Mary Wesley Offers To Pose In A Coffin

The cartoon caption is I think in Danish - Google Translate is unhelpful in translating any of it.There are 32 contributors to the book I am reading 'Loving It All' - Eminent New Zealanders Write About Growing Old - (See last post) - To date Marcia Russell's story 'Regrets For The Things I Did Not Do' is the best in its encouragement of 'its never too late' and the idea that ones 'prime' is a very relative concept - she writes:

"........ Fay Weldon does a good line in women terrorists - so does Mary Wesley. The latter burst out of the attic at the age of seventy-one and scandalised her well-bred family and friends by writing about them, thinly disguised, in nine malicious and hugely entertaining bestselling novels. Wesley reached her prime in her seventies and eighties and is a great role model for all women moving into their eighth decade. She sharply challenged social assumptions about the old, confessed to bad behaviour and recommended a vigorous sex life.

A few years before her death she had her own coffin handcrafted and finished in red Chinese lacquer and used it as a coffee table in her sitting room. When Country Life magazine came to do a feature on her, she suggested they photograph her sitting up in it. It would have been a wonderful illustration of life as a death-defying experience but apparently the magazine declined."

I say the world needs more people like Mary Wesley.

......

CASS

CASS - A Painting by Rita Angus

Rita Angus’s 1936 painting ‘Cass’ is one of New Zealand’s best-loved works of art. Many of the 1,350 stations that once dotted New Zealand’s rail network were just small weatherboard sheds like this one. Cass was a breakthrough work for Rita Angus. Crisp, bright, and rhythmic, it shows her distinctive style. Angus planned Cass very carefully. The diagonal lines of the hills, for example, contrast with the verticals and horizontals of the buildings, power poles, and stacked wood in the foreground. Everything is sharp and clear, and the painting glows with colour. For Angus, Cass had a deeply personal significance. It ‘expresses joy in living here,’ she wrote. Clearly a lot of people have since agreed. In 2006, Cass was voted New Zealand’s greatest painting in a television poll.

As a Kiwi, I view this work as an icon of where I was bought up -  the South Island of New Zealand or Te Waipounamu o Te Ika a Maui.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

"In Jungian terms, the heart of the Mass lies in the rich, emotional experiences encountered by the participants. A man-centered liturgy enables the mystery of the Eucharist to transform the soul of empirical man into his totality."

This indeed has of late been my own very rich experience and I have come to this conclusion - the words "a man centred liturgy" in this quote are made to differentiate a Jungian depth psychological approach as opposed to a traditional Church Dogmatic approach represented by the words 'a God centred liturgy'.

I would claim that both approaches amount to the same thing. Both approaches point beyond themselves and the language that they are expressed in, to an unknowable mystery, a mystery we struggle to define or express.

The union of two approaches, our Psyche (an immanent psychological theory) with God (a transcendent theological theory) is a union of opposites that are not to my way of thinking mutually exclusive. Perhaps the bridge is something Jesus is quoted as saying -  "The kingdom of heaven is within you" and he said this within the Judaic tradition of the transcendent God. Both approaches become unified if they are held together in paradox creating a greater whole - such as up and down, hot and cold, love and hate, light and dark etc. The union of opposites synthesizes newer and greater meaning. It points towards something beyond the requirement of each element needing its opposite simply to define itself.

To take such an approach would of course bring up a large number of theological problems for many of the traditional conservative churches. One interesting aspect would be how to view Judas Iscariot. I have always been of the opinion that without his betrayal there could have been no redemption - betrayal and redemption, again the union of opposites, again paradox pointing the way to greater meaning - but I will leave that idea for another post.

JUNG, RELIGION AND THE UNION OF OPPOSITES

“ JUNG'S theories have penetrated more deeply inside the Catholic Church than those of any other therapist. There is an apparent mystical aura which surrounds his name as compared to the overt atheism of Freud or humanism of Carl Rogers. His friend, the Dominican father Victor White, wrote that assessing a person's dream sequence seemed like an interior religious pilgrimage.
Jungian analysis superficially appears to resemble religious retreats, and religious retreats are often no more than exercises in Jungian therapy. Indeed, the Myers-Biggs Type Indicator - a Jungian based technique that helps one choose the type of prayer that fits one's personality - has been all the rage in retreat centres. Hawkstone Hall - a Catholic pastoral centre - offers "imaginative work inspired by CG Jung". It is one of many.
Jung repeatedly stated that he was writing his own personal myth which cast him in a prophetic rather than a merely psychological role. His own brand of psychology thus becomes dogma and every aspect of religious belief is interpreted in its light. The following sections are intended to summarize his findings with regard to religion.
JUNG ON RELIGION
Jung claimed that he was interested in religion from a psychological perspective. Psychology "opens peoples' eyes to the real meaning of dogmas". For Jung religious experiences and ideas are found in the human psyche and not in the supernatural. He developed a particular interest in gnosticism and claimed that the Gnostics were great psychologists - the highest compliment possible.
From 1920 onwards he became fascinated by the I Ching, the Chinese oracle book. While practising it he claimed that all sorts of remarkable phenomena occurred. He explained the "ghosts" he saw during seances as "exteriorizations" of archetypal images within his mind, originating in the collective unconscious of the human race. At the core of Jungian therapy lies the occult.
He had an obsession with alchemy, the maternal darkness that compensates for Christianity's paternal light. To become whole, we need light and darkness made one.
Jung claimed to have identified Three Stages of religious evolution. The first stage was the archaic age of Shamans. This was followed by the ancient civilization of prophets and priests. Then came the Christian heritage of mystics. At every stage of religious history all human beings share the inner divinity, the "numinous". Within the psyche, the divine and the self merge.
It can be seen that for Jung, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are the true sources of the supernatural. He had absolutely no interest in objective truth. What matters for the individual is to create his own personal "myth" in order to gain wholeness. His own psychology developed from contact with his spirit-guide who he named Philemon.
In 1916, Jung's house felt haunted, his daughters had seen ghosts and he saw a crowd of spirits bursting into the house. As the ghosts disappeared he went into a three day state of automatic writing, leading to the production of his work "The Seven Sermons". He was already far beyond the realms of psychology.
JUNG ON THE TRINITY
For Jung the doctrine of the Trinity is replete with psychological meaning. The Father symbolizes the psyche in its original undifferentiated wholeness. The Son represents the human psyche and the Holy spirit the state of self-critical submission to a higher reality.
Not surprisingly Jung found similar Trinitarian ideas in the Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek mystical traditions. However, he believed in a quaternity, the fourth person being the principle of evil: without the opposition of Satan, who is one of God's sons, the Trinity would have remained a unity. In Jungian terms, without the opposition of the shadow (the "fourth" person) there would be no psychic development and no actualisation of the self.
Jung perceived the dogma of the Assumption as the Church's attempt to create a quaternity without shadow, without evil, for the devil had been excluded. The Gnostic Jung, however, believed that the principle of evil had in fact been introduced into the Trinity by the material presence of the Mother of God. From a Gnostic perspective, Mary becomes a diabolical presence, the maternal darkness, within the Trinity.
In his essay on Job, Jung contends that Yahweh desired the love of mankind but behaved like a thoughtless, irritable tyrant who is indifferent to human misery. Like Adam, who is mythically married to both Lilith, daughter of Satan, and to Eve, so is Yahweh married to Israel and to Sophia, who compensates for Yahweh's behaviour by showing human beings the Mercy of God. Her appearance in the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel leads to a fundamental change: God transforms Himself by becoming man. Yahweh has wronged the creatures who have outdone Him and only by becoming man can he atone for His injustice.
THE CHRIST FIGURE
Maintaining a tradition put forward by Gnostics, Jung believed that Christ is the symbolic representation of the most central archetype, the self. He may be compared to other Mythic Gods who die young and are born again.
The sublime goodness of Christ means that from a psychological perspective, He lacks archetypal wholeness. Missing is the dark side of the psyche, the element of evil. Christ receives wholeness in the person of the Antichrist. The Incarnation leads to the Apocalypse and the unleashing of evil by an inexorable psychological law.
Christ's death and Resurrection are full of psychic meaning, representing the human drama of following the hard road of individualism, allowing the ego to be put to death in order that the self - the Son of God - may become incarnate within.
JUNG ON THE MASS
In his essay on the Roman Mass, Jung wrote that the liturgy arose from the psychic process underlying other ancient pagan rituals. Transubstantiation occurs symbolically in the bread and wine but more authentically in the participant who is transformed, exalted and self-enhanced.
The Mass is the outcome of a process that began in ancient times with gifted Shamans whose isolated experiences gradually became universalized with the progressive development of consciousness
The Church teaches that Christ died in order to save us. For Jung, this is a misleading rationalisation for an otherwise inexplicable cruelty: the angry Yahweh of the Old Testament is full of guilt and in need of atonement. Jesus dies on Calvary to expiate the sins of God the Father.
The masculine wine and feminine bread represents the androgynous nature of Christ, signifying the union of opposites within Him. What is sacrificed is nature, Man and God, all combined in the symbolic gift.
In Jungian terms, the heart of the Mass lies in the rich, emotional experiences encountered by the participants. A man-centered liturgy enables the mystery of the Eucharist to transform the soul of empirical man into his totality.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF JUNGIAN THERAPY
It should come as no surprise to learn that Matthew Fox sees Jung along with Teilhard de Chardin and a select few others as founders of the New Age Movement. Barbara Hannah of the CG Jung institute writes that visualization is considered the most powerful tool in Jungian psychology for achieving direct contact with the unconscious.
Father John Dourley, a professor of religious studies and a Jungian therapist has written that a religious myth should not be reduced to historical fact and that the Christian mysteries belong to the human psyche. Upholding Dourley's view that the Resurrection should be seen in Jungian symbolic terms is the Episcopalian minister, Wallace Clift, who sees a new age of consciousness brought about by a reinterpretation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
The Episcopalian theologians John Sanford and Morton Kelsey - both Jungian therapists - see religious practice as a healing inner-journey towards wholeness and meaning and dreams should be seen as sources of religious insight. Kelsey writes that witchcraft, sorcery and other forms of Shamanism are not evil in themselves but can be used for good. Clairvoyance, telepathy and other forms of ESP are manifestations of the power of God. In typical Jungian fashion, he concludes that spiritual reality is ultimately a construct of the human unconscious.
Logically enough, the Jungian who goes to Confession would wish to accept himself as he is and to integrate the good and evil aspects of his personality. Acceptance replaces absolution". (ln this context, it is of interest to note the number of priests who have left the priesthood in order to marry and become psychotherapists).
The homosexual who has the courage to "come out", for example, is welcoming and integrating the darker and 'opposite-sex side of the personality. There can be no moral condemnation when wholeness is achieved.
CONCLUSION
Wholeness for Jung means the union of good and evil. As the notion of good and evil are central to Jungian doctrine, he cannot be assessed purely as a psychologist. “

THE RELATIONSHIP OF OPPOSITES

The concept of the union of opposites is a universal theme: 

"In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin-yang (simplified Chinese: 阴阳; traditional Chinese: 陰陽; pinyin: yīnyáng), which is often called "yin and yang", is used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and, how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Many natural dualities (such as light and dark, high and low, hot and cold, fire and water, life and death, and so on) are thought of as physical manifestations of the yin-yang concept. The concept lies at the origins of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, as well as being a primary guideline of traditional Chinese medicine, and a central principle of different forms of Chinese martial arts and exercise, such as baguazhang, taijiquan (t'ai chi), and qigong (Chi Kung) and of course I Ching.
Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (instead of opposing) forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation.
In Taoist metaphysics, good-bad distinctions and other dichotomous moral judgments are perceptual, not real; so, yin-yang is an indivisible whole. In the ethics of Confucianism on the other hand, most notably in the philosophy of Dong Zhongshu, (c. 2nd century BC) a moral dimension is attached to the yin-yang idea.
The concept of yin and yang is often symbolized by various forms of the Taijitu symbol, for which it is probably best known in Western cultures." ----- From Wikipedea.

Lugging a Shy Kite

Life's a bit like that, full of shy kites. You get shy kites in your life when you sail a bit too close to the wind. I didn't think I could sail as close to the wind as I have done this year but I did, and I survived ------ just.

This is a photograph from a sail I had last year. We are carrying, or 'lugging a shy kite,' funny expression.  It was so shy it was back winding at times so I put the jib up with the intention of bringing the spinnaker down, but I was able to hang on in there and carry this big expanse of sail until I got to the next channel mark. Then we eased away downwind with the big kite pulling like a team of horses.

The blur in the top left hand of the photo is the skippers finger on part of the camera lens - stupid old coot, can't take him anywhere these days without him stuffing things up.

Sailing close to the wind with a shy kite, what with one thing or another I have been doing a lot of that lately - time now for winds that are a lot fairer - easier on the gear, easier on the body, easier on the mind, easier on the heart.

Mariner In a Marina

I cannot afford to have the good ship Mariner in a marina berth but she did have a special outing recently while her pile berth in the river was being dredged. This was fortuitous for me because I was unable to clamber on board from the dinghy due to the fact that my sternum had  recently been wired up and I was under strict instructions not to lift anything for at least 3 months while the bone was healing - all of this a by product of having quadruple bi pass heart surgery.

The good ship Mariner was moved from our pile mooring to the Whangarei Marina by Brian, the friendly and very helpful marina manager. Nothing seemed to be too much trouble for him and I played no part in the move.

I loved having Mariner moored on the marina. It was so convenient when it came to boarding for  a general check and to run the motor to charge the battery up. Mariner loved being there as well. "Man I love it here," she said, " All the other boats are so close, friendly and easy to talk to and you come and visit me and keep me company a lot more."
"I know," I replied, but the money I save on fees will buy you a brand spanking new genoa jib soon, maybe even a roller furler headstay." There is nothing like the mention of new sails and equipment to perk her up and put a smile back on her face.

Now she is back on her old mooring among her old haunts waiting expectantly and wolf whistling to me when I walk past on my daily post operation fitness walk. Soon we will be going down river together through the new Whangarei lifting bridge on our way to the sea, I can't wait. It's going to be a great Summer.

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Zane Alexander Smith

Zane Alexander Smith is the son of our second son Alexander and our daughter in law Ramiza. Zane is our first grandchild.

There are a lot of words that you could use to explain the experience of being a grandparent, but perhaps the word "Joy" explains it the best. He is a bundle of joy, a happy little man and as 'cute as', as the saying goes.

Having grand children, is for grandparents the completion of part of the circle of life. A circle is a symbol of wholeness, and it gives me a feeling of  wholeness and completion to hold him and look into his beautiful deep brown eyes.

Part of that completion, and a very good thing indeed, is to see our son Alex being such a good dad and Ramiza being such a good mum  - involved, connected and obviously so proud.

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2013 - ANNUS HORRIBILIS? ANNUS MIRABILIS?

If I was a superstitious person I would look at the 13 in 2013 and nod my head meaningfully and say, "Yep, 13, what would one expect during a year blighted by such a numeral? a win on the Lottery? not likely " ......Well.......... I will return to the theme of the lottery later.

On the 21st of February 2013 I had a heart attack at my place of work. I was rushed in an Ambulance to Whangarei Base Hospital. When I arrived, there were 17 hospital emergency staff waiting - I know this because my workmate Stacey came in the ambulance with me, comforted me and counted them.
I owe my life to this team of people who with other teams and individuals worked quickly and skillfully.

After being stabilised and with various tubes and other medical paraphernalia poking out of me I was flown by emergency helicopter about 100 kilometers to Auckland Hospital. Along with the doctor and nurses I was accompanied by my ashen faced wife Christine who overcame her fears
("me in a helicopter, not bloody likely"). I was thankful she was there with me as I lapsed between, vomiting, convulsing and unconsciousness.

Helicoptering is a noisy, bumpy and vibrating way to travel but we soon arrived and landed on the roof of the Auckland Hospital where another team of people were waiting for me. I learned that being close to death enables one to jump the queue and not wait around. Two 'stents' were placed skillfully into the arteries around my heart which had a pretty miraculous effect on me. Unblocking arteries is a bit like unblocking drains - what needs to flow, flows again and life recovers its equilibrium.

There is a 'Golden 90 minutes' between a heart attack event and getting the blood flowing again. Longer than this amount of time and serious heart damage or death can occur. Time and great surgical skill was on my side, thank God.

Between the stent operation and June of this year I had a variety of tests which showed that I was a candidate for 'By Pass' surgery and on the 21st of June I had a quadruple heart by pass. I was discharged from hospital on the 26th of June (my birthday) and sent home to Whangarei to recuperate.

The mechanics of by pass surgery are well developed and a large team of people do what is now a very common operation. Simply put, the sternum is cut, the rib cage opened up, the heart is stopped by injection and the patient is kept alive by a heart lung machine. When the blocked arteries have been bypassed by lengths of vein taken from one of the legs the heart is restarted by injection, the chest cavity close and the sternum tied together with stainless steel wire. This operation takes about 4 - 5 hours. Deaths are rare at about 3%, complications 5 to 10%. I was one of the lucky ones.

It is now 11 months since the heart attack and 5 months since the by pass operation and I am doing well. Much of the 'doing well' part I put down not only to the skills of the surgeon and his team, but also to the huge amount of post operative care I received both in the hospital and when I came home. One week in hospital after such a serious operation wasn't really long enough and I was sent home for the same reason everyone is - the hospital needed the bed as they continued their conveyor belt of heart operations.

The first week home was pretty tough. I felt dazed, I wanted to sleep in a fetal position all the time but couldn't because of the pain from the cut sternum. I spent over 3 months sleeping on my back. I found it difficult getting from my bed to the shower or to anywhere in the house. Small things like dressing myself were difficult.

Sometimes there are experiences where you can draw a circle around it and say, "well that's what happened" - not with this one. I couldn't see the borders of it let alone draw a circumference. It was all too large, too overwhelming and too painful - During the first week at home I found myself often cowering and crying in the shower like a wounded animal.

But help was at hand from my wife Christine and without putting too fine a point on it, I know that if I had not had her there to  care for me I would most likely have died. She deserves my heart felt thank you for the care and support that she gave me. All of this has not been easy for her either.

Someone once said that imminent death focuses the mind. I remember two emotions. The first was, 'This is bloody serious and I might die very soon'. The second was at the height of the pain and distress when I thought, ' I want this to stop right now, I have had enough, why the hell don't they just give me an anesthetic and put me out to all this'. These thoughts are reactive and understandable and totally non reflective.

The reflection comes quite a bit later when the border of the overwhelming event shrinks in the mind to a manageable size. There is much I have reflected on and could write about (a large book in fact) and some of that would be about how lucky I have been. Not long after the operation I talked to an ambulance driver who told me that less than 40% of people who have a heart attack such as mine actually make it alive to hospital, most of them die. Many who do make it have so much heart damage that their physical ability is impaired for the rest of their life.

Later while I was thinking about what the ambulance driver had said I saw on television the advertisement for New Zealands Lotto. There was a very big emotional reaction from me while watching this as I realised that I had in fact won a bigger kind of lotto and I declared then and there that I would never buy a lotto ticket again, that I had won first prize - my life.

With the odds stacked well against me, I am alive.

So as the Pohutakawas start to bloom and a warm sailing wind starts to call to me here in Northland, has it been an Annus Horribilis? or an Annus Mirabilis? ...... It is hard to say. All of life is good, both the good and the bad. Both these aspects provide learning, awakenings, resolutions, insight, endings, beginnings, thankfulness, pain, tears, suffering..... life itself. So.....

.....The truth is that both these notions belong together in a paradoxical non duality - If both the good and the bad, the light and the shadow are held together and honoured fully, they form part of a whole. Heaven and Hell belong together, each contrasts and defines the other. Opposites belong together, Yin and Yang. This is the Jungian depth psychological world view and one that I have lived during 2013 - a point of view which will do for now.
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DEATH and PEACHES

"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. "

- Alice Walker

SEA CHANGE

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,

And round the pebbly beaches far and wide

I heard the first wave of the rising tide

Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;

A voice out of the silence of the deep,

A sound mysteriously multiplied

As of a cataract from the mountain's side,

Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown

And inaccessible solitudes of being,

The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;

And inspirations, that we deem our own,

Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing

Of things beyond our reason or control.

Darker Than Night

 

Painting by Colin McCahon

A PAIR OF SANDLES  

 - James K Baxter

A pair of sandals, old black pants

And leather coat – I must go, my friends,

Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning

Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters

Of a meeting house – windows broken

And the floor white with bird dung – in there

The ghosts gather who will instruct me

And when the sea mist rises

Te ra rite tonu te Atua –

The sun who is like the Lord

Will warm my bones, and his arrows

Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.

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Finding The Light

I have just finished reading (for the second time) a book by Vicki Mackenzie called "Cave In The Snow". It's about Tenzin Palmo, an English woman who spent 12 years alone on retreat in a cave high in the mountains (13,500 feet) on the Tibetan border. What does one say? Well the Buddhists that I know would probably all say this:

 

OM MANI PADME HUM

........

Heavy Weather

Last week I wrenched my arm and shoulder lifting something heavy. I exacerbated the injury on Sunday by sailing (which always involves pulling hard on many ropes) and have suffered nearly a week of considerable pain that has kept me awake most nights despite the popping of handfuls of pain killers and anti - inflammatory medication. So today I took the day off with the intention of going to the doctor and finishing off the last of my work planning that was due today.

At one point during the day I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - Old, overweight, limping (another long story) holding onto my sore shoulder and feeling somewhat worse for wear. It might be easy to bear if the Pohutakawas were blooming on a warm summer wind; but its rainy, wet, cold, my car failed its warrant of fitness (rust), my plannings late and my jeans don't fit anymore. Bugger is all can say at the moment - bugger, bugger, bugger. In fact I feel like shit.

But maybe I should take the advice of Christopher Robin who when talking to a completely different kind of Pooh said - "Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." ---- Maybe.
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If Only

Yesterday we raced in the B division in a Whangarei Cruising Clubs Winter Series yacht race. The whole day turned into a series of mistakes and bad decisions that turned the result into a whole lot of 'If Onlys.' Events soon made me feel like I was having a Glass Half Empty day.

If only the skipper had put the spinnaker up at the start of the race instead of just thinking about it.

If only the skipper had changed to a bigger jib earlier in the race.

If only the skipper had changed down to a much smaller jib and reefed the mainsail when the wind started to blow at gale force making the boat was so over powered by the wind that she staggered up the last leg and lost all her hard won gains.

If only the crew hadn't put too many turns of the jib sheet onto the winch, jambing it up so that at one stage we did a 360 degree turn with the jib back winded, while everything close by sailed right past us.

If only one of the crew and the skipper weren't trying to haul on ropes with wrenched shoulders so bad they spent the day sailing and popping pills.

If only...........

....... so on went the race amongst the breaking waves and the howling wind. We came from behind to lead the B Division, only to see our lead vanish by being over canvassed and by fundamental handling errors on the long beat to windward to the finishing line.

But, the spray flew, there was a grim camaraderie, the big jib that had been recently repaired held out despite 30 knots of wind and at times the sun broke through and shone on Mount Mania and the surrounding green hills. It didn't take long for the glass to become half full again.

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Tapestry

Life is a tapestry that each of us weave - and we don't know what it will look like until it has been finally woven. Forty years ago someone told me that even the supposed negative things; the disappointments and failures (and I have had my fair share) are not seen in their entirety until the tapestry is completed - only then can we judge the full value of all that we have seen and experienced - If we believe in faith, hope and love and weave these thing along the way then - as they say - 'All things will be well, and all manner of things will be well.' I hope so.

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Aboriginal Tracker

One is obvious the other is not. "Yes," I hear you say, " The dopey cameraman had his finger over part of the lens; see, in the top left hand corner of the photo" - and you are right.

But the other is not so obvious - You would never see what it is even if you looked and looked and looked and looked and looked!

So I will tell you. The spinnaker pole is upside down! Yes, realio, trulio, its upside down. How do I know? - I know because I am an aboriginal tracker.
Everyone who holds close to their heart the wholeness of their passion is an aboriginal tracker.

Some trackers can tell upon the hoof, amidst tricky technical play the exact moment a football player is offside. Others are correct to insist that the orchestra should have tuned better to the oboes 'A' above middle C. Still others know about metre, rhythm and rhyme, plot and character, vintage and year - But moi? - well I know about spinnaker poles, storm jibs and a running compass fix - For I am an aboriginal tracker, a realio, trulio tracker - I see the clues laid across the natural pattern, the broken leaf and spore on sand and earth.

No matter what the weather - storm, calm, sun, wind, rain, snow or mist - We who hold close to our hearts the wholeness of our passion - we are trackers all, and we never loose our way.

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One Small Candle

"It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness" - Confucius



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Quest

Yacht 'Tawhiri" (Which means 'Wind' in the Maori Language)

This is the William Atkin designed gaff cutter yacht 'Tawhiri' which was built in Whangarei by Smiths Boatyard circa 1985. I remember seeing it being built amongst the sweet smelling wood shavings in the little boat shed by the Hatea River. She was planked with 2 inch thick heart Kauri planks. I remember the trouble they had laying the planks where the hull shape demanded both bending and twisting. As a result of this the hull was festooned like a hedgehog with large 'G' cramps that held the planks in place as they were fastened with big bronze screws.

I love this design, the small cabin that terminates at the mast, the generous deck room and the sense that this is a small ship rather than a 34 foot yacht. This is a serious small cruising yacht. If you catch her eye she will talk to you of deep, sheltered anchorages, her stern tied so close to a Pohutakawa tree you can easily step ashore, of the relentless sway of mast and sails below moonlight and stars - of warm trade winds, flying fish and dolphins. There is no nonsense about a boat like this.

I once read that the reason people garden is multi- layered. There is the aspect of the love of flowers, but there is also an aspect of design and a quest for perfection - a way, mainly subconsciously, of gaining control, of projecting ones will onto an aspect of the external world when so much of the external worlds larger aspects seem to control you - a balancing compensation of sorts; a way to gain mastery and a way of trying to create something as close to perfection as one can in an imperfect world - the creation of ones own 'Garden of Eden'. The key of course is to guide the innate ability of the garden and let it grow. Perhaps much of what we do has echoes of this psychology of gardening.

There are similar elements of this projection in my own love of boats. I am always looking for the 'Perfect' boat. I think this search is similar to the search by people who continually change their car in an attempt to find the perfect automobile. - It's a dopey kind of search, but kind of fun and there is nothing distressing about it at all. Sometimes I have about six perfect boats all lined up at once and it gives me great joy to see so many contenders for the crown. Of course it would be silly to project some sort of holy grail of happiness onto the search. The joy is looking at the changing parade of beautiful small yachts; the joy is in the journey rather than the destination.
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The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee

The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee
(A story cut and pasted from FB)

"When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

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