beyond

So very many have passed beyond my reach before me, embossed with their memory, given in confession of desires: the life they had wished to live but did not.

Dear friends/God forgive me I cannot remember names as much as the emotions like cloud shadows passing over monumental faces, eyes flickering in confident ecstasy or swimming in sorrow or fear. What they were and by prayer will become far beyond my keen.

And for now, in silent reverence, for they and those who with me stand upon the cusp of time, I spin not Dervish but Prayer Wheel with some more profoundly raised upon the glistening of my braille memory. Changed irrevocably both they and me for no prayer is unanswered in the flesh of time and nothing lost in eternity. We all die sometime, somehow, and in death see the source more clearly; humiliated and naked as we came so we go.

1544

Who has not found the Heaven—below—

Will fail of it above—

For Angels rent the House next ours,

Wherever we remove—

- Emily Dickinson

http://chasingtailfeathers.tumblr.com/post/47123915453

Disclosure/Transparency:

I did not intend to include the poem but discovered it between what resides above and this. Faith is unique and inherent; or so I have experienced in numerous dialogs. Given my reverence and homage for The Author of all Creation. I am catholic. Finding my former belief in shards. That small “c” is significant. It means that I give equal credence to Islam, Buddhism, etc. More importantly to me is the experience of God; not the idea.

In the course of these recent hours, days, weeks, years: I have found threads speaking the same intention, thoughts, longings across all languages and all times, unbidden, (not specifically sought). I might as well be gibbeted as a fool, sage or whatever. In converse with M, last evening, I mentioned planting trees the shade or fruit of which I will never see. When I had money I gave freely to resources that offer education to all, but that was stolen from me, as my life might be via the agency of violence growing daily in America the land of the enslaved.

Instead, I give of myself, no longer relatively ‘wealthy’ in material ways. It may be that what I write are notes to those who have passed, our children, in the universal sense of family. The friends and brief acquaintances discovered everywhere.

Permutations have been made in me and in consequence I have changed. Yet I can change nothing outside myself and leave the world essentially as found. In a sense, at seventy-two years of age I am still looking for a Job Description while mentally young as I was at eighteen. I remember that I’ll never Grow Up but am compelled to do so.

The highest creation we can seek is ourselves in truth and love doing no harm. I can no longer remain silent in the company of “Nones.” Or those in whose company any mention of my resources would render me, in their truth/judgment/perception: insane. What a sweet madness!

I take myself not too seriously, humor being my best quality; always a student of life. I will close here with another set of quotes important to me:

"A good poem is one in which the form of the verse and the joining of its two parts seem light as a shallow river flowing over its sandy bed."

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." +f

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

"Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die."

“The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.”

"There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon." - Matsuo Basho

130405 03:48 beyond

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

sentiments

I neither water nor thirst, but am a pump between both. At times what was, is, and will become of me naked of sentiment or romance: sorrow and ecstasy passes through me.

Daily I prime, or am primed by words, ribald or wise. The grit within growing an ever larger carapace around it; from some perspectives, dark and misshapen – near invisible; and others viewed as precious. Not those who judge me, but seen, my blind inward sight. Not a gem so much as a well worn river pebble becoming rounded.

Witness to my daughters birth, emerging from her mother’s womb, wound apparent at birth: death certain. As it was when my son was diagnosed with Leukemia, but silent then again and again, since my thoughts seem to poison the innocence of others especially the bride-of-my-youth. Who, now unknowing herself cut off from me at the soles of her naked feet, will become what is intended, or she intends for herself, absent my body but never my love and prayers. For as I have said, finally free, the she remains a stranger to me, from first sight in third grade until now and forever more.

It seems I’m finally wed to myself and welded to the creation: author and all of it. Not whole or complete but getting there.

Love, to me, is the greater power. And I struggle to embrace it despite my anger, wounds and sorrows. Fully conscious: the same in others as well, as those who act with indifference, their violence towards me or they for whom I care the most: all of life, and in death, no end.

“Words are the voice of the heart.” Attributed to Confucius but I have yet to find explicit attribution. It works for me as do the others I carry reminding me of the Tibetan Buddhist Nuns who self-immolate in protest the violation of their home by specious materialist. My prayer wheel grows. Conscious, equally, of those who I do not, cannot know. Nameless lay people whose choices reflect grace not graft in the face of mindless greed.

My daughter’s birth was the last recall I have of going into shutdown; a howl of silence. What saved me while being beaten and abandoned serially throughout all my life until that moment. When. It could be said, as I say to myself now, I ceased to be silent.

To myself I am coldly analytical, a Nazi, while hotly euphoric as Goethe. Why Teutonic when my heart is Sufi? Zen? Or by root, nature/nurture, belonging to Jesus. Who by growth, at least to/in me, seems indicative of other wisdom figures as well; eclectic.

Who am I? Living to what end? For what and why?

. . . these things I cannot know for now . . . perhaps when face-to-face with the origin of all consciousness and creation.

Methodically I labor to educate myself knowing my intuition is not the only function . . . to see, perceive and experience everything in its inherent state not as I wish to know it.

I fail my aspirations in conflict with people and institutions/constructs, I sometimes think-feel-sense-intuit, addicted to power as a shield against their fear. Failing. I grow restive, vicious, with sharpened vocabulary, think to eviscerate them for their invasion of my old age, seeking to die in peace quietly without their capricious rape of my attention. Which for me is as taxing as another human companion in my dwelling; albeit infrequent but regular and serial, contrary to what is legislated.

A personal peeve illustrative of what happens to be, world wide, governing us.

130404 04:33

. . . it seems, whistling into a Tsunami, this, what I do (quietly chuckling at myself.) A dog chasing its tail; finally catching it reaching escape velocity, spiraling out of sight: ecstatic.

Could it be the mind behind every deed, or legislated action, is greed? Whether Republican or Democrat for most, if not all, are rich; becoming more so daily. The Congress, that unlovely assembly of Baboons incarnates the best of folly: selfishness. . . . At best a pimple upon the posterior of corporations: Exxon, Bank of America, the manufacturers of death by puncture, wholesale, united in cupidity.

"Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you." - Nietzsche

“Be kind to unkind people. They need it the most.” - Ashleigh Brilliant

“Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.” - Josh Billings

My process, perfect for myself, unable to change ought else, continues.

130403 13:44 sentiments

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

Rhythms

Rhythms awakened me, the snick and thump of a manual sewing machine adapted to electricity. Childhood lullaby’s. “Now I lay me down to sleep. . . .“ Yet I awake decades latter and wonder where their labor went. Mother having had from the beginning a Singer of the new kind, no treadle. Then too she would sew by hand; fine garments for me to wear. Both Mother and Daughter were the women of my life adored. The Great Mother, my maternal grand mother, her child, my mother, both were seamstress’s leaving me with a sense of being fabric woven into garments or tapestries.

Odd I should so adore my threadbare poverty hearing the snickers of those who stole my inheritance. And from my sleep arise disquieted, but not distempered, wondering when the revolution will begin. As stated: “Love is preemptive while law is remedial.” Add, far be it from me to foment riot since I soon will depart to whatever awaits: rot, Heaven or Hell, or somewhere in between. Not sad to leave the stage of this life as it is and swiftly becoming more so; dominated by those who worship power, usury and greed. The true religion of America. Wherein the powers that be retroactively abort every life, except theirs. Those who BMW (bitch, wine and moan) about the right to life.

What life?

Factory Farmed breeding stock and canon fodder!

Fritz Eichenberg, artist and book illustrator, creator of Christ in the Bread Line, asked me shortly before his death; “Have I done anything to change the world?” To which I replied; “I don’t know about the world, but you saved my life.” Our friendship though not deep (I was then ashamed of my mixed mode between being middle-class and nominally from the seat of thieves: Greenwich, Connecticut and an “artist” who never, by his observation decorated my “home” with my work. I detailed the Christmas Eve, standing alone upon the banister of a bridge over the Inter Coastal Water Way ready to step forward to my death. Thinking of he, the Jesus and J. S. Bach. Celestial? No. I simply realized it would take more courage to step backward and live then forward and drown.

Here I am remembering his description of another Jew, not Jesus, who in concert was marched to a mass grave to be shot. The humble Jew, facing his assassins turned around and lowering his trousers baring his posterior mooned them.

So in reply to the anal retentive conservatives, of their greed, who stand upon my neck, while I yet live, I will at the very least bite their ankles . . . possibly to gnaw them into attention. As they stand upon my neck face down in the excrement they’ve made of Earth. The way of love is not riot but at worst boycott. And/Or the curmudgeonly maundering of one about to die, hopefully sooner rather than later. Filled with sadness that my bequest was stolen.

I reside upon a bridge between two Depressions; the future stolen by those whose normal is to rape, pillage and burn everything to their convenience/pleasure/amusements.

I wonder at my empathy, compassion, love for my executioners, since they were my childhood companions for a time when I resided in what I now consider the pimple upon the posterior of creation. Should I not think of them as they were then and now? With concern for them as well as those who follow.

Forgive me for begging your attention. I mean not to foment or intrude. Inflict or impose my awakening in a world of hurt annoyed by the dragon within. It is they who are insane not I. They continue the same activity expecting different results. The consequence of which is a world paved with mass graves.

The wrath to come is already upon us. No need to raise a hand against it. Since what has been sown will be reaped. I imagine, in retribution/recompense, those who gloat and smirk will be given endless loops of themselves to entertain them. Such little as I know of God’s good pleasure is enough for me.

Yet for now I remain bemused by the stripes and scars I see walking amongst us. Those who like me bought the dream of America betrayed by avarice having aborted The Bill of Rights and by smoke and mirrors perverted the Constitution.

Mendicant, I seem employed by a new perspective on what was a life, ideal, as apposed to real.

- Charles Peguy

"Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love."

130403 0536 Rhythm

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

envisioning i ain't there yet!

From this moment. For the moment. Forever? I note change. Wondering how it came about, or to be within me, who is nothing special; just another Joe. Or sometimes John, Jack or Jacob or even “HEY YOU!”

I am not THERE YET!

Holy, whole, complete or finished. This/The process of unfolding continues. For now it is enough to simply say; ‘Be careful of what you pray for . . . ‘ Shy to say so for my many beloved friends: atheist, agnostic and believers who say so of themselves. There are no boundaries between we and god; only delusions, illusions, wishful thinking or indifference . . . possibly avoidance?

Could it be, it seems so, unfolding is better said: enfolding? By any measure or means, I previously thought, by kind or degree: when we die we rot: from nothing to nothing begot. Turn and turnabout  inside out, and upside down, I remain touched by something/someone greater than me. Integration is a process of becoming unending; beginning here-&-now.

10:52

My vision/version/ideation is formulated from many resources, correct for me. Affirmed and convicted: to live and die for. It seems best described – not prescribed – a we: the entire family, living and dead, are woven into a tapestry complete, ineluctable, yet so vast as to defy description. Our language of any tongue: by race, creed, gender penchants, proclivities, practices or associations seems in those who have spoken words of any worth remembering seems to grow more exhausted by utterance of those who would sell of what they presume we need; not want.

For me the difference, is lights years apart, between: assertion/aggression, love/hate versus indifference, Life/Death. Analogies, Similes, epitaph, Epigraph, Metaphor or Parables seems inconsequential compared to experience. No “I” in I, me or what writes; but a near consumed cigarette butt flicked into a mud puddle or as remembered; at sea when the universe is surrounding, becalmed, a mirror if you must. Or, better, sailing upon cats paws alone in a dingy uncaring whither I go; the tiller gently nodding myself near asleep in the bilge at night beloved. . . .

The Way, trackless: I want only for you to remember yourself, as precious beyond all measure of value to God. Learning for now as if living forever while ready to die this moment. Until meeting Creation/The Creator/whatever image need be to guide you to a full consciousness. First and foremost you need a self beloved to know where and why we live trusting that.

. . . . alone we come and alone we go

home

- Julian Baggini

“The topic of personal identity is strictly speaking nonexistent. It’s important to recognize that we are not the kind of things that simply popped into existence at birth, continue to exist, the same thing, then die off the cliff edge or go into another realm. We are these very remarkably ordered collections of things. It is because we’re so ordered that we are able to think of ourselves as being singular persons. But there is no singular person there, that means we’re forever changing.” - in The Ego Trick: In Search of the Self

PS Consider, amusing or bemusing, Google knows your taste in erotica, your sperm or white cell count, when you ovulate or don’t, where you live, what and who or whom you love, etc. Who watches the watchers? Would you believe, you should you know! They track which side your hair is parted or not and the toothpaste brand and how often you brush or don’t ever.

