INSIGNIFICANT MOMENTS IN THE FOLDS OF TIME - A Voice You Could Die For

Some days no one in their right mind would wish to be in charge of the framing department. They'd offer to work the till, counter, wrapping, stocking up or unpacking deliveries out the back. Tasks that could easily keep them occupied, be productive, generally busier. Mind deadening boredom would not descend. You could credit yourself with not living an empty meaningless life. The regular staff, full or part time, even the customers on occasions, could all be fun to engage with.  Unless you were single handedly working the mezzanine framing counter, on the coldest wettest morning in January.

The young man was perched disconsolately on a stool, with hundreds of frame and mount samples ranked behind him like legions of aircraft . He knew full well he could be sat there for hours, trying to maintain this fictitious look of engagement on his face. Fiddling with the arrangement and alignment of the ready made picture frames and pre-cut mounts, for the third time in the last hour. Dusting dustless shelves. Gazing enviously down the stairs, that so few people ever stepped up, to the active chattering hustle going on around the main counter by the exit.

Paradoxically, this was the type of day when you could easily become the magnet for time wasting enquiries. The sort that were always two questions away, from a framing sales assistants perspective, of feeling you were dangerously over committing yourself. Someone would present you with this abstract concept of their picture. The one that has been hanging around for ages, but just needs a frame to set it off better. They have it at home. Their fingers helpfully form imaginary frame corners in the air, just to give you the idea of its size. Describing its subject matter in extraordinarily loose, cartoon like terms. Would you be able to give them some idea what frame would suit and the likely cost thereof? And you might be tempted to miraculously pull a rabbit out of thin air. Though fate might bounce this price badly back on you, should they return later with said picture, wanting that previously quoted price, exactly. They'd be righteously annoyed, for you had made to their recollection, not a general quote, but a specific promise, and they wanted you to keep to it, not betray and potentially rip them off. In short, these sort of customers were inevitably going to be a nightmare. 

His only customer this morning, had entered bedraggled from the rain, soaking a large area of the carpet through dumping their umbrella, numerous shopping bags and a wet Burberry coat upon it. Used up an entire half hour or more of his attention and expertise, and then left with barely a thank you for his time. Another enquiry he'd never see the fruits of. This had been followed by the areas resident piss artist and loud mouthed alcoholic Mr Gordon Smiley teetering in, like the portent of doom he was. Seizing the opportunity of the framing department not appearing busy, came in brandy breath all a flambe. Shouting profanities about the pictures we sold and how your framing charges were effin robbing people blind. He was a difficult one to contain once he'd sufficiently warmed to his theme, which never took long.  Becoming increasingly declamatory in voice and hand gestures. 

Usually, as happened today, the manageress saved him. Gordon appeared to like her, respected her on some level. One got the sense that she felt some mutual ' there but for the grace of god go I' recognition going on. Charitably amusing him, he instantly became more amenable, and quieter. As she walked slowly, gently ushering him in the overall direction of the door. With a stagger and a flap of his grubby coat, he exited stage right, and was gone. The manageress turned towards the framing department, winked conspiratorially and returned to her office. There was another one he owed her.

So this morning had been rough, a humiliating, if not mildly belittling experience. After failing to deal well with a full frontal assault from Mr Gordon Smiley, breathing down fire water upon him. He was now anxiously preoccupied with a desire to take a tea break very soon. If only he could attract someone's attention. So much so, that he failed to notice the man, stood with his back towards him. Singularly maintaining his focus on flicking through the racks of sale frames. Who suddenly piped up, and without turning around, said - 

' Gosh, that one must be hard to handle. Does he come in here regularly.' 

As he spoke, it was as though a bomb had exploded and it's pulse ripped across the room. A wave of emotion broke over, around, through and into him. Had he suddenly stepped into a parallel dimension? How, what, who was this guy? Did he know him? An instinctual feeling of intimacy arising, told him he did. An air of recognition hovered around the voice. It seemed to contain a very ancient longing, for some unrequited love object in the past perhaps, of a much mourned over ex. His memories however, could not settle on any one individual in particular. There was a charm in that voice, like a magic potion, an entrancing spell, the desiring spirit of a sacred love chant from a God. The most beautifully cultivated resonance he had ever heard, that speared, and directly hit love central.

Accompanied by a swoon, those carefully punctuated consonants, with just the light lingering suggestion of a smoothly well disciplined Scottish burr, spread like honey throughout his whole being. A munificent wave oozing a feeling of being deeply smitten, with a man he'd apparently never seen or heard of before. Who had yet to fully turn around, so the young man had not yet seen what sort of face such a voice might emerge from. Every syllable whispering sweet nothings in his ear - whoever this is, he is the man for you. You will be willing to die for this one. Do not miss out. Above all, do not fuck this up.

And the heart burst open, the hands fell lifelessly down, the brain was completely floored. In the bubbling rising moment of ecstasy he forgot that he might need to reply. The response when it did emerge, came out a spluttered squeak. Inside his head all words, phrases, sentences, possessed only the smallest level of intelligibility, drowned under a warbling static, his brain an out of tune radio station. Coughing heavily, he attempted to clear his head and start again. 

' Ah, well.. yeah ..he does....Couple of.. times a week. Harmless really.....But its bad for trade. As you can see, he clears the shop in minutes.'  

These staggered words tailed off in volume and confidence. Though factually all true, they were feeble. Internally he thought : -

'Come on man, perk up, charm him. Engage your wit and banter. Don't let this all die on the deathly desert shore of a stunned embarrassed silence'

So he smartly improvised -

'Can I help you at all? '

Finally the man fully turned around, and it was a fair face, with a youthfulness still surviving even the claws of its eye wrinkles. Thirty something, charming, yeah, he could be putty in those hands.

'Well, maybe you can, I have this picture at home. But, you know as I've been standing here looking through these frames, I think its probably best if I bring it in. You think you can remember a picture well enough, but you really can't, can you? And I'd rather not try describing it to you.  I don't live locally, but I could quite easy pop back later.'

'Oh, OK, yeah, you do that. We offer a quick and professional service. This time of year, it's quieter, so we can turn it around within a week... if needs be'

'That sounds great, I'll maybe see you later then.'

As the man left he briefly flipped this warm beatific, appreciative smile, over his shoulder, as though he were well used to the spellbinding effect his voice could exert. The young man, however, was mortified with himself - if needs be ! - if needs be !! He'd switched on his standard business mode of interaction, and couldn't stop his mouth from this inane babbling. When he ought to have been more himself, relaxed and personable, apply the blokey banter, perfume a select few words with a frisson of come hithery. That usually flushed them out. Either sparkling or scaring the horses. But none of any of that, what a ruddy fool he was,.

Attention came back with a thud to the now empty framing department. A place he now felt extremely reluctant to vacate. To take even the tiniest of tea breaks, lest he missed spending further time with the most captivating male voice he'd ever encountered. Utterly bereft, he preoccupied himself with essentially unanswerable questions, like - do straight men ever flirt with gay men? - he was coming on to me wasn't he? -  or was he just being pleasantly sociable? - he could no longer discern the difference. 

Other thematic variations on these, were much harped upon and circled around for the next hour. Attempting to pin down precisely why he'd found that voice so stirring to his love muscles. Surely it did remind him of someone? He wasn't daydreaming any of this up was he? This had actually happened? Was he conjuring a love object out of a pretty voice? He did have form in that area. But no, this was totally unlike any of that. More akin to being actively benevolently bewitched.

In waiting for the man's return, the imminent became interminable. His manageress couldn't grasp why he didn't want to take a lunch break, after what must have been a rather dull morning in the framing department. Normally staff couldn't wait to get away, you could see it in their deadened eyes. The besotted young man, however, was distracted from rational thought, and from something any framing sales assistant worth their salt should always hold in mind. Casual retail enquiries are the equivalent of a flirtatious tease.

He'd also failed to note, till much later in the day, one crucial word in the man's final sentence - 'maybe'.  No firm commitment there to returning. And so it was, that the man with the entrancing vocal chords, never did return, on that day, nor any other day. The end of the affair had arrived, before it had even begun. The experience of encountering this man, though consciously filed under - this was all a mirage - nevertheless found itself a sacred place where qualities of love were lodged and revered.

FINISHED READING - Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield

'Great poetry is the progressive incarnation of life in consciousness.'

It appears to be part of Owen Barfield's destiny to be overshadowed by his two fellow Inklings Tolkien and CS Lewis. They were highly influenced by his spiritually inflected, philosophical ruminations on the origins of language, and went on to apply those ideas into literary form. Poetic Diction, then, came to my book pile with a lot of expectations hanging upon it. And it has lain there for quite some time, not through lack of interest, but bravery. 

Barfield's central premise, posits a different direction of travel for the development of human language. The traditional view is that gutteral sounds become rough hewn simple attributed words, born out of the first stumbling steps of our self consciousness. These over time accrue deeper and more embellished metaphorical meanings, and rise to a high point with the development of poetry, through Greek Classics, to the Renaissance and the Romantics. What Barfield proposes is another trajectory. What first  emerges are certainly words, but what type of words were they? Themed compound words, with spiritual poetic metaphorical souls.. They arose, to use Barfield's term, as a given, fully formed and imbued with their own poetic diction and richness of meaning. Over time these all encompassing poetical meanings become broken down into their individual constituents. Separated, the words become denuded of their complex breadth. What he proposes is that the tone language took in those first words was existential, poetically lucid and mythic to its very bones. Whatever would follow this over the centuries, becomes entirely allusively metaphorical in character.

' Spiritus in Latin meant originally blowing, or wind. But when the principle of life within man or animal had to be named, this outward sign, namely the breath of the mouth, was naturally chosen to express it. Hence in Sanskrit asu, breath and life, in Latin spiritus, breath and life. Again, when it was perceived that there was something else to be named, not the mere animal life, the same word was chosen, in the modern Latin dialects, to express the spiritual as opposed to the mere material or animal element in man. All this is metaphor.'

Original poeticism was an innate unconscious form, which through use of metaphor poets try to consciously revive or invoke a reflected connection with. Words gradually shifted to become fixed consistent and prosaic in usage. Until we get to the point where Barfield considered contemporary poetry as either mundane in the how and what of it's expression, or overly concerned with, what he refers to as the architecture, its construction rather than the centrality of meaning. 

To demonstrate this process in the chapter on The Making of Meaning 1, he takes the Latin verb Ruo, which can be translated as to rush, to fall or to collapse. This is a word that describes any process of disastrous movement, a declining flow, a deluge, a torrent. This can be psychological, allegorical, economic, with many other applications. The necessity was for three separate words for rush. fall and collapse to arise. Ruo becomes ruina, and what was once about the impermanent nature and character of the falling itself becomes about the thing that has fallen, the desolate state of ruin. Ruin becomes the fixed conclusion rather the fluid process of being ruined.

For me, these sort of examples were where Barfield's idea start to come alive and feel credible. I am less interested in the philosophical slant to his work. Mainly because though I strain my mind attempting to understand it, I do have to recognise the limitations of what I'm able to comprehend. If anyone were to ask me why Barfield became overlooked, I'd say the manner of his expression is probably key. It reads, to these contemporary ears at least, as encumbered. Overly cluttered with explicatory asides, which like the chattering of birds in the trees outside, distract or disrupt the flow of comprehension. 

I have noted previously, that when an author quotes another writer in a book, and that quotatiion encapsulates the ideas of the book you are reading much better, this is telling about the writers ability to communicate their own ideas. I worked hard, but frequently failed to keep up with what he was attempting to express. His use of phrases and poetry in the original Greek, Latin, French or German and not providing you with a translation, struck me as having an arrogant assumption at its core. He either didn't think this ought to be necessary, or that his readership really needed to be those better educated coves.

Qualms and quibbles aside, there are occasional delightful snippets of information. That the frequency with which a poet uses a word, may not always be down to a limitation of vocabulary. That the word itself has some personal quirk or resonance, that suggests it held a deeper meaning for them than just it's lexicography or etymology might reveal. Coleridge had a particular liking and use of the word quiet, Addison had a love for the word secret, Milton's appeared to be fond of the word trim, whilst Shakespeare used the word function in a wide variety of contexts and inferences. The latter may in part be that function was in his time still a new word, being first used fifty years before Shakespeare began to write. It's meaning still open to be explored and expanded in its range of uses. And that itself, is a part of the thrill of new words, new expressions freshening the meaning of older ones. In our rationalised standardised world, the role of poetry and the poet is to return what has become inflexible in meaning back to the fluidity of a stream, to present us with a freshly minted word or unexpected juxtaposition.

'Strangeness shall have an interior significance;it must be felt as rising from a different plane or mode of consciousness, and not merely as eccentricity of expression. It must be strangeness of meaning.'

There are further ruminations here about the uses and abuses of archaism and conservatism, the vulgar and colloquial in language. Also on what makes great poetry and great poets. All of which are the sort of questions an academic might ask, but which a poet would give little consideration to, because nothing inhibits the spirit of poetic adventure more than too close an awareness of the technical guardrails and goal of your work in progress.

' The natural progress of language, if left, as it were, to itself, 

is a progress from poetic towards prosaic.'

 
CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

ARTICLE - Flag Shagging For England

 

In recent years in the UK, there have been demonstrations by far right activists, swaddling themselves in St George flags, carrying them like medieval knights on horseback, hundreds of flags suddenly bedecking road lamp posts across the countries boulevards and roundabouts. The flag of St George have always been prominent at times of national and international football and rugby competitions. This recent development seems to further extend its use, in a defiant reclaiming of the flag of England as the representative emblem of not just national, but racial pride. This comes wrapped in unsettling ideas of brutish white supremacy and the inevitable intolerant stirring of the pot of racist anti- immigrant sentiment. Often further dressed up in pseudo Christian virtues, as though the St George flag is the first bastion of a new moral crusade.

As ever, the English have lampooned the thing they hate and that concerns them the most. Coming up with a barbed term to describe the sort of person who attended these rallies. It is still being grammatically determined -  To Flag Shagg = the act - Flag-Shagger = the person who commits the act - Flagshaggers - the collective act. So the 'flag-shagger' has been conceived from the very start as a derogatory one. There is a good deal of the liberal middle class's social prejudice behind all of this. A view of the far right being largely the purview of poorly educated working class football hooligans, bouncers, boxers and brickies, who live off benefits and have far too much time on their hands. It's the old working class as dangerous destructive demons, forever putting their backs at the service of fascism.

Most of the demonstrators, and the areas where flags were being shagged, it has to be said, have appeared to be working class ones. There has been a consistent vein in English politics, Moseley in the 1930's, then the National Front in the 1970's & 80"s and a further resurgence after Brexit, of far right politics speaking to the experience of the white working class when they are no longer just about managing, but feeling abandoned, completely left behind economically and ignored by political leaders. The elites leave a wide open space vacant for the far right to move in to channel disruptive anger and frustration into protest. Flag shagging, like fascism, is not at all new.  You could almost predict that something like this will happen, given the near collapse of neo-liberal democracies.

As adventurers ( invariably male) set out on journeys of conquest and consequence, when they reached their goal, climbed that mountain, conquered that castle, landed upon the moon, founded a new settlement, these acts of heroism were often topped with a flag being planted. And that flag has meant a great deal, we claim this, we are here, this is ours now, now it belongs to us, we shall be proud to live here. And as the flag is raised some may salute it, respect it, love it, have pride in it, as though this were etched upon the very shadow of their soul. The British Empire was the nexus for flag shaggers, past and present. There has been a long and venerable history, of flag shagging for England.

That our modern day flag shaggers say that the flag of St George, and flags in general, need salvaging from the twin curses of modern day cynicism and historical revisionism over English atrocities committed during Empire. This holds a very tiny grain of truth. Though in the end flags are just flags, they fly high, they fly low, they flag things up. If flags are to be the object of pride, then the country does have to prove worthy of it. Flagshagging cannot save us from our disappointments, frustrations and the loss of confidence in the history and institutions of our country. Those institutions need to be run by better people, we need to be better as a people. It is perhaps no coincidence that in this moment when our national morale is low, our national morals are low too. When the more scurrilous and opportunistic of politicians offer us a solutions to this decline of our country, those solutions are inherently immoral ones. Our moral compass is regularly being fucked over for political advantage.

When morals are confused or at a low ebb, pride tends to be too. There is a general race to the lowest commonality. Clinging to a flag does little to change the sense of a loss of moral clarity. Morals, pride and respect, as a triumvirate, interact, they all have to be earned, not assumed. The object of them has to be worthy of having them placed upon their shoulders. You cannot place pride on a wobbly pedestal nor fly a flag up a broken pole. That little today feels worthy of respect or pride, is undoubtedly one root of our problem. Raising the flag of St George is one act of hopeless optimism, however morally dubious the reason for it maybe if examined in detail. It's like hiding a deep purple bruise under a small transparent sticking plaster. I understand the feeling, even if I do not agree with the analysis of what's gone wrong in our country. Irrespective of racial origin, ethnicity and immigration status, in the UK we all live in semi isolated ghettos of our own making, self alienating and selfishly individualistic, focused upon our particular sense of identity.  Other people, other citizens of England, who hold other beliefs, express other viewpoints, differing from our own, they have all become 'foreigners' to us. And this is our tragedy.

So, it is not just the flag shaggers who feel the sense of a loss of unity and pride. We all feel it. We all hold our pet theories about how and why this has come about, in our country and in our culture. We all spout our favourite scapegoats and hobby horses. Whilst there is common cause in this general theme - that there is an urgent need to renew the country as a whole,morally, economically, culturally and spiritually. Some look to a much mythologised past era for their inspiration, a time when things were rosier, apparently simpler and the country felt more united and cohesive. Others just wish we'd move on from such mythical nonexistent pasts and get on with forging a new reinvigorated sense of purpose and vision. It is part of what has gone wrong that we disagree about these things in so polarised a manner, so we never get to how things might be collectively changed for the better benefit of everyone. 

Now, I'll admit I am not a natural 'flag shagger', if anything I am by instinct, wary and suspicious of such things, and have not felt hugely patriotic for literally countless decades, and yes, I could be easily be catagorised as 'woke'. But both of these derogatory terms 'flag shagging' and 'woke' do not help any one. They don't actually explain or mean anything useful to know. They simply designate a response that says - I'm not going to listen to you. Whilst we are all still seeking something or someone who will give us firm moral leadership in the midst of this sea of turmoil and animosity.

Our knee jerk reactions reveal our need for moral clarity. When we encounter a moral failing or dodgy belief or action in anyone, we have become instantly heartless and puritanical, they are dead meat, persona non grata, banished from the kingdom, exiled to the online naughty chair. We are constantly trying to draw firm moral lines, but these are so prejudicial and judgemental, seriously lacking in wisdom, empathy or compassionate understanding.  Though there are people whether 'flag shaggers' or 'woke'  who hold hateful unconscionable views. England will be trashed if we cannot locate a way to transcend, or at least learn to live with differences, to find common cause beyond the contentious nature of polarised viewpoints.

We undoubtedly have a surfeit of nihilistic prophets of doom. And maybe the Flag Shaggers will always be with us, because they do come as a warning.

Where are the enlightened visionaries today, to bring us the hope we most need?

POEM - Borrowed Words

I'm seeing myself through 

childhood's eyes my toys

cast across the bedroom floor

with the accompanying magical

folklore from my errant dreaming

my rolling chassis is still

as unsure as a newborn babes

for what appears purposeful 

and godlike has assumed this gate 

from the rubble I stumbled upon

The words that I say are 

half beliefs half cut with

bluster a type of blagging

obtained cheaply imbibed

from the erudition of libraries

This mind stuffed with pocketed

borrowings that I will leave behind 

as a trail of cellophane wrappers 

from around my humbugs

the legacy of having once eaten 

Far more than was needed to survive by

Written by Stephen Lumb
March-April 2026

SCREEN SHOT - Exit 8

We are on a crowded train in the underground. A man by the carriage doors is listening to Ravel's Bolero on his ear buds. As he looks down the carriage to where a baby is crying. It's Mother is struggling to comfort it. A standing passenger, starts shouting and berating her for not doing more to quieten the child. He becomes increasingly agitated and rudely insults the seated woman. Just as the train pulls into a station, the man by the carriage door receives a phone call. It's a former girlfriend, she is in hospital, she has just given birth to a baby boy, who is his son. She wants to know whether he wants to be actively involved in bringing him up or not. As he exits the carriage the man is in a panic, he's coughing a lot, he reaches for his inhaler as he climbs the steps, heading for Exit 8. But as he progresses along the empty underground corridor it becomes clear he is going round and round the same circuit of tunnels, ending back at the same point. He is getting no nearer to Exit 8. Just one driven man with a briefcase keeps repeatedly passing him. What is happening here? becomes the question that preoccupies both the man and the viewer of the film.

This Japanese movie from 2025, directed by Genki Kawamura, is a psychological nightmarish drama. Taking the frequent premise of our nightmares of being caught in a situational loop, it takes its time to build it's world and the twisted incomprehensible logic of it. If indeed it has any. It's the sort of movie that leaves you pondering on what is occurring here, was this actually happening, or is it just his dreamworld, or a psychological conundrum he needs to work out before he can move on? Are all the people he encounters in the corridors simply aspects of his own psyche? Based on a computer game from 2023, Exit 8, the movie, exhibits all the recognisable tropes of being derived from that genre, but is not a slave to them, and actually makes something that is intriguing intellectually, which also engages you emotionally.  It is simultaneously a comment on the modern urban Japanese work ethic, where you can feel like you are trapped in this endless tragic life cycle day after day. And subtly drops a few comments and asides as the movie progresses. The driven man with the briefcase being once referred to as 'a monster'. The Escher poster on the corridor wall acts as a background motif for the whole movie, with it's number eight shaped loop.

The movie at just over ninety minutes long,  makes the most of this relatively contained time span. Just when you think you are becoming used to whatever is going on here, it suddenly upends the nature of it. If you are the sort of person who wanted to work out what was going on in the Matrix movies, this movie might give you something juicy to chew over. But putting aside all of that, this is a very effectively made and satisfying piece of film making, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 138 - Faking Shelves & Core Strengths

We were in a queue for a till in Lidl. The customer before us was paying for what looked like the weekly shop. Her daughter still in her school uniform, was doing her best to help pack the stuff they'd bought from.the conveyor belt into the supermarket trolley. Her Mum, tetchily asked ' What do you think you are you doing?' To which her daughter replies 'I'm trying to arrange it all neatly' The Mum replies "There's no point, let it be a mess' and as if to demonstrate, executed a dramatic sweep of a whole load of stuff into the trolley with one arm. I guess you might say that was a life lesson.

Strange Advert Question - ' Throat ruining your moment?'

Finished getting all the cupboard doors back on last week, Hurrah!  Painting and varnishing all the cupboard crates Prairie Sage, Double Hurrah !!  I was waiting all week for the arrival of a device to scan one wall for electric wires. Once it did arrive it became clear that one quarter of that wall was a veritable warren of wires, right where some hanging shelf supports were supposed to go. Initially deflated and Grrr frustrated. Hubby came up with a way around that holds the shelf that side on small brackets screwed into the cupboard next door to it. Still looks like it's hung on metal suspension hangers, because we are faking it to look so. Job done.

We decided a while ago that the wall just to the left of our far from salubrious half working oven, which before our repainting was a fat bespattered Pollock, needed a splashback fitted. After further thought we settled on simply extending the existing tiling to cover that area. All we needed to do was find some more tiles similar to ours. You might have thought that easy to do, to find some 10cm square slighting bumpy finished white tiles. But say not so. After a fruitless trip to B&Q in Fakenham, we shlepped over to Cromer to Tile Depot, where we asked about whether they had any such tiles. The way he said '10cm' was as though we'd just asked him whether the world was truly flat, which quickly made it plain we'd be getting nowhere here. Even online they appear to have become semi- mythical. Not completely exhausted all local possibilities, but we are not getting close to finding any as yet. The kitchen final completion date is pushed further beyond conjecture.. 

In A Health Advert - And thirty days later my neighbours are asking me what I've done to my knees.

Meanwhile, I am in the process of sanding back an IKEA drop leaf table in the kitchen. We've had it eight years, and the strange plasticated varnish has badly worn away in places.  It's made of segments of wood laminated together, our kitchen shelves were made similarly. And I noticed that once you varnish them they're so parched they suck the varnish in like a hungry incubus. I'm guessing this is to do with the laminating process. It helped to lightly dampen the wood before applying my first coat of varnish, I've discovered. Given the amount of time it takes to get the old varnish off, and the five or six coats of varnish it requires to get a decent level of finish, I'm willing to be content with the way it is turning out. It's not perfect, but it will certainly pass as OK. Another thing drops of the to do list, which is finally reaching the last dregs of stuff dreamt up in a feverish brainstorm we had three months ago. What's left to do? The splashback obviously, and a major internal clean of our partially decrepit oven. Which may include replacing an oven fan, which is very easy to do, so my husband says. Why do I feel a rising skepticism that that will be the case?  Experience man, past experience with this project.

For whatever reason I've had stretches of poor sleep lately, followed by a few good nights, that are never quite consistent enough to fully compensate for the previous sleep deficit. Morning meditations after about twenty minutes of sitting, have of late quietly slipped into a half hour coda of slumber.  From which I awake still in meditation posture and resting hand mudra, just a little ashamed of my very satisfying slumber Interlude. One I totally failed to notice and hence prevent. Mindfulness where art thou now?

You Tube Podcast Title - The No 1 Anti-Aging Vegetable 

I've been experimenting as part of my morning tai chi and exercise routine by adding in a round or two that strengthen my core back muscles, which appear to be helping quieten down the perpetually inflamed nature of my hip joints, that has been bothering me all winter. Sometimes it seems, that it's a matter of discovering what works best at relieving one's panoply of aches and pains. Obviously the underlying decrepitude of my joints is never going fully. I can imagine myself in some future care home performing this elaborate range of accumulated exercises that has gradually taken over my whole day. And my life will then feel fulfilled with - something.

Advert Tag Line Taken Completely Out of Context - Goodbye Gush Worries

I have been buying music on download for many years. Beginning back in the day when they lured you off CD's by offering you a CD & MP3 in one combined bargain purchase.  I Tunes would also allow you to download your CD's onto their music platform. The only thing I found was that some of those CD file downloads would abruptly cease working, usually after Apple did some digital upgrade. As with all things internet, the initial freedom and flexibility offered, gradually gets narrowed down bit by bit, until it's fully enshittified. As my CD collection is 200+,  downloading all of it is quite a task, and I've done that a few times now. But no more. I've bought myself a CD player, that you can also stream music on. I've rediscovered the joys of playing music, which has a depth and range of sounds that is richer and more panoramic. 

I'm realising how impoverished my ears have been. The desire for portability and convenience, leading to the limited acoustics ear buds are capable of. I can understand why there is a revival of interesting vinyl, because for all its practical downsides, the reproduction of sound was always way better than even that on CD's. It's one of those technological trade offs we often find ourselves having made unthinkingly. Whilst Apple currently let you play the downloads you've purchased for free via its I Tunes platform, what's the betting they'll eventually make it a premium service you pay a month subscription for access to. It will be that fait accompli or you'll have to tolerate an increasing level of adverts, that will make listening quietly to your own music a thing of the past. 

Misplaced Adjective Advert - Find Your New Fast.

LISTENING TO - Getting Killed by Geese

The production on Getting Killed is one major factor in this albums apparent cohesiveness. It has, overall, a rather clean sounding acoustic, as though this were recorded live to give it a punch, with little further unnecessary embellishment required. It's shorn of showy bombast or overly studio based effects, everything originates with the dynamics of a tight band of folk playing together. So whenever it does get raucously worked up, as it does on the album opener Trinidad, or later in Bow Down, the acoustic cacophony and mess is all the more to be relished. As though this trickster demon has taken over the band and is set on causing destructive mayhem. But all this is a carefully created acoustic deception, put down on this recording. They sound like this small local indie band, that's putting in its application early to make stadium grade.

Cobra - Geese

Camaron Winter's vocals are noticeably never allowed to be subsumed under anything that is going on around them. Because so much of the feverish energy present erupts from out of his larynx. There are many touchstones stylistically that are referenced here. Winter's vocal style here at times is reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright or the Violent Femmes. Lyrically he has moments when he conjures with the spirit of unease present in early Nick Cave,  bellowing about 'there's a bomb in my car' on Trinidad or in the phrasing and emphasis of 'bow down down down to Maria's dead bones' on Bow Down. 

Half Real - Geese

It is one of the minor miracles of this album that even when the sound touches on such influences or established styles like blues for instance, it uses them simply as jumping off points to transcend or abruptly take them somewhere totally unexpected and original. There is frequently something delightfully fiddly and percussive going on, flamenco hand claps or a guitar loosely jangling like a bell, that gives the sound an improvisatory, yet still with a propulsive edge.

Bow Down - Geese

Getting Killed is not a sound nor an album that reveals all its treasures in one listen. My appreciation for how good this album could be, has only grown with each repeated listen. Because you do have to give yourself time just to tune in to the vibe of where it's coming from. But once reached, there is much to be gorged upon.

Long Island City Here I Come - Geese

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - Another Country by James Baldwin

Another Country begins and ends in the alternative creative culture of jazz clubs, the low life and sexual permissiveness of late fifties New York. The first quarter of the book tells you about the life of a young black man Rufus in the last years of his life. All his friends love him deeply, but fear his temper and violent dark side. He is a brilliant jazz player and is undoubtedly a charismatic, but deeply troubled man. All his sexual affairs leave a broken and abused lover behind them. Rufus cannot help himself, he doesn't know why he behaves in cruel and self destructive ways towards the people he loves. His current lover Leona, a white woman, is besotted with him, but has to suffer repeated and increasingly more intense beatings and coercive behaviour. She loves Rufus and persists in the belief she can save him from himself. The dichotomy between that love and the constant betrayal of that love, gradually turns Leona mad, and she's incarcerated in an asylum. Rufus, blames himself and his inability to take control of his errant impulses. No one, apart from maybe his friend Vivaldo, appears willing to help. In a moment of deep despair, Rufus kills himself as the only way he can see to resolve things. 

And this individual tragic story sets the emotional background for what follows. Characters we simply were introduced to in the opening chapter now assume centre stage. Richard is married with kids to Cass. He is an author whose career is on the rise to fame, but the relationship is foundering, they don't appear to like each other anymore. And not just because Cass doesn't believe Richard will ever be that good a writer.  Vivaldo, is an aspiring writer and former friend of Rufus, who is in love with Ida. Rufus's sister. Ida is a tough fiercely independent woman with the beginnings of a career as a singer. All Vivaldo's previous relationships were in someway unsatisfying and this impacted on his ability to focus on developing his writing. His relationship with Ida is no different, plagued as it is by jealousy and mistrust, that he is reluctant to fully give in to. Eric, who originally left to escape a brutally destructive affair with Rufus, returns to  New York from Paris after four years away, with his young black lover Yves due to follow soon. 

The remainder of the novel explores the promiscuous nature of these characters sexual explorations. The way they hurt and betray their lovers, and the fall outs, both major and minor, that result. Each person grasping for some elusive insights, to form a personal resolution for them. All too aware that any relationship has elements of compensating for unmet needs, that have nothing to do with the person you are in love with.

Baldwin builds this dense world of intimacies, where black men love white women, white women love black men, hetrosexual women and men have affairs with bi-sexual men. The novel is full of bed hopping relationships, infidelity, unrealistic expectations, jealousy, envy, unmet desires, people trying to understand what it is they want, what they are looking for in a lover. And it all fluidly unfolds throughout the book. The novel shifts from one treacherously entangled relationship, teetering on the edge of shattering, to another. Some of the pages of dialogue exploring their feelings go on at long and often quite unproductively rambling length. And, if I'm being honest, I don't  know anyone who talks about their feelings and relationships in this way. I had to work really hard to stay with the story as it's focus kept shifting around so much, which I found unsettling as I was reading. 

The view of inter-racial relationships that Baldwin presents us with here, is that white people have no idea what the life experience of black people is really like. There is inevitably a gap between lovers, a lack of comprehension of what it's like for a black person to be in a mixed race relationship. Despite the depth of the love, it feels an unequal one. But the inability to fully understand another person's experience and world view is not confined just to ones race, but also to different gender and to other sexual orientations, religions and ways of being. Other people are generally like another country to us, we love them, we befriend them, but can never fully understand anyone. We assume that we do know. Yet everyone senses immediately when they've been seen and understood for who they truly are. 

This book really revolves, not around Rufus, but his close friend Vivaldo who is frequently the still point who all the characters return to, in the midst of a chaos of their own making. Vivaldo, almost because of his own trials, tries not to judge, but just to love them all the best he can.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

POETRY - Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass No 32 (extract)

"I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

Walt Whitman

(Extract from Leaves of Grass No 32)

2026 PLAYLIST No 9 - Trinidad by Geese

Geese - Trinidad

The opening track of Geese's Getting Killed, Trinidad, is a barbed wire infested cacophony that is up their with the early work of The Birthday Party for something scary heading your way. It starts off innocent enough with a gently voiced blues fired admission that ' I try ', sung repeatedly, but then the car crash begins. Cranging guitars angle grind through some metal, and Cameron Winter starts loudly declamining like someone demented that 'There's a bomb in my car'.Yeah, this is not your average bit of easy on the ear indie, this has nerves of steel, and the brawn of devils. As he admits to murdering his family and then driving away. I love this, mostly because they dared to open their album with this, which makes the rest of it seem a beautiful stroll in a park, by comparison.

MY OWN WALKING - April Journal 2026

'I started questioning how loyal I have been to my own suffering'

 Vinny Ferraro

I've been listening and reflecting, as part of my daily practice in the morning, to an interview Dan Harris did with Vinny Ferraro on his 10% Happier You Tube channel. I've recently shared this elsewhere on this blog. Ferraro is an American Buddhist teacher whose approach to practice I'm appreciating. In it he said the sentence above. Are we all too loyal to our suffering, do we take everything that happens to us far far too personally? 

A friend of mine once stated that worldly reality was not malicious, vengeful or doing things deliberately to thwart and make you suffer. Worldly reality was actually indifferent to what we think about it, what you think you want from it, what you desire and wish for. Doesn't care one jot about any of that. And that is really what makes our suffering so existentially painful. It would be so much easier if we could believe it was a result of a God expressing their displeasure with us. But actually, out there, there are simply circumstances and conditions into which we step and throw in some of our own, and sometimes what happens is favourable, and at other times it is not. 

Instead of this creating an ability in us to maintain some distance and perspective, we tend to become completely intoxicated with the tragic nature of our suffering. The words we surround our suffering with, like tragic, egregious, fatal, terminal, persistent, malignant, long suffering, degrading, decimating - all inform you of the narrative framework of hatred, aversion and resistance we place our suffering within. We don't like our suffering, obviously, but it is all ours nonetheless. As it becomes ever deeper entwined in the possessiveness of - I, Me & Mine.

Buddhist teachings usually suggests you find ways of learning to see the nature of reality as it is, rather than how you want it to be. It's not easy, by any means, as we can so quickly be swept away on the wings of our desires. The American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, would say that Buddhist meditation practice was all about cultivating a bigger container for our experience. Making us able to hold more of our experience without wanting to push or run away from it. That has to include our suffering, not just the nice stuff.  There is a way of staying loyal to our suffering that isn't clinging and possessive, but is instructive and potentially liberating. 

In June this year, it will be two years since my heart attack. And this was undoubtedly one helluva huge wake up call. Suddenly mortality was top of the agenda. I think about this in someway every day, it's not something you forget easily. But I am also aware of the experience now becoming part of the normal background noise of my life, and perhaps it is losing a bit of its cutting edge as a result.  It's slowly drifting into the usual human pattern of fully experiencing the suffering, you survive it, you move on, and then slowly forget what it's taught you. You cease remaining loyal to your suffering as that potent reminder of your mortality, what that suffering has taught you, the moment your desire to totally move on from it closes the door too firmly behind you. Consigning it to the dungeon of the past.

And in a sense Buddhist practice itself, encourages you to avoid unhelpfully dwelling upon anything negative or unwholesome. It can in the name of not unhelpfully dwelling fall into a similar tendancy of moving on too quickly. To forget how a closer reflection on the state of suffering itself can be instructive. Meditation practice can certainly enable you to live through difficult experiences with a higher degree of calm or equanimity, yet leave the causes and symptoms, unexamined, And unexamined suffering if it becomes buried, can exist like an angry gremlin in the depths of your psycho-physical body.

I've been aware lately that there's a layer of life experience I'm reticent to look into. Though I've had friends, there is a lonely way of being within me that has its roots in childhood bullying, that formed a tendency to withdraw into a self contained mode whenever the outside world got too difficult or challenging. I think of myself now as being good at being alone with myself, and in the present day that is mostly true. But there was a time in the past where I was lonely and was less settled and at peace with who I am. And that experience still exists within me, I sense the shadow of it, emotionally tender, largely unexamined and unprocessed.

There is a way of staying loyal to the experience of suffering, that avoids becoming embroidered into the detailed fabric and design of your personal tapestry. The habitual way you think about and interpret your life experiences. Once the suffering experience has abated somewhat, it can be slightly easier to just observe the suffering in retrospect. Still in touch with what you have just been through, but less inclined to be totally taken in by it. But to do that effectively does require us to become that bigger container for our experience, able to hold the pain and suffering we encounter without becoming painfully embroiled in it all over again. To hold the suffering like an archeological artifact you've unearthed and make informed judgements about it's age and provenance, and how it fits into the framework of the internal story you tell about yourself.  And in time, to see through the state of suffering itself, by loosening the ties to I Me & Mine we have previously forged.

2026 PLAYLIST No 8 - Au Pays Du Cocaine by Geese

Geese - Au Pais du Cocaine

Geese appear to have landed in the catagory of becoming the much lauded saviours of guitar based music - 2026 edition. Which is probably the sort of albatross most bands would not want strung around their neck. That they have achieved a level of success without fully capitulating to the mainstream music industry, is a tiny bit miraculous. However, with the album Getting Killed they have broken big, because this album is really just too damned good. It's their fourth, and judging by a cursory check through of their back catalogue, it is indeed a seismic shift in their overall sound and originality. What first caught my attention was this -Au Pais du Cocaine. It's a plaintive song, goodness knows what it's about. Drug or love addiction take your pick. Cameron Winter's flexes his vocals,  channeling a Rufus Wainwright vibe, which gives any song it graces a quality of world weary languor. But whatever this song is, it's compulsive listening. Can't quite get to through day without a touch of it.

FEATURE - Vinny Ferraro Interview

Vinny Ferraro Interview

I came across Vinny Ferraro quite recently, and what a joyful and insightful being he is. Big beaming face, very down to earth and a wonderful fully inhabited Brooklyn accent. I've listened to this twice, once all the way through, and then daily using bits of it for my morning reflections. He has had, by his own admission a tough early life, which he talks about during this interview. His central themes about spiritual practice here are - not taking what happens to you personally - trying to resolve issues you've inherited from your upbringing and family ancestry - how to deal better with your anxiety and mental tendencies - learning how to realign your focus - becoming more equanimous towards what happens to us and around us, so we can, as he pithly puts it,' become unfuckable with'.  And a whole lot more.

2026 PLAYLIST No 7 - Sherpa by Angine de Poitrine

Sherpa - Angine de Poitrine 

Now at first glance you might be thinking, what's with the gimmicky black and white dotted costumes, makeup, the golden triangle insignia etc. This all feels rather too contrived, its weirdness feels arch, a bit of Dadaist theatre, does it not? This is the experimental rock duo Canadian group Angine de Poitrine, formed six years ago. Their nom de plumes are - Klek the drummer and Khn the micro tonal guitar and bass player. They recently released their second album, but have suddenly become something of an internet sensation. Like progressive rock in the seventies, or Avant guarde jazz, the guitar prowess with its mathematics and microtonal execution, brings out the inner nerd in a lot of chaps. 

Their music is built out of repetition, of layering guitar lines over one another, sometimes shifting delightfully into atonality, the microtones etc, that suddenly erupt into a straight slab of rock or jazz riffery.  Occasionally there's a sonically altered vocal like a Star Wars alien. There music has an insanely driven quality. When they hit their full stride they are an irresistible force. As I watch them I think - would this feel any different if they weren't dressed in so avant guarde a fashion? And the answer is yes, but the music they produce would remain interesting. You might start to take it far too seriously. The presentation may feel deceptively a daft parody, but it is consistently in a dialogue with the music. Weirdness meeting weirdness. It's complimentary.

I think its best to conceive of the costumes as all part and parcel of an elaborate performance art piece, and the music as radically anti any convention or musical genre you might want to bag them in.  Sherpa, with it's Arabic tinged chord sequence is about as strikingly original as they come. It is quintessentially them. Angine de Poitrine, in case you were wondering, is French for Angina Pectoris. Chest pain in other words. Whether they will surpass their brief moment of internet fame, and have legs longer term, who can say? Will these masks eventually have to come off?

FINISHED READING - Inside The Flower Garland Sutra by Ben Connelly

The Avatamsaka Sutra, is literally a vast text fifteen hundred pages in length. it is by its very Mahayana nature frequented by baroque levels of spiritual embellishment that can be intensely flowery in their expression. It is a central Buddhist text of Chinese. Japanese and Korean Buddhism. Uisang, a Huayan Buddhist monk from seventh century Korea, created a succinct text called The Seal Of The Huayan One Vehicle Dharma Realm, which is a summation of the main themes of the Avatamsaka. The Huayan approach to Buddhism has attempted to make a working synthesis of early Buddhist teachings with those of the Mahayana, hence why it refers to itself here as the One Vehicle.

Over the centuries it has formed the text into the pictographic form shown below. They took its full name, The Seal Of the Huayan One Vehicle Dharma Realm, and shortened it to The Ocean Seal Chart.This displays the thirty lines of the The Seal in one continuous arrangement, designed to start at the centre with the Chinese character for Dharma, cycling around a twisting maze of lines to end up back at the centre concluding with the character for Buddha. This I find really appealing, as it is both a representational and a spiritual pattern. It gives cogent visual form to a central concept of the Avatamsaka of the completeness and interdependency of all phenomena.

"Dharma Nature is all pervading harmony, without duality."

'While Early Buddhist teachings emphasize the path from suffering to non-suffering, from samsara to nirvana, Mahayana teachings emphasize that samsara and nirvana are inseparable. They are both here now. The Dharma that is the end of suffering is reality. The compassion that the Buddha embodied is never separate from this moment, and in fact is simply seeing that it isn't separate. It's not an object apart from you. It isn't somewhere else, some other time, some other better person. This is it!'

Ben Connelly has kept to a simple rubric here. He takes each of the thirty lines of The Ocean Seal Chart and writes a four or five page explanation, giving personal examples and reflections on it. He writes in a manner which generally eschews complex jargon, and tries to maintain a readily coherent clear style of expression. Given the potential here to bask in the false security of possessing an intellect, Connelly maintains a welcome degree of perspective and humbleness. 

"The minds first aspiration for awakening is true awakening"

This direct quote from the Avatamsaka Sutra directly confronts a common misconception of awakening as a destination rather than an awakening process we are engaged in from the moment Beginners Mind first inspires us. This means none of our many decades of practice are remiss, we are all in a process of ripening and maturing that primary awakening.We may find ourselves trying to drown out our 'first aspirations to awakening' with personal doubts and distractions, but we cannot erase it from our experiential memory altogether.

" An inexhaustible treasure adorns the Dharma realm, a true jeweled palace.

Just sitting in the bed of the Middle Way, the ultimate reality.

This stillness is Buddha."

' In our lives we travel, sufferings and joys come and go, and we can also realise that we have always been right here. We may think that the dream is fake and the waking is real, but both of these matter, for they are our lives.'

There are many, no doubt hard won, useful and practical insights within Connelly's commentary, born from years of his own practice, mistakes and misconceptions, as well as what he has evidently learnt. I found it a perceptive and accessible interpretation of the Huayan philosophical approach to the Avatamsaka Sutra, which does sort of make me want to actually read it, rather occasionally encountering amputated extracts. Mahayana Sutras can be a challenge to read I know, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

All quotations taken from Inside The Flower Garland Sutra by Ben Connelly.
Published by Wisdom Publications.

WATCHED - Mr Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin is a teacher in an ordinary school in Karabash, Russia. The widely renowned unhealthiest town in the world. Existing, as it does, cheek by jowl with a huge copper mine. To us this looks a truly grim place, grey and bleak, full of poorly kept Soviet era housing.  Pavel, however loves the town he grew up in, its people and his work. Apart from teaching, part of his job is to document on film the day to day events taking place in the school. His office becoming a hang out space for a particular type of arty bohemian student. Pavel is a nerd working within the school system, he doesn't ever quite fit the mold. But he has discovered a way that he can creatively contribute that works for everyone's benefit. He loves and cares about his students and their future. All is going fine, until Putin invades Ukraine.

What happens then, is that the state begins to interfere in the day to day running of the school curriculum. Teaching becomes a mere repeating of daily statements from the Kremlin, about the nature of the war, and the people's role and responsibility to support it. Daily he is forced to record on film the pseudo military assemblies, the absurd nationalistic propaganda statements being presented as education. There is one gruesome scene where a group of Wagner mercenaries come to the school to tell them about the war  and show off their military hardware and it's explosive capacity to kill and maim. At one point the Head states that the level of pupils educational attainments are falling. This is entirely a result of the additional burden of their teaching becoming a propaganda arm of the war effort. Pavel can't stand it, and hands in his resignation. 

Then, after someone from the West contacts him about the films he's made, he decides to stay. Simply in order to better document what is happening, and the decline of the school into a source of recruitment for the war effort. As his own students are drawn into being future cannon fodder for Putin's war. He makes small acts of rebellion, like broadcasting the Star Spangler Banner sung by Lady Gaga through the schools sound system. His taciturn librarian Mother, sits repairing books to make them last longer, and shakes her head at Pavel telling him 'to engage his brain, and eat more sweets' for she can sense where this is all leading. People start to be suspicious of him, and his filmmaking. His students becoming hesitant to hang out in his office or be filmed. Pavel knows it's only a matter of time before the authorities come for him, The most touching moment in this documentary is the speech he makes at the Graduation celebration he organises, the day before he leaves and escapes Putin's regime altogether. Everyone attending understanding what the sub text of it means.

This is a very humbling documentary film to watch, about one quite ordinary chap, who attempts in his own way to resist an oppressive regime. I don't think we understand, just how easily any country can fall into becoming an authoritarian state. Look how American democracy has rapidly declined in the space of just one year. Where it suddenly becomes dangerous to mock the leadership or hold certain opinions. How much people start conforming to whatever the regime demands them to be, in order to survive. i might like to think I'd fight back, but would I really?

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

Oh, yeah, and this just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature 2026.
Can currently be streamed in the UK on I Player as part of its Storyville documentary series. 

MY OWN WALKING - Spring Journal 2026

It is not uncommon for religions to use an archaic or even totally extinct language in their chants, liturgy and rituals. An example would be Latin in Roman Catholicism, but other denominations have there own sacred languages such as Coptic, or Church Slavonic. Ancient Aramaic in Judaism, Classical Arabic in Islam. With the chanting of Pali or Sanskrit texts, Buddhism is not then that unusual. These languages are worth preserving, because they serve what is really a rather vital function, that is not solely one of academic interest, for linguistic diversity or historical origins.

These old languages in religious contexts are important primarily for spiritual reasons. Such ancient words embody all the poetic metaphors, experiences, aspirations and insights, encountered over countless generations of practitioners. These can sometimes span from non-historical through historical time, right up to today. They form a bridge, via their sound and lyricism, to present day practitioners with the religious emotions and expressions of past disciples. Giving cogent form to the idea that we are the present day torch bearers for an entire religious lineage, maintaining this language and traditions intact, into the future. And this duty of care, as a disciple, is the case whatever that religious tradition is. It could be said that the Christian Protestant Reformation, with perhaps the iconoclastic excess only a reformers zeal might execute, expunged ,and hence impoverished itself, by destroying this link through language to the past. Which may be why it can often feel, even today, a little spiritually unmoored. There is nothing like an extinct language to ground you in the vale of impermanence.

( In Pali )

"Sangham jivitaparyantam saranam gacchami.

Ye ca Sangha atita ca

Ye ca Sangha anagata

Paccuppannq ca ye Sangha

Aham vandami sabbada."

( English Translation )

"All my life I go for refuge to the Fellowship.

To all the Fellowships that were

To all the Fellowships to be

To all the Fellowships that are

My worship flows unceasingly '

These five lines are from the penultimate verses of the Buddhist Triratna Vandana, or Salutation to the Three Jewels. Verses of praise, respect and dedication ,to the Buddha, the Dharma ( his teachings) and the Sangha ( the fellowship of practitioners ). Often chanted at the beginning of each day, they act as a reminder of what you are dedicating your life to, depending upon and 'taking refuge in ' as a Buddhist. Certainly in the early days of my involvement in Buddhism, they were just something we recited.  I never quite grasped why we were saying these verses in a semi-extinct language like Pali. In a modern Western context this could appear to be a bit anachronistic. Similarly the Pali/Sanskrit names of Buddhist Order Members. Were these an unnecessary bit of exotic cultural appropriation on the part of Western Buddhist practitioners? In holding such views I was completely mistaking the purpose of their use of Pali / Sanskrit , and these verses of the Triratna Vandana point you in the direction as to why.

In Buddhism single words or phrases can become spiritual transmitters, referred to as dharani. These conjure a resonating relationship through sound, with the truth, not just with the Buddha's teachings, but with that small essence being awoken within us, with that of the true nature of reality. Chanting short texts in Pali/Sanskrit in the context of spiritual fellowship can, at its best, be like tuning into the fully functioning life force of Enlightenment. Even if we feel we are just mindlessly chanting these words that are incomprehensible to us, they nonetheless plug us into the spirit of this interconnected essence to all reality - across all time and space - past, present and future.

In my early morning practice period, I have generally just meditated. Though of late I've found myself gravitating towards chanting the Triratna Vandana. After many years of not doing so. I immediately found myself feeling something within my being was woken up and plugged in to a relationship far bigger than just myself. It felt like a coming home, for these verses are extraordinarily familiar to me. I've chanted them in many different contexts, hundreds of times. They also reconnect me with those years of involvement with Triratna and 'the Fellowships that were' then. And even though I rarely meet any of these people these days, they are still with me when I chant these verses. Forming part of a personal lineage of practice, which I am still grateful to have received. So, when I find myself bemoaning the lack of 'spiritual fellowship' in my current spiritual path, I need to remember what this spiritual fellowship can be. Well, it is broad, it is multi-dimensional, it is an all encompassing event. 

Reciting the Triratna Vandana, draws a similar map, one that spans time and space. A known lineage of practitioners traced directly back through two and a half millennia to the Buddha, is important for Buddhists to maintain an active and live relationship with. A Sangha, in its idealised form, is a fellowship composed of all the practitioners whoever were, are or are to be. - the Unenlightened and Enlightened human beings, the Arya ( noble or illustrious ) Sangha, and imaginatively outward to realms of archetypal and cosmic Buddhas. Not just the local practitioners you meet in your Buddhist Centre ( or Church if you are Christian). These Fellowships that were, become vaster in scope once you add in ' The Fellowships that are, or are yet to be'. And these make it clear, if you have no yet cottoned on, that you are your own traditions next step. Without the effectiveness of your practice and spiritual life, there will be no future for it. And a sense of gratefulness and appreciation for the many levels via which spiritual fellowship through practice is handed down to us, is important to the sustaining of our practice now. Through the language and texts that we chant, we atune and orient with the spirit of our lineage of practice, that underpins whatever we subsequently do.

Whether Buddhist or Christian, there were always turbulent epochs in the past, the distant rumblings of this being' The End of Times'. And its very easy for us to bemoan the 'self evident failings' of our present institutions and some of our spiritual fellow travellers, and go passive-aggressive towards it. Significant Buddhist figures and sages, often appeared in periods of apparent decline, such as ours. But we cannot just sit back and depend on someone else turning up to save it.  Chant these last words of the Triratna Vandana written on this page and don't allow any feelings of despair we may hold, be our final coda. The revolution can start at any moment, it may have started already, so be ready to respond. 

'Etena saccavajjena, hotu me jayamangalam'

'Oh by the virtue of this truth, may grace abound, and victory!'

LISTENING TO - Trying Times by James Blake

James Blake's seventh album, marks a significant shift on many levels for him. Two years ago he took a major gamble, left his record label, dropped his agent, and launched himself as an independent artist with his own label. On a practical level he was taking full charge of the direction of his career and how its marketed. Enjoying having a much more direct connection with his fan base. He distrusted the widely used streaming model of record companies, that wasn't demonstrably lucrative for the artist, nor an effective way of promoting and selling your work, as it has often being made out to be. So, the last two years since Playing Robots Into Heaven have proved to be a steep learning curve. But out the other end of all this comes Trying Times, which is probably James Blake's most musically and thematically coherent album, he has made so far.

Trying Times, is on the surface a simple sequence of love songs, often distant and imaginary, fracturing or malformed by modern troubles in maintaining any sort of loving relationship. But, like the song The Death of Love, it is also a comment on this particular moment in our culture, where our tech mediated lives are funneled into increasingly divisive and hate filled dead ends. Where we find tolerating differences, any lack of convention, or merely an alternative opinion, increasingly tricky territory. 

The soundscape on Trying Times is recognisably James Blake's, but it is more organically sparse and sparing in its arrangements, with the keyboard and Blake's voice often clearly placed right up front and unfiltered, than previously. He is less inclined to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at a track, and if all else fails drown it in echo, of voice modulation. Quite often, he starts from a melodic line borrowed from another person's music, whether it's a choral line from Cohen or a 50's doo wop, it sets the scene for the song that is to follow. The idyllic opening of I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, demonstrates the fantasy world that this lilting waltz time song exists within. 

The album opens with Walk Out Music, with a vocal exchange between two voices chiming in with 'Your no good, to anyone...anyone...to anyone....dead, dead, dead ' Blake uses this device of two voices intertwining and sharing a sentence to manifest an internalised dialogue. Which here drops in other words as reminders, that also there's 'trust' and 'opportunity' present as you walk out into a new world. It's an immaculately simple song about reticence and embracing whatever is currently present. And in the songs which follow :- The Death of Love - I had a dream she took my hand  and Trying Times, we find him laying out some of the best songs of the album.

The song Trying Times is undoubtedly the pivotal heart of this album, arriving with 'You know I'm shredded by the time I'm home' and how though ' I'm an eyesore, your a sight for sore eyes'. How our close relationships with others constantly saves us from being swallowed up by our self preoccupations. Our lack of external loves and friendships being a danger to us all. The video has Blake sat beneath a triangle of spinning plates, that one after another fall down during the song. A cogent metaphor for modern life requiring us to do so many things at once, we cannot help but feel we fail to attend properly to all aspects of our life. 

Blake's career has been fortunate in that he has become the much sought after producer and collaborator with a wide range of top level artists, from Rosalia and Beyonce, to here on the track Doesn't Just Happen, with the distinctive authorial tones of Dave - 'If being a man was easy I'd still be me cah I do shit the hard way'  he declares. That he understands 'I know you want to make it to heaven, but it doesn't just happen'. There is a very catchy walking keyboard refrain that ambles cyclically across the background throughout this track, concerning the day to day travails of a man just trying to do good, in the face of adverse conditions. It's one of the many highlights of the album. Others well worth catching, are - The Rest of Your Life  - Through The High Wire. The album winds up with Just A Little Higher. Which concludes the album with one of its most telling lines of lyric- 'Adjust your sights, Cos they're playing us, From a great height'

Like many of Blake's albums, Trying Times has a longish running time of forty seven minutes. Whilst he does alway give you value for money, I do think a judicious cut of a couple of tracks might have been of benefit to the impact of the album, as a whole. A problem when you are your own boss is, who tells you when further editing is required? There is a danger that you are too close to the thing you are creating, and understandably love, to stand back far enough to perceive what it really needs.  

That said, I'd say Trying Times does sustain its length better than some of his previous albums. You are carried along by the all enveloping soundscape he has placed the songs within. There are no overly dramatic lurches away from its languid and often rhapsodic orchestrations. These minor reservations aside, Trying Times gets a big thumbs up from me, I absolutely love it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8