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Persian Silk Tree

Persian Silk Tree – This is one of many we found in the Vendee area of France.

We first noticed the Persian Silk Tree when holidaying in Corfu. We also found it widespread in France. Its proper name is Albizia Julibrissin.

Persian Silk Tree – waiting for the bus in Kassiopi Corfu.

To us ‘Brits’ it might seem quite rare and exotic but in other countries it is widely found as an ornamental plant in parks and gardens. It has distinctive vivid pink and white blooms. They’re like feathers or needles and resemble something more akin to a Dr Seuss character than a flower. The fragrant blossoms attract bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

Its Persian name means “night sleeper”. Its leaves slowly close and bow during the night and during rain. In Japan its name means “sleeping tree”.

I love the idea of a massive vibrant conspicuous tree sleeping.

We liked it so much we’ve put it on the wall.

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A few weeks out…

Two weeks of adventure, yes relaxing, yes, exciting, but also exhausting. We reach for familiar tunes, comforting narratives and that elusive pilot to ease us back into harbour. The birds at home squawk a different squawk to those in rural France. So it’s to stories and thoughts that help us find our feet again. Familiar things, as well as fictional escapades, can act as footholds and resting places to find sanctuary while the sparkly dust of traveling settles.

The smell of the crowd, paint and powder, brighter lights and plastic promise are built up around us. Back in boxes, with keys and codes to pass through and gain access, so-called civilisation rattles and hums around us. We will try and hold on to the fresher air and cleaner lines of the natural. The stars and glowworms seemed more beautiful than the digital polish of contemporary consumable culture. A dash of fine coffee and a biscuit eases the contrast.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but last night I had a dream where everyone from my past ( quite possibly including you) met up at Lemon’s house and ate carrot cake and bacon, we all sang and danced, giggled and laughed, there was little inhibition, minimal anxiety, no expectation, no possessions, but an honest knowledge that we briefly knew each other. You may say I’m a dreamer, I do hope I’m not the only one…

Then I awoke with the song in my head, ‘On a wonderful day like today’. One of those songs we sang in a show as a teenager, happy days. “On a morning like this…”

Of course, said the jester, we share and invite others to reside in our world. We live as a cocktail of roles and characters. Our actions, our lives, taking on hints and suggestions from scripts and directions beyond our control… Yes, we are of course confident individuals, but when it comes to it we all subscribe, imbibe, consume and share others’ worlds.

A foreign culture and language can resonate an intoxicating nuance. Turning blue to bleu and red to rouge. Simple differences make the others’ customary things seem exotic, exciting, delightful and fun.

Can you picture, or even feel, the bluest sky, pin-sharp shadows on whitewashed walls, a lizard scurries beneath the Persian Albizia’s silky blooms. A bowl of grapes and a tall glass of iced tea… silence, except the wind…

We pop down the road to the bustling super-barn that stores bounteous delights. Lords and yacht-owners devise ludicrous luxuries; Crusty Crocs and Choco Boules, pop-wines and processed delicacies. And market people trade trinkets and trivia. Novelties might be purchased and imbued with meaning by travellers taking time-out from the mills, factories, and the familiar. Faced with abundant provisions, including a fine selection of Belgian biers, we relaxed and imbibed a jolly good holiday.

Without the need to discipline a routine our refocusing eyes journey and our minds race.

In the ancient village square, we encountered new people, novel ideas, new hopes, but essential to it all something akin to Nightingale’s vestigium reminds us of ghosts of yesteryear, old fears, old ideas and perhaps wiser elders. A newfound peace, albeit written on ancient parchments.

A new morning, waking to nature’s chorus, closed eyes might reach for new tunes and new narratives, new stories and thoughts. New escapades might invigorate, bright skies and sizzling seas soothe and delight…

But now back in harbour the crew need rest, familiar tunes, comforting narratives and a sense of that elusive pilot.

At home. Our dog looks with expectant eyes and gives me a lick. With a loving tweak, my wife whispers “pinch punch first of the month, no returns”. My daughter brings me a coffee, and a smile…
Utter joy.

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Conversation with constructions

So another trip to the homeland, and of course this instigates new old things to ruminate on.

While visiting the resting place (and hence archived memories) of my maternal grandparents, we discovered the gardens of Tremenheere a stone’s throw away. After a few hours exploring Tremenheere; combined with a day in a sunlit St Ives the previous day; I found myself, a backslidden Arts postgraduate, again toying with ideas of perception, shape, form and texture etc. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed thoughts of ‘Art’. The perception of Art can be fickle, subjective, and a culturally complex thing.

Tremenheere reignited thoughts about human constructions, decay, and the nature of life, and time. Thoughts about movement (dance & movement are also archived in my mind; I enjoyed the physical interactive elements of my studies as elemental to exploration of the human condition and artistic expression), movement and how change can make the subject seem exposed and perhaps become vulnerable, fragile, yet stronger and powerful…

The camouflage of routine and ritual can be broken by movement. Growth breaks shapes and makes new marks. As a creative thinker or creative artist, we might have an urge to make marks, create images, reshape noise. In thin places like Tremenheere, and for me Cornwall has many ‘essential’ places, we can to a degree silence some of the saturating noise of our culture and the echoing reverberations of our ever-present infotainment mediums.

The cleansing invigorating properties of art that works, especially when found in thin spaces, can be remarkable. I find that when combined with nature, good art might resound dark-night, bright-light, harmony, melody, discord, and new narratives that might both heal and/or shudder.

However, I return again to the fragile idea that no matter how exciting our creations and constructions, interaction with our natural wild world always surpasses the podiumed or framed human constructions we create. Conversation with the natural world, interaction between our individual creations, combination and respectful sharing of our endeavors perhaps is the god we might celebrate and learn from.

 

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Let them make cake.

Cake, in a post-cake world.

This year I have found the emotional narratives of spring and specifically the Easter festival specifically vibrant. Like when you can’t see properly ‘cause of bright shiny stuff.

Even when you spend years meandering with deconstruction, experimental creative thinking, and the post-postmodern full-emptiness of current enlightenments, our past colours our world, (thankfully). Our upbringing, the stories and things at the hearts of ourselves reinforce our world whether we want it or not. Emotional narratives pull us strongly.

When I try to ignore some of the more imaginative and cakey ideas our culture entertains, I scrabble for somewhere else to place value. God said, “forgive them, they know not what they do”. I may not know what we do, but I think we still need to do stuff, or else there’s not much left. As August said, “If you don’t like where you are just picture where you want to be.”

Some of the pictures we live with make it more worthwhile. The stories we tell, and the rituals we enjoy, the treasures we cherish, the stuff that binds us to others … often it does not make total sense. Often we don’t know quite why we do what we do, but we need to do it, and let it be. We may not always agree with seemingly trivial warm and fuzzy stuff, but perhaps its these seemingly unimportant things that we need, to let us all be.

So when I ignore most of the trinketry of Easter this year, seeing my sister’s simnel cake (from a distance, via the magic of Facetime) lights up a deep narrative. And so, we also make cake. Okay, ours is not a real simnel cake, it has a rich mix of fruits and spice and a topping of marzipan and ours has many confused disciples on the top. But it still tastes great!

So this Easter, thanks go to pictures, stories and stuff that we use to colour in the spaces, join dots and make cakes in a post-cake world.

A belated happy Easter to you.

 

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Movement

Some thoughts on movement.

And so we moved..

We all move, all day, but when are we really moved?

After 14 years creating habits, routines and rituals we pulled the metaphorical cloth from the table to see what stayed in place. We had a mad half hour in January which turned into moving house in March – Like you do.

Over an exhausting 48hours, with much needed help from Dad & Uncle, we actual put everything that was ‘on the table’ so to speak in to six van-loads and transported it a few miles down the road. We will be putting things back on the table for a few months.

 

I count this as the 12th house I recall having lived in. Never have I lived in one place more than about 7 years, until the last 14 years that is. After 14 years, the initial rearrangement of a place to inhabit has been a moving event. You suddenly realise that you have built a life around many things, objects, spaces, and as I say, habits, routines and rituals. We take a lot for granted, we do a lot unconsciously, and having to carry on as usual when all the usual things are not in their usual places can be disconcerting

But we rejoice at a new table, hopefully a new altar in the world, a fresh space to grow.

I pray the routines, rituals and habits that might evolve will be good. To quote Deepak Chopra “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
And something more antique from Ovid “All things change, nothing is extinguished.  There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.”

More moving for me is I recall my Cornish Nana had a scullery. We now have a scullery… “And you will keep singing as the days go by.”

 

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Joy and meaning.

Joy and meaning…

 

I was recently sharing in one of Brian Draper’s helpful email series’.  This one mentioned Dr. Alastair McAlpine’s profound observations gained from working with seriously ill children: “What terminally ill children taught this doctor about how to live”. “…the so-called small things were the ones that turned out to have enormous significance at the end.”

Obviously, it’s not the same, but sharing our house with two children, and working in a school, the simplicity of a refreshing childlike perspective is often pricelessly gifted to us. Yes, it might be difficult, it is difficult, to see past our cares, our worries, and the pressures and expectations our culture advertises. Also, the childlike growing teen is learning to fit in with our culture and testing our constructs – the growing-child’s behaviours are often challenging. What we are talking about here is an essential childlike spirit… Perhaps.

But it’s not just children that can realise a more honest way. What simple truths might we discover, as Brian says “if we as grown-ups, can subtract the ephemera of adulthood, to enter life more fully…” ?  Alastair McAlpine writes “The kids were not hung up on “stuff” … the happiest, most meaningful moments were simple ones that … embraced the importance of human connection”.

As adults, we engineer the question ‘What brings you joy and meaning?’, something children perhaps don’t ask but just do, be and are. They naturally(?) do, be, are, and embrace their joy and meaning in just being alive. Perhaps again, it’s that simple process of pause, stop, yield, relax, breathe…

Riding to work recently, I slowed my bike to let two children and their father, also cycling their bikes, pass on the track in front of me. Unwarranted, they both individually proclaimed with joy and meaning “Thank you!”, “Thank you!”… The simple honest natural(?) action really made my day, I couldn’t help but smile – in fact further down the track I smiled and audibly laughed – happy daze!

The lack of interaction, as well as the intolerant and often ignore-ant interaction, we so often experience as adults, is bathed away by the joy and meaning that a simpler attitude (or lack of ‘attitude’) can bring.

Last month I shared Edward De Bono’s thoughts “A Child … enjoys the use of his mind just as he enjoys the use of his body as he slides down a helter-skelter or bounces on a trampoline”

Often (and especially on my commute) the happiest, most meaningful moments are: the simple ones that … embrace the importance of human connection.

I am reminded of a moment a few years back: the Morning Puja.
“The day was still grey and the bin lorry ahead was trailing musty decay but the bin men smiled and life or something inexplicable filled the air.“

Pause, stop, yield, relax, breathe… give thanks … with someone.