Rhythm

Before there was DNA there was rhythm.

Countless days and nights on Mercury, Mars and the Blue Planet,

Countless winters, springs and summers.

Sun cycles.

Flips of magnetic field.

Moon tides on planet rock and gas and on the mobile waters of Earth.

Life's chemistry tuned into the rhythms of earth and Moon.

Producer days of plants, consumer nights.

Circadian dips and rises of body temperature, hormones.

Moon rhythms bringing forth new life.

Life created new rhythms.

The quiet tides of air flowing in and out of lungs.

Heartbeats: the high trill of mouse, slow calm of elephant.

Pulse felt in veins pressed on bone.

Fin strokes, wing beats, limbs in a gallop, slinky undulations.

Male thrusts.

Blinks of an eye.

The dark flickering of a trillion, trillion cilia along inner tracts.

Waves passing through brain.

Dream sleep, deep sleep.

Life took rhythm, created language.

Stroking hands speak, cat's purr answers.

Rocked infant slips into sleep.

Playground children chant and skip.

Feet dance to drumbeats

... or blood boils.

Machine man stands legs akimbo,

ears defended,

Power saw between vibrating hands.

Isolated.

Morocco Magic

Tahir Shah has started a new blog:

http://www.morocco-magic.com/

Yesterday he posted a superbly written article he wrote about Marrakech for 'Lonely Planet.'

Please, please have a look at this blog.

Superflight

In far South Africa a barn swallow dreams of long light days at the top of Glenshane Pass in Ireland, of abundant insects and a nest full of healthy fledglings under the eaves of the Ponderosa Bar. The time of the gathering of swallows for the long migration north is approaching. Feeding on the wing, sometimes skimming the surface, sometimes soaring, they will accompany storks along the Great Rift Valley; but, while the long-legged ones cross the Eastern Mediterranean into Turkey, swallows fly over the Sahara quenching their thirst at oases along the way. I have seen them swooping to drink from a swimming pool in Casablanca.

These days we are rarely tempted to watch television, but the series, "Earthflight", being broadcast by the BBC is a feast for the eyes leaving many memorable images. Migrating grey cranes arrive in the Camargue only to have their peace shattered by a troupe of wild white horses. After feeding, rest and recuperation the birds continue to their breeding grounds where a male begins his strange athletic courtship dance. A female joins him in a pas-de-deux and soon all the colony's males are leaping into the air.

In the skies over Rome a huge flock of starlings appears as a superorganism, darkly shape shifting like a jinn. A maurauding hawk overhead is confused by the ceaseless movement and leaves empty taloned . Starlings, we are told, migrate to Siberia.

In Finland an osprey spreads its magnificent wings before plucking a fish from water, and a hungry bear cub scales the trunk of the tree near whose top the bird perches eating its catch. Seeing the osprey reminded me of a radio programme last year where a female osprey called Logie was tracked from West Africa to her nesting site in Scotland. For all its breathtaking photography, television rarely produces the sense of involvement in a creature's fate that a radio programme or even a website can generate.

Five Migrating Cuckoos

No one knows for sure yet, but it looks as if the five male cuckoos tagged in South-East England by the British Trust for Ornithology, are now in their winter quarters. Just after the December solstice all five were transmitting from West Central Africa in, or around, the Congo Basin.

Each cuckoo's journey was unique. Their departure dates were weeks apart as were arrival dates. Two birds chose westerly flight paths, through Spain and along the coast of North-West Africa, before continuing in a south-easterly direction on the final legs. The other three chose more direct routes, through Italy, across the Mediterranean into North Africa, then across the Sahara. Each journey was punctuated by stopovers of several weeks, at the end of flights which could well have been gruelling, covering up to 2200 Km over a two day period.

It is amazing that all five birds should reach their destination without mishap, and that five birds with breeding grounds around the same area should find themselves close together after having been separated by up to 3600 Km. I used to think that bird behaviour was governed entirely by instinct and that instinct was a property of the species followed blindly by each individual. Free will was not something I associated with birds.

It is hard to imagine such a journey being made without knowledge, at least knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of the destination. I suspect each bird also has knowledge of the hazardous regions to be crossed. It avoids very long flights over the sea, and rests and refuels before attempting a desert crossing. This knowledge cannot have been acquired through learning because the cuckoo's surrogate parents know nothing of migration to another continent. It is possible that this knowledge is resident in the bird brain having been put there through reactions initiated by cuckoo DNA. It is also possible that that the knowledge is resident elsewhere, and cuckoo DNA initiates reactions that result in the cuckoo being able to access it at the appropriate time.

Fascinating!

Saw Therapy

As Christmas approaches I protect myself from paralysis by cliche by - weather permitting - daily saw therapy. The smaller branches that were attached to the huge limb, torn off one of our beech trees in last May's storm, are gradually being reduced to firewood. Beech makes an excellent fuel. The fine twigs are ideal for kindling and the logs, laid on a single layer of coal, blaze brightly before being reduced to a soft, fine ash that fertilizes.

Saw therapy only works if you use a manual implement. Men, the main sawers in this area, prefer power saws. Their whining and groaning (the saws', not the men's) is to my mind devils' music that overpowers and replaces the comforting rhythm of old-fashioned sawing.

The therapeutic effects are not confined to rhythm. I have reprieved pieces of wood from being burned because of the subtle beauty of their bark. Among them were long digits whose skin gleamed with the pink of newly minted copper or the orange tint of copper alloy. They were adorned at intervals with finely-ridged metallic bands and marked with patches of silver grey containing dark microflecks and microstreaks. they had dark lenticel pores in the centre of tiny goosepimples, or small raised rhombuses, or between two tiny lips.

No two pieces of wood are the same. For me, humble beech wood rescues me from pre-Christmas boredom and is a symbol of the unlimited possibilities in Creation.

Santa

Junk mail pushed through the letterbox this morning announced that, for £5 it would be possible to visit Santa's Grotto. Mercenary people would appoint someone wearing a red costume with a large buckle, black boots and a white beard to dispense mass-produced toys to children of this area.

When I was a child Santa Claus was a magical figure. Part of the magic was that he travelled on his reindeer-drawn sleigh to bring presents to children on only one day of the year, Christmas Eve. The rest of the time he spent in his igloo in the North Pole making toys for all the children of the world. This Santa made toys for children because he loved them. He only came down the chimney when they were asleep; so they never saw him. They had to imagine what he looked like. Then someone produced Christmas cards with the vulgar image of the Santa with which we are all familiar and that was the beginning of the end of the magic.

The Student Prince

I might have been ten, perhaps younger, when I was swept off my feet by The Student Prince. For many years afterwards I believed that, once I had shed my cygnet’s drab feathers and become a swan, I would be spirited away to a magical place called Heidelberg where a prince with the handsome dark looks of Edmund Purdom and the powerful, passionate yet tender voice of Mario Lanza would see me and instantly fall in love. It was a successful, if not the only, attempt by the Spirit of Romantic Love to get me to do its bidding.

As a teenager I was attracted more to classical music than to pop. Music of all sorts, I am now convinced, powerfully links the physical and the spirit worlds. Performing music, listening to music not only arouses transient emotions but can alter the course of a life because it is spirit which motivates and energises. In thrall to the Spirit of Romantic Love, you can become blind to the charms of mere mortals. Even worse, you can convince yourself that a mere mortal is The Student Prince and burden him with unrealistic expectations.

Last week I was speaking to a young relative and was struck by how his life seems to be following a similar trajectory to the one mine followed for a couple of decades. As well as sharing genes, classical music, its performance and audition, played a part in both our lives.

We belong to a culture where we listen to music because we enjoy it. We are aware of emotions it may arouse, but our society is still blind to other, perhaps far-reaching consequences, it may have. It can affect our breathing rhythm and heart physiology. Because heart signals radiate some distance from our bodies they can be replicated in those around us causing entrainment which is driven, for better or worse, by the most powerful force in the system.

I am certain that knowledge of the effects of music exists in the human race. Perhaps the knowledge will be shared with the rest of us when the time is appropriate. At least this is my hope.