I hear the wind
The sea dragon must be on its wingless flight
So far from its underwater palace.
Where are the places through which my
Footsteps wander without me?
Jeweled hearts are there.
The sea dragon is dining
Chewing away the past and future
Breathing out fire
Spreading through water
Purification.
The sea dragon rises to the surface
The ocean surges as it flies to…
Freedom to Believe – June Perkins
Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger.
Frank Murphy
So why don’t we always give each other the freedom to believe?
Why does history and the present show humans imprisoning, restricting and seeking to deny this freedom?
All in the name of religion?
How important it is to seek out the truth.
Right now, can we give this freedom to believe back and call out to free prisoners of conscience and wish for them the miracle of others gaining the understanding of the need to preserve this freedom?
Today I wish for that miracle, I pray for that miracle and I join Baha’is and all our friends around the world who say‘Five Years Too Many.’
Wishing this same freedom for all those prisoners of spiritual conscience across the world.
I have a Dream Wall – June Perkins
Culture Smile – By June Perkins
I choose to speak in riddles.
The first time I wrote this post it had more overtly personal family stories in it, yet I backed away and thought I can’t write that post yet because I am grappling with a deeper question.
Which is truer, fact or fiction?
I have responsibilities to those I am going to write of, or be inspired to write characters for.
Do you remember the first time you learnt that history might be biased in the telling, that history told from the ‘victors’ point of view will usually portray them without critique? Growing up none of us wanted to be native Americans in cow boys and Indians, because they always died. That was the story around when I was a child.
Do you remember the first time you learnt of the enforced silences of cultures, women, countries, the disadvantaged, the non-canon,caused by the lack of publication or shared words, shared spaces to bring their stories into the open?
Do you ever worry about the authentic self? Who do I write as? Me? A narrator nothing like me? A narrator a little like me? A narrator who is an amalgam of all I know and can imagine and research as well. Are my stories real? Are they imagined? Will I stay in my comfort zone? Will I push beyond that and take you the reader with me? I am not traditional. I never can be?
I set about the story of fictionalising the real to approach a deeper emotional truth, to see the signifiers of my own life and of those in my life more universally and my story genre slips between real and not real, fiction, and non fiction. It is apparent that research is going to be needed to understand this story.
Is it as a simple as fact, non-fact? What do facts tell us? What is the deeper story? What are the secret stories? Are all tellers of tales true reliable? Why do they hide things? Do they demand of us change of names, and exact locations to ‘protect the guilty’?
Are there some stories I will never tell? How much disguise will I have to put on to ‘protect the innocent?’
This is more than theory, this is the story of second generation migrants, looking for home in heritage, space and story. This is the story of those whose new identity is made up of an environment where several languages are spoken at home, and sometimes there is no translator, Who want more than the simple definition of ‘she had to go home to understand,’ What is home?
Diaspora – it’s a long time since I thought about that word.
It’s the story of not knowing if you will ever decode the mysteries of those close to you who grew up in other languages, with other cultural codes, that you struggled to understand as you were encultured in their new homeland.
Dancing Culture – June Perkins
What are the dangers and perils of making a connection of becoming obligated? Will you think less of me if I never go into the birth land space, and why should that be so?
I am not confused, down-trodden, silent – I am seeking for the writing light, where I can present you the stories that have made me, and yet is that really me you might wonder?
They dance culture just for one night
my daughter accepted in
where I never felt welcome
why did I never feel that
and she smiles
as they dress her in the costumes
of culture they have reinvented
when they don’t have the right materials nearby
Is this copy real
unreal, imagined?
All I know is I am happy for her
that she has a taste I was not given in this way
and is the making a journey to her bubu’s homeland
and yet I ask
Why did my mother never take us to her home?
Is she taking my daughter there now in the only
way she can
now her parents have passed on?
What is your idea of home or your authentic writing self?
A basket – taken by June Perkins made by a friend
There are times when fate seems to be aligning all the planets and bringing brilliance our way – Serendipity!
“The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.”
But is it our 0wn effort, and striving that leads to these discoveries and events even though they may seem to be accidental?
A few days ago someone ask me how my husband and I met.
We met after a conference we had both been at in Sydney, New South Wales, but never crossed paths at. He was to be the driver of a team of youth to drive around Country Victoria (Australia) to work on projects to help other youth and visit people in country areas. I was looking for him on my arrival there.
The first words I ever said to him were ‘So you’re the one,’ meaning of course the driver of the upcoming trip, but he turned out to literally be ‘the one.’
I was on the trip after saving money for months to go to the conference and also being sponsored for the project afterwards by a family.
He was on that trip, not really expecting to find the one, but he had asked a friend on Baha’i pilgrimage to pray he would find a wife. She prayed all nine days of our trip, and by the end of it I think we both knew perhaps we had found ‘the one.’
Serendipity?
Another story of serendipity was in the recent visit of Alesa Lajana to my area. She discovered that I was friends with some of the people she was staying with and also a couple of people she was learning weaving from.
We were all woven together – into the fabric of her life. I knew her because my sons had gone to a guitar workshop she held in Yungaburra (where she also performed). It was so cool to see her again.
Aunty Doris, Alesa and Me- taken by my eldest son
The connection – we both like creative things, and she is on a quest for hidden histories but also likes learning how to do weaving.
Another serendipitous happening is that my husband and I once had no ties to the Cassowary Coast in terms of relatives, but then our niece married a local boy and so suddenly we did.
Not only that her in-laws are good friends with one of my closest friends here. Her mother in law is a photographer who some other friends had told me to connect with as we both love photography.
We didn’t expect this to happen but people travel and new family connections are made, everyday.
Do you have stories of serendipity from your life?
He asked me, ‘What do you think of abstract art?’
I replied, ‘I don’t have a background in art. I’m a storyteller. But I do like to photograph patterns in nature – ripples in water, how nature becomes abstracted art’
I was thinking how much art fascinates me, and yet I don’t know all it’s history. I don’t feel equipped to comment about art as if I’m an historian or art specialist/expert. Yet I can comment about it from my heart, from a meditation with the art piece, that is by being with it in a state of grace and seeing what it speaks to me.
What’s this have to do with my writing journey?
This week has been a time to connect with artists in other art forms, such as Alesa Lajana, a song writer, currently learning about weaving , Doris Kinjun, local elder and weaver, Lyn Marshall a painter, and photographer depicting the creative process in words and reflecting on inner and outer journeys in landscape, and Buffy Sainte-Marie an amazing songwriter (through blogged interviews.)
Wikimedia image. Buffy Sainte-Marie
It’s been a time of conversations, listening, reading, and taking in the essence of how others create things.
I find myself thinking about the creative writing process as Marshall writes of it, as being in a state of flow, grace, meditation and worship and realise to do this one often needs stillness.
I ask myself – where do I find stillness in my day? I find it in the early morning, before other demands and realities of motherhood, and family, and so much more catch up with me. It’s before I open diary, facebook, email – and its connecting to the tablet of heart rather than the tablet of communication.
The time of stillness – time to float, daydream, connect with the messages of memory and experience – and think well what do I really want to say, and why – is precious in the making. It insists on a space where there are no demands, but a free fall from a plane above life, above meaning; yet it requires diving into the essence of life, contemporary challenges for our society; for analysis, and creation of pieces that can connect to others.
In today’s time of stillness a free form write for a new poem occurred. It felt like unpacking dreams, hopes, aspirations. It became a time to connect with Buffy Sainte-Marie and think about the power of music to add emotion to words, and to consider the power of journeys of people like Lajana, who look for the hidden histories – and the people like Marshall who look for the essence of things like nature – and represent that in abstractions and deep and meaningful titles.
This is the space I need to be in when writing and thinking. It’s a space where my blog cannot always follow me. In that space of stillness I enjoy solitude and the sense that no-one is watching me.
The other space where I find inspiration to write is being in the thick of life, experiencing it, being with people, in conversation, and knowing about their journeys. In this space, I free flow in my google searching, and can find Sainte-Marie as easily as Lajana or Marshall, and yet my meetings with them in real space offer something different.
Another writing Saturday saga meditation perhaps, for another time.
Where do you find stillness to look for your creative flow?
