and that person who made a big difference is Brian Paisley

the guy who began Canada’s first Fringe festival

Edmonton

who first conceived the Canadian Fringe tour

and who passed earlier this month

...

so this post i have shared below is from Brian’s friend and mine, Ken Brown

and is about the difference made by this guy, and his coterie of hard-working enthusiasts

Ken’s piece gives this a deep perspective within North American theatre i wouldn’t have been capable of...

...

KEN’S POST

My dear friend Brian is dead. His death signifies the end of a vitally important era in the history of Canadian theatre. It also sounds a heavy knoll on those of us who loved him.

Canadian theatre was an evolving entity in 1981. It had gone through a Colonial period, in which nearly all of our theatre was given over to the production of plays from England and the United States. These plays were performed in theatres founded by, and run by, people who did not speak with our accent. Most spoke some version of English from the British Isles. We Canucks had been very busy surviving, and then in the mid-20th Century, helping European civilization survive. It was only in the course of Brian’s lifetime that we finally began to take control of our theatres, to write our own plays, and direct our home-grown actors. From about 1970 until 1982, Canadian theatre invented itself, led by visionaries across the country, from Paul Thompson in Toronto to Gerry Potter in Edmonton, we founded literally hundreds of theatre organizations devoted to the Canadian experience. Then Brian Paisley came back from the Edinborough Fringe Festival with a Big Idea: We could do the same thing as the Scots had done: we could run a festival in the city of Edmonton consisting of whatever work the theatre artists of this town chose to do. In 1982, Brian (and the energetic visionaries around him) got a chance to snag a $60,000 grant that was going unused, and invited a Edmonton theatricians to produce shows.

A bunch of companies responded to that call, and the first Edmonton Fringe Festival was born. To everyone’s surprise, it attracted thousands, many curious just to see what it might be like to drink a beer on the streets (a practice that was all but unknown in our town in 1982). We all know what happened in the years following. Thousands of writers, actors, and directors flocked to our town to seize the opportunity to show their new work. Edmonton developed a whole new language of theatre, as local artists figured out how to produce plays that could be set up in minutes. Great Edmonton playwrights came out ofd this development. We ended up with the largest theatre festival on the continent, attended by scores of thousands of enthusiasts who wanted to see, to hear, to share these new voices.

Through the first ten years of the Festival strode Brian Paisley, thinking up one unlikely idea after another to attract the audience and create a sense of something special happening in Old Strathcona. The sleepy community in which I was born became a raucous celebration of creativity, a vast social experiment, for two weeks every summer. By encouraging outdoor vendors, performers, and a vital street scene, Brian made people want to come out to the festival. This is the man most people remember. Many of us also remember that Brian was a dedicated artist. In the theatre he founded with his then-wife Ti Hallas, known as Chinook Theatre, Brian wrote directed, and produced new work. He invited unknowns like me to use the space (an invitation that was unique in the city). Like so many other artists, I had the opportunity to be heard at Chinook Theatre, to found a theatre company that could seek an audience at the Fringe, and seek to keep it at other times of the year.

Brian gave himself ten years as the Fringe’s Producer, and then, literally at the height of his fame in Edmonton, he walked away from the prestigious position that he had created to run the Princess Theatre. From there, he could encourage and promote the kind of deep cinema experience that was his first love, and open the doors of the Princess to theatre acts that had outgrown the 100-seat venues at the Fringe.

When Brian and his second wife Julia moved away to Victoria, Edmonton lost one of its great visionaries. But he kept many of the friends he had made in Edmonton. For my part, our friendship only deepened as we both became fathers to growing families. I loved Brian for his dry Irish wit, his unfailing curiosity, and his strong opinions. We kept in constant touch over the years, and when he finally moved, alone, to Puerto Escondido, a small town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, he enthused about the house he had built there so frequently and so glowingly, that I finally went down to visit. Thus began a wonderful part of my life after retiring from MacEwan. Every winter I would spend weeks, or months in Mexico, and alway part of it at Brian’s delightful house a few streets from the ocean. We spent our days quietly writing, or taking the “collectivo” truck into the town to shop. We hung out on the beach in the moonlight. We discussed life, art, and love. We watched one movie a night, projected onto the white wall of his living room. Brian was always curious, always critical of foolishness, and always creating. He wrote several novels at “La Casa Mango” and several screenplays. He was an active artist/creator at all times.

Brian died this past weekend. He was 79 years old. Tragically, his end was not easy. He did not have medical insurance, and the weeks that he spent in an American-style clinic were massively expensive. It has been an immense struggle for his family to find money to pay the ongoing medical expenses, and many appeals have been made. I hope you will not find it amiss if I repeat that the need is ongoing. The financial situation is still very difficult for those he left behind, and I encourage you to help. Soon, there will be a musical benefit for Brian at La Cité Francophone. Please attend!

Here is the GoFundMe link: https://gofund.me/70b3543de

Brian was an artist, a social visionary, a critic of bad art and bad politics. He was gregarious, friendly, and outgoing. He was also a tremendously shy person in some ways. Those who knew him well knew that he was very happy with his own company, while being entirely capable of engaging a room. Or a city, for that matter. He created a theatre movement that has literally transformed theatre all over the English-speaking world. He enjoyed it all with an ironic smile on his lips that could break out into a nearly childlike joy when something was really working.

Rest In Peace, my dear of friend. We will all miss you tremendously.

Kenneth Brown

...

Brian is a guy who truly did it

who took an idea and ran with it

for years

the Fringe ideal of a free artistic playground

created, every August, in Edmonton, Alberta

...

he was a great guy...

funny dynamic quick super-smart and enduringly passionate

i didn’t know him well

met him less than twenty times total

did not know what he looked like at forty until three days ago

yet he was always a pleasure

and a laugh

and ever a shot in the arm

...

...

i find it amazing how the Edmonton Fringe

Brian’s great legacy

has kept itself on the straight and narrow so long

in a changing city

and a changing world

yet one must ask

how will it endure?

and will it be betrayed?

...

the obvious comparison is with Edinburgh

the Mother of all Fringes

yet, now that the Edinburgh Fringe has long lost its ideals

people forget how long it held onto those ideals

for decades

for over half its life, from the late 40s until the mid-90s

before its Corporate carve-up

when it turned into the rapacious Libertarian marketplace it has now long been

...

the kind where God is most certainly on the side of the big guns

...

yet Brian first visited Edinburgh in the early 80s

when it still had principles

when it was still possible to use the words “principles” and “Edinburgh Fringe” in the same sentence without it being risible

and, as Ken explains, he took their glorious and thriving founding ideas

and ideals

and ran with them

a team, a coterie, a gang, and more, all formed around him

and they all ran with it full-tilt head-long for years

...

creating an ever-growing and wildly diverse festival of theatre in almost all its forms

with huge audiences

a marvellous atmosphere

and a thrilling array of possibilities for the up-for-it audience

...

so that original artistic dream

long gone in Scotland

still lives on in Canada

because of Brian

...

i’ve said and written repeatedly, ever since i discovered the Canadian Fringes

“if the Canadian Fringes are like a Franklin D Roosevelt version of Capitalism

then Edinburgh is like a Genghis Khan version of Capitalism”

and, errr, nobody tends to disagree with that statement

in the slightest

...

while Brian is the chief reason the Canadian Fringes have still

residually at least

kept their ideals

for the first principle of the Canadian Fringes

devised by Brian

is

“THE ARTIST KEEPS ONE HUNDRED PER CENT OF THE DOOR”

...

which, among other things, has created my living for over twenty years

...

and while all the Canadian Fringes might wriggle around this principle

with “service charges” etc

yet it still holds true-ish

and, if Brian’s principle was removed, everything would become very different very quickly

and it would soon become the rapacious marketplace of Edinburgh, Adelaide and more

but this hasn’t happened yet.

and why?

Brian

...

for in Canada a new artist

with a crazy idea

still has a chance

to succeed

thrive

get spurred

to make another, more

go further

and ...

...

while

in Edinburgh

they are simply another blood-red morsel

dropped into the voracious maw

of the venue-sharks

...

one of the great things about the Edmonton Fringe is that it loudly states

It Does Not Have To Be That Way

...

...

while, amazingly

the Fringe Tour was also Brian’s idea

for this unique and glorious thing

festival after festival in city after city across a vast country

for the whole Summer

was his conception

...

for once Edmonton was up and running

well

why not have a similar festival before, somewhere East of Alberta?

and after, somewhere West... Vancouver?

and soon Festivals spread across Canada

and became that unique wonder, the Canadian Fringe Tour

my living

...

and yes, the person who first thought of this was... Brian Paisley

this is real achievement for just one guy

...

...

of course Edinburgh has the Free Fringe

where, in 97, i ran one of the first two shows in what became that Free Fringe

[i did it less for reasons of ideal

even though i liked the ideal

i did it because it seemed the best way to get an audience and not fail]

...

while, as Brian Paisley would understand very well

what counts is to keep going with an idea

year in year out

and the guy who did that

who started the same year as me [i believe]

was Peter Buckley Hill

who just kept going

rode the sneers and jeers and

won out in the end

...

yet i soon jumped from doing Edinburgh

because i found something much better

much more free of bullshit

and elitism

and corporatism

and sharks

the Canadian Fringe Tour

begun by Brian

a free artistic milieu where you could and can stick your artistic neck right out

and make decent money

...

for the Canadian Fringe is cheap mass theatre

and cheap times mass maybe means plenty

...

...

Brian’s legacy is

of course

not so assured

yet its amazing it has lasted this long

though little lasts forever

...

while i believe i have an advantage in seeing what happens to Edmonton next

for i have been to the future

or, at least, a future

for i was in Edinburgh when the all-change happened

the Corporatism

the theft of innocence

the mid-late 90s

when the venues, the comedy agents and the City Council took over

when it was realised they didn’t have to just make money out of the audience

they could also make money out of the performers

and they certainly did

when they astutely transmuted decades of effort and youth and bravery and creativity into hard coin

as Artists began to lose thousands

and, while many artists were loudly protesting

the small-government Scottish Fringe found itself powerless to do anything about it

...

...

while it would be naive to believe money won’t find a way

that the Edmonton Fringe won’t be sold out somehow

so the question is

how will the Edmonton Fringe betray itself?

...

there are and will be fault-lines

which the following questions might probe at

...

...

what proportion of shows are wholly original?

written from scratch?
and is that proportion declining?

?

...

is the cap on price a socialist hold-out amongst the libertarianisms

?

...

is it true to say

“the women make art, the men make money”?

?

...

is there empire building within the Fringe?

and is the Fringe already facilitating it?

?

...

in the future there will be equivalents to the Pleasance, the Assembly, the Gilded Balloon, etc

who and where and what will these be?

?

...

in what ways are the three best Canadian Fringes, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto, different from each other?
and are these divergences widening?

?

...

how many Canadian Fringes do local companies do for the money?

?

...

is it a triumph that there are TV stars in 450 seat venues?

when the size of that number, 450, means wholescale wipe-out for shows by unknowns

who struggle for a decent-sized audience

of course, TV stars were always going to come sooner or later

its a product of success

though the Fringe didn’t have to allow such huge venues

and therefore change the artistic ecosystem

and wipe-out shows by unknowns

?

...

in Edinburgh there came a point when the big venues could dictate to the Fringe

how far away [decades?] is that time for Edmonton?

?

...

how much harder does it get every year for new companies?

?

...

is there as much artistic risk being taken as there was ten years ago...

twenty?

?

...

...

i wonder what questions other Fringers

performers, audience, administrators

deem the most pertinent?

?

…

in other news

...

Kathmandu

curiously quieter on a Saturday

where i just walked down Freak Street

near the wonderful Durbar Square

and i’m told Freak Street is where the freaks would stay in the 60s and 70s

and the name stuck

...

coincidentally

i’m off to Sedi, above Pokhara

to see my old Gokarna mucker, Dave

who was here in 1976

and who was a “freak”

...

says Dave

WE WEREN’T HIPPIES

HIPPIES WAS MADE OF PLASTIC, MAN

WE WAS FREAKS

...

...

in other news

...

its a Kathmandu of moody skies

where the feet want to wander at near random

down the streets and lanes

and alleys

across the squares

past the old and older

the tumbledown and the tidy

the bustling and the heaving

the crammed and the crammeder

through Kathmandu

the dead-end squares and the long curving exitless streets

where the feet want to and can and shall

pace the straights and

random the corners

so its my third time

in one of my very favourite cities on Earth

maybe my favourite, after Montreal

yet this time its rainy season

which does put a damper

and which means

as the mornings are bright and clear and blue-above

and slowly cloud and grey and drizzle through the afternoon

to many an evening of unadulterated downpour

i should be rising well before six to enjoy the splendours

of the streets before they have people

of the markets as they wake up

of the shrinking shadows

of the empty squares

many with fabulous stupas

a little like a giant white toilet plunger

with weird pairs of eyes drawn here and there

with gentle omming music

and incense rising

and overhanging eaves

and post-earthquake girders, still, holding up old walls

all a fascination for the eye and feet drawn here

and there

through one higgledy-housed square

into another piggledy-housed square

into an alleyway

and maybe into a further smaller head-stooping alleyway

maybe leading to a dead-end where the locals stare at the stymied foreigner

maybe leading on to another white stupa in another irregularly housed square

then, suddenly, another busy street

or busier market

with colourful bunting and flags and pennants

with shiny brass sculpting

with yet more gazillions of shops each overflowing into the street

with the higgledy of the different houses

the shape of many of which i can imagine in pre-Dickens London, centuries ago

as the eye zigzags while the feet zagzig

in a random walk through the old and the ancient

the older and the ancienter

past serene Buddhas

and demonic Gods who will make a passing liar vomit blood

past monks and nuns in maroon

past football shirts and trekker gortex

on a mappy scribble of an extended amble through olde worlde fabulous

for i dunno how long

as i thought i’d leave by now

and head West to see a pal

in the heights above Sedi and Pokhara

yet its much to soon to leave this near endless splendour

where i have a hankering to live off quasi-Chinese street-ish food

and where i should really have a beer

for in Ladakh, India, which i just left

i spent much of June a whole 250 km from any beer

while here its on both corners at the end of the street

yet i haven’t got round to beer yet

and might not for a day or three

of more ambly randoming

up the 365 steps to the famous temple a kilometre West

over the bridge to another old royal capital, Patan

and round and round the lanes and alleys of this Old City once again

...
…
…

…
from remote Ladakh, very Northern India
to Nepal, capital city
...
from cool and bright and open and fresh
to warm and sticky and shadowed and muggy
...
from empty streets and paths
to heaving alleys and lanes
to walk-halting traffic jams on thin roads
...
from a Buddhism
to another Buddhism
...
from tiny villages and two largeish towns
to a giant city sprawling for miles of jagged sullied concrete outside the historic fabulous old
...
from stretched out
to everything on top of each other, packed in, one thing after the next
jammed stuffed crowded rammed
...
from slow
to busy
to busier
...
from gaps between
to the next starting before the last has finished
and more already starting before those have properly begun
...
from muted
to garish
...
from low-rise and wide-open sky
to eaves and rooves above thin streets
...
from stretching out in space
to banging head hard on stone beams
after insufficient stooping in ever-shrinking rain-flooded alleyway
...
from loosely curving lanes
to tight zigzaggery
...
from junctions
to crossroads
...
from one choice, maybe two,
to many
...
from long strides
to short inhibited steps
...
from tallest person in the street
to tallest person in the street
...
from chicken chow mein
to buffalo chow mein
...
from Tibetan / Ladhaki or Indian food
to Chinese or Indian or Nepalese
...
from ice-melt rivers in torrential spate
to rainy season deluge
...
from Buddhism and Islam
to Buddhism-merged-Hinduism
...
from 3500-metre altitude issues
to none
...
from, often, no beer for 240 k
to beer-shops on the corner
...
from breakfast of local honey with tandoori roti from alley-side bakery oven
to hotel buffet breakfast
...
from new streets solely of hotels and guest-houses
to ancient old and older

...

from no pizzas no burgers no franchises no coffee-shops full of westerners

to no pizzas burgers franchises or coffee-shops full of...
...
from stark rocky plunging valleys
to intricately ornamental beauty
...
from rock-falling scree-slopes
to post-earthquake precarious walls
...
from no-mirrors and
i-forgot-what-i-look-like
to oh shit, really?
...
from tumbledown grey-stone hovels
and robust square elegant white new houses
to dilapidated, wonky, bowed, sullied, yawing, crumbling
...
from Leh
to Kathmandu

…

…

…

while this is a picture from my next perch
above Sedi, near Pokara

photo dump Ladakh

...

two nights left of my six weeks wandering the region

...

an astounding place

where i quickly ran out of words for ...

dramatic majestic grand

harsh bleak stark

boulder rock stone scree

sumptuous ebullient verdure verdant green

deep steep plunging

etc

...

so i’ll let the photos do the talking

...

and Ladakh is really not like India

at all

much more Tibetan

much more like the Upper Mustang Valley in Nepal

or, Tibet, i guess

...

enjoy the photos

...

...

...

and its two nights left of my six months in India

...

Kathmandu Saturday

one of my very favourite cities upon this Earth

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

hitch-hiking has been great in this region

and the best way to get around

...

super-easy

no waits over thirty minutes

except the biggest day of the Shia Muslim’s Muharram Festival

when there was zero traffic

...

faster than the bus

where there aren’t many buses anyhow

because there aren’t many inhabitants

because this remote area is pretty empty

and it ain’t easy to find out when the bus is

because maybe the folk you ask don’t understand you

or , very possibly, you don’t understand them

... and anyhow i often ain’t been quite sure where i want to end up

and have happily thrown myself upon the winds of chance

...

done in your own time

as you have long enough

and don’t mind being stuck on a roadside

with an utterly fabulous striking view

for maybe two minutes, maybe thirty

...

safe

EVEN YOUNG LOCAL WOMEN HITCH-HIKE IN THIS REGION

which certainly don’t happen in most of India

where many young women are intimidated by the streets

...

cheap

like free

...

the best way to meet local folk

me i used to hitch-hike masses

back in my Twenties

and it was a great and rewarding way to meet folk i would never meet in any other way

and it still is

i’ve been crammed in cars full of chatty nuns and monks

while my lifts’ English has tended to be excellent

so i’ve met two doctors, an engineer, a crypto-whizzkid, two teachers, three IT guys, plus a civil servant in the Education Ministry, and another... and more

who have given me more of a sense of, an education about, this region than any other source

where one thing i’ve learnt is...

THEY DON’T LIKE RULE FROM DELHI

they’re a Union Territory not a State

which means rule from down South

and the folks i’ve met want Ladakh to be a State

yet they don’t expect this to happen while the BJP are in power

and the BJP ain’t losing power any time soon

...

fun

laughs with the lift

gorgeous roadsides

even when there’s been zero traffic its been an all-surrounding pleasure

...

and liberating

it gives a great sense of freedom to throw oneself on the winds of fate

to be governed by a roll of the random dice

...

and you get there anyhow

wherever it is

sooner or later

...

andnuncomplicated

in Lamaruyu, in Mulbekh, in Kargil, in Brakoo, in Rangdum

you walk out your door and you simply start

...

...

...

...

in other news

i’ve introduced that ubiquitous Canadian joke to a few

“here we have two seasons

winter and construction”

and the Ladakhis they like that joke a lot

Cultural appropriation from the Land of Stupid?

Or self-generated blundering?

...

...

One of my very best travelling days ever

Hitching down the Zanskar Valley

Which i would have enjoyed rather more

If i could have been sure at the time that it wasn’t a stupid thing to be doing

And that every slow kilometre wasn’t taking me further into trouble i’d have trouble getting out of

...

…

Because

Lots of locals told me the new Zanskar Gorge Road is now “open”

But

That wouldn’t be my definition of “open”

When that road is so new it doesn’t properly “exist” yet

Though its certainly “there” enough to be utterly astounding
The most awe-inspiring valley road i ever drove down

...

Bouncy-bouncy bang-bang crashy

Jiggety-jaggety crunchety crashy

From

Padum

To

Nimmu

Next the wide, white-splashed, brown ice-melt torrent

...

Down a plunging river valley, V-shaped not U-shaped and glacial

High, deep, jutting, rugged, stark
Old, aeons, tens of million

Tarmac, gravel, stone, sand

Winding, smooth, hairpins

...

Strata bent, twisted, broken, precarious

...

...

video clip is

THE MOVIES

from last year’s show

recorded as part of the Gabriola Island Theatre Festival

late August

...

So there i was

Moving in five ten fifteen k fits and starts

Down the starkly beautiful river gorge road

The Zanskar valley North from Padum

Much of it overhung by vast cliffs

Much of it newly carved from the rock

Sometimes with a rock overhang the width of the two-lane road...

...

Yet it’s not finished

[Though there are already signs of subsidence]

And so, because it’s not finished, there’s no traffic

Making hitch-hiking somewhat tricky

...

...

While all my hitching in Ladakh, so far

Has been a cheery cruise of a chummy doddle

...
And, also, the best way to meet local folk

Friendly, chatty, informative Ladhaki folk

Doctor, teachers, civil servant, crypto whizz-kid

...

Many many folk hitch-hike here

Even young women hitch-hike

Which doesn’t happen in most of India

...

...

Meanwhile, my two devices were not functioning

So i had no map

And had no idea how much or, more importantly, how little, of the 280 k i’d done

Though Google Maps and Maps.Me are both wrong and out of date in much of Ladakh, anyhow

…

...

While its a big shame i couldn’t take my own photos

For none of the online pictures do it justice

None show the enormity

Or what it’s like to be on the finished and unfinished road

At the bottom of the high gorge

With the vast rock

And its twisted or vertical or vanishing rockbeds

...

Elemental

Raw

Brute

...

I’ve hitch-hiked thousands of time

And this was the most amazing day of them all

Where this road, the Zanskar Valley Road,

Is going to be incredible, a global wonder

...

Assuming portions of it don’t slip into the river

...

So me?

My lifts were one truck

One school bus, full of noisy schoolgirls

One teacher

Three construction trucks

One of them army

And one of them twice...?

...

While groups of road workers i passed offered me lunch

And brought me water

...

While the roadside time

Beneath overhangs

Under cliffs

Next a bridge

Was all glorious

Yet worrisome

For what lies ahead?

Does the road continue all the way?
And are there vehicles and therefore lifts on it?

...

Until

After a number of slow hitch-hiking hours i had no means to count

There i was

Beyond the middle of not-really-anywhere

Stood in the dust and sun and splendour

Waiting for non-existent traffic

Which didn’t exist because the road ain’t open yet

And even if it did exist

The safety checkpoint a mile back wouldn’t let it through for four more hours, till 5pm

Though they did let the foot-bound foreign hitch-hiker through

Me...

...

So i walked on until i got to an unbridged ford i didn’t want to hazard

And stood waiting

In the stark wowing high beauty

For forty minutes

Without a single vehicle

Thinking, am i in trouble

Or not?

Is this stupid

Or not?

It’s errr difficult to tell

Because the whole day has been slow

In the rocky grandeur

...

And then my saviours ...

The taxi with two holidaying Hyderabadis

A doctor and an I.T. guy

Who both had an altitude sickness problem further up

And therefore had to abandon their motorcycles

To descend fast

And, being proper types

Had got an official medical exception to the closing of the road

And were allowed through checkpoints

Unlike all other civilian traffic

So their exception was my ticket to security

And i was sorted

Though i found i’d only travelled maybe 100 k

In six amazed hours of bitty hitching ...

...

So then

There i was

Sat in the back seat

Goggling and gawping at the awe-inspiring splendours

Neck-swivelling, neck-lowering

Eye-narrowing, eye-raising

At the yawing rock
The flowing, churning, foaming river

The enormous scree-slopes

The colossal rock-faces

The gob-smacking scale of it

The height of the rock

The twisted mangled strata

The brown grey green red rock

The broken and smashed and pulverised

...

Brute

Elemental

Colossal

Ancient

Towering

...

With more fallen boulders than anywhere i ever seen

With more twisty switch-backing in the rock layers

The seams and veins and faults

Than anything i ever saw before...

...

While i had to wonder

Am i the first to hitch-hike this astounding road?

...

Until we cruised out the North end of the valley

Where the Zanskar meets the fabled Indus River

And turned right towards Leh

...

Where i am now

And don’t really want to be

Now my laptop is fixed

...

For i’d thought i could cruisily hitch down the Zanskar

Sort my malfunctioning laptop

Then neatly hitch back and resume plans

Yet, after yesterday

[How lucky was i?]

I dunno how wise that would be

Yet any other way back to Padum is right around the houses, maybe 400 k

...

And there’s the big question

How lucky was i?

I suspect i was pretty damn lucky

And therefore shouldn’t try it again

...

So i’m wondering what to do next

On Friday i guess

...

Back to Brakoo is very tempting

And then there’s Tingmosgang ...

...

...

...

Padum before the pass to the mid-right
taken from Karsha across the Tsarep River

...

…

...

in other news

after a month in Ladakh i finally found some good food

for here scran has been no more than ok

the Indian curries are unspecial

ditto the thalis

and momos and noodle soups are only ever not bad

...

while down South i’d springing cheerily from my hotel

three times a day

expectant of good food

yet here?

not so much

…

till this morning i found

fresh bread

from something very like a tandoori

called chapatis but not like chapatis down South

more nan-like

yet doughy and crusty at the same time

while i inherited some honey

from Brody the Utah permaculturist

and the honey is perfect with this bread for an uncharacteristic sweet breakfast

...

while lunch was South Indian poori

nice

with curd, spicy bean- lentil and

a first

some kind of reddish sweet and sour sauce

reminding me China ain’t so far away

...

...

...

WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS FOR

is about to be accomplished

the Grail is close

we are almost there

...

OUR DESTINY

and when this pinnacle of achievement is successfully mounted

when this goal is surpassed

the world, the Cosmos, everything, will have served its ultimate Reason For Being

and shall therefore end

come to pass

and dissolve away into eternal peace and nothingness

...

FROM THE BIG BANG TO HERE, THE CROWNING CULMINATION

it can be read somewhere that the entire purpose of our Universe

has been to come up with the name of God

and that when the name of the One Divine is finally spoken

all shall end

and the very stars go out one by one

yet this theory is not correct

...

rather

ALL OF CREATION HAS BEEN LEADING UP TO THIS COMING FINAL MOMENT

while something has to explain why so many millions

around the world

have been, and are,

doing their very best

to make this literally earth-shattering culmination come to be

where, myself, i have only slowly come to understand it

though millions have clearly realised it before me

which explains why they are so religiously doing their very best

to make it happen

working so hard towards this denouement of denouements

this One Goal

beyond the Twelfth Zero

and when this greatest of all summations is consummated

all shall come to pass

...

FROM THE FIRST ORGANIC MOLECULES TO OUR NOW

and when it does

this universe shall atomise in a blaze of rapturous glory

and the very atoms themselves shall diffuse into micro-particles so tiny as to be infinitesimal

and those infinitesimals shall diffuse again

...

WE ARE ALMOST THERE, REJOICE

many have long wondered

more with every passing year of our Century

why so many are so actively

so selflessly

striving with their all

to surmount this almighty task

why they have accepted such a harsh and brutal human world

why they have voided

have deep-sixed

have nahhed

such notions as

love of our Earth

compassion

empathy

familial concern for their descendents

to instead aid the seemingly unstoppable

the drive for the Great Goal

our crowning climactic crescendo

and, now, the answer is coming clear

that the whole purpose of the Universe has been for someone

something

somewhere

to surpass the Twelfth Zero

...

FOR AFTER FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS THE SUPREME MOMENT COMES

and what is this great culmination

this celestial cataclysm

it is

the creation of the first

the only

Trillionaire

...

THIS IS WHAT IT HAS ALL BEEN FOR

this has been the Grand Design of all Creation

to create a Trillionaire

and it has been the epic journeys of epic journeys

the Greatest Ambition of Our Species

of the Entire Universe

...

AND AS SOON AS IT HAS

all can and will finally end

...

ITS BEEN AEONS FOR THIS

fourteen Billion years of substance, for this

four Billion years of life on Earth, for this

...

and this is why they did it...

...

the apes coming down from the trees

...

the first settled farmers

creating a surplus

...

the first Kings

amassing

...

Feudalism

extorting

filling coffers

...

from a radioactive silver mine in Bohemia

from Joachim’s dollar

to here

...

Capitalism

finessing, ever finessing

the steering of a maximum of resources into fewer and fewer hands

more than anyone could ever need or spend

...

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
Venice, small

the Netherlands, bigger but small

Britain, biggish

the USA, huge

the Fuggers, the VOC, the East India Company, Morgan Chase, Goldman-Sachs

this is what’s its been for

the commercialisation of time, of space, of life

the monetisation of Everything

it has been so that one day in the far-off future

a future now close

one individual might become

a, The

Trillionaire

the only one

for after this Celestial Moment

the Supreme Destiny

the purpose of our Earth

our Galaxy

nay, our entire Universe

has been fulfilled

and all shall atomise

us with it

and those very atoms shall dissolve away amongst themselves

...

...

^...

^...

^{there is of course a big hole in this joke / plot}

^{which i’m sure you’ve already seen}

^…

^currency

^...

^{why the Dollar?}

^...

^{yet maybe you, the Dear Reader}

^{could let this glaring inconsistency}

^{this void in the narrative}

^pass

^{perhaps like a Hollywood movie}

^{where you forgive the holes in the plot}

^...

^{and you, Dear Reader}

^{do do this when watching movies}

^{don’t you?}

^{give plot-holes a pass}

^?

^...

^{or perhaps}

^{you might concur that}

^{as is abundantly clear to many}

^{America’s supremacy is God-given}

^{and so the Trillion shall be in Dollars}

^{and we are nearly there}

^{less than five years away}

^...

^{one last effort folks}

^{and we’ll be there}

^...

^...

...

...

some think the Purpose of the Universe is

Love

or

for one to speak the name of God

or

to complete the Tower of Hanoi

yet no

the purpose of the Universe is to surpass the Twelfth zero

1

10

100

1,000

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

1000,000,000

10,000,000,000

100,000,000,000

1000,000,000,000

poouuuffff!

The End

...

...

well, something really does have to explain why

so many people are working so incredibly hard

to make the Billionaires richer

...

something has to explain why

so many people with no money

the rednecks, the Faragists

have sought, submitted to, a libertarian free-market

which is chiefly going to make very rich people even richer

and them, their children and their grandchildren poorer

have sought to create, for so many, a life of fifty years

yes, fifty years

of working harder and longer for less

and yes this

this has long been an extremely difficult question to answer

why do they want this?

...

yet my writing here

which you are now reading

can humbly proffer a solution

to this great historical mystery

...

why do they so actively want the Billionaires richer?

because, yay

they want our Cosmos to achieve its one-true purpose

because they seek the Great Climax, the holy Grail

of the first and only Trillionaire

...

...

so let us prepare ourselves for the Divine Moment

when the Prophecy is Fulfilled

...

14 Billion years leading up to this

the great culmination

the final orgasm, the Big Death

...

...

Elon knows this is true

he’s the ultimate nihilist

...

and maybe

once all its over

and there is no anything

the Divine Trillionaire gets to live

in some other realm

some other dimension

where they become as an immortal God

and live with the Trillionaires of previous universes

who somehow, by divine purpose

somewhere, of divine design

reign as Gods in all eternity

...

while everyone and everything else simply dissipates away

to be but a memory in the mind of God

where that God is called Elon

...

Elon knows this is true

he knows he is a God in the making

he know he has what it takes

...

...

and Elon might like some of our world to survive

yet he knows others are trying to get there first

and if he slows they might overtake him

and they might live forever

become God

while he is atomised along with everyone else

and becomes, humiliatingly

a vanishing infinitesimal mote in the vastness of all time

...

...

FYI

there have been

in fact still are

universes where they realised all of this

what happens to everything after the twelfth zero is surmounted

where they have made a multi-galactic mutual agreement

that no-one go beyond the hundred billion mark

the eleventh zero

so that they might persist for eternity

...

...

yet in more than one of these universes

stretching back beyond the reaches of all times

and forward into all times

there was an individual

the ultimate psychopath

who sought to destroy the Universe

...

...

while in others it was pure greed from one individual

the ultimate sociopath

...

or the desire to become God

the ultimate egocentric

who sought to consummate Time

in their own self-deification

...

which led to the End of All

the Last Moment

the ascension of a Trillionaire

...

...

so here we are

and there we shall be

on our knees before the Blinding Light of the Greatest Moment

The End Times

The Rapture

soon, very soon

The All

...

...

the guy with the banner on the stick in the old photos

he knew

The End Of The World Is Nigh

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

in a Hollywood-style possible final plot-twist

...

one way to save the Earth, the All

...

might be

...

if someone were to inform said Elon

and all the other wannabe deities

that the definition of God is a loose one

...

and that one of Creation’s many cruel jokes is that

actually

what a God really is

is a miniscule organism only capable of being conscious of one sensation

pain

and that it is hot

very very hot

in the next world

...

and that one might

in fact

really

REALLY

regret being there for all eternity

...

...

while

for the rest of Time

we, us, all, go somewhere else...

...

where the rains have come

and washed away all we are and were

where all our hurts and pains have been cleared within us

and no-one can hurt anyone any more

where everyone has forgiven everyone their trespasses

and life comes again to sweep all forward once more

where an energy and love begins

from a freshet spring within each of us

and surges out in a sweep of warm happiness

to merge and become one

with all the love in the Universe

...

...

but Elon?

he does not know that

...

or maybe he does

and in one final twist in the plot

it turns out he, Elon Musk

has long been aware of all of all of this

and he, with a divine selflessness

is prepared, for all our sakes

to make the ultimate sacrifice

to suffer eternal agony

in order to pave a heavenly path for us all

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

and as the credits roll

with a thanks to

Arthur C Clarke

we see a picture of the night sky

where already the number of stars has thinned, patchily

and we see two large stars vanish

then more

as the sky visibly darkens

until after the credits have rolled

there is the line

“one by one the stars are going out”

...

...

The Accidents Of The Inevitable

a line which could read as oxymoronic

...

yet i mean the happy accidents

the serendipities

that stem from the inevitable

...

i mean, how one logical step after another

has slowly, jumpily

lead me

in a random walk

way up here into the increasingly remote

to a marvellous thing

the journey up the Suru Valley

...

...

where i had and have a growing sense of...

anticipation

...

...

and here it is

a homestay over the river from Sankoo

after a country lane of pollarded poplars

before the colossal snow-capped rock-falling valley to the North

and just beyond the village sign for Brakoo

on the North-Eastern side of the grey, gushing, ice-melt Suru River

...

all too perfect to pass up

...

...

first photo is Lankarche

where a river gorge winds into the valley

creating a broad sloping space for a village, Lankarchey

...

...

meanwhile

a bus windscreen reads

“subdued thoughts lead to sublime determinations”

...

a line which might read better in Purigi or Arabic

yet my clunky line “the serendipities of inevitability” might

you never know

read very well in some language somewhere

while maybe that line

could that be rephrased as “the chances of fate”?

i’m not sure

yet i don’t think so

that doesn’t quite express it

...

for what i mean is

its pretty accidental and random that i’m here

in the small village of Brakoo

yet every step that brought me here has been

the most obvious thing to do next

from where i then was

...

i got to each place and

after two or three days

i mulled out the best next step

until, after ten days

i’d gone from Leh to this remote river valley

...

...

for

after the altitude sickness fiasc

on my abortive Sham Valley Trek

led me, via a tricky desolate empty river gorge, back to Leh

where i’d already been too long

i had to go somewhere

...

yet i needed to take a route that wouldn’t involve staying on high

and, anyhow, the obvious route was on the main highway

along the Indus River

past Nimmoo

then over the pass

to the Wakha River valley

for the Buddhist monastery villages of

first Lamayuru, 2 nights

and then, after the 4100 metre, Fotu La pass

Mulbekh, 3 nights

each perched on the North side of the vast snow-rimmed valley

...

after which it was only sensible to keep going

down the main road

to the unknown of Kargil

a Shia Muslim town

crammed and stretched

between the valley side and the Suru River

...

and after Kargil, the obvious step

is up the Suru Valley

with Sankoo and Rangdum along the way

towards the remote small towns of Padum and Zanskar

in the decidedly remote Zanskar Valley

where it seems there is a new road down the Zanskar River

back to Nimmoo,

though whether there’s any traffic to hitch-hike is a

errr

bridge i’ll cross when i come to it

...

yet, the further i go, the higher and colder it will get

so, looking at Kargil to Zanskar

it made good sense to find a beauty early, and low, and warm

rather than later, and high, and chilly

and here it is

a homestay in Brakoo

in the Suru Valley

with lush greenery

in an alluvial plain

ground out by glaciers

over the millions

all between the steep and harsh rocky sides

rising to snowy peaks

...

...

however

these might seem logical decisions to me

yet they clearly haven’t to anyone else

for there were no foreigners in Lamayuru or Mulbekh

i saw just one in Kargil

while i get the feeling none come to Sankoo very often

and i’m pretty damn certain no foreigner ever walks up that green lane through Brakoo

with its wide-eyed children and halloos and grinning old men

and women in the green wheat-fields unbending their backs to

watch the oddity go by

...

for this has to be one of the friendliest places ever

and feels very very safe

...

...

so i’m fresh out of Kargil

Ladakh’s second city

where i came down from the Buddhist Mountains

on the good road along the Wadha River

to where the Wadha meets the Suru

at Kargil,

a town squeezed long and thin between river and cliff

some of which is collapsing

so, actually in the town, there’s a stretch of the one main road where

no-one parks

or sets up stalls

in Kargil,

where the Suru, but not the Wadha

is greyly foaming in ice-melt torrent

where i came down

from mountain and Buddhism and Tibetan

into town and Islam and Indian

where it was no longer the bunting and stupas and prayer wheels

and gentle long prayers

it was minarets and green

and the call to prayer

for i came down from the mountains and stark bleak gorges

into something different

into city-town-ness

busyness

noisyness

...

...

and where, in Kargil

i soon guessed the spoken language was different to before

and not Hindi either

and yes, its Purigi

a Tibetic lanuage

spoken by 120,000 at the most

almost all near here, Kargil

yet the language, my hitch-hike rides have told me

is thriving

...

though everything written is in English

the shop signs, the public information posters

even the dull detail on the water bottles

...

while further up the valley, soon

it will be another language

Zanskari

...

...

Kargil

being Shia

has many folk very keen on Iran

and there are lots of posters featuring two Khameneis and a Khomeini

are head-scarved little girls carrying pictures of Khomeini

...

where one of my hitch-hikes rides said

there are a bunch of Khomeini fans in the town

and i got the distinct feeling he found them tedious to say the least

...

while, i guess, here in India

if you are going to show affinity for a Muslim country

you might be safe showing affinity for Iran

while you might not be with demonstrating for Pakistan

for the border is only 11k away [?]

and the Pakistanis did actually invade

stupidly and uselessly

back in 1999

...

...

and i say Brakoo is too perfect to pass up

yet there’s no dhabas or even chai-shops in the village

so i’m not sure where my meals are going to be coming from

...

but something always comes up

and i have a kettle, for Maggi

so maybe i’m gonna eat a lot of noodles

and bags of samosas and pakoda

...

and here i’ll be

in Brakoo

rustic, with large new middle-class houses

where super-smiley children follow me down lanes

Brakoo

lushly green with young wheat

which has to all happen fast, grow quick, with such a short summer

and an eight month winter

Brakoo

avenues of pollarded poplars

...

…

.

looking south down the Suru Valley

...

...

in other news

a shop sign says

“proprietor Ali Aziz Hardass”

...

…

...

…

in other news

no alcohol anywhere for well over 100k

if not 200

...

...

...

...

in other news

many of the lanes here aren’t on the map

maps.me is pretty useless

and, while google maps is similarly bad

the satellite photos do do the job

and show me where there’s a road

and a bridge

...

...

...

...

in other news

an easy 7k downhill saunter

on the thin road from Brakoo

to Thovina

[see photo below]

where as soon as i arrive i

thumb a lift straight back

...

...

an afternoon’s rolling stroll from Brakoo to Thovina

...

...

in other news

the random leap of the obvious steps,

the accidents of inevitability,

the serendipities of the

serially

logical,

take me from

step to

step,

stop to

stop to

next ...

here it is

THE NEW POUR

into The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

...

33 spanking new pieces

added to the 766

so its now 799

ideas poems stories jokes

fragments verses choruses ditties oneliners jingles

online

at pure random

...

...

performance poetry

...

an

artform

where

the

paint

is

always

wet

...

?

…

...

while me?

a performance poet?

for almost thirty years

i never went anywhere near the poetry publishing world

despite offers

i was wholly and utterly PERFORMANCE

lost into the fabulous new possibilities of a medium

where so much seemed undone

and where i saw many many great acts do amazing things

...

...

Embodied Poetics

text voice face

breath body space

...

...

yet i was always writing

generating lines and ideas

most of which could never be used on a stage

and this huge array built and built

and built

for decades

until...

i had to do something with it

...

yet a book was out

ordinary was out

and i’d always been fascinated by the random collision of ideas

chiefly to be found in rock’n’roll’n’rap

the concatenations

plotless, narrative-less, ideas

ideas stripped of everything but themself
pure

...

so

a huge number

of disconnected

digital pieces

coming at the reader

at total random

seemed a doable way

to achieve this

...

and here we are

and here it is

...

...

if artists are outsiders

and poets are the outsiders among artists

and performance poetry the outsider of poetry

then i’m not sure quite how I ended up

on the outside of the outside of the outside

of the outside

...

but i did

...

...

the nature of the bucket

a huge number of pieces

wholly randomised

means that, of course

no-one can be sure they’ve read them all

what was 766

and is now 799

...

so when we add more pieces

the Dear Reader cannot know if a piece is new

or if it has been a possible all along

and they simply have not encountered it

...

yet this, Dear Folks

is a the nature of the Beast

the Thing

the never-done-ever

the Bucket

...

...

and here it is

all my eggs in one bucket

a high high heap of powder my

anti-publishing dogma

has scrupulously

kept dry for decades

my one and only shot

a very loaded cannon

The Bucket

...

...

accessed

behind the paywall

here on Substack

at The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

...

...

...

...

from my window

...

…

…

IN OTHER NEWS

...

here i am, in Mulbekh

west of the Fotu La pass

on the Leh-Kargil highway

...

an extremely friendly place

...

famous for a Buddhist Monastery

on the hill above

...

and a thirty foot rock-cut relief of Buddha

the Maitreya Buddha

8th Century

carved into a huge rock

in the Gompa

just over the road from my simple room

[see photo]

...

the Maitreya Buddha is a Buddha to come

which is an unusual concept

...

a Buddha

a King of Love

who will arrive

when the teachings of the original Gautama Buddha are

forgotten

neglected

...

...

...

while

some of the Buddhist music

playing for hours and hours

sounds VERY like a low and gentle Christian choir

...

then twenty oldish women

in heavy ankle-length skirts

with head-scarves or woolly hats

and braided hair hanging down their back

all crowdedly circle the prayer-wheel

then enter the tiny temple space

as the music turns into a sermon reminiscent of

a very drunk drunk

getting hold of a microphone in a pub

and bravely but failingly

attempting to sing an old Irish or English folk song

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

a novel so full of cunning,

so brimming with sly sneaky,

that as i lay on the settee,

laughing and turning the pages,

my knives sharpened themselves in the draw

…

…

…

a three-pronged muck-up of a yesterday

the second, a fall in the river

the third, a heavy fall in the street

but first

a can’t-go-forward, cant-go-back, scenario

where my only way out is

maybe

a 5-6-7 k river gorge

in some remote mountains

i can’t know i can get safely through

and where there’ll be no people

...

all in all

a proper schtuck to get oneself in

another hairy descent

...

the way South

...

at this point i think i’m obliged to mention

the next Pour

into The Bucket Of Unused Ideas

is very imminent

...

33 new pieces

will be added

for the 1st of June

...

six months after it first went live

it will now be 799 pieces in all

presented at total random

one after the other

at a pull or refresh of your screen

something no-one ever did before

...

ideas stories poems gags one-liners

fragments verses choruses ditties

and more

...

some folk have made it a daily part of their life

to have it up on their screens

for constant or occasional perusal

a permanently available stock of new thoughts

old quotes

comic stories

and left-field ideas

...

the undoable way forward

…

...

back to my predicament in the mountains of Ladakh

which occurred after

one hard-trekked day of leg-aching ascent

in the bleakly beautiful, stark rocky mountains and valleys and gorges

on the winding trails from Likir to Yangthang

on the three night Sham Valley Trek

the easiest available trek up here in Ladakh

...

and so

after a nice night in a Homestay

room, dinner, breakfast and packed lunch

not bad for 1500 rupees

i started the next day with a steep descent

down to the river

with the bigger steeper climb visible ahead of me

yet when i get down there to start the ascent i

can’t do it

go up that is

because ... altitude sickness

in the form of dizziness and a physical uurrgghh in my carriage

and

after three attempts at just twenty metres of climb

each making me feel weak, woozy and terrible

i realise i

errrr

can’t go forward

or back, up

or right, North, which is just a rock face

i can only go left, South

down the gorge of the Tokpo River

while the only real remedy for altitude sickness is to go down

so that’s what i have to do

turn left, go South, down

except its an unknown

barely mapped

...

yet

do i have a choice?

especially when, as long as i’m not going upwards

i feel good

and hey

its an adventure

could be brilliant

an off-piste wander

while i have a litre of water

and the packed lunch

so, why not?

yet

i don’t know if its doable

...

...

while thinking now, next morning, achily safe in Leh

i guess i coulda got someone in Yangthang

to somehow get me a taxi

but that woulda taken hours

and been failure

and no-fun

whereas trying the deep river gorge is not failure

keeps the adventure rolling

...

…

yet i don’t know what’s in the gorge

and there’s no internet anywhere here

and the Maps.me App cannot be trusted

for things that do exist aren’t on the App

while trails that don’t are

so i don’t know if its dangerous

stupid

impossible

perilous

i can’t know and i don’t but

keyly

its down

and down i have to do

and down i can do

is the chief thing i can physically do

except, after i make the decision

and begin

the tarmac road soon disappears into a stony trail

which disappears

so, yes, Maps.me is wrong
…

and so i start making my way along the rocky stony bottom

right next the thin, shallow, gently descending, winding river

the Tokpo river

as i enter into its deep gorge

of colossal high rock-faces yawing way above me

of jutting geological striata

some twisted back on themselves

of huge rocks defying gravity

and its bottom of boulders and river-rounded stones

with a scree of tiny slithers on every side

often a slope of scree hundreds of metres high

while there’s little chance i’m going too see anyone

and there must be 5k of this to do

but its not even eleven

so i got plenty time

to pick my way

then stop to breathe it in

to enjoy the stark splendour

plus i’ve no exhaustion in the legs

and any dizziness has gone with the descent

like its supposed to

...

while this, here

i shoulda said

this is one of the bleakest landscapes i ever saw

while everything seems pulverised

broken into bits

by time and gravity

as i dicily pick my precarious way down

and down

the shallow gorge

stepping on

or on the sand between

these ankle-busting stones

and crossing the river five, ten times

not one of which is easy

on the smooth stones

as i find my slow way

stopping now and again to drink in just how

desolate

bleak

this beauty is

where the Southern horizon is high snow-covered peaks

then, ahhh, falling off a slippy stone into the river

half drenching myself

but rescuing my tablet

then soggily eating my packed lunch

while looking at a pair of tidily-set small trainers on a stone by the river

surrounded by scattered ragged clothes

???

…

progress

…

…

while, all the time

i cannot know if this is doable

if there’s a waterfall?

if the gorge thins, with cliffs both sides

so there’ll be no way through

and i’ll have to go back up

which is the one thing i can’t do

so i battle and pick and struggle

and ascend a little slope to a car-wide trail

flat and easy

with old car-tracks

which is a sign of reachable civilisation

and thus good

yet the track then disappears

has fallen, sloughed, been washed-away

into the river

which is not good

though there are then two thoughtfully placed cairns which

if i pass between them

bring me to the lip of a doable slip-slidey path

back down to the river bottom

where i descend for one river bend of rocks and stones and crossing

and then ascend again to another flat easy trail

which again, after one long bend

disappears, sloughed away once more

while i’m forced by the winding of the vast valley-side

to again cross

and recross the river

with a growing sense that this is doable

this is a great thing to be doing

that this is about as good a Plan C as i am going to get in a hurry

and that soon i’m going to come to...

and i do

with, first, a concrete irrigation channel on the left side

which i walk on

then see an abandoned house

and, up the other slope, a crumbling white stupa

[Buddhist shrine]

then a decent trail on the right side

with motorbike tracks

recent ones

which means i’m safe

i’m good

and then

as i hoped it might

but kinda hoped it might not

for it means the real tricky bit of the adventure is over

then, after say 5k

of the intrepid perilous know-nothing river bottom

there’s a proper road in from a gorge to the West

the one on Maps.me

which i guessed was real

and tarmacked

and is

wending down the valley

so the walk now becomes a sunny stroll

a saunter

as i see some poplar trees

which are the sign of a fertile patch

which is likely the sign of habitation

as i descend into the green

to pass the Rizpong Buddhist Nunnery

where there’s a fleet of government SUVs

?

and head on down to the National Highway

to the village of Uleytokpo

have a chai in a friendly cafe

and another

then get my thumb out for the lift back

from Uleytokpo

and wait for half an hour

my longest roadside wait in Ladakh

where often the very first vehicle has picked me up

yet in the end its one of the fleet of government cars

not an SUV

which takes me the 60k or so

back up the beautiful and starkly majestic valley of the Indus River

yes the Indus

the one i’ve been intrigued by since the age of seven

to Leh

...

where i just have time to get one more crashbangwallop in to the

succession of ballsups

because my stiffening limbs are so unwieldy i

get a sudden cramp in the thigh getting out the car

and fall very heavily on the downslope

in the busy Leh street

and am very fortunate not to bang my head

or get hit by some form of traffic

after which

more than disappointed by the cutting short

the failure

of my first attempt at a trek

the easiest trek available

i

get back to my guest house

where i left this laptop

and lie flat and still on the bed

so that nothing else can fuck-up

fall-over

feel wrong

flatline

or fuck-up again

...

...

…

safety in Uleytopko

…

…

…

by the way

i do have a history of unwise and hairy descents…

…

one week till the next Pour

33 new pieces added to The Bucket

from 766 to 799 total

June 1

...

presented to you

as ever

at glorious random

...

with no piece over 100 words

or more than13 lines

...

with a few ideas and wordings i’ve had for

ooo

ten twenty thirty years

but never used in a show

...

and including

...

a poem i wrote in 1985

which must be one of the first five poems i ever wrote

and which not one person has ever seen

...

one story from ‘97 i never dared release in any kind of print

[quite easy to not do when you don’t publish anything]

...

stand-alone fragments from poems i did in shows

in 2006, 2009, 2012, 2025

...

a quote from Veronica Franco

...

a cheap gag from 2001

...

a piece about a rare monument to the atrocities of the British Empire

which prison i visited twice this April

...

a homily

an aesthetic position

an inkless inkling

...

and more

…

all of which will be accessible

behind the paywall

here at The Bucket

...

…

image has two of the new pieces
two of the original

...

meanwhile

its been a mighty leap from sea-level to 3000m

from Chennai to Leh

from South India to its very North

from stifling-slum humidity to thin air

from jungle to “cold desert”

finding my way between three extreme seasons

swelter, Monsoon and ice

...

where i’m currently brushing the edges of one season

the very last of the Ladakh winter

for its snowbound here nine-ten months of the year

and, though the real icebinding cold has passed

it’ll be notably warmer next week

...

and before this i landed full-square into another extreme

easily the most likeable of the three...

the last of the highest Chennai swelter

and therefore avoided the third

the South-West Monsoon

while another coming Monsoon

way out East on the Andaman Islands

drenched me twice, only twice

before i boarded ship and sailed West

...

experiencing some kind of climactic extreme was inevitable

so this is not bad going

...

and all this has brought me to the

thin air of Leh

a town of 45,000

with a high-mountain culture

more Tibetan than Indian

...

where hundreds and hundreds of empty-ish hotels and homestays are

stirring for the imminent short-summer Tourist Season

...

where its pale blue above

and one form or another of grey below

grey-white stone

grey-trunked thinly green trees,

grey-brown stark valley-sides

grey-black roads

albeit with many white hotels and homestays

and some very white whitewashed stupas and gompas

...

where it’s cold

but not glove-cold or woolly-hat cold

with snow-capped peaks and furrier dogs

where it’s a mix of old and new

crumbling stupas

and just-built guest-houses

with intricately carved wooden awnings and balconies

...

...

so i

two eyes

in a head

on shoulders

above two walking legs

am choosing to stride my rhythmless jig

in this meandering zagzig

to pace the

back ends of the

back alleys, boonies and backroads

on my slow

planless and solo

goalless and just-so

stop-start-go

...

...

so i’m trying to not feel like i

threw myself out of paradise

as its more like i was forced out

by the Rainy Season

...

yet it’s been quite a series of transitions,

from white coral sands and greenest green jungle

on Havelock Island in the Andaman Islands,

to three days on a passenger ship, the Swaraj Dweep

carving through the gentle blue-grey waters of the Bay of Bengal,

to Chennai, Triplicane district

heaving brimming and generally full-on

a swelter in the sweatbox,

to the non-time of an overnight flight,

to here

the northernmost state of India

...

where Chennai to Ladakh is

as much of a change in geography as one could maybe ever manage

without crossing a national border

from as urban as urban gets

to cold-desert mountains

...

...

i knew it was going to be a huge change

yet, as i usually don’t worry about or research my destinations too much, i

simply get there and enjoy dealing with

whatever newnesses it throws at me

yet it was, and is, a way bigger difference than

anything i hazily anticipated

...

so i’m physically feeling the all-change

the cold and, especially, the altitude

...

for any sense of triumph at successfully avoiding the worsts

got tempered by altitude sickness

which has now, after four days, finally lifted

it was not genuine-problem Altitude Sickness

just the ordinary ungood symptoms of acclimatisation

mixed with missing most of a night’s sleep en route

yet still

muggy-headed-ness, terrible sleeping, slowness

...

...

so here we are beneath the sky

looping loops with an easy eye

wandering with softly treading feet

over stone and brick and grass and root

and concrete

for you have to be somewhere

and we were there

or near

before we were

here

where thereabouts

and whereabouts makes

hereabouts

...

...

where, as Leh is only so attractive

i will have to get out of town

and actually do stuff

which means a trek

while i’ve been doing a lot of walking

but not loads

and have only climbed one hill in months

a shattering morning of semi-accidental tropical canyoning

behind Radhnagar Beach on Havelock

so my thighs are not fit

and i’ll start with the easiest

the “Baby Trek”

the Sham Valley Trek

two or three nights in homestays

and 58 k from Leh

which should be great

but does mean i have to acquire some gear

wind-proof jacket, woolly hat, etc

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

my attempt to walk along the fabled Indus River

was a no-fun stroll past commercial buildings and broken rock

with the grey clouds growing over the snowy peaks to the South

though this region is actually a “cold desert”

doesn’t get a lot of rain

and the huge clouds huff and puff but don’t do much

so, when the light but cold rain came in Akling

i took the fortuitous appearance of a direct road for the 5k back to Leh

and thumbed a lift in nought-point-five seconds

with a friendly guy playing Pink Floyd

...

so we’re stop-starting in thick traffic back to town

when the driver-guy points to a sudden double-rainbow

and says

“hey, we’re listening to Pink Floyd and there’s a double rainbow”

...

...

so its

out of that and into this

Chennai to Ladakh

from metropolitan swelter to mountain chill

...

so its

next step the next step

from the shadow of the imminent Monsoon

to the coming blazing sun of the two-month Summer

...

and its

next stop the next stop

from Chennai

at its swelteriest

just before the Rainy Season arrives and

ends the long-building intense city heat

to, now, the morning cold of mountainous Leh

at the very Northern roof of India

...

so that’s an all-change for me

from sweaty streets to “cold desert”

from baking to thawing

from rammed crammed and brimming

to bare stark and stretching

...

from sea-level

to way way on high

...

from bustle and throng and jam

in thin alleys and leafy lanes and stretching flyovers

to the bare rock-walled lanes

and grey-brown valley-sides

with, beyond them, the stark rocky slopes

backed by snow-capped mountains

...

from the verge of heat-stroke

to the risk of altitude sickness

...

from an unknown,

now known

to an unknown

soon to be...

...

from filthy to bare

from cheap to cheaper

from a population between 7 and 13 million

to a population of 45,000

...

from Hindu temples and mosques and churches

to many, many, big and small, Buddhist stupas

...

from the call of the mullahs in the towering white minarets

to the chant of the old black-shawled woman circling the intricately-coloured stupa

turning its single huge prayer wheel

...

from a very Indian colossal mega-city

to somewhere that doesn’t feel like India

feels more like the uplands of Nepal

like Manang or the Mustang Valley

and is, i guess, culturally Tibetan

...

so that’s next step the next step

from the dying coral and the lushest of jungles

to the deck of a passenger ship…

from the cabin bunk

and the water swilling in the oblongs of the ships corridors

to the tight South central neighbourhoods of vast sprawling Chennai

Triplicane and Mylapore…

and then from that utter sweatbox

through the non-time

and successive line-ups of

airports

to this mountain world

with its stone-walled alleyways

its square white houses

its white-dusted horizons

and its gigantic sky

...

so here i go

quite the leap

seven weeks in this mountain world

seven weeks of i’m not quite sure what

yet all will unfold

as i learn more...

...

...

Ladakah is only really accessible two three months of the year

around June-July

so i’ve never been able to travel here before

as i always been mighty mighty busy

in Ontario and Manitoba

come June-July

and one of the reasons i decided to take a year off the Fringe Tour

and be a not-quite-broke poet wandering in South and South-East Asia

was it meant i could head for this total unknown

this long dreamt destination

Ladakh

...

and here i go

swapping shackbox

for cabinbox

swapping cabinbox

for sweatbox

and, now

sweatbox for icebox ...

a melting icebox

...

so here i go

to the high meltwaters

now flowing down the legendary Indus River

...

so here i go

in search of some kind of trek that

ISN’T STUPID to do solo and semi-fit at 63

...

maybe begin with the Sham Valley Trek, aka the Baby Trek

or the Markha Valley Trek, a bit less baby

?

the first i guess

but not for a couple of acclimatising days yet

...

...

...

in other news

the next Pour of The Bucket approaches

June 1

33 new pieces

...

...

...

meanwhile

my thigh-muscles sense these high treks are coming

they know they are not used to climbs

and they know it shall hurt

so

the very sight of Leh Palace

way up and stately on a huge rock above the town

is enough to get my semi-fit thigh muscles twinging

…

…

these photos are by way of

complete contrast to anything down South

…

…

the M V Swaraj Dweep

passenger ship, full

1200 people

elemental

brute

old school

...

vast metal in white blue and orange

backdropped by vast rising falling sea

...

mottles, flakes, rust

...

where strangers meet

and chat vociferously for hours

as we heave through the dark-blue grey

the relentless churn of the sea

for three or so days

from Port Blair to Chennai

my longest boat journey ever

...

where my question

when do i get seasick?

became

is seasickness inevitable?

became

no?

became an answer

no

...

on uneven barefoot lurches updown the damp corridors

or lying on my bunk

in my cabin of six

a family of four

with two extra lively boys, eight and ten.

and one tiny grumpy grizzled old man below me

playing loud tinny Bollywood

...

so i’m the only white person on the ship

and all have been pretty helpful

yet language is ever an issue

with the ship’s second officer

the radio officer

the training manager

and three marine biology students from Rameshwaram

who say the Andaman coral is all sick

has declined over their two years

plus a young Hindu errr, pilgrim

is that the word?

on his way to preach near Delhi

where the general air is lively, gregarious,

edged with fatigue

as this old hunk of metal carves through the waves

East North East

where, at my destination

and my departure

the Rainy Season has newly arrived

while, en voyage, we’ve had some light and middling rain

so there’s damp

and swilling puddles

yet its

generally clear

with flat low grey ominous clouds always visible somewhere

with their curtains of sheets of rain

where the calmest spots on board are

on deck in front of the engines

and easy slow hours can be lost

staring out to the leeward North

...

back in the day, the 70s

before there were flights

this was a fabled journey for travellers

ten or so days in a bunk or hammock

or sleeping on the deck

and its still the cheapest journey

but not for me, as foreigners pay more

yet i had to try my longest sea journey ever

while my only nights on ships have been on lakes

Lake Van, Lake Victoria

or in the Med

...

while i quickly mapped the confined space

corridor upon corridor

square stairwell after corridor after square stairwell

top-deck chai-shop, slow, very slow

where food for cabin-class is from an upmarket cafeteria

booked and paid for after boarding, decent

and where the ungood toilets could be worse

much much worse

...

meanwhile

“plenty of cold in Ladakh”, says the chummy guy

for that’s where i’ll be in a week

after another all-change

for i’ve gone from highest heat

to Monsoon

to big Boat

where next its Chennai in the Rainy Season

and then a flight way North

Leh, in Ladakh

the very top of India

which is 3000 km

to a real unknown

...

did not know it was going to be so far…

3000 k!

…

while the early-riser guy says

this ship is old and heavy and slow

and against the current

where heavy means less heaving

less updown

less seasick

which figures

yet there is low-pressure near Chennai

so its likely gonna get rougher

yet for now

the clouds have cleared to the East

and we are heading into light blue skies puffed with white

...

where i have no real idea what to expect from Ladakh

its so high that altitude-sickness comes into play

especially if you arrive sudden, by flying

and i guess it will be cold and empty

for which i am not prepared in any way

beyond one woolly jumper

so will have to get shopping

for warm clothing

and will also have to form a plan

for i have six weeks up there

and have an idealised notion of walking

with bag

from village to village

or bussing

and staying for a day or three

like i did in Jan-Feb in Maharashtra

yet i don’t know how practical this is

and will, as usual, deal with it

roll with it

go with it

find out what’s possible

and not stupid

when i get there

...

...

...

in other news

no wifi

[so this is sent apres voyage]

yes, three whole days without wifi

so its been old Italian movies

Visconti’s Senso

and

Rossellini’s Paisan

neither as good as i hoped

Senso not as good as, the comparable, The Leopard

and Paisan not as good as Rome, Open City or Bicycle Thieves

plus McCabe and Mrs Miller

even better than i remember

...

Warren Beatty, for all the Hollywood lore

is an unusual and understated actor star...

...

next

The American Friend

but not while Old Grumpy below is playing his shrill tinny racket

which is his revenge on the boys for being boys

so the father of the boys is playing his own racket

to make the old guy stop

which hasn’t worked yet

so here i am

stuck between battling rackets

...

“the human race

don’t you just love it

yes i do

its the only way to cope with it”

...

...

...

in other news

...

a slogan for Farage

“everything comes to we who hates”

we who hate?

.,,

...

...

…

in further news

an update

Chennai ain’t the Monsoon

Chennai is an absolute sweatbox

for an unwise afternoon stroll

from heaving lively brimming Triplicane

to pleasant leafy Mylapore
…
…

did i upload myself onto the Internet

into the Digiverse

the Hive Mind

by creating this

The Bucket

?

...

by uploading the hundreds and hundreds of ideas

each a product of my cerebellum

have i accidentally-on-purpose

digitalised myself?

..

haphazardly flung myself into digital eternity?

...

and could this have consequences?

...

for, perhaps

in the no-so-far-off future

like an extinct creature might be recreated through its DNA

The Bucket

because it contains so much

has so many facets, agenda, modes

in the hundreds of pieces

the ideas poems stories jokes

histories conjectures

couplets verses choruses fragments

and ideas again

where this very breadth

might allow an extremely well-read

and well-trained

AI to recreate my brain

not my physical being

just my brain

...

and because

across the 766 pieces, soon to be 799

The Bucket is so deliberately huge in scope

from bigs to littles

macros to micros

personal to historical

comic to not

ephemeral to scatological

poetic to crude

and everything in between

...

and so, because of this very wide range

the AI will therefore have more to go on

which could allow a more detailed picture than most

of the workings and patterns of a cerebellum

of what my brain knows

and where that knowledge came from

of how this brain functions

...

800 slices

or slides

of my head

for a microscope?

or a lantern show?

...

where, perhaps

the approximated reproduction of my head

statistically optimised [whatever that means]

could therefore be more accurate than most

...

...

though i have to say

that the Bucket is so utterly unsexual

i mean

there might be some idealised romance

some sentiment

yet no sex

so these recreated cerebellum

will be pretty sexless

...

boooo

...

...

an Anglo-Indian guy i met in The Sahara, Jack

he said

“do you mean a purely digital recreation of your brain, jem?

or are you talking about some further future

where brains can be created in a lab?”

...

so, do i mean an actual physical recreation of my brain?

good question

i dunno

which do i mean?

...

...

another question might be

why, when humans are no longer the number one computers on this Earth

are the second best computers around

would anyone or thing want to recreate one?

i mean, AI is going to be much better than us

not just a bit, but much much

...

perhaps AI might like to recreate a human brain as a tourist curio

as a steam-punk heath-robinson evolutionary wonder

a corporeal exhibit in a digital freakshow [?]

for AI agents to marvel at

or mock

...

...

and maybe Jack

one day

too-soon

someone will be able to physically recreate a brain

[imagine James Joyce’s

after all, he revealed a gazillion sides to himself]

...

so imagine a supremely sophisticated 3-D printer

one capable of not only printing living human flesh

but of copying and reproducing a functioning human brain

...

or even

as a further leap

imagine a global network of 3D printers producing a mass of living brains

which are then surgically implanted in the heads of...

bodies...

cloned bodies?...

accident victim bodies?...

or...

i dunno

...

an army of me?
uurrgghh

...

and this idea, by the way

is getting worse

imagine an extra and perhaps unnecessary me

or a Donald Trump

or a Dalai Lama

or my mate Venki, now called Bholebaba

...

imagine a host of mes,

or Donalds,

or Dalais,

or Salmans,

being reproduced all over a town,

or a country,

or the world

...

imagine that everywhere you go i’m there

or more likely, Donald is there

...

imagine me, legion

you, legion

JD, legion

...

now that’s a scary notion on a Monday morning...

...

...

yet, on a more practical but not entirely practical note

i am wondering if i have

through this aesthetic burning to create the Bucket

inadvertently attempted to throw myself into

digital eternity

?

...

THIS IS NOT HOW IT WAS MEANT TO BE

i’m a performance poet

where everything is fleeting then gone

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

here on Swaraj Dweep, a.k.a. Havelock Island

the weather has turned

for The Monsoon is not just close

not just flickering in distant lightning in the evenings

growling in the darkness

not just curtains of sheeted rain out to sea

not just spitting in precursor

no

the Monsoon is here

not fully full-on

not cranked up to max

yet here

for the air has cooled

the wind is up

the clouds all have grey in them

and the Rains are upon us

...

...

...

...

in other news

did i ever tell you about

how i tried to book myself into a prison?

...

back in 1990

in Downtown Kansas City

i was looking for a hotel

and this building had “hotel” written on its side

in old fading and flaking letters

and there were people going in and out

so i

tried to book myself into jail

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

clowns

more clowns

...

a pair of clowns so together as stage partners

so quick with each other

so consummate in their aplomb

that

the best explanation is

those two particular clowns exchange

bodyparts on a regular basis

with complexicated surgery performed by

performed by

who’s worst?

performed by

hand up

a poet

...

meanwhile there are creatures

a species of ctenophore

Mnemiopsis leidyi

which can fuse bodyparts

damaged pairs can share digestive or nervous systems

...

and likely they share DNA with clowns

...
…

Swaraj Dweep ...

a many many splendoured place

beaches, coral

yet particularly

the jungle

the rain-forest

the rich greens

ten thousand of them

with the trees

the unique high trees

reaching up, beyond

in deep, tall swathes of green

...

below its the lianas and vines

the eight-foot serrated grasses

the huge leaves, the fronds, the ferns

then, above them

its the many kinds of palm

and the banana trees

plus the Banyan, Baobab and Peepul trees

each of which is still enough to make me stop

yet its, especially

the yawingly high

bare-trunked trees

found only here

the Andaman Redwood,

Bulletwood and

Gurjan

...

while it has

wonderful beaches

Radhanagar Beach,

Elephant Beach,

Secret Beach

...

and great coral

some of it, on Elephant Beach

the most easily accessed ever

...

yet most of all

its the jungle

particularly more inland

away from from the samey coastal woods

...

its the most amazing rain-forest i’ve seen outside the

Columbian Amazon

and what makes it so gorgeous

is those Redwoods, Bulletwoods and Gurjans

each unique to these islands

and rising hugely high

higher than any tree in Europe [?]

and giving an extra dimension

to the rain-forest

to the very varied vistas and banks and roadsides and ridges

of the most greenly green greens

...

all making for wondrous wanders

sometimes semi-lost

up down and around the jungle trails

...

and if not lost then

certainly not

found

…

with patterns next patterns

shapes on shapes

vines behind vines

greens in greens

thicket beyond thicket

...

where much of the jungle floor is wreckage

organic detritus

fallen coconuts, the husks of shelled coconuts

fallen branches, fallen boughs, fallen trees

in a browned underworld

of soft browned earth

and crunchy brown leaves

and rotting wood

plus the bushes

including the thorniest thorn-bushes i ever got ambushed by

while above the walker

or the idle stopper

or the tree-trunk sitter

are the layers of green

often thick green

rising to the reachingly high canopy

of leafy branches above those starkly outlined trunks

...

while

on an inland walk

where i quickly become a

single drop of sweat with a

human being inside

the winding trail will take you around then

updownup

and downupdown

through it

amongst it

in its all its ebullience and richness

its thickness and closeness

its rich reaching lushness

...

...

while i get around by hitch-hiking

which often takes thirty seconds to get a lift

and i just got a lift from a guy from Nagaland

who told me about a trail near Radhanagar

so that’s Thursday morning

earlyish

after Parotha breakfast

before it gets too hot

...

...

...

...

while

yesterday

i did get myself in yet another jungly pickle

somewhere inland

and got surrounded on all sides by dense thickets of extra jungly jungle

where the only way i knew there must be a way out

was that i had

obviously

somehow

found a way in

...

...

...

...

...

in other news

i just did that walk the Nagaland guy recommended

or tried to

because it wasn’t a trail

or if there was a trail i lost it soon

and it was a dry river

i clambered up

and picked my way down

where, in this highest of sweltering heats

it was tough

am shattered

came down and drank two litres of cold water in ten minutes

...

still don’t know where i was

will never know

in that riot of greens

found nowhere that felt like anywhere

just jungle

no building no path no clearing no vista

just jungle

...

there was no trail

just jungle

yet there were machete cut vines and branches

reassuring me

until suddenly there weren’t

... was i lost?

had i missed the tree with

a machete in it

and a skeletal hand grasping that machete

?

...

until

in the end

i did one last steep rocky branchy rooty clamber

hoping i’d be somewhere but no

no path no clearing no vista no break

just jungle

so when the woozy headyness abated

and sensing a possible downpour

which would make retreat distinctly tricky

i went back down

which was not easy

...

...

...

...

in other news

am hitch-hiking a lot

and the only reward i can give the driver or rider is

a winning smile

yet my winning smile has yet to lose

“Everything Is Beautiful”

is a thought and line and attitude I’ve tended towards

for over three decades

…
while I was first taught that

everything might be beautiful

by hitch-hiking in my Twenties

by getting stuck

for who knows how long

on any old random roadside anywhere

in England or France

from standing there at slowly increasing length

losing my frustrations into the distance

by finding ideas thoughts phrases definitions beauties

fascinations

in whatever turned out to be around me

as i started to turn three-sixty

and look

at the messy

and the elegant

at the conventional beauties

and at what some would consider the ugly

the mechanics’ yards

the edge of town sprawl

the slip-road dead-space

the garbage the rusting the half-built the half-fallen

the random roadside anywhere anyhow

...

hitch-hiking also taught me patience

something I certainly did not have before

...

and I also got the idea

Everything Is Beautiful

from a book

Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon

from 1926

where Aragon describes at huge length, for a whole book

if I remember correctly

a single small Parisian street or passageway

one about to be demolished

and relishes in finding and describing tiny details

and then details within those details

finding beauty and enthralment at every level

...

(i seem to recall that, decades later, Aragon

a poet chiefly

flew from France to communist Czechoslovakia

especially to ensure a “Trotskyist” poet got executed

though this ‘fact’ has disappeared from Wikipedia)

...

and then there’s a line I got from Brian Eno

though it’s maybe someone else’s line [?]

which kinda went, I think

...

