time-lapse

Posted on April 17, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #202: CHIANG MAI/DELHI: It looks like this tuk-tuk is moving but it’s not. Shadows of overhead cables create the effect. It feels like this present moment is just one screenshot taken in the making of a video about my whole life… well, I suppose it is, but if I hold everything on the pause button and examine my surroundings in detail, I find they’re not held in the moment I’m in. I’m distracted by two large birds zooming past my window, one bird chasing the other. If the whole thing was tracked by time-lapse photography, the trees could be seen growing up, extending their branches, leaves, closer to my window and blocking the daylight. The flight of birds would be like bees buzzing around in a cloud, and my movements in the apartment, a flash of shadowy comings and goings. Then stillness for the times I’m not there, only the sunrise and sunset light illuminating and darkening the empty living space.

The mind was in this time-lapse mode and I allowed a whole day to pack and tidy up the apartment. More than enough time, it was a night flight, so I’m moving in slo-mo action and at the same time watching a video posted by a Buddhist blogger friend. The packing was uncomplicated because it was all clothes for laundry – my washing machine stopped working the other day and the repairman will come after I leave (somebody will take care of it). So packing your bag is easy if it’s all stuff headed for the washing machine. Mostly it’s just getting it all in, squeezed into all the corners and close the bag with one all-round zip-zip-zip. Carrying 20 kilos of laundry across international borders and through X-ray machines and the officer stops me at the Nothing To Declare exit: ‘may I see inside your bag sir?’ “Carrying clothes for laundry into the country, are we then sir? [Aha, a likely story…]”

That didn’t take place, just a story inside my head with different versions of the same thing played out again and again. I got to the house, said hello to everyone and excuse me for a moment, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! That’s it, done. The whole point of the journey was to get to the washing machine, you could say.

But, before that happened, M and her mom turned up to say good-bye. They brought with them a friend who is a masseuse, so I’m saying how about this pain in my head and neck? (PHN) and in seconds she had me face down on the bed, embarked on a full body massage, she’s on my back, twanging ligaments and tendons like guitar strings. I was in a daze, just enough time to shower and put on the only remaining set of wearable clothes, into a tuk-tuk for the airport – and there was no pain as such, just an easing because the ligaments and tendons’ twanging had stopped.

All the way through this, there were pictures in my mind of getting to the destination but having to correct these images because what I see is the old house, not the present house. I’ve spent more time since last November away from the place than living there. So I have to consciously delete these old remembered places and try to bring the present house to mind. Strange how you have to think things back to how they are right now rather than how they used to be. But the actual destination doesn’t show on the mind’s screen, hasn’t been updated yet… and sleep sweeps me away. Hardly noticed the arrival at 2.30 am, time brought forward by one hour and a half. I’m shoveled into the car by circumstances prevailing, and everything pushing me along in that direction. I get to the house, into the laundry area and put the entire contents of my bag into the washing machine in one swift unpacking movement. Add detergent, select the program button, and close the door click! And there’s this déjà vu thing about it.

“The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” [Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet]

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songkran สงกรานต์, संक्रांति

Posted on April 13, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #201: CHIANG MAI: Impossible to not notice Songkran here, Thailand’s New Year festival, “sawat deepee mai”, Songkran begins today, 13 April 2016, in the Buddhist/ Hindu solar calendar. It’s also New Years day in many calendars of South and South East Asia. Songkran is the water festival, the act of pouring water is a blessing and good wishes. Before the festival begins, everything old is got rid of or it will bring the owner bad luck. Time to let go of bad stuff, ‘should auld acquaintance be forgot for the sake of auld lang syne.’ Wash away misfortunes in the past year, and welcome in the new year and a fresh start.

Thai people usually try to go back home and see their parents or their old relatives at Songkran. A tradition of bathing elders and asking for their blessing is part of the festival. Now I’m seen as a harmless old guy so I don’t get water thrown at me; a very small amount of blessed water is gently poured on my shoulder, or I sometimes get to sprinkle jasmine flower soaked water on the youngers who kneel and pray for fortunate circumstances in the coming year. All Thais go to temple in the morning and make merit by either giving alms to the monks or releasing birds, fishes or turtles from captivity – good deeds and the karma of it all.

But it’s mostly about water and the release from hot summer days. For young Thais and foreign tourists visiting here it’s a joyful water-throwing free-for-all. The streets are running with water to the extent that the Chiang Mai Government this year have started a small campaign to persuade the public it’s necessary to save on water. But not taken too seriously.

It’s also a time when people get reckless, accidents on the road the Bangkok Post today reports that so far, police arrested 20,094 people for drink-driving and 549 vehicles were impounded at checkpoints from 9 – 12 April. Owners of the impounded vehicles, 439 motorcycles and 110 cars, will be allowed to pick up their vehicles at police stations after April 17 when Songkran ends.

the visitor

Posted on March 12, 2016 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: BKK: I had a job as an illustrator many years ago, 1985 I think, part of a lifetime spent shading-in with a Rotring pen, and touching up with typewriter correction fluid, whiteout liquid. No computer enhanced imagery in those days – no computers. Cut and paste was not the metaphor it is today – it was done with a real pair of scissors and glue. But usually I’d sit for hours at the desk without much movement, only the hand holding the pen, carefully searching for form… a happy silence in the room on the top floor of a Bangkok shop house with door leading out to small roofed terrace and bougainvilleas in large old clay pots, red and pink blossoms everywhere. Very little traffic noise, blue sky, and few people came to see me there; I was happily alone in this self-contained apartment for many days at a stretch.

The small lizard (gecko) came to visit me one day and I hardly noticed it at first, a small rustle and clink sound from somewhere on my art table, covered in all kinds of drawing equipment, books and discarded papers. The clink sound again got my attention and I just sat still and waited to see what it was – so completely still, a spider could have spun a web in the spaces between my fingers. Then another rustle in the bits of papers on my desk, discarded sketches and cut paper crumpled up and trashed… and there it was!

Aiming for the cup of coffee gone cold, forgotten, but it was the spoon for the sugar, stirred into the coffee; it was that that it wanted – lying there in a tiny spill of wetness on the surface of the table. It must have come here before, it knows about the coffee spoon. I see its small head get nearer and nearer to the spoon, alert and aware of any movement. But I am a mountain, unmoving. The tongue extends out, lick, lick, and it gets into the hollow of the spoon with its tiny front feet, there’s the same clink sound, caused by the weight of the small creature.

The next day, around the same time it came back and sure enough, headed for the coffee spoon, lick, lick, lick, and it was gone. As the days went by, I got accustomed to it arriving, always around the same time. Then one day it didn’t come, in fact I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it. Sometimes I’d see it moving up the wall by the door and out through an open window to the roof terrace and the bougainvilleas outside. So I got up from my chair and out to the terrace also to see if the plants needed any water from the storage tank… and there it was, in the tank! Not in the water but standing ‘on’ the surface of the water!

Surface tension, amazing! I didn’t know lizards could do that. So I backed out of the terrace and left it for a while. When I went out again the lizard was still there in exactly the same place. I looked at it and there was something about the way it looked back at me: Get me out of this predicament, please? Hmmm was it not able to move because the surface tension would give way and it would sink? I went inside again and searched for the plastic mesh container for A4 paper and all kinds of junk, emptied out the contents and went out to the terrace.

Carefully sinking the plastic mesh tray into the water then over and down, under the lizard. Slowly scoop it up, out of the water and I placed it down in a shady corner on its side so my small friend could crawl out of and run away and hide. That was the last time I saw it (sad). I worried about the affect the sugar and tiny amount of caffeine had had on the lizard, and felt guilty about that. Maybe it induced a kind of lizard ‘high’ resulting in unwise decision-making and stepping out on to the surface of water. Ah well, if that was the case, I saved it in time…

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cruel pillows [part one]

Posted on February 4, 2016 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: DELHI: I just remembered this expression: “a bull with a headache.” It comes from Scotland, where large Men drink whisky all night, then one staggers through to the breakfast room in the morning and is demonstrably angry with everything, then one goes off to work in the wild, wet, wooly Northern landscapes of my distant memory.

Now I live in Asia which is really nice, gentle and warm and I’m a Buddhist and all is well in my world, except I’ve got a headache – all the time. A Buddhist with a headache? What to do, I have wondered many times. For me it’s an opportunity to be conscious and aware of what I’m doing all the time, because the headache is likely to get bad at any time. And I’ve thought too about what we’re doing here in the blogging world… our consciousness/awareness of our ‘world’, in a sense, is what we’re writing about, really, one way or another. Even if a lot of space may be taken up with trying to express how we get to that point. Even so, it’s an all-inclusive thing, isn’t it? And sometimes what we write is not as important as the spaces left where there’s nothing written. No point in asking why the ‘world’ should be (or shouldn’t be) like this. Or even try to identify it and analyze it – as you’ll see if you keep reading this – I’m just trying to make friends with my headache, in a round-about way, not too direct… see how that goes. I’m not expecting it ‘to be’ anything, at times I try to anticipate what it’s likely to do next, wondering how it’s getting on.

The headache arrived last September as a result of shingles on the right side of the head, here’s the link: PHN, but it might give you a headache reading about that, so why don’t I just introduce you to the headache itself? Think of a motorbike helmet that holds your head tightly, a snug fit … that’s it. Now there’s this cloud of intense feeling that, as yet, doesn’t have a name, it’s just energy. As long as it remains anonymous, things are okay – reasonably okay, the only thing is that what you have is this hair-trigger-sawn-off-shotgun-crash-helmet of a headache, minding its own business and nobody’d even know it was there.

So, the lesson is, be careful about what you think! Now, in some foolish un-mindful moment, I might say to myself: Do I have a headache? I can’t feel it now… and BOOM it demolishes my head. So naturally I get to know not to do that, not to ‘name’ it, identify it, or try to make it into something. And, important, I have to learn about this mechanism that can be held in the default STOP position. It’s the: please-don’t-go-there thought; that split-second, small, even tiny, space before the thinking process is engaged and what was really, absolutely, going to happen, by some miracle, doesn’t.

It cannot be stopped sometimes, of course, and you find that the forewarned intuitive snap feeling it’s about to happen means it just happens anyway and there’s devastation all around as you reach for the meds that are opiates anyway so you’re kinda hovering on the edge of a Edgar Allan Poe nightmare most of the time when you overdose on them.

This is how it is, predictably unpredictable so you have to be ready for it to happen any time. If it takes place at night, probably the best way of explaining the feeling of it, when dosed up to the eyeballs with sleeping pills, but still the headache remains and you’re awake for hours, it’s this: pillows appear cruel – have you ever thought of pillows being cruel? Probably not, well I know everything there is to know about pillows, in my research since this headache came to stay with me last September. Really, what I don’t know about pillows is just not worth knowing.

But that’s a whole different story…. [See: part two]

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About this picture: This is the missing head, a screenshot taken from a YouTube video, which shows the head briefly at the end of the clip: https://youtu.be/MjRf-b8Ezis

The whole story is, it’s an ancient Buddhist sculpture, which at the time of the top photo, was at the Beijing World Art Museum and being made ready to be sent to Kaohsiung in Taiwan where it will be reunited with its head.

Its head was stolen in 1996 from the Youju Temple in Hebei Province. The sculpture, made of white marble, is around 1,400 years old. The body is 1.59 meters tall. The head was obtained and offered by a private collector in 2014. Repairs will be made before it is put on public display in 2016. Twenty years after it was removed. The museum has selected another 77 relics for the exhibition in Taiwan.

The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council approved the body be sent to Kaohsiung for a three-month Buddhist Cultural Relic Exhibition jointly held by the administration and the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial Hall, before the complete statue is sent back to Hebei. It symbolizes the possible reunification of Taiwan with China.
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nothing

Posted on February 2, 2016 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: DELHI: Sitting quietly on the meditation cushion, together with this headache that’s moved in recently, and I’m wondering if it’ll quieten down too – sometimes it does. At first it’s like there’s this energy of time and space moving through me from the past into future in continuously transforming evolving forms – but it’s more than that; internal processes happening by themselves – there’s no ‘me’ involved here, because I’m engaged with this swirling mass of headache and also just on the edge of understanding it’s like that when the whole thing becomes transparent – there is no beginning/no end… and it all slips into what you’d call the bigger picture.

So the meditation becomes more of a: let’s see now where are we at? (the headache and me). The outside world is not outside it’s inside too, every time I look/watch/see an object, it’s internalized. The brain creates a customized picture of it for me – and we all agree – who says the sky is blue, it could be a fantastic different color?

The pressure points on the cushion and floor where my legs are folded, and right knee supported, also parts of the body that are in contact with the surfaces of mat, form sensory data which reach the mind and give me balance, and I slip into this physical position like a hand fits the glove.

But then later as I’m walking through the rooms, the thought that I am as much inside as outside is a bit unexpected. The music I listen to becomes me, it is who I am, the alto saxophone sounds of Paul Desmond enter the hearing mechanism and I’m immediately on a 4D wave of melody floating out the window, I just take it for granted.

Then I smell lunch, go through, and eat the outside world. It enters my body. It goes to create flesh, blood and bones. Fingernails and hair grow. It’s quite an experience. The headache is a long swirling blue veil unravelled all around and caught in gentle aircurrents, of the saxaphone music – you could say it’s not getting the attention it deserves. Then all this becomes momentary, the headache disappears again and there’s the curious awareness of nothing. An experience of ‘open moments’, nothing in itself – but how did that happen? Where did the subject go? Suddenly there’s nothing in ‘here’ where the ‘me’ ought to be.

Virtue and the mind itself shows the way to go; the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Everything else in this great mass of no-thingness is an intuitive part of the whole, while functioning as form which is what we are on one level, everything else is too, and here we can study and learn so much from each other, while all of the world is comprised of particles that become increasingly smaller until their structure is formless space.

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. [Meister Eckhart]

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Source for Header Image
Note “open moments” comes from a post in the blog:A Buddhist Year titled, ‘Time”
Music I was listening to: ‘Polka Dots and Moonbeams’ by Paul Desmond:

a lake of sleep

Posted on January 21, 2016 by tiramit

OLD NOTEBOOKS: Take all my meds out and put them on the table one by one; colors and shapes like planets from another universe. Swallow, swallow, and swallow. Have to open my case from the journey to get here. Bend down to find the zip, forgetting about the baseball in the head… rumble, crash forwards against the inner front of the cranium – bash! It’s the headache that lives with me, okay, it’ll settle in a moment.

Zip open the case and it seems like it’s totally occupied with a flat pillow gradually inflating to its normal size – a small pillow but it’s soft and I have to have it everywhere I go because other pillows, I find, are cruel and lead to sleepless nights with headache problems all through the next day. Fling that on the bed. Inside the case it’s still a little cool from the aircraft luggage section. How strange. All these ironed T-shirts folded flat, enveloped and layered inside this cuboid capacity; memories contained, waiting to escape from the case. Find some nightclothes and put them on – balancing the baseball in the head. Get into bed; cold in North India, and the heating we have is inadequate, but there is always the HOT-WATER BOTTLE! Yay! Jiab calls it the hot-water bag and the connotations are strange, which she doesn’t realize of course so I find I’m unable to say why and it’s left as hot-water bag. Winter is so short here I keep forgetting to explain.

Get in and lay down. Baseball rolls to the back but I can feel the meds building a thin soundproof wall around it that means I can’t feel the pain. Staring up at the painted ceiling, the solitary light bulb of a rented house it has no shade – must do something about that. Thinking about this and all the other things I have to do, want to do, would like to do. Thinking about things I thought about already, last night, the familiarity of thinking about it. It’s just there; not attached to it, not caught by it and free enough to see it, like Dolphins diving down and up to the surface and down below again. It’s not the content of thought; it’s the context, the awareness of thinking, the IS-ness of it. Watch the in-breath, the out-breath…

What’s going on here? I try to be in present time and the mind goes quiet. This quietness means the “now” just comes along by itself. It’s about the awareness of it – the human condition, investigating this…the meds are having an effect, the pain is gone. The Teaching on sila (virtue) is something that makes me feel good about myself, there’s the sense of being sure I’m on the right track. It means I can focus clearly, get things properly sorted out. Now I can close my eyes and get comfortable, thought processes that maintain themselves hesitantly, and other things without substance appear and fade away. If I don’t reach out for the next thought, there’s nothing there. The darkness is filled with light, moonbeams just at the edge of vision. “We cannot see we are filled with God because we are filled with a concept of God” That reality is beyond description. Best to leave it undescribed.

“The same intelligence that grows trees from seeds,
that lets birds fly,
that waves the ocean
and gives birth to new stars – that same Intelligence
also breathes your breath, beats your heart,
and heals your wounds.”
[Annie Kagan]
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Note about the quote, I don’t remember where I found out about Annie Kagan, it was one of my WordPress blogging friends. Please let me know if you recognise it, thanks

obviously unexpected

Posted on January 12, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #186: Bangkok: Easily said in hindsight, but there’s a sense of helplessness, as I take leave of the birds nesting in the ceiling fan; now it depends entirely on their strength and vigor – anything could happen to these small creatures … and it’ll all take place without me being here because I’m leaving. Bag is packed on my way to the airport, flight to Delhi and swept away in the wave of circumstances. It was that kind of unexpected situation that obviously decided everything finally when we had the birds on the balcony the last time, in Switzerland.

Things came to a head. Events occurred, a change, suddenly this U-turn showed up and we had to follow it around. I was lying on the sofa in the front room, one day, head propped up on a large cushion, staring at my feet down there and the vague space beyond, when suddenly I became aware of something moving in the room, a shadow reflected in the shiny floor surface. A bird with folded wings striding boldly across the floor… quite far into the room – HEY get out of here! Strange to have a wild bird suddenly fly across the room, bird-wing-flap disturbing the air, the acoustics – a very odd thing. It shot out through the open door, into the outside world, straight over the balcony rail and immediately gone in a direct line further and further away in the vast sky until it vanished as a tiny dot.

I stood on the balcony and watched it for a moment then dismantled the perch I’d built and removed the artist’s easel; scraped off all the bird mess and washed down the whole floor. It’s that farmyard thing; dung and downy feathers blowing around inside the apartment because we have to have the balcony doors open in the hot weather, and even if I vacuum up all the feathers, one or two still seem to be fluttering through the rooms of the apartment. My wife Jiab continues to be nice about it but doesn’t actually answer the question when I ask how she feels about the birds. So it’s that awkward silence…

When the birds came back in the evening, there was tremendous confusion: where’s our perch gone? Flapping of wings, feathers flying and hovering in the air where the easel used to be. Then one of them figured it was a good idea to perch on the door stop bracket at the top of the door – never noticed it before – it sticks out about 5 cm with a rubber stopper on the end. An ideal perch. Also the top of the door, which had to be open in the warm evening. So much flapping of wings to see who had the right to be where, the doorstop perch seemed to be top in the hierarchy. That night I put out the easel again (for the last time) and things quietened down, back the way they were.

The following day, after the birds left, I cleaned up again and took the easel inside, locked the door and we were off for a week’s holiday. Mixed feelings, we left them to look after themselves, letting go of attachments. It’s always like this, uneasy feeling, leaving the place where you were. Gratitude for everything received here, loving kindness, anjali, blessings, time to move on…

Our skills and abilities all come from the kindness of others; we had to be taught how to eat, how to walk, how to talk, and how to read and write. Even the language we speak is not our own invention but the product of many generations. Without it we could not communicate with others nor share their ideas. We could not read this book, learn Dharma, nor even think clearly. [Excerpt from: “Eight Steps to Happiness” by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso]

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camouflage

Posted on January 9, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #185: Bangkok: It might look like a small heap of dirt stuck in a ceiling fan, but it’s a bird’s nest and the tiny bird, hatched out, is just sitting there, not moving… camouflaged, trying to look like a small heap of dirt stuck in a ceiling fan.

Almost impossible to see, but there’s a shape of a head there, and a small body. I can see it sometimes when it appears from under the wing of the parent bird but whenever I lift the camera, parent bird glares at me with this slightly fierce stare.

As soon as the parent bird leaves the nest, the other one gets in… unless I’m standing on top of a chair wobbling around with a phone camera and not getting anywhere. So I’m looking for an opportunity to get a better pic but that’s the best I can do without disturbing things too much.

Yep, some familiarity with this kind of situation because this is the second time around. We used to have doves on the balcony in an apartment on the seventh floor, 70-80 feet up, well above street level, above the treetops, just clouds and sky. I was surprised the birds would fly as high as seven floors. They’d come in the evening, stay the night and fly away each day at dawn – I should say they flew down each day because there really wasn’t any up. Following is a section of notes made at that time:

old notebooks: The birds have decided to roost on that big old artist’s easel on the balcony we have no room for in the apartment; somehow sculptural, artistic in a puzzling conceptual way, birds perched on the cross-piece and silhouetted against the evening sky. I’ll have to try to get them not to roost there; the smears of paint on the easel are becoming more of an ochre/white/grey smearing and dropping off onto the floor.

I spent the whole day today building a structure of bird perches made from bamboo canes bound with string, glue, duct tape and screwed to the wall. Then I waited until evening when the birds came back… but they didn’t seem to notice it at all and continued to perch on the artist’s easel. It must be about having your own place and your own identity, ‘self’, this is ‘my’ territory; this is me, myself, and this is where I am. None of the birds moved from where they were, and my elaborate new perch remains unoccupied.

Two days later: new birds have arrived and assembled on it, checking out the situation with this nearly 360 degrees sweep of vision they have, and thinking, well, it looks like this fine perch must be for us! But the old birds on the easel don’t like the new ones on the perch. There’s some upset-wing-flap and the deliberate pushy invasion of each other’s space with puffed-out, chest and assertive walk thus forcing the unwanted bird off its perch. Gained some understanding of the term: “the pecking order”.

About 15 birds now on the balcony, too much noise every night, small feathers blowing around and coming into the house. My wife Jiab really doesn’t like the idea of it and has spoken wise words about how it is getting quite crowded out there and how this is getting to be a problem. So I have to persuade the birds, I invited to stay, to go away… that’s a whole story in itself and I’ll write about it later.

LATE NEWS: I managed to get a very blurred pic of the nest and I think there are two hatchlings, not one.

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ceiling-fan-nest, 1 egg

Posted on January 6, 2016 by tiramit

POSTCARD #184: Bangkok: The ceiling fan is situated in the open air of the balcony and hasn’t been used in years – the on/off switch sealed with Scotch tape now the birds have claimed the space. When the nesting bird left this morning, I took the photo, standing on a chair with arms stretched up, hands holding the phone-camera at a slight angle pointing downwards at where I thought the nest would be: click… a few tries and I got the picture showing the egg in a fragile little nest, then got down and quickly put the chair away. A very small nest, temporary structure made from stalks of grass individually placed. There’s lightness, like the wind and the air about it.

Shortly after that, the parent bird comes back, sees me watching (it knew I had been up there), looks around with an almost 180° sweep of vision that brings the cranium all the way round as far as it’ll go, then back the other way to where it started and there’s just that little bit of vision obscured by the back of the head. Also some movement on the vertical plane looking up and down with eyes on each side so, somehow choosing which eye to focus with. The head appears to spin around over the top in and in absolutely any direction… it makes me quite dizzy to watch. Bird gets back on nest by sliding through the upper bar of the ceiling fan guard and shuffling in.

Now I’m pacing around the room wondering if this is what it feels like to be expecting a child? The womb is placed outside the body; parent bird feels pecks from a small beak. Tiny beings find there is a way out of their enclosed shell. They learn how to fly quickly and abandon the nest to the monsoon winds, which will demolish it immediately.

Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth. [Thich Nhat Hanh]

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birds nest update

Posted on December 31, 2015 by tiramit

POSTCARD #183: Bangkok: I have to say that there’s not a lot happening here. One bird is tucked away down inside the ceiling fan wire guard and the other bird flies in with two or three longish springy lengths of leaf growth I can’t really identify. The seated bird inside takes the nest-building material in its beak, pulls it inside the enclosure and tucks it in around the space. The other bird watches for a while then flies away. In the photo you can see the long tail of the seated bird sticking up. The bird is inside the wire cage of the ceiling fan and the other one perched on top watching me take the photo.

Most of the day I’m sitting next to the glass doors of the patio, reading my book and a small flicker against the sky tells me when a bird is either coming or going. Strange how this whole thing is happening a second time… some years ago in Switzerland a couple of birds built a nest on the balcony and I encouraged this in the same way I’m doing now; next thing we had a whole colony of pigeons and doves, creatures of the air perched out there on the balcony among old discarded objects and summer furniture. I wrote a few posts about the experience, excerpts follow:

Switzerland, August 29, 2012: Awake at 4:00 AM this morning, came through and switched on the kitchen light; old style fluorescent neon tube-light, flicker-flicker flick. And a bluish white light everywhere with electronic buzz you don’t notice after a while. The light shines through the windows illuminating the balcony of this 7th floor apartment and the pigeons wake up. A very loud sound: croo-croo, croo-croo, croo-croo, croo-croo! So I switch off the light again and they’re quiet as soon as I do that. Now I’m sitting in the darkness, held back in my domestic activities by the wildlife on the balcony. What to do now? Can’t read my book. Stand there in the darkness, and it takes a moment to notice the silence the birds are in. I sit in my chair and fall into meditation state… first thing I’m aware of is entering the quiet space of the perched birds – so silent here, 7 floors above street level. There’s a presence around these birds in roost mode; it takes my breath away, winged animals, so close to me… metta loving-kindness to all beings. I can’t see them but I know I’m very close to a small family group inhabiting the balcony. Two adults and two young birds and there’s another one – the mysterious ‘other’ … the alpha male has taken a second wife? I’m saying this because in the evenings there’s often some extended flapping of wings as they get their places in the hierarchy settled for the night – it’s like who gets to be next to whom. I can’t imagine… return to mindfulness mode.

After a while, and maybe I’ve fallen asleep, the wing-flutter, flap gets my attention, in the light of very early morning. Then there’s an odd silence in the bird group out there; no wing-flap. I get up quietly and go over to see. They’re poised on the balcony handrail; all looking out, little necks extended, heads focused downwards on the space below; the great swimming pool of sky. Still no movement. Then simultaneously they burst into an instant wing-flutter-flap-flick of feather tip flip of flight, and they’re gone. As one unit they drop over the balcony and down. A moment later I see them swoop and swirl in a great arc in the sky then on eye level with this 7th floor and in a direct line away from me, they vanish in the distance.

‘… so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the entire world: spreading upwards to the skies, and downwards to the depths; outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will. Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection.’ [from: Karaniya Metta Sutta]

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