Shi*'s blog ^pro

The sword flowing like water

Under a full moon

Without thought, in its right time.

- Shi*

And between the standing stones

That pen the horn-ed power

She stands adorn-ed

Strong but fragile lithe

Sudden sunlight bronze reflecting

As I within without look closely on

Visioned from my library of dreams

As insubstantial as paper and leather

Another watches me

within without

As I sleep seeing

A tome triangular bound

Falling

From dream to vision

Bull dancer.

Traditionally, free will or pre-determination has been one of those 'mutually exclusive categories' questions. The more that I think about this one though the more it appears to me that it is more of an 'uncertainty principle' question. Put simply: which will apply depends on what you are looking at, at what level and for what purpose. 'Choice' is essentially a sentient activity, that is a thinking decision has to be made. We live at a biological and cultural level of experience and have no real sight of sub-atomic activity on a day-today basis, even genetic biochemistry is little understood and certainly not a factor in our immediate awareness. Because we are blind to underlying realities and because the interactions are chaotic, complex, and innately unpredictable, we can exercise 'choice'. At the same time, our apparent choices are determined by dynamics in the fundamental nature of reality (matter, energy, Tao, God, whatever brand you prefer) and our choices are inevitable. Even whether you consider yourself to have free will or believe yourself determined by destiny is innate in the moment. So if you want to use it for an excuse to be fatalistic, you probably will. When it works out well, with 20/20 hindsight you can give it a capital letter: Destiny. If these weird wyrds help to make your strand in the weave more positive then I will be doing what I do. I think therefore I am.

I said, 'I love you but I am not in love with you'.

Much later, I looked in my heart and saw that I had lied to myself.

Why did I do such a thing?

Was I afraid that you would run away?

Was I afraid to face my fear of loss?

Maybe neither or both but it makes no difference.

My heart aches with the same sweet yearning.

I write my soul in blood.

Waiting for a voice that speaks to my soul

In these dark silent nights when the dreams fly wild

Of swords, the fealty sworn and favours worn

Truth divined in the lines and signs of the sky

A raven messenger or a fairy princess may signify

Attendance at court, a mirror crack'd, oaths honoured

In vigil, dark silent knight, hold true.

Somewhere out there, somewhere in here, there is a place where the dreamers go when the dreams need to be found, when they have left and Psyche sits like Narcissus gazing in a dark pool in an old place ... on the edge of silence. Where there are no words.

Lips pressed against mine. Returning from the darkness. Distant voices.

'Is he breathing?'

'I think he is breathing on his own now.'

Consciousness returns.

'Are you ok, Dave? You stopped breathing there. I had to give you mouth to mouth.'

Why am I lying on the floor? ... and jeez, I feel ... weird.

Strange to brush with Le Morte again.

And the bit that really bends my mind ... I can't remember going there.

She shines full and bright

Cool night air on my naked skin

Dreams and memories

Dance in the moonlight shadows

Heart fire warms the soul

Silent crying to the moon

Can she hear my evensong?

Pat-pat-pat falling

The garden leaves freely weep

Autumn morning mists.

Beleza

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.