120519 00:46
Let us now praise famous men/women, and our parents who begot us . . .
    In a sincere, appreciation and fulsome gratitude do I acknowledge the many who I would praise yet remain slave nor slavish to none not even God.
    But some I would praise more highly than others simply for their spirit of inquiry and curiosity pushing the boundaries of the human psyche beyond the limitless reaches of both God and all Creation.
    At the inception/inspiration of this post I had in mind Maria Popova for her manifold gifts apparent in Brainpickings. And other women who, of needs, will remain nameless for now. In this, my childlike, construct and perception: men seem most fixated upon goals achievable  while women see potential undefined and nurturing prize that. Upon the endless dust of creation neither leave traces save upon the sentient. Creation is not a product but a process self-rewarding; an act of love beyond price or praise.
    At full flood there is within these moments a choir of thoughts possible. Yet sticking to my compendium of encounters, clues and stumblings in the past 24 hours I will say this.
    A Blog is by its nature not definitive but born from journal keeping; the most intimate act possible in humans, solitary, recorded. For me without aggrandizement, pretence or illusion I write to heal others who like me suffer obscenely--in my case, make that past tense--and so it is apparent prayer.
    I am willing to be one pebble piled like The Tower of Babble to reach truths I know extant. And if I seem fractious or fatuous it seems a small price to pay so long as those few who read these words are engaged in the eyes of their heart and the hearing of their feet as they journey as well all do in life or death.
    As for myself, this aging white boy from Greenwich Connecticut and the halcyon Ohio River Valley born and breed, I don’t care to live another moment. The motive to publish has nothing to do with either immortality or any quantitative measure or treasure.
    Think of yourself growing and gestating into a new life undefinable yet worth every tear God might bestow the labor in delivery which for me is mere play. And for God’s Love I would be anything, mendicant fool or otherwise.
    I undergo constant redefinition both of intention and by experience. It is not a singular event like Jesus upon the Cross. Nor is it the sacrifice, of protest a Buddhist self immolating, that I would have you memorialize but these things in your own life and consciousness.
    What follows, from this day forward, will be an annotation of a life and work lived. Apparently fractious but a seamless continuity to me; a reprise of childhood sans the hammer blows forging a self/soul. Love is acceptance of everything including our selves unlovable. From this basis do I ask you to love yourselves and ask, for in asking you will receive from the Author of Creation.
    In closing, for now, one or two caveats: Be Here Now & Do No Harm . . . it is not you or me but we who must find the answers least we be no more.




   

120516 03:03
    Can I speak of grief? Of course I can from my experience. Yet every experience is unique to everyone in that we are all individual. A priest, knowing my history, asked once what he should, or might, say to a father who had, in backing up a truck, crushed his five year old son to death. In reply, “Just listen. He will tell you what he needs but give no chapter and verse.”
    Presumptuous, perhaps, in retrospect I sense my intuition correct. Better yet when I hear the phrase attributed to Jesus: “Let the children come unto me.” Given the loss of two and the absence of the other children by estrangement what I heard broke my teeth yet now in hearing enter His embrace as the child he meant.
    Somehow, and oddly, my questions and reply's seem more urgent not simply for service at hospice; the clinic--not the field--an entirely different experience. For there I learned to consider the needs of staff as well as the patients and their families/friends. It is not so much what I say or do but how they feel that concerns me. Sincerely I carry them in my heart and wonder at what I write since my prayer is continuous and inarticulate ... sometimes I fight to withhold my tears. Since not only is it “unmanly” by some standards to cry but I would rather they receive my acceptance of their pain by me unchanged.    
    Empathy, compassion and mercy are qualities unremarkable by outward signs; not something worn but something lived; to be. Of particular note are the family members of staff who pass there. Regardless degree, kind, nature of service all participate in significant ways. It is a family into which one can be adopted as familiar seen in new and alarming definitions as well as strangers embraced. There, more than one would expect, who healed leave on their own two feet.
    I see life, love, god and myself within each and everyone regardless their health. And pray that when I die I will have the courage to remain unchanged until the end not defined by the cause singular. But, perhaps, that too is vain of me to ask. It is in this sense, a prayer for myself, preemptive.
    I see our PTSD returning warriors as much in grief as in extremis emotionally. They sould be offered healing as well as our 'enemy.'
    It is not by science/psychology or religion/spirituality that we can be healed but both since to respond in love is to accept them exactly where they are and need to be in this time and situation.
    While I remain conscious of Jesus’ healing of others and raising the dead. I see now that it is a process involving the patient as well as the source of healing--intimate--in that love wills the will of God for both. It is something on the order of magnitude equal to loving thy enemy. Effective in the long and lasting term, better than drugs or palliatives, and no nasty side-effects or hangovers.
    Love is objectively indefinable. It is Islam’s ideal that God has many names, too numerous to mention, so too with Judaism. I, being a image recorder/creator am acquainted with the fetish nature of symbols which by it’s nature suggests cults.
    Subjectively, God is Love, present, personal, specific to each persons experience and responds to requests. So long as it’s not a new Escalade ... maybe, maybe not ... it wouldn’t do a thing for me. We all die and in the end even Jesus said, “Thy Will Be done.”   
    On an even more personal issue. I used to wonder while I wandered through everything: ‘What is definitive?” And thus everything became too important to attempt and fail. I know better now.
    I know nothing of the art and craft of writing and potentially a bit more about photography. Yet the more I learn about life, the more I know that I know less, than there is to be known. So if I lead you astray forgive, please, my trespass. Have mercy for both of us and let us know Love at last together.
    Be well
    Beloved
    Death has no dominion
    i know that!

