two kudos for Julian

How long the day newborn
the loins of solar days diminished
lengthened rays so longer night
now until the longest dark the loins of
sons born and dimmed forever more stilled

Of dreams words poems I know more for their gasping
sought the light above a breaching whale seeing the light
above the darkness below. It goes on another life lived in an hour of repose.

Baptized by whales embraced by snakes a bird of paradise returned I fling myself upon this day anew. Peace from slumber resurrect. We the new messiah conjoined enjoined

This day shared with Julian Anchorite of Norwich adored i a nave dwelling knave.
Am i not enough this reprise another life sufficient unto itself going with what i’ve got all my days seeking equality for all. To be for you what she/He was to be for me and we all

"…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", which Julian claimed to be said to her by God Himself, reflects her theology. It is one of the most famous lines in Catholic theological writing, and one of the best-known phrases of the literature of her era.

Creator
Creation Adored
Bless us all.
Amen . . . add nothing ever for naught.

PS Search for identity; specific not generic

121108 14:52 how long the day


In my experience Once in love Always returned Tho separated  by miles or death Hands covered with yeasty bread dough Impossible of removal Withdrawing my hands from her heart  Smearing everything I do with tears

121108 20:02 bread dough
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Be well One and All

Out the door on my way to water aerobics digital recorder in hand I said; “I am not loyal to myself” and thus indignant when no one else is. Plutocracy has been the rule of my life, born of poverty and then taught to go along to get along because everybody was better than I could ever be.

In a sense I was taught Escape and Evasion from the enemy;  somewhat akin to what I intuited from the U.S. Navy Seals I came to know. This is to me, for now, is exceedingly astonishing. My mother was, in retrospect and only now recognized, the best teacher a boy could have to be real in a time of anxiety and chaos. KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid is something I’ll, of need, keep telling myself from now on; for however short or long, “from now on goes.” . . . and today is a good day to die, the warrior’s credo.

If only for myself, my sense the Great Prophets, around whom all religions were formed, then decayed into meaninglessness, is true. Then they were informed and inspired by the same force seen from differing points of view in: time place, culture and circumstance. And they who would lead in fact served in humility and humiliation as Jesus did dying on the cross. Leaving behind those who followed him in charge of themselves something so precious it is inconceivable to others who in their time and place can be taught; what in essence can only be experienced in an I/Thou relationship.

Not I alone, but we all, born sullen to discipline. Fleeing the teacher who fails to convey the essence for a host of reasons, principally none of us being capable of perfection including the Teacher. The Teacher Taught.

Some have a genius for the genius of The All; the personage of what we seek by a multitude of names, for me it was just “God.” The Buddhist, however, refused as did the Taoist etc., to so name: the source and this explains, at least to myself, why Lao Tzu electrifies me. Merely a different modality of teaching the same thing once so utterly foreign to my fear of being unworthy of life, love or liberty.

I am more than fond of Eric Hoffer, and many others, but he principally. But of, or about, his thinking; even I need to stand upon my own participation and responsibility to discover meaning in a meaningless time. Like the Who creating/teaching those I would blindly follow, having no gender or form but dialog in the crystalline night seeing not a crown of stars but beyond all that to the origins of all we can know in life. Oddly for most it is in the last vision while dying, the Light, The Love seen our soul as spirit arising to our truth. All life dies but in dying knows better the origin and meaning of everything. No matter, all my speculations regarding the after life, I will still die knowing only death forever or for a moment.

The why and what for I write is to annotate the process of Being Here Now. It is, and always has been, a journal: travel notes on The Way and we are the resurrection. Many paths, voices, definitions; all leading to the same conclusion. Yet these truths are not self evident; but must be experienced in context of the real; not ideal.

In summary. In a sense what I advocate. Is that we become both pragmatic and ecstatic. To discover what we are as self defined . . . there are limits if you settle for wealth as currency but none if you find your wealth as indefinable. What you see is all you get versus what you cannot see, yet long for, but can never have as enough.

You can know everything, but in the knowing, know nothing. All else is about The All; but not The All. . . .The Real Deal. . . . and all will be well

"Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries."
—Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

121108 12:39 loyalty misplaced
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Freedom = Lao Tzu = The Fargo Shredder

Functionally we need do nothing--just exist. To live without quiet suffering desperation we must listen. Then decide for ourselves to engage or abandon the issues of life and death as we wish for not merely ourselves but all, or merely the other, benign or malevolent.

Amending my harvest of Lao Tzu quotes I became aware that tho I might memorize them all I still will own none save the spirit directed towards. Then remembering a dream, a short story actually, amongst those journals I destroyed or abandoned; too memorable to ever forget like the face of my children in joy for what no photograph, memorable, could ever substitute.

Bereft soon this sojourn in hell, blown in winds, deserted high mountains of New Mexico alone. Leaving mered the ruins and runes of self-creation falling feathers and things unsubstantial scraps and building blocks always solo save for the inspiration to seek and be found forgiven my curiosity.

The city was a backwater in time, those once thriving sections of manufacture small family business littered with neglect now frozen. I stood for a time wondering in my wandering to enter or not a gym knowing nothing within. scabrous lockers dented peeling paint worn surfaces; one was mine eventually. When in wrestler tights and leotard I enterer the contest with he who ruled. Point for fall and point again the trial was long and eventually he vanquished to disappear my reign begun for a time frozen in success. Then another like myself long ago wanderer and wondering entered and entertained me in contest vanished prevailed upon to leave behind she who bested me.

Free at last to fly the galaxies still creating themselves alone in solitude best blest.

121106 12:14 Freedom = Lao Tzu = The Fargo Shredder
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Love; a Duet (a twofer)

Feasible, so many women seem to need me, not my body of course. Once handsome,  or so I was told too late to be nothing but a Bassett face melting. Who’s that old fart laughing at? Who Me?

Rode hard put up wet, 79 miles of hard road kill. Worst and Best. Run over by the hound dog bus of God . . . Why? Did I always have this mystical sense about the Once Great Greyhound Bus? In the mirror when I must shave. Difficult while laughing at my age.

Travel you say! Well folks I’ve traveled both physically and metaphysically so far; meeting so  many strangers who in kindness held my heart wildly anguished, that I have no ideal the meaning of time and space. Uncertainty revisiting me in dreams of those who left me on my own even M. But that is and was my problem; to decide the meaning of Jesus walking away from me. An act of faith or dismissal?

Then thinking about it all the years, months, days, hours, moments I did submit to a woman, as goddess or merely God, it, or I was a failure. The truth of love, is love itself, not what you get but what you give. The dream I just awoke from was God feeding me into The Fargo Shredder and I came out the same way I went in. . . .At least externally. . .

Why am I laughing?

Could it be I love too hard; too much greed to be loved in return: contingent upon getting laid. But, or however, it appears now that is precisely what made me give it all up for God finally. But did I? My dreams of her, any Her, who seems welcoming, kind and feasible gets me every time.

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's home I’d descend; be exiled, banished: whatever. The difference between she and her daughter is that my grandmother would spontaneously touch me -- and now i weep -- she’d put her hand on the back of my neck and the chimerical beast would be blissed out gone to sleep. Instantly.

Orgasms come and go, becoming eventually political, contingent upon whatever; but never were her touches ending even now. I can feel her presence while typing.

Mom and Dad come from humble places seeking the best America then offered, gave, then stolen. We all remain enslaved to ideals; what health, happiness, success and being just perfect looks like. Maya, illusion, no speak, delusional beneficence. The Big Con of America: I’ll take care of you just give me all the power and all will be well.

We survived the last lie about America; kill all the enemies, not learning a thing. It was long before Jesus, this “loving your enemy” motive. Maybe Plato or Socrates, who said “you can learn even from your enemies” and then add “the only people who know the end of war are the dead.” Buddha predates JC by how much? How many years?

Politics and Religion kill more than they heal competing for body counts in pews, slave cells or graves. Dispatched for recycle?

For all the credit cards I carry the most precious is my library card. Popes, Presidents and Kings; all naked in greed imperious. Yet still I long to be supplicant to a woman, and do occasionally dream of one specific and then, and then, I remember Mary in her grotto, silent accepting me, my attention and adoration and again I see that I am not meant to be what I am but what I can become stuffed into The Fargo Shredder again and again.

There ain’t no woman I know of including M, who I can’t be there for, should she let me be something so good. God knows I’ve tried and failed when it all became political conditional upon mood or need, or greed, or dismissal.

Worse.

Breach of trust.

Theoretically marriage is a renewable bond daily. Another way of saying the same thing: relationship must be rebuilt daily.

Nothing I say is definitive. The words I use and abuse have been stated over and over again by far more better than I ever will be. Words are important to me but then so are behaviors. I am just not a “Wham Bang Thank You Mam!” sort.

As a sophist for love and God I return to the crime scene endlessly and anonymously playing the roles; he said, she said, they did did not do whatever.

I don’t need a goddamn Doctoral Degree to be me. No dog collar, Popes Robes or Hail to the Chief all that stuff is for pansies the fearful of failure . . . Grace is participatory--collaborative. Not given to a few. We all have a genius for love.

We are all tenant/emigrants on earth owning nothing accept our choice to be or not to be generously loving with others of ourselves. There is no difference between witnessing the death of a child, as all good you wish for the future; theirs and your’s. Than seeing the Chimera eating yourself piecemeal; a finger here a nose there then a leg or two taking an entire life savagely. That’s just the food chain, physics or ‘fate.’ Could be punishment? Probably not even though the fools who lead generally will sacrifice everything but their children, wealth and sanity to be  something like the real true I AM. . .

. . . always present, silent to most, the best Parent we never had . . . or acknowledged available. I am both pragmatic and ecstatic, a sophist for God. I return to my sense gleaned in Ripley Ohio USA of passing the Carnegie Library in reverence oracular.

As for women and laying with them innocently wicking their love and body heat. Well boys and girls, when creative my body heat raises by significant degrees and to touch me makes me sweat. Enough about me, how about you?

121105 05:08 Questions

I simply must stop messing with people everywhere I go. But then I’d know less than I do. We all are woven into a causal tapestry including the beginning and purpose of all creation; for good or ill. Otherwise I’d snuffle and growl in my cave and becoming finally the bridge troll I actually am inside.

Instead at $1 stores buying groceries or whatever. At times I just need to dive into the river of humanity to know what’s going on. Not the bullshit Fox TV broadcasts but the real deal where people live and who they are. . . . I’ve always been this way, transiting the world from early on until now: still in bliss where I am in this enchanting land. I tease little boys about trading shirts drawing them into conspiracies outside their normal associations imprinting them in my heart.

Laughing. I no longer need to hide my disdain for Fox News; acknowledging it as a carnival freak show for the weak of generosity. Like the rubes who what to see the woman with a beard down to her toes or the midgets wrestling alligators then eating them alive.

Seldom having the price of admission, hating crowds, what I did for a living was to swim through them upstream feeling imperiled. Now this little boy is no longer ashamed to peek into girl’s locker rooms or stick my head beneath the skirt of the elephant’s tent to see what they’re like at rest, the crowds gone.

Among the giants I’ve met, seldom, but many in retrospect, the celebrities don’t compare, were of all ages and genders. Oddly my attention always makes em’ smile glowing with gratitude. I’m like my dad, the biological one, not the Big Guy above, but maybe both; I touch people with my hands and never give it a second thought.

You know I’m not talking about myself, putting on airs I lack, but about you few who read me for yourselves. My suggestion is that you run your fingers through the hair shirt you wear and find the broken dreams lost there amongst the thorns of accusation; I know just as God created little girls in pigtails you’ll begin to love yourself.

He, to me, at the time, appeared a bear of a man in a cowboy hat. Passing in opposite directions alone I mentioned admiring it his hat! Oh Boy! Terry Gross and Charlie Rose move over I’m in the drivers seat now. It is a wonderful time to be a journalist people are so naked in crisis. A thumbnail of our conversation: He told of the rise tide of youth having no ground in truth. And of challenges to his competence and manhood--the faux courage of youth--who found themselves on their backs semi-conscious and he read to keep them there unto death or nearly so. Of such abilities, by stealth, guile and surprise ferocity, I am equally capable of but now in wisdom abandon the joy of exercising it. . . .As is true of my ability to seduce; more astonished in being seduced or charmed by women of all ages; their glory.

Of men I now know better, their realities and protests. And of women I’ve been civilized and that to me is best. Collaboration between the sexes as I wander off stage to bliss eternal. True intimacy is not physical but spiritual; the orgasms last longer.

121106 04:57 Giants

Flowing in on the tide of unconsciousness, exhaustion perhaps, definitively ennui for election time. I saw that I was not yet done growing up . . . i thought the ideal woman would follow me down my rabbit hole unbidden seeking the source of my agony; never, for a moment,  giving a thought for her suffering . . . Joanna and Mother Mary have.

121106 08:56
©2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

change yourself change the world

Hyper Vigilance is to remain awake through exhaustion in anticipation of not missing a threat. Now, after years of remembering Mom's remark; "There will be a time when you will beg for sleep . . . "

Of course it never happened. What did happen however was that I became aware of loving my solitude; the silence, not having, or being obliged, to be 'on guard' all the time.

With bitter/sweet fondness I kissed myself, as I was for the past so many years I no longer count them; goodbye forever. Co-Dependent to the very end. I used women to define me in ways unacceptable inevitably leaving them overtly/covertly but running away without excuse. Eventually recognizing myself dedicated not to being a wild child but to God. Nauseated by the cloying saccharine images of Jesus seen in Baptist Sunday School Classrooms: reference where this me began, somewhere around the changing of time; irrevocably altered by a men's study group centered in Keith Miller. In time, such as is left to me, being too well acquainted with instant death from birth until now that I find the prospect as welcome and living trillions of years in the mind of Creation. I will detail my experience of all the help available to those who quest for truth: personal; freely given.

Instant recognition: I thought I needed an audience to see my suffering and tell me what it meant. Not to vacate it but find meaning in pain, humiliation and my shameful addiction to it; being molested endlessly for the distraction of people just like me. So it seems now that in redeeming my parents and our endless, or so it was until now, cycles of abuse: cause and effect. That which I either walk away from or reply with savage violence ala Christ amongst the money lenders tables. Whether factual or fanciful, metaphorical or just a typo, the scenario is more instructive for me now being nothing like the Jesus I know as a brother in God.

Metaphysically we are all Children of God. Regardless of race, creed, gender, geography or any of numerous definitions to assign what is benevolent or malignant. I find no threat in God of whom and for I would extinguish my consciousness gladly sure that it and all will be well here and now. My trust and faith explicit. . . . as Jesus calling from the cross; "why have you forsaken me?"

"I ain't nothing special, nothing to see, pardon me while I disappear . . " From "Take the 'A' Train" by Duke Ellington. I got soul too but you have to give me a break; being a pink elephant rolling about the stage of eternity, for now, upon a large red, white and blue beach ball.

After the Keith Miller experience I began attending the Episcopal Church, leaving behind The American Convention Baptist Church, a co-pastorate no longer affordable, meaning both pastors had to leave.

Well remembered those times, Randy still lived, there was hope abounding. Yet for me it was merely waiting for the inevitable. Recalling now my sense that I was gifted by those widows who attended for a lifetime (Saint Paul's, Wickford, Rhode Island) keeping the heat and lights on, the place clean . . . my roots are elastic, loyal and never broken, at least not in my conscious heart. The corpse I kissed in my sleep was rigid in wanting someone, a woman best, to tell him it was okay to be beaten raped and robbed endlessly. I don't need a mommy anymore, haven't the time and sure as God made the Stars, will never again contemplate 24/7/365 with or without gratuitous sex and all the trappings of a marriage the once ideal.

I still keep the Mass knowing that God is in no way religious, we are. And betimes I kneel five times a day praying to Allah as well. Sitting under the The Bodhi-Tree (or wisdom-tree) covered with blossoms. That said: when I read Rumi i disappear altogether in love for it and you all.

Significantly M&i learned in early childhood to think on our feet. In this regard consider it meditative versus contemplative. Or finding God under fire. Neither of us consider wealth as jewels but smooth river stones. . . . there is joy in menial work and being anonymous. . . . one's ideal mate is God.

All is well, you know, it will be whatever happens.

121104 18:40 soul processing
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

self love, sorta

A musician by nature, nurture, genes and DNA I remember being told by dad; if I wanted to be like Miles Davis or Chet Baker, a pro, he'd punch out all my teeth. I never thought to ask Maynard Ferguson if he wore dentures. The one time I was with Miles, backstage at The Newport Jazz Festival; he ignored me. That image is buried in Naperville's landfill. (A WASP suburb of Chicago, Illinois, USA)

Oh Sweet, sweet Jesus on a unicycle do I hate being white! And once-upon-a-time middle class from Greenwich, Connecticut, USA

Do I need proof? The mementos, women, souvenirs, quarts of tears, scars

I've been there, done this, and that, can attest the greatest thing we create is ourselves.

Add.

The only competition worthy of your attention, like applause, is within. Easy for me to say but a hard earned truth . . . wandering through Rodin's studio, astonished now to remember Rilke was his secretary . . . if only the rich like the bitch who owns Walmart were to donate their theft of others lives and art, to be freely see in population centers and not Little Rock Arkansas. I might be a little less chimeric towards the vanity others; of mine, I subdue with frequent clubbing's. Sometimes to ride others to be devoured.

Decade upon decades I've wept at the sounds universal prayer, music sung in my soul; just one  bar and I could name it. And now, even now I weep for the slave I was made to fulfill my fathers failures . . . friends do not enslave . . . yet he seemed so calling me moments before his death to say goodbye.

Who am I to judge he whom I am required to 'honor'? At the cusp of my seventy-third year on earth I forgive myself for loving him so blindly and adoringly. Music now speaks genius to me yet all I know to write are words. He would pay me a nickel for every orchestra voice I could differentiate; now I enter the whole and find more the will to create, not follow train tracks without terminus. Near the end he offered me the music publishing aspect of his fame and fortune saying; "It's only worth five or so thousand per year now . . . "

“No dad I've no time for it.”

Ashamed of the devotion I gave and his disregard of all that was sacred to me. Myself now rich beyond dollars and cents happily mendicant.

Turned out to pasture, to die in peace. Little chance of that given the Nazi Death Camp made by J. L. Gray Management, where I live -- another story perhaps.

Those who can do, them who cannot teach, and they who can do nothing administrate.

The world, this small abode of mine, suffocates beneath the lard posterior of incompetence parading as divinely endowed authority.

How can it be that I have met the few kind and gentle people, women and men, gigantic in compassion; while I am daily subject to fools? Can I be for them: J. L. Gray, et al,  the balm those compassionate, passionately so, were for me?

Once I entertained suicide daily; knowing all the methods and practices intimately. In an idle moment I asked, to no one, for I was alone; "What can I do to be fully engaged without begging the permission of Mass Print Media to justify my further education?"

At the very least I now am self-loving enough to laugh at myself zooming amongst the stars: a flatulent party balloon farting comets; eternities lived in moments.

121104 04:40 self sorting
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Dancin'

To say I've flim-flammed the FBI & Secret Service is no lie, nor boast, just the facts Mam.  But then I'd been working for their boss at the time. My dream suggests that I have a too easy familiarity with authority, resented by those who watch me tap dance my way through life. Blessing and curse I've just discovered it my major problem interfacing with bean counters and failed lawyers; all more-or-less ambulance chasers living off the suffering of others.

Odd to think of myself as Wile E. Coyote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFmFMeXV3E.

The divine education continues by various means, measures and rods of measurement. My point being: to unlearn all that I was taught by parents, teachers and schools; especially The Greenwich (Connecticut, USA) Board of Education.

I am talking about The Big I AM upstairs. All the rest, from The White House down to the local administrators are superfluous; pikers and wannabes.

"The sins of the Father rest upon the son . ." or something to that dyslexic perception of mine. Means: The sins of the parent (mom or dad or both) rest upon the child (see http://bible.cc/isaiah/14-21.htm) . . . there is so much more discovered in what I sought, enough for many posts.

I am thinking of a vision I received long ago; that of two funnels conjoined; a variant of a speaking and/or hearing trumpet: glass, floating in space. With? A confessional screen between the two??? It suits my following metaphor: of myself a moth drawn to the fiery light hitting the screen like filter and separating essentials from chaff.

I sense now, at times, I write to redeem myself and my parents; who's behavior was less than instructive but more destructive to all that I might otherwise have been or become had I the confidence than that holding me now; feeding my vain pursuits into The Fargo Shredder. Emergent not a pink mist but reconfigured; a kinda mystery meat--me.

If as I do now understand apprehend and celebrate the purpose of pain, obviously not self-inflicted, but borne as I have, I have loved my parents regardless of their intents or absence thereof. In forgiving them I am better able to begin having compassion for myself. In some small measure learning to love me, as I am, or was, regardless what I become . . . a dust mote racing around infinity becoming less daily. A zero: nothing.

These dialogs are not for me alone, but us, all of us, potential to be all that we are yet deny capacity for. Fear makes us small, growing smaller and meaner as we progress towards death. I can prove nothing save to tell, or witness, what happens daily now.

However should you ask it will be given.

Think in the final moments before slumber what troubles or celebrations you have. The reply may take a lifetime to understand but the simple awe of being attended is beyond speech.

In closing; I doubt I have done due homage to the gift awakening me. Possibly lost in my normal mechanics of greeting the next time of being vertical and still alive. I lie not since I do die in bliss and at times wish never to awaken again.

Yet I do, and for what I know better daily. Governance and religion are what they are, human institutions about, but not, God. Truth? And being such go only so far and no farther. It is up to we who care for the life of love, and love of life, to do what is asked and what we are capable of doing no harm. Healing this world, crushed beneath the false god of Mammon.

As for myself, I have enough, yet in giving it away make room for more. In the process all my dysfunctions have been, or are being, healed; integrated reconciled and redeemed. This is priceless beyond any value I can name otherwise.

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal part of your body love what it loves." - Mary Oliver

http://www.featureshoot.com/2012/11/you-dont-own-me-mitt-romney/

121104 01:11 MDT dancing
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved