‘Dig Me Up, Plant Me Out’
…growth, where there was none…
Dig Me Up, Plant Me Out
Tag: Transformation
Ebbed Out, Not Effed Up
‘Ebbed Out, Not Effed Up’
So, the tide has ebbed and gone out.
Your flow has flown, so to speak.
Maybe it’s a rock bottom.
Or perhaps you’re just lying on the mud and silt; motionless, hanging onto your ropes and reflecting only yourself dimly.
But, you are not f**ked up, not finished yet – the next tide will come to re-purpose you – just you wait and see!
The Eye Begins To See
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
– Theodore Roethke
You can’t regret dark times, if through that darkness you come to appreciate the light and see life afresh…
Monolith In Monochrome
After yesterday’s flirtation with neon in Eighties Palm Regret, it’s back to basics and a return to black and white.
The subject matter is a million miles from palm fans waving in the breeze, even though the the scenes in the pictures were only metres away from each other.
Water sculpted rock – pure, solid and immovable.
The shape is as fantastical as any by an abstract sculptor, all layers and angular beauty.
I was a little awestruck actually, but strangely reassured by the rock’s transformation over time by the elements.
I’d like to think that time and adversity sculpt us all into striking and unique entities.
Fractured
Self-help/lifestyle books and sites are full of tips to assist you to “lead your best life”.
I am not exactly in love with that phrase, nor some of the iffy suppositions behind it.
The general themes involve the person with the less than best life adopting new mental and physical practices,and sooner or later(preferably sooner) their life is transformed.
There are big assumptions in all of this – first, that you are able to help yourself (it wouldn’t be self-help otherwise!) and, secondly, that what has improved one person will do the same for another.
Sometimes true, often false.
Hard to assess, given the range of “solutions” on offer run the gamut from plain old common sense to ludicrous and even dangerous fads.
And mostly, the improvement schemes are aimed at ,and picked up by, those whose lives are just a bit “off “. Easy marks.
People who are broken, whose lives are fractured, fragmented, do not reach for lists with titles like “10 Ways To A Happier You – Now!” They don’t give a flying f**k about trite inspirational messages on cushions,bumper stickers or coffee mugs. If the Dalai Lama himself showed up on the doorstep,with his sweet infinite wisdom, they would tell him to piss off. And nobody, I repeat, nobody, needs a coffee enema…
When you cannot do life ,you can’t do “need to do” bullet point lists.
The ones who are lost, trust me on this, don’t need to be told how to make themselves whole or found ,or whatever.
They need to be understood and accepted ,and there is no quick fix in that. Only time, and the love of others, will reach the soul and give the fractured the wherewithal to move themselves on.
Seahorse In The Sky
Have you passed by a place a thousand times and never noticed something, and then suddenly you do?
I had one of those moments during the week ,when I had a few minutes up my sleeve and stopped on the way to my work shift up at the marae.
Okaku Bay is a lovely flat beach on the Waitemata Harbour in Auckland and the seahorse statue atop a column adorns the art deco changing sheds there. How I had never spotted it before I don’t know.
In my recent travel overseas I filled my photographic boots with all sorts of animalistic symbols – lion, wolves, and unicorns, to name a few, so perhaps had become attuned to seeing such things. Travel in new places causes us to look at home with fresh eyes, too.
It’s all about the magic in the mundane, where ordinary buildings and spaces come alive with images of fantastic creatures. The seahorse discovery transformed my routine day!
Wilder
“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we come from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging nettles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.”
– John Muir (Scottish-American naturalist and writer)
Nowadays , when we are encouraged to find our “wild side”, we don’t really mean anything that would instill fear in us, or cause us pain.
It’s more like an extravagant extra, something different that takes us out of our humdrum existence.
A bungy jump; a raging party; acquiring some “edgy” art or clothes ; or a trip to somewhere off the usual “tourist trail”. Preferably something that can be posted on social media after the event…
But definitely not something we have to endure, or survive.
My own experience with hellish life events outside my control that took me to dark and wild places (nowhere I would choose), was exactly those two things. You too may have gone unwillingly into your own wild woods…
The words of Muir resonate with me as I think about those times: I knew with absolute certainty that everything could hurt me, anything could have my number.
The feeling of being utterly lost, blocked at every turn, and with each moment fraught with pain and danger, will stay with me always. It has changed my outlook on life, changed me.
The true wild transforms you.
If you survive it that is…
Water Into Stone
Low tide waves appear to morph into stone….beautiful curving patterns repeated.
Ebb Then Flood 