from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Monday 26 March 2012

the flash of a firefly

Wonderful gig last night – Shetland fiddler Aly Bain with his duo partner, the incomparably funny accordionist Phil Cunningham. Uplifting and inspiring, and once again I remembered how much is transmitted without words.

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Driving back home in the starry night, for no apparent reason I found myself remembering some words from a First Nation tribe, transcribed in T C McLuhan's Touch the Earth. I can't find my copy to check who, or the exact wording, but this is pretty close. I hope you don't find it too melancholy for a Monday morning; I find something reassuring in being reminded of impermanence, and that so much of our suffering is self-inflicted, due to our unwillingness to accept transience.

What is life? It is the breath of a buffalo in the springtime.
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the sunset.






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