Avicennia marina,salty tidal water and a sinking sun… a perfect combination really…
Month: June 2019
Joy Of Moving Water
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
– Rumi, excerpt from ‘Moving Water’
Magic Bus
” Every day you’ll see the dust
as I drive my baby in my Magic Bus
( too much, Magic Bus ).”
– ‘Magic Bus’, The Who (1968)
…these days the dust might be more over this derelict carrier, than from it, but still magic..
Wooden Flower
Contemporary Pasifika carved artwork catches the sun on a building exterior in Auckland yesterday.
An enclosed flower at the centre of the design ,lines radiating outwards.
Abstract symbols that spoke to me yesterday of gratitude and hope.
That may or may not be what was intended by the carver.
Beauty in the eye of the beholder ,and so forth.
In the same way ,the power of symbols lies in simple representations, over which we overlay the complex realities of our own lives.
Condensed and visible symbols help us more easily make sense of our world.
If you could express who you are ,or maybe just the day you are having, as a symbol, what would it be?
Castle On The Cheap Side
Faded grandeur on Auckland’s Dominion Road.
Faux castle battlements above the proud name,’Cheapside’.
Peeling grey paint.
A bit down at the heel maybe.
Probably not the future imagined at the laying of its foundations.
But still standing,useful and with purpose after the best part of a century.
Some of us are like this battling building, battered but not broken(alliteration alert!).
And still dreaming of being castles…
Commemorate or Celebrate?
A plaque commemorates historical New Zealand events of the mid-19th century that were either righteous protest or causing insurrection, depending on your viewpoint.
A Maori leader, Hone Heke, and his followers ,repeatedly chopped down flagpoles flying the British flag.
And so the story is preserved.
But not celebrated necessarily – ill-feeling can still be stirred up by the story.
I recently had the privilege to draw up a will for a woman who adamantly wanted her funeral to be “a happy party.” That got written in, as she wished.
Which made me wonder, when it is our own turn to go ,will be our lives be celebrated or merely commemorated?
Still Moment
“I get these fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness – and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day, I’m a human trying to make it through in this world”
– Ellen DeGeneres
Between Bush And Sky
Nice juxtaposition of humanity and nature – sleek, linear monolith up against swirls of bushland and pastel evening skies.
For mine,the house is like a vain attempt to impose order on the uncontrollable…
Water Lilies III
Everybody wants to be happy, right? But you cannot be happy all the time.
Serenity is probably a more desirable and realistic place to inhabit as much as you can.
It connotes calmness and acceptance. Happiness may stem from serenity, but not necessarily.
I am drawn to water lilies as a symbol of serenity.
It’s probably why my first ever post, Water Lilies I ,had that subject. To be honest, I just dipped into my photo stash to find something to put up and figure out how to work this WordPress blog gig. But it was the thing that initially came to me, for whatever reason.
Here is another post of the circular, floating marvels: Water Lilies II
I love the way they sit over a fluid, shifting surface. Transcending their environs.
And not just floating, but flowering sometimes.
Beautiful flowers.
Serenity.
Deeply Rooted
Pictured is the impressive visible roots system of a Moreton Bay Fig. Massive, sculptural things – and that’s only what you can see.
By way of contrast, a recent storm pulled up a shallow – rooted olive tree in my backyard and deposited it over the clothes line.
It takes a storm to finds out what your foundation is like.
Like a tree, if we are not deeply rooted we are deeply rooted (that is not a circular nonsense, as I mean the second “rooted” in the Australian / NZ vernacular meaning, “screwed”or “f**ked”).
That means knowing what your mainly silent, often invisible core really is all about and where you have come from.
I hope that you are totally rooted in the more positive sense of the word…
Mind The Gap
I don’t mind, actually.
No, not the sort of gap pictured – that could end a little messily at the wrong time.
I mean the hiatus; the space in between; the fallow period – call it what you will.
Elsewhere on this site I have explored whether being in that place ,willingly or not, is such a bad thing. See Hiatus (Never Mind The Gap!) and In Transition ,for example.
In the not too distant past, I found myself in a major life hiatus. At first I resented being in nowhere land(or at least that was how I saw it to be ). There were none of the usual markers and signifiers that routine and being busy, busy offered.
What I slowly grasped was that there I did not need to prove anything to anyone, did not to need to analyse the situation, or agonise over what was next .In fact I just had to – be. That was uncomfortable for me but massively liberating in the end.
New things and miracles happened without me chasing them. This blogsite is not named accidentally.
It’s often said that we learn most from adversity or our mistakes,and that may be often true. However I think that the real progress is made in the “after space” of those things .
Self-realisation and change occur in that gap in events where motion stops, and we have time and permission to rest with our being and the universe.
You just can’t squeeze that shit in walking to the shops or in a coffee break between jobs….
Beautiful And Terrible Things
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
-Frederick Buechner
…and sometimes those things are one and the same…but never be fearful, like the man says.
PS: Bonus points for spotting the evil and laughing double-faced gargoyle plant flower.
As You Get To It
A beautiful scene on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
But fraught with obstacles – countless rocks, the incessant surf ,tidal rips and undulating topography.
Were you to venture to the headland in the distance, that would pretty much be your lot the entire way.
Challenging, yes?
Consider this,from American inventor Joy Mangano:
“Overcome obstacles one at a time. Sometimes the end goal becomes too daunting, so take things one step at a time and overcome each one as you get to it.”
I recently watched the 2015 movie ‘Joy’,loosely based on her life, as the protagonist battled continual setbacks and frustrations to market( of all freaking things) a revolutionary mop to the masses.
Certainly an eye opener on how to tackle obstacles. I winced every time things went pear-shaped, but she got what she wanted eventually.
Most worthwhile journeys we would probably never embark on if we could see at the outset all the barriers and pitfalls that we would encounter .
Joy’s simple mantra is the only realistic way to reach our dream destination.
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Two Guardians
Carved statue at Orakei Marae and Rangitoto Island are twin guardians, as a sea fog rests on the waters of Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour during the week.
Fairy Lights In The Woods
Stardust on the trees – equally good for complete fantasists and the hopelessly lost.
World Weird Web
For you – when words fail and the world prevails , stuck in your own weird tales – only you know the intracacies, the silken finesse of your web and, having built it,only you can find your way through it all.
For more arachno-themed posts, check out:
A House Repurposed
The house below is architecturally gorgeous, and a favourite local destination of mine, but I am equally intrigued by its history of change.
Built as the showpiece mansion of a prominent merchant in the mid to late 19th century, it has subsequently become a Catholic noviate school , an orphanage, housing for the homeless and now, in public hands, a cutting edge art gallery.
So, big money built it and religion, charity and culture have all lived there since.
The building hasn’t really changed but it has been drastically repurposed from time to time.
The truth it speaks to me is that while we may appear as the same person we have always been (maybe our facade deteriorates over the years!), we are constantly being repurposed in ways we would never have foreseen.
What new thing will occur in our rooms? Who will visit the mansion next?
On The Straight And Narrow
I am not generally an advocate for the straight and narrow in everything, because it can be boring as f**k, but there are those times in life when sticking to that path is a necessity to avoid sinking into, or further down, into the surrounding mire.
The tricky bit ,I suppose,is working out when you are in that place.
If you are,accept the strictures of the boardwalk over the mud and tide for awhile. Safety is, trust me,way better than self-destruction .
And if you have been on that path the whole time, maybe you need to jump off and get a little soaked and dirty…
So Many Books…
“So many books, so little time.”
– Frank Zappa
I really find it hard to imagine Zappa actually sitting down with a book given his massive, sprawling musical career, but he must have – how else to explain the inspirations behind the often surreal songs? Or maybe he was lamenting the fact that his creative endeavours meant he couldn’t read everything he wanted to.
I know the feeling – my bedside table has a stack of half-read tomes and the shelves have many others I have been meaning to read or re-read. Frustrating!
Last night watched an episode of the new series “Catch-22” and realized that it was over thirty years ago that I read the amazing book by Joseph Heller (I bet Zappa read it too), and I had always meant to pick it up again. Time flying by…
Yet I know that the time and energy spent reading a book that miraculously seems meant for me, is a luxury that a time-poor person finds rewarded .Even if it takes a while for me to get to the end, the journey of exploration through others’ words and worlds on the way there is nothing short of amazing.
I could extend that to blogs as well. So inspiring to see other writers and bloggers frame things I may not even have heard or thought of and give of themselves in the process.
Find time…
Ebb Then Flood 