awakening

Arising from a death like sleep, aroused by a dream. Often a string of thoughts or words lost between the time to time of moving from horizontal to vertical. To sleep is to dream and in dreams I am informed, not so much by what the content was, but what was implied/inferred.

Regardless the sublimity of revelation, it is lost between my being an inch worm crossing galaxies of thoughts at the speed of lightning. Merely a way, not The Way. A process of finding a reason to live another day. Wondering less why those who when assassinated forgave instead of laughing humorously at the folly of their executioners. We learn nothing from destroying our adversaries.

09:36

The world, I will soon leave you, is changing rapidly and I sense myself a failure at what I would change. Or, at the very least, protest. World extinction by: _________. Yet several come to mind blazing: over population, corruption of air water, land. Obscene profits made from the labor and resources of people otherwise unable to share in the boon. And one in particular: The science of war is death. The science of life is, however, entirely another matter.

I sense, think, feel, intuit myself as a curator and anthropologist of life interactive, collaborative, and as it might be ideally given the study of love versus war. Add, I have in time come to conclude myself an anarchist as I believe Jesus was; as were all those whose words I closely follow, seeking what they sought.

In sincere honesty I can find no label for myself. At one time I was a photojournalist and currently am grieving for a friend who’s life is facing traumatic change. John Henry White, of The Chicago Sun-Times fame, and I were once roommates during an annual University of Missouri photojournalism workshop. His remarks shared across the darkened room before sleep have remained seminal to who, what, why and where I am. He and his entire department of news photographers we laid off. Made redundant by video and toy cameras in cellular telephones. It never really was about the equipment but the vision, version and mind behind directing what was recorded.

We the people of this planet are essentially what we consume, for good or ill, by way of those who now rule. The Merchant Princes who would be Emperors. Multinational corporations having destroyed any and all sense of national sovereignty.

We who dance to the fiddler’s tunes must, in some sense be willing to pay the musician a laborer’s wage. Yet the cost has become distorted to the extend and degree too high disallowing all the rest of us a life.

I have faith in the generations to come, who will discover as I have, the world owes us no livelihood. Conscious as I was while teaching photojournalism that there were not enough jobs going available for those who wanted them. So I taught my students to see what they were looking at, on multidimensional levels, as both still and motion capture. It follows that we are all captors of life via imagery. And those who “Serve and Protect” the status quo and wealthy are nervous that they in their turn will be held accountable to we the ultimate authority.

A leg and armless man lay before me with a pointing device surfing the internet above his head. A Vietnam Veteran with unit patches displayed; he remains were I left him. Yet never will he leave my consciousness whenever I see the images of bombast and pretense.

“A picture is worth a thousand/ten thousand words.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_wordsw Seems cynical now at my age given my knowledge of poetry and considering The Gettysburg Address. To name but a few words springing immediately to mind. That in their turn describe better the abstraction of what things are about. Then too are the numerous things too small to photograph meaningfully. The spirit moving us for example. Thinking back to my familiarity with Civil War photography and retroactively applying what Lincoln said to the meaning/value of the carnage.

When I arrived in Chicago I called John Henry White without reply. Later, on the street, speaking with other shooters, I was informed he was teaching African/American children and possibly at university level.

Love as verb, never dies. I love his silence as well as our long ago dialogs; and our art is about being witnesses to life. How wonderfully precious it is whether acknowledged as such or not.

Given that yesterday was “D-Day” and Pam’s son’s birthday I will close with a remembrance of meeting a giant of a man at the El Paso Veteran’s Clinic. I did not photograph him since he was astride a scooter and about to die from pancreatic cancer . . . and . . . yet I will long remember what he showed me of his scars, the horrors he’d seen in the Death Camps liberated, or the portrait of himself decorated by several nations . . . a handsome Mexican American even now in his nineties. A paratrooper with fifty-five jumps to his credit.

So you see John, if you ever read this, remember what you gave me. What I hope we give to those who follow. To have courage to be real and address what needs attention fearlessly. . . . Even if we must paint our prison, cave or tomb, with bloody fingers self inflicted.

130607 EDT 01:10 awakening

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved