What to make of a diminished thing

Ruining streams where eternity lies,
No flowers, no bees, but here eat some fries.
We weep for all that can no longer grow,
soft trees still recite what we scarcely know.

Glazed telly vigils while sipping Bordeaux,
not noticing then the slow rising flow.
No place to escape from this poisoned sky,
if only we questioned it sooner, why?

Carpeted, concreted, depleted soul,
forgetting we too are ocean and snow.
Part water, part air and magic unknown,
now just packaged skin and picked apart bone.

No longer do winds blush warm with birdsong,
hollowed out by progress hums, vain, cold, strong.
Greed, give back to us what we have now lost,
as if we knew what true wilderness cost.

Shopping aisles lit, all lined up in a row,
like that's the apex of success to show.
Stillness won't be found in consumption shrines,
but rather in spaces nature defines.

Watching in silence, we voiceless ones weep,
how Sir, can you find in dreamless fields sleep?
When hell spreads hot, don't say you didn't know,
from black shores we told you, we told you so.

An ocean of regret

Soft waves break,
delicate heart ache.
Salty foam, my tears,
on wasted years.

In soft sea sounds,
grace resounds.
Anchor me down,
before I drown.
An ocean of regret,
your leaving has left.

Not seeing the mountain

Sometimes the mountain

is hidden from me in veils

of cloud, sometimes 

I am hidden from the mountain

in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue

when I forget or refuse to go 

down to the shore or a few yards 

up the road, on a clear day…

Denise Levertov

Sadness is

Sadness is a cold still bed. Folds of your breathing now only in my head.
That single white hair, Once I was nestled, there.
In the cave of your arm, that's where you would find me, if I could only.
But you preferred strangers' beds. Your fire's desire left my soul in cindered shreds.

I miss public transport

No longer living in London means no longer having the luxury to spy at strangers on my tube journeys and draw them. Exchanging London's smog for Scotland's bog has been a change to say the least. But this pastime is one of the many that I am starting to miss...

Nature is a mirror

Ocean, tears, rain
All the same.

Cheers

Sugar ticks and selfie sticks
Cobbled streets basted in oil slicks
Swipe to the right peepshows
Broken sleep, wandering where your mind goes
I wish I had never led us here
If I could only clamp my eyes and plug my ears
The City of corrupted fiends
Your behaviour my soul demeans

Litter-strewn and vomit-soaked
Lines of mandy, nitrogen-oxide smoked
No room to breath, no space to sit
Stiletto heels seemed for you a better fit
Offering the City what was once intact
Your affection, like a summer's day, a vanishing act
Now wrapped up in knowing what I lack
Short skirts in taxi cabs, both black
Frayed wit and hollowed eyes
Walking past off-licences stacking putrid pork pies
And cornish pasties
And kebabs

What do I do now without you here
A place so easy to feel your worth does not exist, as I disappear
Half-awake on trains where no one speaks
Internally focused on what the iphone leaks
While I hear sirens and tyrants' bank balances soar
More, more, more
Embracing the fast, gin-soaked race with some trendy herb
Festering mattresses retired to the kerb
Steeped in rain and melancholy
No longer necessary
(Like me)
Beside boozed-up lads banishing love with another round
Don't worry mate, plenty other birds around.

The anatomy of melancholy

Being 'in love', like being 'in imagination'. The concerns of everyday life all dissolve in the daydream and halo of the other.

Is it an illusion to be distrusted? Do we reject what the soul presents to us? Something so pure and simple at the time that will eventually lead us astray?

Does love make us blind to the flaws of another, or does it make us see the true angelic nature of a person? Is it all just an illusion, a trick of light that makes us see what we want and abandon reason?

Does it distort more than reveal? If only I could stop what I still feel,

Goodbye London Town

“This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero!”
― Sivananda Saraswati

With these words echoing in my hollowed soul, I march on. The Scottish Highlands beckon. And so I load all the shrapnel into a tin can, move to the folds of the mountains up north to start a new chapter in my life. London has been a hard but fair teacher, and despite it being a challenging move I will miss it dearly, and all those that made my time so healing over this last year. Three and a half years here have brought many new experiences into my life, and it seems almost impossible to be able to encapsulate all of them and their impact in one post. I have volunteered in the house Handel lived for most of his life, learnt about what weeds you can eat, enjoyed very civil high teas, been offered lifts by strangers and hitched rides on lazy canal boats. I've sunbathed on locks and overcrowded parks, and sampled only a handful of the hundreds of museums the city has to offer. I've explored cobble streets Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway once walked on, cycled up the Pall Mall on many occasion (my favourite car-free stretch of London), eaten dinner in a 1940's disused underground station, sampled cuisine from Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico and wandered through China town on rainy Chinese new years.

I've eavesdropped on many a Polish conversation, drawn people on public transport until they noticed me, dressed up as a zombie, fed foxes, seen street art that made my eyes pop, guerilla gardened, poked around Victoria cemeteries, walked through the Thames tributaries in waders, fallen asleep on night buses, minded the gap and found to enjoy the unique delights of a British carboot sale. I've hugged 100 year-old oaks, seen where Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Moholy-Nagy lived, been to folk festivals in old abandoned war-damaged chapels and acoustic concerts by log fires. I've fallen in love with food markets, learnt about natural dyes and raw food, lived in London's first eco-village, become a cyclist, shopped at food co-operatives, planted trees, volunteered at peace gardens, learnt about foraging, built clay ovens and attended climate change protests. I carry all these memories with me now to a new adventure.

What I've held onto to so long no longer exists, with each exhalation I learn to accept that a new breath needs to replace the old one. I lost my best friend year, but as a truce London offered me many new ones to help mend my broken heart. As well as this new chance to live mindfully in the mountains. I hope to share those experiences soon. London, you really have been a treat.

Be ground

Some more wise words, this time from Rumi:

"Be Ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You've been stony too many years. Try something different. Surrender."

“You only lose what you cling to”

In French, you don’t say ‘I miss you'. You say ‘tu me manques,’ which could be taken as ‘you are missing from me.’ Missing from me, like a beating organ, or the flow of blood.

 A limb that was, now no longer. A hand to hold, a mouth to taste, so soon discarded, now replaced.

You filled your time with another so quickly.
Deaf and dumb with each new kiss, as if the dream of us did not exist.

He is no longer mine

It has been over a year since I have blogged, and it would not make sense to continue writing without acknowledging one of the major tremors that occurred toward the end of last year. The man I loved most parted ways with me. Going through all my photos over the year, and deciding what to write about had a heaviness attached to it. My memories all had him in each of the frames, and it feels like a heavy burden for me to carry them all on my own and not share them. Maybe it is like a wound that needs to be drained, sharing my sadness to lighten the load somehow. This was one of the last photos I unknowingly took of him and remains one which epitomises him best: a soft and tender soul, with a hint of sadness in his face I foolishly did not see at the time.

Mr Handsome turned and walked away, and I turned to medication. In hindsight a decision that I will never make again, and one which I would not recommend to anyone. At the point where I could no longer distinguish my own thoughts and sensations from one another, I stopped taking the medication and decided on taking a less numbing approach, another Vipassana meditation course (an experience I will share too). Thankfully going again solidified my practice, and if nothing else reminded me the inevitability of change and impermanence. And now as Valentine's Day approaches (the horror among horrors of days stuffed with notions of rampant consumerism) I recall this poem to what love honestly is, neither red roses nor blue violets:

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.

It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.

It promises light

like the careful undressing of love.

Here. 

It will blind you with tears 

like a lover.

It will make your reflection

a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

Take it.

Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,

if you like.

Lethal.

Its scent will cling to your fingers,

cling to your knife. 

And so I journey on my own from this point. Do wish me luck, and I do hope to write and photograph some new stories and interesting things in the near future. This blog too will change and adapt to something new soon..