Affirming Those We Love

I’ve been reading Michael Parkinson‘s autobiography called “Parky” for a second time. It’s a beautiful book with some real human stories. One such story evolves around his interview with past and famous actor Henry Fonda. Fonda loved to talk about his talented children, especially Jane. In the interview he said the following about her:   “She is one of the most incredible actresses I have ever seen . When I saw Klute, as an example, I couldn’t wait to sit and talk to her, not father to daughter, but actor to actor. I realized one scene that particularly knocked me out was improvisation, which I couldn’t do if I was paid a lot of money. It just tore me apart.”

Many years later Parky was interviewing Jane Fonda and she was sharing how distant her father had been, how he seemed unable to communicate with his family. Remembering the Interview he had had with Henry Fonda, Parky told her what he had said about her. She responded rather sadly, “He never told me.” Parkinson then said to her that in the interview her father had described her as one of the most extraordinary actresses he had ever seen. Her eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t he tell me,” she said. At the end of the show she was given a copy of that interview so that she could finally hear her father’s words about her.

Parkinson writes, “How strange he could have so publicly and proudly praised her and yet not found it possible to tell her himself, knowing, as he surely must have, how much she craved his approval.” Is it really so strange? Don’t we all do this to some degree?

On The Beach

I was on the beach early this morning and just had to take these images.

 

Then it all turned in to this soft yellowy gold colour. I always marvel at the quick colour changes of dawn.

You Never Know What You May Find

Just how deep are you prepared to go in life?

I took this shot in Cambridge. I thought it was a delightful little scene.

An Ethereal Look

You know how we would be doing something and suddenly an image would come to mind? Well, that happened to me yesterday.

I suddenly remembered a woman who some years ago lived virtually right on the beach. She always wore those long flowing kind of dresses, and early every morning she would take her three dogs for a run on the sand. Those dresses gave her an almost ethereal look as she walked and ran with the dogs. It’s an image I’ve never forgotten.

What brought it to mind? Well, I was reading a short poem by Robert Herrick called, “Upon Julia’s Clothes,” and a certain line in the first verse just invited the image in.

Whenas in silks my Julia goes.
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!

I love the poem, and that line, “The liquefaction of her clothes” is just magnificent. So here’s to the woman who seemed to vibrate and glitter as she walked and ran with her dogs on the beach.

Images on a Walk

First signs of Autumn

Sunlight on reeds

A Thorn tree

Walking on colour

When The Lion Roars

We were sharing some thoughts on our relationship with nature when I rudely interrupted our discussion with the smell of chips. Sorry about that, but the aroma lured me and I just had to share some thoughts on it. So lets get back to nature.

Laurens Van Der Post is one writer who I believe has the capacity to describe nature in prose so beautiful, that it just oozes a natural spirituality which is profound, yet simple. I’d like to share some of this prose with you. Here’s a piece from his book “First Catch Your Eland” describing the sounds of an African night.

” …there was in these sounds and sights something of the nature of a prayer for a way of life for sheer living’s sake which is Africa’s great gift to the modern world. They made the night a temple and I was always struck how, after the roar of one lion, in the pause before another answered it, all the other voices of darkness, like the crickets which raised their own hallelujahs, would be silenced as if by divine command.”

If you have heard the roar of a lion in the darkness of an African night, you’ll know what Van Der Post means.

Some Things Don’t Change

Yesterday as I walked past a little cafe I caught the aroma of french fries, or as we call them here in South Africa, chips. Nothing smells like frying chips.  I stopped and savoured the smell. I couldn’t help but think that in this fast and changing world with our constant need to adapt and learn, some things just don’t change. The smell of frying chips is the same today as it was in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties and right in to the twenty first century.

Who knows  what life and the world may look like in a hundred years from now, but I bet you this, the aroma of frying chips will still be the same.  I don’t know about you, but I take a strange sense of comfort from that. Not sure why, but I do.

The Functional Mind and Nature

Who of us can deny the immense achievements of the functional and rational mind in its enhancing of life in so many ways. Its capacity to see, utilize and use whatever is around it has been a human feat of remarkable proportion.

But here’s the tragedy. When it exceeds its boundaries, and especially when it is fueled by greed, it becomes one of the most devastating forces against nature. Why? Because the functional mind tends to think only in terms of usefulness and serviceableness. It has very little consciousness of essence and life. In Martin Buber‘s words, it relates to everything as an “it” and you can do whatever you like with a depersonalized “it.”  Many have come to know this in relationships where they have simply been looked upon as being useful and serviceable, looked upon as being an “it.”

I watched a program the other night where they described how hundreds of Greyhound dogs are bred every year knowing that only a few will make it to the race-tracks, and even then, when those few are no longer useful. they, like all the others, are simply tossed out to die.

Again in Buber’s words, until the human functional mind turns nature from an “it” in to a “thou”  it will continue to do its work of devastation.

Our Oneness with Nature

Recently, I read a post “Jumping The Gun” by Melissa who blogs at Livelovebegreen. Once again my thinking around the whole issue of our relatedness to nature was challenged.

Having pondered on her words, I’d like to offer some thoughts on the subject. I feel the best way of doing this is to simply share a few brief posts each containing a single thought which has helped me to enter in to a deeper relatedness with nature. So here’s the first post and thought.

For too long we’ve fallen under the illusion that we’re actually not part of nature, that somehow we are separate from her. Sadly, when you detach yourself and observe, measure, analyse and dissect long enough, you begin to believe that you are actually not part of what you are observing and measuring and dissecting. It’s a very subtle thing. It’s almost as if you begin to feel that you’re totally unrelated to it and that it has this inferior quality to it, because being human and somehow above nature far outstrips it. In other words, what you are is totally unrelated and superior to to what you see nature to be.

It’s only when we begin to make the long journey back in to seeing ourselves as being intricately connected and in complete union with nature, that we start feeling and experiencing the profound mystical oneness we have with it. In this oneness we know that whatever we do to her, we do to ourselves.

I’m deeply suspicious of any view, whether it be religious or scientific or any other philosophical view, that does not acknowledge this oneness, this profound and mystical union we have with all of creation.

A Butterfly and a Blooming Queen Palm

We put out bananas for the butterflies. This is our latest visitor.

Took this shot of my neighbour’s  palm tree in bloom. Not sure whether you call them blooms, but I was fascinated by their beauty.