Eve came first and Adam after and from her

120921 19:14 longing

It seems now we all keep secret ideals and ambitions. Yet for me it is these 'goals' that I have eschewed and wonder why I'm talking about it? I can and have talked for hours with others individually who seemed curious about most everything -- not about me -- but about themselves and their sense and conclusions regarding current events: individual, community, global and then cosmic. 

Perhaps the last word describes my interest best: "Cosmic." Since for me all things living are interrelated. At times imagining us as cells within the consciousness of God or part of the whole body infinitesimal . . . at times, mostly benign at others: cancerous. I love individuals but not herds, the latter best describes how we are dealt with by those who purport to govern us.

120922 00:07

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.” --C. S. Lewis

Of some authors I am more attentive and others I persistently return frequently . . . especially in times of disturbance . . . creping from beneath the rocks of my intransigence. Whereupon I find the little yellow rubber ducky I play with in the bath tub amphibious a frog that can fly souring amongst the stars returning with wheels upon which I tow it around like a pull toy then it turns into something else altogether and tows me. 

Would it were so simple to explain to myself, much less anyone else, the relationship between myself and God. Lest you think I arrogate anything special about myself let me remind you there was one death -- sufficient & enough -- Jesus' sacrifice for us: you & me & all mankind . . . and i know his choice to die for us perfect. 

. . . not simply because my roots are buried deeply within what we all call Christianity but nearly equally within the others who also lived in abject curiosity regarding the sources of all things. 

I would know the evil with me as well as the joy versus pleasure issues merciful turned merciless for as he; C. S. Lewis said:

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” 
"Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."
“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”
“Many things--such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly--are done worst when we try hardest to do them.”
"Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful."
"Morality or duty...never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others."

. . . and here i stop bewildered that I never saw the meanings he now seems intended, C. S. Lewis,  and remember Keith Miller's influence regarding why I have being and write more for you instead of my former -- and too recently abandoned -- self loathing and doubt. . . . 

Could it be that unable to walk upon water instead I am merely chuckling the bubbles beneath my naked feet lofting me levitated? Whoever said that God & Jesus never laughed? That either or both never played the Joker, jackanapes as well wept, weeping? 

. . . brief aside: were Jesus able to walk upon water then God was part of the fact/act/behavior since water is unique to us in all the Universe -- for now. I fell to pondering a seldom used resource: my considerable collection of reference materials -- now replaced, essentially, from my last flight away from someone I loved and continue to -- who put me into a punishing mode: silence. Silence like that which Merton spoke of assuaged by the tidal wave, what we now commonly call a: tsunami of God's response. Her silence was to me the most severe mode of punishment ever endured by me inflicted initially by my mother after she beat my beloved baby sister nearly to death. Mother presumed our innocent behavior incest. She had battered me from infancy and I sense, now, that the beating never satisfied her need of control and/or dominance -- again, I sense I was surrogate for my father who either drunk or sober was insensitive at least, at worst simply a fool. 

It is not unusual for a spouse to leave the formerly beloved at the advent of change . . . what follows is a significant to me list: Susan became an Episcopal Priest, a role I thought myself too stupid to qualify for, and had fallen to dismissal of, given my evenly divided nature between secular and sacred conservancy. In this confession I am entering the viscera of my being and finding the chemistry of synapse -- the how and why we are able to think. With Carol or Rosemary it was the punishment of betrayal the first by not including me in an essential choice to allow her daughter to live with us. The latter because she could beat me up with her mouth, invade my need for privacy; not simply to masturbate since with her I'd never had an orgasm not her fault but mine since had I had intercourse with my mother the same result would have become obvious; both terrified me by their violence. 

Least I wander too far away from where I was last evening before falling stupefied with exhaustion to rest awhile . . . the central locus of my consciousness is death . . . the why, wherefore, when and how informs my curiosity until now. Those who love and accept me as I am jackanapes and divine are those who tell me how well they apprehend me. Something I never was conscious of until in tears said; "I want my husband." I was never to my understanding her husband as I understood the definition; cultural, societal, Biblical or otherwise. Yet from the first rejection of my touch and or attention otherwise I'd been informed by word and deed that I was an interloper in her life and not equal. 

I will not voluntarily burn anyone at the stake. Yet I have and do when I transpose my consciousness into their shoes. I would immolate all of the parties involved to liberate you from your self denial and indifference, or mere slavish slavery to the authorities you worship and idolize. I never presume to judge or define my sense of your "lists." Yet I can, at times, touch the broken connection between who you are and where you can or could go given the effort to know yourself as well as I know me. 

Final reference to myself: I would frequently attempt to get mother to acknowledge me intelligent enough to write; then unconscious of what I would write about, but filled with fissions of fear that I'd write about our non-relationship; myself as her 'punching bag.'

As a man I've never been fully homophobic receiving more, "I want your to make love with me . . " from men than women. Sincerely I was honored by their attention and closed the opportunity saying so. It follows that I may have had a homosexual using my mother as a shield (fag hag) but it is irrelevant what people do with their sexuality . . . I . . . In fact. Am more concerned with their soul. Never in judgement since I know God well enough to know it is God's job to judge us in the end. Not mine. If it sounds like Jesus it isn't because I ain' Him. I am me and quite happily so. 

Microsoft Update--Reboot 03:20

While waiting I read Job: 3 "Job's complaint to God" . . . I would recommend it to you since we are in Deep Kimchee -- "Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good." --C. S. Lewis -- I use the word "Kimchee" not in deference to my beloved M &/or Lila but in homage to my father who occassionally used it instead of shit. 

I find the limits of space I invoke while writing indicative of how I began: writing a photography column for The Providence Journal in the early '70s. God or Susan's forgiveness, is to me now irrelevant since I've never asked for nor been given Carol McCabe's . . . and it is she who gave birth to me who now writes with ecstasy -- something she once indicated hating me for. May God richly bless you all and especially those women of my life. Knowing, for whatever reason, Eve came first and Adam after and from her.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Theoretically art is circular and business is linear; to combine the two is difficult but not impossible. Each of us has a dominant perception: linear or circular processed through thinking-feeling-sensing-intuition. These, my theory, are the dominant combination coupled with a subordinate function. 

The only model I have of wholeness is Jesus, Buddha and attendant Taoist, then Mohammad. The latter I do not know well, but well enough to know that He taught in the Koran: "Islam is a complete way of life, not a Sunday (Sabbath) religion." *The word Islam, in my lexicon, means submission to God. I infer from this, as practiced in my life, submission to God in all things.

Yet I remain free to do otherwise at all times.

Cadillac was my mother's ideal automobile and easily recognizable to her mother, or so she thought, as an accomplishment. Mercedes-Benz however is my ideal automobile; as well as others of German manufacture. However I have gone on record as saying they are wrapped in the flesh of dead Jews; six million of them.

Either or both are status symbols defining the owner as successful. Brand names are defended by law in The United States. I have yet to be prosecuted or persecuted for what I say about them. However like Christianity, Islam is monotheistic, and has prohibitions against Idolatry allowing no image of Mohammad to be published; with rare exception. 

To me, as a communicator, I believe Islam is elegant and quite beautiful. I believe I better understand the prohibition against depicting the Prophet based upon my envisioning of Jesus via dreams and other manifestations suggested in "when you brought me a cup of water, or visited me in prison . . " I am offended by ridicule of what I deem holy (whole functioning with both female/male parts equal, all four functions fully employed and applied via linear and circuitous effort) yet I do not attack your right to your opinions. In fact as an American citizen I am obligated by birth to defend your right to free speech.

At this point I must either abandon or move forward towards the boundary between Church & State. Intolerance wears both hats on both sides of the issues currently in play. 

I have faith in my conclusion; we must be tolerant of both ourselves and the other. Cease and desist in calling anyone Enemy. The costs to the family of mankind and our planet is potentially the extinction of both. 

*Islam / Islaam “submission (to the will of God) The root is the same as that of سَلام (salām)

--Mohammed
"Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves."

120921 04:48 perceived truth

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Freedom to choose your attitude

It happens occasionally, by far the exception not the rule or norm, to see deeply wounded people react negatively to me. 

My dream seemed to be an electronic game played upon a pearlescent white shimmering gold screen. Upon which faintly appeared two stick figures without faces. They bowed to one another and began to move in mirror of one another. First I thought they were dancing then the motions became combative and the word Ninja came to mind. Since the figures began to make throwing motions towards where the faces should have been. Oddly I began to see two dimensional rectangles somewhat like invisible photographs or post cards, in outline, towards the vacant spaces above the headless stick figures and I awoke . . . .

Reflections:

I have often referred to disquiet, become fear, then hatred of doctors and medical places. Writing the scenario of my dream I recognize myself in hospitals as a child captive to cribs . . . like cages . . . exactly what and where I left my daughter in custodial terminal care. There was no room between the cribs, more nearly pressed against one another, except for an adult to move as though the adult were watering plants in a nursery. In the background Herb Alpert was singing "This Guy's In Love with You." 

