16.5.10. My last post unsettled me. Whether it's the voice of instilled conscience speaking I don't know but it seems as though by accepting evil I say I condone it. If the world is illusion, a moving tapestry of thought and emotion woven by consciousness then none of it is real - yet I do think we have, are born with, an innate sense of right and wrong. We are a reflection of Consciousness yet are flawed by our belief and participation in this grand illusion. What is the purpose of evil? Are those that commit it (and that's all of us) still learning the rules of the Great Game? The game being you can be and do anything you want, pretend anything you want and its only purpose is to keep you from remembering who you really are? The only rule of life is to participate. Once you stop breathing, you stop playing. But if you've played through many many lives and tire of the illusion you can go home - if you remember who you Are. The more evil committed the less you remember and the farther away you are from the source of all things. I suspect that someone who is very evil is very lonely. Not in the not having companions sense but in the isolation of the self. He has cut himself off from humanity and also from Self.
I just finished reading Out of Africa by Karen Blixen. I was struck by how knowledgeable she was. Her education was phenomenal. And she read. Widely and deeply. Immediately after closing the book I turned on the television and saw some music video clip. It was all glitz and glamour and sex and as brittle as glass - not one iota of beauty in it despite the perfection of the carefully made up and coiffed girls and the colourful barely there outfits. It was like drinking deeply of spring water and then moistening my lips with salt. But the comparisons weren't all bad. Although many of the references she made to other writers and their works were totally unfamiliar and there was a grace and dignity in her writing which seems to be a result of a kind of innocence that we, who see all, do all, know all, lack - there has been a change for the better in some way. When she arrived she was determined to shoot and kill one of each kind of game. She writes of the joy of killing lions, of the kill in general - and the blase attitude to clearing of the land for coffee. Toward the end of her stay in Africa her bloodlust abated and she only killed lions when they threatened the lifestock of the Natives.
I know people still hunt, still have that bloodlust. Still have that love affair with prey as she termed it. The courtship of the hunt and the consummation of the kill. But we are more aware of the finite nature of the planet and all the things on it.
But I didn't start this blog today to write about my opinions but to wave the flag for Dimitri. I have been trying to teach him to put a chewed wooden clothes peg in a bowl. I've been back chaining - having the peg in the bowl and clicking him for targeting it. When he picks it up and throws it out of the bowl I don't click. Today, for the first time I think he got a glimmer of what we've been trying to accomplish (it's quite difficult to type as I have Matisse, the Siamese cat, sitting on my lap and laying across my right arm). Anyway, he threw the peg out of the bowl and then, by accident or design, got it back in. I gave him a jackpot. (BTW, I'm also using sunflower seeds rather than millet - he likes them and they're quicker for him to consume therefore we get more training done. The downside is he's consuming quite a few sunflower seeds). Then he did it again. And again. So I removed the peg from the bowl - and after a few false tries he got it in again. Oh Happy Day!
I'm also clicking him when he looks me in the eye. Each time I go onto the verandah he scurries away. That's okay as he does turn around and, with encouragement, starts retracing his steps. He knows he'll get a millet spray when I come onto the verandah but now I'm waiting until he cocks his head and looks at me with that warm brown eye. Slowly slowly, agonizingly so but still. I keep in mind how K's corella, after some mysterious event while she was away on holiday, took an entire year to trust again - and he was a velcro bird, cuddling under her neck, trusting her to do anything. So with Dimitri, a wild caught Corella, nine months is nothing.
Nidji, accidentally released two weeks ago, is thriving. He hangs around with a pair of lorikeets, quite scruffy looking compared to him. Smaller too. I suspect one is Silda. They only tolerate him on the periphery and chase him away from the feeding stations. He's getting quite wily however, picking his time for feeding and even pushing the boundaries a bit with how close they allow him. He flies extremely well now. Landings and take-offs are second nature. And, as he's with the other two, his chances of survival have increased as there are two other sets of eyes watching the skies.
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