Arthur Machen (3/3/1863 -15/12/47) - An Enchanted Land

Arthur Machen, Welsh writer and mystic, best known for his wonderful supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction.

' I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk in the heart of Gwent . . . .
The older I grow, the more firmly am I convinced that anything I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in early childhood they had before them the vision of an enchanted land. As soon as I saw anything I saw Twm Barlwm, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of peoples that dwelt in the region before the Celts left the Land of Summer. This guarded the southern limit of the great mountain wall in the west; a little northward was Mynydd Maen - The Mountain of the Stone - a giant, rounded billow; and still to the north mountains, and on fair, clear days one could see the pointed summit of the Holy Mountain by Abergavenny. It would shine, I remember, a pure blue in the far sunshine; it was a mountain peak in a fairy tale. And then to eastward the bedroom window of Llandewi Rectory looked over hill and valley, over high woods quivering with leafage like the beloved Zacynthus of Ulysses, away to the forest of Wentwood, to the church tower on the hill above Caerleon. Through a cleft one might see now and again a bright yellow glint of the Severn Sea, and the cliffs of Somerset beyond. And hardly a house in sight in all the landscape, look where you would. Here the gable of a barn, here a glint of a whitewashed farmhouse, here blue wood smoke rising from an orchard grove, where an old cottage was snugly hidden: but only so much if you knew where to look. And of nights, when the dusk fell and the farmer went his rounds, you might chance to see his lantern glimmering, a very spark on the hillside. This was all that showed in a vaque, dark world; and the only sounds were the faint distant barking of the sheepdog, and the melancholy cry of the owls from the border of the brake.'

 

Reprinted from 'Autobiography -Arthur Machen

5 year old Palestinian boy detained in Hebron.

The above five year old Palestinian boy was caught after allegedly throwing a stone at a tyre belonging to a settler. throwing a stone in Hebron. The soldiers detained, blindfolded and hancuffed his father. Imagine what the father thinks? Imagine what the boy feels? Remember that the age of criminal responsibility is 12. Imagine if this was a European child and the outrage that this would stir. After  the incident, the boy was taken into an I.D.F jeep and taken to his parents house where his father joined them. The soldiers took the father and son to an I.D.F base from which they were eventually transferred to a Palestinian Police Station.  B'Tselem released a video capturing the moments of his apprehension.
For many a daily occurence under occupation. This the latest in a number of similar detentions. But Israel we should remember has a long list of human rights violations , including it's siege of Gaza, demolition of Palestinian homes, to name just a few.

For more on this story go here

http://972mag.com/watch-idf-detains-5-year-old-in-hebron-blindfolds-and-hancuffs-father/75594/

Free Shaker Aamer

At 6.30 today hundreds of us will simultaneously share the same message to Cameron and Obama.

Free Shaker Aamer.

There's still time to add your voice.

Head here now

http://thndr.it/12m3coi

Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantánamo Bay procedure

Yasmin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantanamo Bay procedure.

As Ramadan gets underway, more than 100 hunger strikers in Guantanamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being foce-fed. A leaked documen sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasmin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.

Warning some viewers may find these images disturbing.

Read more about Ramadan force-feeding AT Guantanamo Bay
HERE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/obama-urged-halt-ramadan-guantanamo

Link to article on Reprieve website:

Judge : Obama  has power to address "Painful degrading Guantamo hunger strike.

http://www.reprieve.org.uk

Thanks Mona

Happy Ramadan Mubarak

Matthew Arnold ( 24/12/1822 -15/4/88) - Celtic Magic

In Matthew Arnold's lifetime only a quarter of his productive life was given to writing poetry, his reputation rests equally on his prose and critical essays, especially the relationship of man and nature. Ideas that W.B Yeats himself would later develop. Both attracted to the secrets of natural beauty and natural magic.
Here is a famous essay where he draws on these themes, which he brings alive with much eloquence..

'The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they are Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them something quite different from the woods, waters and plants of Greek and Latin poetry.  Now of this delicate magic, Celtic romance is so pre-eminent a mistress, that it seems impossible to believe the power did not come into romance from the Celts. Magic is just the word for it, - the magic of nature; not merely the beauty of nature,-  that the Greeks and Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the soil, a faithful realism - that the Germans had; but the intimate life of Nature, her weird power and her fairy charm . . . Gwydion wants a wife for his pupil: "Well." says Math, " we will seek, I and thou, by charms and illusions, to form a wife for him out of flowers." So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect." Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's feeling in these matters, and how deeply Nature lets him come into her secrets. The quick dropping of blood is called "faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of red-grass upon the earth, when the dew of June is at the heaviest." And this is Olwen described:
"More yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood-anemony amidst the spray of the meadow fountains."

For loveliness it would be hard to beat that; and for magical clearness and nearness take the following:

"And in the evening Peredur entered a valley, and at the head of the valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold a shower of snow had fallen the niight before, and a hawk had killed a wild-fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood and compared the blacknness of the raven, and the whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the lady whom best he loved, which was blacker than the raven, and to her skin, which was whiter than the snow, and to her two cheeks, which were redder than the blood upon the  snow appeared to be."

And this, which is perhaps less striking, is not less beautiful:

"And early in the day Geraint and Enid left the wood, and they came to an open country, with meadows on one hand and mowers mowing the meadows. And there was a river before them, and the horses bent down and drank the water. And they went up out of the river by a steep bank, and there they met a slender stripling with a satchel about his neck; and he had a small pitcher in his hand, and
a bowl on the mouth of the pitcher."

And here the landscape, up to this point so Greek in its clear beauty, is suddenly magicalised by the romance touch:

"And  they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one-half of which was in flames from the root to the top and the other half was green and in full leaf."

Magic is the word to insist upon, - a magically vivid and near interpretation of nature; since it is this which constitutes the special charm and poer of the effect I am calling attention to, and it is for this that the Celt's sensibility gives him a peculiar aptitude.

From:
Matthew Arnold - On the Study of Celtic Literature

For those interested in Celtic themes and narratives, I will also refer you to The Mabinogion a rich collection of texts relating to the mythological past of the British isles. A collection that I return to again and again.

Getting there

Poem written after my grandsons tentative first steps.


It takes time for many  of us to master long journeys,

a while before we can bathe in shadows cast by steepness,

fall among grasses deep,

follow patterns,

conjour magic,

to walk steadily to the edge.


It only takes a moment though,

to see lights flicker upon a July morning,

footprints slowly leaving a trace,

one day at a time,

following the merryground of adventure,

step, step, then leap,

soon running like sunlight through the garden,

and as every day grows,

consider it done,

we will continue to do our best  to protect you,

as  new paths are found to explore.

Pay Rise for M.Ps,The Mind Boggles!

Britains 650 M.Ps are in line for a hefty pay rise. The Independent Parliamentary Authority is expected to unveil plans to increase the basic British Parlamentarian Salary from £65,738 to £75,000. At a time when the rest of the U.K is experiencing one of its worst economic periods, I see no justification at all in this news, and it's simply beyond contempt.
They are already paid nearly 3 times the average U.K full time salary. In Parliament, the 3 main parties, their policies  more the less the same, as they divide us even more, punishing the poor, protecting the rich. It's not as if their  planning a route out of the problems that they were responsible for in the first place. Their apparent solution, workfare and poverty for us and a pay rise for them.
At the moment  we are being led by a Coalition of Millionaires, most of whom went to private schools, inheriting  their wealth from their parents. With many other M.Ps  fom all parties also coming from privileged backgrounds , do they really need an extra leg up in this time of austerity. They already have  substantial discounts on food, drink, and transport than the rest of us, in addition to many of them getting hefty back-handers from their secondary corporate employers.
They might say we're all in it together, but in this, it's definitely a case of  no we're ******* not.
If people are deterred from becoming M.Ps  because  they don't think  they get paid enough. Do we really need them? I personally remember a time when certain M.Ps only took a workers age, more of them would be fine, people who recognise the real needs of the people, people who really understand  the social problemss of inequality and exploitation.
At a time when millions of people across the globe are making a stand against their own governments, why do we as a people, allow ourselves to be ruled by such a pack of greedy and malicious so and so's, besides a few brave loose  cannons, not an ounce of integrity between the rest.


Enough is enough.

If you've got time please sign this e.petition.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44225

Pablo Neruda (12/7/04 - 23/9/73) - Love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer
Remember your hands,
how did your lips
feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues
Drowsing in the parks, the winter statues that
Have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;
I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to
My vaque memory of you, I live with pain
That is like a wound, if you touch me, you will
Make to me an irreperable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing
Vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to
Glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of
Summer pain me, because of you, I again
Seek out the signs that precipitate desires:
Shooting stars, falling objects.


From the pen of one my favourite poets. Born Ricardo Reyes Basaolto, this Chilean poet adopted legally in 1945 the pen name of Pablo Neruda.
From the 1940's on his work reflected the political struggle of the left and social developments in South America, his poetry ranging from Surrealism to political manifestos, but he was also a poet of love, never ambiguous but very open about his feelings.

Earlier post on Pablo here.
Pablo Neruda - Poet of Love
http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/pablo-neruda-july-12-1904-september-23.html

The man of double deed - Anon

                                                       
Head full of cold and  at moment, the complexities of life reinforced, in dreams and thought we can at least  find freedom, converge our different arrangements. realign our illusions. 

                         The Man of Double Deed, 1989 (etching )
                                                          Paulo Rego b.1935 

                                                  Location:- Leeds Art Museum & Galleries
                                                          (Leeds Art Gallery)
                                                      
                                                    There was a Man of Double Deed
                                                    Who sowed his Garden full of Seed,
                                                    And when the Seed began to grow
                                                    'Twas like a Garden full of Snow,
                                                    And when the Snow began to melt
                                                    'Twas like a Show without a Welt,
                                                    And when the Shoe began to sail
                                                    'Twas like a Bird without a Tail,
                                                    And when the Bird began to fly
                                                    'Twas like an Eagle in the Sky,
                                                    And when the Sky began to lower
                                                    'Twas like a Liar at my Door,
                                                    When my Door began to crack
                                                    'Twas like a Stick across my Back,
                                                    And when my Back began to smart
                                                    ' Twas like an Arrow in my Heart,
                                                    And when my Back began to bleed
                                                    I was like the Man of Double Deed
                                                    Who sowed his Garden full of Seed.
                                                                                              
                                                                                                   Traditional
                                                                                        Seething, Norfolk       
                                                    

Glastonbury Foxhunting - Unworthy Farm

Short clips of Blackmore & Sparkford Vale foxhunt,  riding through the 'greenfields' of Glastonbury festival site. They chased a fox over the A361 SW of Pilton from the meet at Sticklinch, then another one NW from West Pennard. They then hunted all over Worthy Farm, site of the Glastonbury festival - around the stone circle and pyramid stage.
Michael Eavis makes great claims about how green and peaceful he is - maybe he should think about the fear and violence involved in fox and hare hunting and the hunt followers he employs as security on the gates at the festival.
Oh and he supports the Badger Cull too, and in these difficult and dangerous time, the tickets at an extortionate £205 a pop, is  what some folk live on for four weeks,  it  certainly does not sound like a peoples' festival to me. Corporate logos plastered all over the site, plus the Mumford and bloody sons !!! I fail to see a vision of Avalon or Shangrila .
On a personal note, have not been since the mid- nineties when  you  could (unofficially) get in free. Think i'ts goin to rain, some things never change.