Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

Tags

2017, 7*, angel, circle, clock, doing, everything, glass, lifetimes, light, nothing, Salisbury Cathedral, speech, statue, stone, time

                Salisbury Cathedral

                angels fizz and jagger touch
                a single flame of tongue

                the oldest working clock
                shows no time anymore;

                so much empty stone
                so many lives lost

                only coloured light of lineage
                and majesty keeping inward –

                so much hopeful effort frozen
                in faraway stare outwards –

                curlicue ends of stone form
                perfect circles of nothing

                suspended in everything

 

 

there is nothing ventured that gain doesn’t think it so, there is everything gained by staying in the centre of the circle; read the whole sequence as it hangs unearthly in space: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

doing wormhole: nothing significant
glass wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
lifetimes wormhole: Open – All – Ours
light wormhole: darkness
speech & stone & time wormhole: stone

 

stone

Tags

2017, 7*, acceptance, afterlife, barrow, breath, death, girl, hair, life, lost, parent, place, settlement, sky, speech, stone, time, world

courtesy of https://historicengland.org.uk – hope she doesn’t mind

                                there was
                                just out
                                and hunt
                                and gather

                                and then
                                we stopped
                                to keep
                                and found

                the whole world wider than the sky

                                that we
                                got lost
                                to where
                                we were

                                and time
                                which came
                                to late
                                and so we

                                hauled
                                the stones
                                to fix
                                place

                                and dis
                                covered
                                in …
                                and life

                                and death
                                the smell of
                                deepness
                                the breath

                                of stone
                “you know what they were talking about
                                in class …
                                Kirsty …”

                                scampering
                                sideways
                                down the
                                slope untied

                                hair waving
                                all over
                                the place
                “… they were talking about barrows, burial

                                chambers;
                                we’re standing
                                on them
                                now – ”

                                all over
                                the place;
                                I’ve come
                                from the

                                ground I’ll
                                go back to
                                the ground
                                when time

 

perspective; read the whole sequence as it treads sideways down through time: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

acceptance wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
breath & hair & life wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
death wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
girl wormhole: neither nude nor / descending a staircase
sky wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
speech wormhole: retirement
stone & time & world wormhole: weight

 

Virginia

Tags

2017, 20th century, 5*, chess, inside, retirement, society, teaching, thought, Virginia Woolf, writing

                                              Virginia wanted
                                to dispense with tale-tell-all
                rough-carved and ugly in ungainly moves
                                across the cornered chessboard

                                              but what
                                of the train of thought she thought
                as more essential than denouement
                                and in and in she went

 

retirement #9: I understand this much: that Virginia Woolf was nurtured in, but wanted to bridge out from, the more of [patriarchal] social imperialism; it has waited this long for me to appreciate her need and courage whilst emerging from the more of unattributable results/problem-solving-backwards managerialism in what should be public (not political, not (someone’s) personal (career)) service (not done-deal) into retirement, in an era when it all seems to be lurching horribly right again; read the whole sequence as it extricates itself from customs: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

20th century wormhole: to rescue something
retirement wormhole: strain
society wormhole: darkness
writing wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie

 

weight

Tags

2017, 8*, anatta, April, beauty, breeze, career, circle, clouds, countryside, identity, lesson planning, right angle, seeing, stone, stone circles, teaching, thought, time, view, work, world

                                                              April clouds are stone
                                              foreboding over the countryside
                                                                                   placed in circles across the land
                                                                                              over millennia

 

 

                I had wanted
                to follow thought and view

                at right-angle
                to all the world

                to find it beautiful
                in all its stark

                to lose my weight
                in perfect shifting breeze

                but had to work
                and plan the bend

                and case the sight
                and lost my sight

                (and gained some weight)
                I … had to work

 

retirement #8: when you slip out of a career and look back on what was achieved, there is only a quiet and drifting cloud to contemplate although the experience of working through it was of unworkable stone which you knew all the time shouldn’t be the case, but it was, it was; read the whole sequence as it drifts across the skies: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beauty wormhole: Sylvia
breeze wormhole: 1968
career & identity wormhole: strain
clouds wormhole: the // orange rose
seeing wormhole: Day Out
stone wormhole: reprieve
teaching wormhole: seen but not heard
thought wormhole: handsome
time wormhole: time travel
work wormhole: holiday
world wormhole: reading // unstirred

 

strain

Tags

2017, 7*, breakdown, career, identity, music, nude, openness, retirement, sound, vinyl

                I’ve lost the needle that settles
                between grooves and plays the circling music

                on fluff the arm skates across the ridges
                making awful rip of a career

                it skints along a ridge edge – wedges in,
                bounces out – a scratch to repeat

                against all reasonable hope that it might not;
                I cannot hear the pops and crackles,

                the greeting space before the
                opening strain, awaiting nudity

 

retirement #7: Virginia Woolf’s first novel was ‘the Voyage Out’; she wrote much of it as she experienced two breakdowns and a number of stark bereavements; this is not a trip to venture and return, this is a discovery to venture and change; so much changes between generation, within and across lives, the further you travel the deeper you stay where you are; read the whole sequence: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown & retirement wormhole: what wounds have you got?
career wormhole: seen but not heard
identity wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
music wormhole: within
openness wormhole: 1968
sound wormhole: ssreet chak-chak

 

brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie

Tags

2017, 6*, breath, brown, eyes, hair, identity, life, neck, nose, portrait, red, retirement, shirt, tie, Virginia Woolf, writing

                                brown corduroy shirt
and dark redwine tie

                finding Virginia
                                              young before gathered and drapèd hair
                                              over enquiring philtrum
                old where sternomastoids meet
                below the whole larynx readying to write properly
                                              and hooded eyes half closed to stolidity
                                                              half open to breath

 

 

read the whole sequence: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …; I bought myself some new shirts with the no-blame severance pay I accepted to make it all stop – one of the shirts is a mid-brown corduroy that naps a darker brown when stroked because it hasn’t washed worn yet; the tie I bought from a charity shop before I even started teaching – deep burgundy red, slim and tonic in the light; I have been meaning to get in to Virginia Woolf for quite some time, but the afternoon light of the parlour has never been quite right; am I pathetic: oh yes, but at least I can write about it; Carol likes to travel as an instinctive way to comb-through the threads of career and life; we planned a trip to the stones in Wiltshire started with the Avebury stones …

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breath wormhole: and smile / like a bud
brown wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
eyes wormhole: darkness
hair wormhole: handsome
identity wormhole: bud
life wormhole: somewhere
red wormhole: love and precision
retirement wormhole: retirement
writing wormhole: no / thing

 

retirement

Tags

2017, 7*, air, blood, career, face, feeling, identity, managerialism, mist, movement, murder, professionalism, retirement, smile, speech, table, teaching

                           retirement

---

                                     .                                      ,                                           .

                           ,                .                                                                                     ;                                                 ,                                                                                     .                       –                 .

                ,             ,                                                       ,  “                                                                     ,                                 ”,         … there

---

                           had been a murder
                           I could feel it all around me and
                           it wasn’t just because there was

                           mist all about – suggested movement,
                           sudden stop – and there is
                           no body

                           that I can see
                           no speech balloon of blood
                           from a face’s final cry

                           but a gentle air
                           where the table is that I
                           use to pound my fists

                           and a swirly smile
                           that told me so, dispersing and
                           unattributive

 

retirement #6: here it is, the full story in all of its salacious detail; restricted strictly to those over 18 years of age – warning: graphic violence, with scenes of intent unattribularity

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & mist wormhole: 1968
career & teaching wormhole: holiday
identity & smile wormhole: six paramitas
managerialism wormhole: dry rot
professionalism & table wormhole: while
speech wormhole: so pleased to see you again

 

where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …

Tags

2017, 7*, austerity, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, conscience, conscientiousness, death, doing, effort, fall, gravity, illusion, inspiration, karma, Lucifer, mind, now, practice, self-cherishing, Shantideva, superhero, talking to myself, time, virtue

                where it has taken birth
                may it not decrease … there are

                tiny filaments here and there
                from time to time
                connecting the flexing muscle
                further corridors within the firing mind

                it’s not a whole package
                nicely taped up in cardboard
                and delivered with a smile, a signature
                and a how-might-I-do-better survey

                it … won’t happen like that;
                here’s where if anywhere
                the austerity takes place
                here’s where if anywhere I develop

                gaunt lines of virtue
                in my cheek, after the inspiration
                has gone:
                just keep on keeping on; if I try super-heroically –

                ag-grandiosely – there is nothing
                to let ‘not decrease’,
                if it does not burn it is not fire;
                I am either serious or not

                and if not, I should;
                go back
                calm down and create new filaments
                quietly and accordingly

                anything ethical
                should be conducted … only,
                not become an eater of conscience
                like Lucifer’s hapless fool

                simply bargaining
                with illusion is the loss of its finding … out,
                the gravity of the flailing fall
                exponential

                to each and every action
                where it will take a long time to gain ground; death
                affords time to practise
                now, all the time now, not

                later, not I-did-have-it-but-
                now-I’ve-lost-it … NOW

 

right-angled out of chapter IV of Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara … or in

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & doing & talking to myself wormhole: six paramitas
death wormhole: ‘never look up’?
mind wormhole: moment
practice wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
superhero wormhole: passersby
time wormhole: the bench

 

six paramitas

Tags

2017, adjustment, aspiring Bodhichitta, being, doing, eyebrow, feet, giving, identity, joy, Mahayana, morality, patience, sand, seeing, settling, shoulders, sitting, skin, smile, talking to myself, the Six Perfections, true nature, wisdom

six paramitas

give, Mark, like you are peeling and cutting off the
scaley skin that cloys around you obscuring your

pure light; be cool, Mark, shelter from the spikes and
eyes of provocation, the winning curl of enticement;

endure, Mark, and face the walls with due measure
and renewed adjustment across a noble brow; nurture,

Mark, a modest smirk: you have the time to do this
all even when busy; return, Mark, to a settled release,

hung from the point between your shoulders like a
perfect coat-hanger; be, Mark, the eye wide shut,

that sees the further shore is in the very sand you
squelch between your feet, sinking lower into pudding

 

these emerged from the section of Gems of Dharma, Jewels of Freedom by Je Gampopa introducing the Six Perfections: delving into etymology reveals facets and perspectives like walking around a display case at a museum and really having a good look at something fascinating; and then I thought, c’mon, Mark, `about time you started standing on your own two feet; so, I sat down to do so

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: singsong chant
doing & seeing wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
feet wormhole: sleep now
giving wormhole: my seat // now
identity & talking to myself wormhole: holiday
settling wormhole: moment
sitting wormhole: the bench
smile wormhole: Open – All – Ours

 

to rescue something

Tags

2017, 20th century, 7*, anxiety, blue, chair, childhood, Dad, depression, dining room, divorce, Eglinton Hill, family, feeling, Genesta Road, great aunt Mary, life, purpose, talking, Thames, visit, windows, World War

                Mary came to visit one year,
                I think before Dad left, sense

                of anxiety and visitation to
                get things right; we gathered

                in the dining room, she sat
                regal in one of those blue

                wing-back chairs to one side
                of the fireplace; they talked

                of things and the way things
                were while the war built up

                and the way things are now,
                we crawled about under the

                legs of the chairs while they
                talked, through the tunnels

                to rescue something with
                several teddies in tow; we

                kept one of those blue chairs
                when we moved, I remember

                sitting in it feeling the coarse
                knap and the horsehair stuffing

                in the lonely bedroom with
                my back to the high windows

                anxious about the purpose
                to do with my life … is

 

quite naturally, but unforseeably, this was written quite considerably, and apocryphally, after: green-wine, but then everything knits together eventually

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

20th century wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
anxiety wormhole: ‘never look up’?
blue wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
childhood & Dad & divorce & Thames wormhole: south horizon
depression wormhole: what wounds have you got?
Eglinton Hill wormhole: alighted
family wormhole: familiasyncopation
Genesta Road wormhole: work
life wormhole: darkness
talking wormhole: embodying
windows wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams