Robin

I have most of my hearing back today - coming and going, it is true, but more here than not-here.

I stepped out on the decking which runs along the West Street side of the office and immediately a little bird flew down to sing at me. A robin.

Later, the same bird was perched, singing, on the second-floor fire escape, while I looked up at it and a pigeon on the third floor railing looked down on it.

Ken Wilber:

That very Witness is Spirit within, looking out on a world that it created. It sees but cannot be seen; it hears but cannot be heard; it knows but cannot be known. It is Spirit itself that sees with your eyes, speaks with your lips, hears with your ears, reaches out with your arms. When will you confess this simple secret and awaken from the gruesome nightmare? 

Can you see the words on this page? Then 100% of Spirit is present, looking out through your eyes. Can you feel the book in your hands? Then 100% of Spirit is present, taking the world in its hands. Can you hear the sound of that bird singing? Then 100% of Spirit is present, listening to that song. 

Entwined With Birds

Nearly 8000 years ago, we were imagining we were birds.

The site currently being excavated at Koutroulou Magoula must represent one of the earliest "farming" communities. Yet there is no evidence of hierarchical structure in the settlement. We were operating as true humans,still.

And we were dreaming of turning into birds.

We built houses of stone and mudbrick, and rebuilt houses on the same spot for thousands of years.

And thought we were entwined with birds.

We have forgotten how to build our dwellings in harmony with the land. Forgotten how to live in community without hierarchy.

But we haven't quite forgotten that we've always longed to be birds.

Visitor

When I Die..

..There will be Crows.

Probably Pied ones.

"We have accounts of birds who come into the room of the dying, are seen on their window sills and collect in large groups around the hospice at the time the person is dying. In the cases we’ve heard, the dying person who has had such visits has always been interested in birds and the type of birds which appear around their time of death is the one in which they have been interested. "

Change of Helping Spirits

Christina always has something interesting to say.
Last week, her podcast on the Shaman Sickness contained much good sense, as usual.

..I might add here that Christina was also the recipient of a Western Scientific education, which she uses as another lens through which to view the world, but she doesn't rely on it exclusively.Which is a lesson I fear the simplistic materialists could learn. But I digress..

The subject of ones initiatory helping spirit is a fascinating one to me, especially now as I seem to be in helping spirit transition.

To be a bit clearer, I have considered the Pied Crow to be my primary helping spirit for some years now, with the Panther as Shadow helper. Before that time, I was connected to Eagle.This appears to be changing again, with the advent of Owl into my personal space last weekend.

On Sunday I took a half hour's meditation, and when I came back to this space, Owl was perched on the roof just above my altar. Now, when I try to visualise my upper level helping spirit, the form of Owl is what I get. Those huge yellow eyes..

Ah, but the more things change, the more I'm in ecstasy. Interesting that my primary upper totem is now transitioning into a nocturnal bird. I can see the paralells with a new phase of my shamanic apprenticeship: one which flows deeper into the cthonic consciousness which springs directly from the Field. I hope that I have the courage to mantain.

Pic: I actually found it here, although I doubt that it originates there.

Too Much To Lose

For the second week in March, it's very hot. The temperatures have soared into the 30s, and I don't tolerate heat with anything like the grace I would prefer to show - I sweat, my feet swell, I'm sleepy and frequently get testy. But it won't last, and with this thought I comfort myself, holding out for the Equinox and, later, the promise of Samhain.

After a period of several years -oh, at least 3 - we haven't seen a single huge, terrifyingly hairy Rain Spider in the house. Before that, they used to pitch up unexpectedly and park on the wall just above the bed, or hover over the doorways, threatening me with their immense size. So I started talking to them, standing right under them, holding forth on all kinds of topics, silently or aloud. After a while, the terror passed, and I accepted them into my life as the beautifully necessary agents of doom for mosquitoes that they are.
Then, just as suddenly as they would loom, they were all gone. Not a single giant arachnid showed up in my house - and I didn't know whether to be grateful or resentful. Now we have one resident in the bathroom. After it scared the crap out of Warren by dropping onto his shoulder - it was hiding in the towel he whipped off the rail to dry himself after his morning shower - it sulked for a little while between the shower doors, and then moved to a position behind the Fluffy Face Towel, where it seems content to spend the long post-summer days, waiting for prey.

And speaking of predators: we were disturbed this morning by an usual amount of noise from the Luries who live off fruit from the suburban trees. The go-away calls were so loud and insistent that Warren and I went outside to see what the problem was. Just then, with an astounding silence of great big wings, an Owl launched itself out of the Cycad and flew not two feet over my head. I've never seen an Owl in the daylight in Bloubosrand before - and I've certainly never been so close to one.

Owl returned to the Cycad, where he is well camouflaged against the dry fronds. The Luries have continued to complain all day, and a couple of Pied Crows (of course!) turned up to add to the suburban avian disapproval of this raptor. He has been sitting in that tree all day, his great yellow eyes opening when I approach; blinking slowly at me, shuffling his talons a little, but mostly napping, I think, until night falls and he can see to hunt again.

I feel so damned blessed, sitting here with a ruddy great spider in the bathroom and an owl outside the bedroom, that I start to wonder why and how I ever came to feel fear of this existence. But that fear, like my life-threatening drinking and my terrified ingestion of handfuls of tranquilisers, seems to have melted into the mists of someone-who-was-once-me. Someone I know I was, but who I can never entertain the knowledge of ever becoming again. I have too much Love to lose, now.

Pic: Spotted Eagle Owl gracing me with his presence(enlargement from photo)

Today Is Also..

...fluffy post day.

I have decreed it so.

For the purposes of this particular Fluffy Post, let me set the scene:

The smokers' balcony at work is three stories above ground level. There is nary a tree in sight. Well - one potted fica over there in the corner, but no, like, actual trees.

The balcony is tiled,runs around the inside of a courtyard, and open mostly to the air - which means that we get wet when it rains and bake in summer, but we don't get to see much of anything natural, unless you count the birds.

Most mornings, I set aside the last of my breakfast, usually rooibos-and-rye sandwiches with cheese and tomato (and please, don't upbraid me on such a voluminous breakfast. My body knows what it needs, which is a huge breakfast, a lighter lunch and no supper at all) to crumble and scatter on the balcony, always in a set place, for the littler birds to come share.

So, this usually means Sparrows - sometimes Minahs - have come to recognise me and will stop what they're doing at about 7 o'clock to feast on bread and cheese together.

I've been doing this for a couple of years, and what is absolutely delightful is that the Sparrows -actually, one Sparrow in particular - will, maybe 3 or four times a year, leave something behind in the place where I shared my food with them. Quite often, it's a feather. This morning, as has happened only twice before, it was a leaf.

A dried, brown, Pin Oak leaf which comes from 3 floors down  and right around the other side of the building, for the closest specimen.

My little, fluffy, brown-and-grey friend was perched, at 8 in the morning, on the railing above my head, yelling at me as only a Sparrow can, until I walked over and picked up the anomalously-positioned leaf.
And thanked him. Whereupon he shut up and flew away again.

Bede's Bird

It took me about twenty minutes of Googling today to find the allusion which was bugging me - and what that teaches me about the Internet is that it's getting dumber along with the rest of us.
(Somebody else was looking for the same thing a couple of months ago.)

The Venerable Bede:

"You are sitting feasting with your ealdormen and thegns in winter time; the fire is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall and all inside is warm, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging; and a sparrow flies swiftly through the hall. It enters in at one door and quickly flies out the other. For the few moments it is inside, the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but after the briefest moment of calm, it flits from your sight, out of the wintry storm and into it again."

 Monday morning and the sultry night has become a stuffy early morning - the air dead and unmoving. We open the front door as well as the back door. And a Dove rushes in. And rushes out.

Later that morning I'm having my first smoke of the working day. On the balcony is a long, pale grey feather. So I pick it up and take it back to my workplace, where it sticks up from between the F8 and F7 keys, a gift.

I know someone else has made that metaphor, before: that Life is like a bird traversing a room, coming  from the great outdoors to fly across the inner spaces and back out into the great outdoors again. But it seems to me that this Dove provided a more accurate analogy than the Bede's Sparrow.

Our Dove came in from the Space Beyond which was full of light and warmth and heat; flew a little while across a darker, shadowed Inner Plane, and departed again to the Great Light Beyond.

He could always see the Great Light before him as he flew across the living room and then the kitchen - it was always in front of him, beckoning him on and guiding him out. if he was looking, that is.

To see the Light from which he'd come, he'd have had to crane his neck around, but he could surely feel, if he tried, the heat and maybe - if there had been a breath of air outside - the wind would have ruffled his feathers. Wind from the Source.

Even, if his birdy beak was up to it, could he smell and taste the air of All Around, as it passed with him through the Little Within?

Pic: Carrie Wild, "Bede's Sparrow"

Birdy Fight Blogging

Bird fights are sometimes interesting.

Sparrows, for example, seem most inclined to squabble with others of their own species: maybe under the principle that whoever is competing with you for the exact same resources is your biggest threat. The Sparrows seem to believe that, anyway.

On the other hand, I've seen evidence recently of intense animosity between two bird species who do not, on the face of it, inhabit exactly the same ecological niche.

This morning I left a bit of bread and cheese out for the Osiris birds.
First to arrive were a few Indian Mynahs, including my friend who ruffs up his head feathers and sings at me whenever he sees me:

When they had had a fair crack at the treats, I shooed them away to allow the Sparrows some food.
All of a sudden, out of a silent sky, here comes a Wagtail; tiny, delicate bird with a huge voice. Two of them are nesting in the courtyard this year, but they seem to be almost exclusively insectivorous and not interested in breadcrumbs. This little warrior dove straight at a retreating Mynah, knocking him sideways. Her partner showed up and hovered in midair near the balcony, flapping the Mynahs away from the food.

What could I do but applaud such audacious bravado?
And then fall over laughing, of course.

Nudged Into Matter

The poor trees which the building managers, Amdec, had moved to install waterproofing on the second floor deck were eventually thrown away yesterday.

You may recall the way in which one of the Cape Ash trees,lollipoped to within an inch of its life, had collaborated with the resident Sparrows to save their nest.

My dearest colleague, The Moffie, called me inter-office shortly after lunch in a distraught state. He had witnessed the disposal of all the trees - which had been left waterless in large pots for weeks - and the Sparrow nest with them. The birds, he said, were flying around with insects in their beaks,looking for their nest, which now could not be found.

My heart suffered major hits. Joining The Moffie on the balcony an hour later, I assured him that whoever was responsible for these life-negative decisions would, sooner or later, also find themselves dying without a home, their children having been thrown out with the trash.
I don't just believe this - I am aware of it as a truth as deep and meaningful as our own god-ness.

For one of the decisions we make when we consent to Fall again into Matter is to allow the ineradicable learning of physical experience to school us. We teach others and we learn from others, just as those semi-conscious building managers are about to be taught by their actions towards some trees and Sparrows. So are we all. It's a major part of why we're here. God teaching God, divinity learning from divinity.

For only incarnate matter can inflict these vicious wounds upon itself.
And, hurting and being hurt, we move toward a state of greater comprehension of Cosmos, and Godhead, and why it is we are here, now.

Pic: How magnetic fields nudge matter into black holes

This Place Likes To Have Fun

 


Yesterday I made up a tea of crushed Juniper berries and Buchu leaves - a first time for me.
It tasted delicious, so I assume my body was craving something in the mixture. But more importantly, it started to work almost immediately. I've had one sore kidney since Sunday night's 'flu onset, and while not debilitating it was a bit annoying.
Juniper and Buchu are both great diuretics. Juniper helps blood flow to the kidneys - I'm thinking this is what caused the practically instant effect - and both have antiseptic properties when processed through the urinary tract. After three cups of this brew (just boiling water added to a tablespoon of berries and leaves) I'm feeling a real improvement. Buchu has other properties which were well known to this country's indigenous people; I think a digestive aid is one of them. But Juniper grows in my garden, in the shape of two sentinel bushes and a tall bouncer tree, and I feel absolutely at home with its fruits.



I've also been having run-ins with beaks over the last couple of days. First it was a Green WoodHoopoe, a little rain-bedraggled, perching just outside my window and cackling at me.

Next I found myself scolding three Scimitar Bills who were quarreling loudly in my neighbour's Kaasboom yesterday.

Right after I'd got them to quiet down, a bonded pair of African Hoopoes walked under the front gate and started drilling up the soil.

All of this Hoopoe-ing activity is quite apart from the odd behaviour of a pair of Hadeda Ibises which, for the past week, have seemed intent upon annoying and teasing Taranis and Scylla by landing heavily on the grass right in front of the dogs and yelling loudly from the Douglas Fir. All day.

Don't ask me, I'm just the Witch of this place - and sometimes, this place likes to have fun.

Meeting With An Owl

Once more, Death has made its presence felt at the place where I work.
This time, a colleague in my own department was blessed with twin baby girls a week ago and lost their mother this afternoon - apparently her lungs collapsed.

As fond as I am of the people who work closely with me every day, I do not have much of a direct line to their spouses. But still, I sat down before my altar tonight to listen, and to see if there was anything I could do.

Almost before the circle of Ancestors, Deities and Spirit Guides was complete, I was getting strong flashes of tawny eyes and horned ears - a large owl was trying to attract my attention. And so I took off into the place where souls may linger between planes to sit down with this owl a while.
No words were exchanged while the owl spiraled up above me and came down the same way, eventually perching on a tree stump with his eyes level to my own.

No words were exchanged, but -oh - the passing of knowledge, ideas, was there.
Knowledge of Death is an uncanny form of wisdom. One which our culture is vastly uncomfortable with. Wisdom of the Owl passed into me tonight - a small dose, anyway - and I can say this: I have not many answers to the questions which circle in our minds and beat at our hearts. I probably have only one real answer in any form - and that is that we are All, in fact, God.
The Owl is God, and so is the stump upon which he rested. The Dream is God, and so are all we Beings which spiral within it.

I hope one day to accrue more knowledge. But for now I am content with the thing I have been definitely given - and that is the ability to experience, and to learn to open to experience.
It's a start, at least.

Standing Still In The Land

Since our little Daewoo didn't quite get through the vehicle roadworthy test last weekend, we brought it back today with a tightened-up handbrake and new ball joints.
While we were waiting for the examiner to go over these two points, I revisited the Vygies.

The bright purple Mesembryanthemums were tightly wrapped up against the overcast morning, but, as I stood there drawing in their anarchical beauty in the middle of a testing-station parking lot, they started to unfurl. Deep golden stamens were presented to what there was of the sun. Because we've got a lot of rain coming (with flood warnings this weekend), the wind had started to blow quite hard, but the little purple flowers with their succulent leaves stayed quite still - apart from this gorgeous opening movement.

Did I mention that a couple of minor physical irritations which I've had for years have disappeared with the recent solar eclipse in Capricorn? Well, the inability to stand perfectly still when in an upright position was one of them. I am now able to dig my roots deep into the Earth and just stay there, for hours if necessary. And it was effortless to stand like that to witness unfurling Vygies.

Eventually, a flurry of yellow wings caught my attention, and I turned to one of the Sweet Thorn Acacias standing around the lot's perimeter. A half a dozen Weaver families had built their incredible nests there, and I was being threatened by a bold male: wings flapping quickly as he rode the swaying tree branch, trying his best to look three times his size.

I sent him my reassurances of peaceful and loving intent, and he stopped, hopped onto the next branch, and became an upside down bird for a moment as he checked on his chicks and mate in the nest. But for a while there I was also riding the wind-moved branch, my plumage gaudy and shining in the sun, a proud bird with a mate and family to defend.

This land is - even with all the concrete, tar and steel - my place. As much as it is the Vygies' place, the Weavers' place and the place of the Sweet Thorn Acacia and the rawking Pied Crow passing high above us.

Scimitar Bills Invade My Garden

Well, while scientists at CERN were getting excited about possibly seeing the footprint of a Higgs Boson, and capturing an antihydrogen atom for long enough to study it, I was running along under some gorgeous birds who were flying from tree to tree in my garden, trying to identify them.

Ah - ScimitarBills. How lovely.

How much more beautiful than 4-muon trails of destroyed bosons.

Birdbrain...

..what a horribly unjust epithet.

I seriously know humans who are way less conscious than some birds.

This morning, the little male Sparrow who is raising chicks in one of the abominations of lollipop-ed Cape Ash trees below the smokers' balcony saw me and barrelled straight towards me, alighting on the guard rail a handspan from my elbow.
He chirped and looked me up and down. I had no crumbs for him today, so I apologised, saying I'd bring some in the next hour. Not good enough, apparently. He hopped up and down, chirping madly, flew away and returned shortly with a feather in his beak.
 The feather was deposited on the tiles, where it blew to land at my feet. I picked it up and left to store it with all the other gifts from the Sparrows I've accumulated over the years: feathers, both wing and down; flowers, plants.
Then, feeling under pressure from a bird a tiny fraction of my size, I grabbed a rusk and went back outside, where I crumbled it for the little fellow.

Don't talk to me about birdbrains...

Zombie Deity

Right. You're God, OK? You're an integral part of the Suchness and Thusness which created the entirety of All That Is.

So why is it that the sight of pigeon poop drives you to erect great big bloody steel spikes on their ledging nests? When you cut down all the trees in the area to create the pretentious monstrosity known locally as Melrose Arch, did you give a thought to the other forms of Life you drove away, drove out of their homes, or drove to death?

And now the spectre of pigeons defecating on your miles of bloody glass work - good for nothing but an over-the-top statement of how post modern you are - sends you into a frenzy of steel-spiked revenge. On birds for crying out loud.

Pigeons carry disease do I hear you say? What do you think humans do? Crammed into your badly-constructed boxes of offices?

You morons. You god-unconscious, destructive bloody morons.

Mind you, the pigeons are equally God. Perhaps they should conjure some dire barrier to your homes, to prevent you from resting, too. Before I take the plastique and do it myself.

Rebuked

Standing on the smokers' balcony yesterday, I was caught by the sight of a pair of Glossy Starlings perched on the cellphone mast opposite.
Lovely birds, they are: orange-eyed and shimmering-plumaged.

I was wondering to myself what it would be like to have such a pretty bird as a Spirit Animal. No sooner was that thought fully formed in my mind than here comes a large black and white corvid, from the Northeast, flapping to a stop on the cellphone mast. Followed by its mate.

OK, OK - it was only idle speculation, guys. I wouldn't swap you, my Pied Crow, for all the Glossy Starlings in Africa.


"We envy the birds in flight - Oh no, God is not dead." - Lux Interna

PS The word from the House Martins is that they are pushing off - maybe as soon as sometime today.

Mad With Grief

I don't know why we're surprised anymore.

We've known for thousands of years that birds display emotions - and I, with a totem Eagle and a Pied Crow for a spirit guide, should be less surprised than any of us. Yet I remain moved in my soul when I clearly discern the emotions of birds.

Every work day morning, I save some of my breakfast for the small family of Sparrows who have nested near the office for a good 6 years now. And every morning, the male flies over to the part of the railing closest to me and chirrups in my face before joining his mate in eating. Sometimes, he leaves me a feather, or a dandelion.

This weekend, I again noticed the Indian Mynah which harasses my dogs - or dog, rather, as the bird targets only our bitch, Scylla. S/he flies very close to Scylla's head with a godsawful screech, talons outstretched. Again and again. S/he's been doing this for more than a year, ever since my PitBull pack, being Terriers, caught and killed a fairly well-grown Mynah chick. I tried to save the little bird, but failed, as we so often do.

The Mynah hung close to the dying chick and was still around and vocal after it died.

It has never forgotten who killed hir chick. This bird is still mad with grief. And we wonder whether or not we're anthropomorphising them. Good heavens.

Birds and Bullies

This morning, while leaving to do the monthly grocery shop, I was completely startled to see a large, dark shape swoop over me. Coming from the North-NorthWest, it sailed over the front garden, around the house, banked in a clockwise circle. It was a Black Eagle - close enough for me to see the yellow of its eyes. Beautiful. I imagine Anne feels something like this when in the presence of her Sacred Thunderbirds.

I'm named after Eagle, of course - but this is the very first time I've been visited by one. The Black Eagles -rare and endangered, especially since we started encasing their homes in steel and concrete - has never before been seen this far away from the National Botanical Gardens. At least, not by me. A very blessed visitation indeed.

Yesterday I spent dodging thunderstorms at Clayville. The South African Pitbull Federation was holding a show, and I get some pictures to share. Pit bulls are legendarily attached to Their Humans, and at the show you could feel it - running through the ground into my heart, a boundless, energetic Love of canine for human which quite took my breath away at times.

Here are a couple of the pooches in the ring:





..and this beautiful old man:



..and of course the high jump:

Into the Deep

The red twinkling led lights along the concrete barrier in the middle of the highway, like so many enraged fairies, inform me.

The wheeling flock of starlings, disappearing into the west, flying as one bird as they leave for their other home, inform me.

The lingering dark in the mornings which has not yet touched the sunset twilight informs me.

It is the time of the New Moon in Pisces.

As Sun and Moon gather in the final sign of the zodiac, I feel an urge to dive deep. The waters beckon, warmly promising to enfold my soul.

It is at this time of year that - as I see the signs of Winter approaching all around me - I feel a tender joy in actually experiencing the cant of the sun in his decline. Time to gather the harvest, time to see to the flocks. Time to ensure that you have provision enough to see you through the harsher months ahead.

Unlike birds, who seem able to plug into their species group soul almost at will, human animals seem proud of their individuality. We cherish it, often to the point where the individuation is seen as a needful thing - this marking out of little pieces of the One into me, and you, and thou.

I'm starting to appreciate that we have lost something of tremendous worth through this process of being individuals, though. When we need to know the way, when our compasses need affirming, when we have questions seemingly unresolved - then would we benefit from the limitless ocean of the source from which we came, to which we ultimately belong, and into whose arms we are headed at the close of our little human plays of incarnation.

This time of deepening water, when the dark gathers its power and speaks strongly to us, is perhaps a time to pause, slow down, take stock of our roots and leaves and branches, and maybe - just perhaps - become our own Messiahs.