Joining

 This weekend saw DC and me take my elderly and vulnerable parents to their grandson's wedding. My mother was determined to go despite the time travelling by car and the overnight stay required. My dad, who has Alzheimer's, followed most of what was going on but was clearly confused about relationships between people. He's less and less located in time, place and person. By contrast, my mother retains an encyclopedic mental map of who's who. She's always been bitterly disappointed that my brother moved to his wife's home city and they raised two boys alongside his wife's family. She knows names, life events and relationships of that family but feels she missed being a grandmother to the boys in the way she wanted. Not a great fan of weddings, I wasn't keen to go, but without me her dream of being at the wedding with all the fantasy she'd created around it would be dashed. Little choice then for me there. The wedding, in a castle complete with deconsecrated chapel, ticked all the 'fantasy' secular elements... readers can imagine! For DC and me the wish to take part in such an affair is something of a mystery. Gone are the days when married life commenced in the church and the couple started to build a life together after the ceremony. These days couples are more often than not already wedded in real life and the ceremony is just a 'rubber stamp'. As a gay men in a relationship of over three decades I've had to negotiate a time when there was effectively no legal recognition of the life I was building. In fact, in the days of Clause and Section 28 it was described as 'pretended'. Pretended! Thankfully those days are gone and same sex couples have the options of marriage, civil partnership or continuing as before with or without living wills, various ways of owning property etc. And so it was that I remembered my brother's wedding back in 1990. At that time I was still trying to put together the pieces of the jigsaw of my own incongruent masculinity without the picture on the box lid and without knowledge that a) there were happy viable alternatives to the closely policed norms and b) the process of putting the pieces together isn't the same as for the congruent. Soon after, I would hear gay men observe that we can and indeed have to make our own rules. Except of course, that isn't exactly so. More accurately, we had to determine the nature of the water through which the congruent swim blindly, and navigate the amphibian shores upon which we might find fertile ground to grow our lives. The decades have passed, and observing my nephew's wedding in this context I was struck by the polished appearance of all these young people. They could have been chosen to be on the cover of a wedding magazine. Whereas, back in the day we were all more a mixture, now, gym toned, immaculately groomed and dressed, the young are Facebook trained. A tyranny I was spared. Yes, certainly masculinity was policed far more closely than today, but our general lives weren't expected to be performed on social media. And so it was that I contemplated how it feels to be in the second half of life surrounded by this first half of life energy. My sense was that it isn't so much age as the vast web of contingency that we really feel at such gatherings. For my mother the wedding was a day of immense importance and her being there a measure of her function as a grandmother and in some way a person. For me it was a bubble upon which images were projected and fantasies aired. Much the same could be said of a lot of what we think of as reality, but here for a day there were people believing in a future based upon love. The script still seems to say that belief needs a classic wedding to be celebrated, but in our hearts we know that the celebration has been going on every day of the ten years the bride and groom have already been together. And TOGETHER is the word of the day really. Gathering together people feel part-of rather than apart-from. Except that together isn't a geographical thing, it's a heart thing. And that's the thing about my attendance at my brother's wedding. I wasn't really at home with myself and I wasn't really much of a part of his life. In this respect I wasn't together-with, I was there, which isn't the same at all. Hopefully my mother feels she was together-with at her grandson's wedding, because that is why it was so important to her.

I've said in the past of DC and me that we've woven together three cloths - the life and personhood of each of us and a shared life of our relationship. We are who we are because of those we've been with - no man is an island. The task before us is to weave with love, but so often I know that for my own part fear has driven the shuttle. Which, provided that wisdom is picking the thread, might not be as much a problem as it can seem. But none of us know the the final cloth of our lives, for it extends beyond what we think of as our life. Maybe in a secular wedding, without the overarching notion of something greater than ourselves, this very aspect of our humanity can be lost more easily. But hopefully, we can all remember often enough that we're not as separate as we think.

Circle

 Last week, the third week with my new employer, I found myself standing in the main switchroom for a substantial part of a local district general hospital looking at the distribution schematic and associated switchboard. I recognised it as my own work from about 35 years ago. It was my first electrical distribution design. I was working for the regional health authority and amongst smaller projects was occupied with a major expansion of this district general hospital. As I contemplate the approach towards the later chapters of my career, working fewer hours and in possibly more supportive and steering rather than driving roles, there was a strange timelessness to looking at something substantial that I produced at the start of my career in the construction industry. I'd had a couple of years in other parts of the vast field that is electrical and electronic engineering but this was really the point where I 'took root' in my career direction. The combination of a recent  change in employment and this part of the past coming into the present had a feeling of circularity and I noticed my mind looking for meaning in it. Beyond any story it might construct there is.... what? I can't say. Maybe the strongest strand amongst a number that might want expression is this.... that we are so much more connected across everything and every time than we can ever really know. And that what seem like things are moments. Moments formed of connections. In Indra's net the diamonds sparkle. 35 years ago I couldn't have dreamt I'd write a sentence like that, yet if I think of the little boy who was fascinated with electricity and magnetism and who was somehow aware and sensitive to.... then it seems a natural unfolding. But such is the nature of autobiography. Everyday we write the story of the past and sow the seeds of the future.  I can't help but have a strange sense that it's all happening at once and that maybe, some no place and no time, all places and all times, all beyond the paradigm of our daily lives, where the diamonds which are only their own reflections turn in stillness, just in that moment as 'I' recognising 'my' own work from 35 years ago, the diamonds winked at each other. Or maybe not.

Grasping

Some days ago I was feeling very stressed by what seems to be on my plate. DC is always there with me as I am with him and that let's me know logically that it is our collective plate. But my nervous system seems unable to absorb what logic can see. However much psychological work I have done (and I have done a lot) the body does seem to keep the score. (I've a copy of The body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk waiting to be read.) It's odd that even as I approach sixty events from childhood compounded with a basically hyper-sensitive nervous system, should continue to play out through fear. Such is karma. And yet twenty years of zen practice does still shine though this. It very difficult to describe this 'shining', and it's nothing special or particularly bright. And it certainly doesn't stop the intense emotional overwhelm which can flare up. And so it was that I found myself trying to come back to a more grounded and spacious awareness asking what is it...? Or to return to the title of this blog what needs to let go? I remember decades ago hearing someone say that it can be quite difficult to find the attachments. Indeed... we are such complex creatures. Things settled and my thoughts turned to the wisdom that can shine through the pain. There is a kind of rock that shines whilst the sands of life shift. As my friend RM Mugo reminds me 'one foot on rock one on shifting sand'. In some way I think, my deepest fear is basically that everything I value will fall away and leave a broken egoic self unable to be the rock and unable to separate pain and suffering. Poetically, and thus in words and thus partial and... my mind... I glimpse...still, flowing, brilliant darkness, burning flame, motionless, illuminated by that which it illuminates... I doubt that I've glimpsed, but there it is a deep trust. It fades but as yet isn't lost. DC might remind me "costing not less than everything" from the final section of "Little Gidding", the last poem in the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

And so another turn around the spiral. Onwards, one foot at a time, moment by moment. All is well. Ring out the bells of Norwich... Let go the bough...

The merit of this post is offered to DC.

A week of the arts

Last week DC and I spent a few days in Edinburgh attending various events at the main festival and the fringe. We saw street theatre, Chinese pole work physical theatre depicting aspects of sex, relationship and the AIDS crisis (a very intense and amazing show), an very complex and full clown satire of USA politics, a number of short plays (each nicely put together), Samuel Beckett's Crap's last tape (very good), a viola and piano concert, a shakuhachi concert, and on our first evening an exhibit of work by Sadao Hasegawa with a talk by two academics who have studied his and other's work in the same field. Hasegawa's work is rich and complex and he's known for homoerotic fetish art. To me he exaggerates fetish and indeed desire so as to be so ridiculous it becomes both transparent and transcendent. In this way he shows the deep humanity and connection at the heart of sex. His work draws on various cultural traditions and stories and he blends them in a unique way. And as one of the guys giving the talk pointed out he often sends threads out off the page... As a number of us in the audience noted there's softness in the work beyond the outrageous. A few pictures below:

It was as a result of sharing these with a friend that I got a recommendation to go to see the Making waves woodblock prints exhibition at York. And so DC and I visited that yesterday. Stunning! Such a vast number of exquisite prints, but a few stood out to me as described below:

This print depicts a cat looking out through the window of a courtesan's room at the free birds over Mt. Fuji, to the right is a rinsing bowl and a towel on the sill. I found this such a poignant image. Courtesans were often sold into the sex trade and must have had a harsh life. The bowl and towel allude to this and the cat looking out at free birds seems to mirror the captivity of the courtesans.

By comparison this depiction of a shrine in a snowy landscape has an open fresh feeling in which I can almost feel the cool air and hear the snow and the silence. When I put all the above works together like this I see a search for transcendence and the traps we can fall into.


Staying with landscape the following three prints showing falling water are so powerful in their depiction of the force and scale of the water. Again, to me the final one has a transcendent quality, but maybe that's just because it reminds me of the way I've seen the nineth picture of the ten ox herding pictures, reaching the source, drawn. I'd like to know more about the third print.

 

 

 

The following print is of a folklore character, Kintaro, a heroic boy and his bear. He is shown watching a fight between two mountain spirits. There's a wonderful softness in the bear, a weariness in the boy and to me this is an intimate study in how we humans loose our basic warmth and humanity and make unnecessary war.

For the colour, texture (I can almost feel and smell the cast metal) and composition the following is just delightful. The white and red is a tea bowl and wrapping paper:

From Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's One Hundered Aspects of the Moon the following are so intimate and touch our longing deeply:

 The loyal servant watches the princes escape disguised as women, by moonlight.

 An old woman in the moonlight.

 A man drives his boat through high seas in the moonlight.

 That's the leg of a daemon this poor fellow has been wrestling with in the moonlight!

For the power in the fire, the night, the ships and the sea:

 

And for the playfulness and joy of the artist:

All these images require close and careful consideration, they're intimate, display our nature and are immensely skilful. If I had a mind to I could write about sex, spirituality, nature, human nature and so much more that is conveyed by these works. But really they speak for themselves and all I'd be doing is writing my own story. What I admire in the works and in those who have skill in the visual arts is that they take the messy wonder of life and show it for the splendour it wants to be, not divorced from the difficult but not absent. Each of the works above is rich in what is being conveyed, yet succinct. Some are challenging but all sit well with the other art forms DC and I have seen over the past week. One print I didn't photo but which nicely ties the week back to itself was one of a Komusō, a wandering non-monastic lay Buddhist from the warrior-class who were noted for wearing straw basket hats called tengai and playing the shakuhachi. The shakuhachi musician who's concert we attended entered the room wearing traditional costume and a straw hat. And I like that Sadao Hasegawa, a twentieth century Japanese graphic artist, was the link to an exhibition of Edo period woodblock. There were so many more wonderful prints, here are but a few.

 

Indigo

Last night's Prog at the BBC on BBC4 was excellent. Compilation of some of the greatest names and British bands in prog rock, filmed live in the BBC studios in the early 1970s. Featuring stadium names like Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake and Palmer alongside much-loved bands of the era, including Caravan, Family, Atomic Rooster and more. Found myself wondering if my resonance was just nostalgia for the '70's (ie pre Thatcher) but decided not. Then today DC and I visited the Granary gallery, Berwick to see the Joan Eardley: The Sea at Catterline exhibition also excellent. On the drive up and stopping for coffee DC and I continued a conversation about consciousness, basically as per previous post.

The following pictures are some from the exhibition:

 Turner came to mind but this has a quality of its own.

 

The sea seems to be about to run off the canvas.

Powerful sense of shore.

Raw white water.

The quality of the indigo is perfect in capturing the sky and sea.

Summer.

The bay, white water and elevation.

The pastel of indigo caught my attention - indigo is such a remarkable colour. Back in 2013 I wrote about the colour blue, its spacious, mind like, portal quality... And connecting with Prog at the BBC, the consciousness conversation, a sense from the '70's when I was a child, a certain quality almost like 'what is your nature, your particular flavour, what through you is being expressed?'... came to me... and does the name indigo capture that? I find it does in part.

Is there a hard problem?

Last Sunday I met a guy at dancing who has come to the UK to study / work with a respected name in panpsychism. One of the elements of this which he indicated he found appealing was that it might offer a way for people to treat the environment as not something to be (ab)used but rather as something which is in some sense conscious and thus not fundamentally different from ourselves. The basic warmth and understanding in this sentiment I resonate with and it stands irrespective of panpsychism's contribution to our understanding of consciousness I would say. The encounter made me reflect on various ways of looking at consciousness. I understand that panpsychism is a way to 'get over' the so called 'hard problem' - how does the physical neurology of a human being result in our conscious lived experience? But for me this 'problem' arises because of the assumption that things exist on their own as separate. And that these separate things are interacting and that this way of seeing still leaves some kind of gap in the explanation of consciousness which requires to be filled with a quality or effectively another thing like concept which is at play and is distributed as an aspect of smaller things. I would say that what IS is a totality beyond our full knowing as we are limited to paradigms afforded by our physical body. From the body we can know paradigms, those paradigms extending over the visceral and our conceptual frameworks - biology, physics, philosophy etc. For me reality is a process; things arrise interdependently and it's meaningless to separate an experience from the experiencer. Things appear in everyday experience. But when we look closely their roots go back beyond what can be named. This includes what we think of as ourselves. To me when we see this the 'hard problem' of consciousness disappears because the physical neurology and the experiences, etc. are all interdependently arising as the unfolding expression of what IS and the totality of that is not fully accessible from the paradigms available to us. Yet at the same time all that is in our reality is the full expression of that reality. Everything else is conceptual addition, not separate and thus part of that reality. The concept of consciousness is in this regard, the reason for the 'hard problem'. Whereas, like the diamonds in Indra's net, made of the reflections themselves, there IS but there is no external position, and the limits afforded by our body determine the reflections. Our body being an aspect of those wider reflections. In this sense the sentiment that we should treat the environment as no different from ourselves is entirely accurate since what we think of as separate is actually all the same process. The Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao! Captured (I hope) in recent poems:

Twinkling

Indra's net, diamonds of the images they reflect
Movement cut through with stillness
Partial, image closes to itself
Time leaps up to fill the space
Sits in its own reflection, a twinkle in the diamonds
Reflected in partial's eye it calls
Hearing, partial folds and widens
Like time, in its own reflection
Lost it seeks the diamond
First through its own folds, then other's
It craves the field between folds
Meeting it becomes less and more
Reflected in other it widens
But time's eternal call sits in its eye twinkling in the diamonds

Flash

In each spark the lark ascending
Flesh of stardust betwixt heaven and earth
Separation and Oneness pretend to be opposites
Child of the Tao and father of the mind yet seen only in its eye
Circle of becoming and maker of time
Expelled from the womb, briefest flash
Who is the dweller and who is the home?
Mind in body or body in mind?
Fed by the earth and the mind's penetration
With each thing this body-mind mingles, to reach for tomorrow, tomorrow, today
Desire's kaleidoscope throws out its colours: come, expand
Eros in his manifold ways mingles in our mind, mingles in our body
Come tomorrow be with me today
The path shapes the foot and the foot shapes the path
Come tomorrow be with me today
Flesh grants love's majesty through all its forms
Come, come be with me in so many ways
Spark! I hear thee calling, who is the dweller who is the home?
Spark, you are the dweller you are the home
The wave in the water the light in the moon
Yet we are suspended, oh majesty in our firmament
Suspended yet rolling: each turn of the wheel
Sing lark, sing! Each turn of the wheel
Circle of becoming and maker of time
In each heart-mind bright moonlight dances on the ocean

I hope that the reader will 'see' the hard problem melting away.

Twinkling

Indra's net, diamonds of the images they reflect

Movement cut through with stillness

Partial, image closes to itself

Time leaps up to fill the space

Sits in its own reflection, a twinkle in the diamonds

Reflected in partial's eye it calls

Hearing, partial folds and widens

Like time, in its own reflection

Lost it seeks the diamond

First through its own folds, then other's

It craves the field between folds

Meeting it becomes less and more

Reflected in other it widens

But time's eternal call sits in its eye twinkling in the diamonds