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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what wounds have you got?

Tags

'scape, 2010, 5*, breakdown, career, depression, ghosts, identity, results-led education, self, snow, sound, teaching, voices, wind

                           part V

I have been in, but not part of, the stadium for such a long time
it is here, all about and above, creaking, flapping, I
had thought it didn’t exist at all; it is cardboard and canvas
standing up against the inevitable winds, and snow

so much construction, so little structure, so little warmth
it is cold here in this quiet wasteland, but I sit
to one side now – out of the way – and shut my ears
to the noises and voices.   I still have a lamp.   I try

to keep warm by it.   I can’t see them – out in the night
and cold – are there any other souls lost, out there?
Come and join me over here.   If we sit together
I can get quite a lot of heat from this lamp.   Let’s see –

what wounds have you got?

 

since this was written and published years ago I have subsequently and finally retired … from being the ‘ghost with open wound‘; I am now, just cold

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: monument to vainglory
career & teaching wormhole: everwhile
depression wormhole: beepbeep
ghosts wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
identity wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
results-led education & voices wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
snow & sound wormhole: open window
wind wormhole: time

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance

Tags

1967, 2016, 8*, air, ale, breathing, countryside, earth, field, gaze, ghosts, grandfather, green, honeysuckle, Kent, life, Michael J Redford, noon, nose, quiet, sound, speech, suburbia, summer, Sunday, time

 

                on Sundays my father downed tools and was
                led by the nose – the Redford bequest –

                drawing us into the quietude of Kent,
                out from the crust of suburbia,

                plunged deepening into green
                carrying bags of sandwiches towards noon;

                when, he would gaze around awhile
                and “let’s try over there” as if he were only

                wondering, “landlord’s name is Bert,”
                he’d trail behind quietly to himself, breathing

                even ghosts in through his live and open nostrils
                (back, even, to the seventeenth century,

                 looking out over the tombstones,
                creaking & checking, drinking, ale); taught me

                to fathom honeysuckle
                on a damp summer’s air carrying far before

                the meet, to flare to the earth
                of a muck heap ‘made’ well, to bask

                and loiter by ammoniac stables
                breathing for to clear the head, to “foller yer nose”

                and find the green bean field –
                cup of sweet wine drunk with intemperance –

 

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose; this piece is, of course, written from the uncle-person singular, therefore his ‘father’ was my Grandfather, who died when I was still a baby – I knew him about as much as a ruffle on the head from on high that I can remember; I have grown familiar with him through Mick’s writings and old pictures I have acquired to try and trick time out of its progress – AND IT SUCCEEDED!

 

 

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

air & green & Sunday wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
breathing & speech wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
field wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
ghosts wormhole: passersby
life wormhole: passing below
quiet wormhole: sleep now
sound wormhole: 1967
time wormhole: time

 

passersby

Tags

2016, 6*, architecture, artist, blue, buildings, facade, finials, ghosts, Granada, identity, others, passing, rooftops, self, Shantideva, sky, smile, streets, superhero, thought, walls, wandering

                “acting like an apparition
                  with no sense of self”; not

                martyring myself an apparition
                because no one recognised my

                self; let me wander the streets
                and plazas parrying every foil

                in my head, swinging up
                facades and leaping rooftops

                with closed-lipped smile
                to greet the passersby; the

                artist sits with his back
                to the wall to finish

                the finials opposite with just
                touches of blue sky

 

the quote is from Stephen Batchelor’s translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (V, 57) which I was reciting as my holiday reading; the ideal and the model, the should and the example; how to be amongst other (and amongst others), it is not the finials, so much, as the sky before which they reach …

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: the purple mist between
blue & passing & thought & walls wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
buildings & streets wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
ghosts wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
identity wormhole: I
others wormhole: Clea
rooftops wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
Shantideva wormhole: inbreath
sky wormhole: be
smile wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
superhero wormhole: zero

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in

Tags

1967, 2016, 8*, abundance, ageing, autumn, birthday, blackberries, branches, brown, change, childhood, climbing, clouds, cows, earth, elm, field, gate, ghosts, gold, grey, hedge, ivy, lark, leaves, legs, life, listening, memory, mist, path, red, rook, rose-hips, running, seagull, shadow, signpost, silence, singing, sky, skyline, society, trees, wind, yellow

            there are great mountains of cumulus
            towered above, shadows course over
            grey-yellow stubble, gulls hackle rooks
            in leaning elms while red and black-

            berries hang in the hedgerow … run,
            run downhill, stretch my legs in boundless
            stride, stream through the air from boy
            to man, flood the plain with open memory;

            or maybe: scale a furtive upward glance,
            through boughs of avenue, a third
            dimension, to survey, to just survey all
            the song of all to sing ‘laaaaaark’; but

            I’ll just rest here, now, sit beside the gate
            sit under the signpost, and listen … foliage
            turned dark and almost brown, the earth
            awaits the golden plough while dancing

            rose-hips watch skeins of Friesians
            work meticulous across the skyline and
            … everything will change, piped rippled
            through bygone years – there will be ghosts

            in the ditches, there will be paths adrift
            of leaf, the ivy will reach up from the post
            which points only to the wind now leaving
            autumn mists to drift like webs into the

            corners of paddocks; and there is a strange
            silence in the sky … as the new town marches in

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times

 

 

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

autumn & branches & brown & change & childhood & clouds & field & grey & hedge & leaves & life & mist & path & red & seagull & silence & sky & skyline & trees & wind & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
birthday wormhole: birthday poem
ghosts wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
gold wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
listening wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
shadow wormhole: the purple mist between
society wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge

 

just saying, is all IV: // lost

Tags

2013, career, cause and effect, confusion, connection, discussion, doing, ghosts, lost, organic, rhetoric, school, society, striving, work, world

 

 

 

           just saying, is all IV:

                           the world
                           has become
                           so saturated
                           with rhetoric
           that the connection between cause and effect has been lost

                           to strive
                           to put
                           organic
                           discourse
           and action in the world is to put yourself ghostly and confusing to the rhetoric

                           my activity
                           at work
                           was non-
                           rhetorical
           (even a-rhetorical) even though it was not; nonsense

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
doing wormhole: strange / tarnish
ghosts wormhole: truly invisible
school wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
society wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
striving wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
work wormhole: quick inventory after coffee
world wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11

 

let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were

Tags

2014, attention, authority, doing, dream, effort, ghosts, identity, legacy, living, meaning, prayer, recognition, self, talking to myself, thinking, world

 

 

 

                                   so much of what I do is
                                   only interesting because I
                                   think I am making a gain
                                   or I think I am solidifying

                                   meaningfully, at last; (dreams
                                   of flashlights and applause)
                                   dreams of legacy and authority
                                   dreams of recognition and

                                   belonging, of being loved
                                   (for what I do and think),
                                   with desperate effort to
                                   ensure my self worthy to

                                   the dream and I end up
                                   the ghost of my own
                                   indifference; please may
                                   I act cleanly: let the dreams

                                   become the ghosts they
                                   always were, dissolved
                                   into the vivid objects of
                                   my attention in the world

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
doing & talking to myself wormhole: tobacco pouch
dream wormhole: dream 260815
ghosts wormhole: truly invisible
identity wormhole: we play / the game
living wormhole: “write, let’s break outta here!”
meaning wormhole: New York Movie, 1939
recognition wormhole: block ‘n’ role
thinking wormhole: out!
world wormhole: sit

 

truly invisible

Tags

2013, anatta, anxiety, being, doing, ghosts, giving, identity, invisible, letting go, life, realisation, work

 

 

 

                      in my life I carefully and
                      experimentally crafted
                      a ghost with which to be

                      I long-time realised, out of
                      a fog of anxiety, that ghosts
                      do not exist; it was a nice idea –

                      the invisible liberator – but
                      it was never going to get any
                      purchase; let us quietly celebrate

                      the release of myself from all
                      that rattling and dooing and watch
                      as I become truly invisible

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: Black Rook / in Rainy Weather
being wormhole: earthed
doing wormhole: rather
ghosts wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
giving & life wormhole: my life / of others
identity wormhole: nothing // matters
letting go wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
realisation wormhole: addicted / compulsive / identity
work wormhole: is that so!

 

Brugges April 2015 – looking lost

Tags

2015, air, archaeology, architecture, brass, Brugges, buildings, calves, carillon, church, compassion, faces, finding, ghosts, girl, gold, grey, happiness, history, identity, infrastructure, lemon, letting go, lifetimes, lime, looking, lost, mantra, measure, nuns, oak, passing, people, portrait, posture, purple, saints, scaffolding, seeing, silver, simplicity, sky, society, sound, space, speech, station, step, sun, time, train, wheel, wood

                Brugges April 2015

                looking to find myself at the international train station – all
                the people passing – I’ll feel stone-faced and unmoved until
                I let their faces pass with all manner of their step ‘n’ roll
                looking to find themselves at the international train station –

                looking is found when letting is seen – lost     the civic
                detail of architecture in spikey scaffolding       turning; the
                bite in the sunny air before the grey girder holding     everything –
                the tracks and posts of infrastructure turned by brick-weight

                and wooden wheel found archaeological, built space high
                into the sky with threefold holy design – life spent and time-
                worn in silent healing sitting collected and still in a lifetime
                of ghostly movement before brick pillars clear as history

                makes them; “time is just a measurement” said John right,
                before he died “happiness is very simple” said Ediccia;
                the purple skirt was settled then the lime shirt veined lemon
                with om mani padme hum threads was procured and the slipper

                slipped from the waitress’ heel as she used her fine calves
                to find free tables; golden saints on pinnacles languidly
                show something that the 7 year old strutting before the
                Open Light Brass Band cannot as oak twigs bud in the sky;

                the dark-carved wood gilt with silver effulgence to a higher
                record than the fine-branched brass scales that measure
                the herbs porcelain to the touch while the carillon plays
                dissimilar tunes discordantly to forgotten time and history

 

I am very pleased to present the above, cultured from a short stay in Brugges at the beginning of this month; we travelled by Eurostar leaving from St. Pancras station and passed through Brussels, then out to Brugges; there is no newer building in the centre of the town, the spires and towers still rise down side streets no matter where you walk (Spire of the Church of Our Lady); there is a large photograph of nuns dedicated to life healing at the exhibition in Sint-Janshospitaal and an exhibition ‘Right, Before I Die’ by Andrew George of photographs of people towards the ends of their life and the words they have to say; we visited the old apothecary back at Sint-Janshospitaal; there was a music festival happening but we only saw the Open Light Brass Band play …

 

 

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

air wormhole: I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia
architecture & buildings & girl & identity & passing & people & seeing & sound & time wormhole: sight / seeing
church wormhole: Trinity Arts
compassion wormhole: the dash is magnificent / the shadow grotesque
faces & society wormhole: mass
ghosts wormhole: under silent direction of architecture
gold & speech wormhole: gold wedding band
grey wormhole: Hypnopompia
history wormhole: ha ha ha
lemon & lime wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
letting go & space wormhole: between
lifetimes wormhole: what heavy and cantilevered structure
looking wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
oak wormhole: corroboration
posture wormhole: oh,
purple wormhole: the edge has come …
silver wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
sky wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
sun & train wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
wood wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop

 

under silent direction of architecture

Tags

2015, Alan Moore, architecture, autumn, buildings, curtains, doing, echo, Eddie Campbell, From Hell, ghosts, identity, name, others, passing, silence, status, thought, time, words

                                it’s only when letters
                                threaten to tell all words,
                                that buildings in which we
                                exist and exit become

                                ghostly like curtains (then,
                                it is best to hang your head
                                in common with others
                                on public transport) oh,

                                and when all there is to
                                eat are the brand names
                                on the sides of passing
                                coaches in autumn; and

                                it is only when high up from
                                time’s point of view that
                                building solidifies again and
                                those who can tell the time

                                can also see the portents as
                                they pass, and know which
                                way to turn that lets ‘you
                                know how it is’ happen in

                all decency without thought or echo under silent direction of architecture

 

askance from chapter seven of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

a little snippet from askance From Hell, askance from chapter ten of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, gwn’n’avvalook

 

 

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

architecture Alan Moore & buildings & others & silence wormhole: the streets just fill with business
autumn wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
curtains wormhole: lobby
doing & time wormhole: hinged
echo & passing wormhole: purpose
ghosts wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
identity wormhole: relapse
thought wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
words wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II