Sun in Gemini

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 31, 2024 + #Poetry, Consciousness, Photography, Poetry

The Moment

When the settee to the phone

Is half-hearted … and alone

And you ring it back,

but only in your mind

—-

If you sit and hold the minute

And the people who aren’t in it

And wonder how to harvest

Passing time

—-

Does a ghostly alter-presence

Steal your silenced effervescence

And delightfully rehearsed

Excuse or ten?

—-

When your eyes refuse to leave the phone

And sticky stillness of the known

In the quiet of the lengthening

Isolation?

—-

But you’re really only frozen

On the path so wisely chosen

In the moment that checked out

Not long ago.

——

From the ashes of confusion

Rise the sheddings of delusion

And the in-breath of a greater you

That sails upon the new.

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2024

Image by the author.

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 28, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Silenti, Consciousness

Darkness and her brother

We often hear the phrase, ‘there’s always light and dark’: two things that stand in polarity – opposition, even – but do we ever stop to let the mind and emotions lead us to a deeper realisation?

Light may be mysterious but it’s a clearly identified ‘thing’ – though it doesn’t have edges. We will see, later, why this is important.

We can flick a switch and have light flow, just like water from a tap.

But which switch do we flick to turn on darkness?

The brain’s cogs begin to twitch suspiciously at this point, as we are brought closer to the semi-intuitive relationship between the light we can turn on and the ‘not-light’ we can’t.

Can we investigate the nature of dark more deeply?

Darkness would appear to be the ‘absence of light’? I can’t turn on dark, but I can engineer a situation where all the light is removed, such as a room at night in which I close the curtains and switch off the lights.

Instant darkness…and I’ve ’created’ it, but not with a positive action. My action was to completely remove a positive thing, leaving the negative not-thing behind.

We can appreciate darkness with our senses. The lack of light makes our pupils dilate, and our mind hunts familiar outlines in the gloom; prompted by the insistent hard-wiring of our survival instincts. Our heart rate usually increases, as we use only partly successful logic to tell ourselves that everything’s okay.

And yet there is no-thing there… There’s nothing that can pursue and bite us, and yet we behave as thought there is.

But … we have a very real awareness that some ‘state’ is most certainly present, and its nature, while not overtly hostile, is one which triggers the highest alerts in our protective nervous system.

Can darkness be a friend?

In magical work, we might hear a reference to the ‘restful darkness of the West’; a place in the temple where we traditionally enter, seeing the light-filled East across the temple floor opposite us. When our work (to refine our collective ‘selves’) is complete, we leave, in silence, via the same gate in the West, returning the temple to its pristine darkness.

In one tradition it is said that ‘darkness fills the space until light comes, but light does not originate from darkness, which is its absence.’

From where does light come, then?

We know that physical light is generated as tiny entities called photons. ‘Orbiting’ electrons in the atom drop to a lower energy ‘shell’ and release light in a magical act of creation. The electron is both a particle and a wave, and obligingly assumes the form we want to observe. It has no knowable existence until we measure it – that is, become conscious of it.

This light from, say, a torch, radiates out to infinity, never losing its energy. A hundred million years from now, it will still be visible a hundred million light years away if we have sensitive enough instruments.

The light is always there, streaming from its point of origin. The darkness is everywhere, but only in potential. Without light, the potential contents of the darkness are unknown,

Our society, our collective world, is full of anxiety. Our minds exists to recognise patterns of events to make sense of them; sense in the ‘sense’ of arranging them into things that may threaten us. This is the survival drive, the instinctive patterning of experience that ‘ranks’ the level of threat against us. The early years after birth are main concerned with making sense of our experiences, with particular focus on what can hurt or kill us. Once learned, this knowledge becomes the bedrock of our physical existence, overriding everything else that is recognised in the category of an important pattern. We learn to group elements of our experience into objects.

Objects have edges…

We get so good at this that we are able to work out not only which ‘objects’ are a direct threat, but also to evaluate what patterns of events and object might be a threat, and to what degree.

In the media and our peer groups – which thrive on anything that smacks of an existential threat to our sense of self – we now have rich field of that which we should be anxious about.

But mostly it is darkness: the potential for a threat which is not present, but ‘could be’.

To go deeper into this, we need to ‘see’ that understanding is a form of light; that it intelligently pervades anything we let it consider. Here, the world consider is used in its old fashioned form, related to the sentence ‘she was considerate’. Mindful might be another appropriate word, but that has now been debased through overuse.

Overfamiliarity through systemic mauling by the societal mind is the fastest way to kill a good idea.

Behind all this is the idea that light may reveal recognisable objects and their patterns to us, but that darkness may have something quite wonderful up its sleeve…

Because without the restful backdrop of darkness, light and its infinite variations of pattern would be invisible to us. In the world of manifestation, contrast is everything…

The darkness, therefore, contains everything, but in potential. The light shining in the darkness manifests and reveals it. They are an intimately-related brother and sister.

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

March 24, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Silenti, Urban History of Salford and Manchester,

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

Dirty old town?

(Above: Old and new: the River Irwell flowing through Salford and Manchester. Never pretty, often grimy, but now majestically framed by the new buildings rising all around it. )

Being here, on the boundary between the cities of Manchester and its ‘lesser’ neighbour, Salford, made me think of the folk song, Dirty Old Town.

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
Kissed my girl by the factory wall
Folk song: Dirty Old Town

(Above: Ewan MacColl, singer-songwriter, defender of workers’ right, hater of Salford, as it was…)

James Henry Miller, the writer of the song, is better known to us as the folk singer Ewan MacColl; his stage name.

I’m gonna makes me a good sharp axe

He was born in England to Scottish parents, and rose to fame as one of the leading lights of the 1960s folk revival. He was also an active defender of workers’ rights and a collector of history songs, in order to preserve them.

Ewan MacColl died in October 1989, age 74.

His two most famous works were the already mentioned ‘Dirty Old Town’ and ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face‘. MacColl was a lifelong friend of Peggy Seeger, with whom he had a creative partnership in expanding the appeal of folk music over many decades.

Shining steel tempered in the fire

He wrote ‘Dirty Old Town’ to describe his feelings about Salford – his home for many years. After the glory years of the Manchester Ship Canal, which ended (commercially speaking) at Salford’s docks, the city of Salford was seen, increasingly, as the poor relation to its neighbour, central Manchester.

(Above: Manchester’s port – the old Salford Docks, link to the PDF overview)

It was left to fester as a grimy and smelly inland port, with terrible housing problems and short life expectancy. Alcoholism was rife…

(Above: A total transformation of the River Irwell’s banks)

I remember that Salford from visits in my childhood. It was a grim place. It’s ironic that, 35 years later, we were to set up our software company on the rejuvenated docks there – newly and ambitiously named Salford Quays.

We were among the first of the companies to move there. In those days the only social facilities, outside of the grim old pubs (in which you were not safe) was a floating wine bar. It served us well, and corporate visitors such as Barclays Bank IT specialists, who would travel up from Poole, were impressed.

The Dutch barge wine bar, was burned down by local thugs when the owner refused to pay protection money…

Salford Quays has changed a lot over the years. We saw it all happen outside our windows.

(Above mid-left, I remember when the Cooperative Insurance Society was the tallest building in Britain. Hard to imagine, now)

(Above: Media City emerging from the quays of the old docks. Image: Mark Whitfield)

The landscape was already changed when the Quays development began to succeed, but the years to come would see the arrival of Media City and other spectacular urban transformations. We were proud to be part of it, even in a small way.

It was our company home for over 20 years. It’s good to go back and see how the old place is doing…

I’ll chop you down like an old dead tree

What a contrast Ewan MacColl would find, now, as the photos show. The dirty old town was indeed chopped down…and a fine new one rose in its place.

(Above: nearby Manchester centre. Dramatic architecture)

It was fun to return. We were in Manchester with friends to see Ian McKellen in the special version of Henry IV parts one and two on the same evening; demanding on both the players and the audience inside the very warm auditorium, but a wonderful production.

(Above: Manchester’s *Opera House,* before the performance)

Both Manchester and Salford have seen dramatic redevelopment. There is a surging positive energy about their future. We can only wonder what the next fifty years will bring…

They move together because they are co-located, but their essential natures are different, and Greater Manchester is the stronger because of it.

(Above: My favourite shot of the visit – sunset combines with architecture in creating a ‘past and present’ montage of Manchester’s Deansgate, just along from Salford’s boundary)

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 20, 2024 + #Phoetry, #Poetry, #Silenti, English Lake District, Nature and seasons

Melting daggers

Dragged, sodden.

Dumped in

Wet and cold moraines

Of winter’s angry passing

Last vestiges of icy daggers

Point to spring with

Slowly dripping teeth

Fading with a promise to return

Daring us to rise from mud

And wash … and shine

With the faithful daffodils.

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 17, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Silenti, Nature and seasons

Silver light and rain-Gods

Weather-wise, there’s little of cheer at the moment. We left for Ireland in the rain, spent the week – apart from one blessed day in Waterford – in constant drizzle; and returned to face the past three days of driving downpours.

Upon our arrival, the neighbours informed us that the weather in our absence had been really good.

So it’s official, we’ve become ‘rain gods’ as Terry Pratchett would have said…

But there is one good thing about this time of year, if you’re a photographer – and that is the quality of what I call the ‘silver light’.

This precursor of the spring can best be seen when distant objects, such as (above) Morecambe’s seafront, are highlighted against the darker background of the hills of the Trough of Bowland, as in the photo.

The other seasonal factor, specific to this time of year, is the silver colour of the calm sea between Grange-over-sands, from where the photo was taken, and Morecambe, five miles away on the far shore.

I’d happily give up the lot for a bit of blue sky, but you’ve got to work with what you’ve got…

But then I am a rain-god.

Mutter, mutter.

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 14, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Silenti, Consciousness, Travel

A Place of Tranquility

(📩 Irish travel, lots of photos, 1000 words. A good cup of coffee…)

We all need a place of tranquility, a haven where we can take a retreat from a busy or even mad world. It may be a room in our house where we keep objects that mean something special to us. We may meditate there, or read books that have become special friends; perhaps even paint or write our blog…

Or it may be a place… Welcome to ours … Kinsale.

(Kinsale is an intricate warren of fascinating streets and sea inlets)

(Above: the location of Kinsale – Bottom centre. A flight to Cork and then local bus (20 mins) or hire car. There’s so much to do in Kinsale that, for a short visit you won’t actually need a car. In our recent trip of three nights, the car never left the hotel car park)

If we’re able to travel, we might like (and need) a week in the sun as winter grinds to its dreadful end through March… and often into April.

Last year, we managed a March week in the Canary Islands – Gran Canaria. That bit of sun did us the power of good, though the return journey’s walk through the car park at Leeds-Bradford Airport in the frozen darkness was an icy ordeal; and a reminder that, though the plane had taken off from Gran Canaria in ‘summer’, we were back in England in the middle of winter.

(Above: Kinsale; not a straight line in sight… mostly. A wonderfully organic and *peaceful* place)

This year, we decided to forego the sun and revisit a place that became special to us over twenty years ago – the seaside town of Kinsale, on the south coast of Ireland, not far from Cobh (pronounced Cove), where the Titanic began its last and fateful voyage.

In the years that followed our first trip, it became at least an annual – and sometimes twice annual – trip to ‘calm the soul’, but we hadn’t been back for twelve years.

It was time to fix that…

(Above: some of its artisan work is in tiny places … )

We arranged to travel by car ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. Our first visit was to Waterford, also on the Irish south coast and covered here in last week’s post.

(Above; The heart of Kinsale is the harbour, which defines the shape and form of the town)

And then we’d make the two hour drive along the south coast to be reunited with our special place of tranquility: Kinsale.

That first wander through the uneven and winding streets felt like we’d never been away. We drank in the old faces, shops, bars and restaurants – not to mention a harbour full of boats. Few things had changed. Once more we took in the individuality of the small shops; the emphasis on Irish fabrics and designs, and of course, the many pubs and bars with a simple and welcoming approach to travellers.

Kinsale is a prosperous place, but not overly expensive. It boasts at least five well-known restaurants. We had eaten at three of these in previous visits.

(Above: The Cosy Cafe; where the locals drink coffee. The recycled cable car is for children’s dining, only! This used to be the celebrated restaurant Fishy Fishy – see text)

Perhaps best of all is the quality of these restaurants. When we were first here, a small corner plot that had once been a fish shop, was booming under a new name: ‘The Fishy Fishy Cafe’ (now the Cosy Cafe, above).

(Above: Fishy Fishy’s new premises, just off the quayside.

Twenty years on, Fishy Fishy is internationally famous (yet has remained good value) and has moved to a location between the children’s park and the quayside.

(Above: what appears to be just a few streets becomes an organic tale of the town’s history and expansion)

As we were touring around several locations in Ireland, (see post on Waterford, here) we had only three nights in Kinsale; barely time to scratch the surface of what the place has to offer.

Kinsale is close to Cobh – pronounced ‘cove’ – from where Titanic departed on its ill-fated voyage across the Atlantic.

(Above: the view from a hotel window shows the extent of the harbour and marina at Kinsale)

My wife and I discovered Kinsale on a chance ‘winter getaway’ break twenty ago. We read a review, packed a rucksack each, and drove to Manchester airport to board a cheap flight to Cork – Southern Ireland’s second city after Dublin.

(Above: bustling and full of energy, Cork is worthy of a visit in its own right)

Cork is well worth visiting. It’s southern Ireland’s second city, and bustles with life. If you go, make sure you walk the length of Oliver Plunkett Street, with its hundreds of individual shops – and the historic English Market – see below.

The harbour in Cork is a working place. To our knowledge, it’s not visitor oriented. The main shopping streets more than make up for that.

(Above/ Montage above: the many faces of Cork. The ornate and period roof belongs to the English Market, on which I will be doing a dedicated blog)

Our focus was on re-absorbing the peace and friendliness of Kinsale, but the day in Cork – via the bus – was well spent. I think I slept part of the way back…

(Above: bright colours are everywhere in Kinsale; it’s lovely and brightens up the winter days. It also makes you conscious of how restrictive England’s planning laws are)

(Above: lots of history. Generations of people – and cultures have loved Kinsale)

(And music… always music … and always a welcome)

Did it make us peaceful? Yes. We had remade our contact with this special seaside town.

We didn’t want to leave – we never do. But our final two nights before getting the ferry back to Holyhead, were to be spent in Dalkey, just south of Dublin. Like many visitors, we had always driven through and on to somewhere else in Ireland. This would be our chance to sample a piece of Irish history that is busily reinventing itself as one of the Dublin metropolis’ favourite neighbours.

See next week’s post.

———————————

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 12, 2024 + #Humour, #iphonephotography

Absent…

We regret that Mr Tanham’s return from Europe was delayed.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

😎

March 10, 2024 + #Silenti

And bicycles…

(📩 100 words, seven photos – two minute read)

I noticed that some of my favourite photos had bicycles in them. There’s something ‘happy’ about a bicycle. I had a look back over the years I’ve been blogging and picked out my favourites.

Some of these are for decoration, or an eye-catching feature to draw you into a local business.

Some are real machines, ready to carry you off on an adventure, ecologically powered by your own effort.

They’re all smilingly eye-catching. They all speak to the soul in their quiet and harmonious ways…

Some make you think of warmer, holiday destinations, where the idea of pedalling gently in the soft air sounds delightful.

Others are purely decorative, fixed to walls as part of the decor, or even fixtures for lighting.

(In a department store in Cork, Ireland)

Some are even experimental; like this ‘Velesophy’ bike, made from recycled coffee capsules)

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 7, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Photography,, #Silenti, landscapes, mystical travel

Norse notes in an Irish song

(📩 650 words, Travel musings, photography, a five minute read)

There’s something defining about the tall wooden figure facing off across the busy harbour-front road with its opponent: the icy-modern loading hoist, made in steel of various hues.

We’re in Waterford, the vibrant coastal heart of south-eastern Ireland; home to the famous crystal glass factory. I can close my eyes and still hear the harmonic ringing of one of our old (inherited) Waterford wine glasses after it was flicked by a teen’s fingernail.

(Above: I have no idea… About twice my height. There was no plaque, but it’s impressive, and could easily be a bit scary!)

The city was founded by Vikings in 914 CE. I had to read that twice when I first saw it on a tourist board; founded, not invaded.

(Above: Waterford crystal begins its life with almost alchemical skill, requiring an eight-year apprenticeship. Image from the Waterford.com website)

There’s something of the ‘Viking spirit’ about the raw lumps of molten glass being twisted and ‘blown’ into shapes we eventually recognise as crystal-glassware.

(Bottom middle – the black dot: the ocean-dominated location of Waterford, in south-east Ireland)

Waterford is a Viking city – and proud of its cultural – and no doubt genetic – past. The map shows why the Vikings chose it: adjacent to the ocean, sheltered by the Irish Sea rather than facing the fury of the Atlantic in the west… and a lot nearer to the power base of the English throne, which was vital for its survival in the first few centuries of its existence.

It’s wet, of course. Everyone was staring up at the blue sky in amazement: “In March, for heaven’s sake, they would say…”

This is Ireland at its winter best. Having said that, we did enjoy a lovely, blue-skied day when we arrived, just one, mind you… It gave us the light to take these photos of Waterford’s city centre while the shy sun shone…

There seems to be encouragement to explore artistic style within the city’s streets. The whole feel of the ocean-side city is creative. .

Anyone who’s experienced Irish hospitality knows they need no help in throwing a party. On our trip, we’ve experienced how powerful is the Irish love of a song and the singing of it. This tradition, shared so easily, takes us immediately into another place, one where the rules are flow, rather than the stop-start of ordinary conversation.

Poetry and most of the graphic arts, here, share this. Live Music is present everywhere and in everything.

It’s there in the poetic variance of tone in the language; in the way people – and even strangers – greet each other; and most of all in the dedication to making music, in all its forms.

This feeling was evidenced when we came across the music shop in the photo, above. Stocked with every conceivable folk instrument, the window simply invites you in…

Have a chat, y’dont need to buy anything…

But even more than the shop window, the entrance way of the music shop tells the whole story.

Festooned with small brochures, calling cards and messages, it’s a riot of contact, colour and identity. It’s the single most potent image I will take with me when we leave this fine place, tomorrow – as we continue our journey along the south coast to Kinsale.

(Above: a free to use outdoor performance arena, complete with mirrored roof)

More photos and travel notes from there… Thank you, Waterford. We’ll be back…

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)

March 5, 2024 + #Silenti

Davóg Rynne’s bardic work

(Nimue) Today I’m sharing a song by Davóg Rynne which he has put out to raise money for Medicine Sans Frontiers in Gaza. It’s a good example of the …
Davóg Rynne’s bardic work

March 5, 2024 + #iphonephotography, #Phoetry, #Photography,

Like Dickens, but not…

Photographically, I’ve been lucky with Bolton-le-Sands. The constantly changing light lends itself to subtle moods, as long as you know where to find the good perspectives.

I time our return drive from visiting my mother’s care home, in Morecambe, to suit what I hope to meet – in terms of light, when we get to the rather weird tidal pools landscape.

Sometimes it works; requiring only experience as to where to stand, relative to the tide and the intense patterns the wind makes on the visible water – be it tidal pool or the full high tide, which is rare.

When it all lines up, it’s great. And Tess loves it, too. She particularly likes the challenge of finding an optimal way across the pools to retrieve the frisbee thrown by her cunning ‘dad’.

An online friend remarked that the shots reminded her of TV images that she had seen of the Romney Marshes in one of Charles Dickens’ tales.

That’s a great mood. More luck than skill but I’ll take it!

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

(mystically-oriented writing)

and