Hastings: neither all or nothing

Tags

2018, 7*, being, birch, blue, buildings, church, doing, flats, furniture, grey, Hastings, height, houses, net curtains, passing, pavement, reaching, reason, roads, sea, silver, sky, steeple, steets, time, Victorian houses, walking, windows, wondering, writing

                                                                Hastings: neither all or nothing

                I walked steep down
                                through Victorian house fronts
                                                down the whole height of the
                                                                church steeple

                and stood at the grey sea
                                wondering if there was good reason
                                                to write of it, after all;
                                                                the houses

                were now flats with nets knotted in the
                                windows and abandoned furniture
                                                on the street, but look,
                                                                that corner building

                built to the shape of bifurcating roads, oh
                                and the silver birch at the edge
                                                of the pavement reaching
                                                                up into the blue

                cleared sky and although I needn’t write it,
                                I do; and the roots of this small
                                                tree have bulged the paviours
                                                                unnoticeably over the years

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
birch wormhole: over-pink cagoule
blue wormhole: {reading right to left}
buildings & silver wormhole: London, 1809
church wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
grey & sky wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
net curtains wormhole: keep the light off
passing wormhole: passing
roads wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
sea wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
streets & writing wormhole: on facing the Have
time wormhole: somehow
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian pipework
walking wormhole: blister on me thumb
windows wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871

 

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passing

Tags

2018, 5*, passing, realisation, revolution, train, wind turbines

                passing
                side-on to
                the turbine
                blades a

                whole cut
                is made
                clean to the
                revolution

                generated
                before I
                realise what
                has happened

 

 

 

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

passing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
realisation wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
train wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing

Tags

2018, 5*, allowing, being, breathing, career, doing, giving, growth, hedge, knowing, landscape, letting go, life, living, mountain, passing, regulation, retirement

                                              it’s
                        not what you do or what you say
                                if it ain’t got that swing

                                              not
                the regulation of life that lives and grows
                        but the approach of not taking it;

                                              not the
                coming out on top a mountain that never summits
                        but in the byways along the hedges passing landscapes

                                            not …
                        the giving way or giving over,
                                but the letting go,

                                    not
                        about the knowing
                                but all about the being

                                              not
                about the certificates and positions that make the career
                        but the smile of greeting

                                               it is
                in seeing that there is nothing to Have
                        that the perfections of living breathe

 

 

 

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

being & career & doing & living wormhole: between
breathing wormhole: London, 1809
giving wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
hedge wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
letting go wormhole: to let be
life wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
passing wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
retirement wormhole: somehow

 

St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796

Tags

2019, 6*, cathedral, cold, echo, footsteps, light, passing, shadow, sound, stone, William Turner

                light inhabits the stone
                that contains it,
                colder in deep cloisters,

                warmer as footsteps pass
                the transept, the shadow
                rinsed and broken across fieldwork paving slabs

 

St Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey exhibited 1796 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 The British Museum http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/TW0378

St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796 by William Turner

 

 

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

cathedral wormhole: low afternoon
echo wormhole: to let be
light wormhole: allowed all gain
passing wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
shadow wormhole: pursued
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
stone wormhole: on facing the Have

 

Dulwich College, London, 1871

Tags

1871, 2018, 5*, afternoon, autumn, brick, college, education, gothic, knowledge, leaves, passing, Pissarro, red, rooftops, spirit, windows

                past the high windows and gothic
                finials of the college

                which kept its knowledge steeped
                like a redbrick afternoon as

                autumn leaves hurried
                like a badly-summoned spirit

 

Dulwich College, London, 1871 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: ash leaves
autumn & passing wormhole: {reading right to left}
education & knowledge & red wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
leaves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
rooftops wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
windows wormhole: blister on me thumb

 

{reading right to left}

Tags

1871, 2018, 9*, autumn, blue, brown, chimney stacks, chimneys, confusion, Crystal Palace, damp, dark, decline, draft, drifting, fire, flag, flagpole, garden, gas, high, London, passing, people, Pissarro, progress, reading, sand, shrub, sky, smoke, society, streetlamp, streets, Sydenham, the British Empire, wind

