Infinito: 22

By Jonathan Gabriel Raskas

…if what around you is real, Your life is clear, And your path of decisions Shall never be off course... –Jonathan Gabriel Raskas, 2.22.2016 “Infinito 22 is a bold and courageous journey, author Jonathan Raskas has bravely shared with us, the reader. It is the journey of a father, living in his finite life as he crashes into his ‘infinite realm.’ Few of us will ever experience the profound depth of the loss of a child. Nor would we ever imagine the infinite breathe it may create. Infinito 22, where the “finite box” of one’s life’s story resides in ones ‘infinite’ legacy, is as beautiful as the man who wrote it, the children he raised and the son he lost.” —Dr. Phil Dembo, author of The Real Purpose of Parenting: The Book You Wish Your Parents Read

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483484730

Book preview

Raskas

Copyright © 2018 Jonathan Gabriel Raskas

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8474-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8475-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8473-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905092

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 6/19/2018

I dedicate this book to my children,

Jasmine Leah, Ralph Gabriel and Natalie Eve.

They have shown me the light in the shadow.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Jonathan earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York City and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Over the years, he has held positions including director of strategic planning, chief financial officer, president and currently works in the financial industry.

Educated in the liberal arts and sciences, Jonathan enjoys a wide range of interests including creative writing, landscape photography (photoscapestudio.com), poetry, gardening, culinary, Baroque music, scuba diving and aviation. He is a licensed scuba diver, airline transport pilot and flight instructor. He volunteers as a pilot for the medical air transport operated by Wings of Hope, based in St. Louis, flying children in need of medical care. He started a public charity in memory of his son, Ralph Gabriel Raskas, called RalphCares (RalphCares.org). In 2017, three days before his natural birthday in front of a judge, he legally changed his middle name to Gabriel as way to connect with his son.

PREFACE

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Impressionism focuses on the manner in which light illuminates an image. Impressionistic art is expressively concerned with physical movement as an integral part of the human experience and perception. There is movement in the stories of your life. In life, wisdom illuminates the human experience and our choices. The light of wisdom yields understanding in its shadows. Purpose begins inside the intention of the soul as we begin in breath. How does one navigate human life outside of the human experience? This evolves into your purpose.

The stories in my book are true, detailed, humorous, and heartbreaking about raising three children from kindergarten to college as a divorced father. I believe with strong conviction about leaving them an infinite legacy. My stories are connected with spiritual adhesive. This book will leave you with seeds of purpose to create your legacy. Choose to live your infinite legacy. It cannot be left in a last will and testament. This book will assist you in that endeavor. (infinito22.com)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

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BACKGROUD

This book is comprised of my thoughts. I am sure that my children and their mother would have their thoughts. I have always lived my life in pursuit of infinite purpose, gazing into the day and night sky since I can remember remembering.

I have been divorced since 2001 after having been married for about a decade. This book is about my thoughts of parenting three children from the ages of 7, 5, and 1 after my divorce while in my own pursuit of infinite purpose. The gates of college slowly creaked open with the sweetness of the six eyes who looked at me while I looked at them. As Jasmine and Ralph entered college their health began to fail within a blink of each other. Natalie was still in high school. I worked full time after my divorce while being emotionally and physically present for my children. My children came first. From what I now understand, I was one of the first fathers to insist on at least an equal sharing of time with my children. I remained firm until that was accomplished. I chose to be available for my children all the time. That was my way. I would have it no other way. My children’s medical matters were primarily handled by me. In 2015 Jasmine and Ralph, having returned from college, were living with me; Natalie divided her time between her mother and me. By 2016, Jasmine, although not well, went to live with her mother to provide me the opportunity to focus on Ralph. Jasmine said, Ralph is going to need all of you. I will have to wait.

I am still alternating at being in peace and struggling with the anguish of the time period beginning with 2013 and trying to understand my own view of my life inside the context of these events. This book is not ostensibly about the events but how they consumed my being. I found a deeper meaning within my life as I wrote away the year 2017. The writing began as a therapeutic exercise and it migrated into a form that soon became the shape of a book. I will share my hike into the forest of meaning. The prose and the photographs are my story. My words are not dressed appropriately without my photography. The images bring emotional saturation, tone, contrast, highlights and shadows to the narrative. I always pay close attention to the first and last hour of sunlight. In this space, my thoughts are most clear and creative, as are my photographs. If there is light, there is a shadow. Where the light meets the shadow, there is creative, infinite energy. It has always been a time when I contemplate so that my thoughts become more intentional. Each image has been chosen to partner with the words in the chapter. The eyes can see what the words cannot say and together they become the story. I hope your response from reading my book is meaningful to you. Being a parent has taught me more about purpose and how to be inquisitive of my soul. Each chapter is in the infinite space where the shadow meets the ray of light. It is where my life happens. It is where I journey.

This book is also therapy. Therapy for tragic, unexpected loss. As I wrote each of these sentences, I got a measure of comfort because it allowed me to be with my son Ralph Gabriel both in thought and in writing. It allowed me to tell other people about my son Ralph Gabriel. And in that way, the life of Ralph, his wisdom and understanding, still shines brightly not just for our family, but hopefully for you as you read this story.

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1

The Light in The Shadow: An Infinite Space

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A world filled with material objects and constructs pushes us away from an infinite purposeful life. I truly desire the duration of my existence in the oxygen to be one of purpose. I begin with intention thereby connecting me to the infinite and leaving my legacy in its rightful place when I am no longer here in this here. It is my intention to share this book so that perhaps you can use the distillation of the stories and take the roadmap to a more purposeful infinite journey, one where you too will leave behind a legacy for you, your children, family and friends. If we all live this way, we all live forever.

I view the world with a childlike curiosity and a respect for the unknown. If I had not travelled the way I did, I could not travel this way in a book. It’s something like, If you come to my funeral, I will come to yours. There will be many stories. Easy to read stories. We will laugh and cry together. I am calling this endeavor a photo-novel.

My photography has all the words I have no language to communicate with in letters.

Read and absorb the photography. This is the most accurate story.

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul…."

                                    Song of Myself

                                      Walt Whitman

We all share the universe. We are the human universe.

Our moments connect the finite to the infinite. The moments are in the shadows. This book is about infinite purpose. You will find it where you look. I have been looking for a long time.

What makes this book different? Not a self-help, not a self-discovery, it is about the human intersection, and the interaction between time and existence. It is not religious.

It uses concepts and precepts from mankind and religious spiritualism to provide formulas and axioms to explain. It’s no different than Newtonian physics or Einstein’s theory of relativity. These formulas cross all religious boundaries. The rise and fall of our chest begins at birth and comes to a slow stop when a person leaves their existence in this world. Our alarm clocks wake us up each morning on planet earth.

The anecdotes and stories in this book are true and accurate but their connection is creative and personal in thought.

This book is a microscopic attempt to collect my moments and weave together a tapestry of a blanket that can be used as a warm, cozy comforter—the kind you can crawl under and stay emotionally warm and safe. This comforter has become my personal cave. It is dark because it is hidden from our everyday senses. Yet, it is full of light and shadows, light as bright as the reflection of the sun on a beach of receding tide.

I saw because I was looking. If you look, you will see too.

This book is really all about what can’t be said or explained. It is about the psyche of you and me and what the shadow leaves behind. The last frontiers of science are the human brain and consciousness. In my opinion, the psyche will never have complete human understanding. It’s no different than the question of where the universe ends. When you look into the night sky, imagine where it no longer exists.

Think on this and your mind will diverge. The human brain is infinite in its own right. It cannot process an infinite question of infinite response. Yet, it has infinite thought capability. The human mind is a mirror of the universe. Thoughts are infinite. It will never be fully dissected and written into a medical school text. It simply cannot. Hopefully, the spices of thought in this book will add new flavors to the days of your life.

There was a time thousands of years ago when people lit candles and had time to think without the influence of the internet and the pace of life in a connected 2018. The age before electronics was an easier time to live a purposeful life. This book is timeless and infinite in its attempt to use the moments of my personal life to open your thoughts to questions like:

Do my thoughts exist forever?

Do I have to speak them for them to enter the infinite and then, do they now exist forever?

It is my purest intention to write this book as a painting. It is my artwork, full of color and colorful reflections. I am not concerned about my stories or words but the reaction of the reader. It is my intent from my deepest meditative posture to invite you to think about the glue holding the events of your life in its linear chain and outline. Some of that adhesive and event DNA has seeped into the events of your life from the universe and your reactions.

Each set of eyes sees art differently. I cannot see a color and be sure the person next to me sees the same shade of color. We cannot exchange this agreement. I am writing about that comparison and my unique perception. I use my moments, words, poetry, and photography to create my perspective. Your perspective is uniquely yours.

I made every effort to provide you accurate detail and emotional brushstrokes so after you turn the last page, perhaps you will think about each breath you take until your chest rises for the last time. With the utmost sincerity, I aspire that my words and thoughts are not offensive or contradictory to any belief or religion. When human life first began, there was no religion. This is the place that me, as the writer with a shy approach, has authored this book.

My words no longer speak to all whom I have loved. I know they will hear me through my writings and my thoughts. I meditate my words. What I have discovered will help me to coexist as a balance on the one side of the scale, which is heavily weighted with the pain of tragic loss. I wish for this to be my equilibrium in the hours ahead, to provide myself with the endurance to finish my marathon. I do not want to say I wish I had more time. For the anxiety to finish each day’s list is in direct competition to the purpose of this book. My legacy is my moments. I wish to use and choose them with thought, focus and purpose.

Life is a work of art that is truly never finished. Your legacy is your life and it will hang on the wall of the universal museum observed by those who absorbed your legacy. There is an energy embodied in each sunrise. What we do with that is a matter of choice for every day is not a dress rehearsal. Every 24 hours constitutes another act of your Playbill.

Henry David Thoreau said, Live life at home like a traveler.

Wake into each day with the perspective of discovery and curiousness. Thoreau is correct, I think, and as Rene Descartes wrote, I think therefore I am.

I have come to understand that without circumstances, humanity does not question purpose. If I define my personal existence by my circumstances, my relationship with the infinite becomes finite. I merely become the reaction to what is in front of me. Like watching a movie. How does one hover above their daily life to pursue purpose? This source of energy originates in the soul. How does one live a human life without the clarity of death to find this energy? One can connect to the infinite and share in its endlessness.

These writings are a combination of many decades of increasing clarity as the fog of the recent years evaporated into warming, morning air. My thoughts became clear and crisp as the outline of linear shapes take form when a fog slowly lifts. I never gave myself permission before 2016 to find my own infinite spiritual intention.

Randomness is infinite. Finite converts random back to a place of comfort even if we pursue greatness. Greatness then emerges from the intention of infinite purpose.

As my grandfather Ralph Raskas frequently reminded me, The good old days are now.

This book rests in the murky waters between fiction and truths. My stories are accurate and true. I have let the stories emerge within my emotional flow. While writing, emotions emerged and I wrote them down. Real life evolves naturally with and without thought. I have allowed these stories that have no explanation or connection to the apparent subject in discussion to emerge. However, in my subconscious they must have been connected. Like a piece of viewed art, my stories will be viewed and you will absorb from them what you do. Our memories often get rewritten, either embellishing them or stripping them of good and bad. As I sat down to write this book, my emotions led the way. Emotions engraved in the psyche are complex. They do not always make logical sense. It does not matter. The truth all came out.

In college, I spent two semesters engulfed in poetry lectured by, Kenneth Koch, an American poet who rubbed shoulders with the likes of Allen Ginsberg. Koch taught me that poetry speaks to our emotions. He taught me to listen clearly to the words and the rhythm of alliteration and tonality. It was not just words but sounds also elicit emotion. I discovered over the next 30 years that he was more right than I knew. Wisdom distills words out of the soul and onto the canvas of literature. For the expression of words in literature is our existence to art. Without writing and recording events, our time is elusive. At some point in time, all we have is pictures and words. Remember this last sentence; it will be back.

As the years slid down and by, I began to think of poetry as the ability to capture emotions from a given moment. Similarly, my photography captures visual emotions. Together both of these mediums have recorded my emotions and moments. With a deliberate understanding, I have used these creative energies to record events I wanted to preserve. I often go back to revisit photographs and cradle them in my reflections. I immediately feel the emotion in its total impact just by seeing a photograph I have captured.

At times, you will read my verse and it will be poetic. This is deliberate. This is the way I think. I decided to incorporate my photography because without these pictures, part of the story is untold and void of certain color. I hope the reader will feel side by side with me as the pages are turned. We meet ourselves again and again on some frequency that is mysterious to me. I have written this book after years of existential thought, unexpected deaths and the motility of time, which fueled my creative bank account.

The pursuit of greatness within each of us can be unobstructed. I am convinced of this possibility. However, I have been challenged to find a way to simultaneously carry emotional pain, tragedy and happiness. In the venn diagram of life, these emotions intersect and are not mutually exclusive. One should identify with their spirit, not their circumstance.

The instance of each moment becomes the infinitely divisible moment that embodies purpose. In an infinite moment in time and space, there is immortality. Here the theory of relativity and time begin to surface in the existence of one’s experience. The relevance in these moments is if we focus.

I remember being with my father as a young child and playing with colorful wooden blocks in a variety of geometric shapes. They came in a cylinder with a silver metal lid. Years later, I played with the same blocks on the floor with my young children, Jasmine, Ralph and Natalie.

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At times the children were my blocks

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How to Endure Pain While Finding Meaning

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At a very young age, Ralph wanted to read music and to play the guitar. In the