Preamble. "-A child said. What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full
hands; How could I answer the child...¦ I do not know what it is any more
than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven." Whitman [I once learned that historians of the
'ancients' credit women with the invention of weaving and suchlike
technologies.]
Dear Learners,
There is a welling up of a letting go.
In my 'grasping hand' yesterday was a three-page letter from the Royal
Botanical Society to Charles Darwin from a Mr. Hooker. It began, "Dear
Darwin, - ... "
To come upon such a document and quite by chance;-) on the floor of a
bookshop in the 'backest' of back rooms.
In the 'backest' of back rooms of my mind I thought to myself....How I
should like this, I should like to have this document about me when I
work....I thought how easy it would be to place or to put it into my
pocket....but I could not, Toby is my friend....
"Toby, I have just found this on the floor in the back room, would you like
to sell it to me?"
"What is it, Andrew?"
"It appears to be some correspondence between Charles Darwin and a Mr Hooker."
"That isn't supposed to be there, oh dear no, sorry that is NOT for sale, I
bought that and some other papers from Hooker's granddaughter a few years
ago. Thankyou I did not realise, -it must have fallen out from
somewhere... or other."
Hmmm.
Vaclev Havel the poet, writer, freedom fighter, leader and follower both
(italicized) once wrote an informative essay in which he is found pondering
why, in essence, he paid the fare on a municipal automated tram when no-one
else was on it. It was a little insight into the mind of deep politics.
Hmmm.
Here is a difficult question.
If all the reflections of men and women, exemplified as 'meditations of the
good' -the do good, do better and do best- do not just remain remote
disconnects, loosest of loose couplings, weakest of 'weak forces' whether as
both 'action' (pay the fare) and 'non action' (do not steal this bit of small
paper) but in some way accumulate, then what would and could be the
implications for us?
Perhaps there can be no such 'accumulation' outside the single humane 'one'
of selfhood.
Sometimes just to 'touch' a scrap of paper is sufficient to set almighty
trains of thought in motions.
If that thing called 'soul' need not depart but remain among. Hmmm.
To quote Gavin's recent prescient words, what if, " -it just goes on."
Indeed.
What if in our falling apart we are gathered up elsewise?
Hmmm.
On the way out of the bookshop ~~ empty handed ~~ I glanced as if prompted by
peripheral vision to place my now ~~ open hand ~~ upon a book, titled Towards
Democracy, by Edward Carpenter. Have you read it? No, I doubt it.
More and more people I sense desire to know how it is that, in the words much
quoted these days of Lao-Tzu " Real control appears as uncontrol."
My response is just another question, 'Does control depend upon where you
(it) begin and where you (it) end?'
Sometimes this thought is expressed as, 'the need to let go.'
It takes many expressions.
Lincoln for example was puzzled by the events of the American Civil War. One
expression was that during those years some invisible and mighty hand had
passed over the continent, bringing it to a rightful conclusion. Churchill
may have not had exactly the same thing in mind, but I speculate he may have
when he said to the occupied people of France, 'Think of it often, but speak
of it never.'
" Apart from all evil - from all that seems to you evil - your soul my
friend, that towards which you aspire, which will become you one day - you
true Self - rides, Above your phantasmal self continually. Do not fear: it is
there.
Through all the baffling and confusing, through all the seeming haphazard and
labyrinth darkness of life, it is there - overseeing; quietly selecting,
directing, ordaining. It is lord of all. If it were chance, it were evil: but
there is not, the soul surrounds chance and takes it captive. And all
experience - what you call good and evil, alike - it takes and greedily
absorbs, nor ever can have enough."
Carpenter goes on now for pages and pages, brilliantly and more brilliantly
IMHO.
But you will never read his book.
Let me take you to another windowless back, back-room of the soul.
Sitting and working formidably away in the Managing Director's chair, behind
the curling desk of important success is Katie, head down then and hard at
work, no Windows ;-) for her in the room. Katie is thirty three years old and
has 'Downs Syndrome'. So like a child then. Ungrown uncrowned sister of Toby,
the antiquarian bookseller.
In the dark reflection of the screen of reality, before I push the button for
"ON" I might glance a face before me. A self-portrait, dull but there.
A dark mirror. Hmmm.
Carpenter, Chapter XXVII
" Did you once desire to shine among your peers - or did you shrink from the
knowledge of your own defect in the midst of them? Did you, friend, covet so
to be more beautiful, witty, virtuous - to be able to tell a story or sustain
an argument well, or to be able to discourse on any subject, or to be a
skilful rider or a good shot? Or shrank from the ridicule which the reverse
of these excited - which was certain and is still certain to come upon you?
Was it really your own anxious face you keep catching in the glass? Was it
really you, who had so many things, one way or another, you wanted to conceal
from others - so many opinions too to disguise?"
Mr. Darwin pointed some people just one way but points me another. Fear
not the tooth and claw.
In Katie's smilingly, swimmingly, oceanesquely glinting eyes (she) exists
far beyond whatever is exceptional and illustrious in human life and is
the stretch of that which is average. All distinctions, all attainments,
all signal beauty, skill and wit and whatever men can exhibit in himself,
are lost in that little and great ocean. To the subtle learning of the
learned, to the beauty of the exceptionally beautiful, the wit of the
witty all these flow immediately and without cost from the common and
undistinguished peoples, those who stand in more direct contact with
Nature. The course is the same, they are tossed up thinner and thinner,
into mere spray - like a wave from the great whole of the Ocean - to fall
back again, inward.
Katie within a replete untainted soulhood sits unwitting in some 'leader
chair'.
She is sitting self set in the frame of some more unselfish and
importantly perfect symmetry.
Dear At, Leo, Rick, Terry, John, Chuck, Charlie, Dan C and Dan B, Winfried Dr
and Winfried Dj, Patricia, Nick, DP Dash, Karen, Ian, Sue, Penny, and on and
on and one:-) you ask me rehtorically, What can this little man and artist
paint of such miracles? When I have neither brushes soft enough, nor colours
refined enough, nor canvases sufficient enough to paint even the twinkle of
her eye nor the curl of her smile.
Is that not why I put them down to both continually lose and find myself here
among you all, each?
A question to the LO is this.
If 'freedom is the deepest breath', what causes the deepest sigh and from
where does it issue first, the soul or the lungs?
Best.
Andrew Campbell
Post script.
At, Rick et al,
Even long after he had stopped painting, Jackson Pollock would go to his
great barn of a studio and light the stove to warm the air. His friend and
neighbour asked why he still did it, why did he waste the time and the
cost of the fuel. Jackson replied, ' I light the stove so the studio will
be warm in case this is the day I can start to paint again.'
I saw your virtual campfire up on the hill, sparks were flying and I was
pretty cold. I approached cautiously as you know, with many shadows around
me but all of my own making in the deepest indigo of before dawn. I really
don't know what I am doing here in this virtual place. I try and keep my
eye on the whole. Not easy. I try to address the one within many and the
many within one. I occasionally get powerful visions some paintable and
unpaintable, I follow the 'unpaintable' ones here, which keeps me close to
the centre while perhaps feeling at some other margin. I am trying to
'figure' the possibility that exists between the two. I think we are all
'waiting for the day'
One vision I increasingly have is that we are all 'making the day'. That
the past and the present and the future is this one day and this one day
is the past, present and the future, lightly enfolded into some other kind
of darkened sleep.
Hmmm.
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