. . . Within my stomach is a slowly rotating Roto-Rooter of sickening terror or horror. Possibly depression moved from my imagining to take residence within my body. . . .

First Bullet: As a child I was overweight ostensibly my hospital visit was to discern why. Now remembering other times. The sickening smell of either when my tonsils were removed and the endurance I experienced alone in a sea of other cribs abandoned by humans in the dark of night awoken. . . . From what I cannot now remember. Possibly dreams of peace confronting the reality of my circumstance.

Second Bullet: My daughter was the first child to die. I witnessed her birth and the donut of open nerve endings on her back . . . I turned away looking down the dark corridor and silently screamed; a reprise of my mental state while being beaten, kicked, and treated as a despicable thing something loathsome.

The custodial terminal care facility was six months later when her condition proved hopeless. She was abandoned in order that her brother might live a normal life by myself; influenced by doctors and wife.

A guilt I've hidden from all accept M. For years I held an atavistic imaging of holding Johanna in my arms both of us naked in winter for her to die from exposure. Now I remember mother telling me of Inuit people doing the same with their elderly, leaving them for the Polar Bears to eat. Details: being the elderly could no longer chew their food and would otherwise starve to death. . . .believe me, when I now conclude, to be eaten is better than starving to death. 

Mindfulness is a process that I formerly described to myself as 'deconstruction' of my daily events. The wisdom of the Orient speaks simply whereas our wisdom book is complex. Yet as suggested in The Bible I seek wisdom above all things. Life is simple. We are born, we live and then die. Our lives are complicated by the knowledge that we will die. The more I communicate with others, the more I recognize those whose preoccupation is a dance of avoidance and those who embrace the precious moments we live fully.

For myself I have no fear of death yet for others I sense theirs and respond with the primary greeting: "I see you" Without going into my sense of their emotional state/estate; of course. 

State being momentary. 

Estate being what they identify themselves with or by; living and dying by or for that 'truth.' 

My 'estate' has no boundaries yet being human I participate in activities that define the state/estate of others institutionally; church, state, or smaller organizations that I may be of service to until it is time to move on. 

A death of sorts -- but not really. The deaths of my children formed me to the degree and extent that I write for those of us caught in transition between the known and unknown. 

Third Bullet: Yesterday was a good day initially. I experienced an improvement in my writing and published three posts. Then everything went to "hell" in a hand basket. Complex and various elements I detail now but not fully since as a 'writer' or 'photographer' I am compelled to narrate the significant from the insignificant details. And of what service I might be to you who consume the events thus far.

I am convicted of my choice to remove myself from hospice service for the inconvenience of patients and the convenience of the organization that serves them. I returned a project previously engaged in and I had tarried doing so for longer than I anticipated divided between completion and abandonment of both the project and 'my' patients. 

Apprehending my transitory state between one known and the unknown, or unknowable, I am moving forward. 

Adapt, improvise and prevail. 

I have failed many times yet arose and moved forward accepting the truth of the unknown; humbled not humiliated. It is still surprising to me that there seems a "game plan" derived from a source more powerful than I impelling me to a position of understanding. For myself and for you. 

Think cosmically -- act locally.

Looking at my dream, at this point, it seems now, two adversaries attempting to identify each other. I tend to name my "Higher Power" as God and know God unknowable in reality; or as envisioned. Yet my part of the equation is known to be welcoming and one of love; a choice. My trust of God is explicit yet my self trust was, until this moment, ambivalent and indecisive. 

My intention, possibly 'motive,' is to sell you what you believe you own. My thesis and experience is that I 'owned' my self partially and now whole. Were I interested in selling you a product that I have, I would say that you must believe what I say and thus find belief/faith in yourself & God. Times have changed and the latter no longer works for me. I am too conscious of all other major religions and their values. Both to myself and those who began them.

If you ask for help in the sanctuary of your heart, mind and Self/Soul; it will be given to you; as to me. I anticipate that you will become reverent and compassionate towards others in need as well as towards yourself . . . to love your family/neighbor as your self does not work if you don't actually love and have compassion towards your Self. . . .The same is equally true of: ". . Love your Enemy . . "

Closing thoughts: Prayer works. Neither M nor I have ever been able to meditate but pray we do; for all of mankind. Mediation works if you need to wade through -- Buddhist term "monkey mind" to reach the core of your being. In conclusion I will use myself as example I prayed as a child and now. The difference is that prayer has also become "Mindfulness." 

