Follow the White Horse

There is a saying about small towns, everyone knows everything because there is nothing to know.  You can give a vague description about anything in a town, and immediately someone will pipe up, "Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about." Everyone has discovered everything so nothing is new to them.  But I am a stranger here in these parts so I looked completely foolish to them as I went completely ga ga over this miniature white horse.

The horse saw me walking down the street and approached the fence, almost like an invitation.  It's interesting about its conditioning because it stopped by a sign that simply read, "Don't Feed The Horse".  My guess is that the horse is an experienced beggar, and people tend to dislike being told what not to do.  Perhaps it is to prevent the owner from being sued if the horse bit them.

However, this horse showed a smile and not its teeth and posed so beautifully for me.  Of course I couldn't resist its eyes and I just happened to have a huge green apple in my bag that just might have made it over the fence as payment for its kindness.

Sometimes we have to ignore what the signs say and just do what is right.  

Since When Is Life Safe? The Sorrow of Time Travel.

It was the first of November, 2012 and the anxiety of the approach of 21 December was being acutely felt in the world.  Did it feel like 1999 all over again?  I started thinking about how many times in my life I had heard the world is coming to an end, and if life is going to end, what is the point?  Right?  I mean why do anything if it is all for nothing.  Why get out of bed?  Why plant crops?  Why raise children?  Why do we need to do absolutely anything if all that is waiting for us is one great big long dirt nap?  Life is vanity.  Someone else screwed it up and well, it is all damnation.    How would you spend your last 24 hours or days or years?  How would life go on if we all had the lifespan of a butterfly?  Well in terms of eternity, that is exactly what we have been allocated, but even a butterfly starts off as a caterpillar, spins a cocoon, waits and then eventually emerges from its shell as a butterfly.  Before it dies it mates profusely just to ensure that life does go on and it dies.  The interesting thing about butterflies is it doesn't question its existence, nor ponders about the meaning of life.  It just produces life and as a benefit, it also helps farmers with cross pollination.  The butterfly is just being a butterfly.

Published in The Allora Advertiser Issue No. 3220, 1 November 2012, p14

I love being around nature, and during my time here, I haven't really spent very much time on newspapers, television, nor even the internet.  Instead I have been writing, taking pictures, and exploring this small town in Australia.  I have spent a lot of time in meditation, talking to people and sharing stories with new found friends.  We have been learning from each other, and honestly it has infused life into my veins.  One of my new friends showed me the local paper for the market specials and in the advert section was a request for an adventurer.  I had to remind myself that the population is less than one thousand people, and someone posted a request that was completely original and paid for.    Someone was seeking a time traveler.  For a half-second, which is an eternity, I thought about calling up the fellow just to ask how many Allorians actually called.  Then again, I noticed the number was not a local number, but I decided not to reply.  The ad itself is enough for speculation.  Since Australia has been progressively changing their firearm laws and gun ownership has been challenged year by year since 2008, I wonder how many have their own weapons to bring.  Of course, I also love the line, "I have only done this once before."  Perhaps he was the gent that showed up in an all tweed suit trying to sabotage a Mountain Dew delivery to CERN and then subsequently disappeared without a trace from the psychiatric facility he was taken to.  So I decided to go on a time travel walk about to the old train station.

In many parts of the world, train travel is making a resurgence, actually train travel for many parts of the world has never died off.  As a matter of fact, newer, faster lines with improved technologies are most evident in Asia.  In the West, we just cannot seem to figure out that train lines shouldn't be privately owned.  There are some things that have to be managed for the service of all, but we can't seem to strike the right balance of what it means to live in a cooperative society.

 There is something striking about seeing the disuse and as I walked along the rails, I came to the end of the line and wondered why we were all so quick to assume that the automobile would be the answer to our transportation needs.

 And so I looked at how nature is overtaking this abandoned line that once hauled cattle and sheep and coal and possibly passengers on the fringes of the outback until one day there was no more profit to be made and it simply died.

 And I wondered about this time travel scenario.  Should someone go back in time and tell people not to build this line because it wouldn't be used one day?  Of course, I am not serious and I have no weapon with me.  Speculating on what a person would or could do if they went back into time is simply not taking responsibility for the life you have lived so far.

 It is better to remember that you cannot unmake your choices, but you can correct along the way.  You can make mistakes and you can choose to change.  It's better to be slow to anger and to speak up at the right times.  Isn't life about mastering yourself and not desiring to control the actions of others?

 So often, you hear about people wishing about what they could have or should have done.  You hear about people (maybe even yourself) that cite many things they wish they had not done at all.  Perhaps they were deceived, hurt or worse, perhaps they were the perpetrator.  My point is, even if you could undo one mistake in time, it doesn't change the person that made the mistake to begin with.

It might seem like it would be as simple as flipping a switch and all of your fortunes would change.  One thing that remains the same is you, your character.  No matter how much wealth, how much health, nor how much wisdom is acquired; that person is still the same with now other identities in place.  No matter how much wealth, fame or power one acquires in life; you still have to deal with yourself and no amount of time travel can change that.

Walking in Sapford's Corner

 On one of my many walks in Allora while trying to catch a vision of whatever I was trying to catch a vision of, I thought about my journey.  It seems that we go through life getting nicked up along the way.  Sometimes, we get bruised and in a way our own pain gets in the way of seeing a bigger picture. It can also get in the way of being the person we were meant to be.  Sometimes our fear of pain leads us to do things to protect ourselves and others that we have no desire to hurt.  Sometimes that desire to shield others from pain actually hurts them even more.

Here, at the historic Sapford's corner, I spent a lot of my time trying to tap into something greater than myself.  There were many themes and theories explored that took me back to something deep within me that had died, my heart.  There is nothing harder for the world to take than that inability to love again.  Part of that reason is perhaps, the world just really doesn't know the difference between love and sexual attraction.  It's made me think hard about intentions when interacting with people.   You see the open nature of a child.  I want to be that child, but I have had to learn about love again.

Allora is sheep country.  When I approached the sheep to take a picture of them, because I was amused by how the driver just pulled up and stopped off for a pint at the pub, the sheep cowered away and started bleating.  Instinctively, they are afraid of people, yet are born into captivity and know nothing else.  They are handled, sheared, rounded up and marked as owned beasts.  Fear guides them, but fear doesn't save them.  I have never heard of sheep living in the wild, but mountain goats, yes.  Sheep have been described as dumb, but peaceful animals that run in herds.  I decided to look up wild sheep and of course saw almost all breeds of wild sheep have horns to defend themselves.  Domesticated sheep breeds, not so, so they resort to the flock mentality as their primary defense when they are in groups as small as four.  A lone sheep is viewed as without protection from the world and is not expected to survive.

 In the Goomburra Forest Reserve,  I saw this tree completely stripped of all of its bark.  Actually, stripped is the wrong word to use, it sheds its bark, standing completely naked.  It was glistening in the sunlight and I just stared at it, thinking that quite possibly something was wrong with it, but as I continued on, I saw several other 'nudist' trees.  It was just its nature and I was questioning it because it was different from what I had seen before.

So the last sign to see was one that told me to keep on walking,  For a town that has a total population of less than 1,000 people I began to see that it's true, we do see the world as we are and not necessarily as it is.

Sapford's corner, historically was a place of both healing and pain; and often healing does not come without pain.

Icing the Equator

It was snowing back home, or trying to, when I finally landed in Australia. Today was new firsts for me.  It was the first time I had crossed the equator.  It was the first time I crossed both the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.  It was the first time I was in Australia.  I had neglected this blog during this trip, so I am retro posting because I did want to document along the way my journey and actually reflect on this journey that taught me about our cousins.  There is a saying about how everything tries to kill you in this country, I supposed that could have been said about the new world when they colonized it centuries ago.  With regard to Europe, it seems they have always had a concern about population size, and so many were forced to leave Europe and find their fortunes in either the New World, or if they were in Debtors prisons, forced to make the journey to Australia.  I had lived in the United Kingdom for two years during the end of the Thatcher administration.  One thing I observed was their class system, it's so pronounced there.  That need to be titled, positioned or well healed and their subservience to the royals.  I observed the tax battles first hand when the ill fated poll tax proved to be the fatal blow to end the career of Margaret Thatcher.  

But it's not 1990, and I am not in the United Kingdom.  What is the best way to describe Australia at first blush?  They have their own brand of English and the people are incredibly down to earth.  In Queensland, it was not uncommon to see people walking into the local stores "black footing", which mean sans shoes and socks.  I resisted the urge to be snobbish and smiled and people would say g'day to me.  I was quiet at first as I listen to the rate and color of their speech.  They had their own language and coarse wording, but what I noticed about so many people was their incredible love of exploration and they knew their history.

When I first arrived, the driver was telling me about the horrible droughts they were having in Allora, which is an incredibly small town where the author, P. L. Travers grew up.  Those of you who have read the "Mary Poppins" series will know who P. L. Travers is.  I hadn't know that she had spent her childhood here before I arrived, but it's kind of a funny thing, because I would say about myself, "I'm like Mary Poppins, I go where I am needed."  It's also the location of a small museum that houses a replica of the Talgai skull that was found here, estimations range from 9 to 11 thousand years old.  For religions based on the story of Adam and Eve, that throws a horrible wrench into that theory.  The original skull is housed elsewhere, in the Shellshear Museum, Department of anatomy at the Sydney University, but nonetheless, the replica is housed their small museum.  I thought it was interesting that Allora township in Darling Downs actually sold the skull instead of donating it.  

 It was an incredible drive from Brisbane to Allora, and I have a habit of shooting photographs out the window, because it helps me to keep the moment alive when I go someplace new.  The weather was terrifically warm and I was very happy to have stowed my winter coat in my luggage.  Here, spring was coming to an end and the very beginning of summer was upon them.

 I was getting use to the altitude of their small pass, and was shown and told about the aboriginal affection for these mountains, which the driver apologized for their lack of size and said, "well, they're really not mountains, more like hills, but to us, they're our mountains."  The aboriginal people call two particular mountains 'the guardians', not allowing anything bad into the outback.  I was only able to get a quality shot of the one below.  I have to say that I felt like Dorthy, in the Wizard of Oz.  Only I wasn't off to see the Wizard or looking for a place called home and I have only passed through Kansas and have no desire to return there anytime soon.

Going with the wind, but not gone

There is a wanderlust in my blood that just won't go away.  There are places that just seem to call to people, like a secret is about to be whispered to them.  When the whisper comes, I have found, in my past experience, you go.  There are many people who don't understand what I am talking about.  They are stuck with their obligations, their responsibilities and there is nothing wrong with that.  There is a time and season for everything.  However, there seems to be something wrong with staying 'safe and secure'.  If we don't allow ourselves to be pushed and strengthened, what happens to us in moments of weakness?

Sometimes when a new adventure comes my way, I can't help but feel my stomach churn.  I don't know it all.  I don't know the whole path.  I don't know the plan from one day to the next.   I only know that first step that leads on to the second step.  I can't see how it's all going to come together and for once I don't have all of the answers.  I have a round-trip ticket to an adventure that I don't have all of the pieces for, and though the destination is a physical one, I am wondering what I am going to learn and who I am going to meet along the way.

I am on my way to Allora, Australia.  What awaits me?  I don't exactly know.  Does that worry me?  It's is the good kind of nervousness,  like the kind I went through the first time I went to Paris or my first flight or my first kiss.  It's the not knowing it all that actually gives us that tingle of excitement.  It is that state of being when you just realize we really don't want to know it all.  We really do love learning for ourselves and not being told how it's all going to turn out.  It's that innocence I love. Whatever I see, whatever I will experience, it will come unadulterated.

In this age of information overload, it seems we get fewer opportunities to not know.  It makes me realize how we may have become too comfortable with the boring and predictable.