ideals & continuity

The intercourse continues, flowing from moment-to-moment, illustrative.

“Truths.” Inconvenient; having been taught tolerance, respect, love and mercy, by very good nuns during my middle-age; I do not cringe to say that women have and remain my saviors. It was they, the good nuns, who taught that Jesus was in the very least the perfect human; being equally balanced between male/female and all four functions: sensing, thinking, feeling and intuition.

In all my quest I’ve never seen the like amongst the prophets or sages. Either implied or inferred. Add they, the good nuns of various orders at Our Lady Of Peace, Narraganset, Rhode Island (now closed?) did advocate flexibility (thank you S. I. Hayakawa) between religions. And in some regards I now understand “Love thy enemy” for all he/she/they or it can teach you.

The dark box of my life and mind, littered with marbles become grape shot ricocheting through my traverse, lending me a better survival modality than anything else. I can tell only the lesser parts since otherwise I would bore you, or perhaps lead you not to do for yourselves what you must since only experience lasts. Understanding your perceptions is the basis of an ability to understand everything. Leading/lending peace in lieu of violence.

To me there seems no end to learning. In death we merely move to the next classroom. I am so vivified with ideas it is difficult to contain or frame, within any single construct or essay, what is really going on: up or down or around inside the ordinary of my life.

Inherited with the first house my parents owned (it was no home to me but then being a stranger in a strange land is customary) lived a boarder; a veteran of The Spanish/American War. Who’s furnishing were ransacked by a mortician after his death. Unlike my mother who would utter “undertaker” at anyone she disapproved of, especially those so venial as politicians are, I would and do include . . . priests, bishops, cardinals and popes . . . well, really, anyone in authority, self-appointed or ostensibly “chosen by God” to molest the humble and poor; especially women and children.

I claim no special relationship to God, save in my thesis: Religion is about, but not God.

Add. I claim no allegiance to being “Spiritual” since that would abort my freedom to write anything I want and take responsibility for. Otherwise I am utterly besotted with The Big G, Ala, I AM, whatever/whoever it is that whispers day and night.

To myself, I am merely grist between mill stones grinding me, either to dust or wheat. Not epiphany but extrusion. Burnt to a cinder and arising again like the Phoenix; part of my personal mythology. No longer a stranger to but knowing myself.

Confessionally I will share with you something only shared with M; ‘if I be touched by grace it grows’ and to grow one, of needs, must accept death as part of life; the good and the dark, finding a balance. Near impossible in this mercantile world of ownership, usury, good-better-best. Wonderfully, M does concur, my conclusion, by experience within her own life.

06:37

I am a fairly proficient analyst of my dreams, and given recent interest, as published on NPR, have endeavored to apprise even the most nettlesome ones: regarding my incompetence. I snatched a few hours of rest between the above and this in which I dreamt of meeting my mother at her last age and my current. Her birthday was on the 4^th of April, an event I still celebrate.

The scenario was at an outdoor restaurant suddenly flooded, knee deep with rain water. Just as she arrived, late and alone, as usual. Populated with my fathers second family and several other familiars. Notably there was a woman who suggested she was a journalist, no erotic potential, but I did briefly think of suggesting that, being a photojournalist, I might enhance her free lance article for a weekly. The most interesting aspects being that I formerly, towards the end of my prior to New Mexico epoch would often volunteer having free lanced for The New York Times, Playboy, News Week, etc. for forty-five years. Worse, I would introduce myself at first meeting somewhere, generally, in the latter part, as the parent of two dead children and never mention being abandoned by my AWOL daughter and granddaughter; so common these days.

Between M, a fabulous psychologist with mystical talents, who suggested I volunteer at hospice service and eventually working eight hours a week in their clinic I swiftly learned to remain silent about my experiences since it seems irrelevant to the needs of those about to die, if not actually dying. Learning from M to remain silent and touch the broken places when announced or appropriate to their needs. Since mine, at long last, the grief and greed for all of the above, had been slaked and resolved.

“A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot; a dog traveling with good men becomes a rational being.” - Arab proverb Included, and just discovered, since I experience being woven into bridal satin, methodically collecting and reading quotes eclectically. Lending one more facet to my refractions on an unusual reverence for women. And regarding my tolerance, if not admiration and love for all religions as I understand them in origin.

Returning to my most recent discursive reference to Jesus and C. G. Jung coupled with the Sufi Ennegram (personality typology vastly more comprehensive than Meyers Briggs and suggested/implied/inferred in Jung’s writings) let me go a bit further with Jungian analysis: dreams form an important factor/facet in understanding one’s self.

