Make Love ~ Grow Your Own Meadow
A meadow in bloom is an uplifting sight.
Growing one’s own patch of meadow is easy ~ more or less. There are some basic pointers;
- Poor soil is no handicap for a meadow. What you want to keep from among your flowers are strong grasses and pernicious weeds ~ both of which will romp away in good soil.
- Clear the ground, or at least dig out strong growing grasses and pernicious weeds ~ making certain you get out all of the root stock. Personally, on a large area I couldn’t be arsed with that and use weedkiller.
-
google images stock picture of poppies and lupine
Dig over, rotavate, plough the ground, and rake to a coarse tilth.
- Choose wild flower seeds suitable for your conditions ~ adding Yellow Rattle, which weakens said strong grasses.
- Water if you have too.
- Direct sow the seeds, a mixture of perennials, biennials and annuals ~ keep the damn birds and other critters off your seeds. You can sow any time from late summer until spring ~ but not during or right before frosts.
How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold. ~ William Wordsworth
The first year the show of flowers will be annuals. Don’t pull out anything you do not recognise ~ remember you will have unfamiliar bi-annuals and perennials coming through.
Collect seeds from your own area when you have the opportunity ~ just chuck them on your meadow.
Maintenance involves;
- Removing pernicious weeds before they have a chance to self-seed / spread.
- Cut down the meadow when the last of the flowers begin to fade ~ only cut in dry weather and leave the hay on the meadow for a week / two weeks until it’s dried. This will ensure that all the seeds among the cut hay fall back onto the meadow.
- Remove the hay from the meadow and give it to your rabbit / chickens / horse. Taking away the cut hay keeps the soil poor, which encourages the growth of just your wildflowers.
There are some real benefits to a meadow;
- Low maintenance and cheap to establish.
- Encourages wildlife.
- Requires no watering ~ maybe except in extreme drought.
- Helps reduce climate change.
- A meadow is pretty, calming, and a part of the real nature. Hence it will increase libido and desire if you are connected to the Earth Goddess.
You have never truly made love if you haven’t loved among the meadow’s fragrant embrace.
~
pictures by jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Expansion’s Emerging Reconstruction
I bit the fruit of the poisonous tree
wonder where it will end for me
will she ignore a sinner’s plea
there is no way to foresee
if time and tide agree
to let me escape
be set free
please
they say wanting her is evolution in action
sex was a one-way transaction
Life? a passing distraction
~
words and pictures by jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Quantum Mechanics and Life
Poetry has rules, the sea has rules, even chaos has rules. Quantum mechanics breaks all the rules that make sense in real life. Yet, if you look really carefully, some of the principles described to explain the sub-atomic world are perfectly logical in daily life.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says that it’s possible to know some things, but the more you know about one thing the less you know about another. I know some people who are world experts in their field, but I wouldn’t trust them with a can opener ~ they have concentrated on knowing everything there is to know about one thing, to the exclusion of knowing anything at all about everything else. That is a perfect example of being a hopeless human being. A real Renaissance Man knows a lot about everything, and at one in the same time can do most things ~ from making a wooden chair to designing a boat, and then building it.
Quantum logic also states that the very act of observing something changes the thing / person you are observing. We all know this is absolutely true. As a gross example most people will not scratch their groin if they think there is anyone watching them. A more subtle example is to be found in your significant other. He / she behaves differently when you are around to the way she / he behaves when she is alone or with a circle of friends that does not include you. Normally your significant other is much better behaved when you are observing them than when they are free of your scrutiny. Most sane people will not have sex with another person / several people when you are watching them.
In fact, if you are watching something / someone, both of you stop being independent entities and become one system. For example, professional sports cannot exist without a crowd, and the crowd becomes part of the game.
And, then there is the damn cat. Schrödinger’s cat lives in a box and is both dead and alive at one in the same time. The assumption is that the cat is neither dead or alive until you open the box and take a look. As far as I am concerned the only lesson you can take into real life from this bit of quantum logic is that it’s pointless to worry about anything until it happens. Don’t dig a grave until you have an actual dead cat.
