Monday, March 18, 2024

FEATURE - The Yellow Scream

 I owe my Husband for this one. He has put me on to the work of this guy. Its sort of self explanatory, so I'm not going to write anything about it at all. Yes, its hilarious, but I also would call it truly wonderful. This is a drastically edited version, the full video lasts forty minutes.

Now, doesn't that make your day feel a whole lot better?

Sunday, March 17, 2024

SACRED MOMENTS - Asking The Question


I'm about to begin a series of articles under the banner of Sacred Moments. I thought this explanatory preface might be necessary to lay out my approach. 

It might be tempting to divide what is sacred into two. - What we hold sacred, can refer to secular values we uphold and wish to exemplify -  A sense of the sacred, can be an experience pointing towards something other, the divine in all the various configurations of it that can be imagined.With Sacred Moments I'm more concerned with the latter, whilst at the same time unconvinced such a strict bifurcation can ever be clearly maintained. There is inevitably some interplay, and this in itself is worth examining.

These articles intend to explore on an experiential level what a sense of the sacred is and has been for me. There is an inbuilt autobiographical slant, Incidents have popped up in a multiplicity of places and circumstances, not just in a religious context or in nature. Sacred Moments simply will note where these have occurred. In the writing of them it has felt similar to an act of archaeology, excavating, identifying, conserving and then placing them in the museum of my Self. To be curious about my own history, how I have told it, and how I now tell it. Noting the shifts in emphasis and implied meaning.

Though a sense of the sacred appears to arise out of nowhere, they do nonetheless have a context, a particular setting. Even if where they are situated doesn't necessarily appear to make much sense of it, nor explain it. I'm attempting to adopt the broadest perspective on what can be conceived of as a sacred experience. I don't think a sense of the sacred is solely about the spiritual highs.

I forget, as do we all, that we have had any such experience, and still do have sensations of the sacred. However evasive or difficult they might be to pin down or own up to. They get easily explained away, denied, rationalised or simply ignored as we quickly move on to the next instance. Sacred Moments is a vehicle for reclaiming them as things worthy of note, and sometimes even to find that they have had a greater influence upon you, perhaps more than you've previously credited them with. 

You cannot chase, hunt down or develop an expectation where and when a sense of the sacred will happen. Similar to happiness you cannot will a sense of the sacred into being. Which is not to say there is an absence of reciprocity. There can be causal encounters arising 'seemingly' in response to intent, but that 'seemingly' is not to be too readily overlooked.

The primary thing is noticing. And in that noticing I'm already recognising themes and patterns. So in my more left brain moments of certainty or cynicism, my tendency to categorically deny or begrudge a perceived lack of spiritual experiences, these examined patterns will make that a more difficult stance to uphold. 





Thursday, March 07, 2024

QUOTATION MARKS - Freedom - John Verveake



'Freedom is not an absolute good 
Freedom is an instrumental good.'

John Vervaeke
Taken from a conversation with Jonathan Pageau.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal March 2024


The day to day discipline of a spiritual practice, once established, is often carried out with the aroma of unconscious competence permeating it. At least, that has been my experience. The basic bread and butter of spiritual practice - ethical behaviour and a compassionate and devotional focus, are what I still expect of myself. These essential foundational practices inevitably become second nature. This is so to the extent that I have to check in with myself from time to time - is this what I'm doing or have things gone a bit lax lately?  Such a spiritual health check I find is ongoing, and part of the practice. Any practice is not just a matter of will and discipline, it also requires faith and a sense of its purpose.

Most religions have 'advanced' or 'higher' practices that are more left field. Ones that tend to be placed on the 'mystical' book pile. Teachings often erroneously referred to as 'hidden' or 'secret' ,but are really only reserved. These 'mystical teachings' usually represent the ĺiving breathing soul of a religious tradition. That they are withheld from common knowledge and use, is significant. They are meant to be rare treasures, but as we know the promise of gold, however distant, can also stimulate greed and covetousness. To bring out the avaricious gold hunter in us all.

Mystical teachings tend to turn what you thought you knew about a tradition completely on its head. Whatever is knowable as divine or transcendent, becomes this absolutely unknowable thing. Whilst that daily spiritual practice you thought really necessary,  can suddenly appear to have no value, if viewed absolutely. Because ultimately it is a provisional teaching, thoroughly transitory by its very nature.

I've become quite intregued lately by the degree of coincidence in trajectory of differing religions 'mystical' traditions. That so many of them ascend into this territory of the unknowable. Whether it's- the Tao which can be known is not the eternal Tao - the Shunyata that escalates its emptiness to the point of emptying emptiness of itself - the Zen concept of thusness, of abandoning any self consciously directed, goal orientated path towards Enlightenment - the apophatic Christian Mystical traditions where the cuddly notion of the bearded patrician, the interventionist God, is completely abandoned. Everything becomes an series of statements of what God is not. And what God is definitely not, is gendered, or even a being you can make requests of. Whatever the tradition, the graspable knowableness of a religion vanishes up itself. And on this most critical of horizons, dissolves into the vast unknowable ocean of nothing in particular.

In past eras such 'mystical' or 'advanced' teachings would never be mentioned to a person who was thought not yet ready for them. In fact it was often considered detrimental to a person's spiritual progress to do so. What was once a carefully guarded initiation, is now available in book form or on the Internet, or worse still, dispensed like a sweety to suck on at the end of a public talk. 

We have an easy unfiltered and casual access to what are basically 'higher' teachings. Instinctively we recognise them as important, even though we'll most likely misunderstand or misapply them. The temptation to believe we can skip adhering to our foundational practices and simply head straight to the nub of it all, can prove irresistible. Why waste time on things that require application, time and devotion, particularly when you have to let go of them in the end? Why not go straight to the heart ? Save time and effort. This is where hard graft finds itself in an unseemly tug of war with instant gratification.

There is a story from The Lotus Sutra about The Magic City. A group of travellers sets out on a long and dangerous journey. Knowing many of them might be inclined to give up, their leader and tour guide conjures up The Magic City. Telling them this is their destiny, what they are heading towards, its just over the horizon. Having heard about the Magic City they all want to get there. After weeks, months and years pass The Magic City still has not yet been reached. Many travellers lose faith in their objective, turn back, or fall by the wayside. Eventually those that stick with it do reach The Magic City. At this point the leader clicks his fingers and makes it all disappear. Confessing to them that the Magic City was simply a skillful ruse to help them maintain their focus and confidence, so they did not lose faith in their journeys purpose. Enabling them to get to a place where they can do without such imaginary destinations.

Buddhism refers to its own foundational teachings as The Raft that gets you to the farther shore. The place where it's raft of practices and teachings becomes redundant. And Buddhism is not alone in having this inbuilt structural redundancy. In the story of The Magic City the disciples are only told of their leaders deception of them at the end, once they've reached their goal. Would it not then be intrinsically unhelpful, if not demoralising, to know about this 'deception' right from the moment of embarking on your spiritual journey,? How would you respond? How would that feel? For once you know, you cannot unknow.

Whether its a Magic City, Enlightenment or The Promised Land, however we mythologise or imagine the goal, destination or purpose of our religious faith, its an inaccurate, if not illusory, comprehension we are dealing with. So when an atheist says - religions they're all made up and a comforting fantasy - well, in a way they are. They are an instrumental truth, not an absolute one.

Magic Cities are of necessity illusory, and to simply highlight that does miss the point of them big time. Underneath these foundational myths lies the ocean of unknowing, that an atheist too has no answer, conception or understanding to effectively encompass it with.

For a believer the way to miss the point is to mistake the myth of The Magic City for a real place. To believe in its literal existence. What the story is informing you of, is that our beliefs are only ever useful inexactitudes. Partial truths that gesture you roughly in the right direction. The degree to which you rigidly hold yourself to those beliefs, will not necessarily speed your progress. No one gets far on a spiritual journey without a provisional faith that there is some sort of top to the mountain that you are climbing. Even that the mountain itself is real.

Faith, I find, is perpetually in a productive, but often slippery, interactive dialogue with our doubts. My religious doubts usually arise from the desire for a sense of something tangible, of having made progress, for an achievable goal, for a conclusion to the journey I'm travelling, banging their head against reality, the hard resistant wall of unknowing. I have had to learn to be more equanimous towards the unknowable nature of where faith itself may be leading me. That makes holding to its amorphous nature challenging. Hence. I guess, the need for The Magic Cities in the first place. 

This is a humbling place to find myself in. To know that I don't know. My ego bristles with being held in the trap of my not liking it. 


Saturday, March 02, 2024

FINISHED READING - Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford



In November 1944 a V2 hit the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths. One hundred and sixty eight people died. Fifteen of them were children, lives cut off from all the fascinating and tragic things the second half of the 21st Century would bring. Francis Spufford teaching at Goldsmiths College on his way to work, passed every day a plaque that marked the place and date that doodle bug fell to earth, and its obliterating consequences for all those lives, robbed of the unfolding of their lives.

Out of this single adopted tragedy he has created the entirely fictitious lives of five children who died on that November day. Inventing a life for them, ordinary lives with ocassional flashes of the extraordinary. Lives filled with significance and insignificance, joys and mistakes, moral incident and immoral ones, aspirational and thwarted dreams.

Through this authorial slight of hand he takes us on a multifaceted journey through the edited highlights, the significant peaks and troughs of their lives and the last half century we simultaneously journey through. Those moments, the ones with greatest emotional significance, frequently dashed with the stinging vinegar of regrets and remorse. They are all here, richly embellished, but different in their essential trajectories.

One character struggles all their life with the consequences of mental ill health. Another has success as a rock star only to fall back to earth as a teacher in a local comprehensive. Hiding her past life from everyone, including herself. Another is a bit of a wide boy, an ethically dubious chancer who swindles people, stomping over the lives of others on his way to a fleeting success, who loses it all in the end. There are infidelities, both real and imagined. Relationships turned sour and abusive as a partner becomes embroiled in the brutal politics of the far right. A families inability to help their bulemic daughter. One man struggles to make a success of his life, stymied again and again by the rapid advances of economic change.

These can only ever present you with small glimmers of the flavour of this wonderful book. Spufford's writing has a uniqueness of voice, deceptively light, but with great lyrical dexterity, a sense for the colourful detail and the incidental but significant landscape within which everything takes place. None of the characters are quite able to escape the circumstances of the place of their birth. 

As all these five people approach the end of their entirely fictitious lives, we see them reflecting on what has passed, with all the mixed feelings that a looming point of demise will inevitably summon. The usual recipe for life, is a meal of paths followed and not followed, actions with consequences, decisions and indecision, obstacles overcome and flows gone with. How often the memories of our past are so discoloured by our emotions at the time. Misremembering there significance entirely.

This book is founded upon the strength or otherwise of its origin story. All of it arising out of the conceit of a 'what if.' This allows Spufford to take us on an evocation of periods and events. Events that these five people travel through and become ciphers for, in a much larger comment on the way people have adjusted to the changes wrought, for good or ill, upon this country. The consequential damage to people's lives, the malformations of spirit in everyone who lived through them.

I couldn't quite find my way out of the nagging question, of what the framing of five tragic deaths with imagined future lives brought to the table. How different would the book be if the sentiment of its origin story was removed ? I wasn't convinced that it mattered enough. The significant power of the book would remain and stand up well in the telling.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8




QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Shaw - Navigating Mystery


'We need to move
from living with uncertainty
to navigating mystery.
It's just inelegant
to not at least fail beautifully.'

Martin Shaw.
Mythologist & Storyteller.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1998 - Abdul & Cleopatra by Jonathan Richman

Its easy to underestimate Jonathan Richman, he can be so whimsical and playfully to appear like a naif man/child. And certainly at the height of his popularity with Egyptian Reggae it did look like rock n roll went to the local play school. I saw him live at least a couple of times and it was live that you experienced how he could take over the hearts of an audience and say look lets play for a while. Yes, there is bucket loads of sentimentality, but it nevertheless has real heart, and this moves you. So you listen with delight to a song called I'm A little Dinosaur, and come away from a concert with all your cynicism momentarily removed. But then there are songs like Lonely Financial Zone which beautifully capture the soulessness of a financial district when everything is closed for the weekend. I guess what I'm saying is the guy had charm and the talent to back it up.

What I appreciate about Abdul & Cleopatra is how firmly tongue in cheek it is, the lyrics on occasion delightfully forced into their rhymes.

'Adbul's not seen Cleopatra, It's been almost now a year, And how I wonder where she's at-ra, As I wander through this world.'

This is classic Jonathan Richman, great sense of rock n roll at its most pure direct and punchy, allied to a silliness that is wonderful to hear unfold. 

'Well, Cleopatra take my patience and test it. Test it, Cleopatra take your time as you may. My time has been well spent. I dun cleaned up my tent. You'll like it when you see it someday.'


SHERINGHAM DIARY 105 - The Eternal Minute


Sometimes on social media you have to just double check yourself, when something does not remain as it was at the time of writing. I posted a film review recently in which ' a classic piece of 'show not tell' film making' got auto corrected to "shoe not tell". Which I imagine is cinema for foot fetshists and chiropodists, about unsightly 'onions' and 'chalices'.

