TWO MINUTES - Looking At A Field

A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. 

William Henry Davies

CARROT CAKE REVIEW - No 35 - I Really Want To Be Kind, I Do Honestly!

Sheringham

A good coffee on a Sunday morning has a distinct pleasure all its own, particularly when you are down on the front in Sheringham. It was the day after a thirty two degree heat. In the late afternoon we'd had to prematurely curtail a meeting here with friends because it was just too unbearably hot, and the humidity had resulted in the hatching of whole flight squadrons of swottable flies. Which nonetheless swarmed around my medicinally blood thinned body looking for a convenient point of rest or entry. 

But on this particular Sunday morning we had the benefit of it being both bright with a strong along shore coastal breeze. The cafe is a summer favourite, and hence most favoured for our morning coffee's before I dispatch Hubby to his work. The coffee ,the view, the general ambiance, is great, plus the guy who owns and runs it is gregarious, affable,and an all round friendly cove. I've never been called 'buddy' quite so often before. So I really want to be kind, I do honestly, I like the place and the coffee here. The quality of the cake offering, however, is inconsistent across the range available. Its generally very good to...Mmmm...to what I'd reluctantly say dips below average. I usually have a tea cake, which is a stolid stomach filler, but consistently its a bit light on the sultanas for my preference. Someone in the bakery needs to get in touch with a more free flowing level and abundant spirit of generosity. 

They've taken recently to doing a regular 'try these out' feature cake. I guess to see if they are missing a trick. The Cinnamon Bun, unfortunately was way too heavy on the dough, very very light on the cinnamon/sugar. So today's offering of a Carrot & Pecan Cake, I approached with a degree of, eyebrows in alert, caution. It did look, on even a momentary glance to be suspiciously too light in both colour and texture. It was of course really a neatly portioned tray bake,(ie. not a cake ) to be momentarily pedantic. Yeah, lets leave that exactly where it is shall we. Lest we find ourselves becoming unkind in the process of not quite managing to overlook what is a 'majeur signe de danger.', as far as Carrot Cakes go in my estimation.

The texture, once it was in the mouth? Well, it unfortunately gave the feeling, at just gone 9 am, of being already a bit dried out around the edges. Did it have substantial heft and moistness? No, I'm afraid not. On the tongue there was a distinct granular sensation, coming at you from two directions simultaneously. One from the tray bake mix itself which appeared to have a higher than usual broken nut, but still bland, constituency. The other was via the unspeakably thin layer of 'vegan?' frosting that tasted poorly mixed - still half marge / half Tate & Lyle. The Pecan bit, well, that must have been that one plonked in the middle of the gravelly frosting   

Now Hubby asked me, just out of polite interest, had any carrot been creatively wafted in the near vicinity of this tray bake mix? Well, here was the most curious phenomena of this tray bake, one I have never ever encountered before. It had a thin layer of grated carrot laid as a base for the tray bake mix to rest on top of. You could visibly see errant strands of suspiciously carroty orange venturing to be part of the main body of it, as if they knew in their heart of hearts, in their very genes, where they ought to be. Its almost as if this were either an after thought, or someone forgot an important ingredient for any carrot based confectionery. Say not so, Sir that they might have done this deliberately, for aesthetic reasons! Thankfully no marzipan carrots, even though Hubby confesses to quite liking them.  

How kind do I want to be? Well, this kind.

CARROT TRAY BAKE SCORE- 4/8

FINISHED READING - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

'I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly. Like right now, how the sun is coming on low behind the elms, and I can't tell the difference between sunset and sunrise. The world. reddening, appears the same to me -  and I lose track of east and west. the colours this morning have the frayed tint of something already leaving....Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.'*

Previous to this debut novel, Ocean Vuong was a much lauded Asian American poet. Its title tells you everything you might wish to say about the rhapsodic nature of its literary soul - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. It is written as a series of letters from a son 'Little Dog' to his Ma, his Vietnamese Mother who can only speak a handful of English words, and can read even less. So the way the novel is presented from the start, is that the recipient of these letters will never know what these letters contain, nor understand what personal message and struggles her son is trying to convey to his Ma.

And these are a mixture of his own recollections, also family legends and myths about their earlier lives living in Vietnam. A child's, a teenager's and an adult's perceptions of being brought up in Saigon and then America. What it is like to be an immigrant, when you are surrounded by a barely welcoming host population. How you survive practically, emotionally, spiritually. 'Little Dogs' father 'disappears' early on in his life, that he has a vague recovered memory of later in the novel. How his white 'Grandpa' Paul, there as a serviceman, brings them to America and makes them his own. 'Little Dog's' fragile sense of who he feels himself to be, begins to pull together once he encounters his first teenage lover Trevor.  

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous shifts from its initial tone of melancholy and regret for how little he understands of his own Mother and her history. From the moment he meets Trevor the language in the novel is on fire. Some of its reveries are stunning evocations of a place and of people. A whole chapter describing the streets and significant buildings of his home town, each with its own distinct tale to tell. And there's the differing stories 'Trevor' and 'Little Dog' tell each other, one sees being gay as similar to a passing mood, the other the resolution of a personal destiny. The sex scenes though explicit, are run through with their evolving love and tender physical affection. Their relationship is the watershed moment where the emphasis shifts from building up a history and a recollected past world to one hurtling into a much more multi-coloured, multi-layered, yet fraught future. Its emotions more confident and clear headed, though nervous.

Much of this novel has the air of the semi-autobiographical. Its a touching love letter to his own background and Mother, and a raw, exposing revelation of coming out and the unearthing of his latent literary talent. Initially I wasn't sure whether I liked the fractured episodic narrative. But the explosion of the love affair brought something else out onto the page. It was as though this was where Ocean Vuong finally located and nailed his true voice as a writer. Something breaks out, that makes one really want to read what his new novel The Emperor Of Gladness, might bring forth. As a debut novel, this has a clear sense of its own unique voice, one that is quite rare. I can only think of Douglas Stuart's Shuggy Bain in recent years that has had a similarly confident hold on its own particular style and sense of place and language.

CARROT REVIEW -6/8

* Taken from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
    Published by Vintage 2019

ART 'N ' AB ART - Continuum - A Salthouse Church Exhibition

 

Its a couple of years since Anglia Textile Works last had an exhibition at Salthouse Church, and I remember the art on show left a huge impression on me at the time. Coming just a few weeks since the rather excellent Stains & Traces exhibition, similarly focused on using textiles as a medium for feeling and self expression. Continuum is a group of female creatives, each with a recognisibly distinct approach to their medium, that maintains that tricky balance of being both adventurous and inspiring. Its also so easy to see how some of them have progressed and finessed their artistic styles in recent years. I'm certainly finding this artistic area hugely exciting to engage with as a spectator and as an artist. There is art here that frequently surpasses traditional paint on canvas. I come away with the bounce of a new fervour to approach my own creative projects in fresher exploratory avenues.

Niki Chandler

An artist whose whose work has becomes more impactful and controlled. The use of coloured gauzes in layering or printing continues, but its one large piece of quilting, a shimmering hanging of tones of blue that evokes seascapes. Their is also a sense of things visibly shifting uneasily, it is also apparently a meditation on her mothers dementia. 

Heidi McEvoy-Swift

A textile artist who also does work making theatre costume, she utilises this as source for thefabrics she uses in a variety of mediums, patchwork and sculptural forms. Some strikingly effective small sculptures made from leaves were a stand out for me here.

Annette Morgan

Annette employs quilting techniques in a wide range of richly dense colourings. Often hand printed fabrics of designs from sketch books, sewn and pleated to give the finished piece a sort of aged layering patina. 

Marian Murphy

A focus on forms hanging over-layered and textural bodies suspended in space. Some very accomplished hand work an emphasis on semi scupltural reliefs.  

Hannah Rae

Densely textured and sewn hangings, also ordinary items concealed beneath an intricate covering of coloured threads and stitches. Like many textile artists she is exploring the mark making potential of the hand or machined stitch, as a means of expression.

  

Claire Spender

Another artist utilising the hand sewn and textural qualities in a collage or semi sculptural manner. Its like free hand drawing but in threads and rough fabrics.

  

Cherry Vernon-Harcourt

A minimalist landscape aesthetic plane, applied here with fabric and threads. The use of linen often layered over laid on items, or scumbled with colour stains, and fine twisted lines of many coloured threads which offer us a shimmering moving horizon point. Really refined skills on show here.

Irena Wilmott

A really interesting application of felted textiles as wrappings and coverings of often recognisible items. As though something alien and intrusive has taken them over and is concealing and absorbing their essence. Genuinely unsettling and fascinating work.

 

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

QUOTATION MARKS - A Zen Saying

 'When the roots are deep

there is no reason

to fear the wind'

A Traditional Zen Saying

STREET OBSERVATIONS - The Invisible Person

As you passed her it was the hand gestures that caught your eye. The woman stood with two hands opened out just so, in a Virgin Mary like supplication, the shoulders shrugging, fingers bent back and then as if being counted, wagged then pointed towards a destination, coy fingers pressed gigglingly tight against the lips. All the facial and digital signifiers of derision, exclamations and enjoyment expressed in a mere few seconds,in complete silence. Not addressed to me, or to anyone in the street, but to this entirely imaginary person who stood before her in her minds eye, with whom she intently. mutely was conversing. Her eyes never looking directly in any living person's direction, This was not street theatre, nor mime performance art. It was one lonely woman half living in this and another world totally divorced from everyone else. One where she could be heard and chat freely, endlessly if needs be. These ghosts who were always reliably there for her, available at any time of the day. Awake, even in the broken hours of evening

She'd found her spot on the octagonal seats round the base of a beech tree. Aesthetically positioned at the conjunction of four busy city streets, before the steps of an old bank. Now a bar and grill trading off its former position of good fortune. There she sat sequentially forming and smoking her own cigarettes. Her practiced tobacco browned fingers betrayed a lifetime of rolling her own shag, twisting and pinching the end, and letting it rest precariously smoldering between the twin beaks of her lips. All the while continuing with the same gentle gesturing of an ongoing polite conversation with the voiceless companion without form, who seemingly sat just to her left.

It was hard to discern what her true age might be, probably in reality her mid fifties, but street life had prematurely distressed her face, by ten, maybe twenty deeply wrinkled years. Spindly legs without much muscle left, disappeared up behind the damaged pelmet of a tan coloured suede mini dress, above it a bare mid riff, with a white crop top slouching down on one shoulder. Yes, she didn't dress her age, but then why should she need to? These clothes were comfortable, its the height of the Summer heat, and here on these benches she could ochre her limbs, Briefly disguising the winter pallor of drained poor health that lay beneath. 

On a casual glance you noticed her long peroxide white hair tied loosely in a stiff bunch. Which she swished backwards and forwards in the animation of her mimetic conversation. On closer examination it was clearly a wig. You could see its wavering loose edges, the hairpins, the hair and the scalp beneath a sickly yellow green colour, the consequence of frequent home bleachings, gone wrong. Scorching the suppleness out of her own hair, turning it lifeless, brittle, reduced to shaven stumps. The wig, a resplendent facsimile for a misremembered fulsomeness of hair. Cut, woven and shaped from the head of someone else.

Why was she stood here now? Well, who knows really? I doubt even she knows. In the past, maybe she'd professionally worked these streets, until drink or stronger intoxicants took the competitive edge off her trading profile. Though that's not the sole reason why you end up on the street. These days where the causes of destitution is a highly competitive market. Hard times undoubtedly fell upon her at some point, and now even this 'performance' is not for real, not for anyone, anything, anymore. This melodrama she's acting out, is cut off from whatever was its primary purpose or place of origin. The existential reasons for surviving this far remains a mystery, long buried. Going through the motions of a life no longer lived, of friends not real or really friends, a charade that you had to take a wild guess at, what it actually meant. 

WATCHED - Andor Seasons 1 + 2

Boy was this couple of series a truly outstanding pleasure. Brilliantly written and staged Andor is set in the Star Wars world of authoritarian Empire and a still nascent rebellion, just prior to the incidents in the film Rogue One. Many characters from that film featuring here. If you thought the three Star Wars prequels and the original trilogy were poorly written at the level of a pre-pubescent Boy's Own Annual cartoons, then be prepared to be surprised by just how adult and cleverly nuanced the script for Andor is. There is lot of waiting around, a lot of hiding, a lot of backstabbing scheming, a lot of political intrigue and betrayal, yet also a lot of action, and scenarios with real heart and humane wit on show here. The makers compare it to the carefully modulated and sophisticated narrative of a John Le Carre post war spy thriller, and one can see why. If you think you don't like Science Fiction then I encourage you to watch this. It very subtly and quietly revolutionises what a Sci-fi epic can be capable of.

There are a vast spectrum of interesting complex characters, too many to mention here, who over the two series you come to understand in more detail, there backgrounds and motivations. Though the story ostensibly centres around the miscreant anti-authority personality of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) a petty thief and chancer. Who is recruited as a reluctant mercenary by the evasive director of rebel activity Luthen  (Stelan Starsgaard )  but ends up being its primary motivating force. No matter how much he tries to get away from it, he keeps being drawn back in for yet one more mission. Another person to save.

Trailing him throughout is Syril ( Kyle Soller ) who imagines himself to be a tough minded resourceful officer, but ends up being demoted for his self-evident incompetence, and has to move back to living with his terrifying confidence crushing Mother (Kathryn Hunter). He envies and admires the hard ass ruthless brutality of Dedra (Denise Gough) who was brought up Empire through and through and who perpetrates the sort of unspeakable cruelties Syril would be totally incapable of doing. A strange odd couple romance does however emerge, that comes crashing down when Syril finds out Dedra lied to him about the real purpose of his mission in Ghorman.

Then there is the seemingly beautifully apportioned realm of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) a wealthy Senator in the ruling Senate. Who is secretly the vehicle for laundering the money the rebels steal or raise through more respectable channels. Her under the radar financial maneuverings are perpetually in danger of being discovered. Her close childhood school friend and former lover Tay Kolma ( Ben Miles) who is now a high class banker, helps her out disguising funds as donations to a variety of charitable foundations. 

Mothma is probably the most fascinatingly morally compromised character in the whole drama. Icily cool, with an unruffled composure on the exterior, yet internally deeply disturbed by the personal cost to her family of her under cover activities. The standout episode of the entire Andor series takes place during the dance evening after her daughters wedding. Before it starts we see her being told by Luthen he has arranged for someone to resolve the situation with Tay Kolma, because he's been attempting to blackmail Mothma to give him a percentage on rebel money.  Luthen means to bump him off. And uncharacteristically she drops her ultra controlled external demeanour and dances like a person possessed, trying to lose her emotions, to drown out the overwhelming complex of sadness she is being totally consumed by. It is quite the most unexpectedly emotionally knockout scene.

And these are just a few characters from a wonderfully broad range on show in Andor.  Most of the sets are built physical sets or existing buildings cleverly montaged into a green screened city scape. They bring a distinct architectural style to these very different worlds, between the capital planet Coruscant and that of self consciously fashionable Ghorman say. Similarly the costumes are equally diverse, from the immaculately cut tailoring of the capital and the more rough rusticated fabrics of Ghorman. All round applause to everyone involved in this series, this is quite a magnificent achievement. It raises the bar so much for Disney + that even they are unsure quite how you could follow it. 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 126 - Retreat & Digest Days

 And we begin with another apt business name emblazoned with pride across the side of a builder's van. This one came to me via Hubby and it is one very fine bit of word play - Mortar The Point - who is based in Weymouth.

One would think that the month that you had your HA! in would be permanently etched in your mind.  On recently checking through blog posts I made at the time I discovered it was the 10th of July and not the 10th of June as I had misremembered. A strange time slippage. But my body knows what is coming, and this June 10th appears to be kicking off an emotional and physical replay, via what I can only describe as a mild panic attack. After a year, the traumatic affect of the heart attack has begun to fade around the edges. You can't live in a state of alarm and heightened preparedness forever. Also, all that active resolve of the first few months to change your diet and exercise habits tends to soften too, to not be so hard line on the self discipline. This is not a bad thing, some sense of normality needs to be resumed. 

I don't think I'm unusual in finding the maintenance of an iron clad discipline difficult to sustain for anything more than the short term. And yet, its also easy to underestimate the beneficial effects of the changes made. Mentally leaving it entirely to your medications to forge a major bulwark against your premature death, is not a good strategy. Anyway, there is a good deal of apprehension already swirling around about the anniversary next month. A type of unrealistic, yet understandable fear, that it will happen all over again at the same date and time. According to Google, this is a typical response, one year on. Its not that I've now become blessed with the sacred powers of a predictive oracle - Damn it!

Most of the time this blog's monthly viewing figures potter along anywhere between 4 and 12,000. The previous high point was last year at over 24,000.  But this May the monthly views reached 56,660 ,which is the highest its ever been. I cannot really take this as being anything to do with me, nor the quality of this blog, but feel free to offer your encouraging remarks. Nor is it particularly something to brag about. It is an amazing, but also strange anomaly, which remains nonetheless worthy of note. I've mentioned before that I think this Cornucopia blog maybe on some course reading list, probably I suspect a language or literature based one. A couple of years back viewing figures boomed in the US and France. Last year they boomed in Singapore and Hong Kong. This year these have been joined by Austria, Germany, Vietnam, Brazil and Mexico. 

Apart from one of my poems and a handful of book reviews that receive raised levels of attention, the remaining views pretty much stretch across the entire history of this blog. They have no clear consistent theme to them. Its just a baffling surge that appears to happen largely in the Spring through to Summer. June has, at the time of writing, dropped back to what I'd call a more normal level. It would be an assumption by me that any reason for this uplift is a favourable one, or be in some way flattering to my ego. It could just as easily be the opposite. And whether the former or the latter - do I really want to know?

Of late there has been a shift in how I approach what I do day to day in my retired life. For the last year its all been a bit too fraught, with the aftermath of the HA! creating an exaggerated need, if not a compulsion to 'make the most out of life'. This was leading to a huge build up of frustration, welling up within me, as daily necessities and unexpected occurrences appeared to perpetually 'delay' creative projects.  It was as if I was attempting to organise my life like it had this inherent work schedule built into it. That this was the only way it could maintain meaning and purpose within it. And yet, in truth, I don't have to do anything at all. However, I choose to spend my days let it be enjoyable. Let me be at ease with myself. Let it not turn my retirement into an exercise in productivity. I've spent much of my adult life doing the bidding of a job, some of which I would not have chosen to do other than from financial necessity. I'm starting to view my days now as similar to stepping once again into the free flowing stream of life and allowing myself to get caught up in the eddies of what ever is passing by, and just seeing where that leads my day. This is proving far less stressful and has a much more gentle flexibility to it. 

When we were last in Walsingham, we found a small side chapel in the Anglican Shrine dedicated for use by the Eastern Orthodox Church. I was drawn to the idea of a shrine that was a screen of  panels, opening doors and cupboards behind which different elements of the shrine would be contained. I want to make my shrine more like that. I've recently bought some second hand bedside cabinets as the foundations for assembling the basic structure on. At the moment the final appearance of it is really only a vague notion in my imagination, but I am excited to see how ideas for this evolve as its form gradually emerges. 

I recently watched a interview (shown above) with Yuval Noah Harari led by two American Theravada Buddhist monks from Clear Mountain Monastery. He talked a lot about his two hours a day meditation practice and how that affects the acuity of his mind, thoughts and reflections. He made a useful suggestion whilst talking about the benefits of being on retreat. The need to switch off from our busy 24/7 technology never sleeps world, and to go on an Information Diet.

This is similar in effect to what in my Buddhist training we would've referred to as Reducing Input. Harari expressed the view that we input so much useless stuff these days, we really need to consciously set aside time without technology being directly in our faces, just in order to process and digest what we are taking in. He suggested this lack of time to properly digest what we see and hear from our screens, was one major contributory factor in the rise generally of heightened levels of anxiety, stress and feelings of being overwhelmed. Modern life has not enough idle time of doing nothing at all. We need more periods of being useless for as long as possible, basically. 

In response to this suggestion I've recently started adjusting my morning routine, I don't immediately switch on the TV or laptop, from the moment I get up. I drink my Rose Green tea and just sit with myself for a while. At some point I'll write in my Morning Journal. These days I can't really afford to go on retreat, so I'm thinking of introducing Retreat & Digest Days into my week ,where I have no input via technology, TV, tablet or computer screen at all. I certainly need to cut back on doom watching the latest authoritarian escalation on the streets of the US.

FINISHED READING - Mountains & River Sutra - by Norman Fischer - Edited Kuya Minogue

This book has had a circuitous birthing. Originally Norman Fischer gave a number of commentary talks on topics arising from the text The Mountains & Rivers Sutra by Dogen, at the Upaya Zen Center. Taken from The Shobogenzo, the sutra it is one of ninety three essays Dogen wrote. It is a mixture of instructions, and mytho-poetic evocations of the state of Buddhahood through nature. Traditionally a Sutra is a teaching given by the Buddha. But here Dogen is taking a more radical interpretation, that its in the nature of mountains and rivers to embody Sutra like teachings, that mountains and rivers communicate Buddhahood to us through their very existence. Fischer's commentary gives the text a more 21st century interpretation and lays out some of the central ideas it contains. Kuya Minogue edited these talks into fifty two teachings and appended her practice suggestions, which became quite locally popular, this eventually led to them being published in book form.

Any commentary on the Mountains & Rivers Sutra will attract my attention, because they are rare. It is also a favourite Dogen essay of mine, and in this case I also have a lot of time for Norman Fischer as a teacher. Though having said that, I have to shamefully admit that since purchasing the book, it has lain on my book pile, and only fitfully been read. Not because the commentary isn't good, because it is. But I wrongfully assumed I had to invest in doing fifty two weekly practices to make the most of the books format. But to be honest I couldn't get on working with it on that level. In some respects I'd have preferred a straight transcript of the complete talks. There is certainly a considerably meatier exploration lurking behind the paragraphs of these edited, yet tasty, highlights. When something is written as a talk it has its own sense of flow and knows the point it is heading towards. When that is re-edited in the way it is here, you instinctively intuit that something is absent and gone missing here. The gaps show. Its not even that her editing is not good, nor her suggested practices useful. They are just not where I am at presently. Besides, Fischer makes an extremely effective presentation of the texts themes, so how it can be applied to practice seemed to me largely self evident. But then I've been a Buddhist practitioner for over thirty years, and this book is aimed, I guess, at someone less familiar with the uniqueness of Dogen's vision of practice. 

Dogen's main theme in the Mountains & Rivers Sutra is to question how spiritually useful it is to hold onto a limited human perspective. Particularly in relation to what the true nature of reality is like. 

'Dogen tells us that when we get stuck in the view that we are the centre of the universe, and that nature is here to serve us, we get caught up in our self-centred view and lose our unique capacity to realise, appreciate, live out and find joy in the reality of our oneness with all existence. He is telling us that we need to study water from the point of view that is larger than how it serves us humans.'*

The mountains and rivers in the Sutra are not used as spiritual metaphors for something else, but active presences we are able to engage with. In one famous section Dogen says:-

'If you doubt the mountains' walking, you do not know your own walking; it is not that you do not walk, but that you do not know or understand your own walking. When you do know your own walking you should then fully know the green mountain' walking'*

Fischer's later comment places a strong emphasis on the universal applicability of this. 

'Here he is saying that mountains and waters, as well as everything that is deep in our hearts, every physical thing, every object that appears...is a unique expression of the most profound of Buddhist understanding and teachings. Everything is Buddha. Everything expresses the fundamental truth of existence' *

When we go into the mountains or sit by a babbling river, these are not passive experiences merely requiring the receptivity of our attention. We are entering into a conversation with the mountains and rivers, where we allow these elements of nature to reconnect us with what is fundamental, to awaken and to instruct us:- 

'When a three month monastic training period was over, monks often burst out of monastic cloister to roam mountain trails, looking for the famous Chan sages to debate the teachings. The sages were easy to find since they often adopted the names of mountains where they lived. Thus, the sage became the voice of the mountain and the mountain became the voice of the sage. In other words, the sage awakened the mountain, and the mountain awakened the sage.'* 

There is a suggestion here that it loosens the fixed boundaries of our self when we live in close communion with mountains and rivers. But there is also the implication that this 'self-less-ness' can ultimately be found anywhere, if we are open to it.

'It really is a great burden to drag all the stuff of the past around. its tiring to be defending ourselves or justifying our opinions and actions all the time. family, community and country are always asking us to decide who we are, what we stand for and what we want. It can seem so important to have others recognise us and pay attention to us.

Dogen is telling us to' just say no' to all that. He's inviting us to drop our thoughts and disappear into our circumstances, into family, into community. He is giving us permission to be the spirit of the mountains and river valleys where we live. If we can do that, we will know the most profound rest that we have ever known.'*

As you can read in these short extracts, there are many rich fecund ideas to be found within this text and Fischer's commentary. It distills a lifetime of contemplation on the meaning and implications of this densely allusive Sutra. My reservations about the format of this book aside, this remains a perceptive and usefully instructive book to read and contemplate the potency of the ideas the Sutra contains.

*All extracts taken from Mountains & Rivers Sutra
 Teachings by Norman Fischer, Translated & Edited by Kuya Minogue
 Published by The Sumeru Press Inc.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

MY OWN WALKING - June Journal 2025

In my teenage years, as the acceptance and the consequences of being gay began to fully dawn upon me, an opened ended question came to my mind - So what will your life be all about now?  

Living in a small market town in North Lincolnshire, I was many miles from whatever passed for 'gay culture'. How was I ever to find out what that was like and whether I even liked it? It wasn't until I moved away to Art College that my limited horizons suddenly broadened massively. The decriminalisation of 1967 and gay liberation had brought freedom, but to be what? Every gay man now had to decide for themselves what the answer to that question was. Be fully yourself, we vaguely generalised, but what on earth did that actually mean or entail?

In the early years post 1967 there was much talk within the gay community, about gay lifestyles and the need to create a uniquely different way of relating and being gay. Marriage and children was something few thought possible, and many believed it actually to be undesirable. That even the idea of gay marriage would be playing the game of doing what is acceptable to hetero-normative models of relationships. Yeah, very hefty use of words there. This did, however, downplay the significance of some underlying huge human emotions, the desire to belong, the desire to put down roots, and the desire to feel accepted, included and loved. 

For many gay men, despite all the positive changes in wider societies views on homosexuality, there was still the need to refuse to conform to 'straight' narratives of what is normal and acceptable. That they saw themselves as the perpetual outsider, rebelling against the enforcement of 'straight' paradigms. And, as we are currently seeing in the US, a government's liberal permissive attitudes and supportive legislation can be changed literally overnight, on the whim of the Tangerine Emperor. The liberal democratic principle that gay people have as much right to live their lives as they chose as everyone else, has revealed itself as being conditional on tolerance being actively in the room. And tolerance, though its not necessarily wholehearted acceptance, it's still preferable to active hate or vengeful moral opprobrium. Ask the trans community for what that feels like.

Hubby and I have now been in our relationship well over twenty years, thirteen of them married. Neither of us has ever wanted to play the perpetual rebel outsider, and neither have we wanted to play happy nuclear families either. Having children, whether biological or adopted, well, that is an investment we have never had enough money to even consider a possibility. Even if we'd wanted to, which we didn't. I'd certainly ruled out ever being a Father, early on in my adult life. What has been crossing my mind of late is what happens to those impulses for 'fathering'  where do they go in a gay man's life?  Its not that they necessarily disappear completely from conscious view. Do they focus on channeling themselves into something else, if so, what into?  And don't say, a dog.

So way back in my late teenage years in the 1970's what did I envisage my future would be? What areas did I focus my attention, ambition and youthful drive upon?  I wanted to 'father' a career in the arts, some vehicle for self expression and a desire for status, success, even fame, floated around in it like fortune telling angels. Though I'd no idea how to go about that, nor if I had sufficient talent, ambition or luck to achieve any of it. I had the rather vague but lovely idealism of a young man, who wanted to make the world a better and more beautiful place, through anything I was involved in or created. There was always in the background the fervently imagined dream of meeting someone who I'd spend my entire life with. Again with no idea how that might come about, nor what the first steps towards that might be. I wanted eventually to have a home on the coast or at least in the countryside, filled with beautiful objects and spend time doing the sort of things I loved, in the company of the aforementioned man. I wanted to be able to enjoy the arts in all its forms. Hence much of my time spent outside of work in my mid twenties, was taken up with being a 'culture vulture' soaking up as much of our capital's artistic activity I could afford to go and see. All of these imagined from a tiny one room bedsit, with only a two ring Baby Belling cooker for company, off The Great North Road in East Finchley, North London. 

Now all of those things I describe above are the type of thing any inexperienced young man might imagine for himself. They are all focused on achieving various forms of self-gratification. Now, some of those things did actually happen, some I had a stab at, but eventually they came to nothing. By my early thirties I'd reached a sort of personal impasse. I saw myself as having in some way failed in my early life ambitions. Who I was, and what I wanted from life required a thorough overhaul. I needed to locate some sort of refresh button. The various disappointments in life, and in the sort of person I discovered myself to actually be, are what eventually led me to Buddhism. Where on some unconscious level I, initially at least, spiritualised self-gratification, and transformed it into a transcendental form of self-realisation. The focus in any 'fathering' is what it is we want to give birth to through our life. And understanding 'the self, though important, it shouldn't stop there, because your 'self' is fickle and not a fixed thing. So you can't build the meaning of your life entirely around its gratification.  

These days the pursuit of self gratification has almost become the default religion of our social media age. But back in the 70's the sort of technologically vain world we now inhabit 24/7 would have been impossible to imagine. Gay culture knew all about the life long pursuit of individualistic self gratification from much much earlier on. It is almost the chapter and verse joyful indulgence in it. And I was not immune in the pursuit of that. I think that it bred in me, not quite a narcissistic selfishness, but certainly a selfish focus that constantly tried to get what I individually wanted out of life. To find pleasure and success, for me and my self expression. Now none of these ambitions are necessarily exclusive to gay culture. Individualism, self expression and an entirely selfish focus on what you want from life, are what late stage capitalism thrives on, and has consequently become extremely widespread in Western Civilisation. But untethered from them from the very start, from any need to form a nuclear family and hence have children etc etc, its just 'The Gays' you see, they arrived there first.

And even though I now know myself better, and am a much more rounded and contented man than I was as a youth. I can still find myself slipping into a default selfish mode of thinking only about my needs and the gratification of them. It's as though way down in some hidden depth of my soul, there is one small corner that is forever living in an impoverished state, still feeling hungry for a self expressive creative urge to be scratched, gratified and fed. 

TEACHING OF THE WEEK

"We can't explain our lives; we can only live them. There is no end to the ways in which we try to define or grasp an understanding of this life. If we try to explain our lives, we just end up walling it up into an ingrained set of conditioned beliefs. All we can do is exercise the gifts we've been given in this life. Our lives are wide open. They are like mountains playfully splashing their toes in the waters that flow down their sides and collect in lakes."

Zoketsu Norman Fischer

Taken from Mountains & Rivers Sutra
Teachings by Norman Fischer
Pub The Sumeru Press In 

RISING UP MY BOOK PILE - June 2025

 

This is my current book pile as of the 4th June 2025. These books are placed in size order not preference or hierarchy of how I will read them. 

The oldest book on the pile is 

Migration.- W S Merwin  ( Currently reached page 175 of 529 )
Its a compendium of Merwin's poetry who is almost unknown in the UK, but a much lauded man of US literature. This goes from his earliest work through to quite recent. It is vast. The poetry varies in length and accessibility. Some of this poetry is absolutely wonderful, and some is just too long and far too opaquely written. I can find it, as a book, a bit overwhelming, so I take breaks, and pare it down into smaller manageable chunks. Hence it's lingering there at the bottom holding everything else up. It is not unloved, just unwieldy. 

Ordered through Holt Bookshop

Mountains & Rivers Sutra - Teachings by Norman Fischer ( Half way through reading this)
Its an edited selection of lecture / ruminations on a text by Dogen, which Kuya Minogue has added suggestions for practice based on the teaching. The latter I think just got in the way for me. So recently I just started to read the teachings as they are, which are brilliant and motivating when left alone, so I've found. 

Ordered through Holt Bookshop.

The Roots of Goodness - Dogen / Uchiyama
I've bought it because it is by Dogen, with a commentary by Uchiyama, translated by Thomas Wright. All of those three things, based on previous positive and beneficial experience, made this a must have purchase. 

Second Hand online purchase.

On Reflection - Richard Holloway 
I've read quite a few books by Richard Holloway and often found them helpful in putting some much needed perspective around the religiously non-aligned viewpoint I have felt myself in over recent years. 

Stumbled across this in Book Hive, Aylsham.

Ceilings - Zuzana Brabcova
I was in my favourite independent bookshop, I got to a point where I'd quickly reached choice fatigue. Husband found this book and thrust it before me, saying I think you might like this. I read the synopsis and thought, he may well be right.

A Book Hive Norwich purchase.

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
I read Baldwin's first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain a couple of years ago. I thought maybe it was time to read Goivanni's Room his famously ground breaking 'gay' novel. I find Baldwin, as a writer really deep and compassionate, as an activist, well, what an orator, what a fluent intelligence. But boy is he an intimidating figure. 

Purchased from Waterstones in Norwich, a freeby on my loyalty card.

Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Saw Vuong being interviewed on Dua Lipa's book podcast and found him a really interesting thoughtful figure. Hearing the title of his first novel made me feel - I just have to read this right now. 

Second Hand online purchase.

A Short History of Tomb Raiding - Maria Golia  (Just started reading this )
I've been a huge long term enthusiast for Egypt and Egyptology since my childhood. Again its the title that sold this to me. 

A Book Hive, Norwich purchase

Devoured - Anna Mackimin
I saw the stylish cover of this book, and read the synopsis. Its set in a Norfolk commune and is a black satire on an idealistically driven style of living and how it can all go terribly wrong very quickly. Looking forward to reading this immensely. 

Bought from Book Hive, Aylsham

BOOKSHOPS

Book Hive, Norwich

Book Hive, Aylsham

Holt Bookshop

FINISHED READING - Heresy by Catherine Nixey

The Greek word haeresis is the foundational origin for the English word heresy. In Greek the word means choice and its not a dangerous thing to commit. This choice was seen inherently as a good thing, a positive thing, being heretical was something to be encouraged. So how did the West get from seeing heresy as a beneficial choice to becoming contentious ideas that needed to be actively suppressed and those who espouse them killed? This huge shift in meaning comes down to how Christianity responded to things it saw as a threat to its own carefully curated orthodoxies. What this book does is blow the doors off some fundamental views of Christianity, as not being quite so uniquely special to them as they are habitually portrayed. The Christian church we see today emerged through the violent suppression, and eradication of rival alternative interpretations of the message of Christ.

In the time of Augustus there was a man well known for his acts of healing and wise prophetic words. Who claimed he was born of a virgin who had received a divine visitation .He wore his hair long and had simple linen robes. And walked around barefoot claiming he was the son of God, healing and raising people from the dead. But this particular saviour of mankind lived in Rome and was called Apollonius of Tyana. Its unclear exactly when he was born, so it cannot be established exactly whether he pre or post dated Jesus. But even the dates of the Jesus's life are also somewhat conjectural. However, it seems most likely they both were present in the Roman Empire in the same time period.  Therefore its hard to ascertain quite who was imitating who, or were they both simply conforming to a well worn and pre-existing religious archetype? The arrival of 'Sons of God' who performed miracles and advocated for living a simple devotional life, such prophets were actually ten a penny during the time of Jesus. Which is why people generally didn't take much notice of him, disparaged his 'ministry' and any claim to being The Messiah. Oh God, not another one! they screamed.

Catherine Nixey's book draws a lot on Roman commentators writing their thoughts and views on Christian teachings. And they are quite unsparing in their criticisms.  The third century philosopher Porphyry thought the parables of Jesus 'fictitious' garbage'. That they were 'little imaginative stories' 'replete with stupidity' written in a 'comical and unconvincing style' and disparaged the use of metaphors and their 'dubious little sayings'. Christian claims about virgin birth, being the son of god, sent to save the world from itself etc seemed to somewhat irk these commentators. Not just because they thought them ridiculous, which they did, but primarily because Christians were claiming them exclusively for themselves, as some how distinctly and uniquely them. But to Romans at the time these sorts of claims were extremely common. Celcus was clearly irritated by the Christian 'legends' which they regarded as 'noble and convincing' when he clearly saw them as fictional self delusions.

In the early years Christianity was very far from being of one uniform colour and creed. There was seemingly a multiplicity of what to us appear unfamiliar views and strange belief systems about who Jesus was. Often contained within an 'apocryphal' gospel. Two of which are The Infancy Gospel of Thomas and Infancy Gospel of James. These were always very popular gospels often incorporated into early Bibles. Though they were eventually excluded. they have had a long lasting influence on the incidental details of Jesus's birth and upbringing. The classic image of The Nativity, of donkeys in the stables etc and the given names of the three Magi all come from apocryphal sources, for example.

They also produced bizzare tales,  One concerned the Virgin Mary. A midwife is examining her hymen to establish the truth or not of her virginity. But on removing her arms her hands have been completely dissolved away. There are also very far from meek and mild accounts of Jesus's teenage years. Where he is portrayed as cursing children that upset him, who are then crippled or drop down dead. There are stories about Jesus as an adult losing his temper and violently attacking someone who disagreed with him. Or the version of the crucifixion where Jesus laughs uproariously during it.  Even at the time Jesus was accused of being a magician, a fake prophet, a charlatan, mostly by other Jews. Nixey discovered there were Christian sects where Jesus had become an all powerful Magus. The appearance of The Magi at his birth was hence felt to be somewhat prophetic. The explanations of why Jesus Christ came to earth had then, some very wildly fantastical interpretations. 

As Christianity became more established, after Constantine's conversion, a bureaucratic desire for a predictable consistency took over. And the apocryphal gospels were more vociferously denounced as fanciful fictions. Yet, considering the sort of fantastical material that still remains in the Bible, this does feel like the pot calling the kettle black. Nixey conjures the world of Rome and its Empire, and how it actually worked on a day to day basis. Particularly in the interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles, it is obvious from closer examination that they must have traveled around the Mediterranean using well established trade routes. Either as a stowaway or working their passage. The places they stop off at are all the main trading ports in the eastern Mediterranean.

One of the obscure outliers of Christianity are the Thomas Christians based in Southern India and Sir Lankha, for whom their signature text is the apocryphal Acts of Thomas gospel. This tells of the Apostle Thomas's travels as he evangelised within India. Archaeologically speaking this South Indian sect is known to be very old. The earliest crucifixes in the world so far found, have come from this area, some of these numerous stone artifacts date back to the 2nd Century. So it is feasible an apostle,that may have been Thomas, did actually travel there. There has also been a degree of subsequent syncretism going on between indigenous Buddhism and Christianity. There is a Jesus Messiah Sutra which blends the Buddhist precepts into the foundations of an essentially Christian God based theology. Practicing these precepts without that connection with the divinity being declared a heresy.

One of the most shocking things recounted is how orthodox Christians reacted after Constantine's conversion. The standard way of dealing with heretical elements by the Roman Empire was to exile the ringleaders. They were always fearful of creating martyrs if they killed them, and sowing the seeds for further discontent. What happened after the conversion was a widespread series of attacks by Christians slaughtering in a savage manner any 'heretical' Christian group. Constantine himself was left bewildered and horrified by how out of control and vengeful Christians had so quickly become. One of the worst atrocities took a whole village of heretical Christians out to sea, tied weights to their heads and feet and massacred them by throwing them overboard.  And having dispensed with the heretics Christianity always ensured their message died with them by destroying all their sacred books. Christianity provided the world with its first incidences of book burning.

Anyone who has an open minded curiosity about what the early years of Christianity were like, will find much to be really fascinated by in this book. Its an intriguing mixture of the weird cranky views of post resurrection Christian sects and a rough and ready exposition for how a the one true Church of Jesus Christ became established and was ruthlessly enforced. Central to that task was the role heresy played, becoming the most direct way of ensuring Christian theological conformity.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

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WATCHED - Shardlake

 
Matthew Shardlake is sent by Thomas Cromwell to Scarnsea to an abbey where one of his commissioners for the Dissolution has been brutally murdered. Shardlake has to find the culprit, but also must discover a really good reason for why the abbey should be closed down. Cromwell insists he take one of his lackeys Barak with him, which makes Matthew think he is the one who is being watched. When he arrives he quickly discovers all is not well here, and there has been a hushed up murder and a young monk has had a suspicious accident. The murders are definitely an inside job, he needs to discover who that is pronto, before someone else is targeted, or Cromwell runs out of patience with him.

Even when reading C J Sampson's novels they do have a rich cinematic quality, so you knew these would be adapted into a TV series at some point. It was just a question of when. This series, now on Disney + is a pretty fair adaption of the first of his successful Shardlake series of novels - Dissolution. 

Casting wise, it does well in choosing Arthur Hughes for the central role of Matthew Shardlake, the shrewd and perceptive lawyer, who is forever finding himself on the wrong side of the intrigue he is investigating. I'm glad they found such a capable actor as Hughes. Hughes has scoliosis and radial dysplasia, which is a perfect fit for Samson's character. To have gone down the road of faking this disability on an actor, in this day and age, would have been more than a bit distracting. Hughes is a very skilled actor, who plays Matthew with the gentleness mixed with over asserted confidence and crippling self doubt of the book, The script does not tone down the significance of being constantly referred to as 'the crookback' by his superiors, as though he were an entirely different species of human. People cross themselves when they see him in the street. Whatever his current standing in society, he is constantly reminded he is almost there on sufferance, because he is good at his job, almost too good.

Anthony Boyle makes a very good Barak, performing him as alternating between cocky and reckless, with the need he has to hide who he really is behind this facade of status and success. He pulls this off well. I'm unsure about Sean Bean as Thomas Cromwell, he's a bit too northern to have been brought up in Putney. And his hyper masculine style of acting doesn't quite convey the slyness and subtle cunning of Cromwell. One of the qualities of Cromwell was that he was a superlative bureaucrat who managed to do all his machinations in the backrooms. Trying to keep his actual public profile as low as possible. His 'dark arts' were what made him so disliked.

The entire series was filmed in Hungary, Austria and Rumania. Though this produces some very dramatic grand landscapes and buildings, it just doesn't look English enough. In the book The abbey in Scarnsea, is a relatively small festering institution situated near a estuary marshland on the south coast of England. Its smallness in scale is what makes it ideal for Cromwell to start his process of Dissolution there, because its easy pickings. In the series it has become this huge semi- castle. Generally the interiors do seem a bit too plush and shiny shiny. I hope when the series moves to London locations they capture the grubby level of detail that Samson put into his novels, which is a large part of why they are such brilliant books to read. But that said, this is a good start, lets hope we get further and improving further series.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

ART ''N' AB ART - Stains & Traces - A Salthouse Church Exhibition

 

When there is a exhibition that is shared between a number of artists, their artistic styles can be complementary or not. Sometimes there is too much variance in their differing approaches, its hard to discern any commonality in aesthetic or motivational approach. This exhibition Stains and Traces at Salthouse Church was rare, in that there was both individuality and a shared sense for a particular form of aesthetic exploration. There was a love for the qualities of textures, fabric, to overlay, to let them absorb paints and waxes, to roughen and fray, the quality of line and materials used was as important as the most conventional of landscape painters. Also how these can be used expressively to associate and conjure up a sense for the North Norfolk marshlands in particular

Mary Morris's works explore the textures of decay, how text and paper stains and distorts. there is something apocalyptic about her assemblages as if these strange artworks have been put together from found remnants of a lost culture. But almost as if lacking the knowledge to interpret them they are collected and displayed like artefacts in an archaeological museum often are. 

Annabel Faraday approaches her making of ceramic objects, as a form of reciprocity and produces in stoneware a version of the found objects texture. In the process exaggerating and heightening its surfaces and staining. So in this exhibition there are small pieces of ceramic made to resemble corrugated iron or boxes. The verisimilitude is only a part of the story here, for it is also about the artists closely observed eye for the significant detail to focus their skill, and your eye, upon.

  Denise Jones textile artworks utilise the fraying of fabrics, that almost unravel themselves across a piece. There is also the use of lines sewn across fabrics like drawn creases in the picture planes. The overlaying of textures and the autobiographical use of written text. 

 Carly Ralph's pieces explore repeated forms in blocks assembled like tiling. The fabrics often quite coarse and weather worn from found sources. To echo the movement of waves or the delamination of materials once they become damp. That process of change captured and hung on a wall.

 

Debbie Lyddon is probably the more locally well know of the artists exhibiting here. The hangings she produce show us very North Norfolk marshland landscapes but formed from stained and rusted canvases, pierced with rings or cut back to hanging threads. Evocatively poised in an exploration of how watery landscape can be expressed through the medium of ships canvas and boat chandlery. Her work has a strong sense of place and history.

As you can see just from these few pictures,there is a thematic overlap between them all. This gave the exhibition a coherence a lot of shared gallery shows lack. This was quite the best exhibition I've seen in Salthouse Church. I hope they all come back to do more in future years.

CARROT REVIEW 6/8