Black and White, Who Knew?

The brighter the light, the blacker the shadows. 

The blackness in the world seems blacker than usual, although beheadings are probably less cruel than drawing and quartering - our well-honed talent for cruel and unusual punishments is breathtaking.  History is no more or less cruel than what is displayed via computer or television today.  We just have better access to the creative psychopaths than before the advent of modern media.

At the same time however, our capacity for giving, for compassion, for love is greater than ever.  No matter how awful the world seems - and watching the news which thrives on and indeed is a venue for the Theatre of the Cruel, it is matched, even exceeded by goodness.  People donating time money and effort to helping the millions of refugees left adrift in the world.  Governments can be merciless and cold (witness Australia's treatment of refugees held like criminals in 'detention centres' - prisons is a more accurate description) but individuals shine. 

If our collective dreaming was of good happy things would reality be any less real?  Is Heaven boring and is that why we dream the shadows as well as the light?  Is there any point in being good when goodness cannot exist without evil to measure it against?  Is goodness relative to the density of evil?

The universe cannot be black despite the absolute blackness of deep space because of the presence of starpricks of light.  There is no atmosphere to diffuse the light or to soften the blackness.  Absolute light and absolute black.  

I get worked up about things.  Lots of things, from the knuckle dragging Neanderthal Roosh Valizadeh who advocates the legalization of rape on private property to the head in the sand mentality of governments, corporations and multinationals in regard to climate change.  My neighbours rile me with their cavalier attitude to the animals in their charge or their environmental vandalism credentials (which are five star!).  Like a mainsail buffeted by wind, at the mercy of an unattended tiller I lurch from one aghast and disgusted episode to another.  

This has to stop.

It's wearing me out.  

The next stage is to figure out how.  I suspect it has to do with meditation and the stillness of the unbuffeted center.

Two more crows arrived today.  They are flighted, wild and very skittish.  Karen has been looking after them for a few weeks.  I'll keep them for a few weeks, let them strengthen their flight muscles while they panic trying to get away from me.  The resident wild crows have already been talking to them which is great.  The galahs, sharing the other half of the double aviary, absolutely panicked when the crows were let go in the other half.  I'm sure they thought they were hawks put there to devour them.  They've settled down since this morning.

One of the crows has white in some of his flight feathers.  Hard to get a good look as they are so wild and panic fly/crash when I enter the aviary.    Have been in twice, once to put in a bowl of water and a second time to leave some food.  The black crow gobbled up most if not all of the food.  Not sure if the other one got any or not.  Will put out more food soon.  They have to get used to me at least to the point where I can put food and water in.  Don't want them injuring feathers or wings in their effort to get away from me.

Karen had a look at Edgar.  Thinks the wing might be deformed.  As I thought there is no broken bone to account for it.  She has no more idea than I whether he will fly or not.  Asked if the droopy wings are normal and she said yes, her crows also had trouble keeping them folded to their body when they were his age.  They are much older and look like adult crows save for a certain gangliness. 

Karen and I worked on a couple of art projects.  She is drawing a pencil sketch of one of her daughters.  I started another watercolour project involving a cat.  Am not using the techniques taught in the watercolour pencil book partly because I'm not using any pencils.  And I'm sure the way I'm doing is not the way watercolour should be used.  Nevertheless, so far so good.  I do like the subtlety of watercolour, the palest of pale shading.  Because it's so slow (I'm using the smallest brush - what is the number?  See, I never remember details like that) I can work the details.  So far, in mistakes I've made (and they've been legion) I've been able to mop up the offending bit with paper towel. 

Fun!

I should write two separate posts as what I want to write about today are unrelated, but as I don't always get here when I want to (or should!) I'll combine the two.

First of all, Edgar.  He continues to thrive.  He has supermodel legs.  They go on forever and are comically topped with this scruffy pin feathered little (in comparison) body.  There are photos of baby crows in Pinterest; all black and fluffy in duck-like down.  He's nothing like that.  He has adult feathers, most of them still encased in keratin somewhere along the shaft.  His eye is pale blue and as he grows and grows stronger, he is more responsive. 

Two days ago I was present when he had a wing flap.  It was then I noticed one wing is noticeably shorter than the other.  Not only shorter but some of the flight feathers are partially turned outward rather than lying flat against his body.  Don't know whether this will affect his ability to fly or not.  Don't know whether it was the reason he was screaming in the long grass.  For such a vocal baby there wasn't a crow in sight - and we have many local crows.  Was he kicked from the nest because he was imperfect?  Nature is not sentimental.  Staying alive is too hard.  Anything that is compromised from birth is ejected/rejected without moral reflection. 

There was a reason he was found by us.  He put everything he had into that metronomic squawking and there was very little left to live upon when he was found which is why he was so weak and ill to begin with.  But I thought Rupert (the rainbow lorikeet) and Lionel (the galah) were fostered by me for a reason too.  I thought they would live - and they did until they were released and then, in a longer or shorter time, they were killed.  No use pondering why (he was found) or if (he can fly), best just do my best for him and see what happens.  In the meantime he makes me smile. 


The other thing I want to cover isn't nearly as jolly.  Much of Tasmania has been on fire.  World Heritage areas on the west coast have burnt to a crisp.  Thousand year old pencil pines gone forever. An interviewed scientist (just tried to find the article and can't) said it was a sign of 'system collapse'.  Another article (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-29/glikson-the-dilemma-of-a-climate-scientist/7123246 ) states that up to a third of climate change scientists believe the situation is far worse than what is fed to the public and that if we don't stop using fossil fuels now we are doomed.

This kept me awake most of the night.  Not because I'm doomed.  I'm 60.  I'll probably eke out another few decades before the planet becomes unlivable (or perhaps, in an effort to save the planet, everyone over 60 will be euthanized).  What kept me staring into the darkness was the plight of all those that don't have a voice.  From the unborn to all the creatures; land, sea and air, which will die through no fault of their own.  It breaks my heart.  If we want to destroy one another, so be it, but must we drag everything else down with us?

So it started me thinking.  Despite the human capacity for self-sacrific, despite our intelligence, our urge to beauty, our creativity, spirituality, generosity - we are a species seemingly doomed to failure.  In the scheme of things, meaning the Infinite Universe, it's not a big deal.  Other beings no doubt have come into existence, shone for a while and dimmed into oblivion for various reasons.  Inborn hubris leads me to think humans are rather special.  We have the ability to ponder, to reflect, to learn  and to know joy.  It would be lovely if those attributes were the ones that carried the day.  For us and every other living thing.  Unfortunately it seems greed, hubris, selfishness, fear and short-sightedness carry the day.  And the earth.

On the other hand, if it's only a dream of Maya, we'll all wake up and shake our heads at the strangeness and overriding sadness of the dream.  I wonder which reality is true.

Edgar, I am relieved to say, is without doubt getting stronger.  He  is standing more without splaying legs (I cover the bottom of the box with leafy twigs to provide traction), can eat on his own with food just dropped into his mouth rather than having a finger shove it down, and his attempts at walking are more frequent and better controlled.  He has a long way to go yet improvement is obvious and welcome.

He is starting to grow into his black fluffy stage.  Very cute.  His eyes are fully open with bright intelligence and curiosity.   

I have agreed to take Karen's three baby crows for four days while she goes to the coast.   A couple of days ago she texted me that she had them and did I want them to which I said no - too much work and smell and IF we had an inspection I doubt I could mask the crow smell successfully.  Did text back that perhaps, when they are older and nearing the time when they would fledge, they could come and live in the aviary with Edgar, form a bond so all four could be released together.  That seems the best way to introduce them into the wild.  Even wild crow babies don't always make it through their first year I read.  Forty-two percent die.  What are the chances of hand raised crows?  I don't know but will just have to try our best.  There is no other alternative.

Taking these three crows for a trial four days will be excellent for Edgar and perhaps I will find that I can manage them quite all right and can keep them until they fledge.  They will entertain each other and behave as crows should behave rather than having their personalities warped by interacting with humans.  (I find myself wanting to kiss Edgar's fuzzy black head, NOT conducive to keeping emotional distance from this wild creature). 

On the home front - not one iota of interest since dropping the property price to $399,000.  On Monday Richard, Anthony, Cameron and their families met at Laidley cemetery to affix the bronze plaque over David Anthony's grave, fully 44 years after he died.  They also dug a small hole on his grave for Glynis' ashes.  A major loose end finally tied off in a fitting manner.  Richard is kind and very family oriented.  Can't begin to imagine how David Anthony being in an unmarked grave all these years felt to him.  But now he has done what any loving father, and he is a loving father, would do. 

Now can we sell the house and move?  Crass of me I know but there you go.  I try not to want but I want nevertheless.  Try not to feel guilty about wanting and feel guilty anyway. 

Every day is a goulash of gratitude and guilt.  Was reading up on the various species of Buddhism.  My loo book is An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie about four Catholics; Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Walker Percy.  It is subtitled, The Life You Save May Be Your Own.  The book details their Catholic conversion and their struggles with themselves,  philosophy, the nature of good and evil, poverty, war, writing and much else that pertained to being alive as well as what it meant to be Catholic.  One thing is for sure, none of them really had the answer.  Even Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who lived the penultimate Catholic life of seclusion and reflection, even he was riddled with the angst which is part and parcel of being alive.

I don't think the 'isms have it.  Perhaps I just am not evolved or disciplined enough to understand what they offer yet it seems as soon as reality is filtered through the prismed opinions of someone else I am lost.  Reality is so immediate.  I sense that even if I don't know it.  It is as close as my next breath and the universe behind my eyelids.

Oh, yes, read a report on how some people have negative reactions to mindfulness meditation.  How interesting as sometimes I have felt, and I think I have written about it, this mild sense of panic, that if I don't open my eyes and move NOW.  It is irresistible.  There is a sort of external pressure which confines and frightens me.  Am glad I'm not alone.  Also glad it doesn't happen all the time.  In future, if I experience it, having read of these bad experiences, I won't fight it or berate myself for being weak-willed and undisciplined. 

Just starting to sprinkle.  Was thinking this morning how we are slowly but inevitably contributing to the desertification of the Lockyer.  Yes, it rains.  Yes, there is the (dwindling) underground aquifer, but with continual land clearing and burning, the continual hoovering up of the underground water supply to irrigate the factory farms, it is turning into a desert.  If I had photos of our drive into town from 1991, when we first moved here, and compared them to now, the changes would be significant.  Little by little, slowly yet inexorably, patches of bush or entire swathes of bush have been cleared or burnt.  It makes a difference.  Having trees, lots of trees, attracts rain.

One hobby farmer down the road removed every tree from his one flat paddock so on the days when the temperatures sore, his cattle have no relief.  It beggars belief.  Doesn't need much in the way of common sense to know that cattle are happier and put on more weight if they are comfortable.  He doesn't need to know, and obviously didn't, that the trees he removed are legumes and fix nitrogen in the soil, all great for growing grass.  Tree prejudice is pervasive. 

But this is an old and battered drum I beat and no one listens because I am living in the wrong place among the wrong people at the wrong time.  Climate change doesn't exist here or if it does it's someone else's problem. 

Going home to the Tweed, and it does feel like going home, just confirms my ardent desire to move there.  Driving from the Tweed Art Gallery towards Stokers Siding or from Nobbys Creek to Cabarita I was struck by the amount of, the colour of and the lushness of trees.  Green filtered light.  How long since I've seen green filtered light?  And I didn't have time to stop and just look at it.  One day....

Edgar update:  He's eating better, seems a little less weak (head not lolling backwards so much) and I don't worry when I open the door in the morning whether he will be dead or not....yet something doesn't seem right with him.  Perhaps the weakness goes deeper than I thought.  Perhaps his screaming when we found him was the last hurrah before he died as it is taking a long time for him to recover.  He grumbles and calls when he's being fed but there is no crying out for food as I would expect.  Magpies that I have raised scream the house down for food.  He sleeps all the time and doesn't move much except to find a corner where he feels more secure and perhaps supported.  So, it's wait and see.  His eyes seem a little more open than previously and I think they will be blue which indicates he is probably a Torresian crow. 

Edgar the Crow

Two days ago we found a crow.  A baby crow screaming its head off in the long grass by the side of the road.  It sounded more like a frog being taken by a snake than a crow so when I investigated I walked really really slow, peering as best I could through the grass.  Green snakes are harmless but browns are deadly.  Even when the crow was at my feet he was difficult to see.  When I did see him, I saw a bundle of black and grey spiky pin feathers and a yawning red cavern from which the squawks were coming.

Took him home and dug out the emergency rations of frozen mince.  Squirted a bit of water in his mouth with a syringe as I suspect he was dehydrated (next day found his first poop buried in the folds of the cloth used as emergency bedding.  It was pure poop with no urine and as big as the first joint of my little finger). 

For two days I have put off writing about Edgar as I wasn't sure he'd pull through.   He wasn't eating much and seemed very very weak as his head kept flopping backwards onto his back.  That didn't seem normal.  The heat hasn't helped.  Today I've put a cloth covered ice bag in his basket which seems to help.  Today he seems stronger, his head rarely flops back and he eats with more gusto and less coaxing.  Oddly his eyes aren't fully open.

At first I thought he was a casualty of the Channel Billed Cuckoos.  Thought the cuckoo nestlings either ejected the crow eggs or the crow nestlings but that's not what they do.  They actually do nothing

but eat and as they are bigger, grow faster and are stronger than the crow babies, the parents feed them and neglect their own offspring until they starve to death and are thrown from the nest. 

Looking up in the gum tree which looms over the area where Edgar was found, there was a nest on an outermost branch.  It is so high up the tree I can't tell whether the nest is intact or whether there are other babies.  It appeared to be empty. So I don't know whether Edgar was an accident or a victim.

In any case, the task now is to get him well enough and strong enough to move outside into half the galah's aviary.  The less contact I have with him the better if he is to survive in the wild as a wild crow.  The local crows, and there are at least two which live in the mugga ironbark, need to notice and accept him into their circle.  A big ask. 

If I can find that fine line between which he knows to come to me for supplemental feeding at the same time as he maneuvers his way into local society, I will have succeeded.  The fate of tame crows, unless kept permanently in an aviary, is grim.  They don't survive. 

In the meantime, we'll just muddle through.  He's still, compared to photos of other crows his age, very weak. 

Down to the Tweed this weekend where I viewed this property http://www.realestate.com.au/property-acreage+semi-rural-nsw-nobbys+creek-120871409 at Nobbys Creek.  The house is perfect.  Lots of light, lots of wood, smells good, new, clean and an easy keeper - great kitchen with a walk in pantry and gas stove, high ceilings, generously wide hallways.  Lovely.  The land needs tweaking.  Very steep, have to move fences and make some kind of arrangement for feed and tack a there are no suitable buildings.  Also need to find way to separate Dakota to keep him from eating too much.

But as we've not even had a nibble since dropping the house price, all the above is a moot point.  Suspect the house will sell long before we would be in a position to buy it.  No matter.

As always, as soon as I left the M1 and drove towards Murwillumbah and the mountains came into view, my heart lifted.  Actually my heart lifted before, as soon as I passed the exit to Tallebudgera Valley but as traffic was heavy and I needed to concentrate I couldn't really give in to it until I'd exited the motorway.  I did sing along with Paul Simon at full volume however.  Joy cannot be contained.

The contrast with the Lockyer is profound.  The Tweed is lush, green, criss crossed and dotted with water (and of course has the sea as a lace fringed blue border) whereas the Lockyer, because we're experiencing an El Nino drought, is again turning brown despite it being January, normally our wettest month.  The gums are skeletal and what water there is is mud brown, not clear and flowing like the creeks and rivers of the Tweed. 

This confirms my already ardent desire to move.  Surely, SURELY, the house will sell and we can move on. 

When I left the house, following the real estate agent down the road, I gave it up to the Universe.  The house, although beautiful, isn't perfect.  It's 30 minutes from the sea, there is less bush around so birdlife won't be as abundant as it could be and the horse accomodation is problematic.  The property is desirable and I very much doubt it will be on the market when we are in a position to buy.  So be it.

But I wanted to blog today not because of house hunting and property buying but because of a tiny soft-bodied insect. 

One mosquito can make sleeping a sleepless itchy hell.  Woke up with bites on both legs, my back and my shoulder.  Then heard the culprit buzzing around my face.  The only way to combat a mosquito is to turn on the fan, unless poison is used which I don't like.  So I got up to turn on the fan, thought I'd go to the loo at the same time.  Fumbled around for the torch and couldn't find it.  Decided I knew the way and if I walked slowly I'd get to the toilet without mishap.  Got to the living room and saw a small green flash near the floor.  It looked like the regular strobing of a In Sleep Mode bit of hardware.   Except there is no bit of hardware at the base of a wooden plinth near the bookcase.  I knelt down and swept my hands slowly over the light and felt nothing.  Tried again, still nothing.  I turned on a light and there on the floor was a small black bug.  A firefly!

I've lived in Australia for 34 years and I've never seen a firefly.  Tried to catch him to put him outside, after turning off the light to again enjoy his mating call, but he dropped down and out of sight in a floor crack.  Maybe he was the only firefly around and now he's dead.  Feel a bit sad about that but oh so chuffed that I saw him.  Hadn't realized I missed them until seeing him.