Uncertainty

Uncertainty abounds
making me question everything
suddenly I seem rudderless
still in the water
awaiting breeze or star
wondering how come
I feel so far away
without star to guide
or inner compass working

Donkey in Well - and goats in general

At times my life is really like a roller coaster of impossible situations that connect in unexpected ways.  I expect everyone feels this at times.  This week I found myself in an animal room at work with three small goats, a cat, seven rabbits and around two dozen students.  We were practising restraint and each one had to take it in turns holding the animals in position.  The students were nice the animals were even nicer and with good humour put up with everything we put them through.  The cat in particular allowed them to scruff her, wrap her in a make shift cat bag, lift her from cage to table with not so much as a sound.  The tiny goats stood calmly as student after student held them searched for a heartbeat.  I took photographs to record the restraint methods and a colleague spoke to the students of the three different types of goat we were using.  One was a miniature goat, which looked like the rest but was actually a year old.  Holding it was a trickier affair and at one point it launched itself in the air off the table, but was caught by the student in time.  You could feel the difference in muscles with this year old goat, sense it’s reluctance to be restrained by so many strangers.  No one was injured and all animals went home exhausted by all the handling but none the worse for their experience.  Hands were washed, safety observed.  The only thing I had not factored in was I had to teach the rest of the day smelling of goats.  People were actually backing away from me in corridors.  Some days life is like that, you think you’ve got through safe and sound and forget that one thing that comes back to bite you.  Here is a short piece that is not mine but I love it so much I wanted to include it here.

Donkey in Well story

“One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a Well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the donkey was old, and the Well, needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey did something amazing. He shook it off and took a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbours continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

The rest of the story….

The donkey later came back, and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

The moral of the story….

When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.”

Hold Onto Good

Hold onto good, let go of all that is bad

Be a template for a human being

Reminding all of the virtues we need to hold

Be wise in both mind and deed

Educate all those you meet or be educated by them

When taking counsel use many heads

But have one thought

Make each day better than its yesterday

Your merit is in service and virtue

Not in the display of wealth or riches

Let your words be clear of idle fancies

Your mind be free of worldly desires

And your deeds be cleansed of cunning deceit

Waste not the bounty of this sweet life

In pursuit of corrupt affection

Or in self promoting endeavours

At every instant remember but two things

To understand all that fate and life brings

In your joy be generous, let every kindness be meant

In your despair or darkness be patient with what's sent

For as the sun follows rain

Your pain will turn to gain

Cutting up pig hearts for fun!

Teaching is a funny business.  I had to cover for a colleague’s class for several weeks and ended up teaching biology – a subject I know hardly anything at all about.  The biology teacher at our school when I was a pupil had a habit of picking up dead animals (road kill) and boiling them in a huge vat at the back of the lab.  The smell was indescribable and is ever associated with biology in my mind.  Sitting wanting to retch is not a happy state.  The technician at my college, a nice chap, had a sense of humour.  He seemed to realise I was not designed to teach this subject and went out of his way to help.  I would come in to do a session on the structure of fish and find twenty huge catfish laid out on boards with scalpels and pins and stuff.  Absolutely terrified but willing to give it a go (I know a smarter person would have admitted defeat) I began demonstrating how to dissect the fish to an appalled class.  Since I did not have a clue this was a barbaric deed that seemed to go on and on and have no end.  At one point I remember cutting the eye out and dismembering the head, while one eager student kept coming too close to my elbow and whispering, “cut it harder” or “go deeper”.  Perhaps this could be a useful method to spot serial killers at a young age? 

It was not a pretty sight and several girls left the class gagging.  The cat fish ended up like mince meat and I was frankly exhausted.  Following my lead they all went to their boards and most proceeded to do a vicious post mortem on their own fish.  Learnt absolutely nothing about the biology of fish but honed their butchering skills considerably.  Anyway, the technician must have loved it because the following week I entered the lab tentatively to discover twenty fat pig hearts on boards.  It got so that I opened the door of the lab and tip toed in dreading what I would find.  I think he loved that first look on my face as I entered the room, sort of a “what the hell is it this week?”  In so many ways I was relieved when my colleague returned and I could retire bloodied from the biology field. 

water boarding

Was teaching chemistry a year or so ago.  It felt like a nightmare zone.  In a lab shoulder to shoulder with adolescents who are more interested in the opposite sex than science and feel safety issues are a complete waste of time.  One tall chap decided to push his safety glasses to the top of his head during experiments, it must have looked cooler, I expect.  Difficult to look good with thick goggle like protrusions on your face.  A splash of acid and he got it on his face close to the eye.  I was mad and concerned.  It was my responsibility to keep them safe after all.  So I told him that acid continued to burn, lower skin layers, for some time after the initial splash and that he had to put his head under the tap at the sink.  Drenched with water pouring over his head and face he spluttered the question how long he needed to stay there.  Fifteen minutes, I told him with cruel intent.  A long time to be water boarded but I could see the rest of the class was learning a valuable lesson and so did he.  Hard to link such blatant torture to kindness but here’s a piece about kindness anyway!

Kindness melts

Kindness melts the hardest heart, it soothes it listens
It allows the sores of festering pain to leak away
It gradually eases the raw edges of life
So that the salve of recovery can be applied
Don’t look for wounds to dress in others
Just know with certainty they are there deep and pus filled
But hidden out of sight
To prevent painful exposure
Therefore, apply kindness daily as required

Let Live Your Courage

This is a piece I wrote for the Stop the Violence Campaign run by UN  Women.  The three women I used span thousands of years.  Rabia Balkhi was a poet from Afganastan (in first millennium) who fell in love with a slave of the household and was pushed into the bathroom after having her artery severed by her own brother.  She proceeded to write her poems on the tiles with her own blood until she died. 

Tahirih, also a poet, was from Iran and spoke of equality and freedom for women in the mid nineteen century.  She was strangled and thrown down a well. 

The last women mentioned was a victim of the Rwanda massacre and had her body mutilated beyond comprehension.  You can read an account of her suffering in the acceptance speech by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) who were awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for its work with populations in danger.  (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/article.cfm?id=708&cat=speech) 
I choose these women because their lives span over a thousand years and they represent the violence that women experience within the family, in society and in conflict zones.  When I have used the poet’s words these are shown in quotes.

Let Live Your Courage

Yielding her life to the sharp brutal blade
Thrust through pulsating artery
Rabia paints her poems of love
With blood red fingertips
On tiles cracked with age old patterns of control
She writes, “A true lover should be faithful to the end”
Another millennium passes and Tahirah pens her poems of love
That cry out her heart’s desire
Down centuries of time,
“This afflicted heart of mine has woven your love to the stuff of life. 
Strand by strand, thread to thread”
Eloquent of mind and body
She spoke of freedom
but roughly tightened silk choked the words
And throttled the tender throat
All that remains is the beauty of her memory
And her words of truth echoing yet.

And here and now a lacerated woman hacked beyond humanity
Lies on a blood reddened soil
Treated by a doctor who has only sutures to tie up what remains
His futile efforts to redeem what has already been lost
spills him into helpless despair and sobs.
So many more waiting for more
Than he can give, he is frozen
Helpless by the horror.
Then from the violated pieces that remain,
barely human, comes the woman’s voice
“Let live your courage!”
And her words of encouragement
In the midst of excruciating pain
Lifted him to action, echoed around the world.

May the words of those that suffer
Reach past your ears to heart and soul
Over centuries and millennium they cry out their loving call to action
“Let live your Courage!”

Cherry Blossom

A chill in the air
And cherry blossom petals fall, shaken by the breeze
Falling where the currents take them
We too, from the moment of our conception, are falling
Our time in this physical world
Limited to this tiny distance
Between our beginning and end
At times, it seems there is no choice involved
We are born, we live and we die
Blown by the fates to destinies
We do not choose
Landing in places we did not intend
But looking close, each petal is unique
Beautiful in its own way
Even its gentle fluttering movement
Governed by the tenacity of its structure
Its hold on the branch
Its pigment different, even its shape is unique
So too our passage however inevitable between cradle and grave
Has the possibility of variation
We can drop unconscious into the void
Or make a tumbling halting descent
An epic and courageous dive
That speaks of choice, will and a desire to make a difference