I  haven’t been posting on here much over the last week as you my loyal readers will have noticed. I’ve been trying to finish my new novel before Christmas and, this morning, I came to the end of the third draft on schedule. I’ve been so busy in fact that I almost forgot that have a new poem, Mount Etna, published today by the online poetry journal Every Day Poets you can read it by following this link:

http://www.everydaypoets.com/mount-etna-by-colin-bell/

The poem was written after an inspiring two weeks  Sicily when, amongst a lot of other adventures, I went to the top of  Europe’s biggest and most active volcano, Mount Etna.

It was alarming enough for vertigo-prone me to go in the cable car up to the half-way stage but that was just the beginning.

The final part of the journey was on foot climbing up through the clouds over one of the most unwelcoming landscapes I have ever seen.

… a thrilling mix of sulfurous steam and gaping holes in the menacing dried lava.

I really felt as if I was treading the top of the world.

 If it wasn’t so high, it could’ve been  the underworld – Dante’s Inferno perhaps and an inspiring subject for a poem.

I could certainly feel that the ground was alive beneath my feet as I climbed to the summit and it was humbling and rather exciting to learn that just six months later, in February 2012,  Mount Etna had erupted again. If you haven’t been up a volcano before, or even if you have,  please read my poem and see if I conveyed some of the wonder of this dramatic place.

——————————————————————————————————————–

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

The post A thrilling climb up the volcano Mount Etna remembered in my latest published poem appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Even though I have been lucky enough to have spent most of the last weeks abroad on holiday, first in Sicily and just recently the USA, I have been on a determined bid to get back into my martial arts patterns (taught to me by my instructor Neil Johnson of White Crane Fighting Arts – see links) as a primary way of getting, and trying to stay, fit.  Luckily, the friends that I was staying with in rural New Jersey had an excellent and large garden that was perfect for my early morning routine.

For over a month now, I have tried to do a daily session consisting of the moving meditation system named after one of kungfu’s founding fathers, the revered Da Mo. Even though it looks gentle enough, it is actually pretty demanding especially on the legs. It stretches the body gently and subtly, trains the lungs and puts you, if you can control those wandering thoughts, into an inspired state of oneness with your surroundings. It was wonderful doing this here in a woodland New Jersey garden with the sun rising above the trees and a chorus of unfamiliar and exotic-sounding birds and insects.

It was pretty challenging doing my Taichi and Kungfu patterns too as the strong summer sunshine racketed up the temperature.

It was a great deal cooler when I started this regime at home in my small town garden in Lewes, UK.

The great thing about having these patterns to perform every day is that you can really do them anywhere giving you no excuse for not keeping your body strong and flexible even if like me, you are not particularly skilled at them.

Unlike team sports or visits to the gym, you can take your exercise regime with you wherever you go and over the last year, I have done just that. As I now approach the third anniversary of a major illness, dare I say it,  the gradual recuperation and exercise is beginning to pay off. The after-effects of my brain haemorrhage now seem to be near to disappearing all together and the seizure-caused broken back too has benefited all through this period from my regular use of my White Crane Kungfu 66-move Taichi form which I began to practise again, against doctor’s orders, on the hospital ward and that has meant that I needed no physiotherapy as my spine repaired itself. So even though I can no longer take part in those highly enjoyable sparring sessions, I have been able to keep my patterns going – even my weapon patterns – in some unlikely places. All you need is the determination and a certain lack of feeling embarrassed doing the stuff in public places.

Straight sword with a purloined garden cane,  Paros, Greece.

Straight sword with a strip of plastic on a hotel roof, Santorini, Greece.

Seven and a half foot staff pattern with a plastic ventilation pipe, Santorini, Greece.

Sword pattern with a mountain walking stick on the summit of Mount Rigi, Switzerland.

Taichi by the Grand Canal, Venice, Italy

Kungfu in Florence.

Da Mo Meditation on Mount Etna, Sicily.

Kungfu on the beach at Cefalu, Sicily….

and finishing with some Chigong exercises just a few days ago in Princeton, New Jersey. It may seem strange to say this but doing these intense but also at times profoundly contemplative exercises in different lands gives me a deeper sense of the places and, don’t laugh, a feeling that I have connected with them in a special way. It all began in 2008 when I practised early morning Taichi in a park by a lake in Fujian Province, Southern China with a roaring lion breaking the morning silence in a nearby zoo.

The important thing now is for me to keep it up now I am back in old England.

The post Keeping my Kungfu going anywhere in the World from Southern China to New Jersey, USA appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

It was a lovely clear Sicilian morning when I made the perverse decision to take a trip up Mount Etna. I began to wonder why as the coach zig-zagged up the narrow road through the lava-strewn lower levels of this 3323m (10,902.2 feet) mountain which also happens to be the world’s biggest active volcano.

It is pretty enough from the distance, I decided, looking at the fumes rising from its two principle craters.

I knew the seriousness of this mighty monster when we passed the ruins of a house that was engulfed by a lava flow in 2002. Etna is still a dangerous place to live and, people were saying that it has been extra-rumbly of late. History tells of massive disasters when Etna spilled her worst in 1169, 1329, 1381 and then in 1669 when Catania, Sicily’s second city was wrecked under molten lava. It wasn’t very nice in 2002 either.  I hoped it would behave today.

Then it was time to leave the coach in a car park that had been destroyed several times by lava – so Mario, the driver told me just to cheer me up. We were in the foothills of Etna where green grass  and trees are a distant memory but before i got used to the idea,  it was time for horror number two: cable cars. I have always hated the idea of being suspected over a drop on a slender piece of wire but I got over most of my phobia going up a mountain in Fujian, Southern China a few years ago.  It was time for a repeat experience.

Actually it was quite exciting as we rose higher and higher through this barren, lava rock landscape before having to change, bizarrely, onto a little bus with very tough tyres.

We were now a long way up the mountain and there was now not only no greenery but that blue sky was gradually disappearing too in the vaporous atmosphere that reminded me, not that I’ve been there, of Hell.

When we had travelled through almost impenetrable vapour for a considerable distance and at a very upward angle, there was a break in the clouds and we had arrived at the next stopping point in the long ascent. It was time to meet our mountain guide.

 He was quick to point out just how spectacular the view had become. Well, I think my Italian just just about good enough to understand what he was saying.

There was still a long way to go but his tough mountain-man manner lulled me into what I suspect was a false sense of security as we started the rest of the climb on foot.

We were walking on a crunchy substance consisting of recent particles of lava.

Unexpectedly, well what do I know, we saw pockets of snow and reminding me that we were now a long way away from the beach.

It was here that I also began to think I was very unfit. A few more visits to the gym were needed I suspected. I am usually fine on a hill walk but suddenly I found myself gasping for breath like an old man climbing stairs. It was a moment before I realized it was not me, it was due to the increasingly thin air at this altitude and a lot of people were struggling with me. Then I saw my first crater which was belching sulphour fumes reminding us that here the earth is open to its core. A thought that was nearly as scary as those dots on the horizon because they are people and that was where we were headed.

Those dots got nearer. I thought of a Bergman movie – we were all walking single-file to our doom.

Naturally, the higher we got, the more amazing the views……and the longer the drop….

… but vertigo-wobbly as I was, I decided to, sorry, go with the flow…..

…I had, after-all, never been anywhere like this before.

Gradually we were inside the clouds with not a hint of blue anywhere – these photographs are in colour, believe me. We were walking along that narrow path with what felt like a long drop on either side.

Once there, a bit breathless still and not sure whether I was brave enough to look, I had reached the highest point that visitors are now allowed to go and it really was worth the walk.

We were not far from the edge of the main crater but no one has been allowed on that final section since 9 people were killed there in 1979. This was enough for me, I can tell you.

It was a magnificent experience but I felt most of my body telling me to get the Hell out of there and I was happy to begin the long descent. When we got down to the cable-car station, I took some time out to do a Kungfu pattern just to, er, let off steam. It also, it occurred to me, might be the first time Kungfu has been attempted on Mount Etna but then only an idiot would try it.

Tomorrow the Sicilian adventure continues – join me then.

The post Wolfiewolfgang goes climbing Mount Etna to get to the top. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.