Your voice, a loud exclamation, a reprise of the small still whispering in your heart, is unique and a once-upon-a-time in history; as in forever thing. As self-portrait everything you've ever done is a rehearsal for THE VOICE within you sovereign and mutable but built upon the rock foundation of Self. 

True to yourSelf you will know no fear, no competition, no envy. Flowing in time infinite recreation, resurrection, reincarnation; the death of the day before and fearless of days or none to come. A snarky remark too be sure; at times I play squat tag with Jesus he's off I'm on the cross. Why? Because I love Jesus that's why. God is the root of my being and the Tree of Life holds many prophets: Mohammad, Buddha, Lou Tzu, Confucius and so on etc. My root remains the same simply God is The Tree of Life and when I or THEY die falling off out of vogue or favor I will simply recycle with them even if merely one cell within the magnificence of it all. 

I knew a woman who in orgasm would squeeze my tongue in laughter. I too laugh more-often-than-not in cerebral orgasm nearly terminal in terms deaded. When I laugh it is obscene. Annie sneaks up and nudges me in sympathy and when crying she wraps herself around my neck and head a living stole. 

However. At the moment. I am also conscious that Mr. Chuckles is about to invade my crib and maybe, maybe not, possibly so, tell me to get the flock out of Dodge. U know naked in the streets with Annie on a string our performing sexual gratuities for pocket change and worst of all no electricity to run my computers and write anything. I am well trained in Elder Abuse and he is the worst and should I ever find the legal complaint he pressed to me ten days afterward a neglected INSPECTION = HOME INVASION for a host of reasons like THE IRS and my beloved BOSS telling me I caused her a pain in the sit down . . . well I'll roll it up tight put it in his urethra and blow him up the size of Felix The Cat in Macy's Thanksgiving parade and tap his testicles with xylophone mallets playing Cohen's I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy chortling with the snark screaming. 

I am not a nice person and one should exercise caution reading or associating with me . . . 
@ the moment I am debating whether to ever return to hospice as a volunteer in the clinic or elsewhere. 

Death has as much to celebrate as birth -- part & parcel one gift with a beginning and end. If I have learned nothing in life what I wrote above is more important than my life. 

About your life: it is a gift no matter what abuse, rape, dismemberment or torture you have endured or will endure. It is not what came before or afterward but very simply to be your real self now; what you return to God for the Gift of Life. As with all love no reaction/demonstration is required but to respond to your true self is. . . . if not for "God" maybe because of God. 

120912 10:15 voices

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Creativity is most anything you do with love: make babies, cars work, Sistine Chapel Ceilings or growing familiar with the working of your mind and heart. Like sewing quilts. When passing mirrors or seeing myself in photographs I think 'oh dear how did I get to be such a high mileage worn out taxi cab?' Then I remember I am physically eighteen and have the curiosity of a three year old voracious as a cat. Or King David nakedly strutting into Jerusalem. Making love not the way of a maid with a man but the afterward daily hello! Ideally love becomes more simple: intimate-friendship-confessional-confidant & never ends. 

Love also is a process unending somewhat akin to why I write the way I do beating a path in the desert for you not to follow but find it possible to find yourself and be well. Whole. A sincere person whose values reflect what you want the world to be for others. 

LOOK IT UP!

You know the drill . . . 1 Corinthians 13 . . . i could rewrite it but it is perfect as is. I know IS the meaning and presence actual reality of IS yet the silent still whisperer says noting overt but nudges us towards ourselves not the IS . . . free will with the explicit emphasis on the first word is to become all that you are creatively and write that across the black night of indifference and oblivion in black ink across it . . . the IS. . . .is no it but personal energy expressed freely sans inhibitions  

Everyone knows the IS and petitions the IS daily sometimes asking for Escalade or Porsche cars, large bank accounts or your child's life spared from anything like wars with Leukemia or the best retirement benefits self granted to politicians who accept graft to  wrinkle laws to someone else's benefit and endless medical insurance guaranteed for life . . . Mr. Snark is leering over the top of my computer display chortling. 

Give some people or institutions a modicum of material power and they run away with your life, your wife, your children, your future, home, energy to warm or cool it with, everything life depends upon they profit from.

