 

You & me. We give others the union we must have within ourselves. Thus the ruin of marriage surrounding us. Laughing again! I realize that so few read me I shouldn't care a fig or a mustard seed about what I've written the consequences of. What we create, whether a Sistine Chapel ceiling or dinner for three or knit a scarf or fabricate a quilt is part of the Creation of conscious life. No. I am not oblivious to the creation of a child being divine and not salacious. Or even the love between same genders since it is love itself that we seek amongst us living vital and present. 

To have had Randy was enough in its brevity, the association, that knowing the ending I'd do it all over again for the Love he gave me in the end. So too with Jodi and so too with Jesus and for the love of you, Jesus, Mary and God as the Holy Spirit knowing not the ending but loving both the life and ending would do that too; all over again and again until we, all of us, get it correctly. The need to participate in Creation . . . and the creation of yourself is the greatest accomplishment know to God.

Laughter!

How do I know this?

Because God told me!

Vanity of vanities is going to the moon, just a hop skip and a jump, but going within we discover so much father than objectives being subjects of love infinite.

I mourn for those caught in the crossfire, this civil war between those who have and those who have not. And in God's love am compelled to address and if possible heal the breach between the two states of consciousness. One smug and complacent the other frantic for meaning and value exorcised violence and chaos. Like God, alone, none of us can to it alone. Yet like God we must collaborate on the meaning and value of life itself otherwise there will be no future generation or habitation for us.

I have a peace that surpasses all understanding and a value immensurable since I have sought to reconcile myself with chaos. It is not what I am for or against but merely what I am as lead to be.

To close; that which is never ending, the story of love . . . I asked God to be real and then later on began to sense we must grow our hearts large enough to receive. And given the Love of God from God; to lend free of usury to all others the hospitality of love itself. The journey as defined by Lao Tzu is begun at the point of departure the ground beneath our feet -- grow where you are planted while loving cosmically. 

121002 04:00 discovery
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved