light of all interaction

Tags

eyes, Buddha, love, smile, realisation, compassion, renunciation, light, world, wealth, 6*, 2019, Arya Lalitavistara

                light of all interaction

                he had been offered
                unending carnal delights
                and he smiled on them
                and declined in a
                thousand tender ways

                he had relinquished
                palaces and his eyes
                in a highway of response,
                so he shined without
                source or pervasion, everywhere

 

slight opacity from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra, the life story of the Buddha who left behind all that life could give in order to find what life is all about, who could be you or could be me

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
compassion wormhole: waiting to be heard
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
light wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
love wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019
realisation wormhole: there will be ovations
renunciation wormhole: Renunciation
smile & world wormhole: mandala offering

 

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THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1930, 7*, attic, day, desire, light, night, poem, roof, streets, William Carlos Williams, windows

                THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE:

                                the unused tent
                                of

                                bare beams
                                beyond which

                                directly wait
                                the night

                                and day–
                                Here

                                from the street
                                by

                                   *   *   *
                                   *   S   *
                                   *   O  *
                                   *   D  *
                                   *   A  *
                                   *   *   *

                                ringed with
                                running lights

                                the darkened
                                pane

                                exactly
                                down the center

                                is
                                transfixed

 

from Poems, 1930: the word becomes the poem, nothing beyond the word itself – cf. * SODA * – but everything in it just the same; WCW was an atomist, a catalyst and maybe, even, an alchemist, but he was not a dogmatist or a fantasist and definitely not a rhapsodist, although he was a poet, and very often-enough, didn’t know it

 

 

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

light & windows wormhole: window
night & william Carlos Williams wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
streets wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

 

window

Tags

1830, 2019, 5*, artist, creak, crystal, fire, light, painting, silence, silhouette, sound, standing, Turner, windows

                oh,
                the Artist stood

                only he
                in silhouette

                daubing;
                his Admirers reclined

                or leant
                and all was silent

                save a creak
                and a lap of flame

                and the
                incandescent crystal

                of light
                around the floor-to-ceiling

                window

 

the sounds of light downloaded from Petworth: the Artist and his Admirers (the old library), c. 1830 by William Turner; when light enters through windows it turns to music if there is an alert-enough artist to express it and an audience-enough to hear

 

 

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

light & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
silhouette & sound wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
windows wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

Tags

ash, beauty, bridge, clouds, consciousness, cottage, dawn, eyes, garden, gazing, gold, grass, grey, hedge, hill, land, leaves, light, memory, Michael J Redford, mist, morning, passing, petunia, quiet, radio, rain, reflection, river, roads, silence, silver, sky, skyline, smell, sound, speech, starlings, stillness, stone, summer, sun, sycamore, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, valley, village, water, weather, willow, writing

Rain

“The morning will be overcast with frequent showers. They will be heavy at times in the south east but brighter weather will follow later from the west …”

Thus spake the oracle from the radio early one summer morning casting his own black cloud over the hearts of many.   I was a keen cyclist in my teens and at many a weekend my schoolmate and I would grease up our cycles and head for the open road.   Shoreham was our target this particular day but the voice of doom did not quell our enthusiasm.   The weather was kind to us on the way down with the sun occasionally breaking through the gloom above to splash a little watery light on the road ahead and we arrived on the outskirts of the village at around nine o’clock. Passing Samuel Palmer’s old cottage we came upon the bridge and dismounted.   After a strenuous exercise, it is a delight to lean upon a bridge and gaze upon the waters emerging from beneath one’s feet.   The flow catches the eye and lifts it slowly into the distance and the senses relax to the accompaniment of its music.   There weren’t many gnats and midges at that time of day, but those that were about were flying very low indeed.   Certainly there was rain about and it wasn’t very far off either for we could just detect the faint scent of it even above the mass of water at our feet.   Not wishing to miss any of its quiet charm, we walked our bicycles through the village, and as the sky grew heavy above us, my thoughts turned to my companion’s pet tortoise Horace who had been extremely active earlier that morning, this being a sure sign of approaching rain.   We turned down the hill past the Crown Hotel, on past the water mill which was then a tea house (I believe it is now a private dwelling) and out onto the banks of the Darenth.

A damp mist had filtered through the trees on the hill opposite and the grey light had transmuted the upturned leaves of ash and sycamore into flecks of silver that hung without movement in the stillness of the impending downpour.   An old weeping willow, pollarded of its crowning glory, leaned out from the bank across the water and as I peered into its dark reflection a crayfish, startled by the leviathan that reared above it, scuttled beneath the smooth stones. As I gazed, the picture was suddenly distorted.   A raindrop had followed immediately by another and yet another and soon I was no longer able to fathom the depths.   We donned our capes, drew up our knees and huddled against the tree like two diminutive bell tents.   Cozy in our little dry islands, the raindrops drummed upon our capes in anger and hissed at us from the river turning it into a boiling cauldron.   The mist that had settled among the trees on the hill opposite had drifted on making way for a great veil of rain that spanned the skyline in graceful folds – a grey but beautiful replica of the Aurora Borealis.

As the curtain drifted slowly by, the day grew appreciably lighter and the deluge eased to a steady drizzle.   Soon after, the clouds broke a little, and a shaft of pure gold struck the hills, becoming wider at its base as it raced swiftly down the valley.   Then the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun and silence, the ethereal beauty of which is always magnified when the rains are over, tumbled into the valley.   We sat in silence beside the bubbling waters and for several minutes we watched its breathless pursuit of the shaft of gold.

It is within such a quietude that I sit now jotting down these notes.   This morning was a grey but clean smelling morning upon which the hedgerow leaves quivered.   It had been raining all night but had stopped just as dawn broke, leaving behind a miscellany of drips and drops, musical and echoing.   Each blade of grass had its tip bent by a raindrop and the clothes line was a string of pearls waiting to be spilled upon the lawn by the quick grasp of a starling’s feet.   By mid-morning the low cloud had dispersed and great mountains of summer cumulus were heaped about the sky.   It was my intention this morning to tackle one or two gardening chores that had been neglected but due to a tiny and insignificant happening, these have yet to be done.   As I passed the petunia bed, I bent to pick up an old seed packet that had appeared and my sleeve touched a petunia leaf.   Upon this leaf there were three rain drops, and as the leaf was set in motion, the three tiny drops rushed towards one another and merged into one large globule that trembled precariously in the centre of the leaf before rolling off the edge and disappearing into the soil.   This tiny happening caused my mind to leap back across the years to remember once more a particular drop of water out of all the millions that must have fallen that day at Shoreham; a single drop of water that has long since been returned to Poseidon from whence it came. We were walking back through the village when we paused awhile beside a cottage garden to discuss our plans.   The clouds were now few and the sun was strong in the cleansed sky drawing out the sweet scent of purity from the land.   Suddenly, a spark of light leapt from the ground and pierced my eye.   So bright was it that it might well have been of solid substance, for it so dazzled the eye that it quite took the breath from me.   I stooped to discover the origin of this manifestation and there, within the cupped hands of a lupin leaf was a tiny trembling rain drop.   It was a perfect globe clearer than crystal; a gem that would have done justice to the diadem of the most illustrious of monarchs.

So it is that my gardening chores for today have once more been neglected.   A rain drop fell from a leaf and in that single drop a flood of memories, memories I felt I had to record, for – they had been pushed so far below the plane of consciousness, that I was afraid they would never have come to the fore again.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

beauty & dawn & rain & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
bridge wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
clouds & passing wormhole: slight sneer
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
garden wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
gold & grey & leaves & sun & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
hedge wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
light & river wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
mist & morning & sound wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
quiet wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
radio wormhole: within
reflection wormhole: in turgid reflection
roads & silver wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
sky & speech & writing wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
skyline wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
smell wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
stillness wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
stone wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
water wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening

Tags

2019, 7*, Arya Lalitavistara, Bodhisattva, Buddha, calm, dark, demon, earth, echo, elephant, food, ground, happiness, light, lion, lotus, mindfulness, mountain, omniscient, past life, path, plateau, power, river, samsara, spontaneity, stars, step, three poisons, Tree of Awakening, view, walking, wheel

                so he bathed in the Nairañjanā,
                he ate the food, his strength

                returned, and he began the walk
                toward the Great Tree; he walked

                with easy gait, grounded
                as a mountain, each step gained

                and graceful with no fight, dream
                or idea; the placement pad of a lion,

                the calliper-swing of an elephant,
                a stride that touched not the earth

                but left perfect wheels
                upon the ground, a step that echoed

                across the plateau, a step that
                levelled mountain paths, each step

                that lead to happy lands,
                each step sprung from past lotuses

                of love and stable intention,
                that rendered demons powerless

                that calmed all view, that evanesced
                the darkness and stopped the

                endless endless rounds; his
                walk outshone the distant stars,

                his walk becalmed the rulers;
                the walk spontaneous, the walk

                omniscient, the walk mindful
                of every ancient step, with such a gait

                the Bodhisattva set out
                for the Seat of Awakening

 

from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra – the life story of the Buddha – originally using the words from the translation by the Dharmachakra Translation 84000 Committee which is freely available online here (for which thank you, thank you) and then other words once my gaze had settled into the image; the ‘Nairañjanā’ is the river by which the Buddha practised his austerities, the ‘food’ was that given to him by Sujata

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: Sujātā
echo wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
path wormhole: alabaster balustrade
power wormhole: in turgid reflection
river wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
stars wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

Tags

1967, afternoon, air, beauty, being, birdsong, black, breathing, camera, candle, church, clouds, colour, comet, consciousness, corridor, countryside, dance, dawn, depth, earth, elm, emotion, evening, eyes, fields, fire, gaze, gold, grey, heat, hills, horizon, identity, jade, leaves, life, light, mauve, Michael J Redford, mind, night, orbit, painting, photography, planet, rain, red, silence, silhouette, sky, space, spire, stars, storm, sun, sunset, the Boats of Vallisneria, thunder, trees, turquoise, valley, west

Sky

One evening about two years ago, there was, in my part of the country, one of the most magnificent sunsets that I have ever been privileged to witness.   Being a keen photographer (although not a very good one, for other peoples’ photographs always seem better than mine), I took my camera into the fields to capture the scene in colour.   It all began when the grey broken clouds, the ‘left overs’ of a stormy day, drifted slowly across the horizon, taking with them the tumult of the heavens.   It had been a somewhat dismal day with an atmosphere that clung like a warm damp blanket, enveloping all with an oppressive heat that made even the unconscious act of breathing an effort.   The day thus sulked its way through the hours, stifling the energy of life and suffocating the songs of birds until at long last, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky, no longer able to contain its pent up emotions, savaged the countryside with a violent storm.   In fact three storms had tumbled into the valley that afternoon that gave rise to a continuous end-of-the-world -like thunder that reverberated about us for an hour and a half.   Fearful though the storms were, the rain felt good, the soil quenched its thirst and the air became cool, and when the storm had flung its final volley of anger contemptuously at us, I saw that the wilted leaves had renewed vigour and had turned their faces once more to the sky.   Suddenly, the late evening sun broke loose and shone low across the fields, igniting the treetops with a blaze of old gold and adorning the scene with the tint of an old master’s painting. Screwing tripod to camera, I raised it to my eye and squinted through the view-finder.   For some moments I indulged in a danse macabre around the field with the tripodial skeleton stiff within my embrace, searching for the most artistic composition to enter the field of view.   By now the sun was an enormous dull-red hemisphere reclining upon the distant hills, infusing the undersides of the remaining clouds above with a heavy mauve the deepened perceptively as I gazed.   The solar chord became shorter and shorter until finally the perimeter of the disc was extinguished suddenly by the horizon as one snuffs out the flame of a candle.   Then, in a most abrupt and startling manner, the populace of the heavens turned to fire.   The clouds appeared to radiate from a point somewhere below the horizon in the vicinity of the sun and spread out above and behind me, plumbing the very depths of space itself.   It was as if Earth had entered the tail of a super comet that had passed close by on its elliptical orbit about the sun.   Hurriedly I set the tripod firmly on the ground and framed the sunset between the jet-black silhouettes of two sentinel elms.

After taking the photograph, I packed the equipment in its case, stood up and looked once more through the elms.   My gaze passed by the silent trees, through the sunset and beyond into space, leaving the great orb of this planet at a tangent.   The moment developed into one of those rare intervals in time when an overwhelming consciousness of the beauty about one descends and becalms the mind.   Although my gaze flew past the elms at incomprehensible speed, I was aware of their crisp outlines against the sky, and as it passed on through the sky into the depths of space, I could see the fire shrinking before me like the glow of a lantern disappearing down a long, dark corridor.   My eyes were now being lifted by a power exterior to my own being.   Up, up they went until I was craning my neck and gazing out into the zenith of space.   I had always been conscious of the great depths of space about me, but could not help regarding the heavens as anything but a dome viewed from a central point, the stars being spattered over the surface of this invisible hemisphere, all equidistant from me.   But on this particular occasion, I became aware of the three dimensionality of space, each planet, star and nebula standing out in such relief from each other, that I felt I could lift my hand and pluck them from their ethereal settings.   Immediately above my right shoulder the crooked W of Cassiopeia pierced the depths with startling clarity and midway between this and the great square of Pegasus, there glowed faintly the spiral nebula of Andromeda, so far flung into the void as to make the magnificent gold and blue binary system of Gamma Andromeda appear but ten steps distant.

Becoming dizzy from the depths above me I turned and cast my eyes down to the eastern horizon.   The Pleiades had just shown itself above the distant trees and was discernible only by averted vision, but its presence was sufficient to tell me that within the hour Aldebaran, the red eye of Taurus, would begin its journey above the horizon to dissolve overhead in the light of tomorrow’s dawn.   But even before Antares had touched the distant church spire in the darkening west, the night air became chill and with a shudder I headed for home.

Some days later when I had the film processed, I discovered much to my dismay, that I had become so involved with the scene before me that I had forgotten to remove the dust-cap from the lens, consequently I have no visual proof to offer my friends of the glory I have witnessed.   Often I am accused of exaggeration when describing a scene that has made an impression on me, yet I experience difficulty in finding adjectives of sufficient depth, colour or subtlety to use in such instances.   How can one convey to others the emotions that rise to greet the song of a nightingale, or to what depths the heart yearns to fly with the swift and embrace all three dimensions.   How can one possibly convey through the medium of the written or spoken word the sight of an evening sky washed with the faint mauve streaks that herald a sunset, or describe the background tint of the sky that is somewhere between a shade of jade and turquoise?

My attempts at describing this beautiful sunset to a friend met with very little response.   Emotion is a very personal thing and that which gives rise to emotion in one, may leave another completely cold.   Even so, I was completely taken aback when my friend said, “what sunset?”

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

afternoon & grey & rain & red & sky wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
air & silence & trees wormhole: 10/30 by William Carlos Williams
beauty wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
being & black wormhole: in deed
breathing wormhole: there will be ovations
church & silhouette wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
clouds wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
dawn & storm wormhole: birth in the world
evening & life wormhole: threshold to behold
eyes wormhole: mandala offering
gold wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
hills wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
horizon & sunset wormhole: in turgid reflection
identity wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
leaves wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
light & sun wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
mauve wormhole: travelling / back
mind wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
night wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
space wormhole: the reach turned to love
stars wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
valley wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890

Tags

1890, 2018, 6*, light, Pissarro, river, Rouen, shadow, sky, spire, stone, sun, time, trees, wood

                Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890

                they’ll grip the bank
                and grow for forty years

                while barges hardly move
                the sun will turn to wood,

                but they’ll be gone, the
                shadow they keep cannot hold,

                the light flattens all save
                the scars of the stone spires

 

grown from the banks of Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

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

light wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
river & sky wormhole: in turgid reflection
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
stone wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
sun wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
time wormhole: threshold to behold
trees wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
wood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees

 

10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, autumn, beech, glow, grass, grey, leaves, light, love, notice, William Carlos Williams, yellow

10/28

                in this strong light
                the leafless beechtree
                shines like a cloud

                it seems to glow
                of itself
                with a soft stript light
                of love
                over the brittle
                grass

                But there are
                on second look
                a few yellow leaves
                still shaking

                far apart

                just one here one there
                trembling vividly

 

specificularity within a cast-iron-changing season from the Descent of Winter, 1928 by William Carlos Williams

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
grey wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
leaves & yellow wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
light wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875
love wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
William Carlos Williams wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

Female Peasant Carding, 1875

Tags

1875, 2018, 6*, air, concentration, floor, inside, light, outside, Pissarro, portrait, shade, walls, windows, woman, wool

                she carded wool
                to her light’s content

                so that the shade
                became her floor and uprights

                and the air
                became her windows

 

Female Peasant Carding, 1875 by Camille Pissarro en plein ombre

 

 

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

air wormhole: waiting to be heard
light wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
walls wormhole: the reach turned to love
windows wormhole: the old man;
woman wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

 

Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832

Tags

1816, 1832, 2019, cave, cliff, Coleridge, depth, growth, height, Industrial Revolution, light, passing, sea, seagull, ship, sky, society, sun, Turner, waves, weeds

                the cave was as high as the sky
                the light at the mouth too bright

                to bear, the weight of cliff; in from
                the light, a retching steamship with

                stacked funnels polluting, intent
                on direction across a dim and

                sunlit sea fathomless to man, where
                only seagulls wing clarity over weedy waves

 

berthed out of the cave by Coleridge‘s ‘Kubla Khan‘, 1816: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832 by William Turner

 

 

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

life wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
passing & sun wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
sea wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
seagull wormhole: travelling / back
sky wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
society wormhole: there will be ovations
waves wormhole: allowed all gain