previously

Once thought of, or felt, self-love seemed, to me, furtive, masturbatory and shameful. Yet now realized, as all I am to myself. Otherwise a life lost in adaption to the expectations of culture; a greater shame have I for the latter.

I adore, so, these stolen hours before dawn; candle burnt both ends middle melting. The silence. No one stirs and nothing heaves but the sea slowly snoring; rippled mirror of eternity merging the stars within both. For a time I am both sailor and strider. A match briefly flicked & flown extinguished gasping, tssssing, cold submersion.

At the hour of awakening, played Aeolian, the threads of all that was, is and will be played upon the winds of creation. Woven a tapestry beyond my keen affirmed unfolding.

Robed in dawn, covered with stars, she, Mother Mary, invited me into her pulsing pink grotto home silently. Twice. I have yet to see her face beneath the hood shadowed seeing her in all women now.

I’m guessing here, between this and that site, 30,000 hits?! And what I said cannot be unsaid. Still wondering, wandering within, had I not written for me alone; notes of a life unfolding anonymously.

Goggle, ogle, gape remembering Can Can on Broadway at twelve, drowning in Vincent’s paintings, by the way Happy Birthday, retrospective at the Met and several prints haunting my adolescent bedroom by mom placed mementos graven

None of this is about me, but us, what holds the stars in their courses, for now at least. Creation is real, with or without: observation, discernment, judgment . . . The good, bad, grotesque, ecstatic of it all available; should only you ask, or knock upon the door of your unknowing.
Fear.
Terror, actually, for me was finding myself unworthy of life; merely that which we generally take for granted. Worse was the specter of insanity . . . add . . . and more true of me than I generally accept the knowing of; finding an excuse to live another day. In some sense longing for an authority to tell me that I was okay.

It works for me that I was in error seeking a woman to mirror me as well, whole, capable. Not a failure as male, father, lover, husband. More importantly -- as a person. Being that way left me owned, like a pet, or used as a convenience. Always subordinate, inferior; an inconvenience.

19:53

There is a point of expansion, departure, acceleration achieving exit speed; a voice of one’s own. My reverence for others, mostly women, slays me again and again . . . I cannot, I refuse to again be a wooden figure in someone else’s doll house.

. . . could it be, Mary that is, who I see when I look into a mirror?

130330 02:53 previously
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

illusions illumined

Forgotten, until this moment, the waining of my enthusiasm, and ability, to love a woman as only a man could or should. Is the simple sense of how it never gave more than a fleeting pleasure for afterward was always the question; “did you put the garbage out?”

Women.

Astonishing!

So pragmatic . . . riddled with love’s darts and little swimmers, of need she must be.

. . . add, for me, it was never a thought to be warmed of a cold November night, clammy the sea enshrouded and I near death; at any contact, flesh to flesh, save for the frenzy, I sweat. Remembering my son’s head as I prayed that God take me instead of him, the wringing wet hair in my hands. 

So odd, no excuse nor rationalization, better I’d left than stayed, for eventually I would have fled, love expressed vital instead of rigamarole/rigor mortis, same same, silence. 

“The way of a man with a maid . . . “ 

REALLY!

I can count on the fingers of one hand the few who seemed to nourish nurture one another beneficially. At that I have met hundreds if not thousands of such wed . . . rarer than genius is love and of love best friends better.

As a child I sought the mirror of love in a woman’s eyes. Disremembering that in his own home a prophet is but a fool. Now a stranger in a strange land estranged I lurch forward to whatever is to be. No stranger to myself.

Jesus is generous while Exxon is Judas . . . just conjecture, a rogue thought as I arose this happy day, good tide.

Rampant, exultant, jubilant and surprised, endlessly, these Easter and Christmas Morns reprised daily. I love too ferociously and lust less for consummation, save in this, the better good for her than me.

04:34

Witnessing death, in my arms, my children, friends by choice or chance - disease, and those I loved, especially at hospice, leaves me without fear of it for myself. Lending a sure urgency to applaud those who live yet know it not but merely exist indifferent celebrate nothing but usury.

I can lend you nothing but my curiosity, lifelong, what does resurrection mean? If nothing I can see, sense, taste, touch it seems more in particle than whole, same as was? No. Different I think for the world turns faster towards its own demise. In itself usury smothers and the meek remain suffocated. But do they? 

die!

or live forever more as did He does . . . 

and for love I would comfort those about to die but denied I am left to wander painting my thoughts upon the night for those of us who remain oblivious equally sailing the solar winds;

be well and rejoice, again I say or suggest rejoice!

. . . far be it for/from me to inflict/impose upon your slumber those amongst the living dead

130331 02:58 illusions illumined

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

be such

true to my nature: greedy for -- love, loveliness, woman -- she sat before me in a sleeveless blouse and I undressing her with my eyes. Licking her humid armpits and wandering about in imaginary lubricity. Beautiful? No! But a nubile young woman at the apogee of her reproductive potential. And I a lecher wondered what our children might be. Laughing now at my imaginary mating; as like that of mice, not exactly recreational.

An astrologist whose service stipulated by my gay, nudist, Episcopal Priest, friend and therapist - did I mention he was? Is? A Jungian? Giving Communion on “Clothing Optional Beaches”?! In retrospect I imagine it was only in summer; for in Rhode Island, starting in November, the leaden skies seemed predominate and chilly at that ending the Hurricane Season.

Somewhere amongst my tumid lust she remarked I might be a poet and i, at that time, was standing upon the platform, one foot upon the departing train, the other firmly rooted. implying or inferred, that change was inevitable. Apparently she was well regarded. Living in Rhode Island commuting to Washington, The District of Columbia to beguile and advise our fearless leaders.

The oddest part about now compared to then: I have no identity. My name is meaningless, my history absurd, yet daily, if not hourly, I am subject to expansion becoming more transparent with each moment experienced . . . leaping light years, passing through mountains of stone, sober I become more so.

To me then and even now poetry was something out there beyond the beyond; an inconceivable icon, glorious like God unknowable and dense beyond steel . . . thinking ‘oh dear God, do I have to eat the whole thing?’

More laughter, I loved my mother so, she baked an Easter Cake in the shape of an Lamb; in a borrowed mold. The exterior was burnt to a crisp and ate the whole thing since it seemed to assuage her tears as she baked another.

Jesus! Or the idea/ideal of Him is the root of my being. And oddly seems, to not despise my rude and salacious self. The tree that I have become has many prophets of other definitions of God or the idea/ideal of “God” hopping randomly, flittering about, from limb to branch. Flapping off to far distant places returning with new definitions of what “God” is or is not: like or about.

If, as I have said of myself, I am too stupid to live, as ignorant as a stone. You might more readily identify with my sense of hopelessness. Despondent when confronted with what passed then, in my time, as an education . . . if you required me to diagram a simple sentence, you might as well have said; “I’m going to draw and quarter you between these four elephants and then eat whats left alive. When I speak of our fearless, lemming like, leaders chasing the illusion of wealth and/or wisdom I know the term “scatocephalic” by experience not conjecture. My vision/version is they are going in circles like greyhounds. And “Civilization” being a transparent veneer upon savage predation. As it was in the beginning it remains. . . “An eye for an eye,” and no mercy, compassion or empathy possible.

Oh well
. . . so what else is new?

My point being that poetry is impossible when I’m not in the mood. Yet I know the Why of it and requisite vision to incarnate it. Regarding Astrology, I have no faith in it. Add that M said; “You can put in a change request/order!” Accepted as Gospel I have begun to wonder what the nubile young very f. . . .able meant? I remember, only opposition, in the chart, now laying within the tomb of an landfill . . .

My thesis is that nothing, virtually, is ever lost in eternity. Regardless the idle pleasure of those who know nothing of war, save profit, who in the anticipation of glee and larger bank accounts, sacrifice other people’s children profligately.

I sense last things, end game, the leaves turning, then falling. Myself soon to be barren, dead falling into dust. What and why I write is merely to speak to others like myself who are intransigent; ignorant of their actual value to Creation . . . Reverting to my sense, dyslexic, that we are applauded by one hand clapping. Yet to me, the universe speaks and I know not why? But then this seems more true of poets than I.

Add, at best, I don’t want to be here in future time, short as it may be, given my lifelong seeking for an excuse to live another day. The force and power is in the hands of those incapable of empathy, making everything material for their greed. . . . I know what good is and it is seldom found; remaining as it was in the beginning will long last my departure and silence.

- Eric Idle
"If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted." 

130329 03:41 be such
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Remember

i seek not to be remembered 
but remind your once and only 
precious self . . . sufficient being 
this you inhabit 
what was or will be 
irrelevant unknowable
be here now 
attend closely the magnificence 
within gratefully doing no harm 
all exit stage left eventually

130328 04:19 Remember
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

enriched besotted not bewildered

Arisen from a death like sleep, wherein my initial dream was of incompetence, punctuated with astonishing insights. Not about myself but those I observed, two young boys in a track event in close competition. Their defiance of one another and potentially their demise in consequence. . . . It was then that I awoke remembering the otherwise drudgery of professional photography as I had practiced it.

Then too I visualized the sure homage I owe to those who chose, in their time, to write. Like refracting crystals the light dancing through them arrhythmical an exquisite dance. The light always transcendent.

Of and/or about myself, now, it could be said that I love, Love, knowing nothing of the end of it; the longest novel/poem in four letters infinite. And then it seems this must be the way all life is loved by the origin of everything.

I am thinking of M, my beloved hour glass, we passing through each other; endings and beginnings that is all. Gifting one another!? 

Belief or none, seems irrelevant since the creator has us either way, regardless of insular/parochial definitions of who, what, why, when, wherefore . . . is not faith indefinable but best known by experience not war. Could it be that before we render ourselves extinct we will agree we had it all and destroyed it?

At lunch, yesterday, in jest I offered to pay with my library card. To which it was suggested that I could wash dishes instead. Whereupon I said; “I’ve been washing dishes, professionally, since the age of thirteen; M chimed in stating she’d been at since four upon a stool. 

Brother Lawrence and Durer where are you when we need define creativity by the humble us all? Meek not proud. . . . that filmy sheen of perspiration making we glow! Inner light manifest.

. . . "To argue over who is the more noble is nothing more than to dispute whether dirt is better for making bricks or for making mortar." - Saint Teresa of Avila . . . Happy your birthday what you were and remain.

Mother once asked of me, close to the end of our relationship, why I, at two and one half years of age had touched her cheek and cried uncontrollably? As if I could then, at the time of act or fact stated, know. I offer, this being curious about curiosity, from slumber transiting this nation from infancy until now, I would awaken in odd conjunction with objects and thoughts. And now still wonder is it call and response, my vision/version of the occurrence?

The concept of conspiracy better said as conspire or co-creation or collaboration with that which we cannot control: Life. Creation. The time of birth, length of life, moment of death

Yes

She is, experientially, an hour glass. We the grains passing through, at some point in time still yet passed on to others that they may love as we do. I do reverence who turns us tumbling now.

“We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.” - Blaise Pascal

“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” - Voltaire

130328 01:25 enriched

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Friends

Men seldom openly weep, but drown internally holding the flood in.

Yet I, a man, have wept gallons over the difference between marriage and friendship, now closeted in my solitary life. It is my dreams that better inform me of the conflict -- ASTONISHING!

Irrelevant, the details and story that hurled me from rest two or so hours ago. Which led me to remember the difference between our ages and intentions. No story teller am I but an observer of the river of time; inconsequential by height, width, breadth or length, but merely that it is at all moving. It hurt nothing that she, being younger than me, inspired lust filled thoughts, but then being a nurse I came to understand her better as a person than a receptacle of my salaciousness.

Embodying those things I’d never known, joy for example, trust for another, but oh God! forgive me for admiring her posterior when she knelt to a patients eye level. And now, two thousand miles apart, remembering my involuntary ejaculation; “Take me with you!” We still communicate and I think more than often of her - there - while I remain here and she growing the requisite roots to sustain and flourish her life. Suffice to say that it is well. I care more for her than my gratification. I am odd that way. And wonder now that, when mother castrated me with her inarticulate accusation of incest, that she didn't do me an enormous favor.

Celibacy having been a long inconceivable dedication . . . even now the ability wanes while the desire remains.

Lust is just another addiction, compelling, scratching and itch: pleasure but no lasting joy. And I, no idle boast, care more for the soul than the body to so use another for my convenience. Yet even now, betimes, take pleasure in the thought. Naughty boy that I was, am and remain for all time . . . poor Ava Gardner naked upon my threshold spanked with a keyboard; “NOT NOW!”

Laughter! My greatest gift!

Not odd, the many men of my generation who leer when I mention her name. Yet I, for one, am more taken by her charisma, the laughing soul within, playful beyond the gratification. But as I, so with them, the men of my time; do not leer so much as grin; our ability waning.

Finally and fatefully drown, I know the consequence beyond orgasm; a greater wealth than I can tell . . . at least for now.

. . . yes, splayed, stapled, twitching upon the dissecting board; vivisection of my Self.

. . . a boy named Ruth, not ruthless

“There is no fire like lust;

 there is no grip like hatred;

 there is no net like delusion;

 there is no river like craving.”

—  Dhammapada

130327 04:42 Friends

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

sufficient

silence / sufficient / kudos / 

the audience of alone / 

dialogs answered

Happy Birthday 

Joseph Campbell

unhappy death day

Mansur Al-Hallaj (mystic Sufi poet)

observations rapscallion associations freely given grats to:

http://www.en.wikiquote.org/

the fleece i touch each new awakening so see what’s left there

oddly affirmation of thoughts, intentions and prayers

ala Gideon who asked and received

why me?

why not!

what is it for!?!?

For now I have a feeling. An experience of closure. Doors shut. New vistas opening; bereft of desire. 

Sans need.

Naked

alone

The process continues having its own impetus

laughing -- outrageously -- having heard that Rainer Maria Rilke, in reply to Sigmund Freud’s offer of therapy said; (lose translation and improvisation) “Thanks. But no Thanks . . .  I’ll keep my devils and angels . . . . “

I love insanely and lust more

the latter apparently simmering now near room temperature 

cockled 

diminishing

less specific

now defuse

expansive instead of contractual

. . . another grats for Wikipedia

tanks for the hyper-links!

rapturous

130326 0231 sufficient

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dialog dreamt remnant

Awakened from a dreamt dialog with my long ago divorced first wife, she having become the priest I longed to be, the topic was not theology but pastoral. We, of course, are both in the same biz. She in uniform and I in permanent mufti. I left in a crude manor, irrevocable, humiliating her for which I still seek absolution . . . she claims to have forgiven me yet I cannot. At least not to my satisfaction.

Not all my dreams, obviously, are “out there” ‘sky pilot’ stuff: ecstatic or intellectual. But inconvenient, cutting cross grain with a rusty saw, the once living trunk of my expectations, longings and what I then thought to be love; taking not giving.

A love once said of me that I was; “sullen to discipline.” Too true by half, for I loathe authority and all its trappings, yet guilty for that.

Angst.

My maternal grandfather had been, before death, a wound to the groin with a shotgun, by choice or chance, a circuit riding Methodist Lay Minister. With four churches served in a Northern Kentucky hard scrabble area. C. G. Jung suggests that grandparents are The Great Mother/Father to this child who still morns for the unknown male lost when my mother was four.

Of my mother, her mother, myself, none of us knew much of the absent father . . . they, my maternal grandparents, married, she at thirteen and he at twenty-three, or there abouts. She was pregnant and delivered my aunt some nine years senior to my mother.

The point of the longish preamble: is that in the dreamt dialog between us, wife and now long experienced with death self, I witnessed the first in memory of her anguish, using a term I did not understand, requesting clarification I awoke and said oh!

In all the turnings, seven years after the death of our last, of two, biological children. The prospect of her ordination, experientially and by expectation, meant to me the farther loss of someone inscrutable to me enshrouded in dog collar and robes . . . receding in bells and smells and smoke.

Gagging, desperate, self-loathing, I sought love where I could find none in myself to trust. Some one to love me at last, constant and true. But that was not to be until M. A long, very long time, for I was then something like sixty-seven or eight when we first met . . . excluding all the intervening times of incredulity until quite recently. Convicted. Think of Sisyphus, yet in my case, not up a hill of sand but ball bearings spinning. Thrice the effort and endless crushings, the stony issue rolling over me down hill. . . .

Add: attempting to seduce a priest, a nun, a Sphinx: impossible . . . Though near the last of my sexual prowess at seventy-two, without apology I annotate that love is not sexual in nature but something given without desire or expectation of recompense. Yet bottled within the sealed solitary bottle of me has become enormous, but then, so has my reverence for others exclusive of creed, gender, age or culture. The exception is now that I no longer desire to be lead anywhere for I am there.

Back to the beginning everything explained and free to live and love at last . . . especially the author of my dreams. And the random rogue thoughts flickering across my attention day and night night and day.

Remember, please, this is teleology not theology. Random notes from a life in process . . . may as well be hung for a pound as a penny . . . full measure, well tamped, all grains being equal. The greatest joy I have ever known is now expanding not contracting.

About M. She is a psychologist of extraordinary ability and experience. Yet more! An alchemist making from dung gold. And should I do nothing else, no recompense required, I would do well to do, or attempt to do for others, what she has done for me.

For some, life is merely something endured, a job. For others it is a commission, joy.

Happily I know the difference in myself.

130325 23:23 dialog dreamt remnant
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

pour vous confidence

I am an archaeologist of the Self; using my life as a lab rat . . . Me, the rat, pink nose, red eyes above white whiskers twitching, and I, the self who writes . . . are good friends and tend to play/debate all the time. However it was in childhood that I asked, in prayer, “that “God” be real to me and ‘god’ IS!

My vast and unremitting ignorance surrenders nibble by nibble. And I, curious, am not limited to, or by, any definition of, or about, Who/What lends me attention; both in my sleep and conscious ordinary life. By, or for, which I do not arrogate anything save within the precincts of my self. We are all capable of so much more than we are lead to believe or have faith in. Thinking in animal metaphors is fun; reminding me that we should never/ever anthropomorphize since to do so is false idolatry -- at least ‘false’ to my experience and thinking. . . .

I’ve done it again! Run right off the plane of everything I’ve sought to gain freedom from. Falling naked, no feathers, flapping my yap, yet caught. Not crushed like a fruit fly but embraced.

I am incapable of doing “party tricks” walking on water, resurrecting the dead or healing anything or one other than myself . . . and nominally at that. . . . You should know that Jesus did the miracles and no one noticed, their pain healed, they went about the ordinary of their life.

Yet when He began to speak in parables folks listened. But being my root, in this life, for now, Jesus is not the only one I adore and listen to . . . for out of the mouths of babes (not Eva Gardner but real infants) comes astonishing truths: laughter and tears. I follow where lead by this process and cannot imagine an end or goal . . . having been both subject and object of extreme prejudice I cannot do so to another and question if what I say of myself and experience is not to be welcomed, shunned or annihilated. I do so for the joy of it which cannot be taken away by torment, torture or death. Or at least I pray so since those who do so would be challenged to do more simply to hear me cry out of boredom. And/or their shattered idolatry.

. . . nothing definitive, just taking myself apart like a cheap, made from soup cans, alarm clock, attempting to see what makes it and me tick.

Looming, present and obvious, before me in real time - REALITY - are two mentors who, when queried, claim no allegiance to anything save life itself.

And Love.

. . . and by them, and through the experience of life, otherwise, common to all of us, I know joy.

And/both not either/or.

Ask and you will receive . . .
eventually.

And not what you imagined; but what is, and or can be truth, dependable and intimate.

http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/46216079873
http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/46181255612

130325 02:10 Confidence (pour vous confidence)
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Gifts & Road Kill

Suicidal, enraged with insane grief, I was a clotted knot which she, M, opened; become a generous open hand, no longer a fist. 

Odd to realize that I can kill, as well as praise, with words. I learned to argue in childhood, internally and silently, against the locus of power. To be honest it only now occurs to me that I was, and remain, capable to both destroy or love in the extreme. At least inside. To me, my sense is, that Jesus was both Lion and Lamb. No excuse, of course, since in time my ideology of the numinous has changed, as He suggest, Love not Revenge, is best. 

M & i are odd in our differences, widely divergent on secular issues, yet as friends, two peas in a pod; in this envelope we call life. I would call her to ask what day it is just to hear her voice. Knowing this she will say; “I’m going to let you go . . . “ At times I think she is an egg timer (laughter, much laughter, raucous.) I love her of course. And the oddest thing happened in recent time, I viewed a cosmic version rendering of my conjoined ‘glass funnels’ in space; a galaxy of sorts. I wonder what the venturi is. Who, what, why, wherefore it is? So make, it & her, a divine egg timer! My myth made physically manifest.

I awoke - from my previous rest period - with a certainty that I’d at long last found the knot of my despondency. Recognizing that where I am rude, crude - salacious, internally, I would, if allowed, dissect issues in sophistic manor but in terms that might heal not destroy surgically.

Metaphorically I have for long described myself as Road Kill. A child, or pet, in infancy, left in a plain brown paper bag over which many had driven thinking it merely litter. Looking at today, at now, I laugh, realizing that I’m still ‘in the bag.’ Oblivious of yesterday and/or tomorrow - more laughter. Waiting the crush.

Simile: My self as a greasy spot on the front of a Greyhound Bus cosmically traveled. Returned from light years promising farther adventures beyond my ken.

Funny. Whenever I’ve stopped, attempting to inhabit life in a more-or-less fixed relationship, or place, it has backed up and run me over. Road Kill Stew. Really, the metaphor doesn't describe what power and force have made of the world; a toilet, backed up, violently explosive, waste everywhere . . . oh God! how I despise authority.

130324 05:33 Gift
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

in reply

Journal keeping was a closed circuit until my sister suggested that I ‘vote’ on an Internet site donating meals to stray dogs and cats. Since I’ve been in companionship all my life, from cradle till now, with dogs &/or cats; knowing, too well, the consequence of their being in pounds and unwanted, euthanasia.

I then began noticing additional sites with similar dedications and went there, eventually landing on Care2.com; then posting: first in reply to questions of a general nature; which in turn generated additional thoughts that needed more space for exposition. Eventually they thew me out; no explanation. I sought other venues, not social network sites per se, but whatever came up.

In order of significant response: Cultural Book is best, Opera is next and last was FaceBook, which I abandoned in a fit of snark combined with profound disappointment over the load of “friends” whose principal claim to discourse to was to declare what they didn’t like about the universe. The sole exception being from a high school classmate who commented, albeit cryptically, on something I’d published ala ‘stream of consciousness;’ “WOW!”

I am most grateful for the response received at CulturalBook.com. Including those leaving me shred, or ventilated, as with grape shot, in tatters.

I have a quirky sense of play with words and concepts, initially self-deemed dyslexic. And abuse, misuse words in extreme contrast -- not a literary devise so much as actually what happens when I listen closely to my response. Problematic when I read since ideas go off in my head like the 1976 fireworks over New York Harbor; about which I left being unable to stand the noise.

Recently I compared pearls to pebbles based upon my appraisal regardless of origin we are all more alike than unalike and jewels seem pretentious. Writing this I am suddenly aware that “do not cast your pearls before swine” associated in my mind with “the pearl of great value” better explains my sense of being - lifelong - bewildered why anyone would forgive their assassins. I do not regard myself as a “goody-two-shoe” ‘Christian.’ I regard my internal devils and angels with equal opportunity for me to say yes or not to. All life is of enormous value, none more so than another; including my enemies and/or those who may or will destroy me.

Significantly I have had stolen from me many things of material value. Lately I am subject, as all who live in my community of HUD augmented housing, to monthly invasions and inspections by the authority who abrogate this access to themselves. While seeking alternatives I discovered that I need to adopt an attitude, not of anger or resentment - a just response - but as I have with all previous thefts, and as advised by one of my mentors who said; “what you are enraged by owns you, let it go.”

From which, in the context of my current reading; Walter M. Miller, Jr., SAINT LEIBWITZ And The WILD HORSE WOMAN (second of his only two novels) I have been able, just now, to extrapolate the potential that if what I say; “pearls are present in all life” then it must be equally true of those who have stolen from me . . . to forgive and forget lets me live another moment free of what otherwise would hold me captive and lead me astray . . . perchance to exorcise my diabolical imaginings in writing instead of flesh.

My enemy does not own me, I do. This possession is sufficient to hold me, for now, from mayhem. Add that I am continually aware of the resilient fragility of life; mine as well as they’res.

Suffering seems the tempering of a steel resolve to leave the world nominally better than when found at birth.

130322 13:54 reply
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

A writer?

A “writer” or “author” I am not. At least not by intention, or ambition, but simply so because it seemed the direction of integration in the line of my life - what was next.

Prayer beads are sometimes called, at least I think they are, ‘worry beads.’ And when I trace back from here to then I sense, and laugh at myself, for tall the various and sundry reasons of me, the why, what-for, where I am and will be beyond this moment unto death and beyond the beyond.

Metaphorically I should use ‘pearls’  but instead I’ll describe myself, being a pebble, worn smooth and more so from experience. Strung together as neither prayer or worry beads, but a necklace of experience and love for it all . . . including the “going home,” Or as Emily Dickinson said; “ . . . called back”

Upwelling water, dripping from my open eyes, tells more than I can ever say to others about, or of love, what is joy!

Light like words I adore, having for a, now, long long time; yet never knew what to do with them - either or  both. Conceptually they are dissimilar, one being a symbol, the other ephemeral. Yet equally  transient - revelatory and fluid too towards what end or meaning definitive. Nearer death at least consciously so knowing my probabilities I still see myself as a child stomping in mud puddles of light and words. Seeing and hearing the splash feeling the moisture wicking up my pants, arms pumping up in celebration not supplication.

Validation is difficult to find. Add that I have had a victim posture for so long taking silence to be another way of telling me that I was unworthy of hearing, too dull; valueless. So it was the dialogs imagined, but actually monologues, internal, reasoning why I had value so swiftly dismissed by others important to me. Today I discovered a new validation. One that healed a long held sense, mostly of guilt, regret, an unbidden sense of fault, sin, flaw, dysfunction towards the bride of my youth for leaving her:

"I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

. . . there have been others; women I loved . . . and left . . . riddled - NO! - the word shred comes to mind’ as in shredding myself. From whom I sought what was impossible, for they were not my mother: mute, prone to rage, mercurial, immutable, capricious, abandoning me. In time, with endless effort I have come to sense they abandoned themselves, but then that is, seemingly, “normal” given the demands of a woman giving birth to a child dependent upon them thus becoming that new - always new to them - thing: a mother.

And the folly of seeking sexual intimacy a surrogate for her, either/neither, loving themselves by yielding finally to me. Sex is not love, it is something else. A facet, at best, of what is best: friendship, trust, confidence and intimacy . . . to be known and loved nonetheless.

"He who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of himself: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive." - Cicero

. . . I am blessed by serendipity, what C. G. Jung called synchronicity . . . i have faith in that and for which I weep freely in gratitude; what impels my prayers, works and faith, faith and prayer: all is work, for work is my joy.

Think, please, call and response. . .
and be well.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. ” - Nietzsche

130323 05:47 A writer?
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dare I say

Dare I say The Author of it All has bestowed upon us more than we can know at one sitting. In the banquet of this we call life. In some sense to do so would be to drink the universe in one gulp!

Innocuous, a tread actually, seems a greater truth than all the wisdom books together end-on-end. But I be a fool to so say since I’ve read only snippets of them. Yet gargantuan in my appetite for the words and worlds of those different in gender, religion and convictions regarding governance from mine.

And of what I write the lesser parts of threads bonding me to generosity; nothing lost but less said. At that compelled more to speak in my own way the random rogue associations caused by experience.

. . . it was a bitter November night, filled with portents of the coming winter, distress compelled me towards he who sat before me in a small pool of yellow light listening to my plea. The audience he gave, the quiet still listening remarkable more than what he finally said that made of me pacific a mill pond unwrinkled. . . . to wait, be silent and wait some more

Sad sorrow and exultant joy, reverence too, began there, or where perhaps merely another thread wrapping the cable of my certainty now . . . not to speak of myself but by way of illustration, a literary device, not egoic. (laughter!) could it be that time and galaxies wrap us like a golf ball unraveled rocketing towards another place?

After all, upon awakening I remembered the sun works 24/7/365 and that I am not strange, at least to myself, eccentric to others, to anoint the day when I do sans light save that which explodes from within.

And then, then remembering the vision of myself at the oar, one of many, moving the lot of us forward, centimeter by centimeter, becalmed upon and endless immobile eternity awaiting the coming dove with olive branch; Peace Eternal.

It seems The Author speaks to each of us in various ways and diverse tongues. Astonished. We then take it as revealed truth and kill one another to prove a truth actually common to one and all.

All is hallowed, this ground of our being now, yet owned by some and contested by others. Add. I remember he and wife who sailed the Golden Rule into the area around the Bikini Atoll in protest.

“I shall be like that tree,—I shall die at the top.” - Jonathan Swift
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ a way station on the course of my day begun at whenever I awaken, seemed to explain my urgency to speak before I drool, my brains vacated by the fools who attempt to own/control everything. I've seen ‘the beast!’ not evil so much as vacant and a cynic incorporated.

Closing thoughts before retiring for the rest period: He who I called my son, came through me not for me (paraphrase of Khalil Gibran) and was for himself what he need to be or become in life or death. The same is equally true of my daughter both of them, one dead the other AWOL. The time of my generation is passing away -- Good riddance?! -- Sadly we've left you little, growing less daily, to live for, or by. . . . That is a material view, metaphysically we've the entire universe ahead. The common threads discovered lead to joy for all equally.

04:12

Several collisions coincident: Having finished A Canticle for Leibowitz (in places lucid lyrical transcendent - to me salvific) I viewed shortly thereafter PBS broadcasts on the largest explosions made by man. And thus integrated the woe I anticipate from the mindless collection of data about us individually and consequent applications in the Police State, our current status, factory famed slaves for the greedy. For whom we seem a herd of lemmings to be sacrificed wholesale. The majority of what passes for communication being propaganda supporting nothing but failed ideals.

. . . M seems little inclined to judge the good or ill of me, having set me free from bondage to my past self-enslavement to others; as victim or prey for predators. As I would do for all life, if I could but the fact is that we heal ourselves, or can, should only we discover we are worth more than all the money in the universe; no one of us greater than another.

“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.” - Johann von Goethe

. . . if you do not own your life, others will, and then consume you as they have materially. We are a world apposed to cannibalism, yet they are our masters. . . .who pretend to be otherwise. Supping on your brains and soul.

(Caption for illustration:
To see The All in a raindrop is a gift seldom bestowed. Grander, by far, less obvious divide called The Grand Canyon. Between Creation/Creator/Created)

130322 02:55 dare I say
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

envisioned

Of few, so few it, would be foolish to call them, the company of several, I am wealthy by the sincere joyous pleasure I take in our being face-to-face.

Or via other modes of communication. And best, thoughts of them from memory. Wherein I am better able to assess, laud and celebrate the gifts and graces of their ever being at all, a friend and beloved of me.

Imperfect.
I have many flaws.
Amongst which is the penchant to listen and allow the eclipse of myself;
naked of desire for anything other than their well being.

Of the several, nay, many I’ve left behind and will so do again in death, I have left in knowledge I was no longer needed as I am to myself. Neither a convenience, utility or character, two dimensional, a prop in their play.

Service? Yes?
But theft of my time and attention. No!
This is possible, feasible, and freely given; attributable to light years traveled alone, not lonely, time recognized as my true joy.

"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." - George Bernard Shaw

I sense now, in no small measure, why those greatest amongst us have forgiven their executioners. If for no other reason than defining their truth and choice exclusive to the injustice apparent in their departure.

Disquiet, temporary, has nettled me since discovery (within the past 24 hours) of myself as a cypher in the police state we inhabit. My self an unwitting slave wrapped in chains invisible.

Solitary confinement, in life or death, holds no fear for me since, in reality, and by experience, I am never actually alone. Nor is anyone save those who refuse to listen to themselves.

130321 07:38

envisaged / inclined / invoking / her giggle / sigh / laugher / dissolving / licking / nipples / enraptured

. . . 15:26

The issues seems simple; we are governed by lilliputian subhuman minds, morally and ethically challenged. Whose incomprehension, regarding compassion and empathy, is indicative of why I discern them as unworthy of debate. Not the face of evil but of what is a subspecies of mankind. Invoking thoughts of the Tibetan Buddhist who immolate themselves instead of kneeling before the politicians of China. For whom forgiveness is folly since the word and deed has virtually no meaning. In America, overwhelming the political process are multi-national greeder/banksters who apparently have forgotten that economies are mediums of exchange, barter, not to be held and admired as an object of lust/addiction.

130320 1958 envisioned
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

cremation of ambition

Ambition can make one more so, ambitious to the extent, in myself, I felt cremated with jealousy. Made small, inconsequential, mean and evil of intent. By the talent/genius/works and words of others. Rendered charcoal tendentious.

Yet offered the opportunity to write and teach, I became something else. Nascent at first then growing, weed or tree, in the darkness of my envy. Now I remember Edward Steichen’s remark, “ . . . the best photographs remain unknown on processing house (mill) floors.” He was then Director Of MOMA’s Photography Department and author of THE FAMILY OF MAN: exhibition and book. Obviously in previous times of chemical & silver photography become currently a tsunami of images, digital.

The same World submerging, is true by words, as well, now flooding; no paddle canoe or ark.

“GOOD, BETTER, BEST” being a ruse employed by merchants of greed not need. And none in reality being more consequential than another but just one more singer in the choir/chorus of Creation. In & of itself the glory not the singer since all, if honest, would attribute creation to the Author of  it inspired/conspired. Not eclipsed, but illuminated - incandescent - kindled road flares burning through the common pavement, a path, not THE PATH! Going where no path was before; making plain the highway of joy, wide and obvious.

Oblivious, anonymous, I remain inconsequential, muttering and maundering, as politicians are want to do. Save in my case lacking any ambition other the joy of knowing I am, briefly, fully human, alive & joyous. Acknowledging creation goes on with or without my voice in the choir; here or above.

Ambition leads most often to addiction; never filled, crying more - More - MORE! The rictus of greed is bottomless; consuming everything in sight, cannibalistic.

It is not by false humility that I speak but earnest and sincere celebration for all the voices I hear and see. Even those of my Enemy who I was suggested to love instead of smite. To forgive seven times seventy, and again, and yet more, in particle replica of what I experience as The Creator. The revolutionary, anarchist, evolutionist, impelling all life to move forward and be.

My ‘enemy’ tells me, through inconvenient terms and behaviors, what may well be their truth; but not mine. In the process informing me more about they who would and will strike me dead, should all negotiations fail.

No one wins a war, the cost is too high! The innocent, the poor, those with nothing have less in consequence the contest. Those who advocate conflict or inflect preemptively strife are bored and ignorant of love. . . .Or profit from it.

We are one family. And no soul is either one gender or the other. None superior, or has the exclusive truth of our origin, or destination; were it so there would be no rape, pillage, war.

"There is no way to peace peace is the way" - Mahatma Gandhi + A.J. Muste  
"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment he needs help. That's the message he is sending."
“Why rush? Our final destination will only be the graveyard.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

130319 05;38 cremation
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

had she said YES!

Women have always been a dark deep well into which I fling myself in prospect of peace, pleasure, becoming whole, imagining joy. And had she said YES! I’d have been lost. For between us was a trust and she incarnated kindness indiscriminate to all yet in those fleeting minutes alone more so to me from time-to-time, day-by-day and then.

A flickering glimmering smile equivocal glittered and then she said; “I’ve given up on men. . . “ Amongst the peers surrounding us, all women grinning. Intimacy is not penetrative but embracing. But embarrassing, momentarily, at least for me it was. Recognizing her need, then and now, to flee; I within milliseconds understood.

She remains embossed upon the titanium steel drum of my prayer wheel; spinning 24/7/365; a resolve to remain celibate, bachelor alone . . . mendicant solitary. Yet again had she said YES!

I’d be now up to my hair follicles in snow and me a desert rat. . . .Too old for one and too young for the other; lost in the limbo dance. Just as well, since the pleasure of anticipation seldom is met with reality; latter on when the bonds strangle; growing bald; the expectation of whatever, worn away.

Heaven forfend I should dance forward instead keeping my mouth shut.

. . . now, at least now and lately, I better understand why He said, “forgive them for they know not what they do” . . . to see within is to know the glow, the pearl, regardless the dark prospect displayed. The Master makes no slaves but masters of ourselves. Something never lost. Light and Love projected unquenched requited or not


. . . but then, as when it began, so it follows, as now, best friends,
4 me the ideal objective of all relationships; marriage in particular


"Man loves little and often, woman much and rarely." - Anonymous

4M&PD

130318 03:33 had she said YES
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

self-deprecation

My unabashedly riotous guffaws are the product, a lifetime in self deprecation. Over which father and I would compete in odd places. Times. Remembering now my mother, who seldom laughed, was looking for a hat in Bloomingdales of all places. When suddenly he and I, in the mirror, appeared beside her grinning in ladies chapeaux.

I laugh now with more than a tincture of sadness, for the memory, while humorous, betrays what I saw in her eyes; terror.

Mercurial in the best of times, worse when intoxicated, a daily event after five of the afternoon. Latter on, the marriage failed, she alone, would disappear for sometimes days and my sister would find her alone in her, always Cadillac, two vacated quarts of Scotch on the floor; unconscious.

"My love life is terrible. The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty." - Woody Allen

. . . we’re a pair M&me two spirit ghosts dancing; passing through one another. And it was she who invoked within me, without knowing really? that I in the end would rather enter a woman’s soul than her body. Few of the many I’ve known came remotely near the passion, the - to me - sacrament which M calls aggression . . . Small wonder now she once called me a ‘priest’ but then I love her all the more for her confidence. I’d no real life before, thinking myself too stupid to live. . . . Worse. Attempting to prove it.

I’m an old man alone, growing older moment by precious minute. Formulating the thesis that success is an illusion. Happy with a companion cat, laughing and crying, about/over which, she the cat, Annie, is bewildered and consoles me. A sailor of the galaxies I know well the term “cats paws” barely rippling the sea becalmed; calming me with her barely perceptible touch, asking are you okay?

