If you prefer you can listen to this here otherwise read on!
Greetings One and All
What a year, what a life… many are berating 2016 for its rude and rough handling of us. Yes it contained some the most horrific and unpleasant surprises globally and personally but it also contained some of the brightest moments of growth illuminating the path ahead.
My year began with a rash of fun missives about things such as Leap Year and Indonesian Eclipses then the writing if not the living faded off as I was overwhelmed by events… I experienced an inexplicable marriage of heaven and hell in relationship form. Encountered death with a stranger on a beach. Returned to transformative festivals like Burning Man. Finished one major film, started another straight away while still making time for a low-budget Indie. Love was lost. Death claimed my father via the limbo of neurological ICU. I donned the mantle and crown of responsibility and finally had a healing Christmas with my family. Per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars). The lesson of accepting loss forever played out in full. I did the work and immediately found that what could be returned to me was. Not my dear departed father but version 2.0 of the relationship with Miss Rabbit.
During the year I behaved in ways admirable and abominable. Proud of how I handled many adversities I was equally shamed at my reaction to perceived challenges. When someone powerful storms into your life in the name of love the opportunity for change can be mistaken as attack on sovereignty. One's old un-serving patterns are not one’s identity, no matter how long one has come to identify with them, they are just a shell. It might protect from external harm but it can also constrain and contain. Growth can seem painful but after lobster-like shedding I am glad of this years extraordinary lessons. I feel the freedom to shift, expand and take the brave steps towards a bright future. One filled with more hope and promise than I have ever felt. Not the least because I feel met and Isadora and I have shared the same journey through a crucible of fire emerging with a strong, respectful, loving bond and beautiful vision for the future. It necessarily took complete loss to find our way back to each other. Our recovery mantra’s, the personal "Locked open in Love at Convict Lake.” and the public paradigm shifting parody "Too good to fail.” Like this astonishing world we live in.
One regret I can rectify was the failure to post one of my two ‘compulsory’ annual blog articles - around Hot Cross Buns … While I might not have written about it - I did not miss out on the occasion…
Rewind to late March and for the very first time I feasted upon Easter buns kneaded by my own hands under the auspices of Miss Rabbit in Gothenburg. It was a first excursion to her home city to meet friends and family. I am nothing if not romantic so a couple of these buns were crested not with crosses but with hearts instead. I was very surprised by the amount of effort it takes to make these bread like things - far more effort than a cake yet a wonderfully soul-nourishing thing to do. As they baked and filled the house with the aroma of yeasty Easter yumminess we celebrated, via a yoga kria, gratitude at the wealth of abundance we enjoy.
I believe in the restorative nature of forest fires and that the phoenix can only rise from the ashes but the healing balm of recognition and reconciliation is required to balance things. I do not Iive to tread the simplest path of a happy pig, nor am I a fair weather friend. Why run at trouble and strife when to remain might enable depth of connection and release from deeply blocked pain and suffering. Why run when learning so much about myself. Learning about me, the maker of my jokes and exporter of my laugh, crier of my tears, dreamer of my dreams and author of my life. And for sure I learned how large and small an alpha I can be and how that was at times quite horrid for my previous loves and teachers. Yum Yum, Mouse, Crab, Red and Pudding please accept my apologies for being so goddamn stubborn. Thank you so much for being with me, for the amazing experiences and for all the valuable lessons gained from you. Lessons that have made me who I am and enabled me to live this life. Your love was always an amazing gift and prepared me for this one I now worship at the altar of. All that I am I offer at the altar of love in sweet surrender.
But then again perhaps it has been this stubborness (Obby the … ) that has enabled me to remain in place and follow this lupine alpha on alpha mating policy...
Good Wolf, Evil Wolf fighting for your soul… which one will win. The one you choose to feed. This is in general taken to mean that one should feed the good wolf not the bad one. However if you don’t pay the bad one any attention at all you are going to have a ferocious, desperate and starving wolf tearing at your soul as its very existence is threatened. That sounds none too wise. Perhaps feeding it and giving it loving kindness might change its ways… for the most part things react well to compassion and sympathy and badly to favouritism and neglect. It is important to find the alternative narrative that encompasses the whole and provides a positive outcome for all involved in the story. It can contain a hero’s journey and yet redeem the villain. For we contain both and both are part of us. Like Tantra is often misunderstood in the West as being only of the light… it is not, it contains all, the whole spectrum from light to dark and back again around the other side where the filters don’t make it quite so clear whose brighter anyway… light, dark, left, right, up, down, in, out, man, woman, mountain, valley, peak, trough, right, wrong, concave, convex, they are all descriptions just of opposites, of abstractions such as directions that cannot exist without each other. None of it is absolute; all can be quantitative and relational rather than judgemental. So invite your dark side in, offer it a nice cup of tea and a sit down, thank it for its efforts to protect you from something it itself is terrified of, reassure it that all is going to be ok, that it is welcome to enjoy the warmth but only for as long as it does not cause trouble. And if it does … flush it down the toilet saying it can only come back once it’s improved its attitude again.
Much love wonderful friends
Doctor Lobster
In the meantime I’d like you to know that I have been befriending Aeschylus, a most wonderful if slightly cranky 30-year-old tortoise here in South Africa at my father’s house.
