Dear Writer

2 02 2019

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Dear Writer,

I am cautious in my salutation. For as of late (and as you rightly point out) you have not given much time to me through the art of writing.

This is not to say that you have given up on me–on words per se; I do hear you in the sweet breath of the spoken word. And I do find you in the symbols, the pasted ideas, some thought of by you, some thought of by others, all strung together in non-linear formation, appearing in everything that you do.

But no, I cannot touch you this way.  I am not able to look back into your eyes and challenge you to reconstruct, refine, and unravel together more mature forms of utterance. I am prepared to re-engage with you but only if you are truly serious about committing to me and this articulation of us. Black on white in any font.

Just for a time consider that to write, you must return to your cave, create some privacy for us to articulate freely and authentically. I do not fault you for almost giving up on us; I too find it stifling when there is a fly-on-the-wall looking over what we (do or do not) produce together; the relentless buzzing of judgement is enough to drive anyone mad.

Let us find a place together where we no longer hear any buzzing. Tell no one where we are going and I will find you in that place. I will find you on the road home.

Until then and forever your,

Words

P.S. If you begin to lose your way, let Wallace Stevens’s words help point you back in our direction.

On the Road Home

It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.

You . . . You said
“There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth.”
Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,
“Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye”;

It was when you said,
“The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth”;

It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.

 





Dear Words,

28 01 2019

I miss you and want you to come back to me. I need you, emboldened black against white. It is wild how much I worship you. But wilder still, how afraid of you I’ve become. For too long I’ve been stuck in my head; swishing and swirling in a mess of cloudy pontification. I do at times feel you close and sense your desire to spell out all my madness so I can own it. But the closer you get to becoming, the more I push you away. I can tell when you’re perched patiently at the tip of my tongue or tickling the tips of my fingers and then I ache for the courage to channel you onto paper, to make you come to life. To make you real, permanent.

Once upon a time, we were a team. You, constantly pushing me with all your clarity, and boldness and honesty. You did cause me pain, a lot and often. But you made me grin mischievously, when I re-read you – even laugh out loud at times. Oh, beloved words, the profundity of what we shared together, in any format, in any font.

I suppose I lost my confidence the moment I lost my authenticity. It was all downhill from there and now I am shy around you. I feel I’ve let you down.

Perhaps you are also afraid of me. Afraid of what might emerge from the page. I know you want to maintain your integrity and I want this for you too. I want to be us again, to rebuild trust between us.

How I long for you to wake me in the middle of the night the way you used to. How easy it was then, when you ravaged me out of my slumber in the middle of the night. The love we would make, drenched in ink, paper spread like a warm quilt all over my desk.  My desk. Our sacred space; how we found ourselves locked in a gaze of pure love, no matter how brief our encounter.

But that was then. Please, I need to see you again. I need to read you over and over. I need to quench my thirst with metaphor. For us to tease each other in rhyme. I feel ravenous. Come back to me.  Articulate me. Let’s start again.

Love, Niki

thoughts vs words





solitude in the woods

16 11 2018

GA8 2

Sculpture by Georgiana Anstruther

i am no longer afraid
not of beasts
nor the wild.
somewhere between Earth and
Heaven, i unfurled
my armour of feathered wings
to stand naked,
upright.
i will now inhale
the wind
and the winter.





a wild dance among the oak

9 07 2018

i have not yet left the forest

nor the woodland nor the trust

the wild dance among the oak

a force of light with sweet kinfolk

oh how we spun

dizzy in the sun

forward and back

bodies slightly out of whack

pleading with the bramble

in new acquaintance and great counsel

i surrendered upon a bed of ferns

and now my heart forever yearns

to weave inside a dragons nest

and honour heavens in my quest

with knobbly knees and twisted limbs

embedded in some ancient hymns

i am the wood, i am the oak

i am at one with new kinfolk





How to move from fear to creativity

2 07 2018

If you think about it, what is the one profession that wakes up every day trying to move us from fear to creativity – there’s only one – and that’s artists. That is what artists do. There is not a single other profession that wakes up every day with this mandate, with this obligation. –  Steven Tepper, Dean Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts





let water flow through our children’s veins

19 02 2018

bring back the forests

bring back the rains

let Kaveri flow





modernism is a psychic love wave, a big gush of sky breath

6 11 2017

words of Robert Montgomery, outside Hammersmith Town Hall

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one day anyone died i guess

20 06 2017

e.e. cummings poem, anyone lived in a pretty how town, is glued onto the door that leads to our living room. i’ve kept it there since we built our house to serve as a reminder of aspects of world, of our humanness, that we are often up against.

i first read the poem at the age of 13 and it broke my heart to imagine all the people–the anonymous, nameless, “Anyones”–who make up our community but live their lives unnoticed. i was uncomfortable with the suggestion that seasons change but our consciousness stays much the same. the possibility that children (once wise) grow up none the wiser. and that the cycle repeats over and over. i didn’t want to live in a banal world filled with carless Someones and Everyones.

but there is more to this poem. while certainly a reflection of much our daily ongoings, it’s beauty lies in the stanzas that follow, in the individual love that No-one has for Any-one; when Anyone dies one day, it is Noone who stoops to kiss his face.

despite the disregard of the town (larger society, the state, the government) Anyone managed to thrive in life through the individual love and compassion shown by another nameless, anonymous member of society, her name: Noone.

days before the Glenfell Fire, Philomena came to me with her eyes filled with tears and said, “I don’t understand why everything is normal again, why life goes on as normal, how people die but after a short while, we aren’t meant to be sad about it anymore… the terrorist-thing that happened in Manchester well it’s as if it didn’t happen since we watched the Manchester LOVE concert. and then Borough Market happened and that now seems to be over too. but in reality it isn’t over, i’m not over it, any of it.”

in the days after the Glenfell Fire, however, Philomena said to me, “at least this isn’t like the terrorism thing or when someone gets cancer, when you can’t help death from happening. at least we can prevent a fire like this from ever happening again.”

let’s hope we can. and in the meantime, i send my blessings out to all the Noones who have opened their hearts and reached out their hands to comfort the Anyones–all those who are striving to make this place a pretty LOVED town.  

in memory of those who have lost their homes:





Hidden Places

17 06 2017

there are still hidden places where man hasn’t yet made his mark – Salero

 





why is our brain DIVIDED?

22 05 2017
 
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. ~ Albert Einstein
 

Based on his best selling book ’The Master and his Emissary’ this is the question that leading neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist explores in a challenging and controversial new FILM.

What is the value of each hemisphere – how do they work together – and what happens when the relationship between the two becomes unbalanced? What is the correlation between brain function and the problems we currently observe in our modern political and economic systems? How is this imbalance leading to an increase in mental illness and autism?
Matter of Fact Media are seeking a limited amount additional funding to complete the last bits of editing for this documentary. Please visit their KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN and help make this film possible!
 
Thank you!
Niki
 
Rowan Williams
“The Master and His emissary was one of the most important books I’ve read in the first decade of this century – I can’t easily think of another one that had quite such an impact!”
 
John Cleese
“The most interesting and illuminating book that i’ve ever read!”
 
 
 
 https://www.facebook.com/TheDividedBrain/
 https://twitter.com/divided_brain




an uphill climb – Ximena Velez Liendo, Bolivia – Winner of Whitley Award, 2017

19 05 2017

“Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.” – Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington

In the Quechua belief, the Andean Bear is a mediator between the upper world (the gods) and the inferior world (human); it provides a sense of direction, a passage from one era to the another, it maintains order when chaos emerges.

 





Internet of Things

26 04 2017

“A new scientific truth is not usually presented in a way to convince its opponents. Rather, they die off, and a rising generation is familiarised with the truth from the start.” 
– Max Planck





Dream states & the pursuit of truth 

24 04 2017

“Let us learn to dream; then we shall perhaps find the truth”- Kukule 

-Cormac McCarthy 

https://m.nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/the-kekul-problem





On the possibilities of INFINITE love

19 04 2017

“I have been expressing an infinite devotion to peace loving and the refusal of war and terrorism by infinite human love” – Yayoi Kusama






forest for the trees

3 04 2017





Considering the Nothingness of God

9 03 2017

 “I think Nothing is God. Nothing has always been here. We came from Nothing. They say in the beginning of the Universe, there was Nothing and then all of a sudden there was Something. Maybe we are the Something-Life is the Something-and God is the Nothing. Like a piece of paper before you draw on it. There is Nothing there but that blank place makes creating Something possible. Nothing will always be with us, even if we don’t live – when we die – we will still have Nothing. Why isn’t it okay to call God by a different name, We could call God Nothing and that would be okay too, don’t you think Mami? I think there are many other words for God.” – Philomena (age 10)





Breathe, then PUSH

4 02 2017

Valarie Kaur, On the labour of love:





The indivisble UNIVERSE

6 12 2016

“The earth is one household, and we’re not treating it that way.” – David Bohm

 

 

Paul Howard (Imagine Films, Ireland) and David Peat (Bohm’s former colleague and biographer) are working on a 90-minute feature documentary on the Life and Ideas of David Bohm titled Infinite Potential.  They hope to premiere the documentary in the latter part of the Bohm centennial celebrations in 2017, which also happens to be the 25th anniversary of Bohm’s death. Imagine Films Ireland have raised 75% of the film’s budget. They are now looking for the final 25% of funding and welcome donations from individuals and organisations. 

Click here for more info on the documentary.

 





an artist’s duty

21 11 2016




here’s to my old friends – i miss you everyday

18 11 2016

“You cannot isolate yourself from the crowd – even if you want to.”

– Ivor Novello