Not Around on Tribe Much

Hi everyone. I'm just around here much any more. Although there is a lot about Tribe that is wonderful I have so many actually-people-that-I-know friends on Facebook that I spend a lot of time there. So if any of you Tribe friends what to link up with me, look here:

en-gb.facebook.com/people/B...524124992

also
www.facebook.com/pages/The...5272974621
www.facebook.com/pages/Mr-...8857567161

& my web page is here

www.redsandstonehill.net

you can order both of my books there!

best wishes to all, Barry

Summer Solstice 2008

Summer Solstice 2008

stand at the edge of the known world
at every moment of breath
awoken by the sun & moon
drawn down by the ocean or sky

down into the cloudy wind
helter-skelter of twisted smoke
to sit in the house with a smiling demon
who turns out to be useless & afraid

the cliff top path for you!
the birds for you, the waves,
the morning sun on windows
the other day, the other day

& your perfect innocence is scary
your false perfection is afraid
clock hands whirl you around
the circle of names & numbers

so it goes, so they come & go
years, seasons, addresses, streets
bus stops, centuries, solar returns
solar winds, solar weather, solar power

Saturday 21st of June, 2008
Beau Forrest, dare-devil
died in a bed, sat on a wall
then stepped from the wall into outer space;

Paula & Gary spoke their vows
to the rainy circle, wrists & lives
tied together, for a dance
for a feast, for a song, for a life;

Edith Morningstar Laxley
came forth from Alice & Dan's secret
there was blood, there was joy
there was a new voice on the phone

you fled to the Atlantic
& found yourself on the spot
as it should be in a world
innocent & perfect as this one

the cliff top path for you!
the birds for you, the waves
the morning sun on windows
today, today, today, today

awoken by the sun & moon
drawn down by the ocean or sky
a circumference everywhere, come to ground
at the edge of the known world



Barry Patterson
July 2008

Caption Contest

Winner gets big eyed bean from Venus! (well my allotment which is a bit like Venus...)

Been paying silly boys with the Simpsonizer & the Gimp.

So what am I saying? BTW the cat's name is Castor. He had a successful visit to the vet today & is now out, sulking.

Closing date next Friday, the 1st of Lughust.

The Wren

It is late May's intoxicating drizzle, misty green & you're just walking back & forth, sometimes playing the flute or engaging in conversation with a dusky winged fly
Not quite alone in allotment town, you wanted to check up on the squashes & beans & found those mysterious paw prints in the plot that they've been talking about
The walking gets slower & slower & silence descends, a noisy silence of rain drum & bird song & the spicy weed shout of soil minerals released into the air
The sky, grey, lightening & darkening itself in time with the earth's gentle breaths & the crow returns to her nest on the top of the electricity pylon over there
The fallen ash log has a gravity of path distance, the walk gets even slower, to that “nothing but meditation lies ahead,” Zen-Zeno speed, like a surprise
The silent power of sitting down, all alone, on the land: its silence is music, its music is silence, its heaviness is light, its light is a heavyweight circle
Letting go of the centre, the horizon rushes away like the end of an unexpected dream-moment: you awaken when you didn't even know that you were asleep
The wren meets your gaze - her resolute eye meets yours before she dives into the dark lightning-folds of the ivy at the base of the hedge
Your passion is a roaring green flame that lances up into the sky like a new bramble leaf that just crossed the threshold, unstoppable in growth-might's call
You'd shudder, but you're a mountain-height of tendril nerve constellations, entwined around the flowering presence of the cerebro-spinal rod
You say the word, make the unspeakable sound that confirms the lack of an echo, a face reflected in a puddle, a daytime half-moon face turned toward the sun
The wren meets your gaze – beyond any idea of speculation or offering of your self, her self, acting out the non-story that completes the circuit
& you bow & bury your face into the sweet earth breathing deeply into crushed ground elder & soil crumbs left behind at the end of the ice-age
Curled like an embryo in a bird's egg, like a soon-to-be-seen in some secret seed, like a vowel in a word, like an eye in a bird's head, like a man in a garden in the spring.

Barry Patterson, June 2008

A Year Round

May 2008

This time around
I won't be leaving you
Beloved May Queen England;
This new rain
Is a poignant
Reminder
Of last year's
Departure.

Goddess green
Has flood-sprung
Everything in a great wave;
Below White Horse Hill
We blow
Horns
Made from sticky spirals of
Willow bark.

The World-Drum,
Heartbeat of Life-Song
Speaks;
“Everything has it's season
Of going away & returning”
So I too, spiralled down into
Tibet's gravity well,
Came back to rain.

The day before we left
All the little herbs
Touched me;
They filled my body with
Hedgerow delight & innocence
& said:
“Now wherever you go
You can take us with you!”

The mountain heavy weight
Of the blessing ray source
Does not know distance;
Our orbits are all
Elliptical,
Spun out
Onto roads & valleys
of journey.

The living, perfect circle,
The company of hands, faces, voices
Are freed from time & story;
They are singing still,
A mantra
Charged by the vertical beam
Of unconditional
Regard.

So I kneel
& resurface
Into green & rain again;
Where they enliven
The city's tessellation
Mind stretched out to scale
The flight, the motorway,
Older, calmer, stronger, stranger.

B. Patterson.

A year after our departure for the pilgrimage.

Epic Journey from the Town the the Wild Woods & back again in Five Minutes

Their fundamental mistake was in trying to take refuge from their sadness in beauty
Mistaking love for some kind of reward in a fanfare of trumpets & horns
Turning away from the mind-wind that sings of the instant of awakening
They lost the natural opulence of our background radiation that surrenders & sighs
Believing that freedom must be found over there on the roadside of the wide, shouting world.

& the steps that they took from their doors in the safety of senile suburbia
Emptied their minds of entertainment, more terrifying without adverts to distract them
Years of eating trash had made them allergic to the taste of green leaves & river water
& longing for email or phones or what they called the music of the moment
They joined hands & took comfort in the simplicity of discovering that everyone is afraid.

Thrown together in a chorus of moans, denied any authority figures
Without maps, on foot, they set out to seek their refugee misfortune
Pavements became unfamiliar, streetnames, meaningless syllables
Hunger was only one of the many kinds of emptiness that they felt inside
Eyes reflecting the pale light of a Saturday morning in February.

Daffodils, thorn trees, thrushes & crows would bear witness
To the human river of in breaths & out breaths steaming in the air
Of eary morning, limbs folding & unfolding themselves over grass
Carpet of gum spotted concrete, tarmac, leaf fringed lane
& all they could think of was what might happen at the end of Story-day.

The road lead out of town, out of time, it became older with every twist & turn
It was time-travel, through the fields, through the moors, through the woods, medieval, prehistoric
Marrow of the hill laid bare, twinkling grains of the ancient desert
First song, shouted from an amphibian throat at the sun
Buddha of the Carboniferous, all black & gold, worshipped by scorpions.

Now the road of the mind's yearning became an evening track on a wooded slope
Darkened by centuries of rain growth & green shadow bank
Beneath, the sound of cold waters making their merry heathen way to the sea
Ahead, the huffing of the wind among the tall grey ash trees on the ridge:
Warm rook voices looping overhead to announce the arrival.

Stopped by the edge of a gulley, waiting for the moment of transcendent understanding
That never came, a shuddering began, a nausea of terror,
Skin-wincing recognition of the long legged old deaths dark-curled tightly in their nests
Waiting for sunset storms & cries of fear & pain in the night land
Wild, hairy old things that everybody knows the look of!

They will come out running, in fierce, jumping huge scampers
Eyes burning with fires coloured by delight & cruelty
Skinny & pale, drumming their feet with impatient hunger
Snatching, catching, nipping, biting soft skins:
Carrying the chosen to the dusty tunnels of no-return.

Then one pilgrim exclaimed & pointed to the wet cliff on the other side
The perfect simulacrum, caught-created by the chance-dimming light,
Eyes closed as if in sleep or bliss, face turned to her left
Breast pointing out from a cloak, hip lost behind ferns:
Our Lady of the Gorge, green & golden, Queen of the Inbetween.

Round bellied, crowned by pendant holly, face all peace
Fallen beech & rowan, ivy clad in an embrace at her feet
She loves them all, even the death spiders in their dark webs of pain
& sends beams of meaningfulness into their hearts, where they stand in silent awe:
Shocked, as if suddenly awoken from an illness of chaos & sweat.

It is just a mossy stone in a Shropshire vale,
But this recognition does not dwell among trees, stones, clouds & birds
Any more than between four walls, on four wheels, on legs walking
Nor among dreams of romance about adventure, spaceships or celebrities
Nor any golden age in a useless future past.

Let us walk on the high hill where the first green is growing
With winter gale carnage of birch tree pieces like beached whales
To the path, to the road, to the town, singing our song
Waving to the children, greeting the gulls in a farmer's field
Set free from our fever of searching, into lucid simplicity.

Barry Patterson 15-02-08

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

The rule is that you don't count total numbers but rather the maximum number of each species seen at any one moment so that you don't count the same bird twice. Counting blue tits in the treetops is tricky & it reminded me of when I was an undergraduate. Mind you I can think of far worse things to be doing first thing in the morning.

I went out on the common. This is what I saw:

200 common gulls
12 black headed gulls
5 great black backed gulls
4 herring gulls
20 carrion crows
9 magpies
1 jay
30 starlings
2 blackbirds
7 redwings
2 robins
10 wood pigeons
21 blue tits
4 great tits
3 long tailed tits
4 house sparrows
2 goldfinches
2 goldcrests
& 1 each of chaffinch, dunnock, collared dove, nuthatch, green finch & great spotted woodpecker

I didn't see any wrens, wagtails, treecreepers or hawks. Shame.

Prajna Paramita

Perfect Wisdom and the Goddess who shares its name cannot be apprehended by the discursive mind or the senses. She is, however, omnipresent as the essence of all phenomena; thus, she may be encountered in the midst of any experience or activity. To see the world as it is -- a dynamic, fluidic, open horizon of meaning – is to gaze upon her divine body and face.

Miranda Shaw, Buddhist Goddesses of India, Princeton University Press 2006

Listening to Last.fm

Listening to Last.fm

www.last.fm

It's a great online music resource!

Listening to: Francis the Mute by the Mars Volta

Listening to: Francis the Mute by the Mars Volta.

Wild metallo-prog with a strong latin, yes, latin(!) dimension. Genius.