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| William Blake from 'Spirit Mirror' at the Glynn Vivian |
I thought I might just share more of my very slow burning process of making, it is not unique, it is a very human experience felt and acknowledged by many of us. Experiences are filtered through writing and reflecting and then making. The following are extracts from my diary sketch book :
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| Red cows in the furnaces and other stories |
Jan 29th 22
Is the universe benevolent ? What other stories might there be ? My story is a tortuous one, a journey that many humans take through 'the first half of life' into the second half. I have carried my desires from one to the other, but they are burdensome sometimes, sad at others. The light of the late sun catches the maple and apple arch in the garden - a golden gateway.
Gateways continue to be there even into older age - possibilities, energies which are different - slower. Gulls wheel over this valley 20 miles from the sea in clear blue air.
How do our stories connect, interconnect ? Our stories are universally linked like hyphae underground. Linked, connected, running through the flow of our physical beings.
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| The Bryn Derwen |
Feb 1st 22
The golden and green fingers of the oak reach up ! They reach up into the blue, they push their buds to the sun. They await the light and warmth. Desiring the sun reaching - flowing toward the light. We also need the spring, need the resurgence.
Our friends who art in heaven, hallowed is the oak reaching into Spring
Whose roots are rooted in extracted land altered by hands that hacked out the hill
Tectonic plates shift sometimes surprising us with the movement of old walls
Reminding us of flux and that stability and economies are illusions
The only energies that are constant are ancient and beyond control
Energies that are both dark and light
Your buds search for the warmth of the golden sun
Red buds
Blue sky
Sap rising
Oak ' shuttling the air into sky and storing the sky underground ' 'People could be the heaven that the Earth is trying to speak to.' R. Powers 2019
Humans produce in art :' the inner images the soul needs in order to see itself and allow its own transformation.' Carl Jung
'Wisdom is feminine, she is the ordering principle of the universe, seeing the grain in wood, the currents in water and wind, the laws of nature, the way things are." Rami Shapiro
March 17th 22
Praying for justice in the gate, no more defending empires, no more holding on to capitalism as though it is life.
The gateway this morning is the light filtering through the trees, early light rising in the east backlighting the mountain and highlighting the wing feathers of the blue tits prospecting the nest box near the beech hedge, dry copper leaves about to fall from the bud.
A lattice of silver tinted branches of the maple , a kind of song, a pardiso, Persia in Ystalyfera. Let all that has breath sing a song of justice in the gateway.
March 18th 22 The shadows of trees and a holy walk
Old men on old ways. We were serenaded by skylarks rising above our heads. Up ancient paths trod by 'holy' feet. Capel y Ffin, the monastery, the priory valley. A blind headed cwm where glaciers carved u-shapes and engineered ridges. There is a deep sense of history in the stones, scattered settlements and remnants of communities in this held hollow. Surprisingly neglected even in this google mapped age. The ground is tracked and trod by humans, sheep and ponies.
What is it about the shadows of trees, the casting of shadow, the leafless yet to bud bulk and net of webbed branches, this between Winter and Spring ? There is an ancient allure to these places. Cwm Iau/ Cwm Yoy the leaning tower and ancient carved cross, the colliding of life and death the ups and downs, reflected in the walking of the hills.
The shadows of trees - Capel y Ffin
We carry them in dark recesses
They sometimes emerge through the chambers and reach daylight
In the process they enlighten and dissipate like ghosts.
But shadows are necessary
The dark parts hold us as much as the light
And there is no contradiction
We are night and day
Brother sun, sister moon
War and peace
Neither one or the other
We are both, held in a holy mystery.
March 26th 22
'because we have been steeped in patriarchy, we may resist the idea of a "maternal" universe, yet the pattern it reveals - that all of life is birthed, held and nurtured in the cosmos - is undoubtedly true. ' R. Rohr 2022
'There is a Sanskrit word, darshan... it suggests a face - to - face encounter with the sacred on earth '. R. Macfarlane
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