More minimalism

Street fashion

 

Window dressing

Sometimes artifice, too, is a lovely thing.

The magical nature of minimalism

So little notion

 

I thought I wanted to be free - well, freer anyway. I had so little notion. I used to think, for all those years, that it was all such a struggle because the inimical structures and impositions of others made everything difficult. Now I know better. Belated discovery of past six months: life just is that difficult.

Some days start, continue and end in a climate of weakness and confusion and everything feels too much. And this is an internal climate - mine!

So now I know it’s not really going to get easier. But perhaps it can keep becoming more fluid. Perhaps I can feel my way into the ephemerality of every hard moment.

Somehow the ephemerality of the happy moments, the strong ones, the softly joyful ones, is always to the fore. But it's not just the good bits, it's all of it: here, blink, gone. Hard, but not fixed; never lengthy; a flickering, ever-changing string of moments.

I increasingly wonder if the enormity of confronting this is what lies behind so much of human madness, cruelty, masochism; behind our obsessive need to build boxes, lock our own cell doors as well as other people's.

Out here, outside the boxes, there's no comfort. But just perhaps, also, since nothing is fixed, there's nothing to be so afraid of either.

Is it possible to pursue goals, to assert some productive organisation and structure without building myself a new box?

Weak, unexpected sunshine slants across the screen of demanding words and work. So, when a particular task is done and despatched, I go outside and touch the sunshine, kick my way through the fallen leaves.

season of mists

Small pond

Experimenting with a  different shape at TRAIL MIX.

Other colours

Passing through

I walked through here again today (the building project, which probably amounts to gutting and rebuilding behind a 'protected' central London facade, continues) and thought I ought to post this photo before the light clothes become too anachronistic - they already are, really.

Through a cloudy glass

The miraculous changing of leaves

The first day of autumn and a gloriously bright, crisp day here. What a time it’s been since this time last year, in the wide world and closer to home. Ay, ay, ay, ay.

At a recent event in London, though, I picked up a copy of the Spring 2012 issue of the US Buddhist journal, Inquiring Mind and read a piece about last autumn’s protests that gave me hope. It’s by Noah Fischer, who grew up around the San Francisco Zen Center, is now a New York-based artist and activist and took part in Occupy Wall Street.

 

" And then, at the time of miraculous changing of leaves, hundreds of people came together in Zucotti Park and didn't go home. From the start, it was clear that this was no ordinary protest. Rather, we were living change in our bodies and mending our connections to each other.

…we can’t live in this world without playing roles, like performers on a stage. In our occupy-opera, the NYPD play the role of protectors of the status quo, standing densely in their dark uniforms with guns, stern expressions and menacing riot gear, or rolling up with trucks full of steel barricades. I know that these men and women are exquisite buddhas, perfectly imperfect as I am. But as the tension builds, they become monuments to un-freedom, following commands that lead them to bash heads against the pavement and to put nonviolent people into little cells and slam the door shut behind them.

 

"…We have a better chance to dissolve the boundaries that separate us if we first make them visible. But violence can begin here to, so it’s important not to truly believe in these roles. I have tried to remember I am not separate from the cops and other actors, even while surfing the tension in these situations.

Early on in the protest, I switched sides as an experiment, wanting to explore the limits of this new social space. As an Occupy Wall Street group marched from Liberty Park to Wall Street Stock Exchange (a daily ritual in the first few weeks), several of us waited at the Exchange, dressed in business suits. When the protesters arrived we heckled them as we imagined a group of young and entitled Wall Street investment bankers might (and sometimes do). I yelled “Get a job!” loudly in the protesters’ faces, falling deeply into my new role. It felt a little transgressive too, like a man putting on a dress, and that was interesting – though I didn’t realize how many unknowns were at play here.

 

" The tension rose, emotions flared. All of a sudden, one of the drummers turned around and shouted at me, “I am a veteran of Iraq, I have PSTD and can’t get a job! Fuck you!” He hit me hard with his drumstick, which I was not expecting. The sting on my arm told me that years of suffering, anger, hurt and aloneness were coming forth. Yes, this was theatre, but it was also very real – as real as violence, as real as our emotions and bodies. In retrospect, it was like the Shoshan ritual in which Zen practitioners expose their inner life and pain in ceremony, for the sangha to share and support. In my conflict with the marine, we shared the sting of disempowerment. Later that day I found him, and we hugged it out and both apologized. Now we hug every time we see each other… "

 

Read the whole of Noah Fischer's article here.

More photos of changing leaves here.