Wounded in life, I seek to staunch the wounds of others . . . . --xoj

"Jack Spratt’s two centavo Guide to Redemption”
©2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

God's tapestry, all creation, my greatest value an attempt to live/love for: in gratitude, mercy, forgiveness, regardless of Age, Race, Creed, Gender, Gender Proclivities, or Generosity . . . seeking to make redemtion salvation & resurrection potential in all unique, precious, individual lives, human, plant, animal, world. . . .through words & images - Jack Spratt ... KISS

Wednesday, March 13, 2013


- Margery Allingham

Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English crime writer, best remembered for her detective stories featuring gentleman sleuth Albert Campion.
"Mourning is not forgetting. ... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust." + grief
"The optimism of a healthy mind is indefatigable."

I post this since I have found the above “Mourning . . . “ helpful and within a file dedicated to those who mourn as I do. And “the untying” as gone on and will continue until face-to-face. At times I think most valuable are my notes collecting and growing enormous. For those who mourn I will gladly share the grace of others equally touched by grief.

130313 08:02 Margery Louise Allingham 

apogee


The apogee of my day is that moment upon awakening and integrating the myths, omens and portents of my dreams melding into consciousness: integration.

Twitching, paws flexing, I’d watch Duke, a childhood pet, sleeping and dreaming; muttering in his sleep remembering what? There’s a story in that, but not for here.

Annie my current companion, a dear friend, a cat; knows the moment of my awakening. I suspect from the alteration of my breathing rhythm. Animals and indigenous people seem to have a deeper sense of intuition, or both combined.

Whatever the future holds, near or far, I remain profoundly and sincerely, grateful for the meetings of apogees, M and mine, tho mine at the time was in perigee; she did in fact save my life. Still, I labor to understand why she seems so surprised that I love her for herself and not mere loyalty. Claiming, frequently, to be humiliated or embarrassed for the things I say of her within her hearing.

Speaking of obits, I seem to myself, at times, at various positions: sacred and secular. Relishing both integrated into one, again - at times, none too pleasing to myself &/others . . . at least those few who do comment, mostly on Cultural Book.

But then if my intuition is correct, so are we all. Regardless of renown or oblivion. Folly is not exclusive to anyone; all are imperfect. Yet when I Inquisition myself, I wonder why I still hold dear the crude, rude and salacious?

But then so was Jesus; at least my sense of Him, an anarchist. . . .The All is who defines humility and love and is not for one special person - look inside and find that within.

Retrospectively I seem attracted to massively powerful women. Never understanding, until now, I was attempting to seduce “GOD”!. . . at least, hitherto unrecognized, the part of inherent. To compel submission or to have them yield what was mine all along; but too screwed up to recognize, tremulous, upon a hair-trigger for the first sign of rejection/abandonment or immutable silence.

. . . not so much a runway, train or otherwise, but simply and unacknowledged Berserk-er leaping, screaming, howling at the moon; alone in the desert of my mind. And now, even now, I realize that of need I am solitary for the simple reason that it is my desire to be so, alone not lonely. Since I know that when in apogee, as now, I am untouchable. Not addressable for any concern by anyone; terminal or otherwise.

What I describe as M’s Sphinx like quiet, is as quiet as eternity and, in time, I’ve come to trust her. In her presence is a stillness, a waiting, an attention exclusively focused upon whom she is with. And it is no longer curious, or subject/object of jealousy that all are drawn to her to share their concerns.

Randy, my son, now dead for thirty-six years, remains present to me . . . he once said; “You glow in the dark.” Mystifying me. But now I remember that at times I speak, shout, laugh and cry in my sleep so he may have seen that, or known it in his special and inimitable ways. Then and now.

This time is like all time, before and after us, consciously/experiential. Decorated with trinkets, the tree remains a tree. Our items of technology enabling us to better, more swiftly communicate, alters not one jot or tittle the fact that we remain oblivious and indifferent in our communications. Typical of all life we use so little of our minds that it is pathetic . . . as in my case: doing battle with ignorance, prejudice, hyperbole, arrogance, etc. Add the collective chaos of “Good, Better, Best” and killing others for their indifferent incomprehension. The enemy is me.

. . . and I would hasten to add that my concerns for mental health are not addressed by licit or illicit drugs or addictions of any kind. They in their turn censure the symptom but address nothing of the cause except in those exceeding rare cases of imbalance attributable to biology or physics . . . or merely being, as most of us are, subject/object to the food chain feed upon by the Greeders.

