So we roast the root vegetables. Carefully, we sharpen the knife. Carefully, we are still the sacrifice keeping that wolf’s blood at bay.
How can we ever protect and model, be the balance we are born to bring forth? How can we be?
What must we do to be who we are meant to be?
The mornings will be cool soon. I take care to pack the pan with the right amount of delight. I take a step that side of abundance to remind myself I am ready.
Call me crazy but there is a way through when all is lost when plans and ideas have combusted to gas when urges of the heart seem stupidly self-defeating
All these feelings
When I can’t find a way to assert and my survival depends upon it and the situation won’t budge
I am stuck fast
I know it’s not supposed to be right Hold me back I will eventually double down Two feet in that’s my sin
If I’m ever going to hear you Two feet – why don’t you take a seat? (might be a long wait)
Who knows how this will go?
Now I’m standing at the point the edge of the common ground the only thing that makes sense is to reach out
Across the divide
(I ask)
It’s a heavy load I’m carrying Should I lay it down? It seems, oh! oh! oh! so simple to receive truly
What use is a full bowl to an overflowing spirit?
I wonder about some things
Let that which wills be your divine feast that you may catch your sisters and brothers in the right moment
A convergence
May it be restored
So I wait for myself to return
I’m thinking — if you love probably worth persisting and perhaps you can share that –
right after the storm clouds have cleared
– straight-up-joy like how it feels in a bouncy breathe in, breathe out soul-restoring, truly connected kind of way
As though we were meant to be just the way we are and all these moments out there were part of what shapes us
Exquisitely, perhaps perfectly designed for infinite growth infinite potential infinite connection
As if nature ruled the world and all we needed to do
Just sitting here Waiting for the curfew to end Waiting for the sun to touch my face again
Remembering an old promise to myself never to waste time waiting again. Now I have this experience. I have these last couple of years of experience.
I nurture plants. I know we are supposed to say we are growing plants, but I feel it’s the other way around. It was just an experiment. I had fallen in love with the peppermint gum in the centre of the park, for many reasons that just kind of bundle up into a wellspring of joy whenever I think to visit. She has hooks in me, no doubt.
This one time I went to visit, during yet another lockdown, and instead of collecting the nice green leaves recently tousled by the wind in a manner that hurried along their transformation from living to dying with gay abandon, rather than that which I always do, I gathered a few gum-nuts from the lowest branches. You know, those looking like they were ready to fall.
There were hundreds of tiny filaments erupting from those three little gum-nuts after only half a day in the bright sunlight. I thought it would take days before any kind of change and was completely unprepared.
For the most part I couldn’t save them. The entire adventure was heartbreaking in a totally surprising way – in trying to figure out how to nurture this new life and not feel guilty for experimenting with, as it turned out, mass death. At the same time, there is nothing I would rather give my attention to than the nurturing of life and growth.
As new things go, instead of the joy I had planned, there were all these (painful) feelings, mostly associated with not knowing what I was doing and being too far down the path to return to any kind of useful prior clarity on the subject. So I abandoned the mission with the sense that, at least now I know, as an experienced fact, that I don’t know.
Like all stories worth telling, this was not the end. Three new shoots in an abandoned pot of dry soil rose with the sun on Christmas morning last year, months after the gum-nut experiment had ended and the grief had settled down. One survived.
That baby tree is thriving and essentially refuses to conform to any of my ideas about how all this is supposed to work. She taught me to listen and learn that although there are countless gum trees in existence today and there have been countless trees before this one, she is completely unique and is of a variety that probably has very little experience growing in pots on the window ledge. I am not a skilled gardener so we have no other viable choice than to continue growing together.
I practice smiling over the phone. Constrained as I am nobody could ever deny the intimacy of our connection now that we all – plants, callers and me – are living in our own personal and private, yet utterly dependent and seemingly endless, lockdown again.
But it’s all good. There’s plenty to learn. Plenty to distract a person seeking clarity and independence and the end of systematic, socially-reinforced discrimination. The kind that seems to somehow, always but perhaps not every time, result in endless sentences enunciated with great vigour and passion which inevitably lead us nowhere more engaging than the contemplation of something ineffable that wavers on the fringes of reality. Pointless, until you measure the outcomes.
