necessarily cryptic

Woh… this ride is wild

Talk about Knowledge: I did it – I got it. I was there. In my body, in the room – I could feel myself. I could see myself…

:) Hallelu Jaqi

australia’s stone heart

I went wandering on Google satellite maps… and was transfixed by this new perspective on an old image (you have to zoom right in). I sat and stared at it, fascinated, till the energy-saver dimmed the screen. The shape, the shadows, the energy of all that diagonal texturing, the fertile associations, the symbolic power, the simple, revelatory miracle of a vertical view – the awful, ironic, necessary marring with Google copyright marks…

Australia’s physical and spiritual heart. But there’s more: pull back to see the whole continent and look at that round swirl in the middle, circling Uluru and Alice Springs – a big fat egg yolk in the messy fried egg of Terra Australis. Trace the rents in the fabric of the earth around that great central ring – a series of lakes and rivers, beginning and ending just east of Coober Pedy, is this not art? (You can get it without the tabs by typing Coober Pedy in the search box and pawing your way east. Do zoom in.) A looping, magical, pendulous, genital jewel in blameless cerulean blue. Whence it all must drain subterraneously toward the great fissure we now call Port Augusta.

Pull back out. If you stare long enough you can almost see the continent rotating glacially, clockwise, chunks breaking off against the currents, against the resistance of the planet beneath, as if someone out there were twisting a cosmic knife in its adamantine heart.

a little pre-US election chit-chat

I’m reluctant to go all global on you again, but I can’t help being obsessed with the big picture. If we don’t manage to curb world population growth and the resulting increasingly acute resource crisis within a few decades – and that’s about as fast as it could possibly be done, eh – then the Last War, which many point around the globe and say has already begun, will accelerate to levels of destruction more wretched than any the planet has yet seen.

You don’t have to be a seer to figure that. Does publishing make you a prophet? Who cares. The point is, even if Barack Obama has the vision to address the impending tragedy, does he have the power? His most loyal sidekicks in the battle for planet Earth don’t inspire confidence – Gordon Brown’s already offered Parliament (ie, vested interests) his prerogative to declare war, and as for Kevin07, the Australian Tintin – whose global influence is stronger than it would otherwise be because he speaks Mandarin – he’s good; he’s very good… but what weapon can an honest Christian wield against the ruthlessness of Hu Jintao? The leader of the world’s largest nation says his political principles are, domestically, a harmonious society, and internationally, peaceful development. Call me naive, but doesn’t this sound arse-about to you? Shouldn’t he be advocating the peaceful development of his own nation, and a harmonious global society? What kind of international development does he have in mind – other than peaceful, of course?

And although Obama will win the election (there’ll be riots all over if the Republicans rig another one) he’ll need bionic (or at least logistical) superpowers to dodge the bullets of his trigger-happy constituents long enough to effect real change.

Ho hum. The view from the Pembroke eyrie is grim as ever. It’s a rainy day and I’m fighting the flu, but that’s no excuse for world leaders to faff around on the important shit.

science/religion

Every religion claims the strongest understanding of the reasons for our existence, and thence extrapolates principles or directives for how best to live. This, in the madness of its multiplicity, is surely folly.

Science claims only a weak understanding of the reasons for our existence, and extrapolates only the infinite possibility of how we might live. It cannot claim that the universe is moral – but it knows there are realms (as yet and maybe forever) beyond its reach.

There, we feel the flux and seek always the pattern. And there, all too often, we fall into folly.

a hole in the sky

We were sitting out the back on the terrace on the public holiday, chilling out the day after the night of Eclectica. The temperature was spring mild, clouds and sun were competing amiably. Justin said, ‘oh look, a hole in the sky,’ and started taking pictures. ‘Can you see heaven?’ I asked idly. There was a long pause while he took the shot, then a laugh.

‘No… just more sky.’

spiritual tedia

I dreamed that someone sent me a gift, something very useful and powerful, strangely beautiful but also dangerous. It was in a small cheap jewellery box, plastic with a clear lid; inside were five tiny spiders and two minute scorpions, perhaps a centimetre long. They were very precious; I had to transfer them into other containers, and I opened the box and then somehow I was juggling lids and cases and people were talking to me and I couldn’t remember what I was trying to do, and two of the delicate-legged spiders got crushed and the scorpions went I don’t know where and I knew I could look forward to getting stung.

And I woke knowing exactly who and what the dream was about.

a prophecy

My sister is visiting from up north. I tell her my rent is going up again. She says ‘I know, you told me last time I was here.’ But that was two weeks ago, and the letter that informed me is dated last Wednesday. She is adamant: I told her two weeks ago, in the kitchen; she remembers because she thought ‘they’re doing the same to us, same amount and everything.’

I have no recollection either of knowing earlier or of saying so, though when we talk about the figure and the way I said it, it feels familiar. It should do, though; it’s the same amount as last time. Clare doesn’t care; I said it, and I said it two weeks ago, and I was definitely talking about the immediate past or near future.

I snort; my eyes widen. The oracle must have spoken through me.

aphorismus

There is no spirituality without politics: one is the celebration of power; the other is the understanding of power. But do you know which is which?

why?

…because it takes me to the moment when absolute mortification

becomes absolute shamelessness…

Salvation.

mystical encounters

Last night I was waiting for the train home, a little after nine, and this dude came up to me. Pretty good-looking for a middle-aged suit – tall, big grey eyes, good jaw, slightly shaggy hair. American, I realised, when he spoke, complimenting my hair. Now this happens several times a week on average – strangers asking about my hair – so thus far nothing out of the ordinary. But we kept talking, idly on my part but he was skilled in the management of it: not too keen, never dull. I’m writing it down now because I want to remember what he said.

He said the people that change the world are not unusually brilliant or powerful, just unusually focused and persistent. He said he knew this both intellectually and in his heart, but he was still struggling to effect change. He said he was a teacher of finance, and that it was a simple subject that I was obviously capable of mastering, and that it’s always a case of one step at a time. Learn one riff, he suggested, because by then he knew I was a singer, learn one riff and when you’re strong on it add another, and then more, one step at a time. And that’s how the world changes, of course. I gave him my card so he could look up the details of my current gigs. He never even told me his name.