Strange Fly
Three times I have come back from a walk in the bush and had to quickly snatch one of these creatures off me after feeling it creeping speedily around under my shirt. It felt more like a crawler and I was surprised to see a fly when it hit the table.
First time I tried to put a glass on it but it just made it out from under, getting caught at the rim but uninjured, was very tough. Second time I was ready and got the glass on it and pushed a dead leaf with some honey on it under but it wasn’t interested, it just got itself sticky so I had to eventually wash it off before letting it go.
It doesn’t stand up like other flies, it squats close and creeps sideways and all ways. Nor does it have a back body section of any size. It would be about one cm long, black and glossy to the eye.
Nature is always presenting something new in my experience. Amazing nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Going to Market
The honey bee is dying here, apparently paralysed from the waist back, perhaps bitten by a spider. Or it is experiencing one of the many maladies visited upon it in the effort to profit from it. It could only move its forearms to scramble around in the leaf litter, not its wings or other legs.
I put it on a nearby surface and covered it with a large leaf. Who knows, it might have recovered.
Who knows without looking?
Flies are still the dominant creatures on my landscape though the weather is beginning to warm up. With the warm comes the biting midges and mozzies but I know how to deal with them now. The other larger creatures won’t be far behind though I expect a little more ebb and flowing of the cold yet.
I went for a walk recently at the nearby NR and met a gardener and he told me where there is a black bee hive, the ones I have a few pix of on the yellow flowers. I have yet to check it out but I’ll get to it soon enough. They are native bees and they don’t have a sting, or much of one.
There is something very pleasing about the black bee. Perhaps it’s that they aren’t domesticated, uncorrupted by man and his exploitive ways, unlike the honey bee.
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The gardener’s wife asked me to do a photography workshop after seeing some of my prints but I declined saying that’s not what I am, others know far more about photography than I do. So she asked me to give a presentation on how and why I got into photography using my pix as illustration and I agreed, as soon as I am set up on another front.
That is selling my images at the local markets, the other front. I am having to learn all about cutting mat and foam board and getting it right, not as easy as it first seems. But all in its time, that’s how it is.
All of it. In it’s time.
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Now the birds are dancing and singing in the trees in the morning. The magpie warbling resounds beautifully, magically in me, reminds me spring is almost here.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Plethora …
… of Flies.
I have been making my own magic potion for attracting photographic subjects to the back yard and it smells a bit up close. Though some of the best, wildest looking flies are from the bush where they can be found at predictable times and places with no potions.
The bananas on the banana tree finally ripened enough for the bats to eat so I cut some down and they went into the making of great cake, banana cake with sultanas, etc. Yum!
What bananas couldn’t be used were returned to the Earth via the Possum and her family, and all the various insects such as ants and flies that inhabit the surrounds of the house I live in. There have been some wonderful looking creatures caught on camera and a selection of them is here, for your viewing pleasure.
You won’t enjoy these pix if you see them through your cultural conditioning – acquired subconscious mental and emotional associations. As in; Yuk! Dirty flies. Or maybe you can’t stand the thought of them walking all over you. After where you ‘know’ they have been, you’d have to swat them. Why?
Thought and emotion, however well founded in common sense, flies do walk on shit. But is common sense a measure of peace of mind? I don’t think so, given that everyone shares in common sense and aren’t any closer to inner peace for it, real inner peace.
Thought and emotion are all that stands in the way of inner peace, are the only source of disturbance. Are the disturbance. Where is the source of what is not peace if not the mind. It doesn’t matter what happens ‘outside’, it’s what is within that matters first that eventually returns in sense to disturb the mind that can be. Mind is the disturbance, when it is.
And it is what is within that eventually negates the ‘outer’ source of disturbance that eliminates the inner.
It begins inside, and ends inside, not out.
Existence begins and ends in sense. Mind as thought and emotion is a consequence, of ignoring this fact and truth.
Existence is now; mind is always some other time.
See the fly now? The pure beautiful sense of it.
No mind! That’s peace of mind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Ambrosia
Nectar of the Gods.
Garuda, half man half bird, king of birds, eater of snakes, took it upon himself to steal the Ambrosia from an impossible place to ransom his mother from the snake queen. At the same time promising to return it to Vishnu which he did and for which he was given the honour of being Vishnu’s steed.
Ambrosia. That’s the aroma that was in the air today. An impossible sweetness, always just out of full sense. Not quite existential perhaps.
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The weather has been cold at night and warm at day. I have enjoyed shooting the flies out back where the bananas have fallen to the ground and the possum family have trampled the remains to ferment in the sun. I could swear some of the flies were drunk the other day, no kidding.
After they fed they would stop on a nearby leaf and rest a while for me to shoot. But it’s always on the day, in the moment. If I go looking for the same situation again it is usually elusive. That’s what keeps me from calcifying, everything keeps moving on. Nothing stays the same for long.
That’s what I love, the freshness of the new. Not knowing keeps me going. A paradox.
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This fly was enjoying a bit of fermenting banana in the afternoon sun, stomped on and mashed the night before by the possum that lives in the roof, when a mate came along. You can tell they are mates by the way they touch each other as they pass in their feeding meander. In #2 the left fly has a foot on the eye of the right fly while it has a leg on the left fly. #3 looks like high fives?
There is an obvious recognition in this touching. It’s a form of communication. They did this for a while, touching as they passed each other, and clearly it is a speci-al thing, you don’t see flies of different kinds touching this way. I don’t anyway. Though flies of different kinds recognise flies, clearly, from the way they chase and avoid each other.
Apart from the obvious size, form, colour and the fact you have never seen a depressed fly are they so different from you and I? Really?
Different yes, but so? Inside?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Fly
Hail, rain or shine there are flies about. It’s easier to capture (the image) some times more than others. For instance when it rains – who mentioned rain? – they slow down considerably. Not wanting to bump into raindrops in flight I reckon, could be quite an impact to a fly.
The flies come in all sizes and colours and are no less beautiful or amazing for being a fly. Flies are not just those ‘dirty things’ you see flying around the garbage bin. They are magnificent creations, incredible architecture, busy little fellows.
It’s not easy to sneak up on a fly. But it does depend, on the fly, the kind of fly, and the various conditions under which they are found. In fact I’d say the only constant of flies is they fly, a lot. :)
They are too fast to see flying but at rest it can easily be seen the restless character, busy creatures. Maybe something to do with having a short life though they never think of such nonsense.
Flies fly. And look their beautiful selves regardless of what may be thought of them.
Fly!
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Golden Wonder
This fellow didn’t just evolve, he is created, now, and evolves in time. There is the mark of his maker in him and it is beautiful, now. Beauty is in but uncontained by the form, and there is only one in – inside. There is no doubt about that unless you want to think and get clever. The fact is it is a beautiful and magnificent creature, and he stopped still long enough for me to show him to you.
Do you see him? The wondrous intelligence behind the form, as the form. Who says where is god when such things be. They just don’t see.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Fly at Sundown
It has been cold at nights in Brisbane and there is not much to shoot at all in most of the places I know.
Went for a walk in the bush, by a dam in Mt Cotton, where the late afternoon sun hits a clearing in the woods on the eastern slope while all else is in shadow, where I know some creatures go for the last of the day’s heat.
This fly became friendly after a few minutes following ‘him’ around, climbed on my finger and wouldn’t go away, seemed to get some nourishment from dabbing his mouth parts on my skin.
A little pleasure to me.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Moon Light
Rain has swept the land for a while now. It comes in floods here and the creeks fill up accordingly. It is dangerous to be caught out in it. There are few enough bugs around but nothing at all after three days wet. Then the sun comes out and it is glorious, lovely soft sunlight sparkling off the still wet, cool ambient temperature. And all the live things take to the air in search of what keeps them going. Sounds like people, doesn’t it.
There are a few places where the creatures show themselves. Openings in the vegetation where there is enough of their breeding and feeding grounds nearby. They come out to hunt and mate and die. Sounds like people again. Are we so different? I don’t think so.
The only difference I see is the capacity to reflect on the past and so think. This thinking stirs the ground of the past, what the past is impressed on, emotion. This becomes the habit of being and so begins the trouble, but only for a while.
When the trouble is known as pain enough there is a way to get through, back to the inner sense that is always here now.
On the other side of pain.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Fly Soup
It seems there are fewer creatures to photograph now but really there are newer ones. Newer in the sense they are revealed by the absence of the more showy characters like the Dragonflies and other larger forms, though they were always there.
It takes the absence of the familiar to reveal the ever present beauty. Beauty being outside the condition of mind familiarity is – being ‘used’ to something – implying a continuity or repetition that dulls the intelligence to the perception of the new.
It’s why the new is often difficult to appreciate, and then we get familiar with it and the process starts again. Life breaks up any condition or position, of course – in the course of being in existence, where all is change.
The fly is one of these newer fellows and isn’t he a beauty, lovely colours and intriguing form. Capturing these fellows, cognitively and photographically, is a matter of focus. A focus of the will to see the new by letting go the familiar.
Being new. And this new being is always now, in sense to begin with, eventually out of sense but not in mind as thought or emotion. A very subtle and rare state of being within and behind sense that begins with the sensation in the body.
That’s called meditation, then being. And it can be done with the aid of a fly.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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