Ben Newman’s art is just that perfect mix of sexy & twisted for a Sunday morning.
1. I am grateful and give thanks to the difficult aspects of my life as I know that adversity is my greatest teacher.
2. I know that I am always at the right place at the right time and that each person, place and thing that comes my way is perfect.
3. I have the courage to be different as I no longer need the approval of others.
4. I manage my expectations accordingly as I know that all pain and agony occur when there is a contradiction between the ego’s expectations and the reality of the moment.
5. I trust that there is an Infinite Self and I am less vulnerable to the manipulating fear of the ego.
6. I open my heart to hear the answers instead of depending upon the intellect.
7. I conform to what I feel from my Infinite Self as opposed to the norms and expectations of society.
8. I do not compare my unique self with anyone else.
9. I accept what I have and where I am today and don’t confuse my current reality with goals for the future. [note: if you do not have any goals, create some]
10. I am satisfied as I know that all is well with the world right now.
11. I continue to expose myself to the present moment and come closer to my Infinite Self.
12. The less I care about the future the freer I become.
13. I need less and less to be happy.
14. As I maintain balance I create energy and power.
15. I continue to give thanks for what I have and know that I am blessed.
16. I maintain discipline by having a greater desire for wisdom than my need to accommodate the ego.
17. I maintain harmony by not judging, criticizing or complaining about other people or circumstances.
18. I am conscious and respectful of the needs of others and they are conscious and respectful of my needs.
19. I maintain objectivity by being an unemotional observer.
20. I attract what I want by seeing, feeling and experiencing what I want as if I already have it.
21. I attract what I want by being centered and having a clear intention.
22. I don’t talk about myself nor explain what I know or do.
23. When I feel angry, I stop and emotionally go within to figure out what I’ve lost and agree to lose it.
24. By respecting other living things, I am respected.
25. I practice non-action by watching the ebb and flow of events and getting underneath life.
26. I attract what I want by effortlessly allowing it to come to me.
27. I know that my job on this planet is to experience, express myself, create, grow and transcend.
28. I know that nothing is permanent and all change is a “gift.”
29. I serve humanity through my silence.
30. I easily change as I have no fear of not knowing.
31. By changing I create energy. By creating energy I affirm life.
32. I am light hearted and laugh a lot. I flee from seriousness as it is a disease of the ego.
33. I accept being here and not being here as equal in value.
34. When things don’t feel right, I do nothing as my actions are initiated by my certainty.
35. I know that life is a sacred journey and feel humility and gratitude.
36. I fear not death as it is my friend.
From Shenker, M. (2009). “Empowerment Chapter 8 (of 10)-Empowering Others.” Emergence : Complexity and Organization 11(4): 88.
“Master Muoga, tell me of demons.” Pita said.
Master Muoga and Pita walked slowly up the hill through the downtown Friday night crowd. The air was hot and humid. Flashing neon chased shadows around the busy street. The crossing beeped and Muoga and Pita quickened their pace to cross the intersection.
“A demon is a madness; a feeling that takes control of your life,” Muoga said. “It overpowers will with a series of waves of emotion, desire, and regret. And people suffer.”
A group of drunken youth bowled towards Muoga and Pita. The young men glared fiercely at one another and catcalled passersby. Their girlfriends clung to them like thug-life accessories.
“How can you be untouched by the suffering of the people?” Pita asked.
“You see demons everywhere.” Muoga said, “They are Maya dancing in Brahman. Their names are legion.”
“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,” A drumbeat followed the chant down the hill. “Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare, Hare Krishna…” Shoppers, drunks, nightclubbers, and homeless on the sidewalk got out of the way of the Hare Krishna devotees who were dancing towards Muoga and Pita, chanting their names for God, and drumming ecstatically. Muoga and Pita moved to the side of the walk and watched as the troupe passed by.
“I don’t understand,” Pita said. He frowned. “You’re not possessed. You’re a Master. You’re not like anyone else. You don’t need to drink, shop, or chant the names of God.”
Muoga laughed. “I have many demons. They stir restlessly in me. I feel for my fellow human, for I share the demons of sex, drugs, language, and regret. We are all possessed, Legion.”
“Demons are fed by your attention. Starve them of attention, and they wither away.” Muoga said, “This doesn’t mean that they disappear.”
Muoga waved at the Hare Krishna devotees, who were now dancing in a wide circle near the intersection while they waited for the lights to change.
“They’re feeding their addiction to their ecstatic absorption in the names of God. Perhaps some of them believe that God will come to them if they chant mantra.” Muoga said. “People generally feed their demons in the same way. I only let you call me Master, because my demons are dried husks of their former selves. There by grace I have gone and I have returned.”
Muoga and Pita watched the Hare Krishna troupe cross the intersection. Some drunkards were mocking their dancing, but the Hare Krishna devotees just smiled and laughed at them.
“Hare Krishna devotees have renounced the modern world,” Pita said. “But they still remain attached to the mantra, to the lifestyle, to so many things.”
“Our demons teach the value of renunciation. Renunciation is not material, but spiritual.” Muoga said. “If we renounce and surrender our attachment to the fruits of our actions, there is peace.”
“My demons will die if I give up my fears and worries about the outcome of my work?” Pita asked.
Muoga laughed and said, “Give it all to God!”
Pita smiled at Muoga. Two pretty girls saw his smile and as he noticed them, they winked at him and giggled, and Pita blushed.
“We cannot escape desire or attachment, but we can be wise about what we desire and attach to,” Muoga said. “And if we desire to master our demons or attachments, all we need to do is embrace them with compassion and love, and they will fall away on their own.”
Pita laughed, “I’ll embrace my inner demons tonight!”
Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn
November 2, 2011
Ben Newman’s art is just that perfect mix of sexy & twisted for a Sunday morning.
Chris
I ran down the hall and barreled into the lounge and tripped over a multicolored snake coiled in a pile and tumbled into Dad’s legs. Dad picked me up and swung me around the room by my arms. I giggled as the room swirled about me. The floor was covered with a plastic sheet, and laid out on the sheet were Dad’s things. They spun beneath me as Dad turned on the spot in the middle of the lounge. The sunlight fell into the room and winked at me from the metal beneath me. Dad stopped spinning and I dropped down from his arms to pick up the thing that most drew me in, it was as long as I was tall, and glinted wickedly. I ran my finger along the rough edge of the knife that stuck out of one end. Dad grabbed it from me and his mouth moved. I watched his lips move. He said, “no, Chris, no ––––––––– dang––––––, you –––––––– yours–––.”
I picked up a metal ring and turned it over in my hands. It was heavy, cold to the touch, Dad stood there, watching me play with it. I thumbed the bit that moved when I pressed down on it. It sprang back and pinched my finger. I cried out in surprise and looked up at Dad. He picked up another ring and turned the thing in the middle so that it moved sideways on the ring. I copied him and the bit that moved stopped moving. Dad was talking, but I wasn’t really watching him talk, I was watching his hands work the ring.
Dad
My son ran in the room and tripped over the coiled rope into my legs as I laid out my tools for this weekend’s climbing expedition. I picked him up and swung him around the room. He laughed as only he could, unselfconsciously. After all, he couldn’t hear himself laughing. His laugh had the pure innocence that only children can have. I always thought of spring melt chuckling around mountain boulders when I heard my boy’s laugh. I was becoming dizzy as I spun him around the room so I slowed and held him in the crook of my arm. He slid down my body, clutching at my shirt to ease his descent. He picked up my ice axe and felt its serrated edge. Before he could hurt himself, although it was unlikely since the pick on the axe was blunt, I took the axe from him and said, “No, Chris, no, don’t play with this, it’s dangerous! You might hurt yourself.”
Chris picked up some carabiners and played with the locking mechanism, looking at how the nose locked into the gate, he snapped it open and shut and caught his finger in the mechanism and yelped in surprise. He looked up at me. I smiled at him, took another carabiner from the floor, and showed him how the sleeve on the gate could be twisted so that it locked the carabiner. He copied my movements with his fingers. Chris was always a good mimic. He could be shown how to do something once and he’d be able to do it again with no trouble.
I waved at the chair and Chris sat down in it. He watched me pick up my sleeping bag and squeeze it. I said “Sleeping bag” and made the signs for “sleep”. I packed my bag with my climbing tools, holding each one up so that Chris could see it, and naming it slowly. I wasn’t sure if he could understand what I was saying, because they were all new words for the large part. I’m sure he knew what I was trying to do as he was paying careful attention to my lips. Without some kind of reinforcement, it was always some kind of luck that Chris seemed to know what we were trying to do when we named everything for him.
Chris
Dad picked up a little brown bag and squeezed it between his hands. It swelled out between his fingers like dough. He bounced it between his hands and it didn’t look very heavy. His mouth moved and he said “––––––––– bag” and pushed his palms together like “bed”. He pushed the bag down into the big red bag with white lines around it like a lolly. He picked up the rings and said, “car––––––”, and showed me where they were going in the bag, near the top. He was trying to tell me something important about the way everything was going in the pack. Something about weight, how heavy everything was. Dad picked up the pack and hefted it in his hands to show the balance. He passed it to me, but I dropped it, it was too heavy.
Chris
The sunlight was only on half of my Dad’s face so I couldn’t see what he was saying to Mum, not properly, anyway. Mum didn’t look very happy. Her arms were around Dad’s waist and she was looking out the window. I climbed up onto one of the cane chairs in the kitchen and looked out at the far-away mountains. The snow on them shone brightly and they rose up into the fluffy clouds around them. I blinked and an afterimage of the mountains shone in my eyes. I leaned against the window and pressed my nose to them. The air was crisp and my breath misted on the window. I drew a squiggle into my condensed breath and looked up at my parents. Dad noticed and smiled. He rubbed my hair and pointed out the window and said something. I frowned as I tried to lipread, so Dad repeated himself. “Chris, see the mountains? Tomorrow I will climb ––––––. –––––– not one of ––––––––, but it’s –––––– of the same mountain –––––––. They’re called the Southern ––––.”
“Dad, what are ‘halpes’?”, I asked. He smiled and chucked my chin. “Alps, it’s spelled a l p s”. I followed his lips. He fingerspelled the letters as he said them. “A el p s, alps”, I said copying the way Dad moved his lips. “Alps are another name for a lot of mountains joined together.”
Dad
“Chris, see the mountains? Tomorrow I will climb Mt. Cook. It’s not one of those, but it’s part of the same mountain range. They’re called the Southern Alps.” Chris looked up at me. It was obvious he didn’t understand everything I said. He asked me, “what are alps?” He mispronounced “alps” by putting an ‘h’ in there. “Alps are a name for a group of mountains,” I told Chris. “I’m going to climb one mountain, far to the south, near Tekapo. You remember skiing at Lake Tekapo last winter? With the MacDougals?” Chris nodded and made skiing gestures with his arms. “Mt. Cook is our biggest mountain. I’m going with my good friend Mike.” Chris nodded and pointed out the window at the mountains.
Chris
I held my Dad’s hand as we walked out the front door. The pack over his shoulder swung near me and I looked up at Dad. He squeezed my hand and smiled. Mum followed us outside. We walked down the garden path. The snowdrops had emerged in the recent Indian spring weather and they nodded in the breeze, slightly bowed. Little green buds studded the stark branches of the trees in Mum’s garden.
Dad’s friends were waiting in their Hillman Hunter by the macrocarpa hedge at the bottom of the driveway. I ran to the car and waved at Dad’s two friends who were sitting in the front, waiting. Dad’s best mate had his arm crooked out of the window and he tousled my hair as I went past his window tracing the racing stripe down the side of the car. I ran my hand over the bumps on the front of the car and traced the letters. They spelt “H, I, L, L, M, A, N”. I said “Hill, man”. My dad’s friend laughed, and said something really quickly. I didn’t understand and I looked at Dad. Dad was still talking to Mum so he didn’t tell me what his friend said.
I crouched down and peered under the car and watched Dad’s legs move and, my hands on the front bumper, I felt the back latch click and the car moved on its springs as it took the weight of the bag. I peered into the headlights and looked at the squiggle of the lightbulb. The lights flashed and I fell back onto my bum. I stood and Mike, my Dad’s friend, behind the steering wheel, was laughing. He looked at my frown, winked, then poked his tongue out. I laughed.
I looked at Dad, he was holding my mum closely. Her arms were around his waist and they were looking into each other’s eyes. Mum’s eyes were filled with worry, Dad’s with love. As I looked, Mum’s eyes watered and she smiled as Dad said something into her hair. He looked at her, and the lines in his face deepened. He looked over her shoulder at me and winked. His eyebrows waggled and he spoke again. It must have been about me, because Mum turned to look at me. I ran into their legs and hugged one of Dad’s legs and one of Mum’s legs. I looked up and saw them both looking down at me, smiling. They looked over at my sister, Ingrid, who was playing with her Barbie and Ken on the stoop by the garage. Ingrid was making Ken hug Barbie, and Ken was rubbing Barbie’s back. And then she made both Ken and Barbie wave good-bye at Dad. She was making different voices for each doll, I could see. My parents smiled warmly at us.
As Dad got into the car, I ran into a cave at the bottom of the macrocarpa hedge and climbed up the branches near the trunk where the bristly leaves weren’t as thick.
Mum
As my husband got into the car, I told him, “Don, please don’t do anything dangerous.” Don laughed and said, “Darling, mountain climbing is dangerous! Don’t worry, at the first sign of any danger, we will head back down, or not make the climb for the summit.”
Mike chipped in, “Yeah, Rochelle, I’ll make sure your man comes home. We won’t climb if it looks like the weather will close in.”
As Don got into the passenger seat of the car, Chris ran into the hedge and climbed swiftly and surely to the top. I wasn’t too worried about Chris as Don had checked the fort up there and made sure it was safe for Chris to play around in. He said he’d laid in some fresh branches to complete the flooring, but I knew that wasn’t always safe as Chris had cut his leg a few weeks ago when he fell through the floor. Fortunately he’d caught a branch and stopped his fall.
“Mum! Watch me!” Chris shouted from the top of the hedge. I watched the car turn the corner and looked up to see Chris balanced precariously on the side of the hedge. To my horror, he jumped forwards into the branches on the side of the hedge and fell down the side of the hedge, the branches breaking his fall. He slid down in less than a minute, laughing all the while. I gasped and covered my mouth in horror. “Chris, no! Never do that again!” I scolded. “You could really hurt yourself!” Chris just laughed and ran into my legs and hugged me. He looked up with the cutest face ever and I couldn’t bring myself to scold him anymore. I crouched down and hugged him. I nodded at the house, and hand-in-hand we walked back up the path.
Chris
I waved at Mum from the top of the hedge and shouted, “Mum! Watch me!” Taking care not to go too close to the edge, I jumped down into the branches and slid down the side of the hedge, the branches cradling and bending as I fell down through them. I wasn’t worried as I’d done this many times before, but this was the first time Mum had seen me do this. I’d been scared the first time I tried it, but after a few slides it was one of my favorite things to do. Mum wasn’t impressed. She looked scared and covered her mouth. As I reached the bottom of the hedge I looked up and saw her say “–––––, no! Never –– that again! You ––––– hurt your–––!” I ran into her legs and hugged her to say, it’s OK Mum, I’m here and I’m not hurt. I took her hand and we walked back up the path to the house. I wanted a hot milo.
Ingrid
The swirling white candyfloss on the TV was moving up the green outline of the island. I looked for our hometown of Christchurch on the map. First, I looked at the bottom and ran my eye up the side for the little thing that stuck out. There! Christchurch. The big swirl of candyfloss was moving halfway up the bottom of the island. Mummy gasped behind me and I turned to look at her. Her face was pale. Chris was playing with his toy soldiers and he looked at me looking at Mummy. He smiled and went back to his toy soldiers. He was making these annoying “brrrrraaapp” noises by flapping his tongue and knocking over soldiers. Mummy got up and walked out of the room. I heard her pick up the phone in the kitchen. I listened to see whom she was talking to, probably her best friend, Imogen. Yes. Imogen. The weatherman was saying something about a big low pressure thing moving into the Southern Alps, and that there was going to be snow. I wondered if Daddy would make snowmen on the mountain. He made one for me last year when we went up into the hills for a drive that day I saw snow for the first time. I heard Mummy’s voice go high. Then she started talking really quietly. The weather finished and I settled in to watch Shortland Street.
Mum
“Hi Imogen, did you see the weather report just now?” I said. “It says that a storm front is coming up from Antarctica. Do you think that Don and Mike will be okay up on the mountain?”
“Well we know they left base camp this morning so they’ll be high up on the mountain.” Mike’s wife, replied. “Hopefully they’ll have seen the weather change and gone somewhere safe to ride it out.”
“But you know how quickly the weather changes up there. They may not have had time to do anything.”
“Don’t worry, Rochelle. I’ll call the Hermitage. They should have someone there who can assess the situation on the ground. I’ll call you in the morning with their update of the situation. Mike’s very experienced. They’re probably sitting in a snow cave right now riding out the storm.”
“The news said that the weather pattern may stay over the South Island for two days. They won’t have enough food to stay up there that long!”
“Rochelle, don’t panic. We don’t want to frighten our kids. They’ll be fine right now. Let’s worry about them running out of food when they have definitely run out of food! You’ll be OK there tonight?”
“Yes, we’ll be fine. I just had a feeling that something like this might happen.”
“Well, we all know the dangers of mountain climbing. I’ll call you in the morning with the news.”
“OK. Thank you, Imogen. It’s good to be able to talk with you. Goodnight.”
Chris
I was up in my hedge fort when the police car came up the road. I was sad that its lights weren’t flashing. It pulled into our drive and I read the number on the roof. Four, eight, seven, four hundred and eighty-seven. A tall, coffee-colored man in a police uniform got out and put his cap on. I kept as still as I could and looked at the things he had on his wide black belt, it was like Batman. He walked up the path to the house and went around the side. Once he was out of sight, I slid down the side of the hedge and ran up the other side and peered over the windowsill. The police man had taken his hat off again and he was talking to Mum. I tried to lipread him, but he was talking too fast. Mum shook her head. My arms were getting sore so I dropped down from the windowsill and walked around to the kitchen door. I pushed it open the rest of the way and walked in behind the police man. Mum looked at me and shook her head. She pointed to my room and said, “Go ––– –– your room.”
I looked up at the police man, and he was smiling at me. His teeth weren’t even and I looked at the crooked tooth, the one that looks like a dog’s tooth. He said something, but it was too fast. It was a nice thing, I felt. I ran out of the kitchen and went up the stairs on all fours, like the big spotty cat I saw on TV last night. I made a snarly face like the cat as I came to the top of the stairs. I crouched down and looked down the stairs through the railings. Mum and the police man walked into the lounge. I got up and ran into my room, touching the little label on the door that read “DOOR”. I said, “dor”. I climbed onto my tall blue wooden chair “CHAIR”. I said, “cheer”. I looked out of the window from the chair and the police car was still there. I ran to my toy box and found my police car and held it up so it was next to the police car.
Chris
Ingrid tapped on my shoulder. I turned and looked at her. She pointed at the windows. The sky had gone dark all of a sudden. I looked at the way the sunlight behind the clouds changed their colors from bruised bluegrey to a wispy white gold like Mum’s wedding ring. I didn’t notice the rain had started. Rivulets of water were running down the windows. I turned on my hearing aids and heard what I was seeing, the raindrops hammering on the roof, and the whistling of the wind in the window frames. Ingrid nodded and said “––––– loud!” Far away, the sky flashed. I looked at Ingrid, and then there was a great bang, and Ingrid grabbed my arm. She said, “Thunder! ––– you see –– light––?” I didn’t understand everything, so I said “What?” to make Ingrid say it again. She said, “That was thunder. Did you see the lightning?” I nodded. Ingrid frowned and said, “I ––– Daddy is OK” and signed, “OK” by touching her forefinger to her thumb when she said “okay”.
Ingrid
It had stopped raining when I woke up in the night. I could hear Mummy crying. Daddy is away, maybe that’s why. I miss Daddy too. I got out of bed. Chris was turned to the wall on the top bunk, and I saw his back rise and fall with his breathing. I walked down the hallway to Mummy & Daddy’s room and Mummy stopped crying when I turned the door handle. I climbed into the bed and cuddled Mummy. The duvet was nice and heavy. Mummy said, “Are you all right, Ingrid?” I murmured and curled up next to Mummy. I told Mummy, “I miss Daddy. When will he be home?” Mummy caught her breath, and then let it out in one long breath. She said, “I don’t know. I will find out tomorrow morning. Now, hush, let’s go to sleep.”
Chris
I woke up this morning and Mum wasn’t here. Mrs. Constantine was here. She took us to her house this morning in her rattle car. I don’t like Jimmy. He talks behind my back and when I turn around and look at him, he stops talking and laughs at me. Mum had to go somewhere, but I’m not sure where.
Chris
I pushed the peas around the plate. I was sitting at the end of the table and I looked around at the Constantines. They were eating and talking with food in their mouths. Across the table, Ingrid was talking to Sabina Constantine, who was sitting next to me. I saw her say “Cabbage patch –––.” Probably talking about Sabina’s Cabbage Patch doll, which was next to her in a highchair. Every time that ad comes on TV, Ingrid sits up and drinks it in through her eyes. I don’t understand. People talk to the dolls like they’re real children on the TV, but do the dolls talk back? I don’t know. I should ask Ingrid, but I don’t want to talk in front of the Constantines. Jimmy always repeats what I say with his mocking face. I looked at Mr. Constantine. He was talking as his hands cut a piece of meat off a long slice on his plate. He didn’t stop talking when he put it in his mouth with a fork; he chewed and spoke through the food. His beard was cut quite short, but his moustache was over his lip so all I could see was that he was chewing and talking. Mum told me not to do that because it was noisy. Was Mr. Constantine being noisy? I tried to follow who he was talking to. The hair on his head looked like a helmet from a suit of armor. His faceplate opened and closed as he spoke and then he stopped. I looked for the next person talking. It was Mrs. Constantine and she said, “–––– don’t –––– ––––– –– mountain.”
I looked down at the meat. It was strange. Boiled peas and mashed potatoes, I knew. Too much butter and salt in the mashed potatoes. But this meat, it was strange. It was hard to cut, and hard to chew.
“Mrs. Constantine?” I looked and waited for Mrs. Constantine to look at me. When she did, I asked, “What’s this called?”
“It’s called ––––– –––––––.”
I couldn’t understand the name. I said, “What?” to get Mrs. Constantine to repeat herself and I frowned as she said, “What’s a wee nee shit Neil?” I glanced at Mr. Constantine to see what he thought of his wife saying shit and then his name, Neil. He was chewing something and talking to Jimmy.
“–––– beef covered with bread–––– and –––––––. It’s German.” Mrs. Constantine said. “They call it ‘vee nee shit Neil’.”
Jimmy Constantine laughed and the movement of his head caught my eye. I looked at him and saw him say, “–– so stupid he doesn’t know what a wee nee shit Neil is!” I looked at Mr. Constantine and he was frowning at Jimmy. Maybe it was because everyone kept saying, “shit Neil”? In the corner of my vision, I saw Jimmy smirk and Mrs. Constantine rolled her eyes and said something really fast. Ingrid looked at me and screwed up her nose. Mrs. Constantine made Jimmy stop laughing. Everyone was talking too fast. I couldn’t understand anyone.
I asked again, “What?”
In the corner of my eye, I saw Jimmy say, “What? What? What? Chris is –––– – –––––.”
Mrs. Constantine started talking really fast again. I cut off another piece of this strange meat, wee nee shit Neil. Maybe Neil made this meat and his family is being mean to him? Everyone talks too fast. The meat is chewy and it sticks in my teeth. I cut another piece and put some mashed potato on top of it. I looked up and saw Mrs. Constantine say, “–––– the mountain.”
“Dad is on the mountain!” I said. I looked at Ingrid and smiled. “It’s the biggest one in New Zealand!”
The table went quiet. I looked at Mr. Constantine and the brown caterpillars above his eyes were a different shape now. He turned his head to Mrs. Constantine and said something. I looked at Mrs. Constantine and she shook her head and looked at Ingrid and me. Jimmy said something fast, and it wasn’t nice, I could tell. Mrs. Constantine shushed him and pointed at his plate. Jimmy pushed at his peas, his face twisted into a scowl and he said something too fast for me to see.
I asked, “What?” But no one would tell me what anyone was staying. All I could get were words here and there. The Constantines looked at me with this look in their eyes. I didn’t like it.
Ingrid
Chris said, “Dad is on the mountain!” He smiled at me and said, “It’s the biggest one in New Zealand!
“No, he’s off the mountain now.” Neil said, “He was up there for nearly three days you know.” He chewed and swallowed. He said, “They’re lucky to be alive.”
Melanie shook her head at Neil. “The kids don’t really know about that, Neil dear. We shouldn’t talk about that here.”
Jimmy said, “Look at Chris; he doesn’t even know that his dad was missing for three days. What a retard!
Chris asked, “What?”
“Now, Jimmy!” Melanie said, sharply. “That’s quite enough from you. Don’t talk about the mountain. Ingrid and Chris still haven’t been told about what happened.”
“Well, Ingrid certainly knows now.” Neil observed.
I felt a tear come into my eye. Was Daddy okay? I must have said that out loud, because Melanie said, “your father Don is fine. Your mother has gone to pick him up. You’ll see him tomorrow.” I nodded and looked at Chris. He was chewing on the wiener schnitzel. Mum never cooked us wiener schnitzel before. It was nice, I liked the breadcrumbs. Chris looked at me. It was obvious that he couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.
Chris
I don’t like staying at the Constantines. No one talks to me or tells me anything. They all laugh at me when I say, “what?” So I’m glad that Mrs. Constantine is driving us home. But Jimmy is sitting next to me and he’s laughing at me right now. I can tell. I’m trying to count the lampposts. I lost count and looked at Jimmy. He said, “What? What? What?” Mrs. Constantine turned her head slightly and said something. Jimmy sank back in his seat and frowned.
I looked at Ingrid with ‘what?’ in my face and she said, “Never mind, it’s not important. We’re going home to see Mummy and Daddy!”
We turn up our street. I looked at the new buds on the kowhai tree, hints of yellow speckling its branches. I wonder if the fort is OK. Maybe Dad will help me put some new branches down in it? We pulled into our driveway and Mum and Dad are there. Dad looks like a red panda. His face is red like when I got sunburnt last summer, but his eyes were like pale goggles. His nose was like Rudolph the reindeer. His eyes are watering, but he’s smiling.
“Dad!” I called as I ran up to them with Ingrid. Dad swept us both up in a hug and squeezed us. He let me go and picked up Ingrid in the crook of his arm. He tousled my hair and said something. I was so happy to see Dad, but I think Dad was happier to see me and Ingrid. I looked at Mum. She was talking to Mrs. Constantine and they were both looking at us.
Chris
I was sitting on the windowsill watching two fantails dancing with each other by the apple tree below, when Dad’s car came into the driveway and went into the garage. I waited a few minutes and Dad came out of the garage carrying a large square thing wrapped in brown paper under his arm and his old leather briefcase in his other hand. He looked up and saw me. He grinned and waved his briefcase at me. I waved back and got down from the window. I put my shoes on and ran down the stairs and outside through the kitchen. Dad was just turning around the corner and I turned and walked to the back door alongside Dad. I looked at the square Dad was holding and up at Dad. Dad said, “I’ll show you this soon. –––– let me take my –––– off –––––.”
Dad put the square down on the kitchen table and I sat on a chair and picked at the tape on the side of the square. I looked up at Dad and he nodded and mimed tearing paper, like unwrapping a present. I grinned and turned back to the square. I found the edge of the paper and ran my fingers beneath it. Holding one side of the square, I tore the paper away from the edge. It was a wooden square with white paper and a string across it. There was some kind of writing at the bottom corner but it was too hard for me to read. I looked up at Dad and he mimed turning the square over. I lifted one side up, and Dad caught it before it fell over onto the table.
It was a black and white photo of a mountain. I traced the edge of the mountain with my finger and saw a plane against the side of the mountain. I pointed at the plane and looked at Dad. Dad nodded and said, “That’s the ––––– plane that was looking for me on the mountain”.
“The what plane?” I asked.
“The spotter plane”, Dad said, and fingerspelled, s p o t t e r. “It was looking for me and Mike when we were stuck on the mountain two years ago.”
“You were stuck on the mountain?” I said. “What happened? I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember I went to climb Mt. Cook with Mike?”
“Yes, I remember. Me and Ingrid went to stay with the Constantines and you came home with a really red face.”
“Yes. Well, Mike and I climbed almost all the way to the top, but a storm came in suddenly and we were stuck up there for three days. We only had food for one day because we thought we’d be up and down in one day. The weather changes so ––––– in the mountains, we—”
I interrupted Dad and asked, “The weather changes so?”
“Rapidly” Dad said, “the weather changes very quickly. All we could do was dig a cave in the snow and wait. We told each other stories to keep awake and melted snow in our water bottles under our shirts. We’re very lucky to be alive.”
“You mean, you nearly died?” I asked. “Three days. I didn’t realize!”
“Mum didn’t want to upset you, so she didn’t tell you or Ingrid anything.” Dad said. “When you went to stay with the Constantines, we were already safe on the ground. Mum and Imogen drove down to Tekapo to see us at the hospital. We had bad frostbite and hypothermia. By—”
“You had what?” I asked. “Something bite and something else?”
“Frostbite and hypothermia.” Dad fingerspelled the two words. “Frostbite is when it is so cold that the skin freezes like an iceblock. Hypothermia is when the cold makes the body go to sleep and if you sleep when it’s that cold, the body freezes and can die.”
“By the time Mum and Imogen got to Tekapo,” Dad continued. “We were ready to go home. Imogen drove the other car back to Christchurch with Mike and Mum drove me home.”
“You nearly died!” I exclaimed. “And I didn’t even know.”
Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
What is a ‘family dog’?
This little-known, but common, syndrome results from the isolation of a deaf child in a hearing family, where the family makes little effort to ensure that the child has a ‘normal’ participation in the family life. Such families usually have a great deal of shame about having a disabled child. This sense of shame is not unique to families with a deaf member, but is shared by many families who have a nonnormative family member, such as someone in a wheelchair, autistic child, etc. However, where the deaf child differs from other disabled peers is that they lack the ability to communicate easily using their hearing family’s preferred mechanism for communication, i.e., the audible spoken word. This lack of communication often leads to a degree of isolation in the deaf child’s community, an isolation that often becomes lifelong. This is an isolation born out of the inability to share a language. Deaf who use sign language with their families at home and are able to communicate across cultures (hearing and deaf) have a lesser degree of this isolation. Chris has a family dog experience when he goes to stay with the Constantine family while his mother goes to pick up his father from Mt. Cook. The family dog syndrome appears to be somewhat invisible as I haven’t been able to find much research exploring this feeling. I suspect it’s because many Deaf have access to sign language environments and the commonality of the experience only arises in commentary over the experience of Deaf boarders who return to their hearing families for holidays, and on the general Deaf experience in the hearing world. Susan Dupor painted this experience in a very graphic way. The deaf boy lies on the ground in front of a group of seated people, whose faces are all blurred. The note that accompanies the painting says that the blurry faces symbolize how the family dog sees his family, he knows they’re talking to each other, but he’s unable to understand. The only way to avoid family dog syndrome is to be explicitly aware of the presence of the other in the room, and interpret or otherwise facilitate communication so that Deaf person can access normal family life in terms of conversations, etc. Too often people forget that the person present cannot participate, and sits there watching people pass the invisible verbal ball. This is the family dog.
Family Dog by Susan Dupor
No complete knowledge is possible as long as there is the relationship of subject and object. When the subject and the object merge into absolute union there are no doubts or questions. When you enter the consciousness of the infinite you will have no problems. You will have no questions to ask, for the questioner and the questioned will be one subject and object will be dissolved.
Only when action is quickened with love and illumined with knowledge, then the pilgrim in the spiritual path finds his destination and end. The one you seek is he who seeks you. The essential craving of the heart is the inner light. He who has faith, he who is tranquil and self-controlled, he who meditates on the Atman attains immortality and eternal bliss.
So, reduce your wants to the utmost minimum. Adapt yourself to circumstances. Never be attached to anything or to anybody. Share what you have with others. Be ever ready to serve. Lose no opportunity - serve with atma-bhava (feeling that the Self is all). Speak measured and sweet words. Have a burning thirst for God realisation. Renounce all your belongings and surrender yourself to God.
Keep your soul strong and fresh and give it spiritual food - prayer, japa (repetition of God’s name), selfless service, etc. Feed your mind with thoughts of God, your heart with purity, your hands with selfless service. Remain soaked in remembrance of God, with one-pointed mind. Repeat the Lord’s name with faith and devotion. Meditate on his form and surrender your heart and soul to him.
Let the thought of God or reality keep away the thought of the world. Forget the feeling that you are so-and-so, that you are a male or a female, by vigorous brahma-cintana (contemplation of God.) Never postpone a thing for tomorrow if it is possible for you to do it today. Do not boast or make a show of your abilities. Be simple and humble. Always be cheerful. Give up worries. Be indifferent to things that do not concern you. Fly away from bad company and discussion. Be alone for a few hours daily.
Control the emotions by discrimination and vairagya (dispassion). Maintain equilibrium of mind always. Give up backbiting and faultfinding. Find out your own faults and weaknesses. See only good in others. Do good to those that hate you. Shun lust, anger, egoism, moha (delusion) and lobha (greed) - like venomous cobras.
SIVANANDA DAILY READING FOR 14 OCTOBER_
Fallen Princesses by Dina Goldstein
[video]
“
SIT IN SILENCE
I am neither male nor female;
I am neither dvaita (dualism) nor advaita (non-dualism);
I am neither saguna (with qualities) nor nirguna (without qualities);
I am neither seer nor hearer;
I am neither body nor mind;
I am neither far nor near;
I am neither black nor red;
I am neither thin nor stout;
I live neither by food nor by air;
I neither move nor stop;
I shall neither go to hell nor to heaven;
I neither laugh nor weep;
I work and yet I do not work;
I hear without ears and see without eyes;
I smell without nose and taste without tongue;
Few understand Me.
He who understands Me, sits in silence.
Sivananda says: “Mysterious is that silence.
Drown yourself in that silence
And be happy.”
—-
COME OUT OF YOUR MEDITATION
O Fool! What are you doing in the room?
Why have you shut the doors?
Are you meditating or building sand castles?
Are you planning or sleeping?
What do you see with closed eyes?
Darkness? Or some white spots?
Is this your vision of God?
Do not waste this precious human life.
See God everywhere - in the sun
In the trees, the child, the cow,
In the breeze, in the old man,
In the running brooks, in the landscapes.
He is not within your trikuti (eyebrow centre) alone.
Can you meditate for twenty-four hours?
Do not become tamasic or lazy.
Do not mistake tamas (inertia) for satva (divinity).
Enough, enough of your meditation.
Thy cells are charged with heavy tamas.
Come out and serve God in all forms.
Here is a dynamic path of cosmic vision.
So says Sivananda
” — SIVANANDA DAILY READING FOR 25 SEPTEMBER[video]
Tara, Tara, Tara … Sitatara, we come to you!
Avalokiteshvara’s tear, mother of all Buddhas, I embrace you!
O Tara, light of a thousand autumn moons, of flawless quartz, incandescently White Tara, you are my ferrywoman on the endless sea of suffering!
All of Humanity, we bathe in your completeness, your undifferentiated Truth! Your seven eyes cut through our games, our follies, our sadnesses. Compassionate, vigilant, and perceptive, thou art! Your eyes like ours, your third eye wide open, and the eyes in the palms of your hands and soles of your feet, they see All, they hear All, they feel All! Not a cry goes unheard, not a tear goes unseen, not a thought of despair goes unfelt.
Your extraordinary, extrasensory perception makes all masks as if they never were.
Oh, Tara, Tara, to cross to you, we but have to turn our thoughts to you.
My HeartPrincess, your voluptuous breasts peep through your blouse, turn my gaze! Calm my ardour! Oh! The curve of your blouse like the heart-struck sign of the immortal within! Oh! How dangerously elusive you are! How omnipresent you are!
Tara, Sitatara, Sgrol-dkar, Saviour of suffering, your starry beauty ravishes my heart! It is not for nothing that Tara means Star!
“Homage! Tara, swift, heroic! With a glance like flashing
lightning, born from a blooming lotus sprung from the tears on
the face of the Lord of the World!”
… Chapter III, Tara Tantra
Give me long life so that I may erase my karma and spin the wheel of Dharma! Bodhisattva, save me from lions and pride, wild elephants and delusions, forest fires and hatred, snakes and envy, robbers and fanatical views, prisons and avarice, floods and lust, and demons and doubts!
Sitatara, I Thank you! Tara, I Love you! Trinity, I Respect you!
The lotus flower you hold in your left hand, Utpala, the triune bloom: one with seeds, the past; one in full flower, the present; and the third, to bloom, the future! A Trinity of Buddhas: Kashyapa, Shakyamuni, and Maitreya! Protection comes from this hand, next to your heart, three fingers raised, it is OK! I know you are compassionate, do not cry for me, I drown myself in your Infinite Love! You are the essence of all our Buddhas, of past, present and future, thou art! You banish fear!
Your right hand grants me any boon. I Thank You. Yogananda said: “Make me the Butterfly of Eternity!” Grant me this boon and let Infinite Love transmit to the multiverse through this shattered reed that is my dwelling.
O Goddess, you are marked like a tathagata, om ah hum. Even now, I feel your grace overflowing within me like molten nectar, I brim with you, I don’t want any drops to spill from me, you must come and drink from me so that I may replenish myself in your everlasting graces!
Purity, Wisdom and Truth, sitting like a diamond, O, what a magnificient vajra! What grace, what calm! Thou truly art incomparable!
While I always write into nothingness, while I always transmit into nothingness, while I swim in the endless Brighter World that illuminates my heart within due to the incredible graces of my Masters, I yet swim!
Thank you for this emptiness I feel, for it means that I have yet to be filled, that my cup awaits your nectar! You free me from illness, you grant me safe passage to the Brighter World, you give me long life so that I may awaken!
Emptiness meditationOm Sobhawa Shuddha Sarva Dharma Sobhawa Shuddho Ham
(I am the embodiment of the purity of all subjective and objective phenomena.)
White Tara MantraOM.
TARE TUTARE TURE.
MAMA AYUR PUNYE JNANA PUSHTIM KURU,
SWAHAOhm, Tahray Tootahray tooray, mahmah ahyoor poonyay jnyana pushtim kuru[-ye], Swahhah
Tibetans say: OM TARE TUTTARE TURE, MAMA AYUR JANA PUNTIN KURU SOHA
O Tara, you are my Self, you are my Master, my Goddess, you are all that I can be, that I will be, that I always have been.
Has it been more than eighteen thousand years already? You have always been with me. You are like a thousand suns reflecting off a pristine field of snow, each crystal in the form of Infinite Love
“There are many who wish to gain enlightenment
in a man’s form,
And there are few who wish to work
for the welfare of living beings
in a female form.
Therefore may I, in a female body,
work for the welfare of all beings,
until such time as all humanity has found its fullness.”
- Tara
It was late autumn when I met Peter Fogarty for the interview. The sky was shot through with brilliant hues from the ash cloud high overhead that competed with the color of the oak leaves falling in drifts along Franklin Road in Ponsonby, Auckland. We walked up the hill to Prego for our interview. A magnitude 6 earthquake had just hit Christchurch, hours after a 5.5 rattled Heathcote Valley. His mother, Nan, was gardening at the time of the first earthquake. The aftershock epicenters were too close to Casterton for Peter’s comfort. He knew that his mother had been going inside the house. On this sunny afternoon, Peter ordered his third coffee of the day.
I met Peter Fogarty to talk about writing for Auckland University’s Master of Creative Writing degree, run by Lisa Samuels, Michele Leggott, Emily Perkins, and Stuart Hoar. He had just completed the first half of the year and was facing a month of writing to hand in a draft of 40,000 words of short stories. We sat at a table outside under the tree and ordered a funghi pizza to be chased by a bottle of French pinot gris, Metz’ Anne-Laure.
Peter, could you give me a little bit of background. What were you doing before the course?
I’ve been working as a biosciences editor for the past six years for Dove Medical Press and freelance for OnLine English, and Vikatan Publishing. Before that I was painting houses, making pizza, and working for the local community cinema on Waiheke and I did my first MA English (1st class) at the turn of the century. I’m profoundly Deaf and I’ve been involved with the Deaf community in NZ for several years. You could probably argue I’ve been involved my whole life. I’m currently on the executive board of Deaf Aotearoa and chairperson of the board for iSign, an interpreter-booking agency. I still work freelance as a science editor for OnLine English and was promoted recently.
In what ways do you think your editorial background has affected your writing?
After graduating from Auckland University in 2001, I had had enough of the academic environment and my reading shifted away from literary theory and philosophy to more esoteric topics, such as Nikola Tesla, Advaita Vedanta. I wanted to work in publishing. I had work experience at Reed, which largely entailed indexing a book about early whalers in New Zealand, and that had put me off the publishing industry somewhat. I wasn’t quite ready for a head‑>desk job.
In working for Dove Press as a production manager and editor I developed a very quick eye to assess the relative worth of a work and in working for OnLine English, I developed a certain precision in editing other people’s work. I learned to be careful not to change the intentions of someone else’s creative work and trying to figure out what they’re trying to say and then saying it more cleanly or directly than they did in the work submitted to me.
Did you find it difficult to reverse the roles?
Yes. When it comes to generating my own creative work content instead of checking other peoples’, I struggled. It’s not like a usual university paper where one can critically respond to an already published text in the context of several other secondary resources. One has to write the primary text.
As such, switching to being a content generator instead of a content checker, takes some getting used to. One has to think and generate the content. My stories have been somewhat varied. Squid Me, Baby is probably the most directly related to the science as it contains a bit of science itself.
I think I’ve picked up a certain boring flow of words due to the editing work, but at the same time, I think this brings clarity to the work.
I’ve said previously that I don’t really see myself as being a writer. This year has served in some ways to underline this conceit. It’s easy to put together words when you know what to say. Therein is the key, knowing what to say. That isn’t easy. And it’s even harder when you’re making things up.
People say, write what you know, but writing what I know doesn’t interest me. I can’t imagine anything more boring than reading a novel about the drama in everyday lives.
Whose work has most inspired your writing, and why?
The first name that comes to mind is Gene Wolfe. His writing is eloquent, and his narrators are unreliable. The words spin out images filtered by the understanding of the characters, and we, the readers, use scraps and clues to see what he is really seeing. So a downed spaceship becomes a mansion half buried in the dirt, it is so old. An immense world becomes a hollowed asteroid orbiting three planets. And a little boy becomes a wizard knight. Just mentioning those pitches gives me goosebumps. The narrative complexity and ornate simplicity of Wolfe’s work is aspirational for me.
Wolfe has said that first drafts are like fighting. I agree wholeheartedly. It’s harder than I thought it would be, to flesh out an idea, to discover characters, and explore their motives in scenes that best illuminate them, without losing your reader with endless monologues or too obscure references. I often feel paralyzed, and unable to put a word down simply because I cannot “see” what anyone is doing. It’s as if I am peering through a bucket with a glass bottom into an undersea world, but some days the tide has churned up the silt and I cannot see a thing, and other days I see everything so clearly, as if the scene is magical and my words turn to ashes in their failure to describe what I see.
Does Wolfe inspire you to write? Who does, if not he?
I’m usually inspired to write for a particular reader. Around 2006, I was writing for a friend in Los Angeles who really “got” me and wrote poetic responses to my work, and I’d riff off them and create something new. I love that sense of play. I haven’t really been able to recapture that feeling this year, though. It’s not something anyone can force. I imagine my ideal reader to be someone like Samuel R. Delany. Actually, I’d be very embarrassed to show my work to Delany, as inadequate as it is when I look at the prodigious output of his twenties. But, as a great fan of his book About Writing, which I’ve read cover to cover twice, and browsed more often than that, I’d love to have one of my stories workshopped with him, perhaps at one of the Clarion workshops, and grow as a writer from the experience. Whenever I reread one of Delany’s works, or his recent interview in The Paris Review, it inspires and excites me to write. I had similar feelings when I read Neil Gaiman’s Vampire Sestina, which you can find in his anthology, Smoke & Mirrors. I wanted to write one! And indeed, I did note down a vocabulary of words that I wanted to use, but as I soon discovered, it’s difficult to choose the right six words for the sestina format.
I see you’re interested in a variety of genres and people, so that probably goes to why you have chosen a mismatched array of short pieces for your projects this year.
Going into this year, I didn’t have a coherent project. I still want to try to write the stories that I pitched from the outsider’s point of view, but so far, something else has happened. Pomegranate was my first attempt to do so. This year, I’m trying to find myself as a writer. I’ve always been able to put words together, and as a child, I was always telling stories. We visited a warship, the Deustchland, in harbor in Wellington when I was about four years old. I didn’t have a lot of language then, but I was able to keep up. My father and uncle drank a lot of wine at the function after our visit and my parents’ advisor for deaf children, Barry Newcombe, asked me a few days later how the trip went, and so I’m told, I mimed them walking drunkenly and laughing by way of my answer. I’ve always enjoyed playing with words. I’m just not sure where my strengths and weaknesses are. I want to find what I truly enjoy and what I’m good at doing. The range of pieces for this year is my exploration of where I should focus my abilities and where I should recognize areas of improvement or weaknesses in my work.
You said writing is like fighting, can we go back to that?
Most of my written work has come in a rushing flow of inspiration. But before that flow comes, I have to think and read and incubate the ideas. It doesn’t serve or feel right to force the work, but this is why I enrolled into the Master of Creative Writing course, to learn to force the creative work, to break the shackles of my procrastinating nature.
Perhaps the problem is that I’m afraid of releasing my imagination, of allowing myself to have fun with the writing. I’m struggling against easy writing. My writing heroes are also people who’ve struggled with something, if it be Delany’s dyslexia or Bauby blinking one eyelid to write The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Everyone has something that informs his or her work. The words carry a payload to be unpacked into the imagination of readers.
In the beginning, I’ve the idea, then the idea sets its burrs into me, and usually I can’t figure out where to begin until I’ve worked out the overall story arcs and plots.
Do you think that this is restrictive? That if you plot out the story so thoroughly then you feel compelled to stick to it?
Not really. I know what you’re saying, but I think it’s more about setting out the moments, the beats, and then putting the characters into them. Writing after plotting is more about how the characters respond to events. My issue is working out exactly what events would best illuminate the characters. It’s somewhat of a chicken‑egg dichotomy. Which necessarily needs to come first? I see people doing things. Maybe a blur of movement, the wind blowing on someone’s face, or the St. Elmo’s fire is the image that comes into my head. I assemble moments like these, and then hopefully the story suggests itself. If the characters want to do something different then that’s what they do. In writing, sometimes things need to be moved around, or perhaps something needs to happen earlier in the story to give the reader some more empathy with the characters.
Sundancers is an example of this. I’ve always wanted to rework this story but I could never get a critical response from anyone about this story. It was workshopped in a small group with Joe Farry, Sonja Yelich, and Emily Perkins. They correctly indicated that the story moved too quickly for the characters to win their empathy. Emily noted that the characters seemed idealized and superhuman; could they be dirtied up? Made more human, flawed? In redrafting the story, I doubled its length with events preceding the race itself to show who the characters were and their relationships to one another. I’m still not happy with the story and hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to workshop it again with the larger group at some point.
I’m trying to discover where I’m strong as a writer. I’ve tried many different forms and I think I tend to prefer the shorter forms. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t have a lot of patience these days for the longer forms. My reading and work over recent years has largely been in the shorter form like comic books, short stories, and köans. I love mediums like Twitter, which encourages one to think in terms of statements less than 140 characters. So far, I am finding myself still comfortable with thinking and writing in very dense, compact narratives where the reader has to use perhaps a smidgen more of their imagination to evoke the scene.
In terms of the köan narratives, I enjoy them because they illuminate one idea through the location and the dialogue between the master and disciple. I read köans by people like Dogen, Kabir, Confucius, for relaxation. There’s something about reading the inspired words of Paramahansa Yogananda as he riffs on the gospels in The Second Coming of Christ, or Koichi Tohei in Ki in Daily Life, that injects me with a sense of life, and I want to convey or evoke a similar feeling of serenity in the reader with my köans. I think some of them do succeed in that effect, if the reader isn’t stopped by their unfamiliarity with the genre.
Why do you like writing work not based in the everyday?
I most often read for escapism. It doesn’t matter if it’s science fiction, biography, or spirituality, reading is escapism, and to escape, one must be immersed in a reality not their own. So I might go through every cave diving book I could find, from novels like Poyer’s Down to a Sunless Sea or nonfiction accounts like Stone et al’s Beyond the Deep. The appeal is that these are stories of humans doing extreme things in extreme environments. I can project my imagination and recreate these feelings and experiences. In my writing, I always want to transport myself, and thus transport the reader into these experiences that they may not have otherwise. There needs to be a seemingly magical or transcendental experience, like Simpson’s survival against the odds in Touching the Void. Now, I realize the stories I’ve produced so far this year aren’t real-life adventures and derring-do, yet the reader does get a sense of transcendence of their experiences as a human.
I’ve a great love for aphorisms. My grandmother gave me a little booklet of quotes from Lao Tzu and Confucius when I was little. It has my initial drawn into it, a long line with little curls at the top and bottom, with a half circle bisecting it in the middle as if I couldn’t make up my mind whether to write a b or a p. Perhaps I didn’t know which one was right, as b or p look exactly the same when they’re speechread without any sound or context. So perhaps I was just covering my bases. The köans are my way of capturing this childhood love.
I’ve never seen köans before. Could you tell me a little about this genre?
Köans are a very old training tool for the mind. They have been around in one form or another for a few thousand years. The way I’ve composed them are longer than traditional köans, and are more like micro-stories than köans. The form I am imitating is primarily a Zen Buddhist form. Zen meditation is a form of sitting meditation, with your eyes open and unfocussed on a wall. But köans aren’t an exclusive practice. Even Christ taught köans in the form of his parables.
Early writers of aphorisms such as Confucius’s Analects are early köans. Arguably, the most famous collector of köans is Dogen. The True Dharma Eye is probably the best current collection of Dogen’s köans.
The form is designed to awaken the student or bring the contemplator to a state of enlightenment that Japanese Zen Buddhists call satori. They often take the form of a paradox, and the idea is to cause a breakthrough in awareness when one holds both sides of the paradox in mind. The answer is generally nonverbal or evident in the environment, or simply does not exist. The teacher poses paradoxes, riddles, or questions to the student, and the student’s response illustrates the degree of enlightenment or understanding of the student. They poke holes in everyday reality. They’re designed to break habitual responses or perceptions. Dogen said that we must drop mind and body to apperceive. He flings the student over a mental precipice.
I like the way they work in terms of triggering an ‘a ha!’ moment in the reader when they figure out the point of it. There’s usually a point, whether it be the sound of one hand clapping, where the head is, if the head is half full or half empty, where are the faces of your ancestors, or other things like that.
Mmmhmm. This pizza is amazing! Could you say a little bit about each type of story you’ve been doing? What attracts you to each genre?
I’m not sure if I can pin most of my stories down to a specific genre. Sundancers is obviously science fiction, but I’ve mashed it up with a variety of other genres, specifically the Vedic literatures and spirituality. I have a lifelong addiction to science fiction and spiritual literature. My other addictions to graphic novels, comics, and crime fiction come secondary to this first love. Sundancers was a story born out of thinking about the word ‘sundancers’, and in redrafting it this year, I think it has been improved substantially. I’ve had a good response from people whose work I respect. I like science fiction because it’s exciting, it takes me to alien places, and I can forget my life and disappear into the work.
I love disappearing into a good book, but I have to say that science fiction isn’t really my thing. One of the science fiction stories you’ve presented was a script, some people have read it as for a comic book, but you’ve said it’s really a graphic story for children?
Yeah, I did present a script for a children’s book. It was the third draft of the story, which initially was too mature for children. I see this story as falling in between the young reader who has books read to them, and the reader who reads for themselves. I’ve had criticisms that it’s too violent and mature for young children, such as my nephew, Gus, who is two and half years old, and I’d agree with that, but at the same time I remember the thrills I had in reading Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm when I started reading on my own. The initial stories I read were abridged and illustrated, and as you no doubt know, have scenes of violence. The artist that I showed this project to was excited and read it to his four-year-old child, along with some sketches that he whipped up in a fit of inspiration. I think that this book could have legs, but I’m still exploring how it could work. I don’t have children, so I don’t have the ready access to what age groups are into. Some people have said that I am not clear about who my target reader is, but I think if the work is good, the readership will find itself. As a child, I was always reading forbidden books. I like how the FuMan stories use unfamiliar words that are rooted in historical concepts and the play of Nature against the Machine. I don’t think that difficult words are an obstacle to reading, but instead it encourages the reader to go out and explore. I do think a short story should be like an iceberg; most of it is underwater and spreads out immensely in an unseen way.
You also handed in a dialogue between two shop attendants. I wasn’t sure where you were going with this one. Could you explain why you wrote this?
I was experimenting with a more conventional riff set in an ordinary situation, with two bored shop guys standing around with nothing to do but serve customers and talk shit. There’ve been some great projects based on this leitmotif, such as Kevin Smith’s early film Clerks and his Silent Bob series. Initially I was imagining two writers arguing with each other in a university setting, but I didn’t find that very interesting. I’m not very interested in setting stories in a familiar location as such stories usually bore me out of my mind when I read them. As a rule, I don’t really read mundane fiction, because it’s, well, mundane. I think it’s because daily life is so grim, but I do want to write a story about being deaf along the lines of the “family dog” conceit, where the deaf person is among hearing people and largely treated like the family dog, present, but not really participating in the family life. I’m trying to think of an arc that would best illuminate that conceit, because it’s a story that could fit into the genre of mundane fiction.
Did you say “mundane” fiction?
Yes, it generally originated as a response to the criticism of science fiction, that it is genre writing, and the challenge is that normative fiction is a genre in itself, that is, mundane fiction. In terms of science fiction, my story Sundancers is an example of the mundane science fiction genre where the “science” is more fantasy than actual. Could humans fall into stars and survive? Of course not! There is no science today to enable humans to sun dance, but why can’t we imagine that there is? That’s mundane science fiction. Mundane fiction tries to show the world as it is, whereas science fiction, as Delany said in Starboard Wine, is “a significant distortion of the present that sets up a rich and complex dialogue with the reader’s here and now”. I find mundane fiction to be drearily boring, and Retail Existentialism largely exists as a dialogue because to describe the clothes on the racks, the shelving on the walls, the way a UV tube flickers on and off and annoys the staff, or the snooty customers that come in, that level of detail doesn’t really interest me. Perhaps it should. The more concrete the setting, the more the reader can buy into the story, right?
That’s true, and I’ve found your stories difficult to read because you use words and concepts that I’m not entirely familiar with. I’m not sure if that is a failing of myself as a reader, or perhaps I am simply not the right reader for your work. I see people on Twitter like @rgyatso saying that Sundancers gave him the shivers. Clearly there’s a readership out there who’re comfortable with your lexicon.
I think I’ve always struggled with this. I do like the resonances of the words and situations that the characters find themselves in. The work has to transport me out of my own reality into another otherwise I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything.
Your octopus story Squid Me, Baby did give me a sense of transport. It did feel a bit heavy-handed with the science and it was over too quickly. Are you going to redraft this?
Yeah, I’ll give it a shot. I agree that it has a bit too much exposition, but I think if I develop the relationship between Chibuogwu and Michael to show that the way Chibuogwu is talking is actually just the way her character talks, then the reader would be more comfortable with the edutainment direction the story went at that point. I do want to expand the scenes with the male and female octopus in the same tank, and perhaps make it more dynamic with more of a sense of looking out of an alien’s eyes at a tableau that is familiar to our eyes. I think I largely want to write from that point of view because I am always “other” in my daily life and I want to represent that point of view to the best of my capability.
I found that Pomegranate story to be promising, but you hadn’t really fulfilled the promise inherent in that story. What is your vision for the story?
Pomegranate was the first entirely new piece written this year. I had the idea of telling the story of pomegranates across the ages, how it spread around the world, how it appears in religious iconography and in the earliest records of humanity as a symbol of fertility and fecundity. Obviously, I was hoping that some fecundity would spill back into my work! Initially I struggled with the fact that there was no coherent way to weave the various stories into one narrative. I do want to write in traditional immersive narratives to try to pull the reader into the story. Eventually all the various story arcs that I wanted to include were able to be collapsed into the framing device of an ancient pomegranate tree telling a child about its children, scattered across the world. Through the travelling seeds from the tree, it can vicariously experience all the historical events across the ages, and recount them to the child. I wanted each episode to be self-contained with a story arc, and the child is returned to reality for mundane reasons, but returns to the tree to hear the tree tell more stories as it speaks with the voice of the wind in its leaves. The current draft falls far short of this ambition and I hope to rectify this over the next few months.
You’re planning to work on the Zero-Point Love story over the next few months, aren’t you?
Yes, Zero-Point Love is the main project for the next half of the course. I think I should be able to generate scenes for it fairly easily as I can visualize the world readily. The difficulty is in thinking of moments that move the story forward. I need to learn to ask questions at every stage of the writing. What is Aarya seeing? What are David’s motives? What event changes David’s opinion about the world? Why did Malidoma go into the tree? What trauma could have hurt someone who calls himself a spiritual Master? Was there a fall? How did greed corrupt Malidoma’s friend Lachlan? I want to explore those things and write their story. It’s a story that has been on the slow burner for years. It’s the kind of story that people say that they’ve got in them at dinner parties when they declare their ambition to write the next great novel, and I hope that I don’t fall into the same hubris, because when I look at my own work I see the omissions, the failures, and the ways it falls short of describing what I see in my Cartesian theatre.
You don’t need to be so hard on yourself. You write well, and you certainly have an active imagination! I mean, you’re describing things that don’t exist! That’s the essence of creativity, to turn a blank page into something that fires up a reader’s imagination. It’s not quite like watching a movie, but creating that inner movie in the reader’s mind.
Yes, exactly, and I need to learn where my words intrude and create stumbling blocks in the reader’s imagination and throws them out of the story. If it’s the odd character names, then I must reluctantly change them, or make them more palatable by changing their context. I don’t know. That’s why I am doing the Master of Creative Writing this year!
Thank you for your time, Peter. Good luck for the rest of the year!
You’re welcome. I need Lady Luck to be on my side!
Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn
Friday, July 29, 2011
Awesome photo of Atlantis’ reentry photographed from the ISS
(Source: ralphewig)
“Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call.”
megan rosalarian gedris: Dressed to Kill -
Whenever I complain about how females are portrayed in mainstream superhero comics, inevitably half a dozen people pop up to tell me this:
“Men are idealized in comics, too.”
Yes. Yes they are. I am aware of this. While I think the idealism is harmful, that isn’t actually what I have a problem…
Earth fell away before them. Clouds spilled in the atmosphere like oil blooming over ocean and land; where the planet once filled the vista, it now shrank rapidly. Night spooled over the planet before them, day an oval sphere like cats eyes, a marble in the spotlight. The heliosurfers, spectators, and support crew watched in the solarium as the skyliner jetted for the Sun.
A tall man dressed in late twentieth century Alexander McQueen was saying, “Just imagine the beginning of the space age when spaceships didn’t have inertial dampeners. The gravitational forces of this acceleration would crush us. Yet we’re standing here like it’s nothing.” He looked down at the woman standing next to him.
“What, so they were subject to the forces of gravity?” Her coppery eyes twinkled. “It really is amazing to see how far humanity has come.”
“Yes, the early astronauts had to survive accelerations of only 2‑3g to escape Earth’s gravitational field, can you believe it?” He laughed. “Any more gravities than that and the body goes unconscious because all the blood rushes to the extremity opposite to the direction of acceleration.”
“And how fast do these skyliners go?” she asked. A naïve expression was on her face, but he wasn’t fooled.
“What is this? Am I your tour guide? Everyone learns this in school. Starships accelerate at several thousands times gravity at sublight speeds. We’d be a fine paste if the inertial dampeners were to fail. These same dampeners give us a semblance of gravity instead of the microgravity we’d usually experience. Where’re you from that you don’t know this, anyway? Are you a sundancer? What’s your name?”
“My name’s Khushi. I’m from the Himalayan taiga. My ancestors swam naked with the whales in the Arctic, my people are descended from the Vedrus, we’re the children of the ringing cedars. The world is our school, not this book-learning science. What’s your name?”
“People call me Moksha. You make light of science, yet it’s this science that you’re using to fall into stars.”
“I know! The image doesn’t quite fit. I believe you’d call it irony. I don’t have to know how it works to know that it works and how to make it work. It’s all about being one with creation.”
“One of those, are you? I was just checking to make sure you were paying attention. I don’t want any amateur to flare up in the sun.”
“None of us are amateurs here. To dive into the sun, it’s not enough to wear suits that dampen inertia, or to hold the sails with your mind. You have to control your passions so they’re calm and steady like the sea on a windless day.”
Moksha laughed. “You’re a poet, aren’t you?”
Huia was late to the function. She walked into the ballroom and stood just inside the door. She scanned the crowd, a mix of dignitaries, retired sundancers, sundancers, crew and spectators. Across the room she saw a beautiful woman speaking into Moksha’s ear, talking softly to make him lean over her to hear her better. She saw them just as Moksha laughed, easily. He looked so relaxed and comfortable. Huia felt a twinge of jealousy shoot through her as if she’d touched a hot wire. She shrugged away the feeling and walked up to them just as Khushi caught a heel in the tiles and fell into Moksha. He caught her easily and she nestled her head in his chest. Squares of light turned over them and Khushi looked up into Moksha’s eyes. A spark went between them. Huia slipped between a waiter holding high a tray of empty champagne flutes and two men in antiquated dinner suits. The band stopped playing as she reached Moksha and Khushi. The room was silent. Huia looked at Moksha, and felt emotion rise within her and, before she knew what she was doing, she snarked, “Moksha, will you introduce me to your new friend?”
“Huia, this isn’t what it looks like.” Moksha straightened up Khushi. “Huia, meet Khushi. She’s from the Himalayas.”
“I am Khushi Chenrezig, from Shambhala.” Khushi said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Huia Pürerehua. I am privileged to be racing with you tomorrow.”
“We haven’t met before, have we?”
“No, we have not. This is my first sun dive. Do you have any advice?”
“You don’t need my advice. Be your self. And why are you still holding on to my man?”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Khushi stepped away from Moksha. “I’ll go.” She walked away towards the bar.
Huia turned to see Moksha watching Khushi walk away. She was not too pleased. “Moksha. Do you really want to test our bond, today of all days? You know I need to be focused for tomorrow.”
“Darling, you’re overreacting. You’ll be amazing tomorrow.” Moksha said, soothingly. He observed Khushi ordering a drink and the bartender bent and took mint from a clearseal bag and began crushing it into a mojito. “There’s something about Khushi. I can’t put my finger on it. She’s…”
Her lips met his words and silenced him. No matter how many times she’d kissed him before, each time managed to feel new all over again. Her lips molded to his like starships docking, a graceful ballet in free fall. He nibbled her lip. She leaned into him and they watched sprites dancing in a creamy swirl above the Americas.
A side door near them opened. The concierge nodded to Moksha. “We’ll catch up after the ceremony.” Moksha said, and he followed the concierge out of the ballroom.
Huia crossed the room to a cluster of fellow sundancers who were standing in an informal circle as the master of ceremonies started his presentation. The group fell silent as she approached. But as she joined the group, she was accused.
“Showing off, were you?”
“Rubbing our faces in it?”
“You think you’re better than us?”
“You’ve got a man, Huia. And yet you can still fall into stars? You must be absolutely heartless. How can you give love, and yet remain in balance? Everyone else finds lovers pull them off center. How do you do it? You flaunt your man in front of us.”
Huia had no response. Truly, she was unusual among heliosurfers in maintaining a relationship during competition. Most stardivers could not maintain their equilibrium in the face of the fury of the coronosphere. They were almost monastics, but like monastics, still had their humanity, their desires, their idiosyncrasies. This was the risk they ran. To rein in passions while maintaining the serenity of their composure.
Khushi took Huia aside and asked, “What’s it really like? To have a lover who doesn’t pull you off center, who strengthens you? Do you fight?”
Gracious as ever, Huia swallowed the niggling tinges of jealousy that she felt. “He’s amazing. He doesn’t pull me away from my heart, he strengthens it! It’s like we are one being in two bodies.”
“We are all one being in infinite bodies” Khushi nodded. “I see. You’re absolutely blessed.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s cheating, because he’s there when I feel for him, so I’m never alone. It’s like a tactical advantage because he helps me when others falter. It’s like he’s a recharger. He fills me up with prana.”
Moksha returned just then. He walked up to Huia and Khushi. Huia did not miss his admiring glance at Khushi. “Darling, we must go.” Moksha said to Huia. “It’s time to recharge.” He winked at Khushi.
“Moksha! Are you serious?” Huia took his hand. “You’re coming with me now.” She cut through the crowd and Moksha followed as if bound to her by a long invisible leash.
In their room high in the fluted wing of the hotel, Huia looked at Moksha half-heartedly. “You’re still thinking about her!”
“I can’t help it. There’s just something about her. It’s not how she looks or what she says. It’s more than that. I knew her from somewhere.”
“You’re tired of me? Is that it?”
“Never! I could never be exhausted of you. Ever since I saw you make a perfect sphere dharnurasana, I knew we were meant to be. Why deny my feelings? You’ve always known them to be true.”
Huia silenced Moksha with a kiss and she pulled him to the bed. She kicked off her heels, aiming one at the antigravity switch. Everything not tied down began floating in the room.
“Don’t think that this is over, just because we’re about to fuck.” Huia warned Moksha.
The sun was hot on her face. A thin pane of transparent metal was all that kept the wind from bleaching her eyes blind. Huia hung in space. The magnetized hull kept her from the deep before her. In the reflected brilliance, she could see the others, similarly fastened by their sailsuits, visible through the shifting matrix of the polymelt colors that coated their sails. Three, two, one! And they fell. They were hot metal slivers caught in the fury of the coronosphere. Arms locked to her side, face pointed forwards, she arrowed down, down. Like shooting stars, they fell.
A memory. Sunlit sweat glittering in the air as they made love in null gravity. Her legs tugged Moksha into her, urgently needing to be filled, to have his smooth length engulf the nervousness she felt. The glowing drops whorled in the air about their movements, a galaxy generated by their love, and they flipped in the air and she could see the sun before her, his face thrown into shadow. His eyes glowed and his teeth flashed a smile. Oh! She pulled him closer, always in closer, as the nullgee pulled them softly apart. Oh! He’d twisted his hips and moved up, the bone of his cock swirling and kneading her inner walls, oh! And his leg kicked, and the motes of moisture about them slanted and swirled in the same way as …
… the flare rising up from beneath her! She snapped her wings loose. Long spindles sprang from her back and for barely a minute, she looked like a quicksilver spider preparing to leap, but with too many arms pulled back like scorpion tails. Grinning, she waited, still falling, but now controlling the fall with her arms. Her thought narrowed and she was her suit, and her suit was her skin, and her soul was all around her.
Up on the spectator craft lining the course, Moksha watched her on the window, shining spikeballs piercing the image as they fell beneath him. In his heart, he felt Huia gather her mana about her like the kahu huruhuru of old. Onscreen, he saw brilliant phosphorescence burn from the tips of her sailspines as they reached hungrily for the sun. He closed his eyes and sent a thought, “our tipuna walk with you, aroha,” and Huia laughed in his heart as she leaped and plunged through a snowy mountain field blanketed by the morning sun.
Huia, silently falling, a meteor! Within a space of love she floated serene as a dandelion seed on an alpine breeze, and Moksha, oh! He poured molten gold into her heart, into her limbs, and time slowed. The geyser beneath her was moving at 450 km/hr but in the slowtime of crystalline awareness, it was barely moving. She looked at the others, all now arrayed along the magnetic loop that the flare was following. She couldn’t do it yet; she had to plunge ever deeper into the coronosphere to beat the others. She narrowed her arms and became a wedge, trying to present as little surface area for the wind to blow her back; it wasn’t yet time! Moksha was with her in spirit, and his thoughts cupped her, as though his arms were around her waist and his cheek on her back, listening to her heartbeat and she felt his beat step in time.
Now! It had to be now or never, and Huia wasn’t about to be another name written across the stars, no, she would live, and her sails unfurled and snapped away from the spindles and the net caught the wind. Still falling, she dropped an arm and angled the plane of her sails so that the pocket of antigravity would suck her along the surface of the boiling sea of gas beneath her. Laughing, she kicked with her legs and flipped around so that the dark shadow of her sails winked, a magnesium flare quenched instantly.
Moksha delighted with her. Pride welled up in him and he felt an arm around his shoulders. His friend whispered into his ear. “Look at her go! If there ever was a bat out of hell there she goes!”
“Brother,” Moksha laughed. “Huia is the light in the night that the bat flees. Look! Look how she flies!”
Solsailers knew the many dangers of sundancing. Surfing the stellar wind was only for these who knew themselves. That knowledge was hard earned, but the Reality within each diamond heart is pristine, how could it not be? That pristine potential earned the sundiver the right to fall and race in the stunning spectacle adored by the known worlds. Not only do the sundivers risk being caught by a closing loop of magnetic flux, they also risked their bodies in the hard radiation seething out of the sun, charged ions passing between the atoms of their bodies, even protected by the sailsuits. If their meditative thoughts were to lapse for but a second, their atomic structure would go nova.
Huia felt a strangled cry emerge from her throat as she punched through the supernovae clouds of two other sundivers whose attention had wavered. Steeling her will, she pulled the sail tighter and pushed for the leader, the only person now in front of her.
How she pulled! Muscles bunched in her arms and legs, and her thoughts tightened, the sail trembling with tension. The radiobright coronae on the wingtips of her sail whispered to her. The pitch of her lifesong rose, and she was past the leader! He pumped his sail, trying to catch up to her, but Huia was now dropping a windshadow on him and he continued to drop behind. Huia did not look back. She pressed her lead and as she was allowing herself to relax into the sail, she saw the sun bulge several thousand kilometers ahead. They would be upon it in minutes. Huia mapped algorithms and calculated that she’d pass it safely, but the others! They would surely perish or be flung out into the inner system, certainly the shock would disrupt their concentration and it would be as if they never were. Huia pressed grimly on as the bubble of hot gases rose before her.
The remaining sailors pursued her like butterfly darts dashing along a choppy electromagnetic riverbed. If they saw the danger, they didn’t care and just as hotly chased their passion for victory. As Huia passed over the bubble, her sails were caught by a popping blister and she was thrown high and forward of the building coronal mass ejection. It was about to blow! Huia considered: was victory worth the loss of life? Again, she felt Moksha’s molten love pulse with golden warmth through her heart and felt the truth of his feelings. No! All life is more precious! She snapped her sails to their full kilometer extension and braked. From above, the coronal mass was burnt bronze overlaid with flickering calculations shifting in real time as the screens computed its vector, and all held their breath and waited.
Flame erupted and Huia saw two heliosurfers evaporate and the last, higher sailor’s sails shred into mercury ribbons in the violent plasma, but miraculously, she still lived! Huia could sense Khushi’s mind radiating calming feelings and extruding what was left of her sails together to try and catch the wind back out of the coronosphere. But her wings were so torn she had no hope. Huia felt the sailor calmly resign herself to her fate.
Huia narrowed her sails and plunged for Khushi. As Huia sliced into the wind, she calculated the load burden of two on one sail. It wasn’t good. The tattered butterfly sails would barely add to Huia’s own lift ratio. Nevertheless, Huia reached out with her thoughts and fed hope into her Khushi’s heart as she closed the gap. Khushi cried, “Go! Save yourself! You’ll only die with me!”
“Never!” Huia cried out. “Never will you leave me!”
Huia reached Khushi and, embracing her, flung her sails wide. They soared. It wasn’t enough. Huia and Khushi began to descend. Khushi and Huia were face to face in their embrace. All each could see was their own helmet endlessly reflected in the other’s mirrored visor against the nimbus of light whispering in the sails. Khushi shook her head. Huia held tighter.
“No!” She thought. “You cannot fall!”
Khushi shook her head again and pushed against Huia. Huia heard her voice within. “It is time,” Khushi said. “I must go. But I promise I will never leave you. I promise.”
And with that, she kicked away and broke Huia’s grip. Freed, Huia’s sails took over and she ascended, up, and up. A candle guttered, recovered, and then died.
Huia, weeping inside her suit, felt a spark ignite in her womb, and in wonder, she heard Khushi’s voice, “You see? I will never leave you.”
And waiting aloft, Moksha felt life quicken within Huia and his heart skipped a beat as he felt the stirring of their co-creation.
-
Peter Fogarty (c) Sunday, June 26, 2011
Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn
