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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

audio of text

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

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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

audio of text (plus distant motorbike!)

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?

skinny love

audio of text

skinny love!… thats the astonishingly yum nettle pesto spaghetti rather than me
teetering on the edge of doolally already… woke up somewhat manic monday this morning, which at least is a change from a week of being weary and despondent
a glut of meditation, yoga and cleaning the shower!… daughter has sensibly retreated to her room

nettle heart

gotta love the nettle-age, snot coloured punk superstar of the spring!
in some rustic, bucolic fantasy he’d gather dainty lace doilie fashion around the fringes of the woods
nah round here they loiter in huge clumps on any patch of wasteland, a vibrant fresh green swathe carpet covering broken glass and rusty shopping trolleys
broken ground, nettles love to be around humans, alledgedly they came over with the Romans… rust iron, sacred to aries, god of war and this months heavenly ruler
like many masculine energies, often maligned, theres also a tender, benign side
i tend to pick them with snip scissors and holey cotton gloves… the holes not on purpose but the occasional frisson of a sting keeps you woke!
tingle-age even now, a very very mild electric shock
what shall i do with them? juice most likely? but possible pesto, fricasse?… not let them languish too long at the bottom of the fridge anyway!
blessings on the sunshine and my current freedom to roam up the cliffs… respite from the collective energy field of worry x

seeds are good

audio of text

sEeds are good… sEEeeeeds are good… as surely the shamen were singing?
traditionally my drabbest photo of the year… i mean its lumps of earth… tho some might well argue my usual slew of selfies border on tedium
but, but seeds… think of the awesome potential!
the eagle eyed may well have spotted the pots are somewhat crudely in the shape of an Om… i chanted the universal seed sound, Ommmmm, over them afterwards… biodynamic innit!??
I don’t really know what i’m doing, but bung them in some soil, sunshine, water… we all flourish better with the right conditions
the most fun bit is always planting last years toms (i have perfected the rare november / never fruiting tomato)… just burst the old fruits over the the tray and admire the seedy slobber gloop
i tend to mark them with little cardboard signs, which rot at the first watering, so then i have no idea, when finally they pop up, which seedling is which!
this year as well as the usual toms, chillis and miscellanious squashes i’m trying runner and dwarf beans
anyway first day of home alone for me, grateful, amongst so many other things for a back yard and the sunshine
strange times, no idea where all this is going, stay home, stay healthy, love to y’all x

urbane

audio of text

Urbane! Kurt Urbane. At my best, from a flattering aspect, i am a kindly and charming soul…
if you were to meet me in a cafe in some far distant land (as some of you have), why then i would amuse and bamboozle with oft uttered anecdotes…
smoothe like sea glass… some suave weather beaten leathery lump o’ wood?
love to talk, yet also to listen… world piques us curious… together we make something…
first on the dance floor, and often the last to leave… when i hear the sound of my own laugh, why it makes me laugh even more!
What be the wisdom of age? why a certain baggy capacity, a knowing that i am enough
braggard, smug egotism? of course! but thats just a single facet, not so hot on days where the usual neurosis, renders me near incapable of tumbling out of bed…
apparently my love of selfies is a feature of libra ascending? and in snaps nowadays, it’s a choice twixt smiling or having eyes! happy or eyes? eyes or happy! bastard choice
yes, the visage of somebody, thus far, blessed with benign circumstances
… and that ‘capacity’, a result of all the times life has threatened to capsize, yet the love of others has somehow buoyed me up
we are stronger for the beautiful enduring nexus of our connections
of course life and time will ultimately chew us all up, we all know that
but yeah, in the beautiful, brief boon, of the lull of now, why, best surely, to enjoy being you?!!

………………………………..
less words, more likes, but always i enjoy the song of my own saying
hmm ‘urbane’, for a pic in the countryside? isn’t it ironic… alanis morissete stylee!

reply to Rhona

ha! thanks love, my eyes radiate a benign cosmic charm… or not… have to rely on the subtle sunset light nowadays
i also have the dilemna… smile and have no eyes? or eyes and no smile… eyes or happy… happy or eyes?! difficult when you just love to guffaw!
anyway if you guys are ever over sussex way pop by and stay… plenty of room for the family… be great to see ya (it’s been a while) xxx

reply to Hannah

Thanks… Wellington bootifull… Was up to me midrift in mud (slight exaggeration)… But, obvs, always worth it for a selfie… Holi looks like it was a blast! Xx

india selfie

Aw last of my selfies with locals posts, as waiting in Bengaluru airport for flight home, after a sensational (sense sating?) cram chock full month of bedlam and adventure! Wonderful!
A group of affable and affluent students from Bengaluru, outside the Grand Palace in Mysore. ‘what is there to see if I go to Bengaluru?’, collectively they shrug ‘eh nothing?’… I’d met them inside, they were fab, the most snap and photo opportunity obsessed group imaginable… I was hunting for the Holy Grail .. me taking a selfie of an Indian secretly taking a selfie of me!
Bog standard snap, but also, possibly, indicative of change… Most of them are women… equality in India is a complex beast… yet in 6 trips here across 30 years, I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of casual conversations I’ve had with local women (not business based natters, or people born in the diaspora obvs)… It’s just not done. Not important in itself, natch, but somewhat indicative of the broader, weird disparities in opportunities here. Family. Religion. The astonishing, enduring power of customs and the straight jacket of social mores… Oops don’t want to over indulge in secular, soap box sermonising! A huge diverse land. What do I know.
The boy approached me first, yet the girl was but a nano second whisker behind… They both spoke excellent English (many many Indians do… And a greater number don’t!), these two were knowledgeable about my country, curious to know more, and proudly told me lots I didn’t know about theirs. Travel innit. Smile, chat about stuff, laugh! Warmth. Buoyed up by our beautiful shared humanity X

cheese

Say ‘cheese’, say ‘squee-ee-ze’… India partakes in its daily attempt to set a new world record for number of sentient beings in a confined space (ala 1970s Blue Peter phone boxes and minis!)… this time as we wend our way around hair pin bends, tumbling down through the Tamil Nadu foothills of the Western Ghats (think Alp sized mountains, without the cable cars, neglected due to continental proximity to the humongous himalayas)… on every bend, there is a collective flabbergasted ‘oof’ of crushed torsos, overlaid with the higher trill of women’s voices… I one of the the lucky ones… with a seat, through dint of having been stuck on the bus, forever, since it and seemingly times beginning… India has a knack of making you feel like a speck amongst a billion, whisper it, soto voce, Kerala and most of the western states, do not have the sense of the high tempo madness… the numinous of the Nadu…. for all the senses the dial turned to 11… ego bamboozled midst a soup of sensation… pounding bollywood tunes, pong of armpits, a bird of paradise blur of colourful saris
a day of contrasts: dawn amongst the tea plantations of munnar, awash with myriad green… watching the malabar giant black squirrels somersault amongst the top of the highest trees… fighting off the equally black crows… truly giants, the size of a monkey, kali black with the fiercest of red trimmings!… a loooong bus journey, 6 hours when it should have been 3… to end guzlling masala dosa, lawks the flavours, just outside the majestic gopurams (gateways) of the Sri Meenakesh temple in Madurai…. proper cream crackered. g’night, snooze good x