A simple Prayer
This little black bee is a first for me. It was 5.00 am and I was in the garden with the camera pointed at some flowers and along came this little beauty with a yellow patch. Then another one came and went. Only at the earliest morning.
I am reading this.
I am the intelligence in the body reading this.
I cannot name this intelligence any more than that. And I don’t need to.
I am nothing to know and I don’t need to know it.
I don’t need to work this out.
I have no problem now because I am not making one now.
I am grateful for that. Now.
Now.
Now.
And any time I see I am anything else I can see I am the pure sensation in this body and that brings me back to now.
Now.
Now.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Not Dead Yet :)
But first, one of those astounding creatures I see almost every day for your viewing, sensible, pleasure, and to remind you there is more to what you can see. Even if that more is in reality less. Am I making sense? It matters.
I tracked this fellow for some time and caught some real nice shots so decided to post an unusual number of them.
The more you see is the detail that has an existence rendered sensible through the camera device for a snapshot of the otherwise invisible world of vital life, in the psyche, at a place where all has a coherent – to the senses – order. The less is where the detail ends, at the ‘beginning’ you can see now, inside. On the ‘other’ side of anything.
Where sensible order ends and God, dare I say it, begins. Though, in fact, god is in all things, no exception!!
*
Amazing isn’t it? The resilience of the human body, or any body – see the frog leap 30 times its length – the fly travel at 100kph hitting or avoiding the debris along the way, just bloody amazing. Especially if you didn’t expect to live that long anyway.
But that’s life. The only undeniable prediction is it will not be denied, will always take some form. As long as there is existence, and I can’t see that ending any time soon. Except maybe in the particular, which is really all there is but let’s not complicate the matter. The particular is the whole, where I am, inside.
So the body just keeps bouncing back, from all the pressures of living, and the accumulated past. The physical pressures are not a problem, just a fact the way light or dark is a fact. It’s silly to have a problem with that.
No, the problem is the past that keeps bouncing back. The past as thought and emotion. But there’s a way to deal with that.
*
Do you remember as a kid the way you learnt to bounce the small rubber ball off the ground? At first it was a bit clumsy, bounce and miss, bounce and hit again but off centre and away the ball goes and you have to chase it to bring it under your control again.
But, eventually, you learnt to bounce that ball with ease, even grace. Bounce, bounce, bounce off the floor, off the wall. Wall, floor, wall, floor – bounce, bounce – control. By the practise, as long as there is the capacity. And the exercise is never given to those without the capacity so that’s not an issue, is it?
So you see, it’s just a matter of practise. Right practise!
Practise of the right exercise/s.
*
Is there ever an end to the need for practise? If you come to it there is. If you don’t there isn’t. For you, since only your experience is important, to you. Anything else is someone else’s experience, maybe not even that.
Imagination, the curse to be mastered. Then it might, might, be called a blessing, among others. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Summer Time …
… and the livin’s easy. Well, livin’s never that but there are many different small creatures about for me to investigate with the camera. And that’s a pleasure, if not easy.
I went down the old Mt Cotton scout camp today for a wander around a few known trails. By the pleasantly aged buildings there is a garden planted by the young boys, I don’t know when. There are many flowers there at the moment and they attract the tiny native bees.
And where one insect goes there are usually more who follow, or just make their own way there. One doesn’t necessarily follow the other, or does it? Anyway, it wasn’t long before I had to give up on the little black bees, they just move too fast. Zip, zip, zip, in and out. I must have got two keepers out of about one hundred shots, not good.
Then I noticed a little black cricket, I think it is. Ninja cricket, I call it, with a short yellow saddle on its back. It was very interested in the small black bees and was slowly making its way towards one on a flower but they were just too fast for it, and not nearly numerous enough to be caught.
I was looking around for what else may be in the vicinity and there was one of the little brown frogs from early spring, only now it was turning green though not much bigger. It was also in position to catch some black bees, up on the leaf about the flower, but after a few shots it jumped away down the plant.
And there was a golden ant taking some of the honey I left out for the bees, which they never touched. Enjoying a long sup of a most wonderful food not often experienced in the world of ant. Food of the gods ant, making the most of it.
A few other creatures came and went. Like the green eyed fly. She landed on my booted foot and slowly made her way up my ankle where I got a few shots. Then she was off to the garden where I got a few more. She had a lazy way about her and at one time she was determined to examine my camera.
She rose up from the greenery and came slowly towards me. At first I thought she was after landing on me and I moved away but she went straight to the camera and walked around it tasting, as flies do. After a while I shooed her away and she landed in the garden again and we both went about our business. She grooming herself and me taking her picture.
As I left the garden for the wilder trails I met a small grey kangaroo, no picture. We have met before and I called out to her and she was hesitant, not knowing whether to run or not. In the end she opted to keep a safe distance of about ten yards but she is getting used to me now. I must remember to bring her some good food next time.
Down towards the water I went to see the wasps at a nest I know of, native wasps. They are small dark hued creatures and like all wasps are alert to any intrusion. I am always careful when in the bush but particularly around wasps as they are very active in defense of their nest. It’s a good idea to give them no cause to interpret any action as aggressive, as they will attack. David and Goliath style.
But their sting is not at all bad, not like the European wasp or paper wasp. It’s like a small electric current that rapidly diminishes, but uncomfortable all the same.
Another fly landed at my feet on the boardwalk around the dam, just two shots of this one. Magnificent creature, colours and form. It is extraordinary the beauty of these creatures up close, that is so easily overlooked by the unaided eye.
A dragonfly also presented himself, lovely young yellow thing. Sat on his perch for me to get a few good shots and away he went. Nothing stays the same for long in the bush. Everything is always moving, staying alive if it can. 
Dying if it can’t. Without complaint.
My beautiful nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Wild Hibiscus Tree – Harlequin and Friends
I’ve been observing the activity and tracking the residents for a while now, down in the forest, on the wild Hibiscus tree. The tree has white flowers with a dark red heart, beautiful clean colour when new. And a contrast that reaches deep inside, in sense.
The leaves have been mostly eaten for a while now, since the tree is also home to a few other creatures besides the Harlequin bug. There are small reddish brown beetles that roam all over the place, including all over the harlequins, who seem to mind quite a bit, getting very agitated when one climbs on their back.
The flower houses a host of squat dark flies that only seem to leave that dark heart when I disturb them, by moving the flower. Lately there has been a burgeoning of other bugs, such as the black and yellow assassins pictured, who seem to transform to the red and yellow beauty by climbing out of their old jacket.
Nothing like a new set of clothes to set you free.
*
The Harlequin is definitely the star of this show though. At first I thought I was lucky to get a few shots of an individual. Then I got a few shots of a few more individuals. That’s when I realised the hibiscus tree is home to these beautiful creatures, they didn’t go away.
Over time I visited the tree and observed the Harlequin bug in the various stages of its development. I watched it mature, eat, commune, grow wings, mate, lay eggs and guard and incubate them. Saw the young hatch and then herd themselves around the tree with the adult looking on for a short while.
It has been an eventful time, Hibiscus Harlequin time.
*
A privilege really, to witness the life of these beautifully coloured creatures. And here you have it in the comfort of your home, no need to go down the bug infested forest, with mozzies and little black biting midges chasing you.
© 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
Tumble in the Jungle
I was in Mt Cotton scout camp today and the most extraordinary event occurred.
There is a small garden there where the Joey’s planted some flowers and shrubs. It is bordered by a few timbers and as is their way the ants use them as a highway through the debris that litters the ground.
Today while I was looking for what I might find in the way of creatures – structure and beauty to shoot I saw these two ants going at each other. They didn’t seem too serious but I suspect they were well matched and that’s the only reason one of them didn’t die in the fight.
They tumbled this way and that, mandible locked to mandible, up and down the natural landscape. For ages it seemed they battled it out, for what? Supremacy, what else?
Towards the end they had been fighting their way up and down a small twig and eventually one of them gave up and ran away. The other then ran back up the twig and all but shouted out in triumph.
I won! Yeahhh!
Well, maybe.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Time Comes to Die
Long slender avenue of green, thorny red devil, wings asheen.
Came out of the darkness, the shadowy green.
Antennae a waving, this way and that.
Big black mandibles closing, on what?
The disc of an eye protruding to see.
No one else there but me.
*
Up and down she went. On that dark avenue of green in the sky.
In her hunt for what I don’t know. She awakened to me and not I.
A looking confused for no reason. Would come to her action in time.
I left her a little of sweetness. She never would know it be mine.
*
I love the small things from the darkness so deep.
I love their colours and mine.
I love the shape that god made them.
I love the touch that is Thine.
*
Out of the blackness you touch me. Into the blackness of me.
I have so little to give Thee. But do take it all, it is free.
Come to the life you have made me. Take from me all that I be.
When time comes to die, all I can say is …
… I see.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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