wasp spider

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Wolf Spider with Rose Bay Willow Herb, Thistledown and ermm i want to say Tansy, but its probably just some type of cheerfully deluded Ragwort
bleaggh i mean Wasp Spider… have Wolves on the brain at the mo!
i thought wow, that must be a wasp spider, without even knowing such a thing existed, google agrees… such marvelous gold hoops, even along its legs
beautiful the subtle interactions of nature… the web all soft eiderdown with the wind blown thistle fluff… lost its sticky!… no self respecting fly is going to fall for that!…
they’ve got myriad amazement fractal eyes… tho possibly a slightly squiffy one might think of it as a suitable place for a lie down?
kind of feel for the spider, all that miraculous effort, ruined!
it’s a bit like when you hang the washing out… and immediately boot a muddy football splodge against it… futile fussball chore!
beautiful this morning up Castle Hill… i managed to cycle and then hop up the last bit, foot on the mend, but not not skippable about on yet x

Al: I thought at first this was a poem by you.. Great pictures

ha, sorry to disappoint!tho all words yearn to poetry, just a matter of jumbling them up in a beautiful ordersomething like ‘myriad amazement fractal eyes’ is clearly a thespian type, fallen on hard times, embarrassed to voice over a dog food commercial purely for the dosh x

tootsies

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tootsies… i’ve hurt my foot… nowt serious, i hope! just some niggardly bruising, probably won’t be skipping the light fandango for a couple of days
was out jogging up the cliffs yesterday morning, you know how it is, plod pant, grumble and wheeze up the steepest section
then, when a-top, time to exult in the view, out and away across the majestic ocean… except don’t… best to keep staring at the lumpen earth …
clodhopper down a rabbit hole … presumably the one folk keep talking about nowadays?
was pretty much as far away as you can get, so had to hobble, painful quick step home in time for work
odd how i can spend 4 days at a festie leaping about like a loon with an absence of mishap… but 5 minutes from front door, caramba!
reflect on what a spectacular joyous miracle our bodies are! only really acknowledged when they sporadically malfunction
you may well perceive me as a slightly balding, impressively wrinkled fellow, marooned somewhere in middle age?
yet actually a teeming throng of cells, bacteria and fungii, a harmony of the highest kit kaboodle! honed by several billenia of evolution
we are amazement in motion. tis awesome brilliant to be alive!
…. anyway watched princess mononoke (writing it is easier than pronouncing), what a fabulous film! suspect rest, telly and biscuits is wisest

Toms 21

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annual august tomato snap
‘blessings on this harvest, this food… thanks to the earth goddess, Rose Gold which wells up from below… the sky god, White Gold which surges down from above… to the cooling Wind, the sweet sorrow of Rain’
these fruits are corporate saba* branded! thats possibly the oddest thing about this photo,
not that i have a gorgeous magenta burgundy daisy tucked behind my ear, de rigeur, but that i’ve taken to parading around in this swish, fashionable grey trackie… well fashionable in 1976 anyway
its lingered in the warddrobe for a few years, but now seems to be its season?!…
*saba a company i sporadically work for, except they’ve changed their name at least twice, possibly three times since then
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Tomato blight… bleagghh… one theme of the summer, some of my plants are infected… but most look like they might just creep over the finishing line into full fruit… probably half a crop?
a preposterously soggy summer… everything else…. courgettes, beans are but fodder for the army of slugs, the nation of snails… oh tho the lettuces in the loft have done well
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it’s been a fun, fascinating summer! lots of dashing about, enjoying things! like most folk, just haven’t felt to share anything much of it on here
hope yours has been equally brilliant!
just been down to sniff the sea, high tide, in the rain… it smells of ooh plumpness, sunday afternoons… and not suprisingly damp bedraggled dawg… rather beautiful really

crash bang baswallop

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‘Crash Bang Baswallop’… Berlin 1990
graffitiing, juggling on … and helping to demolish Die Mauer
Tim, one of my best mates from uni, sent these photos of photos over the other week, I haven’t seen them since ooh 1990
the wall, obvs a dark, difficult scar in europes recent past… yet much in the turbulent, often joyful, spirit of those days, youthful hippies were allowed, nay encouraged, to clamber all over history… with hammers… astonishing
changed the direction of my life too… within a week i’d hitched down to prague for the first time… and was living and squatting there for much of the next 3 years… hectic but beautiful times! x

wisdom of trauma

gabor mate film, free to watch till tmr evening x

great wasn’t it! xx … such a wonderful person centric approach… at moments i felt it verged on being over zealous… trauma, stress chemical responses are certainly a component in cancer and most diseases… but there are clearly other factors too

plenty of shots of gabor melancholic in vancouver rain, a soothing presence

in this touch phobic modern world (even before the current situation) a film that emphasises the importance of children (and the adults we become) being seen and heard… nourished by being held and loved… is a very fine thinggot me helpfully pondering my own childhood and subsequent adult responses too x

wind upend

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fellow in a lurid tabard, frog shower cap (again)… and a tree
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stewarding, sunday, buddhafield weekender…. a day of near perpetual rain, the whole smorgasboard gamut, full pelt raindrops through to the softest faze of drizzle
peaceful on shift, sheltering beneath this majestic beech… a fallen down standing up tree!… once so tall, now so long!
a world wind upended, 90 degrees, exposed roots, yet some still manage to wriggle down to push up branches… earth, loam juice to plump out leaves
a peaceful place somewhere on the edge… ‘gate at the far end of live-ins, just above slope’, my snappy walkie talkie identifier
i am an admirer of margins, sublime of the liminal… forgotten land, often the most fertile
hogweed, on steroids, this vast british bamboo… coils of brambles, thick as my arm, spikes that gouge
a liliputian within this world, overgrown, a writhe and tussle of senses, smells, colours, an orchestra… bindweed flower, a bright, white trumpet.. sweet woodbine, pong of honeysuckle ukelele?
fennel as dendrite fractal… hairy moss like dirty bathwater stains the trunk of a tree… splurge of lichen mandala
bend down, to see the lopped beech branches fashioned into the shape of an opening
portal to another land, guarded by a single proud, vigilant nettle… gatekeeper
realm of enchantment… this after, whilst on shift, long ambient chats with chantal… lucidity.. land of the fae, where colours are brighter, songs both more mournful, yet stirring
this realm is always here, hugging us like a shadow… sometimes, at the midday of rational thought, clenched tight and close, almost invisible
yet, in a wester-ing sunset light, it flickers, seems to stretch out far across valley, immense in landscape
except, flip side, a world wind upended, here is but the shadow of there… yearn surrender, relax, lapse, fall back into the honeyed realm

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articulate beauty, the word, but a cardinal direction always with a playful warmth… teeter edge of pomposity, po faced, a man with both a moustache and a manifesto!
ooops… woken up, head full of the jumble of word drool, just a brief jotting down, ha
at my sisters, for some very pleasant rest, headed back to festie later this morning
despite the gloop of mud, its been a laugh so far… many fabulous people… a chance to dance!… guess you gotta kiss a lot of frogs
anyway… hurrah for festies, land, connection!

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reply to Al: totes! be brill to see you guys… ha, one year amma in kerala, the next a field of buddhas xx

bring wellies, obvs, forecast is good, but a quagmire of mud will take a while to dry out!

it’ll dry out… plus only half the number of folks, so won’t be too bad… tho always best to bring sturdy clobber as well as your sunshine frocks! x