This morning, it was actually just after midday, a couple of tits on the bare trees beside the platform at Paisley Canal. The tits in question are the cutest you will ever see, long-tailed tits, or as they call them in Poland, raniuszek (as in 'bird of the morning'). What a tiny bird, and yet...
There's a lot to be said for spotting a wild human, for they are now a red-listed endangered species. On my 30km cycle today I saw about a hundred humans on foot and about ninety-five per cent of them had mutts with them. This is because they are afraid to go out on their own, not the mutts but the humans. They don't know how to walk without the stabilisers because they are still embedded within an infantile consciousness egged on by the fact they stopped growing at about the age of one. Your economy grows instead and you are now just a slave for that (uneconomic) economy. And so people (who are no longer people but sub-routines for the great program) need their security blankets and pacifiers. One of the more common dummies is the dog because it's alive, although the smartphone and car are close (inanimate) second and thirds. So, it's rare to spot a wild human without the stabilisers, who can actually walk without aids. Give yourself a clap on the back if you see one. Maybe one day soon, a website will be dedicated to these Dastardlys without Mutts, in the same way that you have websites for rare birds species.
The monks know it, the hermits know it, the Zen master knows it... while everyone else seems oblivious to it, maybe because they've collectively got their heads up 'The Great Arse' (and the rest of their bodies in 'The Great Pram') called Society and Progress.... that the light lives at the 'tops of hills'.
The study of the sun: sol etude or equally solitude. The star is you. Without any add-ons. Indeed, it is only by re-moving these add-ons, by subtracting and taking off, that your light will emanate. Otherwise, you are simply a star that has been covered over, that has been 'switched off'...
So, get back into your solitude, and get back into the star within...
Sounds like a contradiction does it not, Beverly Hills and Glasgow. But it's not. There are a couple of areas in and around Glasgow that remind me of that ultra-wealthy enclave of Los Angeles. One of them is Pollokshields with its mansions, villas, and embassies, and its large spacious car-free boulevards. There is history afoot here with much of Glasgow's wealth from shipbuilding, textiles, tobacco etc. ending up here in the stonework, the architecture, and the neighbourhood itself. It is perhaps the only inner-city suburb that does this, all others being significantly further out from the city centre. At any rate there are pamphlets and books available that tell you more. Here, for the moment, a few images...
Once upon a time, long before you were born, to be seated was a form of punishment. Like transportation, sitting someone down was a penance. Because it meant that you were in a cage, and that you couldn't stand up, and that you couldn't walk. Nowadays however, such is the state of our memory - history being a luxury that most people cannot afford - we have no idea that the very foundations of modern society - transport and sedentariness - are steeped in torture methods of old. Who would've thunk it?
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My sacred plant - are not all plants sacred? - arrived today from down south. I had initially thought them illegal in UK but they're not.
| “Hallucinogenic cacti are not illegal in the UK, unless prepared for consumption as a hallucinogen. This could include drying them, or cutting them into edible ‘buttons’ |
At any rate, I had tried germinating some seeds I bought online from Germany but not only were they terribly expensive but even with my grow lights and tents I found them difficult to get going. And so, I bought one that was already mature (about 5 years old). So, here's hoping it's not too stressed after 5 days in a box (the chap sent it second class!). Next year, all things being equal, it should flower and produce seeds. And then we'll really be cooking with gas.
Exitability, not to be confused with excitability, is one's capacity to exit and leave a city's confines as effortlessly and smoothly as possible. The parameters are simple: no car, and bicycle (no electric bikes) and trains are allowed. So, the question then becomes: How quickly can you get into the hills, into the unpeopled realm, into the unpolluted and undomesticated dimension? I have an idea of attempting a project which sees me being dropped into the centre of a major city and then having to root my way out of it. In Glasgow, I can do it in 30minutes. Do you think you could trump that? And no racing and rushing. And what about New York or Tokyo? How fast do you think you get into the outside from these places? What about London? I imagine we're talking hours here not minutes. And so, exitability is a craft, a skill that the wild cyclist attains and finetunes simply through the regularity by which he leaves the city. He knows the train stations, the different lines and timetables, the rat-runs through residential areas, and of course the location of the pot of gold. And with this local knowledge (is there any other kind?) he exits the city, and by doing so, enters something else.
Haole is a term used by native Hawaiians to describe non-native foreigners and the white man. The word means 'without breath, wind, or spirit'. When I worked and lived in Senegal they used the word toubab to describe the pasty-faced invader. When I cycled thru Pollok this morning however, past the monstrous Silverburn shopping mall, a giant car park if ever there was one, and through the heavily polluted air (the M77 being a few hundred metres away), I had never seen a white man as white as Pollok man. Indeed, this 'white' wasn't so much white as it was an absence of colour. This absence of colour itself was an absence of the outside combined with an absence of the moving blood. I honestly felt like a different species compared to these peely-wally skins and faces that made the proverbial 'death warmed up' look lively. They all looked like junkies with their bedraggled bodies and withered faces. But they weren't. These were ordinary people. And even though they aren't junkies in the traditional sense they are junkies nonetheless since it is 'junk life' - cars, processed food, bullshit jobs - that these people are addicted to. Which kinda makes them a different species, a species that is no longer 'human' in the sense that they are close to the land and in harmony with it, but post-human. This post-humous entity is as the word suggests not really alive, sealed in as it is to gas chambers (cars) and coffins (offices and apartments). Modern day man - Homo pollokus - is an entity without breath, wind, or spirit, and the animating power of the Earth. Which goes in some way to explaining the pasty-faced nature of these live-action corpses.
This past week alone we have had three golden days of full sunshine. The temperature has been a mild fifteen degrees during the day. And so there is no excuse not to get on your bike and head out and up into the hills. I took a selfie yesterday up beside Glenburn reservoir behind Paisley and it looked as if I had a sun tan. And yet, the only sun I've had is this Scottish one. But it's not just the sun that works its way into the lining of your skin. It's the rain, the wind, the fresh air, the occasional colliding insect, the mud that my bike throws up... Nature in other words, raw and cosmic. This is the real cosmetic that doesn't so much cover your skin as invest it and imbue it with a radiance that is normally reserved for aborigines and wild birds. But then, I am an aborigine albeit with a bicycle, a wild bird (because of the bicycle), who has aligned myself Nature and thus the self-cleansing and not with the industrial and the self-filthying. Obvious, isn't it?
Not so much weather-beaten as weather-loved ;)
Just call me Touche Turtle. I am always on guard, or as they say in these here parts, aye ready. The wits you see are part of the wild for they allow you to 'operate' the wilderness and yourself within it. The problem with today's superimposed humans removed from the wild is that their wits have also been removed to machines and devices that purport to witness for them. And so, modern man has become a prisoner of and a slave to his machines, and his wits have suffered terribly as a consequence. Not so for the animal who inhabits not delusion and the car park but full-blown Nature, wild and uncontaminated. This animal witnesses everything that needs to be witnessed, that is, the essential. And through this witnessing, the wits and the spirit are galvanized and strengthened. So that today, when I tried to explain to a young man up in the hills that really his two dogs should be on leashes in order to protect the ground-nesting birds and respect the wild, and he said, 'Ah'll fuckin' dae whit ah want, I am the wild,' I replied without even thinking, 'How you can be wild when you've got two barbie dolls with you?' And that was that.
The LA Times announces this morning that it's spider season in LA County as well as elsewhere in the world. I have over fifty spiders in my tiny home and they all love it here! But my spiders are not the web-spinning sort although they do spin some kind of 'web'. Nor do my spiders bite or scare, or scurry under unliftable objects. And my spiders pop out little spiders like nothing on earth perhaps as much as the eight-legged variety. Look and see for yourself...
Ruchill is in north Glagow just beside the canal. It has been cleaned up somewhat (canal and Ruchill) in recent years with the addition of a bridge and various nature walks. The sizeable park is almost always empty and has some great views. Also, the flagpole summit is worth a visit for the vista over the city and beyond although the tall trees could do with a light haircut and comb.
You kinda forget how exquisite the light is at this time of year. Which is strange because the sun in October (as well as September et al.) is unforgettable. Yet, each time, this season arrives I marvel anew at this star's brilliant light. And so here we have a 'ray' hitting the Earth (around Dalmuir) having travelled some 93 million miles. Wonderful, isn't it?
Life is motion.
Wallace Stevens