Schrödinger’s cat leads into the probabilistic nature of the universe. This says two things;
- Nothing is certain. There is only a choice of probable / possible outcomes which range from the very likely to the almost totally impossible. But, any of those outcomes is possible.
- Even the most unlikely thing can and will happen.
Someone will win big on the lottery the first time they buy a ticket. The Americans will honestly believe they know how to make a cup of tea. President Obama will not make a fool of himself in Africa.
The multiple universes claimed to exist by quantum theory mean that anything imaginable is possible. For example; Isis and Aphrodite exist today, King Arthur is alive and well and still has Excalibur, and I may finally come to terms with the true nature of spirituality. No, that last will never happen.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
English Gentleman, moine guerrier
Goddesses and Myths
Just as I seem drawn to the sea and the moon, I am fated to have a deep bond with the feminine elements of the cosmos. Sometimes this connection directly manifests itself when one of the Goddesses answers a question I have needed to ask. The question has to be simple and has to couched in such a way that I am obviously asking for help. Usually I will ask a specific Goddess for her grace.
Most of the time I will receive an immediate and clear answer to my plea.
This is where things start to become difficult and complicated. To begin with, there is only one Goddess.
In Celtic Mythology, (I am Celt, or a Briton, or an Englishman), the Gods were powerful, but the Goddesses even more so. In Celtic mythology the Goddesses are associated with the land, nature, the forest, trees, water, and the moon. The Goddess exists in a triple manifestation;
- The Maiden
- The Mother
- The Crone
and she is linked to the seasons, to birth, fertility, and growth. She is the giver of life and love, and she is the one who bestows sex and death.
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show’d some truth.
This single Goddess in three separate identities is common across all the mythologies I know of.
In fact, the single Goddess who exists in three manifestations appears in all cultures and through the ages ~ at least as far back as 24,000 B.C.. She is sometimes called the Earth Mother, and she is responsible for all creation. In Egypt she was Isis, the Aztecs knew her as Toci, the Sumarians called her Ninmah, for the Greeks she was Cybele, Hera and Aphrodite. To Christians and others she is Mary. At the tomb of Jesus she was Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary of Jacob.
One of the Celtic Goddess was known as Mairiae.
I have no fixed belief in God, Gods, Goddesses and spirits. As it goes I am an agnostic atheist. I believe that the true nature of the cosmos is unknowable.
However, I know that I have what practitioners of 12 step programmes term a ‘higher power’. For my own peace of mind I anthropomorphise my higer power as the Goddess Aphrodite, or sometimes Isis.
It may be that my higher power is Aphrodite, or it may be that it’s my own subconcious, which I am accessing using a technique borrowed from Neuro Linguistic Programming. If that’s the case I’mas close to sorcery as it gets, or maybe magic. Or, it may be that the Goddess exists, and finds time to look in on me every once in a while.
I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do know is the it would be a bad move to anger Aphrodite.
I go down to the sea to pray. Isis and Aphrodite answer my prayers, and the answer is seldom no.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Englisj Gentleman, moine guerrier
dreams and seascapes
casual cruelty
shattered dreams, shattered souls, shattered surf
life is pain in perpetual perfection
she will steal your dreams and break your heart
you gaze at the stars in reflection
they are dimmed and blurred, red giant, white dwarf
she is the morning star Venus
and she will tear you apart
just to see you cry broken and hopeless
Kiss, fuck, kiss, part ~ forever
~
words and pictures by jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
A Power Greater Than Ourselves
SOMETIMES, SELF-WILL AND EFFORT ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH
In 12 step recovery programmes this is step 2. In Alcoholics Anonymous the full text reads;
We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. ~ The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
For many people trying to recover from an addiction to alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, gambling, shoplifting…, this is where it all falls apart. One may have been dry and clean for a while, (although cigarettes and candy will have taken the place of the primary addiction), but here we begin to flirt with the idea of God.
Addicts and people under great stress have poor memories, they will have forgotten that when they were at their nadir they will have said something like; ‘Please God, get me out of this one…’ In any event, in the quotation given above where does it say God? It doesn’t, it says; a Power greater than ourselves. Addiction is self-will writ large; egotism, egomania, narcissism, conceit, and vanity are all part of the psychology of an addict. Addicts and the otherwise mentally ill believe they are the most important person in the Cosmos ~ that belief has to be smashed.
Addiction, stress, anxiety, depression, bi-polar disorder, anorexia, binge eating disorder, psychotic disorders, exhibitionism…, (the list could go on and on), all produce a state of desperation. A state where the sufferer is willing to do almost anything to escape from the see-saw of euphoria and misery that they endure. Anything, except believe that there is more in this Cosmos than themselves ~ addiction and self-absorption go together like ham and eggs.
Trust me on this, one does not have to believe in the God of our childhood, or the God of our parents, or the God of whatever church or religion we theoretically belong to. Lapsed Christians, lapsed Jews, Agnostics, atheists, sun worshipers, druids, can all come to believe that there is a power in the universe that is greater than they are. In 12 step recovery programmes this sometimes known as ‘finding your higher power.’
I believe in a higher power and I believe in good and bad, right and wrong. You sleep in the bed you make. ~ Leif Garrett.
Lief Garrett, singer, actor, television personality, one time drug addict, member of the Church of Scientology, often in legal difficulties.
the nothingness of infinity
So we’re in physical and mental torment of one sort or another. In order to recover we need to give up some of our egomaniacal self-will, narcissistic denial, and the conceit that we can stop doing whatever destructive behaviour we suffer from, whenever we want to. Whether one believes in a Deity, or not, recovery from addiction and a range of other destructive behaviours depends on faith and spirituality. The human mind finds it much easier to believe in something, rather than believing in nothing, (although one could believe in nothingness and infinity.)
There is something about modern man and woman, particularly men and women who are suffering extreme distress, which makes it difficult for them to accept that there is anything beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or otherwise detect with one of our many other senses. Very well, what if I quote from one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century? A man so smart that 99% of the people in the world don’t even understand what he was getting at.
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms ~ this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true spirituality, (geistigkeit). ~ Albert Einstein, The Merging of Spirit and Science.
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science.
Quantum physics and probability theory are both pretty wedded to the fact that nothing is impossible. People being what they are, if one gives a lot of them three choices;
- There is definitely no God, Goddess, Higher Power, or a Power greater than me.
- There may or may not be a Higher Power, Earth Goddess, Power of the Cosmos, et alii.
- There is a Higher Power, Mother Goddess, Power of the Universe, Isis and Aphrodite. I know because I have faith.
There is no possibility whatsoever that they would be able to come to a consensus of opinion. The proof of this is in Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what one believes in, as long as one believes in something that is greater than a single human being ~ that is, greater than you. We cannot go on just existing, we need faith and spirituality in order to live ~ after all, we are broken human beings.
if you can’t believe in anything else, believe in the Power of the Cosmos
Personally, I walked the road of recovery from my disease by believing in the power of the Cosmos. It didn’t matter what I believed in, as long as I believed that there was a Power greater than myself. If you can’t even manage that, then believe in the fact that you want to believe in something, because that will put you on the road to spirituality and recovery from whatever syndromes you suffer from.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. ~ Carl Sagan, in Cosmos.
Carl Edward Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science populariser, researcher into extraterrestrial life.
All of human life requires faith. Faith in gravity, in the laws of physics, in birth, love, life and death. To recover from serious addiction, mental illness, extreme stress, also requires faith and spirituality.
Given that I am currently not only on planet weird, I am deep in the jungle on planet weird, after experiencing reincarnation into my own life, I need a hell of a lot more faith and spirituality than most. Currently it suits me to believe in my vision of the Goddesses Isis and Aphrodite. They are my higher powers, not yours. You need to find your own higher power for yourself to achieve true spirituality.
for some reason my vision of Isis is confused with The Lady of the Lake
Aphrodite’s Herbalist
Aphrodite’s Herbalist
There is a love called herbs
which knows seasons and extraction
~
Which chooses and uses through filtration
the pungent scent of timed infusion
~
Aromatic alchemical hot liquids
medicinal herbs magical uses
~
Richly potent oils from maceration
concentrated to potion by decoction
~
Glisten alcoholic secret distillation
Aphrodisiac attention to golden skin
~
by jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
JackCollier7 
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