IN WINTER WOODS.

On Saturday, January 10, 2015, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

A collage of fallen leaves.

 

Seize the day, as they say. My simple aim was toward ancient oaks. A rough strategy for which part of forest park to walk, as winter light would allow, but off the beaten path.

While the path long lost like a lame lament loops back around in time, compounding ancient ground. A ritual, void of intent, a stray arrow loosed and lost in deep thicket.

Sealed through time with tar and cement, yet a single tree is wild and free as one which is one with wilderness. Knowing nothing of ‘nature reserve’, draws endless reserves through earthbound roots.

Returning to the woods on foot, a winter walking meditation, is no mere brisk jaunt to aid the circulation. A turning away within, in the spirit of mindfulness, in respect of our shared destiny, our dignity.

Transforming with intent, the worldly drama and grim pillage, to one of silent pilgrimage. At the turning of an age, in the company of sleeping trees.

A sceptical age prevails all around, proud of the progress we think we’ve found. As if we’d left the past behind, when the myth of progress is in the mind.

The loss of the now is the notion of time, that we’re moving between what’s ahead and behind. “It’s one giant step for humankind”, revoking all stories by which we’re defined.

As now, or so it seems, at some pre-pagan point within the dream, unmindful of the ground beneath our feet, the plot got lost in self-deceit. The wild stag vanished without trace, no wolves’ lament when the last was killed.

Through the woods, shocked silence sings, falls through branches bare of leaves. But for the call of a plaintive wren, in deep gullies of hidden streams.

All language fails while this water sound, is lilting something more profound. Ensnared by delusion that runs so deep, by language locked in perpetual sleep.

These remnant woods hold a presence sublime, our thoughts, an anomalous paradigm. While lyrically and literally, we’re hostages to history.

So, to ramble on, relatively microcosmic as a dust mite, in a living carpet that sees and hears. Not get snagged by low bramble snares that rip. Crunch softly not to startle or alarm, feathered folk in the underbrush, aware, though hidden and unheard.

To pause and stand amazed, listen to the silence deep within, and breathing slow. Stand as one with a dense, intensely vertical maze. Tall, sleek, slender, ground-grasping talons of evergreen. Gaze skyward where top tips touch in cathedral quiet.

To circumnavigate around what a friend later referred to as “the faerie fort”. A group of rocks on an oak-topped mound. Wrapped around with roots and crowned with deep cushioned moss, the way, one could say it was meant to be.

If all of this is holographic then so are we.

Some unseen force did a thorough job, but then, perhaps, it did itself. As is now known and shown, that leaves of plants and trees, feel, hear, speak, and see.

How sensitive are we? Notice how our plunder returns in kind with thunder. All life is one and space is no division, how then treat the sacred with derision?

No space without form. No form without space, and space, so called, is our breath of life. As Dante said of wonder: “Attaining to wonder, seek not further what may be behind it.”

Beyond that, is what we are, we are that, and that is sufficient. At least for now. ~

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker

IMAGICATIVITY.

On Thursday, December 25, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

Why should difference divide people when it’s what everything has in common? Having uniqueness in common we are all unified, like snowflakes. True unity is when the components are not merely interchangeable. ~

~~~~ ~~~~

It’s Christmas, though it could just be my imagination. Don’t misunderstand,

seasonal celebrations are of great importance. I think we can agree though, ‘it’s Christmas’ only to the extent that a majority agree to acquiesce to it’s being a literal reality.

Otherwise it isn’t.

So i’m not about to pick holes in anybody’s Swiss cheese, quite the opposite. Just to say that it shouldn’t be difficult to discern the difference between a consensus agreement, and an otherwise undisputable actuality. Taboo apart, it’s only Christmas to one who believes it is without question. You have until ‘next Christmas’ for the penny to drop.

Put simply, the word (any word), is not that which it refers to, but a coded significator to spark the imagination. Otherwise we could subsist on scraps of paper inscribed with the word ‘food.’

We recognize the difference between the signpost and the road, the label and the contents, the word and the actuality. Otherwise we remain ‘spell-bound’, and starve, going nowhere.

 

The whole point being, that what we call (only) imagination, is actually our greatest asset and attribute. Yet, when not recognized, realized and respected as such, is our delusion and downfall. Leaving us vulnerable to any and all verbal manipulation.

It’s one thing to call a spade a spade, but that’s merely an agreement so you don’t bring me a fork instead. A spade is not really a spade, but only referred to as such for convenience and the same goes for Christmas. Try asking for a spade in another country.

Such is the magical power of imagination and belief, that unless you have a handle on it, it will be handled for you by the handlers of society, and it is and they do. If they were to decree, ‘Christmas is now on midsummer’s day, (for your comfort)’, would you still firmly believe it to be Christmas, and enjoying it, eventually agree? They only have to check on you once a year.

The next question, why is (or was) it called the season of peace and goodwill for only a few days, when it coincides with ‘saturnalia’ and more, the rest of the year devoted to war, business as usual? Why not 364 days of peace and goodwill and a day off to freak out, or speak out? It’s a backward world that does everything in reverse. Which leads to a case in point, or a point just in case.

Multifarious multitudes of millions, bearing banners banning bullies with bombs. Brandishing upside down and in reverse CND peace symbols like sheep demanding their wool back.

Forgetting the tree of life grows up from the ground not upside down. When simply Googling the right ‘rune’ puts it straight.

Such is the force of unquestioned belief. Holding up targets thinking they are shields doesn’t sound like a wise strategy, magically counter-productive.

Wikipedia suggests even the designer himself was unsurprisingly unhappy, regretting what he’d done.

The rune ‘Algiz’ (right way up) protects from negativity, grounding it in the earth, where uranium belongs. Otherwise you could get struck by lightning or at least be self -disempowered. With so much emotive energy and belief invested, it only takes one psycho with a master copy to topple the dominoes, but such ideas always backfire when the intent is anti –life. Be a well-read rune, rotate sunwise and activate the tree of life.

A better bet would be, the symbiotic symbol of Yin/Yang unity, known as ‘the supreme ultimate.’ The ancient and elegantly simple circle-based epitome of the harmonious union and mutually arising complementarity of opposites. Where the existence of each, gives rise to the other. Each holding the seed of the other within its centre as a secondary link, or kingpin/queenpin. There is no better beautiful symbol of peace and unity, and turning it upside down makes no difference.

 

Recently, a friend produced a palm-full of crimson (spell it right) ‘fuchsia’ - flowers and some rose petals, and the deep crimson lent itself to being arranged on paper, a background white as snow. With a photo image to show how delicately it transformed into an intricate line of dancers. When i mentioned to my friend what i’d been party to the creation of, she said “good, i knew you would.”

As for the flaming flowers in the garden, actually being the fire in the grate reflected on window glass and captured accurately, this time, solely by reflection.

Similarly in the flow of the moment (how can a moment flow?), trawling through my photo folders for anomalous and unused shots.

An image that leaped out while walking leisurely in the woods. Scramble at the wayside foot of a pine stand slope, to where a random rounded rock reveals its profile. With a moss-encrusted rustic head-dress and even an eye if you look up close, pause the crack and crunch of dry detritus sticks to do a digital fix of a so called moment in the flow.

Also, closer to home, cabbage leaves envisioned as canvas-worthy, being literally lilac, turquoise, and soft yellow besides brassican green.

In one and the same plot where hydrangeas had bloomed, like soft firework displays muted in modest shade. The interesting intricacy of the ordinary is extraordinary. The flowers making the most graceful in close-up displays of petal-face greeting. Turning to sparse simplicity like Zen butterflies at the season’s turn, breeze-blown soft pastel blue-pink wings in the shade.

Not unrelated, since being a spontaneous sunward shot from the self-same spot, with either a lens flare or digitally purple orb above the sun.

Slumbering in smoky molten gold beyond the peninsula, between dark house shapes and backyard walls. All in a quick shutter’s click of a moment which had already changed imperceptibly, without having for a micro-second ceased to be now.

So how about the Tao, the Dao (the Dow), the largely ‘forgotten but not gone’ original face of the familiar?

Being a compilation, a combination of imagination, image magic, and creativity. I call it imagicativity. ~

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~

Rainbowmaker.

NEW WINTER COAT.

On Monday, December 15, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

It’s not that everything is connected, it’s that there are no separate bits to connect.

~~~~

Small birds flit and flutter in the bare branch back yard web of willow twigs. Fleeting forays foraging from the feeder. Leaves yellowing to ochre scattered on the cold damp ground.

Duffle pockets yet again in need of needle and the black thread knotted in a tangle and lost against the black hooded and toggled coat with sleeve split under the arm.

Imagining and visualizing in moments what kind of coat to substitute whether for wet, wind, or cold of winter. Something loose like a cloak to cover the knees, or even tweed to wrap around like a native blanket without the need for slick oilskin or flapping synthetic plastic.

Backdrop of dusk stretched behind the dark drab street and small town country market stalls dismantled. Another quick look in a charity shop before leaving on foot up the hill.

The theme being the quickening of dream, the imagination, the continuity of visualization, its manifestation neglected as art lost and forgotten as last night’s dream in the self-same seam-free subconscious.

A long overcoat hangs half hidden waiting in the wings of the material realm. Seeming to be the only one in town of all shops of dream remnants and wasn’t there before, but i was confident it would be.

Near closing, the little lady checking the day’s takings helps me into a large loose coat with “oh it ‘is’ a man’s.” Feels comfortable, impeccable as new for just ten euros, and i keep it on round the clock glad of a good winter coat.

Still coat clad later by the fire and curious what i’m wearing, a distinctly well-made garment. Mysteriously shifting between dark grey to brown with the light and a hint of thin stripe, and like fine fur, grows in one direction down for run off of rain.

Label of obscure Europan origin bearing three animal heads, Sheep, Alpaca, Angora goat. With a conscience hoping the animals were unharmed, not shot by arrow from horseback like a buffalo or caged and abused. Checking online to find the creatures sheared but otherwise content, and who with what vibration wore this finely tailored garment?

Realizing the unknown is all for me to heal, and permeate with thankfulness and high vibrations from inside out. I fill the room with sage smoke, wafting with words to the four directions, plus Mother Earth, Sky, Heart, and incense lit.

‘Mitakuye oyasin’, (all our relations) blessed. Celebrate the night by flickering firelight with Spanish guitar and healing vibrations wrapped in a coat of songs.

Wishing only to be inspired and inspire, through the universality of all art. Satisfied the totem animals i wear came to no harm other than a summer haircut, my play becomes a photo shoot before the night is out.

With the product of recalibrated pelt laid rumpled and loose across a chair with silkworm scarf for sky. Improvising landscapes just for fun and this is the result.

So celebrate, lest we forget, art is first of all respect for all nature sacred emerging in mind from the seam-free continuum. Generosity shared in the spirit of gratitude for food, clothing, and shelter. 

 

 

May we all be warm in winter, harming nothing, creating beauty, speaking truthfully, and amending without need for mending, thanks to a new winter coat.~

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~

Martin Rainbowmaker.