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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taking birth

Tags

2022, 7*, being, birth, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, clouds, compassion, identity, ignorance, jewel, knowledge, landscape, lifetimes, light, lightning, lost, mind, mirror, mist, mother sentient beings, opening, perspective, self-cherishing, self-grasping, shadow, Shantideva, sky, sun, young

                taking birth

        there is
        the mind which cracks within the belly
        of darkest clouds

        throws relief to the landscape
        and populace of the
        whole of sky

        if I could but turn
        just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
        trajectory

        and open
        so much more to just this tempered niche
        of knowledge

        that I could both mirror and shadow
        every fluorescence even before and awhile
        it contrasted

        I’d be young
        that I have long lost and mist
        while evolving this sclerotic eye

        and then
        there’d be sun,
        all my endless malapropriations burnished

        and faceted to a tiny étincelant Indra-jewel
        glinting all direction
        within every perspective respective

…responsive over reactive; effulgent over productive;
avenue’d over viewed; abundant over possessed; dispelled over horded;
homeopathic over pathologic; being over mirror; caught over fallen;
the hand that scratches the foot; not-finished-yet over finished…

 

 

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

being & identity & mirror wormhole: mirror
clouds wormhole: Journey
compassion wormhole: ‘the practice…’
lifetimes wormhole: in deed
light & shadow wormhole: silence
lightning wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
mind wormhole: travel // when I die
mist wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Shantideva wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sky & sun wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

Tags

7*, bridge, clouds, eyes, grass, grey, ground, leaves, light, mist, music, passing, rain, roads, silver, sound, starlings, sun, time, trees, water, writing

sooner;

occasional sun broke through
splashed watery light on the road

on the bridge gazing on the waters
the flow      caught the eye upwards

while the music scented of
mist through the trees

(grey light and silver hung
without movement in

folds) until
raindrops drummed upon our capes;

and later – jotting

in the note-book – each blade of grass
suspending a drop

(pearls waiting on the
clothes-line for the starling’s quickfeet),

then, when
my sleeve touched a leaf

and three drops merged and rolled down
into the soil down

through the years, there where
clouds draw scent from the land, there,

when a spark of light jabbed
into my eye

bright as solid substance cupped
within a lupin leaf

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

 

 

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

bridge & leaves & mist & rain & roads & silver & writing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
clouds & eyes & grey & passing & sound & sun & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
light wormhole: light of all interaction
music wormhole: c’mon – keep up
trees wormhole: Candaka
water wormhole: boiled spangle with soft centre

 

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

 

10/30 by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, air, disappearance, engine, left, mist, morning, movement, passing, silence, slow, sound, train, trees, whistle, William Carlos Williams

                To freight cars in the air

                all the slow
                    clank, clank
                    clank, clank
                moving above the treetops

                the
                    wha,     wha
                of the hoarse whistle

                    pah,      pah,      pah
                    pah, pah, pah, pah, pah

                    piece and piece
                    piece and piece
                moving still trippingly
                through the morningmist

                long after the engine
                has fought by
                                          and disappeared

                in silence
                                   to the left

 

obviously, the sound, echoingly, the sound, only, the sound; from the Descent of Winter, 1928 by William Carlos Williams

 

 

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

air wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875
mist & morning wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
passing wormhole: Sujātā
silence wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
sound & trees wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
train wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
William Carlos Williams wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams

 

Puerto del Carmen

Tags

2019, 6*, balcony, birth, boats, branches, buildings, canopy, death, distance, east, evening, glass, green, harbour, hills, horizon, hovering, impressionism, Lanzarote, life, midday, mist, morning, people, promenade, sea, streetlamp, sunset, time, trees, trunk, walking, water, west

                Puerto del Carmen

                to the east
                in the morning

                the promenade
                ended out at the

                harbour wall beacon,
                occasional impressions

                of couples made
                their way under

                irregular lamps on
                their rusting stems with

                fragile glass bulbs;
                one boat anchored

                out at sea, seemed
                closer than it was

                because the
                horizon is always indistinct;

                then, here at midday, the
                single spindle tree holds

                a canopy intricate
                of branches and peppered-green

                writhe-angled
                to the trunk through which

                storeys and balconies
                can clearly be read;

                in the evening to the
                west, the further

                hills all will hover
                for all the distance

                that bolts of mists will allow
                and for all the show of

                lowing sun will preview
                blind across the water

                                straight
                                at
                                me

 

Puerto del Carmen, a stretch, in distance, along the southern coast of Lanzarote, an elongation of time when one is there …

 

 

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

branches wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
buildings wormhole: intent
death wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
evening & morning & people wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
glass & green & sea wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
horizon & life & trees wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
mist wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
promenade wormhole: waiting to be heard
time wormhole: I
water wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796

 

Batman: Oddysey

Tags

2018, 6*, adults, Batman, childhood, infrastructure, life, light, mist, Neal Adams, passing, samsara, sound, standing, train, world

                Batman: Oddysey

                there is so much latticed,
                bolted-over and capped

                intricacy – gantry and
                infrastructure in all direction –

                the clkk of progress
                oblivious to bolts of passing

                mist, that is why I stand
                bathed in overhead light;

                there will be plot and
                I must always be braced

                to see it, like all grown-ups
                should

 

from the opening pages of Neal Adams‘ Batman Oddysey which was a masterwork waiting to happen, in so many ways …

 

 

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

Batman & passing wormhole: intent
childhood wormhole: the reach turned to love
life & light & sound wormhole: there will be ovations
mist wormhole: birth in the world
samsara wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
train wormhole: travelling / back
world wormhole: the reach turned to love

 

birth in the world

Tags

2019, 7*, air, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, chords, crown, dawn, distance, glass, heather, lemon, light, Maitreya, mist, note, olive, rebirth, shade, silence, storm, windows

                the air refreshed
                and folded by several
                degrees as if to storm,
                the light became

                slightly shaded as if
                through olive glass
                but remained lemon
                in the distance, the

                silence dampened
                like mist as minute
                heather flowers turned
                to dawn, and all the

                abandoned instruments,
                their boxes taut to struts,
                their strings resigned
                to tonnage, discarded

                over couches, before
                windows, each creaked
                and let a single note that
                ne’er had pitched and

                held – chords
                o’er room and vale;
                it was time the
                effervescent crown

                were passed to the
                Regent and the
                Bodhisattva take
                birth in the world

 

bevelled up and out of the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra: before the Buddha was born a prince in a principality in India, he was residing in a heavenly realm (with the gods), but his vows and wishes over endless waves of previous lifetimes urged him to one final birth to consummate them all in Enlightenment; the Regent is Maitreya, the next Bodhisattva to take birth in this world and show Enlightenment … in future

 

 

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

air wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: and … // … sound
dawn wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
glass wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
lemon wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
light wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
Maitreya wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
mist wormhole: to let be
olive wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
silence wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
windows wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

to let be

Tags

2018, 6*, allowing, being, change, echo, identity, letting go, looking, meaning, mist, Mum, prospect, purpose, putting out, retirement, rhetoric, school, shopping, space, streets, voice, wisdom

                                so I stopped working
                in an institution that couldn’t converse within its own rhetoric

                                couldn’t find a voice
                to navigate through all that drifting mist, and got lost, so I

                                no longer comb
                through shops and streets looking for echoes of a lost chord

                                that would weave
                my lives back together (couldn’t find it in all that looking),

                                all that
                                anxious putting-out
                and prospect, finding everything changed and nothing done,

                                and no monument
                that I was ever really there other than the space through

                                which the change
                happened glorious to allow, nothing to behold, everything

                                to be, a lot of
                history to let go – it was obstructive of me to try to solidify

                                there anyway,
                I should have stayed with the wisdom I inherited before

                                I was born,
                allowed the acceptance of my mother’s wisdom: to let be

 

 

 

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

being & identity & meaning wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
change wormholeL The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
echo wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
letting go wormhole: beguiled / desire
looking wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
mist wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
Mum wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
retirement wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
school & streets wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
space wormhole: space for probing thought

 

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