Just you and me along the prom
As far as eye can see
Assuming eye can see at all
Within this silent storm
We could be settled by a fire
With crackle-snap of logs
Instead, we tread in sodden pools
Could dullness get much higher?
This masochistic love of dogs
Companions of the heart
Is strange to fathom, hard to square
Yet, seldom we’re apart.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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I’ve been following Di over at Pensitivity101 for many years, now.
Like the rest of us, she’s had her ups and downs, but always weathers them and comes out cheerful and positive. She’s got a great sense of humour.
She hosts ‘Fibbing Friday’. This week, she offers us the chance to spend a few minutes lying, as amusingly as possible, about the authors of a list of books. Here’s my entry:
“This week I am inviting you to suggest or invent authors for these (I think) fictitious books…”
1. The Mystery – Dr James Hoo
2. Dances with The Wolverine – Peter ‘One-Hand’ Singleton.
3. Who killed Roland Rabbit – Rt Honourable Roger Rogerson.
4. The Taming of the Crew – Odysseus MacMaster
5. Far from the Maddening Crowd – Penelope Farbright
6. The Golden Crown – Pippa Mantel
7. Up, Up and Away – Angela Downton
8. Bottoms Up – Sir Leslie Fillets
9. For Whom the Bell Tinkles – Jonathan Toll
10. A Dog’s Day – Lady Rufus Grey (né Hound)
A moment of levity..
Why not visit Di and have a go?
Steve
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Scaling the Heights
by Steve Tanham
As a child, I remember asking the local vicar, “Where is God?”
He looked at me, a little startled, and said, “God is everywhere!”
I looked around, not meaning to mock him, but he took it that way. My simplistic feeling was that God was in the high places, open, accepting and taking things are they were.
My family were Rosicrucians and it was clear to him that I was being raised a heretic. He and the primary school headmaster were later to take their revenge on the family by conspiring to keep me out of grammar school, despite my earned grades.
What doesn’t kill you…
But it taught me to think.. and not to accept anything at face value when it was repeated by rote. It taught me to realise that if there is a God, ‘he’ would be perfectly happy chatting to me.
The question is a good one: Where is God? And while we’re pondering that we’d better ask: What IS God?
There are two main divisions to the life of our ‘self’. There is a gradual coming to accept the societal view of how things are. The closer and more elegantly we can harmonise with this, the better our chances in life. This is fitting in, and being rewarded for an outstanding alignment.
The other life of the self is what we think and feel inside. We can wear all the masks we like, but what really affects the quality of our lives is how we feel ‘in-here’.
If I feel good about myself, my life will be lived in inner harmony. I will have confidence to go out into the world and discover more and more about it.
Where will I find God? In the high places, of course.
But the new high places will be mountains inside myself – my:self. And once I’ve sampled the quality of the air ‘up there’, I will begin to want to live in that way and continue breathing that inner refinement of feeling and thought.
I probably won’t have an idea what God is. I may simply have confidence that this general sweetness inside is one of the pathways to her-him-it.
And I will begin climbing mountains, and they will be inner mountains; though there’s nothing wrong with talking to ‘God’ on the top of a real one…
Which, when I have enough personal power, and can return my own energy of discovery into my self, will turn out to be places of peace and silence. In those silences a different type of conversation begins.
And now, a reliance on what experts think falls away. Once I know how to be honest about my interior space, I can bring into it the authority of discovery, because the only thing of importance on that mountain is to change my world to the truth – my own truth, whose yardstick has been honed by my own experience, refined and reliable.
The world is full of crazy people. Now, I can be my own crazy person. Except I’m not. I’m a person with a reliable and well-forged set of thoughts and feelings that reflect what I know to be true – for me.
A new core of my life may emerge. The sense that something greater lives ‘behind my eyes’ waiting to be handed the controls. This new something feels a lot like my hard-earned self. But its power is greater, and its insight is instant.
I might call it my Self, rather than the ego-formed sense of identity that has come to make up my reactive self. This Self doesn’t have to react to the trivial world, no matter how good or bad. It has the power to see the world very differently – and thus change my relationship to experience.
And then, one fine day, I might find myself having a conversation with God, but in the highest and quietest place I could imagine; a place at the centre of everything that is and could be.
And it would be deeply caring and personal.
The Silent Eye’s spring 2023 landscape workshop: Water-Circle+Cross will take place on the weekend of 19-21. A few places are still available.
Message us at Rivingtide@gmail.com for more details.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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A most unlikely castle…
by Steve Tanham
James Dawson had an eye for a view. In 1840, he stood on the spot from which the photo below was taken. and decided to buy it.
His advisors explained that he couldn’t buy all of that, but could have the land down to Lake Windermere, on which he could more or less do what he wanted… planning control were not expected along for the next fifty years-ish, so were unlikely to interfere with his ambitious and imaginative ideas.
He had plans to use it as a retreat from his stressful but lucrative career as a Liverpool surgeon. On top of that, and of great assistance to his plans, his wife, Margaret, was rich … very rich.
He had an eye for the Gothic, as well, and fancied himself as a modern ‘lord of the manor’ – but within a baronial castle. He had a clear picture of how he would feel, ruling over this landscape with his beautiful and very rich wife by his side.
She seemed content for him to indulge his interests on the shores of Windermere. She had much to do within her own social life.
Sadly, his wife didn’t like the place, and refused to live there. She was very rich and had lots of choices.
I think I have recounted everything the man on the boat from Waterhead to Bowness told me. He said it was all true. I suspect some of it is… but have doubts about other parts. He did have a grin when he spoke – like someone who’s just transported into your reality.
James Dawson died in 1875, thirteen years after his wife Margaret. Gothic villas like ‘Wray Castle’ were becoming unpopular and were considered ‘vulgar and ostentatious’.
Wray Castle passed to a distant relative, Edward Preston Rawnsley. In 1898, he sold the entire Wray estate which, as an out-of-favour derelict, passed from owner to owner in the face of the money needed to restore it.
But all this was to the eventual benefit of the public. In 1929, the young National Trust bought Wray, not for the ‘folly’ of a house, but for the beautiful stretch of lakeshore that it included.
As parkland, it remained open, continuously. But the ‘baronial castle’ was leased to several unusual tenants including the Freshwater Biological Association (1931-50) and the Merchant Navy (1958-98). Plans to convert the castle into a luxury hotel were halted after the financial crash of 2008.
As a story, you’d be pressed to make it up…
But, in reality…
It’s really beautiful.
And the vision that James Dawson had was not only achieved, but sustained and extended by the National Trust.
If you’re in the Lakes, go and see it. Share the remarkable… and the triumph of the unlikely.
From Wikipedia:
Wray Castle is a Victorian neo-gothic building at Claife in the English county of Cumbria. The house and grounds have belonged to the National Trust since 1929, and house has opened to the public on a regular basis since 2013.[1][2] The grounds, which include part of the shoreline of Windermere, are open all year round and are renowned for their selection of specimen trees – Wellingtonia, redwood, Ginkgo biloba, weeping lime and varieties of beech.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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No strangers on the shore
by Steve Tanham
“Lead them in,” said the man who taught me much about composition in photography. “You’ve got to ferry those looking at your images into the core of the shot…”
The steps, alone, were a perfect ‘lead’ down to the beach. Add in the storm wall and the high level of the promenade’s main body and you have a harmonic set of ‘pointers’.
The third element, and the reason the shot needed to be taken, was the way the central figure (my wife) and the collie were set against the curling pool of water from the draining high-tide.
Tess spends hours racing up and down the compacted sand, chasing the hi-bounce ball or the frisbee. I wasn’t expecting to find a new ‘view’ on this most familiar beach. Which goes to show that you shouldn’t discount the infinite combinations that nature can summon via light and tide.
I’ve put both shots in: after and before. I liked the second but wanted to get more emotion into the shot, and the use of the ‘smoothing’ filter seemed to offer that, allowing it to become more of a painting than a simple photo. Lens art is one of the names for this kind of approach. Purist photographers may not approve…
Its a functional beach, rather than a pretty one. We’ve used it for years, it’s difficult to find ‘new angles’, but they are there…behind every tidal change. All we need is eyes and consciousness … and a willingness to ‘listen’ and see’ to what’s there.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Faro2 : The Shape that fell to Earth
by Steve Tanham
Looking back, it could have been the sunshine… The bright blue sky was such a contrast to the cold grey clouds of Cumbria in early March.
But it wasn’t. There was something about the shape of Faro2 that actually spoke to me…
It looks crazy – the words emerging on the screen here. Sounds even more lunatic putting it into a mystically oriented blog-slot, and yet, why should one place – or ‘space’ – be more special than another? Surely such things speak for themselves … or not at all?
Let’s relive that dramatic encounter…
I’ve gazed on remote stone circles that felt lifeless, but this place – this unlikely exotic and largely abandoned place – reaches across hundred of metres to make me smile. Bring that camera here, it says. You’ll not be disappointed..
It’s not on the tourist map – unless you’ve got a very old one. This is our second visit to Maspalomas, Gran Canaria. We’ve been coming here for the past two years for a winter week of much-needed sun. Our hotel is an eight-minute walk away. We found it last year but didn’t have time to explore. My wife is not the same kind of ‘urban explorer’ as I am and is soaking up the sun by the pool.
Which is great, because there’s somewhere I need to photograph. I’ve sneaked out for a walk. And possibly a cold beer.
No-one said go and visit Faro2. It’s got ‘concrete cancer’, but its not contagious. One of the reception staff who was a child when they built it told us. Going to cost a fortune to demolish.
So they don’t… forty years on, freshly dropped from the blue sky. Still as amazingly energetic as the day they opened it – somewhere back in the 1980s.
The words ‘SHOPPING CENTRE’ lie like a scar over the top of what is a very beautiful construction; its proportions gentle and pleasing to the eye. Somehow its name – the smaller sign – FARO2, is much more in tune. Designers always say use odd numbers of things in arrangements. It’s dated and the faded pink renders it a very odd number. Works for me. Very post-apocalypse…
It was weird… I’ve never experienced anything like it, before. A sense of a building actually welcoming you… Perhaps it has something to do with photographers, and their ability to compose shots that show things off ? Even from a distance, I could tell it was mainly derelict…
Yet there is activity. Lots of it. And there’s a bar-pub.. and quite a few abandoned men drinking beer. But I’m not ready for that, yet, even though the afternoon is hot.
I was weaned on sci-fi. Here was a building that – usage aside – was straight out of that genre…especially tales of devastated landscapes where the survivors clustered around to create a new ‘home’; or point of congregation.
Not Mad Max, more subtle than that… Something about a group of local folks who loved a place so much they wanted to save it. A bit like Covent Garden in London.
Faro2 fell to earth… It’s not fanciful, it told me so when I glimpsed its exotic curves above the rooflines of the nearby houses. The now-revealed circular mezzanine confirms it… Pure spaceship.
And now, by some fluke, or the quantum flickering of synchronicity, the iron-mesh barrier to the upper levels has been moved by one of the crew emptying yet another closed shop.
He says something. I don’t speak Spanish, and he can tell, so, he shrugs and, unmolested, I bound up the stairs with my camera at the ready. He’s probably gone to get his mate who does speak English to come and throw me out.
So I run and photograph while I can…
I collect my thoughts. A cold beer at Cleopatra’s Bar helps. There’s a thriving if small supermarket next door, but I only want a beer. Across from me a man who should be named Jinxie is looking back… perhaps seeing that I’ve been smitten and would I like to join their restoration action group?
And, for the full experience, we need to walk back via the bridge that crosses the ‘walkway to the mountains’. This ‘canal’ is an overflow from the distant peaks to carry the melt-waters to protect the resort of Maspalomas. Residents report they have never seen water in it, but it’s there if needed!
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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The ‘great white hotel’, as we called it, began across the road from where our small apartments ended. Its elegant, curving facade made it one of the most impressive of the ‘grand hotels’ on the Atlantic island of Gran Canaria.
Majestically, it hugged the line of the small ‘wadi’: a set of wide waterways designed to absorb the floodwaters from the nearby mountains.
“There haven’t been any in my lifetime,” explained the hotel receptionist, but it’s comforting to know they would save us, in the event…
Every day we would walk down to the local resort of Maspalomas passing the gardens at the back of the hotel. Every day, there was a well-meaning dad trying get his kids to engage with the giant chess pieces.
On the final day, we decided that nearly five hours on an aircraft warranted a pre-departure walk, even if it was just to stretch our legs. When we got to the place of the giant chess board, we were surprised at the scene of devastation before us….
Chess pieces lay ‘dead and dying’ around the perimeter of the board.
We suspect the children may have rushed down, just before their own departure, to make their feelings felt! Strong-minded little beings, their Grand Master future may be in doubt…
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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There’s something about March that is difficult to define…
It’s a classically liminal month. Not quite the end of winter; not quite the start of the spring. You can be knee deep in mud yet standing next to a clump of glorious crocuses.
When you get a good photograph, it’s to be celebrated … as they can be few and far between.
This shot isn’t great, but it’s colourful…. And the other foot was sinking in the mud.
Borran’s Park, Waterhead, near Ambleside.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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The Swift and Windermere
by Steve Tanham
Just had to take this shot. Didn’t even know it was there until I stepped into the cafe next to the boarding pier for a quick cup of tea during one of our dog walks around Bowness-upon-Windermere. It was a grey Tuesday with poor light, and I hadn’t expected to find much to photograph,
I collected my tea from the counter and turned to set it down at my favourite table: the one facing Lake Windermere. There, framed in the gap within the less-than-attractive scaffold’s lattice was the the Lake District’s newest and finest passenger ferry – the MV (Merchant Vessel) Swift, full of happy passengers and waiting to depart.
Bowness is the largest lakeside town within the Lake District National Park and the major departure point for the passenger ferries that shuttle up and down the nearly eleven miles of England’s largest lake.
After being formally handed over to Winander Leisure Limited by Damen Shipyards Gorinchem BV earlier in October 2020, the new vessel, operated by Windermere Lake Cruises Limited, carried her first passengers on Sunday October 25.
When I first saw the Swift, It looked old-fashioned, almost like an American river boat from the 1960s movies. But that look is deceptive. The ‘spacious riverboat’ is a correct perception. The vessel seats 300 people. But the interior is modern and digitally equipped with heated windows, electric doors and windows, toilets, USB and electrical sockets.
The major innovation is the shallowness of the Swift’s ‘draught’. This will allow the boat to call at some of the smaller ferry points on the lake; something that dramatically widens the commercial scope of the new vessel. The existing large ferries are retricted to Bowness, Lakeside (for Newby Bridge) and Waterhead (for Ambleside)
I haven’t sailed on the Swift, yet, but May’s ‘Circle, Water+Cross’ workshop offers us an excellent opportunity to employ it for one of our ‘mystical journeys’ across this most special body of water.
Further information on the May workshop can be found under the events page at http://www.the silent eye.co.uk)
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
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The New Zealand white slipped down easily as he typed furiously on the iPad. Hours seemed to pass, industriously. Ideas flowed and the plot thickened…
By one inch from the bottom of the bottle, he had it nailed. The robbery, the savage death in the pool of the sadistic villain, the near drowning of the woman – the kidnap victim who had given up hope of surviving. And the slipping away into the night of the mysterious dark stranger upon the arrival of Inspector Docker…
He reached for the packet of breadsticks: the only thing to have with wine when you were creating with this degree of success … and found it empty, causing him to look up.
She was standing there, looking down at him. No longer naked in the pool, but shimmering with silk thread and gold … and heels that made him blink and look again.
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life…”
The silken voice was just as he imagined, but the outline of the small gun in her purse came as a surprise. Perhaps there was more to this character than simply a victim?
He reached for his notebook.
©Stephen Tanham 2023
Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye, a journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog
D
Sun in Gemini 
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