Dawn Meditation

Early morning is my time for sitting in meditation. I composed this Haiku which, even though it doesn’t conform to Haiku rules, expresses the essence of my daily experience.

Winter dawn

Sit, feel my breath

Darkness. Solitude.

Some days meditation is easier than others. Some days getting out of bed is easier than others. Most days I just have to get out of bed, stretch and go for it!

Some days I can sit in stillness and some days I fidget. I think the main thing is to do it!

Thinking about Lessons with Persephone, and walking meditation in the maze, there is the understanding that meditation is not only sitting in stillness.

Lessons with Persephone combined Yoga and Writing. In the beautiful and peaceful surroundings of Nathaneal’s Rest in Mundaring, both Yoga and Writing flowed easily. Home, and the quotidian life makes both more difficult.

I persevere.

Levitating under stress

I think I’ll write about levitating.

I have levitated twice in my long life, both times under extreme stress. I have tried to levitate in normal conditions but it doesn’t work! I do have a witness for both times that I did rise up and forward.

The first time I levitated was many years ago in Africa. It was just before Christmas. We were looking for a particular prickly fern that grows wild in the bush. We used it as a Christmas decoration. The long tendrils draped nicely over pictures, doorways and window pelmets.

climbing asparagus fern – a weed in Australia

A few of the farm dogs were with us as we walked down the gravel track leading from the main road into the farm. Among the dogs was my mother’s fox terrier, Kleintjie. Roughly translated, Kleintjie is ‘little one’. In fact, all my mother’s foxies were called Kleintjie. As one departed this life another Kleintjie took her place.

Walking back to the Big House, Kath – who had recently learned to walk – ran a little way ahead perhaps thirty metres. I noticed movement next to her on the gravel. Dear God, my heart leapt into my mouth. The movement was a banded cobra rising up to strike directly into my daughter’s face. So, I levitated from where I was standing to Kath. As I landed, Kleintjie ran between the striking cobra and Kath drawing its attention away from her. Even as I write this I can feel the hairs on my neck prickle. Death was so close. Kleintjie evaded the snake, which then slithered off the track and into the bush.

photo by Peter Wright

The second time I levitated was in Cape Town. I think it was in 1977. We were living in a flat in Camp’s Bay on the side of the mountain. Because of the angle of the ground, the block of flats was perched atop tall pillars and we were on the top (third) floor. We were more or less level with the ground at the back but had the most astonishing views over Camp’s Bay and the ocean from the front windows.

Twelve Apostles. Camps Bay. Photo by FromJoanne on Flickr

Anyway, early one morning I was standing in the kitchen looking up at The Twelve Apostles through the kitchen window. I heard an extraordinary sound, like a massive pantechnicon that seemed to come from the street behind us. I couldn’t see one and wondered to myself what was a pantechnicon doing up on the mountain at this hour? Then I realised that the stove was moving and rattling. Objects were falling off the shelves. The floor was shaking too. Shit, an earthquake! So, without further ado, I levitated from the kitchen to the bedroom and into the bed. I pulled the blankets over my head although, under the circumstances, that may not have been the wisest thing to do.

If you don’t believe me, ask Roland!

Monkey’s Wedding

Liana and I are standing in the doorway of the hall looking out at the rain. The sun shines through the rain and the rain keeps falling. I say, “Monkey’s wedding”. Liana looks at me, “I haven’t heard that expression before?”
“It is something we say in Africa when the sun is shining the same time the rain is falling.”

Saying, “Monkey’s wedding” is a quaint memory from my childhood. It is something I taught my own daughter and my granddaughters too. It isn’t something one deliberately sets out to ‘teach’ but one of those sayings that children pick up because you use it in a certain identifiable situation. It is a colourful phrase that appeals to children – that appeals to people of all ages. The image of a monkey bridal couple complete with fluffy white dress and flowers, top hat and tails, sparks the imagination.

It has never entered my head that Australians don’t say, “Monkey’s wedding” when the sun shines through the rain. We have so many expressions in common but this one has slipped past the keeper. I wonder if it is because there are no monkeys native to Australia? I’ve had a look at Google and Wiki. It seems that the original phrase comes from the Zulu language – “… a loan translation of the Zulu umshado wezinkawu, a wedding for monkeys”. There is also a link to Portuguese casamento de rapôsa – vixen’s wedding – which then changed to casamento de macaco – monkey’s wedding.

The term ‘Sunshower’ seems to be the most commonly used expression in various parts of the world. Topically, The Word Detective says that in “In New York we used to say, “The Donald is fixing his hair”. Whether that is the POTUS Donald or not is a moot point!

There are so many places I could go with this blog entry. For example, Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens and the instinct of play that nourishes so much of our philosophy. But that will turn this into a Sociology essay and bore most people witless. So, I’ll leave it here and just say … Next time you see the sun shining through the rain try saying, “Monkey’s wedding” – it’s guaranteed to make you smile.

Writing and Research

Thinking about what to write in this week’s blog, I mull over the events at the Lessons with Persephone Retreat at the weekend. In the quiet of the Retreat, writing came easily. At the moment, this blog is going nowhere.

When we were talking about if, and when, we had been published, I mentioned that I had only published in a couple of academic journals and one chapter in a book. This chapter was a shared enterprise with my PhD Supervisor, Prof. Jenny de Reuck, and a colleague who was also one of Jenny’s Post Grads, Sharifa Ahjum. The title of the chapter is “The Remembrance of Things Past”: Memory and Migration as Tropes in the Construction of Postgraduate Subjectivities. (You can see we didn’t resile from long and involved titles). When I reread it now, I am struck by the clarity of the writing and the sense of community we shared.

The book is Bartlett, A & Mercer G (Eds) (2001) Postgraduate Research Supervision: Transforming (R)Elations. New York. Peter Lang. pp 233-245.

The paragraphs that I want to bring to this blog are my own.

In the beginning my doctoral research was to follow my own background – about the women who went to Africa, not from England. That was the intention. In the event, I didn’t follow that research – a common enough story for any PhD Candidate.

In this essay, I moved to writing about Jenny, Sharifa and I – our positionality and affective ethnicity. This is what I wrote: “Where do I stand to Jenny? Where do I stand to Sharifa? How are we so inclusive of each other? It is our coming out of Africa that is our ‘affective ethnicity’. Our form of ethnicity is beyond blood and colour. We draw our connection from our African origins, shared memories of experiences from a country we have left. ‘Affective ethnicity’; meta-ethnicity! Affective pedagogy!” I drew on the work of Moshe Shokeid (‘An Anthropologist’s Work between Moving Genres’ in Ethnos. Vol 57, 1 – 4, 233- 44, 1992.)

Following this I bemoan the fact that I have such difficulty in understanding some of the texts such as Foucault and Bhabha. Sharifa can read and understand these but I battle to make sense of such abstract concepts. Here, again, I quote myself, “Is it my age that stands between me and truly understanding these readings? Has my mind closed the doors—atrophied in the cells? Am I trapped in ignorance? Sometimes I bang my fists against these closed doors, “Open up! Open up!” I call, then, “Think Woman! Think!” Who is the teacher who can lead me to comprehension? Where is the insight that I deny myself? Self-proscribed knowledge, self-proscribed wisdom.

Finally, back to the beginning.

The first entry in my PhD journal reads thus:

Some of the things I want to include:

The spiritual aspect.

The sense of self.

The sense of place.

Identity as a fragile, contextual thing … I worry about my rigidity.

Can I sustain the energy?

The essence is this, researching and writing a doctoral thesis is a lonely thing to do. It is atonement for curiosity; an exercise in humility; self-inflicted isolation. Nevertheless, this is my search for an identity in an alien space. I was never brought up to be an academic. I was never brought up to be an Australian. I catch a glimpse of myself and ask “Who are you?” or maybe, “Who do you think you are?” And then I continue—because what else is there to do?

So, I did continue and eventually, a couple of days before I turned 60, I was notified that I was through. I was now a bona fide doctor.