24th February 2024


Tomorrow is a week since we set up Cottonwood Home as part of the craft offering at Seagulls & Samphire. And we had enough sales this Saturday to cover our basic monthly fee. It appears to be working. Early days obviously. This February Half Term was not great weather and it is usually a bit of a blip that then flatlines until Easter arrives. And Easter is not till the end of March. So let's wait and see. The fitting out went smoothly as you can see from the photos. There is a bit of refining and tweaking still to be done in some areas. But this was a good enough start.


Preparing and getting it all together did however prove utterly draining. It was the first full on week we've had since the shop closed. This present week has been one of energy recharge and recovery. Both of us developed muscle strains in our chest, that seemed an odd bit of synchronicity. We've been luxuriating in days off, doing nothing, finding pleasure in our own creativity, and coffee in a variety of local cafes.


25th February 2024
A bit of a bummer this week - our car (Barbara the Meriva ) suddenly developed a gear malfunction mid week. Hubby only just got it to the local garage in time. They haven't had a look at it as yet. But they've forewarned it could be either a quick two day job or up to a month before its fixed. So we are having to get re- accustomed to being carless. Walking in and out of town. Doing smaller shops and online food orders. All things we used to do when we first arrived in Upper Sheringham and were without a car. That was seven years ago this coming April !


All the things that having a car makes easier, suddenly develop a huge layer of impediment and complexity. Buying big or heavy things makes you have to use buses more. But buses around here are few and far between, to and from Upper Sheringham. You have to think quite strategically about bus timetables and making the best use of the time between your arrival and departure.  

27th February 2024


When is a minute not a minute. ie. not actually a minute in length? What is the longest minute you can ever experience?  Well, you know at the end of cycle in a washing machine, that last minute, the one that takes an absolute age. You stand there impatiently waiting to open the door, watching the 1 minute go on and on, till it eventually disappears with a click. How long was that minute? Well we have timed these, just as a piece of public information gathering. So using our Hotpoint machine as the test, in a forty minute wash, that final minute is actually a minute and a half. But on a thirty minute wash, that minute lasts the enormous length of twelve minutes. You read it right, twelve whole minutes! 

29th February 2024
Being carless reminded me today of the days in my upbringing in Halifax when the fishmonger would drive up the back terrace to sell off the back of his van. So much has been lost to our age of easy convenience. The consequence of which is that Upper Sheringham no longer has a shop or pub to service the needs of its locality. Though it would probably be one of the first things to make a return should our petro-economy collapse.

ITS JUST WRONG - ITS JUST WRONG - ITS JUST WRONG

The much uttered words of the week have been the above mantra, which is as far as our government can go to explain why Lee Anderson had to lose the party whip.  The fact that the Tory party has a deeply ingrained problem with Islamophobia cannot be mentioned. Somehow Islamophobia has been turned by some into a mild justified response, and not at all bad, not like the filthy antisemitism some Labour party members indulge in. Oh, and Mr Anderson, it is a noticeable sign of weakness if you cannot apologise or admit you've made a mistake. Feeble masculinity often chooses to masquerades itself as taking a firm principled stance over the corpse of their reputation.

Monday, February 26, 2024

QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Shaw - Dreaming


"I'm interested in dreaming.
I'm interested in the idea that Christianity
has forgotten its a dream, and
what I mean by that, 
is not the kind of dream
where you've eaten too much cheese,
not the kind of dream 
where your Mother turns into a sofa,
but the kind of dream
where you wake up, and you say -
'I have to change my life'.

Martin Shaw - Storyteller and Mythologist.

Friday, February 23, 2024

200 Words On - At The Heart Of Resistance



Whatever the political creed of authoritarian, they are no friend to democratic ideals, beyond the point of getting elected through them. The trickster nature of fascism, is all about the effective merchandising of a fantasy ideal.

Our civilisation is bewildered. We no longer have a lived sense for what drove the post war liberal consensus, a concept we are so easily prone to satirically deride. Our faith in it appears lost. We do still want to have faith in something, to have our faith renewed. What do we now put our faith in?

However, trust has been badly bruised through repeated disappointment. Putting our faith in anything, is easily sabotaged by cynicism. Cautiousness stymies our commitment. When faith has vanished, when we don't know what we are fighting for or don't want to fight for anything anymore. How can we resist?

Buddhism has no direct equivalent for faith, the nearest is sraddha which means - that which you rest your heart upon. To resist the inhumanity of political extremism, requires we reconnect with what we still rest our heart upon. Then to consider how best to resist, defend and fight for that. Our words cannot remain empty of motive and purpose.


THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 2010 - Wonderful Life by Hurts

This is one crackingly good song, surrounded by a cleanly orchestrated full body of synths and rhythms, saxophones, guitar and a impassive vocal. It's off beat tumbling back rhythm moves the song along on its positivist route. Whilst the rest of it exudes a weary European melancholic drone. Whilst he reminds his love object not to let go of the wonderfulness of life.


It's a shame that this never made sufficient impact in the UK charts at the time. Perhaps it referred back too much to a previous era of synth duos, to stand out as distinct twenty years later.  Hurts have gone on to have greater success in Europe than the UK. But nothing they've released seems quite to match the song quality and production glory of this debut single.

Ditto its video. When Hurts got picked up by RCA they completely re did the original video. It was all monumental Modernism and Mediterranean lifestyle with statuesque dancers galore. Whereas the original video looked like it was set and filmed in someone's basement living room. Starkly heightened black and white, exaggerated textures, the fuzzed edges to the film framing, all hiding a lot underneath its stylistic sheen. The background behind composed of carpet tiles and rolls of fibre insulation.

Then there are the two guys. One blank faced on the synth, the other expressionless on the microphone. Oh, and a female friend who they brought in just because they know she can dance. Dressed in a black lace off the shoulder dress. She stares out at nothing, and when called for to gesticulate, her limbs moving wildly in angles to the music. During one pause, you see her pulling down the bottom of her dress, to straighten the hemline. The posed gaucheness of this video really works, it said something quite distinct about Hurst as a group, a mixture of rough and smooth.. The second video version the record company, took elements of the first and threw money at them, but could never hope to capture or improve on. It had an honest rough arty edge, whilst the other was a conventionally stylish bit of slick fakery.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

200 WORDS ON - The Fascist



Increasing populism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism are red flags, warning of the decline of a democracy. A Fascist administration is slowly slipping into being a possibility.

Described as 'the politics of them & us' what Fascism brings to the table is an unbridled Nationalism. Often attempting to restore a nations pride through mythologising a period when the country was deemed to be great.

Fascism tends to emerge in countries already broken and on their knees. The Fascist leader arrives posing as a man of the people, come to save his country from its destitute state. Desperate people do desperate things, Where a bit of lite fascism might do us all a bit of good.

Fascist's arrive and take a wrecking ball to the countries democratic governance and culture. State persecution, media disinformation, social division, racism, misogyny, homophobia, a climate of fear is cultivated around the idea of enemies within, here dissent itself becomes traitorous, all become prevalent.

Fascists will never leave office quietly, they usually having to be removed by force or assassination.. All Fascist administrations triumph via one man's ego gratification and end in egregious tyranny. The toppling spirit of democratic freedom and renewal can takes quite a while to re-emerge.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

VIDEOS OF - River Stiffkey In Flood

 




Now, the River Stiffkey is for most of its length is narrow and slow flowing, it gently ambles its way to the sea. But these videos I took at Walsingham Abbey show it can be a bit of a demon when roused.

Friday, February 16, 2024

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 105 - Snowdrops in Walsingham


In the aftermath of seemingly endless assaults of storms and torrential rain, the rivers of England have protested by bursting their banks and spreading themselves far and wide across old flood plains, once thought moribund. Devasting homes and land to a point not seen since the deluges of biblical imagination.


And so it is, that even a small minnow like river such as the Stiffkey, that runs through Walsingham on its way to the sea marshes of Stiffkey itself, has transformed itself from a gentle and refined meandering into a surging swirl of taupe coloured mud.



Into this freakish swelling overwhelming moment, comes a more expected time of transformation, the blanketing of Walsingham Abbey's grounds with clump after clump of pure white snowdrops. And humankind of all ages and genders pay to wander through its archaic beauty. The first brightness, a glimmering at the end of winter,is now positively nigh.


It's a special time anyway, but this year the fresh water course that once brought monastics to build on this site, is swirling itself forcefully across the Abbey's grounds. Bringing an unknown drama to the starkly broken minimalism of window arches and buttress ruins, not perhaps seen for centuries. This was just one huge thrill of nature, thrusting and asserting its power to be manifesting in an unexpected form this time.