mirror

Tags

2022, 6*, being, British Museum, enslavement, Greece, Have, history, identity, inner-self, mirror, outside, samsara, society, time, tragedy, war, woman

                                mirror

                        we lift
                whole armies of chariot, arm and thigh –
        scalloped handle either side –
                        to nichèd or columned view
                                asymmetrical
                                        grotesquery

                and for
        thousands of years now
                we see through eyes
                        polished and weighty above our heads
the extent of all our
                inwardly estate

 

I was struck by a caption by a mirror from the ancient Greek section of the British Museum which explained that rich women were not able to own any land, but that they could display their wealth in their own domestic environment and self-presentation

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

being & identity wormhole: ‘the practice …’
Have & samsara wormhole: travel // when I die
history wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
mirror wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
society wormhole: Candaka
time wormhole: ‘‘in my car I pass…’
war wormhole: riders of the night
woman wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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travel // when I die

Tags

2019, 7*, accountability, afterlife, afternoon, architecture, bardo, being, black, brick, brown, buildings, capitalism, century, clouds, crane, data, death, decades, dedication, depth, doing, echo, fields, floating, green, ground, Have, height, horizontal, identity, industry, interdependent origination, iteration, length, lintel, London, magenta, mind, notice, orange, passing, perspective, pillars, presence, purple, rain, rainbow, red, reference, ripple, rooftops, russian vine, samsara, sandstone, sapphire, self-cherishing, self-grasping, silence, sill, sky, sound, speech, Thames, thought, tide, time, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, utility, walls, white, world, writing

                                                                                travel

                                                                                noticing
                                                                at all is a product of
                                                                shifted perspective
                                                                related to behold;

                                                                when I’ve nothing to write
                                                                I’ve lost any perspective,
                                                                cornered by both these walls
                                                                I’ve walked along

                when I die
                this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
                in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration

                                                                cranes atop
                                                                pulling them further up and up
                                                                from the ground on which they
                                                                balance on receding point;

                                                                communities of them
                                                                each taller than the last and the next
                                                                all along the wharfs
                                                                of endless account

                it will be expansive
                high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
                it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple

                                                                kilometres long
                                                                courses of brick
                                                                grimed black and utility-studded
                                                                updown onoff foothold and wire

                                                                ripple along nicely
                                                                across right-angled centuries
                                                                and occasional shot bolts
                                                                of deepest russian vine

                with no sound
                save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
                having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and

                                                                believe it or not
                                                                a rainbow exponential
                                                                to the white arch of Wembley
                                                                we’ll chase for miles

                                                                orange shimmering to
                                                                magenta through staccato tides
                                                                out and over flat roofs
                                                                on and into the fields

                all data wiped –
                suds off my hands from my shoulders –
                and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?

                                                                where trees grow from ground
                                                                shaping over decades
                                                                green-flamed cupolas
                                                                clamped to the sky

                                                                and from perspective passing
                                                                of open field
                                                                turn – creak –
                                                                the whole world

                I may well
                have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
                plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …

                                                                and there
                                                                Lancashire red brick
                                                                with high and whitey
                                                                sills stale and lintel

                                                                before washed-out
                                                                sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
                                                                and horizontal fingers of
                                                                scud-rain

                … but they’d just
                floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
                straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve

                                never really
                                made stuff happen
                                and didn’t have to try

                                more than let more and more
                                of stuff happening anyway
                                happen through me

 

train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive

 

 

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

afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

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 VI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 5*, being, doing, energy, Have, identity, meaning, non-doing, speech, talking to myself, William Carlos Williams, words

                VI

                No that is not it
                nothing that I have done
                nothing
                I have done

                is made up of
                nothing
                and the dipthong

                ae

                together with
                the first person
                singular
                indicative

                of the auxiliary
                verb
                to have

                everything
                I have done
                is the same

                if to do
                is capable
                of an
                infinity of
                combinations

                involving the
                moral
                physical
                and religious

                codes

                for everything
                and nothing
                are synonymous
                when

                energy in vacuo
                has the power
                of confusion

                which only to
                have done nothing
                can make
                perfect

 

from Spring and All, 1923
I’d have loved to have sculpted this into a circular poem so that the beginning line slipped off the end line at the apex of a circle and could be read round and around in circles until nothing was achieved; but it’s not my place to

 

 

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

being & Have & speech wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
doing & talking to myself wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
identity wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
meaning wormhole: being / doing
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I BY William Carlos Williams
words wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

 

early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

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

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

you

Tags

2018, 3*, consumerism, credit, emptiness, Have, identity, need, realisation

                                you

                take stuff away,
                you realise how
                much you don’t
                need it, as long as

                you don’t mind
                facing the void a bit
                while your credit
                is being checked

 

 

 

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

emptiness wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
Have wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
identity wormhole: getting fat in me old age
realisation wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving

 

so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

Tags

2017, 6*, consummation, discovery, fingers, gap, gold, grasshoppers, Have, life, light, mind, retirement, Rumplestiltkin, talking to myself, weaving, words, writing

                                                                so
                do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or …
                                Rumplestiltskin

                                                oh,
                                I have a mind and
                                                oh,
                I can weave gold from any old fibre

                whether you give me your life or not – never
                                a consummation to be made,
                                                never a consummation to be had

                                but
                they have some charm
                                and they have some light
                                                to decipher

                                                makes them sparkle if I twinkle the words finely enough                
                                between the gaps
                fingers working like grasshoppers

 

 

 

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

gold wormhole: mauve
Have & life wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
light wormhole: chuckling
mind wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
retirement & talking to myself & writing wormhole: letting them go
words wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory

 

both modern and en-slaved / to life

Tags

2017, 6*, begging, exploitation, giving, Have, identity, life, market, modern slavery, pavement, poverty, Rome, society, streets, walls

                beggars placed disfigured
                either side of a pavement

                wept to the wall or knelt
                at the paviour; snatched up

                from somewhere the plastic
                cuts shut, (there

                to shame a thousand
                passing pardons each to weave

                themselves reassured
                with bonhomie on the next

                street corner, or sometimes maybe
                to ladder a little

                to give) exploited
                to within a width of their life

                making bruised a market
                of the will to Have

                both modern and en-slaved
                to life

 

there is a distinct type of beggar on the streets of Rome which I have not witnessed anywhere else in Europe (and only heard about in India); the legend among Romans is that injured and displaced people are rounded up from poorer areas in eastern Europe, promised medical care (which often leaves them disfigured – all the better to inspire sympathy) and shelter, and kept in very basic conditions on the outskirts of large cities in Italy and taxied in every day to earn their living; there are gangs of people who exploit these beggars in this way – modern slavery

 

 

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

giving wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
Have & society wormhole: amniotic avenue
identity & walls wormhole: I
life wormhole: letting them go
streets wormhole: breakfast

 

amniotic avenue

Tags

2017, 5*, ageing, avenue, bay window, Bodhisattva Vow, change, conditioned existence, Eastbourne, Have, life, lifetimes, mother sentient beings, passing, people, perspective, promenade, shadow, shops, society, step, time, walking

                                                                amniotic avenue

                ah, here they come
                out from under the receding bay windows above

                people emerge
                by the flanking promenade of shopfronts that come and go over decades                

                ageing with each step
                and pass

by

 

 

 

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

change & life wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Eastbourne & walking wormhole: perspective
Have wormhole: it’s all about…;
lifetimes wormhole: stuck in lower realm
passing wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
people wormhole: I am not yet ready
promenade wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
shadow wormhole: with all love released
shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
society wormhole: growth
time wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}

 

it’s all about…;

Tags

2016, 6*, giving, Have, identity, looking, possession, seeing, thinking, wanting

                it’s all about…;

                it’s not looking
                for what I want
                it’s having
                what I see

                it’s not having
                what I want
                it’s giving
                what isn’t mine

                and when I
                think carefully
                about it, nothing
                is really mine

 

 

 

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

Have & identity wormhole: coagulating
looking wormhole: hold them
seeing wormhole: sharpened apex
thinking wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold