How Many Trees...?

How many trees did I see, did I become, this morning when out and about on the bike. I passed through Pollok Country Park to get to the train station that then whisked me up to Barrhead whereupon I head up into the mostly treeless Ferenese hills. Yet, even 'mostly treeless' yields more truth than down there in the city. And I wondered when I returned home, after another train whisks me through a wooded corridor of green, how many trees had I actually seen? This may seem frivolous to some but it's not. Even seeing a tree does something to the soul. We are of the same stock are we not tree and human? And so, I wondered at the difference of an arboreated bodymind to the non-arboreated one. Our history is one of trees and arboration. There are few land animals on this planet where it is not. And so how many trees did I see, did I be-come in coming to them? I imagined in that tiny two hour pastoral excursion, about a million. And then I thought of the office worker down there in Hell, and how many trees they see. And how impoverished their souls must be in their inanimate artificial treeless environments.

Big Hooses on Wee Hills

Today, a couple of big houses on hills. The first is just off Park Road behind Paisley whilst the second is in Pollokshields in Hamilton Drive. Both areas are replete with large villas and well worth a wander. Indeed, any location scout would die for locations like these! And this is the beauty of wandering with an open mind - you could be anywhere. I often think of Pollokshields as its very own Beverly Hills with its car-free roads (all the houses have driveways) and wide runway-empty tree-lined boulevards. And I haven't even been to LA...

Lifeline

This wet Monday morning, I just know I have to get out on the bike. A weekend inside does not bode well for the moving blood and the moving spirit. And so, expecting rain, I head out into a balmy November morning, dry. I nip over the chasm that is the motorway and find myself in Beverly Hills (Dumbreck) where I catch the train at the wonderfully hidden and quiet railway station. It's still dry, but I know that I'm heading west (to Paisley) and chances are I'll meet the rain on the way. But, it's that train, that wee line that was shut up during the Beecham closures of the sixties, that is the lifeline. It catapults me straight from my gaff in Cessnock to Paisley canal. Not only that but Paisley Canal's railway platform links up with the Sustrans cycle path down to the coast, so there are no cars to negotiate at all. Sometimes, I head down to the coast, but most times I do a circuit which finds me in the hills above Bridge of Weir and Kilbarchan and back at Paisley Canal some two hours later. And what a circuit it is. A lifeline that channels life into you. Especially when it's raining. There is no better way to wake up the spirit!

Soaked but awake!

Escape From The Circus

 The picture this morning of a troop of confused-looking camels (and a llama) stranded on a road on the outskirts of Madrid spoke volumes. It said that no matter how effective animal rights activists are in cutting electric fences and liberating imprisoned animals, the animals themselves are lost without a follow-up. It's no use having a revolution if you don't know what to do after it. Leaving animals to stand in the middle of a road is not liberation even if you do free them from their cages, because you've just released them into a larger cage.

Circus animals need to be freed from their cages and then re-educated (that is, rewilded and relocalized). This is the problem we have today with man. He needs to be re-educated and re-localized, and drawn away from the industrial into the natural. In the case of these camels that would have been the equivalent of cutting the electric fence and then leading them out (educate derives from Latin ex + ducere, to lead out) of the industrial estate (and their industrialised state) back into the desert whence they originally came. It wouldn't have stopped there either because these camels were probably born into the industrial which would mean that they would need to be retrained in negotiating and navigating that desert. In other words, in escaping from the circus (whether a big top or a big office) the process of liberation is not simply cutting a wire fence. It's a lifetime's work.

The President Has Left the Building

I'm not sure whose plane this was but it was sure big enough to be Air Force One and it was just around the time when President Biden was leaving (he only came for two days). I could hear it lumbering and struggling to gain height as I've never heard a plane struggle before. It was quite a sight and it just missed that cairn by only a few feet....

The Sun in November

There's a great tune by the English musician Matthew Halsall called The Sun in September. It's a real cracker of a tune eliciting Halsall's admiration of Nature and of the East. His latest album is coincidentally called 'Salute to the Sun'. Sure, the sun in september can be lovely, but can it really compete with, say, the sun in november, or indeed the sun in any of the winter months? Maybe, but just in case you're not familiar with the sun in November here's a few reminders...

Freebie & The Beanie

Two woolly hats, that's what I found today whilst out and about on the bike. The first was near Johnstone, a brand new Ralph Lauren beanie, with the second at Paisley Canal train station. I took the first but left the second, since the second was already being 'worn' by a family of woodlice on the wooden planter where I discovered it. And I was just thinking of a new woolly hat since my old Rab beanie is beginning to show signs of ageing. Maybe, just maybe, I have such power now as a sorceror that I merely have to think about it in order to materialise it. 

We live in a strange and wonderful world, do we not?

Tortoise Forgets Its Shell

 Only the other day I was musing how snugly my rucksack now fit me. A decade of wearing it almost every day, in every weather condition, has caused it to assume the form of my back. Indeed, one might say that it is part of my new back. And so, this morning, upon reaching the little burn in the hills above Paisley and realising my back was only half there I was genuinely shocked. Shocked in the same way that a mother might be shocked at discovering the child she put in her car this morning was no longer in the car. I thought it impossible to leave a limb without noticing it. It was as if my left hand had fallen off and I hadn't noticed, or, I had noticed but only after several minutes. I suppose it confirms what I already knew, that I travel lightly and my rucksack is not as feel-able as a heavy one might be. And I was distracted by a walker in his fluourescent orange jumpsuit. Which is why I always say, when you're in the hills, respect the hills. You don't dive into a swimming pool fully clothed.

The Joy of Going Out Into the Rain

The joy of going out into the rain is not just knowing that there are no people about, no dog-walkers with their five metre nooses, no phone-starers with their five metre absences, no-one period. As a cyclist whose three main enemies are cars, dog-walkers, and phone-starers, this is bliss. Two out of three ain't bad. But that's not all. The joy of going out into the rain is also the misery of getting drenched and soaked and cold, so that the next time you go out and it's not raining...

Now, Forager: The Hunt For Gold October

Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

Walt Whitman

Yep, it's that time of year again: the 'golden time' when leaves turn yellow, when the sun shines golden, and little magical mushrooms sprout forth from the belly of the cool breath'd Earth. Not all of these little magical mushrooms are magic though. Some of them are distinctly un-magic as in poisonous and lethal. Up here, in my secret field to the south of Glasgow, the fields are covered in all types of mushrooms from fly agaric to your common toadstool and inkcap. But it's the little liberty caps I'm after, and this golf course (with no golfers) is prime territory.

I pity people who do not know 'the hunt' and how to forage for food. It's a joyful thing to forage and get to know your health-giving territory. Yet, it's also hard, which is why people no longer do it, because it's much easier to pop into the Co-op with your big SUV and your even bigger belly. Joy however is borne on the back of hardship and the hunt/forage gives you that hardship through bodying forth into the land, braving the elements, and engaging your own locomotive and locating powers. (Moreover, I don't think the Co-op do magic mushrooms).  All this natural being confers not just a sense of wildness upon the creature (that has been hitherto over-domesticated to the point of poodle-hood) but a sense of overall Health and Wholeness. This health and wholeness is as much about the psyche as it is about the body, and so these mind-altering mushrooms offer to the mind what vitamins offer to the body. This is what you are after all: a 'body-mind-earth-system' who navigates the land and animates itself through galvanizing its own sensing body. Now, forager, go forth to seek and find...

The Dancing Rope

 

The Box

The box of course is Pandora's box from Greek mythology which wasn't Pandora's box at all but her husband's which she opened (think 'reading your lover's diary') in his absence thus releasing all manner of emotional and physical curses upon the Earth. Today, the 'box' takes many forms: smartphone, car, office, apartment, the room... but it could also be your toilet...

So, next time you go to the toilet, be careful, because Brad or indeed Kevin may be hiding in there.

Science & Nature

Usually science opposes nature, tears it apart, treats it like some sort of expendable resource. So, when the refurb. job at the local science museum finished boy was I surprised to see Nature being embraced.

Who would have thunk it, eh, the devil reaching out for God's hand...

Graffiti Removal: How to Make a Dog's Dinner of Someone Else's Art

Graffiti, in whatever format it takes, is a valid form of expression, perhaps the most original, since it is never compromised by another before 'publication'. Young people especially need their voice to be heard, and graffiti, often, is the only way for them to do it. It can be done in a messy manner to be sure but even that mess is a valid form of expression, perhaps the most original, because, yes, it reflects the mess that you have made of the Earth and your Self. Yet, time and again, I see the council 'whitewashing' (chance would be a fine thing) this stuff as soon as it goes up, and making an absolute dog's dinner of it. I mean, are these words so potent and true, that they simply have to erase them by hook or by crook? Are my half inch letters so on the button that the council simply can't take it? That those who work for the council have their knickers in such a twist that they're almost tearing their hair out. And all this when advertisers just around the corner are advertising the crass and the crude in billboards four storeys tall.

Has graffiti removal had its day in other words? Should we not leave the graffiti alone as an accurate reflection of our society? We have all been de-faced and dis-figured (removed from our original configuration and face) under progress and capitalism. So what's the deal then with not being able to return the favour in kind?

I mean, what's the point? Here I am trying to share a little wisdom and a little levity, and then this happens by some morbidly obese brain-dead meat-head whose job title might as well be Nazi. Because that ain't 'clean'. That's just a fkn mess.

