2017: Make a Wish

 

Make a Wish for the New Year!

Let it be beautiful!

For it is a new year, a new start

Here’s your chance to contribute to make peace

In the world, yes you! You too!

Let there be peace and let there be love

Yes let it be! Let this be so!

Let there be fairness and justice,

Fulfilment and joy, let there be

Togetherness and understanding

Let there be what was lacking in 2016

And so let there be an abundance

Of critical thought and of goodwill for a change!

Make a change and make love, not war

Yes why not make love and not war

Let there be war no more

Let it be, make it happen, make a wish

And contribute, give your input

So there will be no war no more!

At least wish for it to be so

So we can move closer

To what we need

And live happily ever after for a change!                                  © Ursula Troche, 12.16

Xmas: Big on Trees but poor on Peace…

The spelling Xmas suggests this is a festival of kissing: xxx! Happy Xmas X! So it’s supposed to get peaceful now – and lovely! But is it?

My beloved Octy (i.e. the little octopus you can see in my photos here) certainly had fun on all sorts of trees he could find and wishes everyone a happy Xmas. And I love the tree-image. The Tree of Life and Bringer of Breath truly!

But politically I’ve been shocked many times this year and I wrote this poem about how we must help to counter politics of hatred, aggression, division, domination. I’ve been shocked by the system as much as other acts of violence: it’s not ok to just sit back and do nothing – or to let this current world situation pass because it won’t pass… we have to counter it with some sort of positive contribution, for our common good, our common humanity and our common happiness.

So I think I let this poem be my Xmas message:

Help

News around the world are becoming

Quite terrible, unbearable, it’s sometimes

Hard to keep calm, to keep cool and

It’s easy to make it all worse, get sucked in

And up, by all that negative energy and make it

Worse: that energy: the echoes of frustration and

Of aggression and desperation of thousands of people,

Sometimes antithetical to each other, sometimes ungovernable

We have, have we? Become ungovernable?

Because obviously we don’t like the system that often

Impoverishes us and could torture us, some of us, and could

Kill us, some of us, so some of us return the killing

Before it afflicts them-selves, an escape from the rat race

This is, yes, this too, is the rat race, and it’s not

Skin-deep, it’s bone marrow, soul destroying, it’s

Terrible, soul-terror, and so it could become an –ism if

Enacted, or it could be something else, it could be, it might be, yet

It is dangerous, frightening, the system and the –ism

How we mirror its aggression and make it worse, it’s dangerous

The effects, the internalisation of the system and the –ism

And whatever it is or isn’t.

 

We are in danger:

Of running scared and being scary, aggressive, of

Catching each other ever more rougher

Between devils and deep blue seas, and

Ourselves, don’t you see? We have to

Permeate this negative energy and help

Help, because we need help, we need

Bread and a job and water and a roof

Over our head, and love, and improved

Housing conditions and living conditions and

Thinking conditions and soul conditions:

Yes we need to think too, about what to do, not just

Act but think about how we act, what we could do, how

We could help, not hurt one another but become one

It’s irresponsible of us not to take some responsibility

And help, yes help, to make this world a better place.                   © Ursula Troche, 12.16

Winter Solstice: 1st Birthday!

It’s Winter Solstice again, annual celebration of the light at its ‘shortest point’ (i.e. the shortest day) – and this little blog of mine is One Year Old today: OYO, oh yeah!

In its first year, my blog has happily grown and will grow further, along with the sun, which will from now on shine longer, until the summer solstice, and then it will continue to grow along with the night, which will frr oom then on last longer… and so on we go out and in, and in and out, but at the same time we go on and on…

 

On these images I catch the light, as it is so celebrated at Winter Solstice, and as I so often do: light pure and light reflected, light with shadows, and light with more shadows, intriguing, outlining, revealing, contrasting, complementing, making understanding: light permeating and illuminating leaves and landscapes, the soul and the social.

The lines below are taken from my writings for the Palimpsest exhibition – Bringing Hidden Stories to Light: as there is a parallel between themes: Bringing Hidden Stories to the Solstice! (plus the blog: this little blog of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…)

Sunset: Encounter with the Earth.

Then the Darkness comes and it is rich

And all-knowing, for here

Are the Hiding-Places

Which are too easily forgotten in the light

This next poem is inspired by a winter solstice walk I participated in: us walkers were a group of artists around Walthamstow (my previous home), organised by Pippa Davismoon, and we wandered through the woods of Wanstead:

Winter Solstice Wanstead Wanderings

As we go quiet

The sounds of the birds arise

The birds arise and speak

To each other and they have

Messages for us

Wrapped in their sounds

Like trumpets, instruments

Singing, squeaking and

Speaking voices

Charmingly around the pond, feeling charming

Around the soul, which is our very own pond; with

Each of us a pool of water over which

To ponder, and there

It is: the pond, the

Place to ponder

 

And there they are, the birds

And all the other animals

Of the pond and of the woodland

The animals: and the anima, the soul

Yes it’s called anima, the unconscious, and now

It is being enacted, tantalised, animated!

And there it is, the message

It’s all around us, in times

Of stillness and attention

When only soul is in motion, only

Soul is the music of the heart and the forest

Soul-music, believe me, believe

In the power of transformation to make

The world a better place

At this time of the solstice

And all around

For all around us are the sounds

Of the birds and all animals and of hope

And the sun, turning, rising, setting, and then

Rising again.                                                                    © Ursula Troche, 12.16

Tonight I will celebrate the Solstice by writing into the night, with a group of writers in Greenwich, organised by Arachne Press.

Happy Winter Solstice Everyone!