Kiwi On The Loose

I have been thinking lately about the changes in my life, and the nature of love.

I  find myself so grateful for this moment that I live in now and how all the deepest changes and the creation of some kind of beauty in my life have been facilitated by relationship, and the journey of loving.

Relationships are never totally easy, they weren’t intended to be, and if they are you are supremely blessed or perhaps you are not really relating at all. It can be like a dance where you never touch or a safe non contact sport.

I don’t mean physical touch and contact here, I mean the soul kind!

The deepest and most wonderful intimacy  comes from being truly known and knowing, being understood and understanding, being accepted and accepting. Healthy relationships are works of art, and I so value mine.

Relationships of any kind are opportunities to learn a lot about ourselves.

Unfortunately sometimes we twist that ourselves opportunity into opportunities to tell others about what we have learned about them.  It’s like they are moons and us the planet they orbit, we only see them in the context of relationship to ourselves.

There are reasons people develop that  kind of relationship style, and they highlight the neglect of one of our most important relationships. The one we have with ourselves.

Those reasons probably all boil down to unresolved hurts and what we have done or not done with them. Often the truth is that we have deeply buried our hurts like dumping toxic waste down a deep mineshaft to be out of harms way. We develop malignant growths around them or we camouflage them with behaviours, decoys, distractions, masks, attitudes and addictions.  We protect, insulate and anesthetize ourselves from the toxic messages  arising from our hurts. These messages continually loop inside our heads and they tell us that in some way we are deficient, unlovable , useless, dumb, talentless or unworthy. And we believe it!  All untreated sickness eventually takes its toll on our health.

Instead of being open we become closed and understandably self protective. We point the finger at others, playing the blame game.  Looking at ourselves in relationship is just too painful when we have buried or bandaged unhealed wounds. Why would we look at ourselves critically and risk exposure to the messages inside our heads, telling us that we are no good, dumb, unworthy, stupid and will never change.

In pointing the finger at others, we could be repeating what we grew up with,  copying our role models, or the environment that shaped us the most. It may mean we have not come to a critical point of reflection and change. Defining moments have come and gone in our lives and we remain unchanged. We do not experience re invention, new growth or re birth. Life goes on down the same old same old path. 

Blaming others is an effort to escape honest and risky critical self examination. When we blame  others in aggressive, subtle or passive ways our love is far from healthy. Our behaviours, attitudes and actions don’t lead to the happiness and intimacy with friends and loved ones that we long for. We are alone with ourselves, and we don’t even like ourselves. This is the worst loneliness there is.

Why are we not able to make changes?

One reason is that change takes work, and its scary work.

Another is that we need some kind of light to illuminate areas that must change , but often our eyes are closed, or we are not looking at all or in the right places.

Change involves surgery, a scalpel to cut out what is toxic or some yuk tasting medicine to treat it and put it into remission.

Change can hurt, so most of us avoid the need to grow unless we reach that point of wanting to despite the pain .

That point may be arrived at through a faith calling us on to selflessness or better loving. It may be someone lovingly ( or out of frustration and anger ) opening our eyes to things that need attention. Or as is often the case, change is facilitated by some very painful personal experience that nearly destroys us.

My defining moment was the painful kind, involving the shattering of a family and a marriage of 23 years.

When the time comes, some people grow up, some stay the same.  I wanted to grow up. That was not one BIG decision, it continues to be a series of  little decisions, lots of them, some easy, some hard and often arriving out of left field when you least expect it.

Suddenly you realise, ‘Houston we have a problem’.

No not a problem, an opportunity to grow!

I discovered this website that has helped me to keep growing up, helped me to make more sense of myself and understand some of the ‘why do I always……..’ questions that have followed me for 53 years.

It’s all about how we love and may help you understand yourself  and your closest relationships and those of your everyday world more.

Check it out, it is very very cool.

http://www.howwelove.com/

Recently, I married my best friend. I am so excited to be in a relationship where there is courage, honesty and commitment to grow and change where we need to, AND have heaps of fun loving and loving healthily along the way.

I am so blessed by Susan.:-)

I have been reflecting recently on the love and faithfulness of my mother, before Mothers day arrived even!. Why is it that we don’t realise everything in one huge blob of understanding instead of the urrrrr   duhhhhh! moments that punctuate your life as you come to simple significant understandings. The answer is of course obvious.

1. We wouldn’t be able to cope with one huge dose of knowing and understanding, ourselves, others and the world around us.
2. We may not have grown in our lives to a stage of being able to understand, want to understand  or be worthy of understanding.

My mother has been wonderful all her life at letting her kids know how she feels about them, how she loves them and how God loves them, that we are all loved equally, that there are no favourites. My mother lives without a mask. And that is a rich heritage. She is not concerned about appearances, status or approval. She has lived a life that she knows is under the observance of God.

I realise in this moment of writing how valuable that really is. I hate pretense, and realise that I have lived in an open and honest home growing up, with all its faults and failings, that I have been loved by an open and honest mother. Perhaps that is why I place such value on being genuine and that the good parts of my self esteem I have to thank my mother for. I am 53 and have come to this understanding in the last week. I have so much to thank my mother for. I told her that on the phone the other day. I am lots of good things because of her. Thanks Mum. I love you heaps. I will be a better husband because of you and what you have taught me about love.

Yes it is one of those days when for one reason or another you are thoroughly tired of yourself.
One of those days when you have lost sight of your beauty and you just want to go away somewhere and be like a rock, still and deep and nothing to feel, just be like a rock.
It’s a day when I know that I need to write something that will capture the chaos in my mind, the agony of being me, the me-ish things that seem to haunt my existence from days I can’t remember, long time gone and give me grief now.
A day when I need to write and be released from myself in my writing.

Its not all bad, don’t we all have days like this that have built up over our whole lives, or weeks or the last few days and you get to this point, or emotional state.

This day is the point.
My point.
Every day after this can be different because of what I feel, learn and let myself experience from this day.
I have a choice with what I do about it.
I write to process, and record it somehow.

Sometimes like today, I am willing to feel this kind of stuff, the stuff of being a human being, and know that it passes, that it isn’t the sum total of my whole existence or the whole truth of it.
Other days I don’t let myself feel it, or acknowledge I feel it. I push it somewhere else, I block it very effectively, or put on some disguise or cover up. But more often than not because of my personality I can’t hide the bad days very well.

Some people are very good at it……….they learn it from childhood, when their feelings are denied or when they are hurt in some way physically or emotionally, or when they are invalidated by significant people in their lives. They get the message they don’t matter, so they make themselves invisible. They spend their whole lives doing the invisible thing to avoid the pain. They don’t think they matter. Feeling ultimately causes pain because their feelings and emotions were so hurt or ignored, so they try not feel anything. They do not need anything, they become very self sufficient. They don’t handle people who do need anything from them very well.
People with this kind of background develop ways of being human and having some kind of feeling in addictions or relationships based on physical sensations that briefly create emotional intensity. At least they feel human somehow, even if brief.

We do things for comfort.

I can be like that a bit, but somehow I have come to know what I do, what I need today. And risk sharing that.

We all have pasts, with wounds that haunt us, and the future is about healing those things that surface.
They often surface in our relationships with those closest to us. I have recently discovered this website. I think its awesome.
www.howwelove.com

The fact that I need a hug, or to be held tells me that my soul was scraped raw somewhere in my past, that I am wonderfully human.
My poets heart is sensitive to my inner working and writing is good for me.

See I feel better.

P.S I actually needed the hug several days ago and started to write then. Writing is a way of hugging myself. After all, some of my needs I can meet myself………….and a lot of good honest writing has come out of that act.

The year has started, and I am back at school teaching music. I love holidays and this one to be sure seemed to go one and on forever, it was a summer like the ones you had when you were a kid. I did a lot of thinking, (can’t seem to stop that) a lot of soul searching (can’t seem to stop that) and a lot of dreaming, (can’t seem to stop that one either).
Some dreams have to die, for new ones to be born. I carry too many dreams and really sometimes I am so blind to whats happening in the dream, I miss the real picture.
2010 for me is going to be a year of reality. I sense the strong call of the wild in my life, but there is also a yearning for the familiar and the peaceful. That may just be lying in the sun at the beach or chilling on a couch in my home, or the wonderfulness of having a job, being able to pay bills and touch peoples lives, laugh, take a photo, think or dance.
The call of the wild is best experienced before or after the peace of being home, and in a place that is shaped by you and expresses you. I like home, I like the land I walk on, I like who I can become and appreciate where I have been, I like the oceans that surround me.

This year I do want to write more, and write more from a space that is inhabited by the reality of Jesus in my life, not a pathetic churchy puppet like Christ, but the man Christ. I want to live and write how that relationship impacts my dreams, how I live, what I say and think, yes who I am. I want to rediscover Him myself and not live on past experiences of Him , or others experiences. To be wild it will be my journey with Him, and to be sure that is personal but will also echo and be consistent with the journeys and experiences of many.

There’s a lot of lip service out there to God and Jesus, but not a lot of dust on the feet from walking the hard road.
I want to have dusty feet, and a very open heart, with a face turned to the sky often and especially at sunset and sunrise.
I want to walk in the garden while he talks to me, and sit quietly with His words and bathe my soul in that kind of love.
Yes that kind of love.

Here’s a link to my 1st poem for 2010. On The Third Day

In New Zealand today the sun is as hot as ever, it’s Friday and there’s nothing like a Friday after a weeks work. Where ever you are in the world.

If anyone reads this I wish you a really awesome year. I really do.

Yes the silly season has arrived and I ain’t got no money, and you know what, I am hilariously happy.  When I see everyone out and about flooding The Warehouse getting prezzies, there is a certain amount of gladness that not being flush don’t mean you cant give.
AND in all this I so damm well know that compared to most of the world I am fabulously wealthy. I am so blessed.
So for Christmas all my loved ones will be getting home made mint sauce from my garden and other creative stuff from my own hand.
Far more satisfying in fact, I feel like a revolutionary conspirator knowing I am not on the consumer band wagon, sucked in by advertising and the desire to make money.
So folks that’s my space at the moment.
I have recently updated theBlindPoet.com .
Also I have redesigned QGDesignz.com
I would love you to take a look and let me know what you think, and while you are at it check out my book. Blind Man’s Bluff Vol 1

I hope to write more soon, if I don’t catch you IO hope you all have an awesome Christmas, with real mint sauce!

I find myself hungry for beauty. Not the kind you might think. Beauty comes in many shapes and forms. As I get older I seem to be more pre-occupied with beauty of heart, soul, mind, vision and more internal kinds of stuff. Outer beauty is driven by wanting to be healthy, and to love/respect myself. Nothing to do with clinging to what was or fear of losing who I am. As I get older and more wrinkled I am finding who I am.
Here is a photo blog belonging to a friend of mine. I love his photos and his thinking. Very inspirational.
Beautiful in fact.
http://montestevens.wordpress.com
Check it out now, funk soul brotha.

Hey it’s me!
Don’t you just love spring? For me however, though I know so well that the seasons effect me, it’s not just spring that has got me buzzing today.
It’s not politics, nor a monetary windfall, not the size of my bank account or anything else :-), it’s just simply this. I am glad to be alive and maybe, just maybe I feel so good because I am managing to have some kind of control over my life. TRUST me I am no control freak or policeman when it comes to life, BUT what I am is tired of feeling like I am not doing what I need to be doing.

AND at this moment in time I am making headway in just a few areas.
In this world we live in we can and do feel so powerless. We are bombarded with media messages about what we need and who we could be. THAT’S on top on the messages we bombard and condemn, define or judge ourselves with.

My biggie lately has been my health.
I was heavier than I ever was a few months ago, after 2 years of sitting mainly at a computer being creative and trying to build some kind of income.
NOW I find myself sitting on my couch at night feeling pretty healthy and on a journey towards wellness.
When will I ever learn, when will I ever forgive myself for being so slow to just do something about what I feel bad about.
I joined the gym, I have a weekly appointment with a nutritionist, I ride my bike and am becoming food wise.
I don’t feel powerless against my biggest enemy (xcuse the pun), who is the enemy? Its me!

I am not particularly flush with cash at the moment and maybe never will be, BUT I can live on a shoestring if needs be and I can live better than most of the world. I feel glad and grateful that I can survive and be content going without stuff. We have so much really.

SO YES I am buzzing. I am blessed, I am springy, because just like the seasons change and have a purpose, so am I changing and so do I have purpose.
That is a wonderful thing.
And I have a 1kg bag of coffee beans that smell divine in my pantry.
Even though I can really only do one cup of coffee a day…………..

Such small pleasures.

I love my Saturday mornings @ home. To wake and while I love my job (as a job) I love being home more and connecting with myspace.com, not myworkspace.com. Work is a wonderful part of life, I am thankful that I can work and that my job is involved with peoples lives etc, BUT there is no escaping, its fun and wonderful doing your own work @ home. Trust me, I don’t have protestant work ethicitis where unless I am working I am not happy or have no meaning. I can sit still and listen to the noises in my mind, I make myself stop and think and just be, watch the cars go by my house or look at the clouds, or a moonlight night. I have seen too many people who can’t, and who are actually afraid to do so. Isn’t it great that right now I have the fridge ready to pull out and clean behind, the vacumn cleaner ready to go make love to the floors and I want to sit down and write. This however is just the raving, what I really wanted to write was about the beauty and pleasure in simple things. Twas a feeling I had hanging up the washing, a delicious feeling.
Here’s my list of simple things today that have touched me today with their simple, uncomplicated beauty…….

• Waking to a letter from Susan who is 7000 miles away and 4 hours ahead in time yesterday
• Hanging washing on the line, and while pegging it up seeing the blue sky and feeling the sun dance on my hands
• The feeling of grass under my bare feet
• A coffee in the sun watching the cars go by
• The sound of the dishwasher and washing machine beginning their cycle
• Watering my plants, a Saturday morning ritual
• The sunlight on the wall as I wake, slats of light coming thru the blinds
• The daisies in the lawn sunbathing, being tickled by the wind
• A quick read of the local rag
• The yellow edges of the green agave leaves transparent in the eastern sun

Yes its these simple things that make me realise how rich I am. That I am free in a good land. That being down under does not mean down and out, that great joy can be found in the strangest and the simplest of places. Like the back lawn.

I know I have seen movies over the years of people who have simple lives and one might say a simple mind.
There is wisdom in this kind of simplicity, and great beauty to me.
I want to be like that.

I have not written for quite a while. At times I get just get fed up with my own words, my own thoughts, the energy involved in thinking and making sense of life and dreaming. And loving. THEN i always get to this point where I don’t give a toss, words are actually important to me and tho I do more than the daily male allocation of 2,000, and maybe as much as the female allocation of 20,000, I like to think that my words and thoughts are about good and positive things. I want to be create beauty in my life, be it asking myself the hard questions, or others. One of my favourite quotes is the your life is the greatest work of art. That takes active engagement. Being there. Commitment and perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances @ times. It takes a winners attitude to keep on keeping on. Sure you u can’t live in an intense space all the time, nor do I want to, but I am not just gonna sit back and let life happen to me or pass me by. I need to take it by the horns and wrestle with it.
Sometimes that gets too much I know, for me and others. I so try not to be self absorbed type5 guy.

There is nothing like the voice of a friend. Obviously I am some kind of communication junkie. Lately I have found myself having with drawl symptoms from a lack of intravenous supplies, and consequently been doing some serious thinking, along the lines of why I am me and what’s the matter with me. In the thick of it, I so don’t know if other people experience these crippling episodes, you feel alone as alone in this world and nothing is ever going to change, in fact in this state when you look back down your life path it just seems like its always been the same.
I wish my thinking wasn’t always serious. (which I know it isn’t, but it so seems so)
I found myself talking with someone not 30 minutes ago about things I had been thinking and feeling of late. Some might call it a venting, some a letting off steam kinda thing. Whichever it was I so needed it, there was no raised voice, just self doubt and wondering about the interface of me and the world, my history and future, what was true, would it ever change and all that kinda emotive stuff. Emo is the term used by youth apparently for this kind of talk. It was not a careless dump of negativity
In my listener I sensed no judgement, no answers and a lot of listening and compassion.
That was a gift I so needed to work out my thoughts and feelings in a context of acceptance and love.
It was a wonderful gift from a wonderful friend. I hope I can have that kind of voice when others need it.

And now I am back on track. Everything can seem so hard at times, a real uphill slog, and in that dazed state the road looks all uphill. The voice of a friend can change all that. Being there for someone be the need large of small, is a precious gift, a priceless gift.
I am over the peak.