courtney, colours, chutney
Author: basgallop
lewes bonfire
aww impossible not to love the lewes bonfire bedlam! the annual stripey jumpered cacophony
swirling smoke, teeming rain
burning brands shoved in your face, all is hubbub, a riot of fire, of clamour… explosions 2 feet away, absorbed in the body
visceral, a somatic nightmare
brass bands vye with samba ensembles, psychotic drummers provide a skeletal backbone beat
effigies are lugged, everything exploded… yes, everything exploded
a jostle, pomp of costume, melee down medieval streets
beauty glimpsed, forever fleeting
people are glamourous, astonishing. WE are beautiful with the madness, fresh of fire, flourished on our faces… shining, tumbling forth from eyes… ha!
anyway, hyperbole aside, i’m enjoying the blurry out of focus unreality of the smaps
good natured, in your face, ritualised anarchy
PANDE-f***kin’-MONIUM
endless endless rain, spent the rest of the day marooned in bed… even getting to lewes is a palaver, like your breaking into the town… a drive and a crazy pedal for me… all part of the adventure
hmm skimming thru recent posts looks like i live in a shower cap… probs truer than i’d care to imagine
Protected: …also
samhain
Protected: snaps from mel
hilary mantel
oh Hilary Mantel has died
i haven’t read much of her work, only wolf hall and bringing up the bodies, and never got far with the final part, yet such a beautiful writer
oh you know, historical fiction, rolls eyes, and the tudors are so over done
but, but, her Cromwell! part Machiavellian schemer, part bully boy thug, loyal, astonishingly honest and self actualised… bought to life in a style of lucid realism, interspersed with poetic reverie
one of the best drawn characters in all of fiction. genius. RIP
………..
read those books on the bus headed into brighton for a programming job, always 7:30 in the morning, rain, torpor, damp bodies squidged together on the top deck, groundation on in my headphones, nose in a book, happily elsewhere
…………………………………….. comments
Andy: I still feel grateful that you gave me I think it was The Mirror and the Light on Audible x
Mary: Cromwell, a man of great principle, architect of our modern Parliament and villainised for his King’s marital whims. He is one of my historical heroes and I think that Hilary did a fine job of restoring his reputation. So glad she finished the trilogy even if I did struggle with the last one..
Kat: Wolf Hall is bloody brilliant!
Nicholas: Unroll thine eyes! Historical fiction is the best! Just finished all the Ken Follett Kingsbridge series and on the last Shardlake book now… Next up Mantell! Escape that broadens the mind instead of hijacking it like hot gospellers and papists (and Facebook)
equinox 22
equinox blessings
i went for a walk up the cliffs this morning, the earth rich and still green, dew and the glistening, gossamer spool of spider skein.
after for a dunk in the ocean… bobbing far out to sea, forever suspended between the depth of sea beneath and the immensity of sky above. equilibrium
what buoys us up? surface tension? and that we too are much of water
turn to align my body perpendicular to the shore, nuzzled, then gently jostled by the sea current
you can feel the swell, the shore bound surge, wave ripples through length and limbs
world moves through us, as much as we move through the world
sea holds all colours, turned mournful, gently offering them up, this song of light
enjoyed my 3 cards for the autumn, sage, spirit fox and hermit
leaves on the tree and the seasonal harmony of orange, russet and brown
unlikely to be a party tho! mores the pity, rather reflecting my slightly subdued, introspective mood
they all look directly out, even if the hermit only through his third eye
observed, gentle benign wisdom. mirrored back to the world
peacock feather for writing a book. genius! i want
think i saw some in the middle aisle of lidl t’other week?
…………
apart from that daughter been over, so in between busy and times, walks up to the long man and thrice around friston forest
anyroads… tranquility and autumnal balance for us all
gold
‘Gold!!!
Always believe in your soul’
an equally rainy day in cornwall, back in the 80’s, with my older sis
made me laugh anyway
things you find on your computer when your looking for important documents!
this just an old photo of a photo, the original snap must be a beaut, at mums somewhere, had to chop mum and younger sister out of this one as the light reflection meant you couldn’t see their faces
Protected: cp
the vicissitudes of water
the vicissitudes of water
down by the river Mole
contemplating the reflection of trees, on the opposite bank, in the waters of the river below
a mirrored green prolifferation of foilage
apart from the occasional pock mark and wind ripple, the reflection is serene, calm and still…
and yet, peering beneath the surface, the water races downstream
hurtle and intent
something astonishing, how can motion summon such stillness?
like the chime, the clear gracious note from a singing bowl, this grasps me emotionally, buoyed up, then pulled slightly apart, gently rent
much in the way a tree, its roots rummaging down into the earth mother below, yet branches and leaves reach to the light above,
tension and stretch
river of flow and stillness, realm of insight and reverie
in truth but a variant on the notion ‘we can never bathe in the same river twice’, whats in the noggin, but stepped down from the lofty impregnable, turret of thought
emotions, held in the body, modulated, softened through the blessings of water
later, at the mill race, after the water has come over the drop, rebound, it surges back upwards from the depths
a marbled ooze like the clouds of some gas giant planet, all mottled greens and blues
4 separate pools, between them a linked chase of bubbles, a pattern that breaks then reforms again in an identical manner
a holding pattern, a frequency resonance?
sense of seethe
something about water welling up from below, primordial, the goddesses of springs
like Sulis Minerva at Bath, each is unique
we have always come to speak with, praise and parley, make offerings to, the goddess of a particular place
this intimate knowledge of the divine
i always think of dad on this stretch of the Mole, as when up visiting, just before he died, I walked here all the time,
it would have been his birthday today
the blue flash of the insignia of a kingfisher, this miracle irridescence… a gasp, a fleeting dazzle, yes, and he is gone
‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song’ the river meanders through the Eliots Wasteland
dad was cremated a mile downstream, the hospice where he died 5 miles further, so much of my childhood pottering along the mole
canoeing with Rich P on boxing day, in wet suits, capsizing somewhere near the weir
floating down the river, cold, laughing
when shamanic journeying, in my imagination I often come to this archetypal british river,
familiar, comforting
alder and willow, streams of slime green water weed, dragon flies, swans and kingfishers
a golden rainbow light of vision
