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people of soup! in these far northern lands huddle close around the cauldron of plenty, gather for stories, yarns of yawn and yore
basgallop models leek and potato, knitwear, with a slight hint of shamanic reindeer wee
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one more crumb for the mountain of futility that is your facebook feed… if its anything like mine anyway
realised this morning that all my stock cubes expired in 2017, so ‘borrowed’ some swiss vegetable bouillon from daughter
yum!
these the last days of leaf fall, this autumnal hurrah
crimson, mustard, saffron, all of the motley browns
a few beeches remain full burnished, stuck over with gold, vivid against the clear blue sky beyond
sucked of moisture, skeletons of nowt but tannin and rasp
breeze stirred, one leaf detaches, it begins with a waggle, a saunter,
the swoop of leaf fandango,
a final bellyflop swoon to the ground
letting go? giving up! oh you leaf shirkers
the wind strengthens, a brittle leaf rattle (something of teeth chatter), a swirl, bask and laugh within this blizzard snow shaker
beneath foot, the leaf kerfuffle, layered, interleaved, humus settling to mud
the earth serpent, coils of body, she rears up, then dives deep beneath the ground,
sloughing off the colours, the beauty, of her myriad scales
a great sinuous wave flowing through the land, but also, passing through us
we are buoyed, immense, lifted up
then left, the promise of return, yet bereft in the still serenity of ourselves
……………….
chewed through a whole biro trying to write those words! i am an inveterate pen gnaw-er, especially when words don’t want to flow (stuckness mostly a winter thing)
fun to write similar words each turn around the sun, a return, spiraling through the year
it doesn’t have to be great, just a really enjoyable process, stodgily working things through
was trying for something a bit more ooh i don’t know manley hopkins or o’donohue this time
recently, when i’ve been waking at a blear 4:00 am, to get back to sleep i’ve been listening again to o’donohue (‘beauty: the invisible embrace’)
i love his irish voice, that slightly peculiar intonation, it flows beautifully with his words, to my pre dawn consciousness muddled mind, i’m not always sure what he’s saying
but its important, a sumptuous crescendo of lyricism
‘Freed from desire, mind and senses purified’
i’ve been rolling these words around on my tongue all day long, like some buddhist koan pebble gobstopper
i’m rubbish at equinamity, just too darn difficult… so with some relief finally realised that this owl pellet of wisdom isn’t from thich naht hahn,
but rather a cheesey dance song that came up on this mornings jog, it continues:
‘My love has got no power, he’s got his trampoline! my love has got no money, he’s got his trampoline!’, sentiments i can definitely get bounce behind
the certain knowledge that November is not for me… its all being reclusive, chunky knitwear and glum soup
the endless twilight tho is quite beautiful
colours of washed out lemon, with a flame aura of blue through violet
black clouds like scattered ash, lit from below, feather bellied, swollen, solemn, ponderous
indeed, nuage et nuance
katie: Love it! And my love has got his strong beliefs (and hopefully a strong trampoline too)
truth! whatever lyrical quibbles its deffo an earworm… listened to it again, now its going around my head, probs till christmas day xx
lou: Yesssss this song is epic 
November live to your dear 
magda: Na na na na na na naaana na naaana na na
harley: na na na na na nah-nah na na na na nana!
genius! i think they realised that the words they had were perfection in themselves, so decided not to bother making up any more xx
hey jude for the dance generation
aww impossible not to love the lewes bonfire bedlam! the annual stripey jumpered cacophony
swirling smoke, teeming rain
burning brands shoved in your face, all is hubbub, a riot of fire, of clamour… explosions 2 feet away, absorbed in the body
visceral, a somatic nightmare
brass bands vye with samba ensembles, psychotic drummers provide a skeletal backbone beat
effigies are lugged, everything exploded… yes, everything exploded
a jostle, pomp of costume, melee down medieval streets
beauty glimpsed, forever fleeting
people are glamourous, astonishing. WE are beautiful with the madness, fresh of fire, flourished on our faces… shining, tumbling forth from eyes… ha!
anyway, hyperbole aside, i’m enjoying the blurry out of focus unreality of the smaps
good natured, in your face, ritualised anarchy
PANDE-f***kin’-MONIUM
endless endless rain, spent the rest of the day marooned in bed… even getting to lewes is a palaver, like your breaking into the town… a drive and a crazy pedal for me… all part of the adventure
hmm skimming thru recent posts looks like i live in a shower cap… probs truer than i’d care to imagine
oh Hilary Mantel has died
i haven’t read much of her work, only wolf hall and bringing up the bodies, and never got far with the final part, yet such a beautiful writer
oh you know, historical fiction, rolls eyes, and the tudors are so over done
but, but, her Cromwell! part Machiavellian schemer, part bully boy thug, loyal, astonishingly honest and self actualised… bought to life in a style of lucid realism, interspersed with poetic reverie
one of the best drawn characters in all of fiction. genius. RIP
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read those books on the bus headed into brighton for a programming job, always 7:30 in the morning, rain, torpor, damp bodies squidged together on the top deck, groundation on in my headphones, nose in a book, happily elsewhere
…………………………………….. comments
Andy: I still feel grateful that you gave me I think it was The Mirror and the Light on Audible x
Mary: Cromwell, a man of great principle, architect of our modern Parliament and villainised for his King’s marital whims. He is one of my historical heroes and I think that Hilary did a fine job of restoring his reputation. So glad she finished the trilogy even if I did struggle with the last one..
Kat: Wolf Hall is bloody brilliant!
Nicholas: Unroll thine eyes! Historical fiction is the best! Just finished all the Ken Follett Kingsbridge series and on the last Shardlake book now… Next up Mantell! Escape that broadens the mind instead of hijacking it like hot gospellers and papists (and Facebook)
equinox blessings
i went for a walk up the cliffs this morning, the earth rich and still green, dew and the glistening, gossamer spool of spider skein.
after for a dunk in the ocean… bobbing far out to sea, forever suspended between the depth of sea beneath and the immensity of sky above. equilibrium
what buoys us up? surface tension? and that we too are much of water
turn to align my body perpendicular to the shore, nuzzled, then gently jostled by the sea current
you can feel the swell, the shore bound surge, wave ripples through length and limbs
world moves through us, as much as we move through the world
sea holds all colours, turned mournful, gently offering them up, this song of light
enjoyed my 3 cards for the autumn, sage, spirit fox and hermit
leaves on the tree and the seasonal harmony of orange, russet and brown
unlikely to be a party tho! mores the pity, rather reflecting my slightly subdued, introspective mood
they all look directly out, even if the hermit only through his third eye
observed, gentle benign wisdom. mirrored back to the world
peacock feather for writing a book. genius! i want
think i saw some in the middle aisle of lidl t’other week?
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apart from that daughter been over, so in between busy and times, walks up to the long man and thrice around friston forest
anyroads… tranquility and autumnal balance for us all
the vicissitudes of water
down by the river Mole
contemplating the reflection of trees, on the opposite bank, in the waters of the river below
a mirrored green prolifferation of foilage
apart from the occasional pock mark and wind ripple, the reflection is serene, calm and still…
and yet, peering beneath the surface, the water races downstream
hurtle and intent
something astonishing, how can motion summon such stillness?
like the chime, the clear gracious note from a singing bowl, this grasps me emotionally, buoyed up, then pulled slightly apart, gently rent
much in the way a tree, its roots rummaging down into the earth mother below, yet branches and leaves reach to the light above,
tension and stretch
river of flow and stillness, realm of insight and reverie
in truth but a variant on the notion ‘we can never bathe in the same river twice’, whats in the noggin, but stepped down from the lofty impregnable, turret of thought
emotions, held in the body, modulated, softened through the blessings of water
later, at the mill race, after the water has come over the drop, rebound, it surges back upwards from the depths
a marbled ooze like the clouds of some gas giant planet, all mottled greens and blues
4 separate pools, between them a linked chase of bubbles, a pattern that breaks then reforms again in an identical manner
a holding pattern, a frequency resonance?
sense of seethe
something about water welling up from below, primordial, the goddesses of springs
like Sulis Minerva at Bath, each is unique
we have always come to speak with, praise and parley, make offerings to, the goddess of a particular place
this intimate knowledge of the divine
i always think of dad on this stretch of the Mole, as when up visiting, just before he died, I walked here all the time,
it would have been his birthday today
the blue flash of the insignia of a kingfisher, this miracle irridescence… a gasp, a fleeting dazzle, yes, and he is gone
‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song’ the river meanders through the Eliots Wasteland
dad was cremated a mile downstream, the hospice where he died 5 miles further, so much of my childhood pottering along the mole
canoeing with Rich P on boxing day, in wet suits, capsizing somewhere near the weir
floating down the river, cold, laughing
when shamanic journeying, in my imagination I often come to this archetypal british river,
familiar, comforting
alder and willow, streams of slime green water weed, dragon flies, swans and kingfishers
a golden rainbow light of vision
Chutniiieeee! Tomato and Apple….. agonisingly, ecstatically yum!
first time i’ve ever made it! the secret ingredient ginger (not so secret now blabbermouth)
toms from the garden, a bag of apples from up the hill… the rest of the ingredients all from rummaging deep within the pantry
bung EVERYTHING in the pan and gently hubble and trouble boil away… eventually all was reduced to a state of primordial gloop… that wot the first amoeba clambered out from?
its texture sticky to the finger, colour kinda brown but with lashings of radioactive vermilion
as you can gather i’m proud of it…
it also required great poise to achieve a selfie balancing an apple on my head (William ‘kiss and’ Tell)
anyway had intended to give up on facebook… horribly last decade… at least i’ve spared you my poetry… but you know. CHUTNEY!
a Hindii word originally ‘to lick, or eat with appetite’… indeed!
a dollop of golden honey smeared across the horizon, heatwave, early morning, down by the sea
later it will be batten the hatches. bludgeoned. furnace stale air
yet for now, the gentle lap lap as the sea tip toes closer… Grandmother’s Footsteps…. ‘Whats the time Mr Wolf?’
Cliff mirrored in the stillness of tide pool, the reflection has something of the wobble of water
Brighton and wind turbines lurk further, distant through the haze
Sea birds their sound: clatter and clamour, gobble or chunder…
the gulls call has a rhythmic insistency, the throb and urgency of a police siren
so different to the melodic warble tweet of woodland birds… this cry, far flung, out across the emptiness of the ocean,
else harking back thru profound time to the days of dinosaurs
chalk
there is scribbleage
a game of hopscotch etched out on the path… who could ever resist?
toss the stone… hop jump, hop jump, hop jump, stoop, pick stone, turn, then hop jump again… a patterning of effort and limbs
somebody has written ‘chalk’ in chalk from the chalk cliffs, the recursive nature pleases my programmers mind
an environment you can write about with the substance of itself
we too are the instruments of our own saying?
‘Chloe loves Jack’
Chloe, or Jack, for that matter, thought it worth articulating
a possessive specificity? this cri de coeur… love walks the chalk?
I have never written ‘I love insert name here‘ in chalk! my Romantic soul somewhat aghast
forever a caveat, a complexity?
yet written in chalk a cheerful ephemera, perfect for youths tender blooms of love
from the cliff flint falls… its clatter
I think of the mountains of Slovenia, Shiv and I setting out along the Triglav trail, the lush beauty of spring,
we climbed higher and higher amongst a host of golden butterflies
two nights camping along the shore of a snow melt lake, distant peaks lotering, crowding the valley sides
nobody, nobody but us
you’d think that, unobserved, nature would be silence, stillness?
but each evening we sat serene in the red light of our campfire,
listening to rocks, rattling down the hillside
like shooting stars, turned to stone, turned to sound
world creaks
smelling salts, mind revivified by the ammonia tinged stench of seaweed
next i play with the light, shadow summoning a loch ness monster
dapple, stipple these words with memories
shadows … away walking up at devil’s dyke when the kids were young… daughter perched high on my shoulders…
a low sunset light… Yawn stretch of shadow away over the valley and the villages clustered below
Fi Fi fo fum with this thumb, this omnipotence, I obliterate Poynings!
turn, reach further out with arm, vastmess ‘Now the shadow falls upon Fulking!’
chortles from up top, she too raises arms, dabbling with this power
two heads are better than one
chalk
I came across some peasblossom at the end of my run today… it nearly made me cry… not for any murky sorrows, tho they are forever lurking, but just because it was so gorgeous and enchanting
a vibrant pink magenta in colour, like some Thai Airways orchid… hothouse spoilt… preposterous
an escaped cultivar? slumming it amongst the ruffians of ragwort and briar
petals peeking out here, then THERE, far flung further along… betwixt and between the tendrils submarine submerged somewhere beneath the host bush
louche and sprawled throughout the hedgerow, the flowers, like some 1920’s flapper, partied out, collapsed, draped elegantly across a chaise lounge
when we were young my older sister was peasblossom, one of the fairies in midsummers night dream
she had this beautiful, frivolous, lace and tulle pink garment, topped off with a purple pixie cap
i vaguely recall the performance, outdoors, it went on forever, so it seemed to the 5 year old me, i was sitting under a chair…
late late late, yet still light in the sky, so must indeed have been midsummers eve
solstice the endless languish of light
the costume was a staple of the dressing up box throughout my childhood,
that and dads old biggles-esque leather flying helmet, that he, in turn, had worn as a child, the smell rich, leathery, beautiful
oh and a long blonde wig, which dad had foolishly bought for mum, she always had dark short hair, instantly BANISHED to the dressing up box… whatever her opinion of the wig, the four of us all loved it
a box of possibilities?
oh peasblossom unkempt amongst the hedgerow
as we pass through the world, world is straggle pulled through us
away across the field, a swag uddered cow yet to be milked
the gut clutch of being, churn
the raft of thoughts, ego clod hopper lurches across
yet beyond this, all is golden, in its majesty, brimful, somehow swollen
life is imbued by the gentle quality of our cherishing
steady… with poise… toes uncurled, dear Hobbit, bask in this, the endless, endless torrent of presence
……………..
this the bliss, the blossoming of our perpetual becoming
Jog on
Jaw first.. tilted, forward to the future
