The Artist, as in Life!

I am on a quad bike, in a group, a small group of one or two.

We are on a beach path going somewhere. At one point we veer away from the beach and enter a grove of pine trees, there is a path through the trees. It is dark, I cannot see any light. My breathing is slow and difficult. We keep going forward in the dark, I get a feeling of being hemmed in, of fear, I cannot see, my breathing is not easy, the path continues and I want to go back or stop and walk through the trees to the beach. It feels like being buried alive. It comes to me that this is death and I am waiting for the end to come but it won’t and I am alone in the dark. It also comes to me, is this how a baby feels in the womb. Is this the door from death to life. When Steve Jobs died I heard it said his last word was “Wow”

Was that the bright light I was looking for at the end of the trees?

I have experienced many dreams over time where I was in a dark enclosed space, all alone, claustrophobia, that is how it feels. A fear of closed or darken places. With no way out and no one there to help. No helping hand, no voice. This is where I am challenged by the whole concept of god and death and dying. What sort of mythology have we created for people to hang on to believe that there is something ‘out there’? For one I have no idea and I had no idea that I would challenged so soon :) life is a mystery to me. I am sitting here in my garden studio aka garage studio because that is what it used to be :) the light is coming with the rising sun on an overcast raining day.

Last night before bed I sat and pondered my day. A gratitude list. I do this as a reality check. Often I have felt that I have achieved nothing during the day, then I make a list and realise quite quickly that I have enjoyed a truly productive and therefore enjoyable day.

Lets see, yesterday. Breakfast with muy lovely Emily, then into the studio for paper work, paying bills, sorting out what’s paid and what’s not. Filing my GST return. Making a list of what to do. Writing a tongue in cheek letter to the Ministry of Justice asking why it has taken 3 years to remind me of an unpaid parking ticket. I guess my $12 is really going to support our rocketing national debt. They quickly wrote back, amazing when you question money how fast they reply. I wrote a semi-sarcastic reply and now will see how long it takes for them to get back to me. The light outside is increasing, my breathing is a little better. Back to yesterday, lunch to feed the furnaces and prepare to drive to Masterton to appear on my friend Matt’s radio show Wheels on Fire, for those with disabilities. What a great hour we shared. Three of us. I was their guest and the subject was Motor Neuron Disease. A healthy dialogue. Next time I will take some of my own music :) Drove south back to home and after some work on my photographic collection we drove over the Remutaka Hill to Wellington and a movie. The Artist. Every accolade, every award, totally deserved. Then some glorious oysters at Ortega Fish Shack and the long drive back over the hill to home in Featherston. So, there we have it, a very good day, an attitude of gratitude. The fact I can drive to a radio show and entertain, the fact that I can still pay my bills, jab at bureaucrats, eat, breath . . . with difficulty :) and enjoy a night out with muy lovely lover, not at all shabby. And now, the day after, time to make a cup of tea for muy lover and me . . . Oh and buy the way, it’s March. 1^st March 2012, cheers :) bugger muy lovely emily brought me a cuppa, it’s now 7:30am, ciao!

Breath of Life :)

29 February 2012

12:26pm

Whew! I am fucked, I feel like bursting into tears but am fearful I will become “poor dickie me” :) and I am certainly not poor Dickie me. However, today I feel fucked, truly and totally. Trying to open envelopes has me screaming for a new design :) trying to eat food with my hands has me looking at smoothies :) breathing is a real bitch. It takes concentration to keep my breath coming and going. Here I sit looking at the screen wondering what the hell I can do today. Well for starters I have sent in my GST return. I wrote to Justice NZ questioning them as to why it has taken 3 years to send me a parking fine reminder. I have paid a bill and cleared the paper work on my desk. This afternoon I am going to appear on radio, Wheels on Fire. My friend Matt is in a wheel chair and that is the focus of his radio show. Do I turn up in my wheel chair or simply drive :) I will drive. Who would have thought, certainly not me, that I would be a guest on a radio show for those in wheelchairs. The downside is that, because of my hands and muscle loss, I cannot get a racing wheelchair or compete in wheelchair events. Maybe I need to check that out, maybe I can. Man is such a miraculous animal, anything is possible. And I am trying to smile at my thoughts of a new racing career ahead of me.

Reality check Dickie :)

I guess these past few days, this past week, have been energy consuming and it takes a while to catch up . . . or not. And there is the rub. All my high level physical activities over the years have given me endurance and strength but not no more. To do even basic walking is a challenge, cooking is no longer any fun to me. My appetite seems to have disappeared. I guess that is the biggest challenge. Food has always been such a huge part of my life, buying, cooking, serving, sharing and enjoying both the food and the company. Today that is gone. I have a wooden platter next to me which muy lovely Emily brought me with cheese and crackers to snack on, there they sit. Uninviting. Uneaten. Bugger.

It’s even a challenge trying to describe what it feels like, what the sense of emptiness does to me. It is kind of like my chest has caved in, my diaphragm won’t work and I am struggling to get enough air into my lungs to give me energy to do something, anything. This Friday I go to the local hospital for a breathing test, this will give the Doctor an idea of my capacity and from that, hopefully, they will create a set of exercises to keep me going. I need to meditate. It has worked for me in the past. It calms me down. Slows down my heart rate and therefore my whole system. I guess that is what I need to do right now and so off I go :) to meditate, on life. aMen!

Anger?

27 February 2012

12.41pm

It’s okay to be angry

And it is. Funny but I found this out yesterday as we drove home from Wellington. A day of social interaction, muy lovely Emily’s daughter, partner and grandchildren, my own lovely daughter Emma and a day sitting at Lyall Bay, looking out over young surfers and eating copious amounts of food and coffee. A glorious day of chat and laughter and a couple of tears as the grandchildren tripped and fell while having fun, as only children can do. Tears and laughter. Leaning back, kicking back, chatting, smiling, enjoying. Exhausting :)

And then, time to leave, the grandchildren heading home to bed and sleep, as for us? Airport and farewell to Emma as she flew homeward to OZ. Four days of fun and catch up. Four days after a gap of Four years. Just right. Waves at the airline gate. Sadness. And a sense of relief as I get to take a breath, rebuild my strength. And a tour around the harbor to meet with friends at their Oriental Bay boat shed. Bliss, to sit and relax and laugh and argue and relax and argue and chill :) Seagulls catching star fish, pedestrians chatting hello as they walked by. Children running. Fish jumping. And then time to go. The meter men in Wellington are like all bureaucrats, crap. They want their money, be it Sunday or Monday, it was Sunday, no fees should be charged so Wellingtonian’s can park and enjoy, but now, the fuckers in government take all the joy out of living at times, especially on a Sunday. Bah, Humbug! So off to the bathroom and oops! Back to the car and off over the Hill to home feeling rather pissed off, tired and I guess, angry. Angry! Why was I feeling angry for christ sake, it’s been a great day, a great week and here I am with muy lovely lover headed for home. Angry!

Mantra’s I love. “Let go and let God”. “How important is it”, etc, etc, but still the anger brews within. Bugger. Anger. And we drove and drove. I tried all sorts of approaches to remove the fire but nothing, absolutely nothing would remove the ‘Anger’. Fuck. I sat, I stewed, I focussed on my breathing. Nope, nothing. Anger. And then, a left turn, out of left field. ‘It’s okay to be angry’. Voila! Anger gone. That simple. So what was it? Awareness, Acceptance, Action. The three A’s. Nothing to do with Aresholes. All to do with Surrender and Acceptance. Amazing. A smile broke out as though the sun shone, as I guess it did. Burned away the clouds and so, now, “It’s okay to be angry” is my new Mantra :) Thank G*od!

of being buried alive!

For years I have experienced vivid dreams, for the longest time it was always planes crashing but no one ever got killed or hurt. I remember one time the plane crashed into the side of a mountain and I surfed that plane down the mountain standing on the fuselage.

Then came the Claustrophobia dreams, buried alive, locked in a dungeon, stuck in a tunnel, all creating a sense of terror. Then one year in the 1980′s I was on a ski survival trip in the Australian Snowy Mountains, winter and we had to dig into the side of a mountain, create a snow cave for 4 people and stay overnight. Well, we dug the cave, some six feet into the snow bank and then curled up for the night. Little known to us six feet of snow blew off the mountain and we were indeed, buried alive. The air vent was blocked, the entrance was blocked and no fresh air was coming in. The long and short is that we were dug out by rescue teams, I lost my toes nails, one guy suffered hypothermia and it took me six months to get feeling back in my toes. Interesting to share this in light of the Canadien Doctor I have just discovered, interesting direction to take my studies : -

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that, or if it is, I certainly don’t have the insight to draw a one-to-one link like that. No personality “causes” disease. But the more emotionally repressed we are, the less we can say “no” to the world’s demands, the more we take on, the more stressed we also become. It’s that stress, then, that contributes to the onset of disease in a major way–not the personality directly. In my experience, people with ALS tend to be among the most emotionally repressed of all the patients with these sorts of illnesses – the most heavily defended against their own experience of anger and pain from childhood – but that’s not a medical fact, just a general impression.  Again, that is not their fault–it’s simply how they learned to survive their childhoods–and how we survive our childhoods shape our personalities. (Remember, too, that I don’t claim that emotional stress “causes” disease, but rather that it’s a major predisposing factor, laying the groundwork for disease to arise.)
I do think it’s useful to listen to the language used by disease sufferers themselves, which can have an eloquent, poignant, and sometimes eerie precision in describing how their personalities and emotional worlds prefigure their diseases.  There a few examples that I cite in the book, including Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, who actually predicted his own dementia (he later died of Alzheimer’s disease) in his poetry, and also in his conversations:  on a walk with a friend once, he pointed to a decaying tree and said, “I shall be like that tree; I shall die first at the top.”  Jacqueline du Pré, the world-famous cello prodigy, once told her sister Hilary in childhood, in a secretive whisper, “Hil, don’t tell Mum but… when I grow up, I won’t be able to walk or move.”  In both cases, these sensitive souls were not just making uncanny future predictions; they were expressing in metaphor what they already felt inside, what their world was like.  These premonitions can also be stored in the unconscious; take my ALS patient who, after a lifetime of recurring nightmares of being buried alive, walked into a doctor’s office following her diagnosis to see a poster that said “ALS is like being buried alive.”
Since the mind and body are inseparable, it’s perhaps not surprising that these premonitory metaphors can grow into concrete physical realities, but it’s still striking – and a reminder of the importance in medical care of really listening to people’s stories, their experiences, their very language, for clues about how they experience the world.”

_ dr. Gabor Mate

Nature, the great Nurturer :)

17 February

2.13pm

Leaning over the sink coughing up phlegm or trying to with muscles that no loner obey me :) then entering the bathroom to spare muy lovely lover the sight of me gagging, I looked into the mirror and was totally shocked. I looked into my own eyes and saw death looking back at me, seriously. This has been a ‘next step of the journey’ morning. As I sobbed in Emily’s arms I whispered that this was not the way it was meant to be. Muy lovely lover and me are exactly that, lovely lovers. I so love the term. It is as if I have never allowed myself to consider being in love, that I could call muy partner muy lovely lover. It is such a beautiful thing for me. Emily is not muy wife, not muy partner but Emily is muy lover. It brings the word Love up front and personal, it brings Love into muy life and it allows me to share it with others every time I use the expression “muy lovely lover”. So much nicer than Wife. Take away the W and you end up with Life! With muy lover it is a day to day affair of the heart. And so, today, muy choking/coughing outbreak was scary as scary is. I could see the end. Now don’t get me wrong, if it were up to me I would stick around for another 31.5 years to get to the 100 I always boasted as a kid. The expression “just for today” is enough for today. I have no expectations. I have muy lover to hold me in her arms and that muy friends, is a truly beautiful thing. I whispered to her that this is the way I wish to go, in her arms.

Now Emily has gone off to school and I am here in my studio, writing. And wondering. At what point do I tell my friends on Facebook! I will leave that to the universal G*od. Thy will be done :) not mine. What a gift that has been to me through out my life, thy will, not mine.

Raised in a ‘christian’ home, more religious than ‘christian’ I would say today. But that is how I was raised. Baptized, christened, indoctrinated, communion-ed, and there is another word that always cracked me up, I was going to say killed me :) but will stick with ‘cracked me up’ and that word was Confirmed. Confirmed as in Confirmation. Say what. Now careful dicky you are starting to think, go back to ‘thy will’ and stop thinking. Confirmation of what!

I was born, that I know. In the Soul work I played with in my 40’s, meditation and body work, I came to accept that I was alive and well, way before I was actually borne into this time and space. I could see myself as a tiny ball of light streaking, yep, Naked Came I :) around the universe before coming screeching to a halt with my umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck. Ouch! I experienced laryngitis until my 40’s :) go figure.

A Being confirmed appears as am aberration to me. I already was. Religion is such a bloody mind/minefield. To mention it in a conversation is to challenge the status quo. That is why, today, I love and embrace the concepts of James Hillman, The Acorn Theory. That we are all acorns and we all have the possibility of becoming Oak Trees, in my case, an American She Oak. My favorite tree as I hiked the Santa Monica Mountains.

Just took another Facebook break :)

Now, what the hell am I raving on about today. Life I guess. It has me questioning, it has me accepting but it does not have me caving  into believing what I don’t believe.

Took another break. Went to my Library, I love my books, I love the eclectic nature of the titles and authors and subject matter. I could catagorize them but won’t, they are simply the books which attracted me wherever I happened to be in the World. Just now I grabbed two books from my shelves, ‘Meditations from Conversations with God’ and The Gnostic Gospels. Neale Donald Walsch and Elaine Pagels.

I have read and embraced Elain’s writing, Neale’s I am not so familiar with but here is today’s reading

February 17:

“You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest love. You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself as these things. Choose now to know yourself as these things always.” – Neale Donald Walsch

That certainly works for me. As does this:

Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” – from the Gospel According to Thomas.

Food for thought is what I find my library of books to be. They challenge me, they amuse me, they enlighten me and they entertain me. I can read. I can write. I can think. I can feel, taste, hear and, today at least :) I can breath. This is called Life. I love Life, I love my Life, even with the issues I face.

Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The more I read Pagels’ writing and the more I understand what resides, what has always resided, in me, the more I sense a truth I was denied as a child. Brainwashed seems somewhat strong but in reality is it not? Every Sunday, without fail we were driven to the Cathedral in Napier. Sunday school every week for years. We had to learn otherwise we would not be ‘Confirmed’ :) I smile at that. Bloody hell. All my years of ‘normal’ education did not depend on my being ‘Confirmed’.

I guess, after having just taken a break and cut off all my hair, yep, a real cleansing buzz cut, it feels so good and clean and . . .

I guess what I am getting at today or trying to get at :) is the fact that we were taught so many lies, untruths, myths, as children that it has taken me to this point to unravel who I am. And returning to my ‘home’ land has brought much of that back into focus. All the nonsense of a clean green environment and that all New Zealanders are a brave, honest bunch and that men are men and . . . well you don’t need the details for that one. My father questioned my sexuality when I was perfectly comfortable, albeit unknowing, with my male/female balance. For christ sake, my dad was a great creative painter, re-known for his sense of color and style. Bugger me :) today, the fact that I can talk openly to a group of men, a large group of country folk and be totally comfortable in sharing my deepest hidden treasures while tears pour down my face. And to see these men, with tears in their eyes. That I love, and that, is Life!

Is that amazing or not/what?

I was sharing yesterday with some friends that the only tears I could shed 25 years ago were the ones that squirted from my arm pits in absolute fear/terror of revealing anything about myself, to anyone. Changed attitudes. My own reading adventures into books that would have had me flogged as a child or burned at the stake by my church. Thank god I have found the path for me, it may not be for you but for me, today, it works.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

I have read this Poem over and over and it speaks my thoughts in a way I have struggled with. Today, I struggle no more. The only struggle I have is to turn my thinking tap off and turn on my intuition one and simply let the words flow. Unfortunately they often gush but then that is all part and parcel of the process. When a river is blocked and the power of the water grows, there comes a point when the blockage is simply overpowered and down races the forces held back, not always pretty at first but over time a balance, a calm returns to the stream and once more nature is in balance.

Nature the great Nurturer, I love it :) aMen!

R.E.S.E.N.T.MEN.T?

7 February

2.02pm

My ribs hurt, my heart aches, my friend Dan has been in hospital for a couple of months recovering from a fall. I had wondered why he had gone so quiet, we spoke every week for the past 9 years. Virtual lunch every Friday just like when I lived in Venice Beach close by.

Yesterday I took the proactive step of asking a mutual friend and was devastated by the news and today rang Dan’s lovely lady, Dorothy who just happened to be home for the first time in 29 days, whew! Dorothy filled me in on Dan’s issues, what happened and where he is today. We managed a few laughs together as we discussed the setbacks and then muy lovely Emily’s own health issues. Then, who knows why, I mentioned I would send her a photo of my new wheel chair to match Dan’s, and of course, Dorothy wanted to know what’s going on with me. “Lou Gehrig’s” I replied. Dorothy was, is, devastated. I am sure I had mentioned it to Dan but obviously not to Dorothy. Maybe not to either, not wishing to add to the stress of dan’s stroke recovery. I guess there is no ‘nice’ way of telling anyone that I have a disease. Or anyone one telling dear friends what their condition is. Another step on the ladder of life, I guess.

So here I sit. Wondering what it is about life, the World, my World, that challenges me so. And yet as I thought of the sadness Dorothy expressed I also thought, okay so what am I doing about it? Yes, there are many things I can do, my mind is sound or so it seems to me :) I can still walk somewhat, sure my muscles don’t do what I would want them to do, my breathing can be a challenge but with muy lovely Emily we are getting things done, getting on with our lives. We love each other and support each other, that is priceless. We were able to achieve garden work yesterday and we socialized with friends over the weekend, that is also priceless. To walk into a room of friends and have them come to me with love and hugs and “great to see you here Richard, we have missed you”. I do not get that from my family of origin :) nor do I expect it and I guess that sends a probe deep into my anger resentment reservoir. One where I have never allowed myself freely to go, the one where the stored rage, anger, resentment of years gone by and of recent times. Amazing really, that just popped into my consciousness as it is a subject I thought about last week, one that I believed could make a challenging topic for my writing. Do I dare go there :) Is it important :) It is a part of my life, a very deep unexpressed, at least to my siblings, part of life. Do I dare? Good question. I guess I can at least write it, where it goes from there I do have a choice. I can share it with the universe and a friend and then make a measured, calculated or rash choice of Yes or No! And then again, this is my writing, no one else is doing this and what their reaction or not, is simply none of my bloody business, so I have heard :)

I once wrote and essay regarding my Father, ‘believing it so does not make it so’. I wrote a letter to myself from my Dad. I also wrote a letter to my eldest brother. I am making typos, that is a sign that I am thinking too hard and not simply going with the flow of my intuition. What would Steinbeck say? I am sure he would smile and say “Whatever”. Reading his Journal from the Sea of Cortez has me inspired for the hilarious detail of his writing. A serious subject like ecology and tidepools and such and he can segue into a priceless tale of catching chickens to buy and cook and eat. I read it aloud to muy lovely lover last night. Ah, Steinbeck! But I am Clark, Richard Clark. Unknown writer, unknown photographer, somewhat known and successful film editor coming to the end of his journey. A long and fun filled and adventure filled journey. A friend on FaceBook posted a great photo of himself and others, plastered all over a MiniMoke shooting a movie in Australia.

I shared that I had owned 5 MiniMokes in my time.

A MiniMoke was a great mini jeep like ‘thing’, a cross between a MiniMinor car and a skate board and Land Rover. They came out in the 60’s. Designed by g*od knows who and built by British Leyland. They were a small cult like vehicle, front east west engine. Independent suspension and a box like construction, a shoe box on wheels? Possibly. Minimalistic and the sort of vehicle I would absolutely love to own today. Jean Shrimpton, David Bailey, Twiggy all owned and drove Mini Mokes. Today they can be seen all over Jamaica, great tourist rentals and fun. I even rented on on the Greek Island of Santorini back in ’88. The photographs of me and three scarily sparsley clad women friends brings a smile :) My first one, registration EFB303 aka effable :) was BRG aka British Racing Green and of course I dressed to suit, I was so into that appearance thing.

I had fun driving around Sydney all togged up in suitable clothing smiling broadly as passers by gawked at me and my Moke. Appearance on a shoe string budget. Same as today, nothing much has changed :) I guess. I drove that vehicle all over the Eastern Seaboard and the Outback of Australia, a weekend trip of 2000 miles was not uncommon. From Sydney to the Queensland border via Bourke. The Back o’ Bourke! With high rising plumes of dust as I hit the unsealed roads, a handkerchief tied around my face to stop from choking on the tiniest particles of dust and flies and all the other bits and pieces outback Australia is known for. I loved it. Friends who had Minis of the regular two door variety would often join me on adventures to the Snowy Mountains where we would wind and slide our way to the headwaters of the Snowy River  and would beg me to do something really stupid like dive into the snow fed pools at the very summit of Mt Kosciusko. I made them happy by doing exactly what they challenged me to do. They had me swimming, they had me running up the mountain in King of the Mountain race, they had me, period. Laughing a great deal we had a ball. And then the trips with just me and my dog. Up the far reaches of the Hawkesbury River, I found vaguely formed tracks, over sandstone outcrops to places that are quite possibly today unvisited. I loved it. The back of the MiniMoke was like a small utility vehicle and in here would be piled my tent, stove, camping gear and clothes, totally covered in a fine layer of dust which, to a 23 year old was all part of the romantic adventurers plumage. I would even wear motorcycle goggles to keep the dust from my eyes. Nuts, totally, beautifully, nuts! I had to sell the MiniMoke, you couldn’t really call it a car, when at age 24 the Film Industry tempted me to become a member. My wage was cut in half and I had to talk the bank into lending me the money to pay off the car, they did. 10 years later I was so successful I bought a brand new, the first in Sydney, Range Rover. One end of the scale to another. Land Rover, Volvo and Honda, my vehicle brands of choice. I have a Land Rover today, I love it, for all it’s british peculiarities :) Registration plate EFEFEF! Effable indeed :)

Stands for Film | Fotography | Filosophy, sheesh!

How the hell did I get here? Same as life I guess. Roads as in Journeys have bends and intersections and sometimes give way and stop signs.

Do I wish to criticize my siblings, my family of origin? I guess not apart from suggesting, my experience, that we were all profoundly effected by alcohol, the great un-talked about family disease. We do not communicate. I try, I guess I do my best but ego and pride and shame and resentment, all these get in the way. There is no harm in picking up the phone today, no harm in firing off a note, none at all. So why don’t I? I guess my frustration, much healthier than resentment, comes from the fact that I seem to have given to my family in ways I never feel, as against fact, was never given to me. The youngest recently replied to my information that I have been diagnosed with MND, at first I felt it was kind of bitter

“Sorry to hear that you are not well. Hope that things improve.

Just finished work and will have a drink to your health. (Red wine only)” (youngest Brother)

However, on re-reading my brothers emails there is nothing to get my back up, in fact they are downright civil and loving. There is another Brother but he has kicked us all into touch so I hear :) whatever that means :) a soccer pun I guess.

Today, right now, I believe I owe my brothers an amends. I need to change my attitude toward them rather than expecting the reverse. As I said we are all effected by the family disease, whether we are open to that or not. So . . . who to phone first? Or email? Phone!

“Richard, I am, of course, stunned.  Has such a diagnosis actually been confirmed?  Now, I am full of questions, as you probably are too.

Certainly more questions than answers.

Tomorrow, thankfully I have nothing booked so will call you around 10 – 10-30am.

Meantime, love and a good nights sleep.

(your Sister) .xx”

So much for my perspective :)

And . . . . My two older brothers . . .  .

“i’ve just read your e-mail again,, what i read the first time was still there, bugger, I really feel for you and if there is anything i can do just call. this “condition” as you put it doesn’t sound to flash but the m.r.i scan will hopefully throw up some positives for you. Love to you both (brother and his wife)”

“Dear Richard,

I’ve been reading your notes and my first action is to stop and read everything again.

It takes me four visits (has always been-so) to fully understand anything.

There is the ‘normal’ approach to ask around and search for more data, possible stuff etc.”

Nothing in these notes to take umbrage from, please correct me if I am wrong :) I guess we all have our own reality and that it is flavored by the expectations we so un-healthily carry. Makes me smile big time when I read the letters and correspondence. What the hell do I expect from a family where at one point all five brothers lived in five different countries and never really communicated. Poor me, is that where I am coming from? Not that I was aware of but the great thing about my writing today is that it is not coming from my head but from my heart and it is the hand of a power far greater than myself which guides my tapping. Daimon, genius, guardian angel, whatever as James Hillman so beautifully writes. By his words and ideas, I chose my parents, I chose my time, I chose my family . . . To learn what I am learning, what I am experiencing and what I guess, I am writing. All part and parcel of the great unknown. I love it all, seriously I do. All part of my journey.

Take my surname if you will, Clark as in Cleric, the keeper of the journal in Scottish history. The idea of a Cleric makes me cringe somewhat . . . On the other hand I am drawn to the flower Clarkia, native to North America, with snowy white or pink or purple flowers, somewhat like the tartan of the Clark sett in Scotland :) named after W. Clark who discovered it way back in his adventures across the American West. Interesting indeed! I followed in his footsteps some 200 years later, mmmm!

Clark has an ecclesiastical origin. The tartan is sometimes known by the name of Clergy or Priest, mmmm again! Notable family members include Richard Clark, a native of Montrose, who rose to become a Vice-Admiral in the Swedish Navy (1623) and George Rogers Clerk who was one of the earliest settlers northwest of the Ohio in America. Fancy that. My ex-wife came from Swedish ancestry in Ohio. I loved sailing and lived near Montrose in Colorado for a while. Coincidence, fate, fun and amusement, who is to know. I sure as hell don’t :)

And, so where was I? Ah yes! Family. Where are we all today, wherever we are I can but guess, we all have our own separate lives, thoughts, dramas, aspirations, disappointments, setbacks, crosses to bear even. Therein lies the question, is it them or is it me or is it simply the us? Possibly the latter. The US. It takes Two, I have heard, to Tango.

Reading, writing, sharing, relieves me of resentment, of anger, it cleans the wound, lances the boil, just like a volcano. Fancy that :)

Enough for today. My friend Dan is in hospital, my heart hurts for him. Time to actually write a real on paper letter of support and love to my friends, all my friends I guess and, my family.

Just Like I would love to receive from . . .  :) but let it begin with me!

LAmen!

B.E.A.U.T.Y.

3 February

3:23pm

Wow, managed to get out of bed around 7am and make muy lovely a cuppa then back to bed to read and meditate and write a little by hand, imagine, no computer in bed :) and my writing is dodgy to say the least so have decided to really consider giving it up and keeping to the key board. So there I lay, propped in comfort by three pillows, light streaming in the window, bright overcast sort of  day, no wind, yippee! Curtains all silvery and in desperate need of replacing, gently dancing to no apparent breeze. And what did I read? What did I try and write? I looked for inspiration, motivation and found it. The Soul’s Code, a most excellent read by James Hillman. I found my motivation under the subheading of ‘Beauty’  page 35.

“There is, after all, something quite beautiful about a life.”

Simple, accurate and, in my experience, eminently possible. “Neglect of beauty neglects the Goddess”

. . . Okay, so you threw up your hands and pressed the delete button, a pity because you would have discovered, maybe to your discomfort and that is a good thing, discomfort, that you have a duality, we all have a duality, not just those born like me, a Gemini :) This duality thing is something I have struggled with since my early teen years, when my father yelled “are you some sort of queer or something?” no Dad we are just having fun! I was speaking to a friend over the phone, I was Blue Bottle from the Goon Show and my friend was, well he was some other character. I loved the Goons. My girlfriends Dad loved the Goons, anyone with a life loved the Goons! Often since the question has arisen, ‘am I gay?’ Today, it simply doesn’t matter. Somedays I could be straight, somedays I could be gay. Am I a homosexual I hear you think :) No, well at least as far as I know. Never particularly was attracted to the idea of having  sex with a bloke but that is me. Someone else, that is their choice. Like religion, it’s a personal choice. There are flavors of religion, there are all flavors of relationship. Choice. I love it. Dear friends of mine both male and female who have enjoyed long happy marriages with children make a choice to change their circumstances and many are now happily settled into a gay relationship.

I guess it all comes down to life and choices we make and “Beauty”. The Beauty we experience is a good life. Of course I don’t need to be in a relationship to enjoy a good life but I choose to be with muy lovely lover. Which brings me to an interesting point, beauty in an other. What is beauty in an other? Is it like I thought it was, perfectly formed ankles, arms, neck, waist line and yes . . . breasts? The answer to me today is real simple, the beauty is in the imperfections, of my self and muy lovely ‘other’. It is very freeing, no pressure, no judgement, no perfection paranoia. No fuss, no muss, take what you like and leave the rest, ancient wisdom :)

Life is perfectly imperfect and I would not wish it any other way.

Bloody hell! How the hell did I get here? Jeez Louise!

Yesterday I needed time out and so drove north to collect a new pair of glasses and then drove home via back country roads. My camera with me, my camera is always with me, looking for imagery to snap away at and so I can sell images, earn some income and claim my GST!

Bugger, my mouth is really dry, coffee is fine in the morning, not in the afternoon, need to take a water break . . .

Cold, slightly flat, semi-sparkling water!

So there I was exploring back roads, hopping out of the car, well gingerly climbing out of the car actually, camera permanently around my neck and setting myself to stand still and snap. Road side flowers at this time of the year are thick and plentiful, truly amazing, scotch thistle, daisies of many varieties and other amazing flowers of which I have no clue but could find out if I tried. Climbing in and out of road side ditches is not great when experiencing muscle loss with motor neuron disease, not like times gone by :) So, I could climb down into a road side ditch, stand and snap but to get out of the ditch, ouch! Place one knee on the wall of the ditch, look for a solid clump of grass to grab, hoping it won’t send me onto my back. Of course it pays to ignore passers by. They would simply write me off as a drunk in a ditch. Anyhow, there I am, on one knee, trying to swivel the other leg to gain leverage but hang on, that leg is also fading fast. Bugger. Roll on my side and leverage my arms, arms aren’t great either :) No one near to video the Perils of Pauline. A matter of speech my friend, my name is not Pauline, and the around the corner comes an apparition, maybe her name is Pauline :) By this time I am leaning against a fence getting my breath back, and my life is filled with a visage of beauty. A young woman, dressed for a country stroll, pushing her baby in a pram with her Jack Russell barking and glaring at my dog Kiri, who sits and watches and is not at all moved. I kick myself because this was a very narrow country lane, quite remote and I would loved to have asked if I could take a couple of photographs. Mind you I had my 90mm lens as against my 24mm lens, so I guess to simply gaze on the beauty of this random walker was enough. This young woman was a beauty to behold. Hiking boots with leggings over which she wore short, like short, short :) cut off jeans and a sort of tight top with a glorious cleavage on display and overlaid by a colorful waistcoat sort of top and a great mound of shiny brown hair. The apparition smiled at me with no sense of defense and I was sort of lost for words but managed to mumble something about a beautiful day to be out with the baby and by the way, “what’s your dog’s name?” Serious. She walked on ahead of me, up the hill and over the crest as I hopped, aka clambered slowly into the car, arranging my camera, fastening my seat belt, starting the car and looking at my minds wandering images, I drove by as she waved, as I waved and got back to the ‘serious’ business of snapping flowers and trees and trucks with large oversized loads. It was a thing of beauty that whole drive not just the baby pushing mamma but the whole drive. I drove south, the weather changed, the sun reflected, clouds changed shape, darkened and added contrast against the sun hitting fields of grain and feed. Beauty indeed. The great Beauty of all? That of being able to simply accept what is and not feel the need to do any more than enjoy the moment.

Hunger rumbles rise in my tummy as I drove south toward town, fish and chips for dinner and so parked in the center of town, locked the car, walked slowly across the road before slapping my pocket to chastise myself “shit, forgot my wallet!” Back in the car, mutter, mutter, the thought of Fish & Chips from this particular vendor playing havoc with my taste buds, a leisurely drive home and a fridge exploring dinner of scraps. A beautiful day. Life is beautiful, indeed! Amen.