In the numbers game ten, seems nicely appropriate, a tithe, for all of us who are merely tenants owning nothing. More seems addictive, compulsive and venal. Banal in fact and act.

I am not amused, the wealthiest man in the world, is responsible for f@%king up writing computer, destroying Word Star wherein one could type like lightning without moving from the home row. Even William F. Buckley used it . . . though given credit as progenitor of the current iteration of political conservancy, I learned from reading him and Gore Vidal that it is possible to be excellent, from, of course, differing vantage points.

Materialist seem doomed to damn themselves, prizing measurable accomplishment in education. The recitation of things: “Polly wants a cracker.” Instead of thinking, creativity and realization that education is endless for it will never vanquish our ignorance.

Perhaps, for now, like war, there will never be an end to demagoguery.

“Kitsch therefore relies on codes and clichés that convert the higher emotions into a pre-digested and trouble-free form—the form that can be most easily pretended. Like processed food, kitsch avoids everything in the organism that asks for moral energy and so passes from junk to crap without an intervening spell of nourishment.” - Excerpted from “Kitsch and the Modern Predicament” - Roger Scruton http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/45112852365

Politics seems - now - not the craft of that which is possible but stasis, all things made impossible; mice making mouse droppings out the electorate. Such little respect or ‘like’ I have for Ronald Regan is for the following: “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” - Ronald Reagan

“A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as he is of his liberties.” - Cyril James

“In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.” - Mark Twain

laughter / tears / sometimes both / in awe / reverence / despair / desired or not - me

130313 04:11 apogee
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Monday, March 11, 2013

irreverence


Measured by times apart / together / the dance of reverence / irreverent the loves not lived / but then what is love / tell me please / mystify me again in the sea of your emerald eyes

M wrote she'd not be there at aerobics for near a week, if not more, and I awoke thinking of she who'd I not see until she chose to see me . . . then the others swimming in my attention equally beyond the pale plumbing the depths of despair; embossed upon me: a spinning prayer wheel, a flag of homage flapping forlorn, for what else to know nothing lost in time irrelevant in the ALL . . . And then, and then, and now slumped in peace within the placental sea of promise becoming another life.

Neither of us do funerals or postmortems and will in time become dust upon the desert; no memorial save in filling the ALL with love for now / forever.

When it rains our garden blushing / in wild array of color / briefly / again for a time is enough. To have been painted light against dark temporarily.

When synchronicity, lightning strikes, say thank you! and keep moving if not split in half like an ancient oak.

Wholly unrelated possibly totally so: when I think of making love it is Bach who sings; the Brandenburg, Magnificat, or best better more yet the Double Violin Concerto. And then I realize the impossibility of this with another, other than THE ALL; to and for whom which it was sung in the first. At play amongst the stars silent void, consciousness caroming rampant.

It is not possible to make another love themselves and so my longing for love with, or in, a woman became the principal motive for all I've done unrequited until this moment recognizing the who can requite. . . . no not the longing to withdraw the sword, as Arthur, but endlessly plunge it into the stone abrading its edge sharper until my desire fulfilled, the sword no more, humiliation become humility.

Mother never loathed being a woman to the degree of self-mutilation, but instead resented fearfully being one, to which, it now seems, I was then her foil. Incredulous, I once, late in life between us, asked my father; was their marriage a success? “Yes!”

Curious!

Since by my observation and experience the truth, would otherwise, be contrary. What does it mean to “honor” one's parentage or “fear” God? Odd, not to die wondering yet to remain spiraling coalescent vaporous enraptured overarching the boundaries of confusion and chaos at last. The obverse of my joy is not sorrow but solemn sincere gratitude for it all . . . on a different order of magnitude, making sweet what was sour; lemonade from lemons; bitter gall an anodyne.

. . . how can I question the wind that plays me; an aeolian harp or judge, otherwise, the unsung silent poetry inside for which in gratitude many have made entire cathedrals of sounds, myths, symphonies then constructs of thoughts administered by those political become stewards of conceit and confection.

How sweet the silence and to be anonymous unremarked.

If so, why do I continue? For those like me who wonder wandering in the desert pathless. Seeking what? Not my, or your, but our way. Wholeness.

. . . add, though not required, no gratuity, but homage for what The All & M have done to and for me. Gibbeted tied and nailed upon my own words; slain. Asking in the howling in my heart that God be real and if possible to grow receiving the love large enough a vessel for others. . . . Communion is not milk and cookies, the body and blood implies the feast is yet to come. Say yes!

. . . and of course; be well

. . . 07:25

Afterword(s): In closing it occurs to me that I use Christian metaphors and similes to confabulate what is tactile/experiential to me. Yet cringe to name - The All/Om - by words exclusive to one religion or another, or any at all. Since I hear truths spoken by many who by education, choice or nature would eschew what they seeming sense is slavery and/or idolatry. We are not born slaves but make ourselves so by fear.

As in awe of the inarticulate as those who speak and demonstrate the simplest sense of “Do unto others as . . .” The primary foundation of moral and ethical behavior - choice – what is universal.

Memo to myself: I create nothing definitive but a record of process; not revolution, but evolution into something, a sense, of what makes life and love possible. Incapable of healing or changing anything but myself . . . redeeming from waste - vitality – absolution. I conclude these things inherent in all life. . . each element a facet of a gem far larger than the sum total of us all.

Perhaps if only once you did enjoy
The thousandth part of all the happiness
A heart beloved enjoys, returning love,
Repentant, you would surely sighing say,
"All time is truly lost and gone
Which is not spent in serving love." - Torquato Tasso born this date long ago.
Aminta Act I, sc. i, lines 30-31 (1573)

130311 04:29 irreverence
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Sunday, March 10, 2013

intransigence

To irk the ire of the intransigent, the irrelevant, the inconsequential - otherwise legends to themselves alone - is to play with futility and oneself. Save in this regard, that others might benefit equally the price of freedom from the imposition and infliction of: "Do as I say since I am God!"

There is no fear in God. Yet since time immemorial men have pretended behind masks of authority fearing everything. Ignorant that God is for all, not one life alone. Those who cannot create destroy.

It is my truth discovered racing the internal mirror maze formed of my fears, granite intransigence polished now dissolved; formulated by adaption to the unimaginative and lacking compassion who's harm of others their only entertainment, pleasure and truth.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Goethe

. . . those who pretend power seem children at play upon the hobby horse, rocking solitary in their bedroom otherwise stationary, in self stasis, onanist, their pleasure making our common good their providence; enslaving continents with their ideals. Office by election or extortion is for itself not for others, a force to bend all life weighted in chains. And they, in their turn, enslaved to the Masters of The Universe who own it all.

. . . or presume they do, for I, as mote or mite, float in a place beyond time, before and after it all conceptually, and would, by fate or desire, live here aware the march of seasons marginally where M sees it all majestically elevated for miles after miles these days and starry nights embracing us equally.

“God” being only a name for something felt and experienced; benign and friend and loving dance partner, the author of life in which this character speaks.

The march goes on, with or without me, in cell or grave, but humor besets me beyond the kin, kith and keep of those who sodomize my attention. Me a Betty Crocker in high heels with fishnet stockings, a broom in my posterior. Their indifference should be pitied, indifferent to their random rape. The contempt I feel for them greater than theirs for me; true for all authority self anointed or appointed by any means and/or measures.

No herder nor herd am I, free to be myself, no matter where or why, discovering always new ways.

"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we." - Mark Twain

130310 07:46 intransigence
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved



Saturday, March 9, 2013

back in harness


My favorite dreams aren’t making love with Ava Gardner but going back to work; an ox in yoke pulling a load. At battle with known objectives, single combat.

Thanks to M and the V Mary plus a host of other women I’ve known I can see my ideal in all women and now men; children too. And yet, now, M’s the one and only; I’d be her puppy dog if only she’d let me. But she won’t and that too is okay since she knows me better than I do.

That’s the point of everything; looking backwards and forwards and at now, I am where I need to be but those dreams of going back to work at The Providence Journal still haunt me. Just yesterday ‘bouncing in the water’ as M would have it (water aerobics) I turned to her laughing, saying; I’ve never been happier . . . these being the best years ever of my life to date.

Then, back then, at The Journal, it was See Spot Run. Throw the stick (an assignment) and I’d run bringing back my sense of it, photographically, and get petted. Over the rainbow, and moon. My objectives and gratifications have changed, but the desire to work overwhelmed everything, not once since starting to work at thirteen and now. And yet in my dream I was back at my current age talking to a peer who was explaining the way things are, and yet, again, I realized the vapor of ink and roaring presses humming the building, lent me a sense of purpose until he said something that I took as; the same, old same old daily bread and butter; ‘another day the same old shit.’

Of course, at times, it was something else, something grand and edifying; and yet, and yet, its all  gone now. Tripping over the events, personal, corporate, collective, world and universe wide, I awaken to where I need to be now and don’t care a fig if its the last breath; I’m ready.

Can anyone tell me what love is?

. . . I know or think I know love better by Jesus. . . .Then there are all the others similar, none better or worse, just different, describing the whole gem of love by their individual facets refracting the light into all the colors there are, the songs, the dances about the longest unending story, the novel called LOVE. One-on-one. It is never different, the experience of love, but then it’s not the having but the giving that matters now, and forever for me.

Oh dear God how I feel it now; the going head-to-head with anyone and anything, willing to die in the traces for the truth. If I laugh and cry the joy of it is worth it all; this now, the being here now.

. . . oh the delicious fetid lubricity, this rose growing from filth, the unfolding of a lotus, life giving life, yet again.

. . . odd. I’ve never given birth but seen it accomplished in manifold ways and now even now know better like M did with me and maybe for her, not in loyalty so much as emulation, to hold a hand a heart for a time to aid the giving birth of one’s self -- so to speak -- a midwife to life.

. . . 06:34
. . . as I shall leave her, or she me, eventually, it would be well to remind myself that we both for now and all time listen closely to what is spoken before and after language invented. in some small majestic way knowing the ends of this little dot of blue in the black void absent or as seen from afar. in some ineffable way this makes our moments together oddly celestial and precious; she the sun and i the moon dark eclipsed in new phase and the sound of her voice a lullaby still green eyes fathomless gems into which I die at each parting . . . odd. we are as different as peaches - she to me - as i a cumquat's evolution renewed

dust to dust indeed!

“Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.” - John Ruskin

. . . beautiful to me in all the above; all woman, but more so much more

. . . 18:24
. . . darkness encroaches, the day ending here where blossoms are rampant, arisen from a nap in a savage dystopian mood: man’s inhumanity to man. Nothing for it but to survive for now to see another day painting its way towards night. And yes, I’d like to die here where and as I am, in peace . . . once in a while broken by the cruelties we all suffer . . . ah yes the indignities and greeding of those who administer our governance; the takers.

130309 0427 back in harness
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Friday, March 8, 2013

imaginings


Pell-mell in all my wildest aberrant and perverse imaginings never did I conceive of a resource such as Wikipedia. Add, it could be, the best is yet to become, more better.

While it is generally true to the simpering, supercilious, censorious legislators incapable of catching ambulances. Lunatic fanatics for their addled addiction to power and notoriety seeking to contain or disable the World Wide Web. Sighting perversion and destruction as an excuse; always possible and available there is, as well, an education in something beyond pleasure sexual and destruction by mass means.

Therein lays the fountain of knowledge leading to wisdom beyond the facts detailed above. An eclectic education available across all boundaries. Comprised, if you will, by individuals whose difference meld into one spring gushing vertical unto infinity. Would we allow such to be controlled by those incapable of finding their posterior with both hands to kiss it goodbye. Simply to remain in office. Assuring themselves gratuitously and endlessly of their security to quite or quell a force able to render them unnecessary while revealing their fraud and perversion of the commonweal.

No.

I think not since in my experience the flood is on. No ruler, president, C.E.O., politician, pope or priest is safe from those who think: freedom! To hell with them and their “shoulds & oughts.”

. . . at times I have tried to typify the behavior inimical, as ‘those who take versus those who give.’ Yet. Better it could be those who’s intentions are inhuman versus those for whom humanity is the tapestry of God, or good, or better: best. Or, possibly simply stated: The Antichrist incarnate. To be sure a collective and not one individual. Helter-skelter: I’ve got mine up your’s.

Oh sweet Lao Tzu & Jesus bouncing about on pogo sticks, I love playing with words.

. . . kinder, possibly, it would be, to simply say all politicians are venal; generous towards themselves only.

. . . another advantage in using Wikipedia is finding relationships between the author and context. Finding those who interest me beyond the moment and what to read next on or off screen.

These steps to freedom liberated from the criminal class ruling us is what I notice most when seeking the number of hits I receive. Mostly from Russia!?! Add, at that, more for Eric Hoffer. Happy to be of service, I could have chosen worse, introducing him to those more enslaved than we.

The most valuable and prized plastic in my wallet: my library card. . . .where, as with hyper-links, I am chilled, thrilled and oft clubbed senseless . . . could it be that once I expiate my sins of omission, commission and self indifference . . . perhaps then I might attempt fiction and poetry no more daring do than what I have done but more fun and laughs.

