...

thanks for those who jotted their thoughts in the margins of this scrap book as they leaned over my shoulder...

i'm left kind of speechless...

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i spent some time over at pete's blog today... man, there's some difficult stuff there... it also leaves me speechless...

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it's after five and it's still light outside...

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i'm thinking about story, about science, creationists vs richard dawkins... of how we do this thing called living without losing our minds...

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you're putting a line
where there should be a not a line

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someone told me they're writing a paper on all communication being domination...

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is this the truth of being human?
that we are fundamentalist by nature. we cannot understand us without them?

is this the truth of the gospel?
that there is another way...

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we could go together if we wanted to... but we keep fighting to make peace rather than surrendering...

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what is on the lips of the assassin as he takes a bullet between the eyes...? Christ knows... the unknowing haunts me still...

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he said, the metaphor is more...

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all these things swim and merge...

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there are no words...

LB,x

tall tales

Spent a lovely couple of hours with the ever-so-lovely Mo. Mo makes me feel happy and safe. She’s sunlight. And kindness.

We dandered ‘round the market, talked over coffee and headed over to the waterfront and explored the co:ordinates exhibition together. She asked me what I knew of the artists and we both felt the same warm rush of inspiration at the individual and collective beauty of it… of the courage in it, the craft… the honesty, the quirkiness… the colour, and texture…

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when i was getting my degree and taking a class in what i think was called organisational behaviour, synergy was defined as, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"…

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Mo reminds me that we humans are the creatures who have story, are story … we break down our walls and differences by listening to the stories of other’s lives and letting them entwine with our own… of not being afraid of the hard edges of some of our stories, of the loss and pain… but in the hearing we are called to an embracing of the other…

It’s so much easier to love when we remember we are unfolding stories… so much easier to bear pain and loss… to accept and live with others…

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But so often our tales are colliding…

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Another wise woman in my life says, "most people never set out to hurt one another… they are doing the best they can at the time… you can let go of blame and anger and hurt when you look back and see that" … after grieving comes a maybe kind of peace making… with ourselves and others… a letting go…

So perhaps forgiveness is wrapped up somewhere deep within these stories… We can’t live with the stories of others til we live with our own…Perhaps we can only let go of the dark stuff by first meeting it, accepting it, feeling it…

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Resistance is futile…those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it…

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For so much of my adult life this far, I lived in an imaginary future because the present wasn’t a place where I flourished… the greener fields always lay ahead… I was always wishing for… I see now that I wouldn’t or couldn’t deal with the past, the story of what had come before… as I learn how to narrate the story of the past, the present becomes a much more satisfying place to live and the future… well, whatever will…be will be…

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Chris tells his boys stories… wild, exotic, ridiculously silly tales in which they are the protagonists, the stars… as he tells his sons stories like his father did with him, they make weekly trips to an underworld place. in this secret magical land, reached by a clearing in a forest where vanishing daisies are the portal to a kingdom of imagination, there are always 2 great armies poised for battle…
this week the toothpaste army is ready to lock horns with the battalion of toothbrushes… next week, it’s the warring regiments of pencils and erasers, or it’s salt and pepper shakers ready to tear each other apart… whoever is at war, these particular adventures have a common dramatic turn of events… our young heroes will step into the space between and cry, “stop! In our world you two go together!” the armies are astonished. How shocked and amazed are these enemies when they hear of how there exists another place where they make so much more sense together than apart?
These laughing boys are the courageous peacemakers inside a story… learning to understand that life is about dealing with conflict… learning to look at things differently and help others see things differently… to see the complimentary nature of our difference… to be protagonists of another way… it’s hard to avoid thinking of another kingdom I heard of as a child… these boys travel in their father’s storytelling to a place where we understand what it means to ‘go together’ and stop our fighting…

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LB,x

significance in everydayness

Am back in the arms of ::Midlake:: again… man, I love this album…

The drums/percussion rhythm in young bride is infectiously tappy… that’s a technical music term i just invented… makes me want to be in a pick up truck, or on a rolling train, or astride a horse…

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my track pad is broken and I’m loving my maybe-not-gonna-be-temporary replacement – a wireless 2 button mouse. I can right click again – probably the one thing bar the delete button Microsoft has over Apple. In the grand scheme of the world pressing ctrl plus clicking is hardly a chore but the ol’ right click seems to make a qualitative difference.
If it wasn’t for needing both my usb ports for some of my peripherals I’d not bother taking my baby to the mac doctor to get said track pad fixed…

Anyways, no idea what that’s got to do with… just seemed a mundane significance in my little world… well, better out than in…

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in truth, today has been about the significance of the mundane and ordinary… of what lies beneath the tensions in everyday interaction… of being pissed off with a taxi driver happy to sit in gridlock traffic rather than find an alternative route and my intense frustration at his disregard of my need to get from A to B as quickly as possible, nor being able to communicate my frustration…

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I never complain to cab drivers or waiters or shop keepers… I was served what can only be described as swill last weekend in a café in portrush and I’m still irritated that I didn’t protest…

So. Sigmund has dispatched me back into the world with a new kind of homework… if opportunity arises, this next week I’m to raise my complaints when the service industry fails to meet their end of the bargain…

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the guy beside me is playing a very goofy air guitar… the girl he’s having coffee with is laughing… they almost certainly work together… she wants to let him know she thinks he’s funny and that she knows how to have fun… he’s tapping his feet repeatedly… she’s not…. She plays with the scarf around her neck and struggles to pay attention when he’s not playing the joker… they don’t mirror one another at all save for leaning in across the table every now and again… how will they start to talk about what really matters to them? both are looking for connection but they’re not yet speaking the same language…

the couple across from me really like one another with affection and really listen to one another… they are in relaxed synch… she plays with the hair at the nape of her neck continuously… more physically contained than he but he’s not the issue, she always sits like this… she was brought up to not take up more room than is polite but her parents never envisaged her in scruffy converse boots… she is a combination of what she was expected to be and who she really is… his hands carry his expressiveness but his eyes tell a story… he listens with his eyes… they both do… the rest of the world slips into the background as they talk… they don’t work together… she takes a call on her mobile and despite taking in his surroundings his gaze always falls back to her face even though she’s looking at her knees as she speaks into the phone…

from inside this womb one relies not on sounds but body language to tell you the mood of the world…

like others, I sometimes resist listening to music so as to have a full experience of the world… but sometimes in cutting one sense off from the world, the others pick up so much more…

like others, I sometimes listen to music with intent, no distractions… but ya know… there is a part of me that tunes speak to when i’m just letting it surround me and my eyes are watching the world and hands are tapping on the keys… a part of me is always listening with intent…

there’s just not enough hours in life to hear it all… so much tunage, so little time…

LB,x

ourselves on canvas

there was something incredibly beautiful about seeing the ikon co:ordinates exhibition for the first time... professional artists mingling on the wall with those who'd never tried anything like this before... a daring and a egalitarianism... all these pieces somehow speaking together...

...been thinking 'bout creativity... and what it is that allows us to tap into that raw channel of open expression of what really matters... of how it is we get past our rational selves and just say it how it is for us...

i've got no insight... just letting it all float about and feel gratitudinal (man! there's a word i haven't used in a whiles) for the opportunity to express... and that for me it's neither process or product that are primary, but message, or perhaps voice... be it with a pen or a brush or a victorian printing press...

i'm drawn again and again to the art of speaking what we feel...

it feels like flourishing and it's a joy to see others doing it in their own ways...

we've all got stories to tell... and i guess i'm surrounded by folks all wanting to let those stories all out...

praise the something-like-nothing that i feel moving beneath it all...maybe it's just love and the sense of collective becoming expressive community...

hmmm, whatever, it's all somehow very cool in the best way possible...

LB, x