Some when in the past, remembering further back

I see a green wrapped leg, raised, a man in white underpants painted on a pot. Earlier stacked up memories. I stand looking across a flat expanse of grass, dew covered silver, green, under a pale blue sky sun. I remember standing here before, on a morning. I remember yesterday remembering this and lying on the studio floor as if lying on the wet dawn grass unfolding my arm. A conker falls from the tree with a clatter as I stand with my back to it, remembering  remembering. An apple falls  through spaces between branches, thunk onto the ground. I pick an apple from each of two trees in the garden and then hear-see some creature flopping down the path. It is a rolling apple. I roll some more, a satisfying game.

a May morning

I wake to an almost clear sky except for feathered vapour trails veiling the sun.

a friend sends a Rumi verse as a birthday gift:

Birdsong

Birdsong brings relief
to my longing
I'm just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Birds sing through necessity and in doing so create something very beautiful. Is that like "doing everything as if for god"? How to live doing the things that need to be done, being what needs to be. It's good to have some very long term goals....



many messages and thoughtful gifts from friends & family. shall I bake a cake?

Can I respond to the rising inequality in the world without anger

From Martin Luther King:

"Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-co-operation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."


This came up because there are constantly examples of all people not being equal, governments aid & abet this inequality. The current UK government seems to me to be crashing through peoples lives little understanding what those lives are like or will be like. Protests in the UK seem to be being beaten down by the police, made violent by the police. Our politicians set the tone, and the tone seems all wrong.
He says he wants people to know that hard graft is rewarded. I think of my parents, I think of the people who work day in day out, I also think of those for whom it is impossible to do so; does he know what hard graft is? Bodies wrecked, no savings, no pension, no early retirement? How to answer statements such as this?
The rich get richer on the backs of the people who earn low wages, the people who produce the stuff. Some by merely moving money about.
For myself I need to find a way of approaching this without hate, without anger; the frustration I feel is not easy to deal with, but to feel anger at people is not good for my well being so therefore not good for the well being of others. And I know violence is not right, that it will always make for more violence, for more inequality. I know that harsh words are violence. I know that speaking and acting from anger is not wise.
If you have time here are two links to dharma talks on non-violence
Talk one     Talk two
Talk two is particularly good, but Talk one has a very simple illustration of how using strong words might solve an immediate problem but builds a bigger one.

So I look to people such as Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama &Mahatma Gandhi [and Buddhist & Quaker teachings] for inspiration. It is not easy to stay reasonable.
I know that on the face of it things here, now, are not as bad as the situations that these three people have faced [although some individuals might have very difficult times] but still it is useful to see how strong non-violence can be. How it is not passive.

A dream: a world where we share in, not share out

The Burning & The Self Edge

heart-form cups, encloses, softness of brittle dryness.

the edge

the very edge

touched
by warmth

turn turn the other cheek turn again

fold in.

selvedges that aren’t so neat
brink of senses feeling

a roll of cloth flies open I cannot gather it all into my arms

that which I can
I crumple
crease.
wrap round roll in bind tight
my edge held tight
covered tight

mmmmmistake:
mmmmnow my inside is wrapped around my outside

the selvedge is to stop the unravelling
the edge of the same, the edge of the self

scar tissue isn’t so pretty
best to unwrap, fold flat,
concertina
neat
slip this that other inside, hide
smooth

splitting yet bound

A scalding creature has slipped inside my skin
It threatens to explode scatter out and screams
to be held tight.

or perhaps it is an icy creature
under skin, into ribs

the soft creature deep inside
stretches out a shadow hand
and places it over a left lung high on the ribcage
a thumb touching a sternum

23:36 christmas eve

The best thing that I have done today is to go outside this balmy mild blowy night, after eleven, despite feeling suddenly sad and hurting physically. The air wrapping, shifting around me. The dog enjoying a longer [in time not length] bedtime walk than normal. Standing in the dark realising how much I want to find words. To listen for them, to actively seek them, also to wait for them.


It didn’t matter that it isn’t wintery, that I am sad, that I hurt. I smile. But I could cry.

*

in my memory of the future I put my hand onto the ground. A mix of mud and ice and snow and rocks. I can only feel texture not the temperature


Slip in mud until the world spins

[môr o goed | a sea of trees]

huge waves lift and fall
trees bend and dance in the roar
or does the land move?