Monday 9 May 2011

Hsu Ts'eshu ( chinaman, circa C16th) - Proper moments for drinking Tea.


When one's heart and hands are idle
Tired after reading poetry.
When ones thoughts are disturbed.
Listening to songs and ditties.
When a song is completed.
Shut up at one's home on a holiday.
Playing the ch'in and looking over paintings.
Rngaged in conversation deep at night.
Before a bright window and a clean desk.
With charming friends and slender concubines.
Returning from a visit with friends.
When the day is clear and the breeze is mild.
On a day of light showers.
In a painted boat near a small wooden bridge.
In a forest with tall baboons.
In a pavillion overloooking lotus flowers on a summer day.
Having lighted incense in a small studio.
After a feast is over and the guests are gone.
When children are at school.
In a quiet secluded temple.
Near famous springs and quaint rocks.

Saturday 7 May 2011

Terence McKenna (16/11/46 - 3/4/00) - On societies refusal to allow us to be idle.


" I  think the reason we don't organise society in that way can be summed up in the aphorism, ' idle hands are the devil's tool. In other words, institutions fear idle populations because an idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that's almost a substitute word for idle, ' malcontent'. Essentially, we are all kept very busy... under no cicumstances are you to quietl inspect the contents of your own mind. Freud called introspection ' morbid' - unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, possibly neurotic, potentially pathological."

as transcribed to Tom Hodgkinson 1993.

as I've said before all life is work, in states of freedom we are released from the illusions of slavery.
Alternatively what was it that the great socialist William Morris say.

" A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is excercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works."

Ah, the dualities of life, for some a struggle every day. Some of us refuse to obey or conform, we can look at a meadow of beauty for hours without moving. For some however this could be hard work. But everyone of us twined together in our fragility, lifes rich differences, the shared humanity of us all.
It is our ideologies that actually divide,the  reality is the toiler or the idle share  exactly the same breath.
All of us skirting around the playgrounds of chance, perhaps.
Anyway,I for one in deep thought at moment, wondering how the dickens the tories have not been decimated, but that  is another tale, one I'd rather forget. The thought of them, makes me very tired.

Friday 6 May 2011


"I didn't go to work today, I don't think I'll go tomorrow. Lets take control of our lives and live for pleasure not pain."

BUT WATCH OUT ATOS ARE ABOUT.

The Experiment - Broomtoad Coldsnap


a petri dish,
aireal view of Buckingham palace
the crowds, the host,
the virus, them.
ah again the experiment

Here's the Historical - moment.
The kiss -
the host is behaving, responding,
perfectly, roaring in priapic extasy.
( a spectral light swooning) ?

in majestic serenity
the transaction is completed
Heavy velvet curtains
billow a little, in a soiled wind
from the stained streets.

the fairy tale - told
was a success!
crosseyed subjects
moved gently away by police
wearing white gloves.


mandrake. twitches
incantation
a Tea leaf reading

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Undecided. But don't call me apathetic.



Whose right, whose wrong, does voting make any difference?
Not much difference between any of them anymore, but the tories no, no, and no again....  the liberals have broken to many promises and colluded just for power's sake.
Do we want the same bloody system adinfinitum? I certainly don't.
Remember all the major paries would have cut, the tories I suppose  are finishing what New Labour started. The tories though a bloody lot worse, ideological driven, an enemy to progress, just wan't to go back in time, back to the 1920s.  Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance claimants were already in New Labours sites. Plaid around here am afraid have let us down with their proposed badger cull, cosied up to Labour.
The Greens, retain integrity though and have a ear for social justice , a radical edge, that has unfotunately been diluted by the rest of them.
Certain parties on the left stand once again , against one another, not united yet.

Perhaps you will choose freedom and vote for none, on the AV vote this could though be the last chance to any electoral change for years, and a yes vote would give the tories a good beating.
 However, stay safe on the streets when you find yourself in battle,  the freedom to demonstrate,at the moment, getting perilous, the police have decided they too can be political, with pre-emptive arrests recently, people are being presumed guilty before actually doing anything.
Yes this is democracy.
Will voting tomorrow change this?

Times are getting grimmer .....  but resistance is not futile

Do not most of us, lose all the time. Consensus government, as a friend said and numerical majorities do not a democracy make.
We will see, but don't call me fucking apathetic.
The least we can do is get angry.
The Welsh Assembly Elections are takin place tomorrow ,in case you wondered what I was blathering on about, and up in Scotland, and local elections up and down the country.

Oh and here's a quote from Emma Goldman

" The State is the altar of political freedom, and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for human sacrifice." 

Tuesday 3 May 2011

Fuck Bin Laden R.I.P Ira Cohen (3/2/35 - 25/4/11)

So Osama Bin Laden. Dead or alive.  Has he not already been killed once, back in 2001.No chance of him inconveniently turning up alive. I don't know whether to believe this story.even less believable than the London Met. But if he really is dead why has NATO decided to retain 140,000 troops in Afghanistan. Perhaps they  know that a global terrorist network is looking for a new manager.
It's still indiscriminate hypocricy though. Many thousands more are killed and silenced by cluster bombs and bullets, buried under warped truth. History repeats itself like a curse. Do we seek  to stoke the flames of reactionary forces and division.Terrorists kill, Governments kill, what is the difference? Civilisation, oh look at us,  aren't we clever, still playing the old blame game, finding bullshit redemption.Undercover of the night, bodies lost at sea. Evil bogeyman killed, people rejoice and the killing carries on regardless.
Anyway here's a quote

" I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not recognise in the death of one. Not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. "

- Martin Luther King

Anyway,
I'm not going to surrender to hate,  I believe in a future one day soon where love will overtake. Another word is ours for the taking.
Even sadder news with the death of Mr Ira Cohen, freed from the fetters of hope. A poet and universal visionary , filmaker, bookmaker, friend to many,disciple of eclectism, shaman of insight, R.I.P.
and the dust so fine
these are suggestions
wave on wave
reach out
each ring
will be upon the wind
some of us forever invisible
carried on honeyed breeze
far in to oceanic jungle
staring out
as mountains erupt
volcanic storms
sway forever, forever , forever

Link to wiki entry on Ira Cohen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Cohen


 Ira Cohen in conversation.



Song to Nothing -Ira Cohen

And surely we will die without memory
coming to cold in the shadow of space
& if it isn't too late
for the star to love you
spraying the sky with whispers
attuned to galaxies hungry for flame
And if the togue of night sings
of Albino winos
till the morning light shafts
the doorway
then surely we will die tonight
faceless at the White Gate
sharing the smoke
with ancient shapes in future garb
and you stand somewhere there
on the other side
feeding on the painof dreamlessness
Where from the misty morning of
white shadows
& the unresisting need to destroy?

Samuel, Samuel, I beg it may be forgiven
that they may be driven
out of the black into the white
Only let the dazzle remain
for gamblers to surprise
the stragecic diamond, the throne
of compressed bone
in the unshored dark
where only light can forgive
& your mind is singed
Embers of echoes in the vastness
disguise the yearning to burn blind eyes
in arrogant displays of feeling?
Running wild these beasts will feast
on the newborn kind
for surely we will die tonight
unless we learn to ignore
what the others live for
on the other side of morning
& the skin of Nothing left by the same summer
masks the faceless wanderer

O let it happen
this wierd to discover
the shape of Beauty in everything extreme

for surely we will die tonight
whether we will or whether we
dream
O Samuel, forgive the dreamer
forgive the dream
The Song of Nothing is your lullabye.

Sunday 1 May 2011

Songs for the People - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (24/9/1825 - 22/2/11)


Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And cakeworm brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before the footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary
Needs  music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grow tender
Girdle the world with peace.

HAPPY MAY DAY/ BELTANE

The government wants to move this day, to celebrate St George in April, or the battle of Trafalgar in October....... is this  because it's  the people day with all it's madness's and idiosyncracies. A time to remember rebellion, independent spirit, dissent. Clarion calling down through the centuries. Humankind's common unity. The celebrations and traditions of ordinary people.
Cameron does not like ordinary people,  does not respect them, then you'd expect that from a tory wouldn't you.
May your day be full of wonder, mischief and merriment...........
heddwch/peace