Jellyfish

Went about three miles out, looking for jellyfish.

We found a few.

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Photo by Hiro Takemoto, Captain of the Endeavour

Songs are like tattoos

Female Nudes 2 and 4
by Bhanu



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLTH8-9Z1I

God help us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iKfrY9l2kY

Fighting for Freedom

Nanking
Gaza
My Lai
Belsen

Auschwitz
Kandahar
Leningrad
Dresden

Hiroshima
Nagasaki
Amritsar
The Somme

Ruanda
The Blitz
The gun
The bomb

Mary's dress waves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqiPy99yTCo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfzov0Cq90o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HxZKa4NwGo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7O9AK2sfYs
Interesting how he can't really talk about the song, because the song says so much more, and so much more eloquently - the man's a true poet.
24.

Figures

An Einsatzgruppe D member about to shoot a Jew kneeling at a mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, in 1942. The photograph is inscribed: The last Jew in Vinnitsa.

(Wiki)

An estimated 1,000,000 Jews were killed in the Ukraine in WWII.

An estimated 26.6 million Soviets were killed in total.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

1945 was not so long ago - I was born 15 years later. And not so long ago, my kids used to 'kill Germans' in the park.

Wonder who they'd kill now.

Balance

One wonders why the BBC gives a racist homophobe primetime TV space in order to 'maintain balance', but refused to broadcast the Gaza Appeal on the basis of 'raising impartiality'


http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/index.php/content/home/suit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21MdXe3BOQ

The Ukraine

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One of the best things I've seen/heard in a long time:

Music and visual performance art, film, history, dance almost - overwhelming poetry, love, war, beauty, horror...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo
http://video.ukrhome.net/watch/1907/2254/17624/Pobeditelem-shou-Ukraina-maie-talant--stala-Kseniya-Si.html

Who's got talent?

Bit much really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kseniya_Simonova

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--LbFRO8SQQ

Open your arms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owmrpWyTdxQ

Late

But I could find my way home

Desert islands

This is probably my all-time number one song - if Kirsty Laing took me down to the wire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJnFv38z1rY&feature=fvw

It's the band I would have loved to have played in - bass, guitar, drums, vocals - no frills, pure rock and roll.

What am I saying?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2bGUeDnqPY

But then I need a dance, down the beach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM7C_yNlC

so and then..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkTQUtx818w

Mates

Human beings are an amazing species - what's he doing here? Trying to attract a mate, like a peacock? Trying to prove his worth?

Can't help thinking that human life occasionally transcends the mundane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5TRBQ_arZo&feature=related

Uncredible

http://interneteyes.co.uk/

The Beatles, 1963, by Fiona Adams

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/25/beatles-bowie-national-portrait-gallery

40 years since Space Oddity?!

10

No end to it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvq9-sFC6a8

9

Wow - when I first hit this girl she was around 3,000 - now 8 million and climbing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqSKVv6YO8g

8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88xIIRDI9U

but there are so many more

7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QZioxCg20I

Number 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geVL-csTISk

Record Number 5

The musical box - Peter Gabriel, with Phil Collins on drums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFBY4dvoISc&feature=related

Record Number Four

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HxZKa4NwGo

Record Number Three

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYPSZiE0OAs

Desert Island Disc 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmolrId_4

Desert Islands

Was listening to Desert Island Discs today - such nostalgia when that theme music starts up, and you know how you do - the discs the castaway chooses seem trite, and you start making your own list...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzqMJWlKMsY

All things to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAgP-LG0cQ

Touched by the smile on her face, that says so much - the hope, trust, longing, the giving, the receiving.

The power we have as individuals - we can touch.

'A good life, not a long one'
(Damien Hirst)

The Girl Within

They paint their pretty faces
and show off subtle skin
in certain chosen places -
but what of the girl within?


http://yumikikuchi.blogspot.com/
http://911.globalpeace.jp/

She's gone

These quiet still moments of peace
when you spend more time than you need,
preparing, spreading, smoothing the sheets,
folding fresh towels - to be clean

I spoke yesterday about Yeats
and the love of his life - Maud Gonne
He asked her in vain again and again
Though she loved him more than some

'How selfish can you get!' the old man said
Yeats, not Gonne - to not let her go
to leave the life she half-wanted -
Love's not everything you know
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Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.



W B Yeats

Typhoon

The hatches are battened, but the boat’s gone
The road’s flooded and blocked
Drain’s suck and manholes spew
The warm wind whips bottles and branches
Scattered skimming through the streets

The sea's let loose a raging giant
Thrashing thin breakwaters with careless contempt
Three-storey waves crash over beach houses
I'm soaked in my tracks, my trousers drenched
And my socks are full of sand

Feelings about bringing my baby son back home, as a young adult -
and should add my behaviour - was I idiotic to try to save Sakuma's son's house - 2 people died after all. Was I an idiot to then check out the boat - and quite get myself drowned? But I couldn't stay inside - I wanted, had to, needed to do something - I had to be alive - I couldn't just sit back inside and watch it all happen later on TV - above all I wanted to be part of this - no-one could say 'Where were you?'

The Beast

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Staggering green waves roar like thunder,
spraying salt-sequined showers in the Sun -

Pulsing like heartbeats from the dark deep.

Ecstatic small children squeal in delight -
'Daddy, can't we stay a bit longer?
Can’t we please? Let’s not go home!’

While unexpectedly fast, predatory foam
Licks at their quick back-pedalling feet,
Chasing up the beach to their smiling Mum -

And the sea seethes back, taking its breath.
A tsunami went over the horizon last night -
This savage same sea hit Samoa and Tonga,

where, satiated, she dragged them under.
The tranquil life-giver can turn from the good

to an indiscriminate bringer of death.

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Over the bar

Crossing the bar (Tennyson)

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcTyIaYLQqo&feature=PlayList&p=10A77F15B24E6F9F&index=13&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL

I spent my teenage years,
and later a full-grown man,
messing about in boats in Salcombe,
south Devon, the South Hams.

Where the river finally hits the sea,
there's a sand bar across the bay -
at low tide less than a human height.
Crossed it more times than I can say -

Hundreds, maybe more, in small boats,
with friends, brothers, or alone.
We went mackerel fishing in the evening sun
- one night came home with 60 or so -

Or was it 80?
And sold them round the park for 10p each.
With our father.

Years later we poured his ashes over the bar.

We men

don't always get it right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gAgP-LG0cQ


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90u1IV4dw8o&feature=related

Roses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K2EA8SWhh8

Music - the voice of the human soul - will die when we do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmolrId_4

An age-old question - why are most poets men?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5C99JyP2ns

Actions louder than words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_RM8To5mjU

Thanks B :)

Went to a posh do the other night:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091003a1.html

Typhoon coming

http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/