Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

~

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

~

[Rumi - "A Great Wagon"]

Spotless Mind

"Pages ripped out. Don't remember doing that. It appears this is my first entry in two years."

Life has swirled and turned and gone upside down. Almost everything is different now. But some stability has finally been gained.
If the Laura of Anna's trails had known what was to come, would she have changed anything?

To Kill a Mockingbird

I saw through the eyes of a child and was sent back in time to summers before I referred to myself as me. When adventures meant challenging ghosts on dark autumn nights and hiding in forests to cast spells. When it was easy knowing what's right. When little experience had many stories to tell. Many more stories to tell than I have now.

'I hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you become easily tired: soon I was hiding in his lap and his arms were around me.'

[Harper Lee]

Things I gathered last summer

I really miss home today

What if I never get to call those rusty beaches with reflections of factories and cranes my home again?

Kosmos

Wired:

'But there is another side to the psychology of spaceflight. During their stay in space, astronauts have reported what author Frank White called the “overview effect” – they became filled with a sense of wonder and awe about the universe, and experienced spiritual epiphanies such as unity with nature, transcendence, and universal brotherhood. Space affords some incredible experiences. NASA psychologists have looked into the benefits of taking photographs from the International Space Station, which may have a salutary effect on the minds of astronauts (.pdf).

These positive effects seem to last. Psychologists studying astronauts who return to Earth report that they are less anxious, hypochondriacal, depressive, or aggressive. It seems that, during their stay in a tough environment, people are able to develop coping skills to deal with the challenge and stress, which they get to take with them back to Earth.'

I was born into unseen catastrophes and unseen discoveries. Perhaps I have space running in my veins. Perhaps I was born 3.7 miles from the  S U N.

In 1990:

• The Space Shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit revolutionizing astronomy;
• Tim Berners-Lee publishes a more formal proposal for the World Wide Web and the first web page is written;
• The First Known Case of AIDS is traced back to 1959;
• The Space Probe Voyager launched in 1977 photographed the Solar System at a distance of 3.7 miles from the SUN;
• 18 years after its launch the US Space Probe Pioneer reaches a distance of 46.5 billion miles beyond all planetary orbits;
• Depletion of the Ozone Layer is discovered above the North Pole. 

[Client Mansell - Memories (Someone We'll Never Know)]


'Isn't this enough?

Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex,
wonderfully unfathomable NATURAL world?'

'I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
and unimportant…,
but thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long
as my great great great great uncleses and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine.
Twice as long to love this wife of mine.
Twice as many years of friends and wine.'

[Tim Minchin - Storm]

I want to shout and murder. 

'It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth.
We're only human; this at least we've learned.' 

[Bowerbirds]

Instead, I want to be filled with a sense of wonder. I want to be filled with all of this   s  p  a  c  e

We are stardust. I  W O U L D  N E V E R  D R E A D  D E A T H  I F  I  B E C A M E  O N E   W I T H  K O S M O S

The worlds end in London

[Low - Sunflower]

'In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river...

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'

[T. S. Eliot]

The radiation will come for all of us.

Beginners [v]

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." 

[- The Velveteen Rabbit]

  

Hal: 'Well, let's say that since you were little, you always dreamed of getting a lion. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, but the lion doesn't come. And along comes a giraffe. You can be alone, or you can be with the giraffe.' 

Oliver: 'I'd wait for the lion.' 

Hal: 'That's why I worry about you.'

[Fleet Foxes - Your Protector]

Taken down by gods

Last night I witnessed the most amazing performance of my life- Low. I almost cried during a few of their songs just because the music was so incredible. No joke. They're one 'smashin bunch o Mormons' from Minnesota (and apparently very lovely people, too). They're a 90's band (formed in '93), but I personally prefer their newer stuff (my favourites at the moment are 'Witches', 'Try to sleep' and 'Nightingale'). Alan Sparhawk (lead singer) is definitely in my list of people whose music makes them very attractive.


[Low - Witches]

'One night I got up and told my father there were witches in my room
He gave me a baseball bat and said here's what you do
When you have finally submitted to embarrassing capture
Take out that baseball bat and show those witches some pasture'

Satan's dark ABYSS

• an immeasurably deep or seemingly bottomless chasm, depth, or void.
• a wide or profound difference between people.
• the regions of hell conceived of as a bottomless pit.
• a catastrophic situation seen as likely to occur.
• the primeval chaos out of which it was believed that the earth and sky were formed.
• (Beethoven- Symphony 7, Allegretto, mvt 2)

The more I experience, the less music I can listen to. The less films I can watch. The less books I can read. The less plays I can see. E V E R Y T H I N G claims a meaning. What is left is the brainless, the funny, the simple, the entertaining. Is that me, too?

I've written myself down since I was 16 and before that on paper. I've kept all the notes, the tram tickets, the diaries, the letters, the journals. I read them again and again. My core has stayed the same, but the passion has become a secret. I no longer share it.

I've always dreamed of a place. There has always been somewhere I've wanted to be. In the moment they seem like the greatest goal, but as time passes, new places take over and the old ones are forgotten. Although some of them creep back. And the further they are, the stronger their power over me.

My arcadias...

Provence, France when I was 14

Ireland from when I was 15 to when I was 17

Done when I was 21.

Havana, Cuba from when I was 15 and still

St Petersburg and Moscow, Russia when I was 17-18

Scotland from when I was 14 to when I was 18

Done when I was 18, done again when I was 19 and done again when I was 20

Toledo, Spain when I was 18

Faroe Islands from when I was 18 and still

Melbourne, Australia from when I was 18 to when I was 20

Southern states, USA from when I was 17 and still

Colorado and Lake Tahoe, USA now, 21

and Kopli always