Category: Uncategorized

December… What can we say?

In other years I have wittered about suspending disbelief, magical jingles, tingles of spicy tonics, simple riches, and hope…

Somehow this December feels different. More real.

This year saw us sell up and move house. We’ve reviewed habits, routines and rituals, we pulled the metaphorical cloth from the table to see what stayed in place. We spent a while putting things back on the table. As I said back then, you realise that you build life around many things, objects, spaces, habits, routines and rituals. We take a lot for granted. We are very grateful.

“…Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.” Ovid

We have had a good year. I have no specific words. Just lots of resonating good things to be thankful for.

Here’s to the reality of spirit; to flavours, colours, images, sounds, thoughts and feelings…
Less fabrication, polish, and plastic, less catalogued lifestyle, less click and collect culture.
Here’s to the colour-soaked spirit of things.

Sorry, but I have to come back to my daily ride as an often wonder-infused grounding leveller. So often I am blessed by a combination of simple things.

The simplest smile from a man in a red hat.
The giggles from a child as he holds his mum’s hand.
The ‘Hi ya!’ from the family as they leave their flat.
The morning puja.
The nod of hello, a man in yellow, on patrol.
The smiles as the boy and his dad ride their bikes.
The wave of the lady that helps cross the road.
The morning welcome.
The chatter of the ladies on the fluorescent daily run.
The ‘morning’ from the girl with the curly dog.
The warmth of the morning sun.
The warmth of community.
The courtesy of the man in the green hatchback.
The eyes that smile as they wait for their bus.
The fellow people that you see every day.
The strength of the morning.
…

As my nana used to sing, “count your blessings, name them one by one…”

Though I love the memories and sentiment of the song, I think the joy of it is actually not to tot up your blessings… Start to count or realise a few blessings, and that’s enough, surely. I think it’s a song of thanks for the now.
To stop and breathe and truly feel alive… is perhaps enough.
Life’s all relative, and we’re only as good as our last attempt, but ‘the now’ is always a good time to be alive, if you can, try to feel the spirit of things.
If it’s not working for you, then peace be with you, hold on, the tempest will pass.

No doubt there are challenges ahead, but at Christmas, I hope we have a chance to pause, take a big breath… hold it… exhale… pause… and smile.

We wish you Peace.

Here’s to more celebration of our spirit, one by one.

…and that was also Movember.

Now to let it go.

The first day of Advent.

What can one say about the activity of fashioning a moustache? Cease striving?

A few staff at work did the same, to help draw attention to the Movember charity and it’s concerns over male health awareness. It drew a few comments and laughs. And perhaps made one person think.
Nothing against the moustache – my Papa had a fine moustache all of his fine life and that’s how I fondly remember him. But alas, facial hair is not really me. Of course hair full-stop is not really me, lol. Then again what is me?

We construct an idea of our self. Others see us in a certain way.

How long would it take for a moustached Jules to become the accepted (if unconventional) norm? We build our lives and create our culture.

The things we create are indeed often something to celebrate. Our industries of service, sport, productivity, care, art, science, entertainment, community support etc are what humanity has become. Yes, much falls short of ideal, and perhaps some constructs should be reconsidered and re-evaluated. But yes, there is much to be proud of and to celebrate – any excuse, for a wholesome party!

But perhaps behind the moustaches, under and inside out designs and monuments, is an essence that keeps us alive – is the essence of what matters.

Perhaps behind the accoutrements that we collect and enjoy is something more precious.

This year we’ve experienced untimely illness and the deaths of several friends and acquaintances. We know of challenges near us that highlight the messy side of our world. A reminder that behind the faces and things that become familiar and routine is a fragile humanity.

So as I remove the Mov, at the start of Advent 2019, we pause, breathe, relax, smile and celebrate an essence that’s lies behind every good thing ever created.

Here’s to a more honest humanity, here’s to the stuff behind the creativity, here’s to the essence behind the ambition.

Here’s to the advent of new things.

I love Sunday Mornings. Space, to stop, pause and listen to relative silence (don’t mention the tinnitus).

I love thinking, and I’m often a victim of the paralysis of analysis. However, I love sensing the glimpse and sparkle of the gap between the building blocks. I love the moment when the information and advice and smorgasbord of culture and consumables tumbles and the Bable tower partially collapses a tad and we a left with something closer to the grounding breath.

I was cocktail reading recently, juggling ideas. “People need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant…” Yuval Noah Harari. Remembering Neil Postman’s ideas “People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not”…  And then Wendell Berry’s ideas where the trees, fields, birds, light (rocks & stones, birds of the air?) become doors to other things; grief, love, amazement, blessings…

Between the extremes that our word illuminates is glorious truth. Like me, we are not all blessed with ‘an extremely sunny temperament’, but inside it all, we can see True Colours. Those of you who know of me, may be surprised by my choice of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good as a threnodic epitaph – turned up loud.

Music is often my touchstone.

I can’t pretend to know much about music but I do love it. I sing in a choir and have played a few instruments, badly. I love the extremes music gives us. I was this week captured by sounds from both ends of the spectrum; by the Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs track ‘Cake of Light’, and then Tchaikovsky’s ‘Cherubic Hymn 1’.

Both tracks essentially vibrant in their own way.

Two recommendations: Check out Late Junction on Radio 4. And as a tonic, I love to dip into Soul Music on Radio 4 – often humanly sublime!

Harari says “you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much baggage with you.”  I agree with him “Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy”, but I question the need to run.

Stop, pause, breathe… put down your bed, and walk. As De Mello discussed; all is well, all is well… wake up from the nightmare, to the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. Perhaps.

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

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.

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.