late crop, some of the final few home grown blushing toms, from outdoors, bare earth, picked last week after i got back from spain not been outside yet this morning, but kinda presuming the plant has finally keeled over and curled up its (toma) toes? almost december?! such a mild, benign even balmy year (benign here at least, can’t imagine the polar ice is faring too well) curiously all the other plants stopped bothering around september, yet this one had a growth spurt, roots must have blunder rummaged through into a realm of some of my deluxurious home made compost (obv poorly mixed) fruits galore! like most folk, and being somewhat of a late bloomer myself, i’m always heartened and enthusiastic about lost causes anyway back to snuffling my way through a horrible cold… and a project delivery which won’t stay delivered… sigh, grumble… but hey tomatoes!
I was back in Granada last week… long waffly post warning
…………. Such an ancient, powerful, spiritual place… where beauty and history are so preposterously tangible. First time I’d returned since living there in the caves for 3 months, ooh mbe 23 years ago where i went after prague, before south america and all the life changes that flowed from those adventures
chasing the ghost of my younger self, the uncanny feeling that i’d turn a corner midst the muddled streets of the albaycin, enter a square and there i’d be, sitting on the pavement huddled amongst friends, laughing, drinking… dogs, juggling, guitars, djembes and indeed not that much has changed, around sunset, gatherings galore in the plazas, the spanish anarchist look will always be dreadlock mullet, drizzled with copious quantities of black garb crusties and colourful pantaloons! this thing of beauty!
audio of text
this time i was just there for 2 days, the first day a tourist amble around the beauties of the alhambra… never been in autumn before, the burnished colours of leaves then the next day, a slow mosey up through the albaycin… a menu del dia in plaza lago… heart of the gitano quarter blaring music, kids arriving on scooters, being scolded, then leaving, everything a soap opera, community, stories played out on the streets. Onto the next square, cafe con leche, beer, a game of chess in the sunshine whilst listening to a rag tag busking band, the dipping and quirky almost arabic rhythms, the fiddler, he was like puppetry dancing, smoking whilst he played, a huge column of ash jauntily dangling from the end of his fag finally, for sunset, the slow climb up the hill to the church
audio of text
a haunting and powerful sense of place, our stories somehow written on, absorbed by the landscape, there goes Rhona, dragging her wheeled granny shopping trolley, a scratched parched dry path, cutting up and across the valley, past gnarled dog eared cactii, off to fetch water from the fountain at the church, high on sacromonte else sitting in a plump red chesterfield, outside K&R’s cave in the shit valley, fire blazing, Rasta, their dog, tongue lolling, persistently panting up and down the hillside after a stone, whilst claire squawks some cheerful story now, lying on the bed, thinking long on muddled memories and the far flung shores of yesteryear
Punky and Rastaaudio of text
elegaic, i tell many stories about the caves, and that time, broad strokes, colourful, chaotic… too much borracho, the reality of it was much more complex for me, Granada always has a strong, dark energy… Sacromonte, only holy fools would dare to live on the sacred mountain mostly, thinking back, i am happy for such crazy adventures, for the heart connections… and grateful to all the lovely folk who looked after me
so it was, this time, at sunset, as we came down, winding our way along the goat paths, the alhambra glowing on the hill opposite, the snow capped sierra nevada mountains behind, lights starting to come on in the city below, the distant, somehow soothing, beep of horns i stopped to look for claires cave, within 100 meters, but couldn’t quite say which one? familiar, home… and very much not further on the hole in the wall, gateway to the valleys beyond, blocked up now, ‘ojo ladrones’… ‘look out, bandits’ then on the spur of a hill, a man stands alone, agitated, angry, he is bellowing at everybody walking along the path below, screaming at the sky, at the mountains…Maricon! Pueta Madre! all this amidst the manifest beauty , the subtle fading light. Granada
audio of text
leave it here? ha… should get on with work, wallow on, till fade out what are we? but the triangulation of all our human relationships? the social ties that tether us, i doubt it what are we? put your ipad on shuffle all songs, the spool that comes out? nope rather, somehow, we are all the people that we love, when you turn to a friend, begin to tell a story, a story a thousand times told.. yet your own voice summons a goose bump excitement, the thrill, catch fire, as sweet smelling Roses endlessly blossom and entwine with our words Granada ………………. ….. oh and pics couple from last week, and a tiny sample from the one film of kirsts that somehow survived xx
off on an early morning flight… not this early, soul always thrusts us awake before we would either need or want boy flew away on his adventure last night too… enjoy!!!… now, midst the gloom, surreal tip toeing about the house, feel like, time slip, i’m bleary eyed up to be out on my post round delivering mail leonard has gone, sure everyone will be posting, tis facebook… not in my opinion an occasion to mourn, somehow feel that, more than most people, he managed to powerfully inhabit his own life. impressive. and has left us some beautiful words. who would want more from life? but yearning, we always do. thank you. this version not quite the simone one, but the one we grew up on, currently bizarrely ‘watching’ this, with no sound, as no headphones and don’t want to wake sherbailey don’t really need volume, etched, powerfully evocative of sitting around after sunday roast, as a teenager, whilst mum and dad played mournful ancient songs once again. doffs dapper hat. thanks mr cohen, all that beauty
ah not a great day… again … political glumness, even less hope, if that’s possible, than before, of the progressive inclusive political agenda the world so badly needs emma played a version of this at dance (i think! might have been something else, i was somewhat busy dancing)…. the song is buddhism innit
Spirit is the upward flowing energy, of air and fire wheras soul, is the more female flow to ground, that of the elements of water and earth soulful days we’re living through
the perils of easy street sea serene, placid, yawns to the horizon only the soothe wash of its voice, which entices, then intones ‘do nothing… be nothing’ as unbeknown, grandmothers footsteps, it wriggle creeps up the beach behind me
‘windfarm’, just a phone snap from a few weeks back, shakily taken from the top deck of the bus, as we wallowed along, on the cliffs near saltdean i love this pic! they’re building the windfarm out of the port, so always a few bright orange windcats bustling about, joe the boy down the road is a big fan, i don’t know how practical the project is, gotta be a good start, and makes sense that affluent, progressive, pleasant brighton should be wind powered (plenty of lentils, pulses and opinions, so fart and hot air powered somedays too!) but photo more about hubris, just a minuscule speck lost in the majestic ocean, turner-esque, enthralled by light, the sea in all its power and majesty… a capricious mutable beauty
audio of text
tho today its a bit of a pea soup out there, i can’t even see the sea, so am loitering pointlessly on here, when i want to be out on my bike! oh and i poured the holy well, blessed water from the festival into the ouse yesterday… said a few simple words whilst watched over only by a white egret, no doubt singing cohens ‘bird on a wire’ it was around high tide, so i quite like the notion of not knowing whether the spring water would head upstream to lewes, else to merge immediately with the world straddling sea… water is oneness ‘love like water always flows to the sea’
