Aires

The temperature here has plummeted. Thankfully an old dusty rusty electric heater was discovered in a storage cupboard. Amusing perhaps to ponder why anyone is remotely interested in these details, as probably they are not. However, it is enjoyable to share them regardless. 

Today after the sun set, streaks of a soft pastel green tingled just noticeable above the distant glowing ambers and the rest of them folks. Multi-coloured margarines spread by the skies hand. The obedient moon is stretching away from the sun now, through Aires and onward to Taurus, I wonder how many times in total it will pass this spot - at least 100 billion, and not once does it wander astray, or change it's velocity. It's crescent leans westwards to its illuminator, westwards to the Atlantic, where whales swim.

I dreamt of a whale the other night. It opened it's mouth and swallowed a knife that someone had thrown from a balcony. The balcony was Venetian, a clean, calm yellow, with swaying red velvet curtains. The thrower had a strange head, like a bull perhaps, I remember the end of it's horns glinting in the light (which was neither sun or moon light). The whale cut his tongue on the knife, it bled glistening dark purple blood that seeped into the ocean. I glimpsed it's sad whale eye just before it plunged down to the depths. The eye seemed to say - "this is your fault, you allowed this to happen, now I must go back down and harbour this wound for many many lives".
    I turned around to the balcony that was now a ship, inside through a large window, I could see a women taking her clothes off, a red velvet dress. The bull headed person was playing a mandolin, the room was opulently furnished, a large four poster bed with gold rimmed curtains. I woke up with the song he was playing in my head. It sounds like what that soft pastel green from the sunset would sound like if it was making a sound, gently soothing with touches of sweet longing.

It is interesting to wonder what becomes of these strange dream characters after I wake up. Did the lady and bull person (male, female?) make love after I exit the dream universe into this one? How can it be that I can point - 'there is a character in my dream', when the pointer and the pointed to are all me and happening within me? What is the distance between them? Did I actually have this dream or this fiction?

As I was saying, the temperature has plummeted, I huddle close to the electric heater whose sporadic metallic clicks keep me company. I had better cook something spicy to warm me up. Below is a picture of one of the local cats, who are much more sassy, and louder than those where I was before - there are nightly brawls. There isn't the same cohesion and community about the cat clan here. 

 

No More Dogs

No more dogs, cats and chicken nuggets. Goodbye to the palm tree who reached through my window. Now is the time for pumping dance music to reach through my window in the morning from next door, and the sound of the sea curling over and touching itself as I fall asleep. Speaking of things touching themselves, I'm supposed to be touching myself all the time if there really is only one self, as Eckhart would claim. Touching my Briki in the morning to make coffee, the soft, gentle keys as I type to you now, the touch of water as I swim, it's all just the one life touching itself, is that right? 

I visited a monastery today, originally established by Saint Helena, wife of Emperor Constantine I. Ironic, as only men are allowed now into the monastery itself. Perhaps it's so the monks don't start touching themselves during prayer? 

I know I've been applying lashings of romantic notions simply for being in a fairly exotic country, however, it is entirely true that I feel I've never seen so clearly and deeply into, wait... let me put this into today's theme - I've never been touched so deeply and tenderly by the sky as I have been here. At night, Orion's belt, Cassiopeia, and the head of the Taurus Bull sparkle in my eyes, at day the blue of the sky comforts, (and why is the sky blue? and not say, purple?), the sun strokes my morning cheeks into a smile, the clouds nod as they pass by, merely actors, playing their part, and all the sky's a stage, blah blah...

Ants and my very first toaster. That might have been the title of this blog post. I bought a toaster because the one in the flat I'm renting had rust on it. There it is, the new shiny plastic black Berlinger Haus toaster. It sits near where ants marched in on the first day. For several days I used a 'natural' remedy to usher them out, that is to say I poured white wine vinegar and placed bits of lemon on their entrance route, many had a goodbye-world swim. After a few days they persisted despite these vinegary deaths, so I bought the real deal - 'Bio-Kill Original', there it is, I see it near my toaster. The ants haven't dared return.

For all this meditation and spirituality, I don't seem to have a friendly attitude to my fellow creatures. I'm not saying I took pleasure in eradicating the ants, but it was satisfying they weren't eating my food anymore. And didn't I, sort of, throw a lemon at a poor unsuspecting dog the other day? Is this how I should treat extensions of the one self that I am? Shouldn't I be reaching out and (non-bestially) 'touching' animals deeply and tenderly, just as the stars touched me that night? Not exterminating or angrily throwing lemons at them. Nor eating them.

I gazed into a cows eyes a while back, and there was it seemed, a harbouring of deep cow anger on behalf of the entire species. Some unformulated almost rage, a distant somehow sensing that their lives are being entirely in service to our stomachs. Perhaps we should look into the eyes of all the animals we eat at the moment of their death? See that simple life that they have withdraw, and their eyes in terror knowing something is arriving, knowing it with dread, but not knowing quite what it is - death. Do humans even know quite what it is?

Desdemona died, as did Othello. Was Iago in love with Othello? Had Othello made love to Iago, betwixt his sheet, which further fuelled his jealous insanity? These are the questions one ponders alone in the evening as the moon rises vanilla turning to chalk. I noticed this quote from that play Othello, spoken by the wizened Emilia to the young and innocent Desdemona  -  

'Tis not a year or two shows us a man, they are all but stomachs, and we all but food. To eat us hungerly, and when they are full, they belch us.

Is it true? and if so, why?