Good Night

Peace be with you brothers and sisters.

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda - Journey to Satchidinanda

Another Hot One and Cats

O helter skelter
What a swelter.

Another hot sunny day like it was on Sunday with temps definitely in the low thirties C out there. I recorded 32 degrees C yesterday in Faversham.

But after a bit of sunbathing this morning and smoking my pipe i am now in the cool air conditioned sanctuary of my local Spoons pub having a long cold lime and soda drink. I have just finished my last report for the supermarket i visited on Sunday.

This morning i listened twice to the new Alice Coltrane Cd followed by one of her more jazz oriented albums. This new release is actually a compilation of tapes she released in the late 70's,80's and 90's from her ashram in southern California , but these were in limited supply with around only 100 cassette tapes made per recording,and now they are available on David Byrne's Luaka Bop label. (David Byrne was ex-leader of Talking Heads). The other amazing thing is that casey28 lived at Alice's Satchidinanda Ashram for a few years back in the '80's.

I was reading the Observer newspaper to discover that at the end of this month is a new documentary coming out called Kedi. If you are a cat lover you will want to see this film.

Merlin ,that black cat,is still around and being made a fuss off and getting scraps and food from staff and residents.

Poems Of The Week

A couple of poems from the Beats


Hay For The Horses

Poem by Gary Snyder





He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."





How To Meditate

Poem by Jack Kerouac





-lights out-
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
i hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance-Healing
all my sicknesses-erasing all-not
even the shred of a 'I-hope-you' or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
'thinking's just like not thinking-
So I don't have to think
any
more'