another page

Another whole page of the Mariner is lying in the neural networks of my brain. Phrases present themselves during conversations, adding their music and echo to the topic in hand.

Quoth he, "He hath penance done,
And penance more will do."

Penance is suffering. Perhaps it is the working of our conscience when we acknowledge a wrong act. It requires that we recognise and feel the pain we have caused to others. Doing this, the other becomes part of me and I am more connected with wider life.

Natural justice requires that a wrong doer acknowledge that their act was wrong and take some steps towards reparation. Jewish 'an eye for an eye' and Aboriginal payback are two ancient justice systems that work on this basis. Wrong doers must suffer before they are redeemed.

The Mariner has suffered, but it seems that he hasn't suffered quite enough at this point. So he gets one more blast of 'dead man's eye'.

The pang, the curse with which they died
Had never passed away;
I could not draw my eyes from theirs
Nor turn them up to pray.

Then suddenly, in the next line, the spell is broken. The poem is like that – things change dramatically in a single line, or even a word. Colderidge doesn't do extended segues in this poem.

Today, I wonder what needs redeeming in my life? Redeeming, repairing a little every day – this keeps me at the coal face of my life. Working on my ephemeral self.

short uneasy motion

I am back in the routine of learning my verses of the Ancient Mariner while driving to work. The week on retreat in the Blue Mountains was followed by a couple of tired days with a sore throat virus.

Now I am on the mend, I go over verses that I already know and repeat the new lines that are 'settling in' to my memory, with the help of the paper propped on the steering wheel. I only glance down at safe times, just as I do when I am following a map for directions.

On Tuesday I started at the beginning and went right through. It took almost 20 minutes and nearly filled the whole journey.

Yesterday and today, it is...

The Sun, right up above the mast
Did fix her to the ocean:
But in a minute she 'gan stir,
With a short, uneasy motion –
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short, uneasy motion.

When I rub against other people, or they against me, it feels jerky, like a short, uneasy motion. Not comfortable. Rubbing against others this week, I feel this discomfort. There's something to help remind me to be attentive.

These tousled trees in the Blue Mountains have the energetic look of a short uneasy motion.

6000 times

Repetition is going on in me all the time. It plays a major role in constructing identity and maintaining a continuous sense of self.

When I repeat things, I get good at them. So I need to pay attention to what I repeat. The Ancient Mariner is helping me to avoid repeating unhelpful things like resentment and grumbling.

Practising with others this week, I had a new insight into trusting the process. All I have to do is repeat and pay attention, then learning takes place. I don't have to DO memorising, just repeat with attention.


Now it was all instruments,
And now a single flute,
And now it is an angel's song
That makes the heaven's be mute.

At Karuna in the Blue Mountains, I enjoyed the earling morning light in the bushland. Every day at 7.00am on the short walk to the hall there was the morning light.

Stormy

Driving home yesteday, I started from the beginning and said the Rime right through to my latest verse:

The coming wind did roar more loud,
It shook the sails like sedge;
The rain poured down from one black cloud,
The moon was at its edge.

Some parts were very fluent, and in others there were gaps and hesitations. Once or twice the thread frayed entirely and I had to cobble a 'mutter mutter' bridge across the gap.

I enjoy the cadences and all the variations of emphasis and intonation which are different every time.

My thoughts linger on word choices... sails like sedge. This recitation is a form of 'staying with', there is a faithfulness in it. My brain seems less flighty these days.

I am back from a few days at Rainbow Beach where I saw this sunrise at the Carlo Sandblow. The sun rose under this bank of thick black cloud. But it didn't rain.

it rained

Today I am learning

The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.


Today we are concerned about the lack of water every day. So far this August we have had only a few milimeters of rain – it's newsworthy. Also newsworthy is the drought that is extending throughout southern Australia. It is looking more like a shift to dryer weather pattern, and not a drought that will break. We're adapting to climate change. The government is buying back water allocations from irrigators because the water simply isn't there and the rivers are drying. The Lachlan is the latest catastrophe.

This picture is from the mound springs south of Lake Eyre in South Australia. The threatening clouds left a clearing in the west where the late afternoon sun broke through a short time after this photo.

happy living things

Some verses almost learn themselves, while others take many repetitions. These two came easily:

Oh happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed in my heart
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And blessed them unaware.

That self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

What a basic lesson – it's not about you. Our natural inclination is to care about ourselves almost to the exclusion of others. So it takes a constantly renewed effort to care for others, to see another's point of view. This is for our sakes as much as for theirs.

In the early morning at Woomera, we saw these birds flocking on trees and screeching in that very Australian way. They were happy living things, for sure. And our hearts lifted to see them.

moving moon

I had a quiet weekend to recover from the hectic pace last week. At work again this week, I'm pacing myself through the various deadlines that loom each day.

Yesterday and today in my drive to the office, I am trying to learn

The moving moon went up the sky,
And no where did abide;
Softly she was going up,
A star or two beside–

Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

I like the repeating motifs ... the bride was red as a rose and the nightmare life in death had red lips. It's a powerful colour. This verse also refers again to the colours in the water -- so exotic and scary for an English sailor.

I thought I 'had' these verses yesterday, but today they had fragmented in my mind. So, I am rebuilding them, etching them in the channels of my brain.

When I learn things, my organism changes. My rhythm, the pattern of 'me' is altered incrementally.

Red suede shoes... very different for me. They are good for those high-energy days when there is a lot to do or something to celebrate.

A busy week

Every day has been packed to the brim so that I get up before 6.00am, keep moving and get home late. Some is work, some is family – like the citizenship ceremony last night that saw us sitting through a small-town affirmation of a large life decision.

The Ancient Mariner verses I have learnt today are –

The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

I love the unadulterated melodrama in this poem. It seems to fit the 'life or death' magnitude of the subject.

In these last days I have felt a resonance between this poem and the novel The Life of Pi that made a big impression on me when I read it a few years ago. In both works, the main story is a about survival at sea. And both seem to touch on eternal elements of human and animal nature.

Here is one of the pictures I took on a walk in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. On this short walk at dusk, we found ourselves in the midst of grazing kangaroos. We were so at ease with each other. This seemed elemental – like the Ancient Mariner, or Pi on his lifeboat.

Flying to Melbourne

Flying to Melbourne today for a business meeting with State Library of Victoria, I learnt several verses.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

And more....

Being a survivor is not unalloyed joy.

These ochre pits have been used by Indigenous Australians in South Australia for tens of thousands of years. Standing there, looking at them, I couldn't help but think of the generations of people who used this ochre. It is good to know that Aboriginal art is flourishing right now and that this tradition continues. So much else is lost.

Ancient Mariner

I am memorising the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I'm about half way through and today I will learn...


The souls did from their bodies fly, –
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!


The cross-bow that he used to kill the albatross that now hangs from his neck. When we do wrong, it drags us down. We are burdened by it until we have paid the price. What price redemption?

Station ruin in Flinders Ranges (July 2009)

Constancy

You knew me
fragrant with bee-buzzing blossom
plump with rising juice;
and then, when summer
crowded my rustling dress
to dance me gaily with
the scudding clouds.
You knew me
when autumn's decline
stripped each leaf
and shrivelled sap.
And now, in winter's
frozen waste, holding
brittle endurance,
you know me still.

Should spring come late,
or not at all,
enduring all this
long bitterness,
you will not falter.

Summer heatwave

We're in for a heatwave – days of 40+ degrees with strong winds. The evening news reported that Melbourne morgues are full from seasonal deaths, and they are expecting 44 degrees and gale force winds with humidity less than 10%. A recipe for firestorms.

I wait with bated breath.

This doesn't diminish this love for my country.


This Land

This land longs for my weight,
wishes for my breath,
yearns for my voice.
The wind is singing me to it,
the grasses waving me welcome.

This land gave me life
and abides in me.
Here, I am needed
and must stay.

My feet will walk this earth
where I am known.
I will rest in the shade
by the creek;
breathing damp air
on soft skin.

Here, I will crumble into dust
and become, once more,
this land that knows me.

Olive ezine

Plump green olive
soaked in brine,
glistening sleekly,
a clue sublime
of tangy mouth
pizzazz divine.
Abundant fruit
of ancient time,
meet your fate
and be mine!

Darker cousin
of the brine,
black and wrinkled
in bed with lime,
an aquired taste
I opine.
Puckered cheeks
will bring to rhyme
salty pickles
preserved in ezine.

The Panther

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Prancing its fineness before me.
It padded slowly around the coffee table,
Turned its cold eyes on me, and posed like pharaoh’s cat.
Soft and still, it sat staring at me -
I stared back.

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Touching my world with its strangeness.
Gracefully glossy, it paraded its difference before me,
Sniffed at my leg and the chair with equal interest.
Quietly indifferent, it sat and groomed itself -
And ignored me.

A panther came into my dreams last night,
Bringing the green jungle with it.
The damp air of deepest shadow chilled the room
Suspending me in frozen animation.
The panther stretched and yawned a wide, pink yawn -
And warmed me.