Lakshmi

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Diwali New Moon Blessings! light a candle and welcome Sri Lakshmi, Goddess of Prosperity, Beauty and Power
she sits on a pink lotus flower, golden coins endlessly pouring from the vase at her lap, heralded, nay trumpeted, by a pair of white elephants… beauty and abundance
One of the seasons great fire festivals, hey, nearly the cheerful bedlam of Lewes and the 5th!
not my spiritual tradition? well, true, but auspicious to acknowledge the goddess in this bountiful, benign form… gold and pink, pink and gold
the main pic is an impromptu, but long standing (3 years), mini shrine plonked down at one end of the dining table…
my daughter came back from india, a gift of the sticker, a mini buddha and tibetan prayer flags
i leaned lakshmi against a jar full of old pound coins, next to a holey hag stone from the beach and, yep, choula hot sauce(!)…
things tend to flotsam wash up in my life, often to stay

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this morning, up early, a beautiful golden light, a sky of profound blue… so to pedal down to the beach for the first proper winter swim of the year
a calm cold ocean, after the recent turbulence of storms. air which nips! those smoke plumes from the lips… yet a sun replesdent with majesty and warmth
floating on my back, looking shorewards, heave of sea, burnished gold, dappled squirm of liquid, the colour a reflection from the sand honey cliffs above
after, see-ee-the of sea as it sucks back through the plenitude of pebbles, eye follows the snake writhe of wave along the shoreline
this trickster mind, thoughts struggle with the clamour… qualm, hunger, scarcity… yet, ha, we dwell midst might, mystery and … a glut of profound abundance!
lakshmi in sussex! preposterous? yet sipping my flask of Rose petal tea, pondering out to sea…
reflect on the myth of her birth… gods and demons tug of war churning the sea of ambrosia, lakshmi arising full formed, beautiful from the waves
the birth of venus, likewise emerging from shell and the sea… lawks with sun sign, mercury and venus, all in cancer, i’m bound to be somewhat curious of the ocean
at pompeii, astonishingly, they discovered a statue of lakshmi, the Romans traded with India, academics postulate on a syncretic Venus-Lakshmi cult…
Romano-Celts on pebble sussex beaches
deffo nuff waffle! oh and dratt, i never even got around to diwali in mysore in the late 80’s

The Attenborough is from hove lawns… lots of postman paste ups on the yellow bins, many fitting the rigid gold and pink hegemony

https://thepostmanart.com/

As a nerd youth (quelle suprise) i was intrigued by Alexander the Great… obviously by dint of brute conquest, such the mores of teh ancient world… but imagine an empire that, just about, spanned vedic india to ancient egypt!!
knowledge fusion of the highest order… there are statues of buddha sculpted in a classical greek style! i’d probs have been a temple dancer tho

Botticelli: Birth of Venus

hewn

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hewn…. taciturn… part chunky Knitware, part Rock… all troll
post lunchtime swim, i’ve recently succumbed to the ubiquitous cold, that snot phelgm lurgy, so haven’t been in for a few weeks…
the water remains disappointingly balmy… but crikey, flayed by the wind afterwards
autumnal exhaustion everywhere, so its been a blessing just to be able to loaf about
entertained by my bleak, elemental, pudge eyed gruff-ness… see, i don’t only play the Romantic Hero

Rhona: Guapo!

ha! indeed, could, possibly, only be more guapo with an icicle hanging from the end of my nose xx

Megan: The hat really looks like a strawberry 🍓!

toes

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toes!… what are they actually good for!?
counting stuff when we run out of fingers
turning the bath taps on, adding warmth, when too lazy to stir from our wallow slumbers
oh they are just so blooming far away!…. i in my lofty eyrie… but hey, thats just the megalomania of head thunk
close the eyes, shut those peepers, allow consciousness to sediment settle
grounded
move one toe at a time, feel the involuntary flinch, a spasm elsewhere in the body… else the grip and relentless puppeteering of the jaw
feet are so connected
ode to toes, odour of toes!
what i really like about them is the reminder that once we were different, that upended we clung to branches, cheerful reversal
that we peeled fruit, picked nits and our noses with them… the monkey that forgot to dangle
yes, a reminder that we were different, but also that we need not, indeed will not, always be the same… toes, time and tide keep turning
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reflexology… i haven’t received any in years! the hands off of covid
a golden age, when i could guarantee that at least one friend a year was training in either massage or reflexology… miss dat
wriggle them toes. riddle them toes.
clay, the squidge between, on the self build an earthship course
… more incoherent muttering…
this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home, this little piggy had veggie sausages….

feet wings! a little bit odlaw, a lot Roald Dali! x

fuel shortage

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‘Sainsbury Newhaven have both fuels, no queues. Closes 6am’…. in keeping with the mildly apocalyptic flavour of the zeitgeist, odd when you find yourself getting out of the house, absurd early, on the basis of some random message off the internet… worked tho
i’m fortunate in that i seldom ‘need’ to drive anywhere, but now have enough to comfortably trundle up to see mum and back today…
yesterday was the first proper brutal winter storm of the season, wind batter and howl… i didn’t go outside, my achievements can briefly be listed as: smudged the entire house with palo santo… watched squid games
Friday tho i was up in stanmer park, helping out on the ‘self build an earthship’, fab!
took this snap earler, thinking the greasy morning light made it ‘gannet in an oil slick’-esque
but the river was calm, a few birds were tweeting in the trees
comparative affluence is a buffer… climate catastrophe looming… a not very helpful, slightly befuddled post!

peach purple banana smile

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peach purple banana smile… colours and flavours of autumn
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Rose Quartz… i was in one of the crystal shops in the North Laine earlier (one feather? two feather? red feather? blue feather?… as the goodly zeus would ave it!)
gawp idle, thrumming in front of a phalanx of Rose Quartz crystals… a friendly assistant (something mayan? arabic?), the waft of palo santo, came over to help
i just said, oh i dunno, ‘heart chakra’, she went ‘aww’, so we both stood there for a minute… crystal bathing, a good natured communion
ha! should imagine they get folk like me in there every day, never going to buy anything, but cheerfully enraptured
made me remember days loafing around the british museum… loitering in the room of the aztec crystal skulls…
periodically some freak would meander in, occasionally wearing a skull t-shirt, and just, well, oscillate with reverence!… kindred!
tho never having bothered to articulate the notion (too obvious!), but, like most people, i know there is spirit in everything
this shining vibrancy, coalesces most strongly around certain places, people or things… usually sacred places… the sri meenakash in madurai, buddhas eye at the great stupa of bodhinath
in this country its mostly nature… an ancient yew, the sea at sunset, turquoise tangerine, a medieval church in the woods… this sacred land
best to cheerfully acknowledge it wherever we can… a crystal shop in the laines… on facebook? ha, possibly not! x
ooh now i’m thinking of the mothers sacred colour in auroville, that was some hue of peach?… pantone panndemonium!

equinox blesssings

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equinox blessings… autumn is upon us. new season, new hair do, same old me
where the day is equal to the night, yes, and the same wherever you are in the whole world!
the universal kindred equality for us all really struck me… pompous is important, and well meant
a moment of equipoise, of noticing, whilst the tide of light recedes at hurtling pace
in meditation this morning the yak distraction of thoughts, tumultuoustumultous
so, for a change, i just sat with the subtle, glow gold warmth of the heart
lots of time down by the sea… go gentle x

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word splurge!… i usually imagine i know what i wish to say, but such the clamor and jostle of thoughts that it ends up suprisingly other
but hey, just the ludicrous imperative of self expression!… for me it’s words, dancing (ha! tho seldom words and dancing together, what’d that contrariness be like?!)…
ever envious of the ease of musicians
whats your fave way of creating? xx

grail

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holy grail… blackberries, strawb and chilli plant
such a weird soggy british summer, damp squib, with wondrous bits!… everything a few weeks late… impossible to know whether it’s too early for blackberries or too late? schrodinger blackberries!
huge swathes of Red ‘uns, mingled in with others coated in the grey, Rabbit fur fungus of disappointment
enough for crumble… and a few for freezing for smoothies into the autumn… lovely
…. but a brief update from yesterdays evening word burble, the actual harvest

oh! and early 90’s yha card… complete with passport snaps, havel on the back of a matchbox and a clutch of Paris metro tickets

lambent

lambent evening light… seaford head, the distant cliff, but a lazy peach smudge, daub thumbed across the horizon
the sea, a softness, ease in and out of being
through the stillness, from the dizzy far below, sound rises like wood smoke
trudge crunch as a man makes his way home across the pebble shingle
splatter scamper of the mackerel, tails fork tongue flicker across the water…. these sea speakings
Blackberries and Hawthorn Hips, knotted Red and Black… fluffed, the firework fiesta of Old Mans beard
hollow sonorous knell of a wood pigeon
look! my head! lumpen huge as some easter island moai
Hoa Hakananai’a… stolen away to languish, across the sea, snug smuggled within the British Museum
home now… lacking much (anything!) to say… greatly liking words, enjoying the fruitful unimportance of it all…i consult the motto on my Rose Geranium Yogi tea bag:
‘let us be kind and compassionate to remove the sadness of the world’

wasp spider

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Wolf Spider with Rose Bay Willow Herb, Thistledown and ermm i want to say Tansy, but its probably just some type of cheerfully deluded Ragwort
bleaggh i mean Wasp Spider… have Wolves on the brain at the mo!
i thought wow, that must be a wasp spider, without even knowing such a thing existed, google agrees… such marvelous gold hoops, even along its legs
beautiful the subtle interactions of nature… the web all soft eiderdown with the wind blown thistle fluff… lost its sticky!… no self respecting fly is going to fall for that!…
they’ve got myriad amazement fractal eyes… tho possibly a slightly squiffy one might think of it as a suitable place for a lie down?
kind of feel for the spider, all that miraculous effort, ruined!
it’s a bit like when you hang the washing out… and immediately boot a muddy football splodge against it… futile fussball chore!
beautiful this morning up Castle Hill… i managed to cycle and then hop up the last bit, foot on the mend, but not not skippable about on yet x

Al: I thought at first this was a poem by you.. Great pictures

ha, sorry to disappoint!tho all words yearn to poetry, just a matter of jumbling them up in a beautiful ordersomething like ‘myriad amazement fractal eyes’ is clearly a thespian type, fallen on hard times, embarrassed to voice over a dog food commercial purely for the dosh x