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This photo, on yesterday’s London Metro, says it all. And so – surprisingly – does a TV commercial for strongbow pear cider! – an archer pulling back the string, lets go.
“Para” is a latin root, meaning placing beside, which also suggests beyond or outside the norm. Many of our words – parable, parabola, paralysis, paradox, paradise – carry this meaning.
A Poem: Coda
This my poem
a seeding dandelion clock
is a globe upon a stalk
and every where
I blow, the once
upon a time it tells.
Poems of Eclipse, 2000
Mandala sphere of every whereness – the point of being. Consciousness, inward as outward, dives into the heart infinitely, all ways.
A wikipedia image
Here is Margaret Maughan who lit Tom Heatherwick’s Torch of Time on Wednesday: as the mandala rises from flower to stem; from petals to stamens.
The golden thread of the dandelion clock runs through all our waters and strings all our beads.
A few impressions of the festival – a woman sings Handel in pure voice. The new Olympian whose legs were blown off in the July 05 bombings tells: the fate was her destiny. She would not, could not be without it. Clare Balding replies: fate is what you are born with, destiny is what you do with it. An unlegged abseiler brings the torch down into the stadium on spider’s thread; and Stoke Mandeville veteran Margaret Maughan lights the Para-Olympic Flame. A Grail Cup emerges through inverted umbrella curves of light. From above, I see the stadium – a concentric flower – it is a trembling drop in the pool. In the beginning, with homage to the big bang and bosen higgs’ particle of Life, Stephen Hawking invites us to be curious; towards the end, Alison Lapper’s huge pregnant figure bears the fruit. Shakespeare’s Tempest is an enquiring child. The disabled are flying in the interior cosmos, to roam and freely rove. The simple images are very powerful. There are as many human cells in the brain, as stars in our galaxy. Each individual sitting on the tube is a galaxy. Neuron threads inside my head encircle our world four times.
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Yesterday – I wasn’t feeling well, and needed to open my eyes – I walked from Amersham to Great Missenden, and met this gentleman:
… he might be looking down into the Olympic stadium: how soft his long neck is. And there is an eye, a vesica pisces, a forming, becoming a sphere …
Further along the lane … Inside the saxon/norman church of St John the Baptist in Little Missenden village, this early medieval fresco has been uncovered:
… and isn’t that an olympic torch he bears in his right hand?
This morning I read: “The Self is the good shepherd of the parables, and none of the sheep, the human personal expressions, is lost forever.”
Isn’t St Christopher, though carrying none other than the Child, the good shepherd? That is “the me” on his shoulder, and my full potential is the Christ. (a good way to handle/heal my sore stiff neck – on my left shoulder, just like St Christopher’s, and softly without hurry, like the swan: walk glide tall.) Christopher bore his burden across a flowing torrent, rocks and water, human strife, disability, to the sands.
In Greek mythology, the hero Jason did too. His burden was an angry old woman, she clung around his neck and scolded him; and he set down at the far shore, none other than Hera, the Goddess of the Hearth. Patience.
Para means “beyond” or “to one side of” – as in parabola (para beside, bola to throw) … parable, compare … paralysis (para beside or derange, lys loosen) … paradox (contrary to received opinion) … paradise (the disus or greek paradeisus is a park or pleasure ground. Reflect also on other words – paraglide, paraclete, parallel …
I and you and every one of us has some disability or pain of life. A Para-Olympian through her or his damaged and disabled frame, pain and courage, achieves something which is beyond Olympus. Thus their extraordinary inspiration to us all. Thank you. Thank you.
Hemisphere perfection: A photo from Friends of Charles Darwin
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
janeadamsart 