Photo: Flat Rock, along the Blackwood River.
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.” Joseph Campbell
The fruit of adolescence recaptured
that old reckless abandon,
a fearless letting go returned
as I came across the first stone,
I was moved, overcome, and I cast
myself upon the sweet-smelling earth,
kicking off my shoes in a Moses moment,
daring to touch this sacred ground
the very core of me.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under bush walking, Country, Free Verse, life, nature, Philosophy/Theology, poem, quote
Photo: freepik.com
“This body, full of faults, has yet one great quality: Whatever it encounters in this temporal life depends upon one’s actions.” Nargarjuna
You said words which cannot be undone
and in the simple math of cause and effect
how I reacted determined my pain and
gave grounds for yours
should you choose to nurture it so,
but in the end we chose to
hold that space and
find a balanced view,
sowing forgiveness and reaping love,
then suddenly finding that
the words had gone,
as if a thunderstorm had
watered the earth and passed over
without event.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under Free Verse, life, love, mindfulness, Philosophy/Theology, poem, quote, relationship, Spirituality
Photo: Uluru at sunset, a calm and peaceful place, an ancient place, a deeply spiritual place.
“belief, like love, must be voluntary.” John Updike
Of orthodoxy there is no real centre
except of ink on paper
where imagination dies
a thousand deaths
in a rut of doctrines and dogmas
that pierce the heart
and erase the future,
imprisoning vision,
punishing hope,
and yet we are all heterodox
bringing our creative spice
to the great universal stew,
an ever changing recipe.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under challenge, Country, Free Verse, life, mindfulness, Philosophy/Theology, poem, religion, Spirituality
Photo: Borannup Forest, an autumnal hue.
I sat in the sun
as summer gave way to autumn while
I listened to the earth’s perambulation
as Solomon waxed lyrical
about all manner of things binary,
I drifted off at some point
becoming more aware of
how things blend and meld
how discontinuity and dissonance
are ever turning in my days
and how perennial experience can be
in the cycles of life,
most especially when we think we’re done
with all of that stuff,
I was struck by the miscellany of seasons
and how nature turns up
without Gregorian appointment
in a kairosian space
where all is awakening
and where peace with everything
is never too late.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Note: Καιρος (Kairos) is a Greek word from ancient times that carries the meaning of opportune time, more specifically in Jewish and Christian thinking it carries the meaning of God’s timing. I have bent the word to make kairosian.
Paul, pvcan.com
Filed under Free Verse, life, mindfulness, nature, Philosophy/Theology, poem, seasons, Spirituality
Source: flickr.com A street peddler in Istanbul.
The smell of sulphur fills the air,
bell, book and candle won’t help you now,
the devil incarnate roams the streets,
seductively peddling false hope, old ways, more tax.
Been like that since the ancient of days laughed and said
“Let them try democracy.”
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under Alt-Religion, history, life, Philosophy/Theology, poetry, politics, Quadrille
Such a beautiful armchair,
fit for a royal,
stately,
sitting in this velvet throne,
jaw set against the world,
eyes righteous.
From this regal center
you rail against
everything that affects your realm
of small suburbia,
ever moralising
from cigarettes to popes,
drowning everyone.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under life, Philosophy/Theology, poetry, politics, Quadrille
Ani Pachen (1933 – 2002), better known as the Warrior Nun, a Tibetan freedom fighter. She was captured by the Chinese army in 1959 and held until 1981 – 21 years in prison, she was 48 yrs old. She continued to oppose Chinese occupation of Tibet and took part in rallies and protests, fleeing to India in 1989 because she was facing arrest yet again.
We apprehended futility and held it as our own,
never stopping to think of consequence.
Logic held no sway,
there was no song,
the soil of our hearts rooted no doctrine,
myths and legends were our truths.
We slept in the open and spoke in ravines,
ate haute cuisine from tins,
punished our fantasies and banished our doubts
as we passed through Falkirk, Culloden, Lexington,
and struggled at Eureka,
countered in Prague,
threw out shoes in Manila and turned orange in Kiev.
We played with protest,
shouldered riot and uprising,
captured yet not imprisoned,
we remained free spirits held by passion,
undaunted, determined.
Our very breath was inviolate,
this was our victory,
to be present.
©Paul Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Image: from somewhere on Tumblr.
If I’m anti anything I’m anti hate, but mostly anti ignorance in matters of compassion and human rights.
The boat is heavily listing now,
yesterday the water ran out.
Faces of grief pleading for life,
guns hold their gaze.
The pimp in the office will give no ground,
He toadies the line that they’re misfits of vice.
In soil of division suspicion grows well.
it’s their religion you see, much sicker than ours.
Well, actually, we don’t believe, ‘cept the retail gods,
and, oh yes, Our Father who art in parliament.
The pimp in the office cruelling life,
whose litany is “Don’t trust your neighbour.”
A girl faces the impenetrable wall,
her parents are gone.
We shut her out, then shut her in,
she’s dangerous you see, her skin colour’s sin.
The pimp in the office will give no ground,
“We’re the land of the … Me.”
There’s a man on the street encrusted in sorrows,
he trusted once, now content to be free.
He’s not beautiful, but he’s married to soul,
his manger’s a gutter, his blanket Orion.
The pimp in the office will give no ground,
“Misery’s my game, let’s play it on him.”
Sorrow lives in hearts near me,
and faceless captives far away.
But I played a new game, I planted new seeds,
I harvested insight and acted at once.
The pimp in the office is struggling to speak,
I rapiered his words with sharp deeds of love.
©Paul Cannon
paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under life, mindfulness, Philosophy/Theology, poetry, politics
Also spelt as Aesthete
Image: thatcreativefeeling.com
Desiring to study the Way of Tea, Sen no Rikyu went to the tea-master Takeeno Joo who set Rikyu the task of tending the garden as a test. Rikyu cleaned to perfection, but before presenting his work to Joo, he shook a cherry tree, causing some blossom to fall to the ground. A little imperfection being the perfect ground. Thus began his journey into returning the tea ceremony and everything associated to its former simplicity.
It is said that the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood the aesthetic known as wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi emerged in the 15th century as a reaction to the aesthetic of very formal and ornate and extravagant art and design of that time. Wabi-sabi is “focussed on the acceptance of impermanence or transcience.” It speaks of “a readiness to accept things as they are.” Or, finding the beauty within imperfections.
Wabi symbolises rustic beauty and quietness, simplicity and quietness. It can also refer to flaws, quirks and abnormalities that occur during production, e.g. pottery, or, as in the case of Rikyu, the blossom disrupting the otherwise perfect garden.
Sabi refers to things whose beauty can only come with age, like weathered timber, green copper, rusted tin. Sabi is said to evoke a sombre feeling very much like autumn.
Wabi-sabi is said to be honest, authentic, organic, modest, incomplete, and where nature, even nature’s corosive power, is celebrated.
Ref: britannica.com, dt.pepperdine.edu (Richard Martin).
How refreshing! I really warm to this aesthetic, and how much we need to embrace it today. Wabi-sabi simplicity could be the antidote to our materialistic, throw-away, plasticised way of living. An acceptance of life as it is. More than cloth bags and organic soap (important as these things are) we/all living things need a modern aesthetic equivalent to wabi-sabi. More imperfection and less sculptured fruit and veg. More authenticity and less keeping up with the Jones’. More incomplete, and evoking a sense of the real. Celebrating nature by engaging nature’s needs. Being organic in every way from relationships, to lifestyle, to purchasing. Accepting things as they are from people to the cosmos. Living with our flaws (shadow aware). How refreshing. I yearn for a bit of Rikyu in all of us.
I Love the Flaw in You
Dead center,
on the mantlepiece,
my truest work
as yet.
Soft clay now hard as nails,
its beauty is its cleft.
Its radiance not celadon,
a muddy glaze its skin.
She sits proudly among the celebrated,
offended by their pretence –
perfect, slick, and mass produced,
with images of empire now dead.
As I contemplate my minimum,
I know she goes with me.
The others to the Op-Shop,
or some other recycle path.
This ugly piece of earth,
this imperfect lustred pot,
speaks, shouts, to me of real life,
and how to cope with love.
©Paul Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under art, environment, history, life, mindfulness, minimalism, nature, Philosophy/Theology, poetry, quote
Photo: decophobia.com/prodimg/marcelbreuer-knoll-bauhaus-chaise-lounge-chair(1).jpg an obtuse angle if ever I saw one, and indeed, geometry was critical to Bauhaus thinking.
In 2019 Germany will celebrate 100 years of the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus school of design, a modernist movement, began in Weimar in 1919, so immediately post WWl. It moved to Dessau in 1925, and in 1933 the NAZI regime forced it to close, citing that it was an enclave of communism. It lasted fourteen years in Germany, then as the NAZIs forced it to close the leaders of the movement took their ideas to other countries. Its influence has continued to the very moment, finding expression in art, design and architecture all over the world.
Bauhaus translated means house construction, so it was The House of Construction. As a movement it completely transformed art, design and architecture. It was an attempt to reunite art and manufacturing, to reintroduce in manufacturing and construction an aesthetic, a form married to art, and quality. It was an arts and craft approach. Their belief was “Less is more.” Those who joined were known as – Master of Form.
There are three identifiable principles in Bauhaus:
Bauhaus boasted a collective whose names are now famous: Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Joseph Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius (the founder), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer (whose designed the chair as shown above), Carl Fieger, Anni Albers, Johannes Itten, and Herbert Bayer. Student Eliot Noyes went on to develop the corporate identity of IBM. Some 1,250 students went through the Bauhaus School and they took its principles across the world, no small feat.
What I love about Bauhaus is its freedom of thought, it wasn’t governed by executives or shareholders, it wasn’t sponsored by governments, it initially had no commercial traction (that came later), the movers and shakers of Bauhaus were simply committed to their craft and its form. I think that’s why it became popular later on, they had integrity and they stuck with what they believed even when they were all separated by the events in Germany. Even the National Socialists couldn’t stop them.
Life, I think, is about experiencing as much as we can in the time we have, and making our contribution too. But at our core I also think that one of the keys to success is staying true to self and staying the course on what is key for us, going the distance, that’s my angle, but its not obtuse! It can be powerful to live what you believe.
Paul Klee’s painting: “Castle and Sun”
the tree is tangled weed and vine overrun it but the buds will bloom ©Paul Cannon
Paul,
pvcann.com
Filed under art, creativity, Haiku, history, life, mindfulness, Philosophy/Theology, quote
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