A dynamic state of peace

It is pouring loudly with rain. The clouds are united in a pure, white sky that has neither definition nor limits. Trees, bushes and pot plants are swaying, shaking and drooping, though the arum lily stands undaunted. The strings of rain are close together, there is unity, harmony in this hard, persistent dance. 

My mind's inner eye is occupied (literally). It is claimed by an image observed yesterday, outside my head, just like the rain today. It is an image of a family of Egyptian geese, led by the male, with Mom as the rearguard. 

Eight or nine goslings paddled for what they were worth through the windblown ripples of their home lake, keeping in perfect single file and so imprinting their live bodies into the 'duck(ling)s in a row', which now inhabit my head.

Once the parents had got them all safely to shore and, famished from their strenuous outing, they immediately began foraging in the grass, Dad raised himself to his full height, stretched and shook his splendid wings, pushing out his chest with its dark brown medal in a momentary posture of proud glory.

Mom had meanwhile flown to perch upon a railing to groom herself in private, as it were, taking some time out from the family.

* * *

In the aftermath of a sorrowful division between dear friends and fellows of mine (a situation which remains painfully raw and as yet unresolved), the undemarcated sky and rain, the disciplined little goslings and their steady parents offer an objective correlative to my inner state: I have taken a stance that is aligned with my heart, mind, body and soul. My friends know where I stand and, most importantly, I know where I stand.

Balance is a dynamic state of peace. I wish this for each individual member of my great and varied human family.

Photo: thanks to Ken Barris

Helped by a hook

This morning, as I walked along the shore of the lagoon, something sharp sank into my foot.
I winced and kicked, and a snag of weeds and fishing tackle spun itself more tightly around my toe.
I pulled out a rusty fishing hook.

In German, when there is a problem, we say, "Wo ist der Haken?"
Where is the hook?

Where is the hook when things don't add up, when they don't make sense. In English, I suppose, the sentiment would be translated as 'where's the catch?'

Among all the different levels of reality there are, most are not immediately apparent.
The hook was not visible in the sand. But once I felt it in my toe, I could see it and remove it and dispose of it safely.

The snag, which keeps tugging at me during these strange, unforeseen days, is: who is there, who still trusts their experience, their own eyes and ears? Who, in the noise of news and numbers, is able still to hear their own impersonal, intuitive voice?

We tunnel in to our laptop and cellphone screens, but the sky does not disappear.

The rusty fishing hook helps me catch myself. For I must be helped to retain a hold on myself in these times.

  

Articulating chaos

There are times when the chaos is overwhelming, the tasks too physically demanding, the tangles of relationships too complicated, the past too heavy.

At such times, your hands may not dance over the keyboard. They are diverted from the pen. The notebook, the journal, social media pages, your blogsite - all venues for reflection are pushed aside by the crisis. You are in emergency mode.

Moving house is always a crisis. Moving from the house of your late husband, who lived in it for thirty years, is unspeakable. Truths reside here, which hurt beyond words. You carry them as you must.

You are in a state of permanent shock. Day after day your hands sort, toss, choose, wrap, pack, tape, label, stack.

You are not alone. You have been sent a Beloved, whose kind words and jokes, whose strong arms and able hands you depend on utterly.
You are grateful.
You rise in the night to make order on the page, but your poems are a jumble.
You forgive yourself, are patient.

You pray for the boomslang in the creeper on the chimney. May his life be spared when the pest eradicators come to gas the borer beetles.
Your heart is slow and vulnerable as a slug.

 

What cure for malice?

I told a story to my beloved this morning. We were talking about dogs.
"I just kick them," he told me an employee had said.

When I was eight or nine, my sisters and I walked to school every morning. It took us a good half hour. A beautiful black bitch joined us at a certain point each day. My sisters spoke to her, and I replied for her, putting on a voice. She was a gentle, agile creature, who thrived under our attention and imaginative conversations joining all our hearts in a magic ritual as we walked together.

One morning - it was only another few hundred metres to the school - she stopped to sniff at a lamppost. Her hind quarters were in the road. We stood waiting for her to finish her 'reading'.

A car sped along. It swerved to the left, deliberately in order to hit her. Her body was flung high up, as high as the lamp upon the post. She landed on the other side of the road with a broken back.

Out of the back windscreen I saw the driver's children look out, laughing.

In his book, My Traitor's Heart, Rian Malan observes laughter in a photograph of people witnessing a necklacing.

What cure is there for malice? What for mayhem? What is the madness driving men - apparently ordinary men, who eat and sleep and breathe just like you and me - deliberately to harm?

They cannot help it. They have no inner life, so cannot die. They have no joy unless they destroy. Orcs. Beyond redemption and mortal comprehension.

Redeem yourself: stand by your life: a fulcrum in the storm. The wars reflect the tipping points of tides that run on more than this mere moment.

The business of a book

What with a chest of drawers stuffed with decades' worth of manuscript material, you decide finally to produce a book. A real book. With a publisher and an ISBN number and proper binding and marketing strategies for a wider readership. Because that's what you know in your heart must happen with this mere tip of an iceberg of words you've built up over a lifetime: the tip, at least, must be shared, somehow made accessible, somehow find the eyes, the heart or hearts that need them.

But you did not think, did you? You did not think that writing over a lifetime in no way qualifies you to enter the business world. You are not a businesswoman. You fear business. You fear technology. You have no experience.

But you've come this far. The book exists. You hold it. You love it.

To turn back now would be more difficult than to keep going. You can't see where you're going. Kind people, good people help you. The steps are infinitely slow. You tell yourself that this is not who you are, you are an ageing woman wanting grandchildren, wanting to sing them songs, you want quiet and to do the dishes and re-fill the bird-bath.

The people you love, who are close around you, are - many of them - stressed. Some are ill. Some are disabled or crippled, whether temporarily or permanently. All are in pain of one kind or another. All are making huge, constant efforts to do their best, to keep smiling.

There are other people around you, whom you are not close to, who are killing each other, hurting one another, speaking in ugly ways.

Some of the braver people you know post calls to, write open letters to the president, crying out their anguish about the painfully ugly words and deeds of the others.

While so many are hurting and distressed, you take down and fold washing, you make salad and ask your nephew, "Can you show me how to take a screen shot?"

Because you know you must stay calm. The way the crew on a ship like the Canada Maru must stay calm in the midst of a violent storm; the way it must sail on - whether or not there is a boy with white legs, falling out of the sky.

And you walk blindly - so you feel - through the darkness with your book, letting it be your lantern.