normal people

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obligatory ‘normal people’ post, yes, i know everybody has reccommended it, but felt to add my small pebble of praise to the pile… if you haven’t already… watch it… one of the best things on telly in a while
finally finished it last night, didn’t feel the need to rush
inevitably a bit of a soap opera tear jerker (i blub easily) about attractive yet troubled young folk
BUT… beautifully filumed, it looks amazing, the irish accents are familiar, and the mannerisms even more so, fab music, superb direction… all of which makes space for and holds the luminous performances of the 2 main protagonists
nuanced, subtle, mercurial, vulnerable and compelling… feels real x

normal people

mz marling

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ooh by a pleasant congruence laura marling picks the music on whats probs my fave Radio show
… was thinking i should try to share things i like, just to dilute the slew of selfies?
this mix is almost lounge jazz… Roberta Flak, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell and many others i’ve never heard before…
i think dad would have liked this… the ambience reminded me of being a teenager loafing around in the armchairs after sunday lunch… inevitably picked up his taste for mournful female vocals
sherbailey has long cancelled her spotify, so i listen to a fair bit of radio, tho only ever on catch up
the chillest show is brill, as it’s all mellow music, most of it frightfully modern… phil taggart, northern irelands finest (and a brighton resident) makes me laugh.
I’ve loved mz marlings stuff all the way back to ‘alas i cannot swim’… talent.

laura marling mix

spirulina

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Spirulina the virulent! basically radioactive pond slobber… with possibly a higher iq and certainly oodles more compassion than any member of the government
we influencers like to share grub snaps of our glamorous lifestyles… breakfast with my usual post yoga morning glow
daughter has got me into overnight oats… cold soggy porridge… proper ballast… without any of the irksome waiting around for it to cook and scraping cement off the pot washing up… i’m a busy man!
this rendition has chia seeds, hemp hearts and my own home made nettle powder… strawbs, banana and peanut butter
what does it taste like? best you don’t ask! i love the taste of fresh nettles, but once dried they smell like boiled underpants
as for spirulina, i am trying to reside in a field of non judgemental open presence… ommm… possibly not nommm
just because you imagine it makes you gag doesn’t mean it lacks virtue for your taste buds
‘blessings on the coaxing of the golden light of the sun, the nurturing warmth of mother earth, the softness of rain, the exuberant gusts of wind… harmony’
tally ho tings to do… have a righteous beautiful day! x

young one one

feels so near i can almost taste it, yet somehow, almost exactly, half a life time ago!… what does become of our younger selves… the river of time and all that malarkey
… edit… adding brief words, belatedly, to what is but a supremely lazy ‘memories of yesteryear’ repost…….
curious as to the provenance of this snap… i remember that we were in a pub car park, somewhere in surrey… with mum and dad, hence the dreads scraped back out of sight, suspect mel would have taken it
summer early 90’s… i’m either just back from prague or the caves in granada… or possibly even south america, but don’t think it’s that late time wise
not one of my pics, as i didn’t take a single one till the kids were born, old photos are somewhat skimpy on the ground
ah what became of that carefree fellow?… guess the young are seldom carefree… just my concerns would have been along the lines of ‘where am i sleeping tonight, wheres the next party!’
oops, it’s become a maudlin’ morning now… i’m shocked my socks match… thats what happens when you dress soberly to please the fogies
and more importantly what became of those groovy deckchair shorts… missing them sommat grevious! x

