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- Breathing Light - Issue #31-Swimming in the Shadow Pool of the Moon
Breathing Light - Issue #31-Swimming in the Shadow Pool of the Moon
In this issue
My Print of the Week
Frontispiece
Swimming in the Shadow Pool of the Moon
The Print Competition-results
Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)
Endpapers
My Print of the Week
"Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."
-Don Miguel Ruiz
I was never really sure about this work, whether it was successful or whether it was an accurate depiction of what I felt.
I made it anyway.
One day, as we move out from the shadow of others' expectations, we may learn to trust our self, our instincts, and what we felt at the time. And, perhaps, that is enough. Maybe the truth lies in the mirror of our individual sensibility.
I was working on a commission for a commercial client. I had a mission to complete, yet there was time to take minor side roads and explore.
We stopped by the side of the road at Makarora because the road signs promised us we would see something unique, were we to take a short walk through the forest.
We took the posted advice.
The path lured us down through the trees, taking us deeper and deeper, guiding us to the promise of something called the Blue Pools. As we descended, we could hear the river's murmur below us. We turned corner after corner until, eventually, we emerged from the green grip of the forest.
And there it was.
The river flowed, transparent, crystalline and blue from a crack in the rocks. It tumbled and swarmed and reformed in a joyous cacophony.
Suspended above it on the swing bridge, I was entranced. I leaned over the edge and immersed myself in my viewfinder.
Something was singing to me from the shadows of the past, rising from the water, telling me that there was a mystery here, a truth that needed to be recorded.
Some months later, I turned the file into a print. It sat on the wall of the gallery I was managing for four months until a visitor came in one day. She stared at it for a long time, then turned me and asked:
"please tell me about this work. I want to know everything."
so I did.
I talked to her about the time and moment, the fact that time is a fleeting experience, that sometimes what we see in our minds is an experience of the heart.
She bought the work.
Somewhere, that work is framed and hanging on a wall.
Perhaps the owner passes it, stops and stares at it, and finds a moment of peace. I want to think so.
And, indeed, that is reason enough to be an artist.
And, if this image speaks to you, please get in touch.
Frontispiece
“Dreams are like the old stories where wolves are seekers always running, and women carry fire in their bare hands and light the dark paths before them.
Old stories hold that the birds will fly all the miles of the world to tell your secrets to the rising moon, and men will walk over oceans of ice to find one truth.”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides
The Power of Quotes
Every week, when I write this newsletter, I'm very conscious that at least one of you is tuning into the quotes I share.
You know who you are!
And that is a great gift, a great joy, and a great blessing for me to share the wisdom of others with you.
I know one of you is sitting in a caravan somewhere in Australia, collecting my quotes into folders and then reflecting upon them. I know this because you have told me so. How blessed am I to be able to gather these things together for you.
We can learn a lot from the comments of the wise.
On the road again
For the last fortnight or so, I've been feeling the pull of the Milford Road.
It is no ordinary road. Everyone who has travelled it, who travels it, or who will travel it will discover how special it is.
I have a local friend who has driven a tour bus from Te Anau to Milford and back 5000 times. And he never tires of it.
Over a cup of tea, we sat down one day to talk about how the road never bores us. We talked about the joy we felt when turning each corner; we talked about the wonder of how the trees continue to grow and shape our vision of the road, and yet the road remains the same.
Those of us who have worked on the road as professional tour drivers know that the road is a song, a singular dance which each of us is privileged to be able to join. We know every corner; we know just the right amount of power to apply for the vehicle we are driving; we know the right story to tell for the place we are passing.
Yesterday, for the first time in nearly a year, after keeping me at bay, the road allowed me to travel it.
For me, a mandatory stop is the forest at Otapara/Lake Gunn, which is ancient and somehow primaeval. It drips with moss and silence and almost-psychedelic greens.
I love this forest in all weathers. I love to walk through it in the pouring rain when the path is covered in puddles and tiny streams. If I stop and silence my breathing, I can hear the subtle dripping of rain and field the openmouthed plants reaching upwards towards the light.
I also love it on bright shiny days, when the sun reaches down through the tree canopy and paints pools of gold light on the forest floor. It somehow changes perceptions of distance and space.
There is a special place where I can sit on a mossy log and simply be with the forest. Yesterday, I reached this place and took time to sit for a few minutes to allow the forest to come to me and tell me what it wanted me to know.
A spotlight of sunlight illuminated a tree perhaps 50 m away. It was a young tree only 3 to 4 m tall, and it sat in a clearing surrounded by its older, wiser whaanau.
I sensed a lesson here. Perhaps this scene was showing me that, despite all the troubles in the world, life goes on, with or without us.
That the earth will abide.
Swimming in the Shadow Pool of the Moon
All earthly knowledge is as a cloud covering the sun.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan
Swimming in the shadow pool of the moon
Summer is draining into the cooling ground,
fading down from the crown
of the cherry tree sentinel at the entrance to my garden.
Already the leaves closest to the sun are Icarus falling.
Their wax has waned, and now
They clatter inanely and echo,
metallic memories written in the yeardiary’s margin,
lifedrained and austere
bleached spare, severe and sere
by the cooling autumn winds.
Yesterday's memories are engraved
like dried papyrus epistles
on the stony, grey headstone of the year.
And,
as the half-moon (neither this nor that)
claws its way, exhausted and alone
Across the sepulchre of the night sky,
seeking Orion, which has turned left
and sunk without a trace to the west,
only Venus
(and to a lesser extent, Saturn)
ticktock a metronome promise of hope
in the unveiling vault of the night.
The Print Competition-results
Last week I offered a free print as a prize for the best entry in answer to your telling me about your sacred place.
Many thanks to those of you who entered. I had some lovely responses. Nga mihi ki a koutou.
Here is the winner—what a beautiful poem.
Your print is on its way.
My sacred place
All of a sudden after such a busy life, everything seemed to stop;
Covid Lockdown.
Life became suspended in mid-air.
Every day and every facet of life became the same.
And small
And confined
Until one day we were allowed to break free
And it was to my sacred place
The Pohutukawa tree
Sitting; its limbs against golden clay cliffs
Legs resting over the sea wall
Leaves whispering in the wind
I talk again to my grandfather, my father,
and all those I love.
My past, my present and my future.
It is a place where I can be quiet in my thoughts
And where I can be just me.
Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)
The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Our Human Fragility as the Key to Our Survival and Our Sanity — www.themarginalian.org
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival i
There was an excellent post on Strong Language, a blog about swearing, discussing what makes "shit gibbon" so arresting, so fantastic, so novel, and yet... so right (for English swearing.
Some years back, when I was leading an undergraduate seminar on Thomas Jefferson, discussion came to a sudden halt at Jefferson’s famous word in the Declaration of Independence, happiness.
Indian Masala Keema Recipe: This Easy Ground Beef With Peas Just Needs Pita Bread & Dinner Is Done by 30Seconds Food — 30seconds.com
Masala keema is simply ground beef with Indian spices. All this easy masala keema recipe needs is some pita bread and dinner is done. This easy recipe would be delicious served with a cool cucumber salad.
Zadie Smith wrote in her spectacular essay on optimism and despair.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Godmother of Rock and Roll, Live in Manchester in 1964 — www.brainpickings.org
Reconstructionist and Literary Jukebox hero Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915–October 9, 1973) is celebrated as gospel music’s first superstar, the godmother of rock and roll, “the original soul sister.
Every year, the Sony World Photography Awards highlights the local photography community with the National Awards. Selected from the Open Competition, these awards are a wonderful opportunity to see the skills of photographers whether they consider themselves amateurs, professionals, or hobbyists.
When demand rises, it opens the door to as many challenges as it does opportunities. New technologies are being used to find innovative ways to make the spice trade more transparent, in a market increasingly concerned with quality and provenance. That cheating can take different forms.
In contrast to the noisy and diverse city, the suburbs were seen as spacious, segregated, and quiet—a much more promising state of affairs to corporations bent on expansion.
How Aubrey Beardsley’s Visionary Illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” Subverted Victorian Gender Norms and Revolutionized the Graphic Arts — www.brainpickings.org
In his short life, Aubrey Beardsley (August 21, 1872–March 16, 1898) became a pioneer of the Art Nouveau movement and forever changed the course of the graphic arts.
End Papers
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
So, the other day, looking down into the pool at the foot of the Falls Creek waterfall, I thought about rivers as an analogy for our life journey.
We are born underground in the mountains, and during our lifetime, the river carries us down to the ocean, where we are reabsorbed into the Oneness. On our journey, we will meet rapids and waterfalls. We will sometimes get caught up in whirlpools that keep us out of the current for a time. We will experience periods of calm and peace as we follow the twists and turns, but we are always heading for a union with the ocean. Then we will be lifted and deposited back on the mountainsides to begin our journey again.
And, while we cycle through the many phases of the river, the river remains.
The river remains.
Tomorrow Sarah and I are going walkabout for a few days. I want to show her the Maniototo where I was born and for us to be able to wander in the silence and vastness of Central Otago beneath the spectacular blue dome of the sky.
There probably won't be a Breathing Light next Sunday (for obvious reasons), but regular service will resume the following week.
Ngaa mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou
Much love to you all
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