Hatches, Matches, and Despaches

A friend with who I liked to think
I did not censor myself with
asked me about how I connected
with family. She stumped me,
left politely floundering for words
when I tried to compose a reply.

She is part of a close extended family
for whom, when the women folk met
on their own terms, they could talk over
each other so agreeably they were blind
to how rare such ease is,and even blinder
to how some families struggle with the language.

Weeeks later, and pondering on my own,
the reply that was honest and tactful
that I should have shared with her
finally came to me:.My family saw me
the way that the Church of England
saw converts to it, the church engaged most
when there were big changes were afoot:
hatches/baptisms, matches/weddings
and despaches/funerals, where if before
the support had been poor their departure 
could be a lukewam/threadbare affair.
Confirrmations are an added bonus.

In between the great events of life,
most of which I was ill prepared for,
my family had.little to say for themselves
or to each other. They now get their cards
at birthdays and at Christmas, they did not always.

They send their cards to me,
I find it hard to be sentimental
amid such threadbare language.

Picture Set Of The Month - October - My Own Photography

 

On the beach in Newcastle, County Down,
one sunny September day, 2026.   

The breakers are worn smooth
from sea washing over them every tide.

That these stumps of breakers are less than a foot tall,
many much shorter, are so naturally sculpual 
  makes me admire them all the more.

And when the shapes they are so worn
as to lend themselves to, well, maquettes
of statues that Henry Moor never made,
I can't help but like them even more.

Echoes Of Us

The idea behind 'Grief Tech'
 - digital technology that remembers our griefs
and recreates the dead as they might have been -
might be sold as 'new'. Sold as a previously unknown
form of memorial. But it is as old as the motive behind it.
The only new part is the technology, which will decieve us
with the ease with which it recreates what it stores. 

Our memories remember best, and help us to forget best too.
Memory allow us a flexibiltiy of recollection
where we are the change we need to be, today. 

Whereas our technology only stores echoes of us.

I Am Neither Proud Nor Ashamed

of my having 'ghosted' many friends in the past,
losing contact with them, leaving no forwarding address,
only for them to find me many years later on facebook.
At the time I ghosted them, I felt like a ghost, myself.

When I was young any sense of my personal space,
my boundaries, my self, felt like they were borrowed
 - they all belonged to somone else but were mine to use
until it was time to return them and replace them
with a new set of age-appropriate borrrowed belongings.
Values that fitted the dictates of the day-until they didn't.

This sense of weak attachment continued,
until I learned that I had to accept that I was gay.
The package - the marriage, the wife, the children,
the mortgage, the job 'for life', were not going to be
loaned to  me after the sense of the disownship
and the half life I had been lent by my family.

After plunbing the depths of the history
of my being serially disowned by the pasts
that I had forcibly borrowed from, 
and surfacing again, I was a differnt person.
I was left to seek 'my chosen family',
where I knew before we found each other
that any sense of the meaning of 'unconditional'
in 'unconditional acceptance' would be relative. 

Any exit could be the start of a new beginning
where I could keep my pasts
as long as I left a clean ending behind me.....

Writing Ontologically*

To be human is to be the measure
of an out of scale monoculture
in which we flatter outselves
that what is right for us is is right
for everything else on Planet Earth
that is of less clear value to humans
because either it's supportive proerties
remain unkown where humans don't see
the non-human life there at out there. 

But there are ways to reverse the damage
we do: live better through takeing less
and sharing more. support the diversity
of species that unintentionally support us.
This reciprocity and inter-dependence
 is something that opponent of Darwin,
Peter Kropotkin would approve of,
Let more diversity survive this way.

*which is to say looking at the nature of what life there is, the nature of it's being....

Wooden Post

For more than six months I have
had to adjust with how well I walked.
When I walk any distance in company
I had to take my walking stick with me,
I often felt unsure about to 'own' having to use it.
I did not want to appear to be that reliant.

Snce I have to have this stick, or leaning post,
with me more places than ever before, I will
and take my stick with me where I will,
but without telling anyone else I will name it 'God'.

He should not mind being leant upon - in fact he expects it! 

September Moon - Harvest/Corn Moon

 

  The 2026 Corn Moon/Harvest Moon rises on 26 September. The modern names for our full moons now come from North America, from the Native Indian Tribes, or from the white farmers who make America one of the bread baskets of the world. The September 2026 full Moon will also be the named after Harvest Moon because of it's proximity to the September equinox. This is when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator, heading southward. Because of differences between the calendar year and the tropical year*, the September equinox will occur Wed 23 September 21 at 1.o4 am.

*The actual time it takes for the Earth's axis to return to the same angle, relative to the sun, completing a complete cycle of seasons - aproximately 365.2422 days.