Senses working overtime #309

1 Badger

The full gatefold cover

This week, I was finally able to track down a copy of this album from 1973. The band has links to Yes and Apple Records (Jackie Lomax joined them after this album), but a major drawcard for me is that great Roger Dean cover.

2 RIP Prince Philip

He's been a constant in our lives and his work ethic is something that has always impressed me - the hardest working person in royal business for many decades.

3 Poetry corner

Nothing Wants to Suffer

Danusha Laméris

after Linda Hogan Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.  The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,  made quickly, and without much suffering. The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth. A table, the weight of years of argument. We know this, though we forget. Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are. Nor the worm, content in its windowless world of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed. The riverbed, gazing up at the stars. Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy, looking down at all of us— their offspring— scattered so far beyond reach.

4 How fit can you get from just walking?

5 What happens to our eyes when we stare at a screen all day?

Overtime:  

"A simple rule for life and work:

Don’t rush, but don’t wait.

Thoughtful action." (James Clear)

Senses working overtime #253

1 David Copperfield

It's taken me a couple of weeks but I've finished David Copperfield and feel a little bereft. Charles Dickens' favourite is a great novel. I'm missing reading it and living with the characters already.

2 Something is more interesting than this - Seth Godin

And now, that’s always true.

Whatever you’re doing.

No matter who you’re with.

Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.

And it’s in your pocket.

All the time. As long as the battery lasts.

There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.

Until infinity.

Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.

3 Small kindnesses 

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

4 The Batman

Love this cover for issue 8 of THE BATMAN'S GRAVE
5 Max von Sydow

Star of my favourite movie of all time - Pelle The Conqueror. You absolutely, and utterly believe in him in that role (and others). Rest in peace.

Overtime: McCoy Tyner

Sadly another great artist, McCoy Tyner has also passed away recently.

Overtime: Oh dear, oh dear

Great piece by Frank Rich on the disaster that is Trump and his response to Covid-19. Poor America - my heart goes out to you all (R and D alike).