I’m surrounded by non-believers. Unhappy people. People who don’t even know they’re unhappy. Maybe I need to tell them? Teach them at least. Teach them how to recognise their unhappiness.
No? Teach them to be happy then, teach them to see beyond the next purchase, the next piece of stuff that they want to hold in their hands, attach to their hearts. The weight of the world. The burden they choose, yes choose, to place upon themselves.
Ah, but I am not a teacher, even though that is what I say I am. It is a lie, a fallacy. I lack the courage to teach.
I lack the courage to be. To be in this moment, and to move freely into the next. It is random, you know this don’t you. You know there is no meaning and all purpose to what there is. It is of our own making, you know this. You know that in anything you choose to be. In all things you choose to exist. You choose to be what you are.
Free will.
And me? I am so free that I no longer see the magic that exists in my own being.
Today I went to bed. Pulled the covers up over my head and let myself slide into the dark. After a phone call to my son I felt too distant, too far away. So I went to bed. Safest place, as I have learnt from years of practice. I went into my cave, and rested. Quietly and calmly abided in my self, in my cave.
Perhaps there was no reason, or perhaps there were lots of reasons, it didn’t really matter. While in my cave, in the dark, the quiet, I slipped through a gap, and was very still for a long time, almost unconscious.
– the name doesn’t matter. For whatever reason(s) I was through the gap and once there I found myself, and when I came back, when I awakened I had a little part of me with me. A little ‘i’, there in my consciousness, in the back room, safely asleep, tucked up cosy with a soft night light on it’s face. And I gently woke that part up, ever so gently. Just came into the room and saw it so quiet, so still, eyes closed, face relaxed in a smile. So sound asleep. I just stood there and watched and waited. Waited patiently soaking up the love I felt. Waited and gloried in the moment knowing that it would change, it would open it’s eyes. I waited until that little sleeping part of me felt me there and opened it’s eyes.
And in my eyes that newly awake glorious part of me saw something. It caught a glimpse of things. Things that that wee sweet wonderful part of me was unable to comprehend. Yet it recognised in those things something that it was. We had something in common. It saw itself in me, and me in it.
And what it saw, it showed me.
It showed me this:
And there i was in the audience. For a fleeting moment, before the song even started, there i was in the smile of a little girl. In the wide adoring eyes of a little boy. There was my joy, my laughter, my innocence.
And when I saw Peter, Paul and Mary I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps this was not me. Peter and Paul and Mary looked too old. There was something wrong. Rationally I knew this was not me, yet there i was.
I didn’t panic, which I have done on other ocassions. I didn’t simply dismiss this whole episode as a wacky dream or fantasy, as I was once wont to do. I didn’t judge at all. There in the gap, in the cave I was able to simply wait. Wait and watch as that little beautiful part of me fell back to sleep. And I knew how still and calm it was. I knew how it dreamt, so softly. And in it’s dream it showed me this:
And there i was again. So much more quietly know, so much more softly. i was just a puff of smoke myself, faint, drifting off. And I saw myself in my mother’s eyes. There she was in the audience. With that faraway look on her eyes as she ever so timorously sang along. She was there. 1966.
I was 9. She was 49. She was a wild woman of the 1940’s. A witch of the south, who had travelled to the other side of the world, to a faraway place, where she had taken off her witch’s cowl, her orange and purple wild woman clothes and had lain naked in the sun. From this faraway land in the sun she heard this song and it awakened something within her.
She would sing this song as she baked. She would sing it as she painted the walls around her orange, as she painted the car. She would sing it to me as we towed the caravan behind that orange car away towards the sea. She would sing it to me as I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I saw into my eyes, and I saw this:
I was a little older now. No longer just a mummy’s boy, I was still my mother’s son. A mother and son with a faraway look in their eyes. A double act full of double meanings. A mother who holds my hand as we look into my father’s dying eyes, as we look into the sleepy eyes of my sons. And before we all fall asleep we make myschief and sail off, through night and day, in and out of weeks, and over years and years.
I am watching my sons now, as they slept. I am only a child myself. This is the magic my sons. And now you are all grown up do not forget the wild things, do not forget the magic dragon. I watch them as they sleep and I feel the love. I wait for I know it is only a moment and we will awake.
And once awake we all will visit the cave, we will tame the wild things and release the dragon. We all will once again play with the magic dragon.