“...a forest is fascinating at every level

from the aerial view

to a microsection of a leaf observed through a microscope”

...

for at EVERY level of scale

a forest a tree a branch a twig a leaf

whole or in fragment

is a fascination

...

while if you yourself try what Aragon did

it never need end

you never finish describing anything

all details lead to other details

all stories lead to other stories

...

and now?

the sterile organised space of the supermarket?

enthralling

the windblown alleyway?

captivating

the flat emerald plain of paddies stretching off to the south?

beautiful

the large dead cockroach on the stairs?

amazing

the tailor at his sewing machine by the step of his shop?

compelling

his shop?

wowing

...

for almost everything is beautiful

in its own way

of course

and the lesson

of course

is to find that way

...

and there are million ways to be beautiful

a trillion

...

so this is a relativism

a more localised, perhaps, democratic sense of beauty

and requires a multiheaded view of the world

rather than

one-view-fits-all

requires taking everything on its own terms

rather than your own fixed samesame terms

...

so

in this logic

a “liberated” head is one which has freed

is freeing

itself to be able to see things in many different ways

...

while me I walk a lot

ten miles or so a day

and frequently

I just walk

choose a direction and go

...

like I do here

in Sri Lanka

where a purposeless march can be a comedy

for, as I have posted before

here, the great cry of the locals to the foreigner

especially this striding ambler

is

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

which I get all the time

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

it’s the first question which comes into a Sri Lankan head

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

and sometimes it’s even partially aggressive

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

every outside hour of many days

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

I’ve even been asked it while sitting

yes sitting, as in stationary

on a bench by the lake

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

which is a telling question for me because

often

often often

I do not know where I’m going

am very rarely lost, proper lost

but I often do not know where I’m going

am planless more than aimless

striding more than ambling

...

while

the side road, the back alley, the river bank, the bridge

enthralling

captivating

enravishing

the smeared, the distending, the rubble

beautiful

...

with the eternal call

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

...

my friend Kate Noakes

told me about

“situationist walking”

which is to just walk in a straight line

and which term I kinda resented

for it is what I’ve been doing for decades anyway

and I didn’t want an encapsulating term for it

an ism, an ist

for it, the thought, impulse, decision that

yes, I’m gonna go that way

and just keep going no matter

and if I have to detour around

because of a railway line

a builder’s yard

a ...

well, I will

...

and then there’s the idea of a “flaneur”

which is yet more old-school French over-definition

...

“The flâneur may therefore be characterised as a deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savouring the multiple flavours of his city.”

...

Baudelaire and all that

which does seem to be a worthwhile way to enjoy the urban differents

...

and which aesthetic kinda got excellently rebirthed by Iain Sinclair

(Lights Out For The Territory, and all that)

and the psychogeography school of writing from the 1990s on

which definitely have Louis Aragon as a distant antecedent

along with Andre Breton’s excellent book Nadia

...

just a reminder

this was written in Feb 2022

in central Sri Lanka

yet never seen by any but one

...

while yesterday i got kinda

lost

in the corrugated iron lanes of the

crowdedly busy fishing village in South East Jaffna

Tamil and rather Christian

and quite the poorest place I’ve been in a long time

though the locals are quite well dressed

yet the shacks, the numbers of people and the

extreme skankiness of the mangy skeletal dogs

speak volumes

fishing folk tend to be the poorest in many countries

like here

a people who, lest we forget, lost a brutal war

...

yet few seem to apply the logic of the flaneur to

a place like

a Sri Lankan back-road

the last car-repair place heading East out of Carcassonne

the pile of cow heads behind the butcher’s market in Ende on Flores

the back alleys of the Plateau in Montreal

the corridors of the immigration office in Karwar, Karnataka

the sterile aisles of a supermarket in Estrella

or Bracknell, or Vancouver, or Mostar

the seats of the battered bus south from Campeche

...

they are all beautiful

if you try

if you let them

...

the rotting tomato in the hedgerow

the hedgerow

the humus under the hedgerow,

the grille on that abandoned car

designed by someone

made by someone else

and done that exact way for an exact reason

though that reason may well be long lost…

...

while this post was begun in

a place which rhymes with itself as it goes along

Anuradhapura

famed for the Buddhist shrines

I couldn’t be arsed with

...

so I chose instead to enjoy the leafy green lanes

the riverside ambles

the quiet bridges

the levees of the many lakes

the ten mile plus march, stroll, saunter, limp, stagger down and down green green country lanes just to get the bus straight back because, by then, i was way too knackered, and new-shoe foot-very-sore, to climb the actual hill to the giant stupa i had come all this way to go see

...

so i

two eyes

in a head

on shoulders

above two walking legs

am choosing to pace the

back ends of the back alleys, boonies and backroads

on my slow

planless and solo

goalless and just-so

meandering zagzig

across this country still new to me

kinda killing time in the Lankan limbo

after the Indian afterlife paradise

...

because

EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL

and it’s all good

because

it is

...

...

...

...

at some point I will have to try to link these ideas with

the idea from my Camino chum, Marina from Bari

that, on the Camino Di Santiago

…

“you find metaphors on the way, as you go

and in those metaphors you find lessons”

...

and with the idea that

you can understand the whole world from considering a grain of sand

and understand a grain of sand from regarding the world

...

and so I go on

singing

not singing

Ray Stephen’s song

“Everything is beautiful, in it’s own way”

...

its more a liberal Christian song

than a hippy-dippy piece

Everything Is Beautiful

...

...

so all the above was written in Sri Lanka

Jaffna i guess

and for some reason which eludes me

i never posted it anywhere

...

and i’ve come back to it because

i have some big ideas percolating around my head

...

...

firstly

the might-be Brian Eno quote

which i’ve been mulling over for decades

and which is actually

...

“A forest, seen from the air, is complex and interesting.

A single tree is equally complex.

One leaf, even one molecule is endlessly fascinating.”

...

which is a most rewarding way to think

...

...

plus

the idea that everything is fascinating

is coupling with my quote in The Bucket

...

The Human Brain Is Built For Fascination

...

...

plus a piece from The Bucket

which was in last year’s show

...

“Almost everything in this world

Can be seen as beautiful

Yet far less can be seen as ugly.

And so, it simply follows

There is an arc in this world

Which bends towards beauty”

...

...

while The Bucket also has the line

...

This world, i been around,

And again,

And you know the main

Thing i found?

Everywhere is fascinating

Everything is a comedy and

Everyone is ridiculous

...

...

and another line i’m thinking about at great length is

that most of the world is best seen at

walking speed

not all, but most

and almost anything detailed, full of humans

is best experienced at walking pace

...

...

plus there’s Marina’s idea

and there’s the grain of sand

...

...

while after all this

i’m not sure i wholly believe

Everything Is Beautiful

yet i do believe

Everything Is Fascinating

...

...

so at some point soon

on a beach in the Andamans

in a Muslim semi-slum South of central Chennai

or on a Himalayan hillside in Ladakh

i’m going to have to syncretise these notions

...

...

...

...

in other news

got myself in a pickle in a dense jungle

i couldn’t find a way out of

where i had to remind myself

there must be a way out of here

because, obviously, duhhh

i found a way in

…

…

posted from Govind Nagar

Havelock Island

in The Andamans
…

…

finishless

and

wholeless

startless

and goalless

...

without cycle or order

centre or border

...

a readerly text

purposed for infinite

permutations

open to the many

interpretations

for
slow browsing

and for

concatenations

...

a dance of chance

designed to be playful

for one piece a week

and for a dayfull

...

...

for The Bucket is not this site

The Bucket is

766 separate short pieces

nothing more than 13 lines

or 100 words

...

ideas poems stories jokes histories

verses choruses ditties fragments

online

and coming at you in wholly random order

...

something nobody ever did before

...

so The Bucket is not like a normal Substack

for you access it at this Substack site

yet, behind the paywall

you will find a pinned post

called HOW TO ENTER THE BUCKET OF UNUSED IDEAS

...

and in that pinned post

you will find the link

to our site

and the password

which will take you straight in

to your first piece

which is brought to you by Nick Fox-Gieg’s randomising programme

...

and you simply have the piece up

until

when you are ready

you pull or click or refresh

and a wholly different piece appears

at pure random

...

and again

...

and again

...

for as long as you like

...

something nobody ever did before

...

...

While every three months or so

we will pour in some new pieces

and the next pour into The Bucket

of 40 or so new pieces

will be May 30

or thereabouts

...

...

...

me i’ve made a living as a performance poet

for decades

yet i always avoided the world of published poetry

which always seemed notably unexciting

compared to performance

which is and was utterly thrilling

and captivated me for gleeful decades

...

and where there is no bullshit between performer and audience

its raw, immediate, honest and naked

...

so, publishing nothing

i had an ever-burgeoning number of unused ideas

and poems

of unusable stories and jokes

and lines and passages and verses

which i doubted i’d ever use on stage

yet which came back to me

and back to me

with their power

and poetry

and originality

...

for hundreds of them are ideas or facts or stories

i never read anywhere ever

...

and this host of notions

many the product of extended obsessions

grew and grew through the years

till i had so very very many ideas

and fragments

and pieces

i had to do something

...

it was like a colossal piece of baggage

i was dragging through the years

and across the world

which would add to constantly

and read through every few months

and refer to for ideas

and which

eventually

demanded too loudly

i do something

...

yet i didn’t want a book

a book would be just like everything else

and not compelling enough to make me go through

what it takes to go through

to get something out

...

and me

i wanted it somehow random

i’d wanted something random for decades

something startless and finishless and

i thought

near infinite

...

until, in the summer of 2025

i found that my friends, Nick and Rebecca

whom i had known for decades

i found that they could make it happen for me

and ...

and...

suddenly...

shockingly...

it was doable

700+ pieces

at random

...

and, excitingly,

it was something unprecedented

hundreds of pieces

at random

...

...

...

...

...

in other news
Havelock Island

very like the nearby and smaller Neil Island

where i monthed

and where the cerulean waters

and white-sanded beaches are as nice as Neil

or slightly less so

yet the jungle is stupendous

the best, the lushest, the greenest

the Andaman Islands are famous for their trees

three of the biggest being unique to here

the Redwood, the Bullet-Wood and the Gurjan

and these are enormous trees

majestic, grand, capacious, towering, beautiful

plus there are banyans, baobabs and peepuls

which are amazing trees i still stop to look at

so the lush jungle

with its vines, its lianas, its bushes, its mangroves

its ferns, its fronds, its super-sized serrated grases

its ten thousand greens

is made all the more striking

by the high bare trunks yawing hugely above

and by the highest of high jungle canopies

all fabulous to find a trail through

...

like this morning

where i

accidentally repeated a walk i

accidentally found on Monday

when i hitched a lift on a motorbike

and the friendly bloke said “secret beach”

and i’d never heard of Secret Beach

yet i instantly got the idea and said

“Secret Beach”

so off he took me

way past Kalapathar Beach

into the verdant or farmed interior

till he dropped me and

pointed me at a scrawled sign

which read “secret beach”

so i wandered along

assuming he was coming behind me

yet never saw him again

but soon found myself on a well-trodden path

up down and around

through the jungliest jungle

where the tree roots are steps

where the shade is cool yet the sun is screamingly hot

and where i picked my way

over trunks, round tree-falls, across streams

revelling in the bestest of the best

the greenest of the green

yet not quite sure if its the right path

i mean, its a path but it keeps climbing

and beaches aren’t usually up anywhere

while the sun is so high it gives no clue to direction

so i can have no idea if it is

or isn’t

the right direction

or how far it might be

while i can’t hear the sea

or see any tell-tale expanses of blue below the green of a horizon

when i can see one, a horizon that is

and so

when i did it

the whole walk

again

this morning

after letting today’s guy who picked me up

decide my destination

which was, first, a chai

with a kind of crusty cake

he wouldn’t let me pay for

and then the path again for Secret Beach

yet when i did it this time i had zero worries

about wrong-path

or wrong-direction

or the path abruptly or slowly disappearing to nothing

or too too long for waterlessness in high high heat

or crocodiles, for that matter

so when i repeated i was much more a saunterer

a free ambler

slower and less purposeful

sitting on trunks or rocks reading Sapolsky

finding my snaking way

down to a beach

which might or might not be Secret Beach

yet certainly is secret in the sense that there’s no-one on it

bar one old fisherman with a hand-throwing fishing net

and then,

heading back on the gentle flat trail behind the beach

where coastal paths have much less varied and attractive jungle

than the hilly inland forests

wending my easy but, finally, leg-weary way back

to Kalapathar Beach

for, first, a chai

and to then find my ride from this morning has a coconut stall

and well, this is a great chance to pay him back

and so, a coconut it is...

...

...

...

in other news

i cannot make tea or coffee while reading the Sapolsky

and why?

because “Behave” by Sapolsky

is a 1000 pages

and i need three books

as a pile on the chair

to put my kettle on

so the lead will reach the socket

otherwise its

no boiled water, no coffee, no tea

so the 1000 page tome makes all the difference

...

...

...

...

in other news

...

there doesn’t seem to be a word

“somethere”

what would it mean?

…
…

and, now i’ve seen it

its so obvious

so needs-to-be-done

...

and it won’t be hard to do, to write

it’ll be a rhyming poem and rhyming poems are fun

fun to think up

fun to write

and a great challenge to make work

...

the kind of challenge you can relish approaching

because you can be pretty sure its doable

achievable

resolvable

...

the English language is fabulous for rhyming poetry

an endless trove of potential

there are six or more words for most things

so with archness, and rulelessness

and fooling about with phrasing and word-order

you should be able to make almost anything work

all you need is time and thought and a sense of fun

...

yet

how come i never saw this could be a poem twenty years ago?

i’ve had the key line all this time

...

images are a non-sequitur
the mud volcanoes near Shyam Nagar

on North Andaman

...

while rhyming is much easier for performance poets

for performance poetry

which allows huge flexibility with time and timing

and the stretching of vowels and syllables

all making a perfect rhyme considerably easier to achieve

...

and those lines and rhymes might look terrible on the page

like execrable

but who cares?

its a performance piece

its for the air and the ears

its for lyrical surprise in the right now

...

...

poems with poor or flatly obvious rhymes are

almost always

a sure sign the writer hasn’t spent long enough on the words

for with time and thought

with a circumambulation in the approach

and a sense of fun and lightness

one really should be able to get it right

...

like i should

now the obvious idea has leapt out

saying WRITE ME WRITE ME WRITE ME

...

...

how did i not see this before?

its plain as day

i’ve not just had the idea for years

i’ve had the last line of every verse for years

...

where the chief rhyme is going to be with the word “LESS”

so the chief issue i can see is not

accidentally

turning into something which resembles a certain poem

one of the very best performance poems of them all

ever

Johnny Clarke’s

“You Never Get A Nipple In The Daily Express”

...

off the “Live At The Electric Circus” 10 inch EP

which i had for years until i lost it

at The Libertines gig in Edinburgh in 2002

where me and Jenny Lindsay were the support acts

...

that poem

“You Never Get A Nipple In The Daily Express”

is very probably the first performance poem i ever heard

and loved

and got knocked sideways by

and considered at great length

in its wit

its politics

its gorgeous adept language

...

though i already knew

and loved

“Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”

which is supremely free and funny and smart

...

...

rhyming poems are so much fun

that i have trouble explaining to myself

or anyone

quite why i’ve written so few

when i’ve thoroughly enjoyed the writing of

“Clanger Man”,

way back when
and

“The Man So Acutely Vulnerable He Brings Out The Vulture In Everyone”,

in the years before 2025

and

more

but not enough more

...

...

for me the gods of rhyming poetry are

Johnny Clarke
Cole Porter... e.g. Anything Goes

Chuck Berry... e.g. Nadine

Bob Dylan... e.g. Hard Rain

and a trillion pop songs
e.g. “you’re gonna need an ocean
of calamine lotion”

...

while the one thing i shouldn’t do

so it doesn’t set me any patterns

is YouTube the Johnny Clarke poem

which i haven’t played for well over a decade

yet i can probably remember EVERY LINE

...

so here i go

i have a rhyming poem to write

here i go

fun to come

here i go

having climbed a hill for an easy roll down

here i go

but not quite yet

...

i think i’ll let it ripen

will conjure some more issues to keep

juggling the notions a

few days more...

...

Ana heads back to Europe in four days

and i’m gonna go exploring Havelock Island

so i’ll wait till Radhanagar Beach

...

while the nature of the idea

chunky, political

is going to open up a whole host of possibilities

so its not like i’m going to be milking one idea

i’m gonna be having bags of fun grabbing ideas from all over

from the personal, the historic

the specifically now, the timeless

the literary, the pop

...

though i don’t actually need the piece

for a new show

until next year

as i’m taking a year off

so i got time

...

yet the key thing is to write the first draft

and then, however long it takes

fast or slow

get to a version i’m happy with

and then, through the months,

slowly muck about with it

have fun with it

let it rise with the yeast of chance

ferment with the sugar of time

...

for me, now i have the core idea

its gonna be about the cultivation of the notions

as they stretch themself ever fuller and wider

and i get the chance to

idly and / or determinedly

consider the petals

and stems

of the many growing

and flowering

possibilities

...

...

so here i go

after Kalipur Beach

its Aerial Bay

for the mud volcanoes at Shyam Nagar

then the ferry to

Port Blair

for Aberdeen Bazaar

and Cellular Jail

then Havelock Island a.k.a. Swaraj Dweep

for Radhanagar Beach, a.k.a. Beach Number 7

to catch all the balls
a-juggling in my head
and finally write a poem called

**[words to be created]** Harder and Longer For Less

...

here i go
…

the mud volcanoes are near Jol Tikry and Shyam Nagar
which we journeyed to pretty much by accident
after being stymied in our Plan A for the day

…

never seen anything like them
yet they are not easy to get to
and took two buses and a jeep

…

if you look at the second clip
that mud is very slowly moving

they were apparently dormant for twenty years until February
and are not volcanic

are, rather, organic matter decaying somewhere under the hill

Mr Rushdie
doncha just love him?
I do
he must be my favourite living writer in the English language...

...

And you know what i think?
when i turn another page

after a page of delights
I think,

Hooray

its Salman and he’s off again
But i also think,

O Bloody Hell

its Salman and he’s off again...

On some beautifully measured flights of lyrical fancy

Because its great and i love him but, but...

Doncha just wish that he would calm down a bit sometimes?
Doncha?
Cos why does everything have to be so up? Why can’t anyone be normal? Why do they all have to be so bloody extraordinary?....

O there’s an enchanter and he’s the most amazing enchanter there ever was, and O there’s a woman and she’s the most beautiful woman in all of Asia, and there’s a scent shop and O, its full of the most wonderful and treasured and scents giving Salman any unneeded excuse to rattle off another long and marvellously written list of the ingredients of ancient perfumes
Which he probably did in his last book, or was that stuffed animals, or alchemists tools, or, whatever?
Whatever, who cares? Its Salman and its always marvellous
But O, there’s a temple builder so he’s the best temple builder there ever was...

You get my drift?
And O, there’s an engraver and, you know what, he’s the most amazing engraver you can imagine there ever was without using adjectives
He knows so much, that Salman, the knowledge keeps coming at you till you’re floating awash in a lyrical delirium growing within for as long as his ever-extending semi-ecstatic sentences...

And he either does know a hell of a lot, or he’s brilliant at making it seem like he does... Probably both
Cos i don’t know if Salman has ever had a character of an Egyptian Observer of the Royal Bowel Movement but, if he did, the royal priest’s mother would have been the most beautiful and enchanting woman in all of Egypt, his father used to make the clouds scatter purely by opening his mouth and letting out the lyrical beauty he was famed for on twelve continents in his youth but which unique gift he lost when he fell in love with the most beautiful glassblower ever, ever, who etc etc, and his sisters would weave the most perfect carpets ever heard of anywhere ever, ever, which began as childish art, curiously mimicking every known style of cave painting ever, ever, about which of course Salman seems to knows everything, so much so he can make knowledgeable jokes about it in a way which even ignorami like us can get, but which tapestries became Egyptian with puberty, Greek perspective with marriage and which, amazingly, foretold every artform there ever was and ever could be, ever and ever, so there...
O Salman, you are the dog’s bollocks but can’t you just calm down a bit and write something more imaginatively restrained in that beautiful matchless style of yours?
Not all the time, heaven forbid, and long may you live, and many books may you write, and prosper may you errr do, but just once, less lists and less bloody superlatives...
Why not?
Err... please
A very long list of all the words which have ever meant please in every language there ever was, kind of please...
...

...

...

First time i was in India i read three of his, Shalimar the Clown, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor’s Last Sigh...

And loved them... Shalimar the most ... [the writing]...

And the second time i motored through the Enchantress of Florence, which was then his latest... and somehow i was surprised by how marvellous it was

And i not long ago read Victory City... his latest

...

...

...

While a couple of decades back i made a list of my favourite living writers in the English language

And seeing how Phillip Roth and Toni Morrison and JG Ballard are now dead

its Salman

...

...

...

Salman, he doesn’t go up to Eleven

Salman begins at eleven

...

...

...

THE JOYS OF SALMAN

...

the lilt

the cadence

from left to right and down

left to right and down

...

to turn the page

and stand the eye above the

downward roll of language

the eye-mind a little daunted at the

unbroken paragraph of the

long passage of words to come

for the eye-mind knows already the

long fluid sweep of the lines

as they lilt

from left to right and down

left to right and down

with a language so beautiful it needs not rhyme or meter
in a cadence

a sweep, a surge, a pulse

with each image a verbal incandescence

one following another following another

from left to right and down

left to right and down

a rhythm in the succession of motif

a sustain in the pursued idea

with a fluid lilt, a deft cadence

and a phrased precision

with the beauty insistent

the intelligence persistent

and a gently rocking in the line

from side to side and down

from side to side and down

with a billowing in the fleshing out of detail

and an exacting in the paring down to the

pertinent

in a gentle lilt, an easy cadence

rolling the eye-mind

from left to right and down

left to right and ...

up and ...

across

...

...

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in other news

last evening on Neil Island

tomorrow a ferry to Rangat

up the islands

for a bus to Mayabunder

on our way to Diglipur

...

...

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in other news

a metaphor the key

to unlocking

the door to

a passage to

a whole new realm of though

t

To slide between the shadows

and become as one with the dark

To enfold within the waves

and become as one with the sea

To filter in with the haze

and become as one with the air

To vanish into the sun

and become as one with the light

To sense the dark the light the air the ocean

and be as one with the ever

…

To word oneself in the air

and become as one with the silence

To move fingers at the skin

and become as one with the touch

To feel the heart in rhythm

and become as one with the blood

To know the world in motion

and become as one with the flux

To unbond every atom

and become as one with matter

To sense the evolving ever

and be as one with the all

…

…

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in other news

Port Blair again

the utter swelter box

the streets a bath in heat

the soggiest shirt in every street

...

with lots of pleasant ambles

yet, for obvious reasons,

the best are along the cooling water

from here, on Marine Hill

around to Dignabad fish market

and maybe on to the Aberdeen Jetty

or from here

past the Port just down below

all the way round the sea-hugging Foreshore Road

out over the sea bridge

past the Chatham Saw Mill

the last of the once-many saw mills

British-built and enduringly destructive

past the mill

to the ferry for Bombooflat

across the bay

[tomorrow]

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in other news

next thing to do

Tuesday morning

is Cellular Jail

Colonial nightmare

designed by the British specifically to be fearsomely brutal

scene of multiple martyrdoms

and most certainly very forgotten North of the English Channel

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in other news
…

I want it, the rattleless fit

want, bit by bit

to shrink and smooth myself down to it

the rattleless fit

want blocks within blocks, grey within grey

time within time, shade within shade

snug as a brick in a block

a line in a grid

a note in a wad

I want it,

to fit easily

inside the me

i used to be

and, bit by bit

shrink and smooth myself down to it

the rattleless fit

…

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…

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in other news

...

first the bad news

i don’t know where the bus goes

then the good news

the destination on the bus is in the western alphabet

[unlike in, say, Maharashtra]

then some more bad news

the destination is

Garacharama

and i’ve never seen that word

and don’t know where it is

yet further bad news is

i need a bus

it was a long walk here

out to what seems to be called Chatham

and i am very VERY hot

because it is very VERY hot

an absolute swelter

hotter than it ever gets in England or Canada

yet the good news

maybe the best news i can have

is that i am, Chatham is, at the end of a head

so the bus can’t go anywhere too far from the centre of Port Blair

though i can’t know how far that might be

and my mental map is sketchy at best

and the other news is that well

i’m gonna get on the bus whatever

and see what happens next

...

...

the further good news is that when

eventually

i get off the bus

guessing it would now veer away from the centre

a smiling old woman said

“where do you want to go?”

and i said

“the centre”

and she said

“its a long way to the centre

but its back up there

and down the hill”

...