by John Delaney @ Photo Shoot

Pain, death, grief or merely suffering a stubbed toe. All have an end and purpose. Each in their turn caused me to search for the meaning of life, it's value and price. The end came when I accepted my lessons integrating the force into my now balanced life; my new truth. Not rigid but fluid. 

Life is difficult and then what? Life knocks us down and many never get up, or recover the loss of a loved one; or favorite Cross Pen. A life or object lost is processed through essentially the same circuitry causing grief unending; silly isn't it. 

My motive is driven by experience not ego; I want you to live fully accepting your loss at the same time balancing it with the joy you otherwise would not have known. 

It is known only to yourself; the scale and kind of love you had for the lost item. Yet I think if you examine your value system, your's alone, not some prepackaged slogan or parable but the viscera of yourself and your feelings; you will find the grit to go on. I know my son and/or daughter would have wanted that for me and for their mother. 

The problem with shredding yourself in guilt and shame is that you are still you when you become bored with mutilating yourself. 

I do not believe in divorce and remain essentially married to the Bride-of-my/our-youth discovering that I want no one to live with except myself and G_d. I am too clever by half to say; "Never say Never" since G_d may have other plans for what remains of my life; the long or short of it. And so I play solitaire for now, maybe poker later on? The minutes, hours, day or night are accepted as gifts chock full of meaning now. Boredom only becomes an issue when I brook fools. Having been a fool for most of my life I am able to tell another one quickly and easily. Yet occasionally I discover myself supercilious, pompous, pontifical, fatuous and ridiculously preachy; five feet above my audience . . . and then I laugh at myself. 

To love my enemy has been, forever, a burr between the rider and myself. Yet as much as I love that, being ridden, I know and trust the rider implicitly. More better every hand I'm dealt. 

You do know that we are in chaos? Our adversary is not Islam but a fragment of fundamentalist who know how to jerk our chain and make us bark. If only St. Francis were here to lead us we'd know exactly what to do; he did it before . . . well maybe they don't teach that in public school? What we have here is a failure to communicate in open transparent dialog. I don't know the Koran well but have dabbled in it as I have The Bible, etc. There are more books that we can consult regarding the wisdom of blowing our 'enemies' off the face of the planet. The problem I anticipate is once started it will end as Einstein advocated beating each other to death with sticks and stones. 

In the end we'll have no one left, well maybe a banker and a lawyer tearing each other's lives apart. The playing, or killing, field become pock marked like the moon. . . .A satellite to the moon, mooning the moon? Or mimicking it.

Surprise, surprise M&M are facing cancer her diagnosis is positive and mine yet to be found. Interestingly we both decided -- independent of our now celestial friendship and confidence in one another -- not to take the crash course of chemotherapy or radiation. We've both lost loved ones traveling that route and wouldn't do that to Adolph Hitler. Who seemingly sought to prove himself the source of cancer.

Our end is to advocate tolerance.

120918 09:04 suffering

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Why would a person enter a place of entertainment armed and blow away anyone, much less several people; leaving others maimed? To say nothing of bereaved. 

And why would society at large proclaim "mentally ill -- evil/devil," then proceed to incarcerate or destroy the perpetrator? If in fact the perpetrator was restrained and approached with empathy, mercy, love; understanding. The problem could, or would, be solved by due process and deliberation. What we kill kills us -- the keeper is kept. And I am willing to bet my immortal soul on my truth; no law, no judgement or executioner's song need apply. I ask of you and myself given the same or similar circumstance: what part of #  6. Thou shalt not kill do we not understand?

Our perceptions tell a great deal about who and what we are; socially and culturally. 

Who & What we blame equally so. 

"THE ANTI-CHRIST!" is a projection of personal, if unconscious, attitudes, beliefs and denied feelings upon the Other. Avoiding our personal capacity, if given the opportunity without consequence, to do the same thing. . . .If you reside in the eye-for-an-eye camp, I've a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you very reasonably. My point is that God kills no one. Saves all spiritually. Has no hands thus it is only we who decide the nature of truth & justice here and now. 

To clarify: blaspheme is not against The Prophet or God; but against an Idol. If we were able to converse with either or both individually I think-feel-sense-intuit that you and/or I would be astonished at their sadness; since Idols have not thoughts no life. They are hollow.

Yet while we all have a sense of God, indefinable when it comes to personal accountability, we would rather say; "The Devil Made" me do it. 

Worse: "God-Made-Me-DO IT!" 

Instead of participating and taking responsibility for our life, our free will and our consciousness we elect people to 'take care of us.' 

Those who take authority over the herd, we the mob, reward themselves richly while we slumber; their hands in our pocketbook/wallet . . . Which never being enough to pay for their reelection is accepted from greater authority called Corporations to guarantee the laws manipulating us to provide more for those who cynically know the price of everything yet the value of nothing. Such choice or indifference is insane: repeating the same action expecting different results.

I have graduated from being a foolish old man scolding politicians; who should know better. To being a foolish old man who does. And of this world I soon leave would leave something better than what I found. 

Be good, no longer ignorant and stupid, then be well.


"In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it." --Samuel Johnson

120918 05:14 evil

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Current events regarding my relationship to hospice unfold. Or blossom so to say. Like a strange new growth in the still pond of my peace. Something like Moses in a bulrush boat as an infant set adrift and then becoming the hero. Or the concept of Jesus as the result of Virgin Birth waiting in the wings of today's BIG SHOW to return and save us & the world.

Read literally it's a nice bedtime story but mine keeps blossoming and I know my self evolving either way; useless slob, old at that, soon to die anyway or the hero of my own myth. I have control since it is my life and my choice to lie down dead, wait, step back seeking another direction or step forward and be a pain-in-the-sit-down. 

In Ancient Greece the play was the thing; the way to teach a form of religion: Strophe, antistrophe, and the epode. . . . I snigger at the thought of participating in that, laughing and yelling like a really great  black preacher, leaping up twirling in mid air doing splits then rolling roaring in laughter. Men you ain' ever been kissed until you kiss a big beautiful black woman . . . who then says; "oooh honey you got the mojo! Then shaking her booty giving you her juju. OH YEAH! I'm a white boy alright wishing I'd been born black as the night. Dats why I likes my coffee sweet and black. A horny old dog; I'm an equal opportunity spender. 

To begin with M knew I was suicidal and she took me under her eagle's wing. The first agenda I now remember seems to have been breaking me of saying; "I'm sorry!" 

Sorry: I was born, lived, cared, smoked cigarettes, passed gas, too fat, too small in many regards: fill in the blank _________. You name it had it; problems in River City. It was flooding I'd had no boat. Add to that I had a bottom line; my subtext so to speak: "I should be put to sleep like a mad dog!" 

Obviously the guy with the butterfly net hasn't caught up with me yet. We play tag with each other sometimes I'm it and sometimes she's running away from me bare foot at eleven in a pear grove blossoming. Laughing! 

Oh yes. That's my biggest pay off; an alternate bottom line. Did I mention: subtext! Of course I did. And I do have one, or many, now admitting loving to write; though I don't know how. The same applies to being a Photographer! Put on, down, inside out, imploded with sneers and slanders; "You couldn't shoot your way out of a wet paper bag!"

In a sincere sense, at hospice I gave my heart. And she wanted bricks. The interesting role I played in that 'exchange' or collective monolog is one of passivity. Not She nor M or God defines me to myself. 

. . . and to think I once longed to lay face down before a cleric, bishop, cardinal or pope muttering into the grout 'here i am, sent me.' . . . but I have every time I refilled someone's water pitcher with ice or fresh water never thinking for one moment in eternity that I was in the presence of Jesus as an old person dying. Drown in snark I arise sharp a whole different cookie cutter.

Any institution is born for noble reasons initially, has life for a time. Like The Holy Roman Catholic Church for nearly 2,000 years, then decays and dies of being and institution about God but not God. Leaders are not born but made by the School of Life. And, after all, the institution need custodians who in turn need to eat, pay utility bills and make sure there's enough toilet paper. My thesis: which are you the custodian or the dude/dudette who it's all about Alfie?

Let's just take this another step: if you or i or someone else was in deed partially or in whole the resurrected divine about whom the BIG SHOW was built; ball park, bat, ball, uniforms, rules and for pay the performance would you die in your sleep or on The Cross? I really love role play in THE PASSION PLAY.

I think she found it distasteful that I laugh at, and about, my own death . . . did she know that sometimes I call God: Mikey? As in, you eat it and if you like it I'll try it? Administrators administrate and get the bigger bucks: medical insurance, golden parachutes, retirement funds to live on, etc. In order to justify the BIG BUCKS they of need make THE BIG DECISIONS . . . remember the dude who said, "I'm the DECIDER?"

Is the workman worthy of his/her hirer? And/or am I my brother's keeper? It, your Life, is your choice and i could still go eat a train just to see what happens afterward.

When it was time to go home I would tell the charge nurse or her/his second or third in command saluting and asking; "Permission to go ashore?" My point being that at my age i could pass/die for a multiplicity of reasons having nothing to do with God. 

With fair regularity I'd disappear for a smoke, to walk the rounds seeing if I was needed -- useful or useless, spending various lengths of time with those who did and did not find me helpful. 

The ship I asked permission to leave had to account for my life or lifeless body either way if there were a fire or they needed an extra hand in case of emergency. The ship sails on 24/7/365 without me for now. I wish them well and will do no harm. Yet I will remain available should they need me before they figure out they have no write to my intellectual property. If they do and can legally prove it, then I will be obligated to inform they have all they need and "Have a nice life." 

Finally I have a moral and ethical obligation to inform my professional and amateur community that anything they volunteer, photography or writing, will be stolen from them by: for profit or not for profit institutions.

I am a journalist first, last and always; a priest in the church of truth.

Do I dare?!

My teleology is that God can, and is anything, God want's to be. The thirteen year old virgin who gave birth to the baby Jesus, the mule she rode to Egypt . . . do you get the picture? Moving across the desert a short distance eastward He could have been Mohammad. Astonishing isn't God. Depending on your Savior of The Day; the dates and places change but the truth doesn't. 

120918 02:47 subtext

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Wobbling away from our only source of light the Sun marching south days growing short by degrees measured by the Organ Mountains; my sundial reminding me that this, our star, is but one of trillions dotting the night skies soon comes the Winter Solstice. 

That who and which created it all is available should only we ask and more than a few have. Their prayerful questions answered in what they left for us to read of their quests. I a lonely old man came to this place a broken toy of fear and now is courageous by the agency of those who have become my community of friends.

No. I am not a member of The Chamber of Commerce. If anything publicly I am an anti-booster since there are too many Gringos, of which I am one, the problem, not a solution for this is an arid high desert land and the water is disappearing. Once measured and treasured by those who farm this fertile land by millions of gallons it is now metered out by the teacup. 

The what and why I write is to promote your fracking the bed rock of your Self to find the unending spring of pure water within.

This land so violently sculpted long before we were people created to inhabit this planet so delightfully and purposefully poised near but not to close to our star one of trillions having the only water we know of have a place for US within infinity should we kill our home this blue nest glowing in the dark. 

I write these humble words leaving a trace upon the endless night; a trail for not you but those who follow to find a higher consciousness like those who had no language. I or you can understand recorded on rocks. Emigrants like me they left their marks upon the land they never owned but celebrated driven from by new emigrants who like myself came to realize that this wobbling planet is not mortgageable.

Owning nothing except my Self I remain at peace. From time to time recognizing the end of my time on earth is close. Returning to the source of living waters discovered by fracking my life. After many fears, tears and laughter I know the living waters as black as the night flooded with stars clearly seen here in this enchanted land raised closer to heaven than most habitations this high across the world. Add to which; Southern New Mexico has the highest virgin birth rate in the world: female lizards capable of reproduction without male involvement. 

I am not oblivious to the protests around the world. Overt actions and behaviors invite violent reaction; what I advocate is covert, underground, with and transmissible from person to person in private. 

This is a journal, the original form and derivation of a "Blog" = web log. By nature and necessity discursive and not a legitimate form for essays. Essentially without agenda and thus meandering from idea to inspiration and back. Keeping a personal journal is one way of listening to yourself: fear, joy, thoughts, feelings, sense, intuition; finding yourself introvert/extrovert etc. Independent of any other authority = finding sanity in an age of insanity.