Agoraphobic

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agoraphobic? nope not me, my heart yearns for the jostle, to be heave pressed within a throng of strangers, crowd held, the sheer sensual overwhelm, lost in a tide of hearts and fellows.
agoraphilliac? is that a thing
agoraphobia… my mind always stutter catches on the word, mostly as, when i was young, i thought it was aggrophobia (and indeed i am loathe to be around aggro!) and mouth mangled the word as such
actually theres a herd of words i mispronounce, yesterday i got hyperbole wrong, again, ha, i like it when i open my mouth and florid gunk gibberishes forth! word glut
as a youth i was a dismal bookworm, consequently i read words seldom uttered …sacred words that are forbidden to be spoken! else words that twister tongue cannot be pronounced
agoraphobia… fear of open spaces? actually fear of public spaces, a subtle difference, as the root etymology of the word is agora, the greek market place
basically every time i say it i imagine myself hanging out in a groovy toga and natty sandles… oh you know fist bumping plato, oiled up naked wrestling with aristotle, discussing quadratic equations with helen of troy, helping her with an lash trapped in her eye
oops i’ve digressed, was there a point? yes! i’m missing people
one of my ideal wednesdays would be ooh… lunchtime drop in meditation in the buddhist center, serene calm of the shrine room, the subtle shift of light, cloud shadows dappled from the skylight above, the summoning ring of singing bowl, open eyes to peer into the smile of the buddha
then going for coffee with a friend, gabble natter of all that is possible… peeling away for a leisurely jaunt through the North Laine, peering at all the beautiful people… clattering accidentally into a pal, long unseen, whilst hunting for mung beans in infinity foods, we hug, then swap sweet deets of forthcoming summer festies
sunset on the beach, later its a plod up the hill to dance, the ancient church of St Nicks, mad dervish whirl, howl, before subsiding into stillness… on the bus home, jolloping along the coat road, gawping at the moonlit ocean, the only other passengers 4 young efl students … who get off somewhere in the wild nether, never nowhere of peacehaven
aw, you know, NORMAL life, the thrills and pleasure of civic existence! … peeps, known, and strangers, i miss you!
spiel spool gently unravelling into words, putting off doing something more productive, like programming, or yoga… this the timbre and rhythm of lockdown daze x

dragon

dragon day! (st georges) a useful day to honour these the energies of the elements… the earth dragon, most prominent in the spring, felt viscerally through the surge of green pulsing and sweeping across the land, yet also serpents of water, air and fire… sometimes benign, often fierce, always magnificent…
within us, the same energies, coil curled around guts and gizzard, the anxious struggle writhe of scales, stirring within the emotional body… now theres the rub, how to let these flow freely?
………
usual slew of selfies (gold and green) from earth day/new moon yestereve, plumped out with some from a walk around bishopstone earlier in the week… played for comedy… it’s facebook, but also selfies as theres nobody else to take snaps of, it’s just been me for the last week… but also selfies (again!)… it’s facebook …the clue is in the name…
on the whole i’m bearing up reasonably well so far, long practiced at piffling away the days, been trying to sustain a self yoga practice (it’s not easy!), meditation, diy, sea swims, the house overflows with seedlings, also audible, netflix… yet missing connection… hugging, proper physical conversations, kinaesthetic by nature, virtual world often feels as a phantasm…
grateful for the opportunity to be outside, for my comparatively comfortable circumstances
very much aware theres sorrow, grief and many problems across the globe… not just emotional, but financial difficulties looming, eek… oops many moods in few words, ha, guess we’re all somewhat jumbled up creatures at the best of times?!
love, blessings, serenity to one and all x

vishudda

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Vishudda…. the exuberant fizz of beech trees coming into soft lime leaf… a gentle blizzard, burr of brown leaf husks fills the air…
pics from yesterday, found bluebells galore!… languish surrounded by them in the dappled sunshine…
at ease amongst the elementals… this land, our land, heart yearn, magnificent in this spring, all the sweeter through these days of worry…
hope you have the fortune to spend time in the woods

….
for lol:
Ha, truth is a mouthful of my ‘beautiful’mutterings is seldom far away, cept in these curious days slightly less extroverted… You and Fran are some of the many folk I always associate with Beltane bluebell-age xx

Aw and hope your keeping up with your tales (as with muddy log in bluebell woods)… World is the richer for all of us saying it into being xx

pensee

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idle pensée… hunkered down on the brow of the hill, gorse flowers, dense clumps of dragon goblet gold
blackthorn with straggled open branches, creamy froth of blossom, the impossible festoon from each smidgin of surface
hawthorn pushes through into soft green leaf
the spell of water… peering down upon a pond, which in turn yields up the sky, a nuanced, mottled reflection of clouds… nuage
a riff on the idea of ‘sky’, with its serpent deeper, more sonorous timbre, tone and flow
minuet between air and water, the surface wind ruffled, pucker kiss stippled
we are forever poised between this up and that down!
bramble snag of mind, wistful, the yearning to tell is always one of the forms of love?