--Bruno Bettelheim
“The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.”

--Brother Lawrence
(c. 1614 - 1691-02-12) was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery. Today he is most commonly remembered for the closeness of his relationship to God as recorded in the classic Christian text, The Practice of the Presence of God.

"A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God."
“Believe me, count it as lost each day you have not used in loving God.”
“The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.”
"You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we think."

120921 01:23 dreams

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

sometimes the dog at other times the Hydrant

Politicians & Pentagon Hacks: 

are sometimes the dog at other times the Hydrant. 

Even the Lobbyist especially the ones with pointy hats and tasseled Gucci shoes. 

All are more-or-less grossly generalized materialist/psychopaths 

at worst, or less so, merely cynics knowing nothing of God 

accept to spell the name backwards Dog.

by

which

I

mean

as

Oscar

Wilde

said

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.”

120920 10:07 Politicians

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

"I love you without knowing how, or when,

or from where. I love you simply, without

problems or pride: I love you in this way

because I do not know any other way of 

loving but this, in which there is no I or

you, so intimate that your hand upon my 

chest is my hand, so intimate that when

I fall asleep your eyes close."

--Pablo Neruda 

So what is it with these passionate dudes; all swarthy brown and beautiful of soul and body?

I mean first Pablo Picasso, Rumi and now Pablo Neruda. Just an old coon hound me looking to see what's the common denominator? 

"If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself."

"If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I."

--Michel de Montaigne

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

--Rumi

It's okay to repeat themes thinking to get them better; unlike insanity saying; "VOTE FOR ME! . . . I'll make you safe and more better!" About Picasso he'd go to the museum with a red lunch box held together with a lavender shoe string and when alone with his work he'd modify it.

Well excuuuuuuuuuse me! If God is exclusively defined as a guy and these guys love god as a guy then homosexuality is populating the earth not with more babies than we know what to do with but with art.

120920 08:55 too important!

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

ha'penny firecracker I'd rather be than the detritus = litter = fallaciousness we make of one another daily I'm a light pop fart in eternity rather alternative to the darkness surrounding me

Love Field Dallas Texas walked into a plate glass door watching a filly twitching her tail walking down the sidewalk love those Texas women but refuse to live there in a ball gag punishment PVC suit with my arms crossed behind the Bible Belt 18 then still do'n it at 72 anywhere wherever i go. 

She, M, said; "you can heal" what who me why how no way later I asked whadayha mean? "you will" Cryptically the Sphinx speak not so much seed planting in fecund soil but javelins hurled across the Formica Denny's table tops then. Me n' Saint Sebastian pinioned to the red faux leather cushion back.

She, M, is the only philly for me and urgently since we have so little time left but that's conceit since in one moment with her Heaven spent come hither go away u bore me to tears tick-tock the egg timer clocks typical of an annalist she thinks or so i think it projection/transference but its not she wears me loyally like a skin tight opera glove

M&M or M&m or M&_ are not Inc. but neither are we religionist zealot fanatic for tolerance not riot or mass crucifixions of diplomats

She, M, is at times Islamaphobic but unlike she i don't call her on it SILENCE when i told her i'd seen Jesus in a dream looking nothing like the Arian Blue Eyed Ideal of Hitler seen on Baptist Sunday School Class Room Walls through dancing dust motes SILENT in theatrical lighting no less actually quite Palestinian fancy that! 

At this point I went to rest, now awake again I realize several things important; to be humble is better than being arrogant. To not be tasked with being a criminal court judge is a blessing since were it I who wore the robes I'd be to concerned with verdicts and about my ignorance of what really happens to us our souls and selves I mean after death I cannot know for now but am comfortable with my unknowing never indifferent yet always a baiter of tigers and Sphinxes.

I once fell asleep with headphones on; the theme music to "Missions" in an endless loop -- adore Ennio Morricone and dreamed of being in a snake pit myself nude and covered . . . I think of it now then and often again as being baptized by snakes . . . concluding it no so odd for me to attempt perfect transparency for you to do so with your Self/Soul mindfully. The same experience happened far off Boston in the shipping lanes -- sometime I'll work on the poem -- I saw waves that didn't move zigzags between them left, right, left again and suddenly was covered by spume: baptized by whales.

Having no faith in evil, or devils, knowing myself human; nothing but our refusal to accept the divine within us surprises me. Now I sense - think - feel - intuit this balanced man/woman me that we seek to dance in avoidance our potential never realizing that God knows us Good Enough; as we are Human.

