Journeys

My dogs used to stand around my fridge staring at it, waiting for it to deliver frozen chicken and bones. Since I have discovered the new walk my dogs stand around staring at my car... waiting.

After looking around furtively we slip through the barb wire fence with the no-entry sign, run across the Gautrain clearing area, climb over the mount of earth which flattened the fence separating us from paradise and then our roads divide.

I stand staring at the green pasture containing islands of purple grasses while the wolves chase a flock of guinea fowl into the trees. I wonder. Should we wander down to the river or should we head into the field of tall grasses beyond the meadow and explore new territory.

Today, new territory.

The dogs disappear into grass which reach up to my waist. The smell of earth on which rain has danced all night rise up, encircle my waist, slip into my nose and disappear into my heart.

I find a magic clearing where tiny grasshoppers shimmer through tightly packed purple and green grasses. Here I rest for a while. A dead tree rise up in front of me. I can see only grasses, tree and sky.

The sky is turquoise closer to the horizon and a grey blue covered in swirling clouds towards its center. My eyes follow the journey of what they believe to be a dove. It turns out to be a small hawk settling on a branch stretched out, following the curve of a wispy cloud.

A bigger hawk is already settled in the highest spot. Together they observe the grass, the river, the small enclosure where I rest and the wolves bounding through the grass their breaths racing with joy.

The wolves runs over and across me until I get up and follow a flying crow towards the smell of river. We step across a tar road and disappear into a cool wooded area. A airplane circles through the air breaking the silence.

It is time to return.

Placing my feet carefully between grasses reaching up to my waist and falling down in clearings covered in shorter grasses I roll around to the smells of wet earth and wild grasses.

So delighted am I, I almost feel like meeting a snake would be the perfect way to die.

We don't want to leave.

Sitting here typing the wolves stare at me, their breaths are still racing and their heartbeats sing about being wild things in a wild place.

"Contact with nature can be a transformative experience, whether in the form of native eco-systems or simply the tree outside ones window. In sum, ecological restoration of degraded urban landscapes creates benefits for both people and the land.

As one urban watershed volunteer stated eloquently, 'Volunteering has filled a part of that place we all have that isn't selfish, and needs to do the right thing. It has made me more aware, and both happier and sadder for my new knowledge of the environment and its condition.'

Urban restoration projects across the country have cleaned streams, resored native forests, planted prairies, and created new backyard habitats."
Urban volunteers and the environment - Robert Ryan & Robert Grese.

Knowing that my place of wilderness may soon be covered with townhouses fills me with a deep sadness. Ecological volunteer programs might slowly turn around the journey leading us further and further away from our wild places.

Do you have a story to tell about a volunteering journey? About taking a turn towards preserving something you treasure, be it education, shelter, health or happiness? About returning the wilderness to places, animals or people?

It can be about a long journey to far away places or it can be about a short journey to that sacred space in your back garden.

Smiling at ten strangers and respectfully acknowledging their uniqueness every day for a week or pulling a few weeds out of a community garden can be as great an act of volunteering as spending 3 hours a day feeding the hungry or clearing a neighbourhood stream.

Read more about volunteering and the just posts here.

All I want for Chrismas time is me

My mind dances through flashes of realisations and swings along to the music made by small moments of reality.


A walk with F's three year old nephew G ( "I am three for real but four play-play). We walk through the beginning of a tunnel dug for the new Gautrain. High walls of bright red soil surrounds us. We splash through puddles of red, orange and yellow puddles, the mid day sky a brilliant blue river above our heads.


The next day an ugly fight with F about the division of household duties, a walk that starts with G stepping on a bee, ends with my dogs getting attacked by two pit-bulls. This is accompanied by the hysterical screams of their owner.


A hard kick moves the pit-bull, between my dogs and the car, to the other side of the road, the dogs jump into the car and me and G laugh with relief all the way home.


"You can notice as you are communicating with a client or a loved one that the responses that you are getting are not the ones that you want. If you take that as an indication that what you are doing is not working and change your behaviour then something else will happen. If you leave your behaviour the same you will get more of what you are getting. Now, this sounds utterly simple. For some reason , that seems to also be the hardest thing in the world to put into action."
frogs into princes - Richard Bandler and John Grindler


Before we fall asleep Florian puts his arm around me and I move closer. My heart jumps across the divide caused by angry words.


I wake up early in the morning in a panic. Did I loose my cell phone? Lately I have been loosing things. My favourite coat and my I-always-feel-better-when-I-wear-them-trainers. They disappear with me into spaces when life gets too hectic to follow but they don't return when I do. After a while I find the phone under my car seat.


I go back to sleep thinking about Milton Erickson's methods of self hypnosis. I ask my unconscious to look for the me that disappeared when I got too busy to allow beauty's movements to slowly unwind me. I dream of meeting a teacher who healing touch travels through me like an electric current.


I wake up and Florian and I talk about what our response triggering behaviours could be and what could change if we make what small changes to these behaviours. We could turn into a whole lot of different couples all dancing to a slightly different beat.


I will stop typing now and bury my nose in the soft fur on Arjun's stomach and give thanks for taking the time to search for myself.


For all on this side of the world happy summer celebrations.


"The Circle is cast, we are between the worlds

At the Goddess' feet.

Where magic is real, All becomes 0ne
and beginnings and endings meet.

Blessed Be!"
Summer Solstice Ritual - Kathleen Anderson

For every one else merry Christmas.


In our quiet time We do not speak, because the voices are within us. It is our quiet time. We do not walk, because the earth is all within us. It is our quiet time.... We rest with all of nature....
From a winter solstice celebration - Our quiet time - Nancy Wood

Magical Truths

"By the time I was ten I had developed a secret fictional character, a child with a silver circlet, and before I slept each night I told myself stories in which she was the central actor and in which novels and television became the basis for her scripts. The nightly stories became almost sacred inner worlds.


Perhaps my shyness made the romance more central than it might have been. But I have almost been troubled and intrigued by the intensity: I always wanted to make sense of the vividness of my own daydreaming. I was enchanted by the imaginings, and yet I always knew, when I was a child, that the make-believe was never real. I never have and do not now 'believe' in magic."
Persuasions of the Witch Craft - T. M. Luhrmann


In order to better understand how people immerse themselves in magical rituals and come to believe in their truth anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann spent eighteen months immersed in doing what people do in order to become magicians.


Reading her book made me aware that many of the "magical" beliefs coloring my world are a hop-scotch arrangement of ideas gained from fantasy books, movies, self help books, therapeutic tales, tarot cards and the dreams of frustrated clerks at the turn of the century. Becoming aware of the truth made me face the possibility that magic is nothing but make-believe.


However, separating the real from the not so real opened my heart to a whole new magic. The magic-of the not-knowing. Every morning I wake up and set sail into the unknown. I know not who I truly am, where I come from and where I will depart to. I do not know whom I will encounter during my day and who I will be when the day draws to a close.


Each night I drift into sleep without knowing where my dreams will take me or what I won't remember when I wake up.


Sometimes I catch a glimpse of truth in the movement of wind through a group of singing leaves, in a line of poetry, in a well constructed academic argument, in the voice of a friend, in the flick of a tail disappearing around the corner.


Alternatively, like a magician diving into a whirlpool, I allow myself to sink into my feelings of confusion, depression and not knowing. There hidden deep behind the no longer wanting to try and the I will never be loved because I don't know the truth and I don't care anyway because I am angry and I dislike this world and everyone in it, rests the knowledge that I do want to try, I do want to love and like everyone else I do want to be happy.


Through this moment a spell of forgetfulness lifts from me. I am filled with wonder at the magic that surrounds me.


"Trance states are states in which we narrow and constrict our attention (and our sense of selfhood) by identifying with our thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a matter which seems to be autonomous - rather than recognizing that we are the knower of these trance states, which are transient. We actually go in and out of trance states all day long.

What is exciting about recognizing and experiencing the multitude of trance states we create throughout the day is that it leads to a transient experience of oneself. Each trance state has a beginning point, a middle point, and an end point. As you begin to to step outside your trances by identifying these component parts, what you begin to see is that the only common factor behind the series of trance states is you."
Trances people live - Stephen Wolinsky.


For me the journey through these trance states are the ultimate magical quest. On our journey we meet many strange and wonderful inner characters. Like the hero or heroine in a fantasy novel we sometimes discover our greatest magic by accident and sometimes we discover hidden strengths when battling demons of depression and self-hatred.


To pursue our quest sometimes requires immense perseverance and courage and sometimes we simply wander into a magical glade where true knowledge interrupts its run through tall purple grasses to lick our faces until we shout with laughter.


"In childhood we could project all our own pent-up fears onto the little match girl, our jealousy onto the stepsisters, and our rage onto the giants, and then go to sleep in peace. We did not have to deal with these fears, jealousies and rages as our own unabsorbed states.


As adults we can no longer project out of us which is in us and belongs to us. Our task is to wake up and try to understand what is going on in our own subconscious, because its dynamics are controlling our outer behavior. "
The Maiden King - Robert Bly and Marion Woodman.


And so we get up each morning and set into a day where anything can happen in our inner and outer worlds. And we encounter many other living beings who are also drifting in and out of dreams of reality.


And sometimes deep magic occurs. For a moment we see the world of another through their eyes, we hear the music of their hearts through their ears and we feel the magic of their spirit as it enfolds their world.


"My training there had taught me to sense the spirit in everything, and to recognize that for the most part the world went its way with little interest in humankind. The raven that croaked from the rooftop did not know that the man who listened would hear a message - it was the man whose mind must be altered in order to find meaning in it, not the bird. Spirit moved through all things; to learn to live in harmony with that movement was the way of the wise."
Priestess of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley.

ps. Please forgive my continued absences in blog land. The lightning, forming part of our highveld summers, loves to play through the wires connecting me to your many worlds.

November Just Posts

I am very grateful that earlier today our internet connection was fixed - just in time for me to publish a just post.

I want to share a story from a book called the suitcase stories. The book describes a project done in inner Johannesburg with a group of refugee children. These children have lost their families, their homes and their identities. They fear the police and they fear strangers. Yet they are also survivors with a sense of humor and hope. The suitcases were chosen to represent a place to gather stories because they have a public outside and a private inside. Children only ever share what they place inside their suitcases when they feel comfortable doing so. Some never do. All feel the process to be a healing experience.



The following story first inspired the suitcase stories project. The story teller wanted people to know about the realities of living as a refugee.

"I was at school in Eritrea, in a boarding school. My parents live inside Ethiopia. We live in a very nice house. Once we went to Egypt, and I have been to Italy when I was very small.

During the holidays, I went home to visit my parents. I was 12. I found they are not at home. I ask a friend where my parents are. She said she does not know - I must go back to school. Then I went back to school. The teacher said I am not allowed to study at that school any more. I went to the Kenya border. From there I ask people to call my friend Wanya. I told her I don't know where my parents are. She told me to go back to school. I saw one of the girls at the border, I knew her from school. She ask me to come with her to Nairobi.

We stay in Nairobi for one week. Then we went to Tanzania, then to Dar es Salaam. After to Mozambique. Tanzania was so bad. In jail they gave us bad food. I was crying because everything was different and new at the same time. My friend, she was sick in jail with malaria. I was not feeling too good. Then to Mozambique. People from Mozambique were not nice - terrible. After, Swaziland for two days.

In South Africa border the police catch us. I was running - the police shoot two times in the air. I was running. One boy pay police some amount - I don't know how much.

Then I come to Johannesburg. I was living in a flat. In that place I was living with two girls from my country. One of the girls she leave me there. She was going to Cape Town on some business and she did not come back home, and she phone the other girl and she tell her she is leaving and I was crying because I did not know what to do, and one man said I must give him some money for rent. But I did not know how much it was. I was in the street and I was crying and someone asked:"Why are you crying?" I told him what is the problem. He said I must come to Ponte City, and there is a mother in that place who will take me to the place where there are people from other countries. And it was there I meet Miriam. I started living with Miriam's family in 1999.

If I had one wish, I wish to finish school and go back to my country to find my parents, my family. My family don't know where I am, or maybe they think I died. And I don't know where they are. Maybe they think I am dead."

I wanted to write about many things. After I read these stories all thought disappeared from my mind. There were just the stories.

Some other thoughts and stories:

The Just Post Writers
aimee with Where does your Candidate stand on Healthcare
azahar with Thought for the day
Beck with Welcome to The Macho World
BipolarLawyerCook with Your own best advocate
bon with Other Pictures
Chani with Blog Blast for Peace: If not now, when? Passing through the Gates, Horse Manure, and Gays in the Military
The Cool Mom Picks' Safe Toy Guide
Denguy with Bad Plastic, Bad Bad and 'Tis the Season
Devra at DC Metro Moms with What About the other 9 months?
Erin with It's That Time Again
I am the master evil genius with What does need look like?
Jangari with Toilet culture, Exodus, and Four Corners on the Intervention
JCK at Motherscribe with We are all connected, we cannot be ourselves without community
jen with Power to the people who need it most, Tradition, Choosing and doing and going
jen at MOMocrats with Power to the People (who need it most)
jessi with Donorschooseorg--helping teachers across the country
Julie at Using My Words with Blog blast for Peace, Does the abstinence message for drug use work?, Let's Get it On: Abstinence only sex education is risky and ineffective, Does putting the arts at risk put kids at risk too? and Inconvenient Truth: A Transcript of my testimony to the EPA at the NESHAP Public Hearing
Kayleigh at Another Working Mom with I'm Dreaming of a... and Holidaze
Kevin at Life has Taught Us with Your signature does make a difference
Kyla with Healthcare is a bitch
Laura with A more important PSA
lori with Thoughts for the day
Mad with SOS? You can't be serious
Mad Organica with Tell Your Girls to Call for the Ball
Madame M. with Plan: Freezing butts, Stargazing and Retail (couples) therapy
Mary G with Charity begins at home
Mel from Actual Unretouched Photo with The Homeless
Pundit Mom with Do Republican Candidates Care About Women Voters?, You Know This Would All Be Different if Men Could Breastfeed and A Promise to American Women
Roy with Intersection of racisim, sexism and commerce
Sin with Seasonal Angst Disorder, Part 1
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with For a Good Time, Call a Feminist (Not that You'd Know This From the Media), No Smart Woman Left Behind and What's Bugging Women?
Thordora with Murders are Not Monsters; they're men
TIV with Post-traumatic stress disorder and ripples of trauma
Wayfarer Scientista with The Spilling of Oil

some of the many readers
Alejna
Crazy
Jen
Kiki
Lawyer Mama
Liv
Mad
Pundit Mom
Sin
Steph
Susanne

Also have a look at what stories Susanne, Jen and Mad has to share.

SPC {What I Wear-4}

Thank you all for taking the time to walk with me. Your presence enfolded me like a soft pink blanket.

Today I wear a designer voortrekker tracksuit top, a navy silk chiffon blouse with polka dots, a hand-printed vest with turquoise hearts of olive green, and a bright pink pair of knickers which are more comfortable now than when they used to be sexy.


I wear the history of women mad enough to push wagons across high mountain ranges, dressed to the nines in bonnets and voluminous dresses that covered them from neck to ankle.


I wear five years of corporate sameness. I wear the delight found in being the only one. I wear how to turn my head, my ankles and my everythings in order to appear attractive. I wear the belief that none of this matters.



See other Self-Portrait Challenges