early christmas pressie, i have splurged on a new shower cap… pig in blanket, pink with aplomb pink is one of my favourite colours… along with green! purple! orange! one of the heart chakra colours, i do love to wear it, yet it is hard to look good in… i had to use a bilge wash filter on this snap… fashion tips from a decrepit hippy heart throb? back when i was renting and boogie boards deckchairs in ocean city, i spent every day snoozing on the beach, under an umbrella wearing a pink hawaian star shell smock… miss that top! an astonishing sense of accomplishment, just from putting it on
aaaw the 80’s, such a duff decade x
comments:
flaps: The pink wings are a nice touch too x
me: angel delight?
from jenny: All you need is a smile!
me: Ha! Your right of course… A study in glumness. Trouble is that I’m so blessed with wrinkle-age that when I smile my eyes disappear. Eyes or smile! what a choice? Hope your well and groovy, missed the happy festie massive last summer xx
shapeshifter, changeling child… rainment summons essence and spirit? no other creature wears the skin of the animals its killed for food… mammoth, auroch… vast tundra sweeping herds of Reindeer on december afternoons impossible not to ponder the ancestors… hairless ape, far from africa, a mighty long way from home following the rich pickings of the herds, ever northwards, across the land bridge, to this, the gloomiest, dampest corner of north west europe… ha, no going back now gleaning, the rending of flesh from skin, curing, tanning…. then bone needles, gut for thread… to stitch a surrogate second skin viscera what a mucky business, hide swaddled, grease smeared, lousy with nits, beneath a dripping canopy, huddled close to the warmth of a dung fire… winter gruel surviving on what, yes, some strength of arm, but mostly guile, fire and stories? yep, that, a few berries, some fungii.. and a huge dollop of love for each other… you’d hope brown, dowd of the season, yet sometimes, at sunset, a colour almost swollen with luminescence down on the beach, i snivel gratefully: thankFuckForHouses, yep, THANKfuckforHouses!
not been working much this week, so a higher than usual quota of aimless pondering!
comment (from hannahw):
Nice hat, on the mundane level, where’d you get it
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me: Kathmanduuu! hurrah thought nobody would ask… all these long winded words, just a peg to hang my hat on, as it were… an excuse for sartorial elegance xx
wool from a rare pink flamingo yeti… they hang around standing on one leg on the peaks of the Annapurna range
had this one 10 years, seem to have mislaid my more yellow-esque one somewhere? keep thinking i must go back to Nepal get another one… far more fascinating than a jaunt down kensington gardens!
mink! i saw a wild critter on the banks of the River Mole whilst up at mums yesterday my mind divided into one of those curious schisms… one thread was in awe of this astonishing, curious, beautiful, genius creature! whilst under my breath i started singing ‘psycho kiler quest que ce? ba ba ba ba ba ba’ minks are one of the weasel-oids (not a technical term!) yet sadly not british natives this one had a glossy glorious sable coat, and was across on the island about 20 yards away, out playing in the daylight … you’d seldom see an otter at this hour, distinctly nocturnal half tail, it did that bounding lope, where the body arches through the air and the tail sine wave follows through… nessie serpentine? it reminded me most of the black malabar squirrel i was fortunate enough to see in munnar back at the beginning of the year anyway it scrabbled down to the river, eased itself in, sleek swam down stream, then wriggled back up through a nest of branches, looked around, then launched itself into the water again. A Riparian delight… a changeling soul, at ease both on land and in the stream… just beautiful Of course a complete disaster for the humble water vole! a quick google shows that mink were first bought here for fur farming back in the 20’s (thankfully banned in 2000!) think Dame Edith Sitwell in furs cigarette holder clenched betwixt teeth they escaped and have been wild since 1960… most introduced species, however well meaning the intentions, end up being an unmitigated disaster! systems that have evolved into hard fought balance, thrown completely out of kilter by any interloper! anyway heres a pic of a tree at sunset from the same amble… possibly the only post you’ll view this week that references, weasels, edith sitwell and talking heads? but mbe not
Tetris Falls, UK, 2020… PROOF, as if any were needed, the MATRIX is CRUMBLING! Doom encroaches… ignore the doofus in the foreground, rather observe the peculiar, suspiciously regular shaped rocks behind! the universe is pixellated… if you dare to venture to the margins… and seaford is WAY beyond any responsible boundary… the orthodontal decay is indisputable… ibid ‘Hancock, Sheldrake, McKenna 2012’ bafflement and confusion!… quite literally, the best way to soothe the power of any wave is to break it up, get it to reflect then interfere with itself as true for eggshell box sound insulation, as for concrete coastal defence against erosion i’ve always loved these geometric sea bollards… they make me think of the now retro futurism of the 60’s, the 70’s… on a family holiday, we drove the long swoop of the grand corniche to monte carlo… and these bits of lego were everywhere… barbican barbarella bar bar ram
morphicically resonating aside, i’m currently enjoying one of the younger sheldrakes mushroom audio books
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*footnote… of waffle interest only to me… ibid… latin ‘of the same source’… obviously used incorrectly above, as there’s only one bibliographic reference… but have always yearned to type ‘ibid’, just so i can feel the frisson of momentarily belonging to the world of fusty academia. the word always makes me think of thoth… misconstruing it as ibis… and the moon god thoth is of course sacred to scribes
tomatoes, in late october? the 3 month glut continues… of course by now they contrive to be both leathery and fluffy, less of the much longed for succulent sweetness of summer, more of the ‘oh well might as well munch another’ but still thoroughly palatable being somewhat of a late bloomer myself, kindred sympathy frrling somewhat troll like this autumn (feeling! but frrrrling probably catches it better), where can’t be bothered, mingles with exhaustion, reluctance and slumber … yes me with my shimmer and swagger, ha… but hey curmudgeonly stubborness has its place… looks out the window again… may well go back to bed oh and astonishingly Finn is 24 today! gobsmacking!
harken to the sea sound! part balter, mostly lullaby an undulant mothering tongue, of swoosh, babble, seethe telling you your beautiful… and that its chips for tea*
‘pebble with fingers’ i love the way pebbles just loll about doing nothing… forever… obdurate gobstoppers of eternity! this eye like beach find, nary a blink in all the years i’ve had it beach smoothed, soused by waves, jostled with its kin, until silken to the touch, finger invisible but for the gentle weight of its heft and clout ah the natural human necessity for story, to tether all things in the weave of narrative… stones tho cheerfully endure and out live these concerns… ‘doing ma thing, the big no thing!’ can imagine our forebears, loitering on these shores, waist deep, sea waded, harvesting mussels and barnacles into reed woven baskets one stops, stoops, plucks just such a stone, to take back to the shelter.. there is never a why… this definably human characteristic, discernment, ‘that stone, no need for others’, beguiled by intrigue, creatures of slender delight, beauty and whim …. oops late for work, but do enjoy the opportunity to bilge! ha… laterzzz
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‘obdurate gobstoppers of eternity’… lawks where was my head at… a phrase to roll around the mouth, like a pebble, or, erm a gobstopper are all languages so synesthesia onomatopoeic? try saying the word ‘boulder’ and not touch/taste/feel a huge globular stone nestled within your yawning maw
ha! thanks!… i think… i know there’s is a always a dictum/homily for ‘plain speaking’, yet if your nature is to be an obfuscator-y psued, well then, best embrace it! … preferable to being an obscure prude? if you have nowt to say, then cover that bluster with a grandiloquent crescendo tho, as the world is frequently about patterning, more like a beaky beady crow, here see these words lined up in a row? peck, scuttle, peck… rearrange them… just so anyway hope your enjoying these blackberry and elderberry filled days! xx
i was actually thinking about buddha, zen gardens, the stones all Reiki-ed into rows
my kids usually just smile kindly and indulgently, whilst muttering ‘doofus’ under their breath… often an appropriate response
‘i am the egg man, i am the walrus, goo goo bidoop’? barcombe mills, river sleek… away from the familiar dunking in the sea, I had forgotten, the altered buoyancy, the different feels of river water swam meandered around the bend, found an ash tree, limbs leaning out halfway across the water embrace, yawn back into the ‘Y’ stretch of her branches, feet up, as tho in a bath… gently humming ‘islands in the stream’ damsel and dragon flies, their irridescent zip and flicker, whilst thronging the riverbank, pink flowers of himalayan balm a microcosm of wonder! only… leaves and sky above, the gentle tug of water below flow. everything will pass
a traditional afternoon paddle in the kayak, with RP up to the anchor inn for a pint, a serendipitous bumping into karen, celebrating her birthday weekend (me wearing my sri lanka t-shirt) then back in a sorrily half deflated craft a roam up to the fort, then home for peanutty tofu gloop and a fiendishly fun and ingenious virtual escape room! a deeply pleasant day!
exuberance over vanity! ha! occasionally i scrub up well… in twilight, from a suitable distance… but here i look entertainingly battered… actually its not me, see, nothing like my profile picture… erm it’s my great uncle… bulgaria! crikey, on a large monitor its even more disturbing!! age folks, it’s a’gunning for us all grok the joy of being ourselves, a deeply beautiful thing
all together now… tho can’t decide if i’m more kenny or dolly! what a choice!…
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thanks guys!…was pondering earlier, whilst coding, just what it is that makes the riparian environment so warm and comforting? astonishing how the brain whilst ostensibly busy still finds space to mull over more interesting things! of course, the personal resonance from childhood, i grew up near the River Mole, usually docile, at times almost plodding a river, somehow quintessentially ‘english’, not in some dreary patriotic way, just that i think of celtic streams being more of a gush, rush and babble! cultural, almost archetypal associations, stretching back through the obvious ‘wind in the willows’, hammy the hamster(!), blakes ‘clod and the pebble’ an environment, seemingly unchanged for millenia people have always pottered and dawdled the afternoons away on a sunny river bank… why would we not? as i was telling my sister, oh i do love to pontificate, many of our river names stretch back to the neolithic, and are some of the most ancient words in the cultural kitty tho having said that the wonderfully onomatoepeic ‘ouse’ is a more recent celtic word ‘usso’ meaning water
as always its mostly about the trees, the serene trinity of Alder, Willow and Ash, the uplifting feeling of just speaking their names aloud they hold the space, strengthening and cosseting the banks, proffering up a dappled shade, encouraging a rich, prolific diversity beneath their aegis when your low on the water, the horizon is blessedly contained, everything is intimate sound scape of the slap and plash of the paddle, the lip smacking plop of a fish, greedily surfacing for a mouthful of insect oops…waffling about nowt… tho i have heard the reverse opinion, truth that is turned about, like a glove pulled inside out: that flowing water loves to be cool and always summons shade like some potentate, accompanied by a eunuch bearing umbrella, else reclined in his sumptous palanquin… words, words, like the river, forgotten the where and the why to hurry! enuff