Forgive me please all those loved and left to find myself at long long last happily alone. More cautious with language spoken not written, Thanks Be To God! Or whatever/whomever speaks to me now awake or sleeping the dreams impelling me launched into wakefulness.

Obvious to me and should be to you; I’m a very bad boy. So much so to defraud all my longings to be otherwise.

I know the Master loves me, as does M, neither making of me a slave to anything or one.

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

. . . which I now, even now, and forever more, add the pearl of great value is within each of us; seek it nowhere else. As grateful as I am for M and the Master I know only now that love is not that which we receive but give. Our true selves.

. . . candy is dandy, liquor quicker, money works too, but to be real, give of your soul; forever renewed.

. . . oddly, or perhaps not, discovered when I went to post:
“Conquest is an evil productive of almost every other evil both to those who commit and to those who suffer it.” C. S. Lewis

130318 01:16 self deprecation
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Rogue

Long have I wondered how and why I should be other than I am as told: White, Middle-Class, Male, American. A gift from St. Patty this morn; though I am Orange and by root going back to the Old Sod, that lovely green isle, Newton-Stewart, not distant from The Troubles in Belfast. But this branch of Spratts, dying with me, left there in 1812. . . .Where, come to think of it, God is in the land and sea, sky and heavens; not in the definitions between who wears the Green, or not, this day.

Nevertheless I owe much to The Holy Roman Catholic Church teaching me to be myself. And become that odd thing born of abrasion, so admired in other Catholics, I have known, loved and admired throughout my life, from beginning to end, so I’ll say of myself I’m catholic = universal, small ‘c’.

Well as that may be I was impelled to write this moment by St. Patrick’s confession and intentions; lovely, loving and only good will he had and so much a part of me now for all life not those who claim to be Christian or Catholic. Whatever that means to them I know what it means to me.

To achieve escape velocity from what I was. I had to lose most all things I loved. Mendicant, beggared, unwanted and seemingly, not despised, but abandoned by accidental birth.

Life with my parents taught me to survive, no mean accomplishment, especially in these times or any and all time. Not to mention the time before time was measured by the likes of us and what will silently remain, no evidence we ever existed: the lot of us. 

Yet now all things taste, feel, touch, smell and are heard differently. Better. And I have a model of perfection in Jesus: equally balanced between male/female, thought, feeling intuition and sense. Add, in my poverty, I am humiliatingly arrogant in that I am wealthy beyond any means, measures or standards I am able to find to gainsay that. At least insofar as I am willing to accept, reverence or submit to.

What remains, that which I would convey, communicate or publish, is a simple sense that dad’s funeral shroud tightly woven about my perceptions wasn’t his in the first place. But a ‘gift’ from the materialist who seemed, in his time and mine, to desire that we be enslaved to them. The author’s of the Great Depression, now euphemistically refereed/referred to as the Great Recession. Statistically dissimilar yet experientially similar.

I former terms I’d say of my death, ‘soon enough will I be worm shit,’ at least insofar as this biodegradable body is concerned. Now, even now, and forever more, will I say what I leave behind will be days I would not have wanted to live through. If I weep for my lost children, and I do now healed of my grief, I weep more for the children born and those to follow them in this shrinking opportunity to live free of exploitation by the rich and privileged, High-and-Mighty, those who seek to own everything. Then too their puppets the politicians who in their greed for acclaim, power and a false sense of accomplishment prostitute our future for their paltry gain.

Perhaps we need a plague in Congress and Wall Street?

I advocate no violence towards those who do violence to me. In that I wonder about the potential of injustice serving a greater cause or crime towards a greater end. Even here in the ordinary of my life under the fascist rule of J. L. Gray Management I have learned to be more attentive to spinning about this abode; a broom in my ass, with dusters in both ears, twirling about their property; my life dedicated to its maintenance; a Stepford Betty Crocker in high heels.

So what else is new? Our privacy raped, as with the economy. The future bleak if nonexistent. The earth itself prematurely scorched beyond habitability. 

Same--Same authority gone riot. 

Immoral. Top to bottom, all who presume to lead.

Feed a person, they live for a day. Teach a person fish, and they will live for a lifetime. But what if they, the teachers, take away the sea? Befoul the sky, make of life: slavery?

“No man is free who is not master of himself.” - Epictetus

Oh Epictetus, where are you now we need you so? The difference between my father’s generation and mine/myself is that I listen to that quiet, small voice, speaking in my sleep and waking; annotated by the likes of Epictetus, to name only one of a growing, hourly, list of those who sought truth not political fame. . . .The cynics who know the price of everything but the value of nothing. (Paraphrase of - Oscar Wilde)

I am who, what, where and as I am; free of chains and the stripes turned to scars, thanks to the follies of others and my own. But, still I ask; what of the children to come and those who remain homeless, hopeless. . . .Taught vocations for which there is none for them to occupy. Never taught to think for themselves. Conformist to a system that is no longer in decay but dead. 

“If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.” 

- Epictetus

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” 

- Mahatma Gandhi

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” - Anatole France

. . . wisdom and truth are not exclusive to any one definition, or another, of it

130317 01:26 Rogue

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

miscreants

Miscreants beggared me, voiding (in) my cupped hands; once adequately filled sufficiently for sustenance. Not that I object. But for others, who’s lives ended prematurely for want of medical attention, or suicide, etc. . . especially those homeless now. I belabor the issue.

And even now of my father, years afterward, I would say; “Thank You!” Even though I suspect he thought - No! I know - he presumed me insane. And for whom I suspect his misunderstanding of my avidity; seeking love from someone who knew nothing of it, save a slogan on a brand of toilet paper or lurid novel. . . . the dart of his disdain and dismissal, nominal melioration, with his last breathe given on a borrowed cellular telephone.

Death holds no fear for me, but dying slowly - by attrition, does. A moment ago I called to assess the feasibility of visiting a friend who had so lingered for near a year or more in my attention. Sadly. No longer allowed to visit save at risk of meeting the person responsible for my absence, I hopped around one foot to another too long.

Nothing, and no one, is lost within all the universe; save being for me a page, no, a large swath torn from the cyclorama of my psyche in the ordinary of my life; mourned. Scarred, healed, I struggle on.

My intention, before the news, just received, to share what small sanity I possess, attributable to the kindness of strangers. In her case, became an intimate confidant and friend. What saved me from shredding from sole to hair follicle the one who dismissed me!? A Sufi once spoke of crossing the chasm upon a thread but now sensed, as on thin air. Again, in her case, her last words to me, our fingers intertwined; “Keep the Faith . . . . “ and I will, as I’ve done, but to not one - but The All, the author of all prophets, my apprehension of what they sought.

