abtw777

I had a tree house when I was a kid. Way high up in the branches, it seemed. I visit it now, as a grown-up, but cannot fit through its little doorway. Even so it brings back happy memories of days spent in leaves and sunlight. I’ve certainly not given up on this pursuit! Now though I’ve tied a big hammock in the branches, even higher off the ground, and I clamber up on sunny days to spend time with the trees and with my thoughts. Today, strangely, I’m thinking about tattoos! I’d clambered up to the hammock and now I lie here contemplating some henna tattoos just painted onto my skin. The shifting sunlight through the leaves mixes with the henna patterns. An emerald web of sunlight. It’s hypnotic. Hennas are temporary of course, and one day I might get some permanent marks. But the whole notion of putting designs onto our skins had got me thinking. Skin’s a funny thing when you think about it. A surface onto the outside world. So the surface of it is not quite us, but not qu...

There’s something deliciously exuberant and indulgent about sunflowers! They are flowers to the max! The uber-flower! No wonder insects get dizzy with ecstasy when they visit flowers! There’s a field of sunflowers near my house. Some of them have spilled over into a little hollow in the ground next to the field, beneath a tree. In summer it’s a wonderful place to lie down and read or sunbathe or just look at the sky. A bank of moss, short grass and tiny daisies sits amongst the rogue sunflowers that have escaped from the field. I lie down on it with my feet pointing upwards towards the sky. It’s a steep bank so it’s almost like hanging upside down. Sometimes it’s good to see the world the wrong way up. Because there’s something wrong with the world, I’m thinking on this particular day. It has too much knowledge perhaps, or too many ‘facts’ or people who think they know the facts. Everyone has their own myth, and that’s okay. But why can’t we just leave other people with the...

It’s always black and white with you. Yes and no. True or false. Fact or fiction. Everything is a competition. But at last you have realised that co-operation is an alternative to all that competing. But I must tell you that even that wider distinction of competition or co-operation is just a myth. For a forest, these distinctions don’t mean very much. What you think of as truth today will be myth tomorrow. And tomorrow’s truth will likewise change into myth and then be forgotten. Some of you sit amongst my trees. And if you are wise you listen closely and hear the big thoughts about the past and the future and the purpose of it all. There’s some wisdom there. The wiser amongst you choose to live among trees, even in tree houses. And here you learn that there are other ways of knowing, other ways of being in the world. You learn that the connections in a forest that you thought took place underground are really extended outwards – even outwards into space. You learn a great...

It’s a familiar phrase: Boys will be boys. But a horrible phrase, when you stop to think about it. An excuse for acting like an imbecile. An assumption of privilege. An invitation to break the rules. A suggestion that some particular boys are ‘proper’ boys, not girly boys, not soft, gentle, peaceful, still boys, or, God forbid, boys attracted to other boys! So when little boys hear their parents saying this phrase with an indulgent smile – boys will be boys – they know it’s okay to be a bully, a thug, a vandal, a cheat. That, after all, is what their parents are endorsing. And what better recommendation to bad behaviour can you get! Forget gentleness, sensitivity, caring, art, fashion, reading, writing – mother and father have already given the signal that such nonsense is beneath them, that these things are only of interest to girls. And girls are inferior beings. Well, you may say, things are changing – at least in a few countries of the world. Boys who like boys, girly boy...

Walking along a promenade. A summer day. There are people lying out in the sun, feet facing the water. It is some familiar town and the beach curves away into the distance with people all along it. After a while I notice there are some naked people in amongst the people taking the sun. No-one seems disturbed by this. The nudes seem welcoming and friendly and this I take as some sort of a sign. It is time to stop, get undressed and go swimming. So begins my most frequent recurring dream. Often it stops around this point. I wake up feeling very content. Sometimes the water is too shallow for proper swimming. Sometimes it gets deep and then shallow again. But if the dream continues further it goes like this: Diving down beneath the water, there are ruined buildings. Somehow it is possible to go inside and walk about. The water is kept out and there is air to breathe. For the most part he rooms of the buildings are empty. But occasionally there are rows and rows of clothing...