I must apologise. It’s been so long since I posted anything. I’ve allowed the vicissitudes of life to overcome me. The care of an elderly parent, another difficult personal conflict, and my struggle with an inconsiderate neighbour.
With all of this going on I’m trying to obey the injunction to ‘Be kind to yourself’. Elizabeth Gilbert certainly mentions this frequently, citing how merciless the world has become. And that has translated into mostly stopping writing. I’ve allowed my innate laziness to grasp at excuses. However I’ve still been collecting thoughts and ideas though, and reading as much as I can.
A couple of things I was thinking about today:
• Perhaps dreams are a bug rather than a feature? Could the various modules of the brain be trying to offload old unwanted information on to each other, until they dispose of that data by dreaming, almost like my laptop sending it to the trash can?
• A Viking becomes depressed when an old enemy passes away, for he will never be able to repay the insults he has suffered. Gosh, this is so left brain.
• Something by Gregory Bateson: Iatmul men could remember prodigious numbers of ancestral names and the myths attached to them. Such knowledge guaranteed possession of totemic powers, a possession challenged by rival clans claiming superior knowledge. To speak the myths out loud, however, was to dissipate their power, hence, in competitive debate between the clans over possession of the names, opponents were challenged over specific details of the myths but without the broader stories being brought to light. It was a situation, Bateson observed, quite alien to the ‘rote remembering’ used in the West.
Now that the confinement here in the UK has mostly lifted, I’ve been hitting my local cafe hard, and wrote these haiku this morning, my first for months.
This bedroom stillness
Alone behind a closed door -
My return from exile
Such a strange being -
Topsy turvy Spaniard
She sleeps in the loft
Black and white splashing
An eager magpie’s delight -
Water plate heaven
Shade and slanted rays
Caress the bricks and floor boards
Morning cafe ease
Dog stretches himself
At nearby cafe table
Canine yoga!
This cafe creature
His haiku breathe themselves alive
Butt melts into seat…
Chocolate brownies
Squared landscape needs more gooeyness
Birthed by heat and greed…
