and both

Across the hours, down the days, eating miles between my former home and now, I became lost in silent contemplation of my gratitude for it all. The friends left behind and those to be discovered ahead. Wondering how it came to be that I left one for another at such an advanced age. . . .sensing myself as wed to M as to Pam in a love elastic beyond distance and time.

Loss has a way of doing that, eliciting the reevaluation of meanings, values and priorities. Revealing important, formerly hidden, truths and choices made on any basis. To hold or fold, gambling on the potential imagined or intuited that may be consequent in choices made.

Finally conscious that when I claim, men never really grow up but merely old then die, I recognized myself as a flirt seeking from women what I was unable to receive from my mother. Who remained, essentially, immune from my attempts to glean her attention, joy or laughter. Which, obviously, I personalized as my problem not hers. A problem I too easily assuaged with wishful thinking in all other relationships save for with M. Whose suggestion that I volunteer for hospice service was the origin of my current geographical location. . . .

130807 EDT 05:17

In an attempt to distill my dream, from which I have just awakened, I began to recognize a collective communal corporation of love for life.; made obvious through my daily research. And discovered within the long silence begun at the moment of my departure; moving, not to Vermont, but to Pamela.

Central to my conflict is the simple sense of losing M. Or choosing Pam over her. But within my dream I sense a union of both and an incarnation of M’s gifts to me manifest in community. A choice made for what remains of my physical life; the long or short of it. What has been forged within me by M is unbreakable. Add. If it happened to me it can happen to anyone since all are capable of loving life; the all of it: rising up and going down.

130811 04:08

Within my dream I stood suspended in stasis. No way forward, unwilling to backup, leaping from the shear cliff face traversed I knew I could never reach the rock spire of what seemed safety distant ahead. Falling I discovered there was no bottom. No sudden death from either terror or collision with the distant valley floor. Awake standing in the dark with my first cigarette I saw a shooting star and thought there are no boundaries to God, or good, or whatever had brought me to this moment in life; for the source is both extrinsic and intrinsic within all and each of us equally.

My current sense is that dreams analogize experience into a comprehensive direction for what is next in life. Which, given my current state of continual transition from the past to future, indicates a need to more fully inhabit the present. To more specifically focus on the human condition versus cause and effect. And, in a sense, I feel that I am being drawn back into photography of people in isolation and transition in this failure of free market capitalism the new religion and creed of America. . . not my problem but ours. The ideal of liberty for all has been sold to the highest bidders; those who take pleasure in hoarding the labors of our forefathers and our selves . . . the consequent death of our future and the victims of greed.

Regardless of duration, life seems more precious to me here and now. Resident in the second least populous state of America; wall-to-wall green mountains. The people of all ages are the subject of our evolving tapestry about which I refuse to attempt prophecy but can record and annotate the remarkable trashing of what was once the “American Dream.”

130731 EDT 06:27 and both

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved