Shi*'s blog ^pro

Pat-pat-pat falling

The garden leaves freely weep

Autumn morning mists.

Beleza

Talk To Strangers - Saul Willi…

Now, as the air becomes clearer and that special yellow-filtered light glows in the world outside my window, I am once more at home. In the sense of Fuchsia's attic in Peake's 'Gormenghast'. This is my time of year, always has been - I don't know why ... add it to my growing list of unknowns. But that it is, of that I have no doubt. When that first chill morning arrives and the clear light fills the thin air. When the leaves begin to take on their autumn collection. The New Look - every year. I must have happy memories ... although I am damned if I can quite place them. Like so many things, just beyond my peripheral vision, seen but unseen. Where the crock of gold is found. The 'cnoc', the Celtic 'hill', where the halls of gold lie under and are guarded jealously by the old folk, the 'sidh' (pronounced 'she', maybe Shi* ). So, an autumnal day and one of those with Canaletto skies and Klimt colours. I am skiving, playing hookie, not working when I should be. Sometimes enough is too much and you just have to say, 'Fuck it'. Let them wait. The moment is too good not to be savoured. So I will go and tend my sorely neglected garden. Recharge my batteries, dream some dreams, re-unite with my muse. A good weekend to all!

This is a psychometric test based on the work of Carl Jung and Isabel Myers-Briggs. Jung first coined the words introversion and extraversion ... one of the axes measured in the test. I have found it remarkably insightful, but then I am an INFP ... Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving ... only one percent of the population apparently.

If you are interested, follow the link:

www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

I would love to hear what you think.

Black, ragged-feathered and portentous. Odin's bird ploughs a furrow through the sea-grey sky. Straight as a singular dice cast. Inexorable course, written as I watch.

Pausing in mid-beat, casting a dark marble, glistening orb. Line of sight. Fixed, I am already past. The corvid flys on, running from the morning sun.

I take another draw, wash it down with a swallow of industrial strength.

And later, much later.

When the sun has passed its zenith.

I exchange unexpected confidences with a sculptor. Why his marriage is on the rocks ... ironic for a man whose spoken language is stone. Why mine failed in the end. Clichés, we conclude, that describe quotidian dramas played to an audience of one. He describes his place in time as the razor's edge, still unsure where the cut will occur. A Romance for a romantic being written ... a clay maquette for a life to be lived in stone. I leave feeling closer to this man. Something real has been said.

And now, as the sun sets ... Leonard tells me how there is no cure.

There ain't no cure

There ain't no cure

There ain't no cure for love.

... I think of the strange and tumultuous road ahead for him. He has met someone who has 'unlocked his heart' but he wants to save his marriage ... plus ca change, toujours le meme chose ... After many years of shutting down his emotions, of reduction of expressed desire, to maintain peace and harmony ... the cat is not only out of bag, it is giving tango lessons on the rooftops under a full moon ... an emotional No U Turns sign in flaming letters in the night sky. For what it is worth, I say there is no going back ... a future can be written any way but it will never be the past re-created. The world has moved on.

Welcome to the world of Shiva, destruction breeds creation.

After a week of laughter and companionship with friends, a week of family comings and goings, time for chess and visits, city and seaside ... a quiet time, a time for reflection.

..............................................................................................

Soul looked at the sword, the word, the wyrd, the way, the truth perhaps. Cleaned and sharpened, its edge catching the moonlight silver, the firelight gold. One last wipe with a soft cloth and she slid it fluidly back into its sheath. A fluid motion on entering and leaving. Katana. The mountain night air was chill, the fire's crackle warming. Food prepared and eaten. Utensils cleaned and packed. Time for the dreaming, then. To be alone. To savour the moment.

..............................................................................................

We are all alone. In the beginning, in the end ... and in between. People come and people go. Some will not return, the numbers of the dead who pass, increasingly so as I grow older, and those tired of my way, but some will stay to share parts of the journey.

Now a time coming to cherish the beauty and flow of existence. To be without unecessary bonds, those ties that bind. Time now for preparation. To clean and sharpen, to wash and pack ... most importantly though to cleanse the spirit. To renounce need. To minimise the material necessary for comfortable travel.

It takes time. Time and patience and a heart full of wonder. Renewing the wonder. Let that be enough. Let it be.

'Singing words of wisdom, Mother Mary comes to me ...'

Peace.

 

Beyond Translation

She said, 'Come here when you need to breathe'.

... and I did

... go there

... and breathed.

 

I had buried my heart deep where I thought that no one could ever find it, especially me. To feel love is to feel pain ... to feel. She opened me up like an ancient tomb, found the hidden key, unlocked my heart.

Blinking in the impossible brightness of a first dawn. Overpowered by the sudden strength of an emotion that I accepted as mine. Everything I had sought to bury, eradicate, destroy. So long ago that I had forgotten, what, where and why.

... and I was so grateful to be returned to myself, gave fealty forever.

An intervention accomplished, she disappeared. I was lost for a while. Didn't understand yet that this thing was mine, not hers. A final lesson she taught me by her absence.

... and later I found her again but I never lost the one she awakened inside me.

The point is ... if there is one ... love is what we have inside. But that is not enough in itself. It needs expression.

Understand me ... I am not talking about romantic love, erotic love, brother/sisterly love, God/Goddess' love, sensual love, any one sort of love ... I am talking about the unifying totality of all loves ... the currency of life ... shi ... ki ... the flow of the Tao ... the sacrifice of Odin, Jesus, Osiris ... the love of Mary, Ishtar, Isis, Tara, and all the other glitterball reflections of the one thing we all know ... even if we know it by different names. Love has many facets and all are sacred. The names and labels, creeds and dogma are of reductionist interest ... useful to those who study comparative theology or those who wish to set themselves apart.

So, I will transcend my frailty, my anger, my despair, my pain ... I won't stop feeling again though.

Baby and bathwater.

It's hot, it's late and the thunder rolls quietly around the humid distance. Not a night for sleeping, it's that unbearable stickiness that makes you pray for a big storm. really, metaphorically ... yes, the pathetic fallacy lives on ... those two in that film, for instance, the ones who have been slowly circling ... somewhere between a bullfight and moths around a flame ... they must burn, the blood must flow - dependent on which metaphor you wish to pursue.

... the wish to pursue ... the desire to imolate ... the need to bleed ... waiting for the storm.

Fully embodied languor ... body heat ... a sheen of perspiration.

... and inside an echo ... or a prime cause for the solipsists out there.

This tension must break, this heat must end, the rain must fall ... hard, drumming, torrential. Endless.

... and in the meantime I will caress this keyboard and tell my soul secrets to the void. Whisper in the ear of the nameless, pray for redemption, count my blessings lest the dark night consume me.

In dreams I find respite ... not in waking imagination ... but in those unpredictable upwellings and currents of the unconscious mind where I find myself unquestionably present. more real than real ... and undeniably a very different and immaterial reality ... an older virtuality perhaps. Where our gods and goddesses live, where love is pure, fear can be withstood, and the action is irrestible. No introspection in dreams, not in mine anyway. Sleeping zazen. Pure being.

But not just yet. Still time to break a few grammatical rules. For the sake of the flow, the feeling ... for the sake of the feelin', by George.

'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose', sang Janis, The Dead and many others. According to the teenager in Frank Zappa's song, 'FREE IS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR NOTHING OR DO NOTHING'. Oh, Edenic state! freedom is when you don't ask questions, eat suspect fruit offered by slippery characters ...

For the rest of us it's a proverbial lunch that doesn't exist.

OK, we are approaching the zone now. so ...

'To be hoisted by your own petard' is a figure of speech with its origins in warfare, a petard being a small bomb or grenado. So, you make your own bombs and they can blow you up. Karma. What goes round comes round.

So what about honour, integrity, compassion, kindness ... and freedom? Petards all?

Hoisted by one's own bushido code?

hmmmm, food for thought.

...............................

a word from our sponsors ... The Doors ... of perception ...

Unhappy girl
Left all alone
Playing solitaire
Playing warden to your soul
You are locked in a prison
Of your own devise
And you can't believe
What it does to me
To see you
Crying

Unhappy girl
Tear your web away
Saw thru all your bars
Melt your cell today
You are caught in a prison
Of your own devise

Unhappy girl
Fly fast away
Don't miss your chance
To swim in mystery
You are dying in a prison
Of your own device

......................

chained by honour and blinded by desire, stumbling into an uncertain future.

... 'all is for the best in the best of all worlds'

.....................

Hopeful monsters all.

In the moonlight we find ourselves

sitting in the old moonlight

horned waning and golden

blue-silk-sheened in the night warmth

the hiding garden alive with soft movement

of light on pale leaves

and deeper shadows.

 

I dream of her

as she rides the night

illuminating my hot blood

showing all things

in a new light

as she slowly dies

 

Teaching me my memories

that death is change

that she will be reborn

in argent splendour

that the summer's heat will pass

that the night will end

that clear dawn always follows

and that we will find ourselves

renewed

These delicate and sensitive instruments.

That guide the journey, fix position, set course.

The heart that swells and beats.

The soul that yearns.

The mind that dreams.

The body that burns.

She asked me where this garden is

As if she did not know

That it lives

In our dreams

In our hearts

In our souls.

 

I reply languidly with a kiss

I looked in her eyes

Saw her dreams

Saw her heart

Saw her soul.

 

She looked back, curious

She had seen me naked

In my dreams

In my heart

In my soul.

 

Pool Nudes Remix

... and where are the angels now?

In the high places.

Where most people don't go.

Alone.

In nature. Of nature.

 

To the low places.

From the high places.

Love.

From me to me.

From me to you.

 

Austere reflections.

Of a hopeful traveller.

Returning.

Home.

In the land of dreams, in the sea of life, silver fish swim through dancing colours. The personal reality flows inward, flows outward.

Clouds pass by the moon.

Tired and dreamless, lost in the fogs of productivity. Marshalling resolve, the lone ronin presses on through the bamboo forest. Later, the fish will swim again ...

Goldfish. In a bowl. watches through the glass wall to the unavailable beauty beyond. Asking: 'Is the distant appreciation of beauty sufficient ...' Replying: 'This is your reality for the moment, in living this moment you know that you will not live it again. Savour its particular and unique flavour.'

Later, the goldfish bowl may fall over when the cat pounces. The goldfish escapes down a drain. Released from the sewers he finds himself in still sunlight waters. Maybe he even meets a mate ...

... or so he dreams, as he watches beauty from his bowl.

 

Inspired by this image:

www.ipernity.com/doc/be-blog-a-lula/2198068

 

 

... and so, after a day of sun and a warm night, the soft rain falls this morning. Soft enough to stand out in for the sheer pleasure of it's cool touch on my skin, sweet enough to glaze the petals of the roses.

Yesterday evening the air outside my bijou studio flat was filled with the scent of Gertrude Jekyll ... she has a rich scent, sensual and heady. I see that the Mock Orange will soon be joining in and then the air will become electric and langorous, redolent of other sensory memories ... a Galliano dress that fitted the fairy in Wolfords, a lost weekend of room service ... Mistress Berlin standing over me in the night garden, raking her nails into my back in a pact of blood, tracing my soul story ... further back Parvati dances as her ankle bells sing, the tabla drives a rhythm that overpowers the senses ... further back still I watch stoned as an angel dresses in a fur coat (in the days when that was accepted), and not much else but a musky perfume mixed with patchouli.

Soft rain and scent, a trail of breadcrumbs through memories of love ... I count myself fortunate indeed. I light a cigarette and savour the moment.

What is it that you want, she said, apropos of nothing.

Unexpected silence.

... but by then the question had dug its thorny parts under my yielding skin and would not let go.

What is my desire? where is the shortfall in my contentment? I started to turn it over.

Perhaps it is in the difference between the intensity of dreams and the uneven content of reality, I mused. Those head holidays I take to exotic places ... places I have to admit that I could quite happily settle in. But then my more unimaginative friends tell me that this is just escapism, unreal, fantasy ...

Happily, I don't need much to make me feel good. The natural world, even the tame world of my garden, brings me pleasure daily. Add some sun and a temperature over 18 degrees Celsius and subtract the stresses of work deadlines and ... hey presto ... I am a happy bunny.

so some first items for my wish list:

1) Less work stress

2) More good weather

But then, although I am very happy with my own company, I do also enjoy sharing my interests and my self with other sympatico types.

3) Good companions

Of course, I have all of these things so I am really putting in my want list for more of the above, or more access to 3) in particular. And maybe something more  ...  some one to share the  full extent of my desire for union,  transcendent  conjunction.  Well,  hey,  these are things that you cannot by-and-large  force.  And my way  is ,  perhaps not surprisingly, quite gentle.  I am the vampire who must be invited over the threshold and the circus girl who disappears if you look away for too long. Such is my way.

So really I don't particularly want anything and yet maybe what I want is everything. Thankfully, money doesn't interest me. Conformity leaves me cold but then so does deliberate and knowing eccentricity. Eccentricity should be perfectly normal to the eccentric, for God's sake.

OK, I digress. Reworking the Cartesian axiom: I think therefore I digress.

Now where was I ...

I was reminded of the interesting history of this area by a comment regarding the upcoming mini-iper-meet there on 7th and 8th June. Normandy was ceded to the viking leader Hrolf (latinised to Rollo) by the French king, Charles the Simple, under the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911 AD. Allegedly the viking longships had sailed up the Seine to Paris and the land was given to the vikings in return for them 'going away'. In time this new land of the Northmen became known as 'Normandy'.

Well, that's my little nugget of historical information for today. Now I must go food shopping - the cupboards are bare once more ... have a good weekend!

Sitting here, listening to Beefheart wailing songs of love ... the Captain being mellow for once ... and he sings, 'and my head is my only house unless it rains ...'. Now Nina picks up with Sunday in Savannah ... coffee brewing and a film to watch in a little while. The life of the modern hermit. After a busy frantic stress-filled week ... what could be finer. Coffee, jazz and chill-out.

A little remixed samba picks up the mood ... sends my thoughts cartwheeling through memories of Brazil, capirinhas and watching live samba in Rio. The band and the audience become one sensual whole - from 18 to 80 a seething syncopated mass of flexing joy. There will never be a revolution in Brazil, I am told, the sun is hot, the cachasa runs freely and it's samba time ... so who cares to change anything? 'PAY ATTENTION, DAVE' says my friend with her voice which can strip paint off walls. I pay attention.

Ella Fitzgerald now, 'Body and Soul', takes me to a more innocent age ... when love and sacrifice was enough. When the big love for eternity was still a dream to be believed in. Me? I am an anachronism therefore. But lets not go where that is taking me.

Kosheen ... I won't forget you ... my ipod is being merciless tonight.

I let you down

I let you down

I let you go

... and all the things that get said at the end, I won't forget you ...

Yup, being a hermit is a positive life choice.

... and when I get bored of it, and the wind changes or that unforeseen walks round the corner and says hi! ... well, then I will change again.

 

RE: SWEET SOLSTICE 21-6-04

She took the pebble carefully ... running its smoothness across her neck and throat then pushed it deeply, firmly through her flesh, embedding it in her heart ...

Thank you darling soul ... my precious blue implant causes me a little pain -  in the most delightful way ... and only when I breathe (*smile)

xxxxxxxxxxxx>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

HEART MURMUR* 21-6-04

The symptoms you describe interest me, because I believe that I am suffering from something similar. I find that I keep thinking about you when I should be working and this is accompanied by a quite pleasant painful sensation in my chest - like my heart is full to bursting. I then feel what can only be described as a hunger of the soul. What should I do?

Suggestions, pppppllleeaase! kisses, souldaveXXXXXXX

 

RE: HEART MURMUR* 21-6-04

something really atmospheric on a sandstone altar i hope (*smile) xxxxxxxxxxx>>>>>>>>>>>>>>take care xxxxxxx>>>>>

Don't be blue sweetness! You can do the heaving bossom bit and I'll do the eyeliner. Just been to another country house - nice clients, beautiful park ... wish you were there with me* kisses, souldavexxxxxxxxxxxxx

Through kohl rimmed eyes
She watched as fingers twisted cords around her wrists
and gently, firmly tied her ankles down ... (*smile) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Spreadeagled on the pale, oily-smooth, marble slab in the large darkened space. The only light being from five huge candles placed in a pentacle around the rectangular slab. The air full of incense - attar of roses*. The masked figure slowly turning back to her with a golden bowl. She feels the warm oil run over her body ...

 

 

Sweetness, of course, the anointing oil is no ordinary oil. Plant extracted atropines, psilocybins and cannabinoids have been added. The effect is ... out of this world*

 

The heat of her limbs contrasted strangely with the cool, smooth surface she was bound to ... strangely soft beneath her skin ...

Thank you beautiful ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>>>>>>>>>i'll get back on the altar (or is that you *smile) in the next couple of days - flat out again xxx - love and smiles >>>

Strong masseur's hands gently spread the anointing oil over her body. Then, a mouth, lips, tongue slides from navel to nipple. The hand scoops a few droplets of oil, touching her lips and then a finger slides into her mouth. She tastes the oil, feels something spreading through her system like fire. A first rite has been observed ... the next involves blood* ...

 

The thorn pierced deep, bringing with it a bone-sweet pain, a transcendent pain, ... or was it pleasure. It was certainly a CLEAR moment, before it subsided to an itch. Brush the rose petals, a rose meets a rose by a very different name. And then another impaling ...

Then … lost in visions…

 

Today, I am the pearldiver pushing back my wet hair. Little drops and rivulets glistening on my tanned skin. My lean form springs skyward, leaving the wooden boat gently rocking, then arcs like a golden bow toward the crystal water. No splash, just a swallowing sound as I pierce the mirror surface ... to enter my kingdom. Sound is deadened, gravity defied, vision rippling*. But I must go deeper, always deeper. That is where the treasured pearls lie in their nacreous beds. It's all a dream and I believe I can live without air. It allows me to go deeper. Is this inside or outside my head ... or both, it comes to me. This is the way, my path of bubbles signing my location.

 

Darkening vision ... always almost there as I lose consciousness ...

 

Come on in, the water's fine!

 

 

'she's feeling very girlie and vulnerable because she doesn't realise that those little lines around her mouth are an easy target for the kisses that take such joy in all the words that put them there...'

'I think I'll be a raven haired amazon today' she purred to soul, kholling the rims of her girlfriends eyes, and daubing her lips with pomegranates....

to graceful damsels dancing in the wind, their long slim limbs entwining with the strands of weeping willows ....>>>>>>>>

 

You beautiful person! I could just cover you in honey and lick it all off again!

William Gibson must be very happy. Let's hope more of his future gazing comes to pass. He imagined future virtual environments in which virtual avatars could interact as in reality. The ultimate post-geographic dream. For now I will continue wending my way towards the foothills of this massif*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

soul looked round but the figure had gone. Walking up the dusty curving marble stair from the ballroom, leaving a trail of footprints in the dust. In the minstrels gallery she finds the footprints of the other and proceeds to follow ...

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