What is Good and Evil

Watching storms appear and disappear on the radar.  Driest October on record.  Hottest too.  When will we wake up and do something serious about climate change? 

Don't know how people cope with stress.  I'm retired, living the dream, our bills are paid, my husband loves me, I enjoy perfect health yet there is anxiety.  Sometimes, when I'm walking the dogs, I feel if I could just walk fast enough, I'd outrun it.  I'd run except I pay in aches and pains and sleepless nights.  So I walk; faster and faster and faster, like I'm trying to break the sound barrier, or disappear into a wormhole to arrive in another place, another dimension.  Fantastical yes, but it feels like that.  Outstriding stress. 

Then I take a series of deep breaths, get centered, accept that I can't save everything, that pain and suffering and death are as much a part of life as joy and peace and birth. 

It's still the great unanswered conundrum that I've never read an acceptable answer to.  Pain and suffering and death.  If we have the concept of goodness and joy and happiness and it seems to be bred into us to seek it, to celebrate it when we find it, and to castigate ourselves when we are the cause of the loss of it to another being, then why is the world so monstrous? 

I love praying mantis'.  When I find one of the inch long brown ones in the house I carry it outside so the cats won't find it.  But that mantis will catch a bug and eat it alive, starting at the head.  Do we accept and celebrate the cruel as well as the kind?  Is it all, in the end, one and the same?  Do we make a choice, coming down on the side of the Fred Wests, ISIS jihadists and Gacys, finding our happiness, our valid happiness there?  Do we not see the big picture and that's why we get mired in morals and ethics and depression? 

It's not theoretical science to say we are just a collection of oscillating waves and fragments of space that disappear as soon as an attempt is made to quantify them.  So if it's all a dream, do I just embrace the dream, mine and everyone else's as having equal value?  Is there really no good or evil except that I have an opinion of it?

Can't accept that.   Almost a physical sensation of revulsion.

 So guess I must accept the stress of knowing how much pain and suffering and death there is in the world.  And, selfishly, try not to think of it too much.  To keep on taking those deep centering breaths and paint pretty pictures.

Non Smoking Zone

Sometimes it just hits me.  How insanely fortunate I am.  Food, shelter, love, companionship, satisfying pursuits, sanity, health, (just noticed I put food first.  Typical).  There's a dull patina of guilt associated with the above list.  What did I ever do to deserve them?  Must come from a past life as I've certainly not led an unselfish, unsullied life this time around.  Nevertheless, there they are.  Blessing beyond measure. 

Since quitting smoking 2 1/2 years ago, even my breath has been the source of a healthy dose of gratitude.  When I think of it, breathing, I have to take a deep chest full with unbearably gratifying breath.  How good is that?  I could be dead (no breath), hooked up to a respirator or suffering from asthma or emphysema or some such thing where breathing is an ongoing fight.  Instead, despite over 40 years of smoking, I've been given a second chance and boy, don't I know it!  When I am mindful (read - when I am here and not lost in some storytelling popcorn eating haze of daydreaming) I gulp big lungfuls of air just for sheer delight.  It's so delicious.  Perhaps people who have never abused themselves with cigarettes can't understand but when you smoke your lungs lose elasticity.  You can't take a deep breath.  Impossible.  You inhale so far and it's as though you've hit a wall.  Here and no further so there is no satisfying stretch, like stretching cramped too-long-sitting-muscles.  It is quite awful.  I used to almost get there by opening my mouth and trying to stretch using chest muscles in a poor and ultimately frustrating facsimile.  Now I don't have to.  Sure, there's a long way to go.  Forty years of smoking damage isn't undone in two but the difference even now is profound.

And I feel so sorry for the people I know who smoke.  Can't help them, can't even say anything because I know what it's like when you smoke.  You're addicted and mentally turn off anything that damages the fragile reasons you've made to give yourself permission to smoke.  I did it so well, so thoroughly for so long.  Nothing anyone could have said would have made me change my mind.  So they smoke and they cough and they smell and they have to budget for their smokes as it's unbelievably expensive now and I am sorry.

I am free and oh, isn't that breath SWEET?

Richard returns today after 2 days on the coast.  He's catching up with Helen and his old mentor, Heather.  Have asked him to 'inhale' the coast, to hold the image of the sea as a goal so that we stride ever closer to The Move.  Have a picture of our house from the ad in the newspaper stuck to the fridge.  Have printed across it in bold black letters SOLD as a kind of sympathetic magic or a metaphysical attempt to rearrange the vibrations to match the dream. 

The burning has already begun.  Neighbours on either side have burnt some of their hills.  But there's so much more to burn and the season is young.  I don't want to be here while they do for I can't pretend or distance myself from the destruction and death. And it gets harder each year.

Every morning around 6:30 a commercial jet flies overhead.  It's trajectory is Coolangatta.  Every morning I stop what I'm doing and watch it pass, the sun gilding the fuselage and wings.  The sun from over the ocean.  The sun which glows on Byron and Cabarita.  The sun that the Tweed Valley birds sing into being.  Our sun.  When I see it I'm there, in that ancient green caldera, in our house with a view of Mt. Warning, with the smell of the sea on the breeze and the gurgle of water from all those rivers and streams sliding along my bones. 

I do try and be patient, really I do.  The right time and all that.  I know it will be the right time but I devoutly wish that right time comes soon.  Every time I ride or walk the dogs or even go outside I see the beauty and the magic of this place.  It isn't the place that repels me but what is done to it.  Our neighbours have sold their 100+ acres to the son of our neighbour.  Much of it is bush.  I suspect the son will follow the father and slash and burn the bush to make it suitable for cattle.  I ride that country all the time.  I'm not sure if I could stand to see it destroyed. 

But you attract what you fear, whatever you hold in your head.  The more I fear the destruction and the burning the more I make it real. 

Ah, the guilt.  It seems guilt is my second skin.  Haven't been able to do yoga for 2 days because I've done something to my back.  And it's hard work not to feel guilty about it.  Really. 

But one good thing.  Am working on a coloured pencil drawing, of the back of Camus' head (again, he's already immortalized in a pencil drawing) as he gazes into a weird blue forest with a flying black cat high above.  Sounds weird and I did despair that it would work but it's starting to come together.  I really like it.  Shouldn't say that about one's own work I suppose but as I make things that I like it would be foolish not to like them. 

Am thinking about taking a drawing/colouring class starting this month.  Need to talk it over with Richard.  It's every Tuesday for 8 weeks.  Will see. 

How very difficult it must be to be young!  The world's violence and depravity constantly invades our space through modern media.  I like to keep up with current affairs but even I find it hard to stomach and must turn to a funny cat video to erase the taste of decomposition. 

We have two of the grandkids here; age 6 and 7.  Bright innocent blue and brown eyes.  I'm not a kid person but I look at these little girls and shudder at the world they've inherited from us and our forebears.  And the muck they must wade through.  People doing unspeakable things to one another, to animals, to children.  All there for the world to see.

Even art.  I get really disgusted with 'art'.  So much of it NSFW.  Or so mired in sex and violence and blackness I feel dirty afterwards.  I've learned not to look. 

Even my dreams are affected.  I awoke the other night from the very real flash of a nuclear explosion x-raying through my closed eyelids.  I thought it was real.  Last night was a saga of survival, herding Richard and someone else to safety and trying to gather essentials like warm clothes, bedding, food and an optimism I didn't feel.  It was a dreadful dream, also very real.  Agonizing about the animals that I couldn't save, could no longer feed.  What to do with them?  How to protect my little company from the predation of others.  I awoke exhausted and depressed.   

I know, KNOW, this is a matter of attention.  Turn my attention to other things.  ISIS' beheadings don't really affect me except that I allow them to.  Today I squatted on the ground looking at a leaf.  It was dappled with sun and shade, bright green, dull green, one piece turning yellow where an insect had had a meal.  The column of air above it leading to the ionosphere remained unaffected by humankind's 'stuff'.   It existed perfect and pure and complete onto itself.  It captivated my attention, reminding me of what is real and what isn't. 

I don't have any answers.  Evil can't be ignored, I know that but I also know it's a product of our intent.  For some reason it acts as a counterweight to all the good things happening in the world (McDonalds and Subway have decided not to use cage eggs anymore).  Is that it?

A Buddhist sage (I think - don't quote me!) was asked about the amount of evil in the world.  He answered that the amount was about right.  There's lightness and there's an absence of light.  How to know the reality of light without the reality of darkness?  Is that it?

Guess these dreams are a reminder and a prod to get a grip.  The mind needs attention and discipline and love as much as the body.  I've been lazy and have absorbed mental junk food.  So back to a rigorous, or at least better, mental diet.

Richard spent last night in hospital.  We'd had a neighbour over for dinner, a neighbour who'd suddenly become a widow when her husband died in bed in the wee hours just over a month ago.  She is coping but needs friends and family support hence the invite to come for dinner and an episode of Midsomer Murder.  At 7:25, after dinner had finished, she was heading outside for a smoke while I entered the living room heading for the tv.  As we were both turned away from Richard neither of us saw him fall.  He'd stood up from the kitchen stool to start on the dishes when he felt dizzy and fainted.   Richard's a big man, not fat but tall and solidly built.  When he fell he made a sound like a muted explosion.  The floor shook.

I turned and he was on his back, unconscious, eyes open but unfocussed, lips white and arms faintly twitching by his side.  After the first moment of disbelief, I grabbed the phone, pulling the books and papers from the stand, and rang the ambulance.

Our poor neighbour was in shock.  She'd just been through a similar episode, calling the ambulance while she tried to rouse her unresponsive husband.  Tragically, he never responded.  He had already died from a massive cardiac event.  She stood in shock and had to be asked several times before she went and got a pillow to put under Richard's head.

That's how quickly it can happen.   One minute you're enjoying a glass of wine and dinner, the next you're on the floor unconscious and trembling. 

The ambos came, two capable and confidence inspiring young people.  (One bright spot, the woman, a horse enthusiast was also enthusiastic about my paintings.  It's rare that someone comes into the house and raves about them, she did.  I was quite chuffed).  But they knew their job and their attitude was great; friendly, professional, even humorous.  Because of Richard's age and the fact that he'd fainted he was off to hospital.  I followed, waiting perhaps half an hour before leaving as I'd had 2 glasses of wine and didn't want to be *done* for DWI. 

All the tests were fine.  Normal everything.  Better than normal but they said he had to stay overnight just in case. 

While we are extremely lucky to have a local hospital and good doctors (the doctor on duty looked like a  nerdy high school student complete with thick framed glasses, an untidy mop of brown hair and thin pale arms) spending hours waiting to be admitted and then more hours waiting to be discharged is not fun.  The friendly but overbright demeanour of the nurses, accustomed as they are to talking to the hearing impaired elderly, the ticking and buzzing of machines, the muted slap of shoes up and down the corridor, the look of patients who won't be going home again, all speak the language of illness.   It is a world apart from the bright daylight world of the healthy.  Last night, one curtain over, a young man gasped in pain.  Have no idea what was wrong with him but every few minutes he breathed agony.  He didn't groan or cry or moan, the pain was all in his breath.  He was removed to another hospital.

In Richard's ward were 3 elderly gentleman.  Richard had gone for xrays.  The man in the bed opposite was asleep, one had zither framed himself outside to visit with friends, and the third, an extremely deaf 84 year old with the largest eyes, sat quietly by himself on a chair.  I was doing a crossword to fill the time.  Suddenly the biggest sheet-ripping fart split the silence.  I wanted to shout Well Done! a la Noel Coward but no one there would've heard.

Richard is home now, sleeping.  He had a crap night, as did I.  The consensus is that Richard's episode had to do with his Parkinson's medication.  It can cause a drop in blood pressure when the patient goes from a sitting to standing position (although, despite numerous tests, they couldn't get his blood pressure to deviate from normal).  It can also cause dizziness.  So we'll see.  He goes to see the doc tomorrow. 

Went to Mt. Cootha yesterday, strolled the gardens for hours with friends.  Pocketed many fallen seeds which I'm saving to plant at our new property, as most of them are rainforest type seeds and will fare better in a wetter climate.  It is, again, as usual, very dry and dusty here.  I long long for the day we move to our new home in the Tweed.  I know learning patience is good for me, that it will happen when the time is right, but, that inconvenient but ... why not now?  The house is ready, we are ready. 

Every morning while feeding the birds, sometime around 6:30 a jet flies overhead.  It's fuselage catches the morning sunlight and burns white and gold and I know it glows from the sea sun.  Not our sun which rises over rocky outcrops and burnt grass, but the wet yellow sun rising from a blue green sea.  An absolutely nonsensical way to look at things.  Nevertheless I can feel, almost smell that sea sun reflecting from the Coolangatta bound jet.  And I sigh.  And take a deep breath.  Another lesson in patience.  Not learned.

In the words of Madeleine Albright, 'The world's a mess,' yet just now, walking from one room to another I am overcome with an overwhelming sense of wellbeing.  How can that be so when there is so much trouble, strife, war, cruelty, stupidity and downright ignorance in the world?  I don't know. Because I am alive?  Because in my tiny corner of the world, right now, right this minute, I can still walk, I breathe, I have all my marbles, I am without thirst or hunger, I have enough clothes to warm me, in fact my house is warm while it is cold outside?  I could go on but that is the drift.   Some of us are so intent on what's wrong that we try and kill one another (or the planet) to make it right.