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

 

Advertisements

LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, bedroom, blue, child, childhood, green, laughing, looking, November, quiet, shadow, Spring, streets, sunlight, weather, William Carlos Williams, windows

                LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM

                Light hearted William twirled
                his November moustaches
                and, half dressed, looked
                from the bedroom window
                upon the spring weather.

                Height-ya! sighed he gaily
                leaning out to see
                up and down the street
                where a heavy sunlight
                lay beyond some blue shadows.

                Into the room he drew
                his head again and laughed
                to himself quietly
                twirling his green moustaches.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
… and WCW had a son called … William, who was it about, hmmm … twirl

 

 

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

bedroom wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
blue & green & William Carlos Williams wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
child wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
childhood wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
shadow wormhole: sometimes
spring wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: space for probing thought
windows wormhole: the moon, the moon

 

A Solitude by Denise Levertov

Tags

1961, 7*, air, anxiety, being, blindness, breeze, children, Denise Levertov, doors, exit, face, hands, image, journey, joy, light, movement, nowhere, passing, people, presence, quiet, right, seeing, shame, smile, solitude, sound, speech, stairs, staring, station, stranger, streets, sunlight, thought, train, water, way, world

                                A Solitude

                A blind man. I can stare at him
                ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it?
                No, he is in a great solitude.

                O, strange joy,
                to gaze my fill at a stranger’s face.
                No, my thirst is greater than before.

                In this world he is speaking
                almost aloud. His lips move.
                Anxiety plays about them. And now joy

                of some sort trembles into a smile.
                A breeze I can’t feel
                crosses that face as if it crossed water.

                The train moves uptown, pulls in and
                pulls out of the local stops. Within its loud
                jarring movement a quiet,

                the quiet of people not speaking,
                some of them eyeing the blind man,
                only a moment though, not thirsty like me,

                and within that quiet his
                different quiet, not quiet at all, a tumult
                of images, but what are his images,

                he is blind? He doesn’t care
                that he looks strange, showing
                his thoughts on his face like designs of light

                flickering on water, for hedoesn’t know
                what look is.
                I see he has never seen.

                And now he rises, he stands at the door ready,
                knowing his station is next. Was he counting?
                No, that was not his need.

                When he gets out I get out.
                ‘Can I help you towards the exit?’
                ‘Oh, alright.’ An indifference.

                But instantly, even as he speaks,
                even as I hear indifference, his hand
                goes out, waiting for me to take it,

                and now we hold hands like children.
                His hand is warm and not sweaty,
                the grip firm, it feels good.

                And when we have passed through the turnstile,
                he going first, his hand at once
                waits for mine again.

                ‘Here are the steps. And here we turn
                to the right. More stairs now.’ We go
                up into sunlight. He feels that,

                the soft air. ‘A nice day,
                isn’t it?’ says the blind man. Solitude
                walks with me, walks

                beside me, he is not with me, he continues
                his thoughts alone. But his hand and mine
                know one another,

                it’s as if my hand were gone forth
                on its own journey. I see him
                across the street, the blind man,

                and now he says he can find his way. He knows
                where he is going, it is nowhere, it is filled
                with presences. He says, I am.

 

how to be in another’s head about being in another’s head: this is a wonderful example of Whalen’s ‘graph of the mind’ – the reach and score of effervent; there is a wonderful clarity and excise about these words such that the encounter is ours as much as just reported; thank you Denise Levertov, as she touches her throat lightly to feel the vibrations as she listens

 

 

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

air wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
anxiety wormhole: anxiety
being & water wormhole: `whappn’d!
breeze & hands wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
doors wormhole: letting them go
light wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
passing wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: tram
quiet wormhole: new blue porsche
seeing wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
smile wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
thought wormhole: presence
train wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
world wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content

 

‘God, who am I …?’

Tags

2014, 20th century, 7*, distance, faces, girls, history, horizon, identity, library, lost, madness, motion, Nightmare, presence, progress, reading, sitting, sun, sunlight, Sylvia Plath, talking to myself, TH Huxley, thought

picked over, cajoled, placed this way and that, gazed at the upper corner of the room, and eventually written from entry 33. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962; Plath wrote this, I merely … Plath wrote this, but the failure is mine, all mine, I tellsya!

                God, who am I?
                I sit in the library tonight
                the lights whirring
                girls everywhere
                reading books
                faces

                And I sit here without identity
                There is history to comprehend
                before I sleep

                Yet back at the house
                there is my room
                full of my presence
                There is my date this weekend:
                believes I am human –
                only indication that I am whole
                not merely a knot
                without identity –

                I’m lost!
                Huxley would have laughed
                What a conditioning this is!
                Hundreds of faces
                beating time along the edge of thought

                a nightmare
                no sun
                only continual motion
                If I rest inward
                I go mad

                There is so much
                in different directions
                pulled thin
                against horizons too distant to reach

                To stop with the German tribes
                and rest awhile: but no!
                On, on, on, through ages of empires
                ceaseless pace
                Will I never rest in sunlight again?

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: 20th century
faces wormhole: jump start
history wormhole: tragic and archival
horizon wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: between
reading wormhole: reating & wriding
sitting wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
sun & Sylvia Plath wormhole: concordance
talking to myself wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
thought wormhole: divergent // direction

 

prelude: // travel

Tags

2013, 6*, acceptance, castle, coffee, compassion, doing, driving, dust, field, green, Have, mist, motorway, passing, people, progress, self-compassion, sky, steel, stone, sunlight, tarmac, travelling, waking, wood

                                prelude:

                had a day to myself
                no work to do no family no obligation
                I could have built myself a castle stony to the sky
                but I did nothing to make my mark in the world
                nothing to house
                the sky

                and I felt strangely accepting of that
                a sort-of love really

                                travel

                woke-up stupid lack-slept
                but I have a certain love for myself
                and I get on with last-minute packing

                people, slaves in so many ways to Have
                but I have a certain love for myself
                and can accept us all to suffer our own coffees

                there is steel in all the greens and mist in all the sunlight
                the harvester shaves the field to dust and someone
                burns the wood to waft across the motorway

                but I have a certain love for myself and
                I let them all pass and while the rubber turns
                the tarmac I progress to a destination

 

 

 

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

acceptance & sky wormhole: stone
coffee wormhole: magnificent salad
compassion wormhole: so pleased to see you again
doing wormhole: wasted –
field & green wormhole: greedy
Have wormhole: beepbeep
mist wormhole: retirement
motorway wormhole: dawn
passing & travelling wormhole: handsome
people wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show
stone wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything
wood wormhole: the 19th century

 

while

Tags

2015, 5*, care, career, chair, conservatory, professionalism, sunlight, table, teaching

                marking books
                during the holiday –

                                because I’m a professional, I suppose –
because I give a care nevertheless

                while sunlight breaks through
                like chalk over the upturned chair legs

                and the folded table top
                in the conservatory

 

retirement #5: written, of course, before I retired, but only now does the significance break through the clouds and the smokey grey perspex roof

 

 

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

career & teaching wormhole: what wounds have you got?
conservatory wormhole: balance
professionalism wormhole: listen willya
table wormhole: returning home handsome

 

did I get old?

Tags

2013, 4*, ageing, click, clouds, crimson, green, grey, identity, life, metal, questioning, red, silence, skyline, sunlight, time, voices, walls, windows

                      at which point
                between the lifting metal-crimson
                      fingers of behind
                      the skyline

                      the never sure
                when the clouds will part          once
                      and stab through
                      the window

                      and the (eventual)
                late(r) grey-green click and silence of voices
                      behind the wall
                      did I get old?

 

 

 

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

clouds & grey & silence wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
green wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
identity wormhole: Clea
life wormhole: adjustment
red wormhole: returning home handsome
skyline & walls wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
time wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
voices wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
windows wormhole: the 19th century

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn

Tags

2016, Africa, air, autumn, book, colour, digging, earth, emerald, eyes, faces, field, garden, gold, grass, hill, horse, lawn, life, lunch, morning, peas, plough, poetry, reading, sky, skyline, sleep, sound, spiders, starlings, sun, sunlight, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees, uncle, wheat

 

 

 

autumn

                young wheat and emerald, in sese vertitur annus,
                reading an old poet in the garden, the sky is clear as face –

                                I had mown the lawn that morning just before lunch
                                and turned over the plot where the peas had been cleared –

                                                              on the steep hill opposite a horse pulled forward from a plough
                                                              moving slowly towards the skyline, jingle of the traces,

                                the book fell, the starlings flew, suddenly, I came awake
                                as the plough turned the field and spark of sunlight leapt,

                shoulder to mine eye, while the earth lay opened and dark-folded;
                                              (visitors had arrived, in quietude, invasion of linyphiids,

                                                              a thin gossamer between ridges – lapping under the sun –
                                                              bristles of random colour, a hundred yards long

                                                              and twenty inches wide and bare of future gold);
                                among the nemesia the book is retrieved, many lives

                                              will be lost, just enough will be saved, restless; this is
                                              thistle-down upon the air, here are crackle and pop

                                                                                 beneath the sky; the tree tops will be dipped in
                                                                                 old gold, and the swallows will be off for Africa

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to : The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts

 

 

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

air & autumn & eyes & field & garden & gold & morning & poetry & reading & sky & skyline & sleep & sunlight & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
faces wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
life & uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
sound wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
sun wormhole: between thoughts

 

The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts

Tags

1967, Africa, afternoon, air, Apollo, autumn, awakening, beans, bees, beginning, birth, blue, book, bracken, bronze, caterpillar, child, colour, cottage, crickets, dark, death, digging, earth, emerald, end, eyes, face, field, flowers, forest, garden, generation, gold, gorse, grass, hazel, hedgehog, hill, hive, honeysuckle, horse, house martin, ivy, January, journey, joy, lambs, land, lawn, leaves, life, March, memory, migration, mind, moorhen, moorland, morning, mother, nemesia, Norway, oak, plough, poetry, purple, reading, redwing, sadness, seasons, seeds, silence, sitting, sky, skyline, sleep, smell, sound, spiders, starlings, sunlight, the Boats of Vallisneria, thistles, thought, time, transition, trees, uncle, valley, web, wheat, winter, woodlark, work

 

Chapter 1

The Wandering Mind

Autumn Thoughts

I sat in the garden one autumn afternoon reading an old poet.   The sky was unblemished, clear and pure as the face of a child and starlings were deep in conversation close by.   I had mown the lawn that morning just before lunch and turned over the plot where the peas had been cleared.   After this exertion and a good meal, I felt no pang of conscience as I turned my back upon the many other chores that cried for attention and took my book into the garden and relaxed in the warm soporific scent of honeysuckle and freshly cut grass.   After an indeterminable period my thoughts were lifted from the page upon my knee and I drifted across the valley to the hill opposite.   There the grade was steep, too steep for tractor or any other mechanical tool.   A horse therefore was leaning from a plough, moving slowly, almost imperceptively towards the skyline.   The cottage in which I then lived was very old and the hills opposite even older; no doubt at one time they were covered with forest, but many men must have witnessed that same scene before me, many men and many generations.   To them it was a common sight, but to me it was a rare and beautiful sight that spanned the centuries. The scene was timeless.

I felt my head nod forward quite suddenly and I came awake.   The book fell onto the grass and the starlings flew off more in indignation than fright.   In the silence that followed, there filtered through the warmth of the valley the faint jingle of the traces, and as the plough turned upon the headland, a spark of sunlight leapt from the polished harness; it was an impish child of Apollo that danced upon the horse’s back one moment, then without warning, leapt the great expanse of the valley and entered my eye within the same split second.   I realised then that here was a beginning; here, before the old year was done, was another just starting.   Here the earth was being opened up to let in winter’s icy fingers so that she might the better prepare the seed bed for next year’s crop.   Then as the mind’s awareness expanded, I felt that this was not the only beginning taking place, there were many more throughout the changing land.

Visitors were arriving, flowers were blooming, animals were being born.   All about me, as I sat half asleep in the quietude, a great movement of life was in progress, and I thought of another great movement of life that had occurred the previous autumn.   It was an invasion of our fields by the linyphiids or gossamer spiders.   We were drilling wheat at the time and as I crouched low on the footboard of the drill to clear a coulter that had clogged up, I beheld a silken counterpane of gossamer stretched between the faint ridges of the harrowed earth.   The effect, if the eye was held low enough, was that of a thin layer of water shimmering in the early morning sun sending off sparks of individual colour selected at random from all parts of the spectrum.   So taken was I with this scene that all thoughts of clearing the coulters left me as we rattled and jogged across the field, and when harvesting the same field this year, there, as a reminder of that small moment, was a strip bare of swaying gold a hundred yards long and twenty inches wide.

I retrieved the book and placed it on the seat beside me.   The starlings had returned and were even noisier than before and the bees were hurrying to and fro among the nemesia in the hope of collecting and storing that little extra for the months ahead.   Soon they will end their toil; soon they would maim and expel the unfortunate drones and retire to the centre of the hive with the queen in their midst.   The day was magnificent, more like mid-summer than autumn, small wonder indeed that the careless cricket continued to ‘sing’ unaware of the imminent peril of winter.   Many small lives will be lost in the approaching days of darkness yet, through it all, just enough will be saved.   Beneath the apparent calm of autumn is a restlessness; and urgency sweeps through the fields and woodlands as the wiser creatures prepare for flight or lay in stores for sustenance through the long twilight of winter yet to come.

Autumn is a season of transition, a season of intense activity; of flowers flowering and flowers dying, of drilling wheat and cutting beans.   Autumn is a time of birth and death; a time of awakening and a time of going to sleep.   It is a time for the young and a time for the old, a time of both joy and sadness.

This is the time of thistle-down upon the air and goose-grass burrs upon the stockings; when the gorse and broom crackle and pop beneath a March-blue sky and scatter their tiny seeds among the dry stems of the sapless grass.   Now the moors are stained a deeper purple, bracken becomes bronzed and the tree tops dipped in old gold.   In the derries the young caterpillar of the Purple Emperor wraps itself in dead oak leaves and sleeps until the great awakening.   When gossamer fills the air and hazel nuts turn brown the young swallows start on that amazing flight to the shores of Africa, a journey undertaken by their parents a year before who, curiously enough, do not show their offspring the way, but follow on some days later.   How many thousand autumns have witnessed this exodus?   Yet to what blocks of logic and fact can we in all our wisdom attribute this common thing.   The redwing and fieldfare arrive from Norway urging on the lingering house martin.   The woodlark sings, the ivy flowers and the honeysuckle blooms again.   And as the somnolent hedgehog rolls himself in his blanket of leaves, the last brood of moorhen is hatched.   Something sleeps, something awakes; something dies, something is born.

There is no real beginning or end to the year.   Even on the first of January the lambs are growing; leaves are forming within the bud and the young wheat carpets the bare fields with emerald.   But for those whose minds cannot accept the existence of that which has no beginning and no end, then let the division between the years be drawn through autumn, for the onset of winter is really the beginning of the year, not the end.   The young year is born into a cold and sometimes frightening world just as the infant child is released from the warm security of the mother’s womb, and like the child, the infant year begins its life before it is born.   It begins in the womb of autumn.   It is here then (if anywhere) that one thing ends and another begins.   It is here In Sese Vertiture Annus.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

1967 & garden & life & mind & thought & uncle wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
afternoon wormhole: “walking …”
air & sound & time wormhole: constant hummm
autumn & gold & sky & smell & trees & work wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
blue & reading wormhole: between thoughts
child & sleep wormhole: 1968
death & eyes wormhole: too late:
field & skyline wormhole: impressionism
leaves wormhole: work
morning wormhole: the coming of ‘The Boats of Vallisneria’ by Michael J. Redford
mother wormhole: and that’s where I are
oak wormhole: dog bark
poetry wormhole: after all?
purple wormhole: 1967
silence wormhole: the missing chord // the now-silent seagull
sitting wormhole: zero
winter wormhole: 1963

 

Le Pont Royal, 1909

Tags

'scape, 1909, 2015, architecture, bridge, buildings, Edward Hopper, facade, morning, Paris, sunlight, trees, veins, walking

                                Le Pont Royal, 1909

                                the thing is: the morning sun
                                which meets the facades face

                                on and sculpts them – fine-
                                hewn – into their architecture

                                and makes the bare trees into
                                manly veins, is not brought

                                by the bridge despite all its
                                pedestrian traffic to work

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
bridge & sunlight wormhole: 1965
buildings wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25
Edward Hopper wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
morning wormhole: fine
Paris wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
trees wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
walking wormhole: while walking