Cloud Watching

When we pause to look up from our earthbound scurrying, we will see that the skies offer an ever-changing drama.

Clouds shift and flow and move: the sky is never the same two seconds in a row.

As the sun moves, so the colours change and the interplay between the wind, the temperature and the sun create spectacles of infinite variety.

Clouds will form themselves into fantastic shapes, even for a second appearing to resemble an object from our world: a rabbit, a saucepan, a dragon or a heart.

Then they are gone, ever-changing, formless yet with form, solid yet fluid at once.

Clouds are natures poetry.

"Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty and live life with your head in the clouds"

"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky" ~~ Rabindranath Tagore Sunset Glenelg near Adelaide, South Australia  April 2014

Kids Give The Best Advice

The older we become the more we tend to be influenced by our experience and set in our ways.

Children on the other hand have a much less tainted view of things. They tend to see things from a totally different perspective than adults.

Because children have fewer assumptions (if any) and are less inhibited they tend to give a more honest and black and white view of the world.

Often they'll give us a totally left of field response without any concern for convention.

SO ASK A KID!

Mind you you'll need to phrase things in a simpler way - which in it's own right is a good thing!

"Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas"
~~ Paula Poundstone

 

 

 

 

This young boy is my teacher!
Top to bottom - Joseph 2015 aged 9, 2010 aged 4, 2009 aged 3, 2008 aged 2, 2007 aged 6 months and 1 day old 2006)

Seekers of Light

There is a small plaque in a quiet and picturesque waterside park in Northwood, Sydney, commemorating the exceptional Australian artist, Lloyd Rees.

For much of his life Rees lived nearby and used the bays and inlets viewed from the park frequently as an inspiration for his landscapes. I often walk to this park as it is one of my favourite spots.

Lloyd was a true seeker of light. His paintings, especially in the last twenty years of his life when his eyesight was fading, were filled with light and washed colours. The memorial plaque at Northwood records one of his beliefs, "If you look for light you find it."

The quest for light has always been important to me. Mine is not a search for literal light - more, the search for direction, a message, a cleaning away of uncertainty and the recognition of inner spirit and authenticity.

Occasionally, life seems to be a chasm - a pit I slip and slide into. There is sometimes a sense of overwhelming darkness and no light ahead. What I have learned is that there is always light, I'm just not looking for it in the right place. I am probably searching for it straight ahead, the most obvious place to look when, if I would only glance to my right or left, I would glimpse its radiance.

That special light can come from any direction. A chance remark, a line in a magazine which starts me thinking, the sound of children playing, the words of a song, a comment overheard on the bus - all and any can give insight and a way through. When times are tough I have now learnt to keep my ears and heart open.

Whenever everyday problems overwhelm us, it is a relief when we see a solution, when we know what to do, when we understand the reason for something and the lessons contained within it.

The light is always there......we just need to look in a different direction.

Lloyd Rees painting Northwood Point, Sydney Harbour, 1978

Déjà Vu Sensations

There are many theories as to what causes déjà vu.

One holds that our "spirit" can actually travel faster in time than our earthbound bodies so it charges off into the future from time to time for reasons we can't explain.

Another claims that it's because we are reincarnated and old memories from past lives are seeping through into our current consciousness.

And then there's the parallel Universe theory that suggests our lives are always splitting off into different directions whenever we make big decisions and that at the point of experiencing déjà vu we are connecting with these parallel worlds.

All of which rather ignores the actual sensation of déjà vu that is simply joyous and mesmerising regardless of what it actually is.

Déjà vu experiences stay with us too, logging themselves into our memory banks where they can be withdrawn whenever those "déjà vu" conversations occur, usually over a few glasses of wine late at night!


"There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar."
~~ Chuck Palahniuk


Top photo is a sketch penned by my friend Dianne in 2004 after she has suffered a stroke in 1999. She said it described how she felt when everything was muddled in her brain.

When Annemarie and I were in Norway in July 2010 and we stopped at this place for a short while, an eeriness came over me as I photographed this scene. I wanted to hop in that boat and paddle into the mist.

OLW 2016 - LISTEN

Each January I choose a word to focus on for the year. For 2016 my word is LISTEN.

Relating to my word, I came across this beautiful story narrated by the prominent Buddhist teacher and Psychologist Jack Kornfield. It touched my soul and I felt I needed to share it with my blogging friends.

"In Africa. There is a story that illustrates the quality of listening that can come through meditation.

In a particular East African tribe or village when a child is born they don't count the birthday of that child from the day the child comes from its mother’s body or even the day it is conceived as in certain other cultures, but rather from when that child was first a thought in its mothers mind, that is the real birthday.

And as soon as the mother realizes that she would like to have a child with this particular partner, she will go off and sit out in a field under a tree, and listen, and wait until she can hear the song of the child that wants to be born in her heart that will come from the wedding or the coming together with this particular man.

And when she hears this song, she sings it to herself, and then returns back to the village and teaches it to her partner so that when they make love together, joined together in love, they sing this song and invite this child to be born.

And later as she is pregnant. She sings the song to the child in the womb and teachers it to midwives so that when the child is born the first song or sound that it hears is those gathered around singing its own unique song.

And as the child grows the people of the village learn the song of this person so that when he falls or she falls and hurts herself someone picks her up and sings her song to her, or in the rites of passage or rituals of the village the song is sung, the wedding ceremony where both songs are sung until finally even at the end of life, the song of this child now as an old man or women is sung for the last time, and say their last words...

When I first heard the story in it touched in me a longing to live in a place where we heard one anothers songs, where we were so in tune with ourselves and with one another that we could greet each other in that way, to meditate allows us to hear the song within ourselves and to be respectful and hear the song of those around us."
~~ Jack Kornfield

Do you know your song? Can you hear the song of others?

Take the time to listen.

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created."
~~ Brenda Ueland

This gorgeous pig and I became friends when I visited the Philippines in October 2015, we talked and listened to each other every day.