Have you ever stopped and noticed? So much going in. So much going on. Everywhere. Everywhere we look. Everywhere we are. There is so much that we are aware of – all sensation – things, ideas, events we touch, taste, smell, hear and see. In our lives, everyday. In our dreams, every night.
Where does it all go? What of it? Where is it all, right now? I can’t seem to be aware of it all. So I select, I choose. I focus on this or that, one moment, one aspect, one bit.
One bit at a time. I heard somewhere that our brains can only think of one thing at a time. Perhaps that is why they flit so quickly from one thing to another. So superfast that we will never ever build a computer to match it.
And yet … What if we could be aware of it all at any one time? What if that were possible? What would that be like? As an experience? To be aware of, to know everything that was going on, for us, at one time. Whew. That would be magic.
That IS magic. There are no tricks, no props, no one else involved. Magic is up to us, magic is in us. We are capable of it. We CAN hold and be held by all that we know, all that we are aware of, in any one moment.
I just found this empty page in ‘drafts’ titled ‘om’. I have no idea how it got here. It has my name as the author and records that it was first saved 17 minutes ago. For the last 30 minutes or so I have been writing the previous post ‘in the beginning was the word…’. Then I mistakenly exited that post, so went back into the site to start again. When I did I noticed there was now 32 rather than the 30 drafts there previously. When I looked in drafts, there was one called ‘om’. Simply ‘om’ and nothing else, no writing on the page, just the word, om.
Those of you that know me, know I am not making this up.
I am sharing this with you because it has happened. Because on one level it is miraculous. Because on the other hand it is not. Don’t get me wrong, this is the magic I have previously spoken of. This is the mystery and wonder of the world at play. Sure this may also be understood as about my poor memory, or perhaps some glitch in the laptop, there are myriads of rational explanations if we wish to seek them. That is our choice. I do not.
I do not because I know.
I know that in the beginning was the word.
I know that in the end there is the word.
I know that right here, right now, there is the word.
Wow, I came across a business card between the pages of ”The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. That in itself proffers the humble card-cum-bookmark some mythological significance. And as for the page and the point it was marking, those will be in a later korero called ‘decay, disease and death’, so keep your eye out for that one.
The card, which in itself is a work of art, I was given a couple of months ago when I visited Greenwich Village with Cari, her son James and his partner Helen. Greenwich is a very nice place, the boat trip up the Thames was enjoyable as much for the commentary as anything else, and we walked to the top of the hill and straddled the mean time. We stood with one foot in the East and one in the West.
I have been unable to use the terms ‘East’ and ‘West’ so readily since that day. If this is it, I thought, then what the hell is all the fuss about. They aint so different after all, East appears very similar to West, when you look at it up close.
I loved the Market, it reminded me of Victoria Street Market back in Auckland, Aotearoa, with more art and more street culture and a little less large commercialism, more an arts and crafts feel, but a quality arts and crafts, if you know what I mean. Crickey I’m articulate!
Does anyone remember Cook Street Market? Anyone?
I digress. At the Market (Greenwich that it) there was this AMAZING stand with fabulous artwork on it. .. no not the one below, and isn’t that way cool though? I think I might buy a picture like that for Cari if I ever manage to get a job, ever…
This other stall was even more AMAZING. Just jaw-dropping stuff. And I briefly spoke to the young woman there (who may have been Claire) -she was very nice and gave me this card that I found today in Joseph’s book.
I had forgotten it, I had forgotten what it signified. It has come back. This time I followed it to a website. Clare Rollet is the artist.
Clare your work is magnificient. The detail and the colour are perfect. The choice of subject, the angle – magic. It inspires me, it takes my breath away. It is exquisite, almost difficult to look at. I hope that one day you will visit Auckland, New Zealand.
And I love cities too. I love walking through them, through all the varied and various parts of them. Along roads and paths, past shops and houses, across parks and commons, around in circles and in particular around the corners. I love the colours and the noise and the smell. I love the wabi-sabi.
I love the people who inhabit them. I love those who see the magic surrounds them. I love those who do not see the magic surrounding them. The magic that is in them. The magic that is them. The magic that is.
So my friends I recommend you all follow the link below for some absolutely stunning pieces of art. Clare could be coming to a city near you, or even a city all around you – but for now let’s start with London -
