mirror maze and facets

In my life of greed for love and approval I did allow in, several who proved to be quick sand instead of geysers; a quagmire versus levitation. Where do I go when despondent? Rarely depressed, but having been upon the bridge about to leap I know what depression is within myself. It takes more courage to live than leap.

For me, upon the Christmas Eve bridge, it was then: Jesus, J. S. Bach and Fritz Eichenberg. And the thoughts they had shared. Or I had fond sticking in my body like petards bleeding with rage and angst. Bellowing. My head soon to be mounted in the dark vault of Banksters; cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Greed never slaked.

Ask and the door will be opened.

I met with a new-to-me author this morning who reflected, almost word for word, what I had moments previous written. Something several orders of magnitude more significant than what Gideon asked of a moist or dry lambs wool before his tent, to me.

No.

Not The Big I AM but nearly so; a new friend. Someone whose words I can chew in times of despair instead of bottom feeders and stones while drowning.

My list of All Time Favorite Authors grows daily. Equally balanced between Women and Men; endless. Highlighted with the usual; those extraordinarily memorable. Coupled with some not so, but nearly. Saints and Sinners, even materialist; about to say scientist but then remembering Einsteins covert theology like Confucius not naming their resources; more teleology than theology. If I use the name “God” it lends an idol not a friend. Especially in these times of “like.” I would rather think I had touched one or two, possibly several, readers than have a trillion “likes”

Michel de Montaigne, for his revelatory transparency, was first; and to whom I frequently refer when lost regarding what to say, why, and how to write it. Newly found is: John Churton Collins, from whom I have a page or two of quotes and snatches of his diary illuminating his choice to take his own life.

What I take from these two is not their style or syntax but the spirit of their questions. And their observations/conclusions on what it means to be alive, in love and becoming a person.

At my origin, it was my maternal grandmother who quoted The King James Version of the Bible and Shakespeare planting those infernal eternal questions which I continue to seek answers to. Remembering the child’s song: “Yes, Jesus loves me because the bible tells me so . . .“

I am haunted by love requited. And now sense that it was not only through Jesus and/or the other prophets, regardless of creed, that truth spoke. But by many others to the end that we be free to be ourselves in love and truth doing no harm.

"The love we give away is the only love we keep." - Elbert Hubbard

"The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears." - Stendhal

130410 20:52 MDT mirror maze and facets

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

The Process

The process is better described as an asymmetric tuning fork. Instead of the note A 440 it sounds a dissonance.

Awakened by a dream, needing to void, initially I sought return to rest but then subtly a disharmony occurred in which I began to question the superficially ordinary scenario. No escape!

It seems there were several odd elements to a familiar landscape. Which I presumed embellishments inserted to add color. Obviously, now, it was intended by the ‘author’ of the dream. Affirmed in stunning ways when I began my methodical pursuit of quotes. A practice that works for me; being as ignorant as I am, I seek not knowledge but wisdom. And dear reader it is for thee. Free. To be free.

Discovered is a resource I am advised not to reveal by several authors beginning with Confucius and Einstein; one extrapolated, naked of wishful thinking, common across history. Indicative of a wealth, common to consciousness; should only we dive deeply enough through our inherent perceptions.

My discernment, derived exclusively in this dream, is humiliating: recognition of my adaption to rape. Which according to M is simply all forms of abuse; synonymous. Possibly my kindness towards others was self-betrayal. Recalling my fathers advice; “The world is filled with predators.” Now seems correct. Kindness is learned and not inherent, at least in me, honestly.

Covertly I have perceived The Bible, as well as other wisdom resources, as owner’s manuals. What to do with this, experientially, once and only once gift of life: precious. A bit chary there, since I don’t believe in death as rot and loss. But that’s me! And my fondness of saying; ‘Nothing is lost in eternity.’

Most magnificent. in this journey, is in saying yes to the invitation to fully live and become a real person; that which we take for granted but it is not. Is that the process is expansive; a reserve which while given freely away, is ever filled and made better: a profit from being profligate with kindness. To give until it becomes your nature, is rewarded in ways unspeakable, unique to each of us. To take is the way of death; pleasure for now, no joy later.

Laughter! At myself, this busy little boy attempting maturity. Flabby white ass, warts, wattles, wrinkles, white whiskers and all!

In compassion the emphasis is on passion. Too late the longing to get laid vanquished by empathy for the other; women only. Who, intimately reveal their abuse, of which there are many degrees from grotesque to benign; exclusive of cultural and historic slavery to men. Think about it once-in-a-while: it is possible that someone cooked the good books claiming that Adam, not Eve, came first!

Snick, snick, the blade sharpened by abrasion in contest my life and survival bet against the mercurial modes of my mothers providence. I know the town well; Providence, Rhode Island and its founders intents. I know better now, by process and proofs personal, the Providence and the Author of it.

Retrospectively it seems I misappropriated reverence and awe to the wrong resource. Am I alone in experiencing recreational sex as akin to seeing the numinous? Those astonishing fleeting flashes of divinity? What happen next: baby/babies, slavery to wages, smothered beneath obligations obnoxious in the extreme; imprisoned by what I then thought as love.

Worse! I became object/subject the attentions of those in authority. The predators. If you turn around, backward/forwards, “The Chinese Curse,” we can become authorities, at least in our lives privately. Dare I say in forgiving our assassins meeting the joy of eternity. Perhaps, maybe not, returning, or staying with the resource whispering in my dreams?!

Swept into the maelstrom described above, a child then of my time, to exercise the desire for joy I sacrificed everything I then knew. Oblivious of the consequence. What and which I know now as the hammer blows upon the then mailable steel I am, forging me into what I could not imagine until now.

Fraudulent, addicted to nothing, except coffee and cigarettes for breakfast; arising at all hours of darkness incandescent. Sex? Yes! I was but now know better.

Why?

I knew nothing better as an expression, nothing so vulnerable, requisite of trust, to communicate that I loved at all.

In recognition of former ecstasies, I recognize, not the product, but the process. As now, so then, submerging one’s self into creation. Wile E. Coyote and Ray Bradbury aside, I’m learning to fly having stepped (or being pushed?) off the edge of everything presumed true as perceived. Is this my version of “run, jump and shout” or building monuments? Artists are monks of a different order; contemplative, meditative writing themselves across the void.

Be well being your best self.

http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/authors/charles_caleb_colton_quotes.html

In parting: It is unwise, although common of me, to irk the ire of those immoral and ethically challenged. For the most part all in authority, but most venal, of those, are politicians and administrators. The ones who mind don’t matter, those who don’t mind do. Save, of course, for indifference or they in denial.

Add: For now at least; I oscillate thrashed against the gibbet from which I am hung. Doubting, a gift akin to curiosity, my choice to be transparent to a fault regarding those who I love, women of course, who I have consigned to The All for their care.

If I have lied to you consider it worse when I lie to myself. There seems a truth greater than I can tell for now within me and all of us.

130410 0407 MDT The Process

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

today is changing

I asked, no begged, her forgiveness: given. Yet until now, beginning yesterday, less ignorant than ever before, I apply the teaching whispered therein.

If I cannot forgive myself, as I am, or when I committed, my leaving her decades ago – tomorrow is her birthday – I will endlessly abort myself. Grotesque. But less than what I have, every day, gone through. Thinking of her instead of praying for her. Oblivious. I should equally pray that I learn what it is to forgive myself. No absolution or forgetting.

Maybe – Maybe not: less arrogant in my ideals of which she was and remains: immutable, silent, Sphinx like. Not her problem, but mine, always overtly beautiful. Could it be in leaving her I gave freedom for her to be what she needed to become.

That is what has happened to me.

Astonished!

Did I write that?

What does it mean?

I have always had difficulty tendering good wishes and glad tidings to those most important to me. Finding when sought, only boiler plate sentiments, or ecstatic conceits worthy only of God: romantic.

Searching quotes is not seeking marching orders. In a sense it keeps me alive and out of mischief; before I lose my memory and all memory of me become dust. So I lend you the following wisdom; “Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” - Dr. Laura Schlessinger, found just now @ http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/random_quotes.html

There are others, quotes that is, potentially more significant in a broader sense. Do I play pinball with words?

Yes.

So long did I silently argue myself not what mother said, or implied: exclusively her problem. Later. It now seems, Psych 101, I married my mother in another guise. With both, convenient or inconvenient, I seemed an armchair to furnishing their doll house.

Sometimes a pinball ricocheting, awaiting the tilt. At other times: a flea – whither goes the dog go I.

Is not love, at base, acceptance. Not attempting to change the beloved into an ideal but loving the beloved as is.

Speaking of The Sphinx; she was more articulate in our parting embrace yesterday, somewhat akin to the anonymous author, touching me with words, I quoted and replied to. Both for now will remain so: anonymous to everyone except myself.

130409 12:12 today is changing

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

changed yesterday

Something changed yesterday. I am no longer alone as in all the days before; a lifetime of loneliness realized. Communion, not communication. Being touched; at last embraced in ways that have utterly altered me unspeakable. Incandescent. Not fireworks, apogee, but simply enkindled; becoming fire itself.

I asked, said yes, and Yes said yes back.

Could it be that the author of unconditional love announced being present in ways unimaginable; unconditional? To whom could I give attribution for what inseminated me making new life forever.

Yet, and yet, outwardly I remain as I was before; like Saul on the Road to Damascus; turned upside down, inside out what was hidden now plain.

Love is not the property of any one soul but all in concert; triumphant, symphonic, an endless ode.

I think, knowing by experience, I am not wrong nor mistaken. That which touched me, and remains, is unnameable for no concept or construct is adequate is is the always thou. Truth. What we all seek.

To be transparent. I feel asleep conscious of wanting; a desire to own and possess that which angelically was given. The Truth cannot be owned but given freely unconditionally and so it must be that I remain now nearly angelic in myself: genderless. Something akin to earth, water, wind and fire all in one. But, somehow, more.

By what I discover, I am inadequate the chore, being poor. A mere clay vessel soon to be dust again. Cracked and leaking with an overflowing to be given only to those who like me remain poor, meek, humble. Once broken: mended.

Everything remains, already spoken. We are the only thing new under the sun; we who cannot hear, see, taste or touch. Since our perceptions are addicted to what we want to see not what is.

05:57

Wholely unrelated: M is given, if not actually very fond, of rainbows.

Just discovered: "The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears." - John Vance Cheney

Ofttimes I fall silent. Fearful that I inflect, impose or infect, inappropriately, fatally? my agenda or intents upon others. This concern reminded me of the second then third renewal of wedding vows with Susan, the bride-of-my-youth. Then my, or our failure, to gel into that promised. The first and last conducted outside, once upon the rocky shore, the other anointed with a rainbow.

Humiliated by age and many failures. I wonder now what consequence could, or should, be attached to being touched by grace; at least insofar as I perceive it by all integrated faculties. Adding now, a sense myself both male and female as I knew/know Jesus to be. Not He alone but many who choose to live alone instead of merge with another. Am I wrong in my estimate that in doing so we become something, more or less: other? Naked, bereft of desire, no longer willing to name and claim anything save the ever changing experience; truth being mutable not immutable since it is the nature of creation.

As I am, is all I will ever be. Sufficient for now; waiting what is next. No simile, metaphor, analogy but blank: an empty stage upon which the play of time will incarnate. Enough. In leaving she said; “I want my husband!” Not you as I knew myself then or now. Guilty in my choice or manor, the behavior/excuse/rationalizations. Something formerly unforgivable. More so when she later suggested “closure” would have been desirable.

Now I ask, receiving no answers, is not all life a sacrifice. If so, to what end. Heaven is not milk and cookies. Or laughter as I laugh now. My sense, inarticulate then, but better defined now, is that had I remained I would have been not husband, or friend, but her child; mindless. Totally eclipsed by her choices and behaviors. Not a judgment between good or evil but simple acknowledgment she would be will and I believe she is without me.

Bewildered by yesterday I attempt to compose some understanding. Not a monument, but a life continuing beyond touched by the beyond. Humiliated then humbled and meek.

A love once said of me that I was ‘ribald’ then ‘sullen to discipline.’ Now as I methodically farm quotes, discovered by he who long ago died this day: "Everything comes in time to those who can wait." - Rabelais

I sense myself as erotically charged, a sensualist, needing no touch to make love, since yesterday love was made possible in ways beyond definition.

I belabor the vernacular of life because there is nothing generic about it. The only Brand I can sell you, is yourself.

130409 03:47 MDT something changed

No. Not exhausted, merely tired, as in: ‘When hungry I eat, when tired I rest.’ A luxury only a solitary could, can & may afford. But then when in company: a pair, throng or mass, some are renewed in silence within.

At the horizon of oblivion I thought in reply: “You melt my heart with your words and insights! I carry your missives in my heart like a special gift.” . . . in response I could only annotate my astonishment regarding the most magnificent thing ever directed at me by another in words.

Then submerging in slumber remembered the first ever poem still haunting me: "Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning Which even now, ever more, staples me to the dead tree, The Cross, and He who said; forgive them. From a solitary to The Solitary; whole, holy and complete.

Dragging with me the corpse of what I last wrote. Like a sailor upon the stars leaving no wake. I take what the weather brings without sorrow; for any day is a day in creation, expanding, creating more; happy the ability to acknowledge.

Like a trombone I am on a sliding scale of squeal or blat corkscrewing up and down the scale of all the notes potential. Wondering did I say what I intended. Could or should I try harder to simplify or embellish? Do James Agee or Jack Kerouac, possibly Lao Tzu, simple broadly drawn or, as in the former, so like Inge tickled to the point of embellished insanity; a mirror maze, Byzantine, a labyrinth.

If allowed. I would stand before Him speaking The Beatitudes. Feeling his breath upon my brow watching his eyes. For if love is given free and flown, never returning, then it is love nonetheless true. I can no longer scourge the have and having not. Always emptying and refilled.

Laughter: Not whatever, but writing, asking for more. Empty, what I wrote forgotten, I remain indebted to those upon whose shoulders we stand awaiting the next generation; a human ladder to the infinite. Always curious I ask is it possible, having the methods and means to extinct ourselves, nothing whatever will be left?

Definitions seem, betimes, coffins or trampolines.

130409 10:05 MDT more in reply

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

ideals & continuity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

06:37

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

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

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

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

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

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

130408 03:57 ideals

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

scant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:38

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

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

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

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

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

M saved my life.

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

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

Not to mention the loss causing suffering explained.

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

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

130408 00:24 scant

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

US'a dreaming

My day begins with laughter, tears, humming and screaming; whenever I awaken from, not rest, but dreams astonishing: always! Regardless the time or place; running around the ceiling.

When last I wrote, yesterday, I began a bit about Ishmael, wandering off to read and then viewed “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Somewhere mid-stream I gave up since it was (the movie) so constipated compared to reading Kazantzakis, anything/everything, I began to understand that we as infants are the center of the Universe and in time, mature? Become vaporous, ephemeral, to me ready to leave the chaos for sanity.

Going Home.

True of me, I hotdog on The Torah, The Bible, etc. And hear God laughing; Her sense of my being a fool for love. Sweet Jesus on a go cart, in downtown Paris, at rush hour, how I love playing with words. The Good Books about God are paving stones while those written by Kazantzakis, Roth, Singer, Malamud; the few, yet many, who describe life as lived and loved. Like the magician littering the stage with motley scarves, hidden behind them, so many, I draw the authors I’ve read from within my heart . . . and now, only now, remembering meeting The Dalai Lama, that the hand I shook had touched Thomas Merton’s; embraced him and later prayed at his grave.

Lord God Almighty! Free at last!

Odd. The confluence, conjunction, collisions of elements: About Ishmael. She was a forty something foot schooner out of Greenwich, Connecticut. Sailed by a young man, a friend of the bride-of-my-youth’s younger brother; one of three.

You see I have always seen myself as white trash from the wrong side of everything. While she, her brother, their friends and neighbors were the white, washed and holy. Merely another way of saying, especially in these times of poverty, the obscenely rich . . . at that, the person with one eye in the land of the blind is wealthy beyond all measure.

In any case, the bride, long fled with children and I alone save for being accompanied by a man and woman who had stepped in to rescue me. We were invited to accompany the captain of Ishmael to a hippie conclave in the tidal marshes of Virginia wherein I was given a joint that rendered me hysterical crawling about the paw feet of a round oak table asking; ‘why I must be crucified endlessly.’

A mystical experience? Yes. I never smoked another joint. Later being informed that it had either rat poison or smack inserted within the weed.

They laughed, of course, as I now laugh at the experience.

Thinking metaphorically, time has become something of an ant farm, or wave form, glass encased, visual. An experiment going back-and-forth, forth-and-back. Endless. Futile. Fascinating.

I’ll have to go back and re-read Melville. Consulting Brewer Phrase & Fable, the thumbnail, yes, it could be that Ishmael is me. Laughing. Gore Vidal once mentioned the children chained in the attics of those button down Victorian Houses for the obscene unspeakable acts and pleasures of their parents. Greenwich, Connecticut?

YES.

OBVIOUSLY!

Not everything is specious, superfluous, fatuous, flatulent in the words of men. Or man as family; one and all. But the process enables me to observe myself comparitively to what I’ve ever said of others. Add. I remain enchanted with the chance? Conjunction of quotes as I wander between what I write and record of others. However when I view television I laugh instead of cry; the supercilious farting of time. With especial gratitude to Fox and the demigod who owns it. To think, once-upon-a-time it was my vocation to make the fools look wise; recalling now the lolling tongues, nose picking, crossed eyes that I excluded or deleted. The problem with irking the ire of the superficial is that they, in their boredom, will make your crucifixion longer for their entertainment. God grant me, please, the grace to not cry at the time of my departure.

For a brilliant woman my mother could be incredibly and rudely scatological. She could swear any Master Sargent or sailor under the table I’ve ever known. As for myself, in anticipation of another monthly, capricious, arbitrary, obviously demonstrative of self anointed administrative importance, inspection/violation of my privacy (as welcome as a napalm enema) I have begun imagining my fellow denizens, of we about to die (HUD housing) in a Drum & Bugle Corp. Who then could goose step with mops and brooms up and down the parking lot in review. Apparently the fecal minded have taken over the world.

One would be well advised to realize that it is possible to die from laughter.

Imagining myself wetting the trouser leg of my superiors while in my step-and-fetch-it mode; listening with focused, rapt attention on their pontifications. Otherwise, in protest, I might simply burn myself alive on their doorstep.

Possibly, I could convince St. Loony Tunes (Rupert Murdoch) to be the Drum Major while his minions record the events, for the delectation and edification of Ayn Rand’s resurrected/reincarnated selfishness coupled with the legends, in their own minds, baboons of Congress?

Salaciously reverent and divinely irreverent I think it not too odd to have awakened this time with thoughts of being a vapor no longer corporeal. Ecstatic. I no longer need to pretend to be “nice.”

Interesting and found at this close:

http://www.movements-retreat.org/readings/Poetry-Readings_Ebersberg_06.pdf

130407 02:37 Dreaming

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved