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The log of John
It’s been a long time between drinks. A long time between my posts. And by way of apology for my inactivity, I have quite the chalice to quench your thirst. More drown it completely in fact, in a gallon of purple prose.
Yes, I do have another web dairy now—67 posts and counting at A Sensitivity to Things —writing more than enough to keep me busy, but time was found recently for a longer piece, a story about the beginning of high school many years ago, about the end of my childhood, about how I found my child self once more by finding meditation:
I remember my last night of childhood clearly. It was the last day of the summer holidays, last day of the month of January, beginning of the hottest time of year in New Zealand, the time of the year that school begins. Tomorrow was the first day of high school. Tomorrow my childhood would end.
Perhaps the slowly growing sense of desperation, unarticulated fear clawing at edge of heart was an unconscious sense of impending death. I certainly couldn’t see living in my future. Here in the very height of summer, amidst late-setting nights and balmy, humid days, the winter of my life would begin.
You might be wondering where the phrase “long time between drinks” comes from—or wondering what it means. It’s origin appears to be American, from some time in the 1800s, and it refers to a long time between meetings or activity. There is no one definitive source for its first appearance, but the following post Civil War tale whet my fancy:
There's a lovely story about a meeting of the governors of the two states during Reconstruction, and it turns on this question: What did the governor of South Carolina say to the governor of North Carolina? Gov. James Orr reputedly said to Jonathan Worth, “The governor of South Carolina feels constrained to say to the governor of North Carolina, that in these military cabinet counsels, there is a mighty long time between drinks.”
You might also be wondering where all the melodrama and heightened prose in my writing comes from? I’ll let you know when I work it out myself.
Read more: Miracles out of Mountains out of Molehills
In a recent charming, illumining anecdote, Age Does Not Matter, Sumangali wrote:
“Age does not matter. At seventy-five Sri Chinmoy is proving that to me. Through his life of meditation and self-transcendence he shows me that perhaps I am not as limited as I think. I hope to continue forgetting how old I really am. I hope to feel amused, rather than bound, if I do happen to remember, and grateful to Sri Chinmoy, especially if others find it funny too.”
I can relate to these sentiments in so many ways.
At 13 and in my first year in High School, I would at times be mistaken for 16 or older, not because of my size—most definitely not—but my attitude and demeanour. I was overly serious and “adult,” something of an grown up trapped in a child’s body, and for the most part related to my elders better than my peers. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing unless it is making you miserable—it was and then some.
Now at all of 32 I find age to be a bit of a joke. I still can’t believe I am in my thirties—now at the point where I have to stop and think to remember my age—and for most of my twenties could not believe I was not a teen. This is only because of meditation.
With the regular practise of meditation—in which I am certainly no expert, but hopefully an advertisement for—and its slow-dawning felicitation to experience life in the ever present, eternal now, I again feel as I did before those forgettable, teen-aged years—like a child, and myself once more.
Hazy, sun-warmed memories from a recent trip to Thailand
Sunset in Cha-Am
My mind was last to get the joke as always; made at its own expense by heart, gentle laughter the first sign that something had escaped its gaze. Yes, I am running after several days not, the reasons for which prove absurd as soon as I leave my Cha-Am, Thailand beach-front hotel.
Leaving the resort village, township of tourist convenience and the music was there—I would recall this later clearly by memory—but side of the road loud speakers and their radio tune made no impression to mind still speaking, thoughts turning wildly at the start of the run.
Running, running... breath yet to catch my legs, legs yet to catch my head, head still insisting body is ten years younger and two minutes per mile faster, but body knows and protests loudly the truth proud mind resists.
Half past five in the evening; work is finished for locals, holidays continue for tourists, sun is setting for all but only just—there is light yet for dinner in road-side shacks come restaurants, old men sitting where they have sat all day, every day, watching young men and women pass to the places where only the young go; light yet for watching the sun set, or for running, and joy—sun heated air warming overworked lungs. Suriya, lord of the sky still holds dominion outside air-conditioned, water by the bottle hotel.
Read more: Beneath golden, setting sun
Subarata
A passing reflection on friendship...
I was touched reading Jogyata's short story for his wife's birthday: A Devoted Heart; it seemed on the 7th anniversary of her passing she was still very much in his thoughts.
He was so very hollow when it happened all those years ago. They were always “Jogyata and Subarata,” joined by ‘and’ rather than ‘or,’ by heart as well as conjunction—a partnership in it's truest sense. It seemed as though a part of him had been ripped away, and of course in a sense it had. For a while he was ghost-like, like only half a man, yet he took on the responsibilities of another one and a half stoically—at least outwardly so—running a national meditation centre that they had always run together. The story wasn't supposed to end with just Clyde, but when God is the author it seems endings are flexible things...
Read more: Passing reflection
James K. Baxter
I've just written a new biography for PoetSeers.org on James K. Baxter (1926-72), my favourite New Zealand poet and also the most critically acclaimed.
James K. Baxter is unusual among the great modern poets in that he was also a God-lover; his life-long wrestling with religion and self-identity the cause of his enduring popularity and ongoing controversy.
Baxter struggled his entire life he to find his true calling, experimenting with academia, Jungian psychology, Anglicanism, native Maori spirituality, Buddhism and Catholicism before producing his own unique amalgamation; instructed in a dream to form a spiritual community in the small Maori settlement of Jerusalem, the down and out, poor, destitute and helpless came to join him upon the banks of the Wanganui River, where he also wrote some of his best poetry.
No discussion of James K. Baxter would be complete without mentioning his best known poem, written when he was only eighteen:
High Country Weather
Read the bio: James K. Baxter: New Zealand's Greatest Poet
Note: for those who notice such things, the ‘cross-hairs’ on his photograph are actually crop marks—in the good old days before computers, a sub-editor or typesetter would manually draw crop marks on the part of a photograph they wished to publish. I'm guessing they were deliberately cutting off his fashionably messy haircut.
Madal Bal, Auckland, N.Z. Is that a new logo?
Madal Bal, an international chain of giftware stores of Swiss origin recently opened its doors for the first time here in New Zealand, a small shop on Auckland’s Takapuna beach managed by Budhsamudra, also known as the seller of fantastic tales on Radio Sri Chinmoy’s Inspiration-Sounds —and one of my flatmates.
As we ate pizza this evening: $6.95 a pie, no-coupon permanent special won out of court by litigious “kosher” housemate, we swapped tales of customers; admittedly his were more fantastic, seeing as how I now mostly work from home, although one of these days I will commit a few stories to paper from my many years as a “Postal Delivery Officer.”
(Here's a quick one for starters—anyone who thinks that something written on a postcard is private is insane—all postie’s read postcards, and in fact love them—they’re a highlight of a mostly mundane job, and good ones get shared around the office before being delivered!)
Termessos theatre
It is over a month ago now that I was in Turkey, a Christmas vacation with fellow students of Sri Chinmoy, spiritual darshan in the land where West meets East, Levi's meet prayer mats, amateur photographer meets spectacular scenery—myself the former and Antalya the later—ancient Mediterranean city of heaven-reaching mountains and endless beaches, and not a few tourists.
The following are a series of image galleries from Antalya, Turkey; sights from the city itself, beaches and mountains, and a visit to the ancient mountain-top ruins of Termessos, an eagle's nest 1500m above the city which Alexander the Great chose to bypass rather than invade in 333BC.
Recently posted on Turkey:
- The Mysterious Bloom by Sumangali
- Reluctant popstar: story of a visit to a Turkish barber
- Photos of Antalya at richardpettinger.com
- Topkapi - Istanbul by Sharani
