awakening

Arising from a death like sleep, aroused by a dream. Often a string of thoughts or words lost between the time to time of moving from horizontal to vertical. To sleep is to dream and in dreams I am informed, not so much by what the content was, but what was implied/inferred.

Regardless the sublimity of revelation, it is lost between my being an inch worm crossing galaxies of thoughts at the speed of lightning. Merely a way, not The Way. A process of finding a reason to live another day. Wondering less why those who when assassinated forgave instead of laughing humorously at the folly of their executioners. We learn nothing from destroying our adversaries.

09:36

The world, I will soon leave you, is changing rapidly and I sense myself a failure at what I would change. Or, at the very least, protest. World extinction by: _________. Yet several come to mind blazing: over population, corruption of air water, land. Obscene profits made from the labor and resources of people otherwise unable to share in the boon. And one in particular: The science of war is death. The science of life is, however, entirely another matter.

I sense, think, feel, intuit myself as a curator and anthropologist of life interactive, collaborative, and as it might be ideally given the study of love versus war. Add, I have in time come to conclude myself an anarchist as I believe Jesus was; as were all those whose words I closely follow, seeking what they sought.

In sincere honesty I can find no label for myself. At one time I was a photojournalist and currently am grieving for a friend who’s life is facing traumatic change. John Henry White, of The Chicago Sun-Times fame, and I were once roommates during an annual University of Missouri photojournalism workshop. His remarks shared across the darkened room before sleep have remained seminal to who, what, why and where I am. He and his entire department of news photographers we laid off. Made redundant by video and toy cameras in cellular telephones. It never really was about the equipment but the vision, version and mind behind directing what was recorded.

We the people of this planet are essentially what we consume, for good or ill, by way of those who now rule. The Merchant Princes who would be Emperors. Multinational corporations having destroyed any and all sense of national sovereignty.

We who dance to the fiddler’s tunes must, in some sense be willing to pay the musician a laborer’s wage. Yet the cost has become distorted to the extend and degree too high disallowing all the rest of us a life.

I have faith in the generations to come, who will discover as I have, the world owes us no livelihood. Conscious as I was while teaching photojournalism that there were not enough jobs going available for those who wanted them. So I taught my students to see what they were looking at, on multidimensional levels, as both still and motion capture. It follows that we are all captors of life via imagery. And those who “Serve and Protect” the status quo and wealthy are nervous that they in their turn will be held accountable to we the ultimate authority.

A leg and armless man lay before me with a pointing device surfing the internet above his head. A Vietnam Veteran with unit patches displayed; he remains were I left him. Yet never will he leave my consciousness whenever I see the images of bombast and pretense.

“A picture is worth a thousand/ten thousand words.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_wordsw Seems cynical now at my age given my knowledge of poetry and considering The Gettysburg Address. To name but a few words springing immediately to mind. That in their turn describe better the abstraction of what things are about. Then too are the numerous things too small to photograph meaningfully. The spirit moving us for example. Thinking back to my familiarity with Civil War photography and retroactively applying what Lincoln said to the meaning/value of the carnage.

When I arrived in Chicago I called John Henry White without reply. Later, on the street, speaking with other shooters, I was informed he was teaching African/American children and possibly at university level.

Love as verb, never dies. I love his silence as well as our long ago dialogs; and our art is about being witnesses to life. How wonderfully precious it is whether acknowledged as such or not.

Given that yesterday was “D-Day” and Pam’s son’s birthday I will close with a remembrance of meeting a giant of a man at the El Paso Veteran’s Clinic. I did not photograph him since he was astride a scooter and about to die from pancreatic cancer . . . and . . . yet I will long remember what he showed me of his scars, the horrors he’d seen in the Death Camps liberated, or the portrait of himself decorated by several nations . . . a handsome Mexican American even now in his nineties. A paratrooper with fifty-five jumps to his credit.

So you see John, if you ever read this, remember what you gave me. What I hope we give to those who follow. To have courage to be real and address what needs attention fearlessly. . . . Even if we must paint our prison, cave or tomb, with bloody fingers self inflicted.

130607 EDT 01:10 awakening

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

player piano

Music in all venues and modes expresses best a soul’s longing to love and be loved. Yet pictures came second in my appreciation the depredations of men to men indiscriminate. Variously my dreams are dominated by both. But now remembering best the discovery of images, illicit and impermissible otherwise, the carnage of Nazi Germany. I was quite young and curious, the photographs, were stored in a chicken coop; I’ve never been the same since.

“The same” as what? Before my witness I had held, exclusively, a sense of being unwanted singular. Then a race chosen for the final solution. But then, at the age of ten or so, I knew nothing of race, creed, gender persecution. In prayer I pray that I will find the answer before I die: why do we do what we do?

More importantly why do we ignore the issues before us when in truth what can happen to another can happen to you or me individually or collectively. The Golden Rule’s dark sibling: “What goes around comes around.”

In profile he seemed crushed as an abandoned automobile recycled into its smallest possible remainder. Around him was the sound of a player piano accelerated to gibberish, the roll torn through him a song in mute silence hysterical. I knew the dream was important. But was confused with free associations herein attempted the distillation of. Sometimes I sense the suicide of the world as its going to hell in a grocery cart bumping down hill towards the precipice of extinction. With age came a sense of integration: the spirit of what I heard and saw in both dream and ordinary of my days. All my ambitions to analogize this have failed and that applies to even this: writing. My greatest joy is discovering the genius of others who have no sense their gifts. Apparently to them improbable since they lack the education or franchise of being intellectual or capable of anything greater than being a cog in the wheel of industry.

In point of fact I would not be alive were it not for the kindness of random strangers who by acknowledgment or affirmation lent me a sense that I should seek life instead of death. Even now I sense I own nothing, being tenant and steward of something I have yet to inhabit fully. Possibly a self difficult to fully incarnate?

At the moment I can look across the recent dialogs and events: sense, seeing, intuiting then knowing the source of what I am writing at the moment. I feel at home here. At the same time I feel at home in my mind. Reopening all the myths and metaphors I used to hold as fixed and immutable objects to which I became subject.

If nothing else my thoughts tend more directly towards not being factory farmed for the amusement, pleasure and profit of anyone or thing institutional.

Of course I remember Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano” and reviewing the summary on line remember better the spirit of the author than the narrative. Which is true of all my reading, the spirit in which it was written and what was sought, at least my sense of it.

We know ourselves simply absent all the arcana and esoteric language of academia. Follow the feelings when things go bump in the night and you will find them more benign that you expect. In retrospect I think all the rest is smoke and mirrors, bells and smells, magical thinking that serves no one really well . . . a sorta kinda I/Thou, not I/Them.

Real change is possible if you stick with changing your perceptions via stone cold sober mindfulness of what makes you heart sing and what does not.

130606 EDT 02:47 player piano

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

loves rewards

Love’s reward is itself. Not what we receive but what we give. C. G. Jung suggested that we must “constellate” grief. A statement taking me years to understand in my own way. Remaining until these past few days of love realized as life renewed. Drawn kicking and screaming from the tomb of my solitary cell into whatever comes next.

I think grief, as expressed in love, has and end. Discovering the gift of what was is sufficient. The departed, were they now able to speak, would lovingly ask that we get on with our lives. I write consciously: that we grieve differently and for different things. Speaking for myself, exclusively, I remember the child who grieved not being loved. At least in a way comprehensible. Then remembering dad calling the time he died to say goodbye. In a sincere and profound sense, realized now, he healed my self-enslavement to his business ambitions. For which nothing but his last words could heal.

Do I redeem myself or them? Absolution is rendered by God alone. What remains of and within me is a rock steady confidence that they gave what they had to give, giving no more, nor less, to themselves. Add. To blame another is to disable knowing yourself: the talent/genius, resilience, will to live and love infinitely now.

Futile I suppose but I do ask would I do it all over again? Yes! All the dings, bents, scars, wattles and warts are who I am now. Within them—all combined—I find myself at peace and joy able to love again despite the vicissitudes and darts potential. My wrinkles more now are from smiles rather than age.

Death is no failure since in life there are options otherwise intolerable.

But then one must of needs spend one’s life well, preferably by one’s own measurement of values independent of those whose lives are led by slogans — who practice nothing of what they preach/teach. Think of life as one dollar, then think how much of that one dollar you are willing to spend that love, life, liberty continue farther beyond your one singular self. Think quality not quantity.

The problem with wealth is there is no end, never enough, maniacal in its dictates. Becoming amoral unethical enslaving all else to its desire. Think addiction.

"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become."

“What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer is the test of love.”

- Brooke Foss Westcott

I do not write to be memorable. But that you remember yourself, as precious. Regardless of all judgments against that value; until you meet the Judge. Cognizant that I can change nothing but myself; the only paradigm available to me. My perceptions and concerns have in significant extent been answered and my process is what faith can be, at the least to me: vast. The remaining concerns are more sharply drawn, revealed in greater contrast, begun with the scars upon my heart. Deeply incised into the body of it.

What I am, is, as I was, merely biodegradable first to last, yet in this time I’ve come to know and love all of life. And of you beloved be beloved of yourself.

In parting this time, need I remind you, to do no harm?

130605 EDT 04:44 loves rewards

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

gratitude

Certain, sure, apprehended gratitude suffuses these moments, two galaxies merged with arctic clarity. The near frost of a Hudson Bay cold front rendering the night sky so close it seems to swim around me limpid and wet; a river of stars. They say there are times of Northern Lights about, and for, which I eagerly look forward. Returned from my former newer mountains of the Organ to the Green knowing with surety ship my service. All my life’s chores reconciled into a new purpose.

All my auditions passed by guile, stealth, accomplishment or panache. What remains, perhaps, the most difficult, will be to sort and load that which I will carry forward minus all my dear friends left behind. Annie will be first then following: the books without which I might otherwise not wish to live. Various cooking items, Pam either has or mine are better. Finally how to put it upon wheels and move it twenty-five-hundred miles. And about this, I confess, myself in something of a dither. Nothing for it but to do it.

Yet again I am reluctant to leave Pam for even a brief time. And St. Johnsbury is such a wonder to me. Reminiscent of my sense of America, the before not the afterward.

To close: I have a sense born of silence and awe, what I offer is what you already possess: yourself. Yet unexplored yourself becomes merely subsistence. Or existence as lively as a stone. My ignorance outdistances my grasp yet by experience rendering each day the ordinary of my life, extraordinary.

Affirmations abound when seeking what we are consciously within in the context of life; difficult but not impossible. In a sense you and you alone can define yourself. Keep It Simple Stupid, it is not about you but us, all of we: the family of life. Each has a role or part to play, a way to be useful and fulfilling to the process of our collective process.

Be well and pray for me, I need all the help I can get to accomplish this next audition.

130604 EDT 01:04 gratitude

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

past midnight love is

Heaven I know, within, is manifest outwardly by animals who seek my comfort in their distress. Ginger of “Gingersnap” sought me sleeping in a chair—climbing into my lap. Then hearing distant thunder I knew she needed me a bulwark against her fear.

Animals, small and great, know their instinct for love better than we who use them as companions against that which goes bump in the night, friend or foe. I remember each avidly from cradle to my nearness now to the grave for their adornment greater than any jewel can bestow.

I had fallen asleep early last evening aware I wanted to share the sense I have, especially here in St. Johnsbury, VT of being caressed by gentle cooling breezes while wondering in prayer what and where those animals and humans passed are. And I know God more real than myself and all is well; exceedingly so.

130603 EDT 01:02

Tintinnabulate suffused with joyous love we are bonded with infinity.

What will soon have been my opening days to both love and St. Johnsbury, VT I will remember best several things: the riot of spring best ever yet, the slow steady dance towards one another of lovers who have finally surrendered to life, and this night I saw a modest flashing across the dark as I spoke of a man I once loved and worked with.

He was younger than I having a magnificent tenor voice frequently singing forth the solos of Handel's “Messiah” four floors above the ground where we were roofing new construction together. And I miss and weep for his loss, his passing from my life slain by love; well actually suicide since he loved a woman who used and abused him for what he might accomplish as a building contractor.

For me love seems impossible when I attempt to hold it to a standard or value instead of for itself as expressed; given freely without expectation of gratitude. And I knew this too well having fallen in love with his wife’s best friend who also left me for points and reasons unknown/unknowable.

Each woman in their turn was at that impossible apogee of beauty fecund yet mature having several children yet promising more. But it is not they or women in general I might slander but he whom I would extol.

Age is relevant only on death certificates since in reality we generally achieve something like nineteen and stop while our bodies march onward. And some of us look like death while dancing at that certain age within. A Sea bee veteran of Vietnam he taught me the ultimate futility of a monkey attempting carnal knowledge of a greased football kicked before his feet chasing it.

Among other things discussed were issues of: a broken down bus carrying several people to a prayer meeting. Did in fact God make the bus break or did it simply fall apart? Add, I loved playing his straight man, when Jim Harrington would do the Andy Williams skit with a bear—milk and cookies. I would shuffle about nodding and begging for the cookies while he would quiz me. Rare were the milk and cookies bestowed and I fawning fainting in gratitude. Yet he was the first to share with me the experience of having friend’s bodily effluents and parts smeared across his face; or merely the simple terrors of war first hand. And then add the experience of returning from the defense of democracy to be spat upon or, worse ignored. For what did friend and foe die? And what meaning the savage indifference the veterans received?

This time and place is not special in any way, save, perhaps, my heart grows nominally large to acknowledge and receive the love coincident with it. Manifest in flashing lights illumining the night of my sadness for the loss of Jim. If nothing else prayer has changed me who remains astonished awestruck and reverent the response.

16:27

Time to time, I think out of my mind, the silence swallowing all that I saw and what was done to me finding a home and a reason to live another — day or more. Finally. The words alone weren’t enough, I needed an echo and now I’ve got one 5 by 5. Who would think that I’d be here at home and in love as I am finally. The threads of consciousness drawn together into a new cord/chord.

130602 EDT 05:21 past midnight love is

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

gingersnaps

To myself I am an uncomely man; nothing to look at—nothing to see. Yet M said I was handsome. And now Pamela and Ginger her companion, who is a forty something pound dog; seem to love me as I am.

For long I have considered myself unwanted and unlovable; a gargoyle atop Notre Dame, more like Quasimodo in appearance than an angel. Yet as I love God more than myself or anything or another I have learned in time that love is key in the following sense. Men love many superficially while women love singly and deeply and where men grow old and die remaining childish; women, it seems to me, are more wise being born that way. There are, of course, exceptions and then my wishful thinking. But by experience and survey I sense myself correct in my presumptions.

My sense, and experience, now, is that I love the three females above named nearly as I love God and merely like myself as I am. The Presence presents in manifold and delightful ways love, not merely for me, but all off us. Add. That my distress is ameliorated by the following: it is not men who are against me or women in general, but merely that men generally are only for themselves.

It is a term of endearment for me to call Pamela Joyce “Snickerdoodle” in the milk and cookies sense of reward. She greeted my long trip to her side with cookies and coffee to tide me over from the poor diet of inflight dinning. And has continued to nurture and succor me ever since.

In recent converse I mentioned being bewildered that so many confessed things otherwise uncommon about themselves and experiences profound. To which she replied something to the effect that I am, in person, something akin to a self-propelled Teddy Bear. Her remarks are, seems to me, that I have different modalities for interacting as a person or journalist.

As journalist we have little ability to help those who suffer but, instead, merely report it. For the moment I think I am nearing the nexus of all conflict in simple terms. Uncertain how to express it in ways comprehensible; especially those amongst us who do not read but look at things as what they want to see versus what is. Nones. If there were no ‘bad’, ‘good’ would have no meaning . . . and for me heaven is not stasis but farther learning . . . therefore death has no dominion.

I have an unusual reverence for the elderly having been schooled by my grandmother in love. The milk and cookies routine came from an elderly woman neighbor living alone for whom I on several occasions did chores and it was she who began my longing for: milk and cookies. Her kindness to me remains salvific and for which, in gratitude, I pay forward to even those whose behavior would assassinate me. Life being what it is, difficult but not impossible, yet when it becomes so death is preferable to fear and slavery.

This simpleton’s sense is that those most free to call the poor criminal are in fact criminal themselves having stolen all the resources for their own means and ends. Adding nothing to life, love, liberty but empty monuments to greed.

I am conservative of eternal verities; values that serve the populace. Considering, above all things, treatment of poverty the single greatest measurement of civilization and culture. Were I the John Jesus mentioned I would in any part, large or small, be disappointed with today considering His crucifixion then, now, continual, as criminal and a waste of talent.

To me He was not God but of, from, inspired, as any great teacher and prophet. Thus allowing for God to speak now in the voices of children, the poor, the elderly and those amongst us conscious of generosity, kindness, mercy, love, for all life in general, as best what is good absent decay. For me—now—is eternity, there being no yesterday or tomorrow. And grace only possible in what we agree upon. Sans our being manipulated by fear by those who profit from doing so.

My audition for the hand and attention of Pamela Joyce continues and in the process I sense, with humor, so it goes with God. Daily, hourly, moment to moment no distress or anger unresolved. Love never dies but is continually renewed.

I am ready to leave at any moment. Conscious that in saying goodbye is saying hello—love is a verb. And at that, merely another name for God.

130601 EDT 03:01 gingersnaps

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved

molting

By all signs, portents, personal myths and proclivities, it seems my choice best to stay with her; whom I have for so long loved. Yet, at that, it remains a molting, shedding the skin of what was to become, something else, at least new. Rarely did I mention the drama trauma to M since it seemed, initially, so futile . . . she then seemed up to her eyebrows in quick sand and a relationship with a man consuming her.

With her now I understand my intuition was correct yet the longing and love remained across the years. It was and remains innocent of all sense of possession; the crime we do in love calling it whatever, it becomes commercial. Subject to the vagaries and darts of legal vicissitudes. The doings of Kings & Queens, false leaders of everything.

But then. What of the children?

I was a child—once long ago—too well remembering the: ‘do not speak unless spoken to directly, go away and I’ll find time for you somewhere or time in the future.’ It never came—that promise. Yet I made it happen here and now. No. Not I alone; but of several influences beginning with “TAKE ME WITH YOU!”

Pervading all that has passed between us beginning (or was it renewed?) not long ago, there has been this slow dance towards one another, ineluctable as inevitable as an earthquake

23:15

Familiarity brings depth, a closer knowing; she too thought of molting; removing the outer skin to grow larger. Perhaps better described: neither of us is what we were before but different and becoming more intimate . . . larger woven into a continuum of a seamless cloth. This world is actually very small both by comparison with other places in our galaxy and the entire universe but also my current sense of service. A nurse from ‘our’ hospice visited today and I knew of, but not, her until I saw her.

Long ago I stood on a neighboring vacant lot awaiting the dawn arrival of a traveling tent circus. When I arrived there was a man, bag in hand, who explained he waited to rejoin them moving along having tarried there in my town and state for a time. I have held a sense now realized that we who serve in whatever manor are travelers not settlers of any given place but always following the need; theirs and ours to be what we are.

Then too, there are those of us, stationary, who travel vast distances, within and without, crossing all time. And for whom time and death have no meaning and nothing can hold captive.

130531 03:44

For The Interlocutor. I sense myself able to say yes or no. Knowing that were it otherwise I would remain addicted to the idea/ideal/idol of what is good, etc., not subject to decay. There is within any belief system those who would teach by rote what must be experienced if to have any value at all above control of the masses.

Reflecting, retroactively, similar circumstance/opportunities—remembering the frenzy and being riddled with doubt, I wonder now where the fear went?

. . . the thrall that held me captive for most all of my life . . . while fabulous also filled with suffering and grief. The latter certain to revisit me and mine since we are spiritual being in biodegradable packages for now but not forever.

"War is the science of destruction." - John S. C. Abbott

. . . discovered in this morning’s search for quotes. Of comparable value to Kurt Vonnegut and his reference to ‘death by mechanical puncture’ . . . rape of another kind?

Standing alone in the dark Mary’s robe of stars made dim by dawn smoking another cigarette, I am fraudulent to suggest that you do no harm, first to yourself, then another, but that’s me. I am a whore for words and images that demand my attention, remembering whores perform a service and politicians, in general seem only to serve themselves. The most obscene are those who so richly reward themselves at our expense and then worse, cataclysmic, are those who suggest that heaven is available only to the children, women and men who destroy themselves with bombs carried in to the midst of public concourse . . . but then there is always the terrorism of commercials suggesting the want of things versus the need of peace and sufficiency.

I will continue to protest the rape of us, we all, the family of mankind . . . it is a good time to be crazy

130530 EDT 05:05 molting

© 2013 by Jack Spratt—All Rights Reserved