Creativity is not competitive with anyone but yourself and there is no end no boundaries no limits to infinity since to create is enough. . . . need i remind my family all of them, intoxicated with want and those with enough; everything we do is a self-portrait. Joy is the long unending Hello to your best friend ever yourself who will be with you for better or horror, in sickness and health, needing no wealth to hide behind and at that the self within dances with the IS. 

. . . more than enough

. . . sometimes especially now i wonder if what i write are/is captions for all my photographs? Those I destroyed and the published.

120912 0901 Creation is

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Finding myself on the opposition side is not uncommon yet loving my adversaries is. 

And what is love?

For me love is not fighting but respecting the other who has apparently a contentious nature based upon many different things, mostly concerns for their survival as they wish to be and have, essentially, always been. 

At a time passing from life to whatever is or will be on the other side of the veil of life holds no fear for me since it is ordinary of life to end. And from experience not theory I know many endings have been beginnings of something wondrous as I have wandered thru life. 

Not always better just different yet again seen through a child's wonder wandering aware finally that I've been taught the difference in job descriptions. Simplistic but it works for me. God implied at the Beginning of everything: conscious life and death; Don't judge the good or bad of experience, that's MY job. The in between is a wonder for we're told many things for instance the apple Jack ate saying hay! Eve this isn't an apple its a tomato and what's this about a snake? I play role play in my imagination all the time especially when in the company of people who bore me reciting my name and then smirking, laughing etc. as though they own me and I'm now part of their inventory: a thing not a person. 

Mornings I live on coffee and cigarettes until my stomach rebels and says you're going to vomit; EAT SOMETHING! It follows that I could if I wished to and had more breathes left along the attendant heart beats I'd play with creating a myth or play or movie or novel . . . that said; poems like T. S. Eliot's are quicker and distillations of a heady life.  

Returning to The Garden and along the long path leading from it; it seems to me somewhere along the way God said, "Vengeance is mine!" As judge jury and executioner God render's judgement at the end not the beginning or middle of life. If you have cared enough to read my writing, mostly conjecture and snark if not actual frustration with the oppositions to life, then you will know that I like God whoever and whatever God is is a friend. Everyone has one a self, consciousness or soul, yet few listen to it becoming ITs; objects in someone else's game of life. At going on seventy two I have finally begun to celebrate mine as friend, loveable and something akin to God who lets me know what's up doc!? Say something funny!

It is as though you're buying gasoline and a person carrying a gun on their belt walks in standing beside you wanting to purchase lottery tickets. You turn to her and ask about her unusually large gun not a revolver but one with an extended clip sticking out the bottom of it and ask anything about it. She states all the abilities of her weapon; how many rounds, what sighting laser like, knock you not over but at your size you'll flips in midair. 'Before crashing to the floor upside down inside-out dead meat.'

Modest frisson of terror curious as to what, why, how etc. does she have the authority to carry publicly a weapon of such power? To all other intents and purposes she's a civilian just another grandmother who is capable of loving or killing you, me, anyone or thing at whim. 

Should God be so capricious we'd all be in big do do since we all do silly things now and then. No. God waits until the end to tender render judgement. Humble, small and silent as the child I once was accepting the trashing's of or from everyone with rare exception. I remembered those best, the exceptions of people with the power to blow me away and apart known better for their kindness. 

I dedicate this to Jon LaVertu, R. N. who in leaving 'my' community for another remaining a friend who I hope will put me to sleep when I get, or am had, by Alzheimer's . . . I love my friends so. Pillow or plastic bag or injection I don't care: JUST DO IT! . . . pretty please with cherries on top and very hot fudge sauce.

To be on the same planet, in the same Universe, with such a treasure of a man is an honor worth knowing. We working separately have the same conclusions regarding those about to die. It is an honor to serve and be taught the value of life from the remains mere scuffed satchels abandoned the soul fled.

Be well & be aware that those you say goodbye to may never return; it's chaos out there. 

120912 07:17 finding

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

If as I am perennially curious then I am a threat to anyone or institution since it is my nature to be curious and record mechanically or by memorization whatever and everything I sense is of interest to me. This is today's revelation, ah ha, or merely another epiphany. 

Add to which I celebrate more my nearing death and liberation from what the world is and rapidly becoming a very deep cesspool of cupidity: Wealth & Power Incorporated into an institution, in and of itself, as righteous and normative. 

There is to everything an inside and outside face, or merely my sense & seeking of truth. Happily I did not fulfill the script of or by any source familial to become a cleric or priest. Reminding myself of the one seminary I attended for an introductory weekend tour. Upon arrival I encountered a man who asked what I did for a living? After informing him of my credentials he said; "Oh GOD! NOT ANOTHER PHOTOJOURNALIST!" Apparently I'd branded myself with the mark of Cain.

120912 00:04

Joyously I am no priest in any formal sense and disinclined to become one by self-ordination; though I do chortle at times when applying suntan lotion at the notion of self-anointing. Father Denis shouts when I say JC; "His name was Jesus! Not Jesus Christ!!" Apparently there is something apocryphal about the anointing bit -- I've yet to inquire about that -- were I priest I suppose I'd know but I love molesting words and concepts with my spiritually dyslexic molestations. 

I've always been charmed by women who smile at me, not necessarily when I capture their images with a camera. To combine the smile with kindness is devastating at least it formerly was since M as taught me to love her Sphinx like charms mysterious and fabulous. I would if allowed simply drink her presence mute awaiting her flicking smile and/or occasional word. If I lose her, a near probability, I'll give up entirely any future thoughts regarding women as love interest since in loving her I've come to know the Author of It. 

That said I fell into a cesspool of -- you know what -- at the behest of a wonderfully smiling blonde who requested captures of her friend's retirement. Or as I entitled the "take" her transfiguration knowing full well what the word implies. Fortuitously the set of five images sent to the appropriate authorities was declined by the blond's server. I receive a "You Know What Storm" declaring an involuntary surrender of my inherent copyright since anything I produce is mine, not theirs, if that were the case I might negotiate every opportunity to serve them. 

I have a modest licence to discuss this since none of them read me; which is well since I bridle at inhibition of any kind and apparently God doesn't mind my thoughts, the words of my heart, or the babies captured upon ponies by my eyes. 

In my two dreams of/about/with The Virgin Mary, quite mystical if I say so myself, she never allowed me the grace of her face. In consequence I seek her in all women regardless of any possible criteria. Obviously I bought Kenneth Clark's shot in the dark in parentheses (woman came first) and Adam was created from Her. . . .talk about a game changer yup!? 

Jung spoke of the difference between male and female as 51% versus 49% = 1%! To me the last sentence in the previous paragraph changes everything. Oui! . . . of course I am too well aware that Women are the most oppressed class of our species and have thoughts, conclusions and convictions why. 

Mindfulness indicates a reappraisal of my entire 'political' association with the corporation or business aspects of the hospice i serve. It my be I who kicks them to the curb. There is nominal 'safety' in that we have two where I live and as indicated I am careful about who I confess my closet writing and intents. "Ask and you will receive" in SPADES! 

. . . .I adore Google's Chrome for it's suggestive spell checker and think it okay their invasion of my privacy, of which we have none anyway. Besides, it's lightning fast. However I do bridle at all the pop-ups implying I need Viagra. Odd for a seventy-two year old man who still CAN! . . . and a smoker yet!

The most astonishing snark was handed to me when I suggested "fun" or "play" regarding the take on/of the retirement party. In concocting the latter sentence I am somewhat surprised that after forty five years of prostitution with a camera I still have fun and play with it instead of presuming it a financial arragement so I can get reelected or pay for my cocain habit. Or both as I sometimes thing of those in either addiction. . . . Possibly I should annotate my text with LOL! The anticipated difficulty with doing so would be such annotation would dominate everything I write. 

I will save The Creation and what I do with either camera or computer for another post/essay/column or blog entry. Save to say that I invested $10,000 to $12,000 enabling what I do with both essentially for the honor of volunteering at hospice. No shame in that since I should pay hospice for the priledge. Merely the rehearsal of my own demise would be a start. 

120911 16:12 inside-out

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

excellent lust

Eternity in a day, infinity in a moment, I left hospice last Thursday per custom exiting past the chapel after doing my wind-shield-wiper walk left-right-center; next room.

She had been there from day one, three years ago, my first day. Before that, maybe five years total. Parkinson’s. What a horror -- a wasting death. Am I unkind? No. Simply candidly honest about death; ours.

It is not that I am a voyeur, too familiar with death, I was a journalist and being human nothing surprises me. My daily walks and talks with patients is what I do beside answer the telephone -- personal calls go though the nurses station in case the patient is asleep, bathing or not wanting calls from certain people. The thing I do 'my wind-shield-wiper walk left-right-center; next room' also provides an extra set of eyes for the medical staff. The maintenance folks do the same.

We are not allowed, nor is it ethical or moral, to use restrains on patients: not chemical/drug or physical. However some escape the bed alarms attached to their attire or via a pressure plate under them. When you are demented, or newly arrived and alarmed/fearful of a strange environment, or merely have and are dying from Alzheimer’s it takes awhile to settle down to the last days of your life. . . .At times falling on their heads and other parts causing significant injury to a considerably disabled person who is about to die. More problems.

Latino families tend to keep their beloved at home until the last day or hours and then hospice provides comfort and respite for the dying and the soon to be bereaved. There are chaplains on call but, at times, things happen rapidly and as a volunteer I never say no to anyone in need.

If you enter the sanctuary of your heart, where part of God resides, you will be able to do what I do all the time. Today was harder than most since my loses were many and extremely personal; personal, patient, administrative and nursing staff moving on.

I’ll probably spend what’s left of my life attempting to make available your Self and Life experienced in a different way.

Stop for a moment, if alone go look in a mirror and say to yourself, no body escapes life alive 100% die. Then say, 'I am going to die,' and it’s Okay! Because if you are alive you will die maybe today. Get used to it, it happens to everyone sooner or later. If you are as afraid as I’ve been then get over it, I did.

Alternatively, and better, next time in a group or crowd think: everyone I see including myself is going to die. This is my reality of choice. Unconscious from the beginning until I volunteered at hospice when my sense of the meaning, value and purpose of life changed and became "BE HERE NOW!" Essentially: that all preceding and following time had no relevance to my current experience . . . not who I want to be in the future or what I was yesterday.

120911 05:55

Epiphany is not a one-time experience but for some – or a few – especially me: continual. Embryonic as in gestation; an old man reborn internally yet overtly not externally/changed.

Gestation is the transformation from egg to human . . . dear God! . . . is this Virgin Birth in me?

Each time I experience this event starting, at or near the death of my second child, it was astonishing. What some call “Conversion, Being Born Again, or Washed in the Blood of The Lamb.” I'm not speaking of a “Religions Experience” since I like many distrust institutions which are born, live-a-time and die a death of attrition – something like how we lost the War in Vietnam – A death by many small cuts; after winning many battles.

We as a species have so little knowledge of ourselves in terms of our intrinsic power. Various prophets like Jesus, Shakespeare or Lincoln have advocated that we “KNOW” ourselves and/or that the unexamined life is worthless—mere existence.

Life is demanding in and of itself; we eat, need shelter, want to relate to one another in meaningful ways. All of which I did and continue to do; what I call the “mechanics” of life. Yet given the tragedies experienced I have prevailed. Each event, any one could/would call a trauma, has proven to be educational not punishment for something I did wrong.

Like maybe being born? These final days of my life are the most joyful chock full of life I've ever known.

Let it be so in you . . . be well.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528801.100-brain-diabetes-the-ultimate-food-scare.html

120910 21:53 excellent lust

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

. . . God hidden in plain sight not coincidence 

“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion — that standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.” ~ Mary Oliver:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/September#10

“Ask and ye shall receive” --The Bible

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” 
--Lao Tzu 

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” ---Buddha

The Author of All Life, the Who with whom I am in communion is present in all; “All are called yet few respond.” 

The secret small whispering voice not conscience but consciousness. . . .Though long aware I could not believe, receive or have faith, those fleeting moments without fear, envy, ambition, greed -- the peace within me now -- since I was taught to be deaf, dumb and blind; unworthy of such attention much less life or love itself.

I am through God’s love a citizen of the Universe, assured of infinity, whatever form God allows by God Her/Him Self in free will not slavery do this I accept and ask you to consider letting it be in you.

. . . More later, more better, maybe. Do no Murder. Be well & do no harm.

120910 05:40 synchronicity is . . .
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

http://www.dailyliteraryquote.com/daily-literary-quote-share.htm