Random wanderings and wonderings

Many apologies about not showing up here or on your pages to say hello. I miss you all.


However, I am struggling to keep all my balls in the air. Three new University projects and not much time to complete them, the re-design and rewrite of a small grassroots NGO website, a new yoga class, regular visits to my parents and oh grom extra pressure at work.


So just a few photos from my morning walk, a few quotes that make the balls seem lighter and random thoughts strolling off the pages of my journal.


"Why is it impossible to know nature? That which is conceived to be nature is only the idea of nature arising in each person's mind. The ones who see true nature are infants. They see without thinking, straight and clear. If even the names of plants are known, a mandarin orange tree of the citrus family, a pine of the pine family, nature is not seen in its true form.


An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing."

The One-Straw Revolution - An Introduction to Natural Farming.
Masanobu Fukuoka.


Sometimes when I am feeling blaahr and don't even feel like taking photos it is good to just point the camera at everything that invites my eye to dance and accept the invitation.


In me there is a dog that has been kicked a lot. It is not good allowing this dog to take over when I make decisions, meet new people or decide that everything is not quite going the way it should. All my inner dog want is love and affection but my inner puppy is a better interface to the outside. Once she gets home she can share her bounty.


Deep inside there is a space which I need to remember.

It remembers that all I need to do is what I know to be right and trust and all will be well. Like a small child who knows she is loved it recognises that although I might occasionally be wrong I will not be punished because how can you punish a child who does not know that what she is doing is wrong?


I catch Shanti's red yellow fur glowing in the sunlight and the sun catches the steam rising out of my cup. It is better to just place my head back on the pillow and drink it all in. Jumping up to fetch my camera will break the enhancement.


"The cosy, smug security of the antiquitter is to be avoided at all costs. Quitters must not be frightened by the potential cataclysmic outcome of a particular quit. Disaster beats stasis - better to be a rolling stone than a moss covered rock. Furthermore, the result of a quit must never eclipse the joy, beauty, and pleasure (even if it be perverse of the quit itself. A well-executed quit is its own reward."

The Art of Quitting -When enough is enough.
Evan Harris.


What will the African Anthropologist in my class say next? He finds such creative ways of arguing against the western art of facilitation.


If we are always making up goals and projecting them into the future do we run the risk of missing out magical happenings not defined in our future? Can we occupy both spaces? The projected one and the here and now. (Inspired by the African anthropologist)


Is it possible to turn the inner critic into a constructive inner critic?


After my lecturer over-rides my objections and moves our class times from nine to eight on a Saturday morning, and I don't have the courage to protest further, I suddenly starts mistrusting her and all the other members in my class. I no longer feel like sharing and I find the topics contrived and boring. The girl to my right turns from funny and amusing to outright irritating.


I want to use the skills learned from facilitation to better understand the part of me who fears criticism and feels vulnerable. On the one hand the feeling enables me to sense peoples emotions and motivations and feel compassion, on the other hand it makes me want to run from the room until I reach a quite place where I can hide.


"You need to claim the events of your life in order to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality."

Florida Scott-Maxwell


"The value of the personal relationship to all things is that it creates intimacy and intimacy creates understanding and understanding creates love."

Anias Nin.


Yearning for my future and wanting to hide under my bed often manages to squeese into the exact same moment in time.


I want to heal the skinless vulnerable place that makes me slink towards the upstairs toilet where I sit and wait for the powerful somebody, who I've been told is judging me, to stop holding on to the door that I need to pass through in order to get to my office.

And then while I sit there, staring at the wall, I start laughing first at and then with myself. I pull myself up to my full height because deep inside I know who I am. I regally stroll downstairs and I smirk down at his bald spot as I step around him. Hah!


Being trampled on by three adoring wolves all wanting to kiss and be kissed on the nose heals the deepest sadness.