The oil (bad language sorry people!)

(i read this morning about a whale found dead in the Gulf)

I am in overwhelm about the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico

I die a little each time i read articles like this

or see the images of animals covered with oil, knowing that they stand to die despite any efforts by the volunteers cleaning them up, because they have ingested too much of the toxic oil already

or think about the people cleaning up who are likely to suffer health problems as a result

and then i think about Nigeria and how they have been subjected to blatant disregard in the way oil companies have dealt with spill after leak for decades More oil is spilt each year in Nigeria than in this catastrophe in the Gulf.

and i get friggin angry

i hate being a member of a human species that can be so greedy for cheap consumption that they are prepared to put the wellbeing of entire ecosystems -including other humans at risk - all for the sake of money.

and then i read that the new zealand government have granted concessions to drill 5kms off our pristine coastline

FOR FUCKS SAKE!

i feel powerless to communicate just how wrong i think it is

just how sorry i am

just how i wish we could go back

but then i drive a car i am pleased to get cheaper petrol for

i use plastic and although i am appalled at the amount of plastic i throw away i still use it...

i am part of the problem

and then i am ashamed

o i know i didn't ask them to cut all those corners on the well and that i would have argued against it (i hope) if i was in the board room....but i am part of a culture that values oil

and sitting here in New Zealand i feel powerless to help clean up the mess that to some extent i am responsible for

but last night i went to a singing meditation and we sang to Yamaya - a sea Goddess, acknowledging the harm the sea has suffered, acknowledging our anguish...

i added a prayer that we would all treat mother earth as if she were our own beloved body (maybe we already do but we are too busy smoking and taking drugs and overworking that body....)

and yet in the middle of our circle there were paraffin candles burning....we had all driven to get there....

our entire lives are so entwined with the bloody stuff that i felt even more furious...

then i saw that anger as a parallel to the oil...

like that the oil is a metaphor for the subterreanean vitriole that we try not to acknowledge, that is explosive, combustible

that unless we protect that forcefull flow, unless we maintain the pathways to get the oil of anger out, that oil is going to spill out and poison us.....

i think we are all inextricably part of the same whole

what is done to one is done to all

and until we take responsibility and live our lives acknowledging our impact and our connectedness we will cut corners and toxic shit will spill where it will

Place and identity

"Having a place is integral to the formation of a healthy ecological identity. Being "placed" in a landscape shapes the mind - the contours of the hills, the rivers and lakes and the forests become mirrored in a person's way of being. To have one's place in the mountains is, in a sense, to become mountainous in ones' identity. Is it not then, as so often is the case in our industrial cultrue ,that to have on place to call home is to become NOWHERE in one's identity? One becomes... disconnected, disenchanted: displaced."

Jason Kirkey. The Salmon in the Spring.

The next idea from this book that took my heart for a walk was this one... do we, in order to be fully human have to know our place...

is this sense of dis-place-ment that he speaks of, at the centre of the restlessness of spirit and the loneliness that we feel

is our seeking for peace of mind and our sense of self as simple as losing our heart to the land

i wonder does this scare us because we know just what we have done to the planet - all the taming and the choking and the dismissing - is that part of the anguish in our own souls

if we can find the place on the planet that we feel "placed" - that we connect with - i believe experienced as a sense of belonging or knowing even a sense of deep love - then we have a chance to become re-placed...

to rediscover our sense of place is to replace our old ways - to replace our sense of self as lonely and searching with a sense of self as here and belonging

it will require us to listen hard

it will require us to heal

and i certainly will require us to change our ways of being on the earth...

but when one belongs, when one is truely connected it seems the need to dominate just falls away...

Maori have a word whenua (pronounced Fen -oo-a a is like the u is pronounced in up) which means land. It also means placenta. When a baby is born the whenua is taken to the ancestoral land and buried soon after birth. This returns the child's first companion to the earth, connects that child forever, to that place and the cycle of life is acknowledged honoured and complete.

My whenua got thrown away.

Home on this beautiful planet has many views for me.

This view in the photo is the place that is my place right now, the place i see when i look out of my window... a small rise, pasture where there is supposed to be swamp and bush... a small remnant of regrowing forest, not healthy because it is grazed under and the cattle eat the regenerating seedlings, trample roots, chew bark... but it is there, with a dark secretness about the shadows underneath it...

This place is not wild but the green feeds me in a way i can't explain, and the regrowing bush, the wildness which still could be on the side of the steep hillock, whispers to me about the need for my wildness to be protected, about the climb and that there is something to see over the other side...

or maybe it is not a symbol at all

maybe that hill is just there

(but i think it is glad to be seen by me)

what does your place look like?

creation and home - another version

I am in a constant struggle with my creative self

actually that is not true

i think my creative self is in a struggle with my conformist self and i am on the sidelines watching with that quick tennis match action (look to the left, whip head, look to the right, whip head, repeat)


"I really want to get this onto paper/canvas just out there somewhere I am thinking colour I am thinking unrealistic but bold I am thinking..."

"Now hang on just a minute... who the fuck do you think you are? You are not trained, your sense of line is shit, your colour ideas always turn out badly..."

"Yes but this feeling...."

"Feeling schmeeling, stop talking over me... I think you have forgotten how embarassing it was for you when you were trying your hardest and then it looked so amatureish..."

you get the picture

Anway i went to another painting class today with Brett a'Court I was quiet and struggling and feeling not good enough in the company of some quite accomplished artists

Brett took each of us aside asking where we wanted to go - at first i tried to think of the clever things i could say

but then i chose to be truthful

i told him what i connected to in painting was the feeling - Frida Kahlo's intricate tiny work didn't light my fire but her pain and passion did, Van Gogh's subjects didn't always make my eyes light up but his passion and courage did...

i told him i wanted to express in that way but i didn't have the technique

i know he felt my dejection

He said that to paint that way needed to have the courage to put myself out there without protection in the world. That it wouldn't always be pretty (but of course i quoted Elizabeth Cunningham at this juncture) but it would be real and full of feeling.

I said i wanted that.

and for the first time in a long time i felt a click of really wanting something.

Brett told me to paint sloppy and big and fast

and i took courage and trusted myself and i got the BIG canvas out of the car and i painted this still life

and i cried.

i know it isn't Frida or Vincent.

but holy crap it feels like me.

this creation brings me home.

to the home inside myself.

as much as i have that home i long for without time and space,

i am beginning to see i can trust the home inside myself

and the more i express that inner feeling outwardly

creation and home

Following on from longing,i want to talk about a time when i felt a glimpse of home.

I was living in South Africa and was attending a series of lectures given by a local buddhist, Rob Nairn.

He spoke about the buddhist creation myth.

I remember it slightly differently than the Wikipaedia version (read down until you get to Buddhist then read the last two paragraphs of that section.)

and here is the version i remember...

once upon a time there was light - all beings were light and joy and bliss...

They could be anywhere in space and time and all was effortless.

Some of these light beings alighted on the earth - it was beautiful there and they began to want to sample some of the earth - the ate the clouds and the soil.

Delicious.

But when they got the urge to fly away they found they could not.

They became hungry and ate more.

And the more they ate the less they were able to remember their true identity - beings of bliss and light and joy...

And the less they remembered the more they resembled something else. Something less than who they really were.

I can remember listening with tears falling - inexplicably sorrowful.

I think the explanation is longing

I think the explanation is Hireath.

I think all of us remember a time where we knew that we were beings of light and joy and bliss - unencumbered by consumption and desire.....

I think that is the home i miss.

LONGING

"LONGING IS THE GROUND OUT OF WHICH PILGRIMAGE ARISES, AND AS WE HAVE SEEN ALSO CHARACTERIZES THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SELF, NATURE, AND THE DIVINE GROUND. IN WELSH, THE WORD HIREATH EXPRESSES THIS KIND OF LONGING, DEEP AND SOULFUL AND IS SOMETIMES SPOKEN OF AS A KIND OF "HOMESICKNESS". In this sense we might imagine it as a homesickness to know our place in the world an inhabit it fearlessly and authentically." Jason Kirkey. 'The Salmon in the Spring - the ecology of Celtic Spirituality.'


This book - recommended to me by the Goddess incarnate, Elizabeth Cunningham and has been one of those digest slowly books- (read reissue from the library 4 times).

I had to read sometimes only a page and then sleep so that it could talk to the deepest parts of me that were sighing with recognition and nourishment...

The part i want to talk about today is entitled longing...

The quote above talks about longing which Jason Kirkey fulfilled by travelling back to Ireland (a country i have long been intregued by (i used to get coffee table books out on Ireland as a primary school child and just look at the pictures) but have yet to visit... Maybe it has something to do with my obsession with green - it always turns up in my gratitude lists....

I also long for South Africa - Calitzdorp, Table Mountain, wildflowers.....i miss that land with a longing that is only quenched by something particularly of that land at the end of that continent, that wildness, that rawness, that powerful, bleak, rich, heart-aching beauty.

And of course i long for the essence of the last sentence in that quote. That knowing of my place in the world, the ability to inhabit this body of mine, claim my space fearlessly and authentically.

That self acceptance, that self celebration, that holding myself to be sacred - and of course in doing so, being able to be a conduit for the divine - because of course when i stop dismissing my innate divinity there is no more excuse....

When i speak of being enough i know it is the key to that gate, the gate that holds me back from that place of self love and celebration.

Being able to ignore that well worn groove in my psyche that believes it is less than, not worthy of, undeserving is the key. To step out of that circular path and startto walk somewhere new is my instinctive understanding of the secret to that nirvana.

The being enough nirvana.

So i long for that.

I get disheartened and feel fake sometimes - i wish i could go with the bravado i have written with here and suddenly jump from the rut, open the gate, bust dramatically out of that ugly belittling habit and march off into my glory. But somedays i have to sweep the floor and manage maudlin children, and make school lunches and walk the dog. Somedays i can be magnificent while i do that and somedays i just do it. Not in the Nike sense. In the just get through sense.

And that doesn't feel like enough enough.

But since i was a small child whenever i was scared i used to say "I want to go home". I could have been tucked up in my safe little middle class bed, where i lived with my nuclear (and yes you can read bomb there if you want) family.

But there was always this deep longing for home that i found difficult to explain.

This longing hasn't left me as i have grown into this numerical adulthood.

I still want to go home when i am scared.

I try to stop the words when they want to tumble out of my mouth for fear that i may be hastening my death (because what is home if it is not with the divine?)

But that yearning for home is deep and true.

I know i am rooted here in Te Tai Tokerau - this particular body i am in knows this is where it is nourished - the trees are familiars, the coast is a friend....

But home is still elusive....

Do you know where home is?

wish casting wednesday WHAT DO I WISH TO KNOW

i am shyly jumping into the pool of lovelies who wish cast

today i wish to know how to live my truth

a big late sincere thankyou

This is well overdue

i am sorry it took my impolite arse so long but here it is (a myriad of excuses all of which sound inexcusably lame right now so i won't bore you...)

THANK YOU

to the glorious Brandi whom i have been enamoured of since i met her online about 2 years ago

Her wonderful blog brings joy and light into the world and i am a proud joy rebel....

her work here in gussying up my blog warms my heart - when i dive into the sea of blue goodness she has created i feel happy

yep Brandi brings happy

if you would like her to work on your blog you can just scoot on over to her website and i am sure she will bring happy into your life too

THANK YOU BRANDI - i am glad you are on the planet