Happily I am celibate, alone and able to play J. S. Bach at full volume blowing my mind away with his divine play; along side Mozart, Beethoven and on and on and on . . . too eclectic for true mastery of any one form of creation. More better; able to laugh and cry with Annie staring wide eyed at me in sympathy not consternation . . . Were i just a bit younger, old enough to see the sacrifice of parenthood to mature conclusion, I'd adopt a Native American Child, Mexican, or Negro and teach them to be courageous as M has me. God knows we're emigrants in a foreign place with more widows and orphans that you can count dying of neglect; not a Welfare Queen among them.

This process of finding does not end in death. Perhaps it just begins again. But for a time we get to go to our true home and be with God in truth. . . .Maybe . . . maybe not . . . to return and try again to bless those who don't know with their own divine truth.

Be well, more better, be yourself.

120920 04:55 religionist?

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

It takes a long time to discover yourself as having a soul. An exclusively religious concept more commonly spoken of as Self. I am unusual in that I am willing to discuss my bigotries and hypocrisies; the before, future and now. It is a personal truth that I seek mindfully -- itself a Buddhist concept. 

When I awaken catching glimmers glances at what my dream dialogs were about; that enterprise is more revealing than what I write about . . . her hair was gold yet dense as her Iroquois father's black was or so she would inform me while I ran my fingers through her hair exclaiming in purrs and in passion I'd grasp in my fists pulling her onto me with vigor not grunting but growling thrusting. 

Anais Nin a hero of mine once said you can learn a great deal via erotica. 

Sexual fetishes are the most interesting, deeply buried and revealing: lubricity discovered in John Updike's, "Poor House Fair" still resides right up there with panties . . . laughing I thought about The Temple Veil rending at the moment of Jesus' death. 

Lucy always gave as good as she got, measure for measure fully tamped down -- quid pro quo. Lucy was my nickname for her . . . I never had the heart to inform her that it was after Lucrezia Borgia and merely grinned when she though: "Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds." 

Inquisitive or -- and/or -- inquisitional: both. . . .Maybe worse: the coral snake ready to bite your nipple . . Keeping a journal is ever renewing a pump once primed endless flowing the insides outward expanding. Characters in a novel then to take on their own identity . . . well . . . I guess in journals that is equally true but the truth of me, once listened to, blows me up and apart vaporizing all nice and snark. The nodal point quivers like a tuning fork then changes pitch: ecstatic or the Ice Man. 

When she said; "I'm pregnant . . . " The Ice Man said not a word, did not blink like the snake I am or can be lidless eyes forked tongue about to flicker out and touch your terror. . . .And in that sentence realized that I was not the man my mother wanted me to be dressed up as a little girl for Halloween but the man she wanted my father to be. 

The smoo, smuck, patsy, fatuous, flatulent, fallacious three-dollar-bill asshole was he. Could it be possibly maybe maybe not he was homosexual and denying it . . . a bassoon playing fagot?

Makes sense to me, how bout you? I was in the bathroom at age something--something and he came in saying, "take off your pajamas." Nude pressed up against the steam radiator, cold at the time--thank God, he fondled my penis saying; "Your mother is curious why the sheets are always clean; no wet dreams?" Fondle--fondle--fondle . . . LOL!

Hung like a horse . . . No! More like a mule . . . he made me walk about nude during our cruise around Tahiti for 3,500 miles!

. . . Jesus Dad! I'm like all young boys; a serial masturbator with mom's panties!!!! Very careful too!!! Kleenex my favorite stock holding before the assholes stole all my money . . . really it was all mom's money she left me. Standing naked in November the door locked behind me on cold brick terrace wicking up into my frozen in terror brain. U do know your brain is six to seven pounds of tofu? Yes? It is your mind that you have to take care of . . . to become conscious of or conscious of consciousness to be exact. And once you've taken an Xacto knife vivisecting that you find that your perceptions are skewed by what you want to see versus what is truth. 

Oh sweet Jesus on a bobsled doing snow boarding flips maybe that's why the Pope put Him in diapers?

Ali, Ali, once you get to da panties, come home free . . . and to think, occasionally I'd call Lucy, Rapunzel let your hair down for me to climb the tower to thee. . . . always did like mannish women: assertive not aggressive like dear O'l Dad just your average closet Sodomite. . . .Mom a fag hag.  

120920 02:41 blame

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved