Sometimes, without any exterior cause that I can see, I feel myself slide inexorably into a foul mood. Foul meaning easily angered, simmering resentment and frustration bubbling under the surface. Think of the breath, stay in the moment, bring back the present. Yes, it works to a degree and I'm a little better but it started me thinking. Yes, there are extenuating circumstances. Nidji, my stepsons rainbow lorikeet escaped day before yesterday when Algernon spooked him and the door was open a crack while I removed the food. It never should have happened. I never should have had the door open but I'd done it hundreds of time, the opening wouldn't have been more than 2 or 3 inches - but there you go. He escaped and hasn't returned. Instead he calls from ever widening circles around the property. Pablo calls and calls. He's very unhappy. But Nidji won't come back. It is unbelievable. Wild birds will return the next day to the aviary looking for food which we have placed on top. But Nidji who's been in captivity for 4 or 5 years, hasn't returned. He's flying like a champion. He's covered alot of ground so must be handling the take-offs and landings just fine. There is a huge very 'landable' silky oak tree and a beautiful poinciana, perfect for hiding in, right next to, even shading the aviary. But no, he lingers on the periphery, whistling.
I suppose another reason I've been cranky (besides Nidji and lack of sleep) is the distance I feel from the spiritual world. I feel enmeshed in materialistic thoughts and actions. When I try and pray, to get in touch with the eternal it is like looking into a mirror and seeing only my face on a two-dimensional surface. Small-mindedness.
Much later. R came in and hovered, looking over my shoulder which in the mood I was in I found irritating. Also claustrophobic. I leapt up and went outside. Best thing for me as I've been working on the latest sketch and watering the fernery. My mood has improved. If Nidji doesn't return, he doesn't return. There are enough trees in blossom to feed him. He has a beacon, in Pablo's constant calling, so that he doesn't get lost and food hanging, in plain sight, on the outside of the aviary. I find it odd when other released birds have returned for a time for supplement feeding, that Nidji doesn't. He's been well cared for, never captured or hurt or medicated. He's known only kindness and experienced a huge improvement on his previous situation (cage, solo). I don't even want to capture him, I just want to make sure he's got enough to eat and drink. But it is out of my hands.
May 6, Thursday. Nidji returned for food on Tuesday. R rang me at work. I've been a happy puppy ever since. Okay, I'm a little worried now as the birds went a little wild with alarm calls (hawk calls) and I couldn't find him outside. Assume he's just gone 'to ground' until the danger is over. The hawk has been hanging around for 30 minutes or so. Cruising this neck of the woods looking for food. A couple of years ago there were a couple of goshawks, one grey, one brown, who had the temerity to land on top of the galah aviary looking for an easy meal. The galahs went nuts with fear. Made such a racket we knew immediately what was happening. We'd go out and try and drive them off but they'd only fly to the top of a nearby tree and wait. We had to out-wait them. They were so regular and so tenacious R even talked of shooting them. Thankfully the mice population increased and they looked elsewhere for food. Not that R would've shot them. He was venting frustration. He will shoot dying birds, rats and brown snakes but with reluctance.
Yesterday and today, after a long absence, I finally made it to the gym. Feeling good in the car, listening to the best of Michael Jackson (whose music is life enhancing). All was well in my world. Happy happy happy. And then I saw a dead hare on the road, then I hit and killed a butterfly, then I saw the remains of a pheasant coucal, another road kill. I could feel my happiness bubble deflating. It seemed false and naive to remain happy when there is death and destruction all around. The news is full of disaster. The death of the planet is a real possibility as we can't cure our greed for energy and money. Wars are being fought, children raped, animals tortured. It threatens to overwhelm all that is good. I never used to be this sensitive, bouncing back and forth between euphoria and a mood that is something like grief. I can smile at the shape of a tree and be crushed by the felling of it. I don't know how this generation of children will cope. Is it like the cold war when the end of the world was predicted with the press of one button? I don't remember feeling like the world was going to end. I suppose I missed the worst of it as I was too young to take note. Now I am. Yet I can't let the pessimism get to me. What to do? It came to me as I was driving home: love it all. Love the night and the day, love the dark and light, the disease and the cure. What? I hear my non-existent reader say. Love murder, rape and mayhem? Are you nuts? Maybe so. And I'm not even sure I'm capable of it. I am capable of trying. Is it not all God's creation? Even if we are creatures of free will there is nothing on this earth which is not God if god is the fabric of creation, the ever changing, ever perfect All That Is. Explanations are impossible. I don't know why there is evil and pain and fear in the world. Is it all relative? What I find awful (heavy metal, mass development, dinner parties) other people adore. I abhor having needles, others hardly notice them. Would we all agree that having birds in cages is wrong? Would we all agree that torturing kittens is wrong? Not the psychopath - he would find joy in it. Is his joy different from our own? Does he experience a visceral lift, that 'oceanic feeling' while he dismembers the little furry thing?
The idea of beauty in the Middle Ages has nothing to do with the idea of beauty now. Even the difference between now and the nineteen fifties is apparent. (I watched, for the first time, From Russia with Love with Sean Connery, the other night. The leading lady, who was obviously considered beautiful to be cast as his love interest struck me as a very plain jane made passable with the use of make-up). The Crusades was good and righteous then as the Jihad is good and righteous now - to some people. Perhaps it's a cop out - to love it all or if not to love it to just accept it, embrace it and not fear it. Jesus had a tanty in the temple of the money changers. Even Jesus could get mad. I've often thought of that. An angry Jesus, the lamb of god. Lambs don't have tanties. So anger has its place? It was a good things millions died to defeat fascism but wrong to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq? Hussein wasn't a very nice man. Perhaps personally he was charming. Libya's president, Gaddafi, has even come out of the cold, having a handshake with President Obama. I am such a product of my WASP up-bringing that my idea of good and evil is predictable. Maybe it's just laziness on my part because it is too hard a subject and philosophy is not something I'm good at. Which brings me right back to embracing, accepting it all as the fabric of life. That old saw about how would we ever be happy unless we'd experienced unhappiness? Cold without the sensation of warmth, health without sickness, etc. etc. Speak up against evil and apathy and cruelty when I can, shine a light where I can but otherwise just embrace the lot.
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