Lodge Hill

Cinnabar caterpillar
Picture credit

I so much want to tell you about Lodge Hill. I'll do it when there is time. Busy again, sorry.

Later It was a warm but overcast day. With my box of pastels and a sketch pad, I felt like Vincent Van Gogh going out to do a day’s work. Before I knew its real name, we (kids and I) used to call it Butterfly Hill, because in August particularly it was full of lepidoptera. The Chilterns are a range of chalk hills, but Lodge Hill is different, a carbuncle on the general flow of the undulations. Don’t think of a tall windswept place, but a miniature nature reserve. Its trees and shrubs give it shelter without destroying the views which stretch off to the Vale of Aylesbury in the misty distance. Such vistas you never see in Wycombe: here, when you stand on a hillside, you see across to the rest of the town on all the other hillsides. It’s a community poured into a series of valleys. Are we therefore "inward-looking"?

We found a spot in a little meadow spongy with mosses, bumpy with tussocks of ancient rabbit-warrens, enclosed with thorn-bushes. The butterflies were pursuing one another romantically, sometimes at risk of inter-racial relations. Do they dare, or is it taboo? The wildflowers were exquisite and often tiny, and I was reminded of some alpine meadow, despite having never been in one. There was wild thyme in flower, & a mint that smells like lavender when crushed, & yellow loose-strife, viper’s bugloss, stonecrop, ragwort and I know not what else including many I have never seen before. Elders and brambles were in flower, promising rich black fruit with purple juice later. The sloes are swelling green like olives. It would take a lifetime of study to know the flora and fauna by name and family, and all the details of how they propagate and why they are the way they are.

We sprawled on a rug, K with her crossword, till she lay down and snoozed, whilst I wondered what if anything I could capture with my box of colours. I stuck to the first thing I had noticed: a striped caterpillar which appeared to be reclining lazily on ragwort. Closer examination showed that it was munching furiously on bud after bud. I was able to draw the caterpillar easily enough but ragwort is not easy with chunky crayons. So I provide you with a photo instead, one which was taken within a few miles of Lodge Hill (though not by me!). The cinnabar caterpillar is striped like this, it seems, to warn predators that it is full of the ragwort poison, which is so strong that they have to make sure there is no ragwort in a field where animals graze.

Ways of looking at things

Hayden and I have been discussing “spirit”. I can’t do our conversation justice by attempting to summarise it here, but at least it reached a point where we happily agreed on various points, including a definition of spirit that covered the vast history of the concepts covered by this word.

I suppose our real starting point was rejection of the notion of spirit as something opposite to body, or – to add insult to injury – superior to body. I am sure that in the history, there have been those who have considered spirit as a substance, even though most agree that this, by definition, is precisely what it is not. Those who understand that spirit is not a substance – it can’t be weighed, have spatial co-ordinates and so forth – still treat spirit as an entity. The universal spirit is God, the spirit of a human being is soul, and then there are angels and “sprites” of all kinds.

Today we have the phenomenon of “spirituality” without specific beliefs in spirits as entities, but with various beliefs nonetheless. The big question that sceptics ask is, “Where is your proof?” But the very question is alien to the proponents of spirituality. “Proof” belongs to the material world. The spirit world, or should I say the spiritual world, trades in a different currency, personal experience or sometimes faith. No rate of exchange between the currencies in the different worlds has been established.

I’m not really happy having a foot in two different worlds. I’m in the “integration” phase of life. So what is spirit? Hayden and I agreed that it is a way of looking at things. If you imagine that trivialises the subject, then think again. We need several ways of looking at things to acknowledge all our experiences, deeply personal as well as communal.

And now to a topic which is more connected to the above than it seems. For several weeks I have been wanting to write about photography: how indispensable it is to our world and to cyberspace in particular; but how hopeless it is at capturing the essence – all right, let me say it, the spirit – of what we have seen, what has moved us. It struck me first when I wanted to capture for this blog the magnificence of a certain landscape near my home, particularly in the evening when the trees cast long shadows, and at that particular season – late May – when the fields of ripening wheat were of a certain vivid bluish-green. My frustration at not being able to capture or share went deep, and yesterday I found myself buying some oil pastels, charcoal and a sketchbook. Henceforth, my digital camera will be used as a scanner to copy these sketches and present them to you here. What primitive, what childish joy! What a lifetime will be required to learn the skills! Let me live as if each day is my last and, simultaneously, as if life goes on forever.

I am dissatisfied with photography because – at least with my camera – it merely reflects the surface of things and does not capture spirit.

Zorba the Greek

The 1961 edition

I’m glad not to have yet seen the film of Zorba the Greek, for it is the book which speaks to me, as I savour a few pages for the first time each day. The film must be full of colour and atmosphere and dancing and dulcimer-playing, but Kazantzakis in the book covers spiritual search in a depth no film could. I haven’t read any reviews. They’d be like pornography, trying to steal the essence without the commitment.

Zorba steps into these blogging topics with grace, dancing, as is his wont, when his words are untranslatable. I never thought (though certainly dreamed) that blogging could become a global conversation and a new communal form of literature. I got here following an inner impulse as faithfully as my unfolding consciousness has permitted.

My first blog was called Discoveries and resembled this one in appearance; but it was based on a false premise-—showcase of ego and attempt to please a crowd. So it was put on the bonfire of vanities. The present incarnation started as An Ongoing Experiment, for I did not know where it was going technically, thematically, visually and various other “-allies”. Allies were in fact what it needed, i.e. readers, commenters, an invisible community. One true reader alone would be enough to make a difference to the world. Let that reader find the blog and let the blog find that reader.

I remain reluctant to tell anyone about this place, for anonymity helps it flourish. As the narrator tells Zorba, mining for lignite is not his true purpose for being on Crete, but it deflects the locals' curiosity. And as the late Douglas Adams mused, it might be the laboratory mice who have been experimenting on us, rather than we on them. So let us allow the benign impulses in us direct our actions. Adams the atheist may have been an instrument of a global spiritual plan. And something whispers insistently in my ear that none of us are exempt from being such instruments. Certainly, I have come a long way, even from the inception of this blog in late April. Then, I was doubting everything, especially spirit. Always doubting, but it turned out to be the main attraction.

Zorba, that most natural of men, believes in nothing, and offers profane sermons such as this:

“Don’t laugh, boss! If a woman sleeps all alone, it’s the fault of us men. We’ll all have to render our accounts on the day of the last judgement. God will forgive all sins, as we’ve said before-—he’ll have his sponge ready. But that sin he will not forgive. Woe betide the man who could sleep with a woman and who did not do so! Woe betide the woman who could sleep with a man and who did not do so!”

The narrator, Zorba's boss, is writing a book called Buddha and tries to eliminate the persistent image of a certain widow's swaying hips from his mind, with little success.

The Cosmic Ordering Service

I have written here about how I've beamed out my needs to the Universe, and had them promptly delivered, like pizza to the doorstep. I was careful not to join the chorus of New Age coaches who proclaim, “You, too, can learn the age-old secrets of how to tap into life’s abundance!” I always wonder how it is they can be so confident that just because it works for them it can work for anyone else. I even suggested here that they be parachuted into an African desert where people have to walk miles for water, for that’s where their coaching talents might be most needed.

Jim in one of his comments adds “. . . but there always seems to be a hitch” and goes on to tell the Universe his need, by an appropriate method, i.e. the Internet. So by that same method comes a possible answer to the problem of those hitches.

The other day I found myself in Ottakar’s, the town’s bookshop, and as usual headed for the “spirituality” section. I never buy anything: it’s just to keep in touch with trends. I usually buy books second-hand, via Amazon.co.uk, Ebay or the Cottage Bookshop in Penn. There, staring me in the face, was The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr. I flicked through briefly, confirming that its sole topic is telling your needs to the Universe and getting them pronto. It gives detailed instructions, which I didn't bother reading because I felt that it already works for me and I did not want to pollute my understanding with someone else's ideas. But it might be worth checking out, Jim.

A grave mystery unearthed

X marks the spot. PH: "public house" (i.e. the Crown Inn)

A few weeks ago, K and I had taken a cross-country walk near the ancient Buckinghamshire village of Penn. The Penns of Penn were reputed to be closely connected to William Penn of Pennsylvania, but in any case many religious dissenters from these parts had emigrated and helped found the town of Burlington over there, and in memory of their birthplace gave the name to Bucks County. Bucks has long been the official abbreviation for Buckinghamshire. The attraction for K and me, though, is the 17th century inn, The Crown, built by the Penn family.

As we walked through a field of yellow-flowering oilseed rape, bordered with field pansies and other wild-flowers, we spotted some odd movements at the top, just in front of a little copse. They were repetitive, up and down, and we wondered if it was some white rags, caught on the thorns, flapping in the wind. But as we got closer, it seemed to be two figures, clad in white, their heads bobbing up and down, then staying down for a while. Advancing all the while, we now saw it was three figures, all in white, apparently hooded. This has never been a haunt of the Ku Klux Klan, so it was baffling.

I never go on walks without being intensely curious about everything I see: birds, flowers, insects, stones, scraps of paper, fossils, lichen, footprints. K often tells me to “Put it down, it’s dirty!” as if she were leading her toddler to nursery-school. So, as we got closer, I strongly desired to divert our walk to pass these people and find out what they were up to. But coming as she does from a violent country where you mind your own business to stay alive, she didn't let me go nearer, in case they decided to liquidate witnesses. It was frustrating because the height of the rape crop and the curvature of the land prevented a full view unless I got very close.

I left with regret, unanswered questions churning in my brain. Were they burying treasure, or a cache of illegal things? Or digging them up? Then I hit on the most likely explanation. It was a police forensic team, dressed in their protective paper suits, who had discovered the decayed body of a man, woman or child. They were photographing, fingerprinting, combing the ground for evidence. This explanation answered all points, and I resolved to check the local papers to get confirmation. Then I forgot all about it.

Forgot, that is, until last night, when we returned for a meal and a pint of good English ale at The Crown. I persuaded K afterwards to accompany me to the site. It was about three weeks after the distant witnessing of the “goings-on”, but I was sure there would be some evidence left behind. In mid-June, the crops and wild plants are at their full growth. Any intense activity such as we had witnessed would have left signs: recently-dug soil, trampled vegetation or discarded objects to aid the amateur sleuth.

K was nervous as we tramped through the long grass, as if fearful of booby-traps. On our right was the copse, a private wood where they encourage young pheasants to breed ready for the shooting season. On our left was a glorious, unspoilt landscape, part of the historic Chiltern Hundreds: undulating meadows and woods, with a few distant red brick farm buildings. I swear it would have looked no different on a sunny June evening four hundred years ago. I was starting to think there would be nothing of note to find, but when we were about thirty paces away, I saw something like a pile of grey wooden boxes, but I couldn’t be sure. Aha! The three hooded men in white had left behind their treasure!

A suspicion formed in my mind. We reached the spot, to investigate at close quarters. Yes, there were eight or ten busy beehives.

Intimations of immortality

I’ve said a few things here about “spirit”, but the other day I felt its reality. I was walking up Desborough Avenue to the intersection with West Wycombe Road. People in their cars were waiting for the lights to change. Pedestrians were on their way to the doctor’s surgery or the clinic next door which does blood tests and so forth. Mechanics were fixing cars in a yard. I don’t quite know what triggered it, but it hit me that all of us are more than our bodies and minds.

It is so easy to say, “Oh, yes, I have always believed in that!” or perhaps, “No, there’s no evidence for that!” What hit me was not an experience that I can easily put in words, not something to be debated. It was a demonstration of what I had heard repeated for more than half a century.

