The wise old man, in the video below, makes a comment which has stuck with me since I watched him a week ago. He says “Fear nothing except the failure to experience your true nature.”

A big question, asked very gently, ‘Are you experiencing yours?’…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hhFiSrsU6A&w=480&h=390]

What will happen when form collides with emptiness,                
and what will happen when perception enters non-perception?
Come here with me, friend.
Let’s watch together.
Do you see the two clowns, life and death
setting up a play on a stage?
Here comes Autumn.
The leaves are ripe.
Let the leaves fly.
A festival of colors, yellow, red.
The branches have held on to the leaves
during Spring and Summer.
This morning they let them go.
Flags and lanterns are displayed.
Everyone is here at the Full Moon Festival.

Friend, what are you waiting for?
The bright moon shines above us.
There are no clouds tonight.
Why bother to ask about lamps and fire?
Why talk about cooking dinner?
Who is searching and who is finding?
Let us just enjoy the moon, all night.

Thich Nhat Hanh

And this is beautiful.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3–UtctNYw&w=640&h=390]

There is a wonderful quote from E.E. Cummings which says “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”

A friend in San Francisco sent me this to me a week ago and I’m still laughing. Frequently, out loud.

I posted the clip on my Facebook page and another friend in Boston tells me that she still finds herself in the car, stopped at lights, grinning at the thought of a very anxious gopher looking for Alan.

I have tried to figure out how to embed this, but, well, can’t. So you’ll just have to click through. I hope you do. And I hope this makes you laugh. Or at least that something or someone, made you or will make you, laugh today.

BBC Animal voiceovers

According to NASA, the 9.0 earthquake in Japan shortened Earth’s day by just over one-millionth of a second (1.8 microseconds to be exact) and shifted the Earth’s axis by about 6.5 inches. Apparently, by changing the distribution of the planet’s mass, the quake likely caused the Earth to spin a tiny bit faster and shortened the time the planet takes to rotate each day.

It was also recently reported in the NZ Herald that “it sounds unlikely but it’s true – the magnetic north pole is moving faster than at any time in human history, threatening everything from the safety of modern transport systems to navigation routes of migrating animals…Scientists say magnetic north, which for 200 years has been in the icy wilderness of Canada, is moving west towards Russia at about 65km a year.”

Magnetic north is moving rather quickly, our day has just got a teency bit shorter, and as a friend said in an email today “I’m not sure what folks are up to these days, as I think most folks aren’t sure themselves of what they’re up to!”

We’re nearly a quarter of the way through the year. Nearly all of the folk I know are crazy busy and reluctant to commit to anything which might make them spin faster. And seeing as we’re all interconnected – not only with each other, but the planet – I wonder how the shifting axis might be shifting our own internal axes. If animals are having to re-navigate their migration routes, perhaps we too, in ways we’re not entirely conscious of, are having to move in different ways.

Which makes it all the more important, I reckon, to find a moment of stillness each day and find your north.

Just a thought.

It has been quite a month. Christchurch and now Japan. A month of numerous conversations about life. How technologically advanced we are and yet so disconnected from some of the most essential aspects of life. How mystifying it is that we can now print human tissue with a 3D printer (see recent TED for talk by Anthony Atala) and yet so many of us don’t know how our own bodies work, how to grow our own vegetables, how planet Earth – at the most basic level – works. And the ‘so many of us’ includes me…

I know more about the textile industry, about Italian Renaissance Art, about pandemic planning, than I know about my own ‘system’. I’m a little embarrassed to be so ignorant of what I should be planting in the vege garden, during these first few weeks of autumn. And I really don’t know that much at all about our place in the universe.

I have some vague recollection of studying the solar system at school but to be honest I can’t remember any of it. So thanks to wikipedia here is some very, very basic information about the sun, la bella luna and the brilliant blue dot that we all call home.

The Sun

• Is the star at the center of the solar system. So far, so good.
• It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields.
• It has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km, about 109 times that of Earth. Jeez.
• Its mass is about 2×10³⁰kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth.
• The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately  149.6 million kilometers.
• Light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds. Crikey that’s quick.
• Sunlight is Earth’s primary source of energy and supports almost all life on Earth by photosynthesis. And most of us take it for granted most of the time…
• It drives Earth’s climate and weather. Good point.
• The enormous effect of the Sun on the Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times. Prehistoric but wise.

The moon

• Is the Earth’s only  natural satellite (or celestial body) that orbits a planet or smaller body, which is called its primary.
• The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth with respect to the fixed stars about once every 27.3 days.
• The tides on the Earth are mostly generated by the gradient in intensity of the Moon’s gravitational pull from one side of the Earth to the other, the tidal forces. Worth remembering.
• This forms two tidal bulges on the Earth, which are most clearly seen in elevated sea level as ocean tides.
• Since the Earth spins about 27 times faster than the Moon moves around it, the bulges are dragged along with the Earth’s surface faster than the Moon moves, rotating around the Earth once a day as it spins on its axis.

The Earth

• Is the third planet from the Sun. And has Venus and Mars as neighbours.
• Is home to millions of species including humans. Although it would appear that we’re not very good at sharing…
• Was formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years.
• Earth’s biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer. Such a fine balance.
• The ozone layer, together with Earth’s magnetic field, blocks harmful solar radiation, permitting life on land.
• Earth’s outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. Oh tectonic plates, how we wish you weren’t quite so rigid…
• About 71% of the surface is covered with salt water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water contributing to the hydosphere.
• Liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist in equilibrium on any other planet’s surface.
• The planet’s interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.
• Earth interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. Yep.
• The magnetosphere shields the surface of the Earth from the charged particles of the solar wind and is generated byelectric currents located in many different parts of the Earth.
• At present, Earth orbits the Sun once every 366.26 times it rotates about its own axis, which is equal to 365.26 solar days, or one year.
• Earth’s only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billionyears ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet’s rotation.

My desire to know more about our place in the solar system has in large part been sparked by the recent catastrophic earthquake activity, and considerable discussion as to whether lunar activity (perigree, super-moon etc) and  solar activity (e.g. solar flares), is connected with earthquakes. Consequently, I’ve been doing a fair amount of research. However for today, I’ve gone on quite long enough! I’ll come back to more on this in a day or so. But right now, I’d like you to do something.

Take a deep breath in, close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting cross-legged just outside the earth’s atmosphere. Far enough out to have a sense of perspective of the earth and it’s relationship to the moon and the sun. As you hover there, let your breath out and feel what you are a part of. Breathe in and breathe out, a knowing that you are a part of something remarkable.

We all – 6.9 billion humans and millions of other species – share this little blue planet, the 3rd rock from the sun. A sun, made mostly of hydrogen and helium, without which life our lives would cease to exist. Our nights are lit up by a moon, a celestial body, that governs the tidal forces of the oceans which give this planet its blue appearance.

We live on a little marbled blue dot, connected to glowing white dot, connected to a massive flaming orange dot. And how awe inspiring, how humbling, is that.

This past weekend, I spent a few very happy days with much loved friends at a wedding in the Marlborough Sounds. We swam at night in the glowing phosphorescence in deep crystal clear water. Ate hot chips, sitting on the wide verandah of the hotel. Hooted with laughter, as we watched the boys debate the best way to decorate the marquee with leftover buttery yellow tulle from the bridal dress. And we got all teary eyed watching the stunningly beautiful bride walk down the aisle with her father.

But today, back in Wellington, a fellow midnight swimmer and I sat quietly in a café, hanging out before she jets back to Seattle and I told her I was feeling oddly emotionally tired given that I’d just been on holiday for 3 days.

Whilst there was plenty of hilarity there was also a sense of poignancy to the wedding. Several guests from Christchurch were unable to make it, although, thankfully not due to loss of life and Christchurch was never far from our thoughts. Knowing, that as we sat eating our hot chips on the verandah, only a couple of hundred kilometres south from where we sat, one of New Zealand’s main centres lay in ruins.

I am, I have to say, feeling a little shaken and a little stirred.

I was born and bred in, live in, the city everyone expected to be the one that was hit. Not Chch. It’s not if, but when, they’ve been telling us all my life.

Honestly, I get the whole there’s no point in dwelling in ‘what ifs’ and I understand that luck (or lack thereof) has a really big part to play in the whole thing, but I have to say that it is making me look at buildings in a new light. As I read in an excellent article this morning, it’s not earthquakes that kill people, it’s buildings.

And I don’t think it’s my imagination, but I sense a sadness and a subtle – or at least it’s subtle here in Wellington, I have no doubt that in Christchurch there is nothing remotely subtle about it –  loss of nerve in our collective consciousness. It will fade, in time, but before it does I’m hoofing off to the Warehouse and Pak & Save to finally sort out an emergency kit.

In the meantime, I’m going to take the advice of my wise 3 year old goddaughter. Her Mum (one of those beloved friends with whom I shared hot chips with very recently) told me that on being told she would be missed this past weekend, Miss 3 year old replied ‘but you’re happy now‘, or something to that affect. I reckon there’s a great deal to be said for that approach.

So yes, it IS very sensible to be prepared. The reality is we live in the land of the long white cloud which is perched on the edge of two tectonic plates. It is natural to feel sad when your community is profoundly affected by tragedy. But we can also appreciate the Now. Laugh out loud with much loved friends. Skinny dip at midnight. Sit on a verandah and eat hot chips in the sun.

A week or so ago, Andre the small black cat had an operation to remove an abscess from his inner ear. Post op, he was forced (oh the humiliation) to wear a plastic collar to stop him from scratching his stitches. Poor boy, he spent the first day or so, whiskers curtailed, crashing into everything. And yet surprisingly quickly, he adapted and learned to feel his way around.

On Sunday night, standing at the oven making frittata, I caught part of a conversation between dinner guests about an athlete training with a large plastic collar. I think I have this right, but apparently in training for some kind of ironman race, he’ll go to a very stony riverbed, put the collar around his neck, fix his sight on a destination and run. Unable to look down and see the ground beneath his feet, he has no choice but to feel his way to his destination.

I began to draft these thoughts on Monday night, intending to say that perhaps there is something to this collar thing, learning to find your way without being able to see you feet. And I’d been planning on posting this on Tuesday after I’d had an opportunity to photograph the cat with the collar. But at 12.51pm yesterday afternoon, Christchurch was struck by its second major earthquake in 5 months and this time it was devastating.

Over the last several months, Christchurch has experienced thousands of aftershocks in the wake of the major quake which struck last September. Its citizens have become very weary of the ground beneath their feet. With good reason. This week, it brought the city to its knees.

The television footage shows a place resembling a war zone. Rescue workers carefully working their way through the rubble. Families of those still trapped in buildings, sitting silently in vigil, their gaze downcast. Home owners slowly putting one foot in front of the other, picking their way the wreckage of their houses. Mostly patient people standing in line for water.

This country is a small one, New Zealanders hardly ever more than 2 degrees of separation from anyone. I feel deeply for those who are struggling to find, let alone trust, the ground beneath their feet. I feel deeply for those who less than 36 hours ago were so sure of their destination and it changed in the blink of an eye.

Tonight, beyond contemplation of the notion that we might choose not to see our feet but instead feel our way, I’m just so very grateful that for now,  I am sure of the ground beneath my feet. And I’m profoundly grateful for the good people in Christchurch who are there to help tonight and in the days and weeks to follow. There to take someone’s hand and guide them across unstable ground and to put a hand on a shoulder and gently but firmly give them direction.

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American engineer, author, designer, inventor, and futurist.

How magical, is this.

“…I like them all, but especially the olive. For what it symbolizes, first of all, peace with its leaves and joy with its golden oil.”
Aldous Huxley

Ahhh, the humble olive. In this case, Spanish green olives.