A
study in blues, as in Rhapsody in Blue.
The
breaching whale of my dream broke into consciousness; acknowledging
the conflicts of my grandparents and parents. Their difference in
loving and living style within societal constraints; their lives and
times.
Will
I never learn not to fall asleep with music!
Or
write!
At
the surface, half in/half out, I recognized the style and thought of
them: women married to men. As, chained together running away, in
opposite directions, fetching up – failing their flight;
collapsing. Awake now I wonder is this not true of almost all
marriages eventually? A seamless continuity of remaking the other
into an ideal partner absent all conflict.
Two
realizations before I go on: I too failed the test to become a friend
submitting to my then wife. For much, I think now, the same reasons.
And now our “All American Dream” has been gambled away corroding
the ideals of marriage, home, children with a future. Future? What
future? Through thick and thin, thinner, then vapor. No hope for the
children, homes lost. As for old age; forget about it. While the
Banisters on Wall Street gloat and smirk. Having bankrupted the
world.
130406
0111 mere mortal
.
. . notes in reply to a dream just awoken from, wherein a dialog was
spoken to an unknown woman whose inspiration this is. Can I say;
“Call me Ishmael”?
What
and why I write are merely notes on a life unfolding. But then,
equally, I could say being enfolded. Such ego as I might once have
had is slowly evaporating in awe for the process I annotate daily in
my personal journal: for me a proof positive of all that I am, a mere
mortal, touched by something vaster than whales, etc. Awesome in and
of itself, this process, I have yet to grow jaded in reply to all
that has happened in my life. About which, with sincerity I will say
this, it is not for me but us equally available: a genius we all
possess. Should only we say “yes” to the invitation to be
ourselves beyond the boundaries of definition common to all life and
language.
In
some sense I propose that we all are filled with events, if strung
together, form a necklace of value and purpose. Not to control, rule
or exploit, own, so much as to serve one-another. In truth and love
imperfect, for now, but participating in a purpose and intention
beyond what we can now understand or define. Albeit the direction of
integration not destruction.
I
know the details of my life and process about which it would be
boring to detail or imply since each of us perceives it: Life, Love
and Truth differently. A Tower of Babble purposeful.
It
is said that to talk to oneself and get answers is problematic. In
psycho babble, Schizophrenic.
Damned
or Blessed either way I will press forward.
(03:10
If I have lived for nothing other than this hour, celebrated, alone;
the feeling, intuition, sense and thoughts. I will have lived for
something of such value it cannot be told or sold. Convicted that I
must share with others the potential of such joy.
And
then I crashed. Returning to sleep for a time to recoup the earliness
of my awakening and dreamed again. Another young woman in my dream,
this time a fellow photojournalist, we were comparing/competing for
work. Within the dream I seemed to demure to her, she being younger,
desirable and so desperate for work. Yet now, awake, I remember
myself before Randy’s diagnosis at four with Leukemia: I was a
terror defying all authority to get my images/vision/version of what
was the truth before me.
At
least so as I thought myself by compare to the wilting fern persona I
adopted with my mother from infancy until sixteen. Who’s savage
rage, sober or drunk, I was able to begin to deflect at age sixteen
when the second false accusation of incest seemed eminent. The point
to this aside is that I have had an unusual deference towards woman
lending them a power they can no longer possess. Which I now, loving
and being loved my M, no longer need; that former sedition against
myself; begging for love. For all we, all who could but do not,
rampage, attributable to rape, abuse, abandonment; I healed will
attempt to save those who insanely go forward murdering.
"A
good mind possesses a kingdom: a great fortune is a great slavery."
"The
most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your
life."
-
Seneca
10:59
At
times I wander about, at stopping points, seeking affirmation to what
inspired me in the first instance or amplification: unspecific. For
me a process I trust, more often rewarding than not. I still flirt
with exploding my mind a la C. G. Jung and Montaigne even Einstein
did; wanting to go as far as IT – FAR goes farther beyond the
beyond.
Returning
to The Rhapsody in Blue(s) My maternal grandmother had remarried
having been married at thirteen. Little, to no, mention made by my
mother regarding her father: dead by accident or design when she was
four. Except any mention of firearms.
My
point being that my step-grandfather never lived with us in Ripley,
Ohio. But visited us randomly upon a Sunday morn late after his
Catholic service and we returned from the Methodist for Sunday Supper
the chicken he killed by hatchet or wrung neck, even the one I
attempted to toilet train; a pet. My sense of marriage was thus
discontinuous and well remember chancing upon them making love
beneath a patchwork quilt and the eves of the attic above. Still it
disturbed them not; not that they continued but didn’t hide either.
Then
there was mom’s confession that dad expected her to be both whore
and The Virgin Mary, why I don’t know, but she was sober at the
time and not especially, wildly, enraged either.
At
twelve, when she accused me of incest with my six year younger sister
I hadn’t a clue what was going on but fled. Running away to be
found by my father, how? I don’t have a clue for I was in the
middle of Innes Arden’s Golf Course. Otherwise, and I’ll close
here, my sexual relationship with women beginning at four: she losing
her panties at every excursion. Then the kissing lessons given by my
baby-sitter in her white nylon slip and I in Y fronts. Exiled to band
camp, The University of New Hampshire, at around thirteen, passing
for eighteen then and dating older women! Well, what more can I say,
I’ve had a ball and despite the sorrows healed it’s been
fabulous! So with M our being a pair is comfortable since my ideal of
love is infinite, if sometimes discontinuous. . . .and no fooling
around.
It
may be, in retrospect, remembering a letter from mom; “You don’t
need my permission to write.”
I
was then unconscious of what I might have said in mourning or
celebration of her. Or, any and all women since then and now!
Laughing
since the spirit and body are willing and able; still at closing
seventy-three: too soon for me.
Photo
Caption:
Three-year-old
"Esperanza" named her pet pigeon after her wheelchair-bound
teenage uncle in Watts, Los Angeles. He was shot by a rival gang
member in a drive-by shooting, 1994 credit photo: Donna De Cesare –
University of Texas Press
130405
1516 Love Art
Nouveau
©
2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved
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