Swimming with jellyfish........not recommended

 

The minute the plane touched down in Brisbane I knelt

down and planted my sweaty palms on the steaming hot

asphalt.

Finally, after what seemed as forever, I had arrived.

Having spent time in Spain, Italy and other hot countries,

I thought that I knew how to deal with heat.

I was wrong. 

Welcoming me to Australia as I walked to the terminal

was the Australian summer and that, dear reader, 

means a humid kind of heat that would probably have 

most of us begging for mercy.

As soon as I arrived at my folk's place on Tamborine Mountain

I was told to never to leave my shoes outside, to

always check for ticks(horrible little bloodsucking critters),

watch out for redbacks and funnel web spiders as they

are deadly, and kill all ants but especially the red and green

ones.

What!?!!??

Oh, and also, if you go for a walk in the rainforest,

wear gumboots so the leeches(black horrible things

that start out small but they suck your blood until

they are three times! in size) wont get you.

Not only could heat squeeze the life out of you,

apparently the country was also riddled with insects, snakes,

and other critters all hell bent on doing the same.

On hearing all this,

I was seriously considering to never venture outdoors

while I was in Australia.

Alas, heat is a serious antagonist and after sweating

gallons and enduring many, many sleepless nights...

I decided to find a breezy spot somewhere safe.

Ha! Amateur! 

Returning from a walk in the rainforest(I had been

told that it was always much cooler there.)

I put away the umbrella(just in case ticks or other biting

or stinging insects pounced on me) and then sat down

to pull off my gum boots.

Looking at my feet after I having pulled off my boots,

I noticed that they were covered in blood and a

bunch of leeches.

Remembering someone telling me to put salt

on leeches to make them let go, I somehow made my

way to the kitchen, grabbed a saltshaker and started

pour salt on the bloodsuckers.

One by one they fell off and bravely I scooped

them up and flushed them down the toilet.

(From then on I always carried a saltshaker with me

when I went for a walk in the rainforest.)

As time passed and I learned to adapt to the many

''dangers'' that was part of living in Australia, I grew

to love it. 

I applied for and was given a permanent visa,

I worked in my folk's restaurant, learned how to drive,

bought a car and started to drive off the mountain and

down to the beach as often as I could.

I made some friends and moved in to a share-house

with a young couple

who lived in a house barely 100 meters from the beach.

Nick surfed and made surfboards and Rita made clothes.

Every morning they would head down to the ocean for

a surf and I would come along for a swim.

For me, the Pacific Ocean was beautiful, inviting and

''safe'' in difference to ''land'', which seemed just riddled

with an endless offering of stinging, biting and potentially

deadly ''critters''.

Safe? Did I say the ocean was safe? 

Wrong.

None of my surfing friends seemed bothered about

sharks, stone fishes, jellyfishes or stingrays, so I assumed that

I was quite safe body surfing the white-wash.

Wrong again. 

One morning, happily surfing the white-wash

I suddenly noticed a bunch of my friends standing on the

 beach waving, shouting and flailing their arms about.

I thought they were just fooling around until I clearly

heard the words: GET OUT!!!!!!!!!

Having just swum out past the break I stopped swimming,

started to tread water and had a look around me.

I was totally surrounded by Compass jellyfish.

(Very nasty, potentially dangerous.)

Somehow, I managed to get out of the water 

without being stung. (Don't know how, it's still a

mystery.)

I have since been stung many times by another nasty

 jellyfish called ''Blue bottle'', but here's the thing;

I still love Australia and call it ''home''.

Australia, some reckon, is a ''deadly'' country

not made for the faint hearted.

Whether on land, in the water, or in the air....

it seems danger awaits us.

Here's the thing though, it is also a country

with golden sands, crystal blue waters, open

spaces, night skies sparkling with millions of stars,

and a nature inhabited by flora and fauna found

nowhere else.

Australia also has

a living culture created by a people who have nurtured 

and looked after country for thousands of years

and for whom the term ''deadly'' means excellent.

Putting some rubbish in my rubbish bin one

morning I suddenly came face to face with

this spider.

And yes, this is the real size.

And no, they can bite but seldom do so.

It did however give me a bit of a fright when

it was two centimeters away from my eyeball!

About the images: top: water colour on paper

''Lovecraft's Jellyfish''

above: water colour on paper

Unconditional love.......is there such a thing

Some say that love is of paramount importance

for all human beings.

Some say that human beings are born with

with an instinctual capability to love and to be loved.

Some say that love is an inherent human trait,

biological in nature and with mechanisms that makes

it possible for us to be compassionate, caring, and

nurturing toward each other.

Some say that love like many other emotions/feelings,

 is able to bring joy and elation, but also pain and suffering.

Some say that most kinds of love comes with an element

of risk.

The risk of rejection, loss, grief, disappointment

 and unfulfilled expectations.

''Loving can cost a lot, but not loving always costs

more, and those who fear to love often find that

want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy

from life.''

(Merle Shain)

Some say that motherly love is the strongest

and purest type of love of all......

Some say that motherly love, whether reciprocated or not 

is foremost concerned with her offspring's

well-being, needs and safety.

However, some do ask........is this really true for all mothers

 or is this perhaps a cultural trope(figure of speech)?

The way we view motherly love, is it not perhaps

highly influenced by our own lived experiences and

the culture in which we grew up?

Actually, come to think of it, how we view love,

any kind thereof, as far as I can ascertain

is probably also highly influenced by our own lived experiences 

and the culture in which we grew up (and maybe still are).

Is pure (without expectations) love even a possibility

for human beings? 

Since I was a teenager I have pondered this. 

Finding a definitive answer has proved fruitless.

The closest I have come to an answer

 is what some call ''unconditional love''.

Some say that ''unconditional love'' is a ''pure love'' as

it is supposedly founded on ''loving someone or something'' 

without any thoughts of reciprocity.

Are we capable of doing this?

Can we maintain feelings of love if whoever or whatever

we love rejects and denies our very existence?

Perhaps parental love IS the closest kind of love

we can call ''pure/unconditional''?

Motherly love

Child, I love you, but your screaming for

hours on end is tearing me apart.

Child, I love you, but you putting everything

in your mouth has got me me frantic.

Child, I love you, but you refusing to sleep

 has got me feeling like the walking dead.

Child, I love you, but the time has come

for you to learn new things and play with others.

Child, I love you, and I know you're scared

but trust me on this, this passage too will pass.

Child, I love you, so if you need to leave,

then leave, but always know, you have a home.

Child, I love you, and I love your children too.

In truth, no matter what you do,

I will always, always, always, love You.

*

Perhaps a mother's or father's love for

their children is as close to unconditional

and pure as a human being can muster.

However, each stage a child goes through on their way to 

becoming self-reliant adults often brings with it a spectrum of

emotions ranging from joy to despair for

his/her/their responsible care-takers.

Like a kaleidoscope's image shifts with every

turn we make and thus creating new images, in my view,

so does our experience of love and loving change

with every experience we have with that which

we call love.

''Love is the the soul's light,

the taste of morning,

no me, no we,

no claim of being.''

(Rumi)

about the images: Top: ''A mother's love'',  felt texters on cardboard

Bottom: "Kaleidoscope'' water colour on paper