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 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

Loving is easier when we let go of expectations.........

Have you ever heard of the term the ''Golden Rule''?

In short, one may call it a principle of reciprocity

as in: Treat others as you would want others to treat you.

Many view it as a culturally universal ethical tenet.

That is, regardless of nationality, religion or political

''flavour'', it is a fundamental human-made concept

/construct that helps us to truly consider the well-being

of others.

The ancient Greeks thought of the Golden Rule

as especially fundamental to one of four kinds of love

(Eros, Storge, Agape, Philia) that they named Philia.

Philia represented a kind of love founded 

on loyalty, commitment, steadfastness and

an open and honest companionship/friendship.

Philia does not include romantic feelings, although,

at times a love that may have started out as a 

friendship/companionship kind of love can

deepen and transform into including romantic

feelings/emotions.

And, of course,.... the opposite.

My personal observation is that although any

kind of Love is often complex and comes with a 

myriad of obstacles to overcome, Romantic Love

(Eros) seem to be the trickiest kind of them all

due to the volatility of romantic feelings.

(We may ''fall in love'', but we may also ''fall out

of love''.)

However, I've come to hold the opinion that

us humans often trip ourselves up by investing

far too much importance on allowing expectations

to override our hearts aspirations. 

If you love me, then you................

If you call yourself my friend, then you.........

You're family so you should...........

Since I feed and take care of you Dog/Cat/ other animal,

you should obey me............

Since we are both humans you should at least........

Uncertainty is something us humans don't like much

and to love often includes an element of vulnerability,

openness and trust and this, this we often experience as

very risky business.

Although we often probably do not think of love

as transactional in nature, (as in: as long as you love me, 

I will love you back.) letting expectations

take control of our feelings of love with demands of

those expectations being fulfilled often tend to

result in more of a transaction rather than a mutual

exchange of love.

Another aspect of love I have also been pondering is

how easy it can be to forget that for anything alive

and or living to flourish and grow, is that it needs

nurturing, a tending to.

Alas, here comes the Golden Rule.

Because I love you I will.........

Dear friend, I so appreciate and love you.........

You're family and though we don't see eye to eye

on everything, I do still love you.......

You're a good doggie, kitty, and because I love you I will........

Madam/Sir, you look tired, will you let me help you........

Any kind of love expressed comes with the potential

and or possibility of rejection.

However, those in the know reckons that love

is not an emotion/feeling, but an enduring state of

mind in which we consistently care for the well-being

of others and may I also suggest, all the critters and

other living things that share

this planet with us.

''Ask not what Love can do for you,

ask what you can do for Love.''

(Citizen Z and JFK)

''Mankind is the game of risk as played out

on a planet it calls Earth.''

(Citizen Z)

about the image: acrylic on large canvas, some editing in

Elements

 

Love is an emotional process, not a logical position.

A few years ago one of my readers contacted me and asked

if I could write about love.

-What kind of love? I asked him.

-What do you mean with what ''kind of love''? he answered.

-Well, in my view the word ''love'' is one of those words

that often when we use it, we redefine it, I responded.

-I've never thought of if that way but I would really

appreciate it if you could share some of your thoughts 

on it. 

Since he asked so nicely I told him I would give it a try.

Love, in my view, is a high wire act.

How so?

''Love'' as far as I understand it, is like

 an umbrella term for an array of different

kinds of deeply experienced and held emotions.

We may say that we ''love'' cheese, cars, music, art,

rainy days, flowers, surfing, hanging out with friends,

binge our favourite shows, play with our kids,

etc. etc. etc. but I have a feeling that when we use

the word ''love'' about those things, we are not talking

about the kind of love we use to define how we

feel about our nearest and dearest.

Why High wire act?

As I view it,

love is often a balancing act including

all manners of risky elements and

 authentic love will require from us to

embrace the risk of the unknown and the

possibility of loss and or transformation.

I have used the word ''authentic love''

because I believe that there are times

when we may confuse what we call love

with what may perhaps be ''better'' defined

as what we believe we need.

If we believe that our happiness/quality of

life hinges on being the recipient of other's

love, attention and respect rather than

the love, attention and respect we offer

others, are we trying to fulfill a need

based on satisfying our ego or are we

trying to express and communicate 

our authentic feelings of love?

Basically, the difference between love and needs

may be:

''Love lets go. Needs hold on.''

(Neale Donald Walsch)

Have we idealized love to the extent that we

have now come to develop unrealistic

expectations of what it is supposed to be and

what it should do for us?

Does expectations really have anything to do 

with love???

I don't believe so.

I believe that love is fluid and malleable

rather than static and unchangeable.

An emotional process rather than a logical

position.

According to the ancient Greeks there are

 different kinds of love:

Storge {family love/including pets}

Agape {love for our fellow humans, critters}

Philia {friendship/platonic love}

Eros {romantic/passionate love}

Different as these different kinds of love

may be, they do have one thing in common:

Expectations.

 Often unspoken but strongly assumed.

Expectations have a lot to do with 

determining how we view our reality.

When or if our expectations are not 

aligning with the way we view our reality,

we often feel let down, disappointed or frustrated.

Mother to son: I expected you to come home earlier.

Son: Why? I told you I didn't know when I would be back.

Father to daughter: Is that what you're wearing???

I expect you to dress decently.

Daughter: Why? This is what all my friends are wearing.

Wife to husband: I expected you home earlier.

Why didn't you call me?

Husband: I'm sorry. My battery died.

Lover to lover: If you love me you should know

how I feel about it.

Lover: I do love you but I don't always know what

you feel.

Etc. etc. etc. etc.

Love, whether of the Storge, Agape, Eros or Philia

kind, fares more harmoniously in my view when

we act with patience, resilience, compassion,

forgiveness, attention and with a whole hearted

 commitment to others wellbeing.

Love may at times appear to be an enigma,

that elusive something that always seem to be out of reach.

Take courage my friend, for the truth of it is.

That deep inside of you, the very core of you, 

is where love lives.

about the image: water colour on paper edited

in Elements

It takes courage to love...........

Slowly she lowers her arm holding the bow.

She raises her eyes and with as much disdain and

defiance as she can muster, she glares at the conductor.

There will be consequences, this she knows, but she

is so tired and hungry that she no longer cares.

For days she and her fellow musicians have rehearsed

the same five pieces of music over and over, so now,

they are all exhausted and at the brink of collapsing.

Head bowed and staring at the floor, she gathers up all her

 courage and then petitions the conductor for a few minutes

 rest and a cup of water for everyone.

Her petition is granted and as the ragtag little orchestra

sits down on the cold, dirty and inhospitable floor, the

conductor fills a battered tin cup with water and hands it to

her to pass around.

In an attempt at finding

 some warmth, they all sit close together

while silently passing the tin cup one to another.

With the music now silent they can hear the noise

from the goings on outside their so called ''rehearsal space''.

At the sound of the ratatatataa and a woman's scream,

she grabs her friend Vira's hand and together they quietly

say a prayer. But a few minutes later all the orchestra members

are holding each others hands and have joined in

in the prayer.

A few moments later their momentary reprieve from their 

harsh reality is broken as the conductor shouts Enough! 

and they are ordered to start playing again.

One by one they pick up their instruments

and as the conductor raises his baton and count them in,

 like a mist the music of Beethoven permeates the

cold stale air in Barrack 14 at the Theresienstadt

concentration camp.

*

The above graphite drawing is my interpretation

of a photo I found.

The photo was taken at the Theresienstadt

concentration camp, the story.....taken from

my imagination.

I wish 

that we would chose to stop the killing of each other

I wish

that we would chose to be more accepting of each other

I wish

that we would chose to care much more for one another

I wish

that we would chose to listen more to those we call ''others''

I wish 

that we would chose to be more caring sharing lovers

I wish

that we would chose to honour humans of all colours

I wish

that we would chose be kind to all of us who hungers

I wish

that we would chose to build, restore and lift each other

I wish 

that we would chose to learn much more about each other

I wish

that we would chose to focus more on what we all have

in common,

and take a moment to consider

that what hurts us,

 also hurts others.

''Love one another but make not a bond of love:

let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your

souls.''

(Kahil Gibran)

above painting: acrylic on canvas

Life is an analogue experience........

It was one of those days when the light was extraordinarily 

beautiful.

One of those days when for a brief moment in time

the light would fall on everything in its path

and turn even broken pieces of glass to the

most precious of jewels.

I loaded my Pentax analogue camera with a fresh

roll of film and headed for the beach.

Arriving at the beach, what I had hoped for

was immediately apparent in all its glory.

The rain had yet again managed to set the scene for

the sun to perform its magic as its rays enveloped

everything it touched.

Knowing that this very special light would only

last for another hour, I started to wander about

searching for that special shot.

I wasn't searching for a postcard image, I was

searching for that something that under normal

circumstances probably would be considered as

uninteresting and rather dull. 

Something that now, with the help

of this special light had become something

beautiful, something extraordinary,

something more ........ like a piece of art.

As I sat down on a bench, camera at the ready

and scanning the scenery, I noticed something 

 in the periphery catching the light in a most

spectacular way.

Knowing that time and therefore also the light

was slipping away, I aimed my camera at the

''whatever it was'', zoomed in and took a few

shots in quick succession.

With my finger still on the shutter button

it started to rain again.

I quickly put on the lens cap, shoved the camera

 in the camera bag, and ran for cover.

The photo session was over and so was

the extraordinary light.

Halfway home I realized that I had to wait

for the film to be developed before I could 

have a closer look at what those last few

frames of film contained.

But then again, part of the fun of using 

an analogue camera was (and still is in my view) 

the anxious anticipation of picking up a fresh

batch of photos from the developers.

*

These days we snap pics with our telephones.

We have immediate access not only to view

our pics but also to edit and print them.

Every moment can be ''frozen'' in time.

We no longer need to use our minds and

memory facilities in order to remember 

our special moments.

What I keep wondering about though,

is whether it's really that good for our

ability to remember stuff if we keep

relying on an i-Thingy to do the remembering

for us?

Insight: Once upon a time, photographs were often

used to authenticate experiences and events.

Today? Not so much, as we have figured out

how to ''deep fake'' and edit images in the

most genius of ways so that photos/pics/images can

 no longer be trusted.

*

Maybe if we focus our attention more on

experiencing the(a) moment instead of

capturing it, we may become the beneficiaries

of those precious moments instead of one of our

many Data Storage systems.

Just wondering...........

This is an acrylic on canvas painting made

from a close-up of the above photographic image.

What is it: it is broken pieces of glass from a green

 beer bottle on top of a water-soaked ledge

What makes our planet precious? Its scarcity.

When I started this blog over ten years ago, I decided to

stay away from two topics:

Politics and religion.

My aim with this blog since my first post is to write

about stuff that anyone, anywhere, may find helpful.

Stuff that may assist in some way to broaden

our understanding of others and ourselves.

Stuff that hopefully can offer some nuggets of hope 

and encouragement for those times when we

may find ourselves troubled, confused, and finding

it hard to articulate with words our true thoughts,

feelings and state of mind.

For all the books(and they are many) that I have

read and are still reading, there is one topic that

I find very challenging to read about.

That topic is that which we have named Universe.

Watching a documentary on Space in general, an

ex-astronaut was asked if the experience of seeing

earth from ''far, far away'' had affected him.

His answer was that he and other fellow astronauts

 no longer identify with a specific nationality or culture,

instead they see themselves, and all citizens on earth,

as one people, one world.

(There is a word for this, and it is ''Overview effect''.

Which means a cognitive shift that affects some

astronauts when they view the earth from space.)

The doco ended with our view zooming out from

earth until earth was no longer visible and me,

experiencing a bad bout of vertigo.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan gave a speech before the

United Nations in which he had this to say:

''Perhaps we need some outside universal threat

to make us recognize our common bond.''

Unfortunately when he said this, many of his loyal

supporters had come to the conclusion that he

had gone a bit ''batty''. 

I'm not so sure he was wrong.....batty or not. 

There's even a movie suggesting that Reagan

may not have been so batty after all:

''Independence Day.''

Many of the astronauts who have viewed earth

from space, have said that they experienced unexpected

 overwhelming emotions and an increased sense of

connection to other people and Earth as a whole.

Exploring species as we are, we keep exploring space 

in search for life on other planets. As we do so, we gain 

more and more understanding of just how vast space is

and how small our precious little blue planet is.

At this point in time, as far as we know, Earth 

is alone in harboring life. (As we define life),

A lonely little blue dot in the midst of an unending

cosmic darkness.

Such being the case, that makes Earth precious

in my view.

Yet, somehow we behave as if it isn't.

Our history of behaviour on this precious planet

bear witness to our carelessness, indifference,

and rampant abuse of the bounty and beauty

it has, and is, providing for us.

Are we so caught up in our own little worlds

that we are failing to acknowledge that perhaps the

greatest threat to our planet may not be aliens

..............but us?

We can do better.

''Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need,

but not every man's greed.''

(Gandhi)

Maybe if we were to invest time and practice into 

being compassionate, charitable and understanding.....

More considerate in the way we treat our ''home'',(earth)

our fellow humans, our fellow critters, maybe then

we would come to truly value just how

precious our ''little blue dot'' is.

Scarcity, as I understand the word,

 is what makes something precious.

But, so far, we have yet to discover another

planet just like ours.

''Earth is not our property to

do with as we please.

We are mere its tenants.''

(Citizen Z)

about the image: ink on paper, editing in Elements