Today, like any other day, teachers in classrooms across the globe tell their classes “how it is” and perhaps have textbooks to back it up. But a good teacher needs to know that there are only three worthwhile subjects: history, personal development and personal knowledge.

Euclid’s theorems, Harvey’s discovery that the heart pumps blood, Shakespeare’s plays, the changing uses of a given word over time, where to place apostrophes, the Ten Commandments: all these are history. You might say they are facts, but they are facts only in their historical context. They are records of what people knew, did or agreed upon. They may or may not be current today, but either way, history is very important.

If the teacher says, “We are more than our bodies and minds: we have an immortal soul,” is the telling of it going to impregnate the pupil with personal knowledge? No. Is it the teacher’s personal knowledge? Probably not. What subject does it belong to, then? Perhaps “edifying hearsay”, a major part of the curriculum but a subject of dubious value.

In that moment, near the traffic lights, about 11am on Tuesday 13th June 2006, I had personal knowledge of spirit. My knowing had nothing to do with religion. There are no short cuts to knowing. It was a subtle intimation, but I will never be the same again.

Blog, blag, brag

Dictionary.com (American) does not have an entry for the word blag, so here is an excellent link to a definition. Blag is a useful English slang word with a wonderful range of meanings:

“BLAG” - British slang for bluff. “Blagging” - pretending to know all about a subject, attempting to impress or con others by using verbal gymnastics. In this sense “blag” means the same as the British slang word “flannel”.
Alternatively, “blagging” can also mean attempting to obtain goods, services, favours, by “blagging” them. In this second definition “blagging” means the same as the British slang word “scrounging”.

For more, see link above. Thanks, Prof. Kirschenbaum. I won't write to you personally now, because I know it is your busy time till mid-July, and mine too for about 5 days more.

Some pizza has arrived

I stated the other day my working assumption that all I have to do is tell the Universe what I need and it seems to arrive as easily as pizza. I'd been musing that it would be nice to earn something whilst doing my old trade. There is no way I can really advertise and when I apply for jobs, whether through agencies or direct, they see my age and don't bother to reply.

So it was not a surprise that within an hour, the telephone rang from a long-time colleague who had passed my name to someone who is now keeping me too busy to spend my day blagging, sorry, blogging.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

What civilisation has to answer for

”the unchallenged centre of attention”
Source: Joyzine, Australia

While I was living in Jamaica, I managed to help earn a few pennies by typing and editing literary and academic texts. One such was a student’s philosophy dissertation. She was not an agile writer or an original thinker but she did put together some others’ work in a coherent way, to the effect that philosophy originated from Africa, and had been misappropriated and bastardised by the Greeks. To put it more precisely, the Greeks dissected and separated the wholeness of the “All That Is” for the sake of intellectual power. Since the Roman Empire, Europeans and their cultural descendants have used that power to infect the world with their destructive domination, destroying “barbarian” cultures everywhere.

The motive for the student’s analysis was apparent: to raise the pride of black people by subverting the supremacy of European civilisation. Despite my education and European ethnicity, I was deeply impressed. My whiteness had been exported to Australia in an earlier generation, just as the Jamaican student’s blackness had been exported from Africa: we shared captive ancestry. I had been uprooted and re-exported to England at the age of four. Somehow I acquired a rebelliousness which leads me always to question authority, whilst retaining a reverence for the richness of the past.

European civilisation was upheld as the glory of the world, an embellishment upon every territory which it colonised. Indigenous populations were “savages” often wiped out with impunity by white settlers.

“Without exception, the earliest Europeans to catch a glimpse of traditional Aboriginal camp life noted the boundless joy, exuberance and independence of the children. No other people seem to be as lenient or indulgent toward children as the Australian Aborigines, and many anthropologists have declared it to be the most child-centred society they have ever observed.
. . . . . .
“Aborigines openly and unaffectedly converse with everything in their surroundings - trees, tools, animals, rocks and such - as if all things have an intelligence deserving of respect.” (Joyzine)