How was it

when a queen walked between courtiers

toward her throne?

The rustle of satin and silk,

the dignity of it,

her head held high

while her subjects’ eyes scarcely dared look up

to gaze upon her majesty.

And what of this day in July

walking between wildflowers,

yellow, heads high,

making a path for me by the sea?

The radiant summer light,

the surf’s applause,

the lizard and rabbit escorting me down the path.

Am I more or less of a queen?

My heart knows,

and I will never tell the secret.

Carol Bialock.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak

Mary Oliver 

I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you,
not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock.
A strong house
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbours.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences,
respectful, keeping our distance
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always the fence of sand our barrier,
always the sand between.

And then one day
(and I still don’t know how it happened)
The sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome even.
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine,
less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight, and I thought of drowning, and I thought of death.
But while I thought, the sea crept higher till it reached my door.
And I knew that there was neither flight nor death nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling you stop being good neighbours,
Well acquainted, friendly from a distance neighbours.
And you give your house for a coral castle
And you learn to breathe under water.

Carol Bialock.

I haven’t told Stan yet, but I think I have fallen in love with Timothy Spall.

The man, that is as distinct from the actor. Two different people, of course, and the difference never ceases to fascinate me.

Timothy Spall says about himself, as Actor….“My job as a character actor is the make me fit the character, to serve the character. To present this human being who turns up in a piece of film or entertainment that’s going, you know, exist as if it might exist after the film is finished and it existed before the film has started.It’s my job to manipulate feelings”.

And about Timothy Spall, the man….“I was always insecure about the way I looked”. Why would that be, I wonder? To me, he is drop dead gorgeous!

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way

With a resolute heart and cheerful?

Or did you hide your face from the light of day

With a craven soul and fearful.

Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or trouble’s an ounce’

Or trouble is what you make it,

And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,

But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth?  Well, well, what’s that!

Come up with a smiling face,

It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,

But to lie there ~ that’s disgrace.

The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce

Be proud of your blackened eye!

It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;

It’s how did you fight ~ and why?

And though you be done to death, what then?

If you battled the best you could,

If you played your part in the world of men,

Why, the Critic will call it good.

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,

And whether he’s slow or spry,

It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,

But only how did you die?

Edmund Vance Cooke.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

A poem about trees by Herman Hesse

‘For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts… Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.‘

I have been acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain and back in rain.
I have out-walked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away in interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street.

But not to call me back or say goodbye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost

Under the anger, under the fear, under the despair, under the broken heartedness, there is a radiance that has never been harmed, that has never been lost, that is the truth of who one is.

Gangaji

“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste 

Speak your truth quietly and clearly  

And whether or not it is clear to you, 

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

Therefore, be at peace with God, 

whatever you conceive Him to be. 

And whatever your labours and aspirations, 

in the noisy confusion of life, 

keep peace in your soul. 

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, 

it is still a beautiful world. 

Be cheerful. 

Strive to be happy.”

Max Ehrman in Desiderata

“That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe”  J Berger.

John Peter Berger was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to the BBC series of the same name, is often used as a university text. 

Some wisdom from Leonard Cohen ~

“The feeling of having had some mandate to fulfil….and being unable to fulfil it….and coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfil it….that the deeper courage was to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you find yourself.”

T.S.Eliot

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
T.S. Elliot.

In my attempt to interpret T.S.Elliot, I was unsuccessful in my struggle to break through the vague sense I had that this was a Soul who perhaps never did find that deep and enduring peace that we all hope for.
Whilst it is true that he finally did experience what might be seen as peace and contentment in his second marriage to the woman he considered to be the Love of his life, I am speaking of an even deeper level than that…..Because it is the case that the quest to find that peace is a solitary pursuit, and can only be accomplished by one’s own self.
Anyone who has read Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Pilgrimage’ will know what I am speaking of.

Back to Trevor Jenkins….who chooses to live as a homeless man, because he wants to do what he believes Jesus wants him to do….and that is, to sell all and follow. He tells me that most recently, he has undergone a transformational change, and is not the man he was several years ago (lovely though that man was, I assure you).
Now whatever you may feel about that, you would agree that it is the heart intent that gets one to the desired destination, rather than the ‘method’ that one chooses to follow.
Two paintings only this time, because I believe I got it in two. Without pre-judging, what turned up on the canvas, much to my surprise, was what I can only describe as a ‘Jesus flavour’….which both mystifies and delights me, as I had not set out to make it happen. Simply fell into the pure bliss of painting this lovely man.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
In that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always…
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing no less than everything
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T.S. Eliot.

Thursday, 26 January 2012 http://thenorthbanktc.blogspot.com/

Australia Day

It’s Australia Day today.  It’s a day when half of Tennant celebrates while the other half mourns.  Knowing where to stand on a day like today can be tricky, so I tend to stand alone.  From the top of One Tank Hill you can look down over our town, not quite nestled in the foothills of the Honeymoon Ranges. 

Most people go there to see Tennant from a distance and be convinced for a few deceptive moments that harmony lives here.  I go there to see Tennant as it really is – an island, standing alone in a vast ocean of spinifex and red dirt.  

On a clear day you can see right to the edge of the earth, to the gentle curving horizon from up there.  Standing in the silence, it’s easy to believe that the world outside is too far removed to reach you.  That if you stretch out your hand, nothing will touch it.  That no one can reach in and touch you.  

Its a view with the power to evoke a primal fear, revealing to you just how small and vulnerable you really are.  The hot dry air sweeping up from the ancient plains below, carries with it that palpable uneasiness those first European settlers left behind – disconnected from their homeland, feeling alone in a harsh and unforgiving landscape, an uncertain future ahead of them.

Its also a view, that if you let it, can draw you into its protective embrace.  It promises to hold at bay the world outside, unable to cross that vast and seemingly endless emptiness. Standing there, its easy to understand how forty thousand years of living here could lull you into a false sense of security.  Make you believe you were safe from that inevitable invasion.

This is the original Australia.  This view.  This landscape.  This isolation. Out here you can touch our past, connect with the land that has shaped us, made us who we are.  Its easy in these times of high speed connectivity to forget that we are all islanders, that we are in this together.  But stand up there, alone on One Tank Hill, and that landscape will remind you who we really are.

Monday, 23 January 2012

Liquid Gold

They say Australia was built off the sheep’s back.  Not Tennant.  We were built off the back of a beer truck.  It’s not the first thing you notice when you come to town.  But spend enough time here and eventually you will realise there’s no creek in Tennant Creek.  

The locals call it the Seven Mile, and for very practical reason.  The highway crosses Tennant Creek about eleven kilometres, or seven miles in the old money, north of town where the old stone telegraph station still stands.  It wasn’t the only building on the creek in those early days.  This is golden country.  Settled by pastoralists drawn by the swaying golden grasses, and desperate men gambling their last hope on the promise of endless golden riches hidden in that deep red earth. 

Like all men working hard in the relentless heat and dust, our founding fathers were thirsty.  It was a thirst that could only be quenched by that other kind of gold.  Liquid gold they called it. Beer.  It must have been a fateful day, that day the beer truck broke down just seven miles short of its destination.  

Now, if you believe local legend, our founding fathers were also a resourceful lot. If the beer couldn’t come to town, then town would simply come to the beer. Today Tennant Creek still stands seven miles south of the crossing, the pub in the main street a fitting monument to that truck’s final resting place.

Gold, in all its forms, seems woven into the very fabric of this place.  That first lucky strike wave passed, as it did in so many Australian towns, though men, seemingly less desperate now, still search for the next big find.  The swaying golden pastures feed a thriving beef industry, and that liquid gold flows freely, though mostly through our blood too often spilled on the red earth in an angry drunken haze.

What do we do, in a place so intimately connected to the very thing that tears so many of us apart?  How do we extract ourselves from our history, our blood?  Someone please tell me – how do we quench that thirst that wasn’t earned through hot and dusty toil?