• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: non-doing

SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

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

 

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between

25 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2016, 6*, avenue, Batman, between, buildings, city, evening, eyes, looking, non-doing, rooftops, silhouette, sky, thought, throat

                of an early evening sky
                that roof top cables lay

                lank by flank of avenue
                of rise high building one

                might throw the weight
                of import in circles to

                follow where it lead but
                hold the eye open from

                throat to silhouette and
                do not flatter the process

                between

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Batman & silhouette wormhole: Batgirl –
buildings & rooftops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
city wormhole: 1964
evening wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
eyes & sky wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
looking wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
thought wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping

 

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before any writing

22 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2015, 5*, attention, being, living, non-doing, non-striving, surprise, wondering, writing

                                wonder
                ing for months whether it is
                                worth

                                writing
                or living long with attention to
                                what

                                I am
                before any writing has appeared and,
                                with

                                out
                guile I find I have written
                                with

                                out
                much thinking about it any
                                way

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

attention wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
being wormhole: without any buffet at all
living wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
writing wormhole: lack of center

 

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bud

03 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2013, 6*, budding, colour, doing, identity, non-doing, sitting, smile, superhero

                                              bud

                there is nothing that I do that is important –
                                that I do it, that it be done at all, that I do it well
                                              or heroically –

                                but that I do any of it
                                              with all the filament colours
                                                              of a slight smile

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

doing & superhero wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
identity wormhole: seen but not heard
sitting wormhole: breathing
smile wormhole: retirement

 

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breathing out

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2014, 4*, ambition, breathing, daily, emptiness, non-doing, openness, self-compassion, sitting, talking to myself, time, words, writing

                I must take
                the time

                to sit with
                an empty page

                each day

                without guile
                or ambition

                completely
                and openly

                and let

                the words write
                themselves

                with compassion
                as if I were

                breathing out

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

breathing wormhole: writing: // in turn
emptiness wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
openness wormhole: con / sum / mate
sitting wormhole: pocket
talking to myself & writing wormhole: No
time wormhole: open window
words wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

 

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happen//ing

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2011, 5*, being, chaos, decision, flow, non-doing, non-striving, politics, recognition, ripple, talking to myself, water, will

            happen doesn’t happen
            through will or decision
            creating chaos like an oar in water

            it doesn’t happen
            through positioning becoming part of the chaos
            riding a ripple

            neither does it happen
            by going with the flow
            becoming part of the chaos riding the trough

            or by not caring
            becoming submerged and possibly drowning
            happen happens

            when it is recognised
            amid the will the positioning the caring
            then

            the will the positioning the care happen
            like water poured into water
            ing

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
flow wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
politics wormhole: listen willya
recognition wormhole: ashramas
talking to myself wormhole: magnetic field
water wormhole: one day / in 1956

 

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

'scape, 2016, 5*, bench, blackbird, blue, breeze, childhood, cuckoo, daffodil, dinner, echo, field, garden, green, kitchen, lightning, looking, nature, no thought, non-doing, past, present, shadow, sound, speech, thought, time, trees, uncle, walls, wood, writing

 

 

 

                ‘when’s uncle coming back?’ tin-
                colander-clnkscrape-against-
                enamel ‘he’ll be back soon; run

                along now’ plate-shuffling ‘where
                IS Mick, he was going to check
                on something …’ cutlery-placed-

                on-wood ‘oh, he’ll be standing
                in a field somewhere, looking …’
                from arm to nature, doing nothing

                I wish I had more time to float
                about on the surface; I made a
                garden seat from the wood

                of an ancient cottage, six hundred
                years old, a daffodil in the breeze,
                the echo mocking the cuckoo

                in the blue shadows, green pasture
                walls of tree acknowledged by
                no conscious thought; lightning,

                magnetism of blackbird commentary,
                the paper I write on through time left
                not empty-handed as the present slips

                                              through
                                                              sensory
                                                                                 fingers
                                                                                              to the
                                                                                                            dead past

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

bench & blackbird & blue & breeze & echo & garden & green & shadow & time & trees & wood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
childhood wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment&
kitchen wormhole: early evening
lightning wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
looking wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
sound & speech wormhole: my seat // now
thought wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
uncle wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
walls wormhole: constant hummm
writing wormhole: tiling

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 1967, 4*, awareness, bees, bench, blackbird, blue, body, breeze, calf, clouds, colour, contemplation, cottage, cows, cuckoo, daffodil, doing, echo, education, foxgloves, garden, green, grey, knowledge, leaf, leisure, life, Michael J Redford, mind, morning, movement, nature, non-doing, now, puzzle, rhythm, shadow, sky, smell, sociology, Spring, summer, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, trees, wood, woodland, work

 

On Doing Nothing

I wish I had more time in which to do nothing, but then I don’t suppose for one moment that I am alone in this wish.   I must however confess to liking hard work – a certain amount that is.   I like the resultant effects produced on body and mind of digging the garden or pitching bales of hay and sheaves of corn amid the shimmering heat of the summer sun.   The sweat oozing forth and leaving the inner body clean; the muscles toned up and aching with effort, the very rhythm of the work itself (I sincerely hope I can say the same twenty years from now).   Then at the close of a long day, an hour’s soak in the bath, an easy chair and a pint of beer, mundane items perhaps, yet nevertheless most satisfying.   The sweat has been replaced by the energy infusing rays of the sun that now emanate from the body with such a glow that you feel sure that those close to you must feel its radiant effect.   The mind is also cleansed, refreshed with the knowledge and satisfaction of a job well done.   On the other hand if total automation were to arrive tomorrow, I would not be alarmed at the prospect of so much leisure.   The future in this respect is viewed with some concern by the sociologist whose biggest headache is to educate the masses into finding something to do with their spare time.   This I should imagine, is one of the outcomes of our present way of life, the pace of which has accelerated to such a degree that one rarely has time to step off the whirling carousel to take stock of one’s surroundings and turn the eye inward upon the self.   How little we know of ourselves and our immediate surroundings.   There is enough untapped learning in my small garden alone to last me all my years without venturing further afield.   Even so, I don’t spend all my spare time digging, hoeing, planting and studying in the garden, for one can never come to the end of the toil produced when one steals a little piece of nature and imposes upon it the conformities of human requirements.   More often than not I am sitting, standing or leaning somewhere in the garden staring at a dead leaf sailing slowly across a sky-blue puddle, or a daffodil petal trembling in the breeze, or entering with the fuzzy humble bee into the heart of a foxglove.   I am not looking to learn, just looking, appreciating the colour and the movement, the scent and the touch, unfettered by a too enquiring mind, seeing the thing as a whole.   Study by all means, study deeply, specialise if you wish, but not all the time; come to the surface occasionally, sit back and view things as a whole.   Specialists we must have; the probing minds and microscopes of the entomologist, histologist, ichthyologists and all the other ‘ologists’ have benefitted us greatly and made us more aware and appreciative of the wonders and complexities of nature, but there is still, and always will be, room for the botanist who is like the manipulator of a jig-saw puzzle, fitting all the detailed parts together to form a complete and beautiful picture.

I find I am very contented when doing nothing and experience no sense of guilt if branded idle and time wasting.   If there is nothing of great import to attend to and I am in an idle mood, then I take advantage of the circumstances and indulge in idleness without shame.   Some months ago I made a garden seat of some timber taken from an ancient cottage close by that was being demolished.   Upon this seat, the wood of which must be some six hundred years old, I have spent many hours in idleness, fingering its rough grey armrests, unaware of time or responsibility; thinking not of tomorrow or yesterday, but experiencing with all the senses the eternal ‘now’; being aware of the warmth of the sun and the movement of the passing breeze; hearing the distinct low of a cow bereft of her calf, or listen to an echo mocking the cuckoo in the woods below.   I gaze at the coloured mass before me drinking in the riot of perfumes; look at the green pastures and the distant trees and see the blue shadows within.   The picture is complete, touching upon all the senses to produce a harmony that is deeply satisfying.   There is nothing out of place, no harsh discords, no roaring traffic or industrial smells.   Even the little cottage at the end of the lane, tree bound and heavy with thatch, gives the impression that it has grown naturally from the soil upon which it stands.   The senses and emotions are not funnelled into a microcosm but are given free range and allowed to accept all that comes within their range, creating in the mind an awareness and realisation of a complete and perfect whole.

One cannot be accused of day-dreaming under such conditions (though surely a little day-dreaming is not harmful) for no conscious thoughts are involved.   I have on occasions been surprised at the lightning passage of time during these moments, when the ‘moment’ has in fact turned out to be all of three hours.   This essay, which would normally have been written in a morning, has taken all day for this very reason.   Being a fine spring morning with but a few puffs of broken cloud adorning the sky, I took pen and paper into the garden, but despite my earnest intentions, I soon fell prey to the magnetism of a blackbird singing in the copse behind the piggery and my attention was lifted from the paper.

I walked through the piggery, crossed the brook and shouldered my way through the cow parsley towards the wood.   I didn’t meet anyone on my perambulation, I didn’t want to.   In fact I would have been most annoyed if I had.   I was perfectly happy in my immediate world of the ‘Now’; it was too lovely a world to let slip by unnoticed, or to be dimmed by the oppressive shadow of chores that had to be done.   Now, as I sit writing, the clock on the mantle shelf is striking eleven thirty p.m. but I am not at all alarmed at working until such a late hour even though I do have to rise early to milk the cows tomorrow morning.   At least I shall have the memory of a beautiful spring day during which I was alive and conscious, and will not be left empty handed as most of us too often are when we let the days of the living present slip through the sensory fingers to the dead past.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

awareness wormhole: while walking
bench wormhole: up on the hill
blackbird wormhole: fine
blue & breeze & green wormhole: Elektra
clouds & mind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
doing & grey wormhole: my seat // now
echo & morning & shadow & time wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
education & knowledge wormhole: listen willya
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
life wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
sky wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
Spring wormhole: first Spring storm
sun & trees wormhole: one day / in 1956
wood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – the soft canticle of the gourds:
work wormhole: ashramas

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

'scape, 1967, autumn, breathing, candle, contents, cottage, cows, gold, gourds, home, introduction, journey, lawn, letter, memory, mind, moment, non-doing, people, piano, pigs, rain, safety, sky, smell, snow, the Boats of Vallisneria, time, trees, uncle, valley, walking, work

The Boats of Vallisneria

by Michael J. Redford

 

—~~~\___ “O” ___/~~~—

 

Contents

Introduction

The Wandering Mind
Autumn Thoughts
A Bowl of Gourds
A Precious Moment
On Doing Nothing

People
Olly
Simon upon the Downs
Safe Home

Walking
A Sign of the Times
Snow
Follow your Nose
The Agricultural Show

Working
A letter of Two Parts
Making Hay
With Cows
With Pigs

Out of Doors
Trees
Sky
Rain
The Valley

Around the Country Cottage
An Old Piano
Candlelight
The English Lawn

Memories
Going Back
Distant Journeys
The Breath of Memory
The Golden Hour

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

1967 & uncle wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
autumn wormhole: dog bark
breathing wormhole: too late:
gold wormhole: bookmark
mind wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
people wormhole: impressionism
piano & smell wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
rain wormhole: between thoughts
sky wormhole: constant hummm
snow wormhole: stacked
time wormhole: Hurst Green
trees wormhole: Le Pont Royal, 1909
valley wormhole: Desolation Angels
walking wormhole: nothing to say
work wormhole: dry rot

 

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Jericho

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2011, being, defining, emptiness, groundlessness, Have, identity, letting go, life, living, non-doing, play, pointlessness, practice, quiet, realisation, reality, relaxing, seeing, sitting, walls

                                Jericho

                                pointless
                everything is pointless
                                I can see it
                everywhere like a needless wall

                                I don’t chose to
                it just seeps through everything
                                quietly
                makes me feel dank;
                                makes me crumble
                just when I thought I was getting footing

                never anything I can feel good about nothing
                                by which
                I can define myself
                                nothing
                I can’t see through
                                nothing that won’t show me up

                                this is my reality:
                no intrinsic reality
                                to play to, to play in;
                this is my reality

                                this is me; I
                should exploit it fully by not hoping
                                that here
                is where I can find myself at last

                                the point is
                that there is no point
                                to HAVE

                                the struggle
                is in worrying that the point
                                cannot be found

                                the salvation is
                in the relaxing with there being
                                no point

                                really
                really and truly there is nothing
                                to do

                                but to sit
                still in the reality of there being
                                no point

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & emptiness & life & pointlessness & sitting wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
groundlessness & letting go & seeing & walls wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
Have wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
identity wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
living & realisation wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
play wormhole: teached / in the ass
practice wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
quiet wormhole: the breath of London
reality wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street

 

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← Older posts

… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

recent leaks …

  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’
  • Journey
  • ‘the practice …’
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
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  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

category sky

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tag skyline

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