QUOTATION MARKS - Seeing What Is by Iain McGilchrist

'Water is distinct from ice,
but in the ice cube it is present:
not as a fly might be trapped there,
but in the very ice. It is the ice.

And yet when the ice cube is gone,
the water remains.
Although we see water in the ice,
we do so not because it is there separately,
to be seen behind or apart from the cube.

Body and soul, metaphor and sense,
myth and reality, the work of art and its meaning,
in fact the whole phenomenological world,
is just what it is and no more,
not one thing hiding another;
and yet the hard thing 
is the seemingly easy business,
just 'seeing what is'.

The reality is not behind the work of art:
to believe so would be. as Goethe put it,
like children going round the back of a mirror.
We see it in- through - the mirror.
Similarly, he says, we experience the universal
in or through, the particular,
the timeless in, or through,the temporal.'

Iain McGilchrist
taken from The Master & His Emissary
published by Yale University Press 2020

FAVE RAVE - Army of Lovers - Love is Blue

 Just discovered this recent gem of Army of Lovers on You Tube. Performing in an apparently very tiny TV Studio, the song Love is Blue. Quite apart from the usual suspects camping it up like there is no tomorrow, there is a man in an armchair so close to the stage one might be tempted to think he is part of the performance - featuring the man who enthusiastically nods and taps along in time to the beat. 

If you can bear to cringe and watch it, there is a bit at the end where they try to explain the meaning of the song, really badly. The song is undoubtedly catchy, but lyrically it makes no sense whatsoever, it is drivel that rhymes. But, oh, is this five star stuff.

FILM CLUB - Winter Light - 1963

TRILOGY SEASON
Ingmar Bergman's Faith Trilogy

Rev Tomas (Gunnar Bjornstrand) is not a well man. He has dutifully run his two rural parishes for years. But since his wife's death four years ago, his faith and determination to continue have deteriorated, as have numbers in his congregations. We meet Rev Tomas on a day when heavy with the flu, he is holding communion services, with a dead lifeless look in his eyes. Two parishioners, a disillusioned depressive fisherman Jonas Persson ( Max Von Sydow) and his wife Karin ( Gunnel Lindblom) approach Tomas for help with Jonas's suicidal feelings. Jonas returns later to talk alone with Tomas. Tomas proceeds to confess to him a litany of his own doubts in the existence of God, how he feels forsaken and why God's silence he finds so unbearable. Jonas leaves without saying a word, to be found dead later, having shot himself. 

Tomas is numb to any guilt he may feel about his role in Jonas's death. Marta (Ingrid Thulin) is a local schoolmistress and has been Tomas's live in lover. Marta is deeply in love with Tomas, even though this is not reciprocated. She has decided to devote her life to help and support him, despite the cutting rebuffs. Though an atheist, she finds a form of faith in serving Tomas. Whilst Tomas cruelly tells her exactly how repulsed he is by her body, her affections, and that he will never love her. She nevertheless accompanies him to inform Karin of Jonas's death. He lies to her, saying he was unable to change Jonas's intention to take his life. Then on to the church in the second parish, where no one turns up for the service bar the caretaker and the drunken organist. The latter tells Marta to get out before the dust and death of the villages gets to her. But instead she stays, desperately praying for divine help, as Tomas presents the communion service to ranks of empty pews.

Winter Light cranks up the religious angst on his previous film in the trilogy Through A Glass Darkly from 1962. Winter light, is a metaphor here. The light it emits, highlights contrasts, creates harsher edges accompanied by a penetrating deathly coldness. Though it brings a deceptive clarity to ones perceptions, it is essentially brutal and unfeeling in the pared back bleakness of its view of reality. Tomas, in the depths of his turbulent faithlessness, has lost all ability to be sensitive or empathise. He can only think of his own suffering. Everything he says causes further pain to anyone who loves him or comes to him for spiritual comfort. There are indications, even the decline in the congregations has its origins in the burnt out nature of Tomas's spiritual crisis. 

This is a thoroughly bleak film, showing you the emptying out of one man's spiritual mission and moral decline. Marta says to him, how he will 'hate himself to death'.Yet Tomas's punishment is to repeatedly every week, go though the motions of rituals and the uttering of beliefs, he no longer has any remaining feeling for. Martyring himself on the cold steely cross of his own loss of faith.

Following on after Bergman's Oscar win with Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light is shot through out with an austere palette of white outs and grey tones. The church interiors are sparse and unloved, with all their religious statuary damaged, dusty or worn away. There are frequent framings of parralel side heads, turned away from each other and from the camera. Visually, as well as psychologically, cut off in their own world of grief and suffering. Bergman's script does lay out his jaundiced view of religious faith, and does so with a trowel. Though this makes it all the more punchier, it is not subtle. All is corrupted in this particular parish. 

Tulin's monologue straight to camera speaking the letter Marta has written to Tomas, is a master class in the heartfelt portrayal of her character, so independently minded and yet not a free spirit emotionally. She is as much trapped here as Tomas. Continuing to hold out a forlorn hope that one day he will love her. In the same manner Tomas hopes, if he just carries on doing his religious duties, his faith in God will return. Bergman makes it patently clear neither of these things will ever occur. For they are both deluded in what they are placing their faith on. And so we see the immense tragedy at the core of this film made plain.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

   

FINISHED READING - A Carnival of Snackery

Anyone who has read, or heard David Sedaris on the radio, will recognise the tone of voice through out these diary extracts from 2003- 2020. Flippant, witty, acerbic and cutting, very humorous dismissals of his own and other people's foibles. This time it's polished into a story, but drawn from his day to day experience. You can see he is always on the look out for comic treasure. And boy does this guy travel promoting his books, doing public readings world wide. His air miles must be super impressive.

July 2, 2017

My favourite person at last night's signing was a fifty year old man who lives with his mother.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked

"Well," he said," I'm mentally ill. And that keeps me pretty busy."

As a book its brilliant bedtime reading. Short diary entries you can pick up and put down the moment slumber descends upon you. Confident you have no narrative thread to lose track of. Sedaris is frank to a fault, about a lot that happens during this period. The suicide of his sister Tiffany, the health and mental decline of his Dad, with whom he has an abrasive love / hate relationship. The touchy tone of his love for his husband Hugh, whose always trying to restrain or save Sedaris from the worst consequences of his character and humour.

May 6, 2013

A joke from last night's book signing.

A woman goes to her gynecologist, who settles her in and begins his exam, saying "You've got the biggest vagina I've ever seen in my life. You've got the biggest vagina I've ever seen in my life."

"You don't have to say it twice," the woman scolds."

And her doctor says, "I didn't."

Sedaris is out of sync with where the world is at. Hence his ability to lampoon it so precisely. An inveterate collector, not just of other people's trash from around his home in Sussex, but also, truly far from PC jokes he asks his audience for, strange phrases that are not self explanatory, such as the books title' a carnival of snackery', and the requests he gets at book signings, which he gleefully does his very worst with.

April 11,2013

"I want you to inscribe something shocking and offensive to my mother," said a nineteen- year-old at last night's book signing. He passed me a copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and after thinking it over for a moment, I picked up my pen. Dear Mary Lou, I wrote. Your son Jesse left teeth marks on my dick.

I handed it back and realised by the look on his face that by shocking and offensive he'd meant "lightly disturbing."

In short it's a delight to read from start to finish. Often laugh out loud, or convulsive guffaw inducing, so careful if you're reading it in a public space.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 98 - Near & Yet So Far

November has been truly the shittiest month in the shop. A combination of terrible and consistently wet stormy weather and the dire economic climate, creating a huge amount of uncertainty and reservation in the public about spending any money at all. We are already deep deep deep into recession, have no doubt.

If it wasn't clear enough before, it is now. We've made the right call in deciding to get out of High St retailing. And whilst that is true, we still have weeks to go before we hand the keys back. From our present point, all I can say is, its turning out to be an endurance test, a bit of a slog, at lot more emotionally challenging than we expected. I'm having to get accustomed to managing an increased amount of muscular knots of tension in my body. The like of which I haven't felt in quite some time.

We are living 'in between worlds' what Buddhism refers to as a bardo. These are places where what is to come is not yet here, whilst what has been, and still is here, has not yet fully gone. It can be quite painful living in the moment of a bardo, impatience and anxiety can arise. Impatience with what you want to see the back of, coupled with anxiety simply about what has not yet arrived, what will that be?,what will it be like? what will we have to face?

So the low hanging fruit of uncertainty is here, even whilst we have more than enough to do in the meantime, thank you. I had the feeling this week of keeping too many plates spinning. We have a garage that is, as yet, nowhere near ready for holding all the stock and storage we will need to run markets and online from. My workshop is such a tip I have to prise myself in there. We are making steady progress with photographing stock and getting it onto the website. The book keeping for the self assessment tax return at the end of January - well, I just can't face that. There is a clearance sale to organise and a possible craft fair in two weeks time. All taking place whilst we are still running the shop, doing half day shifts, to, frankly, make the tedium of it bearable. At some point the Christmas decorations have to go up. Plus keeping on top of our making of stock to sell. Buying materials etc. Understandably, our planning has been a tad improvisatory.

Selling online is a less forgiving environment, when it comes to making of items. Things have to be more standardised across ranges. A shop can accommodate slight inconsistencies, past variations in making, online cannot. Doing the photography for the website, has hence thrown up a few challenges, having to attend to consistency issues for online.

Moving towards the clearance sale has encouraged a focus on clearing out deadwood, cutting back to the basics. Once we started to think about what might go in our final clearance sale, its actually a very limited range of items. Primarily other makers stuff we are not going to be taking to the markets or online. 

We are already in conversations with our candle maker to make a bespoke range for us, and with our soap maker to revamp our packaging to create a simpler market style. A couple of places have indicated they'd like to feature some of our stock. There is a lot going on behind the scenes. As you can no doubt imagine we are both too tense and stressed out at present, to be looking forward to our future finishing date. That still seems far far away.

FINISHED READING - The Master & His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist

Iain McGilchrist started off wondering about the physical nature of our brains. Split, as they are, into two hemispheres with an inbulit asymmetry. This surely could not be an inconsiquential fluke of human evolution, there had to be a purpose in this. He began researching how this brain structure informs our functioning and world view. Many of our psychological struggles often hinging upon a sense of self as divided, a mental tug of war between competing hemispherical inclinations.

The divergent functioning of left and right hemispheres, is more complex and nuanced than pop psychology presents it - as left side nerdy and right side creative. Broadly speaking the two hemispheres hold different overall views and purpose, that at their best co-produce a third way forward. In this process there is cross referencing and interplay. 

The left hemisphere deals with facts and known things, with categorising, synthesising perceptions, feelings and the knowledge it receives. The right hemisphere meets and greets the world in a less pre-processed, pre-packaged way. It is, of necessity, open and receptive to new experiences and sensory information. Responding to intuitions or perceptions that perhaps lie on the fringes of the known, and even to what lies beyond it. The left posseses a narrow minded certainty, whilst the right holds a broader receptivity, a more flexible perspective and range of responses. The right meets life as it appears, the left as it has already been known.

Having come to his hypothesis of hemispherical world views as so diometrically opposite, McGilchrist observed that their interactions has a history of getting out of balance. Though usually any lurch towards the left is counter balanced by a subsequent lurch in bias towards the right. Today the left hemisphere appears to have become dominant, resulting in the denigration of anything from the right hemisphere that does not fall within its stringent rationalising criteria. 

The left hemisphere demands suggestive intuitions be made logical and explicit, or face exclusion. The right hemisphere is meant to act as a necessary check on the insensitivity and inflexibilty of the left hemisphere's authoritarian tendencies. A rigidity that encourages human beings to think of their own mind and body, as though they were a malfunctioning machine. And we wonder why we can become so alienated.

The Master and his Emissary is divided into two parts. The first part an exhaustive ( and exhausting! ) technically focused justification for his hemispherical hypothesis. To the lay reader, such as myself, that thoroughness proved testing. I do not see myself as a philosopher, or an expert in neurology. So I found myself floundering at times. Its a challenging read. Trying to comprehend what minute neurological or philosophical distinction about the hemispheres he was trying to make. 

In terms of my comprehension I acknowledge I have my limits. I tend towards being a ' just give me the general gist' type of person, not that great with minutiae or technical detail or abstruse language. But I'm also not one to be easily defeated either. I could tell it was cogently written, found a lot of it exciting to engage with, and consequently stuck with it. His musings on the musical origins of language and its relationship to right handedness, is one that particularly stood out for me. 

Some things to note about McGilchrist's writing style, is he draws on an impressively wide range of sources, both literary, historical, philosophical, psychological and scientific. He frequently goes off on digressions. These maybe interesting, but they are digressions nonetheless, which though often captivating, do often muddy the direction of the discourse. I ended up wishing he could be more concise as a writer.  

The emphasis changes in the second section, into investigating the influence of left and right brain hemispheres throughout human culture and history. If Part One struck me as quite left hemisphere, Part Two was decidedly more right hemisphere. Even at times resembling a freed animal let loose to excitedly ramble over a wide range of topics and territories. 

Even if you are a tad unconvinced by Mc Gilchrist's theory, there are provocative ideas a plenty here to prompt the question - then why might this be so? Why did our way of writing and reading reverse direction? Why did self portraits over centuries reverse the way they face from right to left, and the point of emanation of light source change direction accordingly? 

He proceeds through history examining Ancient to Classical civilisations. When he reaches The Renaissance, he makes his most convincing case for the flowering of the right hemisphere re-emergence, with the rediscovery of classical worlds, of perspective, the emergence of individuality, the cult of melancholic longing. 

Most of which gets trashed by the fundamentalist fervor of The Reformation that followed. McGilchrist paints a pityful picture of Luther, the catalyst of it all, ending up a truly disillusioned man. He simply wished for the Catholic Church he loved, to behave more ethically and authentically. In which he saw a meaningful role for rich imagery and metaphor in religious life. Yet his actions in challenging the Church, instead let loose a wave of puritanical iconoclasm. Stripping the altars of imagery, metaphorical or otherwise, of anything that they deemed inauthentic. It is in The Reformation one first sees how left hemisphere, literalistic rationales when allowed free rein, are ruthless in purging the world of anything unable to conform to it. Our lives being consequently impoverished.

If The Reformation was a shift towards religious literalism, what followed,The Enlightenment, was its secular twin. Religious supremacy sliding seamlessly into scientific supremacy. The infallibility of God substituted by the infallibility of Scientific Materialism. The emergence of Romanticism, presenting a right hemisphere counter cultural response to the sweeping left hemisphere revolutions that preceded it. 

This is then followed by the Industrial Revolution and the infallibility of economic progress. During which we have the Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris  Arts & Crafts and Aesthetic movements the sentimental last surge of Renaissance and Romantic impulses. Trying to regain something from the blood bath of the imagination that the left hemisphere has engaged in.

It's not until the 20th century era of Modernism you begin to cogently recognise, and feel familiar with, the world he is describing. An all pervasive and developing alienation of Self from Other. The increased incidence of the sense of self being divorced or distanced from the body it inhabits. Manifesting in increased problems with being, mental and otherwise, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, autism, anorexia, gender dysphoria, in Western 'developed' societies. Peoples well being prefaced by dislocation from a sense of place, identity and community that mass urban industrialisation required. All of this McGilchrist places at the feet of an out of control left hemisphere view of the world.

His final flurry is through the Modernist and Post Modern world of art, is used as an instructive parallel. Born of world wars, revolutions and the nuclear age, it radically and continually overturns the stability of tradition and cultural conventions. He confronts the dissonant cold hearted rationalism of it all, and makes a plea to see this for what it is, that this sort of constant upheaval destabilises a society's culture and ourselves. And we see the replacement of art with novelty, originality with something that is merely new, looking and feeling become the impassive analytical gaze, art that is solely about surface painterly effects, innovation adopting the form of constantly tearing up expectations and taboos. The beautiful soul of art being hollowed out.

With Post Modernism art adopts self reflexive naval gazing. Art becomes a game, one that has a code, that requires a decoder, interpretation by those in the know. You can't just look, enter in and understand, you have to research, interrogate and take the art apart, as though this art were an strange machine arrived from outer space. All of these things mirror the divorce from overt feeling that encapsulates the left hemisphere aesthetic.

Whether or not his hypothesis turns out to be true, as a metaphor it tells you a huge amount about why we are, where we are, in modern life. There is always a danger when you start exploring the nature of our split hemisphered brain, that the two sides become caricatures that turn the left hemisphere into - the dangerous gremlin and the right hemisphere into - the much abused angel. The pattern he describes of our culture shifting from one sided bias to another, may also be in response to context. In times of upheaval we tend to look for and cling to certainties, we wish the world to be more stable and literal. And then from stability we allow ourselves to dream more, it becomes more about improving the texture and quality of our existence. 

I came across McGilchrist via the many interviews and forums he's appeared on social media. He attracts a wide range of people who appreciate his ideas, its noticeable that he is most enthusiastically taken up, for their own purposes,by many conservative and right wing groups. His criticisms of Modernism and Post Modernism seeming to chime with their own view that society is broken because its failed to defend its culture and uphold traditions. Whilst McGilchrist is a quietly spoken man, with a nimble mind. He is a very skilled communicator and can quite subtly shift the emphasis when someone asks him a stupid question. He appears at pains to emphasise the provisional nature of his hypothesis. This is certainly a book that is an important corrective to the pernicious drift of our culture into intolerance and bogus certainty.

'In this book certainty has not been my aim. I am not so much worried by the aspects that remain unclear, as by those which appear to be clarified, since that almost certainly means a failure to see clearly.....It is the striving that enables us to achieve better understanding, but only as long as it is imbued with a tactful recognition of the limits to human understanding, The rest is hubris.'

Iain McGilchrist, taken from The Master & His Emissary
Published by Yale University Press, 2020. 

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

THE PAST IN RUINS - Binham Priory

Benedictine monasteries were commonly built in the centre of larger towns and cities. Living cheek by jowl with their surrounding, more secular, community. You could say this was a central part of their pastoral mission. In the situation of smaller Norfolk settlements such as Binham and Wymondham, they performed a secondary role as local parish church. 

Medieval Parish Churches and Monasteries were socially stratified spaces. In a Church, the Chancel was for the priest, choir and, at a push dependent on power and status, nobility, whilst the nave was for everyone else, from merchants to peasants. Similarly within a monastery, the Chancel was for educated choir monks, the Nave for uneducated lay brothers. In Binham Priory, the nave was held equally in the possession of the village and the monastery. Which explains why after the Dissolution, both at Wymondham and Binham, the nave was allowed to continue being used as the Parish Church. 

In this particular instance Binham Priory's past, is not entirely in ruins. The Nave remains intact, with arcades of dog tooth carved nave arches, clerestory and trifolium. A huge wall of carved stone, one of the glories of English architecture. Displays the transition from solid Norman Romanesque at its base, to the loftiness of Early English architectural elevations at its zenith.

In Norwich and Ely, you can see how former Benedictine monasteries, with a less fatal desecration of their physical and spiritual fabric, could transition relatively easily into being a fully fledged Cathedral. In Binham, with less power, money and population, it's transition was smaller in scale, more of an improvised patchwork repair. You get the feeling the nave of Binham Priory survived by the skin of its teeth, into becoming The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross.

What is left, besides the nave, of the rest of Binham Priory, are low walls, the bare shells of rooms and outlines of cloisters, chapter house, warming rooms, dormitory and refectory spaces. The most substantial remains are the monolithic pillars that once supported the tower, which in their half eaten away form, resemble sculpted ice lollies. Some of Binham's wider monastic ground plan, tantilisingly, is still not excavated. Many of the supportive produce and food processing areas, have yet to be investigated within the monastic boundary. 

What we see of the Priory Church today represents a herculean effort, over many generations of Binham locals, to salvage and preserve the nave - for a long long time after the Dissolution's representatives had left. The Kings Comissioners completed their required work of clearing out the monks, removing roofs and lead, taking out windows, removing ritual silver ware. What the people of the parish chose to do with the nave thereafter, was niether in their remit, nor their concern. Unless, of course, Henry 8th or Thomas Cromwell were to make it so. 

The locals proceeded to block up the windows and archways, take out the broken limbs of tracery. Insert windows into walls, and quickly bodge together a low replacement roof. Creating a functioning parish church for themselves, initially quite makeshift in appearance. Engravings and paintings from the 18th century, show you Binham Priory, pretty near to what you see now. Though perhaps slightly crumblier around its edges and overgrown with 'picturesque' ivy and buddleia.

Binham Priory, a secondary house of St Albans Abbey, was founded in 1091 by Peter de Valoines. William the Conqueror, as his uncle, gave over the land to him. The Priory received a further royal endowment from Henry 1st in 1104. The De Valoines seem to have remained the patrons and protectors of the Priory right up until the Dissolution in 1539. There was an early charter stipulating that Binham Priory should never contain less than eight choir monks. Presumably because any less would've been considered no longer viable as a religious institution.

The time between 1091 and 1539, is actually a salutary tale of medieval corrupt practices by a sequence of venal Abbots. The sort that forged documents, so they could not be removed from office, whilst their monks subsisted on bran and water drawn from drain pipes. They sold off the Priory silver, wasted money on endless litigation. Plus, the usual scandalous behaviour that often provided the subject matter to fill the borders of medieval illuminated manuscripts. The clerics that Chaucer so rudely parodied. 

Richard de Parco 1227-1244, is the only Abbot who appears to have been honourable and diligent in his role as spiritual leader to the Priory. However, persistent financial impropriety over centuries had, in the longer term. a huge consequence in diminishing patronage and monks. So by 1539 there were six monks left and an annual income that had declined to £140.

Inside Binham Priory there are a couple of significant objects to notice. These convey, both a sense of its communal continuity and necessary adaption to changed religious emphases.

There is a fine example of a Perpendicular style 15th century font. Portraying the Seven Sacrements, plus the Baptism of Christ, around its eight panels. That this survives in its original location, demonstrates how much the nave was both at the centre, and at the service, of the local population, well before the monasteries Dissolution.

The other object is a repurposing of the old medieval rood screen, after it was dismantled. Some of the remaining screen panels have been incorporated into a side pew. At some point those panels was painted white, and in gothic calligraphic letters religious verses were inscribed over the top. The seeming triumphe of religious language over religious imagery.  However, if you look closely, over time some of the surface paint has worn away and in places medieval faces and decorative guilding are now peeking out. The rich medieval world contained beneath the puritanical bold black text quotations from Cranmer's Bible of 1539. 

These artifacts encapsulate something of the essential nature of Binham Priory, salvaged and repaired, yet still bearing all of the scars of that past sacrilege, even as it proudly holds its head high in the present.

SHORT STORY - The Lineage of Wise Words

At first there was a moment that erupted into time, that became a feeling, an overwhelming surge of inspiration, that came forth in forceful words, the vehicle for eloquence in thought, squeezed persuasively into a sequence of sentences, creating a moving elevating oration, and the person from whom these wise words emerged was as surprised as everyone else was, at how well they came across, the people were awed by their perceptiveness, so when this new sage abruptly upt and left, it also left the people bereft and wanting for more, so they pursued the sage absolutely everywhere, they mobbed them, besieged their house, camped on their front lawn, their lives became no longer their own, they were not let alone day or night for months and months and months, being forced to give impromptu off the cuff speeches, until eventually this all became way too much for an ordinary human to bare, and so the sage quietly retired to a private attic room intent on bringing it all to an end, leaving a note on a side table in the entrance way written in large print capitals - NOW PERHAPS I'LL GET SOME PEACE !

- yet the people who'd pursued the sage, had listened carefully, their emotions were stirred, they'd been broken in their hearts, tears had been wept, an impression was left upon them of something immensely important having been said, yet few could put their finger precisely on what, it was more of a 'you had to be there' sort of thing, afterwards, those in possession of a better memory faculty could recall more content from the speech, so between them they compiled an agreed facsimile that passed for what they thought the basic essence of the sage's speech of wise words had been, they then dedicated themselves to keeping this alive in their memory, through passing on the teachings orally to new devotees they turned themselves into the repository and guardians of the spoken wisdom, for those who could recount the wise words became by a simple process of association - wise themselves - the people came to see them, to hear them speak, the people pleaded : 

- 'repeat for us once again, for we are forgetful of those neat aphorisms, that sum it all up, explain them please, so we might also understand with greater depth, and hold the words of wisdom within our hearts and minds, present them with bullet points if need be, a tick list, whatever will be easier to recollect, maybe a mnemonic, anything to help us feed our yearning to know, to enable recognition within to arise once again, the one so profound that it swept the dust from our souls, it cleansed, consoled, it healed us of our insignificance, our lack of purpose.'

-  it was discovered that this was not solely about the words, but the pauses, brief silences where inner peace could enter to purify the hearts of the people, so embedded in their tawdry guilt, their dirtily greased and obscured perceptions, they were unable to see any other way out, except for when they heard the wise words fluently spoken, and The Retainers of Wisdom were more than willing to respond 

- 'if you cross my palm with silver I will gladly tell you' 

- and such was the demand to hear them simply speak the words, not sotto voce, but bold and clear, out loud, The Retainers of Wisdom became immensely rich, eventually public demand did outstrip the ability of even The Retainers of Wisdom to meet it, even as the pressure mounted they felt a reluctance, none of them wished to give away their exclusive rights - to the profit of a prophet to utter the wise words, until the inevitable day arrived when one of their number rebelled, broke rank and took pity on the people, and said

 - look I'll write it down for you.

- and the people breathed a collective sigh of relief, having had enough of being continually fleeced, whilst confessing shamefaced, that they could not read, so The Retainers of Wisdom, trying their best not to be seen smirking or being patronising, nodded knowingly and seized this opportunity, they set up the schools and took on the task of being the teachers of reading, for a modest tuition fee, only then, once there was a substantial ready made market for books, did they publish an authorised version, a compendium of the sage's wise words, bound in expensive leather, gold tooling and illuminated velum within, for nothing was too lavish for the words of wisdom, however, though everyone was now able to read it, the people were so poor, few could afford to actually buy the book, however treasurable, they'd have to save up, and that could take quite a while, with a gap in the market opening up wide, cheaper bootlegged copies began appearing on the black market to fill it, and so, afraid their lucrative monopoly on the printed word was quickly slipping from their grasp, The Retainers of Wisdom altered tack, ruthlessly undercutting the bootleggers by producing their own cheaper abridged paperback version, with a tacky embossed and foiled cover.

-and yet, once everyone was able to read the wise words for themselves, things fast began to shift and change, and not for the better, but far worse, to deteriorate the very truth of the matter, the wise words themselves, these became the subject of textual analysis and revision, a process through which they became tainted and strangely falsified, elements of doubt were placed, like demon seeds, into the very grammar and syntax of the wise words, that questioned their veracity, their validity, were these exactly what the sage of the wise words had said? how could anyone know for certain these were the sage's authentic words? what if there were later insertions, made up bits? and if the wise words were not authentic did that mean, despite what they felt about them, they were not true? further emboldened they took to challenging the need for The Retainers of Wisdom themselves, as an institution, for it was now centuries, millennia, since the sage of the wise words had martyred themselves, by taking their own life, and things, well they were so different now, and couldn't you find it all for free somewhere on the Internet anyway? the original speaker of the wise words, well, if they were so wise, why did they top themselves, did they even historically exist? what if they were just a phantom stooge, a front, a creation of the illuminating elites, one big millenia long con to preserve the position and status of The Retainers of Wisdom, with all the extraordinary power and wealth they represented, the wise words had been saved for posterity. not to enlighten, but solely to keep the people subservient and needy, to enslave them, the people remarked:-

- 'may be we no longer need wise words handed down to us from above, can we not think for ourselves now? each of us, could we not find our own wisdom? hold to our own truth? we don't need to belong to anything, what use to us is an elitist heirarchy? the sage was an ordinary person just like us, so having grown beyond all of that dependency upon their wise words, can we not now all be spiritual in our own individual unique way?'

- and greatly enthused they organised zoom sessions. posted video lectures on social media, garnered followers, subscribers, hosted there own patroen page, everyone could truly be their own Retainer of Wisdom - though quite rapidly the situation descended into a vitriolic and poisonous factionalism, the distinct cults that emerged, frequently clashed. these formed themselves into roughly two broad strands - the ILP's - inflexible literalist puritans - on the one hand and the CLC's - callous libertarian crusaders - on the other, both of them wishing to appear champions of free speech for everyone, but really only in it for themselves, so only they could be heard above all others, everyone else was to be closed down, roasted in public forums, their arguments destroyed, their integrity defamed through the medium of short expletive ridden social media comments, conjuring up an authoritarian climate online of intimidation and threat, that was no longer about discovering a deeper resonance, meaning, intent or relevance in the wise words themselves, but primarily focused on maintaining the ardent certainty of their followers, what the cults themselves represented, in a 'you're either for us or against us' battle  for allegiance.

 -gradually reinterpretations of the wise words themselves, perverted and twisted what the truth of them was, putting them to serve a view of the world that was totally anathema to their true spirit. And whether these were Defamers or Defenders of the Wise Words both resorted to actions that were frankly, dictatorial and oppressive, that brooked no free thinking opposition, everyone had to toe the authorised line or face being terminated with extreme silence.

- and so in thought word and deed the populous picked up their faith battered souls and drifted away from the wise words, letting them go, abandoning all overt public devotion to them, the books of wise words were openly burned in the street, the websites were hacked, all proselytising frozen, the people became disillusioned and bellowed:

- 'we must live free of these wise words, for everyone who espouses them now are total cunts - Completely Unprincipled Nepotistic Two-Faced Swindlers - we'd rather wallow in abject despair than have a bogus hope thrust down our throats unwillingly. If we must vomit, let us spew it upon the sage's gravestone, for it is they who lead us all astray for far too long.'

- this reached a shamefully dark place, a dread-filled nadir, where everyone was compelled to keep their faith hidden, their heads down, until the moment when one person finally cracked, ceasing to care what would happen to them, chose to emerge from the crowd, to stand up, to speak out, and as they gave voice to their thoughts in honest, plain and unembellished language, they found themselves transfixing the soul of the entire world.

written by Stephen Lumb

November 2023

QUOTATION MARKS - Clarity by Iain McGilchrist

The illusion that, if we can see something clearly, 

we see it as it really is, is hugely seductive.

Ruskin, in Modern Painters, 

makes the point that clarity 

is bought at the price of limitation.

' We never see anything clearly.....
What we call seeing a thing clearly, 

is only seeing enough of it to make out what it is; 

this point of intelligibility varying in distance 

for different  magnitudes and kinds of things...' 

He gives the example of an open book 

and an embroidered handkerchief on a lawn.
Viewed from a distance of a quarter of a mile, 

they are indistinguishable; from closer, 

we can see which is which, 

but not read the book 

or trace the embroidery on the handkerchief; 

as we go nearer, 

we "can now read the text 

and trace the embroidery, 

but cannot see the fibres of the paper, 

nor the threads'....and so on ad infinitum.

At which point do we see it clearly?...

Clarity, it seems, describes 

not a degree of perception, 

but a type of knowledge. 

To know something clearly 

is to know it partially only, 

and to know it, 

rather than to experience it, 

in a certain way.'

Taken from The Master & His Emissary
by Iain McGilchrist, 

Published by Yale University Press 2020

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 97 - In The Aftermath

I appeared to have been alright, right up until the point where we went public with our decision to shut the shop. From then on it has felt a struggle to stay emotionally and constructively engaged. I have found myself increasingly tense physically. The length and quality of my sleep noticeably shortening. All of this not helped by the first week of November being truly atrocious sales wise in the shop. Then the stormy weather did not help. Far too many external storms matched my internal ones. The uncertainty has been grim. Uncomfortable resonances with past experiences of closing a business re-emerged too.

Tuesday 7th November

I had a nightmare last night. One that has a familiar cast to it. In it I am busily involved in a perfectly normal dream story line, one I can never recall afterward, then these dark shadow like figures sneak in from the sidelines, to take over the dream and move in to take over me. 

It's never sure to me whether that was something external invading my dream space or was it an internal mapping out of a fear. I couldn't get back to sleep straightaway. There was still some sort of emotional connection with the nightmare going on. When I got up later, I was shaken and out of sorts. There was an emotion hanging around waiting to be recognised, attached to an idea, that something stable and familiar was about to be snatched away. The shop, my life, who knows?

Wednesday 8th November

Today was a full, but often fraught day. I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen. The house has taken such a back seat in our priorities these last few months, it became a filthy hovel. So recently we've spent time tidying up and sorting out. Because dirt and squalor are never passive companions, but reflect our mental states back on us. Personal neglect goes viral.

I'm on the afternoon shift in the shop. It was planned to collectively take down the summer bunting and put up the winter lights in the courtyard. All the Courtyard Christmas decorations are kept in a loft in one of the shops. So we got everything down only to discover there were no lights. The cafe found one set. But there were two others missing. The search went on and on. No one quite knowing where they were. It turned out they were in the hairdressers. By the time they were found and put up, a job that should have taken about an hour, had absorbed over three. Truly narked by the time I went home. Which I think was indicative of my mental states at present. I'm narked about the nature of reality.

Friday 10th November

We thought our initial notice we put up in the shop was, perhaps, a bit too focused on finality, the closure of the shop. It didn't sufficiently highlight the things we are moving forward with. We corrected that today, with a poster that reframes the decision to close the shop within a necessary change of focus to craft markets and our website. That felt truer to the spirit of it. And whilst there is a negative story to be told about the difficulty of running a small independent shop in a time of economic meltdown. About something coming to an end. Well, maybe that narrative has had more than enough airing from me. It's not the whole truth.

Saturday 11th November

Hubby is away visiting family this weekend, so I have the house entirely to myself for three days. And a full day ahead in the shop looms. Not particularly looking forward to that. The Thursford Christmas Show started this week and the North Norfolk Railway its Light Express trips. And we have had matinee goers stopping off in town. But like everything it's taken down a key or two on previous years. For who has the money?

Today in the shop was an OK day. Felt worth going in for. Watched Strictly - Layton's Argentine Tango was truly knock out. Then watched A Matter if Life & Death on I Player. Liked it a bit more on a second viewing. The inherent contrivance of its mise en scene, rankled less. I could enjoy the ambiguity of what exactly we were watching. Questions it never fully answers as a film, which I guess, makes this one of its enduring qualities.

Sunday 12th November 

I tend to be more unsettled in my sleep when Hubby is away. Hence, my being up and at 2am. My upper chest feeling really taut and stressed. Not going to do much today, bar try to chill out and relax. Just so long as that intention doesn't become another bullet point on a task list. 

Monday 13th November
Well the shit show that is this government just threw whole lot more fuel on the fire. Yes, Sue Ellen has been sacked, but who will The Wee Sunak replace her with? There is also the not too delightful prospect of Braverman Unleashed, spouting even more divisive bonkers vitriol. But if this accelerates the collapse of this government, may be that would all be the price to pay for it. Don't rejoice too much, for this could get really dirty real soon.

A HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK - Strictly Come Dancing

There have been a lot of good dancers this year, a pretty high level has been achieved across the board. However, really top 'Oh My God' moments have been noticeably absent. Until this week. Layton Williams, though not a ballroom dancer, is basically a trained professional. Everything comes with such a degree of ease and stylishness. He is a fabulous performer, really talented. But even with all that polished show biz pazzazz he's failed to knock you side ways. Until this week. The week he and Nikita Kuzmin did an Argentine Tango, which was just so superb it literally blew my mind.

GIVE US A SIGN MASTER

SHORT STORY - And So I Float

Being, it is nothing. Its an all encompassing feeling, the container for emptiness, above, beneath and within. So I can successfully suspend myself in such deep and murky water, and feel entirely at home. However, though I float in this expansive pool of water, I'm still rippled like a snake with emotions and sparks of indecision. Am I going to go all the way with this, or am I simply allowing myself to drift for a while, like leaf fall, hitherd and thithered by random instructive breezes? Looking for some sort of egregious sympathy.

Here we are then, rocking, face down, icy cold. The body positioned as though in the slowest of last throws of mortality. Yeah -, 'as though' - not yet - 'as was', or 'as intended.' Somewhere, between casting myself in and the just about buoyant, the resolve became drenched, weighed down by its own extraneous clothing mostly. Here I meander amongst the gentler undulations of my form and thought. No longer sure, exactly what I was meant to be carrying out. Why I've abandoned myself simply to floating.

Its an accidental impression of a human sized waterboatman I make. A sodden island, isolated in the centre of a mere, fed by the upward swirl of an underground stream. A lump of chilled white flesh, with clothes wrinkling and warping ghost like, around me. 

Why am I here? Oh, but that would be to start recounting a tale, already far far too long. No, really, I can't be arsed. Other than, I am a container for mulled resignation. That must be sufficient. Don't ask any more from me, it doesn't help cheer the draught of the mood. I'm passed being 'talked out' of any of this. Even though this now resembles an increasingly redundant gesture. Who is there left to care, eh?

Seemingly I still do. Care, that is. For I was meant to be lancing the boil of all the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks, with this conclusive dramatic finale. But haven't, of course. This floating feels too passive, so altogether pathetic. As time progresses, limbs, dangling so freely begin to hurt. Losing the sensation in hands and feet. Neck and blue veins stiffening. Thoughts began to slur and slip in and out of clarity. Appearing to open up my imagination, like a heart valve, to let the dream like reveries enter in. As though I'd never done any of this? A ship docking myself into some gothic harbour, overseen by the long shadows of skeletal ruins.

Just when I was more reconciled to totally abandoning myself to fate, there are thumping hands grappling for purchase on my body. Clamped around my extremities, lifting me up. Slipping a hammock around me, which with a roar of petrol exhaust and cascading water heaves me up. Hovering and twirling in the air, dribbling waterdrops, all around me. Gutteral shouts into the air - 'Got him'. They've come to save me, from my self, from procrastinating over my demise. Well, this sorts that out for a while, I guess. The hoist swings me over to dry land, face down on the grassy bank. Where the body, strangely does not stir. They stand around it, looking blank and pityful. As do I, I see myself as they do. as I am.

Something isn't right. I hear them chuntering between themselves - another poor bugger - second in as many weeks - looks like he's been floating here all night. Really! That long? Manhandled, then roughly plonked on a stretcher. The advancing noise of a long zip being pulled up from my feet, then over my face. Locked in. They think I'm dead, they actually think I"m dead! -  I'm alive - No - No - No - why can't they hear me?  I left it much too late, once again?  I am lost, in the many senses of that word. Who... what... where am I going to float too now?

Written by Stephen Lumb
October -November 2023

QUOTATION MARKS - The Truth Process by Iain McGilchrist

To speak of truth sounds too grand,

too filled with the promise of certainty 

and we are rightly suspicious of it.

But truth will not go away that easily.

The statement that 

'there is no such thing as truth'
is itself a truth statement,

and implies that it is truer than its opposite,

the statement that 'truth exists'.

If we had no concept of truth, 

we could not state anything at all,

and it would even be pointless to act.

There would be no purpose, for example,

in seeking the advice of doctors,

since there would be no point

in having their opinion,

and no basis for their view that

one treatment was better than another.

None of us actually lives as though

there were no truth.

Our problem is more with the notion

of a single, unchanging truth.'

Taken from The Master & His Emissary

by Iain McGilchrist.

Published by Yale University Press 2010.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Mount Grace Priory

You approach the ruins of Mount Grace Priory via a quick turn off the motorway (the former medieval York to Durham road), up the same narrow track you would have travelled in the 15th century. Yet intrusions from the modern world make it hard today to imagine the priory as it was originally, in a secluded position. Because, today, its calm serenity is constantly accompanied by the distant rumble of the A170, and on my visit, the heavy duty whine of a loud lawn strimmer fizzing in your ears.

These ruins, nevertheless, are truly unique. The best remaining example of a Carthusian monastery left in the UK. Only nine were founded, so a Carthusian Charterhouse was a rare style of monasticism, even in the time when they were built. 

Mount Grace's layout is typical of a Carthusian monastery. A substantial high boundary wall surrounding a large Great Cloister. With its trapezoid courtyard,  which once had a semi enclosed walkway. The walls pierced by a succession of doorways and side hatches. Through these hatches plates of food were once delivered to monks living their largely solitary life. Behind this wall was a small dwelling with two floors. The ground floor divided into three, a bedroom, a study and oratory, and a living area to sit or eat in. Upstairs a workshop, where a monk might spin wool, weave cloth, make furniture or carve tools for general use in the monastery. Surrounding this dwelling a short covered glazed walkway that over looked an L shaped garden, producing herbs for cooking, medicine, and flowers to decorate the church.

At its height Mount Grace could house twenty five monks and lay novitiates. All purposefully inhabiting semi isolated lives. Most of their waking day spent alone in devotional ritual, prayer or study, interspersed with work periods. Mattins and Vespers the only daily communal services in the church. More collective practice would take place on a Sunday. Including a regular meeting in the Chapter House, to discuss theology, practical day to day issues, raising any difficulties they'd encountered, or disciplinary measures required.

These 'cells' were supplied with their own spring water taps and seperate latrine, though their furnishings were sparse. Nothing superfluous was permitted. In these 'cells' you were alone with yourself, in mind and body, your daily life consistently and constantly dedicated to the fullest blossoming possible of religious devotional practice.

The Carthusian style of extreme monasticism, began to flourish rapidly in the aftermath of the existential crisis that consumed Europe, in the decimating famines and plagues of the 14th century. Of the nine Carthusian Charterhouses in the UK, seven were founded at this time. Extreme times calling for extreme spiritual measures in response. It also marked a return to the spirit of The Desert Fathers, out of whose example Christian Monasticism in Europe had originally emerged in the first place.

So in a Charterhouse only your most basic of needs are met. Something few peasents in medieval England could not so easily guarantee. But the stability with which your daily needs were met, gave you the liberty to focus more diligently upon your spiritual endeavours. Though living as a hermit, with long periods of solitary devotion and little human intimacy or conversation, was undoubtedly an immense strain on a monks emotional and psychological well being. The unspoken down side of spiritual depletion was always a possibility. Not many, even today, could take this on, to meet the sort of challenges that arose.

Mount Grace Priory was founded in 1398 under the auspices of Thomas de Holand, Richard 2nd's nephew. At this time monasteries needed patrons, and more importantly royal endowments. Despite all their efforts to be self sufficient, they frequently required outside finance in order to be viable, and to be able to develop the fabric of the monastery.

The cellular cloister layout was initially built of wood. So gradual was its replacement with stone, that the final cells weren't completed til the 16th century, shortly before its dissolution. Similarly the structure of a simple rectangular Chapel, developed a Chancel, Nave and transepts over a hundred year period. Everything in a Carthusian monastery appears to have been executed in a measured and unhurried manner.

When we reach the turbulent reign of Henry 8th, he chose to make the Carthusian Order an example, of what happens to those who refuse to submit to his will, as the newly created spiritual leader of the church. The Prior and monks of the London Carthusian Charterhouse were tortured and executed, and subsequently became Catholic martyrs. By the time we first hear of Mount Grace, the prior has consulted widely over what others thought he should do, and hence quickly submits to the King's will. But this proved to be only the first stage, in what turned out to be the largest money and land grab ever to take place on English soil.

The first monastic dissolutions in 1536 were focused on small foundations with an annual income of under £200. Mount Grace, with an income of £323, was hence spared. A huge revolt kicked off in the North - The Pilgrimage of Grace. This thrust the realm potentially into chaos. The rebels were tricked by Henry 8th into believing he would respond positively to their demands. Instead he commanded the pursuit and execution of all known rebels, and the widespread burning to the ground of homes and villages in the North, anyone thought to have been sympathetic. 

Mount Grace managed, by keeping its head down, to escape this vengeful purge of perceived rebels. But the King's commissioners were to arrive there, nonetheless, in December 1539. They closed it down, pensioning off the prior, 16 monks, 3 novices and 5 lay brothers who remained. Mount Grace, stripped of its roofs and ritual possessions, was to face a slow decay in its hard won fabric.

The old Priory guest house, became for a time part of a tenanted farm. Then later on it was converted into a small Manor house. Once Sir Lowthian Bell obtained the house and Priory estate, he began a sensitive exploration and rebuilding of both ruins. An enthusiast for the Arts & Crafts movement, with Phillip Webb and William Morris as close friends, he brought that sensibility to his redevelopment of the house. The remarkable Bell family owned the house until 1944, when it was used as a way to pay off death duties. Eventually handed over to the National Trust, who are largely responsible for the excavation and current state of preservation, of both the house and ruin we see today. Though the site is now managed by English Heritage.