i pray the well free from hell

Remembering best her sad eyes I mourn her loss to brain cancer a year ago. As we grew to be friends eventually I asked what kind of men are you attracted to; “bad-bad-boys.” A teacher of arts working in elementary education, she and I plus another man, both ten years her senior were a trio attending 12 step programs. 

Self Help Programs are common if you look for them and work on many specific personal problems. It was common for us to meet at several for various issues plaguing the three of us. There was a constant conflict though, she and I had with the third who reached a point and went no further. The program itself became his passion versus the woman and myself who reached beyond our problems and solutions. 

Did I neglect to mention? 

Passion is another form of addiction; an intoxicating drug. When you close the door to all farther possibilities, even the solution to what you are addicted to; the solution can be your new problem or addiction. 

Leaving the third partner behind, we progressed to a point of trust essential in all relationships. I was intuitively attracted to her by her eyes which seemed to mirror my hidden feelings of sadness and anger. Though there was a sexual attraction too, her admission of liking ‘Bad Boys’ seemed to exclude me. Yet our friendship progressed and we became intimate not sexually but personally.

There is a common thread I intuit between all the various types of problems dealt with by peer or group therapy. Secrecy expressed as “You are no better than the secrets you keep.” My attendance was as result of years and years of private therapy wherein I lied. 

The secret I kept from myself and all others was that I thought myself too stupid/dumb to live and/or learn any
thing or perception of myself different from that conclusion. I had learned early on to be entertaining or charming; to engage strangers outside my family of origin as not a threat. I became, and remain, very good at it this lie I told myself hidden behind a mask presenting myself to strangers as okay. 

However in time encounters with strangers included some who through acts of kindness and attention intuited that there was something behind the mask besides a clown. And by gentle persuasion drew me into a different knowing of myself as not exactly a rabid dog that should be put down; put to sleep. 

Kindness has no consequence other than the act itself. There is no future, no commitment, just a random encounter soon forgotten. To me however it seemed odd and became memorable in contrast to the absence of kindness in my family or origin. Then too there were a few who’d I see again but randomly. Farther along there were one or two who became friends and they, in 12 step programs would be called ‘sponsors’ but to me were then and now mentors. Pretty much the same thing but of considerably longer duration. In a curious way the teacher was taught by the pupil resulting in friendship of long standing. 

My friend with the sad eyes had a mother who through drugs and alcohol plus indiscriminate sexuality drove the father away. He was replaced by a man who, in some sense, described as “step-dad” became her ‘father’ who at the age of six began using her sexually. The fact itself was simple but when she went on to say it stopped at twelve because she “liked the attention” I began to understand my lies and her truth: attention. 

In her life as in mine those events happen historically when there was no information; that what happened to us had alternatives. Thinking back I realize that 12 Step programs were limited to alcoholics; though available most thinking they had no problem; those who drink and drive, abuse children in any way: sexually, emotionally, with extreme fixed views on right and wrong, religion or government, even business; do more than harm the child they take a way the child’s unique life. Simply the right to discover we’re all different. And really good at, and enjoy living alone. Our parents had no sense of the degree of cruelty we as children experienced and then inflicted on our children. In an effort to better understand my family because I loved them I asked questions and came to understand that they too had been neglected, abandoned and banished thinking it normal then did the same to me; as was done to the sad eyed woman or my sister. 

I am free now and we remained friends to the end of her life. 

I have no family by my marriage left. In an effort to make sense of my life and loss I’ve written a journal of which this publication is an extension. If you have a WHY you can discover a HOW. 

I have changed but in many respects remain a clown. The difference is that I am sincere and it shows enabling others to trust their secrets to me. 

We as people can never be perfect regardless of accomplishment, badge, rank or privilege. This can be expressed in many ways; we are all the same: we are born, we live then we die. The difficult part, for some, obvious or apparent, is the living. What we do between the two events of birth and death. Napoleon once said it is too easy to die it takes more courage to live --correction-- "It requires more courage to suffer than to die." His profound, to me remark, explains why so many are addicted to pleasure and know nothing of joy. The first being brief, the latter is eternal. 

Regardless of your poison/pleasure if you cannot get enough you’re in trouble and if you’re unconscious of being in trouble it is because you believe the lies told and carried as an reason/excuse for living. If someone you are close to by marriage or friendship mentions this, you have a choice: ignore or listen. The in between place is called denial and/or procrastination.

Love is difficult; it takes work. Killing anything or anyone by abuse kills us. Not just the slain but the slayer and all associated in the commonwealth of what we all share: life. 

My secret is a child’s request, “please dear god be real” And if I write it is because it is a joy to do so and what I call friend, my very best friend, is God . . . yet I still, at times, fall into the well of ‘too stupid to live.’ Humiliated by the trust and grace of another’s confession. And of God I trust, but still fall victim of my humiliation; “why me?” I’m nothing special just another broken child with a wounded heart scar tissue now.  

I pray thee be well & know thy self free of hell.

120909 14:24 friends & confidants 
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

In love with God
it is not our’s to wonder why 
but to live and die for love
& we’re always crossing the River Styx
. . . in one way or another
. . . a lunatic I always look to see what the moon’s doing, Mother Luna

C. G. Jung, it is now obvious, has had a significant influence on what I’ve become in my wandering’s; never linear. His thesis is an attempt to integrate what the Sufi’s knew before there were books; making my admix of male and female one of the prime integrations of the psyche. Apparently I am as much woman as man by inclination and thinking. Knowing better now why we as children are essentially pets. . . .

It is my truth, not all truth, as a photographer become a writer I am, in a sense the mortar and life the pestle into which life has proffered experiences that make of me a strange being after all. 

Or. 

Should I say of myself I am more whole than I was yesterday given the nature and kind of events experience then. . . .wiped away by the advent of today's events which have yet to occur. Brother Sun & Sister Moon; St. Francis and St. Claire have yet to dance today. Or in another way, let’s say, to waltz around the clock. 

Long abiding, possibly dyslexic & misunderstood; I think Jesus said the poor and war will always be with us. Then that the meek will inherit the world. Men are solar thinking they can control the world by power and women are lunar knowing that they will eventually win by persistence. Neither one nor the other will prevail but together in equality we will have a prayer of survival. 

Many if not all my questions, or prayers, have been answered now. M is doing well but not up to par. As expected she is courageous, as I am for myself, facing the depredations of cancer; she has it and I don’t know yet. In any case life will go on with or without us together or apart my sense being our love for one anther is more meaningful than either of us can now know. 

Hemingway in his “To Have and Have Not” expressed the question differently and unsatisfactorily in comparison to what the title suggests . . . something on the order of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be.” To me these are parables stated in few words that I wrestled with long after first reading and by orders of magnitude, in my opinion, more complex than those attributed to Jesus. 

We have life in the sense and to the degree that we are able to define it differently than our parents. Most don’t,  accepting their parents definitions a definitive/final. 

The trials and errors of time, all life living combined, invoke alternate suggestions = ‘to have not’ in a era of change. Which for me and for many far wiser is the true nature of the universe: change, in the sense of continual growth or expansion. 

“To be” is essentially, at least alone as a statement is okay but to ask “or not to be” implies -- and this is my personal conclusion -- I am not comfortable with how we define and express love: relationship, the meaning and purpose of life . . . do I knowing this, move forward and attempt to define what I value or, merely accept the crowd’s conclusion?

I write for myself. What I write grew out of a personal journal essentially suggested as a method to achieve sanity in my grief for the death’s of my children. True of all change especially that caused by trauma: grief. Is the opportunity to go further than one ever imagined. The Chinese, historically spoke of crisis as opportunity not punishment. 

Kicking and screaming I’ve shared most, if not all, of my process. Or at the very least the most significant, if taken whole and without objection to rage, sexual revelations, etc., defines a process available to anyone in pain and suffering to be come “sane.” Inexpensively without the aid of crutches: church, state, science. 

Regarding my choices I’ve never been indifferent to anyone, though I might for cause ignore them. Anger, depression and rage have at times overwhelmed my essential choice not to be indifferent towards them while they appear to me to be neither hateful, loveable but merely indifferent to themselves. Moving between the polar opposites I’ve come to define myself with a sense of truth that I am able to live with and control by choice. Simply said, it is not what we say but what we do that matters. If we kill it is because of fear. If we love fearlessly we are what is love.

. . . Where I failed is that I was angry my children left me. In my pain and suffering I came to realize there is very much about life beyond my control or influence: I am helpless. Yet there remains that sense-think-intuit-feel about many things I can influence and change: my self and my perceptions. The rest is the wisdom to know the difference and get on with life. The Serenity Prayer expressed differently or applied to the truth of my life in flesh and blood truth.

My essential wealth and power is knowing I have enough. Would I do it over again? Yes for this truth I have; having me. My love of truth, not exclusive to me, is greater than the love of any power. “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”--Albert Einstein

120909 03:57 wonder
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

120908 17:32 joy days & tears for my father

If she reads me, by which, I am thinking not my soul on the hoof, so much as what I write. She says little to nothing. Fortuitous! For should I know her daily attention, especially now, I'd be inhibited mute falling not silent but dead humiliated. Worse I'd become dust instant no crematoria required. 

For these days, so longed for, I'd give nor receive nothing differently; to suffer again the agonies forging the tensile strength within me; what I sense she saw upon our first conversation going on now five years ago. 

And my thesis is proven again; that to create, is to enter deeply beyond Heaven's Gate, near, if not on the throne in the lap of God embraced. And were all the rich and powerful to line the path I've walked I'd laugh ignoring their Whole or Tithe in offering for a taste of this life I've lived. So precious no relic of or the actual Jesus upon the cross twitching would compare in their collections of the arts of life. 

In Greenwich, Connecticut, then one of the three richest communities in the world, walking with my father through Hirshhorn's personal estate Sculpture Garden I innocently turned to him saying; "I own everything I can see."

Oddly indifferent. He who suggested that I read Kafka's "Metamorphosis" at thirteen or fourteen years-of-age; beginning a lifelong distrust of all governance including the Motor Vehicle Departments & The Vatican. 

And so again, once more, am I reminded of his many bequest in life; somewhat but not totally vacating his leaving me penniless at and after his death. He did call to say goodbye, but in retrospect it seemed then, and now, like the Christmas Bonus; "Have a Goose for Christmas, goose yourself out the door on your way home. Good night and goodbye." 

In another aside, another time, never repeated, he cried, "I'd like sometime to read the menu from left to right ignoring the cost." Penurious and niggardly to, not merely a flaw, but a fatal addiction; he at another time spoke longingly of conversing with H. L. Mencken to whose work dad directed my attention; lending me the, in abject despair: "I should be put to sleep like a rabid dog." No longer  reprised. 

However as he aged, returning to electricity and radar/radio waves, would he render the life and times of Nicolas Tesla. The last time after informing me, because I had no children, wife barren, a nigger daughter and versus my slavery to him he had dedicated his entire estate to my half bother because he, Stephen E. Spratt; Commander Chuck E. Cheesed named so long before had helped dad move one day. . . .My fatal flaw was in loving him attempting to invoke love for himself. Thus abandoning my love of art. . . .A fatal cause costing me years, more years, than walking with Randy to his grave.

Finally after dragging me to Hawaii where he previously indicated an interest in purchasing property where we, he and I, could commute for his final days in my care. Upon the first morning I set up my laptop showing him real estate listings . . . "oh I've changed my mind. . . . " 

Did you know, do you care, he did know that I've been around the world five times over and despise airplanes then and the thought of flying anywhere is like unto the Jew packed cattle cars to Auschwitz the shower then the crematoria. . . .known well in advance with wife and family all of them extending backwards and forward generations to be indifferently slain. 

I can go no further for to do so would invoke my loathing of he and his second son. To name either one again and thus reenter them in Google Search would lend them more than the shit it would take to bury their ashes. 

Too empathetic

Too sensitive

Too everything passionate

To live.

. . . just off the phone, she lives another day begrudgingly M and of myself I don't honestly care either way; my bottom line.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

120908 14:22 God forfend

of all the women I’ve bedded in a lifetime Carol was the most lubricious a veritable fountain she was; almost but not quite too much for my pleasure but at that she was of all the most ardent in loving me as I did her. 

my too me not so odd penchant and proclivity of annotation the hour and minute of my dreams, moods, incantations, omens and runes have given me an overview of the actual ruin of my life. The cycles of despondence climax at the winter’s solstice finally fatally defined not by my sister’s admission of our maternal grandmother’s . . . oh . . . God . . . of course it was not her terror of death but the time and date of our maternal grandfathers faux suicide accident blowing his testicles off with a shotgun. Now if memory serves me well or a well as usual I remember his death the same date, different year, as Randy’s and Thomas Merton: December 10th. Christmas for me as always been a terror. Ruminated upon recently I realized that to me the birth of Jesus was also, in the package economy class steerage, fine print, also the fact of his dishonorable humiliating death. 

least i go too far further farther into numerology betraying my long fascination of if not covert addiction to divination I should equally mention that were I to encounter a woman amenable to my wild sensuality I would be utterly lost never writing another word nor occasionally wandering wondering what I will discover the accidental encounter with word disintegrating upon walls and signage or the astonishment of conjunctions between moods, mindful of prayers answered by seeing things two dimensional upon the ground or pavement in this case living in a halcyon village, town, second largest city in New Mexico The Land of Enchantment. . . .

In sleep I die and am resurrected changed beyond recognition with though accurate but a faint memory of who, what, why and where I was before these brief moments of rest i go. Consumers of entertainments never know the ecstasy of participation in anything save reduced by 999/10ths the mania/insanity of creating anything save in those 1/60th stroboscopic winks seeing God in orgasm. 

Both terrified, as in fear of The Lord, and unworthy the grace given, thus a runaway from my Self. It was known only to me in the flashing accomplishment of call it a wrap in the cinematic sense the deed done for once and forever the context now recorded and immortal . . . the situation now commonplace and I idle humiliated remembering touching the hem of God. 

I am only able to be myself with those about to die . . . even Dick Cheney should he ever need the grace I can convey. And at that I can trust so few who in their time together with me confess their grace, longing and regrets conversationally confessional. Otherwise I am as I am merely another guy, though few, who volunteers for hospice service fetching another container of ice cream or soda. . . . in some sense she is not a believer or even faithful but I know a knower when in the Presence and then all fetters fall away and I become something foreign to myself and she more so in her smiling laughter at my shameful language having read, oh dear God now over four hundred posts confessional explicit, no hold bared. No exceptions allowed.

Should I go on? Or save for later on the power flowing through me from sleep prayers answered? I have no sense of tomorrow for standing here now I see nothing but infinity . . . electrocuted when first seen “Be Here Now” so very long ago haunting me ever since a mantra chanted in rare times of terror or despondency.

Would fully castrating myself make M feel safe my simple child’s longing to stay more than a goodbye’s worth in her embrace? I am confident but no so informed the malignancy costing me the loss of one testicle is benign but of and for her I remain uncertain knowing she like I will refuse the savage results of medicine today as my son did, as Kern Flynn did, as Ralph and my dad did and I vowed upon seeing the physical and emotional costs for my own death should cancer seize me. Life is too precious to waste on mere existence staring up at a ceiling for decades immobile with this level of conscious mindfulness. 

These things I know too well while God remains mute regarding my sovereign right to end my life.

PS I refuse to retroactively “correct” grammar punctuation syntax since what I have written must remain intact; my sense the truth of “Poetic Licence.” 

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

120908 1056 ask response

Beneath the dark feathers near the scaly parts discovered my rage hideous now for it put the lie to my compassion and empathy for others having none for myself -- HYPOCRITE FRAUD BIGOT! Clawing my self rent asunder shred worse than the Fargo Shredder so oft alluded to. Viscous evisceration of mind & heart all that I’ve said of my enemies; those who stole my inheritance, my life, my self, the future, the present shat upon; I’ve done to myself in loathing this life lived until now.

“This moment?”

Yes! . . . 

For in writing I enter an impossible place, breathless ecstasy & mirth, breathing under water -- in outer space a Super Nova inhaling itself. 

Yet God speaks saying; “What the Fuck Chuck CHILL! . . . .Not in those exact explicit words but from the mouths of babes, not small girls nascent women in diapers but, panties of course high heels too; and one dude in a Fedora from Ecuador. . . .then the random chance kindness of strangers confessing.

No longer odd to so plainly see God in the poor, wannabe or becoming, grand in and of themselves of all colors rainbowed refracted eyes glimmering; genders and gender proclivities, creeds and degrees of sanity scintillating. 

Oh Sweet Jesus on a bobsled laughing across glaciers melting through gaseous fires erupting from kitchen faucets; waterfalls of fire: 

I’M HEALED NOW! 

Just a random Polar Bear adapted to icy swimming pools in gated communities & penthouses atop Wall Street, Inc. My ride a eighty foot long Supercilious Vanity Mobile my ordinary utility every day Escalade for the gardeners all Indian, Black, Mexicans, elderly senior citizens an outdoor convenience for my Stepford Wives and all those enslaved to me the passersby unionless.

. . . see, healed I can say OFU nicely nary a ruffled feather nor dropped scale and more better yet no flames with which to incinerate tax returns from the previous years betraying my cupidity. Pussy Raider and Dan Rather for fucking ever! . . . .oh yeah did I mention that the Mormons took over for the Mafia in Las Vegas?

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

dream house or home?

120908 07:57 house dream

Not often but when I do dreaming of Susan, the bride of my youth, I see her differently from while we lived together and then in strange houses. Awake now I am bewildered for within there was a disheveled room like the one I write in; the bed unmade for days covered with blue towels my shorts for dirty feet. 

Yet otherwise the house was home the furnishings neat and tidy modest middle class but . . . oh . . . it seemed vast populated by Susan, Randy and Jodi . . . all seeming well and at peace. Randomly we discussed upon this and that, Randy and I, upon the living room floor with a silent radio between us. 

Suddenly he turned it on to some such rock n’ roll I’d never heard before. Rising I left him since I detest distraction of any kind and roamed the rooms unfamiliar and saw that the children had separate rooms nicely appointed astonishing me for at the end of Randy’s life and before Jodi abandoned me they slept in the same room in a poor communal Christian group home we in poverty as I am now. 

I often dream of Susan with strange children never with Randy or Jodi knowing her differently better possibly more a friend than a spouse. Time meaningless then save for my profession freelance whatever carpenter photographer had I begun to write? Always near a telephone attached to the wall or my belt unknowing the police etc including Google would know my every move had they cared, then or now?

Suffocating in sadness I arose just now remembering we’d begun after 20 something years more nearly 30 to be friends. Intimate in sharing ourselves. 

What fell upon me that impelled from her embrace like a piano unexpected falling from the sky? For all that we’d been through together I’d told her; “I want a divorce and it is nonnegotiable whereupon she fled to cry alone above face down in the attic where we sleep no heat in winter nor cool in summer vast open loft wood rafters . . . when did she say tearfully first ever actually no tears for Randy or Johanna at internment; “I want my husband!” . . . watering Johanna’s ashes entering the roots of the rose upon my grandfather’s grave the latter on me hyterical beside my son’s

I well remember, always, the sharing and the anonymous ‘husband;’ who me? No. Never though the vows renewed twice than thrice I never sensed husbandry to the silent woman she remained throughout.

But now I am wife/husband/lover/pet/slave to God like Rumi only he said and says it better. Yet occasionally I return to she who became a priest and I a beggar mendicant naked in the desert remembering the love I had having me now for her still. 

Such a love for God having me having the Beloved is no excuse for I disbelieve in divorce even if I am married to God. 

For me love has always been a passion more nearly a rage savage changeable and volatile not a tomb to rest in. Or of such do i define myself now . . . forever? . . . blest in peace no matter what how or why i live or die in God. Home at last! . . . my tears still falling undecided sadness or joy both i guess

and Annie when she sees hearing me cry vocalizes newly her comfort for me laying upon the keyboard of my life

. . . synchronicity? No discourse become dialog 

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

time like now is flowing unremarked infinity a virgin river moving 

conscious only of itself. Each insertion new for the river is never the

same from time’s eternity springing from earth bounty renewed reprise

always premier always rehearsed moving sinless to the tree of life 

wherein to reach from root to leaf and the be recycled again renewed

120908 06:55 now

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved