The Other Side
Barnacles on my keel.
Sails torn ragged by the howling wind.
But still singing.
On, across the ocean of time.
*
Inside, where the mix is complete and devolves to one, all the colours lie. Silver on blue, gold to green in the magical distance o’er the curve of being. Black.
Will is.
Shapes and ships a tumbling, one ‘to the other, structures blend. Who is who, what is what, doesn’t matter except out here, in sense. Mere 3D being.
On the other side a silver song, where no song should be.
Calling.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Fossilised I
Apparently scientists have discovered the missing link in a fossil, named Ida after one of their daughters, indicative that. It took them years of inspection through powerful looking devices to find the growth on her wrist that indicated she had broken it at some time in her short life, 50 million years ago. Then they found a bone in her foot that may tell them something more, she is our ancestor. Or may not.
All good fun? They are seriously excited about it because they are the first. And so they think they are important. In a way they are since their ‘discovery’ is significant in a more important sense. The inner sense. But they don’t really matter; it is the discovery that matters, but only in its significance.
To have found this link in sense means there is now enough energy in the human psyche to ‘go back’ to an important point of origion, to undo what man has done or become. As a realisation. It is a form of negation indicative of mans inner evolution of which the outer is only significant. Symbolic of the inner journey, back home.
And it’s not personal. The scientist is not important, merely a vessel or messenger. As are we all.
Vessels of the one simple good. Or the other.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Life on the Rim
It’s surprisingly short and warm here, winter. There have only been a couple weeks where I couldn’t find anything to shoot but flies. Flies will never let you down. Just put some food out, any food, and they will come. As long as the neighbour isn’t feeding them better.
There are a few places I go to find all sorts of creatures and I am always finding new ones, places and creatures. I parked in the shade of a tree in a field by a main road, Mt Cotton Road. It’s by a big lake, dam in Aus, and the water is wonderfully clear with all sorts of flowering plants and birds living on it. The air is beautifully clear and the sunlight is strong and warm. The surrounds are free of mans encroachments, probably because this is drinking water for the town of Capalaba in the Redlands of Brisbane.
It really is a wonderful natureful place.
*
Around the perimeter of the field there were iron fence posts, called star posts – because of their design, at intervals of about 10 metres. On top of each post there was a yellow plastic cap, to cover rough iron and to hold an electric wire I suspect. The thing about them is though they provide shelter for a number of small creatures. And that is their unintended value. All I had to do to find these creatures was lift the plastic cap and voila! Instant wildlife safari, well, not quite, perhaps.
They are mostly spiders, jumping ones. These ladies are very active and get their name deservedly from the way they tend to jump, what else. There are two jumpers here, one black on a pad of webbing and one tan, and two other kinds of spider. The wolf, I think, and another I have never seen before.
The wolf came out from under the yellow plastic as soon as I lifted it and took an aggressive stance atop it as I put it down. It was not affected by my presence and I believe these spiders are all female, protecting the nest, no compromise in their maternal instinct.
The other, black, cream and orange one was another story. She was lightning fast and had the presence of an entity to be avoided at all costs. She put fright into my self the way she moved out of sight and back again, made me cautious.
*
The other creature here is some kind of cricket or what? I don’t know. It looks like it lives in the dark, or it’s a young something not yet ready for life in the daytime. I don’t know, I’ve never seen such as this before.
Man encroaches on nature in consideration of what’s important to him, at the end of the day some sort of permanence or ongoing. In this case to fence something in to protect his interest. And when man no longer maintains his intent nature encroaches back again.
It’s the order of things that what man makes dies, nature goes on. That is what matters.
It is what matters most, the will in action. Nature. Will manifest.
My nature. Yours too.
© 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
Going to Market
The honey bee is dying here, apparently paralysed from the waist back, perhaps bitten by a spider. Or it is experiencing one of the many maladies visited upon it in the effort to profit from it. It could only move its forearms to scramble around in the leaf litter, not its wings or other legs.
I put it on a nearby surface and covered it with a large leaf. Who knows, it might have recovered.
Who knows without looking?
Flies are still the dominant creatures on my landscape though the weather is beginning to warm up. With the warm comes the biting midges and mozzies but I know how to deal with them now. The other larger creatures won’t be far behind though I expect a little more ebb and flowing of the cold yet.
I went for a walk recently at the nearby NR and met a gardener and he told me where there is a black bee hive, the ones I have a few pix of on the yellow flowers. I have yet to check it out but I’ll get to it soon enough. They are native bees and they don’t have a sting, or much of one.
There is something very pleasing about the black bee. Perhaps it’s that they aren’t domesticated, uncorrupted by man and his exploitive ways, unlike the honey bee.
*
The gardener’s wife asked me to do a photography workshop after seeing some of my prints but I declined saying that’s not what I am, others know far more about photography than I do. So she asked me to give a presentation on how and why I got into photography using my pix as illustration and I agreed, as soon as I am set up on another front.
That is selling my images at the local markets, the other front. I am having to learn all about cutting mat and foam board and getting it right, not as easy as it first seems. But all in its time, that’s how it is.
All of it. In it’s time.