. . . for now I write for me, not God or you, since these are notes on a life and self in process for which there is no end as objective ambition or in death. Possibly defining or describing making available the three: God, Man & Self. Yet, oh yet, this sweet humiliation of a life unable to read, hear, see and celebrate all those I admire. Could be, maybe not, possibly, impossibly best spent this one and only precious life so like yours.

. . . to be mentored by the best, obviously, one must read. For me the discovery of those I follow in their courses towards sanity and sobriety lend me a sense of unity and purpose where none else is to be found in this world and or time otherwise. Remedially: “When a child is uprooted, it seeks to make a center from which it cannot be uprooted.” - Anais Nin made sense of what where and when I began taking notes. Add Eric Hoffer’s; "The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way." . . . so little time and much to do; are we not all dead men walking? Rather a deeply lived life apposed to one broad, shallow, long, a wafer instead of a feast.

Be well beloved becoming best yourself.

130224 04:44 imaginings
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

boldly dreaming


Dream boldly for the commonweal of all life. None master, or slave, but all equal and well. In health our greatest wealth. Day and night my dreams grow bolder. Expansive and generous with imagining at times humorous/inspired, then too ecstatic, benign for each of us. As a virus of change for the better no longer victims of anyone or thing.

. . . what else are the heavens for / the heaven within / in all born and unborn / for nothing is lost in eternity . . . with a child’s laughter wakeful or sleeping I see this life and earth a petri dish one of many yet to be known; consciousness and love evolving in time; new stars across the void of darkness. Like dear sweet utterly mad with passionate compassion Vincent’s Starry Starry Night punctuated with cypress and spire spiking the chaos of what would dominate and enslave us.

The dreams of this old man leap yet finding the core of infancy knowing what happens to for and against one happens for and in all.

Possible.

Concatenate body mind and spirit. Be free to create the world of love. Fearlessly deny the one/several/many/herd who claim absolute monarchy. Resistance/descent is powerful in love.

. . . 02:58 . . . it is an ongoing process this “writing” or annotation of becoming a person. Somewhat more than mere subsistence; an unexamined existence. The steps to freedom are many and various as snow flakes falling in midsummer’s night defining ignorance; my greatest enemy, my own.

Since my first writing was a photography column, a certain alloted space to be filled between brasserie, tire and turkey advertisements, all equally fantastic in their power to distract &/or bury my thoughts: some, if not all, were absolute conjecture and mirth (possibly my greatest gift is an ability to laugh at myself) beyond which there is a passionate compassion for life. The family of man. The species of us.

If I have a talent. Perhaps it is to find the genius of others, individually, or collectively: as in all of us. Inherent in life seeking the light growing. Loving indiscriminately and following not one prophet but all seeking what they sought.

Unable to change anything save myself knowing the secrets kept keeping me in bondage I seek to expose and explode them inhabiting such as remains of my life and beyond. It follow that what I share within these words is, in large measure, inspired by dreams and fantastic phenomenon of awakening then at some point finding what Gideon sought through placing lambs wool outside his tent . . . a dialog? of course it is at least to me. Yet fain to suggest since it is my way, not The Way. One clue: today is Steve Job’s birthday and the lead quote http://en.wikiquote.org:

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle." - Steve Jobs 

. . . there are a host of others, from disparate sites, affirming my sense of dialog with a being vastly beyond my ability to otherwise describe. Hinted at in all the wisdom books/manuals for life.

I learn from my enemies; those who stand upon my feet glistening my forehead with their spittle - superciliousness . . . It may take long or short for me to find the gift within and forgiven their aggressive faux authority. . . .to kill one’s self or another is too easy; it takes greater courage to love and live.

. . . but then what did Jesus do!? And why?

Can I teach you nothing but to be real? That when the word man is used it implies all the species inclusive without boundary: race, creed, gender!

No. I will not bore nor lead you with my evidence since it would be filling this void with stuff; the column I wrote was roughly eighty lines; seldom  more or less. I was'nt’t paid by the word or pound but it was odd that I could drop my mind into that box . . . remembering now that this is noting but a collection of notes on a life in process: endless.

. . . 04:08
It is possible, not impossible, but difficult, and growing more so. To grow a soul, a self, mindful consciousness of a bedrock foundation upon which to be fully alive and love . . . but worthy of the effort. Read yourself. Abrasion is what makes suffering sharp, Jesus knew. The purpose is not death but growth. I’ve always wondered but now doubt not.

. . . be a good observant -- not Jew, Islam, Christian etc. -- but student of life finding a way to make love possible in our time. . . .& war no more.

130224 0134 boldly dreaming
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved