Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1036

Firefox

Mister Fox: The Legend
Sue Vincent & Stuart France

A Graphic Novel
Available in Paperback and for Kindle

On Amazon UK, Amazon.com and worldwide

“…Mister Fox are portrayed here as they wish to be perceived: liminal tricksters in the half light, dancing and cavorting and brandishing fire for your entertainment, while maintaining an aura of mystery and intrigue…” Ginny Woolf, Amazon

Reflections

Originally posted on The Silent Eye:

‘Know thyself’… Pausanius tells us it was inscribed in the court before the temple of Apollo at Delphi. We are given to understand it is associated too with the Inner Temples in ancient Egypt. It is one of the first phrases we come across in esoteric studies and where else could we begin? It is not the easiest thing to look into the mirror of the soul and admit to oneself what one finds there. Even less to share that openly with others by dropping the social masks and simply being who we are.

I first learned the concept as a child from my grandfather, but it was one it took years to begin to truly understand and longer still to try and put into practice. As we grow through adolescence and youth our self-image constantly shifts, changing as it reflects the desire to become who we think we ought…

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Northern Light

In a few days I run northwards again for the monthly meeting of the Silent Eye. Since the birth of the school I have been blessed with the opportunity to point the car northwards every few weeks. Before that it had been the best part of twenty years since I had been able to spend any time there. So to be able to finally return so often to a place that holds my heart has left me with a deep well of emotion. Much of it gratitude.

I had yearned for the moors and hillsides with a longing that had become so much a part of me I couldn’t have separated it out had I tried. And now I get to go back and feed my soul. Each visit is touched with utter perfection. No matter how pretty it is down here in the south… and it is admittedly very beautiful… there is something in the northern skies and the hillsides, something in the way people say good morning as they pass, something in the accent and dialect… something that is Home and that pulls at the heartstrings, triggering a deep longing to return that had never eased.

Springtime was bad as a rule… the moors exert a powerful attraction in spring as the nascent life eases hesitantly out into the uncertain warming of the year. Summer you know will be beautiful with the tenuous sunshine on the heather, a haze of purple as far as the eye can see. Autumn is an orgy of ochre and scarlet as the colours blaze for a final moment of glory before the pall of winter shrouds the landscape. Winter can be wild, it is stark, hard and monochrome… but is wonderful.

Here in the central south everything seemed remote. The sky too far away to touch, people seldom speak to strangers; there is much beauty but no wildness. I felt isolated from the world, from its folk and, for a very long time, from the landscape too. I had felt anonymous, unseen even to myself as parts of me that knew life keenly in the high places faded into a faceless anonymity, cocooned in a grey normality that blurred the sharp edges and softened the contrasts of being alive.

It was not until the landscape of Albion came to life for me, after Uffington that first weekend when Stuart came to visit… and long before we understood the adventure that was beginning to unfold … that I began to really see the landscape here and realise that there is no border between north and south… the barrier was simply in me. A barrier that was lifted by the wings of kites as we began the journey of writing The Initiate together, telling the story of what was being shown to us in wonderand which, incredibly, continues.

But even so, the moors still call. The wildness is magical. There is an intimacy about the north that invades every pore, working its way into the heart, a silent breath of cold air that clears the fog of mediocrity in which it is too easy to lose oneself and founder. It is a landscape of absolutes and extremes and it demands that same  response from the heart and mind. It galvanises Being.

Many do not understand that apparent desolation of the moors and mountains. They cannot see the extremes of passionate life in the barrenness that clings like lichen to the riven rocks or crouches against the wild wind like a tree grasping for a foothold in  stone. Many respond better to the welcoming warmth of a greener England, one of manicured fields and tended hedgerows, thatched roofs and picture book villages. Each of us must follow the call of the inner heart where it leads and there is more than one way to light up a soul.

For me the moors of the north are home. No matter where I live, where life, circumstance or service need me to be. For me there is both absoluteness and absolution in the wild hills. Leaving them behind still carries a wrench of separation and the drive south is often made through a mist of tears but these days with a joy in the heart that sings because I have walked my hills again.

I can’t help it. I’m a Yorkshire lass with heather in the blood.

Tenacity

Walking on Sunshine Blog Party

So Olga asked if I was going to join Hugh’s party this weekend. Not one to pass up such an invitation, I cast about thinking of who to bring. Sally Cronin had already kicked off the shenanigans on Hugh’s pages, Ailsa Abraham, David Prosser hmm…

So who should I invite? I wouldn’t be able to bring everyone …I’d have to get up a coach party. There are way too many supportive people in our community! Chief amongst those who daily ‘spread the love’ is Chris Graham, of course, but there are more than apes out there who daily support other writers and bloggers… names that are familiar to many, like Barb Taub and Viv Drewa ; Katie Sullivan, Jo and Ronovan…old friends like Alienora Taylor and Gary Vasey, more recent ones like Geoff at Tangental, or Ali Isaac and Jane Dougherty, whose path, by a strange coincidence, I may well have crossed many years ago when we were both in our teens. I could be here all night trying to find someone to ‘invite’… and still miss dozens …

And as I was thus pondering over yet another coffee, faute de mieux, the notifications lit up and I had it. I could be sneaky and mention more than one other blogger here… yet still, technically, only bring one to the party.

I could introduce you to Geoffrey David West, a freelance journalist/writer, living in Surrey, England. He doesn’t say a lot about himself on his ‘About’ page… you really need to read the blog visit his Amazon author page or his website. Jack Lockwood, however, says a good bit more about him on his blog, the Jack Lockwood Diaries… and it is Jack’s adventures that Geoffrey shares in his books.

Jack, a BIA, a kind of criminal profiler who sometimes helps police on major inquiries, writes of his ‘biographer’, “Geoffrey West has written three novels about some big mysteries I was involved in. One where I got involved in a thirty year old mystery connected with John Lennon’s death, Rock’n’Roll Suicide, and another where I fell in love with a girl who I thought might be a killer, Doppelganger. The most recent one is Sheer Fear, where Jack’s brother gets involved in a cover-up of influential people involved in historic child abuse.” A book of short stories, taken from some of the posts which have been on Jack’s blog, has also been published.

Terry Tyler writes of Geoffrey’s latest book, Sheer Fear: “…the opening chapter is one of the best I’ve read for this sort of book – in fact it ought to be used in creative writing classes as an example of how to write the first chapter of a thriller.”

What Jack doesn’t tell you is that Geoffrey also writes on a number of other subjects and with a real streak of humour. Which is just as well as I haven’t told him I’ve invited him over here yet…

Stop Press: Rock’n’Roll Suicide, the first of the novels is free on Kindle for the next few days! Click here to download your copiy from Amazon UK  and Amazon.com!

Why not call over at Hugh’s News and Views and join the party? It’s easy to join in and there is not much involved.  All you have to do is choose a fellow blogger and give them a mention…

Eclipse 2015

We were lucky with the eclipse yesterday. It was touch and go, though, as I woke to heavy skies, covered in a pall of grey. Nevertheless, the camera was charged and came with me. British weather being notoriously fickle, I could always live in hope.

We watched the cloud turn a sickly hue, the dim light fade to that odd, pre-storm shade and felt the temperature drop as the sun was darkened. And we couldn’t see a thing. Even so we stood outside and watched a more luminous corner of the sky with unfounded optimism.

“Can’t you do some Nerk* stuff?”

“There will be Nerks up and down the country willing those clouds to clear…” And a few moments later they did.

For the next half hour we watched the play of light and shade. The sun became the sickle that reminded me of the ‘moon’ symbol of the goddess… and I had to wonder if we were interpreting some of the ancient images correctly. It is she after all who cuts the cords that bring us into life and cuts the cords that bind us to it and it is the sun, not the moon, that gives life to the planet. Perhaps the two symbols are not so very different…

It was a half closed eye, its light silenced by shadow, as I explained once again how and why it happens. Watching I could see the lunar symbolism of many ancient cultures written in the sky, by the moon, but upon the visible face of the sun.

Conditions were perfect… the veil of cloud had not cleared, only thinned, so we were able to watch without fear or damage as the light and warmth returned. As it did so the cloud thinned further, and we looked only on the screen of the camera, capturing the cloud formations as they wove surreal images and shifted from one strange creature to another… ending with the strangest creature of them all. The small dog gets everywhere…

The term ‘Nerk’ as coined by my sons is explained here.

The season of the eight legged frog

It is spring… there are daffodils and primulas… splashes of colour are everywhere… violets nestle beside the pathways and birds dart around with treasures in their beaks ready to build their nests.

And the frogs are back.

Lots of them.

Now, I like frogs. Nice little creatures. But there are limits. When they begin throwing themselves suicidally at the French windows in a desperate attempt to mate with their own reflection you know it is time to start keeping a close watch on the fish. Frogs don’t care. When the urge takes them, they are going to mate come hell, high water, or the spines on a sturgeon’s back. The first year the sturgeon were in my son’s pond was fraught with horror as we disentangled vice like limbs from deep within their gills.

So far this year, there have been no incidents other than a frantic broddling with a long stick to detach the one trying to mate with the pond pump before it became entangled in the mechanism. Every footstep through the garden is attended by a ‘plop’ as another pair dive for safety… every inch of space to which a frog can cling is duly being clung to. I stopped counting a while ago.

I have written of the horrors before and have no desire to do so again. The frogs will make the garden interesting for several weeks to come… there will be a final crescendo of activity when the eight legged frog will become anything up to a twenty four legged beastie…and then they will disperse as we heave a sigh of relief, leaving only a mass of frogspawn and a mere handful of solitary residents behind.

The birds are less of a problem, fed throughout the winter they go about the business of mating and nesting with less frenzy and we watch them come and go, delighting in their presence. Kites soar even here and the heron glares at me occasionally for having designed a heron-proof pond. The squirrels will be about again shortly and all sorts of little creatures rustle and bustle about.

“There’s something on the birdfeeder.” How he thought I was going to identify a bird at the other end of a phone, I couldn’t imagine.

“What does it look like?”

“A squirrel…”

“That’ll be a squirrel then.”

“Do all squirrels have bushy tails?” Well, usually… “’Cause this one has a tail like a rat.”

“….!!!”

I explained. He argued its agility rivalled the squirrel. Except it seemed to live under the bridge over the pond. I explained some more. Now he has me stock the bird table for furred as well as feathered guests. It is surprising what you can find in an urban garden.

Stars

Eclipse

ARS GEOMETRICA VIII

Originally posted on Stuart France:

Operation Three:
‘I am the rose of Sharon as the Lily among thorns
so is my love among the daughters.‘
- Song of Songs 2:1

The ‘Fifteenth’ Leaf.

In our mind’s eye we saw her:

She was deep in the earth…

…But far deeper than the deepest imaginable depth.

She moved in a Sanctum of Silence hewn from Living, Breathing Stone.

And she was three:

One was Movement and transcribed the geometric figures in air…

One was Heart and recited the formula with utmost precision of tone…

One was Mind and meditated on all that occurred.

A Fourth there was which oversaw each station and which also took her form.

And what a form it was:

A form transfigured by each Atu…

We were again minded of our studies:

THE GREAT ESCAPE

A man is tasked with liberating prisoners.

He finds them deluded.
Their history is prison history, their lives…

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