FINISHED READING - Lower Than The Angels by Diarmaid MacCulloch

I was really looking forward to getting my head between the pages of this volume. As with so many of Diarmaid MacCulloch's books, it is quite a substantial rifling though of the history of Christianity's rather hesitant, then proscriptive, then punishing, then moderating, to provaricating attitude towards the whole area of sex, marriage, same sex relations etc. MacCulloch guides us through it all. There's a definite air of him thoroughly enjoying the writing of this one. The sentences and expressiveness is considerably more spritely and spikey. His humour more cuttingly on show, with wonderfully wry, and on occasions very dry, passing comments. So, besides being a revelation on the various volte faces of the Christian attitude towards sex, it also investigates it's uneasy handling of gender, particularly the oppressive way it has dealt with the feminine or anything it considers transgressive of moral norms.

Christianity was initial reluctant to intervene in marriage, what happened within it was originally considered a private matter. That became over the centuries increasingly proscriptive. It took the Catholic Church twelve hundred years before it took complete control of the whole marriage procedure.  Marriage became promoted as a means to legitimise the act of procreating the species. Sex for any other reason. for fun for instance, was to be downplayed, or even frowned upon. Encouraging married couples to practise chastity the rest of the time. This links it with the issue of a celibate priesthood, also a late development. The transition in medieval times from having married clergy to a solo celibate priest, was, as you can imagine, pretty messy. It required a lot of chaste relationships whilst the 'aberattion' of previous decades slowly vanished. Clergy and monastics were now meant to exemplify a more 'angelic' way of living to their congregation. Because angels, as every one understood, were asexual or non sexual beings. Though quite how they so firmly established that fact is left mythically vague.

In the middle of all this is a mischievous little paragraph about Pope Gregory :-

"Before Gregory became Pope, he was struck by the good looks of some English boys or youths who, Bede says, were being sold as slaves in Rome. Enquiring where they came from and being told that they were 'Angli', Gregory commented that the name was appropriate to those with angelic faces, and he varied that cheerful thought in a clutch of further devout Latin puns. Traditionally Gregory's reported literary playfulness has been summed up in a misquotation as 'Angli sed angeli': 'Not Angles, but angels.' Perhaps the agreeable neatness of the pun has allowed the survival of a story which, if reframed as ' Pope, impressed by beauty of young enslaved males, launches mission', might not meet modern safeguarding standards in the methods of evangelism."

When he comes to examine homosexuality MacCulloch unearths some interesting facts. Mediterranean attitudes in the South were generally permissive towards same sex relationships, whilst northern countries tended to be more proscriptive. Though Christianity has been greatly enamoured by the works of Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Socrates, they became deeply shocked to discover their blatant homosexuality. This fact they studiously edited out of copies of these philosopher's work for centuries. Even words, and to whom they are applied can also suddenly pivot.

"There is nevertheless no doubt that 'effeminacy' also completely reversed its meaning as a description, previously, Catholics had mocked Tudor Protestant bishops as 'effeminate'  for their excessive interest in women, rather as John Chrysostom had mocked male partners in chaste heterosexual relationships. A century after the Reformation, the same mockery was applied for the same reason to England's Charles 2nd, that most ebulliently heterosexual of monarchs, so the subsequent switch in meanings after 1700 was very sudden. The new eighteenth century stereotype of the theatrically effeminate homosexual has had a long life; it remains a source both of mockery and of proud gay self-assertion in masculinised heterosexual cultures."

MacCulloch also reveals how even the term 'heterosexual', if examined etymologically, implies an indiscriminate romping across a wide range of the feminine, in and outside of marriage. Literally anything female will do. So, no monogamy there then.  When it comes to trans issues, there are numerous examples of men and women throughout history living as the opposite sex, without that ever becoming an issue with the generally knowing broader population. He resurrects the life of St Wilgefortis as an iconographic example:-

" The bizarre legend and devotional iconography of St Wilgefortis (Uncumber), who had grown a beard in order to escape the threat of a non-Christian marriage and as punishment had been crucified. She/they developed a cult among unhappy wives, and, despite official unsainting by Rome in 1969, Wilgefortis has attracted a new constituency of non-binary interest today."

It does seem that the dual arrival in the 18th century of The Enlightenment, and John Wesley's street evangelism, appeared to trigger a tightening of the moral opprobrium around same sex relationships, and even the more widespread, supposedly deleterious effects of masturbation upon morals. Initially it was unclear from which moral stand point The Enlightenment stood regarding science, sex and it's diversity. Taking far too seriously obvious charlatans like Mary Todd who claimed they have given birth to several rabbits. 

As the narrative moves to more recent times, he charts the difficult arising of the abolition of slavery, women's emancipation, contemporary concerns about abortion and homosexuality, that now include trans issues. The latter three appearing to exist in parallel opprobrium within Fundamentalist Christianity. The propensity for Christianity to move the biblical goal posts when it suits, is exemplified by an attempt to answer the question Why Jesus makes no mention of homosexuality at all in his teachings? The answer apparently was very simple, so the theologians proudly stated; before God's son could be born into the world, the Lord Almighty had eradicated all gay people from the world. It's a neat duck, but a laughably fallacious later concoction. 

In modern times political adoption of Christianity becomes similarly slippery with the actual facts. Putin often borrows the moral cloak of Russian Orthodoxy when it suits his political agenda.  When he was invading Ukraine, he claimed the Donbas region were asking to be saved from 'gay parades 'which as MacCulloch remarks had not previously been ' notably part of Ukrainian President Zelensky's declared military strategy.' Contemporary right wing Christians fail to reflect on their own religion's history with regard to sex, marriage and the family. That for the first millennium it was dominated by the pursuit of an 'angelic' celibacy, and only after the Reformation did bolstering the family unit become a central thrust of its ministry. Plus a long history of campaigning for more compassionate responses towards those who are poor, or minorities being oppressed or abused.

" My observation of the discussion of sexual morality during six decades of ecclesiastical life and politics has been that self-styled traditionalists rarely know enough about the traditions that they proclaim; conservatives do not fully admit to themselves or to others what it is they are trying to conserve, and why they are trying to conserve it. It is important when demolishing myths from the past not to create new ones to justify the present."

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FINISHED READING - Don't Forget We're Here Forever by Lamorna Ash

After completing reading a novel, I press the pause button on literary imaginative fiction, and deep dive into a book that is literal, about something current and vital, that I in someway care about. Lamorna Ash's, Don't Forget We're Here Forever was such a book. An investigative endeavour that takes the temperature of Christianity and researchs the reasons for young people's recent renewed interest in it. It is rare these days to pick up a book, that becomes so all consuming you need to read whilst the hunger for it is still raging.  This is an extremely honest, yet kind hearted book, written with great care and sensitivity towards it's subject matter. My interest  in Christianity has never quite gone to the extent that Lamorna pursues here. Obviously she was writing a book, so she has that as her driver, initially it's her desire to understand more fully the variety of forms of Christianity she encounters, underneath this is her own nascent faith seeking for a place it might rest. 

This book is not then another crude hatchet job on Christianity, that puts it one book nearer to obsolescence. You can tell she is open to the experience of whatever she finds is there. Yes, she has her doubts, even in situations and with people she loves, she has her own self interogating questionings. She meets everyone where they are with a degree of respect and a desire to understand where they are coming from. There are interviews with committed Christians, recent converts, people who left and then returned, people who have had visions, inexplicable encounters with God, those who run Alpha courses or lead Christian retreats. She covers the broadest gamut of approaches from Quaker, through Pentacostal, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, to newer worship phenomena like Soul Survivor, Youth With A Mission or One Church. And many of these organisations are, or were, far from perfect and she doesn't hide or excuse that. But they are all, whilst not exactly reviving, are receiving more interest these days from younger people of Lamorna's generation in their mid to late twenties. Open to Christianity as something that might fill a significant gap in their lives, that society has nothing substantial to fill it with, other than more distractions and analgesics.

The thoroughness in her writing, keeps digging for something one step deeper than a quickly dashed off sketch will provide. The process by which her task to document her own generations struggle with a world apparently going to pot, and the solutions it is trying to find  is a journey that is fluently and compellingly written. It is also full of humanity, with all the flaws, clumsy feelings, cackhanded efforts to engage with a new form of prayer or communal practice. We all recognise the self consciousness and awkwardness of being in unfamiliar contexts. Gradually as you progress through the book, you get a clearer sense of Lamorna as an individual seeking personal answers, as well as the eloquent descriptive writer. As she discovers the contexts she's been unknowingly searching for. She finds herself standing up in a silent Quaker meeting and 'ministers' for the first time. There are obviously those situations and people she has an instant rapport with and those she does not. But you the reader are always with her.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - The Emperor of Gladness

Hai is walking along the bridge over the river, he knows what he intends to do once he reaches the middle. However, just as he puts an uncertain foot towards its precipitous edge, a voice cries out from beneath him to come down this minute. It's an elderly woman living in a dilapidated house near the river bank. She is a Lithuanian refugee from the war, called Grazina, and she is about to save and turn Hai's life around. Hai's emotional resilience has reached rock bottom, his lover has died, only the UPS jacket he wears is a physical reminder. He's grown distant from his Mother, because he continues to perpetrate a lie to her, about being at university learning to be a doctor. Obtaining a job in the local Home Market takeaway through his cousin Sony, a whole bunch of characterful individuals become his oddball chosen family.

Ocean Vuong's second novel is notably more assured and steady in its tone, than his debut. The Emperor of Gladness has these astonishingly vivid runs of prose detail. Taking you on a compelling walk through the houses and businesses that constitute the town of East Gladness. Presenting you with a panoramic sense of the idiosyncratic and traditional nature of small town America. The ordinary straightforward people who live there, and their distinct ways of making the humdrum nature of their lives bearable. They may talk about leaving, but they belong here, they know who they are by living here. 

The emotional core of the book is constructed around Hai's relationship with Grazina. She is prone to incidences of dementia, becoming lost in reliving her own nightmarish memories. Hai builds a rapport and learns how to play act alongside these distressing recollections, to help her escape from them. Most of the deeply heartbreaking scenes in this novel are between these two, as Grazina struggles to maintain here sense of reality and independence. Capturing the mutual need that both of them have, to reconcile themselves to their past. 

Like his debut, The Emperor of Gladness casts an autobiographical shadow. In both novels the central character lives estranged from his Mother, with oblique foreshadowing references to him writing a book one day. Vuong has developed an easy satirical wit, that is kind but knowing, about the mildly eccentric absurdities of his characters lives. Painting a droll humourous picture of a downtown takeaway that has become slightly grubby and past it's best, with it's longstanding petty rivalries towards other fast food joints. The novel is a celebration of the plain ordinariness of these people's lives. In a place where few other options are available, they make the most out of whatever life serves them. 

One vividly described scene is a side hustle a group of them go on. The psychotic effect on them of repeatedly shooting hogs in the head in a butchers abbatoir, is genuinely disturbing. From its opening pages this is a masterly written novel, seeming to drift into moments of uncertainty in the middle, that then recovers it's sense of direction with a heartbreaking conclusion. This structural unevenness was present in his debut. On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong appeared to suddenly discover the magical tone of his own authorial voice mid novel. 

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading both of his novels. I find I feel much fonder of them in retrospect, than I often do when I'm reading them. The colourfulness of the world he portrays, lingers in the back of my imaginative recall. The struggles we all go through to create something out of our prosaic short lives, is presented through them with such an appealing and good natured fondness.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FINISHED READING - Of Boys And Men by Richard V Reeves

"The iron rule of politics is that if there are real problems in society and responsible parties don't deal with them, the irresponsible parties will jump on them."

Daniel Schwammenhal

A former UK government strategist and Director of Demos, Richard Reeves now lives in the US and has become a prominent spokesperson on the current situation men now find themselves in. This book for two thirds of it is quite heavy on the statistics which demonstrate just how deep that crisis has become. In essence, policies have expanded women's opportunities and range of options in life, and there has been very little reciprocal political will to do the same for men. The traditional male role of being the main bread winner is all but dead in the water. And without a distinct alternative role and path being cogently portrayed and laid out, men are just floundering, and their frustration is now taking some of them into darker and more extreme reactionary places. By far the largest proportion of MAGA supporters are male. Trump, and the likes of Andrew Tate have been able to talk to this disenchanted generation of men, and co-opt their anger into their own perverting agenda. There is a sense of an existential ennui hanging over masculinity that mainstream politics is not addressing.

The problem is not due to women taking all the formerly male professions. it is that many of the traditionally male professions are in decline, contracting through environmental and technological developments, something which AI is only going to speed up. A lot of effort was successfully put into encouraging women to see themselves as being able to enter STEM professions, (science, technology, engineering and maths). A reciprocal push to make HEAL professions (health, education, administration and literacy) where opportunities are expanding, more appealing to men, just hasn't been given enough emphasis. The idea that men are privileged by their gender and therefore don't require help, is pernicious and fails to see the consequences of ignoring men's needs. That men doing well, as a benefit to everyone.

However, it is clear that men are not thriving in education and training either, women are outstripping them in both engagement and attainment. The sense is that young men do not see the point, have lost the drive and will to succeed, that women are fully grasping. If men do enter higher education they are quite likely to under attain, or drop out within a year. Male morale is low. Reeve points with particular loathing to the term 'toxic masculinity' which has become far too broadly and indiscriminately used, on literally anything men do that someone does not like. The despair that this creates, that there is nothing a man can do about it, that they cannot win. This is just really unhelpful. It's comparable to disparagingly refering to women as 'bimbos' all the time.

When it comes to solutions, Reeves lambasts both political left and right for the blinkered narrowness of their focus, The Right puts far too much emphasis on biology and implies a return to more traditional male norms, is the best solution to the 'male malaise'. The left refuses to consider that anything about gender behaviour might by biological in origin, and sees male roles in life as entirely culturally nurtured, so capable of change. Neither approach is either credible or in line with a fuller spectrum of the truth. There are professions which both men and women are less likely to do, not because of social prejudice or gender specific obstacles, but because they just do not appeal that much to them, period. So looking for ways to increase take up will fall short. The bias might be biological not systemic, and we have to be open to that as a possiblity. There is also the sense that feminists can view any initiative to help men, as diverting the focus away from women's needs. But as Reeves emphasizes this is false premise, it is perfectly possible to do both well, and they be complimentary. The emphasis here is not equality, but equity.

" True equality between groups that are different in any way can be attained only by providing for the differences."  Margaret Mead.

He concludes with a series of policy suggestions. That he thinks could help. Boys tend to mature at a slower rate, it could be helpful for them to delay by a year moving children to higher class. There need to be more male teachers generally, but specifically in primary education. Gender exemplification being important, particularly in early childhood. Encourage more men to go into HEAL professions, which is an expanding sector.  To bring, not just more attention, but more active policy to male education and employment needs, because simply ignoring them is not a secondary option anymore.

" In the U.S. a third of men of all political persuasions believe that they are discriminated against, and among Republicans, the number is rising. This is false. While the problems of boys and men are real, they are the result of structural changes in the economy and broader culture, and the failings of our education system, rather than deliberate discrimination. But on the political Right as on the Left, attitudes on gender issues float free of the facts."

This is a thought provoking read. He backs up his opinions with a veritable barrage of facts and statistics. Though I found the constant statistical emphasis began to pall after a while. It became much more engaging once he began talking about solutions and ways forward. 

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

FINISHED READING - The Blue Room by George Simenon

Tony is having an affair with Andree. They meet regularly on a Thursday, and if Andree leaves a pink towel visible from the street, all is clear. Her husband is out. They hold their secret assignations in a hotel in the blue room. Just after they've had some very rough passionate sex, where Andree has bitten Tony and he is dealing with the aftermath at the sink. The sex they have, is becoming increasingly risky and harder to conceal the consequences of. Tony thinks he sees Nicholas, Andree's husband, walking back across the street, and escapes out the back of the hotel. Frightened that their affair has been discovered, Tony decides that it has to end. That he loves his family more, and takes them off on a two week vacation to get away from Andree. Then it becomes apparent that this incident is being recounted in the context of an interrogation by the local magistrate. And that Tony is under arrest, but it's unclear for what. And as the novel progresses it's clear that someone is not telling the truth here. It maybe that Andree has carefully created a false trail of evidence that implicates Tony in a crime. It's either that, or between them Tony and Andree have together carried it out exactly as planned.

The Blue Room, is one of Simenon's later crime novels that have a much more unpleasant darker undertow. They are not your standard crime detective tale, built around Simenon's Maigret character. Here he has chosen to write as Tony in the process of giving evidence in a series if interviews. This way you hear his internal dialogue, know his feelings, his sense of panic.Why is he lying about not seeing the letters, they know he has received? It very cleverly drip feeds you information, whilst still maintaining a silence about what he's actually accused of. And through out you are left unsure. Is he being set up by Andree as revenge for him abandoning her, or is he fully complicit in it?  It's a really brilliantly constructed piece of crime writing. 

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8 

FINISHED READING - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Caroline Lucas mentioned this novel in her book Another England, as being part of the sort of cultural forces that can contribute to effect change in society. I have never read a book by Elizabeth Gaskell before. It is also sometime since I've read a Victorian novel, and I had actually forgotten how intensely they can write, with so much tiny heightened detail into inner worlds and dialogue. 

This took me a while to re-adjust to, and I realised that for the task of getting into the world of North and South, I would have to devote considerable chunks of time to it. Otherwise I'd be doing it a diservice. This was not the sort of reading that could easily be digested and entertained in short snippets before slumber descends.  And this was, in itself, revealing about the sentence structure of a lot of contemporary novel writing, which, generalising madly here, is more sparingly efficient in the journey getting to the nub of things. Though Victorian novelists often initially wrote for 'part-works' in magazines, brevity was never Gaskell's or the Victorian way of composition. 

So this is a longer form style of writing, with lots on minor, but notable incident that slowly builds up an idea for what motivates a character. The central character here is Margaret, who feels like a sypher for Gaskell's approach to life. Margaret is a young woman, aloof, strongly self-opinionated and motivated by a sense of injustice, and the need to care for all humanity, regardless of wealth or status. Her father, the once Reverend Hales has had a mid life crisis, and unexpectedly resigned his parish. This entails the whole family moving from the quaint rural idyll of Helstone in the South, to the smoky industrial urbanity of Milton, in the North. The culture shock on all of them is evident from the start. Margaret's mother is seriously unwell, she complains about the dirt, the smog, of having to rub shoulders and to be dependent upon the charitable disposition of tradespeople, like the mill owner Mr Thornton.

It is a different class of person who thrives in Milton, entrepreneurial, less concerned with the well being of those who work for them. Margaret and Thornton have long discussions/debates, where they trade blows over the ethics of modern industrialisd society, and whether the care of his workforce is his responsibility or not. The picture Gaskell paints of the life of workers in the mills are forced to lead, is sobering. And when the mill workers go on strike, violent confrontation is on the cards. Strikes are a new very urban phenomenon. They are treated as a moral affront to the rights of mill owners. That workers are getting above themselves in insisting they have a say in the matter of their pay and working conditions.

Interwoven into this telling portrayal of Victorian moral and social attitudes of the time, the Hale Family is in mid crisis. The mother is ill. Her father tries to earn enough money through teaching and Margaret attempts to keep the household running smoothly. She has a brother Federick, living in self imposed exile abroad, because he was involved in a notorious mutiny, for which he could well be hung were he ever to return home. 

Margaret, almost despite her hostility towards Mr Thornton, finds he frequently intrigues and occupies her thoughts. But when he declares his love for her, up go her affronted bridges - how dare he? And this resistance to love, where each of them pretends indifference, and plays far too hard not to be got, runs throughout the novel. There are secrets and lies at work, that neither of them is fully aware of. There are also plenty of tragic events, murder, suicides and destitution. 

The revolution of a newly urbanised society, had not really been portrayed to quite this level of realism before. Gaskell's attempt to convey local dialect, is not always effective. I couldn't detect quite what accent she was aiming for most of the time. But generally I'd say she portrays working class people with considerably more honesty, than Dickens, who does tend to resort to the loveable caricature, too easily ennobling or sentimentalising them. Yes, there are moments when the drama tips into the stagey melodramatic set piece. 

Mr Thornton is certainly this novels 'Mr Rochester', the blunt yet mysteriously unknowable man, you understand early on these two will be living happily together by the end. Margaret is more a spirited example of heroine than you normally find in Victorian novels. And Gaskell does bring her two central characters together at the end as equals. Though women's options, even here, can be are as limited as the wives of destitute mill workers are, without a husband or financial independent means, any agency would still be ring fenced by marriage. Margaret is herself misjudged for having seemingly strayed from the propriety of what is deemed acceptable behaviour for a woman. 

North and South is an interesting book, from both a historical and social perspective, in the portrayal of a society in flux. Disruptive changes, where views and expectations of class, gender and lifestyle were shifting, dependent upon where in the country you lived. The North South divide we talk of in Britain to this day, has its origins in this period of the Industrial Revolution.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FINISHED READING - Hope In The Dark by Rebecca Solnit

" The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be" - Virginia Woolf

Stubtitled - Untold Histories and Wild Possibilities, Solnit's book, was first published in 2005 in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq War. There is a new foreward to this third edition published in 2016. This might appear to have little to give us hope in this Trumpian world, where we reverse into the future with a blindfold on. But what she has to say here about purpose and the results people can achieve if the have hope, still stand proud. Collective action still works, and the tech bros do fear that it might rear it's none co-operative head. Focusing on keeping us distracted, passively consuming the endless amounts of dreck on the internet.  When we look up from our start phones, then we might start to think. This book does stirs ones confidence, to grasp hope and fight for what you want. Nothing ever progresses or improves without cultivating the imagination to hope.

" Your opponents would love you to believe that it's all hopeless, that you have no power, that there's no reason to act, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn't enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons."

I bought this book because I was finding in our contemporary zeitgeist, it was all too easy for me to fall into despairing, and I wanted to be more In touch with a more open hopeful demeanor. Though as a Budfhist I should already know, not everything we do produces the change we desire, that over desired desires are problematic. Solnit asks us to step back and look at things from a broader perspective, to perceived how change happens in the longer term. That perhaps one small campaign that appeared to fail or fall short in it's aims, might actively change the terms of a discussion and lead to a turn around in public opinion in later years. Hope is for the long run. If we expect revolutions and instant changes, then everything will undoubtedly fail to live up to the expectations we hold. It's so easy to get caught up in despair because what was achieved is only a compromised shadow of what we'd wished for. This may not be the perfect solution, but it is going in the right direction.

"Perfectionists often position themselves on the sidelines, from which they point out that nothing is good enough."

Naysaying, becomes a habit. Yes, this completely glorious thing had just happened, but the entity that achieved it had done something bad at another point in history. Yes, the anguish of this group was ended, but somewhere some other perhaps unrelated group are suffering hideously. It boiled down to: we can't talk about good things until there are no more bad things. Which, given that the supply of bad things is inexhaustible, and more bad things are always arising, means that we can't talk about the good things at all. Ever."

Solnit uses the example of the abolition of slavery, that the campaign took from first utterance to completion, around 250 years to reach abolition. Even then slave labour was often instantly indentured, which was another way of tying them to a particular landowner. Slave owners wanted compensation for the loss of their 'property', which they were duly paid. Though this could look like recognising that slaves could be personal property. All these things got the abolition bill eventually over the line and into law, imperfect though they were as mechanisms. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's was able to build further on that, by removing some of the lingering prejudicial circumstances that bedeviled black lives. And so on, through to # Black Lives Matter. None of this was a perfectly clean fast track trajectory, in the treatment of all humankind with dignity and respect, but it is being driven by the hope that it could be.

"We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voices and vision. And yet, of course, everything in the mainstream media suggests that popular resistance is ridiculous, pointless,or criminal, unless it is far away, was long ago, or, ideally, both. There are forces that prefer the giant remain asleep."

" One of the key recognitions is that the change that counts in a revolution takes place first in the imagination."

I found myself excitedly pencilling brackets around the clarity with which she expressed ideas in sentences and whole paragraphs sometimes. Particularly her criticisms that people on the political left get too self absorbed, and paradoxically like those on the far right, become all about what is wrong, not what it is you want to create. You oppose the comfy consensus by pointing out all its self evident flaws. As a result the left today, can be perceived as constantly in a negative state of mind, in relation to how the world operates, neglecting the need to offer hope and a positive vision for what a better world might look like.

" The despairing were deeply attached to their despair, so much so I came to refer to my project as stealing the teddy bear of despair from the loving arms of the left.  What did it give that particular sector of the left ? It got them off the hook, for one thing. If the world is totally doomed no matter what, little or nothing is demanded of you in response..... And those who were active were often hopeful, though it may be the other way around, some of those who are hopeful are active. Yet the range of the hopeful extends beyond that, and you can find hope in surprising corners."

The assumption by the authorities is that in a time of disaster, civil society will instantly crumble, and tight authoritarian controls will be required to prevent anarchy breaking out. When in fact the opposite is what occurs, people pull together and organise themselves and form alliances to help as many people as possible. During the San Fransisco earthquake in 1906, the city authorities literally impeded and got in the way of ordinary San Franciscan's organising soup kitchens and housing homeless families. 

Solnit champions nonviolent protests, and a growing use of none partisanship in solving problems or issues at a local level. The old left/right polarities were collapsing even in the noughties. You don't come in now with your preformed ideological solutions to solve issues anymore, it's more about finding where the common ground is, listening and being open to hear where the direction of ideas, and possible solutions maybe going. 

"Every act is an act of faith, because you don't know what will happen. You just hope and employ whatever wisdom and experience seems most likely to get you there."

This book is a welcome short shot in the arm. As she points out through examples again and again, those expectations of ours for what is possible, and how quickly it can be achieved, need careful monitoring. Otherwise despair will appear and apathy will get in the way.

" Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.'

All quotations taken from Hope In The Dark by Rebecca Solnit, Published by Canongate Books, 2016.

FINISHED READING- Another England by Caroline Lucas

In the UK, the far right have basically occupied the high ground in defining what Englishness is. Wrapped in flags, nostalgic for Empire, exceptionalism and clinging to the frail ideal of England as being a morally superior culture. The regular repetition of these major shibboleths has consequently poisoned social and political discourse, to the extent that even a supposedly socialist party believed it had to resort to the same toxic gutter and morally emptied itself of all principle and empathy, in order to curry popularity.

Caroline Lucas, in this perceptive book, looks at what Another England to that of the far right might look like. What dignified role can pride in your, country, people and place have these days? She chose to write this book to put out some ideas of her own on paper, to kick off a discussion. A discussion that left leaning parties are noticeably wary of even broaching, for fear of justifying the very views they wish to oppose. Such is the curious political bind we are in, everyone knows Reform needs to be challenged in this area and their selective use of what is thought to be patriotic, but merely resort to name calling.

What defines a nation is really all about the stories we tell ourselves. Because whatever they are, these manifest in how we relate to and behave in the world, how we treat others, and the environment. And in a country where more and more people are struggling to make ends meet, giving them hope and pride is not insignificant.  Lucas begins by utilising our heritage of English literature as an entry point into discovering what that other England might look like. The poetry of John Clare bemoaning the enclosures, the stories of Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell about the human costs and wrongs of the Industrial Revolution. It's true that as the first modern industrial nation, we also were innovating the social responsibility of capitalists. Pioneering a welfare state and the NHS.

There is also the frequency of protest throughout English history, as an agent for change. How the actions of ordinary people of England have forced social, economic and environmental improvements, stretching from the Peasents Revolt, Kett's Rebellion, Levellers, Diggers, Chartists, Suffragettes all the way to Occupy and Extinction Rebellion. These point to a progressive demand for social, economic and environmental justice running like a positive vein of English blood through them all. This starts to tell you of Another England that isn't regressive or toxically obsessed with resisting the imaginary blandishments of 'wokery'.

She makes some suggestions about a way forward, but this is a work in progress. For this is really about the renewal of our broken democratic contract with the people of this country. That England needs to be better represented as an electoral entity.  That practical things like net zero needs to be reached now, not in 2050. We need to stop behaving as if the climate emergency can be put off or delayed. Britain, and it's governments currently have a lack of urgency about this and many other issues, it responds slowly and incrementally, this is somewhat endemic and it's making us all poorer, sick and apathetic. 

Don't read this book expecting to find all the answers here, it is simply giving you a few much-needed directional pointers. We all have to discover for ourselves what we believe we want our country to be and then fight for that.  

But as James Baldwin so succinctly puts it -   

'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it's faced'.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

FINISHED READING - The Book Of Trespass by Nick Hayes

"We need space for the mind to rave, to wander and to dream. Access to land is access to experience and access to nature is access to our own wild, spiritual mind. And while the current logic of property forbids our experience of land unless it is sold, we are expected to buy weekend tickets to access our own wild creativity."*

It is a telling statistic that 92% of land and 97% of waterways in England is in private ownership, and hence out of bounds for ordinary folk to walk or sail on without paying for permission or permit. That is only the starting point for Nick Hayes excellent exploration of that most English notion of private property as akin to a divine right. You are not allowed to question how this ownership came about either. Hayes notes that when common public land has been openly stolen by landowners, once it becomes their own private property any discussion broaching on that illegality, becomes as off limits as how the landowner came by his original estate in the first place. Because actually the parcelling out of land to a select group of individuals, well, none of that stands up too well to close historical or ethical scrutiny.

The lions share of our present land ownership distribution has its origins in 1066 and the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror gave land to his nobiity who'd helped win that conquest. Kicking out the Saxon chiefs and putting in his own men. These brought with them their own culture, that loved to hunt in forests.  So they set about creating new forests with a hunting 'chase' built into them. Land that previously had been open for all to forage and hunt, became private land that you might lose your life if you were caught trespassing or 'poaching' upon it. This fencing off of what was once common land, was the first of many such thefts of collectively owned land for individual private benefit and profit. And so this has continued, common land continues to be constantly accrued by the wealthy landowner, corporation or investment  company. Acts of Enclosure began in the 17th century, greatly accelerated in the 18th, and carried on until just before World War 1. The destruction of feudal land use and peasant livelihoods ranged wide and deep, which led to a slow building exodus from the countryside into the industrial towns in the 18th-19th century.  To own property and land was to gain access to unimaginable privileges, advantages those of us who don't own land can never acquire. 

" Property decides what is proper. It decides what land is for and who land is for. If you can't afford to pay for access to city clubs or country festivals, or if you don't own property spacious enough to create your own community gathering, if no landlord will give you permission, there is simply nowhere for you to commune. As long as what happens on the land is governed by a select few there will never be a society that reflects the values of anything but a tiny minority of its citizens. If we are truly to discover what we have in common, we must be allowed to gather on common ground. "*

When a local council brings in a developing company to revamp a public space, this often entails the selling of the land to that company. And hence once common land held for us by our councils, becomes private land. If you wanted to start a march or protest in this once public space, you'd be very promptly turfed off, because this is now private property and there are no rights of assembly here. Gradually common land and public spaces are being eradicated, and our sense of belonging and having access to this land that surrounds us is consequently diminished. The ability of ordinary folk to dissent and protest is being kettled and corralled, into ever tighter defined areas. This lack of available space and freedom to breath easily or publicly vent, leads us into ill health and a crisis in the nations physical and mental wellbeing. Property law becomes then a major way the establishment limits the effect of dissent, which unfortunately even people kept outside of the establishment fence, with aspirations, seem to buy into.

This impoverishes ordinary lives, where ease of access to walk the land we were brought up in, to breath its sea air, and swim freely in our rivers, are all carefully ring fenced by signs that warn Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Nick Hayes has been one of the founders of The Right To Roam campaigning movement. It's aims modelled upon the Scottish Right To Roam law which was introduced in 2003. Other European countries have the right to roam in law as part of their birthright - Norway, Sweden. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Czech Republic and Switzerland. So it's not the batshit crazy, neo- marxist idea English landowners would like to make it out to be. In The Book of Trespass, Hayes cleverly mixes facts, statistics, historical research and his own adventures in trespassing. As an artist, he is often in search of the forbidden, the out of reach places, the woods and landscapes we cannot see because they are behind a literal wall of exclusion. He wants to draw and paint these things simply because they are so rarely seen. And through out the book we are shown some of his stylish artworks. He is also an excellent painter in words, very vivid pictures of the qualities of a particular forests, the pleasures in lighting fires outside, of gazing up into the night skies above dilapidated architectural follies, or the experience of kayaking down the Thames towards Runnymede, or the jeopardy involved in searching for mythic oak trees. He shows us what we are all missing out on, because it's hived off behind a barbed fence, with an equally barbed sign.

"More often than not, I and whichever friend I could persuade to join me met not one other soul on our trip. We walked, sat around, talked, took in the day, lit a fire, slept, cleared away our rubbish, and left. And the most striking discovery of all this rambling was just how wide the world is, how many hills, lakes, woods and dells there are to this land. If England is full, it is full of space. And the walls that hide it."*

A friend loaned me this book, after seeing the documentary Our Land about the Right To Roam movement, that Nick Hayes is a part of. I found myself being unexpectedly captivated and completely enthused by it.  Part polemic, part the diary of a true nature lover, and a very deep and thorough dive into the scurrilous nature of property and land ownership rights in England's green and pleasant land. Lack of land, or access to land, being a canker on England's sense of individual liberty and view of who we are. Highly recommended.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

* All quotations taken from The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, 

   Published by Bloomsbury, 2021

FINISHED READING -The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

The image we have of India in the UK, is of a third world country, one of our ex Empire colonies which the British civilised and brought democracy too. But this view is not entirely in alignment with what is known about its history prior to the British Raj, nor how it is today. William Dalrymple in The Golden Road, sets out a compelling case for India being one of the world's main civilising cultures, from which we have inherited more than perhaps we might wish to fully acknowledge.

India brought highly developed civilising ideas to Europe from quite early on, which Europe then took and developed further. India was a dominant trading nation even during the days of the Roman Empire. Hoards of Roman gold coins keep being found in India wherever there's an archeological dig. India was always a kingpin of the spice trade, luxury fabrics, minerals and gems. The Romans could never get enough, and sunken shipwrecks have revealed just how much their appetite for bling was being fed by Indian traders. It's estimated a good forty percent of all high ticket price goods sent to the Roman Empire, were being imported from India. And when the Roman Empire fell, and that trade dried up, the Indians swiftly changed their primary focus from West to East, to the economies of China. Korea. Malaysia, Philippines, Cambodia and Japan.

Historians refer to the effect on Medieval Europe of trade opening up via the Silk Road. Even though The Silk Road is a modern concept invented by a German geographer in 1877. But for at least a millennia prior to that, India's Golden Road, as Dalrymple has named it, was a far greater influence on the development of culture and civilisations both east and west. This appears to have been a fact largely forgotten or brushed over post the age of Empires.

The rise of an adventurous entrepreneur Indian mercantile class was key, and with them they brought their religion, their culture and their mathematical prowess. As they sailed both east and west on favourable winds. And it was initially Buddhism they brought with them. Buddhist sutras contain many references to merchants and traders as converts. They were the early adopters of what was then a new and relatively fringe faith. Buddhism became the dominant faith in India entirely due to Ashoka's conversion and widespread promotion of it. In comparison to this, Constantine making Christianity the faith of the Holy Roman Empire feels a bit lukewarm, and more of a strategic than a heartfelt conversion. Ashoka just went for it big time, and the effects of his enthusiasm spread around the known world via its trading network.

There are records of figures like Amoghavara and Vajrabodhi, actively travelling around South East Asia spreading their Vajrayana message of tantric rituals and mandalas. Which in succeeding generations strongly influenced by them, built the temples of Borobudur and Angkor Wat, both of which utilise mandala ideas in the construction of their vast temple courtyard complexes. 

Buddhism and goods to trade, were only two things which they brought with them. By far the greater influence came through the practical and mathematical ideas that travelled with them. The creation of large courtyard universities centering around a library, as places of learning, similar to Nalanda, was one such idea that became embedded in European cities. The mathematical concept of zero, was a logical development from the Mahayana Buddhist notion of shunya. Indo-Arabic numerals, is another of its mathematical legacies to The Renaissance. The game of chess originated from India too. 

All of these, and more, arrived in Europe from India via Islam. The presence of Islamic Moors in Spain brought much of what the Arabs had learnt from trading and invading India, into the European sphere of its intelligentsia and cultural development. Chinese figures such as Xuangzang travelled to India, specifically to visit Nalanda, in order to copy Buddhist texts to bring back to China. His ten year round journey became so inspirational, because his return coincided with the ascent of Empress Wu, who was another active royal proselytiser for Buddhism. Even if her personal ethical practice we would think these days to be more than questionable, in how far it fell short of the ideal.

That the British East India Company came to India in the first place, was because India in the 17th century was responsible for 46% of all world trade, and they wanted a bigger slice of it. Which ended with the East India Company becoming the first corporation to hold its own standing army, in order that it could take over India and asset strip it. When that all went seriously pear shaped with the Indian Mutiny, the British dissolved the East India Company. Repackaging the Empire as a benevolent force for good, including making Queen Victoria it's Empress. And we know the rest. By the time it became independent India hung on to 4% of world trade. Since then it has consistently regained the trading ground lost during it's colonial years. And some would say India could well become the world's third largest economy before too long.

William Dalrymple, writes with incredible verve and love of the telling details. Which makes this a hugely enjoyable book to absorb the contents of. As he richly recounts the story of the Indosphere, and the quiet revolution that it brought to the world. This is a fabulous and revealing book, that begins to set the historical record straight.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

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 or the 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

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

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 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.

FINISHED READING - Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

Imagine you can meet someone from your past ife, with whom you had a strong connection. It could be a lover, a friend or a relative. And even though they are now dead, you can arrange to meet them between dusk and dawn during a full moon. To perhaps resolve some long burning question, ask their advice or help with an issue, or simply just to spend time with them once more. You can only do this once in your life, so chose carefully.  If you chose to do so, you have to contact a 'go between' who asks you who you need to see and why, and then dialogues with the deceased about whether they wish to meet this person or not. If they do, they go ahead and make all the arrangements for a meeting in a hotel room. This is the basic story set up of Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon. 

And so we meet Manami Hirase, a young woman whose lived a life which she feels is of no significance to anyone. She feels internally in constant despair. The one highlight of her life was encountering Saori Mizushiro, a TV celebrity, when she was excessively drunk,, hyperventilating in the street, and Saori had calmly helped her in a peak moment of distress. Saori has recently died unexpectedly, and Manami wishes to talk to her again as she feels her life no longer has any point.

Another 'go between' client, Koichi Tsuchiya is a successful and very busy businessman. He starts a relationship with Kirari Himukai, all goes well, they fall in love, she moves in with him. But then one day she appears to pack her things and leave never to be heard of again. Seven years later, a tortured and embittered man, Koichi is wondering whether to have her legally declared dead, so he can finally draw a line on this relationship. But then he hears about the 'go between' and has to consider whether knowing she was alive or dead would really help.

These are just two of the often complex life stories touched on in this sensitively written book. All the clients the 'go between' helps are living lives that in someway cannot move on because of an issue that has stubbornly remained an obstacle. Each time Tsujimura describes the background of her characters life dilemmas and how they discover the 'go between'. These meetings with the dead may resolve the central issue, but not always in the way the client expected or desired. Some feel released to live their lives more fully, others remain haunted by something reprehensible they did, which their meeting with the deceased still fails to resolve. 

Tsujimura's writing style ( as translated ) is composed quite simply and plainly. In very grounded real terms the messiness of emotions and issues at play in any single life, are revealed. It deftly avoids stepping into sugary sentiment, which given the subject matter is often laced with tragedy, it could so easily do. The lives she describes come across as universally relatable, filled as they are with quite ordinary guilt, envy, love, loss and remorse, everything is here.

The final chapter about the 'go between' we've see appearing throughout the book, provides a satisfying twist at the end of the book. Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon was a huge success in Japan when first published, and has subsequently been adapted into a movie. It does, in many ways mine a recurring vein in Japanese fiction, of the closeness of ancestors, being able to meet and dialogue with the ghosts of your relatives, crops up incidentally quite a lot. This novel also has the recognisable tone of gentle quirkiness which a lot of mainstream Japanese fiction employs. It's not an earth shatteringly original book, but it is very well written and I for one found it a really engaging and satisfying novel to read.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

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FINISHED READING - The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker by Annie Gray

Annie Gray begins the story of the High Street in the 1300's is in the aftermath of plague and famine, England is recovering economically, a whole host of new towns, or burgh's created a century before have been given the right to hold weekly markets. The market town is being born. Markets had of course existed prior to this time, held within monastic precincts, or more informally as trading fares in towns. The royal charters that gave a town the right to hold markets overseen by the local authority. These markets were a lot more chaotic and insanitary then we'd find acceptable today. Even in their time, people were unsure they were a good idea. They easily became places where criminality and prostitution happened. These markets were not just to sell food produce, but for more specialist trades such as haberdashery or bookselling. Overtime, those stalls that proved most popular would forsake their weekly market stall and open a permanent local shop. These were often nothing more than an open window or doorway onto the street, which may have produce hung around it. Product merchandising was in its infancy. People learned first hand what worked and what didn't.

Once you've opened a shop, things have not substantially changed in centuries. You always have to work hard to tempt people to cross your threshold. Giving good customer service has been a reliable way to create customer loyalty. Word quickly getting around through recommendation, as does a reputation for poor service or workmanship. One of the themes over the centuries has been for shops to become stockists or a mixture of products from across a wide spectrum of sectors. Any shop could develop into a place where you could find literally anything you might need. Hence the Bazaars, Emporiums, Hardware Stores. Department Stores, Shopping Malls, even the online retailers such as Amazon or Temu continue to trade on this. The one stop shop that becomes a timesaver. 

Post the Second World War, a lot of traditional High Street properties were destroyed during the bombing of cities, so small independent initiatives, began taking over properties off the main street.  Often dark damp cellars selling trendy clothes to a youth market that they knew would seek them out. These boutiques had their own unique counter cultural ambiance which more mainstream shops soon began to mimic. A good retailer has to be attentive to what is happening on the street, and be responsive to that. And the entrepreneurial pop up or start up store is one way to test the water and begin to make your mark.

Annie Gray, describes this broad sweep of several hundred years of development in the British High Street. She has a wonderful sense for the colours and smells of retailing as it develops into the highly competitive market place of today. Talking us for a stroll down a High Streets of York. London, Leeds or Brighton in different eras, to demonstrate the various trends in that period, and why they have emerged. Each new innovation appearing to provoke renewed consternation about the moral decline it might instigate, or the deleterious effect new more vigorous fashions might have upon more staid traditional retailing. Beneath a panoply of local initiatives such as Market Halls, Bazaars, Shopping Arcades, Victorian Covered Indoor Markets, Department Stores. Boutiques, Superstores, Supermarkets, Shopping Malls and out of town retail parks, we find the social and cultural trends that caused them to be created. Not all of them stood the test of time. 

Some shops changed their target market, a toyshop, for instance, was once a shop solely for adults where you could discover all sorts of eccentric frippery, gadgets and other useless ephemera, only later does a toyshop become specifically aimed at children. Tentatively self service starts to be introduced, into an industry that had previously built and prided itself on offering personal attentive service. Modern customers, increasingly want to be left alone to buy without being hassled by sales assistants. Undoubtedly self service check outs in supermarkets has been driven more by the cost effectiveness of requiring less staff, than personal choice, and the jury is out on whether this impersonal way of processing purchasing will last. It maybe our alienated individualism will simply increase, until we find the nature of human interactions too taxing, and so avoid the cashier aisle altogether.

People have been calling the death knell of the High Street for decades. And certainly some once giant retail behemoths have fallen, but that could be to do with their slowness in adapting. Even in our internet age, some retail sectors remain remarkably resilient, where people still prefer to have a more hands on touchy feely relationship with what they buy. Retail has always gone through quite dramatic shifts that can be appear quite unpredictable. Who knows their maybe a revolt against the impersonal data reaping nature of online purchasing. The rise of the artisan and craft based shops maybe one symptom of our desire for the bespoke and unique returning. To live in a less mass produced, less monitored world. 

Annie Gray's book provides an excellent and enjoyable overview of how shopping and the High Street has changed. How it both creates and follows the social trends of their times to this day.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8