One Day In Washington

One Day in Washington

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind. Bob Dylan Idiot Wind

The White House doesn’t seem so white today,

more a rainy shade of gray,

and Lincoln looks more serious than usual

inside his classical Memorial,

and Washington’s great Monument stands proud

although its apex hides within a cloud,

and cops and bikers sweat, and kids play ball

along the walkways of the National Mall,

and everyone is here, the sage, the fool,

casting their hopes in the Reflecting Pool,

some jeer and some are silent, some applaud

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Lord,

some think there isn’t very much to fear

but fear itself, and distance is not near,

and everything can be replaced, they say,

until the next time it is blown away

by idiot winds, and others, fast and loose,

play games of chance with executioner’s noose

and pardoner’s hand, and deathly voodoo doll,

from New York City to the Capitol,

and all is still a grayer shade of white

and the hard rain falls long into the night.

Ten Of The Best: Bob Dylan (10)

I got the pork chops, she got the pie

She ain't no angel and neither am I

Two of my favourite Dylan lines ever — apart from all the numerous others. 

This is a great video montage to a soundtrack of Thunder on the Mountain, the first song on Dylan's thirty-second studio album, Modern Times, released in 2006.

What can I say about Dylan that hasn't been said a million times and in a million ways before? What I will say is that whatever you or the world are going through (emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically, physically, existentially) he's nailed that experience somewhere in one of his songs — perhaps in the whole song, perhaps in just a few words or lines. Where else can you find that except in the Tao Te Ching, the Holy Bible, Shakespeare or Winnie-the-Pooh?

Thunder on the mountain, fires on the moon

There's a ruckus in the alley and the sun will be here soon

Today's the day, gonna grab my trombone and blow

Well, there's hot stuff here and it's everywhere I go

For the complete lyrics to this song click here.

Bath

Before leaving Somerset, we spent a day in Bath, or Aquae Sulis, as the Romans called it. Before the Romans, the ancient Britons worshipped Sulis here — a life-giving mother goddess, guardian of the hot springs. The Romans merged Sulis with Minerva (who was also equated with the Greek goddess Athena, and is one of my favourite goddesses): deity of wisdom, music, poetry, weaving, crafts, magic, medicine, trade and commerce — kind of covering all options. Minerva-Athena is one of the daughters of Jupiter-Zeus, and is often depicted with an owl. The photo shows the Roman Baths at Bath, which have been impressively excavated, and are one of Britain's biggest cultural tourist attractions. In a bid to avoid the crowds, we arrived as soon as the doors had opened.

Overlooking the Baths is Bath Abbey, the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul — which used to be a Benedictine monastery in medieval times. It has been heavily restored.

Detail from the Baths' upper southern wall, which are post-Roman. The older bits are the lower bits.

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks. HENRY MILLER. But this one ain't going nowhere. I'm sure he or she would rather stay in the glass case than being pushed and shoved by a million camera-wielding, smartphone-touting tourists. 

There's lots to see in the Roman Baths Museum. I think this carving was captioned 'Three Women', but I can't remember for sure. Perhaps it depicts the mythological Wyrd (Weird) Sisters, developed by Shakespeare as the Three Witches in Macbeth — though they don't particularly look like witches. On the other hand, they may be the Three Fates of Roman religion, the Parcae: Nona, Decima and Morta. Or perhaps they are simply three women with very round heads and very thin necks.

The partially reconstructed pediment from Bath's Roman temple of Sulis Minerva. Scholars think that the head in the centre is a Gorgon's head. Just to the right of the head, tucked into the corner, is an owl, symbol of Minerva.

The gilt bronze head of Sulis Minerva — probably from a statue of the goddess which stood in the temple. Only two other fragments of gilt bronze sculptures from Roman Britain have ever been found.

Pulteney Bridge over the river Avon in Bath, designed by Robert Adam and completed in 1774. It has shops along both sides of its span. I don't know about you, but what came immediately to my mind was the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. 

From the sublime to . . . well, the sublime. It's Ronnie Wood's guitar on display in the window of a Bath commercial art gallery! There were also his mate Bob Dylan's paintings for sale inside. 

The Pilgrim's Way (4): Ain't Talkin', Just Walkin'

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

BOB DYLAN Blowin’ in the Wind

Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood

Let the smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood

Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves

Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace

Let me die in my footsteps

Before I go down under the ground.

BOB DYLAN Let Me Die in My Footsteps

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail

Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail . . .

Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line

Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.

BOB DYLAN Shelter from the Storm

The tempest may howl and the loud thunder roar,

And gathering storms may arise,

But calm is my feeling, at rest is my soul,

The tears are all wiped from my eyes . . .

Go tell my companion and children most dear


To weep not for me, now I'm gone


The same hand that led me through seas most severe


Has kindly assisted me home.

BF WHITE and ADGER M PACE Lone Pilgrim (Sung by BOB DYLAN on World Gone Wrong)

For Mr. Dylan there’s no difference now between an itinerant bluesman and a haggard pilgrim. 'I practice a faith that’s been long abandoned,' he sings. 'Ain’t no altars on this long and lonesome road.'

THE NEW YORK TIMES 20 Aug 2006 The Pilgrim’s Progress of Bob Dylan

The only thing I knew how to do 
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew.

BOB DYLAN Tangled up in Blue

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’ . . .

BOB DYLAN Ain’t Talkin’

You have to realise you are constantly in a state of becoming.

BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan exhibition at the Halcyon Gallery, New Bond Street, London, 2013-14.

Thanks to Am at Talking 37th Dream (Rumors of Peace) for inspiring this post.

To be continued . . .

Huck's Tune

Well, I wandered alone through a desert of stone
And I dreamt of my future wife
My sword's in my hand and I'm next in command
In this version of death called life

My plate and my cup are right straight up
I took a rose from the hand of a child
When I kiss your lips, the honey drips
I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

Everyday we meet on any old street
And you're in your girlish prime
The short and the tall are coming to the ball
I go there all the time

Behind every tree, there's something to see
The river is wider than a mile
I tried you twice, you can't be nice
I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

Here come the nurse with money in her purse
Here come the ladies and men
You push it all in and you've no chance to win
You play 'em on down to the end

I'm laying in the sand, getting a sunshine tan
Moving along, riding in style
From my toes to my head you knock me dead
I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

I count the years and I shed no tears
I'm blinded to what might have been
Nature's voice makes my heart rejoice
Play me the wild song of the wind

I found hopeless love in the room above
When the sun and the weather were mild
You're as fine as wine, I ain't handing you no line
I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

All the merry little elves can go hang themselves
My faith is as cold as can be
I'm stacked high to the roof and I'm not without proof
If you don't believe me, come see

You think I'm blue, I think so too
In my words you'll find no guile
The game's gotten old, the deck's gone cold
And I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

The game's gotten old, the deck's gone cold
I'm gonna have to put you down for a while

BOB DYLAN

London: (2) Not Any Old Iron

I've been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country where you could breathe it and smell it every day. And I've always worked with it in one form or another.

Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.

BOB DYLAN

I left Grosvenor Square and walked the short distance to New Bond Street, where the Halcyon Gallery is hosting Mood Swings, an exhibition of Bob Dylan's sculpted iron gates. My main reason for visiting London was to see this. I was not disappointed. These are beautiful art works, the gates enclosing a welded tracery of satisfyingly composed 'found' metal objects, such as wheels and cogs, springs and horseshoes, hammers and nails, chains and spanners, workmen's tools of all kinds. They are decorative rather than raw and disturbing — with some whimsical and autobiographical elements thrown in, such as a dog, a guitar, a treble clef symbol and a small buffalo (his logo on each work) — but this is surely Dylan's intention: the whole forms a nostalgic memorial to and celebration of the Minnesotan Iron Range country of his youth, and his hometown, Hibbing, site of the biggest opencast iron ore mine in the world.    

Downstairs I was surprised and delighted to find a collection of framed, poster-size silkscreen prints representing Dylan's Revisionist Art Series. Here Dylan has fun with the covers of famous American magazines such as Time or Playboy, cutting and pasting headlines from here and images from there in a surreal and satirical mashup. (This technique of recontextualisation recalled some of his songs, his stream-of-consciousness prose poem Tarantula and his film Renaldo and Clara.) He's debunking our cultural icons in these screen prints, but in an affectionate not bilious way. There's also a display of rusty, bullet-holed car doors, each attributed to a Depression-era gangster. 

Finally, upstairs and in a section of gallery across the street, you come across an exhibition of Dylan's paintings and drawings  — The Drawn Blank Series (1989-92) — and his prints — Side Tracks, a series of 327 prints (each hand embellished by Dylan), and Drawn Blank Graphics (2008-13), a series of limited edition prints (most of them sold). The subject of much of this art is the transient nature of life on the road: train tracks, city scenes, café stools, fleeting encounters with women.

Dylan himself has said that he draws 'to relax and refocus a restless mind'. While his style can seem a little awkward and derivative — you detect the strong influence of artists such as Chagall, Dufy, Van Gogh and Warhol, for example — I did enjoy his paintings more than I ever have done before. He does have a keen eye for colour and composition. And it was good to see these artworks 'in the flesh', rather than in reproduced form, and good also to find them alongside the reworked magazine covers and the gate sculptures. It really brought home how Dylan is impelled and adventurous enough to experiment with different forms and means of artistic expression. When you consider the songs as well, and the storytelling element within them, all these separate strands link together and cohere.  

Back on the gallery's ground floor the directors were schmoozing with the buyers and dealers, though apparently most of the iron works had already been sold. I bought a paperback copy of the Mood Swings catalogue (which was later stolen) and asked one of the long-blonde-haired, six-inch-black-heeled assistants if Dylan had visited. 'Yes, he came late one evening.'

'Did you meet him?' 

'No, sadly not, only the directors were there!' 

'Did he like how you'd displayed his stuff?' 

'Oh, yes, I think so.' 

Then I stepped back outside, past the doorman, and into the polluted and expensive air of New Bond Street, with its Cartier and Chanel, its Asprey and its Dior, its Ferragamo and its Alexander McQueen.

Well the winds in Chicago have torn me to shreds

Reality has always had too many heads

Some things last longer than you think they will

Some kind of things you can never kill

Though it's you, and you only, I'm singin' about

But you can't see in and it's hard looking out

I'm twenty miles out of town and Cold Irons bound.

BOB DYLAN Cold Irons Bound

Ring Them Bells

This post is dedicated to blog friend Am (Amanda) from the American North West, one of my most loyal and long-standing blog readers. Am is a big Bob Dylan fan, like myself. She is a talented artist and craftsperson, practises yoga, has a cat called Oboe and has just bought an autoharp. She also has a blog with one of the best blog titles ever: Talking 37th Dream (Rumors Of Peace). How cool is that?

Tempest

Bob Dylan and his band live in Bologna, 2006. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

One minute before the day of the release of Bob Dylan's thirty-fifth studio album, Tempest, listening to the Internet-available taster track and first single, Duquesne Whistle, becomes a sacred act.

Believe in the holy contour of life. JACK KEROUAC Belief And Technique For Modern Prose

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here. SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse. SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

I long to hear the story of your life, which must / Take the ear strangely. SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in it! SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine. SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, / Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. / Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments / Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices... SHAKESPEARE The Tempest

Now I will believe / That there are unicorns... SHAKESPEARE The Tempest 

He not busy being born is busy dying. BOB DYLAN It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Plastic

Disillusioned words like bullets bark / As human gods aim for their mark / Make everything from toy guns that spark / To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark / It’s easy to see without looking too far / That not much is really sacred BOB DYLAN It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Broken lines, broken strings / Broken threads, broken springs / Broken idols, broken heads / People sleeping in broken beds / Ain’t no use jiving Ain’t no use joking / Everything is broken BOB DYLAN Everything Is Broken

Despite our present-day, heightened eco-awarness and our current investment in recyclables and renewables, it's a sobering fact that there are still millions of tonnes of plastic floating in our seas and oceans, that the earth beneath our feet is stuffed full of plastic rubbish, and that the stomachs of many of our seabirds and cetaceans resemble plastic junkyards. Our messy and destructive human footprint is everywhere.

Though, in this poem, 'plastic' takes on a wider, metaphorical meaning: the plasticity of the artificial, the superficial, the inauthentic, the enervated, the meretricious, the unholy. Yes, the commercialisation of Christmas seems to have got to me as usual, folks. I tried to call on Milton, Eliot, even Simon Armitage for constructive guidance, but I've ended up being influenced by Dylan and Dr. Seuss yet again. Not to mention Ray Davies. Oh well, some of us may be destined to remain at the bucket shop end of poetry (and that's a plastic bucket, of course).

plastic world

plastic dog and plastic cat
plastic mouse and plastic rat
plastic flower plastic tree
plastic far as we can see
plastic ice and plastic snow
plastic everywhere we go
plastic death and plastic birth
plastic all around the earth

plastic smile and plastic frown

plastic king with plastic crown
plastic Adam plastic rib
plastic Jesus plastic crib
plastic bird and plastic beast
plastic wise men from the east
plastic shepherds and their flock
plastic chicken plastic cock
plastic sex and plastic love
plastic in the sky above
plastic in the ground beneath
plastic tits and plastic teeth
plastic parents plastic kids
plastic eyes with plastic lids
plastic boy and plastic girl
get me out
of this plastic world

The Books In My Life (2)

I've seen Bob Dylan in concert around thirty times - which must make me rather more than the average fan. Fanatic may be a fairer description. The first time was at Earls Court in June 1978. We queued all night and half the next day for tickets. This was Dylan's first UK appearance in ages and London (where we were living then) rocked with excitement and expectation. The last time was at Nottingham's Capital FM Arena on 11 October this year. Although Dylan was, for him, energetic, communicative even - he stage-walked quite a bit instead of hiding away behind a keyboard - I found the gig disappointing and alienating. The music was hammeringly loud and unsubtle, almost devilish. And his guitar, keyboard and harmonica playing teetered on the edge of embarrassment. I may not go and see him again. But, as Am reminded me in a recent comment she left on my blog, he's been fading into his own parade for a while now.

All this by way of explanation why I own so many goddam Bob Dylan books. They've been begged, stolen, borrowed, gifted - occasionally even bought. You might spot the odd Neil Young, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Picasso (uh, how did he get there?) on these shelves - but essentially it's just Dylan, Dylan, Dylan.

Bob Dylan Was Here

Between Kinsale and Bantry lies the small town of Clonakilty. We stopped for lunch at De Barra's and took a brief nostalgia trip. This bar and music venue will forever be associated with Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix's bass player. Noel played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience from the band's inception in 1966 until 1969. In 1972 he retreated to Clonakilty in West Cork and remained there till his death - from a haemorrhage caused by cirrohsis of the liver - in 2003. Enlarge the pic to see the Noel Redding plaque in the doorway ...

Inside the pub, the guy in the checked shirt is talking about a Bob Dylan gig he went to in Cork on 16 June this year ...

Among the many photos on the pub wall, there's one of Bob with his arm round Noel (I'm guessing this may be the early 1980s?). The picture was taken not far from here. If you look closely you can spot Eric Clapton in the picture beneath it ...

We found another photo of Bob too, taken about twenty years later, just before Noel's death at the age of 57 ...

Of course that's David Bowie in the lower two pics. Apparently he was pretty much out of it when he signed the bottom photo, which is why it's largely indecipherable. Elsewhere there were photos too of Roy Harper, who lives nearby. I seem to remember that one of his albums was recorded live at De Barra's.

Went To See The Gypsy

Today the gypsies gather at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the French Camargue, culmination of their annual Romany pilgrimage. Bob Dylan attended this festival in May 1975. Today is also Bob Dylan's seventieth birthday. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock may have measured out his life with coffee spoons, but I've measured out mine with Dylan albums and gigs. Happy Birthday, Bob, and may you stay Forever Young.

Canaan's Land

The lovely Kate Rusby, one of England's most beloved contemporary folk singers and songwriters, singing Canaan's Land.

The sixties were an era that spoke a language of inquiry and curiosity and rebelliousness against the stifling and repressive political and social culture of the decade that preceded it. The new generation causing all the fuss was not driven by the market: we had something to say, not something to sell.

SUZE ROTOLO (The last paragraph from her wonderful memoir of the 1960s, A Freewheelin' Time)

Farewell Suze Rotolo (1943-2011) 

Wandering Ways

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there
Everybody got to move somewhere

BOB DYLAN Mississippi




And the wayward wind is a restless wind
A restless wind that yearns to wander
And I was born the next of kin
The next of kin to the wayward wind
 
NEIL YOUNG The Wayward Wind

I Am, I Can

Ring them bells so the world will know / That God is one BOB DYLAN Ring Them Bells

Part Two, Sonnet XXIX

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.  

RILKE The Sonnets To Orpheus (translated by Joanna Macy)

Variation on a Theme by Rilke

(The Book Of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me - a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic - or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

DENISE LEVERTOV Breathing The Water

Denise Levertov wrote several poems with the title Variation On A Theme By Rilke, and I thought it might be interesting to pair one of them with a Rilke poem (not the one from The Book Of Hours which directly influenced this Variation, but the last sonnet from The Sonnets To Orpheus.) As you can see, there are some striking correspondences.

The image of the bell is central to both poems, and each poem ends with a declarative I am or I can. Rilke's poem is set at night, Levertov's by day - which is rather neat, as the symbolic resonance of the bell itself unifies all polarities: the bell summons us to both contemplative prayer and interrogative reflection, to both mourning and celebration; and is therefore an audible marker of both joy and sorrow, life and death, day and night.

Rilke's sonnet contains the idea that suffering is an inevitable, indeed necessary part of life. We are all bells rocking this way and that, buffeted by life. And the bruising clapper of the bell strikes us painfully but resoundingly awake. There's also the idea that this transformative experience is not some random event we have to await passively, but that we can influence events ourselves by moving back and forth, by turning ourselves to wine, by saying to the silent earth: I flow. The wonderful, self-willed assertion of I am at the end of the poem affirms the meaning, importance and ultimate wholeness of our individual existence - despite the enigmatic silence of nature and the indifference of the rest of the world.

Levertov's own poem contains a similar idea - though her transformation of self seems to be more an awakening to a whole self that was already there: less self-willed, and more the result of the action of an outside agency, granted as if with / the flat of a sword.    

Whispering On Stone: A Short Piece of Oral And Aural History

Sicily's southeast has always been one of the island's wealthiest and most turbulently historic regions. In Siracusa's Parco Archeológico you can see the remains of Classical Neapolis, including the Anfiteatro Romano, the Roman amphitheatre. Here gladiators confronted other gladiators, criminals and wild animals in bloody combat. The tank in the centre was probably there to drain blood and gore; and after the contests the ill and infirm would suck warm blood from the animals, and retrieve their livers, in the belief this would aid their recovery...

The wealth of Baroque times (as always historically, of course, this meant wealth only for the few) can easily be appreciated in the grand, golden buildings of Siracusa and Noto. Fanciful curves and curlicues, and extravagant, imaginative designs, and 'showing off' in general, were features of the Baroque ...

Caravaggio (one of the greatest painters of the Baroque era, and one of my own favourite artists, and one of Bob Dylan's too) observed that this cave in the quarry-garden of Siracusa's Latomia del Paradiso bore a striking resemblance to the human ear. Mmm, I think I can see what he meant...

You won't be surprised to learn that this cave is now known as the 'Ear', or the Orecchio di Dionisio, the Ear of Dionysius - though this name derives from an older story about the tyrant, Dionysius, who supposedly liked to eavesdrop on the conversations of suspected conspirators there. For the cavern has astonishing acoustic qualities - a little like the Whispering Gallery in St Paul's Cathedral. We tested this out and found that our muted mutterings close to the wall echoed spookily, reverberating round and round the rocky chamber ...

My favourite place, however, in the Parco Archeologicó was the tiny church of San Nicolò, which was by-passed by most visitors swarming to the more grandiose sites ...

Greek Theatre, Taormina

After climbing the steep cliffs near the sea, one reaches two summits connected by a half-circle. Whatever shape it may have had originally, Art has assisted Nature to build this semicircle which held the amphitheatre audience. Walls and other structures of brick were added to provide the necessary passages and halls. The proscenium was built in a diagonal at the foot of the tiered half-circle, stretching from cliff to cliff to complete a stupendous work of Art and Nature.

If one sits down where the topmost spectators sat, one has to admit that no audience in any other theatre ever beheld such a view. Citadels stand perched on higher cliffs to the right; down below lies the town. Though these buildings are of a much later date, similar ones probably stood in the same places in older days. Straight ahead one sees the long ridge of Etna, to the left the coast line as far as Catania or even Syracuse, and the whole panorama is capped by the huge, fuming, fiery mountain, the look of which, tempered by distance and atmosphere, is, however, more friendly than forbidding. GOETHE Italian Journey

Bob Dylan played the Greek theatre, Taormina, on 28 July 2001. What a setting to have seen him in!

Boblo Picasso: Two Teachers In One

For a post which blends photography, Bob Dylan, Pablo Picasso, the personal, the subliminal - and fish trucks (!) - in such a satisfying way, and all within the context of a walk, try reading this from the blog Talking 37th Dream With Rainbow (Rumors Of Peace). I've been following this blog of Amanda Wald Rachie's for a long time now - indeed it's one of my favourites - and I rarely find anything in there that's not illuminating or of value. I'd like to write further about this blog - and a few others I read regularly - in more detail in a later post.

Art is a lie that tells the truth. PICASSO

It takes a long time to become young. PICASSO

Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now. BOB DYLAN

Winning And Losing

For the loser now will be later to win / For the times they are a-changin' BOB DYLAN

If we look around it isn't hard to see that we're obsessed with ranking people into winners and losers. Consider the recent parliamentary election debates on TV: all the media's interested in is who 'won' each debate, who came second, and who was the 'loser' - like a political version of The X Factor or The Wheel Of Fortune.

Consider education: what is it but a constant comparing of who's ahead and who's behind in the league table of learning? (My little Ptolemy is so bright, would you believe it, he polished off his SATs even before he could digest proper food, and as for algebraic equations, well, he was doing those in the womb!)

Consider jobs and professions: who's the boss's favourite, who's performing best in the 'office politics' stakes, who's in, who's out, who's won 'The Most Obsequious Toadying Award Of The Year', who's won the ignominious, foot-in-your-face scramble to the top of the greasiest pole in capitalist win-lose 'culture', who's getting the sack, who's getting into the sack with the secretary?

Consider ourselves, the poor foolish ones, the relentlessly competitive denizens of this petty petit-bourgeois society: status-haunted, we twitch the curtains, anxiously checking out the neighbours to see if they're gaining or losing points in the futile, robotic dance of suburban one-upmanship. Is their car better, faster, more expensive than ours, does its almost sensuous, plastic-metallic sheen have a more attractive and lustrous glow? Is their lawn greener, are their weeds less prolific, does their picket fence stand somehow more proud and erect than ours, are their children more wholesome-looking, their wives more decorous, their husbands more tanned and handsome (or do they look just plain worn-out?) Jealousy and despair set in - we're slipping behind! We'd better invite them double-quick to a dinner party, a little ménage à quatre, where we can impress them with our nouvelle mock-Gothic Heston Blumenthal cuisine and our faux-intellectual banter. Otherwise we might fall even further behind in the winning and losing game!

Well, I want no part of it. I have no part in it. I've haven't had a part in it for years. Yes, count me out. It's such a relief to be counted out. You don't have to wait to be excluded. You can simply exclude yourself. Just like that. We can then take on 'the awesome responsibility of embracing our own freedom', as Fireweed said recently in a memorable comment on one of my Turnstone posts. For I have no interest in simplistically dividing up the world into black and white, into good and bad, into winners and losers like a child's superhero comic. Real life, true life, moral life, soul life is not a question of winning or losing at any price in our supposedly evolved consciousness. We could say we have now reached a post-Darwinian, post-evolutionary New Age consciousness - if only we would realise it. We are rather more than mere creatures jockeying for position in the pecking order - or we could be. I want the powerful to admit their weaknesses, the lame to embrace their strengths, the hidden talents in the shyest wallflowers to shine. For comparisons can be odious. And we are all both winners and losers; and we are all neither winners nor losers at all.

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. KING JAMES BIBLE Luke 12:27

When crows find a dying snake, / They behave as if they were eagles. / When I see myself as a victim, / I am hurt by trifling failures. SHANTIDEVA

(The oil painting reproduced above is Francisco de Goya's The Greasy Pole)

Ring Them Bells Of Mindfulness

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail / For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale / And for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail / And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing BOB DYLAN Chimes Of Freedom

Ring them bells St Catherine from the top of the room / Ring them from the fortress for the lilies that bloom / Oh the lines are long and the fighting is strong / And they're breaking down the distance between right and wrong BOB DYLAN Ring Them Bells

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain? BOB DYLAN When You Gonna Wake Up?

The poet John Donne said 'never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' The bell Donne is referring to is the funeral bell, the bell that reminds us of our brief sojourn in this world. But there is another bell, the bell of mindfulness, that tolls in each moment, inviting us to come to our senses, reminding us that we can wake up to our lives, now, while we have them to live. The bell of mindfulness tolls for thee as well. It tolls for all of us. It tolls in celebration of life and what might be possible were we to hear it in its fullness, were we to wake up. JON KABAT-ZINN Coming To Our Senses