creativity at the edge ...

Eclectic tastes, an open, some might say vacuous, mind; a rebellious nature; a stable psyche, without investment in any cultural, political, scientific or religious structure; curiosity ... all these components of the complex organism writing these words somehow create a worldview without a name ... making it quite tricky to identify any fellowship of the formless ... perhaps why folks coalesce around compromises or just get tired of trying to work out what's really going on ...

Confidently piecing together perceived pearls of wisdom from a wide variety of sources and ready to jettison parts or all of the current delusions, means life is ever interesting ... the key maybe simply to accept what resonates when it resonates, fit it into the ever changing multi-dimensional jigsaw, and crucially to take nothing, especially the illusory self, too seriously ...

Anyway, following the dip into Chaos Theory and the more recent work of Jude Currivan, proposing an expanding universe holding all the information in 2D at the edge and projecting it holographically into 3D to create the forms and adding other dimly remembered influences, including William Blake's universe in a grain of sand and e.e. cummings' : 

"Love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

Yes is a world

& in this world live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds"

 ... perhaps, at all scales, the sweet spot is at the creative edge between stability and chaos .... as noted before ... and the shape of this expanding universe? Maybe toroidal and perhaps with dimensions skillfully curled in the fabric of space time ... or something ... a less than rigorous scientific mind leaves space for all sorts of conjectures ...

Meanwhile, the excitement mounts in the political pantos in DUK and BSA ... the latter sees the incumbent old white man under investigation for some of the many impeachable offences he has committed, while a richer, older white man throws his hat in the ring along with around $50 million to try to win the election next year ... closer to home the Chief Rabbi ups the stakes in the punishment beating of Corbyn for daring to call out the war crimes of the current Israeli regime ... the Labour Party resists telling the truth of the matter, indeed speaking that particular truth of the Mossad plot is now grounds for disciplinary action against its members ... still, many folks see through it and the progressive programme of Corbyn and McDonnell has traction, if not a positive reaction from the billionaire owners of the British Press ... freedom of the press, as observed  many years ago, is for those who own one ... all of which only mildly distracts from the more important work of consciousness raising ... oh yes, Basic Income made it into the Green Party manifesto, though the chances of them forming a government are as close to zero as you could go ... maybe a minor member of a Labour led coalition? 

Chaos ....

November continues mostly grey, with a brief bright and very cold spell, signalling winter ... plenty of time to wander physically and metaphysically ... wondering, for example, whether the pilgrimages are the perfect balance for exploring the mind alone and with fellow explorers ... and missing the others leads to flirtation with fixed places to be in company ... Bramdean sometime this year, Findhorn perhaps, though both some distance to travel ... Land of Joy more local and offering a surprise visit next Sunday from Osel Hita, the reincarnated Lama Yeshe ... later in December a call for volunteers to clear the land ready for more tree planting, which needs to be fitted round a full Christmas programme with Wheels to Meals ... of course the opportunity to just rest in silence in the warm, dry, beautifully simple, cottage also resonates, though formal sitting not so much ...

A trip to Durham uncovers two new titles for the expanding library ... though there are plenty still unread on the shelves ... first, "On Pilgrimage, A Time to Seek" piques the interest, partly for some clues of the structure of the long gestating Wear & Dao book ... interesting enough, though focusing on the sceptical but conditioned explorations of Jini Fiennes, a lapsed Catholic ... prompted by her skirmish with cancer, which finished her off a couple of years after publication back in 1991 ... published slightly earlier, in 1987, the other book, "Chaos", by James Gleick, resonates for different reasons, since chaos was intuitively explored some years ago during the brief and brilliant period of social enterprise with Cameron, a very clever chap with complementary skills and similar aims to redesign public services in County Durham, as if the customer was important ... this was and remains quite radical, where those delivering the services tend to focus on maintaining high and well paid employment ... a worthy aim, but maybe not at the expense of declining services. .. indeed subsequent years of austerity as public expenditure has been squeezed suggests that Du-services was a little ahead of its time ... as for Chaos, it was recognised that a company doing radical redesign required three elements, leading to three job titles : Director of Chaos, to stir up the decaying matter to release the energy for the new forms waiting to unfold; Director of Progress, to shape and promote the new forms; and Director of Order, since paying the bills and all that admin stuff, resisted by the feckless other Directors, was essential ... a three legged stool ... a nod to pedantic readers acknowledges the apparent paradox of a Director of Chaos, but that's semantics ... more critically Chaos overwhelmed Progress and Process and since the customers for Du services were not the same as the end user, it was a tricky market, seemingly dominated by bureaucrats with no interest in anything which might possibly threaten their comfortable lives ... best not to mention the opaque parallel power structures embedded in public sector organisations, since they have long memories ... anyway, who knows where it might have gone in a parallel world where the timing was right?

Surely not on an adventure exploring inner space without the burden of house, car or anything that didn't fit in a rucksack!

Return of the Sun

After a wet week with little light to excite the solar panels, today sees the return of the Sun for most of the day ... yesterday's early show not lasting long, though enough to provide a wonderful early walk through the woods, watching leaves detach and flutter to the ground ... on the tops a good crop of Blewitts, frozen from the cold night and enough for friend's planned vegetarian lunch as well as several helpings here ...

Washing optimistically on the line in early sunshine, then off uphill for gorgeous five hour wander, almost like a day on the Camino and, without intermediate coffee stops, a fair physical test after the week's rest ...

Politics continues to polarise, with main event - to exit or remain in the EU - occasionally diverted into how much each party is planning to spend to bribe a gullible electorate. .. austerity apparently a thing of the past, not because of major improvements in the public finances, in fact without any apology for the suffering it caused over the last 9 years, as if this was nothing to do with the party asking for another term ... not much detail either on how the gross inequalities will be practically addressed by the main challenger or any party proposing radical measures like Basic Income to incentivise folks stuck in benefit dependency ...

Meanwhile Mossad's plot to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-semitism persists, with willing and well paid supporters inside JCs party continuing to punish the leadership for calling out the war crimes of current and recent Israeli governments ...

A relatively busy week ahead includes Assisted Shopping tomorrow and lunch trips to daughters Wednesday and Thursday, with added culture Thursday at Lumiere, an invitation to risk joining the crowds in Durham from a dear friend ... a birthday celebration, itself rather rare ...

As for long awaited book project, despite recent visit from the editor, progress is slow and motivation lacking ...

Settled ...

More or less settled in Stanhope, though dreaming reality is taking a while to catch up, spending quite  a lot of time walking in Spain, on the boat and so on ... possibly a result of the too swift return, albeit without airborne assistance ... the usual questions "when are you off again" and "where next" are met with the usual response ...

Dark nights and short days affect the rhythm, regular morning walks continue, rain or not, though organism treats an hour or so before breakfast as a brief interlude in a fairly sedentary week ... appreciated by feet especially ... meanwhile common cold squeezes past the immune system leaving a persistent cough lingering ... normal November phenomenon and organism only mildly put out ... two ignored emails from local surgery offering vaccination against flu yet to be discerned as wise or not, maybe just another run out for immune system, generally supported with fresh air, sunshine, decent diet and exercise ... and a question around whether the drugs undermine the immune system by telling it not to bother ... none of this speculation set out as advice for others, just an instinct the consequences of which will be accepted ... as with premature screening for cancers ...

A brief review of kit on Camino suggests pack could be lighter with one t-shirt and the spare trousers less, the metal water bottle excessive ... otherwise Deuter performed well enough, though lost his rain cover in Bodenaya ... some pilgrims suggested trail runners for the Way, though trusty Scarpas generally serve, except in very wet weather ...

New routes to explore include the San Salvador from Leon to Oviedo ... though increasing popularity of other routes makes them less appealing ... maybe time to try other countries?

Identification with the various roles in daily dramas scrutinised. .. emotional investment in them serving to confirm them as aspects of a real and substantial self ... desperately hanging on to redundant roles perhaps rather like the caterpillar in chrysalis form resisting its destiny and longing to be back munching cabbage leaves ... an apt example since the return from summer work party found optimistically planted winter greens stripped to the stalks ...

Tomorrow, a trip to the cinema with the elders ...

5th anniversary ...

Today appears to be the 5th anniversary of the freedom experiment, though not of Wear & Dao the blog ... Wear & Dao the book still gestating though feeling like a winter project, as long as itchy feet and vitamin D loving skin allow ... rather dismal days since sunny Santander. .. still seasonal affective disorder fortunately not prevalent here, though several friends report it ... leading to question of whether mind drives the chemistry or vice versa ... or both together ...

Partisan party politics fills the media, entrenched opinions leading to a question of whether evidence supporting contrary views is ever considered ... long standing distaste for gross inequality pulls to the left, though even the Fabian Corbyn is not proposing higher level solutions of a transformation of consciousness to address planetary problems and individual mental health problems where psychopaths are rewarded for "wealth creation", "risk taking", and so on ... anyway, five year voting cycles make proposals of degrowth political suicide ... and perhaps continuing casino capitalism, where hedge fund folks make huge bets on market movements, movements themselves not separate from the bets or the gamblers, will crash the financial system again soon, since behaviours have hardly changed since the last time ...

Hard to say when or if freedom started and finished ... certainly the pilgrim walks have continued long after a house appeared ... anyway, it was a choice to buy it and the window of freedom from anything which didn't fit in the rucksack was a wonderful two years or so, an embodiment of the idea that less is more ... and the experience of liberation from stuff, not to mention self, means it may easily enough be done again ...