Life Cycles …
… Beautifully.
When I first came back to Brisbane I found in the local remnant rainforest a thorny leafed plant that had flowers much like a Hibiscus. Big showy white flowers with a big dark red heart and tall stamen reaching for the sky that attracted many small flies and beetles so that you could say this is where life starts for these little creatures.
There was also one, just one, big red and blue beetle on that plant. It was beautiful, and it was shy, running away every chance it got.
I was in this forest yesterday and saw the same plant was flowering again with those big white flowers and stopped to look into the dark red heart of it. There were all the little flies and bugs milling around and soon enough I found the big red and blue fella, not far away.
Wonderful nature, what a blast, of sense.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Look After …
… the little things and the big things take care of themselves. There is truth in old sayings and no less this one. If you clean your feet or teeth your body has a better chance of health than if you don’t. Check the tyre pressure and save on tyres and fuel, maybe accident.
Be careful what you think and life unfolds accordingly.
The big picture is painted with lots of dots.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Day …
… you no longer see me …
Or me.
Me too.
And me.
Me, me.
And here.
And meeee! Me, me, me, me!
Oi! Me too!
And meeeeeeee!
… is the day the pain from having shot yourself in the foot arrives in your consciousness. Then it’s too late for this time round. If you are quick you might see pain has a value. A spiritual value.
It serves the one and only purpose, to wake me up.
Ding, ding, ding! Hear it?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Man Unmasked
Out in Eprapah NR I saw this fellow out of the corner of my eye as he moved amongst the dried out leaves. Unusually bold for a hopper to be out in the sun and he didn’t do a zig zag roundabouts backward sidestep to get out from under the lens. As they often do, at least here in Aus.
So I followed him around the forest floor until he had enough and with a single clicking sound was gone, just after the last shot here. This little one is about 1cm body length, a frog – hopper I believe.
Who am I? It’s an inevitable question for anyone that has experienced enough change.
So who am I? Am I the body or what it does, the mind and what it thinks and feels? I don’t think so.
The fact is it is these things changing that prompt the question. Everything changes in existence and change is pain. It is pain that enables me to separate because I am surely not that. And separation enables the question. So who am I?
I am asking the question, surely. I am the pain of change. And I am that which changes. All knowing. But I am also more, or less. There has got to be more to it than mere mechanics. Surely?
I am also that which I cannot know, behind the I that asks the question. Behind the body and mind that changes. And what is it I cannot know?
Nothing, surely!
Nothing to know.
*
And I am a Frog – Hopper. :)
*
I am when all is not. I am the nothing, the space behind the body. Inside – where else. I am behind the mind. I am in the tingling inside where sense begins. I am the seeing in the I that sees. I am behind the appearance of the fly. I am now, not then.
I am in the sun that lights the day. I am the darkness that reveals the stars. I am in the flow of water and the land. And the grain of wheat, the bird that flies. I am I, who else.
I am in all things and I see all things (are) in me.
I am first and last. I am between.
I am.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Damsel in the Dark
Little beauty!
Or is there only beauty. Beautiful little Damsel.
Abundance : the state of being free of negativity. What else?
In the esoteric bush.
*
Winter is over, straight into spring. A few dragons are on the wing at a favoured place in the bush by a dam, still young.
Skipper butterflies are many and chasing each other around the place too, never stopping long enough for me to get close.
And a few damsels in the long grass, colourful and easily disturbed.
The place is coming to life. Or life is coming to this place once more, in turn of the season.
With every step I take a wave of form flows to the shadows.
Little fellows getting out of the big fella’s way.
What death may follow.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Lord in Blue
Such an insignificant creature? Not at all. Every thing in creation has its perfect place. The only imperfection is in the mind that perceives one, or holds to what is past, what is not now. The creation is now, as close as it gets. In sense.
While the arguments rage as to whether there is a god let’s look at the obvious beauty of the creation as it is. This shot is of a Longhorn Beetle as it happens in the wild near where I live in SE Brisbane. It is undeniable this is a beautiful creature, it touches a point in the psyche where you can recognise a sense that goes; Mmmm! That’s good, that’s nice.
Without knowing exactly what ‘that’ is. Because ‘it’ is not the insect form, but what it represents, the beauty or inscrutable genius behind it.
There is no manipulation here, as I said, this is how the beetle appeared to me. God like? Why not? To me.
Simply sense.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Caught Out
This Mantis is usually only ‘seen’ camouflaged against the bark of trees in the bush, in my experience. I followed this fellow around the wall of a building for a while to see what would happen. He didn’t like being corralled but it worked to slow him down for a while and keep him from running away.
Then this Aphid appeared at a run over the edge of the wall and the Mantis took off after it and snatched it up in a vice like grip crushing it instantly at either end.
Juicy.
And tasty. To a Mantis.
Going.
Burp!
That’s livin.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Mother Nature
It’s called a money tree – the leaves you can see, by someone, way back when I can’t remember. Where the wasp has started building a nest, a paper wasp, a paper nest. She is alone in the endeavour and there are at least three cells of the hive occupied so far. I have seen the little grub she leaves in the cell, a tiny thing about two millimetres long. And she spends a lot of time away from the hive, probably hunting food to put in with her young, her little babies. Food entombed in sensational paralysis to be eaten as needed, alive. My magnificent nature.
Whenever I go to have a look at the nest she fronts up and eyeballs me. Stands up tall, spreads her wings and ‘rattles’ her front legs at me. She is serious about her young, and dangerous if disturbed. But she won’t waste the energy harassing me if I don’t give her good cause by disturbing the nest. I wonder if she will get used to me, maybe one of the young will be my friend? I don’t think so somehow. Not these wild creatures, their instinct is too basic, no facility for socialising. But who knows, there are exceptions. Watch this space.
Isn’t she magnificent the way she poses in defence of the hive, the beautiful instinctive intelligence to survive in form rendered as a bold defiant stance, against all comers. And that she never has a doubt about what she is doing, no wasted thought, no wasted energy. All her energy going to what she is designed for, to live as wasp and reproduce, against all comers. Magnificent nature.
The fact is I see this, perceive this, in me. Inside. I re-cognise this part of my nature represented in the wasp. It is my nature, since I came ‘up’ through the species, the instinctive psychic structure and not just the appearance in sense. And it is still a part of me, a part of my nature now, in my psyche. The beauty of it is in recognising it I see the being of it, me being that, before thought gets in to distort and make something else of it.
It is wasp and, as clear as my attention to it is, I am being that, in the moment. When ‘that’ is not I am, being, no problem. The best I can. The same goes for any other nature I cognise, when thought or emotion doesn’t get in the way there is only ‘that’.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Grasshopper
I have observed everything has its season and that includes things as they appear to me or in my perception. Things can be without them necessarily appearing ‘to me’. The dragons are still about in large numbers but they aren’t sitting for me much anymore. It is still the season for Dragons but not Dragons for me. Dragonflies are said to be symbolic of fundamental change, with style, obviously. And everything else is also symbolic. Of what is the question, it always is.
It is now the time of the grasshopper, they are everywhere I turn these days and I am waking up to their presence. So let’s have a look at what the grasshopper presents. They don’t have the same drama about them as the dragonfly but they do have their own character, though somewhat withdrawn from view.
Grasshoppers are grazers, laid back little fellows, and so don’t present a threat to anything but the leaves of plants. They tend to blend with their surroundings in various shades of green or brown, with the occasional showman or woman, unlike the dragons who are all colour and show.
They can disappear with a kick of a leg, I’ve seen them with only one, and they can be poked and prodded without giving more than a sideways shuffle to show they noticed. They are their own beauty, unassuming in appearance, soft and strong when necessary but never aggressive.
Have you ever seen a grasshopper negotiate for grazing rights?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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