A Jewel of Harlequins
On the white flowered Hibiscus in the nearby bush is a small herd of bugs, Harlequins they are called, don’t know why – possibly for the distinctive symmetrical markings on the ‘face’. These ones are real beauties; they go through many different colours in their little lives, blues, greens and reds. And there are times when they can be found with developing wings that make them look like something from a futuristic car show, and very elegant.
Anyway, these last days they are this wonderful blue with hues and patches of green and red and iridescent, overlaid on a very purposeful looking form. A very attractive little jewel of the forest.
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You have to know where to find them as they don’t appear on all Hibiscus plants, only a few I know of. And then you have to know how to handle them, with care of course. But they also respond to a kind of attention so it’s possible to get a few shots without disturbing them unduly.
And when they are done sitting I put then back exactly where I find them. This one is on my stick, the one I use for stabilising the camera at times is also good for shooting on.
I am usually in the nature just for a walk these days as the little people are shy or just not around after the drastic weather of the last year, and health permitting – other bugs I am catching are from visiting children, no fun at all, the bugs caught this way.
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It’s a simple pleasure of mine, this walking and seeing or sensing. To see the colours and form, the movement and the life in it all.
And then I go home, to tend the wildy garden I have encouraged and nurtured.
Just for a while now.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Dry Time
The long year of rain that washed the bugs away has been followed by a long season of dry, and few bugs are emerging that I can find, not even the Ticks. I had anticipated something of the sort with my gardening work, lots of seeds sown and plants watered with a compost area for bugs to eat and congregate in. The Possum likes the fruit as well. So it’s not all void of creatures to enjoy, albeit tiny creatures mostly.
Even so, everywhere I go there are maturing well fed spiders. It looks like food a plenty but could be a survival strategy, get a net up to catch what you can while there is any catching to be done. But we’ll see how things unfold.
What is coming can be predicted in the big picture, more or less, but the details are unknowable in their timing and context. That wonderful unknown.
There is nothing wrong with there being so few bugs, it’s just different. Last year they were so plentiful at the same times there are few or none this year.
The weather is very different this year, wetter, colder, windier and dryer at different times. And still nature is what it is behind, unmade, of a greater power than man, waving in time.
The one grace of existence, the unmade shining through.
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And here are a couple pix anyway. What a little wonder. And no sign of hunger. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Petals of Pearl
I’ve been seeding the garden with all sorts for a year or so, not knowing what may grow, and every now and then a little wonder appears through the overgrowth. This one has been budding for about a week and finally opened yesterday, some – half of the petals anyway. And today it opened up completely to the spring sunshine.
It’s a little beauty and I’ve been working it to see what happens, image-wise. That’s one of the things I love about nature and photography, I never know exactly how a shot is going to picture – there’s the shot and then there’s the picture produced. And I don’t want to know.
A wonderfully creative way to spend a few minutes, or hours, in sense. To see what a flower looks like and is. The creases and shadows on the white that give it its texture, the shape of the petals that give them their magical quality. And the yellow, heart of the flower, giving up to the prince of light – the Sun.
Yellow face I’ll call it, in a halo of pearly white.
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It doesn’t have to ‘make’ sense, only to be it.
Whatever that means.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Ready or Not …
… Keep your place or you’ll be caught! It was a game we played as kids, hide and seek if I remember right. And I went on playing it for decades after, in one form or another.
Now I don’t play any more, because I’m not so inclined, and you’ll have to go back and close your eyes to count some more. That’s what the seeker used to do, count up to a number and shout out – Ready or Not …
Have you ever seen any bugs play this game? Of course it’s not the same, they don’t count, not like us anyway. But they do play, why not. Why would a living creature, however small, be excluded from play.
Just look at the design, the colours. So much ingenuity and no play, absurd. And when they are in action it can plainly be seen they enjoy life.
That’s what I see, it’s the way it is, until it is some other way.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Snake in the Grass
I was out walking through the tall dry grass one recent sunny day and was about to put my foot down when I caught a sense of something out of place – made me stop dead.
A shape that only one creature I know makes, a long and perfect double S. It was obviously a snake from the go but the oddest thing is it didn’t move when I nearly trod on it.
I stopped mid-stride and pulled back slowly and tested with my stick, an indispensable tool. When I was satisfied it wasn’t going to strike I got closer for a rare look at a snake in the wild.
It still didn’t move and I saw its eye was glazing over, a little milky, a sign of death long over. Inspecting it closely from head to ‘foot’ I could see what happened, why it died on this spot.
Its tail was wrapped in a dried out stalk of the long grass that grows here. The grass and tail were intertwined the way you see snakes mating on tv, sometimes, and it looked like the snake was trying to pull away.
But instead of untwining as snakes can, this one tried to pull straight off the grass and the grass cut into its tail, down to the bone, tighter and tighter the more the snake struggled.
And that’s how it died, struggling to live. Held firmly to the spot by a thread of grass wound tight around its tail.
Strange that the snake would have been caught so easily but that’s nature, you can’t take nature for granted.
It was a perfect death anyway. And a perfect life.
Who’s to say otherwise?
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Idea Behind …
… what I do, on this site and at the Macro Days, is as old as the hills. I came to it through a fundamental need, born of my experience, to know peace of mind. And to know peace of mind requires a willingness to change, first.
The only impediment is my own psychological self, the conditioning of the mind repeating itself, the grip of the past. It is necessary to know and understand how it repeats before the solution can be realised, and it is simple.
But you can’t do anything if you don’t see or have the need for it. Perception is reality in this case, because it’s very easy to think or believe “I can’t do this” with its attendant negative emotions, and so determine your reality, or your unreality.
This idea is mine in as much as I articulate it and live it, the best I can. If you get it, the idea, it is also yours, as much as you live it – this is important, nobody owns an idea, or everybody does.
The idea is not exclusive, any man or woman can do it any time anywhere. It’s just a matter of taking the action.
When the time is right. But don’t wait for another time if you need it now.
The question then is, do you need it now?
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What is the ‘Problem?
What, in your own experience – not what you’ve read or been told, is the common factor in any problem you have ever had. What is the common factor in worry, heartache, paranoia, jealousy, misery, depression, or any other form of unhappiness?
It is thinking and/or emotion. Usually a mix of the two since they are inextricably linked. You can’t get emotional without thinking and you can’t have thinking without emotion to generate it, as a problem. Emotion generates thought about what it is you are emotional about, and thinking (about a problem) stirs emotion about the thing thought. One is dependent on the other, as a problem. If it’s not a problem it doesn’t matter.
Now, in your own experience is there any other common factor in any form of unhappiness you know of, besides thought and emotion? There is, your attention or intelligence. The fact you give your attention to your unhappiness is what fuels it, fundamentally. Which is how you can be distracted from your unhappiness, by distracting your attention.
You might say otherwise but the next time you are unhappy you will notice it is the thinking and emotion that sustains it, by you giving your attention to it as if it is the greater reality.
It is, but only because you have believed it, and as long as you still believe it. And that is a mechanical process.
That’s my own experience. What is yours?
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Well, clearly, if thinking and emotion are the basis for unhappiness the solution to unhappiness has got to be in the cessation of that emotion and thinking. Or do you think your unhappiness comes from ‘outside’ and you can find the solution ‘there’, somebody or something does it to you, so somebody or some thing can fix it, really?
After all these years people, you and me, have sought the solution to unhappiness ‘out there’ and we haven’t found it yet, out there. Maybe because it isn’t out there at all and it’s time to look elsewhere, and the only where else to look is inside. Or do you know of somewhere else?
So, how to free myself of the mechanics of unhappiness? That’s the only real question I can see since the solution would be the basis for the only real change from the unhappy human condition that prevails. Or is there something more important than to be free of unhappiness?
If there is, I’d like to know what.
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And the Solution?
Thinking and emotion persist as unhappiness because we give it our attention at the outset. What if we don’t give it our attention, what then? What if I am fast enough to catch the thought or emotion before it takes me over? How do I speed up my intelligence enough to keep the unhappiness out?
Surely, if I don’t attend to the feeling or thinking that constitutes unhappiness, as if it is the truth, I can’t be unhappy. Surely? I know this looks too absurdly simple to be true but test it in your own experience. If you don’t give your attention to your unhappiness and deal only in the facts of your life as they arise your unhappiness disappears, more or less.
For instance, if you are unhappy (or stressed, or whatever word you use for it) about something in particular you need to do something about it. If you are worried about having no money you need to do something about getting some, or give up worrying, that’s practical, factual. If you are fearful of the boss because he has a terrible temper you need to draw the line and stand your ground, for your own peace of mind, or accept the situation, or leave. Action clears the problem.
Any other practical ‘problem’ also requires practical action to eliminate the emotion. That leaves the habit of unhappiness, the fact it keeps on recurring uncontrollably, to be dealt with by not focusing on the emotion and so feed it with thinking.
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So, there is the unhappy emotion or thinking – as a problem, and there is the attention I give to it. For there to be a solution there has to be something else to give my attention to, and there is.
There is another element in this (mechanical) system of being human that is rarely observed and that is the sensation inside. This is the means of speeding up the intelligence, by slowing down the mind.
What this means is you have something other than thought or emotion to focus on, something that is more real and won’t go away. And by doing so the ‘problem’ is reduced or eliminated.
So the solution, to the ‘problem’, is to take control of what you give your attention to, obviously.
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To put it another way.
There is the problem (of emotion and thinking), there is the pure simple sensation – that is the only reliable anchor against the movement of mind, and there is the attention or intelligence that sustains either. Which am I going to give my attention to, the problem or the sensation?
The sensation ‘inside’ the body is the basis for the senses that appear to be of the ‘outside’ but are in fact cognised inside, sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste along with more subtle senses. And the senses are most easily realised in nature.
I start with focus on the pure inner sensation as it is the more substantive, and add the others as progress is made in slowing the mind, as the practise is established. Nature is the ‘outer’ reciprocal of the inner sensation.
This, the inner and outer of sensation and nature is the basis for the changeover from mind to sense, and it occurs gradually.
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The way it works is this. What I give my attention to grows. If I give my attention to the ‘problem’ it grows, check next time you are worried what happens if you think about it, you get more worried. And if you can give your attention to the pure sensation what happens? It grows, or the problem (of emotion) recedes.
The ‘good’ Wolf and the ‘bad’ Wolf, of that old Indian proverb. The one that wins is the one you feed the most, or give your attention to.
But to be able to do it in the ‘hard’ times, when the pressure is really on, you have to have practised it in the ‘easy’ times.
Does this make sense? Questions or comments are welcome.
(See Meditate for an introduction to the practise.)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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