120214 05:02
    Great Love is not definitive save for the Friend who speaks to and through us.
    In this instance I am shy about using the word “God” since that three letter word is so often abused or denied. So too do we misunderstand or abnegate we have a soul unique and, dare I say, divine? Or imply “divinely given”? It is my nature--and if it be true of me it is equally so with you and all life--to love.

"The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."
“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 is my custom to arise before sunrise to greet every gifted day. And in these hours find myself strolling though the quotes of memorable others who remain. . . . It is not an addiction or dependency since I miss occasionally when impelled to write; without guilt or shame. In the burgeoning collection I have a few who seem more ‘stellar’ than others yet equal in voicing messages reaching across the years and express love for all of us who remain.
    Like the Friend, it matters not what we call this time of quiet: meditation, prayer or contemplation, the result is always that same, fearless days.

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” 
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

120124 01:47
The dream from which I am arisen is a lovely poem of love for humanity. And equally my Swan/Phoenix song; no dirge. A prayerful hymn of thanksgiving for an unlived life, abandoned talent and sense of the genius of our collective will to love. The core of life’s psyche?

The trembling tear lingering at my eye is both sorrow and joy before I join the dust surrounding me of mountains made desert. . . . When did all ground, time and space become sacred? Where and when did fear flee from me?

Oh! Of course, my last conscious thought before slumber. An unconscious prayer about which I should have been more careful not to articulate: I love discovering talent and witnessing the nascent genius there . . . oblivious of longing to become the nurture for its growth.

Having witnessed, at hospice, the total of one family, in relationship to their dying mother, I ejaculated privately to her, ‘You made beautiful babies!’ Now sensing I should learn to curb my mouth as the street signs admonish in Manhattan regarding pets. . . . But she glowed so! But then again I now think I need a bag gag permanently affixed.

I am at times rude and express my urge to merge physically with a woman. And now find it not odd that the thought expressed to a very few, in later time my request obviously denied/declined, that I’d really rather merge with her soul for a moment to run my fingers through her psyche. Perhaps that is my true longing and lust to really know her. Instead of becoming the more common double backed beast for a brief time with both the creation of life or death implicit.

In recognition of my rogue consciousness. I recall taking my children, or was it child then? To the zoo and witnessing a bear lolled back masturbating in apparent boredom.

Another instance of masturbation: a pet dog where two Jesuits had hidden, with a Protest theologian, when sought for arrest for their acts of political protest. Masturbatory acts became common coin to me at the behest of a friend and teacher in high school. God Bless Jack O’Hara wherever you are. The last time we spoke, five or so years ago, he protested my choice of photography versus painting and I fell mute, my praise and gratitude killed. How could I tell him that the work we do creates the best part of ourselves. What would I now say? For most of us the vocation we sell our lives for is paltry and unworthy of our time, or life’s essence, slavery actually.

No one and nothing is for naught. To have been witness to genius is enough to know that what we call “God” is.

I now think God is within this alchemical retort we being rendered into something new. The metaphor expands and contracts in accord with the circumstance--no situational ethics or morality implied. I am torn between extrude and excrete. The hammer and anvil infinitely more apt than “between a rock and a hard place” . . . the pain . . . the process being a sword hammered into a plowshare. We who quiver as tears about to fall into the sea of oblivion know better that it is our drop of water we give. Our choice to die and give the wonder to the children who follow. Even the children of Darfur whose mothers die of rape and aids leaving them orphans.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." --Anais Nin

PS At the moment I recall it is the birthday of a woman friend who shared her father’s sexual use of her beginning at age six. Ending when, at the age of twelve or so, she began to seek him out. He then abandoned her. At the time of her death from brain cancer, a daughter called in recognition that we were friends, ending her monolog with the opinion that her mother was mentally ill.

I gave no reply but share this because her mother was a wonderful person who cared deeply for others. Best of all, for me at least, she taught me in part, now nearing completion, that friendship was better; the ultimate goal of love . . . and this was after giving herself sexually to a series of “bad boys.” . . . this one excluded . . . solemnity be damned. . . . . image borrowed from Aaron Siskind

120120 23:25

A few thoughts based upon experience, in response to the proclamation that the Music Recording Industry and The Movie Industry are “Pro Free Speech.” Please read/see latest developments regarding Internet Censorship.

What follows is based upon remarks made by my father (a music publisher) and time spent transporting a Julliard teacher (Davis Schumann) to the inaugural opening of Yale’s Electronic Music Studio.

Both detailed corruption in the publication of intellectual property. Instead of the gory details: stolen copyrights, bribes, kickbacks and/or the egregious censorship enforced on the motion picture process. I will give you a thumbnail of my conversation with Mr. Schumann during our one hour trip from Stamford, CT to Yale University.

As a teacher at Julliard Schumann was enthusiastic about liberation from the recording industries strangle hold on the publication of music. In this case I refer to complex musical structures, think/hear, symphonies and large ensemble work. The potential he described became true for all arts and the quest for knowledge. The computer made it possible to write and record music synthetically. The Internet, introduced much later, made the genius of creative people instantly communicable.

An important, to me, point: Creative people generally begin with an idea and whip it into form. At which point, in order for it to be published, one had to beg, borrow or steal the attention of sponsors and orchestra directors . . . the list was seemingly endless and the cost to the artist in non creative time, was significant and difficult. Especially given the fear of rejection we all have.

I see, hear and read genius/talent everywhere I look. Yet wherever I see it I also see the lack of an audience, absence of acknowledgement and affirmation. In terms of creative democracy the Internet is it. Television once held a similar promise but become commercial to the extent that creatively was filtered through conglomerate owners or sponsors agenda’s having nothing to do with free speech. Especially when it, potentially, impinged upon profit. From my vantage point I consider commercial broadcast televised news irrelevant. Even more so since Rupert Murdock and the ‘powers that were or be’ allowed consolidation of venues to reside under one umbrella. One tyranny?

“To Serve & Protect” is a common motto for law enforcement organizations. I ask who are they serve and protect when they kill protesters, either in America or abroad. The motion picture decency board does virtually the same thing with censorship not with lethal force excluding the obscenity of violence and romance/love/attraction as the sale of products. (An afterthought: think about the film “Precious” as counterpoint to the soporific pap and swill making so much profit that the vested money makers will steal our right of access to everything other than their product.)

I see profit in truly free speech for all people. An opportunity to access an education above and beyond vocational training; learning to think and formulate participation, independently well informed. Manifest is an opportunity for diverse views and choice; informed consent, participation in the process of governance. The absence of which is becoming violently apparent.

Everything is process. The collapse and decay of what democracy promised is accelerated by what we have; a population and nation going to hell in a hand basket for the pleasure and desire of 1%. Not democracy but oligarchy and at that a political system ruled by wealth buying the votes of politicians whose sole intention is to get reelected.

This is not an argument we can boycott or walk away from, though the former is attractive and effective. We must participate in any and all measures to retain, if noting else, our right of descent. Behind the scenes legislation is being considered to accuse and confine anyone causing the establishment displeasure. Thinly disguised as subversion with the hot button issues currently in play. Is the cure not worse than the disease?

I have many questions with no specific answers. However I imagine a far greater possibility if and when we work together to take back our governance from political hacks. Why do they continue to award themselves with raises and lifetime security while stealing ours?

--Jean Giraudoux (1882 - 1944)
'The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."

--Marshall McCluhan (1911 - 1980)
"Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be."
“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”

120119 06:00

Random thoughts: Prayer is being a tuning fork in the apparent chaos of creation. Once struck it ripples outward and inward to the, as St. Ignatius would have it, God within and God beyond. Prayer and wisdom seem to go hand in glove. As I am and was: in childhood I had no idea of what I prayed for aside from “Now I lay me down to sleep .  . . and “The Our Father . . . “

Now chagrined I recognize and articulate a concept of expansion; ‘To grow large enough to receive the love of God’, as in God’s love for all of us, the living and the departed. Example: In childhood I seemed to be a source of anguish for my parents and in loving them more came to feel I was unworthy of life. I was drown in that.

Then came a person who later on would tell me her initial impressions of me before and intimately share her conclusions now, going on four or five years, afterwards. I am stunned. Our relationship is platonic, as in friends and I am, at times, alarmed by her insights and struggle for comprehension in several instances taking years to understand and incorporate the gist and truth of what she suggests; her resonance refracting mine.

. . . from dust we came and to dust we return

In our case planning ahead independently we choose the same: cremation, our ashes spread somewhere in the desert we love . . . this place where God is more obvious than any other. Dramatic isn't it. Yet for my part my Power of Attorney has been informed, though he is a Priest, that I would not object having my remains being placed in a dumpster.

Regarding the Bible, or any of the several books of wisdom, I do not cherry pick but attempt to integrate the entity whole and let the implications move about in tectonic fashion. How can I stand the soul quakes? I was enraged with God that my nightly prayers over the sleeping child, my beloved son, was not answered and he spared the death he met. . . . take me instead.

Random acts of kindness are also prayer. A gift freely given with no expectation of return or applause. No milk and cookies for being ‘good’.  Jesus said, “ . . . when you visited me in prison, gave me a cup of water . . . “, treat all as holy even those who assassinate or merely persecute you in veniality and cupidity. I don’t know what Christianity is. Though I am catholic & Catholic educated I can only assess my relationship to God and in that love I find wholeness & holiness in all. Latent or actual it’s there.

Beloved . . . who are you and where?

The resonance expands outward making me smaller each day. I write from a need to escape the tyranny of photography: “Be there and deal with the moment captured in a black excluding frame.” While writing I merge with infinity and find love there.

Or is it here?! As in “Be Here Now!” --Ram Dass.

I imply nothing noble, grand or holy in either the random gift of kindness or the choice of what to include or exclude in photography. Be naked in your kindness vulnerable to failure. You choose your vision/version of what life and love may become. Not even God does that for you. The spindle of grief upon which my life revolved has changed from cold steal to a shaft of light. My gratitude for this is limitless extending even to those who __________ you know who would/have stolen your shirt and life.

As for rote prayer, I do recite The Serenity Prayer, but now instead of petitioning the gift I acknowledge its receipt.

--Matsuo Basho
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought."

--Eric Hoffer
"Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or our worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter worthlessness can be a source of courage."

--Earl G. Hunt, Jr. (Bishop--United Methodist)
“Prayer is a kind of calling home every day. And there can come to you a serenity, a feeling of at-homeness in God's universe, a peace that the world can neither give nor disturb, a fresh courage, a new insight, a holy boldness that you'll never, never get any other way.”

--Rainer Maria Rilke
“Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.”

120117 02:24

Wikipedia will black out globally its English Pages in protest of SOPA & PIPA.

When I had--before theft by politicians, bankers, stock brokers incorporated--money. I gave three hundred dollars to Wikipedia as an investment in our collective future. I do not regret this gesture despite now being dependent upon the charity of others to eat. Just yesterday I discovered a recipe using pinto beans in lieu of meat for hamburgers and meatloaf. I am not ashamed to be a member of The Third World. If anything my new citizenship has proven to be a blessing whose value is immeasurable revealing the nature and origin of addiction and greed.

As an adolescent I considered automobiles manufactured in Germany has being enshrouded in the flesh of dead Jews. Like the lamp shades the Nazis were so fond of.

Now, as I dodge SUVs driven by people speaking on cellular telephones, I think of them as being cloaked in the bleeding bodies of mutilated/dead combatants coupled with the 1.5 million or more civilian Iraqis slain by the previous administration--now seeking to recapture the White House.

Given the infantile posturing and playground rhetoric witness the current “Race to The White House.” I wonder if it is not time for a change; a clean sweep. A retroactive revocation of all rights and privileges secretly codified to and for, as Mark Twain called it; “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.”

Historically the number of “Leaders” worth the scratch required to bury their ashes can be counted on the fingers of one hand. My protest is not limited to Howdy Doody & Uncle Bob of “Shock & Awe”fame--I did donate fifty dollars to the current resident leader of The School for Terrorism.

No my concern is for the return of the Inquisition & Dark Ages.

Surely this cannot be the will of the people; to have our right to free speech gagged and uncensored access to an education taken away exclusively for the profit of the 1%. Between the electorate and politicians the disconnect is obscene.

120118 07:46

"There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development; to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies." --Henry Ward Beecher

First discovered quote within my morning ritual of collecting them. Then as I plowed forward I discovered that the question I ask of myself: "To speak or remain silent?" was answered clearly. I am not nearly as learned as I would have myself be and I seek wisdom not knowledge. Where East meets West seems to be the boundary between the simple joy of creation as it is and will be or to act assertively to alter the course of history.

I am not suggesting anything by way a prophecy since my sense of that activity is more in line with biblical prophets than those who predict the end of the world. Which bye-the-bye is inevitable: organic or physics. If I must define what I'm about it is advocacy and intercession for all life.

My perception and thinking is largely a product of information available, in milliseconds, via the Internet. I am able to process the contrasts between ideologies with comparable speed intuitively. Intellectually I do love even those who would assassinate me, or us as the case may be. We are using the lesser parts, plus or minus a few points of 10% our abilities. Anything that would limit, censor, inhibit, our growth is inimical to healing, redemption or the unfolding of consciousness. My sense is that the most revered in history were in essence teachers. Their intention clearly that we become the best possible person we are able to be . . . in the gem of our being, soul, self, unique and glorious. Anything less seems to be criminal. Oddly I recall at this point the phrase, "The first shall be last and the last first."

In closing I remind you that beneath the exterior of all things is an essence beyond definition. What about the future and the children? Are we educating the world that graft, greed, dominance, power and force are good. Or are we educating the world to be the future as they would have it when we leave. The former will leave the earth barren, the latter, an incandescent blaze.

120115 04:37
Imagine your life as a picture puzzle, the image of which is yet to be revealed.
Now see it coalesce into a three dimensional form in the fourth dimension, time, and you will not see, but sense, the actual presence of Creator/Creation Infinite.

Ask, and you will receive the communion of our cosmos beyond all symbols and myths--stone cold sober. Like seeing Wylie Coyote not at the canyon floor, a puff of dust, but arisen transformed into love.

“I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day..”
"I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." --Albert Camus

I envy no one and no thing, but have a concern for all of us. We who have benefited by the endless education potential through/of the Internet. Here I address legislation currently before The U. S. Congress to tamper with, censor and contort-pervert for fundamentally profit driven motives our greatest educational resource since television. Regarding which, a thesis advanced by Rod Serling who said, “ . . . what we have are a bunch of dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.” The issues are clearly drawn at www.fightforthefuture.org please attend then call, email or visit with our elected representatives and voice either your agreement or opposition.

The fortune stolen from me was derived from the efforts of my mother and her mother who took in sewing. Once, as a child, I accompanied my mother in Manhattan to a button shop where there were a number of men missing fingers. Fascinated I asked where their fingers had gone? One man told me that the Nazis had taken their fingers in an experiment. Then that he and his like fingerless friends sold buttons one-by-one from boxes of mismatched collections purchased for a penny each and sold for two cents in order that their families could eat. He explained the process was called “profit” enabling the entire process to be repeated. The purchase of buttons, sold one-by-one, and his families home and meals.

I understand and accept the nature of profit without resentment. I do, however, imply that the theft of our children’s future is impermissible. God loves all of us but we remain the only hands available to stop greed & tyranny.
“We Americans... bear the ark of liberties of the world.” --Mark Twain

120110 0552

“Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.” --Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

In thought, word or deed, I seek genius such as discovered in Robert Herman; the most gifted photographer witnessed in decades.

Life is not a foot race, one-against-another, but with one’s self. In that sense we compete with God. . . .The race continues beyond death--infinite.

As child and man I am aware the several gifts of my father’s reverence for genius in others: musicians and authors. But more so in his final act bankrupting me the bequest due my life long slavish quest for his love. The gift is in knowing the truth of my love for he who abandoned me, abandoning me still, a pure alloy refined in pain a grief suffered no more.

There is trauma involved. Witnessing Herman’s vision is for me comparable to impalement; final vision an ice pick thrust blindness self-inflicted. Is this not true of a beauty once seen, entered and remembered as a blinding excellence rendering all else ashen? Rumi and T. S. Elliot, Bach, Mozart and Billy Holiday. In awe I’ve died many times before and arisen anew born child.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps yet to know me, as I know myself as known by God. To see is to possess and be embossed with the other carried in this gyred womb, this cosmos, a prayer of supplication, petition and awe; unanswered questions flung like cancer cells against the starry, starry night.

The image I stole to illustrate my discovery and discernment is reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno & Comedy not fully read but illustrated in a magical subway car illuminated by divine light populated by ennui; “are we there yet?” Reprised endlessly in other Herman captures of light odd in their nearly lurid color arising from an ashen tradition of documentary Black & White.

His eyes stiletto punctuating a world dominated by slippery suppositories of political no-speak. As in the feminine eye of God is not orgasmic but catholic: embryo, child, desire and crone; binary and vital. So too with his other images: http://www.robertherman.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=2&a=0&at=0

I gorge upon his vision/version of life as I do W. Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards, Minor White to name but a few upon the altar, my pantheon, now expanded by one several orders of magnitude greater.

I think my father fell short in his reverence for genius never acknowledging his own. Instead he left me with this closing thought: Bix Biterbeck would finish his night by sitting in on a club session invariably leading the resident trumpeter to slip out crushing his horn beneath the wheels of his car before departing. If I have achieved nothing, at least I have known the joy of creation regardless acclaim or reward and joined the love of The Creator and Robert albeit only in my imagining.

120110 10:00 Coda
A truism: Great work is worthy of reprise, each a surprise. An accolade for too few: Happily I reside in the same cosmos as you. For in this instance you make it anew.