off ramp

tippytoe walking the crash barrier between opposing flows of traffic wandering wondering to cross it or not don’t think so bury my my dust beneath the off ramp sign a dust mote blown hither and yon otherwise

Oddly discovered just now:

- George S. Patton, General

"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."

“If a man does his best, what else is there?”

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

“In forty hours I shall be in battle, with little information, and on the spur of the moment will have to make the most momentous decisions. But I believe that one's spirit enlarges with responsibility and that, with God's help, I shall make them, and make them right.”

"Live for something rather than die for nothing."

"Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom."

"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash."

“The fixed determination to have acquired the warrior soul, to either conquer or perish with honor, is the secret of victory.”

"There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear."

"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory."

But maybe not so odd at that. The process has become, sometimes, an interplay between quotes discovered and affirmation rendered; tender these free associations collisions of images inconvenient but fun/funnily decisive.

An education of sorts uncommon to those boring days in school learning conformation for slavery: On The Job Training. Misery loves to rule bending minds to perform like rubber toy bears with armatures inserted through red plastic pedestals cranked by the 1% We’re factory farmed from birth to death.

Be of good cheer on your way to the gas chamber thanks to Exxon.

- Bertrand Barere

“The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.”

. . . were I a rich man would I speak so? Living high on the hog, a life of rude 

salacious dissipation

130413 09:55 MDT off ramp

I checked my email before rest, discovering my intuition was correct, at least in so far as her reply implied. She deserves the best, what she so freely gave to others in their last moments in life; what I witnessed. Who like M is trustworthy and oddly safe in a world about to die. It follows that I awoke certain that it was/is/will be for them and those whose lives touched mine now gone. I am not ashamed to admit loving men who equally hold this extraordinary quality.

I have broadened the net of my curiosity. Using whatever falls to hand to capture all that I can contain eclectically. Chagrined, astonished, at my ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and longing for my sense our world, time and species ending. Not The End Times, foretold but different by trinkets, tensile, ornament and toys. By which, not alone, but other consequential details. For example the too many of us to sustain life collectively. e.g. the sewer we’ve made of the seas. The air, and/or of ourselves, chemically.

About the men and women who I am most attentive there is a simple quality: Kindness. Which, like love, is preemptive and grows; while the obverse makes all things mean and small. Cruel. In sincere honesty I know these things by the experience of them in myself. I change hour by hour growing less definable. I have no desire to be a prophet, a wise person or Messiah; seeking not to follow but find that which those people we attribute such qualities to sought.

Loving kindness has wrought this in me as a gift from real, ordinary, people: miraculous and astonishing.

All things being equal, like a tuning fork, I hum a note between weeping and mirth. Helpless to change anything other than myself. My “self-ownership” is nominal. Something sort of, like, lend-lease, a tenant not the landlord.

If I continue to write it is merely because it gives me pleasure. Masturbatory? I think not since beneath the joy is a consciousness of all who passed before me, soon to join, their silence knowing that nothing, is lost.

Do I lie?

I still have the interlocutor and friend to answer to.

Laughter, much laughter.

A fool for love am I.

Otherwise grasp your sit down and kiss it goodbye.

“Making love was never about you and me in a bed. We made love whenever we held hands.” - Ian Thomas

To close: I would paraphrase the above with the following “. . . we made love whenever together or light years apart

Amplifying, for now, a simpletons sense that were I to describe “God” it would include all of us not just the wise or just, but sinners and saints and all between. I cannot otherwise be a person who loves as loved, judging others worthy or unworthy of life and love.

130414 02:12 MDT before rest

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved