Kiwi On The Loose

I don’t know why I have lost the words to write on my blog here for the last forever. But inside my heart I am finding words again. It was really good last November to publish edition 1 of my writing over the last 10 years Poetry for Flightless Birds & Broken Things. That was kinda cool for me. Now with the slate cleared I have more words that have formed and will be sharing them soon. Writing is such a wonderful thing to be able to do. So wonderful in fact that I am passionate about the healthiness of it for all people. And by writing I actually just mean being able to put pen to paper or type however slowly like me, and that mark having meaning or representing something you would like to say to others or yourself and record it. I literally mean the beauty and power of being able to put marks on paper or a screen. I definitely do not mean how you put words together or how we use them…………..I mean the ability to mark something with a symbol and for it to record some kind of meaning.

I had an experience last week as I fleshed out some ideas about Bin Laden’s death and the media preoccupation with that and a tornado in New Zealand. I had had a really stink day, and as I wrote on my FB wall of all places regarding my thoughts and feelings I suddenly felt really wonderful and free. In fact inside my head it was like I was standing on a plain in Africa among tall grasses watching the sun go down behind far off hills on a gorgeous evenings beginning. It was a feeling of freedom and space and it was all in my head. I had that realistaion of what I already knew,  that really your mind is this place of incredible freedom, and my wrestling and writing down my thoughts re the tornado and the media hype, and the stupidity of the Bin Laden execution and the media pre occupation with it and the gross details, getting that out created this wonderful space. Also was the realisation that no matter what is happening in your life or the world around you there is a space you can enjoy and flex muscle in and that is your mind. That space is your very own and you make it what you want by what you fill it with and do with it. Sounds weird and everyone else has probably worked this out but that night I felt it and saw it in a new way………..and it felt good. We are not encouraged to think, and to think differently in this world we live. Advertisers, and the media machine all want to channel us in a certain direction or predigest our information intake. Standing on the plains of my mind in a land rich with diversity watching the sun go down was beautiful…………….

There’s been silence across the plains of space for several months, and though I write mostly for myself and to use up my quota of words and enjoy seeing them fall onto the page, there are times when silence is like a pregnancy, there is always something happening.
Yes I have learned that there is always something happening. Silence can be still and subtle, sometimes loud like the thunderous rush of a waterfall in a canyon no one ever visits or sees. Noise does not have to be about an audience and so silence does not have to be about the lack of an audience, or the lack of sound.
Silence can happen amidst all the noise in the world.
My silence is possibly more like a solitude of the soul. My soul with its own words that no one will understand not even myself at times.
There’s been a lot happening in my heart ( that deepest of all places that we live and hunker down to watch our own ‘This is your life’ programme). I feel like the rafter coming through some dangerous, turbulent,unknown and uncharted rapids in a river canyon never explored, and I have emerged in sunlight finally and still deep waters. And you can never predict when you will come into the still water when you haven’t traveled this canyon before.
The stillness is more than the arrival of summer and the sun on my skin, it’s more than nearing the end of another year.
This weathering some un-chartered territory and getting through it somehow into the sun and still waters is all about grace to me.

None of us really likes to lose control of our lives, or to do something that has an outcome we cannot quite see. Sometimes we feel like we are going on a predictable journey and then whoa, a wild card comes in from somewhere or there is an unexpected detour and we are in the rapids out of control or on the road and lost, not knowing where this will end up or how it will in fact end. There’s the dread of potential pain on arrival.

To be sure there is a feeling of loving adventure and risk, and that’s usually calculated risk, but to jump without a parachute or enter the rapids without a paddle……….most of us don’t. We stay in the plane, or attach ourselves to someone else with a chute, or we climb around the rapids on good old earth beneath my feet styles. We like to keep life under some mild form of control or predictability.

The reason is that deep down we do value our lives.
Deep down we believe in our value on earth.
Deep down we are also afraid…….

When we have unexpected or the old periodic tune ups that life brings with the adventure of living, we get through. Maybe with a limp or the feeling of rawness that won’t go totally away, but it can feel like the arrival of spring when you get thru it. Its like you have been experiencing winter in your soul for the first time and you haven’t known when spring will arrive. You lose track of just how long the dam winter is and climate change has ruined everything, you know springs out there but you guts on day after day not knowing.
Then one morning you wake one and the ice is melting, bulbs poke hope out of the soil and you know spring is here, and you feel the light. You smile inwardly and your step quickens, somethings changed.
This too has passed, the winter of the soul, and you don’t understand the whys, and wherefores but you can laugh again and the sound of your laughter makes even you stop and listen as you realise that something has returned that was lost.
That is grace to me, that goodness that I don’t understand.

That belief that gives me courage to know that in the next rapid filled and dark canyon, I will not be alone.
Grace will be with me.
He is Grace. His grace is sufficient for me.

I was busy with my work at lunchtime today, when a package arrived for me, delivered by my daughter. The courier guy knows she is my daughter so saved an extra stop by delivering it to her work. One of the benefits of being a legend in my own mind or maybe my daughter is the legend in his. Whichever way something lovely crashed into my day unexpectedly.
I hadn’t ordered anything from anyone, I was on a pretty thin line of credit while I was saving.

There it was.
A large parcel wrapped in that brown paper that always feels and smells like an old childhood friend.
My heart smiled. This was a surprise indeed.

I found my way into the wrapping and once inside realised it was from my wife.
and it was a Fathers Day gift and she was 7000miles away.

Yes my eyes watered.
 A gift that had begun it’s journey so far away in a thought and ended up in my hands was special indeed.

I read the card, my eyes resting on every lovely word.I felt so loved.

Suddenly I realised that I had forgotten it was Fathers Day, that I was a father and that it was a Fathers Day for my own father as well. Whew!
It was Friday and I still had time to get a card and send it to him Fastpost before 5pm.

Not only had the parcel left me feeling warm and loved, it saved me from forgetting my own fathers special day.

My Dad if fact is always special so no extra special day is needed, but I in the chaos of my life and love, I so lose track of things like Fathers Days and birthdays. Call it what you will, I know it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just the wiring in my brain that don’t help me keep track of things like others.

So come on Fathers Day, and I know two Dads who will be really happy.
Me and mine.

A lovely Friday surprise.
Thanks Q.

I began writing this several weeks ago……………..but I am still gonna post it. Why waste feelings and good thoughts right?

Several weeks ago I began to write………..

When I first arrived back in New Zealand after several lovely weeks in America with Susan during July, the weather was sunny, and I found myself most days commenting on the gorgeousness of it all. And it really was, you got into your car at the end of the day and could have easily done a cat nap in the warm sun right then and there. Bliss. It felt good.
Now I know that rain is a part of the whole winter thing, and it’s kinda like duh! what did you expect, when it does rain……..but  I get tired of the rain and then feel guilty for feeling that because that’s what winter is and the earth needs it anyways, AND it’s really been light rain. Compared to Pakistan anyway.
BUT it gets me down. I don’t think I have SDS, (seasonal disorder syndrome), but then again maybe everyone gets that in winter. I wonder what they call what you get in summer?

Several weeks later…………….(Sept 1st)
I woke this morning to spring. Actually it felt like spring last week, BUT today it really felt like spring. My mind even felt bouncy. It was Sept 1st however, the official beginning of spring I hear on the radio. The freishias are out, the daffodils, and other springy things are emerging from the sleeping earth. It is wonderful. Maybe I am emerging from a long sleep as well.

Last weekend I started spring cleaning my home. That felt really great. I had felt paralysed for many weeks under the weight of the to do list that I carry around in my head all the time. (Can anyone relate to that?) Nothing was really happening that I needed to. Part of me was being kind to myself and realising yes, this is winter and its okay to feel like this when its raining more, the suns out less, and you can’t get outside to mow the lawn, do some gardening. It’s okay. Several times I actually sat down and read a chapter of a book. I was quiet and prayed. I wrote some reflections on what I was feeling and dreaming about. IT FELT GOOD.

After my spring clean, which began in the kitchen, and stretched outside to the lawn, I have felt energised to carry on. Spring is here, inside where I live as well as outside.
That don’t change the issues I face or the person I have to live with every day (myself), but it does seem easier somehow.

I find myself smiling, and the yellow daffodils give me hope.
And the freishias, they smell as beautiful as ever.
I found one growing thru the weeds on the back lawn.

Beauty growing thru the weeds. A message from God for me.

I haven’t been able to leave America, and in truth I don’t really want to, but leave I must. There are bills to pay and a job to keep…………..leaving is proving difficult. There isn’t a seat on the plane. As a little kiwi guy who hasn’t spent a lot of his life flying…….I am having to contemplate my first sleep at the airport, missing flight experiences. To make matters worse they have happened at LAX……an airport many people avoid in their world travels. Thankfully I have a good friend in LA with a heart of gold. So Echo Park here I come and a couch to sleep on instead of a cold hard marble floor. LAX is deliberately made inhospitiable and inaccessible I am told by locals so that the homeless wont sleep there. And of course there in the terrorist aspect. BUT I did sleep in LAX once on my first trip to USA and I turned up for my flight but on the wrong day……….that was in 2007 and it seems to have changed since then…….changed a lot. But in all things there is some good and so here I am with my rock star mate Brad outside his home in Echo Park. Better to sleep on a friends couch than the floor of LAX the good       book says……
I may be on that plane tonight…….leaving America again.

That makes a nice change from song titles like leaving Ireland……..in past times. While I am glad to be heading back to a job and our own home……….this trip has found Americans weaving their way into my being lots more. I have seen the people for a change…….all the other strangeness has faded into the background more. (I know its there tho} Driving down from visiting friends in the mountains yesterday…..I actually forgot for a while I was somewhere different…………..I could have been home. Not coz I thought it was the same……..I had just stopped making comparisons. All the time. Waiting for a flight to LAX……………. Being with Susan is like being home…….

This is my third visit to the States. To recap for some, I spent 9 months here in 2008, was here previously in 2007 when I met Susan, and here I am in 2010, now married to Susan and over here in the school holidays. As soon as I landed this 3rd time I felt a change. America is probably still the same but I have changed. This time I have found myself not having to figure it all out so much…….like why is it so different, what makes it all tick. I have partially dealt with or made huge inroads on those questions, now I have found myself just enjoying the people and seeing life beyond the politics of America. I have really really loved this trip and the people I have met.
Of course again there has not been enough time, with Susan my wife, or time to explore the vastness of America. I have found myself falling more in love with this country and its people, beyond all the madness.
We have explored Austin and both really love it here ( I am writing this at the airport in Austin waiting for a flight back to Denver or somewhere ). Texas has always attracted me since coming here in 2007, Dallas is flat, BUT Austin has hills…………..and Austin has the Saltlick………..one of the top 10 BBQ eating places in USA. Absolutely awesome awesome food…….down home cook’n……..and tasting so good it etches itself into your taste buds……….that’s even without doing the eat all you can deal. We were much more restrained. I will write more about Austin……..but heres a few images from the story.

I have found myself over the years so believing that every weekend should be a three day weekend. Believing because after a three day weekend, apart from thinking Tuesday is Monday and turning up for things on the wrong days for a while until the penny drops, believing because it feels so good. How did people get on in the old days when you never stopped work?
That’s one of the things I love about God. The command to rest on one day of the week was sourced in common sense and a need to replenish the batteries, and for our own benefit as human beings. It was not some law by a megalomaniac creator wanting our homage………….
Three day weekends just seem to have that blend of time for everything.
Saturday on the jobs around home you need to do.
Sunday perhaps doing stuff you need to do with people and…….
Monday just for the luxurious things you would like to do……………

There is nothing like the feeling of Friday night or waking on the Saturday morning knowing you have an extra day………..and then there is the deliciousness of Sunday night knowing that tho it’s raining and the rubbish trucks still gonna come by, you don’t have to go to work.
Now I happen to enjoy my job as a teacher and 9/10 days i am okay with trotting off to the treadmill of necessity, BUT the luxury of that extra day is wonderful………..a day to lavish on sitting and reading, or doing what you want because you have had two other days to work on list reduction.

So my thanks to the Queen of England, and the Commonwealth and all that! Eh wot.
Happy Birthday to You.

Getting through to the end of a hard week I could think of a number of things I wanted to do as soon as the work week was over and I stepped thru my front door.

The first was to spend some time with my best friend if she was still up. I knew she had to get up and work early.
If that wasn’t able to happen plan two moved to top place.
COFFEE made in my own coffee machine.
I had slept in this morning and had wanted to have one ever since……
The other option was to head down town and take some photos, to do something for my creative soul.

So what happened?
I managed to spend some time with Susan before she hit the hay.
I made the coffee. And drank it.
I got ready to head down town to get some photos, and fired up my MP3 player to listen to some lectures I had downloaded, and that were so unlocking doors for me.
OFF I went…(after washing some dishes and enjoying the sun in my back window while I worked)
Here is something from that unwind time.
Doing something we enjoy and that gets us out of our weekly after work space, is good for you.It seems so basic but it’s what I don’t seem to do enough.
Healthy lifestyle is about what we do as much as it is about what goes into us, AND it’s not just about exercise in the normal sense.
It’s about how we exercise freedom with our choices, and choices that we make based on our knowledge of our needs and what will help us me emotionally healthy.
I am glad I went out.
Now I am off to the gym!

Beauty Therapy in a nutshell
(a muse)

I find myself hungry for beauty.
Not the kind you might think.
Beauty has many faces & unfortunately
the deepest & rarest beauty is born through pain.
Birth is never a painless process.
Ask any woman or polished gemstone.
Beauty sneaks up on me & jumps out from behind doors.
She smiles at you in strange places.
I know this.

The shell I live in does not totally define me,
but it can limit me.
There’s more than meets the eye to the man in the mirror.
I can see who I really am,
who I really can be, who I have rarely been.
I want to live longer, taste life even more deeply,
to love & laugh at myself & the world,
to finally give up being what I am not.

Beauty is not only skin deep.
The peanuts will have to go!

© BlindPoet
June 2010