30.08.08

A friend's comment on my philosophy: "Its just your opinion; the way you see things." As if I concocted my philosophy overnight instead of spending many years contemplating, observing, soul-searching. My friend is impressed by titles, but a university degree does not make the recipient wise. Although it might make a particular individual jealous, he/she might think 'how could an uneducated labourer, a peasant, arrive at such answers?' My advice: read 'My Philosophy in a Nutshell', also, why many creatures in the world reproduce without the pleasures of sex. The next time my friend expresses that opinion I will tell him that such a remark is pointless without proving where my reasoning is wrong. I don't tell people I can levitate because I know, if they have any sense, they will say "Prove it. Show us how levitate your body without aid."

Written some years ago, before I deciphered existence:

Lakeland

In a Wigan-pigeon'd melancholy evening the gathering solemn corners
lean into the sun-dulled emptying hours.
Through those bee-less amber combs I echo.

Teeming concourse.
Two-faced clock on high.
Blackboards chattering destinations.
Season ticket holders rushing.
In the sunset windows blushing.
In its furrow the python sleeping.
Cleaner nonchalantly sweeping.
Through my clothes the cold air seeping.

Felicitations, arms embracing. One lone figure bravely facing; one arm
waving as she grieves. - hesitating at the edge of every curve it weaves.

How sad eyes do haunt one's pleasure!
I wander down the platform's long-drawn grey till the carriage cushions,
its plush a veritable wreath.
Late arrivals showing, trolleys towing, whistle blowing .
The python shuffles, stretches, slithers past dayglow gang with pickaxe
crump and hammer's clang.
Towers, gantries overshadowing.
Past tower blocks and city streets, park with pond and vacant seats,
megastore and market-stall, corner shop and parish hall, timber yard
and hoardings tall.
Shuntings, baylines, urban sprawl.
The noise, the grime --- away from it all!
By schoolyard, coal-yard, scrap-yard, binlined backyard, banks, bridges,
rosebay, thistle, spinney, copse, fading heath!
I close my eyes and contemplate the lone figure waving: is she going
far away I wonder?
Travellers without companions on lamp-lit railway trains.
Reverberating canyons.
Thunder rolling plains ... the train chuckles out of day.

Through the night the carriage rocks me.
Coupled cradles sway past city, town and village boxy, cathedral, castle,
keep.
Quarry, mine and tillage foxy, cattle grid and creep.
With only the moon above to mock I fancy I see rustics dreaming in
many a misty glistening dell and around each, seeming, a diadem
gleaming, each firefly's dowery beaming in lamp-green leafy cell...
Soon I'll gaze upon a silver ribbon rippling here, rippling there as it babbles around bickering pair; sunkissed waters, waterkissed wings.
Weather rude, solitude.
All that I love. Everything!
'Ev-er-y where,' whisper the wheels. Ev-er-y where, ev-er-y where, ev-er-y where.
We're nearly there, we're nearly there. Journey's end - Lake Windermere.
Now rest a while till seagulls whiten one grey cloud & slow crows blot the pale blue sky. Then sleep. Evening's light lies quiet upon the lake & low stone walls, so quiet that I look up to know if from sun or moon it falls.
Insect wings, a seemingly noiseless wrath, spray with shadows the deepening trees beside the dusty path; peace is like the lake against my skin. I feel I hear it pouring till brimmed is every empty space without & that great void within. On I wander as a child around each mossy bend. On I wander, like a child thinking my days could never end. Walking this deep into the forest is making love: the wings, boughs, incense, atmosphere, this is my flesh! Such pleasure. The intellect now wonders what it was it strove to measure. I smile, I beam, stretching my limbs at leisure.
Night's horizons exhale through the gable's antrummed rise.
The urged, inert church sounds with whispers and enterprise.
Is that rise and fall on the altar the breast of a bird or merely the altar
linen by night's horizons stirred?
Must hold here at the chancel moored beneath a light, a gust of
sanctuary flame, flesh of insight.
Fingertips could trail in such light if there one were laid, to cross that
inner court one would surely have to wade.
A light to dream of dreamers in, of gazing waifs, of kings: A light to
soften falling rain, windswept moorland, thunderings.
A light herein that seems to call, call back one's footsteps as they fall.
But there is naught for fancy to intensify, not even footsteps that go
wandering by.
Yet, to this island did each pathway bend in one long desperate search
to comprehend. High whisper coloured branches throw whisper coloured sounds with every flail of leaves.

This plot of priest and muddy graves which soon must yield the night I crave some reason from above; a science not found in art or love.
To live then die without a trace?
Is this the truth we're born to face?
To die and leave an empty hall: All that laughter, all those tears, all that living, all those years.
Mirror, mirror on the wall what does it matter? .
Yet the heart is glad of its seasons.
Its long periods of hibernation.
And when it springs with wild elation.
Then the withering when it grieves, renewed again when it believes.

Shadows thronged there seem to shift, upon my melancholy drift.
Shadows deep and petal cool there by finger-dipping pool.
Marble pillars, oaken pews - the void is bridged!
A burning prism imbues my soul with animism!
Resonating everywhere. vibrating every ghostly lair.
Are they all assembled?
Are they staring?
I feel primeval rapture flaring - such air as this is offered to commune!
For me tonight tomorrow comes too soon.

J.W.