Watering The Ants
This nocturnal ant handicapped by the dented head.
Here in Oz the ant is in charge of turning the earth, as in other places it is the worm. That’s how it looks to me. Everywhere I look there are ants, always on the move, busy, busy, busy. They are better built for working the dry soil, with a little help from the occasional rain.
There are so many kinds of ant I have lost track, as if I was ever so inclined. Here are a few I invited to stop for a picture, by placing a drop of sugar-water along their path.
Every thing works its patch, you and me included. And everything needs the right kind of nourishment.
A little nectar is a passing heaven, to an ant.
Sensational …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Pretty On Pink
A Green Shield Bug flits from place to place around the garden. If it doesn’t find what it wants in one place off it goes to another. But what does a bug want? Food, shelter and a mate, what else …
It doesn’t know to want anything it doesn’t need. Could it possibly just enjoy the colour in the sunshine, playing in the garden. As many other garden dwellers can be seen or seem to do.
Is there any conscious self awareness in a bug, or is it an instinctive organic robot. Maybe a messenger of a greater intelligence, the earth perhaps.
And anything born has the potential of its mother, and more.
Let’s not dismiss the little things.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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And Now …
… for a little light entertainment from the wilds.
The simple elegance and beauty in the form and being of … a beetle.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click on a picture for a closer look.
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A Shooting Star
Click the picture for a bigger version.
A crop of above, for the unbelievers … :-)
Was this Jewel Bug blessed by a shooting star, or was it the photographer or the reader of this, or was it the earth it passed over? Does it matter … all that perceive are affected, by the perceived and the perception, nothing stays the same after the cosmic touch. It matters …
In ancient days, when we were less rigidly rational and perhaps more intuitively romantic, we saw significance in small things. The flight of a bird, the twist of a gust of wind or a falling star. Everything has meaning if you can read it, and it helps to know what others have seen.
What it means is subjective, personal, a matter of context. Such things as shooting stars are universal and as old as the sky above our heads and their meaning has been intuited in various ways, divined in a mind as clear and magnificent as the night sky. Your mind …
So reading the universal is aided and coloured by the context of the reader. I looked up where in our culture the shooting star has occurred and the instance that spoke was this : ‘And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.’
Looking down, or up, within, see that ancient sky and all it contains now, as clear as mind can be. … are you a shooting star burning up with a flash of mystical purpose, or a rational meteorite.
Mystical purpose is a burning meteor, you wouldn’t know it to look at.
Cosmic symbolism in the ordinary life … nothing too serious.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Dragon Days
Still, in the heat of the day, overseeing its territory from rest, no less dangerous for that, to the other airborne creatures hereabouts – the vast canyons of bright empty space surrounded by deep wells of dark shadow.
To the Dragon I was invisible, a trick of being, not being anything a Dragon would fear. In the ever moving colour and form of the psyche everything is connected, and when ‘the time is right’ one thing knows another, inside.
The smaller the creature, the more distant the relationship, the less direct or immediate the connection. But the Dragon knew me, like Dragon knows Dragon, nothing to reflect on. Nothing to resist, no separation.
In being. In form it’s another matter, everything going its own way, clashing and thrashing, killing and dying, as some thing, Dragon or man.
The trick, or knack, is to slow down enough inside to slip into nowhere, as no-thing, at will, and still function some where, as some thing, outside.
A life’s work, for a man. Dragon does it naturally.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Things That Fly …
Zebra Bee. Ok, not really. A native resting on a cold afternoon.
An unusual fly warming up by the light at night.
Too cold to fly away, resting on the grass.
Racing Red and blue/black winged Wasp.
Long legged fly enjoying the rotting fruit.
Red Assassin Bug, hunting on the flowers other creatures eat.
Bee echo …
Assassin nymph chasing native bee.
Hoverfly in the spiders grasp. Bye, bye fly.
Mating time for the ants.
Doli fly in the afternoon.
Honey Bee meets Spider, usually ends bad for the bee – which is good for the spider.
Mighty wasp. She was seeking nesting sites around the ants feasting on fruit.
Asleep in the field, not far to travel for breakfast.
Things that get overlooked, in the garden or field and on the computer. There are so many images of encounters that are never seen but once.
It may serve as a reminder of the unique character of the individuals within the one amazing nature, everything with a place.
Nothing remains the same, even when change is imperceptibly incremental the movement is always towards ‘better’.
As long as we don’t give in to the dark side, and even that serves, has its place.
And time runs out, things die, nothing remains to change.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Honey Bee Central
Individuals from three visits over the past month or so, where the creek crosses the track in Venman. They come in waves from the hive, fill up at the waters edge and home again.
Hunkered down on the side of the track, off the landing zone and out of the flight path, watching for any nearby bee at the right angle and situation for a shot or two.
Careful not to kneel or lean on one, don’t want to kill or get stung, dipping the lens tip to the water at times for a bees eye view. Hat on in case of accidents from behind, listening for the tell-tale buzz from what can’t be seen.
Air traffic observation. A flurry of landings, a scattering of take offs, coming and going in apparent confusion with rare collision until, all of a sudden, nothing. Quiet space.
A gap in the busy work of the bee, it seems, and the mind at work with them dies, no more to take my attention.
Time to look to the sense, in between.
Mind the gap …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Urban Jungle Monk
The solitary visible resident of the remnant forest car park lay head down on a post. An awkward angle but a still subject, unmoving, as if deeply focussed.
Unblinking metallic eyes, all-seeing atop a long stubbled neck, arms folded in prayer, not unusual for a Mantis.
Focussed … is one word could describe this momentarily statuesque creature, free of the need to think.
Simple natural intelligence, ubiquitous and so rarely realised.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Meditate …
A Lizard, found exposed up on a wire fence after heavy rain forced it to seek high ground.
… for peace of mind.
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Periodically I offer to teach meditation and this is that time once more.
I started teaching years ago and paid the insurance and hired a hall, put flyers up all over the place and paid for advertising. And charged accordingly.
Today I only teach from home, in Victoria Point, Queensland and there is no charge for the meditation as there is no cost to me.
Or I can travel and if it’s any distance I would need my costs covered.
Either way it is my pleasure to teach where it is needed.
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What I teach is to still the mind. It is not easy to do but it is simple and worthwhile, and once learned you won’t forget it – what you need of it stays with you.
You can best benefit from this meditation if you are conscious of a degree of stress, tension, emotionality or unhappiness and recognise the need for peace of mind. That way you are motivated and will readily see how it works so the learning goes deeper.
If you want this contact me, by phone is best, email is ok too. See Contact page, top right.
See the other pages top right too, for the idea …
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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