Saturday 30 July 2016
Thursday 28 July 2016
The Dog in the Night
The Dog in the Night
Years ago, when I lived in the caravan my previous dog Tex would often wake me up if I was having a nightmare. Dook, my dog now has never done this. He never comes up on to my bed as Tex did. He never licks my face. Last night I was deeply dreaming about a journey on a double decker train along with a selection of football hooligans. At one point I got into a fight and in the chaos I lost my dog. Looking upstairs, a lad had taken my dog saying that, due to my fighting I had ignored the dog and couldn't keep him properly. He aimed to keep him. I woke up in anger at this but relief soon followed to find I had been woken up by Dook who stood above me licking my face. I can't recall any similar dream, not even a dream where my dog was the central character. So the first time I've had a nightmare about losing my dog I was woken up for the first time by my dog for the first time licking my face to wake me up in the middle of the night.
Sent from my iPad
Years ago, when I lived in the caravan my previous dog Tex would often wake me up if I was having a nightmare. Dook, my dog now has never done this. He never comes up on to my bed as Tex did. He never licks my face. Last night I was deeply dreaming about a journey on a double decker train along with a selection of football hooligans. At one point I got into a fight and in the chaos I lost my dog. Looking upstairs, a lad had taken my dog saying that, due to my fighting I had ignored the dog and couldn't keep him properly. He aimed to keep him. I woke up in anger at this but relief soon followed to find I had been woken up by Dook who stood above me licking my face. I can't recall any similar dream, not even a dream where my dog was the central character. So the first time I've had a nightmare about losing my dog I was woken up for the first time by my dog for the first time licking my face to wake me up in the middle of the night.
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday 27 July 2016
Biocentrism Demystified: A Response to Deepak Chopra and Robert Lanza's Notion of a Conscious Universe | Nirmukta
http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/
Some time back I posted on the ideas of Robert Lanza, Deepak Chopra and Peter Russell. Here there ideas are debunked. At the time I recognised that the scientific materialist orthodoxy was wrong and could identify various flaws and examples the paradigm concept couldn't contain. These ideas offered an alternative view, something I was hungry for. But the hungry man will eat a discarded half eaten burger cast aside by last nights drunks. As my more recent postings show, the obsession with human consciousness is anthropocentric. In looking for 'intelligent' alien life, in looking for a higher power, we seek out only that which has our speciality, so proud are we of this. As I have joked, elephants believe all matter has trunk. Even rocks and humans have a basic trunk. Any information system sufficiently advanced will develop a trunk. Elephants worry about computers in the future developing AT, artificial trunk. Consciousness, our supposed self awareness that delivers 'free will' and the hope of a transcendent soul looks to me to be a kind of illusion. We act like other animals in all other ways. We act to our instincts then write explanatory narratives for ourselves and court room judges, excusing our actions. In other senses, the sensate creatures we are have awareness like all animals and most probably plants. Much like comparing mycelial mass to a human brain. They certainly have awareness at least as developed as our own but like our forms, this differs greatly. The recent obsession with consciousness that has been the most exciting area of science due to our cluelessness on how that grey meat matter can think and feel could be asking all the wrong questions. As the lens swivels the human yearning for a conscious universe and a conscious God will fade. For most certainly their are numerous higher powers, but to suppose they share our self consciousness is to assume a god can only qualify as such if he where's a suit and clean underpants. Whilst the superstitious notion of an interventionist creator is an infantile projection, so too is the scientific communities delusion of man as a god. We are steered to believe that humans just about know everything, 98% and soon these little gaps will be filled. I doubt we know 2% of what there is to know. Much less, if my intuition is right. We don't know what causes gravity nor where house martins disappear to in the winter, that's before bringing up dark matter or any cosmic confusion. The delusions of science are equal to those of religion. Humanism dismisses the divine yet continues with the Abrahamic subconscious assumption of a transcendent soul or at least our self deification over other animals and dominion over nature. Superstitious ideas common today include a delusion that we can arrest climate change through ingenuity, the delusion of not being subject to animal laws, and the delusion of having control of our own evolution. The fact our stupidity has tipped the planets climate self regulating systems over through our communal ignorance does not imply our communal conscious power to reverse the situation. Green projects, whilst noble and sometimes leading to minor localised successes are futile. Reintroducing red kites looks pretty for the dull witted car drivers unable to detect more subtle looking birds but it does nothing to address the complex biodiversity of the ecosystems now in depletion. The sixth great extinction is underway. We can't stop it. Our number will be greatly reduced in the next few hundred years as the planet heats up. Mass migrations and the fight for food will see some 90% reduction. But humanity will continue. At least for a while and in different circumstances. How the world will look once deforestation is complete and the ice caps and perma frost melt is hard to picture. Yet these higher powers that form the planets self regulating systems are much like the pagan gods our ancestors worshipped. Each year our secular culture experiences the emergence of storms, hurricanes, tsunamis like we have never known. In but a few hundred years, science and technology has unleashed pagan gods that will destroy us. We name them Hurricane Katrina now has numerous fellow gods and goddesses, higher powers, destructive and beyond our control. The quest for knowledge, our promethean journey away from our animal origins assumed our unique nature permitted our use of the environment and other soul free life forms as we saw fit. As resources, insensate and dumb. Only now as science reveals an ecosystem of such interconnected sophistication do we see our error. Only now as we grasp we can only ever see a subjective illusionary world view, never the real thing. Forever cut off from reality in a universe uncaring and vast. Science led us into our current despair and dissolution. Depression, psychosis, delusions of grandeur, an insane inability to grasp the speed of species extinction, drug addiction, narcissism, all natural responses to the failure of the failed promethean quest. Now in our naming of higher powers we revert to pagan gods. I am no pessimist as some have said, but I'm not in denial. Politicians offer a psychotic drive toward further growth. It is all they have to sell. Lanza and Chopra will be okay. They'll merely create a different reality with their mighty human consciousness. There is still fun to be had. We overcome the depression caused by our species failure in the knowing we are only a perverse diversion of nature, as out of personal control of what we are as any animal. We can choose better metaphors, live helpful lives, treat all life with respect, stop consuming so much, stop greedily breeding, steer away from isolated nuclear families growing into unchecked psychosis and explore once more the tribal variance of friends, aunties and uncles, odd shamans that can offer differing views to the seclusion and isolation of the family home. The metaphors of science proved no more real than did our religious mythology. This is a great time to be alive.
