‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

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2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white

                … and yet I think I am so modest:
                      I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,

                      all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
                all the Big Issues I generously buy

                all the time given to Carol and the kids,
                      to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,

                      all the insights from comics and books, I think I
                know what’s what; I stand colossal

                      on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
                than the ants that circle across it,

                so much more, even, than the cat
                      that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand

                      human to the height of all achievement; all of this
                I have already destroyed

                      a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
                with even the most slight

                      annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
                the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed

                teeth and howls; when this dent,
                      this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from

                this axe from some other side) that
                      holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,

                      everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
                and isolated; I won’t

                      become human again for so long I’ll need
                another, far-future,

                flash of lightning
                      in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll

                ever get another chance
                      to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s

                ease out all these creases, let’s
                      polish all that chrome, before evening comes again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses

 

 

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

beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach

 

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cross-section

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2017, 5*, adjustment, camera, cigarette, columns, ledge, passing, portrait, smoke, sound, standing, stillness

                standing cross-section
                pigeon-toed alert like a

                column holding the
                camera out like a ledge

                still      still      adjusted
                until a silent snap –

                smoke from the cigarette
                in her other hand

 

 

 

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

passing wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
smoke wormhole: to arms, then;
sound wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
stillness wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving

 

all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving

Tags

2018, 8*, arrival, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Bodhisattvas, body, Buddhas, clarity, clothes, clouds, confession, emperor, falling, ignorance, immanence, mind, naked, non-duality, omnipresent, omniscience, Perfection of Wisdom, presence, realisation, self-image, self-indulgent, standing, stillness, time, train, ultimate reality, visualisation, walking, windows, wisdom

               all the low clouds keeping pace
                through the train window,
                always arriving, whether fast or
                slow, but never actually moving

                ‘I am always in the presence of all
                 the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who
                 are always endowed with unobstructed
                 wisdom’; there is no ultimate

                difference between the body and
                the mind therefore those who
                walk about in that realisation are present
                wherever an omniscient mind is,

                throughout each plane of ten directions
                within each of the ten directions
                none of them safely away in far places
                of my mind (where I might just get

                get away with anything) and when I
                invoke them to come ‘here’, they are
                already always here, far more immanent
                than I could stand on my own two feet,

                far more immediate before I could even
                think to in-front generate, far more
                intimate than my dignity could allow …
                and then at and long and even last, I’ll

                recognise it all, all my rotting lacks and
                fetid habits (never successfully hidden),
                finally signalling that I get it – confessing
                it all, each writhing and breaking-up sod

                of wilful and peevish stupidity, undressing
                it all with lay-aside relief; and it’s not
                like I’m informing them, they won’t be
                shocked or recoil with disgust or resigned

                with disappointment, it is just me falling
                far short of being right, let alone clever
                or wise, unpeeling from myself all the
                lies I accepted that said I am right,

                clever and vindicated like an emperor
                with new clothes; this immanence of
                clarity, this confession that inculcates a non-
                duality rising to a Perfection with wisdom

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara II 27; V 31

 

 

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

being wormhole: the balance necessary between
clouds wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’
mind wormhole: to arms, then;
realisation wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
stillness wormhole: cape and cowl
time & windows wormhole: … the underleaves show
train wormhole: mother and daughter
walking wormhole: amniotic avenue

 

loss

Tags

2016, 5*, awareness, Birmingham, Bowie, computer games, falling, identity, loss, naked, standing, streets, walking

                “I

                stumble in to town …” on
                endless streets of paviour

                I didn’t notice a kerb and fell
                like an army unit from the

                23rd century, self-contained
                but waiting to rise

                once a cognitive-scan is completed,
                yet it revolves without completion,

                `cannot get a lock, so I stand
                without co-ordinate, beguiled

                by logo-lettering of all regard
                and stagger around with naked physique

                dressed for none to see
                to cover my loss

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: ‘still …’
Bowie wormhole: south horizon
identity wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
streets wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
walking wormhole: out

 

is this it // all the time

Tags

2015, 6*, Bodhichitta, breathing, corridors, depression, emptiness, fear, groundlessness, identity, living, mist, perception, pointlessness, questioning, quiet, rope, searching, self-cherishing, silence, snake, stairs, standing, stone, sun, time, trust, walls

                is this it
                coming again out of the mist

                that in my trust I find I still
                get nowhere that I want to be –

                by the walls along the corridor
                or at the top of silent stairs

                standing on the landing – it
                is not up here after all, nowhere

                else to go …
                is

                it
                this damn mist

                so easy to overlook
                so quiet to breathe

                that I mistake the stones for a figure,
                I fear the rope for the snake, and yet

                this mist will disperse
                the sun will always eventually appear

                I need not wear my collar up
                all the time

 

 

 

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

Bodhichitta wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
breathing & quiet wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
depression wormhole: to rescue something
emptiness wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
groundlessness wormhole: place
identity & stone wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
living wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
mist wormhole: while
pointlessness wormhole: is there anything to write?
searching wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
silence wormhole: circuitry
stairs wormhole: currency of generations
sun wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
time wormhole: sweet chestnut
walls wormhole: snapshots about Totnes

 

looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been

Tags

2015, 6*, attention, being, doing, eating, exercise, feeling, identity, life, living, need, notice, purpose, reaching, standing, strength, study, thinking

                looking back over the tack
                     and jibe of my life I
                          notice there is
                               a fetch

                I stand too much to attention
                     too alert to notice
                          where I am

                I reach far too far to get
                     that I cannot have
                          what I am

                I eat too much to treat me
                     and deaden
                          what I need

                I exercised too much and
                     stretched the ligaments
                          that contain all my effort

                I exercise too little now to realise
                     the strength I have
                          untapped

                I have studied too much to
                     know what I think
                          or feel

                                    after all …
                                         but certainly not
                                              where I had planned
                                                   or where I thought
                                                        I’d been

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: looking ahead
being & life wormhole: passing
doing & thinking wormhole: circuitry
identity wormhole: immeasurable love
living wormhole: addictive
study wormhole: reading // unstirred

 

looking ahead

Tags

2015, 20th century, 8*, age, attention, cypress, dark, daughter, dress, duty, eyes, facade, father, field, fields, green, hair, horizon, house, jaw, land, left, lifetimes, medals, mouth, portrait, Remembrance, sienna, sky, smile, standing, war, white, youth

                                                looking ahead

                at 18 he peered frightened and gentle –
                the high forehead and round jaw of all
                his youth, but that his mouth held duty

                faintly pursed on the left, in reserve and
                to attention, although the epaulettes were
                (the wings of a choirboy) – at the strips

                and strips of field and fields of umber
                and sienna and the deepest darkest green,
                as high as the land was wide, and it was

                wide, to the white-washed house perched
                on the higher horizon flanked by European
                cypresses, at home in the fields; at three

                she looked above the horizon, hair in all
                direction to the sky, the purse to the left,
                in attention and wan smile from above

                the ruffled dress (soon to be outgrown with
                every crumple-ene); the medals were worn
                on the left side, the eyes up to the right;

                they stood together to attention, in profile
                before the wet facades of eleventh hour,
                eyes forward, eyes down, pursed and still

 

three photographs in the house of an old friend: her father when newly enrolled in the army shortly before World War II – he served in Africa; herself in her then-best dress in the very early 1960s; father and daughter standing on a wet street collecting for Remembrance Day …

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
attention & smile wormhole: dear Lucy
daughter wormhole: mother and daughter
eyes wormhole: addictive
father & lifetimes wormhole: granny
field wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
green & white wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hair wormhole: immeasurable love
horizon wormhole: Bexhill 140215
house wormhole: slightly / uphill
mouth wormhole: over-pink cagoule
sky wormhole: low afternoon
war wormhole: memorial