Song of the Source

What soul has not been strengthened by the sound of a babbling brook?

This impeccable October afternoon atop the braes, I find myself in a desert of heather and strange greywacke rocks. The view across the valley is sweeping: I can see Tinto thirty miles away to the south-east and the shadowy adumbration of Ailsa Craig some fifty miles to the south-west. I can also see the ocean to the west  and the tops of the highland range to the north. But none of these primal giants embrace me as warmly as the trickling stream I have just plonked myself down beside. This is the source of some of the burns and streams you will see down there in Dalmuir and Kilpatrick before they run into the great Ganges that is Glasgow's River Clyde. And it is this source that trickles so gently but so evocatively that has now got my undivided attention. It is the complete opposite of a tap running. What is this sound then that holds me in such admiration? It is the absence of the man-made and the artificial. The absence too of the industrial and the enclosed. Here, we have water flowing not falling, and trickling across and through mineral and vegetable in the open. This water is thus 'convivial' as in accommodating other life within it. It is not industrial as in banishing life from it. This is why this stream sounds the way it does - because of its 'aboriginal conviviality' - and does not sound like a tap that has been turned on. What's more, because of its unenclosed nature, the mountains, the ocean, the clouds and the river, are all present here within this source and thus lend their 'flourishes' to this overall trickle. Which is why, if you listen to the stream carefully, your soul will be strengthened, for you too, along with the mountains, the ocean, the clouds and the river, will be accommodated within its song.

 

 

The Mist

Aside the Kilpatrick braes this misty monday morning... the moisturizer rolls in...

 

 

My Legs Are My Face

Orwell once wrote that 'you deserve the face you have by the age of fifty' having presumably served it up to yourself via your behaviour, your diet, and the way you move and treat your own body. Personally, my face is my legs and boy do I deserve these, having served them up to myself via lots of hill-walking, lots of cycling, lots of car-avoidance, and a fairly healthy diet. Should we not be looking at our legs more and our faces less then since we are walking creatures and not facial ones? Should the legs and not the face (or any other part of the anatomy) be the first port of call for anyone searching for a mate? But we have the nasty habit of covering them up these days with things called 'trousers', long 'skirts' and 'slacks'. But it wasn't always the case. Once upon a time in Scotland, men bore their legs proudly via the 'kilt' (from Old Norse kjalta 'fold made by gathering up to the knees') which put them more in kilter with Nature since they could now feel that wind brush against (if not sculpt) them. So, let your legs be your face, and let your face be your legs. Unleash yourself. A man with trousers is a man with his 'legs in pockets'. 

 

Visions of the Infinite

Today, up on the plateau of the skylark, I walked through the sky. The hills up here are devoid of anything that might identify you as a standalone entity. The only screens and mirrors up here is Nature and the locomotive body. As such, when one is up here Oneness (and not fracturedness) is reflected back. It's all this heather and sameness, not to mention the vastness that holds it all together. Down there in the city - in the torture chamber - it's the opposite. Everything reflects back your distorted self because the scene itself has been distorted. That's what a city is: utter distortion if not utter perversion and utter pollution, the perversion being the natural (uni)version that has been forced through the medium of waste, murder, and rape (of Nature). Thus, in the hills, and with continuous practice, one has visions of the infinite because that's 'who you hang about with'. Conversely, down there in the manky city (and Glasgow is nowhere near as manky as some cities), you don't have visions at all because you cannot see anything except your own distorted and polluted self. 

Just a few images from the past week... (Kilpatricks, Campsies, Lochwinnoch). Every week I fill my boots with the infinite, and every weekend I levitate.

 

Climbing the Walls with Style

We Glaswegians are fortunate insofar as we live in a strath. That means that there are hills afoot and if like me you live more or less in the centre of this strath it also means that the only way out is up. You could imagine the city then in its wastefulness and general carbon footprint (more car-track than footprint) as a prison whose walls have to be scaled in order to escape. This is your escape: the land-scape and the hills. When you climb them every day, whether at a snail's pace or a raven's, you escape not just the prison of a denatured and polluted environment but the prison of a concocted and fabricated self. This is how you climb the walls with style, with ab-originality, and an originality that doesn't just strengthen your abs but your connection to the source. So when many are 'climbing the walls' indoors and lamenting the lockdown and the psycho-physical-spiritual degradation of being cooped up inside, the real geniuses are climbing the walls 'with style' outdoors in the blessed space of Nature, whilst exerting their divine right to breathe and engage your own locomotive body.

 

 

The Immortal 8

 

Duncarnock Mount (one of the eight immortals) from above Woodneuk Farm in the Ferenese Hills.

 

The eight immortals are a group of legendary immortals in Chinese mythology. Look no further than the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum for a depiction of their human forms. It is said that each immortal's powers can be transferred to a vessel that can bestow life or destroy evil. Together, these eight vessels are known as the 'Covert Eight'. 

The immortals themselves are generally recognized as Taoists as in guardians of the Tao and the life-force of the universe. They are said to live on a group of five islands in the Bohai Sea, but really, they inhabit the Glasgow strath in the form of hills and crags.

It has taken me many years to find these guardians and immortals (without even looking), and thus am reluctant to reveal their true locations. Yet, reveal them I shall, for in coming to them and beseeching them with your locomotive body, you come to embody the very powers the immortals possess. Yet, you must come to them alone and without encumbrances. Even at the right location the immortal who inhabits this area will not appear if you are weighed down and 'unavailable'. This means you have to avail yourself of all nonsense and approach the immortal 'naked' (not so much unclothed but without any preconceived ideas of what form this immortal may take). It is only then that the covert immortal will reveal itself to you and share some of its secrets with you.

The eight immortals then with  combined height of less than 2000m (and an average height of 250m) are smaller than perhaps you imagined. Just think Yoda in hill form:

 

1. Dumgoyne (427m)

2. The Slacks (365m)

3.  Blairskaith (218m)

4. Duncarnock (204m)

5. Barscube Hill (195m)

6. Hill of Barnaigh (189m)

7. Dechmont (183m)

8. Barr Hill (155m)  

 

These are the 'inner eight', the immortals that protect the inner sanctum. The outer eight are another story and include such notables as Hill of Stake, Meikle Bin, Tinto, Tomtain et al. but we will tackle these shortly. First things first... get your ass immortalised by biking and hiking (no cars, if you are carried in any way by a pollutant that disembodies you from your own vital force [trains excepted] then the immortal will not appear).

The Hard to Kill Hill: Turning 'Heart' into 'Earth'

This is the hill of hills: the sloping field that is just steep and long enough to get that heart pumping so much and so strongly that the 'h' of your heart will spontaneously take off and land causing your once tiny heart to become the size of the 'eart-h'. This is what happens when you start behaving naturally and aboriginally - you reconnect with the source and start earthing if not universing.Your heart becomes strong and so too does your mind. You begin reconnecting to the whole and thus the healthy and holy, the sane and saintly. When this happens you slowly emerge from the cocoon that your small ego-self has been fabricated into and become not a standalone 'thing' that is named, decorated and applied (to a profoundly sick society) but a universal system that realizes the infinite breadth of his relations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One begins to identify not with homo sapiens and your own demented kind that has clearly lost its way but with the Way itself, that all Beings follow. You begin to share fundamentally what you and all beings have in common: (loco)motion self-propulsion.You begin to see a cosmic solidarity emerge that includes and involves you, and which empowers you.

This power comes through the heart, but only through the heart that still beats like a heart. This means getting back into the Earth and into the real 'gym' (of 'nakedness' and the elements). Though your heart may pump on a treadmill in a fitness centre whilst staring into a mirror and listening to the latest dross on the narcissistic echo-chamber, the heart misses out on its true nakedness by being sidelined by the ego and vanity. This means that the fitness centre makes you fit, whilst Nature makes you healthy (and thus whole as a universal entity and not some uber-fit clown with big muscles). This is the reason I think that this scene of Seagal running up a hill (and then perching at the top like an eagle) has stayed with me for thirty years. And why I have not entered a gym for about ten. Because Nature renders powerful like an eagle (able to see everything) whilst the gym and fitness centre renders you docile like a hamster (able only to see your own small, made-up, and broken self).

 

Seagal-like on Contemplation Rock... ;)