Sent from my iPad
Some time back I posted on the ideas of Robert Lanza, Deepak Chopra and Peter Russell. Here there ideas are debunked. At the time I recognised that the scientific materialist orthodoxy was wrong and could identify various flaws and examples the paradigm concept couldn't contain. These ideas offered an alternative view, something I was hungry for. But the hungry man will eat a discarded half eaten burger cast aside by last nights drunks. As my more recent postings show, the obsession with human consciousness is anthropocentric. In looking for 'intelligent' alien life, in looking for a higher power, we seek out only that which has our speciality, so proud are we of this. As I have joked, elephants believe all matter has trunk. Even rocks and humans have a basic trunk. Any information system sufficiently advanced will develop a trunk. Elephants worry about computers in the future developing AT, artificial trunk. Consciousness, our supposed self awareness that delivers 'free will' and the hope of a transcendent soul looks to me to be a kind of illusion. We act like other animals in all other ways. We act to our instincts then write explanatory narratives for ourselves and court room judges, excusing our actions. In other senses, the sensate creatures we are have awareness like all animals and most probably plants. Much like comparing mycelial mass to a human brain. They certainly have awareness at least as developed as our own but like our forms, this differs greatly. The recent obsession with consciousness that has been the most exciting area of science due to our cluelessness on how that grey meat matter can think and feel could be asking all the wrong questions. As the lens swivels the human yearning for a conscious universe and a conscious God will fade. For most certainly their are numerous higher powers, but to suppose they share our self consciousness is to assume a god can only qualify as such if he where's a suit and clean underpants. Whilst the superstitious notion of an interventionist creator is an infantile projection, so too is the scientific communities delusion of man as a god. We are steered to believe that humans just about know everything, 98% and soon these little gaps will be filled. I doubt we know 2% of what there is to know. Much less, if my intuition is right. We don't know what causes gravity nor where house martins disappear to in the winter, that's before bringing up dark matter or any cosmic confusion. The delusions of science are equal to those of religion. Humanism dismisses the divine yet continues with the Abrahamic subconscious assumption of a transcendent soul or at least our self deification over other animals and dominion over nature. Superstitious ideas common today include a delusion that we can arrest climate change through ingenuity, the delusion of not being subject to animal laws, and the delusion of having control of our own evolution. The fact our stupidity has tipped the planets climate self regulating systems over through our communal ignorance does not imply our communal conscious power to reverse the situation. Green projects, whilst noble and sometimes leading to minor localised successes are futile. Reintroducing red kites looks pretty for the dull witted car drivers unable to detect more subtle looking birds but it does nothing to address the complex biodiversity of the ecosystems now in depletion. The sixth great extinction is underway. We can't stop it. Our number will be greatly reduced in the next few hundred years as the planet heats up. Mass migrations and the fight for food will see some 90% reduction. But humanity will continue. At least for a while and in different circumstances. How the world will look once deforestation is complete and the ice caps and perma frost melt is hard to picture. Yet these higher powers that form the planets self regulating systems are much like the pagan gods our ancestors worshipped. Each year our secular culture experiences the emergence of storms, hurricanes, tsunamis like we have never known. In but a few hundred years, science and technology has unleashed pagan gods that will destroy us. We name them Hurricane Katrina now has numerous fellow gods and goddesses, higher powers, destructive and beyond our control. The quest for knowledge, our promethean journey away from our animal origins assumed our unique nature permitted our use of the environment and other soul free life forms as we saw fit. As resources, insensate and dumb. Only now as science reveals an ecosystem of such interconnected sophistication do we see our error. Only now as we grasp we can only ever see a subjective illusionary world view, never the real thing. Forever cut off from reality in a universe uncaring and vast. Science led us into our current despair and dissolution. Depression, psychosis, delusions of grandeur, an insane inability to grasp the speed of species extinction, drug addiction, narcissism, all natural responses to the failure of the failed promethean quest. Now in our naming of higher powers we revert to pagan gods. I am no pessimist as some have said, but I'm not in denial. Politicians offer a psychotic drive toward further growth. It is all they have to sell. Lanza and Chopra will be okay. They'll merely create a different reality with their mighty human consciousness. There is still fun to be had. We overcome the depression caused by our species failure in the knowing we are only a perverse diversion of nature, as out of personal control of what we are as any animal. We can choose better metaphors, live helpful lives, treat all life with respect, stop consuming so much, stop greedily breeding, steer away from isolated nuclear families growing into unchecked psychosis and explore once more the tribal variance of friends, aunties and uncles, odd shamans that can offer differing views to the seclusion and isolation of the family home. The metaphors of science proved no more real than did our religious mythology. This is a great time to be alive.
Sent from my iPad
Mycelium and The Mystical Experience
Mycelium and The Mystical Experience
Returning to the mystical experience I had a year or so back had me thinking many things. As my ego and sense of self and separation dissolved, I entered the soil. Becoming one with the humus I spread throughout the forest floor. It is difficult to remember details though my sense was of being a subsurface interconnected network or web stretching several square miles. The extreme ties or size of the area I was able to explore had no real interest, all I knew was I was part of something far greater. Each particle of soil, each speck of broken down tree or rock held its own history. The life of the tree from acorn through shoot, to great arbor till finally falling, breaking down through decay and returning to the soil. Rock particles of sand also told their histories stretching back further to a time before plant life. This early stage of the experience I can recall most clearly. It is this stage that is relevant to Paul Stamets work on mushrooms. Ill return to him later but in a broader sense a shift is underway in scientific circles. Many cultures saw the land as alive. People like the Lani of West Papua who sing to the forest. Their environment is not inanimate, a mere backdrop for human activity as we tend toward in post Christian cultures. The forest for the Lani is one great being and to live is to be in constant exchange. They sing to it and the forest sings back.
Western minds struggle with this idea and often label it superstitious. To us the wild places are the source of resources. Even many naturalists focus on singular species failing to see the ecosystems as interactive wholes. All life forms evolve in codependence with a myriad of others. The notion that the non human world is inanimate is often represented as rational or scientific but is really a modern superstition. Though science is facing a reluctant about turn. Recent studies show that certain plants communicate with each other, releasing pheromones that warn of insect attacks. They signal to each other using a series of electrical impulses not unlike an animals nervous system. They send out airborne distress signals to insect predators that feed on the plant eaters who threaten them. Underground are mycelia. Vast networks connecting and weaving through the forest floor connecting the many root systems of plants, flowers and trees. Stamet suggests they are a complex system of interplant communication. Ecologist Stephen Harding suggests they "possess an eerie intelligence, and probably a peculiar sense of self to boot."
The supposedly secular western humanist clings to the Abrahamic notion that only humans possess consciousness or souls, and this gives us the right and duty to run the planet. Our treatment of animals and environment has been reprehensible and idiotically stupid in our destruction of the whole of which we are but a part. Scientists studying animal and plant consciousness are turning us back to older ways of seeing by modern means. Philosophers are beginning to accept that consciousness rather than being an emergent property of complex systems and unique to humans could well be a pillar of reality. As significant and ubiquitous if not more so than time, space or matter. The world around us looks to be sentient, aware and connected. As Adam ate of the apple and stepped away on his journey towards god hood leaving behind the singular whole it may be away from the truths earlier people's knew and into superstition and delusion that is causing the sixth great extinction.
