Bagatelle

They're playing bagatelle, it's a made up game about making up stories;

Who are the characters ? She says.
You make one up and I'll make one up, he says.
A man with a gun, says she.
Okay, I choose a person who's come in disguise as a tree, says he.
No way ! says she - choose something like another man with another gun.
Why ? he asks.
Because it's war, she replies.
I choose a person who's wearing a tree costume, he says.
Why ? she questions.
Ingenuity, he says.
Ingenuity won't win your character this game, she says. My character's got a gun.
Ah but there's also this character with the ability to resemble a tree.
Bullets will rip through and obliterate tree costumes she says.
Is that the kind of world you're going to make up ? he asks.

There is no point in making up a world,
she says
when there's already a real world.
There's the world and there's the truth about the world.
You mean there's the truth and there's the made-up version of it.
No, the world exists and stories are made up.
And whoever makes up the story makes up the world.

Try to welcome people into the home of your story, that is, give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you'd welcome when it comes to yourself.


A slightly adapted conversation from Autumn by Ali Smith

I am well

thank you

I am well

I am well

though some time ago I was not well

but I have got better.

One expects to get better until

until one feels the grip of Death.

You can, of course, untangle you from His taloned grasp,

you can slip, so sylph-like if you are slippery like that

and shiver away from His icy clasp,

His unwelcoming embrace, but

you have this feeling

this growing feeling like a sunset, that,

one day, he will come with a warm cloak instead,

and wrap its warm and welcoming softness around your whole being

and then,

only then,

will you sink

deep and low

into the depths

of

His

cosy nest.

More Ghosts

They stare at you sometimes don't they and you, you stare back, but blankly, not understanding. Or

maybe, not feeling the need to understand, yes, that's more like it, but perhaps holding your gazes

just slightly too long for polite conversationalist situations.

Then you're asked if you know their name and you say, no, I didn't ask ( thinking that actually would

have been impolite, it wasn't that kind of situation and what is anyway )

but

but then

but then you start thinking about that somewhere,

somewhere out in the seas of your

it's not memory

is it ?



All the thoughts, the sublimated feelings that come from your physical experience here,

here

here in this world

this life

they're not memory

are they ?

Ghosts of Autumn

One day, if you're lucky,

you may, as I am now,

approach Autumn in your Autumnal years

and feel its full blown beauty as

if for its first time.

And, feeling like part of

some long novel; a protagonist of

some kind,  though,

not

not the only one.

And glad not to be because

All the mists who appear like ghosts

you know are not forgotten, lost or lonely,

They are remembered and live amongst us,

Walking gently, kindly to remind us.

Breakfast in the Rain

He's a face in the wilderness,

She's a beautiful tree,

He's been painted by genius,

She was captured with love;

One painting,

One photograph,

Hanging in different rooms,

Connected by an untold story.

But there's more;

Go a bit further down the corridor,

you'll find the photographic portrait gallery.

Faces upon faces, rows of people,

Some look familiar,

All look so the longer we look at them.







Cut to a hotel restaurant.


The rain is pouring down the old bay windows,

Framed by the Wisteria's pendulous lavender racemes,

The table set for two,

The curved walnut backs of the Queen Anne chairs

polished, their golden yellow cushions plump,

their legs low and spread wide to accommodate your crossed ankles.

You can see yourself now,

Sitting, watching the rain, waiting.

You take your cup and sip,

The tea is delicate,

It's fragrance lost in your dreaming,

As you watch the rain falling.

Love is

We must all think about it because it's so much a part of us.

I think we either seek it or avoid it, possibly oscillating between the two states throughout our life.

We sometimes wonder if it's real, even when we think we feel it.

We can worry it's going to dissolve into thin air even when we are sure we feel it.

It can be as if we feel unqualified, undeserving, distrustful of this thing itself,

As if love is the whimsy,

A floating, filigree, flimsy flittering, vacillant sceptic.

We project all our doubts and objections upon it.

You make us weak ! we wail. I hate you ! Go away and hide yourself under this cloak of cynicism.


But I know it now.

That is, I know it for myself,

Which is, after all, the only way we can know things.

It is the sum of all my life,

It's contained in a well that I can draw from.

The well replenishes itself, however much I draw;

And I can elaborate and extemporise on this image and metaphor,

But I know the understanding at its core is true,

And the mistake can only arise from my inability to communicate it

to you.

Time

Time is the Master, 

Love is the Mistress.

With Time we have our ultimate love/hate relationship.

Time carves us out and weathers us like the wind works on sandstone;

Time is Head Architect,

But subject to the laws of the Universe,

And beyond.

Time understands nothing.



Coiled within Time's double helix,

We look up and down and through,

But the ever-changing view keeps going in  and out

of focus.

The lens of our deficient eye,

The clunky machinations of our clumsy brains,

Despite their esp of other dimensions,

Stuck as they are,

Can only " see " in one.

Lullaby

   Close your  eyes

   and I will sing you the impossibility of infinity,

   How bright and lovely stars you see

   burning in the night sky might be long gone,

   how would we know,

  That we are alone in the universe,

  And our own sun is dying.


  Close your eyes,

  Let me sing to you.

The Qualities of Jasper

Within the stream of thoughts which

flows like water over stones,

A pattern can be discerned that

forms

a

poem.


Look down through it's sparkling clarity,

Find the rhythm

That speaks its form.






Jasper


an aggregate

of micro granular quartz and

or chalcedony,

A cryptocrystalline form

Of silica

and other mineral phases,

an opaque,

     impure

variety of silica,

usually red,

            yellow,

            brown

or        green

and     rarely blue.



The common red colour is due

to iron (III) inclusions





When I

found two polished pieces of Jasper,

I was

Unaware of their nature and properties,

Except their aggregate being apparent,

In their brecciations, tumbled smooth,

One,

Poppy red breaking through

In tiny bursts out

Of its deep,

Dark base,

A thread of silvery blue shimmering

Only in the light.

The Other,

Brick red,

Crossed with silver striations and

Opaque earthy tones,

The first, slightly larger,

Both an almost perfect almond fits

Perfectly in the saddle of my hand,

And when I held them,

One in each palm,

I felt pleasure

In their polished perfection,

And the way their shape

Found a natural home

In the volar of each hand.



I'd heard it can lift a

Heavy heart,

And clear the head,

And held it lightly,

Closed in folded fingers,

Until I forgot the weight,

Of the world,

And the clear blue of a bright sky,

Broke through.


         -

Interpreting signs

There are 4 fixed lines,

For the time being,

3 only are visible,

When I try,

To incorporate the sky.

Manifesto

Gathering Influences



" I cannot call myself a scholar. I have always been and still am a seeker but I no longer do my

seeking among the stars or in books. I am beginning to hear the lessons which whisper in my blood.

Like the lives of all men who have given up trying to deceive themselves, it is a mixture of nonsense

and chaos, madness and dreams.

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has

ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he

can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-

shells of the primeval world. "


From the Prologue to Demian by Hermann Hesse




More from the body of the book ;


For us, humanity was a distant goal towards which we were marching, whose image no-one yet knew,

whose laws were nowhere written down.



I wanted to become more myself



Love must not entreat nor demand.
Love must have the power to find its own way to certainty, then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.



                                                                         -



And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.


From the opening chapter of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran in which Almustafa, the prophet, is about to leave Orphalese on the ship that has come to carry him back to the place of his birth. As he makes towards his ship, the people entreat him not to leave them, but Almitra, the seeress, his friend since his arrival, says he must leave because he needs to, but entreats him to leave them with some words of wisdom upon the most important subjects which concern us.

The first subject is love and so Almustafa begins to speak out loud his thoughts ;


When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.


                                                                       -

Also ;


It is certain that there are few people in the world today who are unaware of and unaffected by the transitional crisis gripping the heart of all Earth Life in a state of bewildering chaos. What had appeared as an orderly system based on irrefutable logic and ' hard facts ' has now suddenly slipped apart like a  Chinese puzzle into a collection of strange pieces whose relationship to each other now seems lost forever. " Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. " At this moment this cracked egg of a world is a swarm with " all the King's horses and all the King's men " trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again: many many means to supposedly the same end product.

From the Introduction to On Magick; An Introduction to the High Art by Aleister Crowley.


It is unclear who is writing the introduction as there is no credit. It's implied that it's written by the editor of the Level Press who produced the booklet. His introduction leaves us with the impression that the booklet was being produced because it was the correct point in time for the essays within it, on Magick, written by Aleister Crowley to become freely available.
He suggests that Magick is a potential system for mending the broken pieces we perceive. He points out ;

Its concept of the Universe and the individual human being's place in it is, on the one hand, so radical that it frightens many people while, on the other, it of all the systems comes closest to reconciling the realms of the spiritual and the scientific into a harmonious and compatible family.

I like the phrase " the broken world egg " that he uses to refer to the problems that humanity faces it refers me back to the egg which occurs in Demian, painted by Emil Sinclair. It's a deceptively simple symbol, providing a good focus for meditating on our life in this universe.


The introduction aptly ends with the peaceful and wise instruction that all followers of a true path understand and aspire to though struggle with on a daily basis ;


                                                      Do what thou wilt
                                                 Is the whole of the law
                                                     Loving is the law
                                                There is no will but loving



It's a deceptively simple adage, a direction easily remembered and accepted, but not so easily interpreted or incorporated into our daily actions.  It's basis is the concept of freedom and how we act in a way in response to it. We have been given free will. In the full realisation of this, we can act destructively or constructively and it is sometimes hard, once all other parameters have been removed, to determine which way we have chosen and what the outcome will be. Of course, we can never know until it happens, what the outcome will be, however,

if we keep readjusting our motives and try to decipher honestly whether or not we are complying with the whole of the law, that is, that we love and our actions stem from love, we can then trust that the path we taking is the correct one at the point we are currently.