suevincent

[suevincent]

Year of the Pig...

Image – Sue Vincent * The device of riddling is common to most traditional cultures. Maidens set riddles for their suitors: ‘What is sweeter than mead…?’ ‘What is whiter than snow…?’ ‘What is lighter than a spark…?’ * Antagonists use riddles to settle their disputes: ‘Forty white horses on a red hill first they gnash then they champ then they stand still…?’ ‘What is blacker than the…

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Walking with grief...

Image – Sue Vincent * ‘I cried like some grandmother, I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.’ – Walter E.Kurtz, Apocalypse Now. * The ‘Good Colonel’ is here reacting to a particularly distressing, and at first sight vicious, and meaningless act of war. However, a culture that can organise the systematic removal of the inoculated arms of its children must have a pretty…

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Petals of the Rose

Petals of the Rose Guided Journeys Sue Vincent A collection of guided meditations, designed to open aspects of the personality in as gentle and natural way as the petals of the rose open at the touch of the sun. Each inner journey will carry you to a haven within your own psyche from which to explore layers of your own being, learning their meaning and purpose. From mystical and silent castles,…

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A Rebellious Streak...

Sir Toby Belcher * Rudy Trudy… No puddin’… No pie… Jabbed… The plebs… And made them… Cry… When the truckers… Came to play… Rudy Trudy… Ran away! * The now slightly portly figure of Sir Toby paced the church hall deep in thought. The inaugural meeting of the New Home Stand was not something to be taken lightly. His preparations had been meticulous and he was sure that ‘his men’ would be both…

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Spendyke...

*** All boundaries… Are important… But some boundaries… Are more important… Than others… The boundaries between… England and Wales… And Scotland And England… For instance… Are not important at all… Not really boundaries… Are they?… The boundary between… Land and Sea… Or between Earth and Sky… These are proper boundaries… Not proper ties… No such thing as a proper tie… Either… That’s just…

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Big Chants...

‘OM’ *** ‘Once, when the Gods and Demons, both children of Prajapti, arrayed themselves against each other, the Gods got hold of a Big Chant. With this we will overpower them, they thought. They venerated the Big Chant as the wind within the nostrils but the Demons riddled it with evil. On it one now smells both good and bad odours. They venerated the Big Chant as speech but the Demons riddled it…

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Big Liars...

‘Evil is also that which destroys spirit.’ *** The psychology of evil is distinguished by – Consistent destructive, scapegoating behaviour, which may often be quite subtle. Excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury. Pronounced concern with public image and a self image of respectability, contributing to a stability of life-style but also…

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Big Wheels...

‘Ophanim and Seraphim’ *** …The Wheel on this cold autumn day is not popular, and the Fairground itself has not recovered sufficiently from the shelling and bombing to attract crowds. A wrecked pleasure place, weeds growing up round the foundations of merry-go-rounds. In the enclosure one stall is selling big thin flat cakes like cart-wheels, and the children queue with coupons. A few courting…

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Big Stone Culture...

Two-Thousand-and-Twenty-Three an Asylum Reality… ‘That could almost be the watchtower of Amon Sul…’ *** … Exclaimed one of our Companions on their first view of Carl Wark. It was a well observed remark and one Tolkien himself would, perhaps, have been proud of. It seems clear that what appear as the ‘remains of Westernesse’ in his books are in fact, in the real world, the Old Stone Sites of…

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Soul-Seer...

Bryn Celli Ddu – Interior *** Deep in the belly of the earth, somewhere in Wales… Bark Jaw-Dark was under attack… First she was a speck, black against the sky, then she was an arrow balancing the breeze, finally, after measuring the hole in the wall of his tomb with her wing-span, she became an awesome, majestic weight, sprung upon his wrist. “I know why the Devil is called a light-bearer, and…

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Westernesse...

A Two-Thousand-and-One Film Fantasy… ‘This was the great watchtower of Amon Sul…’ * Westernesse, also called Númenor, is a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings. It was the kingdom occupying a large island to the west of Middle-earth, the main setting of Tolkien’s writings, and was the greatest civilization of Men. However, after centuries of prosperity many of the inhabitants rebelled…

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'Planet Ape'...

A Nineteen-Sixty-Eight film allegory… * The final scene… * Astronauts Taylor, Landon, and Dodge awake from hibernation after a near-light-speed space trip. Their spacecraft crashes into a lake on an unknown planet. Taylor’s estimate places them in Orion’s Bellatrix System, light-years from their home Solar System. Before abandoning their vessel, they read their chronometer as November 25, 3978 –…

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Also seeing beyond the eye...

Ride a White Swan… *   Things really started to slide when John Lydon left the Pistols… The second Pistols album, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, was… well, a swindle actually. Their third, Flogging a Dead Horse, did just that. And still people bought them. Since then the general populace have been dumbed down even further by a combined diet of reality television and a far less rigorous school…

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Time Bleed...

*** … “Stratford Strange Day!” “I don’t know what you mean?” “Well, the first thing was our conversation before we’d even properly decided we were going to Stratford…” “Which one?” “Statues!” “Oh, that one. It didn’t strike me as particularly strange.” “Except we both decided that we were not fans of statutory, and then spent most of our day in Stratford taking pictures of… statues!” “There were…

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Seeing beyond the eye too...

The original seven inch single picture cover. *** Death Disco is a song by Public Image Ltd  (abbreviated and stylized as PiL) who are an English ‘post-punk band’ formed by lead vocalist John Lydon, of Sex Pistols infamy, guitarist Keith Levene, ex-The Clash, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer Jim Walker, in May 1978. The group’s line-up has changed frequently over the years and Lydon has been the…

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Seeing beyond the eye...

Picture – Ian Dunster from the original UK 45 rpm single picture cover. Fair use… * This, to my current sensibilities, now rather garish picture cover launched me into the real world sometime back in the late seventies… * The Adverts were an English ‘punk rock band’* who formed in 1976 and broke up in late 1979. They were one of the first ‘punk rock bands’ to enjoy chart success in the UK. Their…

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The Moons of Mountain Ana...

* Mountain Ana made the phone to scream. Squeal of a thousand and one pigs! Fingers of pain scratch my brain…  She is upset that Gramps has traded her ring. ‘Soz, Mountain Ana.’ * When Gramps turned up wearing Nancy’s gold ring, Jenny thought it was a hoot. Her hoot-face is for the moment still. It possesses a distant smile. Intuition – ‘just like Becky’s hoot-face.’ * Becky’s sulk-face is…