Kiwi On The Loose

Well the answer is……………very!
I love it how in life you can have moments of incredible lucidity, where you see very very clearly how things are, and what people are saying or writing. THEN on the flip-side are those moments where you TOTALLY miss what was being said, or right under your nose, or before your eyes. I had a situation like this just recently, and yes I feel stupid and embarrassed I could be so blind and thick, but in other ways I am grateful for the wake up call.
For me the wake up call comes in several ways.
1. It is a reminder that I don’t always get it right, that it’s wise to challenge your own thinking and perceptions regularly.
2. It has made me realise that when you recklessly settle into a certain modus operandi or way of being as a person that doesn’t see you challenging who you are and  how you see things, that is when you can do dumb things and totally miss the point or go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with reality or the situation.

My aka is BlindPoet, and I have come to see how appropriate that is for me. If I was an American Indian the name would suit me down to the ground.
This week in my teaching doing listening activities with the kids I came to the realisation that the brain generalises sounds. When you think how the brain remembers and stores every sensual intake we have, that’s a lot of information. When we hear something, I think the brain throws up all the possiblities given that stimulus sound. If the brain had to scan every sound for a match it would take ages. So it throws up a lot of sounds like options. What we have to do is question the options and sort details out in the stimulus sound to see if they match the brains options/memories. That’s when it becomes listening. Listening and hearing are two different actions. We actually need to challenge what the brain thinks the sound is.

And so it is with what i think I read, or am hearing from someone or maybe even feeling.
What I think someone is saying and what they are actually saying may be two different things. It needs me to challenge what I think they are saying. When we get to a space like we just leap to our first understanding of something, that’s when we are at risk of missing the point and getting it totally wrong.

It takes a wake call, embarrassing yourself to realise hey mate, step back, slow down. Jumping to conclusions happens because I think the brain gets lazy, or we get to set in our ways.

Growing always has a level of discomfort attached.
And me being embarrassed is a growing pain.

Clear as mud!
When I think I am seeing very clearly, or acting as if I always have insight, I am possibly the most blind.

Mum & Dad

You were very here today
as I sat couched
writing @ Pablo’s
a snowy November outside
spilling my soul
the coffee cup translations
the meanderings of a son
prodical worker
paper scrawled rants
in a far off land.

I look
to the highest rock
like everlasting arms
stretching skyward
the blessing of the waiting father
a blimp on the horizon
waving in the air
sending words for the day
and mighty prayers
not lost across oceans
as far as east is from west
home is where you are loved

BlindPoet © Nov 2008

I began writing this last November 20th in Pablo’s in Denver.

Really, looking back it was a prolific day. Such a neat cafe. I had ensconced myself on the couch, surrounded by other Pablo dwellers and over 4 hours or more consumed 9 shots of expresso. So the best coffee, Danger Monkey, but very strong. I didn’t know what to order, so being one uncool and decafed as it were in the truest sense, I stood at the counter, the guy looking at me and I didn’t know what to call what I wanted. I ended up with triple shots, expresso in a small cup. You could get the refill free, and I think they gave me a free refill on the refill.  I think I talked Susan to death that week.

This is an affectionate reference to my Mum and Dad who knew they may not see there son again when I dismantled my life and set off for America, but gave him their blessing and support in following his heart to a strange land. And strange it was. I think, and the thought only just occurred to me, as they do,  that I thought America was going to be like the older shows I watched as kid on TV, like Lassie or the Beverly Hillbillies, or Disneyland’s tall tales and true. How wrong I was, and I struggled with how different and askew it was.

So here I sat this snowy day in the warmth of Pablo’s on the corner of 6th and Washington. This little kiwi guy, a sail on this huge adventure, missing home and the familiar, but very aware that he was loved. Not just by his family, but also his American girl, and that story is still unfolding and happening. It is a love story. The love story of my life.

I have really written a lot lately when I think of it, and I feel the wonder and the power of words and good coffee (only 3 a week) gathering a strength and confidence.Tonight I finished a poem that started one snowy cold day in Pablo’s in Denver last November. It was a day of 9 expresso shots and 6 poems. Fun and warmth.

Here is The Denver Old Time Dance Society
http://blindpoet259.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/the-old-time-dance-society/ which is published on my poetry blog.

Or you can read it here. It comes from a collection of thoughts and feelings while I walked the streets on Capitol Hill in Denver on my way to Ogden and 5th where I was helping a friend with some jobs on his home. I loved walking the 12 blocks from Colfax thru this old area of Denver. Heres a link to some photos from that time taken on my cell ph.
http://www.pbase.com/blindpoet/denverdays

Here’s the poem.
Leave a comment, I would love to know how it strikes you. Does it work, communicate………???

The Denver Old Time Dance Society

Stranger feet this dance floor has ne’r seen
elongated flagstones rutted
buffed dull crimson by a gazillion feet
Fall leaf woven carpets secret the drenching of beer
and the stale stench of chunder
with cheese like familiarity
This dance floor goes left and right,
on and on
16th, 17th, across Colfax,
across the abbey road, now you see me now you don’t
black minstrels in white pants
beneath a blue sky
where Lucy once flew with
diamonds and loved Peanuts.

A dance floor cavorted by trees
drunken
with tired limbo hangovers
like bouncers
sleeping off wet  dreams
Grease Lightening
memories of young lovers
bare flesh
parked classics
poop collection bags
the doggy lifestyles
of the rich and the not so
the monotony of middle classes
the daily drone
in CO2 madness
1 2 3, 1 2 3, turn
twist
stepping up
to

Mambo No.5
away from the light

Stranger feet this dance floor
has ne’r seen.

I apologise to my followers and myself for not writing more in what seems like a very long time. The truth is that I have been writing lots, just not to the blog.
That will change as now I have Scribefire on my new mac book pro here at school and I will blog away and get around the net blockade. Man that sounds exciting, what a word, b l o c k a d e. Love it, conjures up many stories in my imagination. Swashbuckling stuff with a beauty under my arm, which I already have. Note its not saying I have a beautiful armpit, BUT that I have a beauty under my arm.
I have been working on various projects but the exciting one is a book aptly called Blind Man,s Bluff. It is a collection of images from my times in America and New Zealand.
Check it out, here’s a link. It would make a unique and excellent present. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/772941
I am really excited about this book and the others I am working on. I have always wanted to write and so I am.
The preview is only 15/32 pages. Take a look and leave a comment there or here.
Shameless self promotion I know. But it seems to be the way of it. The squeaky wheel and all that………..

For a time in my life, and I so hope that it returns, the roads I traveled were in America. They were exciting roads, crowded with wonder at every twist and turn. Everything was new in its own way, I feel like it was a time of constant wonderment and much thinking. As time goes on I  find myself hungering for the road trips with Susan into the mountains or plane rides to new places, be they here or there.
I love being on the road.

The road of daily grind is  one that I am struggling with today. Dreaming gets tiring. You develop two separate lives that each sap your strength in different ways but they are both necessary. One begins when the other finishes. Who only works an 8 hour day. Certainly not dreamers. Two road confront the dreamer. One is your daily grind life, work and all that entails, and the other is the dream road, the one you need to travel to get to some other preferred destination. It’s a future you are trying to create, a different life or one that more reflects who you want to be. The sad thing I know is that you may miss the sights on the road you are traveling as you try to build the one ahead.BUT this is not new ground, many have traveled this path and so must I. I want to do both roads justice, they have a symbiotic kind of relationship. Saturday morning chores are calling. The reality of the road.

Hi faithful followers.

I am sorry that I have not been more active of late. I remain a compulsive communicator AND John Foster I haven’t forgotten about the rest of the Doc Holiday story.

I do have some exciting things happening and I will get to sharing these. Its great to be back in New Zealand and to have a job. I will never tire of saying that. Paying bills is a spiritual experience.

Being back at Kamo Intermediate and in the saddle I can see my perceptions from afar regarding me not being able to start @ the beginning of the year were askew. And I am glad about that. I have/had given a lot of me to the school since 1998. A little older and wiser now, I work to live and not live to work. I have many projects in the fire as it were, and the least of which is definitely not being the best me that I can be. Being a good you seems to come easy to some, for me I struggle with organising my shoes, or keeping to yet another filing system……but I know I am a good teacher, and its great to be back around students and to share the adventure of learning with them. Some of the world’s inhabitants and its management types have this propensity to want everyone to be the same somehow, while professing the virtue of creativity and diversity. Language and practise don’t often line up or shape the practical, visible outworking of philosophical positions.
I am blessed to be working in an environment where I can be myself, as I try to be the best me I can.

I shall return.

This is a story I want to tell, and will tomorrow. It’s late and I have been watching The Patriot which was on TV by coincidence. I will try not to get disillusioned by Mel’s latest womanising.
This is a teaser for the Doc Holiday story. It’s not actually his grave, becoz for reasons that will be revealed, it is hidden. But it’s the same cemetery.
To be cont’d.

It seems that I could write a few these ‘It’s been a while’ kinds of entries.
Since I have started back teaching, with a class of 31 special kids all differently grown and all differently wonderful…..I haven’t had a lot of time to think about anything except getting thru the next day.
In these early stages of putting a class together it’s a matter of routine. routine, routine.
For those who know me please don’t laugh.
I struggle to have routines for my own life.

In some ways my life at the moment can feel a bit like this guy that I snuck a photo of on a bus in Denver. You are just hanging on and taking the ride.You know the basic destination and are keeping your eyes on where you are going and where you may need to get off.
I know of others who are doing exactly the same.
In some ways in these times and living in a world changing @ an exponential rate, I wonder if this is not going to be the picture of the future for more of us who in the west have had the luxury of determining our security, lifestyles and futures.
@ least on the bus we are moving, or going somewhere, or taking the initiative to.

Yes @ 52 I crave peace, security and tranquility more than ever in my life. BUT, I can’t help but wonder if the times of being able to control and determine our futures and lifestyles within some kind of predictability has passed and we are in a new era of needing to hang on for the ride and a total rethink regarding how we foresee our futures and what they might even look like.

AND  when you really think about it, it has been some kind of Western luxury that we have even been able to do that. Let’s also not forget that being able to control you future or lifestyle has been the good fortune of those who have some degree of power to make choices and the resources available to make choices within the currency of their culture or environment. That could read ‘money’. Tho I regret to use the word, because being able to control our futures is not just about money and access to it. IT’s about mind set.

In other ways the ability to control your life circumstances and have some input into determining the shape of your future is a comparatively new historical phenomenon.
That it exists as a potential for you @ all (if you are in the Western world) does not mean it will be there forever. That is the nature of history. It has no master.

Things change beyond our control.

I cannot help but feel like a spoiled brat in comparison to the Kurdish widow of a murdered husband and father, when I get all churlish about my future, what it might be, should be and what I need to do to secure it. Really it is a somewhat arrogant and luxurious thought.

I am not advocating that we don’t plan or have dreams or be positive and turn in doomsdayers. I am merely challenging the assumption that we have right to a future styled ‘x’ or ‘y’. That is a luxury that history may be removing from us.And if we do have that kind of future it is a blessing most of the world never experience.

Only 5% of the worlds population has running hot water, or perhaps even running water on tap.
I do not think my logic is that far from the truth here.

The luxury of life changing choice and self determination has been ripped away from so many people in so many cultures by their circumstances which have not of their choosing.
AND in the West wings we whine and dine out on our dreams and plans for security, and having a future. That is a luxury denied the majority of the worlds inhabitants.

Then we have people like Madhoff who have fed their own greed beyond greed on peoples desire for security and the increase of their own wealth. Now that is so not wrong being wise with what you have, but my point more lies in the fact that Madhoff, (who deserves an existence he has no power over) had a huge amount of money to steal from people.

It existed.

Which he did and in his own greed he took down many charitable institutions that were good for mankind and individuals personal dreams of retirement and future security.

In some ways Madhoff typifies perhaps the state that we have gotten to, but his is extreme I admit. If I am honest, I know I am capable of this kind of greed.

How much is enough? What could he have possibly done with all that money and with not even a conscience about the lives he was destroying.

50 Billion Dollars!

And so in conclusion I pose the thought that perhaps the world is going to change drastically. Perhaps we are not going to be able to create a secure retirement plan, and a life of golf ,sea cruises and trips abroad. Even now those are perhaps the reality for a small percentage of older people.

Perhaps the reality is going to be far more earthy and we will be working to the grave just like many of our forefathers. Just like cultures who have not had the luxury of western greed and priviledge.

Sure we have had freedom, individualism, free enterprise and all its virtures and we have built some kind of shrine around these things and attempted to make them our birthright forever.

I wonder what joy, wisdom and character we have missed out on learning from those who have not been so fortunate.

What do you think?

I’d like to know.

Well despite the business of life, I have just found an amazing little add on that will help me prattle on even more. Its called ScribeFire, and it works with FireFox. That’s an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. And much as I love Bill Gates, its less virus ridden and just different.
Well it’s Saturday and I have survived the week. HAD to cancel a trip South becoz of the weather, but will have a much needed time at home gathering my thoughts and energy for the week.

I think I will write something meaningful later.
I’d encourage people to read a comment on my previous blog made by Craig. Wise and inspiring words. Thanks Craig for y6ur responses.

There was a time when New Zealand held the Americas Cup, and even Dennis Connor and the New York Yatch Club gazillions and the legal wranglers couldn’t keep us from winning it. There is a Tutukaka connection here.When the defence before last was held in Auckland, New Zealand, the Tutukaka Yatch Club put in a bid the mount the challenge from here. It would have been amazing. In some ways I am so glad it didn’t happen. The lure of money doesn’t always result in development along environmentally conscious directions.

This is the speck of paradise where I am now living.

And I must confess I am living. Totally. In the sense of having a job, a regular income and being able to pay my bills and get out of debt.

As I think I stated in my last post about buying jandals, simple things hold a lot of pleasure in the face of a world that’s struggling with economic stability.

Last week I went for several evening walks down to the marina late at night and out to the breakwater. The reflections of the night lights on the water, the mullet jumping, the sights and sounds of boats at their mooring, all this is sensually captivating.

It’s  just lovely to immerse myself in at the end of long and hard days. I love the night and you can feel the marina a real sense of all the boats and bodies resting after a hard day in the elements and the sun.

29 Marlin have been caught and tagged or kept this summer so far.

It’s been a record year. The old timers are saying things like, “It hasn’t been like this since…”.

Zane Grey once went game fishing from here.

Interestingly enough, this season several punters have had injuries from Marlin swords after they have been landed. A rich mans occupational hazard I spose.

Being back in teaching is pretty consuming time wise, gratifying some days and down right frustrating on others. There are 31 students in my class. 9-10 year olds.

I am pleased that I see in myself a level of tenacity that I can only thank America for. You gotta do what you gotta do.

My working now is no longer because I have some need to prove, if only to myself that I can do it. I know I can do it. I found in America a confidence in my ability to survive and put into practice the well known ‘kiwi’ trait of versatility and of being ‘hard’ working.

And I thank those who allowed and helped me to do that.Not the least of which was Susan’s help and support.

Now I work to live. I have a purpose and getting through the tough stuff brings that grit I have discovered in myself to the surface.

That in itself is a simple thing again.

I want to build a base for my future, my future with Susan, my kids, and so you do what you gotta do. That’s motivation enough.

So when the few kids in my class are not tuning into the programe, I simply remember what I am trying to do here, why and for whom I am trying to do it, and I grit my teeth, take a deep breathe and say it again…….or wait until those off the programe get back on it.

These are simple things and I am a slow learner, but I get the message in the end.

Simplicity brings happiness.

I am a very happy man and excited about the future.

The best I believe is yet to come.