Future Woman

I'm going to create a utopian future idea for my elderly self. This is to counteract and 

hopefully cancel out the possibility of the recurring vision that keeps surfacing of me as a 

vagrant, a bag lady, if you'll excuse the expression. This vague, hazy picture of myself

wandering around a bleak, rainy city in several layers of filthy clothes, a battered old hat, 

worn down, ill-fitting boots, pushing a shopping trolly bearing my collection of rubbish in old 

plastic bags started to form itself on the backdrop of my mind when arriving in  

Manchester many years ago and, walking across Piccadilly, I passed a lady who was just 

that. 

I remember her that way, but I may have elaborated on some of the details because 

memory's like that. The original lady who inspired the image was, I think, well known in 

Manchester, but I think I've mixed her up with other characters such as Mrs Tachyon in 

Terry Pratchetts' story Johnny and the Bomb and the lady feeding the birds in Mary Poppins 

for example. 


Except my old lady definitely does not have a time-travelling trolley. She is totally vagrant 

and absorbed in her own world with its processes. These are very time-consuming and 

complicated; esoteric and important and they must be done outside on the urban street.

Each time this image crops up, I try to modify it. I imagine she has a cosy little terraced 

house to go to each night, with a cat and a friendly neighbour to look in on her. But no, like 

one of those imposing, invasive visual edits, this image is rapidly swept aside to reveal the 

awful scene of a grubby wooden shelter somewhere, with gaps in its roof and a filthy floor 

and a bench where she lies, precariously balanced, with the trolly full of debris 

dragged beside her for some sort of flimsy protection. It will be stolen by young, 

heartless thugs now and then, raided for it's bizarre detritus, swung around and played with 

until, becoming boring, it is smashed to the ground, leaving her angry and raving at them 

with her frail fists.

So I must rescue her from this bad situation. It really isn't sustainable at her age. The rituals 

she is performing can be done elsewhere with equal effect.

I put her in a garden. It's a walled garden in Spring. I love crumbling Cheshire brick. There 

are apricots and apples and pears growing against it, Roman fashion. An avenue of Cherry 

blossom along the gravel paths that divide the different beds. It's all been divided up like a 

knot garden. From above you could see the intricacy of it's design. As she wanders along 

the labyrinthine paths, it has the atmosphere of a maze, but without dead ends and with 

vistas. As she pauses next to a bed bordered by lavender, just showing its new tips, she 

looks across to the open circle in the wall which is a window on the fields surrounding the 

garden. Somewhere in those fields is a large field where people camp. Other fields have 

crops growing in them. The campers tend the crops. Turning to face the opposite direction, 

there is a door in the wall. It's slightly ajar and you can just glimpse the path leading up to 

the house. It's a large old farmhouse with lots of bedrooms and an annexe. Visitors come 

and go. They share the cooking, shopping, cleaning etc. It's a place people come to on 

retreat. There's a room lined with bookshelves, another compact with records, a computer 

with hordes of music to access and a good sound system. The middle of the floor is clear 

for dancing and it's lined with sofas. There are headphones in case you prefer that way of 

listening. 

The annexe has a rehearsal space for musicians with a recording studio. It also has a 

couple of very light rooms for making art. One has printing equipment in it.

It's all run as a co-op. It belongs to everyone. I don't know who the members are or how

the guests and visitors get to know about it. I don't know what the racial, sex or age mix is,

but this is a much better future for my future self so I won't question it too closely.



There she is, she's forking over a bed ready to plant something. Someone's coming through 

the gate bringing two cups of tea. She looks to be about the same age as my future woman 

and as she sets the cups down on a table which joins two wooden chairs together, she 

beckons my future woman to join her. Oh, actually, it was a tray she brought and there's a 

plate with cake on it too. 

Future woman, smiling broadly, sticks her long handled fork in the loamy soil, takes off her 

gloves and comes forward to join her, throwing the gloves into the shopping trolly which 

is parked on the path. Sitting down, she sips the tea, takes a piece of light golden sponge 

and, looking out at the perfect order of the beautiful kitchen garden, says "you came 

then" and the two women turn to each other and laugh. 

Explanatory Notes

Language is illusory. Everything said or written has been so before, in a different arrangement.

The world goes backwards as it goes forwards. It's a pendulum swing.

Ideas are oscillations , they rise and fall, fall and rise ad infinitum.

As there is only the same amount of matter in the universe, so there is only the same amount of

ideas and language and progress and newness is illusory, born of a lack of experience.

Newness must come from outside. It must be pulled in from another dimension, as from a cloud in

space, along the lines of panspermia, propounded by Fred Hoyle.

An Old Feeling

My self within,

Raging energy,

A burning adolescent.

I become its dummy.


Out of my self,

Spirit suspended,

Looking down upon

the ugly contortions


of the ego in pain.

Descending, my spirit

opens wide its arms,

silently smiling,


too quiet sometimes

for my self to notice,

in the midst of my

noisy flailings.


Sometimes, when apart

I see you too,

Just one fraction of

an essence, your soul with


its head bowed in

susceptibility.

Slowly, as our selves

retract, we rise and stand



together, spirits

smiling at each other,

The distance rainbowed

between our gaze.

The impossibility of creation.

Impossible Creation

Part I


We know we all create. Surviving the day to day requires us to. The desire to focus on this and

expand upon it, extemporising, perhaps letting the notion of it dominate and dictate our existence,

is possibly what distinguishes the "artist" from others, by which I mean to include writers and

musicians. The activity is analogous to following a religion and trying to uncover its

truths and mysteries. We assume it removes the "initiate" from the mundane, lifts them higher,

psychologically and spiritually from those who don't appear to focus so forensically on this activity.


The one who produces an artefact, words, music that resonates with us, highlighting emotions,

thoughts and feelings, leading us beyond them, challenging our notions of beauty, love, what is

significant, becomes our focus. We watch them closely, observe what they produce, why they did

so, their influences and reasons or thinking, and we absorb them into our being. We stand infront

of a Rothko and think " I am Rothko - he is me - I feel what he felt."  We become empathetic and

this would appear to be a positive thing. Or, we can stand back and marvel, as with some amazing

work by Michelangelo and imagine him some god or someone led by god. Above human in some

way.


However, absorbing another's being, or distancing ourselves from the genius we see

portrayed, that is, acknowledging that we could not ever produce work of such high calibre as

this or that artist, could absolve us from our own job of processing events etc of our own lives. It

is my belief that we need to unravel, unfold and extemporise on our individual experiences, ideas,

thoughts and feelings because, although I believe in the collective unconsciousness as

described by Carl Jung, I also think this should be added to and expanded by each individual.



My conclusion, therefore, in this time of great anxiety about the nature of creation in which painting

appears obsolete, the novel deceased, music just a regurgitation of sounds gone before, is that the

way forward for the arts, for the process of creativity, is not to obsess about the medium, the genre,

the intent or the nature of the process, the characters who have become celebrities, the work that is

deemed great but seems odd even unfathomable at all, but to encourage participation, to expect

everyone to have a creative life; to live creatively and to regard all the things produced, whether

deemed mediocre, or undeveloped even bad, as valid fragments of the creative fabric that we are

woven from. Threads. Or broken pot. Perhaps the totality of our creative efforts is a broken pot.



Part II

Each day is filled with acts of creation. Quietly marvellous things, like cooking and baking. Grace

Paley wrote a poem about making a pie instead of writing a poem because a pie felt more useful

and was always welcome. How many of us scribble, daub, build even, on the sly, leaving the ongoing

things to one side with guilt and attending to these indefinable activities and engagements as if they

were our illegitimate children or concubines who we feel we cannot acknowledge with the full weight

of our love or attend to with the care and time we would like to offer them. They're our selfish

indulgences, things we do when we feel we should be pouring our energies into our day to day duties,

more pressing and urgent and legitimate than this other, which will only, after all, be poured into that

deepest pool of forgotten things.

Not only that, as you glance around in the morning, your eye rests upon the beautiful dish and bowl

that you bought from a potter whilst on holiday, then the fine etching of a landscape given as a lovely

present and moves over to the poster of some artist's work like Munch which took your breath away

on a museum visit. Even the perfect teapot in your hand, though manufactured partly by machine was

designed so well, it's shape and proportions, it's materials, the colour, the glaze. You're lead to think

 about design and manufacturing, it's sophistication, the high levels of skill. You see your mobile

phone and marvel at it, at computers, remembering when they weren't ubiquitous and all of a sudden,

you are overwhelmed by it all. The world is humming, buzzing, vibrating with creative activity and

the evidence of it all and it all seems, of such dazzling calibre that anything you might make yourself

today will seem so meagre, so unformed and insignificant, that you wonder if you might just make

a nice cake. Stands for some time, contemplating the possibilities.

Cycle

A circle,

A closed whole,

Perpetual motion,

Cycle of Fate.



Ohm of my o,

Obvious shape,

Mouth in motion,

Offering. Open.



Ripple and swirl,

Centre unfurl,

Moon then Sun,

The end that's begun.

My fiftieth year

In my fiftieth year,

on the ascent to the date,

strange thoughts and feelings

come over the horizon.


I look at them on my way up.

They're out of focus,

so I can't be sure if we're

on course for collision.


As the one in front approaches,

I am surprised by its anger.

Running full pelt towards me,

it aims directly at my heart.


It breaks all known rules

of engagement or behaviour.

It hurls itself and whacks its wounding weapon

across my defending arm.


I am shattered and defeated, tearful

at this unprovoked and unmitigated attack

and I bow myself down,

to avoid another onslaught.

But my ascent it unavoidable

and the attack becomes relentless,

A fearful barrage of reproaches,

Like a rain of lethal arrows hitting home.

Slowly I become accustomed

To the pain of this awful wave

And straighten my back in order

To reach the summit of my dignity.

Pounding, pounding pounding,

As surprising as a crowd of bicycles,

Careering over the brow towards you.

Their width all encompassing. 

I persist. 

Autumn song

Begin with a clear blue sky,

uncommon at this time of year.


Standing at the cusp

where Autumn tilts us into

the abyss of the long Winter.


The sharpness of the light

lifts the soul, reminds us

there will always be such moments;


brightness of light,

the sun uncovered.


Then the small voice

will sing, a high

pitched lovely lament;


How not to be here,

standing in this doorway,

listening to the birdsong,



existence and loveliness

continuing in our absence.

Finding our self in sorrow. Breaking things up to find truth.

Sorrow can feel soft and comforting. It's the thing we love to wallow around in as adolescents when we are exploring the rawness of new feelings. It's the emotion that comes and goes as we get older and is an appropriate response to normal life events. For some people, I say, because this is me, it's an underlying feeling that's been present always. Actually, this might be true for everyone - maybe we can choose to acknowledge it or dismiss it, I'm not sure. Not everyone wants to talk about it. Everyone is surely aware of the inherent sadness of life alongside the joy, but "healthy people" are able to keep this awareness of sadness in a quiet place in their psyche so that they can get on with living an energetic and full life. After all, life is short. We should try not to miss the joy and bliss it brings along with the sorrow.

I only came to acknowledge in later life that sorrow was the undertow of my life's current and that for some reason, I felt that this was the main truth of life, believing that all other "positive" emotions were false, illusory, to be indulged in for a time, but that the sorrow was the true thing to return to.

Some of this may have been in response to witnessing other peoples' sorrow I think. In particular, my nana, who became increasingly melancholic with age to the point where she did not speak. Family members would pretend that it was due to the pain of being arthritic and this was partly true, but we all knew that the true underlying cause was the sorrow of her life. She had lost fifteen members of her family in a bomb blast that destroyed their house in the second world war and her husband died of a stroke soon after, which left her to scrabble around for whatever low paid work she could find. I know that she managed to be happy for many years because I remember her singing and in particular, singing to me whenever I would cry as a child. I do have many happy memories of times with her when she was quick to see the funny side of things, especially calamitous situations.  The best memory of her is on holiday in Pwthelli, the whole family in a sea front flat, where we shared a bedroom. One night a huge storm whipped up and blew the bay window of our bedroom in so that the rain was lashing in through it as we lay in the double bed together. Unperturbed, she chuckled and began to sing Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head in her sweet, high voice. I joined in. My mum, dad and uncle, summoned by the racket, me laughing and nearly shouting the words, stood at the bedroom door, stunned initially, then beginning to laugh with us.

It was the passage of time, I think when hopes and dreams gradually fade, loved ones die and reconciliations with those we have have become estranged from seem to be beyond hope, together with the pain that stopped her being able to move around and look after the home, bore down upon her until she withdrew deep within herself and became lost to us.

I do believe the sorrow that we all feel can go hand in hand with the joy, of course I do. I understand yin and yang. Without darkness there can be no light. Getting the balance right is the key, but for some of us, whose sorrow has come bubbling up to the surface, ruining all the joys and beauty of life like a putrid flood, we must attend to it. We have to clear it away carefully, noting its source and not stemming it's flow so much as gathering it, ladelling it, drawing it up to be poured back into that source it welled up out of, hoping it will settle into a still pool once more.

This is a messy process. It feels complex and arduous. People you encounter when in the midst of this task may be drawn to you - this is what they are doing  or need to do now also - or repelled - they have done with that already or they will do it later, when ready.

Art, music, books and poetry in particular can provide great solace. As can walking and, for myself, getting high up so that you can see the land going far into the distance, in any weather. Also going out as it gets dark and into the night to see the moon and stars when visible, the clouds otherwise can help give you a better sense of perspective and sometimes your sadness can seem to flow outwards from you here. Anything that feels older, more enduring gives me a sense of peace in which the sadness diminishes. Having to attend to what may seem like petty concerns exacerbate and amplify it.

Mark Rothko spoke of his wish to create art that filled the spiritual void of modern people. If you sit in the Tate and contemplate his Seagram murals, you are looking at paintings created in a deeply contemplative way. He was attending to the need to look inwards and his intention was that they should provoke this mood in the viewer. He had visited the Laurentian library in Florence where Michelangelo had deliberately created a cloistered space in order to provoke inward contemplation and Rothko wanted to emulate this effect.

It is a wonderful thing when an artist dedicates his/her life to the pursuit of truth. I have to hope that contemplating Rothko's work can assist us both to enter the pool of deep sadness within ourselves and also rise up from it. His death really leaves us in charge of how to do that.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in particular has the effect of creating the empty but charged atmosphere with the right amount of poignancy, humour and absurdness. Maybe the visual equivalent of this is something for me to look out for.

Picture This. I am your creation.

Picture this; for I am a camera

and you are the screen,

displaying the images

of who we have been.



Look into the lens

as you look into my eyes.

Do we recognise each other,

are we wearing a disguise.



I have changed myself for you.

I changed my whole life through for you.

There is nothing I can recognise

in my eyes because of you.



There might be a picture, like Dorian Grey,

propped up against some unknown wall.

I would like to find it some day,

and see if that's changed at all.



Did you change yourself for me ?

Was there some other way for you to be ?

We have no other pictures to show

of other selves we could come to know.



Maybe we could paint a picture,

we could take the brush in turn,

paint ourselves the way we want us.

It could be our way to learn.

Listening from within

I have listened to the news on the radio for nigh on forty odd years now. I have watched the news and news analysis on tv intermittently, though sometimes assiduously, for long periods. I have participated in twitter debates, been able to observe and ponder other people's twitter debates and listened to the small number of friends who discuss world affairs.

I am wary of participating and listening and watching any more. All this pooling of thoughts and impressions and ideas give the lie to the truth. Our ideas, impressions and thoughts become homogenised by this daily grind. It produces a palatable ice cream that we taste and savour at our leisure and in our repose.

Remembering the raging argument that my Dad had with my uncle when we all shared a house together when I was growing up. My uncle had The News of the World newspaper delivered once a week and as I began to learn to read, I would look at it. One week my grief could not be contained after seeing pictures of dogs being beaten to death with sticks on the front page. I would cry myself to sleep night after night thinking of them. My Dad was outraged to the point of apoplexy and demanded that my uncle never order it again. I remember this now and the ill feeling it caused, along with the deep feelings of sadness. I think about not knowing about painful things, disasters, wars, cruelty, torture, oppression and the myriad forms of suffering going on as we live each day.

I retreat. I prefer the slow and laborious process of reading. Not newspapers. My circumference of experience has retracted to within my arms' reach. I listen to music again. Even the music in my head is preferable to some external babble. I can sometimes extemporise, internally and externally.

This is a hermit life and perhaps I am hiding from reality. For the time being, I imagine it is reality I am trying to touch. I feel deceived by the homogenous and illusory impression of life portrayed second hand.

I put on my boots, my hat, my gloves and I walk out. It is, inevitably, about to rain.

Impasse

Impasse - Notes


Theres's always a point at which you have to make a choice, or change a situation.

Using the Penseive.

Hurtling through life. Looking backwards briefly at the way you came.

The story arc of my life ; you know, I can see the shape of it reaching out in front of me. It's tree-like.

Light doesn't travel in straight lines in space. It curves along the space time continuum.

William Blake described doors of understanding which can be passed through.

How do we find the keys to these doors ?

A locked door seems like an impasse.

Can keys magically appear ?

                                                         
                                                                   _        



Here is a banal observation :



Change is fundamental to life. Of course. When we make choices, we interact with this phenomenon

and the choices we make can change our lives both subtly and fundamentally.


Instigating change can take a central position in our lives. We can become transfixed with the

potential of it.  It may even take on a pseudo-magical aura for us, for example, when we imagine that

even the clothes we choose to wear somehow determine the outcome of our interactions with people

that day. There may even be an element of truth in this. Our appearance can certainly have a

psychological effect on others and so affect our interactions with each other.  However, when this

observation causes us to invest certain items of clothing or jewellery with magical or "lucky"

properties, we should begin to suspect that our acknowledgement of the influence of our choices and

actions has taken on superstitious overtones.


All this exploration of the effects our actions have on the world begins in childhood and it can be

experienced in a ritualistic/psychological form named "undoing". We learn not to step on the cracks

in the pavement. We touch certain objects a particular number of times. We look for specific signs ;

 curtains closed, lights on or off, someone appearing at a specific place and time. We set ourselves

tasks; jumping down some of the stairs, going up at two or three at a time. We may increase the

difficulty of  these tasks to intensify their effects and become distressed when we find them

impossible to accomplish. And all to prevent, to undo, to ward off, to make a spell.


There is a certain kind of meticulousness and tendency to pay close attention to detail that engenders

the compulsion to perfect this approach to the effects of our actions in our life.


Sometimes, a person who has these tendencies arrives in a situation and they find themselves

narrowing down their spheres of influence so that they may feel they have control over the very dust

that is shed from their skin.

And they may perform



Acts of expiation                                                 as a

Defence mechanism                                           in their

Striving for reparation                                        in their

Desire to undo harm and put objects to right magically.


This type of behaviour has also been described as a kind of

Falling                               to                                            bits.



                                                                   _




The Closed Door.


There were three things that she liked to do most of all; playing with water, burying treasure and

imagining that the house was a hotel in which each room had a different guest staying. She decided

that every guest had to be visited and their needs attended to once a day. The guests had long,

complicated names and these had to be recalled and used in full during the conversation with them.


Playing with dolls was an anathema to her. Nevertheless, the dolls that she possessed had to be

looked after. This she accepted and she would dutifully undress them, give their clothes to her mother

 to be washed, then bathe them in the kitchen sink in turn. All except the rag doll who couldn't be

washed. Time was dirtying her and there was no remedy for this. She had complained about it to her

mother who had carefully sponged the doll's clothes which were sewn distressingly onto the doll's

body and this did improve their appearance somewhat, but there was nothing to be done with its

blackening face or greying yellow wool hair. For this reason, the rag doll was kept, wrapped in tissue

paper so that her body and hair was covered but not her face, in the "fairy cot" that her mother and

father had made so meticulously for her as a Christmas present. It had arrived with a letter from

Father Christmas, stating that he had sent it as a substitute for the Jack-in-a-box she had requested

which could not be found that year. The sporting analogy was not lost on her.


So it was that every time she was taken, by the hand because of the cars, round to play with her friend

Anita who lived in a block of flats near the block of flats that her aunt and uncle lived in, she had to

pretend that she enjoyed playing with the dolls who inhabited Anita's impressive doll's house.

The doll's house was a large, wooden, garishly painted affair which someone had made with love for

Anita. Father Christmas had no doubt delivered it. The family of four dolls who resided there were

stiff limbed wooden creatures with fixed, painted on expressions. The Father doll had a stern

expression, described by the direction of his eyebrows, for his mouth was obscured by a large, bushy

moustache rendered by thick, black lines. The Mother figure could be recognised by her cloth penny

and the mop of yellow wool hair, not dissimilar to rag doll, but fluffier. There were two smaller dolls,

obviously the man and woman's children; one boy with his painted on cap of black hair; the other a

girl with a red Clara Bow mouth and strands of orange wool gathered into a cursory pair of bunches

and tied with cotton.



Anita would prattle on delightedly as they posed and placed the family in various situations. She

made up voices and scenarios for them and bounced them along vigorously to signify when they were

walking. Lost in her own reverie, she didn't mind that her companion only mimicked her actions in a

rather mild, unenthusiastic way and never contributed to their conversations. Alongside her lack of

enthusiasm about animating the wooden marionettes, her playmate was perturbed by the trompe l'ceil

fixtures and fittings in the house, and most especially, the painted door in the top-most room of the

house. Each time she went on these excursions to play with Anita and the house, she would come

 away and wonder and worry about the painted door and how it could be opened.



At home in the front room after these weekly excursions, she would take out the box of chess pieces

and place it in the middle of the board. She often played with the chess set and her father, taken by

her fascination with it, had shown her the way to set out the pieces. He had patiently explained the

rules which described the movements of each piece and she was able to remember the way each piece

was expected to move as they seemed like dance movements, similar to the ones she had learned at

school. She and her father played some simple games in which her father allowed her to make some

straightforward moves, demonstrating that she had remembered these rudiments, after which he

would dispense with all her pieces quite quickly and the game would be over. This didn't upset

her, since winning or losing held no thrill for her. She enjoyed the quiet companionship of

concentrating on the chess pieces with her Dad and then happy to be left alone to play with the pieces

and break all the rules of chess by instigating her own meticulous and complex ones.


Having completed one of her own intricate rituals involving taking first a white piece, then a black

piece, one in each hand, then placing them on specific squares on the board, she would gently sweep

them all away with the box lid until they tumbled off the board onto the coffee table. She had

developed a careful technique for doing this so as to avoid losing any pieces, since the first time she

performed the action she had flung them away with her forearm with such vigour that some of the

pieces had gone flying through the air, hitting various hard objects and making a loud clatter, enough

to summon her beloved nana who scolded her for being careless and noisy.


The ritual complete, the pieces returned to their wooden box and put carefully away under the coffee

table, she would go to the window and look out onto the street to puzzle about the strange fact that if

she put up her hand to her head and compared it to the houses across the street, she was more or less

the same size. Looking down, their own garden was always beautiful and gave her unending pleasure.

There was the gate, painted dark green. She enjoyed swinging on that. There was a sharply cut

diamond shape in the middle of the rectangle of grass and in its centre was a beautiful rose bush with

roses so red her Nana would sing about them. Along the front border, depending on the time of year,

there might be Sweet Williams or Lupins.

Beyond was the road, over which she was only allowed to cross accompanied, so that she could not

imagine herself beyond the gate as an unbroken entity. The circle of her being beyond the gate was

always broken by the intercedent hand, so that, gradually, upon leaving the house, she would feel

forever accompanied by the guiding hand, even when it was invisible. She decided to set out down

road before tea and find the fencing with the finger in it.



And then here, we pause. The trouble with stories is that once they get started, they start to take on a life of their own and run away off from you. She's about to go out in search of something she doesn't understand, but she wants to know it. Since she is a child, she has no understanding of the potential dangers, though we must credit her with an instinct for what might not be considered wise or desirable.by her elders. And it is this instinct that drives her forward.