How shall we sing the Lords Song..In a strange Land?
1971
The seemingly large, long and endless green and white Formica table, was fully laden with food fit for a King..No a Queen..no Two Kings and two Queens! A preparation my Aunties and Uncles rehearsed time and again as children and now as Adults play out like a symphony striking each chord with a resonance that sings of the lessons learnt and now passed down from one generation to the next. A learning understood, and observed and reborn as Adults with a new set of eager faced learners looking on.
We all gather at the appropriate time..with a command we are called to the table with the slow and less eager abruptly hurried to the awaiting feast. The smells permeate the room as does the sense of anticipation of who will befall the task of the Pure..or Prayer before we dine. Fortunately or unfortunately for them it is always the task set aside for the Tuakana or older brother of the flock of cousins that have gathered..Maybe he or she was standing in the wrong or right place at the right time..nonetheless a Pure is offered and we all mostly close or eyes as we squint to see what we shall eat first and how far from the table we are from the prized possessions. The Pure nears its end and the inevitable Amen..is ever so close.
The Children then begin to plate their feast ..carefully placing each piece, balancing the many prized possessions, but also ensuring a few inedibles are placed strategically so as the ..”where are your vegetables?”..is met with a gentle…”here Aunty”…as we wished in our hearts that those hungry kids in Africa could eat all our broccoli, salad and Cucumber.
The children eat, laugh and play as the Adults then feast and no sooner are the bellies full the minstrels and choir of which there are many take their positions. With Ukeleles in hand we are then serenaded by the simple two finger chords, and a sound that resonates and echos a time when life was seemingly so much simpler. The strumming picks up as does the timber of voice, as I realise looking back that we actually could “sing the Lords Song in a strange Land”..and that I was a stranger in a strange Land..with a strange song.
Lyrics bounce around the room as shoulders and hips begin to sway and bring back for me the happiest of childhood memories. Melodies that seemed to soothe and placate all that was different and helped us celebrate all that was the same. Smiles break out almost spontaneously as if in unison as the chorus of the songs reach their crescendo and then break like waves on the reef as laughter and mirth splash over us all.
Though there is so much that is familiar, the experience is muted in that I am unable to speak or understand the language of my Mother. Nevertheless though my tongue is muted this doesn’t stop me being able to join with the universal language of Aro’a..Love..and the wonderful symphony that is Whanau, that is family that is for me being Cook Island Maori.
What a portal it is to experience the Song and Dance of my forefathers, my Mother and my large extended Family. Though I have learnt so much in the Papaa..European world, It is times like these that I realise I have so much to learn about Te Ao Maori..or the Maori World. It is times like these that I am a child again..a child that needs to walk, to know to speak and to understand again a new way of being. So many things I need to learn, and some things I will also need to unlearn. Skills and lessons that will equip me for the voyage ahead as I have reached a new place and a new journey.
With a new-found tenaciousness I question, reason and want to discover again. I want to glean from those that know a way and a way to live that at one time I felt was unecessary, redundant and surplus for the world I then lived in. Now eating every morsel until my belly is full and eating more again..almost insatiable this appetite grows inside me. An appetite that once feasted on another way to live walk and talk. How well I ate from that table and gorged myself on the Papaa..or European way to live. I have worn those “Four Layers” so well and they have served me well in the journey so far. But how cumbersome they now seem for the journey ahead.
I am Cook Islands Maori..but I am also Papaa. I now must learn to walk in both worlds..sometimes more in one and other times more in the other. This is the challenge ahead..a challange I welcome with both arms..one white and one brown.
Tatau – the journey.
Pain is an interesting journey. We live our lives avoiding pain like the plague though when we might take the opportunity to look back on real learning moments in our lives; pain was often a main ingredient. From the time we are little and are told “don’t touch the element” we invariably touch the element and feel pain. And the pain reminds us that if we do that again we will feel pain again. A simple analogy I know but one we might all relate too.
So what about the pain we choose. A pain that we want and desire because the outcome of this pain is something we will actuall treasure and consider a taonga. Lying on the pandana mat I can hear the fan blowing as I look out the window to a cool blue South Pacific sky. I can faintly hear the waves crashing on the reef as I take a deep breath and prepare for the chosen inevitability of pain. How different this is to the pain I knew. The pain that never asked me first or gave me the opportunity to consider wether or not I wanted it or not. Unlike the pain of my past this I choose. This I have control over somewhat and this has meaning for me.
Tatau is the traditional form of tattling practiced in Polynesia. It involves a set of fine toothed combs made from boars tusk and attached to a stick. That is then struck by a hard wood stick piercing the skin. And when dipped in ink leaving the Indelible mark of Tatau. I have felt the machine tattoo and endured the process. This is markedly different from start to finish My search for something closer to that of my ancestors has lead me to where I am today. On a journey I never really anticipated and one that has only just begun.
Is it like the carver who talks about the wood possessing the carving and his job being only to chip away at the wood to reveal what was always there. The Tatau always present on my skin just waiting for the Tatau Taunga to bring it forth and make it visible exposing it to the world though it was always present, lying there under my skin waiting to be called out by the Tatau Taonga’s tools. The rythmic beating of the tools of his trade ; the rakau patupatu and the ivi provide a solace to the piercing of the skin as blood and ink flow together in a reddy black stream. The karakia a connection with that that is greater then myself and the process a connection with my ancestors who in times past felt a similar right of passage.
Tatau is a wonderful privilege. It calls us at the right time and at the right place and when we are ready to walk and carry those symbols and patterns with some sense of pride and dignity. They are not soley mine and they do not soley belong to me. I am merely a messenger carrying a message on my body from a time long gone. Passing this message on from my generation to the next surviving the onslaught and cultural imposition of missionaries and their holy crusade to nobilise the savage beast Many men and women have gone before me and I am just a link in a very long chain. Pain is part of this journey though this time it is a welcome vehicle and the only way to my chosen destination…..identity, connection and Turanga vaevaea. Finding my standing ground.
Tatau mapped out
Making a Song And Dance about it all….E toku Imene, E toku Tamure
Uirangi Bishop Dancer of the Year
Standing in the Tereora School Hall and surrounded by 650 students, the singing began. Not just any kind of singing but the singing that you will only hear in the Cook Islands. It’s a harmony of men and women, each knowing their part and coming in at different times intervals and tones that create a sound that is almost heavenly. The students were in full swing singing like an angelic choir, and all I could do was try and find a quiet place away from the crowd so as they wouldn’t see the tears that had started to fill me eyes causing my need for solitude.
Perplexed and standing outside the School hall I could not help but think again as to why I feel the way I do when I hear that sound. That singing and those tones and timber that seem to pierce through to my marrow and resonate throughout my body and soul. Regardless as to whether I know why…I just know it happens. I begin to understand on reflection that it’s a wonderful sense of connecting with something larger than myself. Something that reaches into the past and connects with me here in the present. Something that calls as it were from the long line of people who have walked the ground I now stand on and seemingly call out my name, asking me to join hands and connect with them.
The songs are not directly about me and neither are they directly about my family, though they are about my people and a land and a history that is indelibly intertwined with my own. It is the most exhilarating feeling to stand their and feel the notes pass through me as if they were knives tearing me asunder. Then through song taking those pieces and filling them, coming back together again full and satisfied. So full it causes an overflow that starts at my eyes and trickles down my cheek letting me know the conecting that is going on inside me.
We are a people who have told our stories and sung our traditions for centuries. We have managed to keep our identity, values and genealogies intact despite our not having the power of pen and paper. Without the access to books and libraries the strength of an oral tradition has retained the information that has kept our culture over the passing of time. Dance, also a vital part of the preservation of this tradition has helped encapsulate these ideas and values and created a visual mode much like movies and video have done to tell and preserve our stories.
So is this why I feel like I do when I hear these ancient chants?..When that harmony sounds and the beating of the “pate” drums resound. Is it the celebration of a time past that calls out to those in the now? A song composed by a composer now maybe unknown speaking of a certain event or time or place that is now immortal through song. Immortal and Immortalised every time it is sung and when sung today like a time capsule opened for the very first time.
In Auckland New Zealand every year they hold the Secondary Schools Polyfest. It’s a place where Song and Dance of the many Pacific Nations that have made New Zealand home is celebrated and displayed with a vigour, passion and competitiveness that encapsulates so much of who Pacific People are in a strange land. Like the children of Israel when they were in captivity who said..”How shall we sing the Lords song in a strange Land”…Pacifica people, like many peoples who have journeyed from their home to strange lands, have been able to preserve their identity by celebrating their own unique songs and dance which- helps them never forget who they are.
Tears fill my eyes when I hear these songs because they are my own. They are as real for me as the ground I stand on. They are a connection to a past I am only just beginning to understand and a language I am just beginning to learn and comprehend. It is essential that people wherever they travel are able to celebrate who and what they are in ways that they understand and comprehend. It is this ability to take what is tangible to a foreign land that preserves a sense of identity and flies in the face of the misnomer that is the melting pot. Whether it be a Morris Dance, a Haka, an Irish Jig or an Imene Tuki…..sing the songs, dance the dances and celebrate and connect with a past that reaches from the tunnel of time to wherever you may be.
Changing our Life – Taui tatou Oraanga
Looking out at the radiant blue sky, not a cloud to be seen and hearing the waves crashing on the reef reminds me that much can happen in 6 months and sometimes when we look back its hard to believe just how much has changed. Since the last post I have moved countries, changed jobs and am learning a new language as well as better understanding who and what I am.
Living now in Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands has been a dream come true. Often people have asked why I made the decision to move. But the truth of the matter is it wasnt a decision as much as a response to something that happened inside me over a year ago. Bringing our brother Micheal ashes back home to Rarotonga was a turning point and in doing so that also meant my family coming home as well as my parents who had made the decision to stay. What a wonderful couple of weeks it was settling our parents into the family homestead and being here for the first time together in Rarotonga.
After the 40 foot container arrived and was emptied, and the house was painted and renovated the time had come to take our brother out onto the still blue water that surrounds Rarotonga. It was his turn to feel the warmth and Sun of Rarotonga and the warm blue water that gently caresses the reef everyday. So out onto the water we all went, singing Michea’ls song “Metepera”. A song we sang it at his funeral back in New Zealand and we sang it again as we set off to the reef just outside our home in Arorangi.
As we made our way over the water we chatted as families do and I looked over to see my daughters taking in the beautiful vista that is Rarotonga and her mountains. My son was chatting with my brother and my Mum was deep in thought…I don’t know exactly what it was she was thinking but I’m sure it was about our brother and the life he had lived…how much she missed him and again the grief that only a mother could feel when they lose a child. None of us could ever begin to fathom or imagine that sense of loss.
This is Us
So as the boat slowly moved us around the island we went came to the place just outside the reef where we would finally be able to let that part of our brother go. His spirit is always with us and his love with us always..we were just letting his body go back to where it came from and no where more fitting then in Rarotonga.
The boat stopped and their was a silence as the waves lapped the boat moving it from side to side. With a few words spoken on Micheal’s life we not only grieved but celebrated him as we let him go. We were in fact welcoming him home and letting him come through the passage that we call home. Micheal as the oldest brother made the journey first. For me I don’t think I could have had the call to come home until my brother had preceded me. His home-coming became my home calling and after returning to New Zealand after that trip it seeded and grew inside me until the door and opportunity opened and here I am.
Its been 7 weeks and there is so much I could write about and will. Its beautiful beyond measure being here. This life is a life where people live and do not just exist. The laugh at the smallest things and take stress in their srtide..often ignoring it all together. I thought I knew what it was to have Polynesian blood flowing in my veins and have quickly come to realise I have so much to learn. I am like a child again learning a new way of living; a new language, a new way of thinking and of being connected. Though it’s really not new, it’s just new to me and familiar all at the same time.
I miss my sons and daughters everyday and their chatter and the business that they bring. I miss Wendys number three meal and maybe the opportunity to buy a few more things than I can now but that’s about all. I have been able to reevaluate the people who matter in my world and know who I want with me for the rest of my journey. Time is an invaluable commodity and having the time to reflect on these things has been invaluable. There is so much I want to say and will write more as it comes.
Living here is sometimes living a life of contradictions and some of those contradictions are very troubling. Working back in schools and in student support has brought some of those contradictions to my door step and I have so much work to do and I love it. I love being here and I love the pace of life, the friendliness of the people here and their acceptance of me being here. They have all made it that much easier for me and I am indebted to their kindness. I have so much to learn and its so good to be home.
Monkey on your back..
Speaks for itself.....
Just when you think you have heard it all, along comes a phrase or quote that just knocks you over. It being the holidays..Well for my kids anyways, I was sitting watching TV with them one afternoon, and yet another ridiculous reality TV show was on. I really felt like frying my frontal lobe in hot old cooking oil, so watching the show seemed appropriate. And there it was in all its blazing glory..a Generation Y, texting whilst chatting to an interviewer. The interviewer asked
“SO where do you work or what are you studying he said…Neither was the reply..I’m a stay at home Son!
I couldn’t believe what I had heard. It was incredulous to me that there was now a category for the seemingly inept generation that seemed to believe that staying at home and doing very little is not only a right…but a status that one could put on a job CV or a resume…Hi my name is Thomas..and I am a stay at home Son!
Not that this is a new or uncommon struggle for Parents. This quote sums up the feelings of many Parents today quite nicely…
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
One could imagine this was written in the last 10 years by someone we are all too familiar with. Truth of the matter, renowned Philosopher Socrates in the 4th Century and quoted by Plato is claimed to have penned these words about teenagers, or youth in the 4th Century. Hard to believe 1,7oo years ago Parents with the same sturggles!..here is another one from the 8th Century.
I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discrete and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint….Hasid, Eighth Century B.C.
What is clear is that since the beginning of time, the schism between generations has been there and the angst so much so that each generation before the other has struggled in its belief, that the generation after them have somehow misplaced or rejected core values and ideals. Generational divide, or shift, or amnesia, whatever it may be called this seems to have always been prevalent. At least in a Western worldview.
I find my self-cringe when I hear myself start sentences with. Back in my day..or When I was a kid…or kids these days just…or do you know when I was your age…Oh God I think it’s happening to me..I am becoming my Parents!!!!!!!!!!!..And yet despite all of the obvious transitions and changes from one to the other over the centuries, there is I believe a real danger facing parents in the 21 Century.
Time and again when I worked in Education, I came across parents who for whatever reason were supporting young adults, that didn’t want to work, or worked very little, didn’t do much around the house to help out, and definitely felt it was inappropriate to give their parents any financial assistance towards their staying at home. These same kids would have cell phones, expensive shoes, a social life, a car and all the latest technology.
As parents we definitely feel that commitment and heart-felt compulsion to support our kids. And that is the very least that anyone would expect of themselves. I’m sure as a Parent, the baseline would be that we do the best we can with the limited tools we have to do the greatest job, and do that to the best of our ability.
Yet somehow, and somewhere along the way support…has become sustaining. And sustaining our kids has created a dependence that we grow to resent. In our efforts to support our kids, we have failed maybe to understand that it is standing on our own two feet, and falling in the process that created the hunger in ourselves to move forward and do the things we have done to get to where we have got to today.
I don’t envy parents that have worked hard all their lives and come from nothing, to have children and then shower them because they love them, with all that money and opportunity can buy. “I don’t want them to have the struggle I had”…Is often the mantra. Maybe forgetting that it was the hardship and loss that we experienced as children ourselves that provided the impetus and stimulus for change in our own lives.And of course we don’t want them to have uneccesary hardship..so where do we draw the line.
How do we create that hunger, that passion, that work ethic when we create an environment where the fall will always be cushioned…the repercussions will never really be truly felt and invariably the lessons will not be learnt. Do we really want to create adults without spines, without fortitude, without passion and compassion because they too know how the little guy feels? Do we want them to so appreciate the value of money and of hard work and commitment that they finish what they start and understand that they start at the bottom and not the middle of the ladder.
Sucking on the teat of dependence..
I utterly detest garbage served up as scantertainment on TV like “My Sweet” where indulgent parents spoil rotten and I mean rotten 16-year-old brats, with money and cars and celebrity style birthdays..And somehow this is celebrated in this modern world. What a lie we are feeding our kids if this is the consumerist monster we are feeding them on a daily basis. Our sustaining them beyond a time when they need to stand on their own two feet is helping them little and if anything entrenching ideals in their head that will not serve them well. And suck on the tit of dependence they will if we allow it. Because the truth is its us in the driver’s seat.
There is a fine line and balance between supporting our kids and sustaining them. We must find the balance for ourselves and each and every situation is different. Sustaining them just isn’t supporting them. Sustaining them robs them of the opportunity to face consequences, think about the value of money and to really understand the merit of a good work ethic. These are often muted by parents as skills and values the “generation” today is lacking and bereft of. I guess my question around that is how much of that is actually of our own doing, and maintained by our own doing. Have we created this monkey on our back and now it has got so large and out of control we don’t know how to deal with it anymore.
Either way or whatever the answer we must map that out for ourselves. We love our kids, and support them in whatever they do or put their hands to. We are people, a parent is a role, and this person fits into that role with all the flaws, inconsistencies, mood swings, ups, and downs, triumphs and defeats and pressures that come with being a parent and person in 2011. Sustain or support..we must find the place where that feels that we are doing the best not only for our children..but also for ourselves…because sometimes it will take us saying…NO…..and to show real love by letting GO.
The Loom of relationships.
Have you ever wondered about the many layers of relationships we move in and out of each and every day? I’ve often thought of
The tapestry of relationships
them as a tapestry on a loom. From time to time we move the shuttle back and forth and a new thread or fibre has made its way into the colour and rainbow that is interrelationship, community, and family.
There are many colours to my tapestry, many threads and many weaves that have made their way in the short time that I have had the choice as to who was there..and who was not. Making choices about what threads flavour our tapestry can be very empowering; very enriching and also very difficult.
Our inability to move threads from our tapestry can be very frustrating and calls into question why we allowed them there in the first place. Why did that thread stay their and why for so long. Only we can answer those questions though I hazard to guess there are those that scarcely have the time to think about the weave and thread that make up the relationships in their lives.
Someone once asked me to draw a circle and put all the people in my inner circle in that circle. Also those just outside that circle and another and another till I had most of the people in my life on a piece of paper with ever-expanding circles and names in these circles. The question was then posed to me…
“Why are these people…in your inner circle?”
A good question it was to ask, and one that in 30 odd years I hadn’t really pondered to ask. Children, family, work, and maintaining a family filled my head with enough busy to last a lifetime, and enough clutter and stress for three hearts let alone one. I was one of those who had little time to think about the weave and thread that made up the relationships in my life.
I pondered the question and looking at my inner circle and those outside it…I realised then I needed to make some changes. Unhealthy relationships needed to go and some needed to move closer, whilst others further away.
Sometimes something must die, in order for something to grow…Much like the chrysalis sheds its skin, and the butterfly moves out of the cocoon, sometimes in order for us to move forward we must allow something to die first. Death, no matter what it maybe, no matter what context will involve pain, grief and a sense or loss and mourning. Some if not all of these very strong emotions can be the barrier to change.
We may not want to feel that pain, that mourning, that sorrow but without the courage to face this passage of growth there will be no growth and no experience of what lies beyond this emotional grave. If we will not allow death to happen where it needs be in the relationships in our lives, then we will end up carrying around the carcass on our backs…and decay it will to the point that we may even resent it even being there and the stench that comes with that.
Still those parts of our tapestry that we need to move out are only one part of the Technicolor coat we weave each and everyday. When I think of my own there are on the edge, the guy at the petrol Station. We meet once or twice a week and chat about the long hours we work..the guy at the dairy..he always smiles when my dog enters his shop he is more than helpful despite his long arduous day and two jobs. Then there is the guy down the road that sits out the front of his house…we have met once…and he sits everyday with his baby girl..I toot as I drive by.. we say little much else but he brings a smile to my face after a long day.
Then there are friends, or should I say acquaintances, which add difference and light and shade all across the colour spectrum to my tapestry…And then there is family. They are the richness of my tapestry, the colour and weave that is tight on the loom and whose threads are bound close and without space or light between the fibres. I could write so much more about family but there is not enough in a short blog to contain that.
Then there are my children, a weave and a thread that is inexplicably intertwined with my own, and so much so they are similar in colour kind and variety. They are on my inner circle because I love them unconditionally. Or at least as much as a human can unconditionally love. They are a part of my tapestry that bring me as much frustration as joy and pleasure as pain.
The tapestry of relationship is what we make of it. Its colour, texture and variety of weave and thread are wholly dependant on the people we choose to have in our loom. The thread that is closest to the loom we have their by choice. From time to time I guess its pertinent to ask why? Sometimes a thread does not sit well in the weave and we are left with the painstaking task of unthreading this weave and removing it without harm to the rest of the tapestry.Or not. Regardless, our loom, our tapestry and the weave we weave…is the work of a lifetime, and a work we labour each and everyday. It is personal, unique, one of a kind and wholly..the work of our own hands.
The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. – Stephen R. Covey
ps.A new thread was added to my tapestry today. Welcome to my nephew Rocco Brown…born today !
Unplugged………
Reality...or delusion..the choice is ours to make.
What a wonder it is that I can go to the shop and buy a Coke..And yet it’s not Coke, its Coke Zero which means it looks like Coke, tastes like Coke but apparently its not Coke. Or at least it won’t give me the nasty side effects of Coke. Much the same as Coffee, that’s has no caffeine but it tastes like Coffee. Sugar free drinks that taste like they have sugar in them, calorie free food that tastes like calorie food and Fat free Chocolate bars that supposedly taste like Chocolate bars that have chocolate.
One can’t help but wonder what is real anymore. What is there in our daily world that actually is as it says it is? We have relationships without commitment..But are they really relationships, kids without any understanding of responsibility that are really just brats, and a judicial system that seems to measure out anything but Justice. Crime that is colour coded so as we know that if a BLUE collar person steals he will go to jail, and if a WHITE collar person steals; they can afford a better kind of justice and get community service if anything at all.
We have Wars that are not wars they are “Operations” called Operation Enduring Freedom. We have invasions of countires that are called Liberations. We have bombs dropped on people that are called friendly and innocent civilians killed in illegal wars that are now called “collateral damage” Even soldiers killed in battel by their own is now called “friendly fire”. I have always struggled to see how a bullet that kills a man woman or child could ever be called friendly in any circumstances.
Entertainment continually bombards our senses and yet at the end of the day where in all that commercial bombardment was there anything really entertaining. Have we really succumbed to a dumbing down, by the stroke of the keypad, chnge of a remote or text message so that our language, cultivated over time and English, once the language of prose, rhyme and higher education has been reduced to LOL, OMFG and LMFAO. I can just see William Shakespeare penning his famous love tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”..
O Romeo Romeo WFAT Romeo?
Deny thy Father ARFT
Or if TWN ,be but be sworn my love
And I’ll NLB a Capulet
We have been bombarded with this plethora of “the unreal”. Stuff that we daily are asked to digest as REAL. Reality TV is a misnomer..There is nothing real about reality TV and yet people consume it like it’s that last Happy Meal ever to be made. Which in itself is not even food. Constantly our definition of reality is being defined for us through the media and the continual onslaught of rubbish that is served as scantertainment. That’s my new word for the year..Because its scantly entertainment.
I often ask myself “Is Social Networking..really connecting socially? As much as it has created a forum and mode by which we can keep in contact with so many people and peek into their once more private lives. Have we lost a little something in the trade off? Can we now service relationships from a distance and not have to deal with the face to face anymore. For whatever the 500 million users of Face book have gained, and me included, is their something we also have lost along the way.
There is so much we can filter and do when social interacting online. Its is not the total sum of who we are and with all its merit, and merit it does have…there is nothing like the social interaction of meeting face to face. “Kanohi kite Kanohi” is a New Zealand Maori term and value for meeting face to face..there is nothing is invaluable or enriching as the opportunity to meet a person “mano e mano”.
It could be so easy to be distracted by the unreal…and not make time for the real. To be so fixated by all the stuff that we are introduced and induced to be a part of. And yet it is when we connect with the real, we most satisfied, enriched, challenged, purposed and whole.
It so reminds of the Matrix trilogy of movies. Apart from the great special effects and story told by Laurence and Andy Wachowski. In a way we too live in a Matrix, a world that surrounds us that is generated and is unreal. It is a world that we have very little choice of being in as it permeates every fibre of our modern, techno plugged in Western society. And yet we do have the ability to unplug…and find a real place for ourselves to be and live and think and breathe…and then plug back into the Matrix and function in that business again.
We all need that place of silence…our Turanga Waiwai..our standing ground.. The place where our feet, our essence our very
being connects with the elements and those with us as well as those that have gone before us. It’s a place of solitude, a place where unlike the Matrix where we cant hear ourselves think..all we can hear is ourselves think. Its where we let that internal still small voice speak to us and guide us so that our journey can be one of enrichment, and personal growth. where we make peace with ourselves, forgive ourselves and those around us. It’s where we take stock and find yet more purpose for a life given to us.
A great place to unplugg...
It is that special place is where we meet reality hed on and face to face with no where to hide. Our sacred ground, where nothing else matters. Where we are simply who we are and defined not by what we do or what we don’t do, what we have or don’t have… but who we are.
Without that place for me, I can find myself lost in the hum and the business of the unreal. It’s so easy to do. The hum can be such a continual din sometimes its hard to imagine life without it. But imagine it I do..and I can close my eyes and take myself to my sacred ground, and look up to Rua Manga and Maungaroa, my mountains, look out to Te Moana Nui a Iva, my ocean and in that place know that I can really be me.
My New Years Resolution..NOT!
A busy day in Muri...Rarotonga..Cook Islands
With New years quietly drifting away its funny how so many of us get so obsessed with resolutions. How lives will somehow change because a significant day has gone by. For a few maybe this is true but I hazard to guess, that for the many its just another hope, another “and that’s not all” excursion into wishful thinking no matter how well meaning that may be.
The only change that was certain was that at 11.59pm on New Years eve my Iphone would change to 12.00am . Of that there was little doubt. Everything else was still up for negotiation.. Change and time, concepts that seem to capture our thoughts when a New Year begins.
Is time really lineal? Is it really like a piece of string, with a beginning at one end and a finish at the end? In both ancient Greek culture, (among the Pythagoreans, Stoics and Neo-Platonist), and in Hindu culture (especially during the Vedic period, 1500-600 BC), one runs onto the concept of circular, or cyclical time. This is sometimes symbolized by the uroboros, the snake chasing his own tail. Polynesians it would seem have little concept of time, or at least the urgency that Euro Western time can bring, one only has to travel to any of the Islands in Polynesia, and expect something immediately to find it will come when it comes…thats called “Island Time.”
We are for certain in a continuum of life and death..That much is apparent..But are we really standing in a line with the foreboding cliff of death that much more closer as each year passes..Or are we on a continuing cycle that passes from one to the other..flowing from one generation to the other like a stream of water, or an ocean for that matter. In this view of time, the beginning leads back around to the end, and the cycle starts all over again. The Babylonians, ancient Chinese, Aztecs, Mayans, and the Norse had cyclical calendars.
Having kids definitely makes one think about time. All of a sudden they experience their first bout of consciousness, they become a person and a separate entity from us as Parents and become..TEENAGERS!.. They then make strange comments about our “being old” and that we somehow have little notion of what is “cool” or “hip” or fashion! Somehow I became this dated being because my kids suddenly realised they had an ego…without any thought for the fact that it was only ten years ago and I was having to change their nappies!
So here I am in my forties, and yet I am not just forty. I am not a forty year old man..fixed in time with all these expectations and prerequisites of a forty year old..Surely I am the total sum of forties years of living. I am the total sum of forty years of life and all its experiences. This for me was where the “piece of string” approach to time seemed flawed and not allowing us to be all that we are at any given time.
Could time be more like an ocean,then a piece of string. A body of water that we swim in daily, gathering experiences as we live out our lives. Around me floating in that water is the collection of my life. It comes with me no matter where I swim in this sea. Sometimes the currents take me and other times I choose more where I shall go. Like jetsam and flotsam all that I live and experience floats around me, experiences, relationships, loves, losses, and memories.
If I reach out my hand, all of that I am at 15 and 16 is there. One only has to play music I enjoyed from that time for that stuff to rise to the surface and be very close and real to me. When I hear Spandau Ballet singing “True”… it is as if it was yesterday and I live in that moment, when my son was born, when I meet an old friend, when I achieved great things or when I failed dismally. When I see old movies or here the Star Wars theme..when I catch an old clip of Thunderbirds on TV..in that moment I am there..it is there with me alive and as real as when it happened however many years ago.
Living in that moment. I am 20 and 30 and 35, I am sometimes a petulant 10 year old, and sometimes innocently 5 and 6 years old, looking at the wonder of that which can be as simple as a sunrise or a sunset. Sometimes I am the child, other times the teenager, and other times the adult.
I swim in the ocean of time. Its is my Moana Nui a Ora. It is my great sea of life. And I am all that I am at any given time, not set or fixed in some chronological space simply because someone else says so. Of course I will meet the social constraints put upon me from time to time, and I must bend to my biological and chronological clock…I just don’t want be tied down with someone else’s weight of expectation and so much so it causes me to drown under its pull and pressure.
I dont want to be like the living dead….those souls that are dead already. The life has gone from their eyes and yet they still walk or float among the living. They go to work, come home, eat and sleep and not much more. The older we get the greater the challenge to keep our head above water, to swim the currents of life and take all that we are with us and celebrate that. Surely this is a life worth living and a life that when it has finished its course, that we can be proud to say we lived and lived to its fullest. This is the challenge for 2011. To continue to live life to its fullest, to love and be loved, to share and glean from others, to be in the moment for the next 364 days ..And then to do it all again in 2012.
Mark Twain said...” The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
MANGUAGE – the new language for Men
21 century Man?
How did these words become part of our main stream vocabulary. Some we will know and some we will just have read..and some I have just made up..MANGUAGE!! Just a few more additions at the end to an ever growing list.
MANGUAGE – Language pertaining to men and mens lifestyles in the 21st Century
MANSCARA – mens mascarra
MANDALS – mens sandals
MANTIES – men wearing panties
MANTYHOSE – men wearing pantyhose
GUYLINER – only for All Blacks (rugby players)
MURSES – male nurses?
MA’ASCARA – our very own kiwiana addition to the vocab.
MANTERTAINMENT – speaks for itself really
MANWHICH – A MAN size Sandwhich
MANBAG – Something a man wears to keep his manscara and guyliner in?..
MOOBS – sad but true…
MANOPIES (man 0 pays)- Man sized canopies
And the list goes on…..
You know your getting old when…..
You know you’re getting older when not only does a fashion icon appear once in your life…it actually appears twice. thats when you really know that life is running past a pace not worth thinking about. I remember the Summer of 82 and Auckland City was abuzz with home delivered videos. These entrepreneurial guys were making the most of the VHS craze that had really swept the nation. Or at least Auckland city that is. The chance to watch something other then one of the two boring channels was an opportunity few would miss out on. Where once stood a picture of family or friends atop our beloved TV sets, now stood this monstrosity of a thing called a VCR player.
Audrey Hepburn..the Siren of cool.
Costing around two weeks wages this entertainment unit soon became the focal point of many a family clambered around its gadgetry and fixated by the many movies it would play and of course would feature as up and coming. Wetting the appetite of those watching with short clips of what would be in store the following week..
It is with this advent of VCR that finally Auckland got a peek as to how the rest of the world was living. Fashion, fast cars and more gadgets that had not yet reached our shores were paraded like the memory line of Bruce Forsyths..The Generation Game..for all to see. Shoes, cars, clothes, cell phones that were the size of bricks and junk food, Taco Bell, Burger King …how were we ever to go back to our sleepy existence in the antipodes.
SO there we are sitting watching countless movies, filling our heads with all this stuff and I see them for the first time. Grease the movie showcased them, and now everyone seems to be wearing them. Everyone but me that is. Wayfarer Sunglasses. Grease made them cool again and Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cops made them cool on a black face. Duckie was wearing them in Pretty in Pink and I knew I had to have a pair. Sure there were the cheap pairs from market stalls and the ones with plastic neon sides…I wanted the read deals, the ones that actually said, Wayfarer and Ray Ban on the sides, not “RON BAN or WAY FAIRA
With two weeks part times wages saved, off I went to buy my pair of Wayfareres. They were cool and looked as good as I thought they would. Complete with a hard carry case and chamois cloth they soon became my prized possession. Sure, I did glance at the mirror and did notice it wasnt quite Tom Cruise staring back from TOP GUN, or Cory Feldman out the Lost Boys but I didn’t care
The Ray-Ban Wayfarers were actually designed by a Raymond Stegeman in 1952. In an era of thin metal frames and the infantile birth of plastic
Stink movie..but cool glasses.
molding, the Wayfarers marked a radical shift in optical trend. Among the first to be seen out with them was Robert Kennedy! Despite its frames catered for a masculine look, and it being marketed originally for pilots (just like the aviators), the Wayfarers became a Hollywood trend. The Wayfarer eventually declined in popularity, but hugely skyrocketed when Tom Cruise was spotted wearing them on Risky Business in 1983. This had everyone wearing them, from Madonna and Elvis Costello, to Jack Nicholson. The Wayfarer became the shades of the decade, but it didn’t stop the fad from fading yet again.
So…there we are..fashion has hit again, and for those just buying your first pair of Wayfarers..I guess you need to join the que as far as chique is concerned..When fashion strikes twice in a lifetime..I guess the only hope is that it strikes three times..and that one is around to see it happen To see a fashion icon return once again, I guess is a milestone and evidence that life is passing one by..or at least I am passing life by…Getting old is an inevitability..being old is a state of mind..Youth is wasted on the young, that’s for sure..and why people worship at its altar for so long is beyond me.
Would I wish to be 18 again? Maybe parts of my body would but that’s about it. I like and enjoy an older head, coupled with a youthful mind, is definitely a life I wish to live and an ethos I wish to live by. Seeing my Son wearing his Ray Ban Wayfarers only reminded that it was time to check that I was still basking in the pouring rain of life itself and under its fountain spout…or was I sweltering in the dry decaying heat of a life lived without joy, passion dreams and hope.
“People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.”..General Douglas MacArthur.