My point? Kindness is something free and easily given; a word, smile, gesture or the mere; “I see you!” In passing, brief of long. It may be the only kindness, as in my case I’d ever known. Best: a touch.

For now.

Forever.

Riot in words, she collected quotes as well. The blossoms of those who cared to give their best - themselves - remembering there is no love in a clenched fist.

. . . if nothing else, prayer, like kindness, changes the giver of it eternally.

Be well.

PS In the name of greed, America’s current religion, murder is committed daily.

20130316 11:34 miscreants
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

2nd Thought(s)

We mass men, all sentient life, among us there seem a preponderance of people, in America at least, who, in masturbatory self-aggrandizement, now maunder their meaningless thoughts via text or voice on portable devices while driving intoxicated as legends in their own minds. Addicted in conceit. Indifferent to all life otherwise. . . and of those who cannot, pilot grocery carts hazarding the isles of Wally World. Eschewed for employee policies and attempting control of the earth.

Then too, tutti, is commercial broadcast television. A high-colonic, infusing then sucking out everything: self, time, imagination, joy and originality.

No wonder we are factory farmed by greeders fanatic for our material wealth, mental and physical health; tracked and/or infused with spurious, specious, mystery chemicals of unknown consequence - present in all rampage killers; an after-fact regardless of armament.

Better for me to await the crematoria sucking my thumb, fetal, in the corner silent? I seem more often now to leap off the edge of our known universe attempting flight, soaring not plummeting.

My 2nd thought(s) are regarding the previous post ‘bemused’ and what it might mean to greeders whose sole entertainment is the serial abuse of all life for their pleasure and profit. Not ‘evil’ but anti-life, at least the lives of others. Being, at one time or another - subject/object - of all the addictions I can imagine, brief or long, I empathize with those possessed.

Yield?

No!

In the interest of full disclosure, a confession: In recent memory there was a young man expelling sounds musical, as welcome as Fox TV News, which also was polluting the silence of the men’s locker room. I turned to a fellow senior and commented that posterior insertion seemed appropriate.

When you run over me with your vanity, please kill me, do not instead, leave me quadriplegic and unable to remember ever having lived otherwise.

Remember, please, the self defined “MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE” gambled away the world’s economy for which there is no absolution save, insertion of red hot pennies, endless, until expiration or explosion. . . . thus ending their bottomless avarice.

One-by-One

. . . no, Virginia, I am not a nice person; I subscribe and prescribe: “An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” - Mahatma (Mohandas K.) Gandhi

. . . However imagination affords me a laugh or two. The illustration used without permission but in gratitude, no gratuity, for: http://www.brainpickings.org/

130316 0850 2nd thought(s)
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

bemused

Bemused, at times, remembering, unamused & clinical; this light dimly glowing in the dark of eternity will soon be snuffed out. But the light, soon to come, dawn, will also be gone; itself blown away; consumed; out. Recycled, not here, but beyond the beyond; my current reach - for now.

Awakened the debate that if we be “The Church.” One and each, coupled with all of us together, sans boundaries, then we must of need be ‘god’ - by particle - not whole. The vision has seldom visited me, but well remembered for when it came, never left, but remained asleep, awakened now and again.

The motto of those who clone animals; “Replica not Resurrection.” Reminds me of He who said He would come again! In part or whole? And in what measure or means would time, intervening, have varied Him?

He is my root, from which I have sprung. Yet in all my wandering - wondering - curiosity I find the spirit of inquiry in many, who amongst us all, few, give meaning instead of taking it; freedom not slavery.

Enkindled by whom or what. . . .

Why?

Why not!

Did not the light enkindled, consciousness, come from friend not foe. Neither anthropomorphic nor knowable as such: thing or energy but both; extrinsic and intrinsic?

For which from beginning to end and returned? Recycled!? Be celebrated in life; and the absence of it!

Speaking solely, i can participate and be responsible only for myself, altering nothing but submitting to the inevitable. . .singing for others who betimes listen for truth

“When to the heart of man
 Was it ever less than a treason
 To go with the drift of things,
 To yield with a grace to reason,
 And bow and accept the end
 Of a love or a season?”
—  Robert Frost

130316 06:29 bemused
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

notes

Why this or that note, chord or phrase - symphonies of praise?
are not Bach’s partitas prayer for one
hummed, strummed, plucked, pounded

Conceptually so are words conjoined in context but more dangerous since, speaking for myself, I cannot simply smile or grin, shrug my shoulders saying nothing; or at most; “i don’t know” soft shoe pawing the ground.

Nothing I’ve ever said or thought hasn’t been said or thought before and/or said in other ways and languages: marble, clay, musical

But then best is dance as I lurch about with Annie astonished both in silence
various in key mode tone rhythm all in praise for this morning
in laughing unto tears

. . . remembering my homage / shutter clicking / 400mm / waist deep in the violas / capturing Aaron Copeland
whenever hearing Fanfare for The Common Man exultant conducting hymns
no longer sad for the loss / for losing defines better what was / it was enough to have been
once

creation speaks in silence to/too/two/tutu/tutti/2
amen

http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/45266782685
frankly I like mo better Yo-Yo Ma
less romantic
incise

130315 04:44 note
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

fond fondling

When I speak I do so without authority beyond the precincts of myself, and then at that, merely to annotate what is left; this rusty blade stroked against adversity. 

Never my intent or ambition to join the sage’s rages calmly articulated against indifference and stasis. Yet while I stroke and stoke my curiosity I discover that odd thing and thought; God, it seems is humble, loving and kind - vastly more gentle than i.

. . . forgiving too

add: merciful: empathetic: compassionate: inseminating all life with an ineluctable will to live - free.

. . . and present in all things save those who know it not living in fear. Seeking ideal wishfully while the real is all there is. creator/evolutionist/anarchist . . . collaborative

enough

but then perhaps this is merely the ides - the middle of March - or the middle way between ideal and reality?

“Love' has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.” - Katharine Hepburn

“Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.” - Goethe

. . . for you this is conjecture; for myself, it is a paving stone upon and unseen path evolving

130515 03:06 fond fondling

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

- Margery Allingham

Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English crime writer, best remembered for her detective stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Allingham

"Mourning is not forgetting. ... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust." + grief

"The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable."

I post this since I have found the above “Mourning . . . “ helpful and within a file dedicated to those who mourn as I do. And “the untying” as gone on and will continue until face-to-face. At times I think most valuable are my notes collecting and growing enormous. For those who mourn I will gladly share the grace of others equally touched by grief.

130313 08:02 Margery Louise Allingham