so, how long is, a piece of string?

Tags

2018, 8*, anger, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, cause and effect, change, conditioned existence, doing, echo, enemy, event, existence, ghosts, identity, interaction, karma, knot, mind, others, practice, pre-existence, samsara, self-grasping, speech, talking to myself, tangle, thought, uncaused, untangling, web

                so, how long is a piece of string?

                always somehow, and ever somewhere,
                in a thousand different ways and
                a thousand different times, I set myself up,

                I set my self up
                to be the clever one, to be right in the end, and inevitably,
                like a thousand different echoes,

                someone comes and stands
                right in my way, or kneels in a ball behind me while someone else
                shoves me backwards

                so that I fall like a prat, and then someone else points
                and says ‘ha; ha’ in a thousand different ways; where
                do they all come from,

                do they just shimmer out of nowhere
                like ghosts just to frustrate me –whooo!–
                do they come out of nature,

                naturally unjust, naturally evil; are they just there
                existing from their own side, like a sharp bend in a long stretch of road
                {oh, come on,

                 no, they’d have to pre-exist in order to
                 come into existence, which would involve
                 a change in something which cannot change

                 because it is pre-existent, and therefore
                 causeless, so that it would have to stop being what it is
                 in order to be what it isn’t,

                 you know that, don’t you}; no, everything
                is conditioned, yes, and nothing stands
                independent by itself, so everything

                I have ever done or said or thought
                has been conditioned already, ok, but also,
                everything I have ever done or said

                or thought has also set up a
                whole web of further conditions
                which have had, or are nail-tapping waiting to have,

                an impact on other events
                and people; and yes, that’s ‘me’ in the corner …:
                the endless twists and turns I have made,

                and still making with every move and word and thought,
                which bind me in, tightly or loosely,
                to everything with which I interact –

                completely and utterly tangled:
                I hope I acted cleanly and carefully,
                but I’m afraid I didn’t – I’m … going to have to face my

                whole knot – a universally big ball,
                so much bigger than l’il ole me
                that it doesn’t seem to have much to do with me, but it does,
                it, all, does;

                and I’d better stop pulling and tugging away at it
                to get my own way and
                start untangling, and start untangling …

…I had a tangle of garden-wire to sort today; it had been wound round a dispenser but some of it had crossed over, become entangled, yanked, and a whole middle section had come away; then it had been worked on, to untangle it, but impatiently, and without thought, and so whole rolls of it had become furled over and through themselves, some bits were knotted, some bits were hanging out in great loops; being garden-wire, it kinked where it had been bent which also caught other strands as they came close to them in their tangle; and it had been cut for a quick solution, and so I had more than two ends that I could make any sense of; it took time untangling it, it took willing to give up on some progress I had already made on seeing that I’d started too far in, or too peripherally; it meant keeping hold of the thread I was starting with and turning the whole tangle around it, rather than working through the tangle, knowing that I was making problems for myself further down the line but I couldn’t worry about that yet; it meant having to abandon my initial thread sometimes to concentrate on further-on loops before I could return to it released; it meant I had to think ahead a bit to loosen the tangle in all the ways that it would, even if it meant unravelling the newly-wound initial thread I’d already sorted, a little; I had to take a rest every once in a while because I was concentrating too tightly …

                no, these enemies they’ve
                been ‘here’ all along, right in the
                back of my head, long forgotten,

                but from the time I crossed them
                in a thousand different ways
                and a thousand different times,

                they’ve been waiting, relentlessly,
                for a body and a circumstance to come together
                to respond:

                “there you go, mate, I owed you that”
                and inexorably I’d been setting myself up with just the right conditions
                to receive it

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 47: Impelled by my actions – [drawn out by circumstance, incited by the heat of the moment, prompted by hearsay, provoked by trigger, instigated by design, mobilised by obligation, shoved by control, summoned by role] – those who cross or hurt me, those who do me wrong just appear, right in my way and do what they have to do. And because of their actions, they will end up fallen and consigned to the infernal realms … surely, isn’t it actually me who have destroyed and damned them, haven’t I just been the mirror to magnify back to them their harm?

and, yes, that is a reference to the REM song, losing … something

 

 

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

being & mind wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
change wormhole: on facing the Have
doing & speech wormhole: ‘ouch’
echo wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
ghosts wormhole: what wounds have you got?
identity & others wormhole: there will be ovations
practice wormhole: ‘there, …’
samsara wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
talking to myself wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
thought wormhole: horizon

 

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‘ouch’

Tags

2018, 6*, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, cause and effect, circular poem, doing, speech, thinking

                                         what I say and do from now on because …             … ‘ouch’,
                                                           and take a little care over                                    I am hit by a stick –
                                                                       I shall wise up                                                  I shall be angry with the stick,
                                                          ‘damn my stupidity’,                                                      ‘damn stick’ …;
                                       with cause and conditionality,                                                          but the stick by itself
                                                         my blind messing                                                                cannot hurt me,
                                                I shall become angry at                                                                it is the wielder of the stick
                                              now, for it to be enacted –                                                             that made it happen –
and it was conditioned by the right circumstances,                                                                I shall be angry with the wielder,                                
                                                              to say or do so,                                                                ‘damn wielder’ …;
                                    it was caused by my tendency                                                                but, beforehand,
                                               wasn’t just spontaneous,                                                               the wielder of the stick was
                                                    but what I said or did                                                              not my attacker,
                                               ‘damn what I said or did’ …;                                                        he was prompted by his anger,
                             I shall be angry at what I said or did,                                                        the anger made him wield the stick –
                                                                         I said or did –                                                 I shall be angry at the anger,
                                               it was prompted by something                                      ‘damn his anger’ …;
                                                                         erupt from nowhere,                      but his anger didn’t

 

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 41: Although the immediate cause of the blows and injury I receive is delivered by the stick yet I do not take this into account but, rather, become angry at the wielder of the stick, my aggressor, my attacker. But then, as the attacker, likewise, is wielded under the influence of anger, if I really must get angry, it would be more fitting for me to rise and become angry at the anger instead.

 

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

circular poem wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
doing & speech wormhole: the reach turned to love
thinking wormhole: ‘there, …’

 

the mantra of Maitreya

Tags

2018, 8*, acceptance, anger, attachment, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, delusion, emptiness, falling, fire, flower, ground, life, love, Maitreya, mantra, openness, others, peace, sentient beings, suffering

                                                                the mantra of Maitreya

                                oh my loves,

                wriggling on the very thorns you couldn’t live without
                struck by the match over the gasoline you just poured
                falling like a stone through the emptiness you cannot evade

                you wave your arms at me
                you entice me in your dancing embrace
                you collide with me completely oblivious

                let me place the flower in the barrel of the gun
                let me accept-wide your disfigurement, your awkwardness
                let me be the ground, flat as the palm of a hand

                                open
                                open
                                open

                                SOHA

 

Maitreya will be the next being to manifest as a Buddha in this world after the teachings of the current Buddha have been lost; the mantra is actually OM MAITRI MAITRI MAHA MAITRI ARYA MAITRI SOHA; insofar as it can be translated it reads ‘OM love, love, great love, sublime love SOHA’, where ‘OM’ is ‘regarding everything from the most-bottom line’ and ‘SOHA’ is ‘let it be so, as it already is’; the poem flowered quite petally from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter VI, verses 37-38: [37] And like this, when they are so bewildered under the spell and influence of the kleśas, they will even destroy and, finally, take their own treasured life, then, how might it be hoped they would hold themselves back from harming or killing the bodies of others? [38] Even if I have lost, or cannot develop, compassion for these beings intoxicated and driven mad by their kleśas, who are engaged within their own self-destruction – lost in their own perdition, chained within their own fall – and who are, even now, committed to my destruction, then, how could I develop anger towards them? The least I could do would be to restrain from anger.

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
emptiness wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
life wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
love wormhole: the reach turned to love
Maitreya wormhole: birth in the world
openness wormhole: transferring
others wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

faulteous beings

Tags

2018, 5*, anger, blindness, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, delusion, identity, ignorance, infatuation, naïveté, society, un-virtue, world

                lookitall, this un-virtue,
                all this aroused anger –

                naïveté, infatuation,
                ignorance, delusion,

                blindness; there is
                no righteous anger, we

                are all self-branded
                faulteous beings

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI – verse 67: Someone acts badly influenced by delusion, naïveté, infatuation, and another gets angry at them also out of ignorance, infatuation, blindness; of these two, which can we say acts without fault, and which is at fault?

 

 

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

identity & society wormhole: and … // … sound
world wormhole: travelling / back

 

‘there, …’

Tags

2018, 5*, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, corroboration, evidence, fidgeting, identity, irritation, lotus, me-me-me, patience, practice, thinking, time

                                                there,

                that fidgeting ‘no’
                and the cloud of a
                thousand irritations,
                that flick the switch

                without audible click,
                the not-should-somes
                the way-shoulds and always
                the don’t-like-doesn’ts,

                the no-good-nothings
                and me, and me, and me a thousand
                and one times a day,
                build me up accumulated,

                become familiar,
                remind me that I don’t like,
                recognise myself as don’t
                like, corroborating me

                evident to just as it is; I’ll
                go looking for it when
                feeling unsure, make me
                constructed again – girder

                rivet, graunch – hold the
                gantry and pucker in
                the face of all adversity, my
                steely face’ll s t r e t c h

                like leather and I’ll draw the line
                in the sand all around me
                like a corpse taken away
                for inevitable forensics;

                no, the practice of patiences
                are a billion-fold and perpetual
                opening throughout time
                into a grandiloquent lotus

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 2: There is nothing so destructive and negative as hatred or aggression; there is no discipline or austerity stronger than tolerance, forbearance or patience. Consequently it is only right to practise and cultivate patience and to do so constantly and persistently in all ways and in all situations.

 

 

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

identity wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
practice wormhole: between
thinking wormhole: despite that
time wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

glamour of saṃsāra

Tags

2018, 7*, anger, blood, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, fighting, glamour, honour, humility, identity, injury, kleshas, mind, mouth, others, patience, samsara, sincerity, step, superhero, within, world

                the self-built hero
                has levelled the world
                to win an honour

                the super hero
                has vanquished anger within
                with no harm to others;

                the super hero
                confronts the enemies
                as they arise in the mind

                step by slow step
                disregarding the struggle involved
                humble, un-beguiling, true;

                after all, when in battle,
                injury will occur – I wipe my bloodied mouth and stagger to my feet,                           
                begone, glamour of saṃsāra

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 20 – There are those who take their enemies’ blows upon their chests, (taking them on the chin). It is they who are the victors, the heroes, they who courageously disregard all suffering and pain in vanquishing the enemies such as hatred and so forth. Ordinary warriors are just killers of the dead.

 

 

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

identity & mind wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
mouth wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
others wormhole: allowed all gain
samsara wormhole: all // are // none
superhero wormhole: to arms, then;
world wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

Tags

2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white

                … and yet I think I am so modest:
                      I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,

                      all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
                all the Big Issues I generously buy

                all the time given to Carol and the kids,
                      to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,

                      all the insights from comics and books, I think I
                know what’s what; I stand colossal

                      on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
                than the ants that circle across it,

                so much more, even, than the cat
                      that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand

                      human to the height of all achievement; all of this
                I have already destroyed

                      a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
                with even the most slight

                      annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
                the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed

                teeth and howls; when this dent,
                      this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from

                this axe from some other side) that
                      holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,

                      everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
                and isolated; I won’t

                      become human again for so long I’ll need
                another, far-future,

                flash of lightning
                      in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll

                ever get another chance
                      to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s

                ease out all these creases, let’s
                      polish all that chrome, before evening comes again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses

 

 

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

beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach

 

south horizon

Tags

1959, 1967, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2011, 2012, 7*, abandonment, anger, Bowie, childhood, Dad, discovery, divorce, drum, evening, experience, horizon, light, London, Margaret Thatcher, memory, Mum, Nan, pain, parents, perspective, purple, rhythm, river, saxophone, shift, Shooters Hill, south, texture, Thames, travelling, words, world

                south horizon

                out on the river
                the purple is shifting

                but in the evening-bulb light
                the world-shaping words

                of grown ups
                is shifting uncontrollably

                but,          no; it’s OK          look
                there is rhythm, there is

                a saxophone, a hi-hat – shflpt –
                in the crack there

                where words sift
                where worlds shift

 

I submitted this to an online magazine; they didn’t want it; I’ll publish it here again with the copy that supported it:

about the poem: on my eighth birthday (in 1967) my Dad arrived home late from work; my parents had one of their last arguments; my Dad left home that night; I couldn’t remember much of what happened that night – what was said, how much I heard, how much I understood – but I realised that worlds could change quite quickly that night; years later, in 1993, David Bowie recorded ‘south horizon’ on his ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ album, but I didn’t really get to know the piece until 2011; hearing it etched that experience back into my memory – bevelled it up, almost – but it also supplied textures and chord changes to the memory that allowed me a perspective that held me from being just angry or hurt; (‘the river’ is the river Thames; we lived on Shooters Hill in SE London from where we could hear and breathe the river)

author bio: Mark Redford was born in 1959 and grew up in South East London until he bolted to university (like a bat out of hell) in 1979, hot from Margaret Thatcher’s election victory; London was never the same every time he returned back; his mother, who had brought him up with her mother (his Grandmother), died in 1999; since then he has travelled back to London frequently to find the previous 40 years, but only seems to find them when he writes down what he saw; you can see what he sees (possibly better than he can) at: https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/; if you bump into him there, give him some directions would you?

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: monument to vainglory
Bowie wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
childhood & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
Dad & divorce & texture wormhole: beepbeep
evening wormhole: alighted
horozon wormhole: 1966
light wormhole: so pleased to see you again
London wormhole: 1967
Mum wormhole: 1967
Nan wormhole: work
purple & river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
travelling wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
words wormhole: breathing out
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show

 

what life went on

Tags

1960s, 1997, 2012, 5*, abandonment, aloof, anger, children, Dad, dream, Eglinton Hill, family, flowers, forgiveness, garden, grief, kitchen, life, living room, pride, speech, table, walls, yellow

 

 

 

                                I arrive at the garden wall of Eglinton Hill*,
                                painted yellow, not quite finished; my kids

                                come out to see me, what has been done
                                while I was at work (what life went on

                                while Dad was away, what had been done),
                                straight into the front living room* – it is a

                                dappled kitchen now, 1960s small-flowered
                                and yellow-weave table cloth; I wander around

                                the rooms with the kids, how they have
                                changed; I rise out of sleep with the grief,

                                I still feel the hurt, I cannot forgive, I have
                                high expectations: proud angry and aloof

 

* childhood home; I was in the front living room where I heard my parents argue for the first and last time

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: 1967
children wormhole: ashramas
Dad wormhole: spit / spot
dream wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
Eglinton Hill wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
family & living room wormhole: currency of generations
garden & kitchen & speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – from arm to nature, doing nothing
life wormhole: carpet worn / to the backing – poewieview #30
table wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – the soft canticle of the gourds:
walls wormhole: trellis / and wisteria – poewieview #29
yellow wormhole: the / bright yellow / world

 

dry rot

Tags

2012, anger, breakdown, broken, care, career, creation, culture, decision, disregard, giving, growth, illness, management, managerialism, resentment, speech, survival, teaching, thought, work

 

 

 

                                dry rot

                                still

                resentment sets in
                                I go to work anyway
                but the resentment is always there
                                I create resources I mark books
                                I teach lessons
                but the resentment is always there
                                I do my fucking duty
                                I do an extra parent’s evening
                but the resentment is always there
                                some manager asks how I am
                                I tell them I survive
                                              (but I don’t tell them
                                               I don’t thrive –
                                               `not quick enough)
                but the resentment is always there

                I offered my thought
                               my creation
                               my care
                because I nurtured growth
                              I cultured way
                              I wanted to give

                                AND YOU PAUSED
                IN YOUR BUSY-NESS AND PRESSURE
                JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GET ON
                                WITH YOUR BUSINESS AND PRESSURE TO COMPENSATE THE OH, SO, ANXIETY OF
                                MAKING THOSE TOUGH DECISIONS FOR THE SAKE OF PROGRESS (PROFIT?)
                                TO OVERLOOK

                                what I continue to think
                                what is still on the table
                                              unopened
                                but which has lost the will
                                              to project anymore

                                              you

                                              make

                                              me

                                              sick

                you made me sick
                                you created a sick teacher
                even while I attend each day
                                for the sake of absence management
                even while I create and mark
                                for the sake of growth
                even while I sit through a meeting
                                which dribbles on about ‘good to outstanding’ until it is running down your neck
                still the resentment is always there
                                sticky invisible and malignant

 

I know: we’ve heard it all before; just indulge this little toddler for a little while longer, will you; it has only slightly altered since I wrote it a good four years ago, like being in a boat on the sea, buffeted and brûlée’d, looking for where the sky becomes screen and the prow rips through it (c’mon, film buffs, what am I talking about?)

 

 

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

breakdown & management wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
career wormhole: need
giving wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
speech wormhole: fine
teaching wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
thought wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
work wormhole: work