Darkness and light

On the middle day of this working week I took my day off. I am employed to work four days per week but as life has it, I have often given up my day off 
A. because there is always some little thing that needs to be done.
B. I'm a freaking workaholic who doesn't know how to have fun or relax.
(Mostly 'B' I think)

On this day I did not go to my Job. On this day I tried to practice being a human with only one day. It was a long and full day.



Bäparu (funeral) It's been a sad time lately, too many funerals, too many Yolŋu family passed away. I have also lost close friends this year who I know I am grieving and finding it difficult to let go.
Before dawn I had to take Mirriku to the airport, over the past six months she has lost three siblings. This time a Yapa (sister). A lady who I call Yapa, who I first met 12 years ago who I respected and admired.  She was a precious wise woman who has contributed to her community all her life, I cannot mention her name or show a photo but my memory of her sits heavy. I know why bäparu (funeral ceremony) is so important for Yolŋu. Things must be done right.   

The weight of my thoughts sunk in my heart and even my legs felt heavy and unwilling to move.

Doubt: I wasn't sure exactly what I would do but I knew I must get out of the house and not go to work! There had been a full moon and the nights were getting hot, I don't think I got enough sleep last night. Take it easy, no hurry.

Visual splendor: I took the coast road again and soon found myself crossing the Rapid creek bridge. The tide was high; It's always nice here at high tide. I gazed down at the creek, the red sand, the aqua tinted depth of the creek was clear enough to see Longtoms swimming effortlessly against the outgoing current.

Aimless: With no plan I rode slowly toward the coffee joint I always go to for a caffeine charge. I took my coffee back to a shady spot near the mangroves and contemplated the meaning of life, death and whatever it is I am supposed to be doing with my time, energy and physical presence on this planet. At this point it seemed a pretty pathetic failure of an experiment and I was wondering if it might be time to consider taking finding the exit ramp. 

Feathers of a raptor for freedom and flight

Inspiration: I scanned my phone for some kind of inspiration, looking at social media usually confirms the worst of my doubts... Odd things can happen! Two notifications appeared with links to a couple of lifesavers. Just some reflective writing and images from a couple of creative people it didn't take much... "...Never forget babe, you are the creator of your life"

Contemplation: I sat another 10 minutes, sipping the coffee, listening to the quiet sound of ripples through the mangrove, the smell of hot wet sand and mud. Glancing at the tree above me birds were darting about extracting nectar from occasional inflorescence. Dry leaves for a mat. I had relaxed, I have become calm and centered in my space. My restlessness and distressed mind was calm.


Connection: Finishing my coffee I mounted the long beast of a bike that is my cruising machine. All is right with the universe. "I am one with the force, the force is with me". Right, off we go.


Purpose: Rolling slowly along the path, still not sure what I should do with my day I passed a car that was covered in dust. it bore the words rubbed into the dust of the windscreen. "Clean Me!" Well OK. That seems reasonable. So I went off to Dollars and Cents got a bucket and some cloths, filled the bucket at the servo and returned to start the cleaning. It turned out that I needed much more than one bucket of water to clean this filthy car. Not a single tap in the area had a handle on it. They were all 'vandal proofed'. 

Company: I made a trip to the hardware shop for a tap master key. On my way there I saw Trev. the Rubbish Warrior. We had a bit of a yarn, walked together for a while until we arrived at the bottle recycle depot, I left him there and went back to my work. 

 
Completion: It must have taken about 10 buckets of water and over a couple of hours from woe to go but I eventually completed the task. The car was clean(er). I felt an overwhelming desire to chuckle, and cycled on with a big grin on my face. I commit random acts of cleaning therefore I am.
(Maybe I should have left this story untold but it was a funny thing to do, it amused me and I felt like I'd left at least one part of the world a little better than I found it)

Exploring: I turned the rig around and headed back toward the coast. Tide was really far out. 'What next oh great Spirit?' I looked to the sea, there is a tiny island sand spit with mangroves and a puddle that is only accessible at times like this... OK. Next adventure.

After picking my way through the mud, hopping across rocks I arrived at sand spit island. It's a quiet little oasis usually submerged. When the tide is out it's like a private beach surrounded by a moat of, yes, 'mud and rock'. 

Giving and taking: Looking back toward the northern Suburbs I could see smoke rising. Another fire! A big one. By now the time was about 1:30. I blasted home full speed, had a shower, put on some fresh clothes and rode to the Blood bank where I gave up 902ml of amber plasma, chatted with the nurses, watched a comedic film then ate cake and biscuits in air conditioned comfort.  

I sat there in the bloodbank, feeling totally at ease with myself. 

Summary: It had been a long day, I had observed the capricious extremes of my fickle emotional stability so easily affected by environment and the chemical reactions of my biology. Cycling miles eases my restlessness, sitting purposefully doing nothing settles my mind, doings something I feel is useful helps me gain perspective between the irrational fluctuations of my monkey mind and the capacity of my body to manifest change in the material world around me.

Final Act: Riding home I noticed the giant smoke plume hadn't diminished. Like any thing of such a scale regardless of it's ferocity of the harm it threatens, its enormity has weight, gravity. It draws the curious toward it. I followed the plume to Northlakes and Marrara Golf Course and could see the flames licking at the fence, smoke and flames rising like a tsunami, Shiva dances over the canopy. The roaring thunder of dry fuel consumed by flame. Late dry season fires are a bitch! 

Thank you oh lord for this day, one day, just a day. My day on this earth, should it end now so be it.  
 

R U really OK?

Reflecting on ‘R U OK Day.’

I’ve got mixed feelings about this ‘R U OK Day’. Sometimes big campaigns like this only seem to compound the feelings of isolation, but generally it seems like a better idea than some I’ve seen.
Unfortunately the video they've produced leaves quite a few blanks... I don't meant to be hyper critical but prompting a depressed person into unspecified 'action'  seems a bit of a bizarre objective. What kind of action? If a person is hovering over the precipice of deciding whether to end it all or go on living, the 'action' which makes the most sense to them might not be what you were hoping for.

I like that rather than putting the onus on the person suffering depression to reach out to others, they are encouraging friends and colleagues to reach out to people who they think might be at risk. I recall not so long ago there was some campaign or other which suggested that if we’re feeling depressed we should try to talk to someone. Well there’s a recipe for disaster! It’s bad enough to be feeling isolated and unwanted generally, but to expect someone who is already feeling rejected and alone to desert their own defenses and make themselves totally vulnerable to another person, who may respond in a negative way, is surely a recipe for disaster.

I have experienced times when I have been quite ‘Not OK’ and have attempted to find someone to talk to about it. In my experience, unless someone indicates that they genuinely want to know what you’re going through trust your gut! A lot of people Do NOT Want to KNOW! It can be crushing to think of someone as a trusted friend only to find out that the friendship was only superficial. When we are lonely or depressed it can be quite difficult to judge. It’s quite possible that a lot of people don’t actually care that much about you and will treat you differently once you share your situation with them.

I have lost too many friends to suicide. 11 friends have taken their lives. I don’t know where this horrendous tally sits in comparison to other people’s experience. Why would I even keep a tally? Well I guess one day it occurred to me that when it happens, we’re devastated and shocked but our lives go on and (unless it is a very close friend or family member… or we were unfortunate enough to have been present or seen the body) we put it behind us and return to our lives, such as they may be… But the numbers stack up and if I think back on the people I have known I can see that too many could not bear to go on! It is disturbing! I don’t have a lot of friends, 11 is a lot of people from my life! It’s a fucking epidemic! 

Sometimes I wonder how I have managed to remain on this earth myself! I cannot stand back and say 'Oh they were weak', or make comments about how tragic it is that someone has died without feeling some sense of responsibility. No we cannot hold ourselves responsible for the action of another person but, we can take responsibility for letting people know they have value in this world and are loved and wanted, to whatever degree we can say these things honestly. There are very few people I would want to see removed from this earth before their life has run it's natural course.

Do we actually appreciate just how wrong things have become? Is this like the frog in the saucepan scenario? We only deal with these things one at a time and rarely see the big picture. Lots of people are unhappy and are choosing the most drastic and permanent solution to what could have been a temporary problem.

It makes me angry and sad reflecting on how those people, some of them quite close to me had come to a place where they felt so totally alone that they’d rather not be here at all. I have been thinking of them a lot lately and wonder what I could possibly have done to make their lives on this earth a little more bearable. Could I have helped prevent any of those final desperate acts? 

I don’t know what else to say except if you know me, and you are feeling low, isolated and alone, if you need someone to talk to I will not brush you off!

As it is

"...As strange as it is, someday I'll rot away and leave behind these bones that my mother made..."

(Prophetic words from the irrepressible Phat Bollard) 

"...Coz one of these days you're gonna wake up dead!"

However in the sagely words of Snoopy the dog:

"...but on all the other days, we will not." 

 

Help... Nonsense

After a somewhat harried day I come home to be swamped with kids running amok in the house, crap all over the place, playing fighting yelling... making noises you would only expect to hear in a zoo.... Their mother sitting numb and stressed, non responsive on the couch.

I try to contain my agitation, sit down and pick up the latest children's book from the library and find a short poem that pretty much sums up the condition I am in 95% of the time.

Here it is....

HELP

Help, help
nothing's right
I can't find my ears
and my pants are too tight.

There's a clock in my sock 
there's a rose up my nose
there's an egg on my leg
and there's a stink in my sink.

Help, help
I've had enough
I can't find my eyes
and the going's getting tough.

There's bread in my bed
there's flies in my fries
there's a slug in my jug
and there's a ghost in my toast.

Help, help
I'm in a mess.
have you got my head?
the cat says yes.

The donkey says no
the hamster in the swimming pool 
says he doesn't know.

 (Michael Rosen's Book of Nonsense)

Thank you Michael... Thank you illustrator Clare Mackie.

And this is me when I have got my shit together.
lol. Have a nice day.

Just burst the bubble!

Not sure where to start this post but today I determined that I would write something.


To begin with the dry season is here! Yes.... The mood is shifting as that feeling like Spring fever takes over and the body and soul bristle with anxious energy and anticipation of moving into an exciting season.

A combination of the change of seasons, a series of profound coincidences (I can't elaborate it would ruin the whole experience!) and a desperate desire to shift gear and direction have allowed me to Burst a Bubble that I had been shrouded in for several YEARS!

Various domestic responsibilities coupled with my insatiable desire to explore, wander and drift had caused me to spend too many evenings living vicariously via the virtual world of the Internet!

I've discovered a lot of great stuff in here and found ways to take part and even contribute. There is so much information, entertainments and distractions but ultimately it's not a real life! Actually I think the 'net' result has only been to piss my wife off and make me crave a real life even more... not to mention the amount of sleep I've lost!

Now since I'm writing in this internet blog it's obvious that I am not giving it away completely! But I have decided to quit browsing and drop all superfluous subscriptions. I have explored the social networking gig and found it extremely unsatisfying... Just like mainstream media these things appear only to create status anxiety and take up valuable time that could be spent far more creatively!

Did you know that when you shut down your Facebook account the spying little creep of a thing presents you with a list of your closest friends who will miss you when you're gone! Ha! Not Bloody Likely! Actually if you want to know how many 'friends' you have shut down your Facebook and see who calls you to see what's up.... (If the phone doesn't ring, don't worry it just means that you are free to follow your dreams without the hindrance of unnecessary cometary)

Now that the dry is here we are spending heaps more time outside. I've fallen back into my old habit of going to bed before midnight and rising before dawn! The mornings have been awesome! We've managed to go on some great little rides around Casuarina Coastal reserve with the kids. Parks, playgrounds and even blowing bubbles in the back yard!

(bubbles! Try it it's FUN!)

Cycling in the dry is much the wetter more humid months!I arrive at work dry and fresh and there are heaps more bikes on the road but the head winds tend to make the trip home a bit slower. I'm not complaining! Even though the Long Bike needs a major overhaul I can't bear not riding it to work every day so will postpone the fix up for another month!

Like I said in the previous post I have dragged a rusty old project from the tangle of vines in the back yard. The poles and U-bolts I pulled from our old trampoline have sufficed as a temporary fix until I find the right size tubing that I can bolt to the frame. I'd love to have the time, space and gear to fix it right up but I will be getting rid of it as soon as it's presentable!

(Four wheeled mobile)

Maybe I'll post here again but if not... Don't worry I'm probably actually living my Tao!