breakfast

Tags

2019, 7*, blindness, blogging, branches, breakfast, breathing, canopy, coffee, dark, echo, energy, eyes, flash, gooseberry, ground, growth, jam, leaves, life, light, living, monkey, path, reaching, reading, samsara, seeing, shadow, sound, sunlight, toast, trees, walking, way, wind, woodland

                breakfast

                these shadows on a long walk
                through the woodland with only occasional sun

                all there, underneath the undergrowth
                cannot see the ground, the stems that grow from it

                branches reach, leaves envelope everywhere
                from nowhere; weave

                and grow round and entwine each other;
                if I lift the leaves to see my way forward –

                searching for light, searching for life
                to grow, to continue – and if I break the smaller branches to

                make way
                I will scratch my arms, sap will sting my skin, my

                eyes, I cannot see, I cannot see;
                and I won’t see; some trees

                are quicker and older (than me)
                they hold the path and reach wide,

                and creepers make them fat
                and vines hang like curtains of water;

                the canopy above, maximised
                to greatest energy, sent back down through rough wires;

                only when the wind leans
                or a monkey leaps, is there a flash of light, gone by the

                time I’ve looked back down to the path
                blinded, to see where I am

                there must be so much light somewhere
                out there, if only I weren’t stumbling around and bleeding

                … really; I come downstairs
                and breathe coffee and spiced home – made gooseberry jam on home – made toast                           

                while reading my posts … yes,
                a thousand hacks and sap in the dark

                where I cannot see
                and cannot know where I am

                a thousand ‘choks’ deferred
                the undergrowth too dense to echo

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 12: How can I attain happiness when the causes for happiness are obtained only through great effort and very rarely, and when the seeds­ of pain and sorrow are so prevalent, relentless and multifarious that they are realised easily and without any effort? And yet it is only from suffering that the thought and longing for escape and liberation from the suffering of conditioned existence will come about … therefore, O my deepest mind, hold yourself strong, patient, steadfast!

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

branches & breathing wormhole: blue sky high
coffee wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
echo & path & walking wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
eyes & life wormhole: eyes like petals
leaves & living wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
light & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
reading wormhole: {reading right to left}
samsara & sound wormhole: at Kreukenhof
seeing wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

writening

Tags

2018, 4*, blogging, discovery, doing, happening, identity, legacy, metaphor, page, poetry, publishing, thinking, writing

                writening

                I like to find what I think
                in kinaesthetic metaphor
                and surprise myself;

                nothing more, not trying
                to be the best, or visionary
                or even to write poetry –

                it just happens; I have
                taken to sharing it – nice
                of you – but, also,

                attached to how it is received –
                not nice, a little ugly;
                I should just do it naturally –

                wash ‘n’ go, shake ‘n’ vac –
                just discover, let it fall
                and spill all over the page,

                not to write the Body
                of Work to blithely leave
                to posterity …

 

the penultimate of my 2018 pieces of work … and they’ve not been coming thick and fast during 2019 either … well’s drying up!

 

 

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

doing wormhole: Renunciation
identity wormhole : The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
poetry wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
publishing wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
thinking & writing wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

 

scintillating to mind’s content

Tags

2017, 6*, being, blogging, browse, centre, counting, doing, emptiness, growth, heart, internet, love, mantra, mind, mother sentient beings, publishing, sharing, sitting, true nature, world, writing

                things happen according
                to my published pages or
                didn’t need writing at all

                so I stopped coiunting mantras
                and let the world sit and
                browse all around me with

                as near to the love I can
                muster, now, at the centre
                and all of the love we

                could share if we but knew
                the empty centre at our
                heart from which we grow

                scintillating to mind’s content

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
doing wormhole: all // are // none
emptiness wormhole: anxiety
love wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
mind wormhole: sometimes
publishing wormhole: next unexpected step
sitting wormhole: ash leaves
world wormhole: that
writing wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

 

bloogying

Tags

2012, blogging, feeling sorry for myself, publishing, recognition, sitting, talking to myself, time, words, writing

 

 

 

                      bloogying

                      just publish them all
                      even the crap ones

                      let them sit there multifarious
                      for months and years

                      all nicely arranged
                      along the bookcase

                      just say what I say
                      without censor without compromise

                      (let me
                       worry about the morality when I sit down)

                      let the paucity of hits be
                      the line of medals that they seem

                      I earned them all with word
                      above and beyond the call of necessity

 

 

 

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

publishing wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
recognition wormhole: let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were
sitting wormhole: Jericho
talking to myself & writing wormhole: diligence
time wormhole: work
words wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being

 

I need to keep my eyes open / in meditation

Tags

2013, 6*, awareness, being, blogging, eyes, film, identity, letting go, life, meditation, mind, music, reading, swim, tide, world, writing

 

 

 

                                              I need to keep my eyes open
                                                              in meditation

                                could it be
that the majority of my noble pastimes
                the reading writing blogging music film
                                              all of them
                are great wide comforting pools to slip into        and
                                              submerge myself
                                away from the awkward fit of
                                                              my
                                                              mi
                                                              nd’
                                                              s s
                                                              elf
                                              in the whole of the world
                                where nothing fits together        like concrete rip-rap

                wouldn’t it be better
                                to climb out of those
                                              amniotic pools and swim
                                instead
                                              through the thousand awkward angles
                (that define me defeated
                                and adversarial to them all)
                                and start standing
                                              o n
                                              m y
                                              own
                                              two
                                              feet
                                with each incoming tide?

 

 

 

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

awareness & reading wormhole: a light rosé
being & eyes & identity wormhole: Dr Strange IV – ellipses
film wormhole: four-colour pulp into cinematic di[gital]pix[el][live ac]tion so easily makes for semantic palava (if you read what I mean) … the foredreading of Dr Strange
letting go wormhole: thinking wide enough
life & world wormhole: Dr Strange III – the needs of billions
meditation wormhole: – sigh! –
mind wormhole: prologue
music wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
writing wormhole: poised patiently for / hours

 

mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional

Tags

2014, blogging, breeze, clock, doors, flower, green, identity, lamp, lemon, life, London, mauve, meaning, net curtains, offering, openness, orange, purpose, sitting room, speech, Victorian houses, white

OK my dears, because you are my blogee friends and do me the honour of wriggling through my petites ramblings where you have probably surmised that I am a weed flowering out of a piece of neglected land by a once-brightly painted wall (of a Victorian house) in sauff-eest London, I’m going to let you all into a little secret: I am a compulsive geek, a compulsive geek-weed flower.   In my solipcistic search for a bit of point amidst all the ground … I count everything.   I’m not particularly proud of it, it doesn’t really add up to much and I am starting to sit in order to make all the counting so transparent that I’ll see right through it to the purpose I was looking for all along anyway.   But on the way I have collected (almost arthritically) a bunch of data about all sorts of things which have shaped me into the paricular flowered weed that I have become (mauve-thin thorns with white tips, deepdark green leaves at the top of the stem, and small but long petals with deep lemon edges, white middle and the thinnest blood-orange corrola and spine).   I have whole lifetimes of top 10s/20s – and more? – of word and picture and tone and image, my whole culture wrapped, bagged, ticketed and stacked into a comfy armchair in a spacious and double-faceted sitting room by a standard lamp and a ticking clock somewhere, doors open, net curtains billowing.   Slighty.   Occasionally.

So.   At the end of the day (litralee – I’m not even jokinngg-ugh) I audit my day and assign MY MEASURE of how much I got out of everything I did or how well I did it.   Or not.   The measure will only make sense to me, but they are A measure of how much I have got out of them, so I will include the numbers for your comparification (if you get that far).   Not geeky enough for you?   OK, try this on for size: I started doing this counting in 1998 and still do it?   Not even bothered yet?   I audit household work, career work, what I do for my kids, what I do for my wider family, what I do for my wife, what I do in my spiritual practice and what I do for myself at the end of every day.   Yawn?   I put all my numbers onto a spreadsheet (once I figured out what spreadsheets were) and have now got ongoing averages and charts for everything I do, hear, think and eat!   Whp-p! I saw your eyes twitch then, I’m getting to you, aren’t I (I’m sorry, but I’m on a roll now).   How about, once I settled my spreadsheet: I inserted enough rows above March 1998 all the way back to 2nd November 1959.   Yes, YES: the day I was born!   Do you see; do you see what happens when you start to listen to a geek; do you see my awful power …?   And then I retroactively filled in all the data!.   Oh, whoh; phew, sheesh – what a load off my mind; if I smoked I’d be taking a long draw at the moment – hot air through the teeth, down the throat – and holding it wondering what adjective would do justice to what just happened.

Actually, I think this confession is doing far more for me than it will ever do for anyone else.   Nevertheless I will be sharing with you some of the countings I have like a toddler sharing the stickiest boiled sweet that I’d saved in my hand just for you even though I’d scoffed the rest myself.   It’s sharing, I suppose, and it’s as sincere as a 54 year old child can be.   I’ll call them “mlewisredford’s top ten _______ !” and provide my own commentary.   I’ll store them under ‘poeviews’.   So you’d better have a wet handkerchief handy, you never know when I might proffer a little fat arm upwards with large ‘lashed eyes sincerely unwavering.

Look out, now!

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

breeze & orange wormhole: wha’
doors wormhole: tired
green & London wormhole: still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city
identity wormhole: I don’t think I could do it any more
leon wormhole: the library, / you know …
life & mauve wormhole: in verse / question / m a r k ?
meaning wormhole: adversely / mistaking the finger for the moon / again
net curtains wormhole: 3:30 am
openness wormhole: practising
sitting room wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
speech wormhole: inverse superhero
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian bays / right angles and eaves
white wormhole: let

 

again

Tags

2012, 7*, acceptance, blogging, breathing, compassion, conservatory, dancing, emptiness, fly, identity, lifetimes, living, lost, love, markbook, movement, name, paint, poetry, publishing, realisation, recognition, self-containment, sitting, talking to myself, tea, teaching, thought, wood, writing

 

 

 

                                … ohpe!
                there it goes again
tens of hours of shaping and formatting a piece
                and placing it and checking it
                                no hits

                timely reminder
                                again
that I have rather seeped into publishing of late
                like gloss paint dried into wood-grain
                                making me all used up
                and no air for writing
                                no air for living or sitting

                                again

                same as with markbook
                                years past
                the same as with anything
that can find my way through the anonymity and overlook
                                enough
                to become identified
                                and then flog it
                flog it for all its worth
well why not flog it for all its worth
                                because it puts all my eggs into one basket
                and baskets these days
                                are one among a million

                —o—

interlude

                the fly
that was annoying me in the too hot conservatory is now
                gracefully
                circling
in the pint of peppermint tea I was letting cool
                and was really
                looking forward to

                —o—

                I need to flush
the askance and dance
                                through everything I live
                not just through the poetry
                                but
                I can’t do that
if I am too gravitated in the centre of anything trying
                desperate
                                to Make Me a Star and Saviour!

                … guess
guess what the conclusion is going to be
                                c’mon now
how can I loosen my centre of gravity
                so I can askance and dance freely
                                without being there at all

                                come on now class
                Redford – put your phone away
                                and give it a try
Mark – stop staring out the window
                Lewis – put your hand down
                                give the others a chance
                altogether now:
                                SIT!

                —o—

                …

                … OK, Lewis, tell us why …
well if you sit being aware of the thousand thoughts and movements which are not sitting
                without
                going
with them and just smiling on them sweetly as they pass
                                you create a gap in the centre –

                                no you don’t
                the gap is already there
in fact there is nothing BUT gap
                                there has always only been nothing there   -yes
                alright Mark
let Lewis finish:-

                – you create a gap
in the centre of thought and movement
                through
                which
you find your true self which was never localised in the first place
                                no matter how hard Redford tried –

                oh so
I’ve been wasting my life trying
                alright
                Redford
calm down don’t –

                slam
the door
                go after him will you Mark
tell him he’s been living his wastes all along but that
                                he still needs to find those gaps in the
                                              first
                                place

                —o—

                oh, and Mark, try not to be so insensitive in future

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: Woodbrooke labyrinth / affirmations
breathing wormhole: too
compassion wormhole: Beresford Square: // it’s alright it’s alright
conservatory wormhole: dream / 130207
dancing wormhole: slow slow / quick quick / slo / w
emptiness wormhole: ‘set the controls / for the heart of the sun’
identity & tea & writing wormhole: through the window
lifetimes worhole: gravity
living & sitting wormhole: while
love wormhole: 32 years
markbook wormhole: pep talk
poetry wormhole; chores to do – diptych
publishing wormhole: successive scenes in the autobiopera / conflict and resolution in each episode // credits: me me me me me
realisation wormhole: adversely / mistaking the finger for the moon / again
recognition & teaching wormhole: :just wondering …
talking to myself wormhole: practise what you doing / give what you having / breathe what you remember
thought wormhole: the ocean
wood wormhole: Michael Redford: // someone missing

 

I am the / luckiest man alive

Tags

2011, 6*, being, blogging, breakdown, career, groundlessness, identity, journal, living, morning, open, sitting, sleep, teaching, wind, windows, writing

 

 

 

                early morning
                fidgety leg
                can’t sleep
                come into study
                gentle exercise
                open window in

a little under a year I have completed a whole notebook
I have been teased by authority and survived my third breakdown
I have faced my lack of faith in the system and my compulsion to play to it
I have gone part time I have started a blog I am mushrooming with ideas I am sitting more
                                                        I am writing

                wind blowing
                I am the
                luckiest man alive

 

 

                … let’s go to back to bed

 

 

 

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

being & writing wormhole: it is knowing what to drop once / everything has been collected together / that makes everything fit
breakdown & groundlessness & morning wormhole: the early morning of the sixties
career & identity & living wormhole: my job
open & wind wormhole: clouds
sitting wormhole: swifts test the chasm of sky
sleep wormhole: Saturday
teaching wormhole: ‘but, Mark, what do you want …?’
windows wormhole: chores to do – diptych

 

in between

Tags

2011, 5*, acceptance, ambition, awareness, beauty, blogging, evening, identity, time, vanity

 

 

 

                     publishing planning
                     statistics clicks
                     lost the evening
                     lost the days

                                              but look at me
                                this is what I do
                     again and again

                     it’s only

                                in between

                     when I have been finally embarrassed by my vanity
                     that I have the seconds of beauty and success

                     but never because of my
                                planning and publishing
                                              and never because of the statistics

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: alien / and awkward
awareness wormhole: what?
evening wormhole: 1974
identity & time wormholes: 2^nd November 2011

 

… someone’s back

Tags

2013, blogging, career, friendship, ghosts, identity, listening, society, teaching

 

 

 

… I think; nothing’s solved, there is only fore-shortened outcome as the Mechanism rolls out its Procedure of Care trying to track down that ghost;

I am in ‘wither’ with the school I have worked in for the last twenty five years; every so often, and quite despite my unrelenting stubborness to continue on disregarded, I collapse; the most recent collapse was even more lost and frightened than I am used to and I don’t think I can platitude my way back out of this one (see obituary … if you have the stomach);

I thougt to cut down my activity to return myself to myself, but I couldn’t find him anywere, only the pain and lost-bearing which have haunted him all along anyway; I had a dream last night which I posted this morning – it feigns to hold the answer although I can’t quite breathe what it is yet; but then I had posted it, instinctively; so I gave myself a slap but my hand passed straight through: there is only the activity that makes any sense of the machine beng here in the first place; it is not wrong, but it is, after all, only levers and pivots; I must continue on acting, invisible and occasionally chain-rattling, otherwise all those girders and diagonals will look ridiculous standing there, windswept and wailing;

so maybe returning back to blogging is the first step to returning back to living … thank you so much to all the good voices that whispered over my shoulder ‘remember that we are here’, you all left an echo that I could navigate by

 

 

 

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

career & identity & teaching wormhole: dream 100213
ghosts wormhole: chrysalissing
listening wormhole: listening