CDs

Got the re-mastered edition of Remain in Light by Talking Heads on the system and I have to say that as far as re-masters go the Talking Heads series is going to stand as a stunning achievement. Most re-masters seem to be little more than an exercise in turning up the volume but not these, they are incredible and it is frankly hard to believe that they haven’t quietly gone back into the studio and re-recorded them so different they are to the originals.

Just about finished re-arranging my precious cd collection, really trying to thin it out and just keep the ones that I know that I really like. The exercise is supposed to be part of my strategy to cut down on my cd buying habit which I have to admit has been bugging me for some time. How many times have I walked into a HMV or Virgin on the off chance of finding something that I think that I’ll like and then blowing the best part of 20 quid? More recently of course it has not so much physically going to places as just browsing the web. I have had a pretty good go and I think that I am just getting rid of the stuff I know I’ll never play again. What I am now left with is a collection of around 500 CDs give or take one or two and that should really be more than enough. The batch that have just come out of the racks, deemed no longer necessary, will either be given away to anyone who wants them or just taken down to the local charity shop. Simple as that, I know I won’t miss them. Well at least I hope that I know.

Hopefully it will all go towards making me think twice when I next have the urge to go and buy a CD which will probably be tomorrow or sometime over the weekend. And I guess that when I sit down and really think about it there is not that much truly great stuff that has been released; especially these days where a lot of music is made by people who are simply pursuing a career and nothing more than that. Since getting my new car, a Toyota Avensis, I have also been going through a period of taking CDs out to the car and seeing which ones sound best on the eight speaker sound system. The CDs that I currently have in the motor are two by the French new progressive group Air, a recent live CD by British metal masters Iron Maiden, the re-mastered Bob Dylan 60s classic Blonde on Blonde and the first volume of the Wilco and Billy Bragg collaboration on tracks written by Woody Guthrie. I think it is called Mermaid Avenue but I might be wrong about that, having not played it for a good couple of years. In fact it nearly got chucked in the previously mentioned recent purge. Somehow it managed to hold on and I’m glad about that as I am sure that it would be ones of the ones I would regret getting rid of a couple of weeks or months further down the line.

Anyway all of this must show what a luxury life must be for me if these are the things that occupy my mind at the moment, when there are so many more serious things going on in the world. Thankfully I am in good health and have no need to worry about money or anything like that as long as I stick to my monthly budget. So many people are not in such a fortunate position and face real difficulties in both those areas. It will be helpful to me if I continue to be mindful of that and appreciate what I have, celebrate each day as the new dawn appears on the horizon.

An Uneasy Night

An uneasy night’s sleep. Kept waking up and drifting off again, never quite managing to go into the deep. The problem was that I hadn’t brought our wallets up. I had left them downstairs and I had been too lazy to get up and go and fetch them. Our house has been broken into twice in the last 2 years so now I always take our wallets upstairs when we crash. The psychological scars you could say. There was also the nagging worry in my mind that we are paying Jim too much to do this year’s mailing. He has to put 10,000 12 page supplements into envelopes along with an order form and then stick a label on them. Along with that he has to take them back to his garden shed in Loughton and then deliver them to us when they are complete. He getting £1350 for this and that works out at 13.5p per supplement and I think that is too much. In the past he has had a number of inserts to put in as well but this time around there are none, just the order form. It is yet another example of him getting the better of me when it comes to business and shows up again my sometimes crushing inability to strike the right deal. Not only do I think we are over paying Jim but I have also miscalculated on the piece weight this time around as well. Each piece comes in at exactly 65 grams which means that by just a single gram it falls into the higher price band on the Royal Mail Packet Post tariff which means that we are paying 36p per piece in postage instead of 32.9p; a bad mistake. It will mean that in the UK mailing of 7500 out of the 10,000 we will pay an extra £232.50. The 36p price tariff goes all the way up to 94 grams and I should have made sure we put in a couple of extra inserts at 10 or 15 grams each in order to get full value out of the tariff. It would have also given Jim a little more to do for his princely £1350. I will have to make sure that we do not get caught out again like this next time around. Little mistakes like this are what sends my blood temperature rising up the scale and leaves me staring into the face of failure as I work my time through this Capitalist system which actually let’s face it is doomed to destruction anyway. That’s right, I have just remembered the dream I had before I woke up. I looked out of our living room window and saw a huge plume of black smoke spiralling up from across the Roding Valley. Some great catastrophe had taken place and the wind was blowing the black smoke right in my direction. A few hundreds yards in front of me a house burst into flames from the heat and I saw a cat desperately scratching at the window trapped inside. Then I woke up and the sun was shining. Have a nice day!

Weather: Raining, London Grey

Writing this in the middle of the working day, coming to the end of my lunch break. Weather: raining, London grey. Spring has yet to come. Not cold exactly but not warm either. Thoughts centre on work at this time of the day, the things this afternoon which need to be done. Leaving early today in order to deliver some labels to Jim, our part time accountant who also does our mailouts from his garden shed in Loughton, Essex. We do two mailings each year, October and April. We are running a bit late on this one as it is already the last week of the month but none of the 10,000 have as yet gone out the door. Hopefully this will mean that May will be busy because as far as cash is concerned we beginning to run a bit low and need more to come in. The pressures of business; we are well and truly locked into the capitalist work mill and constantly need to check our figures to make sure our butts are covered. This will presumably go in until one by one we drop off the edge of the world and disappear into the distance of the measureless multiple lives we collect, live and share together in the vastness of space.

Ben Hur

Here's one from Revised Rudeness : Cuts Ups -

the sun scorched hair
in witch-like locks
coarsest camel’s hair
coarse as bedouin tent-cloth
his hands up as a signal
utterly boats dropped
repentance and baptism
stripped hissed crushed
crying in the wilderness

Childhood Inventories

Here's one from Revised Rudeness : Cuts Ups -

a red satin petticoat furred with
a striking clock box
velvet pins and box of sweetmeats
boxes of sweets
and a little blue box of
storm blew scatter crossed,
seasick and shaken
wind-blown flotilla veterans
up the dark sedge of reeds
inventories hidden

A Small Rap on Ghost Eternal

What to write about? I don’t know. The main thing in my head at the moment is what to play in my car, a 2005 Toyota Avensis, – re-mastered Talking Heads or prime quality live Iron Maiden? Tough decision. It’s a hard life.

The ghost eternal is a blog primarily for my archive of poems, I’ve been writing them since the early ‘80’s on and more often than not off, so I have a pretty good stock, enough to keep my going for a year or so I guess, especially if I throw in an odd new one every now and then. I don’t mind if the whole thing isn’t picked up upon; it’s about seeing all my stuff together and mixed up any old fashion; one day a poem from the ‘80’s next something from 2002 or whenever, then a fresh one; you know, stuff like that.

I like the idea of going onto the blog, posting stuff and watching nothing happen, writing to an audience of ghosts, a moonlit landscape in a little known place, only me for company.

Praise be to the ghost eternal!

5

Here's one from Poems from India : 2002

most of the time our thoughts
are caught on the wheels
of a tricky and complicated
ventricular system
built on wind and light,
circumnambulating
the fortress of the heart
where the radio of truth always plays,
and from the source the sound is perfect

problems begin with transmission,
for there be mountains
surrounding radio land -
those protective shoulders
where inner powers hide;
an unfathomable shrug
of the mystical number 5
keeps all pretenders at bay
on the lake of prayers,
so cast away all hesitation -
the stillness is deep

Flash in the Sky

Here's one from Revised Rudeness : Cut Ups -

sack racketed shoulder
wrapped out of pattern,
frantic slamming anti-flash
blasted open ransacked
animal shoulder clatter

Confucius and the Mercedes Benz

Here's one from 2006 -

throw down the stick
look into the river of dreams
and see the pagoda
on the western horizon
peace pagoda
rogue silence abandoned

fly to the city
out of the valley
ancient stones forgotten
they once astonished
moss covered tonics
and you were grateful
for their therapy

the Confucian paradigm
is lost in the lights
of divided families
thieves and broken boundaries
the lonely question -
how to live wisely
in the world of Mercedes-Benz

Tree in the Distance

Here's a new one, from 2006 -

tree in the distance
calling me,
dreams beyond it
forever free,
great cumulus confusion
stacks up;
horizon is bleached
wonky even,
colour of spring season

Tree of Stumble

Here's one from Revised Rudeness : Poems 1983-1991 -

tree of stumble
the virtuous path,
a made up nothing
of roots and gases

Babylon Drums

Here's one from Revised Rudeness : Poems 1983-1991 -

heat beaten monastic rice
and the dull quiet of day sleep
are a long way from the ocean
which is where my dreams lie
like solitary clouds of heaven
golden white and full of eagles,
bolder than let them drum over me
babylon drums

KSRTC Buses

Here's one I wrote in India 2002 -

let the warm wind wash across your face
and let your thoughts curl out of the side of your head
to disappear over the plains in a whisper,
peace arrives in the form of shining waters
but no sooner do you see them than they’re gone
replaced by onward meditations -
a bunch of bananas hanging from the front
of a roadside shack,
a herd of buffalo bossing it on the highway
unafraid of the metallic tonnage
that hurtles down towards them,
with more than a hint of jungle
hissing from the fenders,
the crunch of Shiva all too possible
on a beautiful sunny day

Python Fire

Here's a poem from the '90s -

a lose rhythm of python drum
floats like a holy trail inside my head
taking me anywhere i don’t care,
maybe to a lost holiday in a distant trance
or to the pure imagination of a desert land
populated by a random circuit of abandoned cars,
it doesn’t matter so long as there’s
the taste of the city within me lifted from the seas
of memory churches flowing through my heart
like a fresh mountain fire

Ghost Eternal

I rise
I try
I tire
I cry -
I close my eyes.
It is all over
Before it has begun.
Holding a handful of nothing
I can smell the incense burning,
Prayers for my soul are said
By someone in the distance,
And I am grateful.
The ghost eternal is open,
A cloud of substance
On the two-worlds border
Is washed in darkness,
It is time to move on...