window

Tags

1830, 2019, 5*, artist, creak, crystal, fire, light, painting, silence, silhouette, sound, standing, Turner, windows

                oh,
                the Artist stood

                only he
                in silhouette

                daubing;
                his Admirers reclined

                or leant
                and all was silent

                save a creak
                and a lap of flame

                and the
                incandescent crystal

                of light
                around the floor-to-ceiling

                window

 

the sounds of light downloaded from Petworth: the Artist and his Admirers (the old library), c. 1830 by William Turner; when light enters through windows it turns to music if there is an alert-enough artist to express it and an audience-enough to hear

 

 

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

light & silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
silhouette & sound wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
windows wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

 

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threshold to behold

Tags

1967, 2019, 8*, abandonment, alcove, being, birds, blue, books, breeze, Dad, Eglinton Hill, evening, garden, head, identity, life, meaning, openness, place, purpose, room, shoulders, skirting board, sky, son, sound, standing, text, time, trees, Victorian houses, weight, windows

                                  threshold to behold

                having persistently interrogated every alcove
                and skirting and sash-window of every room
                he could possibly have been in

                for any lead to any whereabouts, to even a
                chalk-outline, of how to be (beyond the breath
                of standing next to him in the breezy garden) –

                they were so well-moulded, fitted at perfect
                right angle, pulleys holding the weight just right
                to open, surely they would know – nothing,

                (or were they just too arcane to decode),
                the son stood before the bookshelves – how
                was it, now – legs not really astride but anyhow,

                (dangling, even), but head and shoulders alert,
                scanning the spines, weighing what each had
                to offer to respective places and times in the

                whole of a life, ah, this is the one – plucked –
                from the top of the spine, reached down; felt
                their weight, now, opened boarded covers

                (sound of crease), open at random (must of
                decades), what does the text say when
                eavesdropped unaware, has it sense, could I inhabit

                that sense enough to see what to do, to breathe
                what to be – birds take flight into the turning deep blue
                above evening trees

 

my father left his family on my eighth birthday; I’m sure he didn’t plan in that way, but that’s the day he happened to come home late again and confess that he’d been seeing someone else – I played with my new cars behind the sofa and listened to him leave, I didn’t look up so much as stare at the shape of the room as if noticing for the first time in the Victorian house on the hill where we lived; ‘I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed’ (a no-prize to anyone who can name where these lyrics come from) looking for the direction I needed to be ‘the man of the house, now’ as someone said to me at the time; it’s only now I have retired that I realise there is no direction to go and that there is no man about the house other than saying makes it so; I still don’t look up, but am more and more sure that I don’t have to, now; still, all that browsing, plucking and hoarding over the years …

 

 

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

abandonment & Dad & life wormhole: my uncomfortable life
being wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
blue & trees wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
books wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
breeze wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
Eglinton Hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
evening & time & windows wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
garden wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
identity wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
meaning wormhole: the old man;
openness wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
sky wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
sound wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
Victorian houses wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

Landscape, Pontoise, 1875

Tags

1875, 2018, 6*, clouds, fields, garden, growth, horizon, houses, life, lifetimes, passing, Pissarro, Pontoise, progress, sitting, standing, trees

                Landscape, Pontoise, 1875

                they sit and stand bent
                in the fields,

                in the gardens, while trees grow
                past the stories of

                house and only
                passing clouds behind the low

                horizon show
                the rapid progress of growth

 

about three storeys at right-angles into the Landscape, Pontoise, 1875, by Camille Pissarro … and oh, I’ve not been able to find a copy of the painting to paste here:

 

 

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

being & passing & sky wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
clouds & horizon wormhole: horizon
garden wormhole: {reading right to left}
life & trees wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
lifetimes wormhole: waiting to be heard
passing wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
sitting wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

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

 

sun setting over a lake, 1840

Tags

1840, 2018, 6*, clothes, emptiness, groundlessness, hills, lake, love, no-boundary, now, possibility, shore, space, speech, standing, sunset, timelessness, water, William Turner

                                                quick
                let us stand close as our wadded
                       clothing

                                               will allow,
                the watery expanse will dissimulate all
                       possibility

                                                of shore
                at the precise moment that the sun
                       perches

                                               lastly
                over hills before the wider gulf
                       of ever

 

Sun Setting over a Lake, William Turner, 1840

 

 

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

emptiness & space wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
groundlessness wormhole: with all love released
love wormhole: only
speech wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
sunset wormhole: we held cold hands
water wormhole: on facing the Have

 

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

Tags

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

 

cross-section

Tags

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