Curved coastal rock forms at Kohimarama Beach, Auckland.
Ancient seismic activity leaves its mark ,but is only exposed at low tide.
It is as if the stone mimics the shape of the waves that lap against it; one great curling continuum!
Month: September 2019
New Adventures
So, off on the big bird to Great Britain and Spain today.
The thrill of the new ,and of an adventure half a world away beckons.
I really like this quote from Bill Bryson which neatly encapsulates why travel is so beneficial for you:
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted”
I expect to see plenty of things familiar to others, but novel to me, to feed this blog and hope to share them with you.
First things first, though….where the hell are my sleeping pills and earplugs for the 29 hour flight from New Zealand?
Jailbird
” If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.”
– Charles Bukowski
This World, Not Simply Visited
I took a few shots of a street mural down the way from my home in Auckland a couple of days ago, and now present a portion of it detailing a world globe.
Very cool… I love maps and globes of all sorts and will give the artist some leeway in the geographical accuracy stakes!
Anyway, I post this as I am off to the other side of the world, Europe, on Sunday, for the first time in thirty years. Just a tad excited, and like all tourists, I have been busy plotting and planning the places I most want to visit in the pretty limited amount of time I have.
Which brings this visitor-in-waiting to the below words from a favourite poet,which certainly give food for thought:
” When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
– Mary Oliver, excerpt from “When Death Comes”
Four Plants On A Wall
Yesterday’s post centred on the number three.
Another day ,and another number on.
Four.
Specifically , four potted plants in a mural by a street artist on a white concrete wall, behind a bar and a McDonald’s.
Four is usually synonymous with a square or rectangle – regularity.
And even though the painted pot plants are evenly spaced there is a sense of funky freedom in this four !
Good Things Come In Threes
Three Orchid Rows, Singapore
I love the saying “good things come in threes”.
They so often seem to.
Even if they don’t ,there’s always: “third time lucky”…
And, if you don’t get lucky third time around,
…. then perhaps pray to the Holy Trinity…!
Old Walls Will Fall
Pictured is an old volcanic rock wall in Auckland’s Cornwall Park.
Been there for decades, and will probably be there for many more.
Solid!
But inevitably, left unattended, it will deteriorate and crumble, bit by bit.
Or some sudden event may breach or destroy it (Berlin Wall, anyone?).
And, sooner or later, the walls we build in our minds to protect ourselves from perceived threats have to go too.
They might keep us “safe”, but they prevent new thinking and better ways from getting in.
I’ve had a few old walls fall in recent times, and it is not the end of the world.
Just the opposite in fact…
Wires On Fire
Three burnt lines, wires on fire, sending singed signals …
At Anchor
Boat At Anchor, Russell NZ
There is something ineffably reassuring about seeing an anchored boat on calm waters…
Together In Precarious Places
Gannet Colony, Muriwai Beach, NZ
Back to the beach and birds.
Previously: Return Of The Gannets
Where, and how, they gather together in this place is a marvel.
It’s not easy.
The migration route across the Tasman Sea to this very location, for some of the gannets at least, is a miracle of sorts.
But even the smallest things are difficult.
On a recent trip out to Muriwai, I observed one gannet make a dozen unsuccessful passes trying to deposit twigs as nesting material to its partner. Landing in the small nest space (indentations in the soft rock and dirt , which they create) was prevented time and again by the swirling gusts of wind. I watched for minutes and the creature persevered, but still hadn’t completed the task by the time I left (it was way worse than any airline delays and technical issues I have suffered through!).
The bird was working so hard for its mate and family.
The entire flock of gannets pull together to survive in this precarious place of wind, sea and clifftops.
So too, vulnerable people need each other just to get by.
Immigrants in strange lands. Struggling sports teams. Addicts in recovery. The destitute and homeless.
Communities formed by necessity and nurtured by mutual reliance. Strength in numbers, for sure.
When the odds are stacked against you, there are no prizes for being a f**king lone ranger…
A Whole Handful
Five fingers, a whole handful, of toetoe plumes in the still Auckland evening.
All you can hold in the moment, and the moment is all you have.
“From one seed a whole handful: that was what it meant to say the bounty of the earth” – J.M.Coetzee
Little moments, even quiet ones, are full in themselves but are also seeds of abundance.
Under The Wharf, Above The Waves (VII)
The ‘Wharf ‘ picture series continues – this time blurred, black and blue, which is how things look and feel in the nether world.
Twixt and ‘tween land, where you exist as other, and neither (above or below, that is).
You can scope the previous ‘Wharf ‘ posts to see where this theme comes from, if you are so minded.
My meditation on this scene is a little different this time around:
What lies between fighting the truth and running from it?
Acceptance
Wiser than fighting, braver than running, and harder than both…
As I have said before – be the barnacle!
Grief And The Garden Of Compassion
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep yourself open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in life’s search for love and wisdom.”
– Rumi
Cloud’s Illusions
Spring in Auckland – a stack of sun, reams of rain – and cumulus clouds like these reflecting both.
Clouds are for dreamers.
You can see what you want in their shapes.
Giant sheep and rabbits; Jesus; your late father’s face; portents of the future or maybe the outline of a Central Asian country…
Anything you like, everything you could imagine.
All illusory, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Queen Joni once sang :
” I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all ”
– (Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’)
Abundant
Part of an inscription on the side of water feature outside a shopping mall I visited today. The inscription was about the people and abundant resources that existed in that locality centuries before it became a consumer magnet.
Inside, the shopping hordes were loading up their tote bags, and we too had to pick up a few things. I’d rather have been elsewhere, truth be told, but sometimes malls are (almost) necessary evils.
Abundance is not the acquisition of more stuff however.
Abundance is about our perception of the world, that it ,and our lives are enough. That feeling/attitude only really comes when we are content with who we are and can share what we have, and of ourselves, with others.
People have shared out of their abundance with me when I have been in need ,and for that I am grateful. In order to live a full life I have to do the same really.
All That Glitters…Gets Boxed In
It’s the way of the world.
If something is shiny and precious enough, it gets assigned a value over and above its basic elements.
And like this very yellow gold jewellery in an Asian glass display cabinet, it gets boxed in.
To be admired, shown off and micro-examined by others with their own motivations, good or otherwise.
I have seen it with people I know or are well aware of – once you are on constant display there is a polished role or roles to be played.
That person might still shine but their light is often captured in the box of others.
A gold bracelet has an amplified worth, but it had a unique molecular character and purity before the artisan’s touch gave it a lustre to be lusted after, or sold to someone with enough cash.
We are all valuable in our own right, and really need just enough glimmer to throw light on the free path we are on.
Return Of The Gannets
In late winter,the gannets return en masse to Muriwai, on the Tasman Sea coast near Auckland.
Home for the season to nest in rocky hollows above the crashing surf on a stretch of coastline constantly buffeted by the prevailing westerly winds.
It is a staggering sight.
Equally staggering is their annual migratory journey across the ocean to Australia ,2000 kilometres away.
The gannets literally live their entire lives on the edge.
It is all enough to make this comfortable human feel just a little inadequate.
Sunset On Suburbia (Muse Dream)
A quiet midweek evening in the ‘burbs where I live, the terribly ordinary framed by the fantastical colours of sunset , with rain about to fall, and fall heavily.
I tend to think magic is often found in the most mundane things and places.
Or at the very least there is magic trying to break through.
As Irish pop band The Thrills had it:
“The suburbs dream tonight of finding their muse”
(from ‘ The Curse of Comfort ‘)
The New Flow
Walked down to the river shore this afternoon to calm my head.
An ebb tide, about as far out as can be.
Mudflats, shell banks, strewn rocks exposed.
And layered and eroded sandstone, captured in this photo and then subjected to some post-production flight of fancy.
Something bright, molten and fluid resulted.
It brought to mind, and to life, a poem I wrote a while back ( I don’t write many) and posted here: Bond / Flow
This is for those who have ever lost hope.
Peace,Andy L.
Hands Of Time
One of those cool multi-faced clocks that tells the time in different places around the world. The clock is in Singapore but this dial gives Vancouver time.
Love the concept of world time zones – while I am posting on my blog you may be asleep, and vice versa!
Or, on the longer time scale – some are living life to the full, while others are about to pass away.
I was driving around town yesterday and a song popped up on my Ipod’ s random play.
“Hands Of Time” by the criminally underrated Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith . Great, gorgeous and wise song and rendition , but not sure that he actually wrote it.
Some reflective lyrics from it:
” From the moment we are born
We’re in the hands of time
As drunk on life as death is sober
When we say goodbye
Though it hurts to lose a friend
May it help remembering
For every door that closes in
One’ll open to the other side
Opened by the hands of time “
Those words speak deeply to me of time, the ultimate healer and changer.
Okay, time to go…
Ebb Then Flood 