IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT FOOD, BUT IT SURE HELPS!

3 O'CLOCK. UP AND SLOWLY INTO YOGA FOR THE NEXT HOUR. HAD BEEN UP EARLIER, FOR SIPS OF WATER, BUT ONCE THE PRACTICE WAS OVER, HAD MY USUAL PINT OF ROOM-TEMPERATURE WATER WITH HALF A SQUEEZED LEMON.

WATCHED H.H. DALAI LAMA GIVING TALK ON MEDITATION & HAPPINESS...

BREAKFAST

ONE GRAPEFRUIT & 2 SATSUMAS

*

5.3O'ISH OUT FOR CYCLE RIDE IN DIRECTION OF THE SEA-FRONT. SOME TEENAGERS ASK ME IF I CAN DRIVE THEM HOME! THEN, CHAT WITH AIDAN @ HIS PHOENIX BAKERY. HOME @ SIX FOR...

A FEW SOAKED ALMONDS (20?)

(PROTEIN AFTER EXERCISE)

*

MADE A POT OF HERBAL TEA, TO SIP WHEN COOL DURING THE MORNING, UNTIL I GOT TO GO OUT - I HAD A MAIL-ORDER DELIVERY...

*

7.00....ZAZEN...

25 minutes sitting....i do not have a timer....i do not have a strict schedule....i do not sit on zafu (cushion) since damaging left hip and knee, following directive of..."pain is the taste of zazen." TOOK ABOUT 12 YEARS TO HEAL...

 ...just "suddenly" noticed one day, when i had resumed yoga practice once again. i do sit on zafu - it has such a good postural feeling...but only for "fun", for a few minutes, to remember the MAGIC ...

*

LATER IN MORNING, AN HOUR OR SO OF GARDENING IN THE SUNSHINE...ATE FIVE PLUMS... HAD HERBAL TEA, FROM TEA-POT, & WATER, UNTIL MAKING MY WAY TO DORCHESTER - FINALLY GETTING TO LEAVE AT ABOUT 11.00.

OUT FOR 3 HOURS OR SO. CONSUMED...

SMALL PUNNET OF BLUEBERRIES

ONE BANANA

MINERAL WATER, AS DESIRED

*

@ 15.00 I WAS DRINKING THIS FROM MY PINT GLASS..

...WHICH I JUICED FROM THESE...

DEEEE-LISH-USSS!

*

MY DAD WOULD'VE RECOGNISED THE "MAGIC" IN THE WOODED SCENE I SAW, WHILE CYCLING ALONG THE RODWELL TRAIL, THIS A'NOON...BUT HE NO LONGER ACCEPTED THAT THERE WAS ANY "MAGIC" IN FOOD. AND CERTAINLY NOT IN THE VARIOUS DIETS I ADOPTED OVER THE YEARS. HE WOULD QUIP AT MY SALADS..."IS THAT THE SERVING BOWL?!" HE COULD NOT BELIEVE THAT A MEAL LIKE THIS...

...WAS ANY MORE "MAGICAL" THAN HIS SHEPHERD'S PIE, BOUGHT FROM THE LOCAL SUPERMARKET. AND IT WAS HE WHO REARED US AS VEGETARIAN BABIES IN THE LATE 40'S AND EARLY 50'S. BUT HE DID CONTINUE WITH HIS HATHA YOGA, EVEN WHEN HE HAD LEUKAEMEA. BUT WOULD NOT TRY A GREEN JUICE ON A REGULAR BASIS. BUT. BUT. BUT....WE DID GET VERY CLOSE, AT LAST, AT THE END OF HIS LIFE. AND WE WOULD NATTER FOR AGES IN THE  LATE A'NOONS, WHEN I WOULD BRING HIM FRESH CREAM CAKE AND A CUP OF TEA! IT WAS WHAT HE WANTED. IT WAS WHAT HE LIVED FOR AT 86 YEARS OF AGE. AND IT WAS THE FOOD THAT BROUGHT US TOGETHER MORESO, WHEN HE WAS ILL. IT WAS NOT HEALTH-FOOD...OR WAS IT?!

*

LIFE IS NOT ALL ABOUT FOOD. THERE IS MAGIC IN FOOD - BUT IT CANNOT BE QUANTIFIED.

*

ON THE BUSES - #1 & #2

     #1

heart of compassion
as at stop after stop
after stop
pensioners board bus
SLOWLY
moment by moment
Buddha's dilemma
understandable.


     #2

pink ear-phones
freckled face
silver crucifix
immaculate nail-varnish
fingers at i-Phone
gone too soon
my blueberries 
also
have the
desired taste.

     *

june 30th  2012 - twixt weymouth & dorchester.

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SUMMERS W/ ZAZA - (10 poems)

TOO FRIENDLY

young ones
asking for
cake again
leaning
on fence
salivating

*

sun
going down
through pines
horses
going down
through fields

*

HABITS

Hannah
bareback-riding
long legs
elastic arms
&
light hands

*

ATTRACTION

Bees must
think
my hat's
a sunflower -
dozens
of 'em

*

Flies every-
where
wish i
had a
ponytail

*

BLACKSMITH

Mayor knows
he needs
a firm grip
or else
lose more
teeth

*

ON THE PATH

Flies on
the dung
still steaming

*

Nice enough to eat
ripe as a peach
& rock 'n' roll
on Caroline

*

SWALLOW

Swooping
in-and-out
the stables
in-and-out
my heart

*

Horses fed
little girls
in bed
full moon
fuels
summer dreams

*
(bernard hemensley * 2011 * writ over the 2 previous decades)

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"MONSIEUR NADO"

*

Monsieur Nado, aka STINGY ARTIST, left his hermitage, this Sunday morning, for Radipole Lake @ 04.10 hrs.,on his bicycle. Soon it will be mid-summer's day. He intends to celebrate his late mother's birthday on this day. She will be 88. Her ashes still occupy a cardboard carton, as delivered by the undertaker, a few days after her cremation. Monsieur Nado is still on the look-out for a "proper" vessel, in which to honour those remains. A local potter, a Buddhist, did make "urns" for this purpose, but was indisposed at the time of his enquiry. So the ashes sit, these two years past, in Monsieur Nado's bedchamber, until something just as suitable can be found. Or, maybe he will scatter them at the Lake, where once they were mistaken for sweet-hearts, sitting together on a bench, viewing the lake's calm waters, from one of the quiet paths that intersect this Lake....tres "Jules et Jim"...or nouveau roman...in Monsieur Nado's imagination!

Monsieur Nado was up and out early, to capture some pre-dawn photos. Unfortunately, not so many photos, as the memory-card on his digital camera expired along the way, but hopefully, not at the expense of artistic integrity displayed  as accompaniment to this text. Not too melancholic ? "Melancholy", certainly not being experienced by M.Nado. Roll on, the glorious twenty-first of June and the celebrations....in FOUR DAYS time!

*  *  *  *  *

4 QUICKIES....

     1.
remember snow?
wind-driven iciness?
not quite
a need for fire -
summer
after all.

     2.

what is it
about skin?
snow-white
in winter
that like
summer's
white roses
ache to blush
at the sun.

     3.

i remember my
mother told me
that she and
her sisters
would heave to
ease their mother's
ice-cream thighs
into corsets
shreaking
GELLATTY.
GELLATTY *
and laughing
and laughing.

(* ICE-CREAM. ICE-CREAM !)

     4.

no wish to
hex the weather
but summer's
green fields
so pleasantly-painted
by poets-of-the-past
more beautiful
mysterious
and precious
by far
under winter's
cloak of snow.

     *

(writen on bus - Weymouth/Dorchester return - friday 15th June 2012. Might work on 'em at later date BUT so busy to fit in any writing of poems lately, i planned to see what i could write on the journey. There was a fifth poem - about "hummingbird" - but it just did not come together for me....)

     *

                              *   *   *  

STINGY ARTIST'S HOUSE OF BOOKS @Golden GOJI Hermitage: ON "CHE HAMZAH'S MONKEY" - Owen Davis - Stingy Art...

STINGY ARTIST'S HOUSE OF BOOKS @Golden GOJI Hermitage: ON "CHE HAMZAH'S MONKEY" - Owen Davis - Stingy Art...: The life and legs of a book always amazes. Of recent times have met and had good chats with my Malay/Sufi friend, Suzuki. Warmth and eas...

MY RELIGION IS KINDNESS - RE : KWAN YIN'S BLOSSOMS IN WEYMOUTH

Yesterday, leaving the harbour area, walking towards North Quay, i bump into the "soft-slippered" lady from my "KWAN YIN" poem, posted here on 23 / 02 /2012. Not unusual, of itself, as i see her quite often, and usually stop to chat. We go back 27 years. Until recently, she was always accompanied by her giant of a husband.....ANYWAY, she had just come out of an establishment, where the fish nibble at ones feet in tanks of water ! i ask her if this is what she has been up to, just to amuse her. No, she has just had her hair done. After a little banter with the young hairdresser and myself...Churchill speeches!! etc. she begins to worry as to how she will get home on her "bad feet". The hairdresser had agreed to see her home, but i say i will, as i am going in that direction myself -towards ASDA - near where she lives. i am happy to do this. We walk arm-in-arm, VERY SLOWLY..like walking meditation - very mindfully. All the while, she is saying "hello" , left and right. Most people, she knows...some she does not. There is no differentiation. Especially, she likes to greet children. She is only a child-like 4-foot-nine, or thereabouts, herself. A very little thing.

As we near ASDA, she says she has shopping to do. I'm hoping there will be a shop assistant to help her, as i've seen happening often in recent weeks. No one about !!....Come-on, i say, Let's be doing it, i know where everything is. She is pleased that i am helping her...still arm-in-arm. We put some items in the basket - 2 JAM SWISS ROLLS -  6 ORANGES - BAG OF MINT HUMBUGS - BAG OF LICORICE ALLSORTS & 1 BOTTLE LOW CALORIE  FIZZY BITTER LEMON. (How is she still alive on this diet ? !...She has obviously, at about 80 years of age, not done too much wrong !)

How she manages, without regular help, is beyond me. No one, i believe, helped her, for many years, as she struggled to keep her "needy" husband in "order". So, where is/was the much heralded Care-in-the Community that MRS THATCHER brought-in, as she closed mental hospitals to give the "dignity" to patients, now no longer "needing" to be in an institution. They were now, sometimes, on the street instead !

  *

AT HOME, i reflected on my day : my day of chats and ART EXHIBITIONS (Dorset Art Weeks), walking in a summer breeze on the Esplanade...pretty girls....BUT THE BEST OF IT,was being with "my" "soft-slippered little-lady", of lending my arm, hands and heart to someone who required them. My only regret is that I KNOW I COULD HAVE HELPED HER MORE. IT ONLY REQUIRED SOME TIME AND A MORE OPEN, LOVING HEART AND NATURE. As THICH NHAT HANH says = we are all connected = "WE INTER-ARE". YOUR sadness makes ME unhappy. YOUR happiness = MY happiness. WE ARE ALL CONNECTED. THIS IS INTERBEING. This is why the DALAI LAMA says = "MY RELIGION IS KINDNESS."

                                                 (Sunday 27th MAY 2012)

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