To be true to one’s self is the ultimate freedom from fear and envy. Advocated by the greatest humans I have discovered. Adding “Do no Harm.” My abiding curiosity is addiction to anything including “God” who I experience in live and expect in death to be the ultimate of all consciousness.

130408 03:57 ideals

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

scant

Between dream and coffee, scant are my worries for loss, the lightening bolts that awakened me. Since, oddly or not, Wikiquote reminds me in, most often, very explicit words. Once bewildered by chance, coincidence, collision or serendipity the secular in me says synchronicity and the sacred says Thanks Be To God.

I sense no conflict between the two; being a writer now, no longer dependent upon external events to record photographically. An answered prayer actually, remembering how for years, when idle, I wondered surely there must be a better way for me to live. Independent of beauty or tragedy: laughter or sorrow; external.

And then and again I destroyed almost everything I’d ever produced professionally or personally except, of course, now recognized: myself.

Long have I remarked; “Everyday is Christmas and Easter; an-eternity-in-a-day.” With Thanksgiving sandwiched in-between. Spring has sprung, the season of resurrection, rebirth, the earth reincarnated and renewed. All Holy, these closing days for me, since Buddha too is celebrated this time. We all reside in a Universe loosely measured 24/7/365. Yet, in retrospect, I sense the holy within sorrows and joy, melded or mangling me into what I am now. No longer caring whether there is another spring within my body.

Lovely, loving the sense in which I experience, the will towards a common good for all of us; spoken in various voices and times. Weaving together the wisdom of all ages and places. I sense an obligation, unrequited, to express gratitude for those whose kindness has encouraged me to walk the walk using talk. The faces and places, gesture and actions, given that I might live just another moment before stepping off the bridge. (Laughter) I illustrated a suicide and remembered by calculation it was high enough to end it all, simply by the fall, not drowning.

I think myself at an age when childish things should, or could, be past, retaining a child’s gift of astonishment, reverence and awe. Instead of building cathedrals of greed or grace; running, jumping and shouting; instead I write.

Coupling words together, mere symbols, might, maybe not, cause a pause in our collective suicide?

Keep It Simple Jack = KISS: I have no extraordinary relationship with anything other than myself. No self ordination or consecration but merely an education self-derived from curiosity. My quest affirmed, daily renewed, by those who did speak of all things considered. Otherwise I freely admit being a failure at formal/vocational training by which, and all indications, I should be a menial laborer. Crying, once in adolescence, considering that thinking was a terminal disease. It is if measured by the inverse proportion of knowledge versus wisdom. Greed versus compassion.

01:38

I love savagely and lust ferociously, thus it is well I discovered today: “When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near.” "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" in Finian's Rainbow (1946) - Tommy Steele version – Yip Harburg And this saved me from, discovered before retiring last time, in an email: “. . . You melt my heart with your words and insights! I carry your missives in my heart like a special gift.” The tussling angels and devils within seek no prescription or excuse but I now know peace being myself naked of desire for anything from women save what’s best for them.

Women have been my ‘saviors’ time and again. Especially now at or near my vintage. Confidence and intimacy redefined, healing the “castration” mother’s incorrect accusation implied: incest with my six year younger sister. Who when asked what she remembered said; “She tried to beat me to death!” The gynecologist visit, before or after? Call me Lucile or pansy, I then and now still long that love be possible in this world. Not for me alone but all of us.

Amongst the many, more than several traumatic, events: My father walked in the front door caring my mother stiff as a board, as in rigor mortis. Drunk from a social event. She was allergic to alcohol, however at the time of her death it was not uncommon for her to drink at least one or two quarts of Scotch per day after business hours. He dressed her in bed clothes and proceeded to pack all he could in his car. Before leaving he said to the twelve year old I was then; “You’re in charge take care of you mother.” And left.

Mother and sister slept through it all and I never said a word. He returned from Scranton, PA some ten hours later; hundreds of miles driven.

Between abandonment, beatings, slander and rage, my life has been dancing upon marbles. More like the rug, floor, foundation being withdrawn from beneath my feet, from birth until quite recently.

M saved my life.

Devils and angels line up in a chorus line quacking when I pray. Reminding me of all I owe to each woman and breathe I take. Oh! Be still my floundering heart; with gratitude to those who wrote, and acted, kindness at all. But most especially M who always wishes me rainbows though I am over the moon for her.

And yes! Happy Birthday Yip! Thank God for all poets of whatever form; in words and flesh. Saving what otherwise would take an eternity to learn.

Not to mention the loss causing suffering explained.

And even now Jesus transmogrifies from cradle to cross again and again; sometimes in part or nearly whole resurrected in us collectively. For me, not the only savior, but one of the very best.

“The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.” - Lionel Trilling

130408 00:24 scant

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved