carrotblog

In search - all this time, I am finding me. Here in darkness. Of your tent, where you once stood. Fixed on things, technical and shiny, no time for the inner rodeo. Of life and its spirit, darkened here in your tent.












Acknowledgements to the anonymous photographer for the image of the tent.

At last it dawns on me.

Self-realisation beings with conservation.

Interior life and external structures - co-inciding in a point of departure.

Well it's been some time. Out here camping inland
discovering a way of life under cloudy skies. There
were strangers - two of them? Who pass by me.
Indifferent to the inner themes, inquisitive - of me -
not me - of knowing circumstances around me.
Their questions: intrusion. Fear - why me? I walk
on, you stop. Hiding high under cloud cover as their
tent and trap splay as wide as man brings.

From eastern shores, 150 years ago - who were you
that you might come to these inland lakes? I read of
you, stranger in our midst, lost to the landscape of my
home lakes. The modern stranger - lacking such grace
here makes no time for the inner life which you sought
to illustrate out here camp ground, thawing out in hidden
sentiment, revealed in mist and fog through English shores.

For you they came, signpost blank, they turned in sly
manner searching for one's own gain. Camp farm, growing
doubt, weary of stranger's discourse, I look away from you -
no shelter here as I turn myself towards the open cloud.

So close to me as the horizon draws near, thoughts of escape bring me into the open sea. Of things unknown, the end of the last lunar cycle. Of things known, this world I travel to, across the stretch of the city by night, awake by morning light, working by nightfall in a life, not of my own design. Moments coming - anticipating this freedom, how it frightens me back towards concrete certainty. Of all that I am, things that I do, there is nothing more than you - the life of the other - who embraces me in the work that I do.

Work that I carry, carried in this head, soon you will be released from me and here, I ponder rock-face salt-air of your bitter months, eroding into the well of my being. Facing uncertainty, how clean you strike a line across this world of mine, vignetting down into island hue. You, the other, who fails to release me. Bonded to you in schedule and meeting. Through all, now behind me, as February's close draws near, I am here, before it all. Uncertainty's horizon, before me once more.

Where can I go, that journey's end which stays me once more with thoughts of home? I am away. Closer to being....being washed up on foreign shores. Shore of uncertain life, life that now beckons me.

It is close - time. Rock face, salt pillar, you whom I leave behind. I love you with sweet bitterness as I stretch forth into the new salt air.

I saw him where I once stood, standing there over the silence that was once mine. In corner hidden, close to my heart, there he clambered in cryptic semotic, bewildering as I turned inwards, stance fleeing from myself and meaning fled - in the going dread gone.

Hearing him, the sense derived from stones and pebbles, concrete foundation of my youth, ebbed into rubble against my recollected youth, of this corner of my solitude. Stance. He knew me from a distance. barking commands, to those who would be commanded by their own weakened spirit. Living, yet unknowing of the foundation on which life stands. Here, stoned in my analytical corner, semiotic giving rise to reflections of the still-life of stones, what can arrogance hold?

No room for me in fled clamber, there is none left in my corner as he displaced me, moved me on, an errant gipsy, unspirited gentle yet weak, unable to commandeer or hold onto what was mine, even this very heart. Reflection - did I not flee you in these howling winds? And flight from stone, where am I other than ice-drenched in snow? Where am I now that he has pushed me here, from home, towards the world that I have never known? My corner, abandoned to cries of clamber! Clamber! Trampled clamber, trampled mercilessly! Grave of my solitude - here; now. It has become yours too.

At the start of the new year, here I find my way towards the end of the roll which takes me further from the noise of your world.

Home, wandering here above Derwent Water, rings of silence all around me remind me that I am blessed to be here - away from all the stress beneath me. Belated yet free.

Happy New Year.

On and on, centuries left you forlorn, here on the right. St Bega standing here, existing here before me, opening up heaven's bright sky. . Do you not?

Perched and pondering - trap, outside of me, melody on-and-off how am I to know what is and what is not? Syncopated with the life I have come to see, gravel grain, you my guilt creep away from me.

Foundation beneath me, support me as I show off, harmony with another, still when I question you before thought melts me into your consciousness

Were you not - to exist, who then person - fake in red behind me, non-existent in mind's eye, visible here stilll? Disappear there, you here I there, eye that lies, concerning me worry anxious deep, lying deeper behind you still.

If all eye surveys, known here, is the foundation of me knowing this much, then foundation open, flowing consciousness, question me before this sacred den as I embrace my leap from hollow end.

I have returned; it has been two months, and here at the turn of the year, I have come to ....not knowing, nor seeing. Existing.

Immediate: you are my consciousness. Eye: see that I am here. Seeing - now. How am I to be? Beyond time and space, there is no other, than the known that can escape. I call you truth.

Buttermere,

Returning home I feel it too. I am at home - home with you - as longing - mine - melts into your moist reservoir mouth, right side gripped in reflection of your forest fell. Am I here? Am I really here?

Thinking I see - I think - tongues of your lips embrace me cool in its free flowing fleet of thoughts. Reflection on one or another, stack ready and steady in stillness, heart formation surrounding me, hay- hemmed in by you mother breast, dripping wet yet nourishing against barbed edge and man's pike or proof of the modern light in contrast to my mise en abyme.

Travelling tight - into hazen light's high
Here I am freed from urban maul
For away - far away, I am here, hidden
at home where you - away from me and lost to you
you know this much as I too have lost me too.

What condition - of love -
might you illuminate for me -
As I hold tightly to all that is lost,
Hidden, hidden deep in bark and root,
For you, dear Derwent, winding me through
life's journey, blowing me from full view,
into a secret life below your evening skies.

One day before I came along your road,
Jaures, modern mortar, I embark along
northern canal routes on foot to find you.
Three-thirty in the morning,
Who are you, stranger who longs to meet?
From medieval mortar, somewhere some
in rustic cobbled community,
my thirst hems me in, along life's dry line.
From here, open terrace and cafe, almost
wrecked by man's automotive lunacy, I
have left you in the day, night that falls on me
under Parisian crescent moon.
You were there as I turned corner,
Greeting me with slake and mantra, as fricass'ee
foams from your mouth.
Reprise stranger:
Who are you in this present darkness
That I long to meet?

I am coming home. In the going I am gone. Gone away from you, former home in flight, holding you to my breast, squirrelling comfort, you are my home, former love feinting line - how I let you go in tenderness. Squirrel sweet, spread across a minor ruse, your arms open in love's dead space - dead safe in one final embrace.

This was my fight, you might have said. With eyes, searching for love. I was a stranger here in France. Unknowing of this foreign land, land I can call home, land you no longer tread.

For love. You are my home, travel I seek - of life, from home faraway, of which I am coming, drawn towards - the quarter of men. Strangers, shrouding over me, hammer foot and malice, clandestine shadows search of me, discovering what I have left unsearched of myself. And darkness! Darkness all around discovering how...here in France, I am ... lost to myself.

Dog - howling metaphysical progress! Here you begin at journey's end, leading me, innocent bystander of your fate, en route along the finish line of a Type A.

What for? Recovery's end - covered in endings. This is life; this is death.

Metaphysical journey
For you I take off once more
And Love
How you chaperone me in flight
Guiding my lost bearing along the
itinerant's path once more
Signpost planted, hosting free-footed-flight
Beyond this peninsula of pain
In solitude, once or twice
I seek your company
beyond the crumble
of this my concrete world.

Adieu!

In passing visit - I was curious. To your home I came, aroused
Scent of friendship wafting existential vapour
From the other side of this open door.
You welcome me - metaphysical lover
Entwined with fanciful things;
emotion's rise and love's arrest (don't make one false move)
I embrace your open arms
A refugee of love breaking pane and escape
From colonies of despair tearing astride
Your welcome floors me gentle guardian
in barefoot kindness.

Thinking thought you die before me

Beyond this summer of sorrow

Breaching me further

Flying high, you watch me fall

Into sorrow's morn

A second time

Trial - now in September life

World above me

World over.


Flowing over - so over me

Material life elevated through crumbling ease

And warm stroke of recurring tear

Awakened in surprise by reprise

When reflection fails me

Tracing your love

First shot in the morning

Your pain tenders me

above every trough

I travel through

Follower unknown here in pursuit of being,

Intrepid adventurer in this season of mist

Human yet almost - lukewarm, in temperate handstroke - brisk

Feeling for all that man can hold in his miss.



You arrive; before you arriving too: season of yearning and sorrow

Hunting forth in dreams for sight of your love withering me

Fallen for you, handsome manoeuvre flooring my mind flight fast for Black Oak Tree

Through ring and perennial bark, stretched out in collapse – this is life’s furrow.




Of mystery’s leap - furlong knowledge grasping man invading from higher despair

Planting touch you wound my embrace I cannot deny for sound

Fragrant footsteps, scent of man, treading surreptitious - I follow your essence

From a sure distance, dead trail strengthening my arrest

Unfolding, I stalk this inward ripening from hollow being

Motive tearing for your heart; your pain - arraigning me in sincere sentence.

Friendship,
arising
From contact,
once or twice.
In this warm
embrace
of mere shackle
I find
You are my
facsimile.

Headache - physiological imperfection in perfect vertigo - where are my bearings? Friendship and sense hanging over me, tossing in turmoil the night' bearings leave me in isoceles - geometry split-spinning in split angle of pain. Hanging over me, slipping by me. Bothered again - unilateral - in abstracted silence.

Turning to you, fugue! Fugue - how....dare you. You follow friendship - mine too! Where to? Abstracted silence; vanishing act, absence re-enact this moment where I plead to fugue: please - not you!. Experience of friendship (dare I ... turn to you?), bliss, then sentience and moment - gentle headache, recoil please as I undulate with you. Spanish grasp in outstretched arms, embracing today's void, flamenco flourish of contact with your fleeting journey, human being - none of you yet were it not for you - malice of my liquorice afterthought - who could cause me to be? Warlock of ether, disappear from me as this motion - palpation brings my headache in full view.

Throb, you ache me as my essence embodies fugue, friendship fugue, flight into where are you too? Aching essence fleeing fugue, contrapuntal force of reflection, through and through, flight forces me into first steps of being through. Through and through. Being in fugue, Buxtehude, fleeing from being, headache you embrace me in solipsism's blue. Follicle's wrench - , my mind's fear wrings with thoughts of friendship - these my glass marbles ungrasped and rolling in death, drawing me over or near (is this identification?) your spine - triple, quadruple - breaks me into two. My mind follows you over - I am fallen for you, body's permission to collapse over you - where are you? Void! Fugue! Drawn to you in present-absent fulminant void of me and you. Where are you?

Where are you! In pain I call to you force pouring through, as tonic throbs heart beat with ontology's flu. Unexpected - I wander along hang-over's edge, dying to be me, if only for you - dying for you - really - where are you! I lose me in fugue. Here and wretched torsion headache and white noise, empty mirror, hung beside me, reflecting virtue, empty as I burn in shadow. My midnight fever, seeing this my friendship in descending fugue.