And no, that does not mean you will not hear from me. What it means is that I will concentrate on saying only those things that may benefit others or myself; avoiding trifling conversation. Albeit 'trifling' is completely subjective, my subjects will be what I deem to be most worthy of what needs be said out loud.
I will have to think as consciously as I can before I speak and write ever more carefully. Judging from my own calculation of how well I did with temperance last week, this week will feel like a year I am sure.
My morality board is paying off though. I have avoided six candy bars, a pack of cigarettes, abstained totally from drinking ever again (as one glass of wine at the cricket match left me sick for two days) and my pants are loser providing an easier leg lift onto the kitchen bench to stretch out my fingers toward the freezer.
Silence...perhaps I shall negotiate today as my one day to not speak at all...a Gandhi holiday, to which, I am certain we could all benefit from, if only we all chose the same day. And since this is merely a fantasy to consider, I shall leave now and challenge myself to the reality of how silence can really improve my life and those who surround me and consider what topics are worthy of discussion always.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Travelling Round New Zealand
One of the things I have always appreciated most whenever travelling around NZ is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world that come to NZ on a working visa to work in the orchards and see what life is like here, as opposed to there, wherever there may be.
This weekend, on our quick trip from Christchurch to Dunedin, then onto Cromwell to watch my super-son’s* cricket match, my husband and I met a woman travelling on her own from Berlin. We stayed up until almost 2AM (so much for temperance) talking nonstop about her version of what life was like for her and her family in Germany and cross-comparing my husband’s family life here in NZ, as well as my own family roots in the USA.
One thing we all had in common was our awareness that our educations were all limited by our individual national recollections, which the German woman translated by tapping on her head and saying...
“How does one say it”, tap, tap, tap...
“Brainwashing”, I offered up...
“Yez...that tis it!” as she pounded the table.
I had to throw temperance to the wind as this was a rare and ‘one off’ opportunity to share with another human being what we each found being in this world to mean. She is a pacifist, as am I...and, that is not something I stumble across very often. The table was the only thing we agreed need be beaten in this life now, past or future. I felt emboldened for having met her. Thank you my new friend, you know who you are.
Now about my super-son*, which is what I prefer to call him as opposed to a step-son. A super-son is one you inherit by marriage, not to be trodden upon, but appreciated for the unique advantage of not having had to push them from one’s own body, but merely embraced as one of the many opportunities life offers up without physical pain. I enjoyed watching his cricket match, the first match I have ever seen, being under the misguided impression that cricket was boring and impossible to understand, coming from baseball indoctrination.
I found that I liked watching cricket and can see that it will afford me many moments in the future to learn new strategies of how to play chess with a funny looking bat.
I must mention that my husband and I took our ‘fur kids’ with us. Now that we are two adults on our own again, with no children at home to take with us, Mr. Taffy and Tuppy, are now our privileged guests on mad dash weekends away. They loved it and we found taking the dogs to be much easier than carting children. There were no arguments, car sickness, or endless requests, just lots of wagging tails and tales of our own making, without the interrupted versions of childish versions that suggest we didn’t do one thing they thought fun.
We will take them again.
This weekend, on our quick trip from Christchurch to Dunedin, then onto Cromwell to watch my super-son’s* cricket match, my husband and I met a woman travelling on her own from Berlin. We stayed up until almost 2AM (so much for temperance) talking nonstop about her version of what life was like for her and her family in Germany and cross-comparing my husband’s family life here in NZ, as well as my own family roots in the USA.
One thing we all had in common was our awareness that our educations were all limited by our individual national recollections, which the German woman translated by tapping on her head and saying...
“How does one say it”, tap, tap, tap...
“Brainwashing”, I offered up...
“Yez...that tis it!” as she pounded the table.
I had to throw temperance to the wind as this was a rare and ‘one off’ opportunity to share with another human being what we each found being in this world to mean. She is a pacifist, as am I...and, that is not something I stumble across very often. The table was the only thing we agreed need be beaten in this life now, past or future. I felt emboldened for having met her. Thank you my new friend, you know who you are.
Now about my super-son*, which is what I prefer to call him as opposed to a step-son. A super-son is one you inherit by marriage, not to be trodden upon, but appreciated for the unique advantage of not having had to push them from one’s own body, but merely embraced as one of the many opportunities life offers up without physical pain. I enjoyed watching his cricket match, the first match I have ever seen, being under the misguided impression that cricket was boring and impossible to understand, coming from baseball indoctrination.
I found that I liked watching cricket and can see that it will afford me many moments in the future to learn new strategies of how to play chess with a funny looking bat.
I must mention that my husband and I took our ‘fur kids’ with us. Now that we are two adults on our own again, with no children at home to take with us, Mr. Taffy and Tuppy, are now our privileged guests on mad dash weekends away. They loved it and we found taking the dogs to be much easier than carting children. There were no arguments, car sickness, or endless requests, just lots of wagging tails and tales of our own making, without the interrupted versions of childish versions that suggest we didn’t do one thing they thought fun.
We will take them again.
 |
| Tuppy |
 |
| Mr Taffy under cover |
 |
| Mr Taffy |
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Painting of Ben's Virtues
It was on the hottest day I have ever experienced since moving to New Zealand eight years ago. One of those days that found my friend and I huddled out back of my house in the only pure shade we could find. My friend was painting her beautiful Maori/Pakeha soul onto a long piece of hardy board left over from lining the inside of my fence, while I had been painting my displaced immigrant soul on a matching panel. Ben's virtues of temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility were bouncing around in my head.
Panting from the heat I looked at my panel titled "Underwater Cactus" and realized it was too hot to paint a watery scene, the paint was drying on impact and the affect I was seeking was rather slippery, so I grabbed a new panel and laid it down on the ground, standing over it and inscribed Ben's virtues onto it as fast as I could and decided to call it my "Morality Board".
My beautiful friend looked up from her passionate pallette and commented,
Oh, I like that, it looks like it is written in blood.
How affectionate I am for my friend that always seems to know exactly what I am after.
For three days now I have been contemplating daily the first attribute of Temperance: Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation. I have four more days to go and find myself sweating blood at what new finds I will see as I discover my own unconscious embedded intemperances. They are not just food and drink, though food has always been a problem for me until I first came to New Zealand and began a regime of eating like a Kiwi instead of a Midwestern American. I thought I was going to starve for the first month and I can remember my children looking at their plates like I was joking. But, I had a new man (now my husband) in my life and I was trying to take on his practises. I lost twenty pounds in no time!
But, the real weighty issues are the intemperances I find inside myself, not just on a hot day, but every day, that have been building for many years simply because I did not have my "Morality Board" written in what looks like blood to remind me. In three days I found enough intemperate reactions to life inside myself to know that not only will this be a long year, but there are many years to come which all need my continuing checks and balances that my friend Ben has selected for me, which I wholeheartedly agree, is a good enough way to remind me how unconscious I have been and always will be.
So, on the flip side of my "Morality Board", I have decided to paint it black (and yes, you may think of the song here)...and, write in chalk the things I know I need to watch out for on a day to day basis that can be added to and erased more easily than writing them in blood.
Panting from the heat I looked at my panel titled "Underwater Cactus" and realized it was too hot to paint a watery scene, the paint was drying on impact and the affect I was seeking was rather slippery, so I grabbed a new panel and laid it down on the ground, standing over it and inscribed Ben's virtues onto it as fast as I could and decided to call it my "Morality Board".
My beautiful friend looked up from her passionate pallette and commented,
Oh, I like that, it looks like it is written in blood.
How affectionate I am for my friend that always seems to know exactly what I am after.
For three days now I have been contemplating daily the first attribute of Temperance: Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation. I have four more days to go and find myself sweating blood at what new finds I will see as I discover my own unconscious embedded intemperances. They are not just food and drink, though food has always been a problem for me until I first came to New Zealand and began a regime of eating like a Kiwi instead of a Midwestern American. I thought I was going to starve for the first month and I can remember my children looking at their plates like I was joking. But, I had a new man (now my husband) in my life and I was trying to take on his practises. I lost twenty pounds in no time!
But, the real weighty issues are the intemperances I find inside myself, not just on a hot day, but every day, that have been building for many years simply because I did not have my "Morality Board" written in what looks like blood to remind me. In three days I found enough intemperate reactions to life inside myself to know that not only will this be a long year, but there are many years to come which all need my continuing checks and balances that my friend Ben has selected for me, which I wholeheartedly agree, is a good enough way to remind me how unconscious I have been and always will be.
So, on the flip side of my "Morality Board", I have decided to paint it black (and yes, you may think of the song here)...and, write in chalk the things I know I need to watch out for on a day to day basis that can be added to and erased more easily than writing them in blood.
Monday, February 7, 2011
My Friend Ben
I have been reading Benjamin Franklin by Carl Van Doren published in 1938 by The Viking Press. I am not through it yet and already, I feel I must write about it. It is a book I was allowed to take for free from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand on February 2, 2011, between 11:00AM and 2:30PM during a book giveaway. As you might imagine, there was a host of us there sporting boxes.
My husband, daughter and I wheeled our free book selections out on office chairs with swivel wheels that were also a part of the giveaway. We each had selected from our own preferences. My husband’s was history and geography, my daughter’s was science and literature, mine was American studies and literature. How could I do any better than with a book written about Benjamin Franklin?
Today is only five days later and I have already begun a painting in relationship to the American I always admired superficially, having owned a copy of Ben Franklin adages that sat on my coffee table for many years. About his life, I knew relatively nothing other than a story of a kite, lightning, electricity and moral fabric tossed about through adages slurped randomly. I knew I liked Benjamin Franklin, but I really didn’t know why. Call it intuition, or not, if the thought frightens you.
I’m finding I was savvy to feel rather kindly toward Ben, even if he validated a few things that make me cringe with my political correctness lens that hasn’t yet been fully deleted (I’m working on it with a little help from my own Junto, a scheme I have adopted from Ben who adopted it from Cotton Mather). Ben’s industrious capacities cannot be denied, he accomplished a lot before the advent of light technology, and he had to use ink and type and set it and before that, create what was to be said, he was a one man google-anonymous-blogger without the light show and the quickness, but will all the punch.
I mean, I really admire this human being, the way he was being, inside of where he lived and when, and even now, I would like very much to be locked into an elevator with Benjamin Franklin for awhile, it would not prove onerous, but uplifting, perhaps to the next floor of my own conscious participation with the world I live in. That is why I am determined to paint part of what I learnt about him that makes me like him so much, a plan for living, a list of desirable virtues he longed to groom in himself, a list complete as twelve things, or so he thought, until a good Quaker friend pointed out his many instances of lack of humility, to which Benjamin had to agree when he viewed what must be repeated with the acceptance for others’ opinions.
The list went from twelve to thirteen then. Obviously messing up the mathematical beauty of how it fit into taking Ben through the list one at a time for a week, for twelve weeks, to begin to repeat again and make way to practice all traits for a month of each year at its conclusion, but nevertheless, it works well to remember humility before going back through the original twelve again, lest we forget our requirements to be parrots. And, the original list with the addition is herewith set out as the desirable virtues our young Benjamin set off to instil in his internal world:
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation: Avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries do much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation. 13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates (Benjamin Franklin by Van Doren, p. 88).
Now, I am committed to attempting this exercise throughout the year 2011 to see what I can see inside myself surfacing daily under scrutiny by my own conscious act. Temperance, I have but one day today followed and realized that once I met my limit of three fudgsicles, I resorted to placing my foot upon the kitchen bench and stretching out the desire to finger the remnants inside the freezer. Woe, is me, I do not drink, but man can I eat when contemplating. I must take up a race to the other side of the house to keep my date with number one on day one, this is going to be a long year.
More on the painting next time...
My husband, daughter and I wheeled our free book selections out on office chairs with swivel wheels that were also a part of the giveaway. We each had selected from our own preferences. My husband’s was history and geography, my daughter’s was science and literature, mine was American studies and literature. How could I do any better than with a book written about Benjamin Franklin?
Today is only five days later and I have already begun a painting in relationship to the American I always admired superficially, having owned a copy of Ben Franklin adages that sat on my coffee table for many years. About his life, I knew relatively nothing other than a story of a kite, lightning, electricity and moral fabric tossed about through adages slurped randomly. I knew I liked Benjamin Franklin, but I really didn’t know why. Call it intuition, or not, if the thought frightens you.
I’m finding I was savvy to feel rather kindly toward Ben, even if he validated a few things that make me cringe with my political correctness lens that hasn’t yet been fully deleted (I’m working on it with a little help from my own Junto, a scheme I have adopted from Ben who adopted it from Cotton Mather). Ben’s industrious capacities cannot be denied, he accomplished a lot before the advent of light technology, and he had to use ink and type and set it and before that, create what was to be said, he was a one man google-anonymous-blogger without the light show and the quickness, but will all the punch.
I mean, I really admire this human being, the way he was being, inside of where he lived and when, and even now, I would like very much to be locked into an elevator with Benjamin Franklin for awhile, it would not prove onerous, but uplifting, perhaps to the next floor of my own conscious participation with the world I live in. That is why I am determined to paint part of what I learnt about him that makes me like him so much, a plan for living, a list of desirable virtues he longed to groom in himself, a list complete as twelve things, or so he thought, until a good Quaker friend pointed out his many instances of lack of humility, to which Benjamin had to agree when he viewed what must be repeated with the acceptance for others’ opinions.
The list went from twelve to thirteen then. Obviously messing up the mathematical beauty of how it fit into taking Ben through the list one at a time for a week, for twelve weeks, to begin to repeat again and make way to practice all traits for a month of each year at its conclusion, but nevertheless, it works well to remember humility before going back through the original twelve again, lest we forget our requirements to be parrots. And, the original list with the addition is herewith set out as the desirable virtues our young Benjamin set off to instil in his internal world:
1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. Moderation: Avoid extremes, forbear resenting injuries do much as you think they deserve. 10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation. 11. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation. 13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates (Benjamin Franklin by Van Doren, p. 88).
Now, I am committed to attempting this exercise throughout the year 2011 to see what I can see inside myself surfacing daily under scrutiny by my own conscious act. Temperance, I have but one day today followed and realized that once I met my limit of three fudgsicles, I resorted to placing my foot upon the kitchen bench and stretching out the desire to finger the remnants inside the freezer. Woe, is me, I do not drink, but man can I eat when contemplating. I must take up a race to the other side of the house to keep my date with number one on day one, this is going to be a long year.
More on the painting next time...
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti, I Hail You
Haiti... I hail you amidst all my most positive thoughts, the kind that say I wish I could do more than I can, like dig the dirt off your hands, stack the ruble to one side continuously until there isn’t any, I am thinking of you.
Reading is all that I find of you, in my world where the water swirls differently…amidst flightless birds, I am hearing calls worldwide for your rescue, and defense of no enemy, only nature upturning her ends, cutting split-ends on the surface that is not personal, not like us, but very much like us…discarding that which has no purpose in our coiffeur, cannon or coffin.
Three seems to be the eternal symmetry for uniting hands.
My hands are at work writing your affect on my mind from an abundance of well wishers, to one lonely dirge, problems come out of the woodwork when fear for fellow creatures are at hand, some are worthwhile, and some are not to a few rotten lot, but they are dying, too…boohoo.
False tears are not viable for long. Only those born from a broken heart, with a mournful song, will be heard in the birth of your disaster, singing tunes that remind us of our sustainability, like martin and mohandas creating moksha (Lit. freedom from birth and death. The nearest English equivalent is salvation).
Let not the ideas of any science, theory, philosophies be mocked with threat of death, but invited to live somehow silently quiet in different proximities. She is larger than life, our earth; our boundaries are self regulated, unnatural. Nature is not an invisible hand to something else invisible, but an observable fact of face grooming without selection.
IT could happen to any of us…and, we all need to remember that by doing our part to make it less painful, whatever that part may be…even if, it is to be silent Pat Robertson…hush up, go to bed, we will wake you when the ordeal is over.
Haiti, wear your situation with the understanding that billions of hands are helping you, if only in their minds. Painful, precious prayers from believers and non-believers alike…planting seeds of survival for you in their minds, not with judgment or malediction, but with downright willfulness toward your prediction, coming in planes, by boats, by internet, by the light of each day a new and additional wave of friendly hands to dig you out, and up and on your way toward the next day and the next day and the next.
Aftershock continues for forever, in smaller waves, but there has been a great deal of punctuation in the phrase existing in your freedom. Long live Haiti, a people’s nation that must arise above that which already is, already has been, pick a different way inside your knowingness and arise, live, lay out your arms toward one another and all that is. Embrace the living and bury the dead with the dignity of appreciation for those yet living to ride the earthquake of destruction in their own living rooms, stuffed away in places that feel so safe because they say so, and not because it is.
Haiti, I hail you as people like any other, with the same desires, needs and deeds of the most pious of nations, the most degraded, the mix is the same everywhere there is sentient life that separates us by our wills. Will yourselves to a resurrection, whole and completed by the humble embracement, with the dignity of understanding the way things ‘is’…and, simultaneously, the way ‘they shall be’.
Haiti, they 'shall be' you inside the turmoil, maybe even now, with a different title, a different label, a different type of disaster. Each loving hand has a heart attached to a personal measure of grave issues of the soul…quaking in the boots they wear to rescue you. Haiti, I hail you…
On higher levels of pain, the most positive reflections of pure love surface, to shine…a way into the grave of every soul, and then the turmoil goes away by degrees of comparison, the hardest day that always makes the brightest day’s heightened measure, we treasure it all the same, we survive brilliantly.
Reading is all that I find of you, in my world where the water swirls differently…amidst flightless birds, I am hearing calls worldwide for your rescue, and defense of no enemy, only nature upturning her ends, cutting split-ends on the surface that is not personal, not like us, but very much like us…discarding that which has no purpose in our coiffeur, cannon or coffin.
Three seems to be the eternal symmetry for uniting hands.
My hands are at work writing your affect on my mind from an abundance of well wishers, to one lonely dirge, problems come out of the woodwork when fear for fellow creatures are at hand, some are worthwhile, and some are not to a few rotten lot, but they are dying, too…boohoo.
False tears are not viable for long. Only those born from a broken heart, with a mournful song, will be heard in the birth of your disaster, singing tunes that remind us of our sustainability, like martin and mohandas creating moksha (Lit. freedom from birth and death. The nearest English equivalent is salvation).
Let not the ideas of any science, theory, philosophies be mocked with threat of death, but invited to live somehow silently quiet in different proximities. She is larger than life, our earth; our boundaries are self regulated, unnatural. Nature is not an invisible hand to something else invisible, but an observable fact of face grooming without selection.
IT could happen to any of us…and, we all need to remember that by doing our part to make it less painful, whatever that part may be…even if, it is to be silent Pat Robertson…hush up, go to bed, we will wake you when the ordeal is over.
Haiti, wear your situation with the understanding that billions of hands are helping you, if only in their minds. Painful, precious prayers from believers and non-believers alike…planting seeds of survival for you in their minds, not with judgment or malediction, but with downright willfulness toward your prediction, coming in planes, by boats, by internet, by the light of each day a new and additional wave of friendly hands to dig you out, and up and on your way toward the next day and the next day and the next.
Aftershock continues for forever, in smaller waves, but there has been a great deal of punctuation in the phrase existing in your freedom. Long live Haiti, a people’s nation that must arise above that which already is, already has been, pick a different way inside your knowingness and arise, live, lay out your arms toward one another and all that is. Embrace the living and bury the dead with the dignity of appreciation for those yet living to ride the earthquake of destruction in their own living rooms, stuffed away in places that feel so safe because they say so, and not because it is.
Haiti, I hail you as people like any other, with the same desires, needs and deeds of the most pious of nations, the most degraded, the mix is the same everywhere there is sentient life that separates us by our wills. Will yourselves to a resurrection, whole and completed by the humble embracement, with the dignity of understanding the way things ‘is’…and, simultaneously, the way ‘they shall be’.
Haiti, they 'shall be' you inside the turmoil, maybe even now, with a different title, a different label, a different type of disaster. Each loving hand has a heart attached to a personal measure of grave issues of the soul…quaking in the boots they wear to rescue you. Haiti, I hail you…
On higher levels of pain, the most positive reflections of pure love surface, to shine…a way into the grave of every soul, and then the turmoil goes away by degrees of comparison, the hardest day that always makes the brightest day’s heightened measure, we treasure it all the same, we survive brilliantly.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Curio Bay
Every campsite needs a water tank. Curio Bay, on the North of the Catlins region of the South Island of New Zealand, gets a thong and a wave for best water tank.
Back from the Break
Okay, I've been travelling around the South Island of New Zealand for the past month. Yes, the catch was fantastic at Moeraki. And then, we came home regrouped and went to the Catlins, then to Central Otago and back home again.
Along the way we met so many wonderful folks...the kind that cook you a breakfast on the barbeque and even clean up all the dishes while you are told to sit and relax...imagine that...a real holiday!?!
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