Currawongs in the persimmon

I am very fortunate to have persimmon tree outside my window.  It is in a courtyard surrounded by camellias and azaleas.  It was planted in 1972 and has never grown too big so it keeps it ornamental quality. The persimmon tracks the seasons and now it is bearing small orangey yellow fruit. The long dry spell over summer has not been kind to the tree or its fruit despite our  additional irrigation from rainwater tank. In early autumn appear the currawong  which swoop into the dark green foliage and eat the sticky pulp.  The fruit at this time is hard and the birds consume  it all before it has a chance to become ripe and edible. The fruit which falls from beak to the ground is put on the wall; if the currawong does not salvage it the possums do. Having tasted a persimmon and not liking it I do not miss the opportunity to eat the fruit. It is an acquired taste. The pictures below are glossy from the gentle rain. 

PERSIMMON TREE

Up and down on the bare stems

the currawongs sway

tugging at their find,

light flashing off

oil and black feather,

their yellow and black eyes

super-cautious, malevolent.

Every year they come,

harvesting the unwanted crop

never looking older as we do,

generations to the same tree,

while we, half-hidden, watch,

wondering what the taste is like to them;

is it the sticky, floury sweetness,

the acquired flavour

not to our taste?

The season turns into short days,

the foliage is all but gone,

far out on a thin branch,

like a Chinese lantern on a pole,

hangs one remaining persimmon.

A currawong steps out cautiously,

the head jerking in an arc,

sticks clasping a stick, watching,

ever the black seeing eye.

Bird pecks from as far as dares

and the branch bounces wildly,

the talons tighten, the wings arch,

the air flapped for balance.

The persimmon and the bird

spring in unison, a pas de deux

in black and orange; an

unintended comedy.

A reach down to the fruit

leaving V shapes in the soft skin,

then a gobbling of the pinkish pap inside.

But it is hard work and precarious.

A few more pecks and an air borne woosh.

Later we take off this hacked piece

and place it on the courtyard wall.

The currawong returns and finishes it off.

It is a shame to waste good fuel

for a frosty night. 

George Herbert

Simone Weil was deeply affected by the poem Love III by George Herbert.  I could never see what Weil saw in this poem which seems saccharine,  pious and self-pitying. 'Love' in this case is a trope for God alias Jesus.  Herbert feeling 'Guilty of dust and sin' is beckoned by Love to 'taste my meat'.  Given that Weil, a non-observant Jew, did not really believe in the personal God but, as far as I can gather, a divine mystical force to be reached by 'waiting' and 'decreation' it is strange she is moved by what is plainly a coy poetical love feast between Herbert and his personal God.  I could understand Weil's ineffable approach to the divine but am confronted by the literalness of Herbert. I have just finished reading, Music At Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury.  I am perhaps at some accord with Weil that in being acquainted with Herbert and reading his verse one can see something of the pure soul and this in itself is refreshing set alongside our confused time of shallowness, distraction and self-absorption.   Herbert so wove his humble life around the Christian project that his hallowed spirit is infused into his poems and his life. To read Herbert is to walk with him and feel welcome and trusted. Herbert is also a foil to the worldliness of contemporary Christianity with its powerful establishments, money-mindedness and pecuniary incursions into secular spheres. As for Weil - I see more Buddhism in her cosmic view than religion.  Those who 'sit' in quiet meditation are about the practice of 'decreation'. John Drury (a chaplain and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) is  sympathetic but objective, scholarly but not abstruse. 

A Take on Meditation

In amidst a conventional life of work, family and interests I have practised meditation of the sitting and watching breath type with some pretentious link to Zen meditation.  I think over the many years I have 'learnt how to meditate' - whatever that means. By my own lights my short period of sitting (on a meditation chair) has afforded a brief segue into a gentler and more somatic consciousness which is refreshing and recreating. I mention somatic as I think the posture in meditation is as important as the attentiveness to  breath. Over time these experiences have perhaps tuned my outlook to a more detached kind. (As a natural Outsider I wonder if this is the right way to go.) I have always avoided any connection of meditation with spiritual things or other cosmic penetrations. I also do not put any great store in the curative effects of meditation physically or mentally. If meditation does impact upon the person it is somewhat ineffable and subtle, certainly not usefully detectable by self-analysis or crude scientific measuring of brain waves. But oddly while the 'results' are subliminal I find myself wishing to instil the practice into  a more Taoistic view of life. I am also no fan of the word 'practice' which suggests ambition, attainment-seeking and accomplishment.  My meditation chair was made by Dynamo House, Melbourne. It is the folding variety and has collapsed several time requiring makeshift repairs.  After I developed a circulation problem in my leg a kind thread person put some padding on the seat so now I would put it into the luxury category.  

A Difficult Cat

Our cat is anything but a nice cat.  He is rather grumpy. We think we was a factory cattery cat.  The big mistake was going to a pet store to buy a kitten but being talked into taking a free cat if we brought a certain value in cat paraphernalia. It is no wonder he was free.  But I do not dwell on his negative side.  I try to avoid the nasty swings of his claws or his quite strong nipping. His frustration when he does not get what he wants is just a facet of his congenital anxiety. This also comes into play when a stranger visits the house and he heads for the hills.  He learnt distrust I suppose from being separated from his mother at an early age.  He has never got over his separation from her suckling, warmth and love. So I try to fit in with him.  He is fed on time with good quality food.  I give him affection even when he does not respond.  I try to bring out his best side.  I do not condemn him. I do not negatively compare him to the other cats we have owned.  He is not here for our amusement. He is his own cat and has his own life. He rewards us with his beauty, even present after 12 years, his sullen superiority, his quiet dwelling in the garden and his presence which is full of a transcendent silence. 

