Category: Bite Sized Blogs


Stuck in Poetic Mode

I have a cold and I am not sleeping well. When I woke, I woke late, heavy, unrested and lethargic. The voice that spoke was by comparison brisk and business like

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’. The truth cut deep, a slash of self pity and the start of the slow bleeding slide into another day of dull depression. Sweet relief just a sandman’s whisper away but my soul is stuck in poetic mode.

‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
And again
 
‘I know how you feel, I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are’.
 
A chipper little voice, this Jimney Cricket of a character wasn’t going to let me put my head under the pillow today. THIS was a soul baby knocking at my door. There was nothing to do but write. And so:
 
I know how you feel
I know how bad, ugly, rotten to the core you are
How you want to rip yourself away from the flesh that is you
Raging, roaring, kicking, punching against the fibre of your being
I know how you drown, smothered, gagged, suffocated, suffocating
Writhing, clawing, tearing at the walls that are who you are
 
I know how you feel
I know the rage, spitting, livid, firey ire
Burning runways of smouldering fury through your soul
Destroying, exploding, killing love, kindness, compassion
Those mealy mouthed mother fuckers
I know how you are consumed
Inside the cage of your humanness
A twitching, flickering, putrid mass of toxic oozing pus
 
I know how you love to hate
I know how you despair
I am the evil bitch, the bully boy
Who wants to punish and obliterate all sign of milk and honey
Who wields a whip of righteousness and snuffs out unbecoming joy
I know the realness of this place
A landscape of the mind
Where goodness is a rag to the raging bull and destruction holds its sway
 
I know how real it feels
When those demons come to roost
Hideous heads and flickering tongues, devouring my flesh alive
I don’t know if I have been here before or if I never left
I don’t know if this is how it is supposed to be or if I am an aberration bereft
I don’t know if this is real, a dream, a play, a game or nought
I don’t know if I will survive, if love will save the day
I only know these words have come to grace the page and say….
 
I know

Our Home Is On Fire

‘Markets that deal in human futures are inherently pernicious’ Shoshana Zuboff – very interesting and considered observations on a new type of capitalism emerging as our experience becomes a commodity.

I, for one feel threatened by this scrutiny of my experience but Shoshana’s message is that it isn’t personal and we don’t have to be powerless when we understand that we are in ‘a moment of discontinuity’. Rather than thinking ‘our house is on fire’ understand that the very essence of who we are has now been commoditised and turned into data, data used to predict behaviour and shepherd our experience. We can be afraid because we do not know how to deal with this or be present to the bigger landscape turning our attention to deeper questions of awareness, responsibility and our collective vision for the future.

Let’s not be tinkering with the deck chairs on the Titanic rather consider a new paradigm of the future together.

I was prompted to write this post after listening to Shoshana’s webinar on Surveillance Capitalism as part of the Presencing Institute’s webinar series on Dialogues on Transforming Society & Self, (DoTS). Her book is available on Amazon.

My peer group On A Mission will be hosting a Pura Vida, a Creative Summit in Costa Rica in September 2020 to consider exactly that; new possibilities and paradigms to foster collaborative synergy based on consciousness, evolution & celebration. Watch this space for more information or email [email protected] if you want to know more.

Dissolution

We are story
Ilusion
Water colour
Rememberings
Kept alive
In the framing of my mind
Invisibly etched
On someplace
I call my heart

I clutch
A painted reality
of yesterday
Making it mean tomorrow
Projecting holograms
Of you
And you
And you
On to the mirror of the future.

Blind to see
There is nothing
There
I am nothing
And you
An emptiness
Of ephemeral meanderings
In the echo chamber of
Some consciousness somewhere.

The me that is I
And the you that is you
Captured by human magic
Pressed memories
On to the ether that is the internet
Or a photo on my phone
While the we that is us
Dissolves and disappears
And we are dissolving still.

The drip dropping of these words came as I was reminded of a friend of mine who passed away almost a year ago in May 2018. The partner of a dear friend; we didnt know each other well or for very long and perhaps there was only one photo of the two of us. A selfie on my visit in 2017 – two distorted moon like faces grinning into the camera as I prepared to depart from Middle Earth. And now……all I am left with is the mystery of it all and the dissolving.

Photo by Lieselot. Dalle on Unsplash

 

Easter Rising*


Perhaps it is the emergence of Spring, the coming of Easter, perhaps it is all of us, or just my desire for new life and emergence but my radar is picking up a farrago of metaphors about the cycle of life and death.

And just in case I dont notice it in this bucolic muddy, bole of countryside that I am living in then it shows up in my mail box and my twitter feeds.

Courtesy of Sharon Blackie of The Hedge School’s newsletter today:

Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

From The Holy Longing by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated from German by Robert Bly

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

*Being Irish – the juxtaposition of the words Easter AND Rising is poignant and particular and has a singular meaning. Also known as the Easter Rebellion, it was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in the First World War. It is has a personal impact too as a great uncle of mine, Walter Scott, was probably the last child to die in this struggle. This is not the topic I wanted to talk about here but it is part of the mythic struggle to reach the light.

Painting The Future

photo: Anne K. Scott (c) 2018 Carrapateria, Algarve, Portugal

Painting The Future

I can’t see
I can wield
I can’t know
But I am sure
In my lostness
I am found
And in the hum of the Universe
My intentions
Are subtle brushstrokes
On the canvas of tomorrow

Still You Stand

‘If every remnant of success was gone from you — still you stand as the culmination of all that you’ve learned…’ @AbrahamHicks #CrossingFrontiers

We Are All Alchemists


unsplash-logoKelly Sikkema

Black is just how humans perceive the absence of any significant peaks in the spectrum of reflected light.

The alchemist knows that where there is lead, where there are challenges, there is blackness, there is also gold.

We are all of us alchemists. We activate our ability to release the spirit of the lead when we know that everything in life happens for us not to us. When we turn the eye inwards, when we observe our lives from the perspective of spirit we reveal the spectrum of golden light that is hidden to the human eye. Light that opens up new pathways for us to follow.

To Be Awake Or Not To Be Awake


unsplash-logoElla Jardim

To be awake means that the dream is over – to re-member the dream of unconsciousness that brings a life of tensions, anguish, feeling unfulfilled and running after illusions is to be asleep again.

The Hollow Space


unsplash-logoAnnie Spratt

There is a hollow space in us that we inhabit with our breathe. When we listen into that space where the visible and the invisible meet we will hear the crystal clear whisper of our hearts.