Month: February 2018

brass monkeys out there today! an easterly that will eat yer face. bone gnaw, but buffeted by the gentle, sporadic swirl of dandruff snow… dandruff, such a 1970’s affliction! all middleaged men, leer sleazy in polyester suits.
anyway quaff of ginger, shoo kids out of the house about their various missions (a miserably hungover son, i so don’t miss that). Then don muddy gardening glove gauntlets and hop on my bike!
such a joy to be outside… bike finally mended… after a few weeks of it being in a state of disrepair, strewn across the kitchen. hurrah!
the few folk you meet all greet you with a wave, everyone like an over enthusiastic volkswagen beetle driver… a jogger, 2 stray dogwalkers… and one fellow, towell, jam roly polyed under his arm, clearly away to cavort in the sea! blimey!
… oh and the icicles! they’re from the weekend… saw them dangling above me, like the proverbial sword of damocles, from the cliff top on high
scrambled up to get a better look, and grok the view, interestingly, if i’d clambered over the lip of the cliff from above, i’d have been terrified, but as i wriggled up from below felt rather safe
anyway don’t let the icicles skewer you from above, trepanned, soul opened to the endless flood of spirit from above
…euripides tho he was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise shell from on high upon his bonce! greek tradgedy
… as often the way, nothing to say, but do enjoy saying it

………………..

ah yes, every morning all of us sing the world into being! x
tho actually i went to singing on saturday, huge fun as always, yet my contribution, even after umpteen years practice remains a dismal caterwaul… sometimes i hit the right notes, but being a little tone death i’m not always sure when that fortuitous event happens

ooh only just noticed this was up! not everyday you get to play lead watering can in a hair metal video! 🤘 RAWK! 🤘… well not exactly
pleasant, serendipitous congruency: a few weeks back, on a sunny winters day up at the permaculture plot in stanmer… where i sporadically volunteer…
Em and Malik, unite the beat, friends from our ‘share your story’ group were leading a workshop in found sound
huge joyful fun, we got to flap away at the spinach, bash and bang on everything! then blindfolded meander about the plot, navigating by being tuned in to the aural properties of the space
…and the result, this beautiful, lovingly hand crafted promo video for the plot
ah to be working in community outside in such a beautiful space on a lovely day! on with me code

the excellent share your story

http://shareyourstory.space/

brighton permaculture

https://brightonpermaculture.org.uk/

check out some of unite the beats other projects, inspiring stuff, thanks guys! x

https://www.unitethebeat.co.uk/

season of the hazel catkins, bringing a genuine benign softness to the woods at this time of year, apparently sacred to brigid, irish goddess of inspiration (ajna and aquarius?)… and her feast just passed
a pleasant weekend in the sunshine at the lovely festie at emerson… such a beautiful sacred landscape around there
at one point i meandered off for a sunset walk, found a swing hung from the branch of a huge old beech tree to play on, in the low evening sunlight you could see how every clump of grass was connected by the glorious shimmer of spiders skein
so much else happening in the world, whilst we blunder bumble along with our tired thoughts
ephemerera continually arising into being then fading away again. a delightful granualarity… if we but find the stillness to watch

……………
… and to babble further… i quite like it that folk seldom read far
the next day a family of rats playing in the garden, steiner biodynamic rats at that!… of course quell the initial loathing, ancient enemy, man and rat have been neighbours for ever
both our familiar and similar, alike in their curiosity and querrelousness… normally you just see the hairless tail of one scurrying away from view
but these just hopped about, poking their noses into everything. dudes!

a dusk time stroll up towards the castle, i rounded a corner just at the moment a fox pounced out, the whirr of feathers midst the melee, as 3 plump game birds scrambled skywards

Rufus exultant. Magnificent. for a second he paused, then nonchalant turned tail and bounded back into the thicket. not your mangey down town fox, but tawny sunset gloss of pelt

always in the woods there is the sense, if your imagination allows, that just around the bend, the laugh, the tantal-o-o, the joyful shrieks of the wild wild fairy hunt

but with hazels, they always seem like the spirit of a sweet young boy… and with him, forever nearby, walks the white lady of the woods, snowdrops and anemones flowering around her gown

oh and spent some of lunchtime reading about hazel in my tree book… tree of quicksilver wisdom!… the salmon and the legend of Finn McCool… probs some of that in these links? … starts with the yeats, from the christy moore song too

https://www.druidry.org/library/trees/tree-lore-hazel

http://www.thegoddesstree.com/trees/Hazel.htm

…and ever curious McColl means son of hazel … as in Kirstie… and her dad Ewan, who wrote: 

out take from grand budapest ‘otel, or some other lushly coloured scene from wes andersons* oeuvre!

me, magnificent in ‘not nettle’ green outside maries palace o marble… tried adding a filter… but all of them merely decreased the glamorous sumptuousness… so just plain

*apostrophe somewhere here… but, for me, a bit like grammar pin the tale on the donkey!

‘i been talking with the man in the mirror’… brutal cold day here, snow fell this morning, but didn’t settle, i am nursing my poisoned elbow and glugging tons of turmeric, cayenne and echinacea tea!
thoughts, as often the case, turn to our Neanderthal cousins, wondrous hominids, if your european twixt 2 and 6% of our dna comes from them (substantially more if you’ve ever been a member of Oasis)
during the last ice age, they roamed and even flourished on the frozen tundra around about here, they’d have been munching muchly on mastodon bone marrow… and would probably have made light of my enchanting grumblings
trying to channel some of their qualities… obv sad that both those creatures are no longer part of this world, but just, how do you hunt a wooly mammoth? how!
why with brawn and stubborness, yes, but much more importantly with ingenuity, guile and cunning… and beyond even that, with the help of our friends!
being human, we amount to nothing without each other. mahayana baby

aw and of course, all i know of neanderthals… and much of what it means to be human, one of the best of books!