Hopefully the Freedom Flotilla sailing from Greece should soon be on it's way soon.In the meantime we should demand that the Government and the powers in Greece allow this peaceful convoy to sail. They sail as an expression of world citizens involved in non-violent, direct action,confronting ongoing abuses of Palestinian human and political rights.
The way America has colluded with the Greek and Israeli authorities has been shameful.
I believe in hope and also that this siege must be broken. " Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians" - Nelson Mandela.
Long live the weeds that overwhelm
My narrow vegetable realm-
The bitter rock, the barren soil
That force the son of man to toil;
All things unholy, marked by curse,
The ugly of the universe.
The rough, the wicked, and the wild
That keep the spitit undefiled.
With these I match my little wit
And earn the right to stand or sit,
Hope, look, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I .
Off too London town, cat sitting, opportunity again to reflect, I like doing that. Time for a little Marx, Miro, Schielle, some driftin, reflecting.... find some reasons to be doubtful. Emma Goldman reminds me to keep on dancing., carry on believing. In the evening find some music, cross some fences, look at a pretty city, sit awhile, feel the beat underneath my feet. Lights will dazzle, for a while........ in the meantime I leave something in the air.. probably be posting sooner than I think.... hope I remember when it's gone.
Tomorrow Job Centre workers , teachers etc are on strike to defend their pensions, but this is everybodies fight too.
The government's attacks on workers go hand- in-hand with their attacks on claimants. At the same time as lowering terms and conditions of workers, they force claimants into privately run workfare schemes through for profitcompanies like ATOS, Maximus, Skills Training and Careers Develoment Group. At the same time they force the vulnerable and ill off incapacity Benefit and onto JSA ( Jobseekers Allowance).
They say these cuts have to be made, whilst spending millions weekly on futile wars in Afghanistan, Libya etc., whilst Prince Charle's income is rising ever higher and higher.
Tomorrow I hope to go to Aberystwyth and join a broad resistance standing together to show their opposition to these cuts.
Meeting at the Morlan Centre at 12 0'Clock. Ed Milliband is saying he doesn't support these strikes, but that's just his inner nit coming out, a united breath is what we need, solidarity must be maintained.
Love today, love tomorrow. It's our job to wind up Mr Cameron, don't let him get the upper hand, he wants us to work longer, pay more, get less, miserable *******. Why should ordinary people pay for a crises bought about by the bankers and their friends.
Enjoy the sunshine, everybody out.
Billy Bragg singing - Never crossed a picket line.
War is a wonderful thing
because it's like a syringe
in the bloodstream
of the economy
because it makes boys
into robot-men
War is a wonderful thing
because it affords a chance
for the most foolish forms
of heroism
to be exhibited
because it proves which nation can most quickly become
insensitive toward the people of another nation
War is a wonderful thing
because it inspires scientists
to create technological marvels
like napalm and nuclear weapons
because it gives the freedom to lawfully murder
War is a wonderful thing
because the vague softness of kindness
is eclipsed by the focussed hardness of hate
because it's something we can all rally around,
really get together on
Following on from Fridays post. Report of visit to Epynt.
A humbling experience, the weather not that great, which to me seemed most appropriate. A good presence despite the dour weather. A day of constant drizzle ,and mists that seemed to envelope us on our individual journeys. We remembered the innocent killed not in our names.
On the way up to a mock village created for battle games, humanity or something shined a torch,( but the cynics among us saw a propaganda excercise) , laid out for us, rows of coffee, tea, and biscuits too, neatly provided by our hosts the invading army. The Sergeant Major smiled, made jokes, he had been trained well in hospitality.
Their was a smattering of religion, but underneath the skies I felt we were all equal. Two languages spoken , side by side. In my pockets I placed some discarded bullets that I'd picked whilst they read out names of the dead senselessly killed by drones. A moving experience, humbling.
Some people greeted one another as old friends, others remained on the outside, all welcome though..... poets, painters, students, academics, pensioners, claimants.
Half way down the mountain me and my beautiful partner and a dear friend got a lift from an old lay preacher( who by coincidence knew my hometown well, a small world I said to him in his own iaith,) as we talked about people we might know, and the smell of dew and rain began to dissapear, we began again to discuss brighter things. Atheists and christians somehow united. Words that divided us, blown away, because a belief in peace was our common goal.
Found a village where we knocked on a door asking for directions. Sorry we haven't a clue they said , we're on holiday from Cornwall.
We found our way home, others remain forever lost. I hope they are not forgotten, we can carry on with our daily play, but for many others, the world has forgotten, and governments carry on regardless, acting with dangerous, deadly shame. Together we will keep our close eyes on them...... day after day, and night after night.
" The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men become robots. True enough robots do not rebel, but given man's name , robots cannot live and remain sane. They become " Golems" they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life." - Eric Fromm (1900-1980).
I love this picture , now sitting proudly in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. A snip at £557,218 .... what recession. It is though quite beautiful and was bought with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Charity Art Fund plus a few individual donors, so that's allright then.
The artist, William Dyce was a Scottish realist painter who came to Wales when his health was failing in the late1850s. He didn't last long I'm afraid.
I've got a photocopy in a small wooden frame. Suits me fine..
Glastonbury weekend, remember when it was a peace festival supporting C.N.D, yes it's been a long time, since then walls built higher and ordinary people have been kept out. The spirit of 71 apparently this year, so it's free entry is it?
Anyway 70 years ago Mynydd Epynt was a strong Welsh speaking community of 220 people, inhabiting 54 farms. During the Second World War the people of Epynt thought that the war would have little impact on them, but in March 1940 however a government letter changed all that.
Despite united opposition on the part of the Welsh speaking community and support of a throng of Welsh M.Ps and leading national figures, a deadline was set. By June 30th each and every farm was empty. The community was no more and a whole way of life had been shattered. A community where farmers had lived for 450 years on the same farm.
The area became known as the Sennybridge Training Area, and is now used by the M.O.D as a military training area and artillery range, in an area of outstanding beauty.
Tomorrow on " Armed Forces Day" I hope to join Cymdeithias y Cymod ( the fellowship of Reconcialiation) on their pilgrimage to this place. We will remember the civilians killed by unmanned vehicles ( drones).
The area between Epynt and Aberporth ( ten miles up from where I live) is one of the two places in Europe where testing drones is permitted. As reported earlier in this blog these unmanned aeroplanes are part of the recent development in robots used as arms. Those used in Afghanistan and Libya are controlled thousands of miles away in a center in Nevada in the USA through satellite communication technology. This has the effect that many innocent civilians are killed because of misinterpreting images on video screens that are so far away from the battle field.
Those who join ( at their own risk) this pilgrimage to Epynt will show their objection to testing these drones in the air above Wales and will send a message to the governments in Whitehall and Cardiff Bay that the militarisation of Wales is not welcome.
Epynt
The pilgrimage is setting off at around 2pm from the Shoemakers Arms, Pentrebach, Sennybridge, Brecon, LD3 8UB for the remains of Babell Chapel (see below), which is within the army's training area.
remains of Babell Chapel.
There will be be a service led by a Rev Guto Prys ap Gwynfor at 2.30 p.m. Following this we will visit the mock village built by the army for practicing house-to-house fighting. We will commerate some of the civilians killed by drone strikes by writing their names onto the grave stones in the mock graveyard.
For me personally it will be a rare opportunity to visit this important place in my countries history, where a rich ( not monetary value) community was displaced for imperialistic purposes, and I will remember.
The Northern boundary of the Military Training Area.
a really scenic part of the woods too, their is a lake on the firing range and the views are outstanding. Rememberwe will not be tresspassing, it is the army that has done that for all these number of years. Have a nice weekend, the keywords are :- heddwch/peace...........
Sometimes people use the word shame when describing a piece of music they somehow see as a guilty pleasure.All forms of bigotry stems from one fundamental principle, namely that one believes one's culture to be superior to that of another or at the very least fails to understand that other culture. In its most violent and extreme form, this can manifest itself in book burning ( the Nazis) record music burning ( the Klu Klux Klan) or cultural destruction and vandalism ( the Taliban). Those culture snobs who believe themselves to be the final arbiters of the nations tastes and who would say to you they are mainly poking fun at your preferredstyles of art and music , and who would seek to make you ashamed of them, are in fact standing alongside the worst despots in history, as they pursue their relentless drive of cultural genocide. Some in denouncing the awesome and majestic sound of music, they are at one with Hitler, the K.K.K and the Taliban, none of whom are fans of the genre. Grandpa teifidancer did not sink battleships at the River Plate, nor did Great, GreatUncle teifidancer go over the top at the Somme for a society where you would be treated as untermensch for your love of rock music. For those about to rock I salute you.
Spoke to him only once, crossed the road to parliament square, just to say thanks.
But a real hero, an inspiring voice who stood up against warmongers and imperialists. He will stay as a torch to all those that remain, we will keep fighting, keep questioning and we will never forget. An illuminator of conscience, courage and willfull determination. He refused to be silenced, he wished for no wars, and dedicated his life to peace, inspiring so many people. .
Long live freedom. Love peace and justice for all.
Oh and perhaps it's best not to mourn, carry on his legacy and resist.
The following is a companian to my post earlier this week by J.G.Ballard.
Mr Jarry was a man whose entire existence seemed to be devoted to fun , pleasure and mischief. Best known I suppose for his epic burlesque play 'Ubu Roi ' , which was first performed in 1896 when he was twenty-three. Ubu who he let loose on the world was a grotesque figure, a personification of human greed, cunning and treachery. Jarry devoted himself to chaos , but also also managed throughout his wild but pleasurable life to write plays, novels, essays and journalism.
He wrote a series of notes and reviews for ' The Wild Duck' a satirical, anarchist, anti-clerical paper named after the Ibsen play.
He developed the Ubu theme in further plays including 'Ubu Cocu', and in his Rabelaisian-cum -symbolist epic 'Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician' he invented a character as important and intersting to modern readers as Ubu himself.
His works are now considered major precursors of surrealism, Andre Breton and the surrealists hailed him as an immediate predecessor and Ubu as a prophetic figure. Although the coarsness of his language was deliberately shocking, Jarry's humour was often metaphysical in nature. He would for example, often give a logical demonstration in lucid style of an absurd proposition. Ubu gave us a terrifying image of the animal nature of man, his cruelty and ruthlessness.
Born in Laval, Mayenne, France, he was of Breton descent, moving to Paris when he wa 17 where he gained attention for his poetry and prose poems and general outlandishness behaviour.
A life of bachaalian excess was his main preoccupation, drinking was to him his 'sacred herb' and absinthe in particular made his heart warm.
A mephisto in miniature ,wild, extravagent and unhibited, in his use of language,permanently dressed head to toe in black,another devotion was to cycling, an obsession . His life lived hardcore to the extremes, an anarchic adventurer chasing the sweet excesses of the absurd. A hardcore eccentric he also took very seriously the art of taking nothing seriously and referred to himself in the third person. Often painting himself green, in homage to his favourite tipple, eating his meals in reverse , adapting his own living quarters to such an extent that visitors had to stoop on entering his myterious lair, which was full of strange things.. He followed closely the footsteps of his hero Rabelais. Reading a book by Jeremy Reed at moment called ' Isodore' about Isidore Ducasse who called himself the Comte de Lautreament (1846-70) and who wrote 'Les Chant de Malador whose dark , brooding, haunted world Jarry also belonged to. Jarry also owes a debt to Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme, visionaries too, revolting against the rational. A lot of his writings predate science fiction in their othertherworldiness.
Illustration for Ubu
Welcomed by many symbolist poets , painters and journal writers, because of and not despite his extremity.
Throughout all his excessives , he maintained his sense of humour, and his unigue sensibility. Speaking with exagerrated and flowery precision. Drink practiced as discipline! He wrote ' anti-alcoholics are unfortunates in the grip of water, that terrible poison, so solvent and corrosive than out of all substances, it has been chosen for washing and scourings, and a drop of water, added to a clear liquid like absinthe, muddies it'. That's right he took his absinthe neat, and when without funds resorted to ether.
People could apparently tell when he was coming, because sometimes he did not wash for long periods, and he had a general disorder about him, guzzling from whatever drink he had available, whilst swaggering around waving two pistols, which he had about his person,at all times, between riding his bicycle in hell raising style,often in a drunken haze, but how I imagine how he must have dazzled, this swaying subversive, dressed head to toe in tall stovepipe hat and black hooded cape, full cycling gear worn at all times, a wildness about him , that makes many a modern rock god look like mere pussycats.
Almost mythological now is his status, burning bright, dissipating suddenly into the Paris night.
Never bowing to boring convention, this inspiring even on his death bed, his last words which were " Bring me a tooth pick."
What a guy, what a time. My god he must have dazzled. Long may his memory be kept green. We are all Ubu, still blissfully unaware of our destructiveness, the world still rich in its ridulousness..
What follows is a small selection of his writings
The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race
Barabbas, slated to race, was scratched.
Pilate, the starter, pulling out his clepsydra or water clock, an operation which wet his hands unless he had merely spit on them - Pilate gave the send-off.
Jesus got away to a good start.
In those days, according to the excellent sports commentator St. Matthwe, it was customary to flagellate the sprinters at the start the way a coachman whips his horses. The whip both stimulates and gives a hygeinic massage. Jesus, then, got off in good form, but he had a flight right away. A bed of thorns punctured the whole circumferance of his front tyre.
Today in the shop windows of bicycle dealers you can see a reproduction of this veritable crown of thorns as an add for puncture-proof tires. At Jesus's was an ordinary single-tube racing tire.
The two thieves, obviously in cahoots and therefore "thick as thieves," took the lead.
It is not true there were any nails. The three objects usually shown in the ads belong to a rapid-change tire tool called the "Jiffy."
We had better begin by telling about the spills; but before that the machine itself must be described.
The bicycle frame in use today is of relatively recent invention. It appeared around 1890. Previous to that time the body of the machine was constructed of wo tubes soldered together at right angles. It was generally called the right-angle or cross bicycle. Jesus, after his puncture, climbed the slope on foot, carrying on his shoulder the bike frame, or, if you will, the cross.
Contemporary engravings reproduce this scene from photographs. But it appears that the sport of cycling, a a result of the well known accident which puta grevious end to the Passion race and which was brought up to date almost on its anniversery, by the similar accident of Count Zborowski on the Turbie slope - the sport of cycling was for a time prohibited by state ordinance. That explains why the illustrated magazines, in reproducing this celebrated scene,show bicycles of a rather imaginary design. They confuse the machine's cross frame with that other cross, the straight handlebar. They represent Jesus with his hands spread on the handlebars, and it is worth mentioning in this connection that Jesus rode lying flat on his back in order to reduce his air resistance.
Note also that the frame or cross was made of wood, just as wheels are to this day.
A few people have insinuated falsely that Jesus's machine was a draisienne, an unlikely mount for a hill-climbing contest. According to the old cyclophile hagiographers, St. Beiget, St. Gregory of Tours, and St.Irene, the cross was equipped with a device which they name suppedaneum. There is no need to be a great scolar to translate this as "pedal."
Lipsius, Justinian, Bosius, and Erycius Puteanus describe another accessory which one still finds, according to Cornelius Curtius in 1643, on Japanese crosses: a protuberance of leather or wood on the shaft which the rider sits astride - manifestly the seat or saddle.
The general description, furthermore, suits the definition of a bicycle current among the Chinese: "A little mule which is led by the ears and urged along by showering it with kicks."
We shall abridge the story of the race itself, for it has been narrate in detail by specialized works and illustrated by sculpture and painting visible in monuments built to house such art.
There are 14 turns in the difficult Golgotha course. Jesus took his first spill at the third turn. His mother, who was in he stands, became alarmed.
His excellent trainer, Simon the Cyrenian, who but for the thorn accident would have been riding out in front to cut the wind, carried the machine.
Jesus, though carrying nothing, perspired heavily. It is not certain whether a female spectator wiped his brow, but we know that Veronica, a irl reporter, got a good shot of hoim with her Kodak.
The second spill came at the seventh turn on some slippery pavement. Jesus went down for the third time at the eleventh turn, skidding on a rail.
The Israelite demimondaines waved their handekerchiefs at the eighth.
The deplorable accident familiar to us all took place at the twelfth turn. Jesus was in a dead heat at the time with the thieves. We know he continued the race airborne but that is another story.
The deplorable accident familiar to us all took place at the twelfth turn. Jesus was in a dead heat at the time with the thieves. We know that he continued the race airborne - but that is another story.
AlfredJarry's portrait of Jesus's feet.
Pataphysics - Days and Nights, Book IV, Chapter 1
Sengle had taken it for granted that, owing to his proven influence on the behaviour of small objects, he had the right to assume that the entire world, in all likelihood, obey him. If is not true that the vibration of a fly's wing " makes a bump in the back of the world," because there is nothing in back of infinity, or perhaps because movements are transmitted, accordind to the Cartesian equation, in rings ( it is established that the stars describe narrow ellipses, or, at least, elliptic spirals; and that a man in a desert, believing himself to be walking in a straight line, walks to the left; and that comets are rare phenomoena) - nevertheless, it is evident that a small vibration radiates outward in a series of significant displacements and that the reciprocal world is incapable of moving a reed in such a way as to make it take notice; for this reed, carried along in the retreat - which is never a stampede - of its surroundings, would remain in its particular rank and file and could confirm thaty, from every point of view, its relationship to its surroundings has remained fixed.
Under a glass bell Nosocome had suspended side by side a straw and a cocoon of silk, and verified the fact that a source of animal heat, which brought near, did not displace the enclosed air sufficiently to provoke a liberation. Fromseveral yards away Sengle obtained declinations with a brief glance.
Sengle rolled dice one day, in a bar, against Severus Altesch playing for the first fifteen. He rolled five, five, and five three probable combinations to Severus in advance, while the dice were srill whirling round in the opacity of the dice box. And on the second roll, already drunk on absinthe and cocktails, he threw a five, a four - the bourgeois idiot within Severus cackled derisively - and a six. Nobody would play with him any more, since he was cleaning them out of considerable sums of money.
His strength, having been breathed oiut toward the External, re-entered his body, funnelling into him a deposit of mathematical combinations. Sengle consructed his curiously and precisely equilibrated literary works by sleeping a solid fifteen hours, after eating and drinking, and then ejaculating the result in an odd half hour's scribbling. This could be anatomised and atomised indefinitely, each molecule being crystallized according to the laws of matter, in an ascending scale of vigor, like the cells of the body. Some professors of philosophy rhapsodize that this resemblance to natural processes partakes of the ultimate Masterpiece.
He had absolute confidence regarding practical matters, having always experimented, unless the inducive principle was false, in which case all the laws of physics would be equally false; so that all he needed to do was to rely on the benevolent return of the Externals which would jolt him and trap him in a series of dilemmas, until he emerged, via the inner stairway of salt, at the summit of the Pyramid. And that had never failed him yet.
This repriprocal relationship between himself and the Things which he was in the habit of controlling through his thought processes (but we are all at this stage, and it is by no means certain that there is a differnce, even in time, netween cognition, volition, and action, cf. the Holy Trinity) resulted in the fact that he made no distinction whatsoever between his thoughts and his actions or between his dream and his waking; and perfecting the Lebnizian definition, that perception is a true hallucination, he saw no reason why one should not say: hallucination is a false perception, or more exactly: a weak one, or better yet: predicted ( remembered sometimes, which is the same thing). And, above all he considered that there existed nothing except hallucinations, or perceptions, and there were neither nights nor days ( despite the title of this book, which is why we chose it), and that life goes on without interruption; but that one could never be conscious of life's continuity, or even that life exists at all, without these movements of the pendulum; and the first proof of life is the beating of the heart. The heartbeats are extremely important; but Sengle didn't give a damn for the fact that these little deaths nourish life, an explanation which is no more than a statement of the obvious. Neither did he give a damn for the piddling professor who once postulated that explanation.
The world was simply a huge boat, with Sengle at the helm; contrary to the Hindu concept of the huge Tortoise carrying the tiny universe, the least absurd image was that of the Roman scales, whose fantastic balance-weight was reflected and balanced by Sengle himself ( the balance-beam's fulcrum being a lens, although this hypothesis is contrary to all the laws of optics). More philosophically - ad Sengle, not thinking pride a sin, liked to imagine this grandiose scheme, constructed in observance of the theories of the formation of images, with the rays crossing at the same point as abov- it was indeed Sengle who identified himself with the enlarged image, and the imaginary figure; and the tint world, stood on its head by the projection of its gigantic double on the screen of the other scale pan, toppled under the traction of the new macrocosm, as a wheel revolves.
The concept of this great windmill is perhaps quixotic, but only imbeciles still recognise mills by their grist alone.
And Sengle had dulcnified or deified his strength.
The Man with the Axe
After and for P.Gauguin
On the horizon, with sea-mists blown,
Vague hazards roar and moan
Waves, our demons we array
Where troughs of mountains shift and sway.
Where we sweep into a bay
A giant towers above the clay.
We crawl beneath him, lizards, prone,
Whilst, like a Caesar on his throne
Or on a marble column, he
Carves a boat out of a tree,
Astride in it will give us chase
To where the leagues' green limits lie.
From shore his copper arms in space
Upraise the blue axe to the sky.
Through the Door...
Through the door and the holes in the wall are crawling;
Through the door and the holes in the wall flights glide.
It's the rustle of hippogryphs' wings and silk falling,
and a flurry of snowflakes, a soft drifting tide.
In the air hover hieroglyphs, darkly enthralling:
Skinny necks twist around in a mischievous pride
To decipher their meaning. Then, wheeling aside,
The flock lights on wasteland, clumsily sprawling,
And marches, a band of prim pundits in column,
Mumbling strange words in a gibberish obscure-
Singkle-minded, their beaks so ascetic ignore
The spiders which gnomes, with their hands far from solemn,
Have displayed in the corners like fruit on a stand ...
The procession advances to some distant land.
Poems translated by SIMON WATSON TAYLOR
FEAR CREATES SILENCE
Nothing is terrifying, if it be not a widowed gallows, a
bridge with dry piers, and a shadow which is content to be
black. ear, turning away its head, keeps its eyelind lowered
and the lips of the stone mask closed.
THE CLOWN
His round hump hides the world's roundness, as his red
cheek rends the lion on the tapestry. Clubs and diamonds are
embroidered on the crimson silk of his garments, and toward
the sun and the grass he makes a benedictory aspersion with
his tinkling aspergillum.
LOVE
The soul is wheedled by Love who looks exactly like an
iridescent veil and assumes the masked face of a chrysalis. It
walks upon inverted skulls. Behind the wall where it hides,
claws brandish weapons. It is baptised with poison. Ancient
monsters, the wall's substance, laugh into their green beards.
The heart remains red and blue, violet in the artificial absence
of the iridescent veil that is weaving.
WOOD ENGRAVING BY JARRY - ' Les minute de sable memorial
