huts and visions, from the road north

This sequence is composed from field-notes on the culture of viewing, remnants from a book-length poem that records a journey through Scotland, guided by Basho’s Oku-no-hosomichi, pairing Basho's temples with Neolithic sites, or contemporary temenos. Our journey, from Edo-Edinburgh to a view of Sado-St Kilda, guided us toward an understanding of viewing, from chambered cairns, most notably Bharpa Langais, North Uist, through folly viewing points, to contemporary secular constructions. The visits are detailed in the posts on the road north blog. Although we decided that this material did not, finally, belong in that journey narrative, I have preserved it here, as it bears on my ongoing research into shelters, huts, viewing platforms, follies and comparable constructions made, or proposed, by contemporary poets, architects, and artists.

(I)

these are Basho’s temples and our pairings

from the road north

Basho’s Shugen-komyoj

is our St Medana’s Chapel (9)

Basho’s Unganji Temple

is our Carbeth huts (10)

Basho’s Sue-no-Matsuyama temple

is our Chapel of Sand (24)

Basho’s Zuiganji

is our Jupiter Artland (28)

Basho’s mountain temple called Ryushakuji

is our Outlandia (34)

Basho’s Zenshoji

is our Stonypath, Little Sparta (47)

Basho’s Eiheiji. Dogenzenji’s temple

is our Bharpa Langais (49)

(II)

leaving behind papered rooms

and feather duvets,

looking for other manners

of seeing and feeling,

we exchanged our names,

pulling on Basho’s coat,

and Sora's thinsulate hat

we extended our reading

into sited writing,

tying tanzaku to

flutter and fade

in cursive glens,

and tasked ourselves

with the translation

of viewing into vision,

intuiting that superstition

should always be read

sdrawkcab,

every culture flows on

enshrining vision

in eras of eyes

as we go further north

the text of the landscape

becomes speckled and undulating,

marked by dye-painted stones,

pockled rocks charts

rain runnelled cup-to-

ring-to-cup, clambering up

hilltop duns, fort-farms

and coastal beacons

(III)

…landslides and floods alter paths and cover markers

with earth, trees arisen generations gone… hard

to locate anything now, but that moment seeing

the thousand-year-old monument brought back 

sense of time past

– Basho (station 23)

sitting here, giving thought

to what can’t think,

giving speech

to what can’t speak,

we sip tea under

raised stones that set

the world in motion,

at Kintraw, Camusvrachan,

libating within the rings

of Kinnell and Temple Wood

aligning the cross-corners

of the quarter-days,

the rising or setting

of the sun or moon

living or dying

in their orbital incision,

grazing the mountain,

consecrating or fucking

the horizon

granting the volcanic

tumult of mountains

the accented outline

of a tradition

(IV)

through the cloud

which must be allowed

to be broken,

we went on

through endless mountains

slipping the sight-lines

into place

one-by-on, the peaks

caught hold their names,

in the fringes

of harsh dear places

of ling, quartz,

colour-patched lichens

which, unawares,

are   ever   so   slowly

splintering & splitting open

Cambrian boulders

ethics and geology

aren’t for confusing –

rock’s rock: ergo inhuman,

despite the bitter rages

of those who perceive

unpeopled moors

as the only worthwhile things,

for being wild,

for all their lonely

at-one-ment,

no peak ever felt

such an apartheid

of the spirit

(V)

we sheltered among

Druidic groves

of oak, hazel and willow

at Sròn Daraich

saw the virtue

in accommodation,

proven by the sapling

rowan and ash

we found growing,

the rowan out of

the crook of a gean,

the ash out of

the crook of a rowan

(VII)

we bent down low

to enter cells and caves 

where saints made recess,

and the ruined chapels 

of the Church’s

tenebrous lantern

as at Sand

which was bathed

in daily rains,

and which fulfilled

its name in sandbags,

its honeycomb stone,

held aloft by faith

and roofless devotion

(VIII)

‘that year for my birthday

nephew gave me a cave’ (1758)

we Scottified ourselves

in the cryptic grot

of the Duke’s hermitage,

where hired ascetics

validated worlds of wonder!

Ossianic awe! Exclamation!

we wondered at Acharn,

whose dark chamber

led us to out

on the final day

into summer’s opening

(IX)

strange to see

all that was once in place

floating so loosely in space

– after Rilke, ‘Duino Elegies, 1’

in time the tradition

of caves and temples

fell from the grasp

of Church and Laird,

landing in the realm

of artists

for our eyes only,

they render perception

with the same thrill

as those old follies,

in secular temenos,

gateways, and huts,

minimal shelters,

close-roofed caverns,

and open-windowed forms

each design translating

our looking into

the immersion of vision

raising our eyes

to the temples

of Gaia’s skies 

(X)

and so, to us,

Basho’s mountain temple

called Ryushakuji

is the hut, Outlandia,

a stand  of spruce

cleared to make

a hut of larch

that overlooks Ben Nevis

a window with

surrounding walls

this hut scrapes

carousel clouds

a woodshed,

a crow’s nest 

atop a mast,

an odd-pod,

a frottage cottage,

a shoogle-shack

to give you vertigo

a place to look from,

a mountain home

that once belonged

to Han Shan

for all those

who take the path,

what lies before you

is silence,

what comes after you

is silence

(XI)

by Uist's shore

the hut of shadows

is a whitewashed wall

that reveals the slow

flicker of the sea’s

everyday beauty

taking a great leap back

through 6,000 years

of human consciousness

into a darkness we recognize

from the chamber

at Bharpa Langais

(XII)

at Kinloch-Rannoch

the sky-eye

is where we watched

dusk fade the sky's

many monochromes,

and felt our seeing

sink into space,

as the light

of that first star

drew us

into stellar time

then it dawns –

there’s no edge 

beyond perfection,

no seeing beyond

the hem of time

(XIII)

their names are these:

The Renga Platform

Outlandia, Glen Nevis

An Turas, Isle of Tiree

hut of shadows, North Uist

the woodland platform, Glasgow

sky-eye, Kinloch-Rannoch

The Bothy, Inshriach

Sweeney’s Bothy, Isle of Eigg

The Conch, Inverness

Yird Murn Starn, Galloway

the wild shelters of Kevin Langan

(XIV)

chronology of vision

chambered cairn

sacralising

standing stone

aligning

dun

aligning

grove

alphabetizing

well

divining

cell

meditating

chapel

preaching

cathedral

gathering

hermitage

romanticising

folly

ornamenting

secular temple

contemporising

Notes

The Road North was composed in collaboration with Ken Cockburn. Angel’s Wing, Pleurocybella porrigens, mushrooms, picked on the walk to Outlandia. Archbishop Whately said that superstition should be read backwards. A tanzaku is a traditional Japanese poem-labels, a form we adapted on. In the 3^rd station of Basho’s Oku-no-hosomichi Sora symbolically changes his apparel.‘we give thought to what can’t think’, after Yoritomo. Hugh MacDiarmid refers to “lonely at-one-ment” in ‘Stony Limits’; later Hamish Henderson would criticize this “apartheid of the spirit”. The hermitage at Dunkeld was commissioned by James, 2^nd Duke of Artholl; that at Acharn by John Campbell, 3^rd Earl of Breadalbane and Holland, in the 1760s. William Wordsworth, described Ossian’s Hall as a 'world of wonder'. Outlandia was conceived by London Fieldworks, designed by Malcolm Fraser, and built by Norman Clark. Basho visits the temple at Ryushakuji in station 34 of the Oku-no-hosomichi; Han Shan, 9th century Chinese hermit-poet, author of Cold Mountain poems. Hut of Shadows, Chris Drury’s camera obscura, North Uist. The sky-eye is the name we gave to James Turrell’s sky-space, Kinloch Rannoch.