Warrior

The supreme art of war writes Sun Tzu is to subdue the enemy without fighting. This was how my Tae Kwon Do teacher approached the martial arts: you're here to learn how not to fight, and how to not fight. This is one of the warrior's attributes: intelligence, and awareness. Which is why I'm going to title my next stencil project - Warrior. 

Because this world is sorely lacking in intelligence and awareness. And people need re-minding.

The Wall of Wisdom

As I'm spraying the first stencil I hear girls' voices behind me. They watch as I peel off the paper and the words 'Ah the bells... the bells!' appear. They ask me what it means. I do my mime - staring at my hand, waddling in a stoop - but they don't  get it. I silently put my hand up to my ear... and suddenly I feel as if I'm back in the classroom again eliciting the target language from my non-English speaking students. And I am, in a way, without being behind four walls and a projector. This is the real classroom, surely, the one that isn't a classroom. And in this classroom wisdom is the order of the day. Wisdom always works better when it is digested with a gulp of fresh air. 

Does God Hate Nature?

Certainly, this would have been your reaction had you passed the butchered little garden in front of the Gospel Chapel in Cessnock the other day, that God hates Nature. But God doesn't hate Nature. Some might even say that Nature is God, or that Nature is the art of God, but whatever the case Nature is God's creation and as such it is true and good and beautiful. So, what on earth is happening here, when trees are butchered and plants bludgeoned? It certainly isn't happening in the name of God. Which is why I wrote a little letter to these butchers giving them a piece of my mind. And I know these plants weren't diseased in case that's their reply. How do I know that? Because just the previous week, call it a coincidence, I wrote a piece on my hood entitled Ecology of a Neighbourhood and had a good look at said plants and tree which may have been a tad overgrown but nothing that would justify such heavy-handedness. God had a gentle touch last time I looked. It is the devil who bludgeons and butchers and destroys.

BEFORE

AFTER

LETTER LEFT IN LETTERBOX AND ANOTHER NAILED TO THE DOOR

What you did to those  plants and tree in your chapel grounds (and in your care) amounts to nothing short of butchery. It saddens me to see such heavy-handed ignorance especially coming from those who profess faith in the Almighty. Nature is God's creation. It is an absolute disgrace that you should call yourselves believers when you behave like this. 

May God forgive you.

Post Script:

Three days after posting above missive I saw the butcher-priest painting his windows. I asked him what happened to the plants and the tree. He said that the tree was leaning to one side (no it wasn't, and even if it was...) which is why he had it chopped down. I told him in no uncertain terms that if he did that to a child (in my eyes there is little difference beteen a tree and a child) he would be put in prison for the rest of his sorry life. I left him speechless with a paint brush in his hand. 

People Make Glasgow

I've always wondered at the anthropocentred nature of such a statement... when there are clearly a lot of things that make Glasgow not least the hills that actually created the glas chu (the grey green hollow) in the first place. So, Nature made Glasgow, the glaciers made Glasgow, the rivers and streams made Glasgow... people, well, people don't make anything except noise...

Ecology of a Neighbourhood

Neighbourhoods can be fascinating places for that particular brand of life that is not your own demented and deformed kind. Take my own humble neighbourhood for example which looks quite ordinary on the surface, streets full of cars, and rows of sandstone tenements. But between the cars (or gas chambers if you prefer which quite frankly do nothing for neighbourhoods except menace and pollute them) there are little front gardens a few metres wide, walkabout crows, pigeons and gulls, who forage on foot, insects galore feeding from wild garden flowers, and kerbside weeds (which sadly the council and car drivers like to spray with their chemicals). All this ecology stops the neighbourhood from becoming a car park (for many residents now that's all a neighbourhood is: a place to sleep (recover from work) and park your car. A neighbourhood, sadly, is no longer a place to live. In the past poverty stopped people from having cars. Now, even the poor have cars because of dodgy loan and hire purchase schemes and used car salesmen. And so the wildlife becomes even more important, because there's nothing worse than a neighbourhood which has excellent access to public transport (tube, bus, train links are all  within a five/ten minute walk from my door) drowning in gas chambers and toxic boxes that we like to call 'cars'. Car drivers have even taken to parking on the pavements not because there are no spaces on the road but because they think it's cool (to block disabled access and irritate the blind and the hard of seeing). The point of this piece is, in the words of Vincent Derthier whose Ecology of a Summer House I came across many moons ago in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia (!), 'to stimulate readers to an awareness and appreciation of the many and complex manifestations of life in this world and of our participation in that biological wonder'. It is an effort to allow people to see beyond the car park the small minded have made of our neighbourhoods, and to see that fruition and not pollution is the order of the Earth. It is also an effort to stop and pause and consider your neighbourhood as a place for Life and peace and living, and not for death and disease and recovery.