enriched besotted not bewildered

Arisen from a death like sleep, wherein my initial dream was of incompetence, punctuated with astonishing insights. Not about myself but those I observed, two young boys in a track event in close competition. Their defiance of one another and potentially their demise in consequence. . . . It was then that I awoke remembering the otherwise drudgery of professional photography as I had practiced it.

Then too I visualized the sure homage I owe to those who chose, in their time, to write. Like refracting crystals the light dancing through them arrhythmical an exquisite dance. The light always transcendent.

Of and/or about myself, now, it could be said that I love, Love, knowing nothing of the end of it; the longest novel/poem in four letters infinite. And then it seems this must be the way all life is loved by the origin of everything.

I am thinking of M, my beloved hour glass, we passing through each other; endings and beginnings that is all. Gifting one another!? 

Belief or none, seems irrelevant since the creator has us either way, regardless of insular/parochial definitions of who, what, why, when, wherefore . . . is not faith indefinable but best known by experience not war. Could it be that before we render ourselves extinct we will agree we had it all and destroyed it?

At lunch, yesterday, in jest I offered to pay with my library card. To which it was suggested that I could wash dishes instead. Whereupon I said; “I’ve been washing dishes, professionally, since the age of thirteen; M chimed in stating she’d been at since four upon a stool. 

Brother Lawrence and Durer where are you when we need define creativity by the humble us all? Meek not proud. . . . that filmy sheen of perspiration making we glow! Inner light manifest.

. . . "To argue over who is the more noble is nothing more than to dispute whether dirt is better for making bricks or for making mortar." - Saint Teresa of Avila . . . Happy your birthday what you were and remain.

Mother once asked of me, close to the end of our relationship, why I, at two and one half years of age had touched her cheek and cried uncontrollably? As if I could then, at the time of act or fact stated, know. I offer, this being curious about curiosity, from slumber transiting this nation from infancy until now, I would awaken in odd conjunction with objects and thoughts. And now still wonder is it call and response, my vision/version of the occurrence?

The concept of conspiracy better said as conspire or co-creation or collaboration with that which we cannot control: Life. Creation. The time of birth, length of life, moment of death

Yes

She is, experientially, an hour glass. We the grains passing through, at some point in time still yet passed on to others that they may love as we do. I do reverence who turns us tumbling now.

“We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.” - Blaise Pascal

“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.” - Voltaire

130328 01:25 enriched

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Friends

Men seldom openly weep, but drown internally holding the flood in.

Yet I, a man, have wept gallons over the difference between marriage and friendship, now closeted in my solitary life. It is my dreams that better inform me of the conflict -- ASTONISHING!

Irrelevant, the details and story that hurled me from rest two or so hours ago. Which led me to remember the difference between our ages and intentions. No story teller am I but an observer of the river of time; inconsequential by height, width, breadth or length, but merely that it is at all moving. It hurt nothing that she, being younger than me, inspired lust filled thoughts, but then being a nurse I came to understand her better as a person than a receptacle of my salaciousness.

Embodying those things I’d never known, joy for example, trust for another, but oh God! forgive me for admiring her posterior when she knelt to a patients eye level. And now, two thousand miles apart, remembering my involuntary ejaculation; “Take me with you!” We still communicate and I think more than often of her - there - while I remain here and she growing the requisite roots to sustain and flourish her life. Suffice to say that it is well. I care more for her than my gratification. I am odd that way. And wonder now that, when mother castrated me with her inarticulate accusation of incest, that she didn't do me an enormous favor.

Celibacy having been a long inconceivable dedication . . . even now the ability wanes while the desire remains.

Lust is just another addiction, compelling, scratching and itch: pleasure but no lasting joy. And I, no idle boast, care more for the soul than the body to so use another for my convenience. Yet even now, betimes, take pleasure in the thought. Naughty boy that I was, am and remain for all time . . . poor Ava Gardner naked upon my threshold spanked with a keyboard; “NOT NOW!”

Laughter! My greatest gift!

Not odd, the many men of my generation who leer when I mention her name. Yet I, for one, am more taken by her charisma, the laughing soul within, playful beyond the gratification. But as I, so with them, the men of my time; do not leer so much as grin; our ability waning.

Finally and fatefully drown, I know the consequence beyond orgasm; a greater wealth than I can tell . . . at least for now.

. . . yes, splayed, stapled, twitching upon the dissecting board; vivisection of my Self.

. . . a boy named Ruth, not ruthless

“There is no fire like lust;

 there is no grip like hatred;

 there is no net like delusion;

 there is no river like craving.”

—  Dhammapada

130327 04:42 Friends

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

sufficient

silence / sufficient / kudos / 

the audience of alone / 

dialogs answered

Happy Birthday 

Joseph Campbell

unhappy death day

Mansur Al-Hallaj (mystic Sufi poet)

observations rapscallion associations freely given grats to:

http://www.en.wikiquote.org/

the fleece i touch each new awakening so see what’s left there

oddly affirmation of thoughts, intentions and prayers

ala Gideon who asked and received

why me?

why not!

what is it for!?!?

For now I have a feeling. An experience of closure. Doors shut. New vistas opening; bereft of desire. 

Sans need.

Naked

alone

The process continues having its own impetus

laughing -- outrageously -- having heard that Rainer Maria Rilke, in reply to Sigmund Freud’s offer of therapy said; (lose translation and improvisation) “Thanks. But no Thanks . . .  I’ll keep my devils and angels . . . . “

I love insanely and lust more

the latter apparently simmering now near room temperature 

cockled 

diminishing

less specific

now defuse

expansive instead of contractual

. . . another grats for Wikipedia

tanks for the hyper-links!

rapturous

130326 0231 sufficient

© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dialog dreamt remnant

Awakened from a dreamt dialog with my long ago divorced first wife, she having become the priest I longed to be, the topic was not theology but pastoral. We, of course, are both in the same biz. She in uniform and I in permanent mufti. I left in a crude manor, irrevocable, humiliating her for which I still seek absolution . . . she claims to have forgiven me yet I cannot. At least not to my satisfaction.

Not all my dreams, obviously, are “out there” ‘sky pilot’ stuff: ecstatic or intellectual. But inconvenient, cutting cross grain with a rusty saw, the once living trunk of my expectations, longings and what I then thought to be love; taking not giving.

A love once said of me that I was; “sullen to discipline.” Too true by half, for I loathe authority and all its trappings, yet guilty for that.

Angst.

My maternal grandfather had been, before death, a wound to the groin with a shotgun, by choice or chance, a circuit riding Methodist Lay Minister. With four churches served in a Northern Kentucky hard scrabble area. C. G. Jung suggests that grandparents are The Great Mother/Father to this child who still morns for the unknown male lost when my mother was four.

Of my mother, her mother, myself, none of us knew much of the absent father . . . they, my maternal grandparents, married, she at thirteen and he at twenty-three, or there abouts. She was pregnant and delivered my aunt some nine years senior to my mother.

The point of the longish preamble: is that in the dreamt dialog between us, wife and now long experienced with death self, I witnessed the first in memory of her anguish, using a term I did not understand, requesting clarification I awoke and said oh!

In all the turnings, seven years after the death of our last, of two, biological children. The prospect of her ordination, experientially and by expectation, meant to me the farther loss of someone inscrutable to me enshrouded in dog collar and robes . . . receding in bells and smells and smoke.

Gagging, desperate, self-loathing, I sought love where I could find none in myself to trust. Some one to love me at last, constant and true. But that was not to be until M. A long, very long time, for I was then something like sixty-seven or eight when we first met . . . excluding all the intervening times of incredulity until quite recently. Convicted. Think of Sisyphus, yet in my case, not up a hill of sand but ball bearings spinning. Thrice the effort and endless crushings, the stony issue rolling over me down hill. . . .

Add: attempting to seduce a priest, a nun, a Sphinx: impossible . . . Though near the last of my sexual prowess at seventy-two, without apology I annotate that love is not sexual in nature but something given without desire or expectation of recompense. Yet bottled within the sealed solitary bottle of me has become enormous, but then, so has my reverence for others exclusive of creed, gender, age or culture. The exception is now that I no longer desire to be lead anywhere for I am there.

Back to the beginning everything explained and free to live and love at last . . . especially the author of my dreams. And the random rogue thoughts flickering across my attention day and night night and day.

Remember, please, this is teleology not theology. Random notes from a life in process . . . may as well be hung for a pound as a penny . . . full measure, well tamped, all grains being equal. The greatest joy I have ever known is now expanding not contracting.

About M. She is a psychologist of extraordinary ability and experience. Yet more! An alchemist making from dung gold. And should I do nothing else, no recompense required, I would do well to do, or attempt to do for others, what she has done for me.

For some, life is merely something endured, a job. For others it is a commission, joy.

Happily I know the difference in myself.

130325 23:23 dialog dreamt remnant
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

pour vous confidence

I am an archaeologist of the Self; using my life as a lab rat . . . Me, the rat, pink nose, red eyes above white whiskers twitching, and I, the self who writes . . . are good friends and tend to play/debate all the time. However it was in childhood that I asked, in prayer, “that “God” be real to me and ‘god’ IS!

My vast and unremitting ignorance surrenders nibble by nibble. And I, curious, am not limited to, or by, any definition of, or about, Who/What lends me attention; both in my sleep and conscious ordinary life. By, or for, which I do not arrogate anything save within the precincts of my self. We are all capable of so much more than we are lead to believe or have faith in. Thinking in animal metaphors is fun; reminding me that we should never/ever anthropomorphize since to do so is false idolatry -- at least ‘false’ to my experience and thinking. . . .

I’ve done it again! Run right off the plane of everything I’ve sought to gain freedom from. Falling naked, no feathers, flapping my yap, yet caught. Not crushed like a fruit fly but embraced.

I am incapable of doing “party tricks” walking on water, resurrecting the dead or healing anything or one other than myself . . . and nominally at that. . . . You should know that Jesus did the miracles and no one noticed, their pain healed, they went about the ordinary of their life.

Yet when He began to speak in parables folks listened. But being my root, in this life, for now, Jesus is not the only one I adore and listen to . . . for out of the mouths of babes (not Eva Gardner but real infants) comes astonishing truths: laughter and tears. I follow where lead by this process and cannot imagine an end or goal . . . having been both subject and object of extreme prejudice I cannot do so to another and question if what I say of myself and experience is not to be welcomed, shunned or annihilated. I do so for the joy of it which cannot be taken away by torment, torture or death. Or at least I pray so since those who do so would be challenged to do more simply to hear me cry out of boredom. And/or their shattered idolatry.

. . . nothing definitive, just taking myself apart like a cheap, made from soup cans, alarm clock, attempting to see what makes it and me tick.

Looming, present and obvious, before me in real time - REALITY - are two mentors who, when queried, claim no allegiance to anything save life itself.

And Love.

. . . and by them, and through the experience of life, otherwise, common to all of us, I know joy.

And/both not either/or.

Ask and you will receive . . .
eventually.

And not what you imagined; but what is, and or can be truth, dependable and intimate.

http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/46216079873
http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/46181255612

130325 02:10 Confidence (pour vous confidence)
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Gifts & Road Kill

Suicidal, enraged with insane grief, I was a clotted knot which she, M, opened; become a generous open hand, no longer a fist. 

Odd to realize that I can kill, as well as praise, with words. I learned to argue in childhood, internally and silently, against the locus of power. To be honest it only now occurs to me that I was, and remain, capable to both destroy or love in the extreme. At least inside. To me, my sense is, that Jesus was both Lion and Lamb. No excuse, of course, since in time my ideology of the numinous has changed, as He suggest, Love not Revenge, is best. 

M & i are odd in our differences, widely divergent on secular issues, yet as friends, two peas in a pod; in this envelope we call life. I would call her to ask what day it is just to hear her voice. Knowing this she will say; “I’m going to let you go . . . “ At times I think she is an egg timer (laughter, much laughter, raucous.) I love her of course. And the oddest thing happened in recent time, I viewed a cosmic version rendering of my conjoined ‘glass funnels’ in space; a galaxy of sorts. I wonder what the venturi is. Who, what, why, wherefore it is? So make, it & her, a divine egg timer! My myth made physically manifest.

I awoke - from my previous rest period - with a certainty that I’d at long last found the knot of my despondency. Recognizing that where I am rude, crude - salacious, internally, I would, if allowed, dissect issues in sophistic manor but in terms that might heal not destroy surgically.

Metaphorically I have for long described myself as Road Kill. A child, or pet, in infancy, left in a plain brown paper bag over which many had driven thinking it merely litter. Looking at today, at now, I laugh, realizing that I’m still ‘in the bag.’ Oblivious of yesterday and/or tomorrow - more laughter. Waiting the crush.

Simile: My self as a greasy spot on the front of a Greyhound Bus cosmically traveled. Returned from light years promising farther adventures beyond my ken.

Funny. Whenever I’ve stopped, attempting to inhabit life in a more-or-less fixed relationship, or place, it has backed up and run me over. Road Kill Stew. Really, the metaphor doesn't describe what power and force have made of the world; a toilet, backed up, violently explosive, waste everywhere . . . oh God! how I despise authority.

130324 05:33 Gift
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

in reply

Journal keeping was a closed circuit until my sister suggested that I ‘vote’ on an Internet site donating meals to stray dogs and cats. Since I’ve been in companionship all my life, from cradle till now, with dogs &/or cats; knowing, too well, the consequence of their being in pounds and unwanted, euthanasia.

I then began noticing additional sites with similar dedications and went there, eventually landing on Care2.com; then posting: first in reply to questions of a general nature; which in turn generated additional thoughts that needed more space for exposition. Eventually they thew me out; no explanation. I sought other venues, not social network sites per se, but whatever came up.

In order of significant response: Cultural Book is best, Opera is next and last was FaceBook, which I abandoned in a fit of snark combined with profound disappointment over the load of “friends” whose principal claim to discourse to was to declare what they didn’t like about the universe. The sole exception being from a high school classmate who commented, albeit cryptically, on something I’d published ala ‘stream of consciousness;’ “WOW!”

I am most grateful for the response received at CulturalBook.com. Including those leaving me shred, or ventilated, as with grape shot, in tatters.

I have a quirky sense of play with words and concepts, initially self-deemed dyslexic. And abuse, misuse words in extreme contrast -- not a literary devise so much as actually what happens when I listen closely to my response. Problematic when I read since ideas go off in my head like the 1976 fireworks over New York Harbor; about which I left being unable to stand the noise.

Recently I compared pearls to pebbles based upon my appraisal regardless of origin we are all more alike than unalike and jewels seem pretentious. Writing this I am suddenly aware that “do not cast your pearls before swine” associated in my mind with “the pearl of great value” better explains my sense of being - lifelong - bewildered why anyone would forgive their assassins. I do not regard myself as a “goody-two-shoe” ‘Christian.’ I regard my internal devils and angels with equal opportunity for me to say yes or not to. All life is of enormous value, none more so than another; including my enemies and/or those who may or will destroy me.

Significantly I have had stolen from me many things of material value. Lately I am subject, as all who live in my community of HUD augmented housing, to monthly invasions and inspections by the authority who abrogate this access to themselves. While seeking alternatives I discovered that I need to adopt an attitude, not of anger or resentment - a just response - but as I have with all previous thefts, and as advised by one of my mentors who said; “what you are enraged by owns you, let it go.”

From which, in the context of my current reading; Walter M. Miller, Jr., SAINT LEIBWITZ And The WILD HORSE WOMAN (second of his only two novels) I have been able, just now, to extrapolate the potential that if what I say; “pearls are present in all life” then it must be equally true of those who have stolen from me . . . to forgive and forget lets me live another moment free of what otherwise would hold me captive and lead me astray . . . perchance to exorcise my diabolical imaginings in writing instead of flesh.

My enemy does not own me, I do. This possession is sufficient to hold me, for now, from mayhem. Add that I am continually aware of the resilient fragility of life; mine as well as they’res.

Suffering seems the tempering of a steel resolve to leave the world nominally better than when found at birth.

130322 13:54 reply
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved