A count ability

Counting.

Counting.

Counters. Countering confusion. Countdown.

5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - what - lift-off your expectations.





We fixate on the numbers but the world turns anyhow.

Heading towards another zero start, the clock wound back to nought.

Hard to be open, to leave the lid-lifting to whatever will arise.

We count towards our next encounter.

Cogs turn, springs coil, ready for the strike of the bells.

Empty diary spaces wait to be filled; one day rich with significance - the intricate glory of living.

Fire and Ice

It is a vexingly teasing human puzzle that the time of year with deadlines to reach places of significance has weather most guaranteed obstructive. Iced roads of contoured glass make the struggle hard to win. So parties are depleted, trains freeze up and planes are grounded. The whitened cold world is against us. Hard and impervious, the ice-lock slows and stops our tracks. The way good people can get anywhere isn't easy at all. So striving passion meets implacability. We are forced to respect the overwhelming forces on which we must depend.

Some huff and chuff, how this can mean global warming? But remember the poem:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate,
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Fire and Ice < by the aptly named Robert Frost

I like the deadly simplicity of this, though I don't think of hate as ice-cold, I think it one of the passions, so more akin to flame or boiling rage. To hate, one has to have cared, hate is the thwarting of love.

Ice, on the other hand, is powerful but is sheer, universal indifference - a natural process - inexorable and inevitable; beyond man's capacity. Arsonists may spread forest fires, no-one can freeze a landscape.

old but blazing gold

Bright blazing day today. Though last leaves the colour of cornflakes shiver on almost denuded trees, the autumnal sun is brilliant. I learned (or relearned?) recently, that leaves in autumn show their 'true colours', having lost their chlorophyll. That's quite an interesting thought, that at the end of their existence, though the life-sap is ebbing, true nature/character is unmasked. In the leaves' case of 'leaving' it looks to us like bright glory but could we be witnessing destruction and seeing it as beautiful? Some people hate the endingness of autumn, seeing it as bleak, negative, failure - the promise of summer always defeated, come to dust. But I have always loved its change, its sense of transformation - turning base green into gold. In the world, we are moving from a time when "Greed was good" and the accumulation of stuff, property, etc to increase one's sense of substantiality was encouraged and actively fostered; into a new time when change is being recognised as vital. Change is threatening quite often because it means entering unknown territory - you lose something or someone and it seems there is only ending. But the ending is also the beginning, nothing is certain but change. Being alive to living change.
(photo by Vova Zinger)

It's a new dawn, it's a new day

Hard, when the weather is driech, as it is today, to think in terms of new days and new beginnings. But the light, though grey and gloomy, is new. The trees stripped back to almost bareness are clearing themselves for a restorative pause. When everything is dying back and disappearing it can look like an end, but this only superficial. Everything is dedicating to a necessary rest, before the slow gathering of strength begins in preparation for an eventual new beginning.

Another poor wise artist

"Don't fuck me around" - first time I've heard that refrain at a funeral. In Afrikaans as "Moenie met my rondfok nie" half the congregation didn't understand it, just enjoyed its rhythm along with the rest of the chant, both funny and obscene - spitting acid humour in the face of outrageous authority; Steve's speciality. Diffident and charming in person, an eloquent fury on stage.


I met him a good 11 years ago in a basement bar doing his mesmerising muso-voodoo-rasp in his Durban South African accent. An exile since he went AWOL from enforced conscription in the late Apartheid eighties, somehow he wound up in Newcastle. We exchanged memories, his more scorched than mine.

Not long after, I watched his act again, this time a swan song before he flew home with a newly beloved. It didn't work out but he wrote me a letter saying not much had changed; that the poor were still poor as can be. He sent me a squatter camp photo.

I saw him again on a summer walk in fields, he seemed fragile and wary but I arranged for him to hear my newest radio play Poor Clare which he loved, basing some lessons around it. He sent me a poem he'd written in Ireland, near a convent with swans. I later discovered his aunt lived there, a Poor Clare herself, Sister Gabrielle.

Next time I saw him properly, he looked much older. He was drinking more. I was worried but he told me he was grooving on myspace. There was music and crazy videos, in one of them he danced in his underpants, a ringer for Rhys Ifans. We swapped mobile numbers and he invited me and my boyf to a gig. In the Chilly, his band was The Groove and he played, sang and chanted - angrily funny and as lyrical as ever. A nomad Shaman crazy-boy. He hosted other writers, learners and students from his community classes. Sharing the platform. Generous and inspirational. A sane man in a world swirling with madness.

Lately we communicated on facebook. Both Byker flatdwellers we riffed on pigeons and water supplies, but Steve's page was his gallery and he'd put up film after film both gross and poetic, shots of his paintings and writing of every kind.

In that way one does, I thought he'd be there forever and that I could choose when next I'd see him or meet up. But Steve left very abruptly - the actual cause of death as yet uncertain, but in bed, perhaps even in his sleep. There the evening before, gone in the morning.

In a cautious, conforming world he was inspiringly gauche, eloquently damning of hypocrisy - another poor, wise, not just artist, but prophet - and oh how we need them and oh how are they ignored. This was his second last entry on facebook:

"The Ominpotence of things yet to be. The irrelevence of deeds already done. The cosmic shrug is the only certainty that will steer you through these stormy times."

His very last entry talked how he'd clearly inspired some kids he was teaching - but said that soon he'd be a "free agent".

That's the only thing that compensates for missing him - to feel he at last might be free. I'm glad to have known you Steve, and at the young young age of 38, I wish you could have stayed longer.

Some of Steve's work can be seen on this website, created by his brother Martin

http://steve.yelvy.com/

Fifteenth months later

Resuming this blog after too long an absence and after starting another on wordpress - the isness business http://www.tellycom.wordpress.com/ which is much more focused on writing. Blogs work best with a clear focus. I think that's why this one's been fallow. But I dislike neglect and hey, I am still very much an artista, still povera and hopefully not unwise.

Despite the wet ground of April 08 I did plant my potatoes and a lot else besides. Who woulda thunk the North East earth would yield sweetcorn and courgettes, not to mention runner beans, peas, onions and yes lots of lovely spuds.

Since then I've wandered to Aldeburgh, Durham, north west Wales and Berlin but not in that order. I am learning German and almost teaching English but certainly pedagogically engaged this autumn. That's enough of an update. Now for the regular posts...