mokie | Reading

"Did Michelangelo ever work in ivory?" she asked.

I thought the answer had to be "No, Michelangelo was far too butch" but I asked the Internet just to be sure.

And it told me there are a couple of ivory crucifixes in Spain- in Guadalupe and Montserrat- that have been attributed to him.

Well, I never!

They're not greatly impressive as works of art, but they're skilful- so I'm modifying my answer from "No" to "Probably not."

The narrator of the book I'm currently reading- Iris Murdoch"s Under the Net- has been telling us about the time he ghosted his best friend. Synchronicity, eh? He ghosted him because he'd first betrayed him- and can no longer bear to face him. I can bear to face the person I've ghosted, but I think Murdoch has hit upon something in linking ghosting and betrayal. In ghosting we betray the trust the other person had placed in us. We may argue that the trust was always misplaced and we didn't invite it, but this doesn't entirely stifle the feelings of guilt.

I dreamed I went to have my hair cut and the Latin American hairdresser wanted to shave scenes from her country's 19th century revolution into the stubble. I said, "Go for it."

I'm happy Jeremy Corbyn is starting a new political party. People are joining in droves- and disgust with mainstream politics is such that it may even get somewhere. I don't fancy tying myself to someone's else's mast so I won't join but if the party puts up a candidate locally I'll vote for them.

Ghosting- the new name for a practice as old as Linear "B".

I've ghosted and been ghosted.

On occasion I've ghosted inadvertently, meaning I've put off replying and put off replying until it would be silly to pick up the thread.

I'm ghosting the person who annoyed me- but only after telling them that I wasn't going to exchange any more texts. And leaving the loophole that if they wanted to speak to me face to face they knew where to find me. This person dodged out of an earlier face-to-facer and that was pretty much the final straw.

I was always a reluctant correspondent. Writing any kind of letter, email, text is a perfomance. You have to assume a mask adapted to the nature of your correspondent. The persona you present to a bank manager is very different to the one you present to a sweetheart- and for everone in between the two extremes you have to calculate just how intimate/comic/severe you can afford to be and choose your words accordingly. It's bloody hard work. Some of the same applies to face to face meetings but there you're relating to the person in the moment and words are not the only medium; there's body language, there's emotional temperature and what- for want of a better word- I'm going to call vibes. Face to face you can adjust, turn on a sixpence, improvise....

Scotland and the North of England got hit hard but Storm Floris merely dragged the skirts of its coat over us down here on the South Coast.

Floris- is it a girl's name or a boy's name? Neither and both. The internet tells me it's gender neutral and Dutch, derived from the Latin word Florens meaning "flourishing". I'm all for gender-neutral. And what a beautiful name it is!

Picture Diary 100

1. Under the mountain

2. Tap Dancer

3. Vive la France

4. Ascended master

5. Hermit

6. O.B.E.

The honest thing would be to say, "You've royally pissed me off and I really don't like you- so l please leave me alone" but I find I can't.

The best I can manage is discourageement. Might outright rejection be kinder?

I am sufficiently European to resonate with Catholic things
And sufficiently English to resonate with Anglican things
And sufficiently far out to resonate with Pagan things
And sufficiently marginal to resonate with Quaker things
And suffciently impatient with all the above to resonate with Zen things....

Next week one of our members is going to be giving a talk on her pilgrimage along the Milky Way to Santiago da Compostella and Mark- who has an eye and an appeciation for anything cross-cultural said how interesting it was that Quakers were prepared to countenance something so very, very Catholic and I thought, "Well, now you mention it I suppose it is, but I'd sort of taken it for granted...."

Keep calm and carry on.....

Seems like a good mantra for these chaotic, catastrophic, thrilling times.

Or, alternatively, the Zen version, which I rather prefer for its graphic, poetic quality.....

Chop wood, carry water

Chop wood, carry water,

Chop wood, carry water.......

Spent the early evening at Edna and Miriam's beach hut down by the Holy Well.

A thunderstorm has passed through just before we arrived and we watched it floating away to sea, drank wine, ate bread and cheese.....

I dreamed "we" had gone across to France to eat at a restaurant with a wonderful reputation. We were seated downstairs in a crowded room and- while they were perfectly friendly and brought us various amuse-guelles- the staff were tardy in taking our order. I began to wonder whether the experience was worth the large price we'd be paying for it. Then, suddenly, we were no longer in the cellar but sitting in the open air at the edge of a cliff with a fantastic view out over blue distances, while behind us stood the soaring gothic towers of a mediaeval city.....

Every so often- ever since I was 12- I have felt the need to have a little Rider Haggard in my life. I am currently reading Finished, the third part of a trilogy, featuring Alan Quatermain (dear old, wise old, violent old Alan) and dealing with the fall of the Zulu kingdom. I read book 1 in my teens, book 2 in late middle age and here I am rounding off the experience. There's lots of fighting, lots of tamped down sexuality and lots of lovely, lovely supernaturalism. There's not much that Indiana Jones knows that he didn't learn from Alan. The Quatermain book that is mostly read these days is King Solomon's Mines, but I think the trilogy- Marie, Child of Storm and Finished- is better, richer, fuller- with more engaging characters....

There's an old chalk pit carved into the cliffs at the west end of town that has been repurposed as "The Italian Gardens" and is sometimes used as an open air theatre. We were there yesterday evening for the Eastbourne Operatic and Dramatic Society's production of the Tempest- latest in a series of summer Shakespeares that goes back to the beginning of the century.

There's this to be said for amateurs, that they're doing it because they want to be there and not just because it's another job. There was rather too much gabbling and shrieking and overcooking of jokes and drama but I've seen productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company I've liked less. Someone had had the idea that Ferdinand should be played as a callow playboy in love with his i-phone and Miranda as a moody teen- which is oddly wrong-headed- but there was a strong Prospero, an even stronger Ariel, a Caliban who was essentially the star of the show- and the magic filtered through.

Per request:
Name you would like to go by: Verdelet

-Present path or tradition: Traditionalist Witchcraft, NECTW flavor, mainly, been simmering in that Cauldron for half a century or so.

-Interests: easier to point you to my user info.

-Age (not mandatory): old enough to no longer give a damn?

-Brief Bio: Green Vine, daughter of Qayin. Bearer of Lantern and Keys. Fifty years in the cauldron and still simmering. Tradition-rooted, bullshit-resistant, and usually correct.

“Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.” – Terry Pratchett.

Current Location: Yon Bonny, Bonny road
Current Music: Thomas the rhymer

I have a bruise in the crook of my left arm where Marcia failed to insert a canula but none in the crook of my right arm where her jovial senior colleague succeeded. I'm proud of myself that I got on top of my needle phobia and submitted to this carry-on with cheerfulness.

On our way home from the hospital we stopped at Siyvers Antiques Centre (which is housed in an Edwardian railway station) because they serve home-made cake in their refreshment room. I nearly bought a matryushka doll of President Clinton with a doll of Ken Starr inside him and a doll of Monica Lewinsky inside Starr. "Little bit of history" I thought- but it was an ugly thing and I don't need to be filling the house with bits and bobs for no better reason that they're quirky so I bought a nice model of a GWR railway engine instead because it was cheaper and I like steam trains a whole lot better than I like Bill Clinton.

Clinton Matryushka dolls aren't rare. Look on Etsy for examples of the sort of thing I nearly bought.

And here's a picture of the thing I did buy. Not bad for a fiver. GWR stands, of course, for God's Wonderful Railway

I'm back from having my eyes photographed at the hosptal. The procedure involved me having drops put in my eyes and dye injected into my bloodstream- and I was prepared to come out looking as orange as an American president- and for my urine to be fluorescent yellow, but not for the whole world to have turned strawberry pink......

I understand now why I flinch at the word "spirituality".

It's an either/or word. If I am "this" I cannot be "that". If I am "spiritual" I cannot be whatever the opposite is- "materialistic", I suppose.

But why insist on the opposition? Why insist on the emnity of the two states?

There is only One Universe. And all the divisions within in it are illusory. The quarrels we have, the wars we wage are all games. The spiritual being and the materialist come off stage, remove their make-up and go down the pub and have a drink together.....

Picture Diary 99

1. Nevermore

2. Careful!

3. Putting on the Ritz

4. Nice little place you got here. Pity if something were to happen to it....

5. Thinking

6. Shelter from the storm

Just as well I made it up with the neighbour.

Because a delivery man wanted me to take in a parcel for him yesterday and I'd have felt pretty silly if I'd had to say, "Sorry, but we're not speaking."

I was so taken with Olivier's Astrov that I thought I'd give his Othello a spin. The film of the stage production was made in 1965. I remember it being controversial at the time. Now it's all but unwatchable. I stuck with it until the end of Act I .

It's truly terrible. Not only because of the blackface but because the production is so inert.

I had several goes at writing a post about it, but then thought, "After all this time, who cares?"

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mokie

January 2025

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people I read

Reading

Too Butch?

Scenes From A Revolution

Ghosting

Floris

Picture Diary 100

Too Nice?

Cross-Cultural

A Choice Of Mantras

Departing Storm

Change Of Scene

Dear Old Alan

Open Air Shakespeare

Hello

GWR

Colourful

Non-Duality

Picture Diary 99

Dodged That One

Who Cares?

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January 2025

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