Hastings: neither all or nothing

Tags

2018, 7*, being, birch, blue, buildings, church, doing, flats, furniture, grey, Hastings, height, houses, net curtains, passing, pavement, reaching, reason, roads, sea, silver, sky, steeple, steets, time, Victorian houses, walking, windows, wondering, writing

                                                                Hastings: neither all or nothing

                I walked steep down
                                through Victorian house fronts
                                                down the whole height of the
                                                                church steeple

                and stood at the grey sea
                                wondering if there was good reason
                                                to write of it, after all;
                                                                the houses

                were now flats with nets knotted in the
                                windows and abandoned furniture
                                                on the street, but look,
                                                                that corner building

                built to the shape of bifurcating roads, oh
                                and the silver birch at the edge
                                                of the pavement reaching
                                                                up into the blue

                cleared sky and although I needn’t write it,
                                I do; and the roots of this small
                                                tree have bulged the paviours
                                                                unnoticeably over the years

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
birch wormhole: over-pink cagoule
blue wormhole: {reading right to left}
buildings & silver wormhole: London, 1809
church wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
grey & sky wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
net curtains wormhole: keep the light off
passing wormhole: passing
roads wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
sea wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
streets & writing wormhole: on facing the Have
time wormhole: somehow
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian pipework
walking wormhole: blister on me thumb
windows wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871

 

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{reading right to left}

Tags

1871, 2018, 9*, autumn, blue, brown, chimney stacks, chimneys, confusion, Crystal Palace, damp, dark, decline, draft, drifting, fire, flag, flagpole, garden, gas, high, London, passing, people, Pissarro, progress, reading, sand, shrub, sky, smoke, society, streetlamp, streets, Sydenham, the British Empire, wind

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871

                deep eaves in Sydenham the
                chimney stacks raised high

                to draw the draft – splendid
                in counter – front-garden shrubbery

                left tangled to riot and dampened
                from autumn, seems stuck in

                foreboding brown conflagration;
                the clean stroke of streetlamp

                under sandened sky will not
                be sullied by slimey gas until

                after dark – controlled, controlled blue –
                but, we read in the right direction:

                look, the flag from some
                turgic land of the Empire swaves

                away from its pole – the dirty
                heavens cry – the dwarfed

                chimneys, here, their smoke of
                coke and belch drift

                in the same direction conjuring
                transparent edifice where mens’

                seriousness loom in smudged
                silhouette, foreboding to behold,

                and others scuttle about the
                bright, wide street coming

                and crossing in all direction –
                pushchairs and carriages to hold

 

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871 by Camille Pissaro

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
blue & society & streets wormhole: on facing the Have
brown & wind wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
garden wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
London & sky wormhole: London, 1809
passing wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: only
reading wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

on facing the Have

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 7*, balcony, blue, boy, car, driving, face, girl, house, laughing, law, leg, looking, man, mind, no-mind, passing, roads, smile, travelling, watch, William Carlos Williams, woman

                XI

                In passing with my mind
                on nothing in the world

                but the right of way
                I enjoy on the road by

                virtue of the law–
                I saw

                an elderly man who
                smiled and looked away

                to the north past a house–
                a woman in blue

                who was laughing and
                leaning forward to look up

                into the man’s half
                averted face

                and a boy of eight who was
                looking at the middle of

                the man’s belly
                at a watchchain–

                The supreme importance
                of this nameless spectacle

                sped me by them
                without a word–

                Why bother where I went?
                for I went spinning on the

                four wheels of my car
                along the wet road until

                I saw a girl with one leg
                over the rail of a balcony

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “In passing with my mind …”, the perfect beginning, middle and end of a poem; I read this when I was younger, possibly a bit impatient that I wanted something more to happen to call it a happening and also a little annoyed at the snagged details in passing thinking them too particular to so little that was happening … but I liked it; and this liking slipped in between my pomposity and fussiness and worked its way out over following decades through poems exploring this same sense of passing not being the start of something and its almost immediate dissolution, but its almost-not-being-there being its universal reality: vivid, important and sufficient unto itself – “the supreme importance / of this nameless spectacle”; it wasn’t until later I read more of the text in which WCW embedded these poems, raised beds, nonetheless, with earth so finely nourished and turned over that you could sink your fist into it up to your elbow: “When in the condition of imaginative suspense only will the writing have reality … Not to attempt, at that time, to set values on the word being used, according to presupposed measures, but to write down that which happens at that time / To perfect the ability to record at the moment when the consciousness is enlarged by the sympathies and the unity of understanding which the imagination gives, to practise skill in recording the force moving, then to know it, in the largeness of its proportions …”

 

 

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

blue wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
girl wormhole: ash leaves
house wormhole: presence
looking & travelling wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
mind wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
passing & roads wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
smile wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
woman wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold

 

SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 5*, birth, blue, brown, bushes, clouds, fields, grass, growth, hospital, leaves, purple, red, roads, roots, Spring, trees, water, weeds, William Carlos Williams, wind

                                SPRING AND ALL

                By the road to the contagious hospital
                under the surge of the blue
                mottled clouds driven from the
                northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
                waste of broad, muddy fields
                brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

                patches of standing water
                the scattering of tall trees

                All along the road the reddish
                purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
                stuff of bushes and small trees
                with dead, brown leaves under them
                leafless vines –

                Lifeless in appearence, sluggish
                dazed spring approaches –

                They enter the new world naked,
                cold, uncertain of all
                save that they enter. All about them
                the cold, familiar wind –

                Now the grass, tomorrow
                the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

                One by one objects are defined –
                It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

                But now the stark dignity of
                entrance – Still, the profound change
                had come upon them: rooted, they
                grip down and begin to awaken

from Spring and All, 1923, from which Paul Mariani’s excellent biography of William Carlos Williams got its name “A New World Naked”; being is to break and contrast, it is primordial but also cyclical, WCW doesn’t bother with the cosmic, he deals in twigs

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
leaves & Spring & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
purple wormhole: … the underleaves show
red & William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
roads wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
wind wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, bedroom, blue, child, childhood, green, laughing, looking, November, quiet, shadow, Spring, streets, sunlight, weather, William Carlos Williams, windows

                LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

                Light hearted William twirled
                his November moustaches
                and, half dressed, looked
                from the bedroom window
                upon the spring weather.

                Height-ya! sighed he gaily
                leaning out to see
                up and down the street
                where a heavy sunlight
                lay beyond some blue shadows.

                Into the room he drew
                his head again and laughed
                to himself quietly
                twirling his green moustaches.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
… and WCW had a son called … William, who was it about, hmmm … twirl

 

 

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

bedroom wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
blue & green & William Carlos Williams wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
child wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
childhood wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
shadow wormhole: sometimes
spring wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: space for probing thought
windows wormhole: the moon, the moon

 

BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 6*, air, blossom, blue, cars, children, distance, flowers, grapes, green, gutter, light, marsh, mist, petals, reeds, smell, strawberries, streets, sun, voices, water, William Carlos Williams, willow

                                BLUEFLAGS

                I stopped the car
                to let the children down
                where the streets end
                in the sun
                at the marsh edge
                and the reeds begin
                and there are small houses
                facing the reeds
                and the blue mist
                in the distance
                with grapevine trellises
                with grape clusters
                small as strawberries
                on the vines
                and ditches
                running springwater
                that continue the gutters
                with willows over them.
                The reeds begin
                like water at a shore
                their pointed petals waving
                dark green and light.
                But blueflags are blossoming
                in the reeds
                which the children pluck
                chattering in the reeds
                high over their heads
                which they part
                with bare arms to appear
                with fists of flowers
                till in the air
                there comes the smell
                of calamus
                from wet, gummy stalks.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
WCW was good enough to let us into his local so much that we found his family there too; he espoused the search for poetry within your own fingernails, within your local yards and backstreets, within your private moments in front of your own mirror, within the loaned experience which can only be borrowed when you’ve brought up children and shown them the world in which you brought them to their own existence … rather than charging off for it rummaging about Europe’s kulture: he was an icognito prince, old WCW

 

 

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

air wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
blossom wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
blue wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
cars wormhole: ash leaves
green & William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
light wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
mist wormhole: that
smell wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
streets wormhole: we held cold hands
sun wormhole: only
voices & water wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

Tags

2018, 7*, being, blackberry, blue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, bougainvillea, bread, breakfast, clouds, cooking, creation, hills, holiday, jam, Lanzarote, life, lunch, olive, rain, roundabout, sand, sky, study, table, valley, vegetables, villas, walking, wind

                coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself,
                070118

                when blackberry jam is on the bread for breakfast
                there will be bougainvillea on the roundabout by lunch

                when the walk uphill is steep enough and windy
                the rainfall advances, but stays in the valley

                so that when walking through villas between showers
                there are always sand-blue clouds under deepening olive sky

                when you cook or prepare the vegetables right
                the paella is right the oval dish long

                when creation and study and life happen around the same table, there is                      
                being

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 31 – everything is governed by other factors and nothing governs itself; anything which seems to stand out from this as independent is illusory [and usually desparate in some sort of way]

 

 

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

being & sky wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
blue & life & walking wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds & holiday wormhole: we held cold hands
hills wormhole: that
olive wormhole: mauve
rain & valley wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
study wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
table wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
wind wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

Tags

2018, 5*, blue, brown, evening, eyes, face, fawn, gaze, grey, head, home, life, meadow, morning, nose, perception, sound, time, walking, world

                his young head pushed through into a small
                meadow, brown and blue eyes gazed from

                a pitying face fifty feet tall, the chomping
                stopped and she blew violently down her nose:

                we walk the lane behind the herd every morning
                out, every evening home, both fawn and grey

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows

 

 

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

blue & brown wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
evening wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes & world wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey & morning & sound & time & walking wormhole: we held cold hands
life wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows

Tags

1967, blue, brother, brown, cows, eyes, faces, food, hedge, herd, imagination, intelligence, Kent, meadow, Michael J Redford, milk, parents, reading, running, skill, sound, the Boats of Vallisneria

With Cows

Cows can be frustrating to say the least.   If you are in a hurry, they are not; if you want to turn left, they will turn right; if you want them to come to you, they will walk slowly but surely from you (except, of course, when there is food in the offing).   You can shout until you are blue in the face and, unless it is milking time, the only resultant effect will be an all pitying gaze from two enormous brown and blue eyes set in the most imperturbable face that nature has created.

My first introduction to the bovine species took place when I was about seven years old.   My parents, brother and I were on a picnic in Kent and on that particular day I was a fearless explorer penetrating the depths of the African jungle.   This had stemmed from the fact that I had just finished reading a book called the Gorilla Hunters which had sparked my imagination into a riot of fantasy.   Slipping unobserved into the undergrowth, I crawled upon all fours until I came upon a high, mossy bank surmounted by a thick, prickly hedge.   Hearing an unfamiliar chomping sound coming from the other side, I wriggled into the hedge and poked my head through into a small meadow.   I turned and gazed upwards and at the same instant, a cow who was hiding behind the hedge and who I swear was no less than fifty feet tall, turned and gazed down at me.   Then, unable to contain herself any longer, the cow blew violently down her nose at me, turned on her heels, and shot across the field like a bullet kicking the air behind her as she went.   I cannot recall ever seeing a cow move with quite so much speed.   Neither, I suspect, would an observer have ever seen a small boy move with such speed.   I rejoined the family scratched, breathless and as pale as a ghost, and shamelessly told the face-saving lie that I had been chased by a bull.

My opinions regarding the intelligence of cows has pendulated with the acquisition of experience.   When I first worked with cows I noticed how, on entering the shed at milking time, they all went to their own particular stands, and had an animal for any reason entered the wrong stand, she was very soon ousted by the rightful occupier.   This, I assumed, denoted intelligence.   However, I was very soon to discover that cows are animals of habit and habits are no criteria of intelligence.   Eventually I came to the conclusion that, because of its indolence and obstinacy, the cow was a complete and utter dim-wit.   But once again, experiences of the past year have led me to the final conclusion that cows have a very good measure of intelligence.   I milk for a local farmer one day a week to give his herdsman a much needed break from the seven day a week routine.   He owns a large farm with two herds of cows, a herd of Jerseys and a herd of Friesians.   Milking is carried out in a modern tandem parlour with automatic feeding and ‘all mod cons’.   When the animals enter the parlour they are fed by pulling a lever which releases just the right amount of food from a hopper into a manger.   When the lever is pulled down, two pounds of food are released and when pushed back up, another two pounds.   After a surprisingly short period of time, the cows become aware of the connection that existed between the action of the lever and the delivery of food.   By contorting their bodies in a manner quite out of character with their natural movements, the cows discovered that they were able to reach the lever and very soon began pushing it down and returning it to the upright position to obtain an extra double helping of food.   Indeed, one of the Friesian cows developed the knack of tossing the lever violently up and down in order to obtain an almost continuous supply of food.   When her manger was almost full, she would struggle back to her normal position and attack the gargantuan meal before her.

However, with cattle cake costing over thirty five pounds per ton, this state of affairs had to be dealt with.   We eventually overcame their antics by tying a piece of cord to the stanchion and looping the other end over the lever, so that in order to feed the cows, we would merely remove the loop, pull the lever and replace the loop.   This system worked beautifully – for a while.   It wasn’t long before the animals overcame this obstacle by pulling the loop from the lever themselves, despite the fact that this is a somewhat delicate operation for their great, cumbersome muzzles to perform.   An interesting point that came to light during this period was that the Friesian cows were the worst offenders, whereas, out of a herd of twenty five Jerseys, only four managed to reach this standard of reasoning and acquired the knack of working the lever.

Yet despite their apparent superior intelligence, I have in my experience, found fewer ‘character’ cows among the Friesians.   By ‘character’ cows I mean the bovine equivalent of the human being who is ‘a bit of a lad’ or rather ‘quite a girl’, the one who stands out in a crowd.   One such a cow was Magatha, who was just about the ugliest little creature that I have ever seen.   She was sway-backed, had a fawny-coloured coat with grey patches all over it and had a face too concave even for a Jersey.   One ear had a lump torn from it and her ridiculous little head was beset by two crooked horns.   Despite her lack of charm and elegance, for she waddled along in a most ungainly manner, she was the most endearing and affectionate cow I have ever met.   At milking time she would always be last out of the field and last out of the shed and during the short walk between the two, she would creep up behind me and push her ugly little head under my arm and we would troop up the lane behind the herd like a couple of young lovers.   On one occasion (I think it must have been a ‘morning after the night before’, for I wasn’t in a very benevolent mood), I failed to reciprocate her affections and instead gave her a hefty whack on the rump to speed her on her way.   She countered this breach of etiquette by doing a half-passage and forcing me nearer and nearer to the side of the road.   I realised too late what she was up to when I landed full length in the ditch running with effluent from the much heap.   However, like all good lovers we made up and until the end of my stay at that particular farm, we could be seen every morning and every evening strolling arm in arm together along the lane.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

blue & brown wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
eyes wormhole: thought
faces wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
hedge wormhole: travelling // arrival
reading wormhole: … the underleaves show
sound wormhole: moon- // washed