17th June at....
Any old time? time being illusion. I follow my physics...
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14th june at sunrise
The
definition of ‘poignant’;
Or ennui or melancholia.
None of
those words, really, are sufficient.
Probably the
city sophisticated busy person will not appreciate this.
I have only
two things which eat away at my soul a little. Only a little.
But they are
‘final’. It hurts to know they will never be resolved.
The remedy i
find is long walks in the hills.
But that is
only a temporary remedy before a boring death.
The first is
for the last five years i seek places which are the very most quiet and
beautiful to maybe live and maybe work. ‘Quiet’ of course by definition means
quite isolated. Farming now even in rural pleas is so noisy. Many large
machines working all day.
Randomly in
the beautiful year of slowdown, 2020, i made a new connection as i was cycling local lanes.
And through that connection six weeks ago i came
up here to work on the land for a few months.
I have been
invited to stay up here as long as i wish. There is work that needs to be done
restoring fences and buildings for animals (but dysfunction and stress in the family
house – i avoid). Many people living in rural and isolated areas have such
angst. They feel lesser. They are damaged by their televisions – they cannot be
part of the bourgeois mad world they watch all day. They cannot simply enjoy
they do not need to be part of that. Very few people who live in places like
this ever walk in nature, even.
I exist here
in an isolated bubble where no one else is in my life.
However the
true sadness is that this place is by far the most beautiful paradise i have
found for many years. It is perfect. But nobody else knows how to just enjoy being
in such places.
I awake
today – the weather has turned warm and quiet, and for me it is perfect new
good energy. And beauty. All cares gone. Not one second of past sorrow can take
from the pleasure here at sunrise. I have known many beautiful places in the
world and this place is top of the list. But nobody else can slow down and just
exist in places like this quite happily. Live true rural zen...
My second
lamentation is that at times in the last decade i research and think about how
the rural areas are damaged by landowners and other people. The TRUE damage. The
things that need to really change. I have chronicled – photographed at times
these real changes.
That does
not upset me – even if there are many problems. (and the environmental ‘activists’
and government lie and ‘people please’
about their work to protect the environment. It is all bullshit. Things just
slowly only get worse. 99% of landowners do not care about the damage they cause).
BUT the
worst thing of all is that if one lives in places like this, one has to CENSOR
oneself. One cannot speak the truth. The truth about the ways other people
live. Not a truth to ‘hurt’ them or even criticise them, just a simple objective
truth. Shared with a new friend perhaps.
Some people
who must be my friends or at least acquaintances have ways that are not good
for the environment. But one cannot say one thing to anyone. Gossip will maybe
twist words and others will think one is directly criticising a person
publicly. And then they seek mad counterattack. So one must be silent. That corrodes the soul a little bit every
day.
I like to
write about real experience in this mode of life, but i can never even identify
a location or name because who knows who may see something and twist words.
I do not
like that reality, but it is reality.
Here is a
short look at the beauty every day i wake to when i stay here.
I have a
lost front tooth maybe i will have repaired soon. It means i cannot speak
properly. I sound like i am drunk. That does not trouble me as much as simply
no one changes their life to just exist in harmony with this kind of existence.
To find a ‘paradise’ but know that no one else wishes to share what is truly
paradise, that is a bizarre existential mode to live in. I manage...most of the
time.
And the next day.
Sat on the embankment of Clun castle remains. Only because it is a large parkland where one can just crash out all afternoon in the sun and there is hardly a soul to be seen...
Why do i state that?
I never usually identify anywhere or anyone and keep myself largely hidden away. Here at least. And as for other places I have occasionally doodled - well i never seek an audience. Except for that smelly albatross attacking rote secrecy culture and High Court injunctions, because over the years "should i or should i not..."
But the simplest truth is that myself i am sometimes assisted in life by good drama or stories. Songs perhaps too; but a well told tale - especially in an unexpected place, perhaps bolsters deep down what you know is right. I am not a cynic. A few times watching Erin Brockovic i know that even using the tools of oppression - Mary Movie star the top dog, can be a great thing if done well. As was that.
And to my complete surprise, because for some years i search high and low and what to me is also a powerful medium, the radio play, had become formulaic and anodyne. But at last. Husking out on these slopes in that energising sun. I takes real skill to have e giggling out loud. And I though that was a skill lost to anodyne formulas. Not here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00181m2
Laughter, real humour... skilfully placed. And an ending which is open - preaches no solution, i do think is abot the only civilised solution there can be. All else going a tad up its own bum.
Now.....
Over the years between phases of being involved in my causes, I think there are other just as important jobs of work which I have just as assiduously focused upon. One is a quest to find great influences to the one person who i must always act for no matter what, even if dead. I haven't met many - literally a handful in fifteen years. and they must be her gender of course - affinity and maybe simpler an equation for her. I know who is the latest on that list...... In fact maybe the best of all. But of course that is too much of a burden on anyone isn't it....
The other is to look for the best of non-earnest inspirational culture - be it the greatest of lit, to cheesyish film that stays in the heart. Earnest does not. In my opinion one of the few exceptions to that rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_the_Rain
But there is almost within that the 'thing'. I found that film because i went to the small dusty city it was about, to see my own lost lass five years ago.... It is complicated but need not be.
The art must always be above the personal sorrow. Especially if as magnificent as that movie.
But here is the real thing though I shall not put it in words - maybe that is not possible:
For a decade i have felt just as important an aspect of figuring how to change the 'system' - i.e. truth to often greedy and warped power, is indeed how woman and man can work well together as partners, backstop, backup ... partners in the whole thing.
Foolish me i was much influenced in my 20's by the slightly cheesy and a little outdated book on the woman man of it Bridge Across Forever. Specifically how the couple having combined set themselves up as a powerful and dedicated force to fight an eco destruction planned for their vicinity having moved up into the hills together. 1 + 1 =3. solidarity. Moral support. Backup...
Thus the rules of woman and man or other iterations of course to be fully inclusive, i think is almost as important to ponder. And a great way is in my opinion again the best of radio drama.
Thing is.
In this age of supposed self determination and self expression and so many opinions on what the rules are we may as well be back in Babel...well what is there to say or think, never mind dare to share.
Around a decade ago online especially in forums about injustice it all became " he / she is an official full on narcissist and here is why..."
One reason i gradually retreated from counselling those who could work things out and even save their children from removal by the baddies if they at least work n some kind of united front.
And in their pain such people would sometimes turn on their helper. Me..
It may have been a good 'policy' i know not - no one can really know any guaranteed wise solution, but i developed organically - i.e. in the 'field' hahh hahh a line "you make the mistake of thinking I am you..I am not which is why i may be able to assist you.."
Of curse there is all of the modern human condition in that open for debate.
And i do not know especially in the last year if people 'need' to be with others almost 'weaker' than they are. I am exactly the sort of person who will say that 'strength' and a competitive nature is exactly what has poisoned and warped society.
But then.... there is a different strength. And i wish it upon anyone who is sincere in fighting for ay obvious universal human rights. Self esteem. Balanced self esteem. Only the weak person really does seek weak company. (the less functional, the slightly wonky). I know because that was how i was until about fifteen years ago. It is a trap and one knows it or at least wonders like heck abo that in oneself.
I still do not know who are 'better' as company or more - those who know dysfunction? Because that deepens most people over time and that is great too. Or those wo are strong enough to....
survive the worst of all.
To live... LIVE ....this joy for ten years.... not 'have' but live it.... for that joy to be me ... of course not solely for myself, and have it so cynically destroyed to only spite me for having green and progressive values and even the occasional brown friend ...
just a few from 05 and 06
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mlP2IsAQSGX08ikoikLXd6lPBRE0QLtg?usp=sharing
And over the years for it to get even more lovely and healthy.
And survive even these days smiling about it - and not much pain .... survive that. I know that is strength.
If anyone else wanted or needed, available to them perhaps...
that is what i call strong. A rock. No matter what. And i have no idea if anyone actually even wants that - or is woman enough to ...well .... find that perfect balance equal and equal..
Or.... something 'else' ?
play "what love sounds like"
http://petersouter.com/work/radio/
which perhaps explores fully ... not sure how to put it: maybe that sometimes you have to look after yourself or someone else and stop all that being strong.... accept that a bit of mutual wound licking is part of it too. And maybe that is where the rest of life can start eventually reenergised.
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And later on.....
Parked up in an extremely quiet rarely visited graveyard car park. Here i do my thinking. Not that one can 'do' thinking; thinking comes when we are in the right space and good energy arises.
pictured earlier in the year at dawn. I do a lot of imagery and writing for that matter but itinerant - in fact i was planning to roam looking for new pastures entirely away from here earlier in the year but disposing of my 30 year household took longer than planned... as yet no fixed plug i get only an hour of charged laptop before i have to fiddle around and recharge and waste hydrocarbons so i only ever at the moment have time to write or the like in very quick spurts
I know - daft. Crazy; quite absurd. To suggest to someone barely encountered get in a choo choo. And for someone barely encountered it would be even dafter if they did.
It is ancient history for me and I bare no grudges; nor do I ever have any axe to grind other than my trusty old one i sometimes use to make my living, but I have known what i write from within. And I know what the real 'price' of being a minor revolutionary whom 'they' know does mean it - all the way, can be. I don't often use the word you used in answer to my query of you, "oppressed", because in the UK the 'oppression' is often so so mean minded and lowest common denominator, yet designed not to leave scars. Nor ever be known of for sure.
Never even having had a parking ticket for years let alone any other stain on my ordinary flawed human character I happened to be in a small Portuguese 'Stone Hotel' - gaol.... a few months in 2003. It should not have ever happened as in essence later private sessions with judges allowed. My real crime was that after a few weeks I started to speak out. Publicly. I was told by a top legal man of London if i do so the establishment always tries to squash. But that was my choice. Better stay silent he countenanced. I countenanced back over the crackly phone line "i have no choice..." .
I would not know for some time that back home plod was 'harassing' to use her words a whiter than white woman of my loose acquaint only as a friend who ran for years a Steiner playgroup I had attended with my daughter several years. They threatened her to reveal some flaw in me. She did not as she could not. But they left her shaking and in tears. This is how the British state operates. It picks on the 'weakest link' and as they see it that is some woman friend or even lover.
In 2010 the state i believe (but will never know for sure - they make it so... they are clever) blackmailed my then partner who in fact had our child in her 47 year old womb. She told me herself she had been blackmailed. And then she ran away. And the stress she implied caused her to miss carriage. She was warned off helping me when maybe i did need help. But only have her as witness in a court to truth. That for a few months all had been as it always is in my life peaceful and most healthy in all possible ways.
The film Official Secrets (GCHQ) in fact is a rare example of a film describing these underhanded actions - her boyfriend was used as a weapon against her....
I study for years the literature and film of oppression but MORE IMPORTANT...how to survive it all and turn it to least least some good. Yevgennia Ginsberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgenia_Ginzburgand her two books Whirlwind etc are my bibles. She alone seems to have understood how t find the silver lining in even the worst of cruelty. I worship my gods or goddesses in total sincerity.
We spoke of Afeni and her sis.... in fact not for long enough because i think Afeni learned the most gorgeous gift in existence. Even if i was also thrilled to encounter someone who even knew a little of the family - i had never met anyone knew of any of these people except you (as pacifist - i am, i balk at any mention of BP but Afeni showed me the truth). As she was oppressed with trumped up utterly absurd charges, and then learned to fight back in courts, she will have learned that sometimes if we believe...and i still don't know in 'what' - we can be taken to another level by oppression and cruelty if somehow.... somehow we .... well i suppose retain dignity is all that matters. Always.... i learned that. Magic can come - her work defending herself and co-accused against the whole system , an uneducated woman, was i am sure she knew magical..
But my only (hahh hahh i play with words except i have no axe to grind) lament - in fact this one is serious and perhaps almost the end for our society is that years i would gently quite the greatest lines ever written in a song
"oppression is a cruel tutor and injustice is a nurse"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLtmV-t588&ab_channel=BobDylan-Topic
And it would sadden me that no one wished to even try sand ponder what those words i would rattle out at times mean. Even when (rarely) i will share some of my own story whereby a once extremely conceited and lost younger man really did learn that those words are true....
End of that subject - any 'causes' (my fave word for years), and the true price... except i am smug as having paid the price i feel fairly bulletproof - no one can ever get to me or hurt me. And that is freedom (for both parties in any equation). Freedom to be new also.
Except only at one level - years of pondering what people are behind their masks, never mind living like a monk albeit an extremely outdoor lithe hill walking one (and cycling - i made hours of film May 2020 me cycling astonishingly flowerful lanes no hands on my old sit up and beg bike as possible subversive material everyone else gone nuts)
I do not and connot charm or do bullshit. I have seen too much of reality. And the not too kind side. Never mind state dirty tricks.
If i say to someone; "My desk is completely cleared". (at times it has been far too overflowing with distraction) and then add in i know the rules, and expect nothing of anyone ever especially in UK where i don't think anyone can spell propriety any more. And also know that setting out a stall means tell it like it is. But one must keep to another person's table edges. Which could mean "categorically one coffee in a public place as you smelled like an exe murderer to me....rules are if you even turn around when i tell you 'off you trot horrid little man' and send you on your way, i shall immediately apply for a lifetime restraining order against you....." etc .... i have no reason to do anything other than what A N Other requires.
incidentally this lady Helen B https://www.facebook.com/helenbpilates/ the toughest funniest most secure woman think i ever met i met her in 2020 lockdown in a lane near where we both live in the vicinity of...and within a few weeks was taking her daughter horseriding se knows ALL about me... well most.... not my internet stuff.... her and i never do online in fact as she told me she knows how toxic it is.... so yes she is brutally funny and anyone sending her a message "this ex gaolbird heairless mad old git he tells me you and him wandered the hills a fair bit from 2020 riding sessions.... is he even slightly 'safe'.." she will tell you there is no more deserving vaguely half decent person on the planet needing a half decent wifey.... and also that my behaviour to women is absolutely perfect unblemished....and I know what the rules are...
she would even pick you up from the station ... she knows that i actually do need a wife (in a non ownership way - in my teens we called it a repressive institution..... but then as a way of symbolising i really only wish to commit to one afinitous person, maybe t has its uses on balance...??)
Yes i know its daft but this isn't daft - to even hint at get on a choo choo, even THINK it...: all that years of pondering and studying, and most of all learning the hard way there is the bullshit fey version of who we are and the real version, i do know tat understanding as i do the true hurdles of even at a simple level meaning I could do the work to being completely committed to the wellbeing of another and that i have learned the hard way that it is all that matters - even when we get t wrong.
Put it this way in the brilliant film La Grande Belazza the gero has a scene wehere you realise his philosophy which had become that at his age you only do the things you REALLY wish to do, from now on....when he so gracefully declines to see his bedmate's facebook photos.... that is where i am at - in life generally. It is lovely. I wish no shallow or wasteful diversions now. at some level service to someone one really does value - in my case so few even if i am nice to everyone even the enemy as i know they weren't born a twat, is all there is.
real service real commitment does trump everything else. In fact i even know what the definition is of that which must be encouraging ones other half to do things for themselves even if they are in conflict with ones own firmly held wishes or values ... or i suppose even the dreaded 'lifestyle', place lived etc....
I know it is all so part creepy...me.... i can even give the whatsap of a local vicar lady who i like and she knows i am safe as houses and dont wish to live in one ... because she too has a travelling van.... thats how i encountered her and began a great chat 4 years ago . She also confided in me smilingly she doesn't actually believe in her boss. She said as a hobo vagrant itinerant type - even if only in spirit then, she knew she could trust me to keep a secret. We (mendicant wanderers through existence) are a bit different. Honour does matter.
But i kinda wish a new life rest-of-life...i have no needs from my old one.... In fact have before supported someone else entirely in their real needs (Not dosh, other harder stuff) only for them..... i know what i speak of.
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10th June
well it was 9th June at lunchtime. But i work up in the hills a few days at a time where the internet and mobile phone coverage is very sketchy. And i had sat and tried to write something more, yesterday, and thought it had been saved but alas, not...for me at least. So be it i try to always have poise and grace.
Which incidentally to my horror i did not on my day in Ludlow. For a completely prosaic reason which is that recently a front tooth cap I had had for several decades has broken off and it has left me sometimes with throbbing pain, but worse of all I cannot speak in my normal manner - it is almost as if i am slurring words like a drunk. I have to really slow down and regain poise. It is all quite disconcerting. Especially if - rarely, i encounter someone i wish to make at least a sane impression upon; It sometimes throbs painfully as well as it was that day. I hope to get it fixed next week.
Right, lamenting.... all i really lament is that over 50 it is quite quite simple: get the body moving and push it regularly enough and it is wonderful how 'natural' systems seem to improve - immunity etc.. I was a littlke under the weather last weekend. I may have even had a bug. On Tuesday i pushed myself and walked 5 miles up and down Beacon Hill. and i did it again on Wednesday evening. And it seemed like yesterday my system had recovered back to tip top good energy. But, the lament: my age grouip endlessly go on about some illness or other yet no matter how one speaks with them they can never actually apply the remedy: get out doors a lot and also keep that body moving .... i say "30 miles a week [under own steam] ... essential.."
I wish to communicate something. But digital and screens ... well.....
Remnants of Alex part 1
(unlisted video only viewable from this link)
In fact the key to life i know is in the thing above - every day a new day, and if you can get yourself up the hill a few times a week every day is.
But...i like to attempt to float poetically concepts to folk ... but largely keep opinions to myself especially nowadays as everyone seems so so uptight the last few years....nothing must ever be taken personally. It is as if it is a 'microagression" even to speak of trying to do things properly always (for the sake of saving resources for the next generation...
And then especially the last few months i love to just watch sunrises and sunsets - i know the best places. But also i know that such a mode is not the answer to life...purpose and service even to one other, is...
But then what to write about?
And i know I am good on them - i have refined my rhetoric to be gentle and inclusive of all of us - the good and 'bad'.
One subject is so prosaic but i know is foundational and it is using this as example - ten minutes later ... along a byway up in the hills known for serene beauty, albeit windswept - many miles of open hills....
But half a mile from my earlier spot one passes this. Which doesnt look as bad as it it is in that come the winds this gets transplanted across the landscape. But it is almost as if the owner of this little spot has left it so to spite everyone. SO be it and i feel sorry for that mentality - we were all born innocent little sheeplets, but i also know that to even have a conversation about how this could be addressed is dangerous.
For years i have come past this place but i remain silent because addressing such things - and sadly people who will fight if they fear being addressed, one - the environmentally minded in this case, needs true backup and moral support. And only someone with whom one is committed partner generally an be that person willing to share what is always a risk.
I gave up because that person could rarely be found. But i still believe it is useful - to humanity, to attempt to bring conversations back to such fundamentals.
One such fundamental - no one will speak of - the landlords, the 'opponents' in some matter such as environmental, some dodgy social worker or even scholl teacher, if the bossoccracy is dealing with someone they know is one part of a cohesive couple they treat you so so differently. They are far less likely to mess with someone they know has good moral support back home. They know that 'picking' on a solo person is far easier fayre ... i have done my own private almost 'studies' on such things but it is as if the green and other leftist types wish to create some new atomised species.... real life doesnt work like that. The bullies who will pick on us - from the weird antagonistic landlord or the like, to the authorities who will pick on the likes of Julian and co.... if they see real solidarity they know it. They won't change...
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8th June 2.30pm
This is a 'private' web page.
By which I mean it is not indexed, which means there is no link to this page from within any online space. Nobody can 'navigate' onto this page from some other page they may be visiting. And as there will be no names or any other identifying feature in effect google will not list it in any search results (unless an exact phrase within were searched for, and even then the resultant search result would be all but meaningless).
I almost never point any person I know to any webpage i have created. If i do there is specific reason. The only exception is my freedom of speech work 05-9 and i only decided to start to work on having that made into something, as, bizarrely, in 2020 people i would here were googling me. Local people. For no reason. And I am a very quiet reserved person rarely even mentioning my past to ordinary rural peeps i sometimes encounter. So I decided to have at least part of the REAL story written up. Otherwise sometimes I riff on online pages almost for only myself but maybe by some random occurrence some snapshot of something I lay down may end up somewhere with someone who mazy find it a curiosity in a warm way which is what is always intended.. Though few would 'get' my rather poetical style. Well it is written that way but i doubt comes through the two dimensions of the screen that way.
With the next sentence it would only mean anything to one person anyway. - albeit not much as in such a too brief encounter not much could really be shared and perhaps debated. The sentence is that my inner thinker had a warm resonance upon hearing you use the word "lifestyle". The context being lament at the gradual tendency towards conservative and only "lifestyle" concerns of the sibling mentioned by you.
In other words I listen (usually talking too much as I have such few opportunities at talk with those i know i have some affinity with). . And sometimes - rarely, what I hear thrills me.
In that instance because for quite a few years i have a fair bit of the time meandered pondering 'messages' - largely on the environment and unsustainable existences. But also very much on how to live a meaningful and also healthily balanced existence. The 'environment' is my primary calling, but to me attempting to communicate the real benefits of a simpler life in tune with nature but not in any earnest way, is one calling. I have spent about a quarter of the last decade writing about such things. But i make sure it is always 'naturalistic' and in real time. I have not ever heard anyone simplify it so well into that one word. And this i value you.
What do I mean by that - the real time ? That is the harder thing to explain.
On one level it is allowing myself to be within a range of situations and allow the insights to come from within.
That sounds too pretentious. It is far more a case of 'letting go' into experiencing the true nub of someone - but in my case as an observer. Though seemingly i may be working for someone or otherwise formally involved. Such roles are really for me just journeys of philosophical exploration. I wish to have useful things to say about human existence.
Good for me; and i have shared nothing interesting yet.
For more than a decade as 'artistic response' to lifechanging selfish damage by others (nothing really to do with me, but i lived with great sorrow as a consequence of others' acts) I would find myself easily in the artist's 'zone'. Natural creativity visited me. Mainly when i would write - rather poetically, and very much in the moment of no aforethought, just write; but also as i would roam far and wide in the wildernesses around me photographing. And this was all a creativity i had never before experienced. I find it hard to write more simple prosaic statements such as this i shall attempt. Though in truth i do have a sense of the maybe-metaphysical in that all (we may evolve into following useful insight) is somehow connected. I do not believe any person has ever had a satisfactory narrative of what is the metaphysical. I try myself sometimes to riff upon that.
Suffice to say that i get out of the way of myself - perhaps the first hurdle of certainly creatively writing; I am not sure if it is quite the same with visual or other forms of art.
Fear not i do not really believe in '[certain] things were meant to be' and so called 'fates'. I think it is all far more complex and tricky than that. So i firmly act as if nothing can ever be preordained, though there may be some 'kairos' in many things - a Greek word for things happen when we are ready by dint of other hurdles or phases of life we 'needed' to traverse, have concluded. We may be freshy evolved, ready anew, for whatever next. Kairos is almost all of Ecclesiastes 3 ( "a time to love/ die/ eat/ sow etc" ) in one word.
Anyway to my point. It probably won't seem even a slightly interesting point.
For seven years sometimes i quite deliberately but never with any plan set out to roam among people. Though ostensibly these last seven years there have been two sincere 'causes' i have attempted to further - speaking about Green, then post brexit unity in case there was a chance for a second vote (Corbyn if elected i think would have angled us towards).
I have spent about 1/3 of my time in that mode, but it is always also with a mind to seeing what insights about people develop spontaneously. I then spend about 1/3 of the time walking the hills - as wilderness as possible, or cycling the byways. And as i do i ponder on what i have discovered, and i also try and write or at least make audio or film recordings of it all. I ponder the words.
I am and always have been immensely practical. Nothing phases me. And this spending time almost in the 'noetic' or sublime space or mode was quite new and i love it. The rest of the time - about 1/3 of the time i must perform down to earth simple practical outdoor tasks associated with simple rural ways such as fence building or firewood processing in as self sufficient a way as possible. I write about that too. But try to make it alive and never earnest.
Anyway my real point is that all these three modes together add up to almost continual inner conversation about what words are best (which words 'carry' people we may need to try and reach?). What are the better simpler words to use when writing? I like to write poetically to some extent. But effective communication i also value if one ever can achieve that.
Myself for some years - all my life in truth, but especially the last decade, i truly lament (for them as much as the rest of humanity) the bourgeois status fuelled consumerist agenda which seems to ever increase. Even in the very fringe rural areas i chose to spend most of my time a status driven showy existence has become overwhelming. It often gets to me in fact but i try hard to keep good spirits in my own happier mode of simplicity. And in my own thoughts and writings i came back some years ago to that one simple word. you used "lifestyle", which seems out of fashion... but it is such a good word. Their god became the church they are addicted to called 'lifestyle'. This simplifies almost everything that drives so much. And i do not think in a particularly good or fulfilling way. But you know that too. It was just that i was so warmed to hear someone use that word. Even if it is the word perhaps i decry more than any other.
I do think there is a not so good turn of events the last decade in that we as a people have become atomised even in terms of the words that are tried and tested to express simpler concepts such as someone who is so feverishly attached to their 'lifestyle'. People try all sorts of other newer clever sounding terms and i think this does little good. I like it when i meet someone who it seems i may at least be speaking the same language with that we can both easily understand.
'Lifestyle', well in various arenas i have riffed upon this. But i essentially reject all but the following. In a past life of access to great sophistication if i wished and even luxury I would never meet anyone who would know this as a truth: No luxury and no lifestyle can trump one simplest thing that for 27 years (since i dropped out of London life) is today still the greatest pleasure i know. Well almost...
Today I air all day where I am working (high in the hills) my bedding. The smell that later on is experienced - seemingly almost by some magical intervention, I have never encountered any smell that no matter how many years i live like this, always fills me with something special.
I have perhaps only two things i lament. I have known great long lasting pain but would not have one second of my life other than it has been. I know what being centred and at peace means. One evolves into that state via such things. Or can....But i lament few can ever really allow the above fact - that all those expensive and high cost (upon the soul) 'lifestyles' cannot ever provide the true luxury of the smell of freshly aired bedding or clothing. I lament so few truly can allow for such things any more. I occasionally cheekily throw this to someone (i value), but it never works...
I sometimes say i like 'subversion'. I do but it is at that level - throwing in such things which undermine the pride of the modern human. I often try to make artful imagery around such things or weave words about this. I have many other sheets blowing in the wind photos over years - like a sonnet in slow motion but they are in five flippin terabytes of stuff i just make and rarely find the mood to sit down and start to do something with it all. It is subversive - only against modern cant and vanity, and never aimed at anyone to hurt.
I lament one other thing, sometimes. But especially now these last few weeks. In that i am working at a place that is so beautiful and also on a job i would so much love to share - not because i need to share it but it is a job that is good for the physicality - the kinds of labour that must be done, but also (my big thing) i salvage materials to reuse and i try to work entirely with nature but also learn as i go how to make the work more effective (sustainable) - its a particularly easy going setup and i would love someone else to be also learning these ways - all quite simple and traditional. I make films of some of what I do - one day i may share it (with the world ) but the screen is so two dimensional.
i have not put that well except
to say that even if it is hard sweaty work - digging holes for posts in
extremely stony ground half the day, but there is something so therapeutic and
simple about it it would be good for almost anyone's soul....but nobody can appreciate
this any more...
So many acquaintances the last few years still seem weirded out by 2020. Well to me this really is the 'REMEDY'... but no one seems to appreciate that...
And this may sound really daft but it sustains me: When i start and get into such jobs, as above, i treat it almost as if a private work of 'performance art'. All day as i labour i am looking for the poetical or artistic aspect. Or is it some kind of fable - i weave fables in my head as i work away...in fact i make sure i only work in environments where i am free to have my notepad out or stop to ponder some turn of events... maybe with a view to writing about them.
I now waffle. All i know is that i find it somehow less problematical to write on one simple page such as this than in Facebook messenger. So much weird baggage with Facebooking... it may seem this is intrusive but i would wish exactly the opposite - i am simply sharing whims i suppose and know so few, in fact no one who takes nothing personally nor so seriously - nothing is personal, i personally only seek some simpler universal things such as smiles at simple things like sheets blowing in the wind...
I am not on good writing form today. I don't know why. But i do wish to if ever possible find some way of warm affinitous thread of communication. I am sure this will never even be read :-) so be it...
