MY OWN WALKING - April Journal 2025

I recently re-read a journal post -  Checking In With My Faith & Doubts. 

A couple of sentences stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

When you experience a sore thumb you have to ask why is this so bloody sore?

I'm still looking for experiential affirmation through my meditation.
I don't appear to be able to get beyond this being a bugbear. 

The more I read this, the more I saw this as an expression of yearning, for something that I really want, that I'm simultaneously trying to convince myself that I shouldn't want. A deeper experience of the transcendental. Because wanting anything in Buddhism is a craving, it's seen as problematic, spiritually speaking. And this struck me as particularly barmy. Yet even as I write this,I see myself forming a cage around this notion and branding it an 'unhelpful view'. And before I know it surprise, surprise, I'm manifesting some negativity towards being a Buddhist. I'm simply tired of this prejudicial labeling of experience, but that isn't really what this is all about. I can sense an evasiveness here, in fact I must confess this is my umpteenth attempt to write about this. What I was writing, or the way I was choosing to write about it, really wasn't quite nailing it. And this was getting to be quite frustrating as a process of expression.

Then I recently watched, quite a few times actually, an interview with Tyler Staton, a Pastor from Portland, Oregon, USA,on Seen & Unseen's You Tube channel. I've found him a quietly impressive person, who embodied an appealing clear headed spirit. What he talked about was the need for an experiential spirituality, and this has set off bells of recognition within me. There was one paragraph in particular I found personally relevant. It appeared to sum up where I have been and where I am 

'for me it was a journey of quiet crisis, basically of getting a certain distance into the spiritual life and looking at the deepest wounds in my own life and saying you know there's patterns in my character and way of being that it seems like aren't missing one more bible study.....its not information, intellectual information I'm missing, its something deeper than that, that needs to be unwound within me, and also....I just began to see what I was experiencing wasn't matching what I was reading on the pages of scripture in ways that were increasingly troubling to me.....what am I missing, that was happening in the lives of the early church, because I want that...I want to experience their life. How do I begin to walk into that ? And that hunger set me on a journey.'

Though spoken from his devout Christian perspective, I found this also mirrored to an extent my own experience within Buddhism. I've also come to realise that whatever is absent from my spiritual life will not be found within the pages of a book, however intently I may study them. Something much more experiential is required here. But what the hell would that be?  Since having asked that question I have been scrabbling around trying to find a way to best explore and write about this. How would you translate this 'experiential spirituality' into a Buddhist perspective? Intuition suggested that this may relate to different viewpoints between a 'developmental' and an 'imminent' view on the purpose of spiritual practice and its relationship with Enlightenment. Though some would say this is inherently a false unhelpful dichotomy.

The 'developmental' could probably be described as representing the traditional Buddhist approach. You learn the meditation practices, the devotional rituals, refine your ethics and study the Buddhist Sutras. These develop your awareness, spiritual qualities and states of consciousness that will move you inexorably over time, and often lifetimes, towards the state of Enlightenment. Sometimes couched as The Spiral Path as if this should be seen as a linear form of progression upward, like climbing a spiral staircase.  

The 'imminent' appears in its most developed form in later Buddhism. It still utilises all the practices and study of the tradition,but doesn't envisage the progress to Enlightenment as linear or upwardly progressing. It believes Enlightenment is already here, present in us right now, but we are not yet fully awake to it. Terms like Buddha Nature and Buddhahood begin to be used to describe this imminent innate view of Enlightenment, and practice as an unfolding of our awareness of this in the here and now.

Into this I want to throw a third viewpoint that of Dogen the 13th century Japanese co-founder of Soto Zen. His view takes 'imminence' and gives it a profound philosophical shift in emphasis. He had a doubt about the whole 'imminent' approach, and it is one that those critical towards it use to this day. If Enlightenment is innate, what is the purpose of doing any spiritual practice ? Why practice anything at all, meditation, ethics or study, if you already have the awakened state within you?  Doesn't this fly in the face of the Buddha's traditional teaching?

Dogen came up with a solution, one that is very particular to him. That practice and realisation, are not two separate things, they are not even two things intrinsically entwined, but manifestations of the same thing - Enlightenment. For Dogen practice is an outward expression of the innate Enlightened state. He creates a compound term 'practice-realisation' to describe how every moment of practice is an 'actualisation of the fundamental point'. He radically develops this concept further so that everything is in a state of 'practice-realisation' and to sit in contemplation helps unfold this awareness,  allows you to experience ordinary life on a much deeper level. Now, this is what I believe 'experiential spirituality' means from a Buddhist perspective.

Dogen went to China to study Chan, which is the origin of Japanese Zen. Now Chan was itself a cultural cross fertilization between Buddhism and Taoism. A concept like Buddha Nature is very similar in its relationship between practice and realisation, to the idea of the Tao, as this innate and indistinguishable force present in life and nature. Dogen brings the latest development of Chan back to Japan, and through this further integrates it with a sympathetic relationship toward the forces of nature present in Japanese Shinto. Now a convincing case could be made that these insertions took Zen too far away from the traditions of early Buddhism, to remain in essence Buddhist. It certainly is less grounded in the core Sutra teachings. I would say it is still Buddhist in spirit, but not the orthodox letter of it. and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm not too concerned about whether Dogen is orthodox or not. Does it feel a true or helpful perspective? Yeah, it does to me.

Then I read this appreciation of Dogen's approach by Norman Fischer that says it all really about what 'experiential spirituality' can be in all its intimacy.

'Dogen insisted that we all have Buddha Nature - that is we are already enlightened, we just don't know it. And because we don't know it, we live in a way that is destructive and that cuts us off from true intimacy....Dogen believed that we are not appreciating what life actually is..and then living it fully in every moment...step inside your life and let go all conceptual frameworks that alienate you from yourself, and from each other. Just enter life completely in this very moment. feel the awesome presence of what you can hear, see, smell, taste and touch right now. Become aware of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams that flood awareness without getting hooked on them. Feel how, right now, human experience is truly awesome, and don't look for something to complete what is already complete. But most often, we don't believe that everything we need is right here, right now. We are always looking for something more than what is here - something that is missing.'

Yeah, tell me about it Norm.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

If we doubt the walking of the mountains,
we also do not yet know our own walking.
It is not that we do not have our own walking,
but we do not yet know
and have not yet clarified our own walking.

When we know our own walking,
then we will surely also know
the walking of the Blue Mountains.
If there were an end to the walking,
the Buddha-Dharma could not reach the present day.

Taken from Dogen's Mountains & Rivers Sutra

Translated by Cross & Nishijima

FAVE RAVE - Tyler Staton on Seen & Unseen's Re-Enchanting

I've been a regular watcher of Seen & Unseen's Re-Enchanting podcast on You Tube for a couple of years now. Though undoubtedly resolutely Christian it has guests from all forms of life, not all of them Christian, many are non denominational or atheists. The conversations are often really stimulating and ask cogent questions about how to re-enchant our dismal secular world view.

This weeks conversation with Tyler Staton, a Pastor from Portland USA, was one of the best of the series. He is just quite an impressive speaking individual, well informed and clear. For me, some of what he is talking about here resonated and sounded like music to my ears. A lot of it easily  transferable to Buddhism. Obviously he couches it in Christian terms of reference, but there are truths spoken here, universally applicable to spiritual lives of practice whatever the form.

 

CHURCH LARKING - Stiffkey Parish Church

The double dedication to both St John the Baptist & St Mary, is a legacy of there once being two churches in Stiffkey's churchyard. St Mary's being de-consecrated in 1563. This strikes me in itself as remarkable, that a tiny village like Stiffkey once thought itself able to support two benefices. The remaining church is a very self effacing building. Small in stature, and not that architecturally notable. 

The exterior is largely classic flush flintwork with stone flushwork. The church is predominantly 15th century architecture, though the tower and chancel are thought to be the earliest part of the church surviving. The tower has a slender square profile with an octagonal staircase on one side. A similar octagonal abutting staircase acts as a type of counterbalance on one external edge of the nave. Quite what function this staircase had is not visible internally, but it may have been to provide access to a rood loft. 

The Chancel strikes me as being quite petite in relation to its longer and distinctly loftier nave. This may reflect its earlier date of construction. It also is the only part of the building not executed in flint, but cement rendered, which may be hiding a multitude of constructional sins of repair, or was simply a cost effective restoration when executed in 1848. The entirety of the external flushwork is devoted to its main porch. The relationship between the main porch, the octagonal staircase and the tower does strike a clumsy and adhock cluster. There is much here that reflects the poor and humble nature of its medieval village setting.

The pronounced verticality of the three perpendicular windows either side of the nave, strike one as dramatic when viewed externally. One expected something equal to that drama internally. And though they can bring a lovely quality of light to the interior of the church it has nothing of note to enhance the beauty of. The interior of St John's unfortunately has a particularly dreary looking architectural aspect. No clerestory, no side aisles, no pillars or arches, just its clear pattern glazed windows majestically sweeping upwards to a rather dull and perfunctory wooden roof. I searched hard to find some hidden detail that was worthy of being highlighted. The chancel has some rather finely executed Victorian stained glass. The corbels on the chancel arch are quite distinctive. There is a strange recess behind the pulpit. Hard to say what that once originally contained, a saints shrine, a window or a blocked up door.

The church was built right next to The Old Hall, which in its medieval hay day must have been very impressive. Though there was obviously never much patronage coming from the Bacon family into the church fabric. Humble churches can have their own charm and be characterful. Unfortunately St John's looks like a church that has never been much loved, or found patronage from people with money

SCREEN SHOT - Queer

Queer the novella was William S.Burroughs second book, carrying the same frank realism that his debut Junkie had featured, but this time focusing on the expat American gay scene in New Mexico. Though written in 1952 his publisher at the time refused to publish it, because of the explicit homosexuality. It was finally published in 1985 when Burroughs had now reached literary legend status. Junkie and Queer are impossible to not see as semi-autobiographical in most of their scenarios. Written before Burrough's began his famous experimental cut up technique, Queer, the book, lays out the territory of his future trademark the laconic self lacerating mode of writing, sending up how lost an American exiled abroad can be. 

William Lee (Daniel Craig) is living in Mexico City, frequenting the many gay bars, and having casual unsatisfactory sex when he can get it. The city is full of draft dodgers, ex GI's and gay men escaping persecution or prosecution. For this one brief moment this district has established its own vibrant queer culture, that many men bath in and relax, .Lee is a gauchely awkward individual and lacks confidence in how to operate in this milieu. He views Eugene (Drew Starkey) from afar and fantasises about a relationship with him. Eugene himself is confusing to read, giving off mixed signals.. But slowly a relationship of sorts does evolve. Lee becomes totally besotted with Eugene, even though he remains unsure what Eugene's true feelings for him actually are.

The film is a desperately sad story of a man who wants a depth of human understanding and sharing of experience that he will never ever find. He hopes to discover it through a relationship with Eugene, and later through taking the hallucinogenic 'yage' brewed by Dr Cotter (a totally unrecognisable scene stealing Lesley Manville)  The first half of the film is bathed in the soft tones of yellow night lights. Becoming a fecund green as we enter the darkened jungle, the surreal nature of its drug induced dream scenes brilliantly realised. By Lee's return to Mexico City much later, the gay district has changed into cooler fresher blues, its literally cleaned up its act. 

This is Daniel Craig's film from start to finish, its the best performance I've ever seen him give, garnering award nominations along the way. Starkey is suitably enigmatic eye candy. There are cameo appearances by Jason Swartzman as Joe Guidry, an Alan Ginsberg type, and Drew Droege plays John Dume the classic arch eyebrowed aging gay man who you'll find in a gay bar anywhere, in any time period.

Luca Guadagnino's film of Queer, with a script by Justin Kuritzkes melds its rough edged narrative source with Guadagnino's altogether more polished and smoothly mannered film stylisation. Some reviewers have not liked this, and found its two and a quarter hour length an indulgence in which the characters lost all direction. I did not find that to be at all a true representation in my experience. The use of music often three decades later than its period setting, was actually utilised to beautifully counterpoint themes and moods. All adding to the overwhelming sense of loveless ennui inhabiting an unrequited life.   

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 2017 - Slip Away by Perfume Genius

Always seemingly existing and thriving on the arty fringes of the pop world. Perfume Genius slowly matured as an artist and songwriter until with the album No Shape where he got the nearest he has so far got to writing a hit album, its possibly his most mainstream and accessible creation. His experimental itch forces him to push at his own musical boundaries. So subsequent albums have pared back instrumentation to focus on vocal style and strength of songwriting or have been written entirely with choreography in mind.  

I have been re-listening to it lately and this track Slip Away is still such a joyful eruption of optimistic creative energy. Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius has such a frail sounding voice, yet he twists and forces it into areas its probably never made for. So the tracks opens with this slow background aboriginal sounding rhythm, into which comes the light sweet tone of his solo voice, which gains harmonic company, then suddenly this thundering bass pattern hoists the track into a whole other magnificent stratosphere. I find this completely addictive. Another joy of Perfume Genius's releases are the videos, always a bit off kilter but extremely creative and memorably unique, and the one for Slip Away is no exception. 

FEATURE - Walsingham Abbey Snowdrops

 It appears to have become a favourite event for us to visit Walsingham in the crisp days of late Winter and premature Spring. Running from late January til the first days of March people visit the Abbey site to see the woodland dells carpeted as they are by thousands and thousands of snowdrops. Last year it happened in the midst of the River Stiffkey breaking its bounds and spreading over the flood plain in a powerful demonstration of its hidden super power. This year felt much more restrained by contrast, but as beautiful as ever. Here are a few photos from this years wander through this little Norfolk miracle.

 

MY OWN WALKING - March 2nd Journal 2025

There is no other spiritual teaching more liable to be misunderstood, or misused than that of karma. On a basic level it can be described as-  everything has its consequence. These consequences can be either a good or wholesome outcome or a bad or unwholesome outcome, for safe measure Buddhism also creates a designation that is not wholly either of the first two, a neutral outcome. 

Karma within a Buddhist context, it's an extension of the Buddha's primary teaching of Prattitya Samutpada, often rather clumsily translated as Conditioned Co Production. That all things arise and cease in the world due to the conditions surrounding them, one of which is our interactions with it. Not everything in those interactions is within our ability to control, only our personal individual behaviour, our perceptions and reactions. Hence why karma becomes important in what arises and ceases. 

Any notion of karma has to be held very very lightly. It's a rough provisional principle for considering the consequences of your actions. What is likely to happen if I think, say or do this? It should never be confused with fate. Sometimes the consequential feed back we get can be instant. But we all must know of instances where an individual behaves terribly and appears to not suffer any negative consequence for the unethical nature of their actions. They appear to be getting away with it. Sometimes we appear to be getting away with it. This feasibly could undermine our confidence in the whole efficacy of karma. 

In response to these sort of instances, as is frequently Buddhism's tendency, there has been much effort put into defining and cataloging a litany of levels on which karma operates. For example - the severity of the karmic consequence can depend on our proximity to the unethical action - Negative karma can be delayed, or assuaged by subsequent positive karmic actions - Karma can be passed on to future rebirths. In the process of coming up with all these specific explanations, they do nothing but throw up more questions and inconsistencies to be ironed out. They all fly in the face of the Buddha's own words that it was futile to attempt to fully understand or explain the workings of karma.  

Karma's only real usefulness is as an ethical metaphor, through which to view our present thoughts, speech and actions. As an idea it has a limited range within which it is practically useful. Once you step beyond that, into what happens with karma after death, you move into extremely tricky and potentially misleading territory of theoretical propositions.

And yet in conversations, the Buddha would be asked, or he would state, what the spiritual attainment of a person would be, what they would become by the end of their life. These were karmic discussions about the consequences of a lifetime of spiritual practice. He used a hierarchy of terms that reflected when someone's Enlightenment would be, in this life, the next life, or states in between. With evocative names like Stream Entrant, Once Returner, Non Returner and Arahant. Were these reflections of the truth of the matter, or merely meant as possibly useful metaphors to a mendicant monk? What is probably more important is are they useful to us now?

In my early years of involvement in Buddhism, it was common to find people talking about the general direction of their spiritual practice in terms of whether they were attempting to gain Enlightenment in this life or not. On the surface it appeared to be dependent upon how ambitious were you? Were you mentally delaying Enlightenment, banking on a future life in which to get your act together in.?  What if this life was your one and only opportunity to gain Enlightenment and you blew it? Certainly if you were not sure there was a future life at all after this one, then the necessity to go for it in this life would only be further heightened. Throw ideas of a personal karmic inheritance into this mix, and you can probably sense what an effect these sort of ideas could have upon any ideologically driven young person. It sort of lets in ones ego and desire for status to gain a perverting foothold in your spiritual practice.

In my own case I think there was one period in my spiritual development, when this whole idea of Enlightenment or bust, would just throw me into a complete existential panic. On the cusp of middle age, was I already too late to get myself on the fast track to Enlightenment? A consequence of this was I became very driven, hard line and applied a rigid self discipline, I felt I needed to put a lot of work in simply to catch up.  And if this spiritual work appeared to fail, then maybe it was me, that I had some old karma to burn off. Or was it the karma of poor self esteem and low confidence that provided leverage, to pull the rug from underneath your stringent efforts? The opportunities for self flagellation I found are numerous in the spiritual life.

If creating the right conditions was important, then surely a monastic environment would be the most likely to produce Enlightenment? Well, not necessarily, its never that simple. Though that didn't stop me holding such a view for a few years, and I was all for forming a more monastic style community with a Rule and everything else. When you appeared to be doing all the right things, but still not getting very far with meditation etc, then its not you its the conditions, becomes a convenient scapegoat. Either that or you still aren't practicing hard enough, it needs yet more intensity. However, if  Enlightenment was solely the result of the amount of energy and time you gave it, then we'd all be celestial Buddhas in a matter of a few arduous months.

How you apply yourself, and Why are in the end more important than What you apply yourself too. The Buddha's reputed last words were 'With mindfulness strive on' , not a brief reminder about karma, or the beauty of the Enlightened state, or a relevant teaching about the true nature of reality. Just continue to be mindful. There is an example in the life of the Buddha, where a lay disciple got hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick about a teaching, but because they had practiced that incorrect teaching so faithfully and with such devotion, they had made immense spiritual progress. This indicates that cultivating our faith and devotion are probably more significant than their 'near enemies' - applying willpower and discipline ( near enemies, in that the former are very easily replaced by the latter ). Though willpower and discipline can have a role to play, without increasing the faith and devotion copper bottoming them, they become  leaky vessels incapable of developing or holding the Awakening Mind.

These days I've mostly ceased thinking in terms of Enlightenment as a goal. If we have just this life, then I've got precious little time left to pull that one off. My aim, if I have one, is a very human and earthly one, to enjoy whatever that period of time turns out to be. If I have another lifetime after this one, then what I do now will have its importance. In the end, no matter how I decide to couch it its what I do now that will matter. Whether I'll ever be a Stream Entrant, Once or Non Returner or an Arahant, seems entirely superfluous to how I choose to live my life in this present precious moment. All without creating expectations of what may result through my doing so.

TEACHING OF THE WEEK

"Thus, the views of all beings are not the same. Question this matter now. Are there many ways to see one thing, or is it a mistake to see many forms as one thing? Pursue this beyond the limit of pursuit. Accordingly, endeavours in practice-realisation of the way are not limited to one or two kinds. The thoroughly actualised realm has one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways."*

From The Mountains & Rivers Sutra by Dogen
in a translation by the San Francisco Zen Centre.

SCREEN SHOT - Heretic

Two young Mormon girls, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are doing street missionary work. They call on a reclusive man, Mr Reed (Hugh Grant) who has requested to know more about their faith. Mr Reed comes across as friendly and affable. As they enter nothing appears to be awry. They tell him they need his wife to be there or they cannot stay. Reed says she's out the back cooking Blueberry Pie, she's a little shy, but will be out later. 

Once they sit down and start conversing with Reed it becomes clear he is well versed in many faiths, and knows more than enough about The Church of Latter Day Saints. His questions start to get more pointed and there's a developing undertow of suppressed aggression. Whilst he is supposedly out the back talking to his wife to convince her to come and meet the girls, Chloe notices the perfume of the candle that is burning is called Blueberry Pie. Realising that they are in danger they attempt to leave, but the door they came in by is centrally locked. From here on it can only get worse.

Both the two female leads are ex-Mormons, and the directors Scott Becks and Bryan Woods consulted Mormon friends to get the detailed feel of the movie right. Hugh Grant is totally indispensable for the script to work. It needs someone who can be avuncular and seemingly unthreatening, but who can pivot into someone altogether darker. It was written with him specifically in mind, and it gives Grant a whole movie in which to display his acting ability. Something he's obviously relished after playing so many scene stealing cameo roles in recent years. He is utterly brilliant in this film. He is playing with, not against, his own screen persona and this makes even the off hand witticisms become unsettling 

The script itself is erudite and cleverly written, deftly exploring the issue of religious institutions versus faith, archetypes across world religions, all through Mr Reed's perverted agenda. The script and Grant's performance turn this movie into something well above ordinary. Even though it is quite contained and a three hander, it holds your attention for its entire length.  Lets see where this performance now takes Huge Grant in the sort of parts he gets offered.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FINISHED READING - The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada

Asa's husband is offered a new job outside the city. His Mother Tomiko offers them the house in his home village right next to hers. It's tempting because it will be rent free. Living so close to her in- laws is not quite what she would want to do, but a rent free house would mean she can leave her job, which she intensely dislikes.

But there are aspects to this new lifestyle that irk and bother her. Her mother in law too readily interferes in the running of her house. And why is Grandpa always out watering the garden, come rain or shine? One day when out wandering she encounters and follows a strange black furry animal, and whilst pursuing it falls down a hole. A hole just right for a person of her size. A strangely unfamiliar neighbour rescues her. But her life after falling in the hole turns out to be stranger, more surreal and perplexing than the life before. Is she now living in a dream, or is this ordinary life of hers revealing an increasingly bizzare undertow?

This is the second book I've read by Oyamada. Like The Factory its best described as a short novella, The Hole being a few pages short of 100. Similar to The Factory it subtly winds up the weirdness factor. People and conversations become odder and more inconsistent as the story progresses. I don't think The Hole is anything like as engaging as The Factory, which was written to be much more of a social satire on corporate culture. The Hole is just a slightly spooky story, that lacks depth of character and any sense of purpose beyond being just a bit weird.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

SCREEN SHOT - God's Creatures

This 2022 film was only Paul Mescal's second film after his TV success in Normal People. Its a small scale independent movie. The story centering around a small Irish fishing community, that survives on oyster farming and processing. Aileen ( Emily Watson) works as the floor manager in the villages only employer a seafood and fish processing plant. One day her son Brian (Paul Mescal) returns unexpectedly to the village after disappearing many years before. No one talks of why, and he evades answering questions how he survived in Australia. There had been a major falling out between Brian and his Father Con, which lingers on still on his return. What he did to deserve this is never really spoken of, but its an unresolved wound none the less. Aileen tries to help set him up as an oyster farmer, by stealing nets of oysters for him. But he also starts stealing other fisherman's catches and selling them, which if found out would bring down the law upon him, and ruin the families reputation in the village. He appears also to want to rekindle his relationship with his teenage love Sarah. She accuses him of rape, and Aileen lies that he was at home in order to protect him. But the burden of guilt at doing this begins to eat away at her.

This is entirely Emily Watson's film, she emotionally dominates every frame of it. Mescal's ability to exude charm, is effectively backlit by the growing sense through out the film, that he has a bad reputation and is a lot nastier a person than he presents himself to be. Both performances greatly elevate this film way above what it might otherwise have achieved. God's Creatures is a powerfully taught and gritty drama, depicting lives lived hovering along the edge of poverty, in a wildly hostile and unforgiving landscape. 

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FINISHED READING - One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

"One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening - while the land is still being stolen and the natives being killed - any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilisation.  But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight."*

Omar El Akkad is a prizewinning writer and journalist, who has worked extensively in Canada and now the US. Born in Egypt, he understands from family experience, the moral tensions and the compromised situations individuals find themselves in when facing oppression or speaking the truth. Particularly when you are a journalist reporting on Israel, Palestine or in the Middle East. This book will puncture any self satisfied vanity we might hold of Western democracies being moral exemplars to the world. If there was a word to describe our governments implication in the committing of atrocities, often executed with our tacit approval, its - disingenuous.

"This is an account of a fracture, a breaking away from the notion that the polite, Western liberal ever stood for anything at all."*

This book is written to be uncomfortable to stomach for the Western reader. I've certainly found it brought me up sharp, its bracing, it challenged assumptions, yet at the same time was energising. Something gets freed up when your awareness grows beyond its current limitations. It vividly details the moral vacuum at the heart of Western democracy, our media, our governments, which also has its echoes within us. Prevented by vested interests from telling the whole truth. Hampered by twisted logic, untruth tellers, and institutional prejudices that the far right would have you believe do not exist. Racism that is barely named and shamed, or referred to as cultural pride. Genocide, a word that cannot even be mentioned when faced with it happening right before your eyes. Human beings robbed of their right to be treated fairly or justly, because they hold religious beliefs or come from a country the West wishes to ostracise or express disapproval of. Akkad is excoriating about the state of his own trade of journalism, often reduced solely to the dubious stoking of fury as clickbait. Everyone just fishing for website views, not persuading hearts or minds, let alone the pricking of consciences

"Jettisoning the requirement to report news in favour of inciting rage and fear and hatred of your audience before serving them up ads for guns and bunkers is a perfectly functional business model. It might not be journalism, might be the opposite of journalism, but the cheques clear." *

When it comes to war, resistance, opposition or rebelliousness, the West has developed a whole linguistic framework to talk about atrocities during combat with all the emotional shock and terror carefully removed or neutered. Words like 'collateral damage' which means innocent people were slaughtered - by accident, by incompetence, or most likely factored in as part of the military objective. We are sorry, but not sorry, some people were killed. In our elections we are frequently forced to hold our noses and chose a political party that seems the least worst option. We live in disappointed and despairing times, when few stand uncompromised by their evident lack of principle. And we wonder why voters are moving towards right wing populist disruptors. 

" It is not without reason that the most powerful nations on earth won't intervene to stop a genocide but will happily bomb one of the poorest countries on the planet to keep a shipping lane open."*

In the US there's the presumption that Republicans and Democrats are ideologically polls apart, but on foreign policy there is usually precious little to choose between them. If US voters hate the Democrats for anything its because they consistently fail to live up to their own 'caring' brand identity. Akkad discerns how Americans have a schizophrenic view of themselves, they laud and extol the virtues of the little guy outsider doggedly fighting for individual justice and freedom against the big guy, whilst they benefit from living in the largest most dominant economic empire on the planet, and this big guy throws its weight around imposing their free will on foreign 'little guys.' and their ability to have their own freedom and justice. Resistance to having this done to you, is just simply ungrateful, or lacking in respect.

"Victims of empire aren't murdered. Their killers aren't butchers, their killers aren't anything at all. Victims of empire don't die, they simply cease to exist. They burn away like fog."*

Omar El Akkad's writing is at times extremely cogent and forceful, it pulls no punches. He's not afraid of the sharply pointed analogy if this serves the point. If there is a subtext or underlying theme to this book, its a desire from a disenchanted heart - that we speak as we see, that we speak what we believe to be true, that we don't reduce everything to the blandest of worded compromises. In these days where those on the extremes of left and right politics engage constantly in a tit for tat culture war. Complaining about free speech being constrained, whilst constraining it, Libertarians and progressives both attempting to cancel those who hold disagreeable opposing views. If Western democracies are in decline its because both voters and politicians no longer have any sense of what they stand for anymore. And so we are served enfeebled politicians spouting platitudes. 

"Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close."*

This book is written with great fury and succinctness, there are far too many quotable paragraphs to copy them all out here. It is simultaneously deeply personal and universally applicable, which is what gives it such a compelling thrust where all the daggers are meant to go in. It documents the West's response to the genocide in Gaza and how it silences any narrative that speaks contrary to the acceptable one. Its one helluva book, that flips from riotous anger to clear headed insightfulness in the space of one sentence. Undoubtedly deeply felt, he cares and uses his passion and expressive skill to enable you to see through the obfuscations and the tricky use of language. When a lesser writer might want to soften the blows a bit, he doesn't. It can feel like  one long heart felt plea to remain open, to speak honestly, to hold fast to the notion that all humanity is worthy of respect. Because our leaders will try to convince us there is a hierarchy of worthiness.

"Know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul."*

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

* All extracts taken from One day,everyone will have always been against this 
by Omar El Akkad, Published by Canongate, 2025 

MY OWN WALKING - March Journal 2025

Consequences, everything eventually reveals its consequences. Sometimes it pursues you like a thief, a rogue shadow following you through the sickly yellow glow of evening streetlights. Its never easy to predict what or when the outcome might catch up with you. Our apparent cluelessness does not prevent us from reaping them nonetheless. 

One of the consequences for me of the HA! has been recognising that this was also a consequence, the outcome of - I am what I eat. The type of food I'd been eating most of my life, my broader health choices, a pretty sedentary lifestyle with insufficient physical exercise, the type of culture I live in.  The genetic and parental nurtured inheritance aside, it has largely been achieved through my choices as an individual over 67 years that has led me to this consequential juncture.

I've grown up in a relatively wealthy and individualistic society, that has no guard rails of a surrounding natural circumstance to constrain us, even to eat proportionately. There may be growing food poverty in our society, but this is not a consequence of crops failing, and there has not been a state of famine in the UK this century. But there is consumer outrage when there's a hummus shortage. Conspicuous consumption is the empty headed mantra, the modus operandi of our neo liberal capitalist society. Is it unsurprising then, that our world is full of inconsequential short lived fads, that businesses make their fortunes out of. Including peculiar forms of diet and Tick Tok, and then Tik Tok diets. 

We rarely have to respond to real hunger, we hardly ever feel hunger in any substantial way. We eat before hunger even rears its head. As though experiencing hunger was something to be feared. When I was younger and my body more sylph like than now, it was adaptable and recovered quickly from any excess I could throw at it, Filled with a youthful bravado that dismissed 'nanny state' like injunctions to moderate or monitor what I ate and drank. Nothing appeared to have much consequence then. Its a fundamental of secular individualism, to tolerate no restrictions nor injunctions to reduce or exclude even chronically unhealthy foods, and to use this resistance to bolster one's individual right to be a complete knob-head if you choose to.

As men grow older and enter their middle age,our bodies ability to process food and not put on weight disappears. So a 'dad bod' or a beer paunch can quite comfortably settle in. We continue stuffing our face with the same junk food we've eaten since childhood, whilst viewing all sorts of diverting, but inconsequential stuff on a laptop or TV,  Our internal two fingers up reactionary response to reining in or adjusting our consumption, becomes reminiscent of a petulant childish tantrum. Demonstrating how Western notions of individuality effectively keeps us in an infantilised, immature and naive state. One very reluctant to consider what consequence to our actions there might be. These rarely arrive right away, so we can clearly ignore, deny or delay any corrective response to later, much much later on.. 

Until, that is, we get some bodily shock to awaken that concern from its drugged slumber. A touch with death, or feel our vulnerability through some injury, and suddenly staying alive moves higher up the list of priorities. By then it is often too late, some sort of consequence for the past abuse of one's body has become almost set in on a bone and muscle level. Only able to ameliorate this with the help of medicinal interventions or a draconian overturning in our diet or lifestyle. Paradoxically, we can be at too old an age to countenance change, too set in our ways to tolerate innovations in our elderly lifestyle. We reach an age where we'd prefer a comfortable trouble free retirement. Extending ones lifespan by denying ourselves familiar creature comforts, well, that perhaps cuts no mustard. Why bother now? Habits, however bad for us, become what makes us happy. A healthier diet does not readily fit into the slipstream of a cosy retirement plan.

Yet it has always been - why bother now? For in truth there never appears to be a right time for considering some things. Usually its whatever reminds you of your mortality, like writing a will for instance (Note to self, just get on and do it)  We often talk of ''comfort food', as though this were an entirely separate form of eating, and maybe it is. Because what makes me desire to eat 'comfort food' is not hunger at all, but concerns I don't like to consciously think about or coming into close contact with, difficult troubling esteem issues, spiritual issues, mortality issues. When these surface I have in the past reached for the crisp bag for comfort, the Belgian bun for sweetening the troubled heart, the sugary fizzy drink to bring a brief respite. I know I can utilise food in this way, as a form of analgesic  And in extremis this is fine. If, however, it's everyday I reach for the 'comfort food', in a never ending sequence of danish pastries, then there might be troubling territory I'm avoiding being fully conscious of. Metaphorically drowning it in highly processed and refined fat and sugar.

 

SCREEN SHOT - Conclave

The Pope dies suddenly and Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has been appointed to oversee the whole conclave process for finding a new pontiff. Lawrence had wished to leave Rome to retire to monastic seclusion, to deal with doubts that have assuaged him of late, but prior to his death the Pope had convinced him to stay. He is aware who the likely candidates will be, and is a close friend with one of them Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci). Bellini is the leading figure on the progressive wing of the Curia. The other possible candidates Adeyema (Lucian Msamati) Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) Tremblay (John Lithgow) are all traditionalists. 

Trembley in particular is a reactionary hard liner, and is the person Lawrence least wishes to see win. Just as they are going into seclusion for the conclave, two unusual things happen. Lawrence is disturbed to hear rumours that the Pope had told Tremblay to resign over his involvement in a scandal.  And a totally unknown Cardinal Benitez, secretly appointed by the Pope as Cardinal for Kabul turns up at the last minute. As the sequence of votes to narrow down the candidates take place, Lawrence reluctantly finds himself also emerging as a candidate, which begins to compromise his position managing the conclave. Particularly when circumstances start to suggest corrupt practices may have been used to tilt the vote in Tremblay's favour.

Based on the Robert Harris novel, Peter Straughan 's screenplay produces a tense and beautifully turned plot of intregue. In the centre of which Raplh Fiennes gives what can only be described as a star turn. He's in almost every frame of this film, with a worried or perplexed face trying to work out what's best to do. Needing to get to the bottom of the situation whilst not appearing to be prejudicially taking sides. Its a masterpiece of finely judged understated expression, whilst speaking volumes, that has rightly received awards nominations. Edward Berger's direction winds up the plot like finely tuned clock work, sharply and cleanly. With set piece bits of claustrophobic theatre in the Sistine Chapel that are expertly managed. This is a small unassuming gem of a movie.

 
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8  

FINISHED READING - Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong

In the introductory pages of this book Karen Armstrong quotes the poetic words of Wordsworth, to portray the underlying spiritual malaise that bedevils us now in relation to our deteriorating environment.

"There hath passed away a glory from the earth......
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now the glory and the dream?"

Wordsworth was aware with heightened sensitivity, that his easy childhood connection with the natural world had once been synchronous with a sense for the sacred, of the Godly within all life. Something which in his growing into adulthood he'd lost. Like many of the Romantics, in the midst of the consequences of The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution he felt like a soul bereft. He strove through his poetry to reconnect himself and us with a sensory relationship with nature and through it the divine. That he felt his younger self had failed in this respect, led him to be a much broken and hardened man in later life, living off his past reputation. 

Karen Armstrong wrote in her autobiographies of her own struggles with faith and our religious institutions. For a while she fell out of love with them. Her many subsequent books on the major faiths of the world, the nature of God, the common themes of our human religious institutions, have been rightly lauded for their clarity and insightfulness. Through them she has reconnected herself and us with the many ways in which a sense for the sacred remains important to our humanity, not just to us individually, but collectively as a civilised society.

With Sacred Nature she takes a closer look at source materials, the early years of a faith's development, and finds within them shared themes of the importance of a responsible and respectful attitude toward the environment upon which we depend. Though some faiths may have moved away from such a sense for our interconnectedness. Even within the Judeo-Christian world view, so often seen as giving Godly encouragement to seeing the world as ours to exploit, there are opposing Christian narratives to that self serving viewpoint. 

And so she also takes us through Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and finds similar texts that tell of the need for human kind to live in harmony with nature, to use its bounty with care, to not be careless in our actions. She makes the case for an urgent need to restore our relationship with nature, to view this as being symbiotically entwined with a sense for the sacred. She does not proselytise for any one particular religion, but makes clear that without a complete transformation of our underlying mode of being, of thinking, feeling and acting in relation to the world, we will inevitably be dooming ourselves to oblivion.

She concludes by returning to the Romantic poets, this time to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner.  A poem that can be interpreted as a metaphor for our current predicament. The albatross which saves the Mariner from dying, he then chooses to shoot, and it all goes downhill from there. The Mariner much too late has a vision of a better way forward for future travellers, whilst realising he must continue to suffer the consequences of his own actions. That is now his fate, and ours. We must change our hearts and minds. But what's done, is still done, and we will have to learn to live with the consequences of that.

"Within the shadow of the ship
I watched with rich attire.
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam, and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! No tongue
their beauty might declare
A spring of love gushed from my heart.
And I blessed them unaware."

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FAVE RAVE - Virdee

I love a good police procedural thriller, but these days its quite a crowded competitive market and not many of them are quite as brilliantly conceived as Virdee. 

Harry Virdee (Staz Nair) is a police detective in Bradford, he's married to Selma (Aysha Kala), who is a Muslim. As a consequence Harry's Sikh father refuses to see of acknowledge him anymore. His brother in law Riaz Hyatt (Vikas Bahi) is one of two local drug lords who are near to being at war with each other. Riaz is an old friend from Harry's teenage years. He uses Riaz to sound out what is really happening in the gangs on the streets. No one in his police force appears to know of this connection. There are then a series of murders, which appear to follow a gruesome set pattern. On the surface it's made to look like as though the two drug gangs are the cause. But something about it doesn't quite add up to Harry, he suspects there is a third person independently involved. Slowly, he gets closer to finding out who that is. As members of his extended family start getting drawn in, Harry's past actions come back to haunt him. 

Written and adapted by AA Dhand from his original series of novels, Virdee is thematically and visually punchy, set within the South Asian community of Bradford. Plenty of unexpected twists and cliffhangers at the end of an episode. In many ways Virdee is your classic unconventional cop with a dodgy past and family conflicts. But it is the placing of him within second generation immigrant communities, with the secondary theme of a clash going on between those still clinging to old country mores, and those who have been born in Bradford. Its not afraid to deal with race riots, gangsters, interfaith marriages and the nature of drug gang cultures in modern British cities. This gives it all the vivacious colour and fizz you could wish for in a contemporary thriller. 

The three central actors of Staz Nair, Aysha Kala and Vikas Bahi, give this show a very fresh star quality. Brilliantly filmed and paced, with a theme tune to match it in drama and colour . I loved every minute of this series I didn't want to rush through it, so much so, I refused to binge watch. Instead I savoured it episode by episode, spacing them out across a few weeks. Virdee was fabulous, more please.

CARROT REVIEW  8/8 

SCREEN SHOT - No Other Land

Imagine that you live in a village. One where the country next to where you live, suddenly decides it wants to turn the area you are living in into an army training ground. Regularly the army then starts to arrive unannounced with bulldozers to knock down a house or two, barely leaving the inhabitants sufficient time to gather and save their belongings or livestock. You protest, but even the protesters are then attacked by the army, people are shot, some seriously injured or killed, relatives are frequently arrested. And this happens repeatedly, over and over again, like a form of prolonged unending torture. Imagine what effect this would have upon you. Do you resist, stay, rebuild and fight on, or do you give up and leave the land, the place your family has farmed for generations, and move into the city?

No Other Land is an extremely personal film, painful to watch. It shows quite graphically just what ordinary Palestinians have been having to deal with for many decades. The film was shot by Basel a Palestinian and his close Israeli friend Yuval. Though an ally, Yuval also has to deal with distrust and hostility from the people he's trying to help. Even Basel chastises him about how easy it is for Yuval, to walk away, to just drive over the border to the relative safety of his own home. He doesn't have to continue to live here. Documentary footage incorporates 'in time' recordings of these attacks, the villagers reactions, the heartrending pleas for mercy and understanding, their distress and depression afterwards. As Basel and Yuval ponder together quite what needs to happen in order for their films of the situation to get the public attention they need.

There is no way these ordinary people can effectively fight back against the US funded Israeli military. They do what they can but their homeland Masafer Yatta is being robbed from them piece by piece regardless. What is also clear is that the army training ground excuse is just a ruse. What they really want to do is push the Palestinian presence away from near-bye illegal Israeli West Bank settlements, with the longer term intention of expanding them further.  

Basel's family have a history of activism and fighting off the encroachment of settlers and demolitions. His Father was arrested a number of times in his hothead youth, until he settled down to man the village's petrol pump. The film mixes film shot in Basel's childhood and contemporary footage. It shows you the time Tony Blair came to see the village school which was under threat of demolition. A week later it was reprieved. However, towards the end of the documentary you see it being bulldozed as the school children watch on. The vindictive cruelty of it was all too apparent.  All of the modern footage was filmed between 2018 to 2024, and stops just prior to Hamas's murderous atrocity. And you realise when they say the only place for them to move will be into Gaza, they do not know that Netanyahu's government are about to lay waste to it in a genocidal level of revenge. 

No Other Land quite rightly won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It speaks volumes that the Director of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet had to make a plea at the ceremony for someone to distribute it in the US. Because so far no one will touch it. In the light of The Tangerine Emperor's fickle nature, no one is willing to incur the unforeseeable consequences of his vengeful wrath. That's shocking, but telling, like this important documentary.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

FAVE RAVE - Big Booty by Moonchild Sanelly

 

You know, when you smile from ear to ear when you first see a music video, that this person is claas. Moonchild Sanelly is a singer and rapper from South Africa. Her distinctive marker is the turquoise rope hair, and the bling and the outrageous shoes, she is one big character. She's also a liberated woman, she don't give a fig bout what you think of her. Hence we have Big Booty, a hymn to the transcendent qualities of shaking that stupendous ass - Big Booty I fuck up the world - she cries. But really this is all about the life giving joy she brings to what she does. I just love every minute of this track. Look out for her singing in the background on Little Sims new track Flood. 

CHURCH LARKING - Glandford Parish Church

To say that entering St Martin's Glandford was a real surprise, would be a bit of an understatement on my part. It is the most jaw dropping church experience I've had in many a year. Simon Jenkins in England's Thousand Best Churches described it with dry matter of factness as the finest example of Victorian woodcarving. Whilst Pevsner simply found it all a bit overpowering. And I guess in truth it is a bit of both.

St Martin's is a small church, and probably could only house 150 to 200 in its congregation. Yet every square foot of it is packed full with the most ornate of carved decorative details. Every where you turn, there's a finely carved rood screen, characterful pew ends, a beautifully turned font cover, a glorious angel roof that would have had a medieval woodcarver wetting themselves with envy. For such a small nave and chancel it can feel a tad OTT. Everything is just that fraction too large and in your face for this small scale building. But as someone who tends to love things that are in your face, and likes individuals who take the very Un- English risk of being passionate, ebullient and sumptuous, I love this church so much. Its hard to put into words quite why. Apart from - boy is this camp. 

So why here in this estate village of Glandford? By 1730 the original church was completely in ruins. In 1882 Sir Alfred Jodrell inherited the Bayfield Hall estate. He decided to completely rebuild the church from scratch, a previous restoration from 1875 was pulled down. So you'll find nothing here predating 1899 when this restoration began.,everything else has been visibly removed. This rebuild took several years to finish. Jodrell was extraordinarily wealthy, and a renown Victorian philanthropist. He went on to improve the Bayfield Estate generally, but also had a hand in financing the restoration of St Nicholas's in Blakeney. Which having now seen his work in Glandford I can recognise the footprint and quality of his interventions there.

Jodrell wanted to build the new church to honour the memory of his recently deceased Mother - Adela Moncton Bowyer-Smijth.** As an Anglo-Catholic his taste was all for heightened Victorian Gothic. Unlike Pugin, Jodrell chose not to slather pattern, paint and gilding all over his interiors, but to have a uniform honey coloured wood, that can make it look like the church was made entirely from gingerbread. It would not have turned out quite so glorious had he not had some of the finest Victorian woodcarvers his deep pockets could buy. Building something completely from scratch, means Glandford does possess a visual coherence across all its interior furnishings. Most of the stained glass was made by Herbert Bryans and Ernest Heasman, with a few earlier pieces by Kempe & Co. The woodwork is largely from the workshop of Walter Thompson & Frank McGinnity. The north chapel which houses the angelic marble memorial to Jodrell's Mother was, according to Pevsner, carved by Pietro Bazzanti of Florence. Which sits under the canopy of a beautifully executed intricately carved wood paneled ceiling. 

This is quite the most extravagant high Victorian Gothic church you will find in Norfolk, if not the entire UK. Do not miss seeing this if you should ever be in the vicinity.

**Sir Alfred Jodrell was married, but he died without issue, so his was the fourth and last Baronet. The ostentatious nature of his aesthetic, and frankly over the top relationship with his dead Mother, does make one question whether he was closeted, and his marriage one of convenience. Though it is perfectly possible for a straight man to be as camp as a row of tents. I hasten to say,lest anyone start throwing words like 'woke' around.