The Grand Illusion and Progress with Dimitri!

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.

Nidji and the Eternal Question

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.