Sunday, 31 August 2014

A GAELIC MARKET.

On Saturday, July 26, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:


I could say 'Irish', but that's an English word.
But then, so is 'Gaelic'. Margadh Gaeilge, a Gaelic market.


A GAELIC MARKET 1, martin law, 2014


Between a lapping seagull sparkled harbour and high green backdrop hill, ant people are mingling on dry stone, drawn to converge and pause under canopies, fluttering flags, banners and balloons. Corralled by a foursquare continuous convoy of creeping buglike metallic conveyances. Being a pattern repeating over solar centuries every seven days.



A GAELIC MARKET 2, martin law, 2014


A brief breezeblown pause among high cumulus clusters in the blue void, before zooming in through veils and vapours.

While, on the ground, diversity flashes kaleidoscopically into vivid focus. Market day, and a fine sunny day in July.

We are out in force, with a thousand conversations occurring simultaneously, and all unpremeditated. Nobody knew what they were about to say, or what they might hear or see. All happening organically in flawless spontaneity. All in a timeless continuum of a bright breeze off the sea.



A GAELIC MARKET 6, martin law, 2014



From a hawk high vision of surrounding folds and hollows in the blanket of the rural psyche, pinpointing strewn remnants of generations.
Grainy monochrome glimpses of farmers' markets frozen in photographic moments long past.

Drawn to mingle and gather on a wide square of dung-dotted stony ground. Long lines of parked pony and trap, donkey carts against an austere backdrop of barracks and mills.



A GAELIC MARKET 4, martin law, 2014



Milling crowds in black suits, overcoats and hats, the women long frocked and veiled or wrapped in shawls. Patient ponies parked, breeding cattle corralled in clusters, straggling children, and barking dogs, prize ponies and caged ducks, cocks, and chickens. The same tarpaulin tents and fluttering flags, frozen outside time.

In dormant provincial decay, hounded by the holy of holies and shackled by the angelus.
Wrapped in grey newspaper headlines of the smoke of war and sagas of uprising.



A GAELIC MARKET 5, martin law, 2014



Why get stuck there, forever bandaging the wound? Go deeper, beyond the rudiments of industry and servitude, and ask a Druid. Echoes of Tara awakening and the 'real' fall of Rome revisited.

Because this time all the cats are out of the bag, and it's a different kettle of fish and the cows are coming home to roost.

So in case you wonder about all this fluttering of flags and what it reminds you of that you can't quite put your finger on. This forever urge to gather the stray living strands from the relics of dust and doctrine. Connecting the dots all the way to a nexus of upsurge and true tribal revival.




 

The peoples' market, a multifarious diversity of banter and barter, balloons, and local colour,
and practical produce, in the face of uniformity and plastic trash, is really a give-away.

Whether you trade with sea shells or minted metal discs and printed paper promises, it's a coming together in synch with the tides and seasons of freedom and fortune. A primitive prototype of all that's fair, marketing the surviving vestiges of community.

Rudimentary it may be. But there's enough there, local food, clothes, crafts, and tools, to expand a network of local currency. When the big giants crash, we still have a shared link to renewed evolution outside the mechanistic matrix. Practicalities are the prerogative of 'people', not patriarchs.

Instead of fake progress, things we don't actually 'need', which only serve to enslave in debt, 'a faith worse than debt.' Return to bonding with the folds and features of the land
and natural untainted food growing no matter how small the scale. If everyone grew food and the fields were full, abundance would be free.



A GAELIC MARKET 7, martin law, 2014


Regional, local, evolving again. Wiser than when we were unwittingly outwitted, wandering from the way. What more can i say? Just a few glimpses of market day.

~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~
Makes Rainbows.~




Thursday, 21 August 2014

A FERTILE CIRCLE.

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


'G.M.O. = Grow My Own,'



A FERTILE CIRCLE 1, martin law, 2014



Hilltop backyards in a warm wave of sudden sunny summer abundance. Rows of crows on roof ridges and chimneypots shift places and swoop over to the sunny side between unpainted stucco backyard walls.

A patchwork of fences, hedges, and washing-lines like an allotment of enclosures painted by Van Gogh. Makeshift sheds, purple drooping buddleia where red admirals flit, settle, and suck, among the arcing heady scented blooms.

Dog barks, child shrieks, hedge strimmers, power tools, and distant strains of outdated music. Seagulls sail in slow spirals high on warm blue air.

With an aerial view of rectangles in rows, and pastel painted diminishing fractals of gable ends. Four side roads ending in allotments and wild yellow iris in deep shade just before the tideline.


A FERTILE CIRCLE 2, martin law, 2014
Some cycles of seasons ago, clipping a central patch in the long grass, i lay down, squinting into a high sun's hot prismatic glare, contemplating a future garden.

Till, with two sharp sticks and a length of twine
one staking exact centre and with the other describing a perfect twelve foot circle in the cropped grass. A definitive statement in a long untended square grown wild and crowned with a tall crop of waving green.

Taking a straight spade as a cookie cutter, turning the first turf clods outwards from the ring. Matted grass rootstuff, stones, plastic, and shards of glass. A single rose briar stem in the grass. Levering and hauling a buried bulky boulder with a squelch and suck from the wet clay. To be a standing stone, upright like a canine tooth.


A FERTILE CIRCLE 3, martin law, 2014



But don't forget the magic in a circle. The primal definition of form and field. "With this stick, i make a mark in the soil." Serving the soil with affection in abundance.

Concentric to the four corners, ripples in a pool, and what i did, defies the grid. Seasonally cyclic as a crop circle.

Subsequently slogging the sluggish sods of soil, purging all inorganic relics of rust and bottle tops, degrading plastic and tangles of wire. Separating the wheat from the trash.

The primal form emerging, as in the painting, ANCIENT SYMBOL. Not to mention a mountain of meticulous mandalas of sacred geometry, the east, the south, the west, and the north. Incense, sticks and stones, driftwood off the beach. Chopping and filtering the soil for cultivation, but also really just playing with shapes.


A FERTILE CIRCLE 4, martin law, 2014
Well, a garden's a painting whichever way you look at it. In that sense, imagining it from above like a canvas. Green brown pattern on the patchwork ground. A circle emerging down below among the grid of parallel rectangles. Serving as a compass and a sundial mound.

Till now, in a sultry shade of a breeze through the flavour of yellow, rustling the willow, the softened ground round the moated mound, and a garden full of diverse large green leaves.


A FERTILE CIRCLE 5, martin law, 2014



People now reading G.M.O. as, 'Grow My Own', or even 'Go More Organic' and guerilla planting in the steets. In small country towns, planting in any available plot, outside the Bank, the Post Office, the Office Block, the Parking Lot, and all along the towpath by the canal. Spreading from town to town, 'FOOD IS FREE.'


A FERTILE CIRCLE 7, martin law, 2014



Tend the rambling diversity at leisure and take what you need for free. In the name of intentional pure abundance, and community. It's happening now and that's the way to go, to reap the harvest of the hedgerow.

I pronounce a FERTILE CIRCLE grown to fruition, untainted, wholesome, and unbroken.
It grew all by itself.

It's an earth relief replica of an ANCIENT SYMBOL. The womb of the Mother Goddess.
The same symbol still used today on electronic devices as the 'POWER ON/OFF' sign.


A FERTILE CIRCLE 6, martin law, 2014



Occurring too in numerous unaccountable crop circles, softly on the wisdom body of the generously ever rebirthing Earth.

The switch from striving, to thriving. From decay and decline, to new rebirth.

>><< >><< >><<
Makes Rainbows<





Sunday, 10 August 2014

A LIQUID MIRROR, (Process of a painting.)

On Sunday, July 20, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:


'One showing is worth a thousand words.'
~ Zen saying.






I just now completed a painting, titled A LIQUID MIRROR. It took around four days, in five hour sessions on average. I work at a snail's pace, as the process requires full attention to subtle exactness. There is nothing dramatic or emotional about it. It's a form of meditation.

At this stage, i am familiar with my method as to rarely encounter an obstacle that i can't resolve. To say i learned the hard way is an understatement. Probably the best way to learn.

The worst thing you can do is give up. No chance of that though, as it's my preferred kind of challenge, endlessly interesting. To abandon creativity is to embrace self defeat.

Never lie down on the battlefield or your spirit may abandon you. But it's an increasingly peaceful battle, no blood, no sweat, no tears, at all.

That being so, instead of capitalizing on it, (you can't put a price on intrinsic worth) i intend to share all of it. I keep the painting, you gain rare insight into how to do it yourself.
A gift is something shared, why bring commerce into it ?





The measure of art is not how quickly you can part with it in exchange for 'paper.' Or how much paper you can get. Anyway why be in a rush to part with the embodiment of your spirit's pleasure ? You're welcome to a print of it for free. A fractal of the source with essence intact.

So now i will give you a magic medicine. A distillation of what's going on here, complete with images, so you can see the process in progress. There's no loss in simplifying, on the contrary. Because descriptions always seem more complex than the action itself, till you get it.

I'm sharing dependable practical principles of procedure here. Along with feeling, so forget 'technique'. There is no technique, it's not a trick, or a knack, and you won't get far with only a mere technique. Technique is for people whose feeling is not involved, and active expression is intuitive feeling in action. So...

THE THREE BASIC COMPONENTS.

  1. ~ CONTOUR OUTLINE.
  2. ~ SHADOW AREAS.
  3. ~ COLOUR/TEXTURE.




Image number one, CONTOUR OUTLINE.
Simply the visible boundaries of form. What we tend to call, 'things.' When we refer to 'things', we're just pointing out portions of the whole and giving them a name. No 'thing' was ever separate in reality because no one thing ever existed in isolation, being merely a concept based on exclusion, or to be exact, ignoring.

Apparent visible boundaries always have their own uniquely distinct character. That's an important word. This is what line delineates; the distinguishing characteristics. Without specifics there's no character, only vague generalization.

Trees differ from clouds, or rocks, or creatures,
but all coexist together in exact relationship, 'by virtue of one/another', both visually and actually.

So, in drawing a line, be sure it typifies the thing depicted. This entails a lot of looking without inner distraction. Just seeing, without undue effort to 'look.' Attention is present by itself, unless we think 'about' it. It's simply truth to present experience. Composition is seeing where it is, in balanced relation with everything else.

Unpracticed people are unable to depict what they see, without something to refer to directly. For example, how does an ash differ from an oak, or a cauliflower? I remember a teacher in school saying; "And don't make your trees look like glorified cabbages !" Now there's an idea, though it wasn't wasted on me, already engaged in turning over a new leaf.

So if you're drawing directly from what you're seeing, 'one look equals one line.' You can always erase it and correct it. That's the opposite of a mistake, we learn by correcting mis-takes. I'll draw the line there and go into the shadows.






Image number two: SHADOW AREAS.
William Blake is said to have said: "It's not so much the colour as where the dark areas are put." (Approximate quote.) Shadow areas follow contours, literally, as well as chronologically.

When you fill in the shadow areas you already have the emergence of form and volume. It's a nice way to start, as you already feel you're making progress. A procedure is helpful because it helps you to know how to proceed.

Shadows are a deeper tone of the colour of the substance on which they fall. So if you're starting with the shadows within foliage it's a darker green, (mix a tiny touch of black with green. Or even its opposite, violet, tentatively as that's a strong pigment, and opposite colours neutralize one another.)

If it's autumn, or rocks, or earth, dark brown is always a good foundation for shadows and shadow pockets within contours.

You'll see what it looks like in the photo. It's a nice feeling filling in the shadows. Now you already have contrast and depth, the yin and the yang. The polar parameters of wholeness.
So you can take a tea break or whatever, comfortable in the knowledge all is in order.




Image number three: COLOUR/TEXTURE.
I include colour and texture together as they're obviously not two things usually. At least in nature they occur together. Colour is the most luscious stage, as you're working with frequencies of feeling, like when the bare bones and structures bloom and blossom like flowers in summer.

I'm well aware it's possible to paint using only colour, having explored many diverse avenues.
What i'm presenting here is an all purpose practical simplification of the elements of drawing and painting combined. Just one conceptual triad to serve as a guide for further free improvisation. There are no rules, you're free to invent them or discard them.

Colour is infinite permutations, combinations, of subtle modes of feeling and associations like flavours of foods, aromas and moods of frequencies of pitch and radiance, relational resonance as within the realms of music, and i'm always patiently impatient to get to this stage, where there's no area of blank canvas left to be accounted for. Admittedly a typical occidental as opposed to an oriental notion, and you can quote me on that, if you like.

But all colour is relational, vibrating differently according to its context, whether harmoniously or discordantly, just like people. You can modulate and retune, fine-tuning and balancing one against another, blending or mutating, and who's to say precisely where red becomes orange and so on, all the way through the circular spectrum of the rainbow?






Vincent Van Gogh aspired to juxtaposing one pure naked colour against another, approximating the depth of harmonious loving feeling of one human for another and he did a pretty good job. Especially with the sunflowers and the irises which continue to resonate in divine sensual harmony despite silly irrelevant rumours that he didn't have much of an ear.

So forget "green is envy, red is anger, blue and green should never be seen, because you're yellow and black is evil and i've got the blues".
Or that some colours "clash". When it's simply that they're complimentaries of exactly the same tone, which is fascinating in itself.

Because these are all negative cliches of popular disinformation, disseminated by uncreatively incurious and terminally wounded life haters with jaded palettes who couldn't even tell you the exact colour of a sour grape and need to balance their chakras. Enough to make a rainbow cry!

So to round it all off and bring the process to fully integrated fruition, you bring the linear shadow tone back in. To fine-tune and weave- in the "dragon lines" (Chinese term) and minute dots and dashes of surface texture.

Binding it all together like a tapestry of veins,
'arteries', of rivers and streams through fertile land. The devil is not in the detail but angels may well be.

You behold the timeless tranquility of a living scene made manifest. Reflected in the rippled surface of A LIQUID MIRROR.





"I wish i had that gift", you say.
Well, i just handed it to you. Didn't i ?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Makes Rainbows~




Artwork:
        A LIQUID MIRROR, martin law, 2014



Friday, 1 August 2014

Blog Awards Ireland Nomination

 

Martin Rainbowmakers Blog martinrainbowmaker.blogspot.ie
has been Nominated in the Blog Awards Ireland 2014 Long List for Best Arts and Culture Blog



Best Arts and Culture Blog – Long List – Eventbrite

                           Congratulations!






Thursday, 31 July 2014

A BREAKTHROUGH.

On Tuesday, July 8, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

   ('Work in progress.')


Cycles of creation. Death and rebirth. The Phoenix is a relevant icon for the creative process. As Van Morrison sings: ..."search for inspiration, sometimes it just isn't there."

Then, from the embers and the ashes another flaming form bursts forth.




Endangered species it may be, but a universal and not entirely rare bird. A Zen saying: 

 "You can't lose what's really yours, even if you throw it away."


Anything can come out of the blue of infinite possibility. It might well be an unidentified flying object. The kill-joys may say, "There's nothing new under the sun," but that's not so. Everything 'under' the sun constantly renews itself. Besides, it's likely to come from somewhere else entirely, consciousness for instance, and that's infinite and includes 'the' sun.




I was again up against a seeming wall, consisting of 'writer's and artist's blocks simultaneously. Being nothing new and forever an aspect of the path. But how do you get around that ? Water demonstrates the wise answer, flow on, around and over.

There's only a blockage where there's an urge to proceed and create something. The sense of block is when an adequate vehicle or channel seems not to be at hand and boredom as opposed to enthusiasm ensues. Simply because you want to move forward and not just repeat what's past.




So when 'the energy build-up without a channel' builds to the point of counter productive frustration, you take the most adequate vehicle available and drive it mindfully somewhere you've never been before

giving full undivided attention to the how of it.


Go by a route that contains possibilities for expression of feeling, putting that energy into the substance itself. So i move into action and do just that. Better than being laid up in a lay-by lamenting lack. Setting up your own road blocks ruins your drive.

I even have a tentative 13 letter title, to serve as a carrot in preference to a stick. You don't beat yourself (or the donkey) with a carrot. It gives you an incentive to move forward, something desirable to aim for.

Another Chinese saying, from Lao Tzu: "If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
Like most wisdom it's just common sense.
Called wise to the degree that it's not very common.

So, feeling enthused and encouraged by being aimed, i went to town (so to speak) and got a suitably proportioned canvas and other preparatory aids.




Sat at an outdoor cafe table in a local alleyway in the sun. Joined by two other people (both called Denis and both wearing shades) in animated conversation over coffee, in the familiarly chacteristic Irish idiom of passionate common or garden wisdom.
Denis from Dublin expounding in unmistakeable idiomatic Dublinese about, among other things, going ahead regardless of what people may or may not think. Not be daunted (as i was, previous to going ahead) by seeming apathy and absence of a spark of response to creative output... "that sort of way like you know."

When you decisively choose and act on what does inspire you, often others appear who mirror the same back to you. In this instance instantly.


Expressing it mindfully in writing, dispelled the writer's block. Took some promptly improvised photos to augment the story. One such photo, not included here, is the suitable vehicle for what i'm about to paint.
Watch this space....


> R.B.M.
>><< >><< >><<






Thursday, 24 July 2014

ETERNAL SUMMER.

On Wednesday, July 2, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:


Despite the war on life,
small wonders of nature,
untroubled.
~R.B.M.


ETERNAL SUMMER 1, martin law, 2014


Miraculously (all things considered), it's Summer ! Well, it is today, and as i recall, it was yesterday as well. But that's neither here nor there. Where is yesterday? Neither here, nor there.

'All things considered', being 'The War on Life',
which only a total ostrich is unaware of. A state maintained by 'Ostrich Television Trickery', O.T.T. (i hate abbreviations) which pours out fictional censored dramatizations
(read 'propaganda') of the war, so you'll think that by contrast, the world outside'the box' is normal. But as you know, O.T.T. Is over the top.

That's a condensed rewrite of three lengthy paragraphs laboriously proving the obvious, that a war on life is prevalent on all levels.
I decided a bit of levity was more appropriate.


ETERNAL SUMMER 2, martin law, 2014


An ostrich in this instance being a person afflicted with a will to ignorance, hopefully an endangered species. Besides, it's futile explaining anything to an ostrich, never mind pointing out what the contrast button is for, and a head in the sand is the most vulnerable position on earth.

So, 'miraculously, it's Summer !' This is a celebration, which implies a sense of gratitude.
Eternal Summer, though changing from moment to moment even as i write.

You might have a judgemental reaction to the word 'eternal', thinking it's either something sentimental or something to do with religion, neither of which is relevant. Eternal is just the natural state of the universe.


ETERNAL SUMMER 3, martin law, 2014


The dictionary defines 'eternal' as being "without beginning or end." But wait !
It's not possible to define 'eternal', because to define is to put a boundary round a fragment.
Eternal is the infinite whole without boundaries. Do you think you can put Summer in a box ?

If time was a natural state, animals would need to wear wristwatches. It's we who are the captives. Willingly surrendering fully present awareness to the most unquestioned concept on Earth: The forward march of time.
Whereas if you're really put on the spot by a situation, time stops, or rather, ceases to be.

That's partly my understanding of eternal, eternity, timelessness. The dictionary doesn't have the last word on anything, it's not a sacred text. Just a rough guide, and who needs to travel with a rough guide ?

Free exploration is not a conveyor belt. Imagine what a truly eternal Summer would feel like. Or remember childhood before you learned 'to tell the time.'


ETERNAL SUMMER 4, martin law, 2014


Those who say "i haven't got time" have nothing but time with no relief. Time makes you a central character in an ongoing story.

The sun reappeared from behind a cloud (so to speak) as i wrote that. At least from where i am, it's relative. But nothing really did anything, it just is.

It's just Summer (so called) NOW, and 'now' is not a moment in time because nothing is going anywhere. Just eternally changing.

So never mind the past, it was never present anywhere. Nor the future, it's just an imaginary version of what never was anyway.
So how can now be a moment in time ?

It's always NOW and you'll always find it HERE.
Except of course if you try to grasp it. While at the same moment believing firmly that it's just gone. To reach for 'the next moment' is to deny the ever present. When were you ever present in a 'next moment ?'

The feeling of past, is just re-membering, putting it back together in imagination, in the elusive 'now.' But that doesn't make it a present reality. It's just a thought, obscuring what is. The same with future.


ETERNAL SUMMER 5, martin law, 2014


So how can there be a reality between two things which never exist except in imagination? We are collectively 'spell-bound' by language, mistaking the symbol for the reality.

A bit like these grey clouds temporarily (presently) obscuring the sun, which never goes anywhere either.

A bold blackbird (could be the same one) repeatedly returns to the crumbs on the bird table in the sally (crann saili) willow, only a few feet from where i sit writing. The sun bursts through a promising patch of blue, playing hide and seek with my arbitrary preferences. Or to be more exact, it's the preferences themselves doing that.

Then, in no time at all, out of the blue comes an invasion of ragged ominous grey from the South-West. Settling in and transforming all distance to a uniform opaque blanket, squeezing out all trace of blue.



ETERNAL SUMMER 6, martin law, 2014
This is Ireland, not Australia or Arizona. A climate conducive to a mutable philosophical temperament which, when thankfully bathed in solar blessing, circumspectly says "But will it last i wonder" (it depends on how long 'last' is present), "and anyway we'll see."

Climate change? Mad scientists apart, when was there ever a period on Earth when climate didn't change ?

Crows on roof tops grow restless and vanish for cover. Neighbours, hands in pockets, briefly exchange comments from doorsteps and disappear indoors. I bring the chair in and put on a woolen sweater.

In memory i recall how nice it was when it was nice. The clear hot blue and bright light bathing the street in sultry heat. Everybody saying " Isn't it great ! But will it last i wonder." Imagining the future. With the inevitable "Please god", implying ' are we redeemed enough yet to deserve a little pleasure without subsequent punishment ?'

Whatever it does or doesn't do, it's eternal Summer in eternity, not to be compared with any other place or time, there isn't one, not here anyway. Better not spoil it by worrying what's next. There never was any such thing as a next.


ETERNAL SUMMER 7, martin law, 2014
The plants will appreciate the soft drizzle if no-one else does, they look well and happy. Sun and rain go together like up and down. Nothing causes anything. Everything is every-thing (and i mean Everything). Continued in the eternal continuum. ~

Makes Rainbows.
~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~





Wednesday, 16 July 2014

FULL TO THE BRIM.

On Monday, June 9, 2014, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:


"The highest good is like water.
It nourishes all things but does not lord it
over them."
~ Lao-Tzu.


FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014


Woke to grey veils of rain off the bay
and the round moat full to the brim.
Running off the roof with barrel overflowing.
Wind blown leaves a flurry in the
drenched green garden.

All of this is just a preambulatory excuse to share some photo images. The way it looks is what most interests me. Apart from being one of those typical niggles that occur everywhere every day.

FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014



People grapple every day with mundane conundrums, inconvenient glitches and head bangers. Sludge pumps, cracked axles, blasted gaskets, leaky carburettors, dead batteries, fickle fan belts. Not to mention broken homes, broken bones, broken hearts, house fires, flash floods, mud slides, car crashes, earthquakes, explosions, tsunamis, plagues, aerial bombardments etc.

I'm blessed with being spared most of these things in the experiential present. Doodling with word shapes and liquid linguistics, to momentarily express something minimal and unmomentous. If ironically typical enough to be mildly humourous from a detached perspective.

Just a context for some recent photos, expressing artistically an ordinary experience of water.


FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014


So, here we go, lovers of the liquid illusions of wordstreams and water. Long story short, not forgetting to dot my eyes and cross my tease.
After a moment's due deliberation of process and a contemplative cup of tea, on a dappled bench where pussy willow pollen falls softly through flickering sunlight.

Bow-saw grasp, cut the black plastic down-pipe by the water butt, "kark kark" (the rasping sound of saw teeth through plastic.)
The offcut piece half spliced to wedge fit and slope. A chopped pine chunk to hand, a neat wedge fit between butt and ivy clad stucco wall, supports the makeshift elbow joint.


FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014


Outflow end yanked up tight under barrel rim.
Knotted length of coated wire flex draped over and out hangs down. A handy plastic flower pot weighted with a palm size stone. 'Gravity feed'?

Perfect. Solid. All plastic and not a penny spent. Technology reiterates ontology,or something. Taoist solution to the way of water. The answer close at hand. Simple, Lao-Tzu would nod.

Worked well and why wouldn't it? Then the rains came. Freakish for June, unrelenting for grey wet-blanketed days on end, a wall of grey across the bay, Atlantic and westerly.

Chorus:
Woke to grey veils of rain across the bay
and the round moat full to the brim.
Running off the roof with barrel overflowing.
Windblown leaves a flurry in the
drenched green garden.


FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014

Due to go into town, Friday being market day in wet green Munster. The odd windwrecked umbrella passing fleetfoot in the street.
The guttering out front too, sagging and clogged with falls of crowpecked moss balls.
Rain spills sporadic, splashing and splattering on concrete before the front door.

Flooding the drenched and drooping lupins.


Two heavy wheely bin-fulls of rainwater in a row, barely a stopgap.

Never mind bailing out the banks, mine are full to the brim, threatening to overflow, right where the onions grow.

Black plastic bucket grasp to handle it. Bailing bit by bit to swoosh and dump down the drain, lowering the level of in-pouring rain. First cast the moat from thine own eye.




Around a hundred bucketfuls it took. Rain down the roof, flooding into the garden never mind the pipe, brimming ripples down the barrel sides too. May day May day both hands on deck.

Later, on reflection, with a ladder, having tackled the mudclogged gutters, and out back, the downhole blocked with crumbling dirt. Tearing away wet ivy to plunge elbow deep in the mud silted pipe, face down many times between showers until almost got it clear now.

Grasping and groveling to feel to find a U-bend, that dull hollow reverb sloshing sound underground. Acheived at least a slow soak away in case it comes again.

And since then, been out to buy bottled water more than once ! Ironic as rusty old pipes, and there's talk of extra water charges ! In a land like this where water is in abundance free !!


FULL TO THE BRIM, martin law, 2014

While, underground, below pot-holed roads
"Oh Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes" are crumbling and what comes out the tap is toxic poison.

While my barrel runneth over, full to the brim.
Hush ! ... The sound of rain !

//// //// ////
Makes Rainbows / RBM.