Willy Shakes aka William Shakespeare @ Brianpickings.org

“ . . . . credos that underpin the analytical tool. Dubbed Prospero’s Precepts, these eleven rules culled from some of history’s greatest minds can serve as a general-purpose guideline for critical thinking in all matters of doubt:

1. All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
2. Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
3. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
4. Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
5. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
6. A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
7. The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
8. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
9. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
10. Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
11. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

130402 09:37 envisioning
© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

perceptions

@ parabola.org.
Were I a rich man I'd subscribe. However, not being one, makes me richer than those who stole my inheritance(s). In the process bankrupting the entire world economy. The cynics, who as Oscar Wilde said; “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.” 
"Heaven is within!" - J.C. 
' . . . and not within a bottomless rictus of greed.' - J.S.
is not hell the waste of the entire human race?

basis

There seems no reason for life other than love

conscious of itself. Complete with free will

pointless otherwise

. . . or do I mean free choice?

Save in life or death how can I know otherwise?

What dream awakened me this time?

Hurled from sleep awake and enthusiastic to write!

Yesterday at lunch, with M, our cherished times alone together.

I announced that after a lifetime of loving her I knew her not: the bride-of-my-youth.

Now awake realize it was my love projected upon the loveliness of her; a fantasy or incarnation of myself as woman, impossible and she remains a stranger as from beginning to end; loved nonetheless.

If I use the term friend, then what of M & me? We are friends uppercase and of she and I never in any other definition than legal. Remembering when burying either child of our marriage, individually and separately, I was alone and she elsewhere distant. Known where, yet unknown now as then, a stranger to my grief. She tearless while I wept, weeping then and now. And of now, even now, I weep for I remain alone and of she? Who knows? For unlike with M I never gained the confidence of her trust or self.

What remains unchanged, myself?! Utterly! I feel free of the nets thrown and restrained by my desires. Holding me loveless. Seeking empathy compassion from one incapable of it within her self. Or do I speak for most, if not all, of us? Conservative, holding what is within as truth versus experience.

What greater love can I express except to share with you the gift M has given me.

“Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man's life is the only treasure he can ever possess.” - Giacomo Casanova

Convicted, splayed, playing with my viscera, entailed to detail my lifelong search for love. Finding the Author of It, I am no longer at frenzy but peace. It is obvious, at least to me, The Author IS actual: extrinsic/intrinsic! But, at best, this is merely my faith and proofs as I wend my way wandering through life; all of it. Anathema? Perhaps to some, maybe more, if not most: folly and a fool am I.

The details of my life are wonderful, in fact, fabulous. Yet I remain a miner in the pits of fortune, begrimed, happily so. Remember, Mythology, is best when attempting description of what is too real to bear all at once. One thinks of Jesus and his miracles but remembers best his pithy parables so like the koans. Lending us wonder as we wander, pickax swinging at our fears within. Which I could detail but bored at the prospect since as with myself, so with you; one must find the dragon as friend or foe and saddle her/him. Burnt to a crisp then resurrected whole; either, neither or both: Dragon & Self. Think not and/or but and/both! But irrevocably changed for the better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia

No one can, or will do it for you; not even “God.” That said you must do for yourself what your heart sees as best alone.

My conceit/conclusion: Religion is about, but not, God. Who by any other name remains: I AM. No single prophet, religion or governance is a revealed truth absolute . . . an answer to what we can know now and/or at the time of our death: face-to-face

Among my many enemies, most manufactured by myself, within, by misapprehension, the worst: thinking myself unlovable, abandoned, I became self-abandoning . . . a martyr to nothing, reverential to appearance superficial. Enslaved by beauty . . . but . . . is not truth beautiful?! “God is patient, kind, slow to anger . . . .” but never does for us what we must do for ourselves.

All else seems addiction, a dance of avoidance, ignorance . . .

be well.

PS

I remain astonished at my ignorance. Reverent towards The Author of all love and life. Confident who/what has lead me so far will continue beyond what now seems beyond all things.

. . . discovery never ends. Again, be well, be beloved of yourself as no one but “God” can.

“Forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom.”

“My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless.” - Giacomo Casanova (born 2 April 1725)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/April#2

130402 03:01 basis

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

put your brain in the microwave!

'If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.'
@ http://www.brainpickings.org/
put your brain in the microwave!