buddhafield! some moons ago, 2015 0r possibly 2018?! I love to sing!! few things make me happier… tho obviously I can’t hold a tune, stabbing wildly, and with bewilderment, at each and every note this pic a pleasant stumble upon, I’ve never seen before today, i’m malingering at home with the vestiges of a summer virus, cheerfully whiling away an hour rummaging through the official bf photo account… some beauties in there! such fun to find friends in photos of yore, else to spot myself ‘wheres wally’ styleee lurking somewhere in the crowd scene… weirdly comforting to have passed through such emotional extravaganzas and somehow to have left a trace, not too much, not too little… a soupcon anyway singing!! hurrah!! it really is such an profoundly joyful and glorious thing to do… particularly wonderful at festies in a large group, singing spiritual songs in four part harmony. communion. euphoria. belonging. i’m always burrowed away in the bass section (had to google to make sure it wasn’t base!), standing in solidarity with most of the men… it has a proper brotherly tribal vibe there i tend to be in the front row, luckily many british men are foot shuffling shy grunters, so there’s usually room at the front! which means I can dance! and gawp at all the beautiful faces across the circle… I really love to dance too the front is also the best place if your a singer lacking in confidence, your held by the voices behind you, there’s normally at least one strong bass singer, so follow their lead and try to mesh with them… if your stuck at the back, why, guaranteed you’ll just just get lost, drift off and wander away! down the front your cocooned by voices… oh and it’s even better when you go right in the middle of the circle… that’s where you can hear the full interplay of parts… it’s the most healing and nourishing of things to be caressed by several hundred human voices.. really is the pinnacle of being human. kindred. vibration after a singing workshop, theres a real synchronising of moods… everyone leaves mildly radiant ha! so many times someone will seek me out elsewhere in the festival, tell me how much they loved watching me in the circle mantras/kirtan are brilliant too… and this year never managed to leave the ‘land and social change’ fire before 1:00… singing around a fire, so many lovely talented people, primordial, full power… my throat chakra is always really open by then, sapphire blue, i love warbling along in a resonant basso profoundo just to clarify, when i say i can’t sing for toffees, i mean that i can’t hold a tune, or hit a note, i actually enjoy the fruity timbre of my voice, congealed wisdom (yeah baby!) but nope no musical ability in my family… not allowed to be in the choir when i was a child… music teachers love to spout something like ‘everyone can sing’… yeah after a fashion mostly i think it’s more like an aptitude for say maths? ‘everyone can do maths?’… well i can anyway, possibly one of the reasons why most money I’ve earned is from programming? a brain box for book learning… i remember tutoring my daughter for her gcse maths, which, absurdly, everyone has to pass… watching her failing to grasp what seemed like the most obvious of concepts… anyway i get the same polite blank incomphrehension when the choir leader looks at me when they teach the tune, a diligent effort to supress their eye rolling, incredible people. hmm somehow I’ve digressed?! long windedly! how does that happen… daughter passed her maths! i love singing! huzzah! x
a blessing: radiant white gem of clarity and constancy
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watching tree creepers in the glade… for Joanna Macy
heat bludgeoned at Buddhafield, plunge into the cool shadows of the glade, deep within this submarine realm of myriad green hammock marooned, a cheerful sprawl, limbs strewn, arms and legs akimbo above, glimpsed through patchwork leaves, the blue calm of sky girth of benign pondersome oak, surrounded by slender silver birches
a tatter scrap of a bird alights, nervously it skitter stitches up the trunk, spiraling higher. then scarper flits from tree to tree I recite the dictum ‘nuthatch down, tree creeper up’ another bird joins, then another, a whole family, shy oblivious, as, again, buddhafield bloom blossoms around them
I love to walk this land, a deeply storied place within this glade, standing in circle, as friends made their wedding vows, else the soft solemnity of the grief space
tumble into sandals, hoik heft of rucksack, follow the path towards the stream, heading for crew food, tea, friends the gentle chatter before shift the background ommmm of nature? we the creatures of busy burden
but here, earth rumpled, astonished, a molehill in the path earth fresh excavated from the night before, a blacker dirt, a more recent tumnulii than it’s neighbours, volcano splattered about fresh grave? Joanna, your personal turning within the seasons and cycles of our own great turning but more, molehill, with the steady measured comfort of your words, seek for sanctuary, this soft earth turned burrow of being almost home Thank you
pic from bf website
context and natter chat!
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another Buddhafield festival come, and after 10 days in the field (for me!), gone
Buddhafield is a conscious festie, ‘no drink, no drugs’, held in the Somerset Blackdown Hills every July At its heart it’s a Triratna Buddhist festival, with Meditation, Dharma Talks and Pujas… yet due to the nature of the movement, theres also yoga, inclusive spaces, shamanism, dance, singing, permaculture, 12 steps, live bands, music around the fires… the whole hippy kit-kaboodle!! hundreds of beautiful people to dance with, laugh with and hug!
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On the Sunday afternoon, as the festival was beginning to wind down, I ambled along, grooving to the musicians jamming outside old tree popped into the beloved arms tee-pee for a smattering of a Kirtan, before ending up in the dance tent… where Sofia and Sandra, Italian friends, were holding a ‘dance of the elements’… think dance followed by Didge and Singing Bowl Sound Bath whilst I was nimble prancing around the dance floor, a seed spore blew in from one side of the tent… one of those huge ones, spore sputnik, hairy awesome gossamer spider THINGS… it was drifting towards the ground, so i wafted it back upwards, like you would with a giant Rainbow soap bubble… a gentle gyre, then it caught the gust of wind and exited through the other side of the tent… i chased it to see it drifting deep into the dark, ominous fairytale woods reminds me of Bedes Olde English Saxon tale on the stark brevity of this life on a winters night a sparrow flys into a mead hall, where a King and his thanes are feasting, a brief flutter, before it leaves through the other door, back into the cold and dark which, to mind(!), chimes well with Buddhist thinking
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I’ve been coming to the festival since ooh 2009 and, thru a quick head mathematical totting up, as an ex programmer, I love being logical(!)… reckon, that down the years, I’ve spent over three months in this particular field… and what a joy that has been! every year several old familiar faces don’t return… but always there’s new people to Love! the inevitable truth that in fair time, one year, however distant, I will no longer return… which admittedly sounds a little maudlin and nostalgiac, but in my opinion is exactly how life should be Anyway I’ve always stewarded, usually running one of the teams up by the front gate… Rocking the Podule!… I love the energy of arrival, greeting people just as they first get here
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oh, the poem, I was going to say something about that… I wrote it sitting in the glade, between shifts, we had heard that Joanna Macy was in the last few days of her life… I’ve always loved ‘the work that re-connects’, usually popping in for at least a couple of the daily sessions at BF… it’s a profound body of work, crucial for all of us alive in these times… and also a great smorgasbord of a workshop, which has a little soupcon of everything… bit of eye gazing, a few games, a lot of soul sharing! In the poem I wanted to give voice to the other creatures that live on this land, all year round… the owls that hoot deep amongst the trees… the frogs, that go hopping about the site every time it rains… the brawler hares that live in the fields up by the front gate… what do they make of it when the glade is invaded?… by slack liners, teetering along a rope… by kids whooping… by the tranquil sanctity of the grief space they just get on with it, going about their tree creeper and mole ways… oblivious to the festival, but beyond that, oblivious to the throes and heroism of human mortality i would wish that when i die that this is treated with deep nonchalance and disregard, by nature, going on with it’s own business but my fear, THE fear, is that this is now only the case in isolated pockets? that such the hubris, such the sickening tragedy, of our reach that this has become the exception rather than the norm?
anyway, i’m hoping the moles don’t mind too much the dance tent, foot stomping, earth juddering base sound resonance? part of the impetus to write something came about because when Love Patrol (they bring us tea, biscuits and love) came by where I was working, Meera had a book of Mary Oliver poems, a couple of which i read aloud to the team… I love reading aloud… Mary an obvious, and much more lofty-profound influence
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Stewarding in the sunshine and the rain… bekky took the sunshine snaps, she wanted to send her mum a couple of pics showing her how it was… her looking wholesome, before donning war paint and reverting to the feral, loving Rainbow child she really was! One of my favourite tasks was driving ‘Dancing Queen’ around the site… the stewards purple vehicle… so named because it only had one cd, Abba, which would play the first three songs then spit it out! I arrived laden with charity shop cds ‘Bat Out of Hell’ which sadly would not play at all, scuppering my plans to dawdle about with ROCK melodrama blaring out the open windows… my other cd was Prince, a purple vehicle deserves tunes by his regal purpleness! This vehicle a huge improvement from the one in previous years, a scrap yard salvage, completely missing 1st gear, this would make getting up the steep hill from slope a wheel spinning extravaganza!! Anyway I’d pop down to pick up a huge vat of crew food, enough for all the Stewards working up top… then with Halley cuddling it in the passenger seat, a human gyroscope to stop it spilling! we’d crawl slowly up the hill, the fruity sounds of ‘Head’ blaring out and deliver grub to all the stewards… there was a huge double rainbow, it’s arch radiant over all the site… slightly soggy, starving, delusionally happy stewards were most content as ‘meals on wheels’ finally arrived!
dancing queen
(to be cont’d)
pujas next! (note to self)
cdslove patrol bicciesold friend from healing gardenbf websiteold tree
gorge on courgettes, man and his marrows… tomatoes refusing to ripen, understandable, soggy drek day yawn, slightly sleepy… tons o’fun stuff 10 days at buddhafield, daughters graduation! xx
RIP, had almost forgotten this fabulous song
Nat: Ahh didn’t see you at buddhafield!
Shame! A familiar tale, what with the bonkers weather, so many old friends glimpsed but briefly across the field… but, ha, a glut of glorious connection and hugs galore… So can’t REALLY grumble… Hope yours was a good un xx
oh… and finally… the hazel medicine is with me today…. one of my favourite Christy Moore songs, an irish ballad… its a late at night round the fire type song, don’t listen now,… its actually a beautiful W.B Yeats poem… about a man finding then losing his fairey lover… lots of hazel lore in this one:
The Song of Wandering Aengus BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
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
back from another blissed out ‘humdrum’ buddhafield… well mostly, after a week in the field, allowing the energy, the warmth to slowly sift, then settle… before, hopefully, taking the joy in my heart, stone plonk pond rippled, out into the wider world beyond favourite buddhafield moment? hmm maybe the evening after the festival had finished! skiddadled to my sisters to pick up lovely daughter, this year, a gentle transition, snoozing in a hammock in the shade next to the pool early eve i took crumble, the dawg, for a stroll up the hill, high summer, straggled and woeful bedraggled in the hedgerows, the familiar silhouette of oak, of ash, beneath which the dappled purples of mallows, thistles, the yellow of groundsel, this the daisy age, white trumpets of bind weed full fluted in flower, wound about them, entwined, the bramble briar rose up above, swallows and martens swoop stitch the blue colour of the sky i stopped, the path wound onwards, this the cusp of evening, a field of corn, ears plump to the stalk, burnished rose golden by the light of the setting sun the full moon (nearly!) sailed jauntily above the trees, just as the sun, burdened, weighted down by the pomp cavalcade of its own majesty, wallowed heavily beneath the horizon… mother earth, father sky, brother sun, sister moon fulcrum, a harmonious tidal turning
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i pondered long on what? on nothing? on dad? and, of course, also the boon bounty of the previous week of the strong, sweet gentleness of hugs, with friends, with strangers, the long loiter in connection, snuggling up for profound spiritual chats by the fireside, gabbled laughter over food, else irreverent cackling up by the gate! meetings with long lost friends, a soft openining to new ones dancing, singing, mantras, a childhood game of stuck in the mud, talks on activism and buddhism, tai chi, chai, flirting, singing, dancing! of work, the hodge podge bundle of stress i became whilst managing the sunday afternoon going home shift ‘yes i appreciate that your child is crying, that you must hoik, that huge heavy bell tent up the precipitous slope, but no, i am sorry, i cannot authorise you to drive onto site’ then again i loved driving the super mario cart buggy jeep about the site, one hand on mahogany steering wheel, elbow out the window, floppy ermintrude hat, only 2nd gear, 4th and reverse! boogie woogie wonderland! oops what was i saying? cheerful in the knowledge no one will have bothered to decipher thus far! fun to write!
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unravelling, the undulating, to feel in my body, the coils of this, some small portion of the huge green earth serpent, rising up, her energy coursing throughout the land gentle, coiled spirals a myriad scales, all sizes, all colours, irridescent, yet summoning to a singular harmony… vibrant, tara, heart chakra green cycles of expansion, followed by those of contraction, falling to a dwindle, then rising to exalt! harrowing followed by abundance. pulsation, rhythm pulled inside out to languish in this the radiant beauty of the realm of form… falling to stillness, beneath there is always a ringing so to take each others hand… and dance singing together with the ancestors on this our land slowlty turn and head for home ‘manna gonna come down, manna gonna come down, manna gonna come down, manna g-o-nnnnna make us strong’ x
