Shining threads

Shining threads

Sunday 26 June 2011

All things in moderation

All things in moderation - the folk wisdom says.

Except Morris dancing, crack cocaine and incest.

A moderate amount of murder, slavery and exploitation of animals is clearly OK by the standards of the UK, 2011.

Parliament are currently drawing up legislation to ban Morris-dancing completely and send it underground, now it is socially taboo and frowned upon by polite society. But there is a counter-revolution being launched to keep the fertility rites on the streets.

There are campaigners arguing for selective cases of incest to be allowed - after all, if a brother and sister fancy each other and there is mutual consent, where's the harm? Particularly if they use protection.

And crack cocaine is starting to feature on Gordon Ramsay's new menu, sprinkled on a refreshing mid-meal sorbet, to liven up his diners.

A voice from the sideline cries: if moderation is the rule, then we must be moderate about moderation. Therefore the exception is allowed by the rule! Shining a light on all areas of life, in a universal and particularising way.

The Ruler, standing dead-straight and 30 cm high, cracks, shatters and dissipates. No - He/She/It bends, curves, accommodates. The Ruler dances and plays itself groovy tunes on the infinite scale of measurement. 

Saturday 25 June 2011

Thoughts have wings

Thought have wings that carry words across oceans to deliver your messages in the minds of those you know.

Blazing trails of thought-vibration through the ether - imprints of sentiments born intentionally or unintentionally.

If all the thoughts of your life were gathered up into a single vision - what would it look like? All your hopes, dreams, intentions, praise, hurt, anger, confusion, suffering, love.

Is the vision fixed?

What is stronger? Which features endure?

Can you see the redemptive qualities in even the darkest of creations?

The light is rarely a dazzling sun but more often like a silver lining.

Flecks of enlightening energy in a conglomeration of everyday vicissitudes.

Even those thoughts you sent full of ugly malice and darkness were not unintimate with the light.

There is an alchemy of emotion - a process of salvation starting in depths of your despair.

Do not expect things to make sense in a black and white, linear way.

Thank the heavens for the subtlety of psychic rhythms and transformations.

Thoughts have wings. Some fly higher than others. And the others - have a poststamp of love, whatever the contents.

Thursday 23 June 2011

Low, high and something in between

Red's depths swirl like a subterranean soup - the primal roses hidden behind the surface of things to sweep us off our feet and become horizontal. Sizzling, erupting, insinuating, blushing - this colour does not make a subtle entrance but can makes its presence visible in various ways.

A clear cool panoramic sky is a salve to still the energies of the mind - peace of still waters and falling away of colour - what we all need as a break from time to time - transcending the endless chiming and rhyming of kaleidoscopic play.

Something divine flowers in my heart - shifting and holding all wayward and aloof volitions with a kind, gentle blossoming which can be with all things.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Low and high (a response to an exhibition by Emily Paige Short in Folkestone

A poet's task is to take the vocabulary of language, the words of literature and consecrate them.

Tease apart their everyday usage and exalt the words into a more subtle realm.

Do not think that poets are merely creative.

We destroy language.

Stretch words to the edge of their possibilities - like bubbles blown from a soapy mix - then give them an extra push in the listener's mind, so they explode into a sodden infinity.

In times long past, when the earth was imagined flat, the heavens were deemed high and the soil beneath our feet low. The stars were fixed in their aloof countenance and so was the order on earth, each to his own caste and role in life. The King was high - the peasant low.

Now, after a series of attempts to bury the breakthrough, we live in a post-Copernican world. The heavens are all around and in motion. Notion such as up, down, left and right make little sense in the paradigm we inhabit. We still have our partly dethroned Kings & Queens, in this strange brew we call democracy, but the next in line is an organic farmer.

Even further back, we constructed religions dedicated to the sky, projecting our hopes and fears into ethereal realms. Somewhere we forgot our bones and teeth, feet and bellies. This mortal coil is not a trap to be unleashed from but an anchor to be appreciated. A welcome limitation, grounding us in a multidimensional space to explore - caves, mountains, rivers, volcanoes, stars and sky.

We must honour all dimensions - seeing an integrated vision of life.

Whether you go low or high, however you define those terms, remember they are just possibilities and trajectories in an infinite contextual field.

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Everything is everything

Eagles fly down to meet the upward thrust of dolphins, rising out of the ocean's froth.

Archers send flaming arrows right round the curve of the globe, ducking as they come from behind and let them spiral eternally - leaving the question, when where they shot? Who was the archer? Forever poised, tautening his bow.

The darkness is married to light. Everything speaks. Magic is a germ within the body of science, pushing it forward to its rebirth in a second alchemical renaissance.

Numbers ricochet around the skies of infinity - refusing to recognise one another as superiors or inferiors, alive with their own particularity and laughing at the cumulative succession of ones that is all they are.

Friday 3 June 2011

Scattered light

Like a smashed glass strewn out across the laquered nightfloor, stars shine their scattered light through time and space.

She does not paint within the lines and crosses the room, spirit elevated by the arch of her shoes, both seeing and oblivious to the established order. Crushing the glass under her foot, she makes her way to the bar. Her dress is patterned by impressions from her travels and is pressed firmly by her confident flesh.

She takes a bottle without hesitation - immediately knowing the one amidst many for her and fills a new glass half-full with liquor.

Her mind like a hive of bees, or scattered light held in communion yet never coalescing. The beauty of the dance is between the distance and the intimacy. Hints of attraction and hints of self-containment. A chemical mystery chimes with fresh reactions, novel equations.

Time calls with its incessant distractions, yet she can't be stirred from her own presence, eternity flowing through the sequence of life. A series of steps, beyond notions of grace and free-will, just perpetual becoming, in love with the process.

A voice calls from the shadows. Familiar yet not quite hitting a note of recognition for her. She turns with an open anticipation and meets his gaze.

Their souls have journeyed, like scattered light, through multiple forms, and this time, this meeting, may have been the most recent in a catalogue of many. How would they ever know? What is difference anyway? And what is repetition?

Moments in love. Conversations across boundaries. Exchanges of information for pure delight.

Now - they meet on a floor of broken glass, just whispers and murmurs. Gentle touches and stolen kisses.

Scattered light sometimes exceeds its distributed waywardness and rejoices in collaborations of movement. Meetings of uniqueness. Words of reconciliation.

Reveling in the beauty of random arrangements, scattered light flickers gleefully amidst the shadows.