Independence

My title is something that feels in short supply some days, but then something will remind me that I am bigger than the sum of my parts, somewhere, somewhere unlocatable... somewhere where there are no boundaries inside me...

Two friends and I practised reminding ourselves of our unbounded spaces yesterday by repeating, 'I'm awesome'...'I'm fantastic'...'I'm a legend'! And in that moment, I am fairly sure they felt as free and independent as I did.

And then, we all pack up and forget to remember these invisible realities on too many days wherever we reside. Too often, it is forgotten that Independence is a state of mind mostly, and when it isn't, we still have our unlimited invisible Self to fall back in.

Independence is being your own best friend no matter what your circumstances!

But...I am so thankful for friends that are guides, sometimes props, sometimes dependent enough upon me to remind me...I can do this world regardless!

Stuck in the Middle Again

Okay, so I lied, stretched the truth, changed my mind, any and all manner of perceptions can and will be tolerated by this social scientist...because I'm stuck in the middle again...not going anywhere, staying in Christchurch and continuing my education in physical earthquakes on one hand and mental earthquakes on another.

July 9th, I start at Lincoln University for my Masters in Social Science. I will be setting up a studio/gallery/home office I shall call

The Comfort Zone

wherein I will communicate, study, write and paint my way out of

The Red Zone

For those not privvy to

The Red Zone

that would be the parts of Christchurch that are merely a memory from not just the after effects of 10,000+ earthquakes and aftershocks, but by the army of professional naysayers that have controlled and destroyed what was left of our central city and certain other areas deemed not merely impassable, but out of the control of the masses at large...'We the People'.

Moon Beams

Here's peaking at the full moon through the trees outside my window...and, trying to capture it with all of its intensity on the street without a tripod...

Debriefing a Magnificent Journey

This has always been my primary marker and to see it set before me was the highlight of this journey. I feel it now more than ever because for two weeks I spent all my time being entertained by angels...

Angels are everywhere...this is what I must never forget when my friends or I stand in the fire surrounded by wasps:

There is a time to fight back and those times feel very clear when you witness a dear friend swell up from a bite that threatens their existence. There is a time to burn things down...and then, there is a time to renew. No one knows this better than each new day that uses light to deploy its message...

I am here, a lonely sillouhette upon the horizon, but the day will bring even more light and better perspectives if you are patient, and even if you are not...it comes...

And then, you may focus on the Birdsong...

Waking up

Woke up, got out of bed, had this overhead

So I went downstairs and what did I find on the other side of the driveway, but ahhhh...

The moon giving a sideway glance at the new day upon me...

And then the whole world went brilliant right before my eyes...MAGIC!

Easter Sunday

It is not hard to believe in a resurrection when my perspective of such is allowed to include all my dead relatives who fly over my head every day of the week I chance to remember to LOOK UP, LISTEN INTENTLY AND INTERNALLY and admit that they are all still here inside me. I come from a family of bird lovers. Each of my dead relatives comes to mind when I see or hear the presence of the birds that surround me. Angels they are, flying by and chirping out the good news about life and death, pretty much the same thing. And, every now and then, I spy one of them watching me intently from a camouflaged position, sitting on a fence post, or nestled amongst the green leaves. There is nothing dead about any of my dead relatives. In fact, they are more mobile now than they use to be when I invisioned them living in a particular spot on this planet. Now, they fly all over the world and wind up anywhere and everywhere I go when I decide to remember them. Easter is a good time to remind us to remember, but I don't remember them because of Easter, in fact, I tend to avoid what most people do with Easter, having turned it into a massive consumer culture for buying new clothes and showing up once a year and regurgitating other peoples myths. I wake up with the birds every morning and hear my supposedly dead father tell me to distance myself in order to see the bigger picture, my supposedly dead grandmother worbles: 'This too shall pass' and my supposedly dead grandfather reminds me to do everything I have to do with a smile because I have to do it anyway. With all that at the beginning of every day I never have an excuse to mark a single day as special because they all are, just like us.

Saved by a Second (now Fourth) Opinion

Saturday morning, a more mature and less randy engineer came and inspected our property and said what we already knew...'The proverbial @#*! house' is what we have here. Fortunately, this engineer has been around about five to six times as many years as the young man who scared most of the other occupants off the property. It was a very close call, but had we not acted with some sort of resistance, we could now be paying mortgages on a spot reduced to rubble with nowhere to live for two to five years...WOW...it pays to be older and a bit fiesty! All is well for the moment...no red stickers and no action to drop the building. Nature may have something further to say, but for now, the cracked walls are as solid as they come.