I can see that regardless of intent; the design of mass-population-based programs, under emergency situations, or on a clear, business-as-usual day, simply highlight, reinforce and solidify the unacceptable and detrimental outcomes generated by default – in an exclusive system based on a sketched-out, stick-figure model of what it is to be a human being.
I can see that regardless of public policy or the design of our technology systems or our administrative and bureaucratic systems or our banking and health systems or anything that affects our daily exchanges of resources and information; it is not yet standard practice to verify the algorithm used to deliver services, the meat and bones of it all, by measuring the practical outcome against the intent of the organisations, systems, governments or laws. Not in real time as part of an iterative cycle, anyway.
In the work that I have done for most of my life (IT) that was my edge – measuring practical outcomes against intent with an almost instinctual understanding of the exponential effect over time of minor deviations, workarounds and errors that iterate indefinitely without appropriate intervention. As far as I am concerned, I know the effects of those deviations or biases will eventually escape the confines of the virtual world of numbers and bits of data, to produce actual disadvantage in the real world where some, but not all outcomes, will be utterly non-compliant with the stated purpose or spirit of certain laws. I know this from lived experience.
Laws like those that cover anti-discrimination have had little to no real-life effect on the outcomes produced by government, banks, corporations, service providers, non-profits, social institutions, etc. etc. The fact that huge companies find it viable to continue apologising for making life hard in measurable, practical ways for certain demographics, but not to change or improve the biased systems that generate such outcomes, outside of updating a policy or two – helps me understand why generally we haven’t made much progress since the introduction of such laws.
Now, I get it. I probably have this perspective because my whole life experience is constantly being skewed by the kinds of biases that are built in to these systems. In my current almost-save-your-ass-but-really-just-delaying-homelessness unskilled job, this awareness is the source of self-conflict, deep grief and tends to rip open old wounds. Not because of my situation so much as what I am able to see from this vantage point.
Based on the outcomes I witness, I can see that there is still a strong need for the women’s liberation movement to be working towards equality, including at a systems level.
I can see that workplace harrassment, bullying and anti-discrimination policies are merely guidebooks for power-hungry bosses and ladder-climbing colleagues on how to handicap or take out their teammates.
I can see that infantilising and patronising the “general public”, older people, people with accents, differently-abled people, people not matching the stick figure model on this or that point, people with unusual names, people who are kind, people who are not doctors, people in poor countries, people who breathe, any kind of other people – is considered generally, despite the discordant outcomes, more appropriate than to treat people with the kind of respect, dignity and equality that encourages their well-being and best contribution to the world.
I have a kind of perspective that can see and hear things that happen around me and that makes you lose people forever if you speak of it openly and that person didn’t want to see.
Privilege involves not being able or willing to see or hear. To leave that space, in order to see and hear, we have to deal with a lot of bad feelings with no promise of rewards.
But if you let it happen, the growth, if you encourage it and are willing to adjust your approach constantly because it matters in a way that affects your peace, sometimes you get a new tree. And considering how many trees have contributed to my survival and well-being it almost seems like a tiny, pointless beginning. Pointless, until you measure the outcome.
Lockdown ends tomorrow, perhaps I can venture out and find another photography model?
I don’t know your name and I don’t know your game Precisely who you are Nor exactly why you came And taught me how to claim The space that has has no name And the cars don’t see your games Nor the people standing by We’ve lost our sense of joy Though we all can hear your caw …calling all of us…
There’s a half-eaten, glazed donut, with pink squiggles, resting on the fire hydrant. It’s been there since yesterday afternoon.
I think about various things while I wait for the lights to change; how the adjacent tram-stop and the randomness of it’s actual versus proposed schedule – how that, in some kind of convergence with the mask-wearing rules, and perhaps not enough unoccupied time to bring it all together, might have delivered this scenario.
However it came about – the crows can see the donut.
That was last week, the donut episode. This morning, I hear the birds who don’t have much to say, indeed many are silent. So I reckon it’s probably going to be overcast this morning with a pleasant afternoon. I learned that much during the long lockdown of 2020. The birds know weather.
They know other things too, as the donut episode proved.
This morning however, we see an hour later that the sun has risen and it is overcast. Apart from the odd flare-up, everyone, including the birds are silent. Probably a couple more hours until the sky is clear of clouds.
There was a loud cawing that startled people. We all looked around — it came from up there, above the street light. Then the fast-click of the green man, we are focussed on crossing the road. I am looking out for cars turning left and right and preparing for this and that possibility. There’s no time to check what’s going on with the crows who are now shouting to the heavens, in sequence, from three different points above the intersection.
All immediate calamities averted, as the slow-click of the flashing red man begins and the pedestrians exit the crossing, I calmly return to my place on the kerb.
My eyes are drawn to the top of the fire hydrant. It is bare. I look up. Right and left. I spy a large black bird on the light-pole above me, munching on half a donut. A quiet explosion of joy erupts in my heart.
My goodness, that was slick work. Nobody saw the crow get the donut, nobody even saw it move. I’m pretty impressed! I’m thinking they’ve been at this caper a while, as I nod my head.
They stayed around for a few days, the crows. Their presence began to feel important to me. I remember saying out loud, I can’t see any food this time, I wonder what is happening? So I asked my mother about them.
There are no crows in Australia, only jackdaws and ravens. Crow is also sacred law. Raven is magic. This is good. There is also Waa the protector, and Waang the trickster, and so many other stories of crow from the culture that has always cared for the land I walk with, this is Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung country, each side of the river. I think about these things often.
I was influenced by this video that I’ve now watched several times. No question, I love hearing this story.
“”””” Something happened. In the shower, which I think is a good place for these kinds of moments.
Pondering the nature of the yin/yang symbol as it arose in my mind’s eye for no particular reason, it occurred to me quite suddenly… the centre is not round. At least, it doesn’t need to be. Looking inwards, going deeper when one imagines the centre, what does it look like? How do we perceive it? I will tell you right now, for me it’s black, and my perspective of the proper way to use light is to explore that which is not already lit.
Before the shower I had been thinking over the idea that all change happens at the edge, between knowledge and confusion, between chaos and order, on the borders. In a moment I understood that the shape of the unknown is not geometric, it can’t be a circle or sphere with equal force in all directions, because, what of conditions, weather and cycles and the hunt for food, like the way bird songs are influenced? It must be fractal, as in nature. How do I explain (to myself) that these were feelings or experiences, not ideas, which are frequently a half-step-to-twenty-seven-thousand-steps behind.
I tell you, what surprised me the most was an image of Bundjil, the creator, from the video, being thrown up in my mind’s eye as a representation or image of the centre. It was an entirely new feeling. Take a look at the way it is drawn, and then tell me this is not the truth from yet another perspective. Our centre is shaped exactly like the Self. To access it is to embody it. External layers are as relevant as seasons.
For several seconds I was all things and nothing. Unlimited potential without desire, like I understood the end-to-end, iteration-by-iteration, process of creation while it was happening within me. Afterwards I kept thinking of the primordial mass – not that I have much idea what it’s all about, just the impression that the centre is not empty, it’s just made of different stuff, the stuff of infinite possibility, the stuff that precedes life. Like space or air is not empty – or where the hell are we? None of our ideas have any power in this realm which is both before and after existence, before and after time, before and after me. They don’t belong here, they are just passing through.
From within the infinite depths of the unknown, life springs forth in joyous profusion.
Self
Now those birds have gone back down the road a bit to where they usually reside. I spent ages trying to identify them until it got boring and I just smiled at them with all my joy and gratitude for the adventure that trying to see into their world took me on.
I don’t seek your power I can’t eat your hate _ It’s tasting kind of sour The way you’ve sealed my fate But I’m a new beginning A mix of all that’s true I am one that’s ending The pain we all go through When we divide and conquer The lovers and the land Have you stopped to wonder What you don’t understand Is maybe the beginnings Of cracks between our worlds? Dance into the middle Where you can glimpse these curls Won’t you come and join me? So we can celebrate That time in our history Where we’ve wrought right from hate Nodding to the future As lives that we might like Unity’s our culture And I don’t want to fight Instead I want to grow us Right out into the light Life is gonna show us Those stars shine bright at night
Jambo Robyn 