the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes

Tags

2022, 20th century, 8*, afternoon, banshee, blood, blue, brown, capitalism, Carol, childhood, dream, eyes, faces, fields, garden, gold, growing, history, landscape, life, maelstrom, measure, mist, object, objectification, orange, plane, production, sapphire, sky, sound, space, storm, summer, sweet, time, whorl, World War I

                                                the inevitable tock

                        this queasy land
                        life out of time, this dreamscape
                        with waist-high mist

and then a uni-prop dhrined straight across the sky one endless summer gardenoon

                        made a whorl
                        brown and bloody fields
                        and jar-sweet marmalade

                        wherein history appeared
                        as proliferated objects
                        space now only a measure

                        the face appears
                        in the eye of the storm
                        tarnished blue and palsy

                        measuring gossamer gold
                        between always-contestable markers
                        from an impossible sapphire cap

                        only retrospectively glimpsed now
                        as screaming banshees
                        back in the maelstrom

when we close our eyes

time by Carol Redford; used with permission – thank you

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

20th century wormhole: the reach turned to love
afternoon & Carol & garden & sky & time wormhole: time
blue & gold & life wormhole: Journey
brown & capitalism wormhole: travel // when I die
childhood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
dream wormhole: Candaka
eyes wormhole: Four Noble Truths
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
fields wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
history wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
mist wormhole: taking birth
orange wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sound wormhole: long / road
space wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
storm wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
summer wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

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Candaka

Tags

2019, 6*, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, Candaka, dharma, dream, gazing, gods, horizon, Kanthaka, meaning, renunciation, role, society, step, sword, the Four Signs, trees, yesterday

                Candaka

                out from the trees
                he emerged but was bedraggled

                he stared just under
                ahead, no longer to triumphant horizons

                his jaw hung as if forgot to locate
                no further to commend

                and his sword listed, tinny and tarnished,
                unsure to hand;

                just yesterday
                was a dream where he played the part

                of losing each part that he had played
                step by tired step

                and out of step with Kanthaka’s step;
                he had lost the Prince

 

etching, from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra; Chandaka was the charioteer and the groom for the Prince, Siddhartha Gautama, his chauffeur, in a way, but also a confidant, to some extent; it was Chandaka who led the Prince out of palace-life where the Prince encountered the Four Signs (four features of life which he hadn’t taken into account in his privileged life – old age, illness, death and living outside of society and social role); Kanthaka was the Prince’s magnificent horse, worthy of bearing a sovereign, the epitome of beauty, strength and transport; despite society and role obliging the Prince to remain in the palace and fulfil his dharma as king, his urge to get to the bottom of purpose and life was strong from previous lifetimes of vows … he had to leave; the gods themselves helped the Prince escape – it was only Chandaka who did not fall into a deep sleep; Kanthaka’s hooves did not strike the ground, the gates flew open by themselves – because they wanted someone to get to the bottom of purpose and life as well; both Chandaka and Kanthaka were devoted to the Prince but could not fully appreciate the gravity of the Prince’s quest, they played their roles – their dharma – but without full agency: all they could appreciate was the challenge to role and society that they had participated in, and no means to understand beyond that …

 

 

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

Buddha & renunciation wormhole: light of all interaction
dreams wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
horizon wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
meaning wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
society wormhole: looking for the right exit
trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

 

“And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, animals, architecture, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, collapse, corner, dream, fireplace, lintel, moss, pediment, pillars, ruin, settlement, sound, stone, thought, trees, walls, weight, windows

                                “And anger it is that lays in ruins
                                  every kind of mental goodness.”

                crunch what have I stepped on
                cracked, hollow, all about, what

                is this square stone pediment
                skewed and in the way, no, not

                square, this moss has rounded
                the corner, and here is a

                pillar (where’s the arch, where’s
                the other pillar) all concussed

                and made of cone it seems,
                it must have just collapsed

                one day, couldn’t hold the weight,
                maybe someone took the

                other pillar, maybe the lintel
                just shattered and got walked over;

                but no walls here, just that
                mound over there, I could

                climb the side, there are steps, oh,
                it was the fireplace, all that rubble

                has filled the hearth and …
                this was the back wall, here

                is a corner of a window space,
                but there are just trees to see

                now, was it cleared here once,
                did they keep animals milling

                about, were they comfortable,
                did they have dreams …?

 

a wistful from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, verse 7: “Encountering that which I fear or do not want, and obstructed or frustrated in obtaining what I want, these provide the fuels of discontent, of unhappiness, of irritation. They smoulder and then flare-up, spreading within me. I become built-up and headstrong with anger which eats away inside and will eventually consume me and the toxic world I have created for myself.” The title-quote is from “The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech”, a commentary to the Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Kunzang Palden.

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
dream wormhole: on facing the Have
sound wormhole: in turgid reflection
stone & trees wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
thought wormhole: in deed
walls wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875
windows wormhole: threshold to behold

 

somehow

Tags

2018, 5*, corridors, dream, embracing, forgiveness, head, looking, manager, now, retirement, school, speech, teaching, time, visit

                                somehow

                                I was visiting back
                where everything seemed to have changed
                                … ‘I’ll let Simon, here
                take you there’, I let
                                Simon know
                that I knew these corridors,
                                had worked here a time ago
                for quite a time …
                                and in the lunch hall
                the manager who’d watched it fall apart
                                in unmoveable brief
                was making her way
                                my way we,
                would have to meet, I looked down
                                to greet, she looked down
                to avoid hoping there
                                was anything else to notice,
                I took her head in my arms
                                because I think it’s
                OK to say “it’s OK”
                                now

 

 

 

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

dream wormhole: on facing the Have
looking & retirement & school wormhole: to let be
school wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
teaching wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
time wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

 

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

 

THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 6*, air, ambition, awareness, being, body, breathing, clothes, dream, eight worldly dharmas, feeling, feet, ground, hats, life, living, looking, nose, shoes, sky, talking to myself, Thursday, weight, William Carlos Williams

                                THURSDAY

                I have had my dream–like others–
                and it has come to nothing, so that
                I remain now carelessly
                with feet planted on the ground
                and look up at the sky–
                feeling my clothes around me,
                the weight of my body in my shoes,
                the rim of my hat, air passing in and out
                at my nose–and decide to dream no more.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

a song, perhaps, to sing when once one is retired, althout WCW was only in his thirties when he wrote this, which possibly means you don’t have to wait to be broken by the long haul in order to realise the beauty oftheworldwhichcrushesyou is precisely where you stand in it with being rather than reach …; we try to make ourselves so solid and de-fined by what we want rather than what we are, that we are afraid of the openness of the sky that arcs so far away from us, but that when we jump right into it – the ultimate skinny-dip – we feel ourselves so solid on the ground from which we leapt … he wasn’t a showman, old Bull Williams, but he knew his shit, even from the age when you wouldn’t believe it

 

 

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

air & being wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
awareness wormhole: letting them go
breathing wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
dream wormhole: “I need help”
feet wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
life wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
living wormhole: `whappn’d!
looking wormhole: cowl
sky wormhole: we held cold hands
talking to myself wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
William Carlos Williams wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

“I need help”

Tags

2015, 4*, career, dream, fear, letting go, passing, shame, speech, stairs, teacher, teaching

                vulnerable and stuck
                on the way to first lesson

                taking the short-cut over
                the main stairwell, narrow

                foot-ledge, I cannot
                continue, don’t look down,

                I cannot go back, “I need
                help, get a teacher” and

                I am not ashamed to
                call out loud, no one

                does, I cannot go back,
                a teacher passes, I

                cannot remember her
                name “I need help”;

                I realise there is a balcony-
                corridor behind the ledge,

                safety partition is loose,
                I can lean back into it,

                break the screen, fall
                back, no more fear

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: circuitry
dream wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
letting go wormhole: place
passing wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
speech wormhole: Sandwich
stairs wormhole: is this it // all the time
teaching wormhole: I turn to wake up

 

breathing through hypnagogia

Tags

2014, 5*, breath, breathing, care, career, dream, hypnagogia, illusion, letting go, observing, passing, waking, work

                breathing through hypnagogia

                                rousing
                into congealed injustice
                                                career of my 40s
                                                all sticky
                                between breaths, under fingernails
                I can know   longer   care

                                observe
                                it will pass
                                breathe

                                                                let it disperse by itself
                                and just do the work with
strong sense of illusion

 

 

 

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

breath wormhole: the quiet whale
breathing wormhole: do I
career wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
dream wormhole: I turn to wake up
letting go wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
passing wormhole: this time
work wormhole: work

 

I turn to wake up

Tags

2014, 7*, authority, breakdown, Carol, determination, doors, dream, Emily, future, heart, Hillside, home, humiliation, identity, innocence, life, managerialism, neglect, power, presumption, pupils, responsibility, sound, streets, teachers, teaching, time, toilet, uniform, waking

the e-mail that clanked dank in my heart
                the report I hadn’t written
                                for so long, for Emily
[her future all depends on it, poor Emily, she is so innocent and so pretty she deserves all the future she can get and You are neglecting her of it with your own languid longevity] but I will

                                NOT be responsible for future lives
                when I am ill from the presumption which doesn’t let me
even crap in private outside my own backdoor pan-in-the-yard
                they have called for me at my front door
                                with the brusqueness of a uniform
                                                with the presumption of amoral (sic)
                                                                even here
                                                the uniform and the outside toilet in my own house:                
                the humiliation could not be more complete so
I pull the hood of my dressing gown over my head
                and sink out of the dream

                                This Will Not Be

                                                I rouse Carol from
                                                                her own dream
                                                and drift somewhat back to …
                                … pupils all around the street
                                                they
                                                should
                                                not be
                                                there but only I
                of all the teachers in my front room
go out to front and tell them –
                command of my righteousness –
                                that they should not be there they should be BEHIND the house
                                                behind the house
                                but they turn languid
                and run round the corner down the street, they know
they don’t have to listen to me and
                I am powerless because
                                I am ill

                                I am so fed up with this
                                                I turn myself to wake up
                                                                I turn to wake up

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: slow enough / to have love
Carol wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
doors & life wormhole: every step I take
dream wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Hillside wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: dear Lucy
managerialism wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
power wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sound & streets wormhole: while
teaching wormhole: dream I // dream II
time wormhole: this time

 

make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let

Tags

2013, 7*, afternoon, attention, boundary, class, construction, defeat, defensive, dream, labour, letting go, lifetimes, living, morning, satisfaction, shift, silence, skill, speech, teaching, waking, water

                I woke saying “sit down”
                to a class who had
                been testing me like water

                moving silent against
                my every prescription
                demanded or presumed

                despite all the charm or
                cleverness I might use
                to a morning

                and then an afternoon
                of defeat and defence
                unable to use the skill

                and manoeuvre I have
                taught myself for
                lifetimes now

                all the shift and forming
                around the boundaries
                finding every fissure

                and fault just ahead
                of my every attempt
                to dam it all; what labour

                what want of satisfaction;
                let the water go
                where it will – it will

                all go there anyway – and
                make your rickety
                constructs strong with

                unbending grids
                of attention and wide-
                open grates of let

 

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: be
attention wormhole: divergent // direction
dream wormhole: wakeoutofadream
letting go wormhole: redundant
lifetimes wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything
living wormhole: free
morning wormhole: windows // and balconies
silence & speech & water wormhole: the quiet whale
teaching wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket