O represents the Ouroboros—an ancient possibly Egyptian symbol of a snake eating its own tail. It is also the ensō 円相—a zen symbol representing the universe, enlightenment and ‘mu’—the void. It represents the Hindu Upaniṣhad’s concept of Brahmā, the absolute, and Ātman the soul, which are combined in the concept of Advaita (not dual). Occurring … Read more
Λ or L stands for Λόγος , logos, which is a word or argument.. a narrative and by extension a logic, a law (though ‘law’ has a different latin root–from laga, something lain down). The progress along the pada, the path, through time, is a creation. It demands a narrative. First we are simply counting … Read more
The P in Pλosm is for Path or Sanskrit पद् ‘pad’ = foot (it has the same indo-european root as in octo-pous, “eight feet“, and ‘pedal’). Each footstep on the path finds a balance between logic on the one hand, and the unknown (the ouroboros), on the other. The path is not going anywhere in … Read more
This website is a bit of a mess. There are two layers—the wordpress blog you are in now, plus a bunch of older web 1.0 pages, where my poems are archived by date into the Poem Library database . There is also an oldish page of experimental poems (using Java whirldiggery and such). My self … Read more
my first sensations are of the light and the sun.. flooding into the front room of my grandparents’ house where my parents and i were living in Farrer, Canberra, in 1978, and the sounds of mum playing the clair de lune on the small ‘minion’ piano there.. the green sofas of that front room and … Read more
Over the Christmas break i spent time with my bees. Here are some of my hives, my 4yo daughter helped paint one of them (we did it before the bees were in it). I have had bees for nearly 9 years but i only feel like i am beginning to get the hang of it … Read more
Bec Sandridge first stuck me as out of the ordinary when I heard her unique voice — a kind of seashell soft croon that has both a warm force and an ease, winging at airy heights — and her early songs allied this naturally with a sweet acoustic guitar. But as her music has developed, … Read more
I was born in 1978 and although I don’t think i have any specific memories that i can be sure i can tie to the 1970s (when i was still under 2 years old), decades do tend to live on for a few years into the following one, and the general spirit of the 70’s … Read more
The sound track to this post is Anton’s new track “not blowing smoke up your ass” .. you should let it play in the background. Modern society is like a carefully calibrated engine. After centuries of experimentation, by the mid 20th Century most the raw forces of humanity were brought into a balance, to drive … Read more
Reading Lorca, and then reading about Lorca in Spanish Wikipedia, I think about the how the quiet poet becomes a rebel, not through any change in himself, but through his being an unchanging self while society around him changes. (photo courtesy KlimBim) One thing I like about the Spanish Wikipedia apart from the intimacy of … Read more
A large old Apple Box tree, (a variety of Eucalyptus), that grew beside the road near Lagoon in Burra, blew down in a storm last week. Large eucalypts like this one would be over 200 years old, their lives stretching back into pre-occupation times. The long memory of these trees drinks from the still, still … Read more