Category: little fluffy clouds

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Tane mahuta

A guest post from the as-yet blogless Lucy Kempton for the forthcoming Festival of the Trees.

Meeting Tane mahuta was one of those jaw-dropping, lump-in-the throat moments.

In Maori cosmology, Tane Mahuta is the god of the forest, the son of the sky father and earth mother, who tore his parents apart, breaking their primal embrace, bringing light, air and space, so allowing life to flourish.

tane-mahuta1.JPG

This avatar of Tane is a 2000 year old kauri tree in Northland, New Zealand. It is impossible to convey the scale of these trees in a photo; their feeding roots are near the surface and delicate, and you cannot approach them too closely, which seems only appropriately respectful. The movement of the dappled forest light on the texture of the bark seems to be emanating from the tree rather than simply reflected, and a whole unattainable world exists in the branches.

tane-mahuta-2.JPG

Some days later, walking on a headland overlooking the Pacific, I met Tane Mahuta again in microcosm, this time in this lichen covered old fence post!

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Mala

mala

Yesterday we had a reunion of the meditation course taught by Alistair on Holy Island in August.

London rather than Scotland was the venue this time, the highlight of the day being meditating in the beautiful shrine room at the Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan Buddhist Centre.

People came from Dallas, New York, Germany, Scotland, north London. Childcare duties meant I was late, very very late, joining the proceedings but I made it to the shrine room just as the meditation ended. And everyone there was wearing a mala! I noticed this particularly. The reason soon became clear as Jonathan uncurled from his cushion like a cat, holding out the string of beads pictured above. He had brought one for everyone, each different, each with individually designated recipients.

Alistair talked about the importance of individual practice and not relying on the group, which makes a lot of sense both in practical as well as spiritual terms. But there is something very special about the gestalt of this group of people which came together around the course.

mala beads

Just as each of the beads on this mala is individually exquisite – the graining luminous as tigers eye, the perfume of sandalwood, the smooth sheen of the surface almost soft to the touch in its lustre – so with everyone in the group.

But before I get too carried away with extravagant similes I have to confess that the real world soon took its toll on my beautiful mala. Originally the cords at the end were much, much longer. Unfortunately that night the cat got into my room, found the beads on my bedside table and chewed the cords. I had to cut them off short.

A feline lesson in the dangers of attachment I suppose.

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Club Tihany

The conference I’ve just attended was at the Hotel Club Tihany on a little peninsular jutting into Lake Balaton. It was absolutely brilliant and I feel totally energised and excited. But before I get into the conference itself tomorrow / later today here is a slide show of a non-work-related nature – press play to set it going:


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I’m off to Hungary

coffee

And I make absolutely no apology for reposting a poem I’ve blogged before, actually more than once, by a Hungarian poet…

The Poem of Darkness

Once more, the vigil season!
Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.
Night’s rust-juice floods the gardens,
by six full to the brim.
damp oozes from the mouldering trees,
you muse on how much time
you’ve left. Your foot stops dead, in fear
of stumbling into a tomb…
But tell me: have you ever let
a snow-white sugar-cube soak up
dark liquid, dipped in the bitter night
of coffee in its cup?
Or watched how the dense liquid,
so surely, so insidiously,
will seep up through the white cube’s
pure, crystalline body?
Just so the night seeps into you,
slowly rising, the smells
of night and of the grave all through
your veins, fibres, cells,
until one dank brown evening,
so steeped in it, you melt and sink –
to sweeten, for some unknown god,
his dark and bitter drink.

Dsida Jeno, 1938
translated by George Gomori & Clive Wilmer

There’s no sugar lump on my saucer above – sugar-dipping is not a domestic activity. I’m looking forward to exploring the cafés of Budapest as recommended by Karen, who isn’t there, and Maria, who is, and dipping many a lump.

Then it’s off to a small village on the shore of Lake Balaton for the Internet Hungary 2006 Conference at which, on Wednesday, I am talking about Global Voices and citizen journalism.

And now I must go and start packing. I notice that I have only 33 30 minutes before I must leave.

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I'm off to Hungary

coffee

And I make absolutely no apology for reposting a poem I’ve blogged before, actually more than once, by a Hungarian poet…

The Poem of Darkness

Once more, the vigil season!
Broad pen-strokes on my sheet look grim.
Night’s rust-juice floods the gardens,
by six full to the brim.
damp oozes from the mouldering trees,
you muse on how much time
you’ve left. Your foot stops dead, in fear
of stumbling into a tomb…
But tell me: have you ever let
a snow-white sugar-cube soak up
dark liquid, dipped in the bitter night
of coffee in its cup?
Or watched how the dense liquid,
so surely, so insidiously,
will seep up through the white cube’s
pure, crystalline body?
Just so the night seeps into you,
slowly rising, the smells
of night and of the grave all through
your veins, fibres, cells,
until one dank brown evening,
so steeped in it, you melt and sink –
to sweeten, for some unknown god,
his dark and bitter drink.

Dsida Jeno, 1938
translated by George Gomori & Clive Wilmer

There’s no sugar lump on my saucer above – sugar-dipping is not a domestic activity. I’m looking forward to exploring the cafés of Budapest as recommended by Karen, who isn’t there, and Maria, who is, and dipping many a lump.

Then it’s off to a small village on the shore of Lake Balaton for the Internet Hungary 2006 Conference at which, on Wednesday, I am talking about Global Voices and citizen journalism.

And now I must go and start packing. I notice that I have only 33 30 minutes before I must leave.

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There’s a red ring around the moon

…and it’s full, I told the gathered diners, and went out to take a picture. My stepmother said it meant rain.

Rain or not it’s the sort of thing that gives great delight if you can actually see it. Away from the bright lights of the big city the sky is full of wonders.

moon ring

The next morning the second-born demanded to see the picture.

“That’s not a ring, that’s just clouds” he said, obviously disappointed that it wasn’t like saturn.

The presaged rain hasn’t shown up, though. It’s been a beautiful sunny autumn day.

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There's a red ring around the moon

…and it’s full, I told the gathered diners, and went out to take a picture. My stepmother said it meant rain.

Rain or not it’s the sort of thing that gives great delight if you can actually see it. Away from the bright lights of the big city the sky is full of wonders.

moon ring

The next morning the second-born demanded to see the picture.

“That’s not a ring, that’s just clouds” he said, obviously disappointed that it wasn’t like saturn.

The presaged rain hasn’t shown up, though. It’s been a beautiful sunny autumn day.

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Frizzy arboretum

This month’s Festival of the Trees is being hosted by Lorianne at Hoarded Ordinaries, so I suppose it’s a hoarded arboretum. It’s full of links to gorgeous words and images, beautifully illustrated by Lorianne’s own pictures.

Next month the trees will be holding their festivities here (one of the main reasons I reconstituted the blog so as to give them somewhere to gather). I love the “what we’re looking for” instructions:

For the purposes of the Festival, we’re defining trees as any woody plants that regularly exceed three meters in height, though exceptions might be made to accommodate things like banana “trees” or bonsai. We are interested in trees in the concrete rather than in the abstract, so while stories about a particular forest would be welcome, newsy pieces about forest issues probably wouldn’t be. The emphasis should be on original content; we don’t want to link to pieces that are 90% or more recycled from other authors or artists.

The Festival of the Trees seeks:

• original photos or artwork featuring trees
• original essays, stories or poems about trees
• audio and video of trees
• news items about trees (especially the interesting and the off-beat)
• philosophical and religious perspectives on trees and forests
• scientific and conservation-minded perspectives on trees and forests
• kids’ drawings of trees
• dreams about trees
• trees’ dreams about us
• people who hug trees
• people who make things out of trees
• big trees
• small trees
• weird or unusual trees
• sexy trees
• tree houses
• animals that live in, pollinate, or otherwise depend on trees
• lichens, fungi or bacteria that parasitize or live in mutualistic relationships with trees

So get creative with the woody plants (audio of trees, anyone?) and send any contribution for consideration to: festival [dot] trees [at] gmail [dot] com. The deadline is 30 October, the festive forest appears the very next day on the first of November.

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Maizy to the rescue!

An unceasing volley of hysterical barking which not even bellowed curses from the study could stop. Rising from my screen in seething anger I stomped to the front door to mete out retribution… and saw, through the front window, my van hanging suspended between earth and hell (aka the Park Royal Vehicle Pound).

Ok. So the tax disc has expired. And that’s because the MOT has expired. And that’s because it’s got a flat tyre. And it has a flat tyre because I have no jack and no wheel-nut thingy and am feeble. And, strangely, nobody’s pulled up on a shining white charger with the requisite tools and muscles about their person and done it for me. So I’m a criminal.

It was clamped yesterday and I peeled the penalty notice from the windscreen with the familiar feeling of nausea-trauma, death and destruction, mental and physical immobility and general existential despair which suffuses my being on such occasions.

Only half an hour before the barking started I finally nerved myself sufficiently to open the plastic wrapper and extract the bad news. Which wasn’t soooo bad. There was a number to phone and if done so within 24 hours of the clamping the fine was half as much as that levied after 24 hours.

Now I knew that the clamping had happened while I’d been on the school run the previous day so I knew I had a few hours leeway. Or thought I knew. Because not only was the 24 hours yet not up, but here was the dreaded grabber with its crushing grip of steel around my pride and joy, already in the air, swinging round over the flatbed.

Now it’s obvious that the kind of job which requires you to remove another person’s possession, especially one as invested with pride, machismo and sense of identity as the personal motor vehicle, will warp your character if it wasn’t already warped before you started. And also expose you to high levels of hostility, abuse and violence.

I approached with extreme caution.

Body language submissive, unthreatening.

Slight tearing of the eyes, judicious nervous twiddling of long blonde lock of hair.

Expecting a fight to the death, storms of sobs to be deployed, possibly screaming, kicking, biting, the raising of a mob of indignant residents against the iniquity of the car thieves, and so on. Instead of which the delightfully unwarped person at the back of the truck told me I had 10 minutes to phone the number on the card, pay the fine and if I did so they’d put the van back down.

Which is exactly what happened.

“You were lucky” the truck driver remarked. “If we’d got it to the pound it could have been £400 to get it out. You were lucky you came out when you did.” When I told him it was the dog’s barking he advised me to give her a good dinner this evening.

So instead of meting out retribution I shall be meating out reward.

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This morning

dew

Dew is perennial; unlike rain, which comes and goes, dew is a daily occurrence. It’s like grace, arising regardless of our merit.

Velveteen Rabbi

bars and stripes

I was searching for a counterweight to the world’s towering edifices of greed, hatred and delusion… A place of light in the world’s swamping darkness. A tiny light barely visible through the trees. A light that was carefully nurtured, lovingly protected, and would not go out. Light, like a witness, like an example of what the world could be.

Paula’s House of Toast