brace yourself

up in the morning early

Fog last night once the sun had gone, but today;


early morning,

ice,

smoke,

misty trees,

and sun on the ice house.

After only four days of theLime Tree diary, the roofers came yesterday and put up six feet deep scaffolding to fix the kitchen roof, so the view is totally obscured. Picture today (and for who knows how long?) taken from the courtyard. They turned up at 8am this morning with a cement mixer, and haven't been seen since. Don't think I'd want to work on the north face of a roof today either; yesterday's frost never went from there.
I would have condemned the cement anyway.

Cold frosty evening

it's been a cold and beautiful day:


cold robin (click to enlarge)



cold water


sun just gone



new clearing



low path

Cold and frosty morning

reasons why I like winter:

apple trees



last years' leaves



cherry blossom



apple blossom



a seat in the garden

Sunny Sunday

A trip to Tyningham and the mouth of the Tyne (the East Lothian Tyne, that
is, not the Newcastle one)

sky rocks



wavy rock



through the trees



Marg in the sky with pebbles



cormorant and bass rock

Synaptic Self indulgence

Having mastered the fabric of the cosmos ( a doddle) I am now wading through 'The Synaptic Self' (Joseph LeDoux), a brave but rather turgid attempt to explain the emergence of self from neural synapse creation.
For anyone with more spare time than is good for them, there probably isnt a more engrossing question than this one, 'what is a self?' What interests me is that in even the best books I've read on the subject (Anotnio Damasio's 'The Feeling of What Happens'), just as you think you're mastering the whole thing you get to the bit that seems to say 'and then a miracle happens'.
In the case of this book, it comes early on, in the situation in which you most commonly meet it, when discussing the neural structure of vision. You get a description of the retinal nerves and the neural transfer of their stimuli to the visual cortex, and then this gets 'processed' into visual images, as if everyone knows exactly what that means and how it works.

Still, reading a book like this can have its own affects; to be aware of even a tiny bit of the extraordinary processes going on inside me all the time produces its own set of neural responses that result in a very special kind of light-headedness.

Being alive is an amazing trick, and I have immense respect for anyone or anything that can pull it off convincingly.

Lime Tree diary

This is the lime tree that I see when I look out of our kitchen window. Inspired by Sally's journal of Brook Park, I'm resolved to take pictures of it every day, if possible. Well, it's a nice idea, we'll see. I'll post them in a gallery here.

meanwhile, back on the window cill:

Book Covers in the Sky

Walked out my door tonight and there before and above me was the cover of my book.
Wish I could show you a photograph but my little digital camera just goes black.
Here instead is the stunning version Joel did

Play me some wheel music

just put my old memory card into my new camera and what do I find?



This is the Mound in Edinburgh in Festival time (2004). Mr Spin, one of our favourites, turned up working with our two other favourites. And all for free.

first signs

Times passed

well, I didn't have to wait long to see that posting a link to Times Bones was not a good idea. I've spent most of today writing and re-arranging it, and I can't face uploading it all. So I've taken down the link.
Still, a lot of progress was made, which is good because it means I can look forward to work tomorrow.

What is Time's Bones, I here you cry. What is it indeed. We-e-ell, it's a story, told for young people, derived from my work on creation myth, if you can imagine that; though how it came to be the way it is has been as much of a surprise to me as to anybody. Suffice it to say that the main character is the jaw bone of a giant pike.

Rony rites again

just read this wonderful poem at Rony robinson's journal Bobbing about
Thanks to Sally for sending me there

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity

The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like disonant details awaiting harmonious resolution

So says Brian Greene at the close of his book 'The Fabric of the Cosmos', which i finished last night. He's talking about phyisicists, who, he says, 'spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It's an occupational hazard'

Well, I must say this book took me quite a way down 'the winding road to clarity', but 'the jungle of bewilderment' still forms the major part of my landscape.

see how it goes

I've just modified the side bar on the right so that you can view the current state of play with Time's Bones using my XLFiction Storymaker Toy.
Not sure if this is going to involve too many distractions, but we'll see.

Dream Distractions

Joel wanted to know if he could view the document as a whole when it was divided into separate documents. This is the kind of distraction I really appreciate.
Here is a downloadable version of the XLFiction Storymaker file. I've added a new Menu Bar item 'Merge Selected Documents'.
Replace my file-links with yours then select a range of cells including the documents you want to combine (the whole lot if that's what you want). Be careful; you have to click and hold if you start at a cell that has a hyperlink or you'll just open the document instead. (This means using the left-Click on your touch pad if you're using a laptop - tapping the pad doesn't seem to do the trick). You can include blank cells; the code will ignore them.

The code will then open a new word doc and dump your files into it as 'subdocuments'. (In the order along first then down, if you're using more than one column as I have here).

The wonderful thing about this is that you can edit this 'master document', and your edits will be preserved in the original individual documents. (Similarly, edits to the original documents themselves will be updated in the master once its saved; basically the master is a view of a set of linked documents).

I've also discovered that Blogger rewrites the paths to my hyperlinks when I uploaded the html version, so it would be straightforward to put up the text files. then I could write this book online. Hmm ...

Orion re-visited

I just wanted to say, that the image I posted below is the nebula in Orion.
I said it very quickly this morning. I wanted to say it again, very slowly this evening, because I have been thinking about it all day (I've been at a commmittee meeting of the Lowland and Border Pipers' Society), and it keeps overwhelming me. I'll say it again, in case I haven't quite got my head round it :-
This is an image of the nebula in the constellation of Orion.
Sorry, I don't think I can cope .....

visiting orion

I just received this image from starry Night, the people who provide my astronomy software. though you might like to see it. It's the nebula in orion's belt

If you click on this image, it'll take you to the Hubble site where you can spend as long as you care to travelling around the nebula.

Incidentally, I'm told that the two stars of Orion's feet are two thousand light years apart; that's one hell of a leap, even for a giant. It means that his right foot will get here two thousand years befor his left.

XL Fiction

I was quite pleased with the idea of using a spreadsheet to create a time line for the characters in a fictional work-in-progress, but I'm even more pleased with the latest stage which involves using a new worksheet as a map of the text, because not only can I colour the things I've done (more or less) different from the things I've left undone, BUT I can insert hyperlinks in the cells to the text itself, so I can easily see what's actually in each section..
I discovered that you can use the usual HTML form of 'anchor' in these hyperlinks, but instead of being web-page anchors, they can be Word document bookmarks
(eg. 'Chapter One.doc#beginning). Type this directly; dont use the 'bookmark' button on the hyperlink dialog, coz Excel thinks you cant do that and gives up)
You could put bookmarks throughout a complete text, which is what I started doing, but I soon realised that what I wanted to do was move the Excel cells around to re-arrange the bits of text, so I ended up creating separate word documents for them all and linking to them.

So now I have a map of the work that I can easily shift bits of, and I can open the sections of text and edit them to make them fit their new positions. Much more fun than skating around a long text trying to find bits and copy and paste them. I think I'm going to copyright this idea here and now. (you can probably buy an expensive piece of software that does the same thing
You can see the map I've got here (new window), but the links to the text won't work, of course, unless I decide to put the texts on the web site.

curled up with new dimensions

I was right to be excited. it got even better later, and today I think I've sorted it out. I really do.
What a strange business it is, when stories take on their own life; one idea pops up from who knows where and the thing takes on a whole new dimension. I think this is because I've started writing in a comfortable armchair, not at my desk.

Speaking of new dimensions, and thinking of curling up, I'm nearly finished reading 'The Fabric of the cosmos' (brian greene, 'the new Hawking, only better' The Times said). At first I thought it was all going to become cler; i really appreciaated his explanation of how time and velocity were related, and curled up multiple dimensions make a bit more sense; but oh dear, i struggle still with the question of what things are made of. How can this ever stop? I mean, this is made of little bits of that, and that is made of little bits of ... what exactly?

And another thing; I still can't stop wondering, just what is space expanding in to? and am I expanding too? Are you getting further away from me? (These questions are evidence for my essay 'why I'm not a theoretical physicist').

When I've finished with the cosmos, I get to read 'The Synaptic Self' (Joseph leDoux). I didnt get a lot from his 'The Emotional Brain', give me Antonio Damasio any day, but Damasio himself says of this one 'his perspective takes you deep into the cellular basis of what it is to be a thinking being' which is, after all, where we all want to go. Take me deeper, Douxie baby

out of the forest, staring at the gutter

something quite exciting happened tonight to the story i've been writing for months . I shouldn't get too excited. I know I shouldn't. But it is quite exciting.

who was it said 'we're all stars, but some of us are gazing at the gutter'?; blowed if I know.

just let me out there

"Mine is a novel of ideas - other people's, mostly" (Biff cartoon)

the template of doom

oh dear. i thought i'd be clever and down load the blog template into MS front Page so that i could edit it easily. Well that worked ok, but it's completely scuppered my Front Page application.

However, we have just bought a new camera, so

a world of difference

I was trying to make a note of the thoughts I'd come across refarding the meaning of the word 'world'. It was provoked by coming across some notes I'd made about the way copernicus used the word. But a stuffed-up nose and consequent depression, plus an afternoon spent putting up a new curtain rail (looks quite good considering) have eroded the point of that. Some other time perhaps.

In a fit of wild optimism i started writing a children's book last year. it's been sleeping for some time, but joel's been very insistent, so i'm pouring a stiff toddy and taking the possibility of reviving it to bed.

mahler's instrument

'we are merely instruments the universe is playing on' (Gustav Mahler)

Hidden Code

Oh dear, a day spent digging around in database code i wrote years ago trying to find bits that won't work when it's upsized. Clear blus skies at the start, evening-orange(4pm) sun on the shutter at the end. there has to be more ...

starting this journal has sent me into endless circles of thinking about what has occupied so much of my time, what I shall henceforth refer to as MLW (My Life's Work). Sometimes I think I must have allowed my imagination to run away with me. sometimes I think I have hold of the tail of something overwhelmingly important. just supposing you thought you'd stumbled over a secret so revolutionary that it would up end a whole way of thinking about the world? Chances are you'd say 'Nah, can't be true. if it were true, how come I found it?'

To handle something like this you need to be self-confident in the extreme, as well as capable of harnessing your argument in a way that people will listen. Me, I'm just arrogant enough to think what I've learnt could be that new, but otherwise I often feel I'm short of just about everything else I'd need to convince you.

Trouble is, I can't afford to let go. I'm going to go on using this journal to re-organize my thoughts, and to muse on what they mean. What they add up to is nothing short of a total re-evaluation of everything you might have thought was understood about what for want of a better word we have to call 'spirituality'.

For the time being, I'm collecting together items from mythical traditions of the sort that have been called 'stone-age boulders', ideas that appear in widely separated locations but which surely cannot have arisen independently; that they appear at all suggests a meaning above and beyond the superficial 'fantasy'.
I've already introduced the Cosmic mill and the Ocean-churning, and the cross with its five 'stars'. here's an even more unlikely notion, and one of the most widespread; the 'world' is supported by a serpent, and under certain circumstances, this serpent can also be the cause of its destruction.

In Borneo, the Dayak Indians know that
'the real native village of mankind is not in this world. Man dwells only for a time in this world, which is 'lent' to him'.
For the Dayak, the 'real world' is the sacred land, and they can speak of it in some detail. It is where the sacred people live;
'It lies among the primeval waters, between Upperworld and Underworld, and rests on the back of the watersnake'

whereas in the North of sweden stands this stone and in India the created world is held up by Visnu, and just to bring it closer to home, the late 16th century alchemists showed this serpent to be clearly related to the zodiac.

however, there's an even more outrageous version of the story:

The Serpent known by the Fon people of West Africa to be keeping the stars in motion by means of his coils is said to have built four pillars to support the heavens, twisting himself around them to keep them up. Monkeys feed him iron bars; if they were to fail in this task, the pillars would fall and the earth would collapse.

which brings us to the pillars on which the world rests ...

The mind-mills that you find

if you have doubts about mythical contact between India and the americas, you might want to compare this with this and if you think using a mill to re-generate creation has nothing whatsoever to do with christian imagery, here is a very strange image indeed.

The Time is right

hey, I just figured out how to get this journal to tell the time GMT style

serpents on my mind

Over new year I met up again with Allan Nowell who's been researching the relationship between a strange dance from wrysedale in northern england and the images depicted on 'celtic' crosses and illuminations which show three figures with their hands and legs interlaced. {see timedance.co.uk}

The irish crosses he showed in a quick talk he gave us set me off along this path again. It seems to me this 'celtic' cross, with the circle enfolding it, is an exact symbolic replica of the Maya one, with the ecliptic 'snake' now a complete circle, The cross is then seen not specifically as the Milky Way but as the whole frame with which the cosmos is measured.What's really interesting is that some of these celtic crosses show a central Christ with the souls on either side, 'saved' to his right, 'damned' to his left, setting out on their respective journays towards the bosses at the ends of the arms of the cross. If I'm right about the circle representing the zodiac wheel then the points where they cross must represent the constellations of Scorpio and Taurus. Ok, this would mean that the Milky Way (the traditional path for souls) is shown stretching from right to left, but this would be an inevitable compromise if you wanted to show Christ at the centre; you'd hardly want to put the saved souls above him. besides if the christ is at the centre then this must be a 'plan' view of the cosmos, viewed from above.
The bosses must then represent the four evangelist beasts, and it would be interesting to examine their designs in this light; comparing them with the imagery used on the intitial illuminations of the gospels, for instance.

On a slightly different tack, you can see the use of the double-headed 'zodiac' snake over the doorways of many early churhes, often accompanied by the zodiac animals themselves. Lincoln cathedral is one good example, if i remember rightly.

we're still left with the question, what connection exists between these celtic crosses, (and the remnants of cosmic imagery elsewhere in christioan symbolism), and the crosses of the Maya (and it seems of elsewhere in the americas). Thereis a clear and direct link between certain elements of celtic mythology and that of India; do similar links exist with the far west?

raised-up sky

In fact, the only thing I've added to My Life's Work this past last year came from re-reading 'Black Elk Speaks'. I was walking up Cockburn street in Edinburgh just before christmas when i saw in the window of the crystal shop (Cockburn Street is full of what in the 60's we knew as 'Head Shops'. Do they still call them that?) a copy of this book that i'm sure i read thirty years ago. But it doesnt seem to have any of the stuff i remember in it. Instead it told be about the 'waga chun'. This is what the Oglala Sioux called their Holy tree, which they erected in the centre of the sacred dancing place, at the centre of the hoop of the nation. (If you put the words 'waga chun' into google you can find all about this and about Black Elk.) The reason why this was just the sort of thing that really excites me is
here .

What, i wonder, is the relationship between the mayan crosses and ones like this at Clonfert in Ireland?

All gone home

christmas is past, twelve-tide is the last. The boys are away home, [the house is missing the plunkings], the sousaphone is daring me to take it back to the attic, and its time to start the year anew. The plan is to get back to my life's work, again. This journal was meant to be part of that plan in the first place.

So I looked at the web-site and found i hadn't put anything new there since autumn 2003.

still, the last entry I made is exciting enough to recall; so here it is;

At last I have found details of the research I long ago heard rumours of, which reveals star knowledge in Palaeolithic times. For details see Lascaux Taurus. Having found this information, and I find it almost indisputable, I was encouraged to include the reproductions of Rock-paintings which I consider to be representations of Orion from the renowned site of Tassili in the Sahara.

Graham Hancock has s new book about cave art which may have something to say about this; I haven't done more than glance at it in Borders books, but there is a review in last saturday's Gaurdian. Here is a review posted in a world you might want to return quickly from.

What i'm not clear about is whether hancock has anything to say that might link his hallucinogenic 'learning' experiences with this clearly 'stellar' knowledge. Looks like I need another visit to Borders.

shadows with music

well, well, well. things have a way of turning out different, especially shadows; here's a shadow Lee Morse cast back in 1928.

thanks to Joel for introducing me to Lee, and for much else besides.