‘moon and a brace of apes’… monkey mind magus, beginnings, channeling spirit from the heavens to earth… was reading a tarot tome earlier! snap one of joes from spain back in november, cabo de gata da barbary apes x
monkey mind
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sparkle
sun sparkle on sea, one of my favourite things… pic a mere frivolity of gloom, essence remains cheerfully subtle and elusive
i love the way light dissolves in water, yet also, reflects in kisses
as we crawl out from under the burden of days.. been both happily seasonally busy yet quiet and, like many, not feeling to say so much
oh, but also my sock is in their somewhere, got kersploshed in a puddle, then made a bid for freedom and jumped in the sea!
there it lurks, where the jellyfish spawn… both odious and odorous… swim well deeply darned one x
ghost boat
ghost boat before seaford head
morning sea fog, whispering of baffle and blurr, doubt and nothingness
earlier the world suffused with a warm, washed out apricot glow, now faded to a wraith like clamminess
mist, pearl moistening every spiders web
a realm fungal furred, rot and cankour, yet gorse flowers still tweet strident yellow, coconut ponged
most branches are bare, crenullated with stone green lichen crisps, brittle as undersea coral
season for softening, of surrender to the earth, take us down gentle into this, our darkness
ah do love a breakfast poetic blather!
on the way home, emerging from the murk, a fishing boat languishing just off mooring, ha, blasting out christmas tunes, hackneyed, but bobbing in the fog suprisingly jaunt joyful
morning pages
wrote one side of morning pages left handed today, crab scuttle etching… a curious process, feeling that this my alien hand doesn’t belong to ‘me’… to escher mbe?
you can almost sense the grapple battle for control twixt ego and whom? mute, secret sharer
a twitch, when the ‘usual I’ has the upper hand, it falls apart, hand wrench arches in the wrong direction… d’oh bother blather
but allow the process and a curious hypnotic rhythmic flow begins… automatic, we know what to do
…and the words, are they any different? dunno, can’t read the illegible ink blot scrawl
looking out the window, world appears shimmering, the background to a tarot card, a slight slippage? mythic realm ever at our elbow
da vinci the invincible
anyway summon daughter from her slumbers, admire the red glow of rolled plasticine clouds.. sizzle mushrooms, pepper, tomatoes, garlic
what are words on the page anyway? tongue convolutions to not make a sound, words that crave connection, synapse fire flare, ink deluge
i’ve typed all this left handed, sense adandonned, suspect i’m incorrigible bored, ha, doncha know
winter
brutal bone gnaw withering cold… i set off on my bike across the tundra twixt b&q and bishopstone… still air, yet brrrr the wind chill from the velocity of my own whizzing, had to slow down to lessen the shriek shatter ice cream head
passed a poor little dead shrew on the path (i love the word shrew, none of that Roman flounce, a simple country saxon name befitting the creature)
no bigger than a teasel, i could empathise with its last words frozen to lips… ‘unloveable. too small. big cold’
lacking gloves, i’d gone with a stripey sock on each hand, zig and zag, berated by puppets as i pedaled
forever sartorially flummoxed by winter! summer it’s sandals, cargo pant shorts, a 10 year old moth eaten t-shirt, what could be better?!
nowadays it’s all about layers, chunky knit colourful sweaters… ‘cept i don’t have any… jumble sale strewn, lurid acrylics, something of the dressing up box… widow twanky at the tour de france
even the sea can’t be bothered, usually a hurly burly, giving it a ‘bit of this, a bit of that’
but today a half hearted lap, lap, the sound of someone gently closing a patio door
dreaming of a giant knicker elastic powered catapult to hurtle me to the tropics
rhythm of the seasons, means i can write the same post every year! and not worry about it
yet… headed home… thinking of a friend from the prairies
each leaf, every bush, frost licked to brittle needle diamonds
a tree with arms flung up, fractal, exultant, here midst the whisper beauty light
winter
late crop
late crop, some of the final few home grown blushing toms, from outdoors, bare earth, picked last week after i got back from spain
not been outside yet this morning, but kinda presuming the plant has finally keeled over and curled up its (toma) toes?
almost december?! such a mild, benign even balmy year (benign here at least, can’t imagine the polar ice is faring too well)
curiously all the other plants stopped bothering around september, yet this one had a growth spurt, roots must have blunder rummaged through into a realm of some of my deluxurious home made compost (obv poorly mixed)
fruits galore! like most folk, and being somewhat of a late bloomer myself, i’m always heartened and enthusiastic about lost causes
anyway back to snuffling my way through a horrible cold… and a project delivery which won’t stay delivered… sigh, grumble… but hey tomatoes!
granada
I was back in Granada last week… long waffly post warning
………….
Such an ancient, powerful, spiritual place… where beauty and history are so preposterously tangible.
First time I’d returned since living there in the caves for 3 months, ooh mbe 23 years ago
where i went after prague, before south america and all the life changes that flowed from those adventures
chasing the ghost of my younger self, the uncanny feeling that i’d turn a corner midst the muddled streets of the albaycin, enter a square and there i’d be, sitting on the pavement huddled amongst friends, laughing, drinking… dogs, juggling, guitars, djembes
and indeed not that much has changed, around sunset, gatherings galore in the plazas, the spanish anarchist look will always be dreadlock mullet, drizzled with copious quantities of black garb
crusties and colourful pantaloons! this thing of beauty!
this time i was just there for 2 days, the first day a tourist amble around the beauties of the alhambra… never been in autumn before, the burnished colours of leaves
then the next day, a slow mosey up through the albaycin… a menu del dia in plaza lago… heart of the gitano quarter
blaring music, kids arriving on scooters, being scolded, then leaving, everything a soap opera, community, stories played out on the streets.
Onto the next square, cafe con leche, beer, a game of chess in the sunshine whilst listening to a rag tag busking band, the dipping and quirky almost arabic rhythms,
the fiddler, he was like puppetry dancing, smoking whilst he played, a huge column of ash jauntily dangling from the end of his fag
finally, for sunset, the slow climb up the hill to the church
a haunting and powerful sense of place, our stories somehow written on, absorbed by the landscape, there goes Rhona, dragging her wheeled granny shopping trolley, a scratched parched dry path, cutting up and across the valley, past gnarled dog eared cactii, off to fetch water from the fountain at the church, high on sacromonte
else sitting in a plump red chesterfield, outside K&R’s cave in the shit valley, fire blazing, Rasta, their dog, tongue lolling, persistently panting up and down the hillside after a stone, whilst claire squawks some cheerful story
now, lying on the bed, thinking long on muddled memories and the far flung shores of yesteryear
elegaic, i tell many stories about the caves, and that time, broad strokes, colourful, chaotic… too much borracho, the reality of it was much more complex
for me, Granada always has a strong, dark energy… Sacromonte, only holy fools would dare to live on the sacred mountain
mostly, thinking back, i am happy for such crazy adventures, for the heart connections… and grateful to all the lovely folk who looked after me
so it was, this time, at sunset, as we came down, winding our way along the goat paths, the alhambra glowing on the hill opposite, the snow capped sierra nevada mountains behind, lights starting to come on in the city below, the distant, somehow soothing, beep of horns
i stopped to look for claires cave, within 100 meters, but couldn’t quite say which one? familiar, home… and very much not
further on the hole in the wall, gateway to the valleys beyond, blocked up now, ‘ojo ladrones’… ‘look out, bandits’
then on the spur of a hill, a man stands alone, agitated, angry, he is bellowing at everybody walking along the path below, screaming at the sky, at the mountains…Maricon! Pueta Madre!
all this amidst the manifest beauty , the subtle fading light. Granada
leave it here? ha… should get on with work, wallow on, till fade out
what are we? but the triangulation of all our human relationships? the social ties that tether us, i doubt it
what are we? put your ipad on shuffle all songs, the spool that comes out? nope
rather, somehow, we are all the people that we love, when you turn to a friend, begin to tell a story, a story a thousand times told..
yet your own voice summons a goose bump excitement, the thrill, catch fire, as sweet smelling Roses endlessly blossom and entwine with our words
Granada
……………….
….. oh and pics couple from last week, and a tiny sample from the one film of kirsts that somehow survived xx
suzanne
off on an early morning flight… not this early, soul always thrusts us awake before we would either need or want
boy flew away on his adventure last night too… enjoy!!!… now, midst the gloom, surreal tip toeing about the house, feel like, time slip, i’m bleary eyed up to be out on my post round delivering mail
leonard has gone, sure everyone will be posting, tis facebook… not in my opinion an occasion to mourn, somehow feel that, more than most people, he managed to powerfully inhabit his own life. impressive. and has left us some beautiful words. who would want more from life? but yearning, we always do. thank you.
this version not quite the simone one, but the one we grew up on, currently bizarrely ‘watching’ this, with no sound, as no headphones and don’t want to wake sherbailey
don’t really need volume, etched, powerfully evocative of sitting around after sunday roast, as a teenager, whilst mum and dad played mournful ancient songs
once again. doffs dapper hat. thanks mr cohen, all that beauty
election
ah not a great day… again … political glumness, even less hope, if that’s possible, than before, of the progressive inclusive political agenda the world so badly needs
emma played a version of this at dance (i think! might have been something else, i was somewhat busy dancing)…. the song is buddhism innit
Spirit is the upward flowing energy, of air and fire
wheras soul, is the more female flow to ground, that of the elements of water and earth
soulful days we’re living through
ease
the perils of easy street
sea serene, placid, yawns to the horizon
only the soothe wash of its voice, which entices, then intones
‘do nothing… be nothing’
as unbeknown, grandmothers footsteps, it wriggle creeps up the beach behind me