• 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: quotidian

on facing the Have

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

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cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1971, 2016, 6*, becoming, being, Bowie, creation, death, dress, found, hidden, history, identity, life, possibility, quotidian, searching, society, story, thread, time, voices, wardrobe, words, writing

            cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread

            in all ongoing history, queasy quotidian iteration,
            of all the plaited threads, this particular will always

            splay without of the weave; strangely aligned with
            aquiline possibility ‘leave them alone and they’ll

            come home’ transgressive tales behind them,
            all dressed-up in words with open collars throaty

            upon a time improbable, hidden in plane site,
            hiding in plain sight but easiest found in wardrobes

 

outertextual in The Bewlay Brothers from 1971; there are more from here, but not now …

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

being & identity wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
Bowie & death wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
history & voices wormhole: and smile / like a bud
life & society wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
searching wormhole: chartless …
time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
words wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge
writing wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

 

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hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?

09 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1992, black, blue, brown, cave, cliff, clothes, coat, doors, echo, eyes, falling, green, grey, groundlessness, growth, home, house, identity, Joe, kitchen, light, mauve, mist, mother, path, pink, planet, pointlessness, quotidian, red, school, searching, silence, sky, sound, story, streets, tea, time, voices, waves, world, wormhole, yellow

every day David would come home from school, and his mum would ask him how it went and he would say it was fine although he always wondered to himself what it would be like if he had a day at school which was worthwhile, and whether he would notice it if it happened; then he would have a cup of tea which his mum made him and he would do a hundred other similar things until he went to bed that night; and he wondered why it was that he had been doing this for years without any change when he noticed that the path leading to his front door didn’t in fact lead to his front door anymore but ownwards like a cliff-path, under the house and curling away into what seemed like a great underground cavern which was so big that it was like a world and the celing was so high that it seemed like a sky, although you could see it; his house was just there on a ledge on the side of a huge cliff, the street where he lived just wasn’t there, anymore; “do you want a cup of tea, luvvey?” sang his Mum from the kitchen window; “in a minute, Mum, I’m a little, busy, at the moment, I’m looking for the town where I used to live”; “OK, dear, but don’t stay out too long”; “Aaaaaaaargh!!!” said David, for quite a few minutes when he missed his footing on a pebble and fell over the edge of the path and down, a surprisingly long way without bumping into the side of the cliff at all, when he started realising that it was pointless – and a little silly really – him saying “Aaaaargh” when there was no one in possible sight anywhere around in this huge cave, what was the point, in saying anything?, so he stopped, but, as he looked below him, he could see, gradually, more clearly, a great blueness coming into sight as he fell, as if clearing through mist, with green patches, here and there, and yellow and grey streaks, and some more waves if you really looked; and David began thinking how pointless it was to describe the sea as “blue” when if you really looked you could see all sorts of colours in it, and he set himself the challenge of trying to find, really different colours that you wouldn’t expect to find in the sea, and after a while – as he fell and fell for ages as if he had jumped from an aeroplane – he saw a pink which quickly turned into a bit of red then mauve then blue and then the sleeve of the old man shifted as he took the pot off the fire to serve up the tea and the colours of his coat changed again in the half-light so that David couldn’t tell if it was black or brown or blue, anyway he was looking forward to his tea because it smelt richer and thicker than he had noticed it before but the man wasn’t offering him any and poured himself a cup only, besides David noticed that the man was growing larger but that the room wasn’t getting cramped by him; the man was now, probably, fifty feet tall and the sounds of his moving coat and his supping of the tea were starting to sound echoey; oh, no, it was David! he seemed to be shrinking, faster and faster, his clothes had long since ceased to be on him but around him and then he was lost in a huge valley between his shirt collar and the shoulder of his shirt and then there was a small hole at his feet which grew quickly so that he clung to one side of it to stop himself falling in but the edge of the hole became thicker and flatter so that it was smooth and there was nothing more to hold onto, so he wasn’t holding anymore, and he expected himself to be falling, but everything around him just seemed to be going away from him in all directions into blackness, when from out from nothing something seemed to come towards him, huge, with great speed, that he expected it to make a great rushing sound but it didn’t, it was totally silent, it was a planet, a planet so big that it make his legs wobble, coming straight for him, getting larger and larger so that it filled everywhere around him but it never seemed to hit, so he closed his eyes; after a while he told himself that he may as well see the End so he opened his eyes and the planet was gone, there were just dancing lights zipping round and round him so quickly that if he looked back along where they came from they would whip round so quick that he would see them a hundred times every inch he moved his eyes and eventually they went so fast he could just see bands of light surrounding him; as he travelled toward the centre, and the front door opened, the sun, which was low and had caught in the glass in the door and sent a dazzling piece of light straight into his eye, whizzed halfway around the horizon and disappeared behind some trees and the houses opposite and his Mum’s face, “hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?”

 

written for my eldest child when he was young

 

 

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

black & mother wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
blue & eyes & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
brown & echo & red & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
doors wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
green & mist & sound & voices wormhole: 1967
grey & kitchen wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
groundlessness & pointlessness wormhole: Jericho
house wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity & world wormhole: lonely and free
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
mauve & pink wormhole: my seat // now
path wormhole: 50 mph
school wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
searching wormhole: substance
silence & streets wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
time wormhole: even / a second
waves wormhole: inbreath

 

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Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, avoidance, change, comics, conventional reality, Dr Strange, Edward Hopper, ellipsis, encounter, eyes, Gene Colan, hands, humanity, life, living, moment, quotidian, reality, seeing, skyline, step, Steve Englehart, streets, time, trees, walking

 

 

 

                                                              I

                                the always-aslant encounter
                                                              of humans and street
                                              making their lives
                                                              in the grounds they see
                                making their lives in the grounds they are given
                                                                                 constant encounter
                                              as variable as the daily

                                                                                 for those who see
                                elliptical to the happenstance –
                                                              the skyline to the treeline
                                                                                 the glide to the cobble
                                              the palm to the point
                                                              the both-step-aside to avoid each other’s path
                                                              and collide –
                                                                                 Hopper saw it
                and Colan saw it and Strange had already
                                                              stepped into it
                                                                                 stepped through it stepped out again

                                              moment

                                                                                 but now
                                his pupils are that much more round
                                              the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
                                                                                 the face in the orb implied
                                that everything had changed and that
                                                              things
                would never be the same again

 

I am psyched that the first trailer for the Doctor Strange film has just been released; I think this is going to see me lose my 56 year old jaded-cool; I am more excited about this than I was for the Batman movies, even though Batman is my character (oh, sorry, didn’t you know?), (in fact, I envisage Batman, ideally, as more akin to Doctor Strange, the character should be more mystical than he is generally presented); I am glad to see the trailer dealing with kaleidoscope-reality, this has a lot to go for it from the start; Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One is a genuinely creative piece of casting but I hope she is not as ‘explainey’ and active as this trailer suggests (or even as dynamic as she was Gabriel in ‘Constantine’, a female sage should have more devastating effect but with less of the door-slamming); (and talking of door-slamming: I was disappointed that the trailer starts of with the ubiquitous iron door slam portending dire catastrophe for gawp-eyed Humanity, I was hoping Doctor Strange, at least, would approach tale-telling differently, but I suppose superhero movies have hit their formula now, no one’s going to play with it with that much money going in … mind you, Stark’s humour, and the first Avenger’s humour were interesting innovations, I might hope for something innovative in Strange, not humour, so much, as power through deft and understatement, rather than grunt); the round loft-window gave me The Smile at the end; Cumberbatch has a Good Walk as he broaches realities, he has the right eyes to see-through fingers for the part as well; I once hoped that David Lynch might write and direct Doctor Strange … that would have been interestingly different and so right … it was not well-received (have a look in the comments section of https://longboxgraveyard.com/2012/11/28/76-superhero-greenlight-doctor-strange/) … actually, dab’n’abbit, here is my tender, but I’ll settle with what this film seems to promise:

Dr Strange operates in worlds which are ‘mystical’ in the sense that they function within natural laws and forces which are alternate to our own – they are worlds which we just don’t get and it would be better for us that we didn’t know about them so we can continue functioning ourselves.   And yet Stephen Strange is of and from this world – he is all too human but has mastered the Mystic Arts.   He therefore lives between the two worlds – the physical/political and the occult worlds – or rather he lives amid, at the same time.   He is ‘strange’ because he bridges these two worlds, and this is the central pull of the character for me.   In comics the ‘occult’ world was depicted fantastically (the floating-island footsteps of Ditko, the swirls of Colan) because it was a visual medium meant for younger audiences (growing up); but the occult world doesn’t so much ‘look’ strange (like a childishly re-arranged physical world), in fact it isn’t even a different world it is the same world ‘seen’ (and ‘heard’ and ‘felt’ and acted in) differently.   What was equally attractive about Dr Strange (and under-used in the comics) was the depiction of the character in ordinary, recognisable surroundings but knowing he was actually operating in a world out of the space-time continuum.   I would conceive that Strange’s ‘battles’ took place while he was strolling through a park, while walking on the street, in the blink of an Eye (herm).   I once heard David Lynch talk about how he achieves perspectives in his work by ‘filming through the eye of a duck’ meaning that he doesn’t just film ‘lineally’ he films simultaneously/alternately – he shoots a scene/whole films which physically depict one narrative but which affectively show an alternate landscape in which they play out.   What better ‘mise-en-scene’ist than David Lynch to depict the life of a character who has ‘mastered’ the arts of living bridged across two worlds-in-one?   No need of CGI, no need of costumes, not even much need of action!   I know, I know, not the ingredients for your standard superhero blockbuster money-maker.   But they have been done and will continue to be done under their own momentum.   Dr Strange has always been a peripheral character because he is so … strange.   Perhaps this would be time to make a different take on the comics-to-film translation formula …

Anyhoo, I wrote a series of poems tracking Doctor Strange through a key set of issues written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan; (Dr Strange #6-13 (Feb 1975-April 1976)); these issues are some of the best comics I have ever read; they were also seminal in shaping me to become the significantly un-noticeable writer I have become to this day; I posted them in 2012 and then re-posted them again in 2014 because I thought the film was immanent – it wasn’t; but, dammitall, I like these babies so I’m going to post them again, spread out until November 4th …

 

 

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

change wormhole: top table
comics wormhole: Poewieviews
Dr Strange & Gene Colan wormhole: Dr Strange VII – the madness of Mordo
Edward Hopper wormhole: New York, New Haven and Hartford, 1931
eyes wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
hands wormhole: really
life & reality & streets & time & walking wormhole: 1964
living wormhole: dash
seeing wormhole: rhymed
skyline wormhole: miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22
trees wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23

 

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… 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 …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

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

category sky

announcements awards embroidery poems poeviews reflectionary teaching

tag skyline

'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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