PS In childhood a friend once described me as a tank into which rounds were fired yet I kept moving ... the crew inside, although wounded continued on....a recent insight. Happy in my solitude, my nature, I close with the following:

Loneliness, like flu, is "infectious", study finds
Tue Dec 1, 2009 3:06am EST
SINGAPORE, Dec 1 (Reuters Life!) - Loneliness, like the flu, is contagious, U.S. research shows.

It can spread among groups of people and women are more likely than men to become "infected", according to researchers at the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard.

Using data from a large-scale study, they found lonely people tend to transmit their sad feelings to those around them, which eventually led to them being isolated from society.

"We detected an extraordinary pattern of contagion that leads people to be moved to the edge of the social network when they become lonely," said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, a leading U.S. expert on loneliness.

The findings were published in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Before losing their friends, lonely people transmit feelings of loneliness to their remaining friends, who also become lonely.

"On the periphery people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left," Cacioppo said.

"These reinforcing effects mean that our social fabric can fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater," Cacioppo added.

Because loneliness is associated with mental and physical diseases that can shorten life, Cacioppo said it is important for people to recognize loneliness and help those affected before they move away to the edges.

For the study, the team examined records of the Framingham Heart Study, which originally studied the risks of cardiovascular disease for more than 5,000 people since 1948.

The study has since been expanded, and its second generation, which includes another 5,124 people, was the focus of the loneliness research.

The study showed that as people become lonely, they become less trustful of others, and a cycle develops that makes it harder for them to form friendships.

Societies seem to develop a natural tendency to shed these lonely people, something that is mirrored in tests of monkeys, Cacioppo said, adding that this makes it all the more important to recognize loneliness and deal with it before it spreads.

(Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Paul Tait) ((miral.fahmy@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: miral.fahmy.reuters.com@thomsonreuters.net, +65 6870 3813)) ((If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com))

PPS what makes me do barrel rolls and loops amongst the starry nights soaring or in free fall . . . .

--John Dryden
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”

--John Milton
"So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life."

036. Flower Shower
Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.

One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.

"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.

"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.

"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuto as rain.

120515 0538
    In any and all events it is shame to lay waste to a mind, body, much less a soul. Yet we hold the measure and means to do both wholesale unto extinction, ourselves and all life known, in the bargain. To aspire health, wealth and wisdom seem impossibilities in this time and place near pointless. In our brief history and culture, a thin and inconsequential veneer to our home, upon the marble we call earth. Within the larger contest of all marbles seen and unseen. Questing for life by our definition “divine?” Our bodies alone are filled with life inimical to our well being held in check by curious defenses at least 90% our responsibility and participation.
    Our sense of peace and equanimity.
    Do I protest the Factory Farming of our psyches or bodies? No. Since it is ideal, at least for me, to Love my Enemy and grant that enemy the right, no matter singular or corporate, to exist as I do. Free, whole and well. Call that Liberal to which I would quietly say, ‘No it is conservative of my sense the Truth spoken, immutable, by He who I call brother. And not He alone but for all the prophets of Freedom to be at all individual.’
    In the final moments of our time together, my father choose to shred my right, in whole or part minuscule, to his estate based upon choices not inimical to me but to him. By choice and chance the list grew intolerable. He weeping sober myself silent gazing and grazing the content of his intention. My sole surviving daughter called a Nigger so offensive I fell speechless and not simply for my knowing we are all biracial stemming from an original pair most likely black in origin. Or that I provided him with no heirs to carry the ‘family name’ forward knowing too well my age and the tubal ligation of the bride of my youth; taste and choice in women thereafter.
    For a lifetime before when questioning the origin of our sir name he’d say, “We’re from a long line of chicken thieves and barn burners!” And I when more nearly mature than before knew the name differently. And not for alone the Spratt who lived on Wall Street in the home of The Exchange property become; chased and badgered with the rhyme implying theft of alms for the poor who he, under Tammany, administered. Or the one who lived on Long Island holding and breeding race horses and slaves.
    By inference or implication I knew we came from Vikings originally, possibly Berserkers, who raped, pillaged, killed, maimed and/or burned our victims. Then in a latter time settled in Scotland, Ireland, England when they were ignorant the collective “Great Britain.” Where the rhyme is recorded, initially, in A Child's Alphabet of Friends.
    No. Frankly I am bored by heritage only fascinated by legacy. The bequest from generation to generation by deeds not fortune or fame. Mythology oft bespeak truths too fantastic to believe yet in simplicity remain a thorn in our sole; a stigmata in the soul.
    If I weep now, for I do, the privilege of serving the Lord’s Blood in a pewter cup, possibly consecrated by a Spratt, Dean of Westminster Abby and buried in the vestibule. Curious. Lady Antonia Fraser confirmed my suspicions while I was the only photographer to ever get them together without bushwhack, she and Harold Pinter. He later allowed me access to the stage upon which I photographed a dress rehearsal for Trinity Repertory Theater an American premier, a play whose name escapes me now, so long ago it was.
    A point of order and recent--at the moment--discovery: I might well be a fly, yellow jacket or mud wasp pollinating from origin either waste or glory. In any case I was never satisfied to record the light reflected from anything but seeing/seeking the glowing fire from within.
    Let us now praise famous women/men who before us stood defiant and self-derived the obscenity called education provided vocational pap for nascent slaves to serve “divine rights” of Royalty or Politicians to so rule our lives.
    And in the end of my quest regarding our sir name I fell fascinated by a legend or myth beneath the one in question: “Jack Spratt could eat no fat..” It was suggested that there was before a “Jack The Giant Killer.”
    Farther I did forgive my father. In doing so became able to forgive myself the fury and welcomed my poverty as St. Francis did to his satisfaction.
    Grinning to anyone who will listen I describe the lascivious imaginings of misspending his wealth indiscriminately fathering children with women of many colors and proclivities populating a world soon to be no more.

120515 00:10
    My dream, were I to attempt expatiation, was like a chess game times five, vertical and twirling in complexity beyond three or four dimensions, possibly five!?
    In these brief moments of consideration, while brewing coffee and voiding, I came to sense it the work of a mind, mine, being willing to accept that our consciousness is vastly more complex than I’d previously considered. Yet mine in particular, more willing to accept, without apology, in child like innocence, the divinely salacious, height, width, depth, and breadth of it as common among we the species called mammalian.
    Visualization in two dimensions reminds me of black & white representations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, of which I am too little familiar otherwise ... something looked forward to. Perhaps should I live long enough and God allows.
    Perhaps I should introduce the various elements, conscious, preceding this event stellar. Today I met for the first time a woman within whom a cancer had grown blocking her esophagus rendering her unable to speak, drink, or eat, or fully breathe, dying slowly--clearly. To witness this in however brief moments I was in her presence was like watching a person drown and starve to death too slowly; completely helpless. And at that the witness of my son, by implication my father and in consequence my persistence in smoking cigarettes extenuated beyond endurance regardless my empathy.
    Earlier I’d requested a doctor to sing my DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). What evolved was a debate regarding the futility of it in current context litigious, political, moral or ethical conducted in 5/8th time. Of equal futility is my willingness to donate any or all parts of my body that another could/should live since mine are essentially worn out by age.
    God! How I adore Jesuits and others of comparable compassion in debate. Being a fool for words adored as well, I, among friends say of myself report: “Jousting with Jesuits.”
    Then too I’d been in the presence of she whom I adore unreasonably and sensed our love making fully clothed in public more fantastic than anything I’d previously longed for physically or within my two dream encounters with The Virgin Mary.
    In childhood I’d been presented with, as fixed, immutable, gospel, The Bible and Shakespeare. Yet in this context, the day and dream, reminded me of my first self-derived/discerned Truth spoken and attributed to Voltaire: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Perhaps not verbatim yet adequate in this context.
    Suffice it to say that more important then context is the apprehension of the potential Mankind’s reply to God’s love and the passion/compassion within both.
    Process not fixed in stone ... the journey more important than the goal.
    Terminus?
    Could it have been being in the Presence? A conversation unspoken yet illustrated? Possibly annotated by a yin and yang of yes/no in black & white? If so or if not why do I now cry open eyed in joy?
    With humor my potentially only saving grace; I’d rather Truth from the Source than anything said of Him, Her or It. And if I pretend any value to so teach that anyone else can achieve the same end before we collectively stand in the court of consequence inconvenient and incontinent the truths we ignore.
    For me, finally, death has no dominion.
    A final and parting shot across the bow of my own bigotries. This dream seems to indicate that I must, in truth accept the failings of myself, unforgiven until, now the maundering's of those for whom my words, thoughts and  conclusions, remain essentially inconsequential, superfluous and the squeaking a gnat. I would contend with God but to Mankind I remain convicted that we are the body politic and the only ground of Truth potential in context: here and now. More simply said, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.” --Gandhi

http://forum.quoteland.com/1/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=586192041&f=099191541&m=1...

120514 04:57
    I tend to visualize the highest power as a multi faceted gem and then all life of equal complexity. It would seem simplistic but I refuse to accept the idea that we ‘create God in our image or vis-a-versa.’ Since for me the conjunction of events and elements of my life so often indicate otherwise filtered through my skeptical mind and conception/perception.
    We learn differently through this prism and no one way better than another . . . if you wish to know what love is hug a leaper or mongoloid. I as a cipher, and being superfluous, am conscious that the leaper is me, the mongoloid is many I’ve encountered. And in general terms, in past representations of myself, I though of “The Elephant Man” or Quasimodo until I was better informed that they were more wise and loving than I’ll ever be; to my shame.
    I am potentially better informed about death then most people I know. It follows that I reserve an anger towards indifference to life in all forms upon or within our nest, what we call the World. And regarding suicide, having contemplated it near daily for most of my life (see Enneagram: Type 4), I hold a special reverence for the freedom of choice--to breed or not breed--to destroy one’s life or not.
    My daily ritual of collecting quotes has come to be an education I dismissed as impossible in childhood, the information inferred or implied indicated that I wasn’t worth the effort therefore I never really tried. But like the mongoloid I loved emphatically. It is a precious quality available to all; thinks pets and children who know better than to allow prejudice and bigotry to dominate their perceptions.
    Happily I maintain the virginity of my mind in the following sense: if Jesus had no children than by adoption I am His kid. And not His alone but the child of Mohammad, Einstein, Confusions, Buddha and so on and on and on.
    Factually I have nothing new to say on the issue, “The Truth Will Set You Free”, etcetera. If money, fame, immortality were an issue I could easily repackage the available resources, in much the same way pharmaceutical corporations do aspirin for profit. As for prophecy the idea of predicting events bores me and regarding the issue of protest and descent the hidden governance of corporations posing as individuals has aborted many of our rights to free speech.
    When ever I hear “Right To Life” I privately and quietly ask “What Life?”
    I have larger issues to ponder than the ideas/ideals most fear and guard against thus making themselves good consumers of any authority figure or cult that comes along--it is all process, grow where you’re planted and expect/welcome change--that’s real life.
    The education I eschewed is essentially vocational beginning and ending in a reward: better pay for doing something that sucks the life & soul out of you.
    We generally operate with a fraction of our potential, immensurable, immense, while last year alone 7.1 million children died of preventable disease. I can hear the argument ‘but they were ignorant, a different religion or color than I!” Greed is selfish, love Generous. I am subsisting on less than the national poverty level via Social Security yet remain wealthier than most of the worlds population--and at that without complaint except for the pompous politicians who purport to serve me or us. In a sense think of them, plus their corporate sponsors, as murders. I once thought of German cars being wrapped in the flesh of dead Jews--I still do--yet apply the same concept to SUVs wrapped in the flesh of our dead children mutilated in useless wars.

--Ernie Pyle
When Ernie Pyle, the famous World War II correspondent, was killed on the Pacific island of Ie Shima in 1945, a rough draft of a column was found on his body. He was preparing it for release upon the end of the war in Europe. He had done much to promote the myth of the warrior and the nobility of soldiering, but by the end he seemed to have tired of it all:

    But there are many of the living who have burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold dead men scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches along the high rows of hedge throughout the world.

    Dead men by mass production—in one country after another—month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

    Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

    Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

    These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn’t come back. You didn’t see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road in France.

    We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That’s the difference.

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”  --H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken

. . . in a way it would be better if I were retroactively aborted, or merely remained silent.

120512 03:51
    I have no idea and no memory of what I post from, day to day, hour to hour, save the memory of phrases and ideas . . . or dreams that propel me from ‘rest.’ I refuse to obey the ideal that I must sleep a contiguous eight, seven, six or five hours. It suits me not. For those who ask, in general, I am generous with my time and for a few overly so going so far as to be for them a nurse if need be in the sense I am neither poo, pee, or blood adverse. But in that statement betray myself and fear being kicked to the curb by the one thing I overtly and consummately find, life, love and meaning for: hospice work; yet like the ministry have so little time left to gain the requisite degree proclaiming my right to do or be so.
    I am a person ‘on fire’ with knowing the value and price of each and every moment. And too well aware of death but more the victims of war on both sides. In that I am convicted that death is not the end of what writes ‘immortal’ or not, prose or poetry, or the faltering attempt to cram a new life into a small vessel of time as in think cosmically and act locally.
    Organically growing from my arising methodology of collecting quotes, astonishingly wonderful way to learn to ‘write’--and I’ve never be able to apprehend the difference between crystals and prisms metaphorically . . . or like mirrors and windows, glass is a gas, crystals are something else altogether at least to me in the rock polisher of my mind more precious than any other stone.
    In any case this ‘morning’, for it is still dark, opening my quote files in Jarte: multiple tabs, WordPad on steroids, the entire alphabet available, I fell across Tennessee Williams: “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”, then remembered “Suddenly Last Summer” which like several experiences continue to tumble in my memory until they become transparent.
    If you were to ask all and  sundry relatives, wives, lovers and friends they might well say the I did perpetrate ‘evil’, or no good, did them dirt, especially in my leaving and like the one who suggested I volunteer at hospice I continue where led daily in homage and reverence for them as well as for what I’ve become: bliss, joy, confident in voice, act and deed, at last in these fleeting moments. A warriors mind and poet’s heart; “Today is a good day to die.”
    The sweet baptism of a child is but a dedication, the baptism of fire, quite another. A choice made for whatever reason or season in ecstasy, terror, during mid to later years, is substantive.
    I gave my heart to Jesus over the telephone in St. Petersburg Florida long ago, then my soul recently to God in private. Of the former I fear I’ve made a bit of a fetish, at times nearly a cult figure. Yet of the latter God, unknowable, yet present the song of the wind playing the Aeolian Harp of me best blessed by vagrant breezes and typhoon obvious. Doesn’t mean I’ll not fail nor that I can speak for the personage of many names but I will arise again to pantomime seeking the Elephant groping blind. No birds alight on me like Francis but dragonflies yes and whales too and even snakes in dreams have baptized me. . . . again and again.
    Yet obviously my tap root is in Jesus and my leafy arms reach and find before God all the other prophets sent to heal our suffering individually and collectively. In love there are no boundaries only love itself--its own justification--just like life.
    My sole intention is to aid you in finding your soul magnificent. . . . and we’ll be fools for Love together. Blessings of the day Mothers -- no regrets.

“Prayer reaches out in love to a dying world and says, "I care." --Dick Eastman

"The sheer rebelliousness in giving ourselves permission to fail frees a childlike awareness and clarity. ... When we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel."  --Eloise Ristad

120510 23:38
broken by intent or askew the family born into
we are two so familiar in the eyes of one another
maybe in another time we will be lovers again
making babies and household all that now no
longer feasible  the feast of youth long past half
generation apart so now friends met by accident?

I would be her female to her male conjoined 
healed and wed together imagined bliss if only
it were so this no divorce friends forever life
we seem of a time before time was measured or
treasured as the rule of life that begins and ends

in truth i had no sense of having a soul worth keeping
save for her healing the various sundry ills beset me
insanity of course wishing to die soon by my own hands
type 2 diabetes a broken heart literally and figuratively
and a towering rage apparent only to her there too was
grief inconsolable and she said yes to a cup of coffee
gallons ago

her home visited once per annum celebrating Thanks
giving her birthday and Christmas rolled into one is my
Mecca come Jerusalem Ganges and Bodh tree pilgrimage
my calendar set the New Year the longest day after the
shortest her birth God is zero Jesus eight Mary twelve yet
i’ve no house save these words indwelling impelling
flight unvisited save for once or twice the syntax telling
she has no sense of value in her self save what she says
by ritual quote and I don’t write for her but God and my
self welded had i the grace of Rumi or Shakespeare to
tell the love between us I’d say more but this must be
enough for now it is finished until I cry again we are
beloved by God who in loving us is unable to make
us love ourselves let alone one another in trust
120511 00:28 4m