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.

This saying is more perhaps an Australian saying, but since such a close we love to hate you bond exists between the Australian and the Kiwi, kiwis affectionately use it too.
“She’ll be right mate” is a turn of phrase that means just what it says. It has a twang of its own, it’s own accent even. R2D2 in Starwars could never really carry this off, or John Wayne for that matter. It has to have the drawl of down under folks.
Just like ‘don’t worry be happy’ has a Jamaican voice inherent.
So what does it mean?
Simply that, don’t worry, it will all be okay.
It can mean ‘ I don’t need any help’ when used to reply to an offer of help.
In fact here’s a song written by Fred Dagg (another post in himself) that will give you the idea.

When you’re hunting in the mountains and your dog’s put up a chase,
And a porker’s coming at you and he doesn’t like your face.
And you’re running and he’s running and he’s pounding on the pace,
Well, don’t worry mate, she’ll be right.

She’ll be right, mate, she’ll be right.
Don’t worry mate, she’ll be right.
You can get your feed of pork when he slows down to a walk
So don’t worry mate she’ll be right.

When you’re logging in the ranges and you’re riding down the bluff,
With forty feet of timber riding right behind your chuff.
Your clutch has started slipping and your brakes are worse than rough.
Well, …She’ll be right, mate, she’ll be right.
Don’t worry mate, she’ll be right.
Just give her all you can give her, and she’ll just fly into the river.
So don’t worry mate she’ll be right.

When they’ve finished off your forwards, and your backs are wearing thin,
The second half’s near over and you’re forty points to win,
And a hulking wing three quarter’s got his teeth stuck in your shin
Well, …She’ll be right, mate, she’ll be right.
Don’t worry mate, she’ll be right.
You won’t worry who’s the loser when you meet them down the boozer.
So don’t worry mate she’ll be right.

When you’re boiling up the copper and you’re brewing up the hops
You’ve made a hundred dozen and you’ve hammered down the tops.
The missus comes and asks you where you’ve put your footy sox.
Well, …She’ll be right, mate, she’ll be right.
Don’t worry mate, she’ll be right.
Shove a shot of metho in, and you’ll swear you’re drinking gin.
So don’t worry mate she’ll be right.

So she’ll be right, can be added to a huge variety of situations and applications.

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’s Saturday morning and here I sit.
No matter where you live on the planet, and perhaps its an urban planet dwellers trait, Saturdays are just so wonderful.
We got thru the week. Survived another 5 days of work. Maybe had another WHEW! payday experience with your bank acc. I sure am glad to have a job.

While I was in America I realised that Friday nights and Saturdays and Sunday afternoons all felt the same as here in NZ. I had always wondered if they would. Such are the things I wonder about.

Friday nights in Denver just felt like Friday nights in Whangarei, on the other side of the world. In the air you could feel the relief of the weeks passing and time for yourself without having to worry about work in the morning. It was party time.
There is a sense of WHEW! in the air.
Freedom.

Saturday mornings were similar in Denver but not as marked, possibly because any day or night of the week there are just so many people out and about. Denver is a seething mass of humanity most anytime. And it’s not even the largest of American cities!

Sunday afternoons in Denver however were so like in New Zealand. I don’t think it was just me. I can remember heading back down into Denver with Susan from playing in the mountains. In the late afternoon sun even the freeway was permeated by happiness and a kind of slow motion vibe. You could so feel it. It was like the same song was playing in travellers internal radio stations.

It was the same kind of happiness that I remember feeling sitting in the backseat of the car as a kid coming back from the beach after a Sunday afternoon with Mum and Dad. I had been in the sun, and dreaming about girls while lying on my beach towel, and looking out past Rangitoto towards the open sea of the Hauraki Gulf, watching the yachts in the sea haze and warm wind. Dreaming and happy. Life was a breeze then when you think about it.

Magic I guess describes that feeling. School was still fun, there were girls and games at school, so the last few hours of freedom were great and more linked to a favourite Sunday evening TV show. Slowing down the inevitable slide into another Monday wasn’t a huge worry.

Wow what a blessed childhood when I think about it!

And as I grew up and even as life got more complicated as it does, Sunday afternoons still felt the same. (but with the additional dream of afternoon delight or skyrockets in the night)

The Sunday afternoon feeling or vibe does seem to slow time down and radiate all of our dreams for a life of weekends and three day work weeks or no work at all. It’s like the Tantric Yogi slowing down the heart rate.
You could see it on the freeway. Cars with bikes, boats, full of happy people just slowing down the inevitable arrival of Monday by not thinking about it to hasten its arrival. Its like there is a collective consciousness of everyone to milk the last hours of freedom on the weekend and keep the contentment of what they had just done to revel in their freedom.

And so we are happy.
In the setting sun behind us in the west. Or where ever we are heading or where ever we are facing.

Can anyone relate to this?

I am grappling at words to describe it.
As I write my flat-mate Paul is mowing the lawns and the smell of fresh cut lawn makes this all the more real. It’s a weekend smell. It’s almost primal.

In some ways I see life in freeze frame moments.
It’s like you are heading down the freeway (motorway in NZ speak) and you see a face in a passing car, faces, families, lovers or mates. The guys all coming back from a bonding trip. The camera shutter clicks and you study those faces, or scenes. The head sleeping against the passenger window. The glow of time out side and together, or against the elements, time on the earth.

You know part of what they are feeling. It’s so real.

And so the camera in your head captures, or observes many things everyday.
SOMEHOW you know a slice of what that person, people, or situation might be feeling because you have had freeze frame moments with yourself.

There is a collective consciousness that really if we tapped into it, it would unite us as humans.

Perhaps a campaign on the Sunday afternoon bliss could unite us.

Or building up a collective bank.

So we understand each other and identify with our like experiences as humans.

But hey, and I regret to be negative, it’s just like the trench wars of world war one.
They sang carols at Christmas, played soccer in no mans land..then went back to killing each other.
Fellow brothers, fathers, husbands, uncles, lovers of someone.

Why is that?

You would think that in all our technological nirvana we would understand and empathise more with others.

BUT………………..

I wish the world could live in the ‘weekend bliss’ state more.

And I know full well, having a weekend and being able to have that ‘luxury’ is a blessing that I have done absolutely nothing to deserve.

None of us deserves anything…hey if evolution is how we got here, why do we have any concept we deserve anything. Where do rights come from? We are accidents and the fusion of time & chance.

Why else do we kill the unborn and each other. We don’t really matter

Better go do some housework.
Pauls finished the lawns.

And I am in too deep.

It’s Saturday morning.

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.