the year for all of us to snog more dragons i wish for you, the same as i wish for myself, a year and a yield of more and deeper connections… both with each other, and with the land on which we are blessed to dwell we are woven together and it is this that grants us our strength… is that a permaculture principle? dunno… now entering hippy warp drive mirror neurons, we profoundly feel and experience that which others around us feel… this the privilege of primates profoundly social animals, we are nothing, in fact we do not even truly exist, on our own… it has always been the story of us! lets make it a good one have courage… literally coeur the way of the heart ha, the irony, not lost on me, that the man spouting most voluminously about connection required to take another selfie as home alone with myrtle the dragon … then chooses to flourish it on a platform, which is ersatz connection, realm of pout then preen of ego yep yep quagmire, doldrums, exhaustion the words most frequently on my lips at this the fag end of the year but but but… i mean what i say! … i had to get my bum wet sitting on the floor to take a snap, proof! and yes, always try to say it with charm… charm and a dollop of imagination of course, do more yoga, eat lots of chocolate
yet, so far as possible…. dwell in anahata, the heart space mind… wishing us all… love x
lots of happy new year wishes!
thanks guys, honey HNY right back at ya! managed another brief sea swim at end of cycle, a lovely day out there… and a dip a fine way to change whatevers lurking in your head aw and can’t resist playing old songs from my generation, mama club praha 92, for me the song, obvious but: a somewhat feisty youthful scottish band, extraordinary producer, copious loved up stimulants. kapow!…. like any idealism doomed to crash and burn, but such a way to go come together as one
Rosie: Happy New Year Lovely
fanx… hope the cornish/devon atlantic remains wild, wooly and rugged! xx
ah such plump luxuriance of line! some fab sketches… mostly Rosetti i love figurative art and have been thinking a little of the pre-Raphs on my drive home today partly because Burne Jones lived in Rottingdean, some marvelous stained glass in the church there, i imagine him and kipling (doubt they were friends or even their lives overlapped in da village!) scoffing cakes quaffing tea in the Rose garden at the Grange (library)… ‘exceedingly good Rudyard’ then ambling off along the undercliff, unbuttoning frock coats and dabbling blue white victorian toes in the ocean
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hmm what to make of the pre-Raphs?! like most folk, often find their finished works drift towards twee Romanticism, rather backwards looking, a somewhat british trait even then… yep, you’d imagine the subject matter would be something that would appeal, mythpoetic, images as lucid and laden as a tarot card but its a bit like tennyson? and who reads him nowadays? Why were they not seemingly looking at the world of change and turmoil happening all around them? or for that matter, all that was about to happen across the channel, the first twitches of the seismic shift to modernism, an age of upheaval and revolution so yep, lets paint Sir Launcelot in a dashing, fashionable brocade frock slight frothy swoon to their art… hard to know quite what to make of it, men looking at women, in a post john berger, lacan scoptic vision kinda world? erring on the side of generosity, the women were always their muses, lovers, sisters… occasionally both oops just typing words, with no real direction or imagination… i shall stop
oh and more lovely schmaltz to wallow in
and, bizarrely audrey hepburn in Rottingdean
off pinterest… louis someone (apols didn’t note his name), a non disney illustrated version of the jungle book x
oh and as i’m seemingly still commenting on this post
william morris, one of burne jones best mates… socialism and wallpaper, a love triangle and the peculiar flavour of Ruskin-esque medievalism… gotta love the victorians (and Radio 4)… tho melvyn is a bit crank grumpy on this one… listened on the bus when the road home was shut… armed police!
‘i was late, it was raining, it’s hard to huddle on your own’ solstice dawn, nadir of the year, ebb, this the dwindling of the light, darkness encroaches. blessings to y’all ha, of course i have tweaked both the dinge and pathos levels, all is performance, masters of artifice yet as it’s the season of holly and homily: time to hunker down and gnaw on bone (quorn burgers!), ponder long on both personal and collective futures, it is late, but mbe not as late as we think? most of the fears that we find in the darkness, but not all, are things that we have flung there, far from us and our circle of light allow, be comfortable with these the dark familiars, it may well not be alright, but ‘it is’ midst the sullenness, possibly, easier to feel the seed of light? …. anyway it was proper windy up on the cliff, watery kersplosh wave chaos beyond the harbour walls, picture, ‘whaling vessel beleaguered by storm, heads for safety of harbour’ doesn’t really demonstrate, dang christmas soon! glug whisky, dance to neil diamond, that sorta stuff x
an interesting kabbala type short talk i was listening to t’other day:
Dave: Love this post mate – wishing you an excellent Christmas, catch you next year!
cheers fella, keep meaning to write to ya, in appreciation of sys etc, but like everyone underwhelmed by my energy levels… festive blessing to you and fam xx
Wendy: Love your turn of phrase mister x
Thanks! and i, in turn, adore your writing m’dear it’s fun to acknowledge, then try and speak something about say the solstice, all the obvious themes and structures in place, truth is through feeling into nuance like you, this year, i felt it important not to immediately gulp at the longed for light, but rather be comfortable and nestle, here, with the darkness and exhaustion your words usually have a calmness, an almost serene flow to them
wheras, ha, mine often are a bulging, confused, exuberant gallumph! I want to be beautiful and funny at exactly the same time which is quite a reach, so usually i topple over midst a tyrannical polyphony of glottal stops (see!) anyway wishing festive greetings to you and yours, hope to see ya soon! xx
Wendy: Ah thanks for your words about my words I love your natural exuberance that comes through in your writing, an electric staccato that has a gorgeous poetic flourish to it. It’s all you and I love that truthful expression
We meet in lyrical x
Wendy: Always
Nicki: Wow what an amasing description of christmas .. thankyou ..x
it is good isn’t it, like his voice too… lovely to see ya at the devi bhavar, pop over whenever ya fancy for some proper winter loitering xx
Days of straw spun into gold… Golden Rose of the Soul, Rose Gold of the Heart Strong gossamer spider skein of which we weave our lives..’Joining hearts and hand and ancestral twine, ancestral twine’ the joy of connection, the simple, oft whispered, much muttered mantra: ‘do wonderful things with beautiful people’ through nature, through the land, songs and hugs, here, this is the space in which we meet each other the cusp of sunset, where land is earth is sky leave room for all that which arises in our hearts. Boddhicitta Soul the flow of energy that sinks from heart to earth? whilst Spirit flies upwards from heart to sky? summon the subtle energies of this land, the earthen Red which oozes up, the babble, sparkle white tumbling from above, to mingle, here, within us Rose Gold of the Heart
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hiatus, woke this morning, far too early, with a fire of absurd words in my head, thrill to the grandiloquence!… tho impossible to take it too seriously but of course, daughter carted to gatwick, all my family (except me!) are away in the States, Rome, France, Ireland… i am left sole guardian of this realm of toil and Rain then the quagmire of Saturday around Sainsburys… sitting here picking me nose, thinking of the beautiful and the unsuitable… thankfully nobody reads far on here… and i ain’t going out in this sogginess… blunder on! and the same pics again. ha
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back to the honey tongued, guile gilded gabble… ooh great! want to type galvanised, just because it makes me ponder electroplating and frankenstein frogs shocked into life thinking now of the Mahamuni Buddha in far Mandalay of approaching it on knees proffering a slither of gold leaf, place it like a postage stamp on the centuries old, gold swollen belly of the statue sticky! tacky to the touch, warm, moist gold, truly the sweat of the sun these the days of the old emperor, stern, stale, serious, his toad weight squats down upon the earth but also – seldom glimpsed, somewhere beneath, ever flowing, enraptured beauty, the subtle grace of the world dancer ‘She’s as sweet as Tupelo Honey’, mutable, molten Golden Rose of the Soul, Rose Gold of the Heart
marooned midst the grey gloom, world daunted, suffused with darkness like an old oil painting, colours smudged sullen by centuries of candle soot hair plastered down from the rain, a submariner light, lost languid neath an ocean of olive oil ah the blessing of not having to go out again, just code, cook grub for daughter and sing along to ballards on a playlist of course, often on days like these, our sorrows gather close, but, with thanks, not right now, not for me rather a spreading of soft radiance traipsing back from lidl, crossing the bridge, the swash and swaddle of traffic in the rain stop, face turned up, look to the sea, look to the sky, tender exultance words, enchanting, surface from singing in circle at the last festival, with sofia and close, tight huddled with friends, ‘bury me deep in love, bury me deep in love, take me in, under your wing, bury me deep in love’
chimpanzees… watched that dynasties, david attenborough headed doc last night… it’s bollocks. literally, and not in a good way appreciate i sound like ‘disgusted of tonbridge wells’ but seriously a waste of licence fee payers money it’s one where a film crew follow a gaggle of chimpanzees for a year and offer up beautiful, intimate and profound footage of our closest relative… so far all so good, but what lazy and reductive story telling! it focuses solely on the grapples and struggles to be alpha male, absurd, whats that test whereby female characters aren’t represented in films? here we have at least 4 named male chimps, and the only time female chimps are noted its because they’re fertile… gobsmacking yes of course it’s a fascinating story, and should be a strong strand in the film, but seriously, the only one? wheres all the mucking about fun, the kindness and tenderness? the humour? i have no issue with anthromorphosising their behaviour, but for a slither of dna they are us I don’t think for a second that Chimpanzees are soft, fluffy and cuddly creatures, clearly they are powerfully fratricidal and, yes, often engaged in a tussle for dominance but after filming them for a year… that is all you want to say? some tawdry Machiavellian game of thrones tale? as with all these things, tells us more about ourselves than these beautiful profoundly complex creatures patriarchy? gawd i dislike that word and find it mildly offensive (it’s root is from the word for father), but yeah seems a pretty accurate representation of how this was offered …and merely to note and hopefully stop any needless gender finger pointing, because these things are usually more intricate than we acknowledge, both the authors: the director and the chimp expert were women I would suggest that when two chimps are grooming each other, lets face it there’s not much else for them to do than chuck rotten fruit at intrusive camera crews that rather than giving it a dismissive voice over ‘here they are cementing an alliance’, yes that might be the case, but also, as they’ve known each other since they were born and share a long, interwoven and colourful history… it might just be possible… that they like each other?
