Seasoned Greetings

Seasons greetings…

Specifically, I hope that you have a (check as appropriate)…

__ Merry Christmas + Happy New Year

__ Happy Chanukah

__ Enlightening Eid-al-Adha

__ God Jul (means good yule or winter bonfire – nothing to do with ‘god’) og Gott Nyttar

__ Sunny summer solstice

__ Wondrous winter solstice

__ Other…

Just in case you are wondering, Eid-al-Adha is the Islamic feast (Dec 31 this year) celebrating the father (Ibraham) who heard voices and thought he should sacrifice his son. Notwithstanding the evidence that hearing voices and having a split personality (Ibraham = Abraham) suggests he is a little psychotic, any parent will tell you that filicidal ideation can arise from time to time. Interestingly, the Muslims believe the son on the chopping block was Ishmael, Jews and Christians believe it was Isaac. Ibraham/Abraham probably would have been happy to slaughter both of them. However Ibraham (like most parents) eventually relented from the idea of sacrificing his son(s), and went on to slaughter a ram, they all had a good feed, forgave one another, and Ibraham/Abraham became the forefather of the Arabs/Jews respectively. His great-great-great-great…etc…grand-kids, (the Jews and the Arabs) continue to fight to this day - like kids in any family. As if the family didn’t have enough problems, the Christians run around terrorizing the 'hood.

Meanwhile, here’s to a wonderful 2007…

Cheers and love,

from Stephen & Zachary

Funereal Winds

It was a windy day for a funeral. I wondered whether the soul would be torn asunder by the bellowing gale. Down by the sea, a fitting funeral for a sailing man I guess. But wind is such a disturbing weather pattern. It is like it blows the elements of my insides like dust motes around a room. I am creeping around inside trying to find the cracks through the which the wind is coming. It is insidious. It may not be coming from the direction of the prevailing wind. An eddy is wrapping around my body, and this steady breeze, this incessant zephyr, this annoying compression of air, is blowing in from the other direction. Where the fuck is that gap.

I am set to wondering. Are the dust motes that I see being blown around, are these the elements of my soul. Are they the little bits of fluff and dust and are my essential nature. Are they so fragile, so light, so insubstantial that they are all that really holds together my soul. When these sprites – for surely they cannot be considered more than that – are whisked around, I am chasing my own soul.

In front of me, on a bench, on top of the bench, a solid box, open, and inside, a man’s body. My friend. Where is his soul I wonder. Is he now oblivious to the blow. Across the box and bench, I see the ocean, the whitecaps – and the wind continues to whisk around whipping up a frenzy. Is it his soul that has invited this disturbance? Is it that any death, like a wind, must disturb the souls of the living.

By my hand, I have my partner. Rebecca. Although right now, I am not looking at her face, she is number – god knows what number she is. I am reflecting on my life, my long string of girlfriends, lovers. How do I love them, let me count the ways. How do I count loves? My love for this man, Peter, the rock, so inappropriate a name for a sailor I always thought. Sailors don’t like rocks. The wind-whipped waves may look unfriendly, but the solid, unmoveable rocks are far more disturbing. The solidness of real life, the implacability of physical existence, it is not that which is undoubtedly present that leads to my doubts, my questioning, it is the elements that give that solidity life. Life. That is the wind. It is life which moves the dust motes around inside the shell of my existence. It is the breath of life. No breath, no life. Peter is no longer breathing. Rebecca’s hand is warm. I crave her body, her warm embrace, to be engulfed by another life, to be supported by her body, to be inside her. I am looking to go back to the source of my life, to my mother.

A man is droning on in the background. Talking about Peter’s life. But Peter is no longer with us. All I have here are the rocks. The breath is gone. And the man talking, just more breath. Save your breath. I have plenty of wind inside me. It is whistling in the eaves of my mind. It tells me, if nothing else, that I am alive.

(Cabarita, 9oct06)

"Like this Papa. Follow my lead"

This picture was announced as the winner of the National Archives of Australia Holiday Snaps competition on Sunday, June 18.

The photographer was Margaret Burnell.

Please feel free to contact me if you want access to the photographer - or the models of course.

Here & Now

Yesterday's future
Tomorrow's past
Visions, dreams & fantasies
Of a singular moment in time

(inspired by / paraphrased from a source I don't know!)

Letter from God

Stephen, 

Knock it off! 

I haven’t forsaken you. I’m always there. 

A little busy, but always there. 

Perhaps I can note here that you don’t always seem to have a lot of time to connect with me. 

Sure, our connection is a little bit iffy. Given that when you try to connect with me, you’re essentially trying to communicate with everyone and everything living – who by the way seem to have lives just as busy as yours – of course there’s going to be a little static on the line. 

I might add that you seem rather hung up on concrete communications. The spoken word – as in soundwaves – or the writing…on the wall. That’s fine, but if you’re going to insist on those forms of communication, and those ones only, then you’re limiting the channels we might use to connect. Kinda like waiting for a message from someone in the letter box or the answering machine. 

Let me explain a bit more… You gotta put out a bit more energy than that. Give me a holler. Don’t be shy, come say ‘hi.’ 

And don’t give a holler and just turn and walk away. You gotta listen actively. Monitor multiple channels, holler down all of them – and listen carefully. 

I’m out there. Yeah, I know, I can hear you say: ‘You can say that again.’ Cute. Bear in mind that your message ain’t just going around the corner, or even across the world. It’s going across dimensions. 

You see (actually, you probably don’t, but you get the gist), you have this image of me as some guy. For starters, I don’t have a gender. I don’t need one. There is only one of me, and I’m not reproducing. 

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you: ‘Created man in his own image.’ You are not just like me, you are me. I really am created within you. I am your image of me – although not an old guy with white flowing robes and nor am I Aslan the lion. So knock it off. 

I am the essence of you. You and everyone else. And everyone is / are through me. Maybe think of me as the life force. That spark that cannot be seen that drives all living creatures.  

Everytime you see a living creature, you see me. Hey, and get this, you know those days you can’t even pull your ass out of bed? When you finally do and you look in the mirror, guess what? You see me. Yeah, I have good days and bad days too.

Communication is a two-way street. I have bad days too. Just don’t put up a roadblock. 

See ya round. 

G.x