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

Saturday, March 16, 2013

miscreants


Miscreants beggared me, voiding (in) my cupped hands; once adequately filled sufficiently for sustenance. Not that I object. But for others, who’s lives ended prematurely for want of medical attention, or suicide, etc. . . especially those homeless now. I belabor the issue.

And even now of my father, years afterward, I would say; “Thank You!” Even though I suspect he thought - No! I know - he presumed me insane. And for whom I suspect his misunderstanding of my avidity; seeking love from someone who knew nothing of it, save a slogan on a brand of toilet paper or lurid novel. . . . the dart of his disdain and dismissal, nominal melioration, with his last breathe given on a borrowed cellular telephone.

Death holds no fear for me, but dying slowly - by attrition, does. A moment ago I called to assess the feasibility of visiting a friend who had so lingered for near a year or more in my attention. Sadly. No longer allowed to visit save at risk of meeting the person responsible for my absence, I hopped around one foot to another too long.

Nothing, and no one, is lost within all the universe; save being for me a page, no, a large swath torn from the cyclorama of my psyche in the ordinary of my life; mourned. Scarred, healed, I struggle on.

My intention, before the news, just received, to share what small sanity I possess, attributable to the kindness of strangers. In her case, became an intimate confidant and friend. What saved me from shredding from sole to hair follicle the one who dismissed me!? A Sufi once spoke of crossing the chasm upon a thread but now sensed, as on thin air. Again, in her case, her last words to me, our fingers intertwined; “Keep the Faith . . . . “ and I will, as I’ve done, but to not one - but The All, the author of all prophets, my apprehension of what they sought.

My point? Kindness is something free and easily given; a word, smile, gesture or the mere; “I see you!” In passing, brief of long. It may be the only kindness, as in my case I’d ever known. Best: a touch.

For now.

Forever.

Riot in words, she collected quotes as well. The blossoms of those who cared to give their best - themselves - remembering there is no love in a clenched fist.

. . . if nothing else, prayer, like kindness, changes the giver of it eternally.

Be well.

PS In the name of greed, America’s current religion, murder is committed daily.

20130316 11:34 miscreants
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

2nd Thought(s)


We mass men, all sentient life, among us there seem a preponderance of people, in America at least, who, in masturbatory self-aggrandizement, now maunder their meaningless thoughts via text or voice on portable devices while driving intoxicated as legends in their own minds. Addicted in conceit. Indifferent to all life otherwise. . . and of those who cannot, pilot grocery carts hazarding the isles of Wally World. Eschewed for employee policies and attempting control of the earth.

Then too, tutti, is commercial broadcast television. A high-colonic, infusing then sucking out everything: self, time, imagination, joy and originality.

No wonder we are factory farmed by greeders fanatic for our material wealth, mental and physical health; tracked and/or infused with spurious, specious, mystery chemicals of unknown consequence - present in all rampage killers; an after-fact regardless of armament.

Better for me to await the crematoria sucking my thumb, fetal, in the corner silent? I seem more often now to leap off the edge of our known universe attempting flight, soaring not plummeting.

My 2nd thought(s) are regarding the previous post ‘bemused’ and what it might mean to greeders whose sole entertainment is the serial abuse of all life for their pleasure and profit. Not ‘evil’ but anti-life, at least the lives of others. Being, at one time or another - subject/object - of all the addictions I can imagine, brief or long, I empathize with those possessed.

Yield?

No!

In the interest of full disclosure, a confession: In recent memory there was a young man expelling sounds musical, as welcome as Fox TV News, which also was polluting the silence of the men’s locker room. I turned to a fellow senior and commented that posterior insertion seemed appropriate.

When you run over me with your vanity, please kill me, do not instead, leave me quadriplegic and unable to remember ever having lived otherwise.

Remember, please, the self defined “MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE” gambled away the world’s economy for which there is no absolution save, insertion of red hot pennies, endless, until expiration or explosion. . . . thus ending their bottomless avarice.

One-by-One

. . . no, Virginia, I am not a nice person; I subscribe and prescribe: “An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” - Mahatma (Mohandas K.) Gandhi

. . . However imagination affords me a laugh or two. The illustration used without permission but in gratitude, no gratuity, for: http://www.brainpickings.org/

130316 0850 2nd thought(s)
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

bemused


Bemused, at times, remembering, unamused & clinical; this light dimly glowing in the dark of eternity will soon be snuffed out. But the light, soon to come, dawn, will also be gone; itself blown away; consumed; out. Recycled, not here, but beyond the beyond; my current reach - for now.

Awakened the debate that if we be “The Church.” One and each, coupled with all of us together, sans boundaries, then we must of need be ‘god’ - by particle - not whole. The vision has seldom visited me, but well remembered for when it came, never left, but remained asleep, awakened now and again.

The motto of those who clone animals; “Replica not Resurrection.” Reminds me of He who said He would come again! In part or whole? And in what measure or means would time, intervening, have varied Him?

He is my root, from which I have sprung. Yet in all my wandering - wondering - curiosity I find the spirit of inquiry in many, who amongst us all, few, give meaning instead of taking it; freedom not slavery.

Enkindled by whom or what. . . .

Why?

Why not!

Did not the light enkindled, consciousness, come from friend not foe. Neither anthropomorphic nor knowable as such: thing or energy but both; extrinsic and intrinsic?

For which from beginning to end and returned? Recycled!? Be celebrated in life; and the absence of it!

Speaking solely, i can participate and be responsible only for myself, altering nothing but submitting to the inevitable. . .singing for others who betimes listen for truth

“When to the heart of man
 Was it ever less than a treason
 To go with the drift of things,
 To yield with a grace to reason,
 And bow and accept the end
 Of a love or a season?”
—  Robert Frost

130316 06:29 bemused
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

Friday, March 15, 2013

notes


Why this or that note, chord or phrase - symphonies of praise?
are not Bach’s partitas prayer for one
hummed, strummed, plucked, pounded

Conceptually so are words conjoined in context but more dangerous since, speaking for myself, I cannot simply smile or grin, shrug my shoulders saying nothing; or at most; “i don’t know” soft shoe pawing the ground.

Nothing I’ve ever said or thought hasn’t been said or thought before and/or said in other ways and languages: marble, clay, musical

But then best is dance as I lurch about with Annie astonished both in silence
various in key mode tone rhythm all in praise for this morning
in laughing unto tears

. . . remembering my homage / shutter clicking / 400mm / waist deep in the violas / capturing Aaron Copeland
whenever hearing Fanfare for The Common Man exultant conducting hymns
no longer sad for the loss / for losing defines better what was / it was enough to have been
once

creation speaks in silence to/too/two/tutu/tutti/2
amen

http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/45266782685
frankly I like mo better Yo-Yo Ma
less romantic
incise

130315 04:44 note
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved

fond fondling

When I speak I do so without authority beyond the precincts of myself, and then at that, merely to annotate what is left; this rusty blade stroked against adversity. 

Never my intent or ambition to join the sage’s rages calmly articulated against indifference and stasis. Yet while I stroke and stoke my curiosity I discover that odd thing and thought; God, it seems is humble, loving and kind - vastly more gentle than i.

. . . forgiving too

add: merciful: empathetic: compassionate: inseminating all life with an ineluctable will to live - free.
. . . and present in all things save those who know it not living in fear. Seeking ideal wishfully while the real is all there is. creator/evolutionist/anarchist . . . collaborative

enough

but then perhaps this is merely the ides - the middle of March - or the middle way between ideal and reality?

“Love' has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.” - Katharine Hepburn

“Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.” - Goethe

. . . for you this is conjecture; for myself, it is a paving stone upon and unseen path evolving

130515 03:06 fond fondling
© 2013 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved


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