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871

                deep eaves in Sydenham the
                chimney stacks raised high

                to draw the draft – splendid
                in counter – front-garden shrubbery

                left tangled to riot and dampened
                from autumn, seems stuck in

                foreboding brown conflagration;
                the clean stroke of streetlamp

                under sandened sky will not
                be sullied by slimey gas until

                after dark – controlled, controlled blue –
                but, we read in the right direction:

                look, the flag from some
                turgic land of the Empire swaves

                away from its pole – the dirty
                heavens cry – the dwarfed

                chimneys, here, their smoke of
                coke and belch drift

                in the same direction conjuring
                transparent edifice where mens’

                seriousness loom in smudged
                silhouette, foreboding to behold,

                and others scuttle about the
                bright, wide street coming

                and crossing in all direction –
                pushchairs and carriages to hold

 

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871 by Camille Pissaro

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
blue & society & streets wormhole: on facing the Have
brown & wind wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
garden wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
London & sky wormhole: London, 1809
passing wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: only
reading wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 7*, balcony, blue, boy, car, driving, face, girl, house, laughing, law, leg, looking, man, mind, no-mind, passing, roads, smile, travelling, watch, William Carlos Williams, woman

                XI

                In passing with my mind
                on nothing in the world

                but the right of way
                I enjoy on the road by

                virtue of the law–
                I saw

                an elderly man who
                smiled and looked away

                to the north past a house–
                a woman in blue

                who was laughing and
                leaning forward to look up

                into the man’s half
                averted face

                and a boy of eight who was
                looking at the middle of

                the man’s belly
                at a watchchain–

                The supreme importance
                of this nameless spectacle

                sped me by them
                without a word–

                Why bother where I went?
                for I went spinning on the

                four wheels of my car
                along the wet road until

                I saw a girl with one leg
                over the rail of a balcony

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “In passing with my mind …”, the perfect beginning, middle and end of a poem; I read this when I was younger, possibly a bit impatient that I wanted something more to happen to call it a happening and also a little annoyed at the snagged details in passing thinking them too particular to so little that was happening … but I liked it; and this liking slipped in between my pomposity and fussiness and worked its way out over following decades through poems exploring this same sense of passing not being the start of something and its almost immediate dissolution, but its almost-not-being-there being its universal reality: vivid, important and sufficient unto itself – “the supreme importance / of this nameless spectacle”; it wasn’t until later I read more of the text in which WCW embedded these poems, raised beds, nonetheless, with earth so finely nourished and turned over that you could sink your fist into it up to your elbow: “When in the condition of imaginative suspense only will the writing have reality … Not to attempt, at that time, to set values on the word being used, according to presupposed measures, but to write down that which happens at that time / To perfect the ability to record at the moment when the consciousness is enlarged by the sympathies and the unity of understanding which the imagination gives, to practise skill in recording the force moving, then to know it, in the largeness of its proportions …”

 

 

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

blue wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
girl wormhole: ash leaves
house wormhole: presence
looking & travelling wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
mind wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
passing & roads wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
smile wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
woman wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold

 

La Route de Louveciennes, 1870

Tags

1870, 2018, 6*, autumn, cart, echo, electric, evening, grey, industry, land, leaves, metal, orange, passing, pink, Pissarro, quiet, roads, sky, sound, sun, table, time, town, trees, wheel, white, wood

                the cart’s wheel will roll
                metal-held and ungiven down
                the hard-pressed road making echo

                only between the sides of its empty
                bed, slatted and turning; some-
                where in the oranging-grey town

                were stables to rest and evenings
                of sounds at the wooden tables;
                most leaves have already fallen,

                industry slowly arisen over the
                wet land, the white sun, quiet
                in the dirt-pink sky, but electric

                between the bare trunks

 

La Route de Louveciennes, 1870; Camille Pissaro

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: presence
echo wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
evening & time & white wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
grey wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
leaves & roads & trees wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
orange wormhole: space for probing thought
passing & sun wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
pink & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
quiet wormhole: allowed all gain
sound wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
table wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
wood wormhole: transferring

 

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

 

THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 4*, city, firetruck, gold, gong, light, night, passing, rain, red, rumbling, siren, sound, wheel, William Carlos Williams

                                THE GREAT FIGURE

                Among the rain
                and lights
                I saw the figure 5
                in gold
                on a red
                firetruck
                moving
                tense
                unheeded
                to gong clangs
                siren howls
                and wheels rumbling
                through the dark city.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
how could this not be included; how could I not include the painting by Charles Demuth; how emblematic is this of taking the notice of all that is in the universe that we are born to …

 

 

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

city wormhole: raised brow
gold wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
light wormhole: despite that
night wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
passing & red wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
rain wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams