Balloons.

Father de Carli...set sail in a chair, flown by 1,000 helium filled balloons.

He went so high, 5,300 meters and got colder and colder as the balloons carried him over the sea.

His phone stopped working.
Balloons started popping
And eventually he was dragged through the sea, still in his chair until the sharks found him.

..he was all gone.
Only his foil suit remained when the boats finally traced the path of his descent.





There is no reason why...

Ceder tree.

I drove past the first house I bought, this afternoon.

I wonder if it still has pink carpets and how big is the tree I planted in the corner of the garden, twenty-eight years ago.

I was on my way to visit one of the three trees (not including the one I planted) I have ever taken any notice of. I didn't take any notice of the one I planted.

Gardening is the wrong speed for me, I don't believe that there is any connection between what I do and what happens if the result is longer than a month or more!

The tree I wanted to see is in the park, close to the old house.
A very regal,
Absolutely massive
Ceder tree.

I wanted some twigs from it to burn.
I'm considering making incense..

The ceder tree is of the wrong type, but the smoke smells like Tibetan incense..The resin from the tree smells like frankincense.

Then we went to check the viability of pushing a wheelchair from the back garden, along a green lane, to the road that leads to the shops.

Husband's mother has been confined to her bedroom for over a year now!

Not because she is ill, but because she is unable to do anything about her plight...

In theory she could go downstairs.

She is looked after by her husband, and he decides what happens.
If he doesn't want to help her to go down stairs on the lift, she can't go.

Abuse is not always the obvious things.
The bad things that happen are often normal and so mundane you don't recognize them

The track from the house to the road looks ok, so at some point soon we need to try to get past all the silly objections.

Got toothache.
Cloves work.

Listening to Passover.

Deciphering Meslamtea, Nergal, Erra link to Hercules.

OSCILLATE from Daniel Sierra on Vimeo.

Oh lord, where to begin?
A few days ago the possibility of writing anything about my life looked about as feasible as crossing the Sahara dressed as I am and equipped with nothing but a VW Polo and a bit of sun-block.

So that leaves me with the detritus of current 'news and affairs'..
The image of doctors and landlords being asked to check the legitimacy of people....

Non-citizen?
Non-person
go die you are not one of us...


The news is full of footballs
Reminding me of  Sebastian Haffner's description of the emptiness of German society
War reports read for win/lose content.
The beautiful game.

Individual Vs 'community'

The hideous spectacle of disgruntled Labour and Conservative voters, uniting to vote for the 'Dad's Army' party...

Hell why not?
Lets get rid of all those things that aren't 'British'...

Silence

As the English language, full of Saxon and Norse, Latin and a sprinkling of extra-hot sunshine imports is tossed out.

Before English was spoken?
Wheat, pottery, beer, wine...were imported

Farming.
Was imported.

The long barrows, an Eastern European tradition that spread along the Danube valleys and across the sea.

The Beaker burials that lie under the round barrows of Wessex.
Copper smelting..
Stonehenge...
Iron.

Sorry, they all have to go.

Ruining the countryside!
Bloody eyesore.

So, one son is off to town to be interviewed for a pod cast by Jack Parker.

And my other has just got the job as drummer for Joy and Repetition.

In my in-box
An invite from The National Trust to go on a cruise.
Curiously tempting!

Thousands of pounds

To sail all around Britain...

It would be civilized though
Don't you think?

After our last trip out...
To Halas Abbey and Belas Knap
Anything in motorbike clothes easily becomes a forced march up hills.

A cruise sounds so relaxed.

In Britain we have two admins in charge of historic landscapes.

English Heritage 'do' the pre-historic places
Or at least own the buildings or megaliths

Whilst NT own the land.
And buildings that have a written history and a roof.

I recall that in the early years of the 20th century there was some prejudice against the benefits of civilization

T.S. Eliot commented upon the fate of the Melanisians explored in an essay on the Depopulation of Melanesia, by the psychologist W.H.R. Rivers...In The Dial  published December 1922,

... W.H.R. Rivers adduced evidence which has led him to believe that the natives of that unfortunate archipelago are dying out principally for the reason that the "Civilization" forced upon them has deprived them of all interest in life. 

They were supposedly dying from pure boredom.

W.H.R. Rivers wrote:

 A great deal of satisfaction has been felt by government authorities in the Solomons at the abolition of head-hunting expeditions. True, it was time they came to an end, but the government when it took away at a stroke the chief occupation of the men, viz. war and preparation for war, put nothing in its place, and now I have heard from a traveller in the Western Solomons that the men simply loaf about and smoke in idleness. A government edict that extinguishes war is not going, ipso facto, to convert a savage warrior into a peaceful agriculturalist. In this case there is probably experienced a great loss of vitality and zest of life.

'Heritage is an industry
The heritage preserved by English Heritage and The National Trust is, especially in the case of English Heritage, a fantasy not unlike Game of Thrones: too clean, too eloquent, expensive...fake but ultimately a pleasant waste of time.

And less exciting than head-hunting.

All this talk of vultures (the YT at the top of this page)
Makes me think of defleshed bones and long barrows.
And Marija Gimbutas's theory about the beaked, bird goddesses of death...

The Mesopotamian image, of Inanna- Queen of Heaven (she holds the rings signifying the store-house and she stands upon the lion) is also described as Ereshkigal- Queen of the Great Earth (the underworld) because she has those scratchy bird-feet claws and owls at either side..
--


Why is your sword so red with blood,
O my gallant son?

I stabbed my brother, he is dead,
Mother, dearest mother.



When will you come back again,
O my unhappy son?

When the raven turns snow-white,
Mother, honored mother.

When the snow-white swan turns black . . . .
When the moon turns burning hot . . . .
When the stars dance in the sky . . . .
When we all come to Judgement Day.

Link..