Birds at play

Leastwise I think they were. The memory I have when I look at this photo is of a great noise immediately behind me of bird song that sounded like 'talk' and sheer joy. Earlier I had been watching birds in a flock swarming manifold as if dancing in a tribe and this small group was so much closer when I first heard them and turned around in excitement...to see them close and almost collisions between them like children when they roll around on the ground in play flexing their physical ability and strength, experiencing joy together. I had a great number of beautiful photos tonight. What to choose.

State of mind isn't it. Creativity. Whatever the pursuit is. And my day, my week was very difficult. Full. I haven't exactly changed the world either for all my trying and declaring, but I found something in myself all week to contribute, and because that world has not changed is not a recommendation for the world I have inhabited and contributed to, neither for my want of trying. Looking around taking photographs I felt so much strength of extension to what I could see and accepting what I feel, what I had said and been writing and done, submitted, presented and laid bare. The photographs communicate to me a focus, knowledge of self and acceptance, passion and depth of belief, clarity, purpose, an increased understanding of what makes me in my community. What a difficult week of so much grief and stress for all of us, the lost plane, the great sadness in New York, Syria, and on it goes that we learn these things and some of the material in the media like a searing knife, complete and utterly patent rubbish beyond any imaginings. To think a media organisation would put to air what 'apparently' it can be deduced President Obama of the United States and the Pope conversed about between each other that they did not share with the media, making it up as they go along, organisations and editors not worth the paper they wipe their...

I experienced in the midst of my impressions of others and places as the week wound up a thankfulness that I have my intelligence I can discern the nonsense and feel intolerant of mischief making. I felt grateful to my genetic inheritance and my ability to get up and try for another day to do my best. I truly felt some moments of happiness that tomorrow I get another chance if I wake to tomorrow. The day itself was so frustrating and the week so big, but I kept on trucking to each attempt to fully participate and contribute, to get and give, to summarise, take and offer, listen and empathise and accept what I couldn't do. The drivel I experienced and the emotional disabilities I saw exacted in front of me. Am I harsh? I am filled with love. If that is the world of careless indifference to truth in office after office and yet another one, it will not be my world. What a difficult day. I will not see others live this deprivation of the soul surrounded by plenty if it can be avoided. Friends cry in the night alone, people tell me their dreams once they know they can, that is who I am. There is a great joy to be found in arriving at a kind of peace in chaos and grief without religion of any sort other than the drive to be an ok person in a reasonable environment ... and driven by a belief in community, for it to be better, inclusive, extend, embrace.

Does anybody have any idea what the discrepancy is between the rates of death by cancer in the rural environment in South Australia and the metropolitan?

Nine times greater in places. This, this is Australia. The 'little' things have to be fixed up. The gates that are left open, the lack of respect showed contribution and engagement, the tawdry responses to the little person, the poor person, the disabled person, the refugee. We cannot cure cancer yet. I even think it is wrong that the advertisements say we will if we give money or if we drink cups of tea and eat cakes together. Something is missing that the goals are not immediately realisable. We can certainly try to cure cancer. We can equally stand up and declare ourselves in the face of what is wrong that affects us and we observe.

What a week. How much courage it has taken me to accept myself and put up with it, my own flaws and my emotional incapacity to cope with mediocrity and dishonesty to nevertheless stumble my way through saying so. Our communities have to be fixed. People have to fix them. People are suffering in them. People are in fact dying in them. Medical waiting rooms filled with patients waiting for treatment, doctors who are breaking down, systematic injustices, ill health, addictions, psychoses, war, chaos and death, they are all ours and ...domestic violence is that which happens in our own borders (per Aldous Huxley's writing which described domestic violence as our internal chaos in our systems, that which happens at home and is not war with another country). DV is not just the war between people who are partners. What a week. Here are the birds at play. They do not have Christianity. They have no more need for it than I do.

Something banal perhaps in some people's estimation of what I am on about with a university education and a life time pursuit of survival. All week I have been engaged in trying to secure safety fences (as well as do my usual work). For children not to be harmed. Cyclists not meet their death, People to not break their ankles. All needed immediately around me. Maybe in the coming week I will blip some photos to show you by loading them to Flickr. To the left of where I live and to the right hand side. Jokers to the left of me. Jokers to the right. I am the only resident in this very most immediate vicinity. Before I leave this place whysoever I do, some of these matters will be fixed. That is my resolve. A community cannot remain broken.

I have one other photo for you. I found a sign I had not seen before. I believe it is new. Literally a sign. I only read material signs. I see what is visible in this photo as such ironic juxtaposition. Immediately behind the (new) Men's Shed sign is a wide and deep, dry and empty concrete drain that needs fencing (2 plus years ago) and stagnant water at its end that breeds mosquitoes. This area has a virulent illness that affects people very deleteriously called Ross River Fever that is mosquito borne. At this location is the concentration of local population and individual and busloads of tourists that congregate to shop at the supermarket and stop and look at the ducks at the lagoon.
Sign

I was told this would be fenced by today. In the last week I submitted 23 photographs to illustrate the need it be fenced and I have been at the offices of the local Council three times regarding different matters affecting me and this community...and the last time almost breaking down weeping, and that is ok because that is what people do when they care and who have feelings for themselves and others. I don't care that the person who is responsible for the supervision of some of these matters "is a lovely bloke". What's lovely got to do with it when I ask if he is empathetic?

Small town. First evidence of corruption "lovely".

It's been a hell of a week.