The Invitation …
Everything, by it’s presence, is an invitation. To what, then, is the question. That depends on its intent and your predisposition.
In this case intent is inoffensive. So, to capture an image of a resting Potter Wasp.
Or its significance is something unseen.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Gardener’s Delight?
I suppose that depends on what kind of gardener you are. For one who enjoys macro and all the magnificent creatures that become apparent in all their wonderful colour and architecture it is a delight indeed what can be found, usually just by being there in the garden doing nothing more than enjoying the sense of it all.
One day I saw this giant wasp land on what was supposed to be something of a birdbath, with water plants and stones and things in it for any other creature that might find it attractive. What was unusual was the size of it; about 2.5 inches long and it would fly with all legs hanging down so it looked very relaxed, without a care in the world.
It was collecting water from the bath, either for drinking or to help with making a nest somewhere nearby, probably up in the rotten old paperbark trees. A kind of Potter Wasp I believe that would use the water not just for slaking a thirst but also for making or lining the mud nests it builds.
Then I saw a second one and the first appeared almost immediately after it and they both chased each other around for some time until they landed on the birdbath and started mating by the edge. I still didn’t approach them for any shots as they are extremely sensitive to changes in their environment and I didn’t want to interrupt.
So I let them do what they do and eventually off they flew up into the trees of the garden. They came and went at different times until one day I was surprised to see one just sitting there on one of the stones. It wasn’t a perfect situation for a shot but I took what I was offered and here it is.
What surprised me was the fact I have only ever seen these wasps in the deep bush where they have a distinct ‘don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you’ sort of attitude. In other words they command respect, and rightly so. There’s an unmistakable intelligence about them.
I gave them their space and they gave me a few pictures. That’s as it is, no problem. Season’s not over yet, though the rain keeps falling …
Mark Berkery ……. Don’t forget to CLICK on any picture to enlarge it in a new tab – best in FireFox – for me
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Lady of the Morning
With a clear night sky and moisture in the air she attracts the dewdrops of a morning. Not yet warm enough to evaporate, maybe not at all today.
She is a Potter Wasp, or a Mud Dauber, I am no expert on naming – waking up in the field of bees. The sense is enough for me, no need for interpretations to muddy the view.
She is a lovely shape and colours, and gentle as can be. She’ll sit in my hand but I don’t post the same picture twice so you’ll have to take my word for it, if you give her due respect she will return it handsomely.
That’s the simple pleasure of being with the wild things, too simple for the mind to slow up for. It’s really gotta be worked at, this stillness that lies at the bottom of the well. See it down there, when the shapes and colours pass on by, as you go to sleep?
It’s really that simple, when you don’t ‘fall’ asleep.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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After the Flood
It just ended today, that’s monsoon season in Brisbane I suppose, heavy rain coming and going.
People get upset at things the way they are but there really is no need. When it rains it rains, when it shines it shines. And it will do that when we’re all gone, I assume, if there’s someone here to know. Things will change when they change, not before. So relax, because it may never be as you want, or fear. Now isn’t that nice, a way to go? :)
Nice and relaxed? Feet up or down and doing something you enjoy, even if it’s only feeling the sensation of being alive. That’s what it’s all about, after you exorcise the superhero, the one who would be special, with something special to do. There is nothing special but what you do, so everybody is special, or not.
Isn’t it nice just to be relaxed, no tension or pretense of being anything other than what you so obviously are, a body of sense. And if there is anything else to do it must present here not there, because I am not there, whoever ‘I’ am. It is here or it’s not, because I don’t know where there is. And I am finished with the other, superhero to the world.
I will never be what someone else was, what a fiction. True, fictions have been known to live, by conjuring with intent. But intent to what, the further undoing of the superhero in another form? What else but to aid the intelligence entombed in such offence.
For that the image has to be left out of it, or is it in, and that’s an exercise to start with, but you only feel mad for a few days, or is it weeks. It’s just like taking off those favourite boots that you’ve been wearing for the last year or so, it feels a little odd at first. Or putting on some new. :)
What do you think, I am mad? And do you think it matters what you think? Life is lived either way, then everything gets left behind. And yes, a sense of humour can hide your pain or keep you going. But you don’t give it up twice, or thrice.
Can you change what you are when what you are never changes, or always changes back to itself? Will the silent judgment of another make a difference? If an island were thought to be a mountain would it be that?
Or are you content to be an ordinary man or woman, maybe with something extraordinary to do for a while, maybe not. Grow old, get ill and die.
Shit happens.
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Or to throw off the cloak of mortality? Reach for the stars and the crown, touch the beauty and light. See the end to his suffering, touch the wings of his love in her flight?
As I once did, and never gave up on. Cloaks get heavy in the rain, reach shortens with age and with pain. Beauty and light always remain. But suffering the wings of his love in her flight?
Why not? Except, has someone turned it into a game?
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I called out once, or twice, or thrice. And saw no reply on the wall. Was it eyes a failing in the dim of twilight, or assumption blinding the truth and beauty of little mice.
No echo in the hall, at all. But if you would join me we may still have a ball. :)
And you would only have to tolerate my sense of humour, my …
… intolerance of the intolerable, and my judgment due thereof.
The hero is late, that’s fate. And who is that at the gate?
Late is only late, not fate, but judged no less in kind.
And now, indifferent to the source, I no longer mind.
I can still walk a while, or is it just a mile?
A little wait, dear mate. A smile?
Oh dear, dear dear, what fate.
I must go on a while.
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The garden is a quiet place, so fair. And when I can’t walk for long I do linger there.
It has many things it needs of me, or so it seems to me from here.
A little time alone, by the seat in the corner, with wasps that know no fear.
Around the corner a vision comes, to show a light from over there.
Will never know if it doesn’t show, the voice I may never hear.
A shining in the afternoon, a welcome, no need to swoon.
Or maybe now, just tell me how, how to find thy boon.
And, please, not just with the same old spoon.
How else can I say it but to the phasing moon.
A little time so soon, my love.
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So soon, before the cat gets the Dove. :)
In the early hours he prowls the ways around the house.
Looking, treading so carefully, not just quiet as a mouse.
But just in case, he once was bitten, as by a giant snake, or was it a grouse?
Djinn, the feline of the house.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab
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Rescue! Rescue!
I am going to tell you a dream that many little boys have. Of floods, endless rain, everything drowning, and a friend comes to help. A reminder of another time.
He can’t remember being a child. And then he remembers being a child and looking into a mirror and seeing his mum in need of rescue, and he spent the rest of his life rescuing his mum – in some woman, a self perpetuating mechanism, it’s classic I’m sure.
‘This is the boy’s love of mother distorted in the pain of a child that couldn’t help his mum when he saw she needed it. And the boy lived a sad life, to say the least.’ Because he always found what he expected to find, he couldn’t help it – the imprint on the film in the projector frames the light.
And then she, some ‘woman’ from outside the projection, came one night and loved the pain out of the boy in a dream turning to a nightmare. It was the opposite or negation of a nightmare, to have love enter so. What a wonder that is. And when he was falling back into the nightmare she came again and called out Rescue!; a gentle call, and rescued him again.
This is what love does, it stops the pain, the nightmare, by invoking love – the willingness to give up the nightmarish projection. ‘So just love her man, it wasn’t her fault you couldn’t rescue her. Just love her. Whoever ‘she’ is.’
And only ‘she’ can stop it. And who is she? Only you know, and she is the one you’re with. And she is the one to come, to the rescue. ((:
Love is the rescue, the rescuer and the rescued.
And this little Potter Wasp lady warmed up on my finger and took a little honey to start the day with and flew away. ((:
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Nature's Place 
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