Hot Spot
The Hibiscus tree sustains many forms of life, it’s amazing how many. And their life cycles fit each other, as the tree is coming round to a new generation of flower buds the little Harlequins are ready for them, juicy morsels. Just as the assassin bugs came along when the little Harlequins were about to appear. And the small reddish brown bugs live on through it all. Everything fits in.
When I went looking at the plants around the hibiscus I found it was just the same, abundant in different forms of life, at different stages of development. There are hot spots in the forest for insect life and this tree and its surrounds is one. You can go to other trees and plants and not see a living thing, until you get up close.
And then if you go there regularly you will find the kinds of creatures come and go with no apparent reason but you can sense the perfect rhythm of it all. But none is more populated than this one Hibiscus tree.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Silver Song
Born of the blackness cold, my love.
To colour the light I am. In line and form a ringing.
Afire, in thirst, of experience. The mad singing.
Where change rakes the dead embers of mind.
Pain, old friend. What else.
To buff the point of being I am, a sharpness mirrored round.
Pierce the veil of shadows. That I am found.
Emerge, o silver singer. To do it all once more.
When all I want is Thee my love.
Return, awake, to the shore.
Of death, the boon of Thine.
Come take me home at last, my lord.
Oh. Cold blackness mine.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Whose Art Was That?
It is easy to judge, seeing things positionally, from a place of identity. Partial being. The difficulty is in extracting the value of experience, it should tell all is change while I remain I behind. It does, but it takes a long time, and long pain.
But judgement is a pernicious habit of the machine mind. Which takes its rise from the momentum of life itself, never giving up. As can be seen all around in the forms of nature, or not nature.
The force of it can be overcome. Not by opposition, but by surrender. Surrender of the force. For all force is it. This is being without the force of existence, the power behind – no more need to die.
It is this knowledge that reveals the truth in every body. Living is the art, I am the artist, in any body.
The one artist within. Being art. No exceptions.
The art of being.
*
As I came round the bend of the track in the forest there he was, or was it she. Sitting on a tendril of green overhanging the trodden path, a fly.
Blue, red eyed creature. Little beauty. Unafraid he sat, for long enough to image. Coming and going, and coming again.
A few days later there he was again. Same tendril, same fly.
He winked, I know.
Old friend.
*
Ya just gotta laugh at it all sometimes.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Breakdown
It’s what happens to things. And everything’s a thing so everything breaks down some time.
What makes it time a thing breaks down? It’s time; it’s time to break down. It’s time in the order of things.
All things are ordered. The earth, the solar system, the universe, the whole of existence is ordered. You didn’t think it was disordered, did you?
Being ordered it all breaks down to order, right on time.
It’s bloody perfect. Perfectly ordered.
Perfect breakdown. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Masked Paramour
Sitting in the flower tops, waiting for her love.
Surrounded by the colour blue, and mauve.
Round and round she went to see.
Arms outstretched, but not to me.
Once a beckoning, it seems.
Then strikes a pose, of themes?
I don’t wonder that she would feel.
And along comes a meal.
Not so easy, the meal.
One finds there little appeal.
The other, oh well, away on the wind.
Love returns, eventually, in kind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
It’s Never Too Late
These shots are of creatures that are seen only around the outside light at night. The largest creature here is the first at about 2mm wide head. The others are so small they are unidentifiable to the naked eye.
To rise up.
It’s never too late to throw off the chains.
Never too late to be new.
It’s never too late to give up the mantra, the one that keeps you from love.
“I can’t!” “Why me?” “It isn’t supposed to be this way.” “Something’s wrong.”
The mantra of mind that sees only what is gone, and never the way it really was, or is.
It’s never too late to say it’s good. Good to be alive! Well done! That’s lovely!
It’s never too late to step out of your skin. The one as me ‘this’ or me ‘that’.
It’s never too late.
*
Well, I suppose it can be too late.
The sun sets, the stars shimmer only once just that way, the same rain never falls twice.
But it’s never too late to dance for the pleasure of it, or sing a little song.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Long Way to Market
A journey unto itself, getting my stuff to market. Learning about printing, the ins and outs of mounting – matting, adhesives, pressures, sizes, compositions. People. It’s a job learning to do the job properly. And maybe someone will buy something when I get there.
But on my way to market I saw this spider. An amazing creature. It was a little skittish at first but settled down after a few shots and even sat for me, it could be said.
She is a beauty. Big, young, healthy and most of all untroubled. Sitting there in the vacuity of being spider with nothing in particular to do. Being no thing, until spider has something to do, spider moves.
Being moves as spider.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Pilgrimage
Dusty trail, overflowing with green, damp humid in the tropical spring shade. Big dark ants crossing. I stopped to see what they were doing and it was the obvious, going somewhere. There were two kinds of ant here, big and small. The big ones had a certain character about them, a quiet strength. The smaller ones a quiet study.
In nature everything’s either going somewhere, doing something or doing nothing – being what it is – or just being.
Grasshopper is about too, about the house. A shy one this morning, trying to hide behind the green pole. Maybe his skittishness had something to do with its dented eye, the other one. I got him anyway. And there will be more. A season’s come. To go. Whatever that means.
Dragon’s flight is easy and unpredictable, predictably so. I followed him around the edge of the field, in and out of the bushes, to dam’s end. And off I went into the forest, to home, whatever that means. :) Home James!
Spider was hiding out on top of a flower, purple blue. She moved about at intervals, showing herself a patience, no thought. Sitting in silence, little spider being. Being spider.
An unusual bug climbed out of the forest of grass at my feet. I have never seen her kind before, soft, light and unthreatening nature. She wandered about the blades of tall grass, a rolling gait, and I showed her about a few twigs.
A little wonder of the day. All going home. A pilgrimage indeed.
And a flower or two to mark the way.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Spider Time
As soon as the weather started turning warm again I noticed an increase in the flying population. Small creatures to start with, then some bigger ones, gnats, midges etc. then bees, wasps, beetles and still getting bigger. Dragonflies have started their first wave of the new year in earnest; there are many young ones about where there is water.
Water, life to all things. Without the movement the fluidity of water enables there would be a lot of very slow things in existence.
*
It wasn’t long before the spiders started showing themselves. Sometimes just as a speck on a thread hanging from the branches or ceilings. Often on the leaves where the little flyers landed. Now they are big enough to get noticed all about. As it is with all things, following the resources for survival, the population burgeons and gets fat on the bounty.
There is a cost too. You will often see a spider with a leg or two missing. Everything costs something.
*
They have favoured places, spiders, depending on their kind. Or so it seems. Some love to weave their webs across the canyons of green and shadow and need a flow through of air to carry their prey to them, or they set up their webs in sheltered places and wait for other creatures that seek out the shelter. Some hunt in open spaces for their keen eyesight, like the big eyed Jumper, and others take to the jungle for their sensitivity of touch and the network of threads they lay around a place to feel from, like the spiky Lynx.
It only takes a little time observing nature to realise there is an intelligence to the way of things. All things have a place, even if it kills them. Because it’s the way of things.
Everything dies, and it fits.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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