“The total mass of human-made materials (dominated by concrete) now exceeds the mass of all living biomass on earth”

Houses without names
Houses without rooms
Churches without doors
People without accents
People without stories
People fidgeting on trams
Petrograd
Communism knew concrete
The Berlin wall, too, heaved in concrete politics
Religion does not get much further in secular society than ideas

If there are talisman, how do they feel?
What future are you holding?
As you walk through the city
Waterloo Bridge
National Theatre
Hayward Gallery
Barbican
How did concrete and art become bedmates?

Castle with no keep
No glass
No wood
No stone
Civilization without people
Souls without words
Faces without mouths
Sounds trickling into silence
Sounds absorbed into concretes sponge
A dumb thud
A mute inertia
Monk without the scream

A church drawn from your pocket
An imaginary city, uninhabitable,
Where Elon Musk roves,
lifting his leg to concrete, and taking a piss
Is concrete alive?
Does it feel our piss?
Does it know the acid rain?
Can concrete grow like a cell, putting out feelers into the air to feel the acid which threatens it?

Peter Thiel
Sits as an abbott
In a concrete hall,
Seeking immortality
Floating, libertarian city states on the sea
Lights glisten on the foreshore
Peter Thiel gazes into his palantir
What future is prophesised there?

Unrooted churches
Anywhere, nowhere
Is concrete strong or weak?
Like a worm
It doesn’t see itself
Listen not to the abject

What does it stand for?
Kafka is forgotten
The octopus forgets to grow arms
A vociferous material
Which speaks to the tectonics of the modern
The tectonics of a Roman viaduct

An urban fox jumps out at me from behind a concrete wall
The cosmic crow lands on it
What would Ted Hughes make of concrete?

How would Christopher Wren judge concrete?
What would Giotto think?
Maybe his frescos would look pleasing on concrete walls
A concrete cathedral built by romantic worms
There is *only* interiority
Locked in minds
Locked in concrete selves
Spinning in self-referential loops

In concrete hedonism or science?
George Monbiot and the ecomodernists would love it here
Less so Chris Smaje
The organic grower in Frome
Who proposes a small farm future

Did you know
The Romans invented concrete
Then the recipe was lost for 2000 years
But before them were the Greeks, with marble
Bring back the Eleusinian Mysteries
where the Apollonian and Dionysian balanced each other
What moves our lands?
Persephone rises and in her steps
The earth remembers the pulse of life and death

Vacuous echoes in the concrete hallways of London
Spectral presences
More equality in the oaks of the forest?
Fake hierarchies, fragmented conformists
How will the human spirit relate to and speak through concrete?

What is concrete in a postmodern century?
Anonymous yet strangely warm
Cracked cement in polished Tate Modern flaws
Barbed wire on concrete walls
The concrete divide and barbed wire aggression
Timothy Morton’s eye glistens amidst the oil rigs of Houston
Which sits on concrete undergirdings

Roots of a tree break through the concrete
Like a quiet wingbeat opening the sky
If there is something that could break barbed wire,
Wouldn’t that be a thing?
Moss has no concrete complex, nor does lichen
The lichen is slow but tough
It is neither fungus nor algae but both
This is concrete’s virtue
It hosts life
Concrete covered in life’s slime – the future?
In time concrete is part of life it just doesn’t look like it
Let us plant trees

In study group, when discussing maha metta,
the experience of non-duality clicked again.
Silapiya explained: “while metta involves self-reference,
maha metta is when generosity
spontaneously pours out of you,
because you no longer experience the person
sitting across from you as separate,
and you help them as you would help yourself.”
His supra-human eyes probe. He continues:
“you no longer experience yourself as a separate being –
but intertwined with all life.”
Every now and then it clicks:
the unconditioned,
medicine prescribed by the doctor,
a soothing relief,
“It’s just a ride” – Bill Hicks

Listening to “Home” by Maribou State
the subject of “home” is on my mind

“Varkala” by Maribou State played at Frances’ funeral

Re. “Home” by Maribou State,
what does it mean to build a home in these times?

Heidegger’s concept of “dwelling” –
 a mode of being that involves a harmonious relationship with the cosmos

Is “home” the source? The mother?
My whole life I have been seeking the feminine, a return to the mother,
as if I was cut off, homeless, alone in the universe,
told to forge ahead as an isolated phallus!

Alan Watts anecdote:
an astronaut returns from space and is then asked about God –
the astronaut replies, “she is black”

Morton is skeptical of the notion of “home”
because it entails sealing oneself off,
embedding oneself in a specific place,
sealing “human” realm off from the “nonhuman” realm –
denying interconnected, entangled reality

Does any of this relate to climate change and the ecological crisis?

Morton and Zizek say that it’s a false narrative that we are cut off from Mother Nature
they call deep ecology proto-fascist
there is no Big Other, according to Zizek
so why then, in myself, am I continually seeking out the lost mother figure?

I have a hard time embracing negativity,
as Zizek and Paul Celan do
(by negativity I mean thelack or gap that is inherent to human subjectivity) 
I never recovered from the mirror stage of human development.
Am I indulging in naive sentimentalism? Delusion?

Everything I do:
music, yoga, mushrooms, romantic relationships, wild swimming, writing poetry,
is an attempt to reconnect to… what?

A “lost intimacy”, Morton would call it – not lost wholeness or lost mother or lost nature

Rose is keen to connect to a (pristine?) nature
which is prior to/beyond human construction

I am more sympathetic to this view these days –
especially if nature refers to
the free, creative spirit, within and without
 “ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness”

Lesley pulled me back to centre.
As she cares for me, I care for her.
The feedback loops of care
develop both our capacities for self-care.

Friendship is a great thing
but romantic love is red hot –
thereby it has greater potential for healing?
(while it burns)

I spent three years learning all the concepts regarding “healing”,
without healing;
with Lesley, healing happens in practice.

When I come back to centre,
it is as though there is a plug hole in my belly,
and skittish, nervy waves of anxiety
drop down it,
like a waterfall through my belly
to the sacrum and hips,
where tension crashes and splashes.

When the anxiety spikes, let it spike.
keep still and silent – let it spike
To “stay in touch” in times of dissociation
requires my greatest level of strength

A snail called Chris
slithers along Old Kent Road,
a soft-bodied wanderer
in a world of straight lines.
He crawls toward Asda, seeking food,
not knowing its processed glare.
Traffic roars around him
like Brobdingnagian beasts,
its pulse too fast for his quiet timing.
People stream past; the shadow of a stomping heel is a possibility.

Meanwhile, in Burgess Park,
Lesley the snail spirals calmly by the lake,
a creature shaped by green light and open space,
her rhythms tuned to wind, birds,
and the patient geometry of leaves.
She keeps her shell strong with calcium,
her life soft as moss,
anchored in a log’s cool crevice,
unhypnotised by the city’s bright machinery.

One day, sensing something wrong,
Chris leaves old kent road behind.
Shaking from old shocks,
but held together by the quiet integrity of his slime trail,
he inches toward the distant trees.
A saxophonist and a ukulele player busk nearby,
and their riffs shimmer through him
like rain on his shell.

At last, he reaches the shade where Lesley lives.
The diffused light soothes him;
the lake breathes.
And when he sees her,
Lesley is radiant in her spiral home,
he knows he has reached a place
where his smallness fits the world again.

Joy surges through you
after a winter of brokenness,
when you thought such emotion had dissipated.

It was waiting within you, hibernating –
in the sacrum, in the hips, in the core –
ready to roar.

Society, technology and Elon Musk cannot defeat it;
nor Trump descending his golden escalator.

It arises here and now,
within and beyond your flesh,
outshining sorrow and suffering

I’ve been the underground man for too long
Trapped in consciousness
Wrapping every experience and memory up in thought and deconstruction

You must move. Energy wants to express itself outwards, not congeal inwards

Is this jouissance? Perhaps so:
an energy beyond pain and pleasure,
borne in the charnel ground.

Spontaneous eruptions of jouissance are rare.

For the most part, I cannot rely on jouissance,
nor any emotion –
the emotional realm is too unreliable.

What I can rely on is mindfulness:
the ability to hold what is present in awareness.
Intentionality; will.

But I am grateful for tonight’s grace

My pale face fills with colour.

A fusion of mind and body (samadhi).

Romantic love may be a supernova,
but the red dwarf of electric joy
exists within each of us, self-sustaining.

We are made of sunlight.
The star’s old fire lives in our blood.
Let it keep burning.

Will the drug addict on the sidewalk in Berlin
witness the luminosity beneath his trauma?

Kali waits, ready to wound,
to destroy, to create, to love.

The above sounds a little like *elan vital*;
shout out to Bergson and Deleuze

What’s the difference between elan vital and jouissance?
(oh no! too much philosophical jargon!)

Is elan vital, as Deleuze’s posited essential process of reality (vitality of difference)
too simplistic, positive, expressive and eternalist?
Too good to be true?
Ray Brassier thinks so.

Too hot, too life-affirming; no entropy, no decay.
Perhaps – but I will stick with Deleuze and Bergson.

This is the energy I trust.

this poem has too many ;s

Jumping, looping, hopping
A grasshopper on the slopes of the Alps
Oil hits a hot frying pan
Spitting and spluttering
Bare feet on the Sahara desert
The Duracell Bunny

Spitting across London
Spluttering from Chiang Mai to Berlin to Alicante
Hopping from the counter to the staff room and back
Jumping up and down on my meditation cushion
Looping through my instagram feed

Unable to stay in one place
Disappearing and reappearing
A person one moment, a ghost the next

A pseudo Buddhist,
Less Zen than a chicken who knows its time is up

You only lasted one month in the monastery

A spider lost in a web of data
A jack in the box
A scared butterfly
A cockerspaniel off the lead

Therapist is not buying it
You exploded at him once in the therapy room
He wasn’t buying that either
Not the agitation, nor the scatteredness, nor the rage

“It’s all an act!” he says
“I don’t buy it. Good pretence though”

You appreciated him calling your bluff.
The Freudians should learn this tactic.

D: “What’s the function of the agitation and jumpiness?”
C: “Wait, it has a function? I thought this was my nature.”
D: “It allows you to avoid the underlying sadness within you. And it allows you to avoid taking responsibility for the task of building your life.”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
C: “And how does the sadness move?”
D: “By feeling it. And forgiveness.”

And then there is the *drop*
Have you ever had that?
The *drop* into a different dimension of being

What the Buddha calls no-self – anatta
Always already present
Waiting to reveal itself to you
But don’t forget – it’s not you!

Maybe, dear reader, you’ll have trouble conceiving of this experience
As much trouble as I had conceiving it

I was brought up as a Western individualist
with a Protestant *grip*
while being a lover of American entertainment
and big personalities like Howard Stern
I came of age in an era of ego-performativity

The Buddha’s teachings have been quite the contrast:
no-self, the unborn, the zero point, the formless, purposelessness, the void
These teachings have been deepening in me over the years
Their power and profundity self-evident

Applying “right view” in Berlin –
where divas parade
like peacocks and parrots and exotic birds
while being a diva yourself,
having just started a band

Ego is needed at times,
to drive forwards with momentum
Identity and intentionality are connected
self-belief and agency are connected

At Padmaloka once, I remember Vidyadaka saying,
“we’ll need to utilise some ego here to get tasks done during working week”

No-self is a gesture towards opening – widening – expanding – participating – sharing
a generosity of spirit
A trust
Loosening the grip

A kind of balance with which you ride the chaos that you find around you
It is not a matter of resolving the chaos
Because there’s something arrogant and war-like about putting the world in order
whereas there’s something poetic
about an escaped ski going down the mountain
over the contours of chaos

“Believe in yourself” :
a cute cliche or a fundamental principle?

Maybe change “believe in yourself” to “believe in no-self”

In my case,
if I trace back my ethical misdeeds
They are rooted in self-doubt, self-abandonment, if not self-hatred

I wish all people could think well of themselves
no matter the “reality” of themselves

The “reality” is not fixed, not essential,
a shimmering mirage
but shimmering
An appearance I’m learning to hold without grasping

Sand dunes

No-self, a decentred centre, perhaps –
but a kind of centre too!
The self is necessary, on some level!

Nirvana is a robust tent with which to bunker down in a storm
Many guy ropes
Not a limp nothingness
but an unentangled presence
The iron Goddess of mercy

Mask/space, persona/choir
The show must go on!!!
Enjoy the video game
You hold the controller, you wear the virtual reality glasses

Know that there is truth in the film playing through the virtual reality glasses
and truth in the space which opens when the glasses are put down

Aim towards less fabrication
The more minimal the fabrication, the more I trust it

You’ve had a fun time playing Aragorn in Berlin recent weeks
The swarthy hero
As much as a neroudivergent guy can play Aragorn, at any rate

But remember that Frodo is the real hero within you
Who can withstand any ordeal, any temptation
“Small” , vulnerable, but indefatigable

Frodo is the real hero inside all of us (Jesus)

Wandering around Zadie Smith’s Kilburn
London entwined in congealed race
White sex scumbags
Hobbly old aunts
Young men who had kids too early
Carrying tricycles under their arms

A parade to Gerry’s Pompeii
A garden on the Paddington canal
filled with makeshift statues of British historical figures
Made by Gerry Dalton
– now a craze in the art world
A carnival of colour and absurdity in the autumn rain

Council houses counting their durability
Clones with old house plants
Doors counting rhythms of concrete stairwells
Gen Z shouts: “Peckham is brutifal!”

I saw the best minds of my generation
Writing adverts for tech products
Upgrading their job titles from account executive to account manager
For Deloitte and KPMG

Dress-wearing men parade the streets of New Cross
Dallying Cautiously
Kilt wearing schoolgirls in Highgate

Protestors curl around Whitehall
While metropolitan police arrest blind pensioners
A counter protest of Zionists and nationalists nearby
Light and darkness mingled

The engine of capital roars in its Isengard dungeon (Canary Wharf)
Across the river artists sell paintings for tenners in their Woolwich studios

Lloyds bankers meditate in thee Buddhist centre, seeking New Age ablution

In St Thomas’s hospital, people on their last legs with cathatas
Zimmer frame through pale green wards

Phones ping between here and Waterloo
A thousand pings a minute

Yet it is quiet and grounding in Rose’s abode
As grounded as Silapriya’s sentences
And the presence of my Triratna Buddhist mentors
A bulwark of calm in the face of jumpy feeling

Richard Roger’s taste for deconstructions
Contrasts with Belgravia’s lucid white columns

Coins no longer rain into the guitar cases of buskers
Only the tappings of phone wallets
The faces of bus drivers nod in a depressed stupor
As acknowledged by their passengers: “thank you driver!”
Is happiness a skill?
Is it given to some and not to others by an unearthly god?

All is tragic, all is victorious,
From Harrod’s to Tower Hamlets

Dickens still walks these streets
Was John Soames happy in his Hogarthian labyrinth?

Women rub shoulders with seasoned football supporters
Before an Arsenal ladies match

While men spend their entire monthly salary
On a Tottenham Hotspur season ticket
This is how men discharge their warring tendencies
Without wrestling free of neoliberal choke hold
Nor breaking through the veneer of superficiality in any way

“We build our computer (systems) the way
we build our cities:
over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.” – Ellen Ullman

I used to think that there was a directionality to Leviathan
But there is none.
Technological evolution happens of itself
An out of control algorithm
Grey ecosystems wearing trainers and tracksuits
Sam Altman says it took him being the “adult in the room”
To realize the adults in the room do not know what they’re doing

Free market capitalism misses the point
Our sacred life is split into numbered hours
Of pointless production

How can one person change anything?
All I can do is write down what I see happening
Seek solidarity with those willing to resist
Take to the streets

Philosophers toke weed through the night
Which rolls into some untrodden dawn

One door opened,
a life I longed to live,
Then it closed,
and I remained
on the old road,
dragging the weight
of the person I am today.

Grief moves slowly.
It is not only the loss of someone,
but the loss of a future self,
a life unlived.
The wound is not only loss,
but shame.

The hardest forgiveness
is the mirror’s forgiveness.
Yes, self without substance,
a shifting mirage,
but before dissolving the old identity,
one must see clearly
the tight knots of attachment,
the names we give ourselves.

Knots ripped apart at once,
But no gentle release:
rather, a tearing.
I did not feel
objects vanish into emptiness.
I felt myself torn from them,
left bare,
wandering the wilderness,
asking:
who am I,
without what was taken?

Love enters, departs,
two cousins dancing
through the corridors of time.
Love tears, loss follows.

Since then,
I ricoched down the river,
syncing up with new sankharas
eddying around me,
opening to them as best I can,
growing through the cracks.

I move through emptiness,
seeing it in all:
past, present, the debris of loss.
One grief after another,
personal loss piled upon loss.

How my heart clings:
frozen, clawed,
nervous system hardened
like Miss Havisham in her dusted gown.

Emptiness is a screwdriver,
unscrewing the hinges of samsara.
It is lubricant,
smoothing the friction
between subject and object.

I dissect experience
into time and space,
into parts that shimmer and vanish.
Careful
not to slip into nihilism,
not to disown the vividness of feeling.

To touch experience
while seeing its emptiness
is the subtle art I practice.
All for myself,
so I may one day extend
to others.

July 2024 was more than ego death,
more than heartbreak.
Affliction clamps the chest;
emptiness pries it open.

A mirage in the desert:
from afar, shimmering,
yet at the source, nothing to hold.

A rainbow: radiant, uplifting,
grasp it and there is nothing;
its being depends on sunlight, raindrops, position.

An echo in the valley:
a voice resounds,
yet no speaker dwells behind it.
Thoughts, feelings, “I”,
all echoes,
arising and fading
in awareness.

A mirror:
holding images yet unstained,
forms vivid,
but substance absent.
Experience arises,
seen fully,
but nothing lies behind.

When sankharas cease,
a possibility arrives:
neither drive forwards into *becoming*
nor collapse back into *non-becoming*
In that gap
is your true home

Dukkha teaches anatta
over and over again

Throne of Blood and Ran
Two characters driven by power, money and ambition
Bending the worldly winds in one’s favour by force
Caught in fixed identities
Abstractions about who they are and who they should be
Both try to secure control over their fate
– through murder, division of land, alliances –
but events spiral out of control

Saddhaloka sits beside me on the sofa at Adhisthana
A humble man
70 years old
With a quiet presence
He murmurs with a kind of poignant empathic sigh at one point
He knows that human identities and plans are fragile
He knows in his bones that it’s important to hold them lightly
He knows that accepting instability and uncertainty – is the stability

Rashomon; Ikiru; Seven Samurai
He is the Beethoven of directors!
While Beethoven had fullness in sound, Kurosowa had fullness in vision

Saddhaloka has fullness in presence

Movement runs through his films
The movement of the elements:
A world much greater than ourselves
Eternal movement – impermanence – move with the flow, roll with it
Like a rolling stone – the good kind

His central question: why can’t people be happy together?
But prior to that : why can’t be people be happy?

That’s a question which resonates with me!
Why can’t I be happy?

Can I smile, and mean it?
That’s my aim in life