should-ought-interlocutor

In dreams we are able to enter a state of balance between what is and what we think should be. The metaphor is somewhat inappropriate; it is more like balancing a check book. When an imbalance is discovered one should find the source of error. Either arithmetic or excess spending in futile endeavors; resources cast away.

And one’s life is, in health or otherwise, our greatest wealth.

When I was a child I sought/thought and did childish things; with gratitude to St. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. My childhood now, at near seventy-thee, is ending by the dream from which I have just emerged. Indicative of what we all have and hold dear: the will to live.

To have a friend, one must befriend themselves, then the Great Friend emerges, and truth is possible. Nothing is exclusive if you begin to sense this in others independent of gender, race or creed.

M once said: “you can heal.” As uncertain now as I was then: bewildered. Years later I asked if she said this to/of others? “Yes.” More uncertain now then ever before I think I may have misunderstood; initially hearing “heal others/heal thyself.” My quibble is, now, as irrelevant as any sense of jealousy regarding her relationship with others. She is a wise, wonderful and gifted healer; generous beyond the limits of my understanding: and contagious at that. No one is perfect. Yet in our friendship perfection for us is now. Perhaps I misspeak in the sense that I cannot speak for her experience; only mine.

Truth will set you free. Your truth interests me more than mine; in life or death. This cosmology is ours to inhabit.

I sense that your truth can be found many ways: in meditation, prayer, creative activities—and here I’m thinking of dance . . . myself lurching about laughing for example: alone.

- Dick Eastman

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

14:52

I think myself a scrivener annotating personal events to perchance share for another who like me lived in fear forever. Sensing, within the last 24 having lived more than all the seconds, minutes, hours before. And still. Nothing whatsoever is lost in eternity. Yes I have ‘lost ‘ a great deal and know others having lost more.

Today, bereft of M, I ate lunch alone. She is well I trust, living, and there will be more moments within the ocean of her emerald green eyes. Sometimes still in gaze, others dancing in delight or mirth. But for now I am alone, as I was a lunch, listening to an elder explain God and Holy Days to a youngster, wondering how can I name the friend who visits my dreams and days? The interlocutor.

Find your own and be well,

forever more.

130412 01:56 should-ought-interlocutor

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

in particle or whole

Some seem in particle or whole, to incarnate, something/someone, vaster then themselves.

By good fortune, fate, or wives, lovers and others who did protest my desire to do with photography as I did with paint, clay or stone; capture the beauty of nude women. Eventually, as in the end days of my actuarial life set free by M and the love of another impossibly young and two thousand miles distant. I find myself chagrined recognizing that though I longed to, had I done so, I would have known a greater remorse. Always chary of women, by birth from mother, lending them all greater powers then deserved. Nude, naked, near or far or clothed in a circus tent these two have made of me at long long last a man by intimacy of soul, personality or self revealed. So, gladly, have I found what I sought all along; filled to overflowing.

I am not nearly by fractions imaginative, save for what visits me in dreams. Lending me what little winged tongue of the poets I admire leading me to speak. Always a mentee, the mentors most memorable of late have been women. Actually. Always. Since long back. Alone and bereft of any desire; thinking myself unworthy of love. Something lost at birth yet found in old age. It seems what is lost is desired too highly until perception is contemporary with truth glorious. Healed.

She who visited me in my last dream. A whippet with well proportioned protuberances. Red hair coiffured, elegant, poised, impatient. Indifferent to me. Who had been commissioned to photograph her in any way possible, just another celebrity. My heart stopped. I awoke certain that she was the younger sister of a childhood friend who had visited me carnally only days before her wedding.

I didn’t know. She had been then a stick figure in childhood an annoyance. Then an airline stewardess and flown in for a few days romp, then flew away. And I drunk with guilt called to ask her to marry me. Her mother answered telling me of the marriage days ago. Did I mention: Glorious!? All women of any age are so for within they are The Mary.

Decades later, we free for the moment, I asked her again oblivious of my sot with women declined. Abused mercilessly by her, by then former husband; she was, returning to her children impossibly.

The University of Hard Knocks, from which I seem to have graduated a Doctor of Suffering, is a strict teacher. Add that I never was a prize nor will be; so far as I can see backwards, forwards or now.

“There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.” - Euripides

Possibly—I think not—being born and lived in the time given. Bewildered: the young women who splay themselves. In derision, laughing at men who in reality are mere little boys, or begging for love, attention and acceptance? The Earth groaning beneath the weight of us, so many, how do we meet and mate becoming not lovers but friends; two equal halves of a greater one?

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore; To one thing constant never.” - William Shakespeare

There was another red head, face fallen, eyes pools of sorrow. It is not that I have a THING for red hair but women in whom I see something vital. As our friendship evolved she said she was drawn to “bad boys – very bad boys.” Later explaining her step father had used her from age six until twelve when she sought it, being the only attention she knew; as a sex toy. Even later she sent me an image of her at seventeen, voluptuous, whippet, scintillating, vibrant superficially—eyes mirthful. Later, again, she died of brain cancer.

No one is superficial save those superficial to themselves.

We, who are so indifferent, unable to create, destroy. As it was in the beginning so it extends beyond now unto extinction. The exception being when we as men or man understand the term generic for we the family of humans. All combined and equal.

An afterthought: with time and devolution it seems afflicted I sought affection now wondering was it I who infected them or my greed and addiction to beauty my undoing?

Destroyed and reborn thanks to M

credit capture: Mary Ellen Mark

130411 06:22 in particle or whole

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

he sea oh the sea

In my dreams imagining sailing the cosmology, a heart alone in love with it all the sea of stars. A sailor born to be, planted four thousand feet above sea level, an oar become a tree for the simple glory of being alone in ecstasy.

He whose vessel I helmed lays now deep in the North Atlantic in a jar, his ashes there placed in honor by the U.S. Navy. And from sleep I arise having visited him again and again for he is the only other who witnessed we sailing through a pod of whales far off the coast of Boston spuming us for having not a collision but been awakened by our passage across the midnight sea sharing.

Zig, Zag and Zig again guided by intuition. A primeval forest of ferns fetid aroma rose; soaked in celebration of life, magnificent, the gift of it.

They, the sea of stars and we upon it.

And the devil-may-care boy with a girl sailing the angry Ohio before the wind with an Indian blanket for a sail uncaring whether, or when, return. Disremembering the girl remembering the feeling of glorious indifference to harm or hazard or how or why we ever returned from the sandbar destination. An island in an always remembered summer.

Dream catapulted from slumber by once again sailing fantastically fast. Surrounded by rich white boys who laughed in glee while I meditative said merely; ‘must be at least fourteen knots by wind alone driven.’ To no one in particular. Save myself.

All those I sailed with are gone beyond, only I remain to tell them why and what for is life glorious. But then surely the must by now know or else my deepest intuition is a fraud. And whether cometh the dreams sailing me away?

In the hours after my son, the only one, left me a ruin, rubble, no past no future I wrote; “Thank you God for allowing me to sail a teardrop across the palm of your hand.” To which the priest said ‘heresy.’ Then the mother became one – a priest I mean – and I fled.

To be a tree bathed in star light alone upon the high mountain desert dancing.

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.” - Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)

130411 01:55 the sea oh the sea

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

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