I don't really write blogposts for others. That sounds a little self obsessed - i may have in the long past, but one thing that 2020 and 21 has shown me is that with so many spending so much time online for whatever reason from 'company' otherwise isolated,  to it being the only way to interact with service providers, I feel something of a butterfly mentality seems to pervade. The  quick connection and flurry of communication and then one or both communicants have gone elsewhere; and sequential conversation seems  harder than ever.

The Portuguese word saudade is interesting. Perhaps has something to offer us in good focus. It essentially means an awareness of something good about life in the past sustains and maybe can in fact even be revitalised as a guiding ethos. But of course as we have 'lived' that past phase we know what it is to live it and anything next that is some return  must be thus more than lip service. 

I think it is a word i need to ponder further. 

This is specifically not 'a saudade': Though it is connected to the person  - a Portuguese acquaintance, who shared with me the provisional translation i added in "is not finished". In other words it is not sentimental or only some lament for what is lost. It may be possible to reclaim that valuable existence. 

I had a rather fine 2020 for several reasons. There was however one moment - only one really,  when i encountered a large dose of reality that i found depressing to say the least.

But before i get to that I also had a deeper positive moment  - with all that wonderful  time to think, space to let good thought come.

Some people - maybe a fair few,  time free and maybe a new sincerity as of this year, i had a chance to spend long quality time with a few people from different cultural background.  I have had a life - all my adult life,  prior around 15 years ago, living in or having significant connections  with people from, all sorts of cultures worldwide.

Maybe this year i figured the true benefit of knowing other mindsets - observing close up how a cultural construct does make a different human. It is just how hopeful this is in fact for humanity.

2016 here in Uk and as we know other countries various political developments rather shook up the goldfishbowl. The waters in my opinion became too muddied by overclaiming certain specific developments such as 'hate' and 'anger'. I tend to think that many are a little more bolshie and i wonder if one reason for this is spending far longer than ever before looking into small screens which never leave you feeling that nice about anything even your own persona.

I happened to go to Bolivia 3+ years ago. I went for a family reason  - my daughter was there, rather than any new desire to travel at that time. I had looked it up on Wikipedia beforehand and the pit of my stomach rather contracted at seeing the words "South America's Poorest Country". Thoughtbubble: oh that's not too hopeful then  ..... in terms of even getting out alive...

(In the 90s Much of S America having a reputation as a little cutthroat at times).

I have travelled the world and nothing moves me that much any more. Bolivia was by far the richest society however I have ever enjoyed.  A country of laughter and lack of cynicism. A genuine curiosity in other human beings too. 

I think at the time there were no McDonalds at all and very few Western style nighttime venues. I did one evening go to one widely advertised Planet Hollywood style eatery in Cochabamba  that was a sad harbinger for the wave of Disneyfication starting even there. But it was still very much yet to be.

It did however so throw me at first to see the Cholitas - Bolivian women who proudly wear a kind of traditional costume  and certainly it is not for the tourists as there are few. It symbolises I believe a solidarity with modern Bolivia  - incidentally remade as a rather beautiful egalitarian society  after a part violent  mini revolution period in the mid 00s which was  started by supremely brave women in the main standing up to the colonial powers who had all bust stolen their country for decades. Many of these women lost lives resisting in the main US corporate  rapaciousness which even privatised the rainfall in cities (film Even the Rain is gorgeous)  

 

This photo may not seem much but the backstory makes it to me about the most poignant I have ever taken. Several days no sleep travel to get to LA Paz en route further into the rural areas(a magnificent encounter en route  - another brave anti establishment person) .  Tired and even emotional, will I even find my daughter? And then this little angel was run by me. The vision brought me back to earth - hers.

So, the Cholitas hours on their phones as they hawk their wares in the marketplaces. Of course I can have no knowledge of what content they are involved in. 

But it was more the Portuguese woman i sat with a few weeks ago  - she like many her life curtailed in certain ways did have time to let herself out. And the different ingrained mentality even of someone here 8 years was apparent. And it hit me recently in that really is 'hope'.  With so many cultural variants and some are quite significant this Western (cynical) somewhat rapacious variant is just one of many. It could even change. For real. 

Everyone has spoken for decades of "life speeding up". Not really in my opinion. But saudade as a living word, and my own interest in it the last few years having homed in on it only recently but as a bit of an internationalist poetical person for many years, is perhaps a good exercise. If change is to come, then what from past experience and ways is worth pondering as to be worthwhile attempting to reinsert into life? I think it is a worthy project to riff upon. I do not mean sentimentality, and certainly not harking back to some vision of Britain in the 50s. In fact myself I am still interested in genuine equalities that took hold in the 60s and 70s  - I  wonder if they have not gone backwards a little.

But now  the hard bit. With so much time to sit and just be in 2020 especially as parks reopened even though I have my favoured many sq miles of deserted parklands and near wilderness places I frequent, there was one day I sat and soaked in the autumn sun 2020  in a local lovely park. I suppose i was there curious about how people be emerging. 

I wonder if the words anger and even hate are overused. I am not even sure if there is much real 'hate' around anywhere even if it is constantly claimed to be so. I prefer the word angst. Or just bolshiness.

Maybe there was an element of school-is-out even if they hadn't been to school for months but it was the period when schoolfriends began to congregate anew, but that day and in fact it was one of several when i felt something for real that i hope one day the culture could turn around from. 

   

I live a few miles from a very small town. Not much larger than a large village. There is a stable and not exactly pressured community. But something has changed and i assume it is real. From five or six year olds up to teenagers - but it was the eight or nine year olds i sat slightly jaw dropped overhearing their engagement, the many small groups gathered that day were  almost all shouting and swearing with such forceful angst I could hardly believe what had become. Aggression and pointed loud vulgarity seemed to have become the language of these children. No one sat and gently riffed. Everything was loud and melodrama. Everything was an issue to be volubly expressed. It seemed almost a new culture really had been born. And i cannot see this being that good for future functional harmony.

But it is remembering how many genuinely different cultures or mindsets there are that to me is the hope. I suspect someone is going to have to do a lot of work with this nowadays youth to help them find some more balanced setting.  But recalling often how different other human arrangements can  indeed lead to something different I think we need as help in this. It doesn't have to be so. But may take decades to help back to something a bit more good for them.

 

 

Laybys

 What a funny word. Allegorical or metaphorical, a nuanced real 'space'  that holds implicit movement to there and from, which could have other uses or meanings.  But then the harder thing as you get a little older, never mind cultural differences in how words are in usage, among a range of classes and backgrounds with the same people,  even in one's usual people, the language may have diverged.

And then laybys if they for whatever reason have to be stopped in regularly - in my own case I choose the very quiet ones - more passing places on single track quiet byways,  then one has events that happen there, in time. One day i shall write up for myself the stories of the various laybys. Sounds dull. Not at all. In fact over a few years it almost seems like a series of events happened which lead to one last meet at a layby. That meet which finishes off the last chapter. Of a book that was only temporary as it is not mine.  Somehow two equals  have to collaborate on ones own shared real new book. Only two people can fashion that book  - the book of them. And that requires a page one. 

Perhaps the trajectory, journey, just days on diversions of the person was long a parent means that they did not often have the time or space to  keep up with single person developments including the regular phone calls. Over years I mean. And thus ten hour layby was so new and seemingly important and thus has to be named so for now. Writes the person who years would have welcomed a half an hour. 

One thing i do know. Two years ago everybody i met in whatever setting once middle aged their standard third line in conversation had become "I am in such a hurry i haven't got time to talk ..."  What a wonderful 18 months in that at least for some  at last they did. It was almost time travel back to a healthier time in human affairs. I wish we could keep that but I fear we cannot. All this self importance.... such is life. And writing anything blogish is fairly 'self important' too so I must keep to just a functional poetical tones. It is hard to sum up a rather at times trying existence - quite random, never sought, and yet know full well one would not have had it any other way as especially the last three or four years all the tough periods had somehow combined to leave one much of the time really rather feeling great. And as i keep regular diaries that is no blowing-hot-and-cold   statement for a warm day today to be followed by  bleak cold  days of nothing to say. Because one thing i am most proud of really is a constancy. I think that was earned...   

Two items maybe

 but wise women or people for that matter speak of phases.

Nothing really to do with any saudade, simply that when one phase ends - having ones personal backscratching human, and heck you miss them if you are having a phase of an itchy back, I thought it rather apt that just a few months later quite simply the most perfect exact-fit backscratcher was provided in my hills by  mother nature herself.

I couldn't take this to the grave with me, but saudade is making sure that last wishes are recalled - It's so good a tool, you want to pass it down to any descendent because it is simply so good - how could the base of the horn be quite at such a perfect angle for best grip leading to maximum scratching power. Almost as if the fairies left it. 

But then phases of scratching pass too...

The other item, well this can be my 'will' after all. There will be nothing controversial. Everything here absolutely saintly.

A framing.

 But not really, as all that is is today.

And today is ok.

But how did one get here.

And live without fear.

Of tomorrow or yesterday.

I think that's the key and one little lass i do need to have it for her. Maybe one day. Maybe not.

For now a bit of a scribble almost this webpage - just a completely nongeographical no-one-in-particular range of observations - many connected with smaller scale rural existence, that i know matter. And one day i must write about them properly. But i don't write anything much in the summer as being out in it matters more.

Passing on to a child even one not your own the true rural skills in such a quiet gentle way is the best of life.

much more important, now....

Even if the greatest failed project known to human here on maybe-earth was a  good one in intent. And it is not glib to make trgicom out of tragedy + time = comedy said Mister Shakespeare. Ii takes a long time living with tragedy  - otherwise known as 'life events' and billions of others have had them too, within to know he was right.

Not that anyone with a care for a little resistance should value Mr William Shakespeare. I think it's time to drop him too. Not 'cancel' just know that Mary Ann Evans never mind the magnificent Rachel Kushner have it all rather better.  It may well have done a lot of lasting harm deep down that Will's starring women always had things done to them...  rather than real life when any sane man knows women are just as capable of being every little bit of what some man can be. And should be too. 

Now the stories - not that anyone's stories are that interesting to any individual other, but i knew years ago we have an Odyssey here. And there never was any Penelope. Not that she was on my radar.  

What a perfect spring this year and 'my' hill...i don't like much the so overused 'h' word...healing.... but this place somehow did become the healing hill. But only as i put in the footwork to climb it a few times every week, no matter what.

2019ish insight words: "you never ever come back off a walk feeling any worse than you started, indeed always a bit better no matter how bad it is when you start "

Silly - just to prove. Anyway someone saw this; prove to her yes i was almost always on duty from dawn.  

But there is one few years stopping place - 'achin tan' as they say, way above all the fray. Paradise always. Somewhere you can always breathe. 

But then 30 months ago - what a story. What on earth happened to her?   No one stops me dead ... with such grace and simplest yokel humour. That's a saudade even if Cheshire genes. 

most poignant picture you could ever imagine. Imagine for now....soon i shall fill in some gaps.

And yesterday i nearly broke my pledge - only to myself. Saudade is maybe not finished, who knows. 

It was not in fact the kairos yet. 

That would have been symbolically giving up.

Nope not yet.

But the bottom line is small scale farms or smallholding you do need to be two.

Who knows, prepare as if the best of life will in fact happen.

And then.... how can a best day ever happen just like that. I hate neon. But put my lifetime aversion aside when the time is, to do just that... outshone by best smile and spirit ever. 

Just a weird moment. But not really - subversion, in a picture. taken July 2020 when everyone else was still going nuts about everything. She knew high viz just reflects the healing sun. And she liked it that I alone seemed to get her little act of subversion (on 'covid' marshal STASI duty) 

There is one thing that cannot really 'be' saudade in that what do all the gurus of public waffle on who to be hardly ever mention? time passing. Maybe it exists maybe not - it is said at the level of quantum physics it does not really.  Yearning is maybe implicit but yearning for what? The only change one may yearn for yet we seem to forget that is that earthly Newtonian time seems to slow down. Which the psychologists sometimes pinpoint to being the illusion when one packs so much into a life. Continual novel or thrilling real experience. Not silly things like bungee jumping into the Grand Canyon. There are genuine experiences. Some which may be in theory the absolute last one would chose. Because we always forget there will always be a silver lining.  And when you see about ten per year out of about ten per year so called crises or tough times... time so slows down that even someone with a great memory can hardly recall what he was up to   a mere 18 months ago so much didn't but in truth did happen.

but 'propper' music...

The absolute impossibility of yank search ever having a brain: stick in (my writing panel here, who happen to own youtube) 

"Ivry

"Bruch

"violin"

and everything else but surely the one piece of music that IS life...

as we dream it

comes up

so you have to do it like this...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TepIFIGc5Yo

anything in big red is a must, ...maybe ...

all i know is that every single next phase that came along in life over 20 years i simply could never ever have predicted one second of it ever....and i am a deep deep very balanced philosopher and quite good observer of mankind....and good lit and other thought.

But.... Gorecki 3

MUST be Upshaw, there was only ever one Dawn

her version of "Sorrow" makes the lands of my lass  less sorrowful - hey they still had heart to love their pierogi! But that's about all. And when they thought we had it all. well they made a little booby. 

+++++++++

Sadness, mine.....i never had poise and grace to fully understand Italian... language or mind for that matter.

except that they can be a tad sexist piggies.... His 'Official' channel does not even name her....

i know Portuguese music that flirts with the saudade...

And i am sure she does here too, this is no 'new age' moaning or playfulness for clicks. She gets straight in to that sublime.... hardly anyone else ever could, even Upshaw in truth 

sublime the Polish version: towards good purpose with honour and.... nobility. 

I cry at it every time as now ... 

And of course it is her, with him, 

perfect example of, why...

The Pursuit of 'Happiness'

 Bit of a dodgy word - perhaps misunderstood  - but one never wants to even hint at any critique  of any individual. And i am not. There is a  lovely time of life when you do not. No matter what. So let's not get stuck in that rabbit hole any more, ever.

But before one gets to so called 'happiness' there is just technical unhappiness - myself in balance let's just call it frustration: I would listen to a version of the above in 2004. A lot. It was where 'it' started, or maybe restarted. And unhappiness was all that at that time could be. 

But if one met someone else and wanted to ask "so what do you think of this?" well, at least have a decent version - which is defined by firstly a good quality recording, and of that actual arrangement you did live inside for more than a year. And finding it again does not hurt. Ancient bleedin history.

Yes...it's the right one. I started to have the poise and grace to search it yesterday. So much 'choice' in youtube and so many imposters. And good old Nova Nova looks like they had the application; no app helps, they remembered," maybe we need to update with a better quality clip - we shared it with the world so let us be kindly and make sure they have a better version now we can give that away". They did. That is all i wish in my fellow human. Just a bit of propriety - when you have something so wonderful to share, well also keep up with the tech and see it is a good recording if you can.

It was of course wonderful to stumble upon his bringing it life in a  new way, live but...2010 maybe i found him.13 years ago i guess the sound captured and upload techniques have improved. So be it. We can but do our best.

But what is 'life' - i seem to often get little proofs it is imaginary;  One cannot live life entirely as if that is so.  Indeed if 'touch' here is so effective at causing some real change (i write this on hugging-is-legal day even if we were hugging illegally all winter gone) how does one term the alive and pretend alive in one sentence which may be the actual deal - reality. Even if 'reality' is itself far too much a cage-word....

And so, life (the provisional word for the here and now)... 

Never mind the time we  - my daughter and I, found it together via finding her together i shall never forget that day because of our hilarious "oh lets gate-crash a party dad.... after all it's your birthday why not..."

The last party i would ever chose to attend. The new word 'woke' could have been invented for them, all. 

But one...

So, then....we did not know what it was called. I had left just my cassette and MD copy .... and then the maybe good things of the internet come along i think it was shazam.... 

Of course i didn't need to know who they were 

And she - that lass then may not ever know if she does remember the " M song" ..

Of course she would. Even now.

But life happens and from then 2004 via finding him maybe 2010 ...playing it live....

and then to another, a few years ago 

" i really am ready to meet... that 'maker' or whomsoever this ringmistress with a dodgy sense of humour is.... lucky me i am truly lucky.... gratitude matters and i can say at last i know how it truly does feel inside if it is real...no confected gratitude to sound good...mine real....  and i think that is the one i would like to slip off to....or maybe have others chuck me in the compost to.... because it is of no one; no person is connected. Just a gift i came to alone. And knew.... maybe the perfect modern version of a sublime...and peace....and all is nothing really.... and should never really 'matter'.."

And to read anything more that i hope follows as i like to write - neutrally, of no one really, maybe one day 'to' someone who knows....  at least do me the bloody manners of having one or other of them on yer headphones...because i need a rhythm...i arrive at it now. And it is thus written to that rhythm...non stop, pure unknown muse power. or pure nutjob fool power...i don't care; i like it and it satisfies something in me.... but there will be other tunes too. Ditto

Anyway in short between 2004 and 2019ish when Tape / Parade said to me "thats all you need ever...no real emotion just peace"  a fuck of a lot happened. Which is not what i wanted. It was never me. I only hope a version of 'me' that came to pass is some use to someone one day. As i do know it has some...

Of course it really started in 2003 in those High Mountains of Portugal... just me and her. 

But that isn't fair, it started centuries ago in war and peace and war in half her ancestors' lands.... but that certainly isn't my fault. And i honour her other side's pain...I forgave entirely. I would like to tell her some day but sadly his guilt  anger and angst would only find that an attack on his pride. So be it. I did my human best.

Grace

 and 'space'.

Just to 'breathe'. "Breathe in to the .." someone said...

Not like that. Her world and lexicon. 

Who am I and I dislike the 'I' word as I do believe there are many 'universals' to the human being.  Be something 'special' and evolved, but still there are many root being things to us. Some do change over maybe 50 years of being on the planet. ( figured a good one a day ago).

One for me even if i think it was always core is what could be called 'grace' But that sounds earnest. earnest doesn't work.

this is simplest first notes for something. Not even the space and grace due situational matters - sat in hot sun engine running to charge the machines.

But grace is knowing who i did become. Halloween 2009 i met someone who was new start part of life so important for 6 months in truth. She was (bless her she had a terrible childhood) basically Lady Macbeth. And a brilliant actress. I was thrown to say the least. But I do not regret - i learned such deep lessons. 

And she did unnecessary real harm, even perhaps to my child. Empathy means i know she simply could not be different. Yes she may have chosen that way to be, but i doubt she knew of other ways.

A deep topic that. Can we choose?

End of her except to me grace is: She caused true issues. Many would think 'never think of her for a second'. But one evening we were together (at that point very happy, even in 'love')  in  my super sweet old caravan in a sublime spot 'off grid'. And she berated me "dickhead... why don't you put the lid on the pan [being used to boil water] it will not waste your gas as it will boil more quickly".

I said i felt like a dickhead smilingly "proof i am thick i never developed that habit ...you are right"

Even today, on a small gas ring boiling water for my coffee i still most gracefully and enjoyably think of that moment as i always do when putting the lid on.... " hahhh... follow Lady Macbeth;s orders .....she had one gift for me at least i still benefit from.."

And in that moment to me is universal 'love'  (still present now) - we did have some, nuclear sad mess prevailed (not our fault  - external actors)  i honour her spirit - the safe side (other sides were not i discovered later on)  and even the love in that moment then 11 years ago we did mutually enjoy I honour, in grace.

SO ... another form of love which is always there.

Ralph and I. I cannot not think of his unique spirit always with me. That is me. I know it is the best love i have ever known. It never even went a little wonky.

(and also ... i have some photos about cheap living.... to me it is a joyful art....thrift... thrift to some is a lovely nuanced way of speaking it means homespun and never antagonistic..i thougt of this as i put on to my one ring some chicken sausages i had bought last night as they were knock down price... 80 percent off.... now i so rarely ever but sausages never mind meat....a bit now and again could live without it..... thrift means it was the kairos to have some sausages keep me going...sadly she i never forget also on our first cup of tea was so fundamentalist she became traumatised wehn we entered a small café  - only one café in that village and she couldn't even handle smell of some bacon sizzling....balance methinks means not taking any of it to extremes... we had to leave)

I write. I have two modes a stream of consciousness poetical 'in the [creative writing] zone'. I like that. I can also write matter of fact. 

My problem is i wish to do both. For a few months it has been more the latter in various arenas. One cannot write the prosaic simpler form and throw in (to entertain myself) the stream of consciousness. Ones reader will think one has gone nutjob.

But that is for another day. This must be of the latter variety and anyway is the project that around 4 years ago i set out to explore. That was a  simple not personal look at how in rural fringe areas if anyone  - unless they have inherited some big wedge, or sold up an expensive house down south, for a smallholding or even small farm existence to be viable, one does need over the medium term to be with a helpmeet. Or life partner. 

Maybe at times one of the couple will need to be earning the full average wage in some ordinary job - ideally part time so they can also get healthy rebalancing via landwork and being in nature. One set of bills between two. Maybe one vehicle between two. And also when one or other is delayed or diverted " ...i shall not get back to water the tomatoes tonight just so as you know"

I decided this needs writing about in a  simple form. So much self obsession ("MY...identity" and gifts are,  and pesonality is... ) seems  to be taking us away from that need for togetherness for general viability. THat idea was not my 'memoir' simply what i had observed in others over the years and juxtaposed with some realities from my own life. I have no taboos. Loneliness - i rarely suffer from is far far far too much a  taboo. Is an unsayable word in my region and culture. All openness is good if one can... maybe work attitudes or attitudes in small rural communities precludes some openness, but it is an ideal I am sure. 

And thus i shall doodle a little here.

Grace also means, half an hour ago my mobile phone made a noise. the noise it makes  - rarely in my case, when a message is received. Grace means i do not need to look because in fact i think this is more important - just needs to be started and i am at the exact energy level and 'space' setting to do it, now. It is no neurotic need. It is simply good if we can try out some of our many year notions. Kairos is a great word. This moment in this now, here - actually next to a freshly mown hayfield (paradise) is it. Honour it. Nothing that came in on my phone will change my next hour here. Even if there is one message i would love to get ..now... nope... balance and grace do what maybe one has to do first...

In fact i have just lied to myself about something. Big scary word 'lie'. Not deliberate. 

Being 'in the zone'. Funny thing is I am in my 'element'. Slightly struggling to keep 2 laptops charged and a phone and some dictaphones whilst trying to retain myself for writing.

But it is in the 'struggle' that in fact myself comes back. I needed to have a sentence that i never had until this moment now. Here, cooking, charging juggling - a kind of juggling i was long ago well practiced in. 

Me  - has to include a picture of my daughter. Why? i ask myself.... not out loud but it simply occurred in the 'zone' here and now. It is ancient history our life together.  Because for 11 years  - put into practice with her, all i wished for her above all was to indeed be able to live smallholding existence. Its good for you (rest of life it vaccinates in a way). And also having so many animals around - rescue hedgehogs to ponies and loads of ferrets and rabbits, you learn peace...peace in the presence of animals. That i also believe is a great thing to have inside which serves for a more resilient life - emotionally. The melodramas crises etc are less dangerous - less likely to spin you somewhere really bad for you,  if you know you can always get an animal in your life once more because that was whom you were years ago. (that para needs an edit but yes that was my project). 

And it links in to small farms, smallholdings homesteads, whatever ... if you do not learn and internalise some of it when you are young you never really do 'live' it even many years on. Smallholdings being viable. So, if it can be a child can learn and live that life so of course also they can replicate it years on for their kids ..is of course the absolute root of what my project was. I had forgotten that - so so much distraction and ego and fear in so many.

That is a noble project even if too late for me. In respect of another kid. 

And thus she does belong here. Even if tis ancient history. But i start with Ralph as he gave me to me. 

 Hahh hahh transiting between two laptops (battery opt) .... bleedin best photos on other....so later it will be.

And then anyone new, no matter who. You forget. You get distracted.  You forget the tools you found in language. I say i don't much like the word 'zen' - mainly as it was coopted by the crystal salespeople and healer obsessives. They all wear a 'uniform'.

 I had come up with a new phrase a few years ago but it has only just come back - a distraction of late had kept it out of my mind. . I doubt it could be Miss Construed. The Zen of Kairos. Absolutely the now - it is time now... the zen and balance means it is time. Thats what kairos means. It was time - kairos,  for some years not to be 'alive' fully. And for me it is time ...i think...time to be alive and maybe to take risks. That's being alive in a  different way.  

Too much opinion as i just want to upload fact.

more later

 test...a good day today. Most are when the kerfuffle of the new dies back down and you like it. 

saudade is not finished