Seeking Wisdom

Making Love...or

2011-12-15T23:52:00.000-08:00

Playing Cricket

What does he feel

as he grips the willow…firmly, lovingly

and faces the challenge?

The ball

that spins and tricks and flies..

and are his eyes

inside?

Judging, measuring

timing the connection,

then his moment of truth!

Sweet sound of ball on wood.

full and centered.

Eyes following all the while

as it moves

True, low and fast.

Now an ally.

A flurry of white as he goes for two

Beating the quick return

And crossing the crease

To breathe once more.

Checking the placings of his men.

A scene of grace and strength and skill

Yet…underneath

For me, at least…a tension

Beating, pulsing to the rhythm

Of the heat, the ball, the hand, the eye

The man

lina

Sex, Intimacy and Social Mores

2011-12-13T15:55:00.000-08:00

I realise that the media and society in general is eager to use words like "sex' and "celibacy:, yet "intimacy" seems to have been mislaid.
WHo of us does not wish for that elusive state, shared with another of our species.
Sometimes, we have to take risk, find our self worth, recognise and salute our innate priorities and just turn our backs on the social mories and common denominator that informs our generations with such meagre, small minded and essentially damaging
guidelines and "acceptable" behaviours.

I think that intimacy is more than just emotional closeness. I believe there needs to be a congruence of minds...a shared level of intelligence as well as a determined desire to be one's own person.

I shudder at the idea that some people have regarding marriage...as if two can become one.
It is insulting to both parties and totally unrealistic.
The question is not in the "understanding" of someone! (Why would anyone want to try?) It is also not "needing to be understood!"
The question should be do I have the capacity to accept the qualities of the person with whom I MAY be able to share some special times and thoughts.

A wonderful event

2011-02-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

The Mullet Run
The air and sea have made a deal to soothe the sweet Pacific. Awareness is everywhere… in the rain drops, on the dripping foliage of the wattle trees and in the memory of the soft shelled crab awaiting his new carapace.
Awareness is everywhere and becomes tangible. There is the scent of the wet burnt eucalypts hanging in the air…hanging like that dream I failed to remember even though I thought I had.
Birdsong and happiness splits the air as the world says goodbye to summer.
This is a bounteous place. A place pleading to tell a secret. A secret involving gravity, and latitude, salinity and atmosphere.
The summer rains are finished and the mullet are coming.
From the backwaters of creeks and lakes, rivers and estuaries, flows this silver stream, with twitches of fins and twists of tails.
In every year of my life this ancient rite has occurred. Year after year, the dance of silver is refined until the choreography is more heart stopping than any recollection, any act of love, any prayer granted.
Lakes and river and all waterways take colour as the weeks of summer rain cease… browns and grey, greens and umbers as the salt water becomes brackish.
Shoals of mullet have been growing quietly and undisturbed in the safety of the waterways. It is time. The collective culture of this species now shows its willingness to pit itself against life.
If you are lucky, your eyes will be filled with silver. This is the time of dreams, of magic….a time of waiting and remembering the laughs of years gone by.
Mullet. The humblest of fish! They come determined to reach the open seas.
A stream of solid silver makes its way out. A marine Milky Way. A stream so solid you could stride across in heavy boots or tap shoes.. Wreathes of silver scales wash upon the shores while this monster flash of living light makes its own music as it snakes into the bay.
The urgency to leave one phase of life to pursue the next is a statement…a lesson to all of us. These strips of mercury must mate only in the open sea. They fill the day with their light and endless reflections and the following morning we find the shimmering, glistening waves of silver scales washed up, abandoned like clothes not needed…jewels spilt on the sand.

YASI

2011-02-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

While my heart is sad for all the people being terrorised by this magnificent cyclone, I cannot help being thrilled by the power of Nature. At the same time as this once in a 100 year Cat 5 cyclone, we have a heatwave in NSW and fires in Victoria.
It is quite easy to picture future Aussies becoming environmental refugees. The planet will only destruct in its own time...we have helped destroy our time on this wonderful planet.
ALl I can do that makes sense is continue to comserve , save, and leave a small footprint...all of which only assuages my soul. On the other hand, I intend to apply and receive my second country's citizenship papers and passport so that all my future bloodline can at least have an option.

Christmas

2010-12-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

If one person reads this and as a result goes out of his/her way to be more considerate than usual, I will feel pleased. I ponder on the small amount of influence a person like me, has, on society...the welfare of mankind.
I am like a pebble thrown into a busy waterway.
My ripple is eaten up by greater currents and whirlpool. I imagine the days when the world was still so unpopulated that each person bore weight and influence. Now we seem destined to accept the fact that media and advertising are the strands that make up the fabric of our communities, societies...our worlds.
My conclusion is always the same and sounds so mundane. It is to be kind, be peaceful, be just and honest and hope that others are doing the same.

Dawn

2010-11-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

Dawn.
Layers of grey mist swirled and coiled across the bay as the sun poked fingers of light from the horizon. They hesitated, then lifted to reveal the desolate old pier…a shadowy structure that lurched crookedly out into the water. It stood on fifteen and a half barnacle encrusted legs. The timbers, which were bare and grey as old bones and polished splinterless by ages of sun and salt, caught the soft gold and pink of sunrise, as though specially painted for the day.
A girl sat hunched against the early morning chill, a sole figure on the deserted curve of beach, chewing the stem of a piece of washed-up seaweed and facing the panorama of sunrise. The taste and smell of salt and old sea things were familiar, yet as exciting as the ocean itself and the start of a new day. In this small part of the world, on this morning, she was the only world alive and the beauty was hers alone.
At one end of the pier old lobster pots and fish traps lay heaped against each other in a haphazard pile of rusted wire netting and weathered slats of wood. Pieces of rotting ropes damgled from the pilings, frayed and stiff with salt and casting twisted shadows on the surface below.
In this dark safety beneath the pier, small schools of silver bream and whiting flashed and wheeled in intricate formations of discipline and survival. An occasional vee-shaped ripple bespoke a larger predator and all movement ceased. Tiny crabs scurried around the pilings, their stalky eyes black and protruding. Legs waving and claws grabbing, they carried on their disjointed dance of survival.
A single gannet swooped low, skimming across the surface, then banked abruptly and headed to its roost on the top of the cave on the lava cliff. Light caught the tips of its wing feathers and for a second he was clearly outlined against the black face of the cliff.
She watched the never ending motion of the sea which rolled gently like a giant pudding simmering in a saucepan. Noises, muted in the early hours now slashed through the stillness. Greedy gulls fought and bickered, circling frantically at the shoreline as they scavenged for food.
The old pier creaked and moaned, protesting against the onslaught of high tide.
Two dark clad fishermen strolled along the beach, their voices deep and gruff and the acrid smell of their cigarette mingled harshly with that of fresh salt breeze.
Colours were suddenly clear and bright. Dawn was over and day was beginning.

Glory

2010-10-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

Glory is a word I learned as a small child.
I learned it in relation to God and creation and other magical spiritual things.
It has always been a word without a visual for me. I could never see "glory".

I became a "glory-seeker" most of my life and now I watch the dawn, the rivers, the sky and small things like raindrops, and smile at the glory of it all.

Grace

2010-09-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

There are times when I am the only one. I embrace the gentle skin of silence that wafts upon my self and find a clarity and peace like no other time. More satisfying than "after-sex" . More exciting than Lady Ga Ga. More spiritual than the hour of prayer I so love. I am in a capscule of absolute quiet at these times and secumb to the unimaginable beauty of no noise. No vibrations; no waves of sound thrumming through the ait; Truly, I think it may be a state of Grace.

My Most Confusing Queries.

2010-07-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

What do I long for?
Explain "longing"
What do I want?
At which particular minute.
How do I feel?
About what?
Where would i like to go?
I do not wish to go.
Which would I chose?
The one I needed.
Are you lonely?
I don't know what that is.
What makes you happy?
ME. I MYSELF
One of my parents suggested that the reason I am socially inept is because I do not have answers to these types of questions.
I ask what does she mean by "socially inept"?

Sarah Blasko - "We Won't Run"

2010-07-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

I was born after my "use-by" date!

2010-06-15T01:40:00.001-07:00

This is just a small piece about 11th cent Irish Law of the land known as the Burren, a rocky kingdom on the western shore of Ireland.

In such a society all rules, laws and behaviours relied on the fact that people were members of clans.

Everyone had a value….a value of “sets; or milch cows..
This value was termed an “honour price”
All disputes were judged publicly, by the Brehon and almost all grievances were satisfied by the honour price which identified all aspects of the law.
A Brehon is a judge of geographical area, (kingdom).

A Brehon must be learned in seven main areas of legal knowledge

1Cain mac ina techta, the law of sons.
2Cain manac, the law of monks
3 Cain flatha, the law of lordship
4 Cain lanamna, the law of marriage
5 Cain cairdesa, the law of kinship
6 Cain criche, boundary law
7 Cain cairde, the law of treaties between territories.

CAIN LANAMNA
1. Marriage of First Degree: The union of joint property
2. Marriage of Second Degree: The union of a woman on a man’s property
3. Marriage of Third Degree: The union of a man on a woman’s property
4. Marriage of Fourth Degree: The union of a man, visiting a woman, with her kin’s consent.
5. Marriage of a Fifth Degree: The union where a woman goes away openly with a man, without her kin’s consent.
6. Marriage of Sixth Degree: The union where the woman allows herself to be abducted without her kin’s consent.
7. Marriage of Seventh Degree? The union where a woman is secretly visited without kin’s consent.

mankind

2010-05-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

Raging man
astride this world
demanding
begging
pleading
tempting with his soul........
causing a pure thing.

leave me plucking
arrows from my heart.

The Chaos of My Reality

2010-05-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Let's first get this straight. There is nought randon about chaos. When I think of chaos I am thinking of a glorious complex association of patterns of majestic equations. There is a tendency to rely on media to imprint our opinions on reality. This is dangerous. To be corralled into a force-fed culture is akin to battery hens and the resulting consciousness may as well be those hens' eggs!
My consciousness is my most precious commodity and I willingly give it free reign to the very cusps of emotional intrigues, the depths of horror and despair and all in between.
The core reality of our time would seem to be stress...from the size of our lips to the taxable income of third world economies.
Moral and economic crisis loom menacingly every whichway.
(Too much info, too little time to digest...national heartburn or irritable bowel)
I won't subscribe to the loss of identity demanded by the puppeteers.
I cannot. I am undisciplined, untethered and under-the-radar!

So.! I may be the only player but believe me...this is my game.
Chance, chaos,change,actions and reactions...stuff of my dreams.

Gazing Passionately at Stars

2010-05-11T04:55:00.000-07:00

Overtaken

And consumed

Exploded fiercely

Like the head of a match.

Shattered

and

scattered by implacable torture

among the black stalks of want

nothing extinguished

or unfevered.

Circumstance

2010-05-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

Someone somewhere said, I am sure, "It isn't what is served up, but how we experience it."

A sticky mess

2010-04-29T16:58:00.001-07:00

As a child of the bush, I have been fortunate enough to glean remedies from old "bushies". Tales of the past handed down from generation, in a land where distances are enormous, neighbours are miles away and there is no cell phone network coverage. While I now live in a "civilised" and rather upmarket niche-beach-village,(Yes, I am getting to the point!) I am still insecure enough to cling to these old tales.
Yesterday I managed to injure myself with a very sharp adze. (another old fashioned implement which I use instead of a mattock which is too heavy fro me).
A great gash along my foot, spurting blood at a great rate of knots! Fortunately I keep all my spiderwebs, of which there many, so in an old tried and true bush remedy, I gathered up as many clean-looking webs as possible and whacked them into the gash! Magic!
Then, thinking I was onto a good thing I decided to apply honey to an old and infected wound on my arm that has been slow to heal due to the fact that I am forever in the dirt. I must admit that this played havoc with my sheets, altho a bed partner could probably have found a way to get some mileage out of the whole scenario. The honey has reduced the infected wound to a quarter of its size and I am quite enamoured of this rather seductive sticky feeling. So...there you have it! Cobwebs and honey! They even SOUND like the name of a novel, don't they?

NOT

2010-04-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

You may wonder why I do not comment on politics, the economy, religion, diets or political asylum seekers. I also try to ignore war, sickness, lobbyists, gossip, celebrities, film noir and/or headlines in all media including electronic.
I do.
Sometimes I feel that "they" (ruling evolution) are managing to strip us of individuality, initiative and common sense. Some could term this paranoia! I, personally, wish NOT to become like a soviet citizen of long gone years. I chose NOT to be controlled by my debt(both personal and national). I chose NOT to be dependent on my government's merciful generosity and I am at peace with the fact that that my opinions may be shared by no one at all.

Romantic...hand in hand

2010-04-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

They were walking hand in hand along the beach and I was jealous. I have walked hand in hand. It is a gesture of something which is often habit... or perhaps a way to balance... or of not to have to talk words. Hand in hand. The consideration is the body language, the spacing of the footprints and where the chins are indicating. My hand in hand would never be close enough to your warmth, to the truths that fall out of you as your eyes grow dark in intrigue and independence.I would rather cut wrists or fingers and share a bloody bond than hand in hand with shoulders pointed away.
We did that and it was warm and right with honest hearts and truthful eyes that night before you had to go.If ever we were found again and walked hand in hand, I would run behind us every mile to ensure that my left footprint was well inside your right one...that we were once again three-legged.

New Kid on the Block

2010-04-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I hardly ever recognise faces, yet when I am in the bush or walking the beach I am always able to spot the newest face on the block. Today it was this magnificent creature...the brahminy kite. He is nesting in a tree in the dune along my beach. It is doubly exciting for me as until now, the brahminy kite was never found this far south on coastal NSW.
It will be interesting to see how he fares with the two pairs of osprey and the bossy flocks of galahs and lorrikeets that own the seeds of the dunal grasses, every Autumn, here in my small piece of paradise.

Love and Life

2010-04-12T04:44:00.000-07:00

Did I look long enough for the great love of my life or did I give him/her up, just in case we would not be able to discuss St Exupery together?
Did I stay too long in the glory of my thoughts and miss those complementary ones that are yours?
Soon my exile will be ended.While I walk on the edge of a cyclone I know that the wind is pushing me and my mind into whatever cave mouth or mine shaft of memory it chooses.
There are rules of social engagement i have yet to learn and will not.
My societal demise is proud and strongly emphatic. It demands its individuality.
I will stride and crack my knuckles, lie and weep fearlessly in this enterprise called life.
Shit!
Sometimes I just need to remember.

Autums nights and Evidence

2010-04-05T04:54:00.000-07:00

These are Autumn evenings lapping my feet as I wander through the black
autumn evenings remembering a moon on the sea of another place ...
moons on seas , cliches yet eternally true.
Evocation. Hints and hues, saturations of tiny pieces of a life not remembered in full coulur and action. Guessing, did I do that and when and.... where is the proof?
Evidence. There"s a concept!
And yet proofless, evidence-less, loveless, jobless, pitiless are in themselves evidence in gold of humanity.
I will be disordered, distracted.... wanton in my petticoats as I stride restlessly forward with a swing in my hips and a curl on soft lips.
The spirits and demons cloud and crowd in great comfortability.

Recognising

2010-03-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

It cuts you deep and bloody with no time to register that someone has found you in your safe and sterile den, There is no place to breathe without being seen in my eyes which are now possessed by one whose heat is high, whose memories are like those of my childhood,and whose radar is more fine tuned than all mankind. Confusion reigns and there is no let up.You brace yourself and step up bravely to face the new contender for your honesty and pure.Tossed and roiled on life's oceans does not give time for life vests, buoyancy compensators and flares. It is always just me/you and the air sucked away surrounding us in nothing.Spinning needing each and one another in the madness of this dance which some call life but which seems like the most perfect death. For what is more eternal, more everlasting than being known?
Dare we know? Do we take that step that flays us skinless, bloodless and boneless and leaves us happily.... transparent ectoplasm?

Seabirds and Despair

2010-03-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

You should know that sometimes the beauty around me puts me to despair.I get a sense of not quite inhabiting my own surrounding while my physical self is preened and pruned by the elements of sun, wind, salt and responsibilities.
Little seabirds, terns, hovering suspended, floating rudderlessly as the unfettered memories of my mind.Storm winds creep low from the horizon, ambushing the gulls. They bounce on the air, gently, as suspended as a child's mobile, wafting merrily above his crib.In unison, they go, like a clutch of shredded coconut, gleeful in the inky sky.
I am left with motes of feather somewhere deep within the soul of the body that stands bereft and lonely, damply insecure of love and life once more.

Summer 09/10

2010-03-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

A relentless summer, this one of '09/10.

Sky either blue with an intensity that hurts,
flesh saltstung and brown as a pecan nut...
or...
grey and thunderstruck
Clouds roiling and boiling and streaming ...
Steaming the atmosphere into a fug of desire and despair.

Evensong

2010-03-08T02:11:00.000-08:00

Last Evening
I sat on my verandah, full of fanciful yearning and watched the stars slide by.

I thought

“Life is just a pot of simplicity, simmering modestly,
Secure in itself.
It would be futile to struggle to understand the circumstances that catapult us into the moment.”
I admit it freely…
I take the easy way out and embrace my destiny.

Nature

2010-01-31T03:00:00.000-08:00

Aristotle said "Nature does nothing uselessly

In Memory of Storm Boy...the Chow

2010-01-10T21:49:00.001-08:00

My Dog

The dog knows when I am due home, I think.

As I drive up the dirt track, he’s always there. A black mound of fur, mute and myopic, that stands on four straight legs of characteristic Chow.

He doesn’t react in any way storybook-ecstatically. The lolling tongue and wagging tail syndrome of man’s best friends is not manifested in my pet.

Rather, he stands, stolid, column of granite, dead centre in front of my car until I have no choice but to halt.

You cannot bluff this Chow.

He then turns, power steering, no inch given, and surveys the track ahead. I wait, as he slowly, majestically picks his way through the imagined minefield of the last fifty yards.

He spies a goose wandering lost from the flock in the tall grass, on the verge. The ear goes up (the other ear is another $600 story) in a signal reminiscent of John Wayne or other actor, leading the advance party or a posse, through no man’s land in the late night movie.

We freeze, I watch the goose’s head as it see-saws through the autumn grasses. The dog watches too. We wait.

It’s finally safe! He leads off while I try to contain the melting ice cream in the brown paper bag.

The urge to abandon the car and race to the front door, to sanity, grows strong.

I sigh and accept the gift of my homecoming ceremony.

One more sweep around the lemon tree and I’ll be in the garage.

But, wait! The pale cat which is always on the roof, is padding pasty the trees. It’s not supposed to be there and canine Holmes has noticed. All is not right at 3.50pm in 5 Blackhead Road!

That cat shouldn’t be there…the black cat, maybe. He sometimes waits behind the chopping block to pounce on the dog’s back foot. But not this pale and inferior moggie.

Harmony shattered, routine fractured! We stop again…radiator needle in the red…sounds of overheating.

Why don’t you chase the thing, I think, in misery. To what god of the canine world did you pledge this vow of stoic silence and stately stance?

A Chow of the Contemplate Order of canine!.

Bark, dog! Skit cat! Chase!

But no. In the centre of my driveway, in plumb line with the Subaru insignia, he stays.

I have tried going around this black guardian of my afternoon virtue. He shuffles…has the sidestep as adroit as a youthful Pele.

The pale cat stops too. They stare. How do they communicate, silently, through the heavy air of my despair.

A silent detante is reached. In instant accord, they move.

The cat, tail high, with slice of tongue curled up, moves off regally, as the dog goes forward.

Ah! The inner sanctum (garage) looms close. The dog high steps daintily and precisely, like a Santa reindeer, over the half inch concrete pad. The two front wheels roll up and over and the car drifts to a halt.

He ambles to my door. Maybe, hopefully to greet me with that doggie devotion I hear about!

Suddenly, he sits. Legs buckling in unison. Concentration’s gone and the flea on his left haunch needs attention. The space is small. He blocks my door.

As I bottom-crawl across the gearshift and handbrake, to reach the passenger door, I laugh. I’m home.

The sun and moon...lovers

2010-01-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

The sun.
The enemy, the lover....the central core of desire.
My planet's engine.
Puppeteer of my life.
Forcing out my energy then draining me until I am dry.
I yearn for its light.
I curse the quantity of its light.
I lay myself bare to its heat and give myself utterly to the lick of its tongue.
then
The mellowness of the moon soothes these flaming desires
caresses the fervour of my day and rocks me to his chest until I am healed.

Giving Utterly

2009-12-26T17:13:00.000-08:00

This may be the most beautiful thing I discovered in 2009
it was written by the Aussie poet, Kenneth Slessor.
Titled....
"Sleep"

Do you give yourself to me utterly,
Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh,
Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly,
But as a child might, with no other wish?
Yes, utterly.

Then shall I bear you down my estuary,
Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously,
Take you and receive you,
Consume you, engulf you,
In the huge cave, my belly, lave you
With huger waves continually.

And you shall cling and clamber there
And slumber there, in that dumb chamber,
Beat with my blood's beat, hear my heart move
Blindly in bones that ride above you,
Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,
Through viewless valves embodied so–

Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,
The riving and driving forth,
Life with remorseless forceps beckoning–
Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth.

Night Driver

2009-12-17T01:45:00.000-08:00

For Taxi Drivers

He, taxi driver of the city night... hollow man and shadowless,denizen of invisibility.
He, "cabbie" to some, nameless to others.
He, man of eve, man of the nightshift, following after Zengo of the grey cardigan, who’s off to Coogee to son’s birthday. Now it’s his time absorbing heat of the day, setting the car seat for legs long and inclined to cramp. Ford or Holden makes no matter cruising Bayswater or conforming to the rank, he’s paid his dues.
There, flagged down...hopefully a friendly one here inside deserted darkness somewhere in this city, within the nightness of it all,
A nocturnal to and fro of humanity, sometimes inhuman, but in the guise of ---- with money in their pockets and perhaps he’s the only few minutes of comfort or safety as they hasten about, molelike in the burrows of the underground blackness of their lives.

And the lovers, hand holding, touching, impatient going to who cares place, borne along by Bill/John taxi driver anonymous and automation, taking part unknown by them in their flashing, searching ritual of something- celebration of life. He, happy not to have to talk, they know what they are doing and he’s just part of the metal and machinery stage set.

Taxi ramp, harsh light and one thirty am with late news flash and empty streets stretching out for another four and a half hours with thoughts of opportunities lost or missed, sparking and spiralling in technicolour more bright than the Dixon Street Festival lights, and doing the sitting there out of choice, a percentage on an hourly rate.
Not caring: maybe the pedestrians wandering by need a ride, start the engine, trusting computer in the head, a quick U turn to save two blocks and turn down radio, fare’s a talker, answering yes, or no or perhaps, not likely – customer always right, mind in neutral and car’s in third or fourth, a bit noisy, must check it out later and “the next on the left- yes, beside that garbage bin, thank you, slam”.

Alone and on your way again, almost hitting the night mongrel dog animal and he dreams of friends he knew , ones who had dogs, who had died, or disappeared and because it’s a slow night he knows it’s $47.80, adding it up in bits through the night.
The moon’s on the sea, the city-sea. Does it gather his heart, the glory of indigo and almost-silver, part of the city; yet not?
Ease foot off pedal, forget the fare, getting salt smell and easterly touching the immobility of his face with memories and other moons and seas and beach night sounds, striking chords gentle and soul plucking, but just for a moment- it’s late and he might make two more fares if he’s lucky, and life’s like that.

Wanting

2009-12-16T01:02:00.000-08:00

There is no time wasted in watching the stars go by...do you do it?
Do you not long to be out there?
I want to stride from star to star, naked and free in the moonlight and declare ownership of the world in which I dare to dream.
Let comets follow my footsteps like phosphoresent trails obeying my feet.

I want to be sucked into a wave and fly through foam in an underwater world.
I want sand in my hair and seaweed winding gently on my skin.
Just once I dare you...stand skin to skin with me. Inhale my breath and burn with my heat.
Stay..eye to eye....and die

Lust and Dogs

2009-12-13T02:30:00.000-08:00

Thought scrambling. Thought clearing.
I think I would really like to experience whatever dogs- with- the- wind- in- their- ears- and- their- heads- stuck- out- of- car- windows, are feeling.
I am smelling thunder and tasting footprints while the world holds its breath.
Three times a year and one just happens to be New Years Eve when I am needing a bowlful of silence while I sniff and taste.
We are like onions…so many layers of me and sometimes I cannot remember which layer I am at. It is quite a shock to find I am in my third year layer full of fascinations and sentiment simultaneously looking out with my green cynic’s eyes.

Then there is lust. That intense longing . It hovers above my head like a speech balloon in a comic strip. The object of this intense craving so multifaceted I carry it carefully in my cupped hands hoping to recognise its many forms. I trip on it, write it bad cheques and usher it through my limbic system,buying tickets and tokens as I update these licences and authenticate authority.

Passion in human relationships

2009-12-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

Passion. What is it? Is it a totally subjective concept? I believe so.
In considering the meaning of passion, for me ,(in relationships), I believe it is MY recognition in another, his/her ability to be moved by subtle shifts of the mind , language, nuances of the body and a familiarity with silences that lets me free range.
Not a shared thing...more a recognition
I cannot not imagine passion for another.
Such is the ambiguity and fragility of my personal world that the discovery of a certainty is something for which to strive.

Cycle of Life

2009-12-09T01:03:00.000-08:00

Last Summer

The summer’s over now
The southerly is strong
I walk along the beach
No people to tread on.
The dunes are stronger too
Without the trash and silt
And tides have caught the ruins
Of castles we once built.

Waves are breaking cleanly
Onto firm brown sand
A lone board rider silhouetted,
marching to his band.
Somehow blending into nature
Bliss etched on his face
Easily blending into nature
Rejoicing in his space

The winter birds are back
Swooping low and gay
Catching sight of glitterfish
Darting through the spray
Not screaming like the gulls
Or eagles of great might
Just little birds flying
for fun and sheer delight.

Remember that young gull?
We spoke to him in French
You fed him on salami scraps
He balanced on the bench
We made him feel superior
That far off summer day
He came back time and time again
When you had gone away

I wonder where he is
Will instinct bring him back?
When the sun is strong and the east wind blows,
And humans make their tracks
Upon this silent sweep of shore
That’s purely mine, today
Last summer, good and gentle time
But still, my yesterday

Something About Ezra

2009-11-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

It is in here that a wisdom seeker should search!
Ezra gets my nod...... An Immorality.

Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.

Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.

And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,

Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men's believing.

Southern Visitors

2009-08-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

I took myself on a photo tour of a neighbouring city.
Tides and seasons ebb and flow on this piece of pacific coast..
Suddenly, in this last week, automobile registration plates have become alien....invaders from the more southern states...following the sun as sure as lemmings.
They stand out by their very structure. Clean sedans, roof racks, cycle racks.Not yet salt encrusted, faded or sanded by the very climate they have come to worship.
A significant fact of life in this part of my world, is the casualness.
Local cars are parked casually, never rigidly within lines at 45 degrees; often using two spaces; happily in no parking zones - the only risk being to the wallet.
The tourists define the season by their very conformity. Southerners , white skinned, new Akubras , wearing beach-walking sandals and parking carefully.
Expectant, enthusiastic and unable to proceed into traffic roundabouts in a peripherally elegant manner.
The anomoly of the commonwealth......traffic regulations ordered by borders.
Main street running along the esturary. Parallel navy bitumin and blue streaky water.
The sun dances from shopfront to water, catching highlights on cheekbones, hats and shoulders of the ambling visitor.
A sense of time forever, no hasty dreaming. Street vendors and buskers delighted in the day to show their wares.

The tailor run

2009-07-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you of the tailor run.

The wind and seas are coming down from a rage.
Turmoil is everywhere and this shoreline, which I love like a poem, memorised, is a discourteous place. The air crackles statically on my hair and skin. I could be on a faraway planet. It smells of Cambrian times. Seabirds wheel high like tiny fighter jets, miniscule SR-71s, then, flay themselves through the sea’s skin. The booming swell comes and goes, as I stand in a lost memory, echoes of a low incendiary growl. While I rig my 12 foot “big” with the 3 ounce spinner, the atmospheric frenzy relays itself to the baitfish. Whitebait. They are coiling and roiling outside the break, in an organic and measured ballet.
Tailor…streamlined predator….pelagic superfighter.
The fancy spinner will tempt with clarity and glamour, as it flicks through the glitterfish,. I notice that the sand is cold and causing pain up and through my shinbones. Better that I am knee-deep and numb for this action.
I ponder on the peculiarity of my relationship with creatures of the sea. I am familiar with the deadly, the specimens, the beautiful and now, the food.
As I cast and crank, the wattles and tallow woods pump out their final blossoms and pollens in the heath land at my back. Wattlebirds clack in the dying light and willy wagtail claims ownership of this place.
Alone, here, I am charged to the eyelids. Time comes and goes in waves and pleats, like the water I stand in. Perhaps, time is moving through me, not me, through time. Again and again, the rod tip bends, the top third of the stick arches impossibly as I reel in and set drag. They fight in streamlined glory and are dispatched and bled before their silver and blue has dulled. I ache with happiness as the wind rakes through my hair and thrums its atavistic rhythm on my taut line.
Then…they are gone. I have my bag limit.
I stand exhausted, hands swollen, knuckles tight with salted skin and blood rimmed nails. Night.
I am a feather riding light.
Lina

Philosophical indignities

2009-07-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

This hiatus has not helped. I begin to think that language is only for the purpose of thought. The anchorites of ancient days may have been blessed with an awareness of life and its meaning. I manage to nod at the beauty around me, then find myself part of the scene rather than the onlooker who is able to make decisions and choices.
I suspect that philosophy is a con and there is only matter and science.
A sad thought for a lover of literature.
What is literature? A philosophical question that, naturally, cannot deserve and answer.
Pfttt

Ulysses

2009-07-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

Reading "Ulysses" again.
James Joyce somehow manages to make me lose confidence in myself and my dreams.
Not because of his writing, which I love, but because he understands so well that the only truly heroic action humans can make, is to live. Just do that tiny little thing in our lives that is absolutely essential to do, but which bears little weight on the outcome of mankind.
Joyce manages to keep body and mind of Mr Bloom and his characters in a nice state of balance.
That is so hard to do.I learn from this book each time I attempt to understand it and coming from the heroics of Yeats it is mystifying in the realisation that they are both such outstanding Irish authors in this century.......one embracing everything heroic and large, the other making observations on the minuitae of every minute of a life.
I need to think.

Poem of a small child, grown

2009-07-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

The small child prepared the way for her senses to forage through life:
The Sun

A sneaking, sensuous flirt
Caressing golden on my skin
And through
To my core
opening me wholly.
Inside, I’m gold,
soft and warm and owned.

The Sea
An animal thing
Beating and pounding
My skin and my heart

A loving thing
Cradling, rocking,
Gentle fingers on my skin.

A lonely thing
Whispering sadly on the sand
Sharing my tears and yearnings

A god-made thing
Enduring, endless
Making me feel so small

Searching for Beauty

2009-07-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

The seed! So tiny, yet wordlessly owning a conviction of the legitimacy of its authority.
Me! I am walking on the rim of a cyclone. Ocean waves are higher than my feet. How? If the earth tilts now we will own a new coastline. Winds are pushing my clothes into every crevice of my body as the material attempts to flirt with the skin of my sacred places. The willy-wagtail, on the sand at my feet, tries to fly. A valiant thing, tossed and twitched on the edge of the wind.
The child outgrows the drawer and begins to absorb the sounds of the planet. The groan of old timber floors;rhythms of familiar footsteps along the hall; sounds escaping from mouths, given meaning by inflexion and by the light and expression in eyes. Before words were filed, this child knew that beauty shapes itself according to the soil on which its seed has fallen. Beauty would always be the idea that would make her life tolerable.
They often found her tucked in tiny corners, surrounded by sweet smelling heads of roses, tugged tufts of clover, fragrant violets uprooted by small fists; shiny and perfectly round pebbles in her grasp. She stroked her cheek, her chin, with a perfectly soft and purely white chest feather of a backyard chicken.
She conversed in rhyme with her mini friends in a language in her household, from the time her tongue discovered four teeth.

Fertile

2009-07-03T03:08:00.000-07:00

What are the limitations of a seed?
How can we predict its fate?
A large black seed with hard and shiny case.
Are there any options or is it all a foregone conclusion?
A seed. Fertile, of course.
DNA?

Song for a Child and a Seed

2009-07-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

The seed and child wait...both mute and reliant on other factors.
The woman sings:

I met him in a bar room

Down a side street in the Cross

Looking battered and bewildered

Taken up with life’s defeats, shoulders bowing with the weight,

Worn out roads beneath his feet.

As I caught his eye and toasted

in the spattered yellow mirror

I felt the trembling start of all the end of all my dreams.

He was loving,

how he loved me!

In a way I’d never known

As we travelled places, sacred, in the stars.

While my heart sat full and naked

On the fabric of my sleeve

He fed upon the feelings, on the secret hopes and needs of all my dreams

In the cold pale light of dawning

On the tousled mattressed sea

I lay blinded in the blinking neon light

As he shrugged into his worn jeans

All the shreds of my emotions

Unravelled down the ocean of those tangled hotel sheets.

He was leaving

And he left me with nothing but my skin,

taking all the glorious grandeur of my soul.

With his hands upon his belt and his long legs wide

Astride

the scattered shattered relic that I recognised as me.

Silent seed and crying child the witnesses

Growing Seed

2009-06-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

contd:
Tiny seed. You landed among an argument of ethics and aesthetics. See the alpha plants reaching for the sky. Would you know they are feral? Find your faith, your courage and forge your place.
Settle in that small space between two rocks and trust the weather gods to smile upon you.
A baby come into the world. It was a Friday, a thirteenth on a day when the strongest windstorm ever felt in the city of Sydney, NSW Australia, snarled throught the streets.
The baby was taken to the home and a drawer was found for its cradle. A lucky child lying asleep beneath the socks and underwear, and above the sweaters and blankets.The winds howled, shrieking the news to the world and ten mimi appeared through the night, each taking turns in guarding the babe.

Coming Out!

2009-06-30T00:49:00.000-07:00

With trepidation and pounding heartbeat I clear my throat.
Perhaps the seed will acknowledge that I am intent on allowing it to sprout. Nothing.
Ah! It demands energy! A forced and fearful cough and spit.
Am I the old man with rheumy eyes who coughed and spat all across Asia, with me?
A stubborn seed bespeaks a plant with strength and stamina.
I take a breath and create a great Arghhhhhhh-ahem.
Out it shoots. A tiny slimy seed wearing a coat of shiny black and offering promises.

It is there, I swear!

2009-06-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

There is a tiny lump in my throat, trying to be a story.
It started as a miniscule seed within my heart, travelled through my arterial byways and laid down some roots in my brain.
I think I was daydreaming because it has slipped past my conscious self and has become stuck in silent vocal chords.

Tourists in Winter

2009-06-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

There is something beautiful in a brittle winter morning on the east coast of Australia.
Security that it can never become deadly and depressing as some countries have to endure. A chance to wear clothes that hug and comfort. I know no one who actually owns and overcoat, yet, as a child we all wore them.

Tourists from the southern states are invading in search of sun...of a hiatus to their arthritis!
Numberplates betray them as well as new beachside clothes and eager faces, thermoses and strange driving habits.

Mud pies and children

2009-06-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

Houses were on pilings when I was a kid.
You could get under and escape from the adult wrath.
Funny how you don't remember being "naughty"
Does anyone?
I spent a great deal of time under the house in the rainy weather making mud pies.
I had a pulley system....a conveyor belt of sorts.
Friends were the workers and I was the president of the company.
No one minded.
I can't recall bullying. The word of the 21st century but perhaps made worse by the number of child experts...and the guilt laid upon families. I agree with that freeroaming kids' site.
It is a small matter of trusting one's parenting. When I was a child parents seemed to have a much stronger sense of self worth. Perhaps something to do with instant and on tap media.

Life Happens

2009-06-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

Perhaps casting about for small incidents may be the way to go.
"Night-Floating" What was that all about.
From 3 until about 9 years I would find myself floating just under the bedroon ceiling.
It took no energy..I was just there looking down at my parents who were tucking my blankets in tightly around the body I no longer inhabited.
I was always worried that the blankets would be so tight I wouldn't be able to get back in my body if I so desired. I wonder what it all signifies?

Fishing helps

2009-06-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one pearler.....Tasks and committments over by the nod of noon and the easels had turned enemy in my eye.
Autumn. The air was sweet and clear...brittle as an icicle....quiveringly delicate ,with surface tension-strength of a spider web.
Onshore winds of yesterday had glassed the ocean with two enticing channels just calling for me.
Autumn here, more a Browning one with its "mute appeal to sympathy", than that of Keats' Ode.

Some new filament on my reel, the shiny hooks supposedly less cruel, minus the barb.
Back Beach? Front Beach or Nine Mile?
I grabbed my bucket, knife, bait and tackle box, took dog on lead and set off , the air forcing me
to bounce with energy.
I am ........here standing on the arc of sand, marked out in maps of Coastal Exploration, 1789.Government Gazette.

Had my 10foot beach rod for small surfs, and cast out to the back of the gutter.
And there I stayed, for hours.
Sun beating on my back, seagull acolytes tripping around my feet or whirling up and off into the bush when the big brahaminy kite
came soaring and circling overhead. The breast feathers white as light reflected, contrasting to that beautiful russet bronze of wings.
Head looking up, reaction too slow as I missed a thunk on my line...it didn't matter. The thrill is for the thunk, the pull, the tug.
Continued to play at fishing as I absorbed the colours, the barrel shaped clouds, the long blue curve of coastline pointing north.
And the sounds..the eternal shoooooooom of small breaking waves, lorrikeets in flock arguing in their fiesty noisy voices,
sand, too, squeaking beneath my feet.
I stayed until the last rays had fallen behind the dune bush, wandered back as renewed as a newborn
and sat in peaceful solitude on my verandah reading through the dusk and into the night.