'They say life's what you make of it.
Dawn is painting.
40 years weather
forged vulcan's flame on flax leaves.
I am my own harpoon,
hurled into oblivion's night
a lifetime wending back to eden.'
It's quite interesting reading this again.
I must have been 40 years old when I wrote this.
Well, I am my own harpoon,
and I am hurled into oblivion's night
because I don't know where I'm going.
It's like rolling a dice sometimes,
you don't really know.
I hurl my harpoon and
it may strike gold, it may not.
As you get older, you begin to appreciate
yourself more.
When I was young, I didn't like the way I looked.
And then gradually I grew into myself.
I lost my last tooth,
and the dentist said we have to do an implant.
I said, 'No, just pull it out'.
'Ahhhh no', he said, 'no....'
And I said, 'Look, actually I'd quite like to look like a pirate'.
I don't have to be anyone, other than myself.
I like alternative stuff, I'm not mainstream.
I have to keep making things to maintain my sanity.
And simple things, repurposed things.
So I might find an old piece of timber and reuse that.
All the metal that I use is scrap metal.
I've learnt to live life very simply, on very little.
For a lot of my contemporaries,
living like this is not normal.
They come in here and they have a fit.
There's no dishwasher, there's no microwave...
everything's a bit...
unmodern.
Just having what I need... no more...
that to me is, in a funny way,
honouring all of those that have gone before me.
I can be a curmudgeon at times.
But mostly, a lot of that is tongue in cheek.
There just isn't too much to be grumpy about.
I like what I see out there, so that keeps me bouyant.
The smell of different timbers when you're planing them.
The sound that the plane makes on the timber.
Spiderswebs.
The smell of earth when you're digging it.
The smell of apples as they quietly rot on the ground.
There's a certain amount of pleasure to be taken
out of all of those things.
Believe it or not...
I even get a bit of pleasure out of doing the dishes.
Anyone can access these things.
But I think that we cover those things up.
Sometimes people think, oh no, that's even dirty.
And we're looking for new sensations that cost money
like going to a cafe every day, or a new car.
We've replaced beauty with what money can purchase.
And we think that anything below that is not worthy.
And I think the only worthy things are all below that.
Life...
it's not complicated.
It throws complications up,
but they are simply complications.
I had a partner who died of cancer in 2001.
Still touching that one.
That wasn't a complication,
but it did throw up lots of issues
that I had to deal with...
sadness, loneliness...
but they were simple.
Things are always going to happen.
You accept them for what they are,
and you learn to live around them
inside them, outside them,
however it happens, you learn to live.
Step forward.
Move forward through life.
Don't look back too much.
Just move forward.
The meaning of life, I think,
is to live fully,
not plastic pleasure, not tinsel town pleasure.
To live and enjoy, simply, life,
until you die, which we all do.
And we are put on earth, a little space,
that we may learn to bear
the beams of love.
William Blake.
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for those of you who have written out comments,
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