Lark Descending Part 1

I look for stories, maps, images, metaphors that help me to make sense of who I am, and what is happening in the world around me. I do this not only for myself and the generation to which I belong, but I am compelled to do it for the all the stages of life, how can I make sense of what is going on in birthing, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, true adulthood, eldership and the fraying threads of death and dying.

It is a life long quest requiring a loving blend of perseverance, play, attention to quiet things and tenacity to stay with it because it's all so slippery. The sense I am looking for is unavailable to the logical mind, the “I like things pinned down nice and tidy where I can see em mind…” does not deliver the goods. Sure something can be drummed up, dressed up, wrestled into a poetic package but it will be dead before the day is out. This is partly because the stories and sense making that I am hunting for ( I might call them.. intuitions of wholeness) must include everything, that’s a vast and there are no nouns only verbs. Not only must it be all embracing, this sense making must be able to include that which cannot be spoken.

By that I mean words are limited, they trick me, fill the head with stories, persuasions, assumptions. Most of the mob on earth (including myself a lot of the time) are hypnotised by the contents of the minds, I tie myself in knots attempting to get what I want and reject what I do not want and all time missing the real magic and mystery, what is it that actually knows? Everything a human experiences arises in a field of knowing awareness. That which knows does not speak and yet somehow this hunger to make meaning must include this understanding. Bring on the artists, the poets, story tellers, musicians... You know this wild animal cannot be pinned down, rather glimpsed, tickled sideways with no promises anywhere.

If I took on another name it would be Lark Descending...

As above so below, the Larks climb in their exaltation. I mirror the movement on it is downward revisitation over decades, less exaltation, more an uncomfortable squirmy soul squeeze. Much as I have struggled against it, all that hurts, what I so keenly to project on to other, what I push away is the one place I must go. I learn most when sweat is on the brow and my back is against the wall. It is there mostly after a few days, weeks cooking in the beguiling juices of resistance and fear, movements in the depths of a alone night. In this place the eye gets sharper, the survival instinct gleans. I notice what I was not able to notice before. I begin to see in the dark and what I see is a patterning of fear and control that has been carving its way all my life. I recall David Whyte recounting the tale of Beowulf, the hero having slayed the Grendal is told... "it is not the thing you fear but the mother of the thing you fear…”

Convolvulus is not only hard to spell it is a prolific rampant green being we live with on the land we share, it has be renamed “the serpent in the garden.” Silently strangling plants, resilient to cutting, pruning, burning and prayer…it returns, there is something about this plant that is close to home

So I turn towards it and make a quiet earth touching gesture to meet this. Theodore said, “The days on fire .... my shadow pinned against the sweating wall…. for what is madness but nobility at odds with circumstance…” Here I am, made of love, for love and yet starkly thrown out of love by some dark mysterious alchemy of a human soul that is both triumph and tragedy

Nothing more matters now that this. I am out of reasons and so even as I speak these words I know the roots are conspiring, the serpent is listening. I put down all efforts to out wit this no-thing, instead I choose surrender and a daily pledge with my life to be more aware of these patterns of fear and control. I am no longer willing to be an unconscious conspirator to havoc and hurt. I been here before many times over the decades and each time I catch its scent, track it a while then fall back asleep. They say it is darkest before the dawn and there is no medicine like the a clean mirror of a darkening night.

I think the question burning in me today is this, how can the Gods and Goddesses be with me in one moment and absent the next, when abiding in tranquil surroundings she is tickling my toes, bring smiles to my heart, enchanting me with imaginations of wild wonderful becomings. And yet when fizzing in the mutlit taksing tumult, the fury of a epic to do list she is……? well the answer is... always here.

I am glad the naked ladies are coming, they are weaving some dark fecund magic as I speak this, meanwhile the Buddha is blurred on the rock. What say you blurred Buddha of the naked ladies coming? Silence..... the clear pond is equally silent, only the chthonic at present unseen movement of the wild naked ladies coming.

Naked ladies for those who dont know are a beautiful flower I first fell in love with at Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre, I planted some and made a sign so that no one would occupy the space.