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Showing posts from 2019

Exotic Canines

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I really loved watching Bali’s street dogs strutting their doggy stuff while I was there for a week. Wild and seemingly threatening, they roam the streets and beaches doing as they seemingly please. But I never once witnessed them to be actually or potentially harmful to humans in any way. Of course many do have rabies and do potentially pose a health risk (although many have been treated for rabies by the State —they're the ones wearing collars). What I observed and loved was that they seemed mostly unfazed by and uninterested in humans. Sometimes they would engage and play with us. Occasionally whilst sitting on the beach after a swim one of them would come and just sit right in front of me or next to me (not sure why...). But generally they stick to themselves, strutting and chasing and sniffing and pissing, barking and fucking, scrounging and sleeping, without daily subjugation or deprivation of their natural instincts and faculties. They looked pretty happy and peaceful

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

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I’m not sure how it is in the lives or minds of others, although I do wonder and enquire a lot. I would love to bypass people’s conscious mind though and travel into that place where conscious mind meets unconscious , to really see. To myself too. And I do try. But short of that kind of technology being available just yet I will have to suffice with asking questions and hoping for the best. Although, the problem is that to get a full picture on someone, or myself, one must be willing to enter that dark zone within to give a full account. Or so I have come to believe. And I often wonder if anyone actually exists without that darkness within. I mean, if someone was born into idealistic circumstances — environmentally and psychologically — would they still harbour darkness as well as light? I can only truly know my own world and my own mind, and even then I don’t think I can completely understand it. But more so than I can know any other, if I so choose, that is. I suspect, how

Life and Death (A Love Story)

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It’s difficult at first for me to imagine...to truly imagine...dinosaurs alive and inhabiting earth. Film and television, in collaboration with paleontology, attempt to foster or conjure the imagery, but it is still, despite the science, quite fantastical. It’s a story, mythology, in my mind. However much I try, I can only fantasise about how it would be. I mean, at least the story of Jesus has some semblance of a connection to reality, to ‘history’, through the written word (albeit a history written by men and manipulated by the original church patriarchy). But just imagine, living creatures up to 190 feet long and 60 feet high traversing the earth. Imagine the territorial skirmishes, the stampedes, the terror they would instill within a human psyche, past or present. The primal violence, and, sure, the majesty too, of Mesozoic existence confounds me. And so I imagine Mesozoic earth would have been quite inhospitable to hominoid types like us. My research (some Googling)

Sweat Lodge

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I traveled to another place. But that place was a feeling. It was a feeling of peace. Absolute peace. Universal peace. God's? peace. Afterwards, my head felt light and empty or liberated and my feet heavy and rooted to the ground. Gently pulled in both directions. I was completely empty, like I've never been before. There were no thoughts. Just a sense, feeling. But before this I had to descend into hell. My own hell. It was certainly around the right temperature. In a sweat lodge you are huddled within a dome tent with a group of other travelers seated and sprawled, prostrated and supplicated, around a dug out pit in the ground that gradually gets filled with red hot molten rocks over the course of four sessions. It gets crazy hot in there. Extreme heat for around two hours. With a few short breaks. And it’s as dark and black as pure nothingness in there. Not even the slightest sliver of light can creep in. The prolonged heat does something to you, to your b

It Takes a Whole Village to Raise a Child

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I used to fantasise about being a hermit. All of my problems would be solved, I thought, if I could just be left alone — by people and the world. For, all of my ailments and stress were caused by others...obviously! Family, friends, strangers, social conventions, conventional morality, government...and most probably you too. It made perfect sense, to my mind. It was scientific even. Like when two inert substances are brought together, such as bicarb soda and vinegar, you get an acidic, frothing, bubbling over reaction. My life was a continual series of these kinds of chemical reactions. But, if you keep the substances apart...peace and serenity… Genius! Nobel Peace Prize please… However, as a friend of mine would annoyingly point out whenever I bemoaned my inability to extract myself from society and enter the serene utopia of Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, “If you really wanted to be living that life, you’d be doing it”. Damn him and his beautiful logic! I may not have accepted it at f