rant over! enjoyed pontificating! apologies if anything in my postulation lacked nimbleness… i’m just a lummox like you
Comments:
The Bechdel test (BEK-dəl) is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.
Sarah:That’s interesting…and a good point…I admit I did enjoy the programme….but actually now I’ve read your review, totally see what you’re saying, and it’s true!..rather pissed off that I didn’t view it more critically!…classic evening coma letting TV wash over me….but that’s the trouble…that’s how many would have watched it, and then the ideas shown seep in, and then before you know it, you believe it’s accurate.
RB: thanks, i actually enjoyed it too, and in fairness the main character was clearly a compelling individual think we’re all a bit weary of the ‘great man’ view of history, empathetically easily accessible, a la greek tragedy, just foolish to pretend that that is all just stating the blooming obvious, i know, but every story we tell about ourselves or the world, is a choice and excluding many of the other equally viable stories that could be heard not saying we should necessarily be telling those stories… do what feels truest… but at least acknowledge that all is not as rigid and monolithic as we might pretend… a plea for plurality! oops feel like i’m on some Radio 4 panel, ha, have a lush day xx
Gabrielle: Did you see last night’s episode on the painted dogs? All about the ladies last night…
RB: ha! no, i’m perpetually about a month behind anything on the box, i’m a living in da past xx
Hannah: Watch the next episodes which follow Matricachs, rather than Patriarchs – Lions and Painted Wolves – and the penguins which is a more equal struggle for survival/dominance for both male and female. I understand what you’re saying, but for me, in the Chimp world anyway, the males are in charge – like it or not! Unless I’ve missed something… which is a possibility
RB:
ooh i did see the penguin one out of order with my daughter, beautifully filmed but so dauntingly desperately cold! colder than pedaling along seaford promenade in a january gale… i had to put the heating on afterwards hmm take your point, i haven’t seen the others, possibly my umbrage is more to do with that chimps are so so close to us, feel like i’ve worked in offices with some? and as a fellow primate our subtle and profound experience of this beautiful world surely isn’t only about dominance… but should include nurture and humour… and tiddlywinks, but what do i know xx
RB: mostly bored and do so enjoy the occasional rant… being old school faux anarchist, part of the fun is having a bash at establishment figures and the cult of st attenborough is mighty powerful indeed, obviously an, in truth, benign nature doc isn’t the culprit… almost all the creatures are gone… it’s just us, historically the arrival of man is swiftly followed by the extinction of all mega fauna goodness whats with me sermonising today! hug right back at ya! xx
Sarah: yeah…I seriously do not want to return to this world as a penguin!… Looks a very daunting…and cold existence!
RB: too right! i’d get cold feet about that, reckon i’d be a hummingbird, or a swallow, or a dodo even x
Laura: Love your poetic ramblings Richard! Very agrreable and enjoyable to read
bleaggh garlic and apple!… won’t be snogging any vampires (today) decided to add some raw garlic to the already insane tumeric ginger lemon concoction but the flavour hung around for the usual silken balm of apple juice… hmm alium oops ally oop.. gonna hop on bike for a cycle extravaganza… been forever leaving the house! make a change from skulking under duvet listening to the rain pattering on the skylight, interspersed with ladle dosage of maudlin pop ballards, a hobby i guess? wishing all you peeps a deeply joyful day x
audio of text… apols for blackbird singing, may 21 when i recorded audio!
Granny (Edith), Uncle Harry, Aunty Annie I was fortunate enough to have these 3 (and several others from that generation) as substantial presences in my childhood It’s a blessing to actually be able to stretch out ones arms and almost feel 100 years. four generations, them, the folks, us, the kids. Here they are, younger than i was when they died, and indeed younger than my kids are i really like this photo of a photo, i was up at mums last week rummaging through some of the many boxes and found it in an old album, probs grannys, don’t remember ever having seen it before? tho may well have done. you can somehow see much of their personalities that i knew so many decades later… youthful radiance
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a slightly off kilter (and a little bit muddled!) honouring of the armistice… a catastrophe. the consequences of which have reverberated down through the years, a trauma that stays carried within our bodies, whether we realise it or not i feel reluctant around any official remembrance and all the myths, symbolism and narratives that entails Not even wishing, except with factual brevity to say much about their lives (with honesty we can only tell our own stories?) but two of their older brothers died during the war, one as a soldier, one from consumption, annie worked in an armoury factory Harry volunteered when 15, tho that sounds impossible, and was captured, then a prisoner of war in France Their lives also spanned the great depression, another war and the post war austerity. Staggering. My somewhat calmer impression of remembrance day was of being a cub, standing outside on esher green, always a cold grey drab November morning, shorts and the astonishing skimpiness of jumpers in the 70’s! the extraordinary silence of 2 minutes before the bugle sounded Tomorrow I’ll put on some elgar, as thats what mum and dad always did, and think fond thoughts of these 3, and all my ancestors but also spreading out from that in a spirit of compassion… may all beings be well, may all beings be happy and free from suffering. Love
mel: I love this. I haven’t seen this photo before. Also love your words. Captured the feelings perfectly. Also remember standing to attention on Esher Green !!
RB : it’s a great snap, suprisingly warm and casual by the formal standards of the day, but that might just be that we know them well xx
larkin
The Explosion – by Larkin On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead: In the sun the slagheap slept. Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering off the freshened silence. One chased after rabbits; lost them; Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses. So they passed in beards and moleskins, Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter, Through the tall gates standing open. At noon, there came a tremor; cows Stopped chewing for a second; sun, Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed. The dead go on before us, they Are sitting in God’s house in comfort, We shall see them face to face – Plain as lettering in the chapels It was said, and for a second Wives saw men of the explosion Larger than in life they managed – Gold as on a coin, or walking Somehow from the sun towards them, One showing the eggs unbroken.
a poem for the armistice, always loved this one by larkin, tho not about war at all, elegiac and beautiful, with, possibly, the most transcendent last line in poetry… gives me goosebumps anyway x
prize pumpkin! me, not the squash… overboard, a man …and his marrow… curious orange… three of these plucked from the garden, daddy, mummy and baba bear sized hope to carve tomoz when daughter here last year one of my green courgettes became engorged to harrowing marrow proportions… had a disaster cooking it, never ever ever bake a squash with rice inside, whatever that prig jamie oliver says took 4 hours!! whilst kids fought maliciously, anyway i saved some of the seeds, planted them out… and lo and behold the progeny of an elongated green thingumibob is orange and bulbous… who’da thunk it! happy halloween… hopefully a more seasonal serious post later x
Audrey: Gourds and squashy type things are really naughty they’ll cross pollinate with any other members of the same family so you never know what you’ll end up with 😉 xx
RB: frisky! i had no idea, kind of approve of the libidinous diversity… at least it didn’t end up as a mushy pea… thats about the only veg i struggle with… that, brown sauce and bead and butter pudding. yuk! why! xx
Audrey: I’m with you on the bread and butter pudding – gadz – but brown sauce? What do you have on chippy chips? In Edinburgh it’s salt and sauce – has to be 😘
RB: chips? lumme eck, no! i am one for a biodynamically fried organically grown sauteed king edward spud … carries on making things up by stringing together words i don’t really understand… but artisanal in truth: tomato ketchup! or when i’m feeling sophisticated and continental, tres belgique, mayonnaise! x oh and for some reason i can’t remember what that beer is you drink in edinborough (see i’m posh none of that burgh nonsense), was it thruppeny bit? shilling ha’penny? who knows! x
I love your natural exuberance that comes through in your writing, an electric staccato that has a gorgeous poetic flourish to it. It’s all you and I love that truthful expression 
we so must do something soon xx
