If you enjoy reading, I put a sample from chapter 24 of my novel on the excerpts page …
On reflection, I added a preamble …
carried by rivers
behind your text your voice
lives on in spacious hearts …
while language re-assembles –
chameleon-like – to frame
the silence ’round your words –
the true pitch reverberates
with a longing so strong
it makes us shiver
in anticipation
for the unknown …
an afterthought to ‘written in water’.
written in water
a waltz of light
tilts and elides your text
to the ever-ever stream
and the gliding waters’
swoop up your tale
from the deep
your legend rebounds
with self-same code
of a longed-for world
in a plasma of vision
undulant – pending
vowels on silver and blue
surge and splatter to rhyme
carried by the consort
of waves – to where
the sea collides with land
be it carved in sand
be it marked on white
and bound in a shell
for the pearl-diver –
or flicker across a screen –
true text is reborn …
Ashen, July 2009, in remembrance of a friend
Filed under Blog
how my dad was attacked by a tree
Here some random thoughts, interspersed with more random thoughts as well as random quotes and random links, all to do with ideas about TRUTH and REALITY …
To start with – a piece written by my son when he was, huh, quite young, describing a true experience. He gave me permission to share it.
* * * *
On Tuesday the 3d of May 1989, at eleven o’clock, me and my dad set off to Driebergen, about 20 miles from Amsterdam. It took us 45 minutes to get there. We went to see dad’s old house and it looked still the same as when he had lived there 16 years ago. Then we drove to a tennis club, called Manger Cot’s (Cat?). Dad went to the club house to meet some of his old friends, like his tennis trainer, Bill, and his father, can’t remember the name. Then we had a look if the squash club was still there, but it wasn’t, so we had some lunch. After that we went to a music shop, and I mucked about on the drums while dad talked business with the shop keepers. Later we went into the woods and walked about.
On the way back, dad was brutally attacked by a TREEbrandishing a knife stained with blood from its previous victim. Dad fell over and when he got up he looked like Frankenstein with a massive cut down his forehead and blood dripping all over the place.
Dad said it didn’t hurt, but we still went to Peter’s house (a friend of my dad) to wash off the blood. But Peter wasn’t there, and neither was his wife. So we had to walk back to the car and drive to the music shop to clean up the wound. Then the shopkeeper said he knew where there was a surgery, so we went there. When we got there, dad went in to see the doctor, and I waited outside in the lobby. Dad came out with three stitches in his forehead and a big plaster over it.
By Yeshen
* * * *
The etymology of the word TRUTH indicates – good faith, fidelity, sincerity, veracity – and agreement of fact or reality. TRUTH has been subjected to many theories and definitions, here are some of them:
1 Correspondence Theory: In the words of Thomas Aquinas, ‘Truth is the equation of things and intellect.’
2 Coherence Theory: Truth is only what is coherent with the whole system.
3 Constructive Theory: Perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent to convention, human perception and social experience, in other words, every truth is socially constructed.
4 Consensus Theory: Whatever is agreed upon …
5 Pragmatic Theory: Truth is verified and confirmed by the results of putting one’s concept into practice. It is self-corrective over time.
6 Kierkegaard says – ‘Objective truths are final and static. Subjective truths are continuing and dynamic.’
7 Nietzsche thought untruth is better than truth if it has life-enhancement as consequence.
8 Fromm held Truth to be a functional approximation of reality.
9 Foucault refers to ‘Regimes of Truth’ that shift constantly throughout history.
10 Baudrillard: The simulacrum is true because it conceals that there is no truth.
11 Lao Tzu: Words of truth are always paradoxical.
12 A mystic, Hazrat Inayat Khan, expressed TRUTH like this: Those who see the truth uncovered, abandon reason and logic, good and bad, high and low, new and old … As water in a fountain flows in one stream but falls in many drops, divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream of truth. Not everyone can comprehend the idea of different truths being derived from one truth. Common sense has been so narrowly trained in this world of variety that it naturally fails to realize the breadth and subtlety of a spiritual fact so far beyond the reach of its limited reasoning.
* * * *
Filed under Blog
the view from my desk
Check out my EXCERPTS page occasionally. I frequently replace sections of my novel there.
Today, the beginning of chapter 16 – The Island
Filed under Blog
tiny buddha’s lot
I’m in editing mode, but since I see him when I look across my screen, I’ll spare a thought on my faithful friend.
He’s been around a while. In Somerset, he made friends with young Suzuki …
In Surrey, he has been on the same prominent spot for over two decades, watched many seasons go round … 
during which he surrendered many of his finer features to the environment, shrunk his belly, and experienced some indignities …
not just from Jetty, but from Robins, Warblers, Starlings, Blackbirds and even the occasional Wood pigeon, who all use his head as a way station on their rounds through the garden.
During the last two years he grew a coat and a beard of lichen to make up for his decreasing substance, and the question arises, should he be shaved? 
Your advice is welcome.
Filed under Blog
doing the irregular
A week of challenges, adventures, doing the irregular – attempts to stall sending out queries for my novel, or necessary diversions from too much screen-gazing? I hadn’t taken my car into the UK metropolis for years. Mission accomplished. I visited my son, his partner, and friends across London, enticed out of my comfort zone – days of inspiration.
Saturday – last-minute-decision to honour a birthday-party-invitation. I accept a friend’s lift through the rolling green hills of Surrey and Sussex– to Brighton.
* * * * random thoughts – collective words – joie de vivre * * * *
I remember her dancing Kathak on the terrace, bells on her ankles, like that … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prQOdTmF8u0&feature=related
Moving from one eternal hug to another, age is not
We’ll work and create ‘till we drop
And the birthday girl, bouncy, colourful, happy
Senegal drums in her heels – age is never, rhythm is ever
A whirling mover, therapist, shaker …
Her achievements are implicit – she is too busy to dwell on them
Glamorous daughter – back from choreographing the USA
Over there – a strange glance – is it dark – is it not?
Kiss of peace – be there such a thing – it takes two
Escape from loud acoustics to the pub garden
We challenge each other to random words
… lipstick light shines over rails …
… birds nest – friends talk – missing syllables …
… under blossoms – look behind – plastic – not classic …
… far too much – smoking seat – pink trailers – smoking …
… pink planks going in the mind …
… I think a Haiku comes later …
The birthday girl’s neighbour does Shiatsu and astrology
And her friend plans or dreams to write a book
Beware of the monstrous light – out of place
Salvaged from a railway hall – it hangs on a tiny hook
Best not stand under it …
Chequered shirts are the craze in town
We glimpse the pier and past grandeur – the royal pavilion
Onwards home through the night and shiny lights …
* * * *
Filed under Blog
… editing saga on a windy day …
A cup of coffee is the answer. I mull over the problematic paragraph while the kettle sings. It’s the word that doesn’t chime … back to the screen. I pull up Thesaurus. There – a more succinct term. With a warm, tingling feeling of satisfaction, I replace the word and read like for the first time. Still not right. The whole paragraph is flawed. My mind goes blank. I stare at the screen. A sudden comprehension animates, turn things around. I begin to cut, paste, type …
The telephone rings – I can’t ignore the telephone. It could be a client, it could be a friend, it could be my dad saying he has need of me after all, it could be … no, can’t be a publisher. I haven’t sent out queries yet, have I? I press the green button on the phone – the sound of a fax machine. Arghhh, one of those, back to the screen …
Damn, I lost the thread. Ah, the coffee. Didn’t I turn on the kettle a while ago? I return to the kitchen. While the water hums I may as well wash the white shirt I mean to wear tomorrow – done. I take it out to dry on the washing line. I grab three pegs because there’s strong breeze today. I clip on the first peg and have a fantastic aha-moment about the paragraph. I missed an opportunity to engage the reader.
I rush back to the screen and insert more dialogue. Excellent, now it flows, why hadn’t I thought of this before? On to the next sentence, this is easy, just a comma out of place. Commas should be done away with, allowing the reader freedom to imagine pauses. Full points, yes, but commas – I could call it experiential. Stop messing about, get back to your protagonist … I woke in semi-darkness to the scent of mint. Tuck busied himself over a small fire. I wondered why, having poured boiling water over the sprig of herbs, he went on pouring the tea repeatedly from one vessel to another …
A drink – coffee! I knew something escaped my memory. It won’t take long to make the kettle sings again.
Filed under Blog
… battling with the branding goddess …
A branding-class expert is something to be … anyone can be an expert, but branding the expertise takes imagination combined with determination. Establish a need, provide a context, add a striking image, a name, and presto, you attract a following of customers. Be like a dog, bury the bone, and bury it well, then dress it up virtually, mark it, package it, and you have a brand, it’s your invention. Don’t deviate; be like the dog, only tolerate your own teeth marks on it. We admire the sheer ingenuity of branding, which has turned into an art form. Take computers – they are memory devices, communication devices, and much more. Apple took a sumptuous bite out of the computing potential by developing an aesthetic language, a shiny package, and a logo with irresistible symbolic power.
Examples of successful branding have helped the growth of a fat goddess that pervades all fields of commerce. Her indulgence irks. There is the ambient kind of branding, like-minded people gathering around new mind tools, new therapies and self-help advice. Creative approaches I’d playfully developed in my work with clients for over two decades are presented as the latest invention, the latest trick revealed. By naming an approach or concept anew and creating a media platform, an idea becomes owned with the shield of a trademark. No free lunch. The trend is relentless. Even common herbs are re-named and patented.
Today, as ever, survival of the fittest means assertiveness, magnetism, influence, and, or material resources. I wouldn’t talk like this if I had a rewarding brand going, would I? While I resist the branding-bug I am free to ask … what will be the consequences? Where will it all lead? Will there come a time when a cooperation so inclined could offer you a tempting reward for a scratch-sample of your skin and patent your DNA? Would our human-rights-act guard against this invasion? Could the race over ownership, patenting and branding spread as far as shaking together a new race in a test-tube?
I am selectively brand-blind. I try to resist slogans, signatures, icons or familiars that aim to burn and mark my memory. It takes alertness, counter-programming. Subliminal stimuli in advertisement were banned, but subliminal messages abound. I prefer to make fresh associations each day. I want to choose my own habits. I want a flexible identity, and space to grow irrationally, no forced order, please. My inner world deserves a room within the social order. I seek no fault, but I make a stand for my inner silence, and my trust in the unknown. Don’t package me, label me or fit me in pre-fabricated boxes. Meet me when and wherever we meet as if it was the first time … like this …
Am I fooling my contradictory self? Surfing virtual networks, I am drawn to a new brand, the no-brand orphans. I’ve met you out there, searching for kinship. You’re my audience. I wrote a story for you, about a heroine who does not want to comply with what is expected of her, knows well what she does not want and attracts more of the same, until she steps through the mirrors that reflect her.
Yet even when we are empowered by what we want, and this is the secret behind the presently fashionable ‘The Secret’ – psyche is not two-dimensional, it has multiple layers, and whether we are aware of this or not, life will pull us into another myth, and we will create another goddess we bow to.
Let me come clear, this is a plug for my book, a story in search of a platform, an attempt at branding 🙂 Established publishers – big brands – may well have a niche for a heroine who starts out not knowing what she wants, a story transgressing genres, it remains to be seen. I haven’t begun querying yet. But if it came to self-publishing, I would need to address my kinship, other branding orphans. Are you out there?
Filed under Course of Mirrors, my book
the mysterious object, part three
… Memories awakened, of a time when it was possible to gaze straight at the venerable light-giver without being blinded … in the dark sky, shone the light-giver’s mirror image, pale and beautiful, shimmering, and stirring a deep longing in those who witnessed the phenomenon. The gentle orb puzzled minds, since it changed shape from night to night and periodically disappeared, only to re-emerge, gradually waxing from a sliver to gentle fullness. Some saw in the orb another divinity; others rejected this, not wanting to betray their bright and bountiful divinity. The two kinds of worshippers did not see eye to eye. More secretive circles formed, and stories spread. Ever now and then a night-walker claimed having been touched by the silver light, though was unable to explain what possible benefit there was in being touched by this new mystery? Incredulous stories spread, which were laughed at by the now established beneficiaries of ingenuity and industry, and the few night-walkers who sincerely tried to share their experience were regarded with suspicion and ostracised.
Let us relate just one incident, as told by witnesses, to give you a sense of the mystery. One night, or so it goes, a group of seekers gathered on a flat rock above a deep pool of water to watch the full silver globe in the sky. To their surprise, a perfect replica of their beloved object appeared in the still water of the rock pool, beautiful, beyond words. Everyone present gasped. One young woman who resembled her great, great grandmother, Lila, the famous light-seeker, was ecstatic with joy. ‘This is it,’ she exclaimed, and jumped from the rock’s ledge right into the glowing reflection.
The silver scattered and rippled out into circle upon circles on the water. The others looked on in astonishment as the soft light gathered itself back once more into round brilliance. Night’s divinity re-assembled its fullness, still quivering with the gentle, undulating movement of the water. There was no sign of the young woman.
To break the tension, all started talking at once, expressing in so many words and shouts what they thought they had witnessed. With the noise going on they did not hear the footsteps. Quietly, from the darkness around them, the young woman reappeared. Her skin gleamed and glittered, as if she had absorbed some of the mysterious light. Her friends inundated her with questions as to what happened, ‘What was it? No answers came, she had lost speech. Her silent gesture however firmly impressed itself in each men and women standing there on the rock and seeded in their memories forever more. The seeker pressed her right hand to her heart. She had many silent followers, as had many like her from there-on after.
~ the end ~
Filed under Blog
Course of Mirrors 