My experience found something far greater than me taking me in to a reality so crisp and true that the everyday delusional state we live in became laughable. What took me in was not like any notion of a god known to me. As the experienced developed it grew far greater but the entry point was integration with the soil. Below the surface. Interestingly a standard shamanic practice the world over is to enter the underworld. As a shaman myself I use the system whereby, as one enters the transcendent state or other state of consciousness, through drumming and chanting most often, the shaman journeys to the lowerworld which has no connection to hades but is more a parallel reality where say a lost spirit animal guide can be refound for the dispirited individual who has sought help. Once in the state the shaman imagines a hole they know of, usually in a forest or piece of wild land they know well. The place I use now is one from recurrent dreams stretching back to childhood that I picture now in the area of woodland where my own epiphany took place. Was the mycelium taking me into the global or universal consciousness through its own consciousness? There was certainly a higher power at work. Another, greater consciousness of which my molecules became a part.
Some ideas from Paul Stamets work could be key to understanding what it was that happened to me. I have written in previous posts about the biology of mystical experiences and it seems likely that amongst their many uses or purposes, mushrooms are the trigger for human epiphany. The key to the necessary shift in our paradigm perspective if we are to survive as a species.
Previous extinctions like the one 65 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs have been caused by asteroids striking the Earth. Darkness follows as the ash cloud denies the planet of light. Each time it has been mycelium, fungi that has returned life to the planet. Fungi predates plant life by a long way. 1.3 billion years ago fungi was alive on earth. 600 million years later plants followed. Through the ability to form tendrils with cell walls of one cell thickness, mycelia can grow through rocks, breaking them down. They create humus. They stand between life and death, breaking down the plant matter, creating nutritious soil for new life to form. Biodiversity follows in abundance. We share a common ancestry with fungi. A super kingdom links animals and fungi and this common origin means the same concerns. We both breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. As we grew thicker cell walls and consumed using internal stomachs we stepped onto land. Far earlier mycelium took to the land though they went underground using external stomachs to find nourishment from the stuff they brushed against. We walk above a complex world we know little about. Mycelium mats, the subterranean network of fibrous growth of which mushrooms are the fruiting body are the largest organisms on the planet. Beneath our feet in field, supporting forests above, they can grow to thousands of square metres in size. Such is their complexity that within a single square inch of soil, the cellular fibres, if stretched out, cover eight miles. Eight miles of mycelium in a cubic inch. The biggest known organism in the world is in Eastern Oregon, 2000 acres in size is this mycelium mat. A highly evolved being, of cell wall of a single cell, serving as lungs, externalised stomach, a neuro biological network in constant communication to all parts. These sentient organisms pervade all ecosystems. Aware of humans footsteps as they walk through, seeking out the debris disturbed. Where nutrients are unavailable mycelium can communicate the need to other extremities and transport requirements a hundred or more yards. Givers of life to plants and animals by breaking down rocks in to humus. Stood between life and death, breaking down dead trees into mulch nutrients feeding bigger trees. Breaking down death to create life. Perhaps it is from here that a fear or phobia seems to grow. Stamets refers to a racism against fungi. The dark and dank places, the superstitious fear of toadstools, an inherent feeling of disgust in many that urges them to look away. Yet our very existence is entwined and dependent on fungi. Our evolutionary roots are shared, we evolved from fungi. One has to wonder of this disdain is shared also. In logging we cut down and burn, hoping for a hit of carbon yet killing the mycelium below. Now open to the sun the ground grows dead as the soil becomes nutritionally thinner. A forestry of decreasing returns. If mycelium is the life bringer below ground then we are the death bringer above.
As far as we know, the current extinction our over population is causing is the sixth in the planets history. Two we know of were caused by asteroids hitting the planet. The dust and ash cloud brought darkness killing 90% of all life. Mycelium, not needing light, survived both and initiated both repopulation and creation of the new ecosystems. Fungi inherited the Earth. Fossil records from 450 million years ago show a planet with no planet higher than two feet though a fossil found in Saudi Arabia came from a thirty foot high mushroom. One can try to picture a land of ferns no higher than your thigh interspersed with the occasional towering mushroom as tall as a house. The oldest none buried human so far found is nicknamed the iceman. Preserved as he was in life, not laid out for death, he carried two fungi. These tree growth fungi still grow today and are of a type that can take a spark and smoulder for a week or more. With such fungi he was able to carry fire on his travels. In legend the keeper of the flame, the carrier of fire has always had a significant role. Similar fungi played a role in the development of firearms, ground down they carry the spark to the gunpowder.
Stamets points out that fungi follow catastrophe. Returning life to the planet after the asteroid extinctions. Humans leave catastrophic mess in their wake. Timber milling for example leaves wood chips in its wake that see rare species become abundant. Mycelium is often the missing component in permaculture and agriculture. Mycelium make soil. It is expected that at least half the planets species will become extinct in the next hundred years, 90% or more as yet unidentified.
To ward off pathogens, fungi I have developed numerous antibacterial and antiviral compounds. Our shared ancestry means these offer a vast resource in medicines. People of traditional cultures the world over have used these for years. In 1929 Alexander Flemming discovered Penicillium Rubens mold and so began antibiotics. A factor in the allies victory over the nazis was superior anti biotics and many further discoveries found us able to eight infection. Sadly overuse now risks this valued resource. Cheese, beer, wine, bread use moods and yeasts. Stamets work now uses mycelium to breakdown organic pollutants like oil and petroleum. The aftermath of chemical warfare against the Kurds saw his studies allocating species to breakdown anthrax. Further his work finds possible cures for viral disease HIV being an example. Working together with mycelium we may find a sympathetic existence with the planet. It is a law of nature that if a species overpopulates to the ecosystems overall harm the host body will reject it. It is hubris to think we should be unique in being seperate from the biodiversity of a singular and complex whole. If my experience could be placed into words it would be akin to this. For a time I lost self and drifted into the whole. An interdependent singular, much like Lovelocks Gaia or quantum theories multiple arrangements in a singular molecular field. We are one. Whether our puny consciousness, our arrogant measure of an equal being or God, became of such redundancy as a question when faced with something so much greater than a single man and his mind.
Mycelium masses form a planetary web, a mass of fibrous tissue, that largely goes unseen until it breaks surface to form the fruiting mushroom body. The intricate branching of threadlike membranes whose structure, inescapably resembles brain cells. To imagine sentience, a high intelligence is hard to avoid. The similarities are numerous from the way both brains and mycelium grow new connections and prune existing ones in response to environmental changes to the use of chemical messengers to transmit signals throughout a cellular web. Mycelium actively help trees and an explanation of how saplings trapped in darkened forest corners survive. Through one parts requesting another part for specific nutrients hundreds of yards away the mycelium can address such crises. The brain and the mycelium mass evolved as similar structures to perform similar jobs. Nature repeats successful patterns. Stamets sees other parallels in the information architecture of the Internet, in the matrices of string theory, in computer models of the web of dark matter suffusing the cosmos. The mycelial archetype is mirrored throughout the universe. Such recurrences are signs of an evolutionary intelligence governing reality itself.
As a youth discovering magic mushrooms, the Liberty Cap abundant where grew up, my eyes were opened to such a new perspective the change was beyond puberty. For a few seasons I religiously picked psylocibin mushrooms and took many trips. Of these some delivered real epiphanies. I saw the light. I understood. Once the eye became attuned, areas of land that once seemed barren suddenly lit up as the light caps became visible. Looking back the mycelium offered them up to me. Not that I am special in anyway. Others of my circle had the same experience. Once I recoiled back to my materialist scientific upbringing I rarely saw them again. As though not required hence invisible. As I struggled to verbalise or put the understanding in to words I slipped into thinking that these states were delusions. That it only felt like I understood. For this reason and an increasing inability to contain the two realities I gave them up along with LSD the other psychedelic I used. I felt as though our youthful dream was over. Many turned to other drugs and alcohol. As the free festival scene and New Age traveller movement was targeted and crushed by the government my mystical moments I buried.
Quite by chance, in exploring the research chemical bubble where loopholes in the law allowed new substances a window of legality I discovered AL LAD. Across the spectrum many new compounds mimicked illegal counterparts. On occasion they were trumped massively. The three or four years saw development in psychoactive substances accelerate till new improvements on the rough and cut street drugs were becoming available on the internet one a week. Of course there were as many if not more failures and poor imitations.
Lysergic acid diethlamide 25, LSD or, under contemporary distinctions, METH LAD was discovered famously by Albert Hoffman the same year the atom was split. Derived from ergot, a mold peculiar to rye grain, western culture was changed. As though these two discoveries offered a fork in the road. Destruction or enlightenment. At first used by intellectuals it ultimately made it to the public by the sixties. This revolution saw the birth or growth of environmentalism, feminism, vegetarianism, a craft revival and numerous shifts in culture still playing out today. Though the cause of only rare accidents the authorities clamped down on LSD with a zeal beyond cocaine or heroin. Dangerous drugs with violent cultures of supply. Mushrooms saw a minor cultural blossoming in the early eighties. This is all well covered elsewhere. But within the research chemical scene first AL LAD and LSZ became available. Later came ETH LAD, 1p-LSD, ALD 52, PRO LAD, a divergent family of lysergamides. Many had been discovered in the 1970s but largely unexplored. After a few trips I learned AL LAD offered a trip similar to LSD yet less challenging. In its manufacture LSD must first be made and four fifths is lost in the processing meaning that it only made commercial sense to reduce product so profoundly if it was legal.
A product synthesised from ergot, a fungi, triggered the mystical experience that was to change my life. I have written many posts about it so won't here other than to say this. After abandoning the epiphanies on psylocibin mushrooms of my youth I followed a workaholic path. Furniture design and making offered a creative practice by which to both make a living and explore artistically. After thirty years obsessing over objects I'd developed habits to cope that were unhealthy. The AL LAD did three things. It rendered a materialist obsession with objects wasteful. It cured my tendency towards stress of work, depression and substance misuse as a coping strategy. Thirdly it ridiculed the materialist scientific atheist outlook I had developed. I must have done AL LAD no more than twenty times but only the final one qualifies as a mystical experience. Just as with the thousand odd mushroom trips and few hundred LSD trips of my youth only a handful were of a mystical quality. It is wrong to think these substances always deliver transcendent states. But on occasion they do. My final AL LAD trip took me so far beyond anything before they feel like single letters to the book.
Mystical experiences are generally interpreted within an individual's cultural or religious framework. Mine occurred in woodland. Whether the mycelium beneath the forest floor reached out for me I don't know, but it was into this underground network I first entered. The forest took me in. I lost any sense of separation as my particles dispersed amongst the whole. There were all the qualities of the divine. The sense of a higher power. The sense of being taken. The sense of universal love. A benevolence. A singular consciousness of which we are part. Innefabilty, not explicable with language. A gnosis. The gift of a knowledge or understanding. My life had grown tangled but I was taken above all trivial concerns and freed to see the greater truth. Reading Stamets work, how I experienced this stood on a mycelium mass, it's reflections in the mushroom trips of my youth, coming from a synthesis of ergot, all point towards the entity or sentience that spoke to me either being the mycelium or using the mycelium to connect.
On Sunday, as these thoughts span round my head, quite by chance I was given three Brazilian psylocibin mushrooms. They weren't sufficient to deliver a trip. They did, however, give me a warm reconnection. A message for later in the year. In our new warm damp climate I imagine mushrooms will be more abundant than thirty years ago when I last took them. Now I find myself unconsciously looking for likely fields to go check in a few months time.
Sent from my iPad
Returning to the mystical experience I had a year or so back had me thinking many things. As my ego and sense of self and separation dissolved, I entered the soil. Becoming one with the humus I spread throughout the forest floor. It is difficult to remember details though my sense was of being a subsurface interconnected network or web stretching several square miles. The extreme ties or size of the area I was able to explore had no real interest, all I knew was I was part of something far greater. Each particle of soil, each speck of broken down tree or rock held its own history. The life of the tree from acorn through shoot, to great arbor till finally falling, breaking down through decay and returning to the soil. Rock particles of sand also told their histories stretching back further to a time before plant life. This early stage of the experience I can recall most clearly. It is this stage that is relevant to Paul Stamets work on mushrooms. Ill return to him later but in a broader sense a shift is underway in scientific circles. Many cultures saw the land as alive. People like the Lani of West Papua who sing to the forest. Their environment is not inanimate, a mere backdrop for human activity as we tend toward in post Christian cultures. The forest for the Lani is one great being and to live is to be in constant exchange. They sing to it and the forest sings back.
Western minds struggle with this idea and often label it superstitious. To us the wild places are the source of resources. Even many naturalists focus on singular species failing to see the ecosystems as interactive wholes. All life forms evolve in codependence with a myriad of others. The notion that the non human world is inanimate is often represented as rational or scientific but is really a modern superstition. Though science is facing a reluctant about turn. Recent studies show that certain plants communicate with each other, releasing pheromones that warn of insect attacks. They signal to each other using a series of electrical impulses not unlike an animals nervous system. They send out airborne distress signals to insect predators that feed on the plant eaters who threaten them. Underground are mycelia. Vast networks connecting and weaving through the forest floor connecting the many root systems of plants, flowers and trees. Stamet suggests they are a complex system of interplant communication. Ecologist Stephen Harding suggests they "possess an eerie intelligence, and probably a peculiar sense of self to boot."
The supposedly secular western humanist clings to the Abrahamic notion that only humans possess consciousness or souls, and this gives us the right and duty to run the planet. Our treatment of animals and environment has been reprehensible and idiotically stupid in our destruction of the whole of which we are but a part. Scientists studying animal and plant consciousness are turning us back to older ways of seeing by modern means. Philosophers are beginning to accept that consciousness rather than being an emergent property of complex systems and unique to humans could well be a pillar of reality. As significant and ubiquitous if not more so than time, space or matter. The world around us looks to be sentient, aware and connected. As Adam ate of the apple and stepped away on his journey towards god hood leaving behind the singular whole it may be away from the truths earlier people's knew and into superstition and delusion that is causing the sixth great extinction.
My experience found something far greater than me taking me in to a reality so crisp and true that the everyday delusional state we live in became laughable. What took me in was not like any notion of a god known to me. As the experienced developed it grew far greater but the entry point was integration with the soil. Below the surface. Interestingly a standard shamanic practice the world over is to enter the underworld. As a shaman myself I use the system whereby, as one enters the transcendent state or other state of consciousness, through drumming and chanting most often, the shaman journeys to the lowerworld which has no connection to hades but is more a parallel reality where say a lost spirit animal guide can be refound for the dispirited individual who has sought help. Once in the state the shaman imagines a hole they know of, usually in a forest or piece of wild land they know well. The place I use now is one from recurrent dreams stretching back to childhood that I picture now in the area of woodland where my own epiphany took place. Was the mycelium taking me into the global or universal consciousness through its own consciousness? There was certainly a higher power at work. Another, greater consciousness of which my molecules became a part.
Some ideas from Paul Stamets work could be key to understanding what it was that happened to me. I have written in previous posts about the biology of mystical experiences and it seems likely that amongst their many uses or purposes, mushrooms are the trigger for human epiphany. The key to the necessary shift in our paradigm perspective if we are to survive as a species.
Previous extinctions like the one 65 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs have been caused by asteroids striking the Earth. Darkness follows as the ash cloud denies the planet of light. Each time it has been mycelium, fungi that has returned life to the planet. Fungi predates plant life by a long way. 1.3 billion years ago fungi was alive on earth. 600 million years later plants followed. Through the ability to form tendrils with cell walls of one cell thickness, mycelia can grow through rocks, breaking them down. They create humus. They stand between life and death, breaking down the plant matter, creating nutritious soil for new life to form. Biodiversity follows in abundance. We share a common ancestry with fungi. A super kingdom links animals and fungi and this common origin means the same concerns. We both breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. As we grew thicker cell walls and consumed using internal stomachs we stepped onto land. Far earlier mycelium took to the land though they went underground using external stomachs to find nourishment from the stuff they brushed against. We walk above a complex world we know little about. Mycelium mats, the subterranean network of fibrous growth of which mushrooms are the fruiting body are the largest organisms on the planet. Beneath our feet in field, supporting forests above, they can grow to thousands of square metres in size. Such is their complexity that within a single square inch of soil, the cellular fibres, if stretched out, cover eight miles. Eight miles of mycelium in a cubic inch. The biggest known organism in the world is in Eastern Oregon, 2000 acres in size is this mycelium mat. A highly evolved being, of cell wall of a single cell, serving as lungs, externalised stomach, a neuro biological network in constant communication to all parts. These sentient organisms pervade all ecosystems. Aware of humans footsteps as they walk through, seeking out the debris disturbed. Where nutrients are unavailable mycelium can communicate the need to other extremities and transport requirements a hundred or more yards. Givers of life to plants and animals by breaking down rocks in to humus. Stood between life and death, breaking down dead trees into mulch nutrients feeding bigger trees. Breaking down death to create life. Perhaps it is from here that a fear or phobia seems to grow. Stamets refers to a racism against fungi. The dark and dank places, the superstitious fear of toadstools, an inherent feeling of disgust in many that urges them to look away. Yet our very existence is entwined and dependent on fungi. Our evolutionary roots are shared, we evolved from fungi. One has to wonder of this disdain is shared also. In logging we cut down and burn, hoping for a hit of carbon yet killing the mycelium below. Now open to the sun the ground grows dead as the soil becomes nutritionally thinner. A forestry of decreasing returns. If mycelium is the life bringer below ground then we are the death bringer above.
As far as we know, the current extinction our over population is causing is the sixth in the planets history. Two we know of were caused by asteroids hitting the planet. The dust and ash cloud brought darkness killing 90% of all life. Mycelium, not needing light, survived both and initiated both repopulation and creation of the new ecosystems. Fungi inherited the Earth. Fossil records from 450 million years ago show a planet with no planet higher than two feet though a fossil found in Saudi Arabia came from a thirty foot high mushroom. One can try to picture a land of ferns no higher than your thigh interspersed with the occasional towering mushroom as tall as a house. The oldest none buried human so far found is nicknamed the iceman. Preserved as he was in life, not laid out for death, he carried two fungi. These tree growth fungi still grow today and are of a type that can take a spark and smoulder for a week or more. With such fungi he was able to carry fire on his travels. In legend the keeper of the flame, the carrier of fire has always had a significant role. Similar fungi played a role in the development of firearms, ground down they carry the spark to the gunpowder.
Stamets points out that fungi follow catastrophe. Returning life to the planet after the asteroid extinctions. Humans leave catastrophic mess in their wake. Timber milling for example leaves wood chips in its wake that see rare species become abundant. Mycelium is often the missing component in permaculture and agriculture. Mycelium make soil. It is expected that at least half the planets species will become extinct in the next hundred years, 90% or more as yet unidentified.
To ward off pathogens, fungi I have developed numerous antibacterial and antiviral compounds. Our shared ancestry means these offer a vast resource in medicines. People of traditional cultures the world over have used these for years. In 1929 Alexander Flemming discovered Penicillium Rubens mold and so began antibiotics. A factor in the allies victory over the nazis was superior anti biotics and many further discoveries found us able to eight infection. Sadly overuse now risks this valued resource. Cheese, beer, wine, bread use moods and yeasts. Stamets work now uses mycelium to breakdown organic pollutants like oil and petroleum. The aftermath of chemical warfare against the Kurds saw his studies allocating species to breakdown anthrax. Further his work finds possible cures for viral disease HIV being an example. Working together with mycelium we may find a sympathetic existence with the planet. It is a law of nature that if a species overpopulates to the ecosystems overall harm the host body will reject it. It is hubris to think we should be unique in being seperate from the biodiversity of a singular and complex whole. If my experience could be placed into words it would be akin to this. For a time I lost self and drifted into the whole. An interdependent singular, much like Lovelocks Gaia or quantum theories multiple arrangements in a singular molecular field. We are one. Whether our puny consciousness, our arrogant measure of an equal being or God, became of such redundancy as a question when faced with something so much greater than a single man and his mind.
Mycelium masses form a planetary web, a mass of fibrous tissue, that largely goes unseen until it breaks surface to form the fruiting mushroom body. The intricate branching of threadlike membranes whose structure, inescapably resembles brain cells. To imagine sentience, a high intelligence is hard to avoid. The similarities are numerous from the way both brains and mycelium grow new connections and prune existing ones in response to environmental changes to the use of chemical messengers to transmit signals throughout a cellular web. Mycelium actively help trees and an explanation of how saplings trapped in darkened forest corners survive. Through one parts requesting another part for specific nutrients hundreds of yards away the mycelium can address such crises. The brain and the mycelium mass evolved as similar structures to perform similar jobs. Nature repeats successful patterns. Stamets sees other parallels in the information architecture of the Internet, in the matrices of string theory, in computer models of the web of dark matter suffusing the cosmos. The mycelial archetype is mirrored throughout the universe. Such recurrences are signs of an evolutionary intelligence governing reality itself.
As a youth discovering magic mushrooms, the Liberty Cap abundant where grew up, my eyes were opened to such a new perspective the change was beyond puberty. For a few seasons I religiously picked psylocibin mushrooms and took many trips. Of these some delivered real epiphanies. I saw the light. I understood. Once the eye became attuned, areas of land that once seemed barren suddenly lit up as the light caps became visible. Looking back the mycelium offered them up to me. Not that I am special in anyway. Others of my circle had the same experience. Once I recoiled back to my materialist scientific upbringing I rarely saw them again. As though not required hence invisible. As I struggled to verbalise or put the understanding in to words I slipped into thinking that these states were delusions. That it only felt like I understood. For this reason and an increasing inability to contain the two realities I gave them up along with LSD the other psychedelic I used. I felt as though our youthful dream was over. Many turned to other drugs and alcohol. As the free festival scene and New Age traveller movement was targeted and crushed by the government my mystical moments I buried.
Quite by chance, in exploring the research chemical bubble where loopholes in the law allowed new substances a window of legality I discovered AL LAD. Across the spectrum many new compounds mimicked illegal counterparts. On occasion they were trumped massively. The three or four years saw development in psychoactive substances accelerate till new improvements on the rough and cut street drugs were becoming available on the internet one a week. Of course there were as many if not more failures and poor imitations.
Lysergic acid diethlamide 25, LSD or, under contemporary distinctions, METH LAD was discovered famously by Albert Hoffman the same year the atom was split. Derived from ergot, a mold peculiar to rye grain, western culture was changed. As though these two discoveries offered a fork in the road. Destruction or enlightenment. At first used by intellectuals it ultimately made it to the public by the sixties. This revolution saw the birth or growth of environmentalism, feminism, vegetarianism, a craft revival and numerous shifts in culture still playing out today. Though the cause of only rare accidents the authorities clamped down on LSD with a zeal beyond cocaine or heroin. Dangerous drugs with violent cultures of supply. Mushrooms saw a minor cultural blossoming in the early eighties. This is all well covered elsewhere. But within the research chemical scene first AL LAD and LSZ became available. Later came ETH LAD, 1p-LSD, ALD 52, PRO LAD, a divergent family of lysergamides. Many had been discovered in the 1970s but largely unexplored. After a few trips I learned AL LAD offered a trip similar to LSD yet less challenging. In its manufacture LSD must first be made and four fifths is lost in the processing meaning that it only made commercial sense to reduce product so profoundly if it was legal.
A product synthesised from ergot, a fungi, triggered the mystical experience that was to change my life. I have written many posts about it so won't here other than to say this. After abandoning the epiphanies on psylocibin mushrooms of my youth I followed a workaholic path. Furniture design and making offered a creative practice by which to both make a living and explore artistically. After thirty years obsessing over objects I'd developed habits to cope that were unhealthy. The AL LAD did three things. It rendered a materialist obsession with objects wasteful. It cured my tendency towards stress of work, depression and substance misuse as a coping strategy. Thirdly it ridiculed the materialist scientific atheist outlook I had developed. I must have done AL LAD no more than twenty times but only the final one qualifies as a mystical experience. Just as with the thousand odd mushroom trips and few hundred LSD trips of my youth only a handful were of a mystical quality. It is wrong to think these substances always deliver transcendent states. But on occasion they do. My final AL LAD trip took me so far beyond anything before they feel like single letters to the book.
Mystical experiences are generally interpreted within an individual's cultural or religious framework. Mine occurred in woodland. Whether the mycelium beneath the forest floor reached out for me I don't know, but it was into this underground network I first entered. The forest took me in. I lost any sense of separation as my particles dispersed amongst the whole. There were all the qualities of the divine. The sense of a higher power. The sense of being taken. The sense of universal love. A benevolence. A singular consciousness of which we are part. Innefabilty, not explicable with language. A gnosis. The gift of a knowledge or understanding. My life had grown tangled but I was taken above all trivial concerns and freed to see the greater truth. Reading Stamets work, how I experienced this stood on a mycelium mass, it's reflections in the mushroom trips of my youth, coming from a synthesis of ergot, all point towards the entity or sentience that spoke to me either being the mycelium or using the mycelium to connect.
On Sunday, as these thoughts span round my head, quite by chance I was given three Brazilian psylocibin mushrooms. They weren't sufficient to deliver a trip. They did, however, give me a warm reconnection. A message for later in the year. In our new warm damp climate I imagine mushrooms will be more abundant than thirty years ago when I last took them. Now I find myself unconsciously looking for likely fields to go check in a few months time.
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday 26 July 2016
Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world
Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world
https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world?language=en&utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread
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https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world?language=en&utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread
Sent from my iPad
Sunday 24 July 2016
Saturday 23 July 2016
Thursday 21 July 2016
Wednesday 20 July 2016
Monday 18 July 2016
Barely Literate
Barely Literate
Years ago, in my teens, an astrologer did my birth chart. At the time I'd rejected the mystical to embrace the atheism I was raised by my father with. She described me as 'spiritually retarded'. Such a dismissal of my grasp of the transcendent suited me and I have warn this tag with pride. Still do. My life has changed. I still hold .little respect for the astrologers I've so far met though now recognise my contrary nature and rebellion against a type of new age outlook was idiotic. Throwing the baby out with the bath water. Last night I woke, read an article from the guardian and typed a Facebook post. Stream of consciousness, unedited, no idea where it was heading when I began. But it was quite funny. Someone shared. Next comment : 'Barely literate'. For a moment I felt hurt. I hope to write well. I'm unschooled. No little of grammar nor technicality. But I believe my ideas have value. The public schooled, properly educated types could pull me apart. A comment thread continued. First my punctuation was at fault. Soon it became clear political differences were at the critics core of irk. Technique was attacked though substance offended. I'm no fan of the stream of consciousness novel. Jack Kerouac never caught me. But as a Facebook post? I'm proud to be barely literate. Just as I was proud to be called spiritually retarded. Such critics reveal themselves. Some people I truly hope do not like me.
Sent from my iPad
Years ago, in my teens, an astrologer did my birth chart. At the time I'd rejected the mystical to embrace the atheism I was raised by my father with. She described me as 'spiritually retarded'. Such a dismissal of my grasp of the transcendent suited me and I have warn this tag with pride. Still do. My life has changed. I still hold .little respect for the astrologers I've so far met though now recognise my contrary nature and rebellion against a type of new age outlook was idiotic. Throwing the baby out with the bath water. Last night I woke, read an article from the guardian and typed a Facebook post. Stream of consciousness, unedited, no idea where it was heading when I began. But it was quite funny. Someone shared. Next comment : 'Barely literate'. For a moment I felt hurt. I hope to write well. I'm unschooled. No little of grammar nor technicality. But I believe my ideas have value. The public schooled, properly educated types could pull me apart. A comment thread continued. First my punctuation was at fault. Soon it became clear political differences were at the critics core of irk. Technique was attacked though substance offended. I'm no fan of the stream of consciousness novel. Jack Kerouac never caught me. But as a Facebook post? I'm proud to be barely literate. Just as I was proud to be called spiritually retarded. Such critics reveal themselves. Some people I truly hope do not like me.
Sent from my iPad
Sunday 17 July 2016
Friday 15 July 2016
Thursday 14 July 2016
Tuesday 12 July 2016
Sunday 10 July 2016
Saturday 9 July 2016
Birds 2
Birds 2
Making again took me back to town. The capitals of Guardianistan are Islington and Frome. A town in mourning for something they never understood. I suggested to get over their grief that they meet up in groups of say twelve. Play the rizla game. Each person should write their favourite MEP on a rizla and stick it to their neighbours forehead. Then, by asking questions over the legislation their person is best known for, which article of the Lisbon treaty they pressed hardest to form, they could work out who they were. Of course I joke. Nobody could say more than a couple, most couldn't name one. This referendum was a managerial decision hurled down to the shop floor. A decision of such nuance and complexity no one of the general public was equipped to make it. They huffed and puffed, grew red faced, but most hadn't a clue . Instead they took words that sounded good. Access to the single market requires free movement of people. In or out we would be subject to the same regulations. In or out our economy is sufficiently strong to survive the brief storm of exit.
But I turned away. By the river white cattle egrets soared by. Pure as Angels. Smaller birds enjoy the overgrowth their. A saviours warbler. Is their a sweeter birds name? A grasshopper warbler. At home the eaves of all the houses have sparrows, house martins and other nests. The parents return from sorties to feed the young. Each morning I awake to the chicks chirping for food. The flight patterns formed an ever changing bunting decorating the houses. Now some have flown, some still are fledging. The odd crow, jackdaw or woodpecker comes around looking to eat the young. From my windows I see the tiny heads peeping from the clay moulds of martins nests. Out in the fields swallows scim the ground, a foot above the grass tips, sweeping up flies and insects. Some come so close you imagine you could reach out and touch them. Overhead buzzards circle, enjoying the thermals that our eyes can not see. Last Sunday as I took my dog for a last walk a young sparrowhawk chanced upon some unlucky young bird. Their followed a whipping circuitous high speed ballet as the predator chased down the prey.
Saturday morning I woke exuberant. This was curtailed first be online attempts to pay tax etc and change addresses, a simple enough trifle, I had been informed. Two hours and I was seething with frustration. Reading the Saturday paper deepened my anger as the elite wrote articles on how losing the vote affected them. How their privileges were undermined by the stupid, racist and uneducated. The Guardian was awash with arrogance and bigotry. All their intelligent writers from Paul Mason, john Harris, Irvine Welsh
, Giles Fraser were omitted leaving an open field for the pompous new face of the 'progressives'. A left leaning self perception that disguises a right wing educated entitlement. Democracy was once their freind. Now a referendum saw their views in minority, democracy was at fault. Representative democracy they cried, not this direct democracy. Overlooking that the poor had just saved their skin from an endless path away from democracy, transparency, accountability. So subsumed by their own smug righteousness were they, reality was at fault. Throwing the turgid misery paper aside I stepped out. Taking my dog we set off over field. Through meadow and corn field, past hedgerow through pasture then deep into native woodland. Here in damp we slipped through branch and leaf down to the fields surrounding the river. We crossed, stepped a few yards on paved area before a pathway beneath a disused railway bridge took us back into grazing land and finally to my home. Here I doused myself with eth lad, cut my hair and beard then showered. Feeling refreshed we walked the return to Leigh on Mendip. Soon green effervescence overwhelmed me. Only my second eth lad experience but the first time to truly get it. Full visual lysergic spectrum yet focused and clear. Not so comedic and light as al lad. Greens and blues in sweeping structures. Earthy. Less of the swirl and red spectrum of Al lad. But the difference is more profound. Less challenging than meth lad, LSD 25, yet not without an edge. Introspective. Of the holy trinity I'd say the deepest in self reflection. Clear and deep thoughts. I am tempted to say that of the trio it's my favourite. Certainly the ease and carefree sensationalism of Al lad provides the gentlest ride, bereft of dark avenues. Yet eth lad isn't intoxicating nor blurring. The mind finds crystal clarity. Mulling over the recent politics all fell into place. The future is bright. What changes we now enjoy, freed of the shackles of personality politics for a while. Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Farrage all gone from the scene, perhaps Corbyn too now he's said his piece to parliament over Blairs actions over Iraq. A new and open field. A reboot. Whichever way you voted the political class were given a kick in the teeth. Their pomposity and arrogance took a hit. Those who now look confounded deserve to be. Did they not understand that whole areas of Britain had been abandoned in their fight for the centre ground. Once free movement became inevitable, all governments cut back on training and education knowing jobs would be filled anyway. Why spend? They thought. But the uneducated were not stupid, nor in my view were they racist. Their number swung the vote. Surely, purely on maths alone, these abandoned people, cut adrift, insulted, called stupid racist and worse, surely now they must be listened to. Here is where Coebyn could win. His negligence in abandoning his euro sceptic convictions allowed the leave campaign to be spearheaded by the far right. But if the man has balls. If he can learn from this, speak to these forgotten people, labour could win the next election.
The afternoon was sun drenched. Village cricket plays out before me. The teams include boys coming of age, a peak core of six either side at competitive fitness, early twenties to thirties. Out field men as old as sixty still play. The villages manhood. Lives spent meeting each weekend to compete and talk. Flurry so of excitement and bouts of discussion. The footprint of the men in white from the air forms an oval. Strays tightening in number to the heart of the game. The bowler makes his run, bowls, batsman cracks the ball that flies out and a deep fielder suddenly alert dives to catch as cheers go up. Villagers, no more than two dozen watch the game with me. Sat on benches all named in carved letters. The cricketers now left the crease. My mind drifted to the global footprint of cricket. The fading shadow of the empire. The commonwealth countries that were rudely rejected as ted Heath joined the common market. Trade agreements drawn from wartime alliances. Men who fought and died in the trenches. Men from India, packistan, Sri lanca, New Zealand, Australia, all proud cricketing nations. Our commonwealth trading partners rejected for our new love of Europe. Cricket, being a gentlemen so game continued. England may now be throwing its lot in with the French and Germans but our respected cricketing brothers of all creeds and colours forgave and still play on. Perhaps it is only now through cricket that the friendships and alliances that fought off the menace of utopian European schemes still lives. My goal now is to join the village cricket team..
Sent from my iPad
Making again took me back to town. The capitals of Guardianistan are Islington and Frome. A town in mourning for something they never understood. I suggested to get over their grief that they meet up in groups of say twelve. Play the rizla game. Each person should write their favourite MEP on a rizla and stick it to their neighbours forehead. Then, by asking questions over the legislation their person is best known for, which article of the Lisbon treaty they pressed hardest to form, they could work out who they were. Of course I joke. Nobody could say more than a couple, most couldn't name one. This referendum was a managerial decision hurled down to the shop floor. A decision of such nuance and complexity no one of the general public was equipped to make it. They huffed and puffed, grew red faced, but most hadn't a clue . Instead they took words that sounded good. Access to the single market requires free movement of people. In or out we would be subject to the same regulations. In or out our economy is sufficiently strong to survive the brief storm of exit.
But I turned away. By the river white cattle egrets soared by. Pure as Angels. Smaller birds enjoy the overgrowth their. A saviours warbler. Is their a sweeter birds name? A grasshopper warbler. At home the eaves of all the houses have sparrows, house martins and other nests. The parents return from sorties to feed the young. Each morning I awake to the chicks chirping for food. The flight patterns formed an ever changing bunting decorating the houses. Now some have flown, some still are fledging. The odd crow, jackdaw or woodpecker comes around looking to eat the young. From my windows I see the tiny heads peeping from the clay moulds of martins nests. Out in the fields swallows scim the ground, a foot above the grass tips, sweeping up flies and insects. Some come so close you imagine you could reach out and touch them. Overhead buzzards circle, enjoying the thermals that our eyes can not see. Last Sunday as I took my dog for a last walk a young sparrowhawk chanced upon some unlucky young bird. Their followed a whipping circuitous high speed ballet as the predator chased down the prey.
Saturday morning I woke exuberant. This was curtailed first be online attempts to pay tax etc and change addresses, a simple enough trifle, I had been informed. Two hours and I was seething with frustration. Reading the Saturday paper deepened my anger as the elite wrote articles on how losing the vote affected them. How their privileges were undermined by the stupid, racist and uneducated. The Guardian was awash with arrogance and bigotry. All their intelligent writers from Paul Mason, john Harris, Irvine Welsh
, Giles Fraser were omitted leaving an open field for the pompous new face of the 'progressives'. A left leaning self perception that disguises a right wing educated entitlement. Democracy was once their freind. Now a referendum saw their views in minority, democracy was at fault. Representative democracy they cried, not this direct democracy. Overlooking that the poor had just saved their skin from an endless path away from democracy, transparency, accountability. So subsumed by their own smug righteousness were they, reality was at fault. Throwing the turgid misery paper aside I stepped out. Taking my dog we set off over field. Through meadow and corn field, past hedgerow through pasture then deep into native woodland. Here in damp we slipped through branch and leaf down to the fields surrounding the river. We crossed, stepped a few yards on paved area before a pathway beneath a disused railway bridge took us back into grazing land and finally to my home. Here I doused myself with eth lad, cut my hair and beard then showered. Feeling refreshed we walked the return to Leigh on Mendip. Soon green effervescence overwhelmed me. Only my second eth lad experience but the first time to truly get it. Full visual lysergic spectrum yet focused and clear. Not so comedic and light as al lad. Greens and blues in sweeping structures. Earthy. Less of the swirl and red spectrum of Al lad. But the difference is more profound. Less challenging than meth lad, LSD 25, yet not without an edge. Introspective. Of the holy trinity I'd say the deepest in self reflection. Clear and deep thoughts. I am tempted to say that of the trio it's my favourite. Certainly the ease and carefree sensationalism of Al lad provides the gentlest ride, bereft of dark avenues. Yet eth lad isn't intoxicating nor blurring. The mind finds crystal clarity. Mulling over the recent politics all fell into place. The future is bright. What changes we now enjoy, freed of the shackles of personality politics for a while. Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Farrage all gone from the scene, perhaps Corbyn too now he's said his piece to parliament over Blairs actions over Iraq. A new and open field. A reboot. Whichever way you voted the political class were given a kick in the teeth. Their pomposity and arrogance took a hit. Those who now look confounded deserve to be. Did they not understand that whole areas of Britain had been abandoned in their fight for the centre ground. Once free movement became inevitable, all governments cut back on training and education knowing jobs would be filled anyway. Why spend? They thought. But the uneducated were not stupid, nor in my view were they racist. Their number swung the vote. Surely, purely on maths alone, these abandoned people, cut adrift, insulted, called stupid racist and worse, surely now they must be listened to. Here is where Coebyn could win. His negligence in abandoning his euro sceptic convictions allowed the leave campaign to be spearheaded by the far right. But if the man has balls. If he can learn from this, speak to these forgotten people, labour could win the next election.
The afternoon was sun drenched. Village cricket plays out before me. The teams include boys coming of age, a peak core of six either side at competitive fitness, early twenties to thirties. Out field men as old as sixty still play. The villages manhood. Lives spent meeting each weekend to compete and talk. Flurry so of excitement and bouts of discussion. The footprint of the men in white from the air forms an oval. Strays tightening in number to the heart of the game. The bowler makes his run, bowls, batsman cracks the ball that flies out and a deep fielder suddenly alert dives to catch as cheers go up. Villagers, no more than two dozen watch the game with me. Sat on benches all named in carved letters. The cricketers now left the crease. My mind drifted to the global footprint of cricket. The fading shadow of the empire. The commonwealth countries that were rudely rejected as ted Heath joined the common market. Trade agreements drawn from wartime alliances. Men who fought and died in the trenches. Men from India, packistan, Sri lanca, New Zealand, Australia, all proud cricketing nations. Our commonwealth trading partners rejected for our new love of Europe. Cricket, being a gentlemen so game continued. England may now be throwing its lot in with the French and Germans but our respected cricketing brothers of all creeds and colours forgave and still play on. Perhaps it is only now through cricket that the friendships and alliances that fought off the menace of utopian European schemes still lives. My goal now is to join the village cricket team..
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday 6 July 2016
Saturday 2 July 2016
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