Microcosmic

"You were only waiting for this moment to be free" All the sounds are samples of Blackbird - song and calls - treated in various ways. The melody is 'Blackbird' by the Beatles This is "She moved over the moor" The Irish traditional folk song 'She moved through the fair' - performed by Curlews....joined by other moorland birds - Wheatear, Meadow Pipit, Golden Plover, Snipe, Merlin & Hen Harrier.

Just an ordinary little scene in a tiny corner of Planet Earth. Birch & ferns picked out in spotlights of the sun's first rays - the warmth raising mist in wisps. But never seen before - not just like this - and never to be repeated. ...a slice of magic! I’ve walked on the small corner of our planet – the one I call ‘my patch’ – maybe a thousand times. I’ve crossed this unexceptional parcel of land nearly every day for the last few years. The same path from the cemetery on to the old abandoned golfcourse - nothing to see here. The track that becomes muddy in autumn’s rain and seems want to stay muddy long after dryness has come back into fashion. But wait... It’s never been muddy quite like this. I’ve had to skirt round it, clinging to dry parts – but never quite in this way. And look at those thistles, that arrangement of spikey seedheads, one in front, two behind. And the way they seem to slide past the willows at the back, as I walk by – I’ve nev

Here there should be wood here there should be wood but there's me instead standing up in a lightning struck hollow I am Jonah, the oak tree is a whale and then I am part-whale cavity walls, skin of lizard, fire-crack black algal green overlay on crosshatch-fractures looking is ushered upwards, sight shot out skyward, straight though a peephole the tree, now Cyclops by dint of my eyes human senses added to those old oaken ones making eleven in all seeing itself for the first time branches jacknifed to injured chevrons boughs, whole chunks of tree, strewn dead and dying like fallen comrades on a battlefield damage surveyed, I hatch out of the tree there's nothing it didn't already know

I’m nearing 12 moths of consistent daily mediation. I thought it would be good to take stock and see where this has brought me, and that this might be interesting to share. I’ve been interested in meditation for, what now what amounts to, decades. Almost my default New Year’s resolution would be: “this is the year I’m definitely going to take up meditation”. An initial burst of enthusiasm would tail off after a few weeks, nearly always down to a seeming lack of ‘results’. Where were the advertised benefits – the ones that would ‘sort me out’ once and for all! A big part of what I was looking for a cure for anxiety – a constant companion, sometimes a pronounced feeling of worry, sometimes a more subtle sense of unease…an ever-present. The Mind Illuminated For nearly every day of this year I’ve managed to meditate for an hour. I have developed what would have seemed at the beginning to be a super power - the ability to stay with the meditation object (which was the brea