poliphilo

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

The Invisible Man was the first thing I ever read by Wells- (in my early teens, in the dormitory at school, in the short period of grace we were allowed before the lights went out, with the nice, friendly maths master wandering up and down putting the prettier boys at ease and telling them they didn't have to call him "Sir" at the conclusion of every sentence. Did we have his number? Oh, yes, the older ones did and the younger ones soon caught on) I had remembered it as a grim SF fable- and am surprised to find that it's actually quite funny- less War of the Worlds, more History of Mr Polly. It's dark, of course, but we English like our humour that way. And now I think of it, Mr Polly (possibly Wells's best book) is pretty dark as well....

It's raining, it's misty, I'm still adapting myself to the long dark evenings. "Cosy" I tell myself, but as yet I'm not wholly convinced.....

By a nifty piece of happenstance (now that my name has gone forward to be a Quaker elder) I found myself listening to a podcast last night in which a couple of clever young chaps were talking about eldership in a wider context . Most people in our society, said one of them, never really get beyond the mindset of adolescence with its neediness and concern for status. He cited a Jungian ecologist called Plotkin- whom I should probably get to know better- who distinguishes between the older- who are merely old in years and the elder who have been initiated into true adulthood- and are thereby qualified to be teachers and guides. He spoke of our digital culture as "The Shimmer"- a term so newly minted that the Shimmer itself doesn't seem to have heard of it. I Googled and drew a blank. With its suggestion of glamour and illusion- and beauty too- I think it's perfect. We all live in the Shimmer now, he said, and must learn to get wise to it pretty damn quick or else it will eat us.

British Summer Time is over- and the clocks went back last night.

BST was introduced in 1916 with the aim of improving industrial efficiency- though I've never understood how this was supposed to work. By now- over a hundred years later- I think we just carry on out of habit. There was a hiatus from 1968 to 1972 (which I'd completely forgotten about) when British Summer Time was retained through the winter months . I don't know why this experiment was abandoned. The obvious thing would be to go back to Greenwich Mean Time and stick with it all year round, but for some reason government is afraid of going there.

Does it matter? I suppose not. But if everyone finds this monkeying around with clock time as unsettling as I do that's a whole lot of anxiety that could be avoided.

1. They Make a Wilderness and Call it "Peace"

2. Apparition

3. Trickling Down

4. I Specialise in Urns

5. The Long and Winding Road

I'm a bit smug about this- and I don't suppose there's any way round it, so sorry, but I can't help myself.

I picked up this set of libretti for the Savoy Operas at the Tip Shop and they cost me £2.00 for the lot.

There's no date of publication but the look and feel of them suggests to me that they're over 100 years old.

It's not a complete set. It lacks The Yeoman of the Guard, Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke. My guess is it belonged to some Eastbourne based am-dram enthusiast- and lacks The Yeoman because it's almost a proper opera and beyond the resources of a local am-dram society and the other two because they never caught on.

Will I actually read them? Yes, I will. And when it comes to the tunes I know I may actually sing them (but under my breath so that Ailz doesn't throw things at me.)

Yesterday, by the way, was World Opera Day. Synchronicity or what!

Picture Diary 64

1. All that remains

2. Arrival

3. Transmitting

4. Folie a Deux

5. There is Something in the Loch

6. Ascension

I gave Freya a Quaker T shirt.

She sent us a message this morning saying someone had stolen it and did we have any more.

Happily we do. The clerk ordered a box of them from Quaker Central and I came across it yesterday when I was doing some tidying up.

It amuses me to think of the thief walking around wearing a shirt proclaiming the virtues we Quakers like to think we exhibit- SIMPLE, RADICAL, SPIRITUAL. Perhaps it amuses them too.....

It's recorded of Balzac that he drank 60 cups of coffee a day.

What they don't say is how big the cups were

Or how strong the coffee was.

I don't suppose he was drinking double espresso out of half pint mugs.

But, even so....

My normal limit is a single cup a day. I could manage a little more but I hold back because I don't like the way it makes my nerves spark like severed electric wires.

There are wiseacres who say the coffee killed him.

(Gallic shrug)

How do they know?

Are they doctors? No, they're literary types.

Talking about death and doctors, it seems that on his deathbed, probably knowing he was finished, Balzac told those in attendance to "Send for Bianchon"- Bianchon being the noble, wise, entirely admirable and entirely fictitious doctor of La Comedie Humaine.

Choosing thereby to go out on a joke.....

I planted all my daffodil bulbs. Now I'm waiting for the next consignment.

There was a ghost in my dreams which was covered in some sort of scaly, flaky material- like porridge oats. It had a woman sitting on its knee, like a ventriloquist's dummy. "Who's that?" I asked. "My sister," it said.

I finished The Lily in the Valley, my favourite Balzac. Next up is They Were Defeated- Rose Macaulay's only historical novel- of which I retain fond memories.

Last week we took Edna and Miriam to the recycling centre shop. This week we're taking Elisa....

Picture Diary 63

I'm still making images at Nightcafe, but I've recently changed my default model from Dreamshaper XL to Flux Schnell.

The picture of Jonah and the Whale was my first using Flux Schnell

1. Jonah's Dream

2. Fortuna

3. Tess

4.The Wharf

5. Passageway

Picture Diary 62

1. Billy the Kid Enters Heaven

2. The Spiritual Form of Billy the Kid

3. Transmission

4. Seer

5. The Holy Blissful Martyr

I'm falling way behind with posting AI pictures so I think I may dump a whole lot at once.

1 Dance Class

2. In the Wood of the World

3. Three Trees

4. Flowers of Paradise

It rained all day yesterday.

Today the sun is shining and I've assured myself I'll be planting daffodils.

I had a dream about moving house. The removal vans rolled up outside the building and I was surprised to find that they were powered by teams of huskies....

Picture Diary 60

1. On the Way

2. City Lights

3. Pan

4. Showgirls

7QCvun0WDpiqPVqbItpb--1--94mef_adetailer-face_yolov8n-417s3.jpeg

5. Old Friends

I'm reading Intentions: the Intergalactic Bathroom Enlightenment Guide- a sort of autobigraphy by Prudence C Calabrese. It's wacky, it's profound, it's beautifully written- and it can be downloaded for free at her website.

Calabrese, who also operates as Birdie Jakowski, is a remote viewer. Remote Viewing- if you don't already know- is a technique for gathering information about anything that existed and exists in our universe (and others) by sitting down with pencil and paper and concentrating on a set of random coordinates that someone else has selected. I don't suppose I'm explaining that very well- in fact I know I'm not- but please believe me it's not New Age nonsense because if that's all it was the USA's three letter agencies wouldn't employ its paractitioners as "psychic spies". The belief behind it is that the universe is all one thing and we as parts of the universe have connections to all the other parts and can access them if we choose. We may have walled ourselves off in one tiny little physical corner of All That Is (the better to explore it without too much distraction) but the wall is permeable- and mediums, channelers, poets, musicians, artists and dreamers pass backwards and forwards all the time- usually without knowing what they're doing. Anyone can be a remote viewer- and those who get the best results are often the most unlikely folks- suburban housewives and hard-nosed military men.

Calabrese saw a UFO as a kid and had a grey alien show up in her bathroom when she was older and download information into her brain. She trained as a remote viewer and has since developed her own system which is gentler and more feminine than the system she was taught- which was developed by and for the military. I'm not good at submitting to other people's disciplines so I won't be taking the training myself, but then, as a poet and artist, I don't believe I have to.....

I seem to be in the mood for this sort of thing at the moment.

It's a silly story. A girl who has lost the power of speech because of trauma is banged up in a gothic mansion with several men knocking around- one of whom may be an atrocious murderer. The acting is mostly as wooden as the script encourages them to be, though Ethel Barrymore got a best supporting Oscar for playing a cranky old woman, Dorothy McGuire (must have been great to have a starring role with no lines to learn!) is charming enough and Elsa Lanchester has a nice little cameo as a housekeeper with a taste for brandy. I'm always very happy to see Elsa!

The thing is it works. Suspense? Check. Detective interest? Check. A thrilling climax? Check. Noir visuals? Check- and at it's furthest stretch there's a distinct flavour of German expressionism. Robert Siodmak directs.

Siodmak had a a long, eventful and interesting international career. He started in silents, made films in Germany, France, Britain and, of course, the USA and his last film (a Swords and Sandals epic which is reportedly nor very good) came out in 1969. He was a gun for hire not an auteur, but some of his movies are "classics", including, I'd be prepared to argue, this.....

Once upon a time there was a part-work magazine called The Masters. Each issue featured a collection of nice big colour reproductions of art by a famous painter plus a monograph by someone appropriate. For Leonardo da Vinci they decided they couldn't do better than reprint the late 19th century essay by Walter Pater- which is one of the glories of English prose. Anyway, in my dream it had started up again, only they were doing it on the cheap and the paper was grotty and they were having it printed by the people who print The Radio Times. The first issue featured a contemporary artist called Low who painted dim grey pictures of uninteresting subjects. Apparently he was thought to be very great only I wasn't so sure.

Low was also a chef- and buying the magazine involved you in eating a multi-course meal he'd prepared that looked splendid but tasted of nothing very much. "This is just like the food you get in dreams" I thought. And the remakable thing is I failed to take that further step in cognition and conclude, "So this must be a dream I'm having." It was a missed opportunity to go lucid- and I could kick myself.

Yesterday morning we woke to mist on the low ground but the full Moon beaming from a clear sky. It was a super Moon I'm informed. Afterwards we had a lovely clear day and I let the grass dry a little in the sun and then I cut it. In the afternoon we sat out on the patio and drank tea with Terry who is giving up his apartment and leaving some suitcases with us while he decides where to go next. I like to sit out on the patio in Spring and Autumn but not so much in summer.

This morning we woke to rain and I cleared out the gutters (see previous post) but the rain cleared off and the sun came out and I planted daffodil bulbs until I decided I'd had enough of it. My project for this Autumn (I've just decided) is to fill the furthest part of the lawn with daffodils- my favourite flower. This afternoon I spent more time on the patio and drank tea and read some random poems from my Collected Kipling. He wrote so many and I keep finding ones I don't know. and which- at least when I'm reading them- seem to belong among his best. Did he ever publish anything in verse that wasn't, at the very least, clever and well-turned?

I have a clever gadget- a sort of scraper on a pole- that allows me to clean the gutters from an upstairs window. This needs doing regularly because pigeons.

I had a go this morning in the rain. I figured that in wet conditions the mud and grass would turn to a kind of soup that would be easier to shift. I wasn't wrong.

But I've made a frightful mess and all that side of the house- indoors as well as outdoors- now stinks of guano.

Quakers come to decisions by "discernment"- which involves listening to the inner voice and taking due note of what everybody concerned has to say. It can take time.

We try not to argue.

And we try not to demonise any person or opinion. One of our key texts (though no Quaker text is accorded the weight of "Scripture") is this- that we should "look for that of God in everyone."

Natural leaders emerge within a Meeting but no-one is set above anyone else. Each Member's opinion counts. If there is disagreement then the matter should be set aside until a common mind can be reached. Forcing a decision through in the teeth of opposition is most unQuakerly.

When the Meeting is asked to decide whether a certain decision has its approval the proper form for showing assent is "I hope so,"- which allows for the possibility that with the best will in the world the Meeting and the individual may have got it wrong.

Profile

poliphilo

March 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Page Summary

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Ivory Alcea for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Mitsuba Aoi

Page generated Mar. 3rd, 2026 07:33 am

|

Recent Entries

Expand Cut Tags

Cosy

Shimmering

Mucking About With The Clocks

Picture Diary 65

A Fistful Of Libretti

Picture Diary 64

The Spiritual Thief

Balzac Liked His Coffee

Dribs And Drabs

Picture Diary 63

Picture Diary 62

Picture Diary 61

Rain And Shine

Picture Diary 60

Intergalactic Bathroom Enlightenment

The Spiral Staircase

Low

Writing For The Sake Of Writing

I Love My Pigeons But.....

Quaker Decision Making

Profile

March 2026

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Syndicate

Style Credit