in the night

European Southern Observatory, Flickr creative commons

 

'Coming back into self after a crisis is as slow as mending bone. Psychiatric illness affects the deep centres of the brain that govern perception, emotion, behaviour and personality. These areas - the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus and limbic system manifest the hidden experience of the mind as opposed to the core motor and sensory function of the brain.

In the night I slip past the night staff and go out into the courtyard, lie down on a bench and look up at the sky. The night air ripples. According to Scottish mathematician J. S. Haldane, "the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." This gives me comfort. The stars are out - gleaming cantos of space. In the wide, wide night, there is only the essential smallness of self and the tiny equilibrium of earth and air on which we exist.'

Kate Richards, 2013, Madness: A Memoir, Penguin.
https://katerichardsaustralia.wordpress.com/ 

the albatross

photo by Ron Knight, Flickr creative commons

 

'Wingspans of these birds can approach twelve feet, a reach so wide they cannot flap to take off. Instead they nest on the highest, most exposed ridges so that it is enough to merely stretch their wings into the wind and be vaulted skywards. After take-off they can watch the ocean heave beneath them for two years straight without touching earth or rock. Human beings seem so marginal to their lives that I had the sense that they could barely see me, as if their gaze passed right through me. I sat within inches of one nest, and though the bird sat stiffly, and was clearly uncomfortable on land it breathed an air of impassive serenity. Its feathers trembled like dusted snow, a dazzling, laundered whiteness.'

'They mate for life, and with increasing numbers lost to long-line fishing hooks more of them are standing lonely vigils on the ridges of Bird Island, waiting for mates that never return. Populations are falling as a result. Ornithologists tell us that albatrosses are not clever birds. Developmentally they are quite primitive, and the stereotyped patterns of their behaviour are sluggish and slow to adapt. But as I sat and watched them I thought not of illegal fishing or their reported simplicity but of Herman Melville's awe on an encounter with them: "At intervals it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it ... Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself."

Gavin Francis, 2012, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins
 

The endurance of emperor penguins

Photo by Christopher Michel, Flickr creative commons

 

'Masters of endurance, they weather the coldest and windiest habitat on earth - they are the only penguin that shows no territorial aggression, having realised that in order to survive personal space is a luxury they cannot afford. They live through storms of hurricane-force winds and temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees C, leading Apsley Cherry-Garrard to observe that in his opinion no creature on earth has a worse time.'

'I wondered if there at the end of the earth I might learn something from the emperors, of the purity of living in the physical senses, of a life without tangles of motives or the radio-chatter of the mind. They seemed to offer a welcome all too rare in the natural world, perhaps even a kind of forgiveness.'

Gavin Francis, 2012, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins

The Essence of Happiness

Photo by woodleywonderworks, Flickr creative commons

 ' ... generally speaking, one begins by identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering. Having done this, one then sets about gradually eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way.'

'If we utilise our favourable circumstances, such as our good health or wealth, in positive ways, in helping others, they can be contributory factors in achieving a happier life.'

'The demarcation between a positive and a negative desire or action is not whether it gives you an immediate feeling of satisfaction but whether it ultimately results in positive or negative consequences.'

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., 2001, The Essence of Happiness: A guidebook for living.
 

'Because our solidarity is stronger than our sadness.'

Photo, David Shankbone, Flickr creative commons

 

 We have only one enemy: inequality.

  Dr John Falzon
  Chief Executive Officer
  St Vincent de Paul Society National Council 

 

Rather than making us feel demoralised, this report should make us feel determined. 

Our task is to transform these personal stories of injustice into a powerful, collective struggle for a new society; a society in which people are not blamed because economic structures lock them out or in some case lock them up; one in which people are not told that they would not be poor if only they chose to be a little more productive.

This is our beautiful struggle, we who are many; we who make up the massive movement for progressive social change. We have only one enemy. It is called inequality. And no matter how long it takes, we will win against this enemy. Humanity will win against humiliation. 

Because our solidarity is stronger than our sadness. And even though our struggle is enormous, so too is our hope.

Foreword from
'Sick with worry ...'
Stories from the front-line of inequality, 2015
St Vincent de Paul Society
National Council of Australia

https://www.vinnies.org.au/icms_docs/225819_Sick_with_worry_2015_national_report

depression lies

Photo by Dawn, Flickr creative commons, https://flic.kr/p/5Xp3jH

 Matt Haig: Yes, depression lies. And it's very hard to not believe it when it's there, because it's very much in the foreground and it totally convinces you. And it's not always that it necessarily lies, but it gives you the very, very worst interpretation of your reality. Yes, so I think time proves that life doesn't always get worse.

from "Depression and #ReasonsToStayAlive",  Lynne Malcolm and Matt Haig, All In The Mind, ABC Radio National, 31 May 2015
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/depression-and-reasons-to-stay-alive/6494972

Matt Haig, 2015, Reasons to Stay Alive
http://www.matthaig.com/reasons-to-stay-alive/

The next time you see someone

Photo by David, Flickr creative commons, https://flic.kr/p/6i5NFA

poetry by Tao Lin

Inangahua Junction bridge after the 1968 earthquake, photo by Phillip Capper, Flickr creative commons

are you okay?

i don't think telling someone 'don't feel sad' will console them

you need to do whatever you can to make them feel better

whenever your actions make them feel sad

and not stop until they feel better

...

poetry by Tao Lin, 2008
Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy 
Melville House Publishing, New York 

Looking outward

Photo by Tony Fischer, Flickr creative commons

'What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.'

Quote often attributed to Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson but sourced to Henry S. Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street.

'It is the brain which does the thinking, not the thought; it is the soul which moves us forward, not ourself.'

crossroads

Photo by Renaud Camus, Flickr creative commons

'Stand at the crossroads and look,
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.'

Jeremiah 6:16

The unconventional David Walsh

Reflection MONA by Tracey Croke, Flicker creative commons

'I feel fear ... it's very rational that I feel fear in terms of a biological response. It makes sense to have built into me something that makes me fear death ... The sheer fact that I can face death is a huge privilege ... the chance of me being here is astronomical ... I had to go through incredibly fortuitous process to have the opportunity to contemplate death ... so I hope that I'm rational enough that  every time I think - soon I'll be dead -  I think, but right now I'm well and truly alive. That's the great privilege of facing death, having the opportunity to contemplate it in the first place ... '

November 2014, David Walsh, founder of Museum of Old and New Art.
Interviewed by Phillip Adams at Sydney Writers' Festival
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/public-forum-with-david-walsh-and-phillip-adams/5960560

J B Priestley

Photo by Evonne, Flickr creative commons

'As we grow older we are apt to forget that the despair of the young is even more gigantic and immediately overwhelming than their hopefulness: we never again face such towering blank walls of misery.'

Hope is a rope

Photo of Fred Beckey by Corey Rich

Michael J. Ybarra, 'The Old Man, His Mountains', The Wall Street Journal, 10 November 2011
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204485304576645473106063438

Die Hoffnung is ein Seil.
(Hope is a rope.)      Angelus Silesius

'Forces of pressure pose and define a question. But it is the forces of aspiration which formulate and offer an answer. It is as though human beings - personalities and/or collectivities - who are burdened by the weight of necessities, found something like a rope to be a message, an announcement, a 'revelation', a gospel. Whether they believe this rope to have come from elsewhere, or whether they think it came from within themselves is of no consequence. In both cases it is a rope that they throw in the air, in other words, into space, into the clouds, into the sky. To the observer, it seems that there is nothing to keep it up, except for the impalpable and inconsistent worlds of fantasy, wanderings and absurdity. And yet this rope is anchored. It holds. And when humans grab hold of it and pull themselves, it takes the strain, it maintains its rigidity ... '

Henri Desroche, translated by Carol Martin-Sperry 1979,  The Sociology of Hope, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Beam like the sun

Photo by Ed Dunens, creative commons Flickr

'You cannot define yourself in reference to other external coordinates.

You must define yourself internally.

Think of yourself as a manifestation, a visible realisation of some higher frequency.

There in the micro-quantum world lie the answers to everything.

Get yourself in alignment to that stuff and you beam like the sun.'

Russell Brand