*
Now the birds are dancing and singing in the trees in the morning. The magpie warbling resounds beautifully, magically in me, reminds me spring is almost here.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Zen Frog
This fellow is in a state of being; no problem with what or where he is, no rumination or regurgitation of his past experience interpreted nor fear of some possible future – the past reformed – thought and emotion. There is a simplicity to this creature that reminds me of my own simplicity at an uncommon level of being. The simplicity of being without movement of mind as past, being now. Now, the mystical moment available to anyone who is willing now.
Surrender-ed. The state of having let go enough that the past no longer grips the will by the usual momentum, without ones volition. It, being, is arrived at by unrelenting endeavour. The endeavour to realise no-thing by focusing on no-thing. But it begins with right meditation; focus on some-thing that doesn’t change, you can’t go straight to being-no-thing.
No matter what arises it is not the truth, you’ve got to know this. It’s an act of will to realise it. And it is enabled by the conservation of energy and its proper allocation.
*
For example when you ruminate on the reasoning behind anger you make more anger, if you don’t know this yet try it out. So too if you attend to the simple good it appears to grow, though really it’s the other that diminishes.
Don’t give your energy to what causes emotional or mental pain and give it to what you enjoy. When you know one and the other and can tell the difference.
This is the formula for freedom, the freedom from what repeats and is unwanted.
Then, like now, the beautiful new is. Being.
Focus. And what you focus on.
It’s really that simple.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Plethora …
… of Flies.
I have been making my own magic potion for attracting photographic subjects to the back yard and it smells a bit up close. Though some of the best, wildest looking flies are from the bush where they can be found at predictable times and places with no potions.
The bananas on the banana tree finally ripened enough for the bats to eat so I cut some down and they went into the making of great cake, banana cake with sultanas, etc. Yum!
What bananas couldn’t be used were returned to the Earth via the Possum and her family, and all the various insects such as ants and flies that inhabit the surrounds of the house I live in. There have been some wonderful looking creatures caught on camera and a selection of them is here, for your viewing pleasure.
You won’t enjoy these pix if you see them through your cultural conditioning – acquired subconscious mental and emotional associations. As in; Yuk! Dirty flies. Or maybe you can’t stand the thought of them walking all over you. After where you ‘know’ they have been, you’d have to swat them. Why?
Thought and emotion, however well founded in common sense, flies do walk on shit. But is common sense a measure of peace of mind? I don’t think so, given that everyone shares in common sense and aren’t any closer to inner peace for it, real inner peace.
Thought and emotion are all that stands in the way of inner peace, are the only source of disturbance. Are the disturbance. Where is the source of what is not peace if not the mind. It doesn’t matter what happens ‘outside’, it’s what is within that matters first that eventually returns in sense to disturb the mind that can be. Mind is the disturbance, when it is.
And it is what is within that eventually negates the ‘outer’ source of disturbance that eliminates the inner.
It begins inside, and ends inside, not out.
Existence begins and ends in sense. Mind as thought and emotion is a consequence, of ignoring this fact and truth.
Existence is now; mind is always some other time.
See the fly now? The pure beautiful sense of it.
No mind! That’s peace of mind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Sail On
There, what rises in the clear dark space, inside. And passes.
Death, the wanderer pervades.
Colours green and silver in the deep blue place.
Up the wispy trail it is made.
Reminders of you. My love.
Going home on broken wings.
To no where.
*
My Beautiful Raggedy Man.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Magical I
Out back where the flies fly and play there are a few tribes of ant that seem to get on together. That makes sense since they have inhabited the same piece of earth for millennia. Obviously they don’t compete directly or one of them would have been the victor by now, surely.
There are tiny golden ants that are so small they are rarely seen, unless I leave a little honey out. In fact that is how I discovered them. I left some honey on a few leaves to attract the flies but they weren’t interested and after some time the tiny goldies showed up and fed till it was gone. Now that I am aware of them I see them often.
There are some ants that are just too fast to shoot and don’t stop for anything, not for more than a fraction of a second. My camera wont focus that fast. In fact there are many kinds of ants about the house. There are the glossy black ants. And there are the armoured ants, in two different colours. Armoured because they have spikes protruding from their bodies at different strategic places, to give advantage in combat. No doubt they have their predators, as I have seen.
They all have different physical characteristics, sizes, colours, feeding habits, demeanor. Unique and beautiful expressions of the being of Ant, a quality of god from out of the pure psyche.
As all things are.
*
Then there are the quiet blue – green ants. There are two nests that I know of in the back garden. I have seen them many times but until recently they have been very elusive to the camera. They don’t normally eat fruit like the others and they live in the ground at the base of the fence. When they come out it is usually to find the source of disturbance, which is usually me lately, since they are on the sunny side where I shoot flies in the afternoon.
In the last couple of days they have been out eating at the ripe banana that has fallen from the tree where the bats and possum have been plundering, and at the apple I put out today. Maybe they are just hungry enough after the long cold and rain, relative cold that is.
Anyway, I have taken the opportunity to shoot them and the results are wonderful. They have deep contours in their skin that reflect the darkest magical blue and green of the psyche. And they are gentle creatures.
I observed one appeared to be bowed, maybe resting, and was tended by another looking down on it and waving its antennae over it. They do communicate, and care, obviously. In their way.
I am touched, at the place where Ant and caring is. Where I am that.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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