Greetings One and All
What a year, what a life… many are berating 2016 for its rude and rough handling of us. Yes it contained some the most horrific and unpleasant surprises globally and personally but it also contained some of the brightest moments of growth illuminating the path ahead.
My year began with a rash of fun missives about things such as Leap Year and Indonesian Eclipses then the writing if not the living faded off as I was overwhelmed by events… I experienced an inexplicable marriage of heaven and hell in relationship form. Encountered death with a stranger on a beach. Returned to transformative festivals like Burning Man. Finished one major film, started another straight away while still making time for a low-budget Indie. Love was lost. Death claimed my father via the limbo of neurological ICU. I donned the mantle and crown of responsibility and finally had a healing Christmas with my family. Per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars). The lesson of accepting loss forever played out in full. I did the work and immediately found that what could be returned to me was. Not my dear departed father but version 2.0 of the relationship with Miss Rabbit.
During the year I behaved in ways admirable and abominable. Proud of how I handled many adversities I was equally shamed at my reaction to perceived challenges. When someone powerful storms into your life in the name of love the opportunity for change can be mistaken as attack on sovereignty. One's old un-serving patterns are not one’s identity, no matter how long one has come to identify with them, they are just a shell. It might protect from external harm but it can also constrain and contain. Growth can seem painful but after lobster-like shedding I am glad of this years extraordinary lessons. I feel the freedom to shift, expand and take the brave steps towards a bright future. One filled with more hope and promise than I have ever felt. Not the least because I feel met and Isadora and I have shared the same journey through a crucible of fire emerging with a strong, respectful, loving bond and beautiful vision for the future. It necessarily took complete loss to find our way back to each other. Our recovery mantra’s, the personal "Locked open in Love at Convict Lake.” and the public paradigm shifting parody "Too good to fail.” Like this astonishing world we live in.
One regret I can rectify was the failure to post one of my two ‘compulsory’ annual blog articles - around Hot Cross Buns … While I might not have written about it - I did not miss out on the occasion…
Rewind to late March and for the very first time I feasted upon Easter buns kneaded by my own hands under the auspices of Miss Rabbit in Gothenburg. It was a first excursion to her home city to meet friends and family. I am nothing if not romantic so a couple of these buns were crested not with crosses but with hearts instead. I was very surprised by the amount of effort it takes to make these bread like things - far more effort than a cake yet a wonderfully soul-nourishing thing to do. As they baked and filled the house with the aroma of yeasty Easter yumminess we celebrated, via a yoga kria, gratitude at the wealth of abundance we enjoy.
I believe in the restorative nature of forest fires and that the phoenix can only rise from the ashes but the healing balm of recognition and reconciliation is required to balance things. I do not Iive to tread the simplest path of a happy pig, nor am I a fair weather friend. Why run at trouble and strife when to remain might enable depth of connection and release from deeply blocked pain and suffering. Why run when learning so much about myself. Learning about me, the maker of my jokes and exporter of my laugh, crier of my tears, dreamer of my dreams and author of my life. And for sure I learned how large and small an alpha I can be and how that was at times quite horrid for my previous loves and teachers. Yum Yum, Mouse, Crab, Red and Pudding please accept my apologies for being so goddamn stubborn. Thank you so much for being with me, for the amazing experiences and for all the valuable lessons gained from you. Lessons that have made me who I am and enabled me to live this life. Your love was always an amazing gift and prepared me for this one I now worship at the altar of. All that I am I offer at the altar of love in sweet surrender.
But then again perhaps it has been this stubborness (Obby the … ) that has enabled me to remain in place and follow this lupine alpha on alpha mating policy...
Good Wolf, Evil Wolf fighting for your soul… which one will win. The one you choose to feed. This is in general taken to mean that one should feed the good wolf not the bad one. However if you don’t pay the bad one any attention at all you are going to have a ferocious, desperate and starving wolf tearing at your soul as its very existence is threatened. That sounds none too wise. Perhaps feeding it and giving it loving kindness might change its ways… for the most part things react well to compassion and sympathy and badly to favouritism and neglect. It is important to find the alternative narrative that encompasses the whole and provides a positive outcome for all involved in the story. It can contain a hero’s journey and yet redeem the villain. For we contain both and both are part of us. Like Tantra is often misunderstood in the West as being only of the light… it is not, it contains all, the whole spectrum from light to dark and back again around the other side where the filters don’t make it quite so clear whose brighter anyway… light, dark, left, right, up, down, in, out, man, woman, mountain, valley, peak, trough, right, wrong, concave, convex, they are all descriptions just of opposites, of abstractions such as directions that cannot exist without each other. None of it is absolute; all can be quantitative and relational rather than judgemental. So invite your dark side in, offer it a nice cup of tea and a sit down, thank it for its efforts to protect you from something it itself is terrified of, reassure it that all is going to be ok, that it is welcome to enjoy the warmth but only for as long as it does not cause trouble. And if it does … flush it down the toilet saying it can only come back once it’s improved its attitude again.
Much love wonderful friends
Doctor Lobster
In the meantime I’d like you to know that I have been befriending Aeschylus, a most wonderful if slightly cranky 30-year-old tortoise here in South Africa at my father’s house.