T'ao Ch'ien

T'ao Ch'ien  (Y'ao Yuan-ming) (365-427 A.D.) was one of those educated and  literary Chinese officials who fell out of favour and took refuge in country parts.  One senses in these poet-recluses that they were  square pegs in a round holes to start off  in government service. Their poetic sensibilities made heavy going of the shrewd and ruthless politics of the day.   Unlike some who create a poetic pose of their poverty T'ao Ch'ien did fall on hard times.  He was a farmer on a modest holding.  He loved playing the lute, reading, visiting friends and drinking home brewed wine. Apparently this drinking was limited to just the amount of  wine necessary to become relaxed and mellow - and no doubt soften the soul for some more poetry.  T'ao Ch'ien poems (in translation) come across as quite modern and natural.  This is remarkable given he was born in 365 A.D. Despite his hardships there is an joy in life in the poems and a counter point of stoic resignation.  It is the same attitude one finds in Taoism of Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu.  If we can only simplify ourselves (meaning empty ourselves of conditioning and contradictions) then all will be harmony under a beneficent Heaven.  Here is a favourite poem from the translations of David Hamilton in his book The Selected Poems T'ao Ch'ien. I often wonder what happened to his sons. 


SCOLDING MY SONS

My temples covered all in white. I'm
slack-muscled and loose-skinned for good. 

now. And though I do have five sons, 
not one of them prizes paper and brush. 

A-shu is already twice eight, and who's 
ever equalled him for sheer laziness?

A-hsuan is fifteen, time studies began, 
but he's immune to words and ideas. 

Yung and Tuan are both thirteen now, 
and they can't even add six and seven. 

And T'ung-tzu, who's almost nine, does 
nothing but forage pears and chestnuts. 

If this is heaven's way, I'll offer it 
that stuff in the cup. It needs a drink. 

Thoughts on Schweitzer

Black Swans near Lake Burley Griffin 

About every two weeks and in all seasons I drive a short distance  to Lake Burley Griffin and take a morning walk. I like to see happy families away from work, computers, televisions and shopping malls. I also see lots of dogs in all shapes and sizes glad to be walking beside their human friends. I also enjoy observing the black swans, the darters drying their wings in the sun, the busy sea gulls, water birds pecking in the lush grass with curved beaks. 

We are more human when we share our lives benevolently with animals. There is a co-mingling of being, a communion of spirits.  

On my walks around the lake I often recall Albert Schweitzer's ethic of reverence for life. Schweitzer thought that ultimately we can know very little about the cosmic meaning of life but it is plainly evident that the being in us, which is also will-to-live, is present in others and in animals and plants.  Will-to-live means not only basic survival  but species potential. At a higher level it is will-to-love. Schweitzer died in 1965. He is not very fashionable now. Perhaps he is forgotten. His reputation was not helped by writing most of his life as a theologian and a philosopher of an non-academic sort. He was probably a non-theist.  He also mixed this up with medical missionary work in central Africa and got into trouble for not keeping up with medical technology. He was also a bit colonial and paternalistic in this thinking (being essentially a 19th century man). These in combination were bad for his posthumous career. He made his central ethic reverence for life  and this ethic in a dynamic way he termed ethical mysticism. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about it. It is the mysticism of  the kindly touching of other beings because we are at some level of the same stuff. 

A Very Cute Family 

Book Binding Ends

I acquired a pious book titled Fathers, Martyrs and Queen of the Holy Rosary from a relation I located while doing my family history. She knew my grandparents and had met me in Melbourne with my parents when I was an infant. I do not remember the meeting. She was happy to  pass it over to me as I was a closer relative than she to the original owners.

It is perhaps a Roman Catholic alternative to a Protestant family bible.  I tend to call it 'the bible'  in the absence of a suitable name for it. As a non believer the contents do not speak to me and I suspect for present day believers it represents a fervour of another time. It is inscribed with births, deaths and marriages of some of my 1800's ancestors. 

 It was handed over in a pretty poor state, the cover boards falling off, end papers torn and spine spit in two. At the time I was learning craft book binding and took it to my recreational class as a project. It took all of one semester to repair the book. The teacher was somewhat intimidated by having to advise on the job until I assured her I was repairing it not restoring it. 
  
Recently I decided to relinquish my book binding craft. The pastime had being in abeyance for some time and I had passed on to new things. The paraphernalia of bookbinding have charm: pretty book cloth, colourful and marbled endpapers, trusty pieces of hard board, spine tape in various hues, brushes and glues. It was a little hard to bundle some for donation and some for disposal.  

A legacy of the craft is the 'bible' as well as the books I have re-covered in my library, all with a personalised sticky label attached to the end boards. I attained no great heights of bookbinding.  I lacked the dexterity, the artistic talent and drive for perfection. As well I only had a small part-time work desk and none of the larger machines or implements for proper book binding.  My projects  were salvaged old books or good quality paperbacks rendered more pleasant to look at and handle. 

I hope I have ensured that the 'bible' survives another hundred years and is still in the possession of a relative and that he or she may pause a moment to read the legend 'tipped' into the endpapers telling of its discovery and repair by the distant relative long gone.