the worlds i live in

the little worlds

under my feet

that i feel

as surely

as the clouds overhead

know more of me

than i do

of myself

pagan angel

love was a promise made of smoke

in a frozen copse of trees

a bone cold and older than our bodies

slowly floating in the sea

every morning there were planes

the shiny blades of pagan angels in our father's skies

every evening i would watch her hold the pillow

tight against her hollows, her unholy child

i was still a beggar shaking out my stolen coat

among the angry cemetery leaves

when they caught the king beneath the borrowed car

righteous, drunk, and fumbling for the royal keys

love was a father's flag and sung like a shank

in a cake on our leather boots

a beautiful feather floating down

to where the birds had shit on empty chapel pews

every morning we found one more machine

to mock our ever waning patience at the well

every evening she'd descend the mountain stealing socks

and singing something good where all the horses fell

like a snake within the wilted garden wall

i'd hint to her every possibility

while with his gun the pagan angel rose to say

"my love is one made to break every bended knee"

all words iron and wine

cicada

he had the whole garden

the whole world

to fly in

he flew into my shoulder

a tap

"hey, whatsup?"

so when he landed on a fencepost

i went over to him

and admired him

and told him how beautiful he was

as if

he didn't already know

tinariwen - tassili

the thrill of hearing good new music has been with me since i first put on a 45 of the beach boys sloop john b, or maybe it was the lp of beatles for sale, i dunno, what i do know is that the rush is still there. when something new crosses my path, i've got to listen and if it's "good" it'll get played over and over

tinariwen are a group i've enjoyed since stumbling across their womad performance a few years ago. i couldn't believe my ears and eyes! pure rock roots completely and precisely melded into the bass-driven groove and chicken-pickin' guitar of malian trance with the kick-in-the-teeth edge that revolutionary lyrics always carry.

four albums since that time, tinariwen's edge is still sharp. their latest album entitled "tassili" will be released at the end of this month but if you'd like to hear the entire album streamed (courtesy of npr) please go here. to hear individual tracks and read the review by npr writer bob boilen go here.

four years

this blog is now four years old - an astonishing feature of my life through which i have managed to share at least one posting per day since its inception on august twenty-seventh, two thousand and seven.

i'm proud that in one way shape or form i have kept my commitment.

no matter what or why or who or when or even how i have been or am.

i have watched the digital soil in which i have carefully planted the seeds of my becoming self,

grow from wishing for readers and reposting current news on technology, art, and coolness in general, through my relationship with nature and its relationships with me, to its current place as a journal for writing that speaks as much of the nascent momentum of my wish to speak in a poetic tongue

as it does of my wish to express both the expressible and the inexpressible

with equal understanding.

the significance of this is that despite my very public and social work as a teacher, i am in fact very typically and cerebrally english in my need for a considerable amount of personal space in which to be able to take several steps back and observe the animal i live inside.

then again, perhaps that has no cultural context and is expressly a feature of the person i am.

no matter - the peculiarities of the digital realm afford me the sweet luxury of

expressing my experiencing of this state, with a delete button mere centimetres from my index finger.

i am grateful to all of you who arrive here each day and to those of you who respond in whatever manner to my thinking, my photographs, my riffs on old paintings, my poetry, my stories and especially to whatever it is that compels the sharing of my work which finds in part a place to locate itself in process right here.

love of course . . . steven

evening closes

lift your eyes

from the sliding shadows

on the path

and you are

the soft light

you paint

the pale clouds

as evening closes

riverside

a dusty, narrow, root-crossed trail led steeply downwards to the water's edge.

a tree with a wide strong trunk had grown out over the river.

i crawled on my hands and knees along its rough body

and then straddled it with my legs

until i reached a place where i could see

up and downstream.

rainrings

look at this leafless branch

torn from a tree

carried to the sea

on a river

of rainrings

americano

i like to go out for coffee sometimes.

americano's are a special pleasure.

when i am in my hometown, this is where i like to sit and enjoy coffee.

see the little boathouse near the top of the picture.

it's a small cafe called the silver bean.

it sits by a river that flows through the middle of my town.

i always meet people i know ... just by sitting there.

a simple pleasure.

easier said (than done)

when they wrap their arms and eyes and lives around me it's the most exquisite form of containment.

immersion in the wholeness of them.

all my life i've heard that it's easy to let them go when the time comes.

i think my parents were glad to see me go. i have no regrets. no recriminations.

i made it really easy for them!

i think it made it easier for me to return when i became more of who i am today.

we were all ready!

i feel my children so deeply. they are entirely me.

they are entirely themselves.

music today, some summer pop from rahsaan patterson: easier said than done

claremont august 13. 2011

i slept on the lawn of this house

and woke to this flower

evening of august 12. 2011 bronte creek

a silver edge to every cloud

scallop-shelled out from above the very late sunset trees to the south.

a small growing point of light, it rounded and swelled, pregnant with moonbeams that lit

the small enclave of tents i was one small part of.

music for alongside the moment experiencing: "last night the moon came . . . " jon hassell

i am here . . . very briefly

their beautiful unlikeliness

a family of fungi grew overnight outside my tent

ferry

water knows nothing

of borders

water knows nothing

of place

or thing

looking down the side of the ferry between kingston, ontario and cape vincent, ny, usa

moonlit

a space

lit by

wished upon stars

in the small eternity

i traverse

in an instant

between the world

of my imagining

and the world

of my living

===

something has happened.

the moon lit up the room.

God knew about it

tomas tranströmer

so much more

you and i and we

know

we know

there's so much more

than this

so for now

settling here

let's enjoy ourselves

and each other

knowing

that

there's so much here

and

there's so much more

than this

a careless arrangement

landscape: a shinnecock vale william merritt chase

against summer's

soft and careless expanse

time's melody

fragments into formlessness

Time Is Like A Melody by fulltimehobby

immigrant

moving

in one airplane flight

three thousand

four hundred

and twenty two miles

from the chafed skin of working class subsistence

to the heart of working class modernity

i am eight years old

looking through

a window

a large plate glass window

through which i can see

the very big american cars

travelling past the very big building

i now call home

my entirety contained

in two bedrooms

an l-shaped living room dining room and kitchen

and in that kitchen

a fridge and an electric stove

a bathroom with hot and cold running water

there's food in the fridge

and

in the cupboards

none of this possible

or even imaginable

twenty four hours earlier

in the same world

at the same time

side-by-side

mine and not mine

a beginning

and an end

my heart

stretched

to transparency

-

far off i found myself standing in front of one of the

new buildings.

many windows flowed together there into a single

window.

in it the luminous nightsky was caught, and the

walking trees.

it was a mirror-like lake with no waves, turned on edge

in the summer night.

excerpted from "out in the open" by tomas tranströmer translated by robert bly

tracery

i had been reading all that i could find of the writing of j.g. bennett who

had passed through the work of gurdjieff.

i was immersed.

in love with the ideas, but through applying my own habit of reading and learning

and then believing that "i knew",

i wasn't learning anything that i could truly apply to the details of my daily work.

one evening, i saw in the newspaper that "meetings with remarkable men" a film by peter brook depicting the early years of gurdjieff, would be showing at a small cinema on the west side of toronto.

i arrived in a state of great excitement and walking down the late summer streets i moved between the shadows of the buildings full in the hope that i would experience some sort of transformative experience.

surprisingly, there was a small crowd outside the theatre.

among them were sufis.

as i approached i was compelled to absorb their appearance.

and then their presence.

i must have been holding my gaze for some time,

for i became aware that one of the men was holding my eyes.

not in a harsh or judgemental manner.

rather, i felt compassion and encouragement.

afterwards i considered that this man

- much like i -

lived in a city.

he benefitted ffromood and shelter and love and warmth.

and was who and what and why and how and when he was.

much like i.

from that moment alone

everything has flowed.

-

there is a kind of out-of-sight dreaming

that never stops. light for other eyes.

a zone where creeping thoughts learn to walk.

faces and forms regrouped.

we're moving on a street among people

in blazing sun.

but just as many - maybe more -

we don't see

are in dark buildings -

high on both sides.

sometimes one of them comes to the window

and glances down on us.

tomas tranströmer

waiting as we do

i was a little boy

in wales

once

long ago

we had stopped at a village market

to buy bread and cheese and tomato

which we ate in our car

beside us

a hill

pulled back into the sky

so steeply

such a sharp ascent

and the wind

thin and pierced

with embroidered eyelets of rain

slanted sideways

as if

pushing

against my wish

to see the top

where i imagined myself

telling my daddy

that i had done it

i had climbed to the top

his wish

fulfilled

-

there's a tree walking around in the rain,

it rushes past us in the pouring grey.

it has an errand. it gathers life

out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

when the rain stops so does the tree.

there it is, quiet on clear nights

waiting as we do for the moment

when the snowflakes blossom in space.

from: "the tree and the sky" tomas tranströmer

this was the day of my dad's birth so very long ago