A delightful mixture of stories, music and dance. Entrancing. Just right for a warm afternoon basking in the warm sunshine listening and watching these interesting characters – unfortunately it teemed with rain! That rather took away from the mystical vibe the band were weaving!
A Hidden Universe
There is a hidden universe within my head,
Residing in the electronic pathways
Of my cerebrum.
This world contains the traces of days gone by,
Of people dead, places visited
Experiences felt.
It’s a store of things that no longer exist,
Distorted through time
Like an image in a mirror
Under the surface of a rippling brook,
Sometimes clear, sometimes hazy.
Memories revisited, unvisited and forgotten,
Waiting to be reawakened.
Incidents frozen in time,
Embellished, improved, recreated
And relived.
A whole life is trapped in fragments,
Unique fragments;
A vision of the world
Containing all that exists of many things.
It’s a jumble of oddments,
Some special, some mundane,
Poorly arranged, poorly stored, frustratingly incomplete.
Occasionally a stimulus causes a forgotten moment to emerge,
Like a silvery fish from amongst the weeds,
Darting into clarity from the depths to surprise us.
Then it’s gone.
One day it will all be gone forever.
Opher 23.2.2022
Inside my head the whole of my life is recorded. Everything I’ve seen, heard and felt is laid down in a continuous tape, a chemical, electric phenomenon.
It’s a universe with a unique perspective. My view.
I find it miraculous to even begin to imagine this process.
My memory used to be sharp and clear – now it is hazy. So much forgotten.
They say that we rebuild our memories, remake them, change them, embellish hem. Often what we are remembering is the memory of a rebuil memory.
How I wish it was sharper.
I often wonder if it is the memories decaying or the process of remembering becoming less effective.
Age is a frustration.
I cannot remember people clearly, whole events are missing, most days have entirely vanished, yet some are as sharp as yesterday.
One day this whole universe will dissolve into oblivion.
Mystery of History
The mystery of history
In rocks, stones and shards.
Captured in legend
By mystics and bards.
The wisdom of ages.
The lives that are long gone.
Remembered in the landscape;
Revered in poetic song.
Standing in the circle
With the setting of the sun.
Breathing in the ambience
From days when all was one.
The warmth of the stones,
Full of memories and hope;
A living reminder –
The dreams of human scope.
All the mists of time
Now shroud reality
From a distant age
When nature was divinity.
Close to the seasons
Though hard, cruel and true.
When life was simple
And we knew what we should do.
Now in the age of plastic
Where change is the new god;
Where cash is the gospel
We live far from the sod.
Communicating with electricity
Across the wastes of space.
We seem to own everything
But have lost our sense of place.
Opher – 8.7.2021
Fresh back from Cornwall, having stood in the Stone circles, visited coits and Iron Age villages, with a sense of wonder.
Connecting to the past.
Looking out from those rugged places it felt like I was looking through the eyes of my ancestors.
Life was hard but they were in tune with nature and felt at home in the land.
This modern world is all plastic and speed but lacks any connection.
I feel at home in a stone circle. The stones have warmth.
God Too
I’m the power in your sun
The atom and the wind
Giving light its speed
Its colour
And its spin
Arising out of nothing
To make your sunset glow
Organising your bodies
To your neurone flow
I give life its mystery
Creating all the laws
That keep it all in motion
Its perfection
And its flaws
You make me into Gods
Religions and Holy books
But I evade all your
Interpretations of my looks
You will not find me concerned
With how your life should run
Providing you with morals
For what is
Or is not done
I am not a human
Apart from the cosmic flow
I connect you to the mystic
That you cannot know
Your religions try to capture me
As I appear to you all
But I spiral through the words
Of the prayers that you call
Everything you think is real
You create it from the void
And you are doomed
To live the life
With which your dreams have toyed.
Opher 8.2.99
I suppose I think there is some mystery, some mystical element behind the universe. It comes out of nothing in a big bang – from nothing to the universe in a fraction of a second; atoms out of nothing. There is energy flowing through the universe. There is size beyond comprehension. There is infinity and the void from which it comes. There are atoms that cannot wear out and energy that goes on forever. But is there a plan or purpose? Is there a God that is concerned with morals and human destiny? Is there an after-life? That is too human to me; too convenient. If there was a God it is one God; the God of all religions – no one special sect. The morals and the dogma do not hold with the mystical. I ridicule it. Religion is the biggest tyranny. It has held us back for thousands of years, stopping progress, inhibiting ideas, constraining thought, filling us with dread and fear, sin, evil and paradise, Heaven and Hell. It is human concocted rubbish that does not hold up under scrutiny. It merely moves you on to a series of other questions. So what happens after Heaven? Where did God come from? What purpose could there be to eternity? Mysticism I can equate as some flow of energy but religion is a pathetic attempt to explain things that are beyond human imagination and god is a construct.
Whenever I stand in a stone circle or see monoliths or standing stones I am transported. They have some strange resonance, a connection to the past.
It feels like I’m connected.
My ancestors used to gather in these places and perform all manner of rituals. They were powerful places.
Those religions are long gone but the mystical, spiritual connection still feels powerful to me.
The strange things you write when you are twenty one and your brain is still wiring up! This is a sort of mystical bit of strangeness about reality, infinity and where we fit in.
30.
It was Wednesday – a quiet day. Messny felt the sunlight bouncing on the wall and off out into space as he lay in his morning bed. It was still relatively dark in here with the curtains drawn.
‘Wait a bit?’ Messny thought to himself. ‘How did I manage to feel the sunlight hitting the wall?’
But he allowed himself to retreat into his drowsy state. It did not really matter how one felt these things.
‘Outside,’ he thought sleepily, ‘how absurd. If there was such a thing as outside I could not possibly feel the sunlight. No – at last there was no outside or inside.’
After a while the sunlight lessened in intensity and then there was only the softer play of moonlight on the wall which played a gentler tune and lulled Messny to sleep.
Dreaming, dreaming softly, dreaming of green fields and soft hues – tranquil, lazy days in which the Earth is bathed in sunlight. It is a new world – forever young, with no yesterdays or tomorrows. Messny was busily moulding it out of thin air. In his lazy dreams he lay on his bed and felt the sunlight meander through the layers of the wall before bouncing off into space.
Messny whimsically thought to himself – ‘if someone was to wake me now and say ‘Hey, you were dreaming,’ I would have to say – ‘No, I was not dreaming, but now I am.’
A hand shook Messny’s shoulder and he woke into the room with sunlight bouncing off the wall again.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ Janey asked with a smile.
‘No thank you,’ Messny replied. ‘I’m OK I’m dreaming.’
As soon as his eyes closed he awoke back in his bed, dreaming of sunlight bouncing off the wall. He thought to himself – ‘Only a dream away I had thought that I was doing precisely this. Now it is really happening.’
Another annoying side of him whispered in his inner ear in a tone of voice that suggested that it knew better – ‘How do you know you are not dreaming now?’
‘That’s easy,’ he answered himself, ‘if I were dreaming I could pinch myself and wake up.’
Messny pinched himself and woke up in the same room with the same sun busy at work.
‘That’s incredible,’ Messny said to himself, looking around the room, ‘Only just now I was dreaming about exactly this.’
‘You thought it was real then,’ his irritating inner voice said in such a superior tone.
‘Yes,’ Messny replied, continuing the inner dialogue. ‘But at least I am sure that this is real.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ it replied in a tone that suggested that it was in possession of better information that the rest of Messny.
Before Messny could really decide if this element of doubt could ever be resolved the door opened again and disturbed his trend of thought. Janey appeared with a concerned expression on her face.
‘Are you sure you are not hungry?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t eaten for over a day.’
Messny became aware of a decidedly uncomfortable hollow feeling in his stomach.
‘You know, I think you’re right,’ he replied. ‘I’m ravenous.’
‘Well get up then,’ Janey instructed him.
‘There you are,’ Messny said internally, addressing that inner voice of doubt. He was feeling smug because he thought he had a little bit of ammunition this time. ‘I’m feeling hungry and in a minute I am going to get up, go to the loo, get dressed and have something to eat. I can remember back into all my past life and this is a logical extension of where I was. If this was a dream it would not be so rational. It would be chaotic and disjointed. This is my life. It is ordinary.’
Messny swung round and got himself out of bed. There was no reply from his inner self and he interpreted that as admitting defeat. It had caved in before such impregnable logic.
Messny ate his meal and made pleasant conversation with Janey. She had been concerned over his strange behaviour and thought that he must be sickening for something. Messny reassured her that he had merely been exhausted. It was a lie. He wandered off into the garden with a mug of coffee. He could feel the sunshine bounce off his face. It seemed to beckon him.
Without a thought he stepped out of his clothes so that it could play across his skin. He luxuriated in the naked energy interacting with his body. He walked around watching the energies cascading in delicate arcs of a billion different hues and his senses sang with pleasure. His skin throbbed as his cells soaked up the warmth and light. He could sense the earth and grass all pulsing in time to the rhythm of the sun. He was part of it. They all danced to the melody of the sun. The ground crawled up and the sky reached down. Messny was bathed in the ecstasy of the cosmic dance – connected to the furthest star and beyond through the universal stream.
Energy was all there was and everything vibrated with energy.
A voice pulled Messny back from his infinite reveries. It was a tiny vibration almost too small to bother with. He felt little as hands gently guided him away.
Dimly heard voices filtered through to his ears from another dimension:
‘I’m really worried about him,’ the vibration was saying. ‘He’s been acting very strange lately – lying in bed all day and not eating. I’ve just found him wandering about outside with no clothes on. He appears to be in a daze. He’s not there at all. I’m wondering if I should call a doctor?’
‘He’s probably just got a dose of flu,’ another vibration answered. ‘Give him a day or two and he’ll probably be fine.’
Messny woke in bed with the sunlight bouncing off the walls. He was full to the brim with contentment.
‘Where are you now?’ the irritating voice inside his head asked.
‘Lying in my bed, of course,’ Messny replied.
‘Are you still sure you are not dreaming?’ it sneered.
A wave of panic passed through Messny’s mind but before he could reply the doctor arrived and proceeded to examine him. He checked Messny’s throat, took his temperature, poked around his abdomen and proceeded to ask a series of questions. He prescribed a sedative and left.
His prognosis was too much sun.
Messny was drowsy and passed into a deep sleep. The last thing he remembered was the feel of atoms playing in the sunlight. His dreams were empty and forgotten.
A while later he woke into a fresh world. Energy was causing crazy patterns to flow in the wallpaper. He quickly got out of bed and dressed.
The others were up and starting to eat and he joined them. They greeted him jovially – delighted to see him looking so perky and bright. It appeared that Messny was back to normal. He made small talk, smiled and was positively glowing with health and joined them for breakfast.
Messny looked out of the window at the garden with all its vivid colours. The sun was shining and the earth and flowers danced. He wanted to go out to play but thought that he had best not – at least not yet.
The doctor’s prognosis was probably right – a case of too much sun.
I am a unique Indie writer with a number of books on offer. I has a very readable style and tackle a number of themes in an original manner.
My books are available on Amazon in paperback and digital formats. They are world-wide!
In the UK you might like to browse through on my link below: For overseas visitors please refer to your local Amazon. You’ll find me there.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1475747471&sr=1-2-ent
In the USA:
In the USA – https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=opher+goodwin
Here’s a few selected titles:
Rock Music
2. In Search of Captain Beefheart – The story of one man’s search for the best music from the fifties through to now.
Science Fiction
1. Ebola in the Garden of Eden – a tale of overpopulation, government intrigue and a disaster that almost wipes out mankind, warmed by the humanity of children.
2. Green – A story set in the future where pollution is destroying the planet and factions of the Green Party have different solutions – a girl is born with no nervous system.
Kindle & Paperback versions:
The Environment
1. Anthropocene Apocalypse – a detailed memoir of the destruction taking place all over the globe with views on how to deal with it.
Education
There are many more – why not give them a go! You’ll love them!
This is the artwork I used for the cover (one of my paintings)
This is how it came out:
What do you think?
Incredible it appears that my paperback version is now available before the kindle version is ready.
In the UK it is available on the link below. In the States it should be out on Amazon.com USA. It would be nice if you gave it a try. It is selling for £5.99.
Please give me a bit of feedback.
Thank you
Cheers – Opher
This is a poem to the mystical woman whose love holds the universe together and gives it meaning. She is not real; no goddess to be worshipped. She is the purpose in life, the muse and meaning.
The atoms are tiny particles floating in space. The distance between their nuclei is so vast that when two solids, with their zillions of atoms hit one another, there is no contact of solid against solid. Without the forces they produce solids would slide through each other; we would drop through the floor. sliding through space.
Love gives life meaning and makes it real.
This is also a love poem to my special person who has made my life so much more real and made me a better person.
YOU
When I wake in the morning
The air is sweet with dreams.
The light from the window is crystalized through diamond images of you.
I breathe you in through the pores in my skin;
The freshness
The brightness
Of you.
You are the colours of my world,
The scent upon my breeze,
The essence that binds all things together,
The hum within the leaves.
Nothing would be real without you.
I know that would be true.
If you were to leave
I would just drop through
And moulder in drab dungeons
Through an eternity of grey
Wallowing in emptiness
Through each and every day.
I have to have you near me
Nothing else will do:
Your scent, your colour
The wonder that is you.
Opher August 4th 1995