All the great teachers taught up-front-and-persona; face-to-face; accountable to jeers and legitimate questions from their audience. Lacking that live classroom but having free access to the greatest teaching venue since the Gutenberg Bible (intentionally I've left out radio, television and film since each has in turn become a cyclone of mercantile intent; or merely lead the best minds of our age to lie about the merits of products which we essentially do not need.) My sense is that the various mediums available to us are not trustworthy since in order to operate they must bow to advertisers who by nature tend to censure in favor of private vested interest therefore everything is tainted with cupidity. This is due to many factors and my intent is not to render history since like nature it cannot be changed or healed.

I have been intentionally real, revelatory -- to some -- in excess using street language. I believe the young have a vested interest when this generation is dead and buried. 

You can be healed of the deepest secrets that govern what you fear; or fear to do. It is safe and transparently honest to keep this motto: Do no harm. And you will not defame, kill, maim, rape or steal; for it against your true nature: proactive. All man's laws are reactive; after the crime not before. To take one person's life for taking another person's life is revenge. Reverting to an 'eye-for-eye' leaving the entire world blind.

I think-feel-sense-intuit that you are the pearl of great value. Metaphorically the formation of a pearl, biologically, is a protection against pain; a minute invading parasite in the fleshly part of an oyster. I ask you to consider the experience of abuse, rape, thoughts and emotional being equally difficult to recover from. As well are extreme religious, political, value ideals. These and more can be brought into balance without losing the pearl . . . which for me; in time became the cause of my wholeness or merely being a real person fully alive versus merely existing like the living dead, not zombies but all other people who simply occupy space and time until they actually die of boredom or addiction to substances that anesthetize them in avoidance of the pain within.

What we hate, love and desire owns us; possesses and enslaves us until death. If, as I do, love God however, I have a friend for eternity and a love given returned unconditionally magnified; "the eye of needle" become the entire vault of heaven how and after now. 

120917 07:22 a place for US

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

snooze

i bore myself looking at yesterday and tomorrow is tinny a trifle

now however is another thing this day altogether celestial no YAWN!

newly minted coin of the realm embossed with clouds distant galaxies

rushing away in glee and the cosmos is the only company store in sight

i no longer mourn yesterdays lost/loss no waste of life being in the pressure

cooker of life as then lived proves redemption a greater gift than all

the time before time began

120919 08:52 YAWN!

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

if i laugh at the transition between rigor and rigor mortis/it is my sense of life's earnestness/
nothing and none ill spent/and my laughter is delight the flight/of soul's towards heaven sent/all without exception/those who sinned/and those who didn't/it never was in my job description to judge/their lives as sinless or sinners/revealed/shared/confessed

she died the Thursday before/that evening I'd left checking on her/i felt something eminent/but instead of touching her to take her temperature/or bless her with my love/expressed though having/
fed her for she could not/i instead fled towards my crib/the day exhausting spent speeding behind me/
then the Monday of distracter/storms of chaos & rage/i listened and then sought where I am/at this now moment my truth/she the Valenitine sans Saint/just a commerical day of excess chocolate and meaningless paper wasted on sentiments not our own/the flesh of dead trees used to be filters for/air and water/needful for life since we breath and are mostly water/ 

how do you measure a day?/treasure it or meter it out in chores/tasks assigned to you by your employment/in nature or kind or degree/for me the day has no clock/not a check-in-out factory/my time is 24/7/365/eternity all rolled into milliseconds/will heaven be like a high school reunion with/
lovers wives wannabe's/could have been's/will they be as i see myself now in the mirror shaving/peaks and valleys of age beneath gray hair/or with the be the ideal i first saw looking into their eyes and at/their posteriors measuring their feasibility?

4M&M&m the latter didn't know it was time to move on anyway. . . .Seanna gone/
returning to Heaven/home & peace @ last

120916 09:10 high school reunion

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

You gots ta get up quick to catch god in the act of creation

At least I do since I've nothing better to do except:

If I laugh at myself & i do it's because I love you

Who is You?

Well Kiddies I'll tell you because; I love you because you are You. And what I'm about to write is a game changer; not my game or your game, but THE GAME we play called "Life." 

Everything in "Life" -- hereafter referred to as 'life' -- is an illusion. Obviously we are born, have life and then have 'nothing' in death. Are we agreed? Of course not! 

"When the going gets rough, the tough get going."

We, of need, best be very careful because if you attempt to change someone with aggression the response !IS AGGREESION! in defense of fixed, frozen, ideals. You can alternatively change them with laughter, or love; or Both. 

We are all actors who think we own the stage, the theater, the audience and the parking lot and so on. In my reality I'm just another 'wet back' emigrant. And ICE means, at least to me: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: like sudden death beneath the wheels of a gigantic Sports Utilities Vehicle with THE BOSS driving and texting/sexting/talking or whatever on two cellular telephones while steering with their elbows and watching Fox TV infomercial misnamed as NEWS! . . .Oh sweet Jesus driving a Go Cart please let them kill me instead of leaving me a quadriplegic for the rest of my life -- WHAT LIFE?

Do I define life in a fixed way? Of course not since I see God every where watching the THE BIG SHOW!
And I don't think god likes it, but cannot definitively prove it: the like, dislike or bemusement. Well actually could we say AMUSMENT?

As soon as we are born the education begins. By the biological authors of our 'life' we are taught how to cope with THE BIG SHOW called life. At least the best their disability, dysfunction, prejudice, bigotry, fear, terror that we will be sexual before a certain age . . . i won't bore you since the list is quite long. Did I list enough for you to apprehend that you were once fertile ground now plowed and planted with nonsense? . . . ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME!

And all of this happens before Ur in pre-school. Thereafter the maladjustment begins in earnest -- not Ernest the kid sitting behind you tweaking your ears with spitballs. Vocational School: any school that tells you what to do for the rest of your "life." School Vacation is when you learn what you really want to do in LIFE. And this is where and when all my mistakes began: I began to think; 'dear god please be real. . . .' Latter on I had another rouge thought; 'i must grow large enough to receive the love of god. . '

God really isn't a vocation, or job description you can go the CVS Pharmacy and get behind the counter compounding prescriptions. You need to be a very rich and sadistic Drug Lord to do that.

What is the operative word? Rich? Powerful? Important? Memorable? Commendable? in what you want to be when you GROW UP!

Do Not Smoke in the bathtub! It might become your instant crematoria now that we seek energy independence making the Middle East very unhappy since we don't want to play the petrochemical game any more. You are not even safe expelling gas orally or though your posterior near an open flame. Death by Atomic Power is actually kind of sweet and slow; you lose your hair, bones become sponges and so on. The cure is worse. 

Gas is cleaner but getting it and moving it is a problem. I had intended to talk about 'natural' gas but my attention was diverted by those very large trucks lumbering through the night to deliver what you need to motivate your average ginormous SUV so you can go to the battery store and get more energy for your average vibrator . . . while of course telling Marge and Jane which brand last the most orgasms . . . I'm not a 'bad' person and did not learn this in school just my jocular imagination . . . I've seen gasoline tanker trucks stopped at traffic lights outside schools and wondered what would happen if it exploded? Would Exxon then become the most wanted terrorist in the world?

The really interesting thing about power, as demonstrated by behavior, is that it tends to advertise itself as competent. Richly rewarding itself in self-congratulatory excess taxing the electorate and receiving graft to legislate more theft. Public Education is a fraud as is No Child Left Behind since neither teach the art of thinking for yourself. 

This time of chaos and anxiety is neither recession or depression it is merely an adjustment. To what? If I said collaboration I'd set up a howl . . . well . . . actually screams of protest. A tsunami of Slogans pressing automatically implanted words learned in Vocational School.

I'm running out of space. I'll need to make this a serial story or very long parable of what it seems is possible. I have no answers for anyone but myself. My intentions are not  subversiveness nor treason but an appeal to the genius of you loving your Self.

If I have answers for my self? Where did they come from? Actually when I look back I realize that all my dreams have come true.

Change is natural and part of creation to fight change is to kill your Self.

120916 03:05 catch god in the ACT!

© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved