Month: December 2018

ah such plump luxuriance of line! some fab sketches… mostly Rosetti
i love figurative art and have been thinking a little of the pre-Raphs on my drive home today
partly because Burne Jones lived in Rottingdean, some marvelous stained glass in the church there,
i imagine him and kipling (doubt they were friends or even their lives overlapped in da village!)
scoffing cakes quaffing tea in the Rose garden at the Grange (library)… ‘exceedingly good Rudyard’
then ambling off along the undercliff, unbuttoning frock coats and dabbling blue white victorian toes in the ocean

hmm what to make of the pre-Raphs?!
like most folk, often find their finished works drift towards twee Romanticism, rather backwards looking, a somewhat british trait even then…
yep, you’d imagine the subject matter would be something that would appeal, mythpoetic, images as lucid and laden as a tarot card
but its a bit like tennyson? and who reads him nowadays?
Why were they not seemingly looking at the world of change and turmoil happening all around them?
or for that matter, all that was about to happen across the channel, the first twitches of the seismic shift to modernism, an age of upheaval and revolution
so yep, lets paint Sir Launcelot in a dashing, fashionable brocade frock
slight frothy swoon to their art… hard to know quite what to make of it, men looking at women, in a post john berger, lacan scoptic vision kinda world?
erring on the side of generosity, the women were always their muses, lovers, sisters… occasionally both
oops just typing words, with no real direction or imagination… i shall stop

oh and more lovely schmaltz to wallow in

and, bizarrely audrey hepburn in Rottingdean

off pinterest… louis someone (apols didn’t note his name), a non disney illustrated version of the jungle book x

oh and as i’m seemingly still commenting on this post

william morris, one of burne jones best mates… socialism and wallpaper, a love triangle and the peculiar flavour of Ruskin-esque medievalism… gotta love the victorians (and Radio 4)… tho melvyn is a bit crank grumpy on this one… listened on the bus when the road home was shut… armed police!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b9w0vq

‘i was late, it was raining, it’s hard to huddle on your own’
solstice dawn, nadir of the year, ebb, this the dwindling of the light, darkness encroaches. blessings to y’all
ha, of course i have tweaked both the dinge and pathos levels, all is performance, masters of artifice
yet as it’s the season of holly and homily:
time to hunker down and gnaw on bone (quorn burgers!), ponder long on both personal and collective futures, it is late, but mbe not as late as we think?
most of the fears that we find in the darkness, but not all, are things that we have flung there, far from us and our circle of light
allow, be comfortable with these the dark familiars, it may well not be alright, but ‘it is’
midst the sullenness, possibly, easier to feel the seed of light?
….
anyway it was proper windy up on the cliff, watery kersplosh wave chaos beyond the harbour walls, picture, ‘whaling vessel beleaguered by storm, heads for safety of harbour’ doesn’t really demonstrate, dang
christmas soon! glug whisky, dance to neil diamond, that sorta stuff x

an interesting kabbala type short talk i was listening to t’other day:

Dave: Love this post mate – wishing you an excellent Christmas, catch you next year!

cheers fella, keep meaning to write to ya, in appreciation of sys etc, but like everyone underwhelmed by my energy levels… festive blessing to you and fam xx

Wendy: Love your turn of phrase mister x

Thanks! and i, in turn, adore your writing m’dear
it’s fun to acknowledge, then try and speak something about say the solstice, all the obvious themes and structures in place, truth is through feeling into nuance
like you, this year, i felt it important not to immediately gulp at the longed for light, but rather be comfortable and nestle, here, with the darkness and exhaustion
your words usually have a calmness, an almost serene flow to them

wheras, ha, mine often are a bulging, confused, exuberant gallumph! I want to be beautiful and funny at exactly the same time
which is quite a reach, so usually i topple over midst a tyrannical polyphony of glottal stops (see!)
anyway wishing festive greetings to you and yours, hope to see ya soon! xx

Wendy: Ah thanks for your words about my words I love your natural exuberance that comes through in your writing, an electric staccato that has a gorgeous poetic flourish to it. It’s all you and I love that truthful expression 

We meet in lyrical x

Wendy: Always

Nicki: Wow what an amasing description of christmas .. thankyou ..x

it is good isn’t it, like his voice too… lovely to see ya at the devi bhavar, pop over whenever ya fancy for some proper winter loitering xx

Days of straw spun into gold…
Golden Rose of the Soul, Rose Gold of the Heart
Strong gossamer spider skein of which we weave our lives..’Joining hearts and hand and ancestral twine, ancestral twine’
the joy of connection, the simple, oft whispered, much muttered mantra: ‘do wonderful things with beautiful people’
through nature, through the land, songs and hugs, here, this is the space in which we meet each other
the cusp of sunset, where land is earth is sky
leave room for all that which arises in our hearts. Boddhicitta
Soul the flow of energy that sinks from heart to earth? whilst Spirit flies upwards from heart to sky?
summon the subtle energies of this land, the earthen Red which oozes up, the babble, sparkle white tumbling from above, to mingle, here, within us
Rose Gold of the Heart

hiatus, woke this morning, far too early, with a fire of absurd words in my head, thrill to the grandiloquence!… tho impossible to take it too seriously
but of course, daughter carted to gatwick, all my family (except me!) are away in the States, Rome, France, Ireland… i am left sole guardian of this realm of toil and Rain
then the quagmire of Saturday around Sainsburys… sitting here picking me nose, thinking of the beautiful and the unsuitable… thankfully nobody reads far on here… and i ain’t going out in this sogginess… blunder on!
and the same pics again. ha

back to the honey tongued, guile gilded gabble… ooh great! want to type galvanised, just because it makes me ponder electroplating and frankenstein frogs shocked into life
thinking now of the Mahamuni Buddha in far Mandalay
of approaching it on knees proffering a slither of gold leaf, place it like a postage stamp on the centuries old, gold swollen belly of the statue
sticky! tacky to the touch, warm, moist gold, truly the sweat of the sun
these the days of the old emperor, stern, stale, serious, his toad weight squats down upon the earth
but also – seldom glimpsed, somewhere beneath, ever flowing, enraptured beauty, the subtle grace of the world dancer
‘She’s as sweet as Tupelo Honey’, mutable, molten
Golden Rose of the Soul, Rose Gold of the Heart

marooned midst the grey gloom,
world daunted, suffused with darkness
like an old oil painting, colours smudged sullen by centuries of candle soot
hair plastered down from the rain, a submariner light, lost languid neath an ocean of olive oil
ah the blessing of not having to go out again, just code, cook grub for daughter and sing along to ballards on a playlist
of course, often on days like these, our sorrows gather close, but, with thanks, not right now, not for me
rather a spreading of soft radiance
traipsing back from lidl, crossing the bridge, the swash and swaddle of traffic in the rain
stop, face turned up, look to the sea, look to the sky, tender exultance
words, enchanting, surface from singing in circle at the last festival, with sofia and close, tight huddled with friends,
‘bury me deep in love, bury me deep in love, take me in, under your wing, bury me deep in love’