Category Archives: beach

April 8, 2018 · 5:13 pm

Thwart Across, Side to Side

via Daily Prompt: Thwart

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These boats have timber seats, planks thwart the boat. Otherwise known as thwart seats because they cross from side to side. They are a seat , but only rudimentary, their true purpose is to act as a reinforcing brace that helps provide a rigidity to the boat’s frame, so a thwart seat is a double-bonus, seat and brace in one.

I came to this example of thwart while at the same time I had been reflecting on forgiveness. The more common understanding of thwart is to obstruct, to stymie, or block someone or an action. When we don’t or won’t forgive, then we thwart ourselves, we block ourselves.

There are many serious quotes on forgiveness, one that I like is from the Greater Good magazine from UC Berkeley: “Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.” The upshot of this is that we unblock when we forgive, we help and enable ourselves to move on from the anger and pain. So forgiveness is about ourselves and not the other. When I forgive, the other may never know, but in the act of forgiving, even from afar, I am indeed releasing the anger, the revenge and the pain, I’m stepping away from the negative. And as a result I feel better, whole. And sometimes that enables me to reframe a relational conflict and bring healing into it, so that there can be reconciliation. Again, that’s because I have done the work in myself, I am transformed and able to meet the other, to enable the other, as such it is a double-bonus.

Forgiveness is not unlike the thwart seat, it spans from one side of a relationship to another, it bridges opinion and blockage, and most importantly, forgiveness supports me, and helps to hold me together when I’d rather take negative attitudes or actions. Without the thwart seat of forgiveness in our lives there is nowhere to place ourselves in conflict that has any positive way forward. As vessels we are fragile beings and we really do need forgiveness to be able to reconcile, heal and grow. Forgiveness is a gift to our selves, and yet also to the other, even though they may never know. Forgiveness strengthens us.

Paul,

pvcann.com

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March 31, 2018 · 2:17 pm

Warning Signs

via Daily Prompt: Warning

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Photo: abc.net.au

The famous Salmon Holes at Albany, in the Torndirrup National Park. Fishing is not prohibited but there are warning signs at the entry advising people that there is a risk of being swept into the water. Since 1983, 12 people have drowned, so the warning is quite real. But a University of WA study revealed that 226 people believed they would survive falling into the ocean. Well, some have, Lyn’s late uncle Grattan was swept off the rock, but managed to survive to tell the tale. But too many believe they are invincible. One of the features of the bay are the sudden “king” or large waves, that catch people off-guard. These are powerful waves, and pose a serious threat on slipery, wet granite.

There are warning signs in many places for a variety of expected risks and outcomes. These signs are on equipment, packaging, cliffs, rocks, and well, everywhere.

Humans don’t come with warning signs. I’d add a few: dangerous when ego is driving; an ecological hazard, if lacking emotional intelligence 101 do not engage, dangerous if provoked, and so on. We are a complex species, and not always adept at working out where our emotions are coming from, sometimes not until damage is done in a relationship. We can be swept away by jealousy or anger, ego or fear. The rock of life is just as slippery as the one in the photo, and sometimes there are “king” waves that sneak up on us unanounced. Best we need to read the signs, and take care.

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March 22, 2018 · 9:59 am

My Favorite Place

via Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

Augusta, the place where two oceans meet near a river mouth, and where heaven touches earth.

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Above; Early Morning from the deck, looking east across the Blackwood River, and the Southern Ocean beyond.

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Above: The Southern Ocean, and part of our routine has been to walk this beach as part of a loop.

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Above: The Blackwood River, not far from the river-mouth, and this is part of our regular walking route.

Augusta is my favourite place. Although it would be true to say, I have many fave places, but Augusta would be top of the list. It’s not where I work, and I’m not yet living there full time, but we have renovated an older more compact house to be our next step, and later, into retirement. We fell in love with Augusta 35 years ago when we spent some time here on our honeymoon. And we returned regularly over the years for family holidays, eventually being able to afford to buy a house and renovate it. We work about 1.5 hours away and so we come down for our days off and holidays etc. It is my fave place because it has bush walks, river walks biking and kayaking, ocean and beach, forest. The flora and fauna are magnificent, the views are great – restful and restorative. It is a small community and relatively. For us it is a place of happiness, and where we can be creative too.

Paul,

pvcann.com

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March 3, 2018 · 2:38 pm

Cleaning Up The Mess We Made

via Daily Prompt: Messy

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I see news bulletins or read an op ed piece and the sheer negative of the report overwhelms me. Some years ago I saw footage of plastic waste in the ocean and I had steam coming out of my ears. How could it come to this? Such a mess!

Boyan Slat, a young engineering student has one proposed solution to the problem. Slat encountered plastic in the Mediterranean Ocean and at 17 yrs began working on a solution to plastic polution in the ocean. We’ve all seen the shocking footage of marine life snarled in plastic, or the photos of granular plastic which makes the sand look coloured. But Slat has at least put his mind to it. Of course, his proposal has attracted both support and criticism. He has raised in excess of 27 million US for his company –  Ocean Cleanup, but some in the scientific community have pooh-pooed the idea because it is yet untested in the wild. However, some criticism has come from those who believe that we should be working solely on prevention.

There will will always be a need for constructive criticism especially in testing and peer reviewing scientic work, but I wish that the opinionated people who haven’t a clue would butt out. It would be nice to live in a world where prevention was the sole effort in anything, but on the face of it, our track record as a species is that prevention is hard won. I don’t work in binaries if I can help it, and my prefernece is to use both prevention and reactive solutions together. Besides, I’m a born skeptic in regard to the human condition, and I believe that even with prevention methods, we would still have a problem of plastic in the ocean. Some polution is just by negligence or accident.

Even if this doesn’t work, at least he’s tried, and I applaud that. We will soon find out as the company are set to deploy this year. For me, this is a positive step, and the scientific community have been engaged in a new way forward to resolving a mess of our own making. And in my view, a step forward invites more.

Paul,

pvcann.com

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February 26, 2018 · 2:10 pm

New Eyes

via Daily Prompt: Imagination

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It’s known as Cathedral Rock (Windy Harbour), I get it, it’s quite large, it reaches skyward, spire-like. It was clearly someone’s imagination, and I get to share in that a little. However, if inclined, I can use my own imagination and come to my own sense of this rock, I thought of it as The Leap, the rock in the water having already done that.

I have met people who claim they have no imagination, or they only have a limited imagination. Initially I react to that with sadnness, but I question their premise. I think they have not had the encouragement, and probably the opposite in fact, to explore their capacity to imagine.

My imagination was given free reign. My mother indulged me in imaginative ways. She made cardboard castles and forts with working drawbridges (it’s amazing what bobbins and string can do), she taught me to imagine that my toys were real in the play moment, the cars, the plastic farm set, the soldiers, the trains. The best gift to my imagination was that mum read to me and taught me to read very early.

Reading took me to other worlds, and worlds I could extend, or place myself in. The Last of the Mohicans, Treasure Island, Pirates and Amazons, The Secret Seven, all fueled my mind and my play and creativity. These gave way to Asimov, Tolkien, CS Lewis, Donaldson, Moorcock, Rowling and more. Best of all were the poets from Donne to Oliver, and music, of course. It flowed out into writing, poetry, painting and more that I have passionately engaged. Imagination gave me new eyes, a different view. Which reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, which is related:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”  Marcel Proust

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February 23, 2018 · 2:12 pm

Conversant With Nature?

via Daily Prompt: Conversant

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One of my favourite places, the main beach at Augusta, clean, pristine, and great for everyone. There are dune protection programs, a series of specified paths, signs about protecting the Sand Pipers who breed there, and also for the possums too. The State govt recently imposed a ban on plastic shopping bags, and the community are supportive of that goal. The problems are few here, mainly the threat of bushfire, or the one or two people who flout the accepted behaviour for using the beach, river, or the forest trails.

I may not be fully conversant with all things environmental science, but I do feel conversant with nature, for me there is a sentience, a relationship with all beings. The result of that sense of relationship is more than just awe for nature, I have a respect for and desire to engage with nature. The interdependent relationships we survive with and thrive on are finely balanced and require care and attention. Any loss is more than just regrettable, it is permanently damaging, and in some cases, cataclysmic. Plastic islands in the ocean, plastic sand (grains of plastic) in the Mediterranean, marine and terrestrial creatures bound or damaged by fabrics, salinity, air pollution, and more, are a major concern.

As we continue to battle human rights and have made sweeping changes in some areas of human rights, it seems that we are not yet conversant with the rights and needs of nature across the world. Time is short, and nature needs us to be conversant with its needs now and its future. The irony is, the UN are in dialogue over space law, especially the treatment of the Mars environ by the Mars One team, yet we haven’t really ironed out a binding agreement on earth that gives nature a voice of its own. Ecuador has already stepped up (in 2014) and shown the way: “We the people assume the authority to conduct and Ethics Tribunal for the Rights of Nature. We will investigate cases of environmental destruction, which violate the rights of nature.” (Prosecutor for the Earth at the first International Rights of Nature Tribunal in Quito, Ecuador, January 2014). A sign of hope.

Paul,

pvcann.com

 

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February 21, 2018 · 2:42 pm

Turn To Stone

via Daily Prompt: Encrusted

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The well known Augusta water wheel, originally timber, built in the 1800s to provide water for the town and the lighthouse, now encrusted in calcite. A metaphor. If we cease to engage realtionally with others, with nature, with what matters, we risk becoming encrusted with hardness, weariness, compassion fatigue, creative dryness, and we seize up, ever hardening, never moving or growing. A heart that hardens ceases to love, and becomes encrusted with oughts (commonly referred to as a hardening of the “oughteries”), don’ts, must nots, and the bargaining of a negative mindset. What starts as protection of the self, becomes a coffin of stone that constricts. When I see that wheel, I want to chip away the calcite, to release the wheel and let it turn once again. I want to do that for those whose hearts have calcified too, but most of all I want to ensure I’m freeing my own. Only love chips away the stone of a hard heart.

Paul,

pvcann.com

 

 

 

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January 22, 2018 · 1:33 pm

Candid Me

via Daily Prompt: Candid

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November is cool on the south coast, most especially in the morning, which is when we were strolling along the beach and Hayden had dropped back to take some photos including this one. We were totally unaware until later, when he confessed he’d taken this candid shot.

It reminds me that a candid view is always the one you don’t see or at least are not fully aware of. It’s the view presented on the street, at the beach, coffee shop, driving, working, socialising, shopping, and everything. Of course there’s CCTV everywhere, traffic cameras too. People are indeed watching. But my point is not that people are watching, who cares, but am I able to authentically be me where I am? The self conscious are never viewed candidly, they are always checking. The egoists are strutting, making an entrance, making a scene. No harm in that! However, masks aside, is the world able to candidly view the authentic me? Am I comfortable as me in the world?

Paul,

pvcann.com

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