Tall tales
My previous entry, nearly a year old now, looked at the stories of my childhood and the way they interwove with the various places I found myself. The story has seen a few chapters added since then- a two month trip to India, learning mud building at the Earth Institute in Auroville, collecting hippy pee to water the permaculture patch at Sadhana Forest, picking cotton buds from bin bottoms as karma yoga at Amma's ashram, early rises and bending breaths at Shivananda ashram in Trivandrum, tutting at the tourist dives in Varkala, starring in a luggage advert in Kochi, squealing at the apocalyptic fireworks of the Pooram festival, climbing the tea hills of Munnar, listening to the stories of those bulldozed from their squatted homes in the ruins of Hampi...I spent my summer on my bike with the Otesha Project- weeks spent cycling from Monmouthshire via Stroud, Gloucester, Cirencester and Bristol, delivering workshops and plays about various sustainability issues- energy, food, money, media and fashion. I ummed and ahhed over whether to take up a year-long permaculture course or whether to study for the MA that I ended up opting for, and am now in two minds as to whether to continue. I shall not delve into this rather boring tome right now- the summary should suffice. But I have, as always, flirted with the option of Not Doing what I've cut myself out to do and, to this end, have been visiting friends beginning to inhabit a beautiful, rough-cut farmhouse nestled in the rugged hills around Abergwesyn Common, west of Builth Wells. Lovely boys- artistic, caring, unhappy with the way things are going in the world of work, cities, governmentality and welfare cuts. They spin their own alternative yarns, weaving visions of former ways of life with the prophetic visions of a lifetime of partying, deprogramming and networking with the underground family. I have had my own paragraphs in these upside-down tales, but I have worried somewhat about some of the narratives. Conspiratorial, apocalyptic and edgy, I have seen and heard some 'facts' whose proferring oozes intransigence, tinged with moments of holocaust denialism and anti-semitism. "It's not religious Jews we're talking about". But you still said "Jews". From evil corporations and corrupt governments (I get that) to aliens and lizard elites. David Icke and his ilk seem to provide a space for a resurgence of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and refuse a space for scientific consensus, or even rational thinking ("they're all in cahoots-something-about-quantum-consciousness"). I worry.
From chemtrails to calm. My life has been one of zipping in and out of the sense of being part of a meaningful constellation, but I enjoy putting the pieces together and lying back in a postmodern haze. Today, for instance, the word 'inuksuk' entered my field of attention from two wholly different sources- the Mental Wellbeing Impact Toolkit, glanced at in my patchy reading for my course team task (to survey Adult Community Learning in Herefordshire) and on a speaker bio for a conference on Jungian psychology at Cardiff University (google: 'Jung studies UK'). A wikipedia type-in brought up images that I'd imagined when looking at the OS map for Abergwesyn and its surrounds- dotted with recumbent standing stones...as well as knobbly creations lining the beaches at Boom festival. Resembling a cairn and, in it's simplest form, just a stone stood up on its long end, the name means 'something which acts for or performs the function of a human being'. Constellations rush in- Dave Marshall at the Bulmer Foundation talking to me about apple trees in orchards acting like caring human beings. Metaphor, artistic expression and simple manipulation of the environment to express solidarity, intention, presence that extends beyond the physical form of a human acting. Gleaning these constellations, adding them to my toolkit, makes me feel real- learning from a course doesn't- it makes me feel like a pawn. Disobeying seems order of the day- things seem to make sense when I'm alone, constructing my own visions, piecing together the beautiful jigsaw that is the imagery and words and potentials in everything, but pulled together into coherence by an act of my own will. Alistair McIntosh, a key inspiration this year, writes in Soil and Soul of this process of joining-dots, con-stellating the bits and pieces of knowledge that, arranged and represented by your own unique powers of communication, become relevant and impacting- your work, your production. Drama, song, art, knitted socks- this is what I want to be doing- teasing out the links between things, not spelling them out in a storm of controversy and claims of scientific rectitude...
From chemtrails to calm. My life has been one of zipping in and out of the sense of being part of a meaningful constellation, but I enjoy putting the pieces together and lying back in a postmodern haze. Today, for instance, the word 'inuksuk' entered my field of attention from two wholly different sources- the Mental Wellbeing Impact Toolkit, glanced at in my patchy reading for my course team task (to survey Adult Community Learning in Herefordshire) and on a speaker bio for a conference on Jungian psychology at Cardiff University (google: 'Jung studies UK'). A wikipedia type-in brought up images that I'd imagined when looking at the OS map for Abergwesyn and its surrounds- dotted with recumbent standing stones...as well as knobbly creations lining the beaches at Boom festival. Resembling a cairn and, in it's simplest form, just a stone stood up on its long end, the name means 'something which acts for or performs the function of a human being'. Constellations rush in- Dave Marshall at the Bulmer Foundation talking to me about apple trees in orchards acting like caring human beings. Metaphor, artistic expression and simple manipulation of the environment to express solidarity, intention, presence that extends beyond the physical form of a human acting. Gleaning these constellations, adding them to my toolkit, makes me feel real- learning from a course doesn't- it makes me feel like a pawn. Disobeying seems order of the day- things seem to make sense when I'm alone, constructing my own visions, piecing together the beautiful jigsaw that is the imagery and words and potentials in everything, but pulled together into coherence by an act of my own will. Alistair McIntosh, a key inspiration this year, writes in Soil and Soul of this process of joining-dots, con-stellating the bits and pieces of knowledge that, arranged and represented by your own unique powers of communication, become relevant and impacting- your work, your production. Drama, song, art, knitted socks- this is what I want to be doing- teasing out the links between things, not spelling them out in a storm of controversy and claims of scientific rectitude...