Diving-board or spring-board

A ledge, in the movies, (window-ledge or mountain-ledge), is a place from which a person may leap, or from which he can climb back up to the top.

A baby's guide to the universe.....

Pulse and beat are said to be the movements and sound of the universe at work. A regular beat in the form of patting, recitation, or tune puts a baby to sleep. Somewhere at the very heart of things these two factors must be linked.  :)

Angst? Accidie?

          It seems illogical to try to escape the ground of one's being by taking substances.
          John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" was written to prepare young people for the realities of life. It was to be a journey and the end would be home, the "Holy City" as he visualised it. But what was the point of the journey?
          I suppose a modern analogy would be the gym or one's jogging route, agony at times, sometimes exhilerating, but bringing much self-realisation and general hell.
          The aspiration of the athlete would be excellence, and that of the ordinary person fitness, a slim line, and the avoidance of being called a couch potato.
          To change the analogy one farms oneself. The ground of one's being has to be investigated, ploughed, fertilised, and sown with "good seed".       
          It's a great life if one embraces the whole and doesn't try to escape, or refuse to get up and get out there to do the work We all want to be able to give a good accounts of ourselves when we get home!

The Shard

The Shard is a modern spire rising up from the heart of secular London, splintered as we are, but reaching for the stars.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a knife-edge word. 

Too little and others have to compensate.

Too much and others can't grow.

Way too little and others pay the cost.

Way too much and we compromise the soul.

So what then is boredom?

So what then is boredom? Is it not frustrated desire to do it knows not what? It is agitation without a purpose. And what is purpose but the current caused by the primordial spring leaping forth from the heart's core? Let then agitation cease so that this natural current can make its' way unimpeded.

What is stillness?

So what is stillness? It can't be a simple matter of keeping the arms and legs and head still while the mind concentrates on not moving, like a child playing statues. The mind commands the body, and no General can enforce discipline if he is chaotic. The virtue of discipline emanates from himself. Likewise the quality of stillness must radiate from the mind. Therefore it follows that the mind must enter into itself to be itself the stillness which is to permeate the rest of the organism. Yet mind itself is a territory to be quelled. The attention is forced to retract to the centre-most point of the mind to still the agitation in the rest. Only then does boredom cease to exist. 

What is boredom?

What is boredom? Isn't it the inability to exist in the present moment? In the present moment only stillness exists. Therefore it would seem  realising stillness nullifies boredom.

Interesting!?

Why do T.V. journalists like to describe events as 'interesting' so often nowadays?. Even the arrival of the hurricane Sandy in New York was going to be interesting. Maybe they feel they are showing professional detachment but it can sound downright callous. Or dull. Adjectives add colour and sense to an account, but they are disappearing from news vocabulary. Maybe news stories are becoming more like computer games?

Memories

Memories hang dense and rampant in the human mind.
     Would we could tuck them tenderly away
          in some sweet treasure-chest,
              or drop them finally
         down a deep unfathomable well!

What is a poem?

I think too much poetry consists of jotted-down ideas. But these are just the ingredients of a poem. They are like the flour, sugar, eggs, and milk set down on the kitchen table to make a cake. They are not the cake. Jotting down the ideas is the first step in making the poem. The ideas have to be trimmed to skeletal form. A poem is a concentrate of thought. The peeled-back bared-down ideas  have to be connected, and then set in rough first-draft order. Then the metre and rhythm have to be worked on to express the thought appropriately. The language has to be worked on to fit well into the rhythm, and to match the over-all mood of the poem. The imagery has to symbolise the deeper messages of the poem, and the images need to  echo and reflect back on each other. They should stimulate visual, auditory, and tactile memory. The closing lines need to sum up, or point towards, the whole.
Otherwise what you have is prose arranged in short lines.