What's all the song and dance about? Rockin' the boat! Yeah!

Stumbling across this on YouTube, I couldn't help thinking about the music which sustained the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa: the revolution in four part harmony. Ah! remember the parties! Mbaqanga, that particularly South African music style with rural Zulu roots. Mahlathini and the Mohotella Queens (here) , bare arms in hot velvet nights, bare feet pounding on Paul and Gill's wooden floors on the sunnyside of town. Good old Grahamstown. The transforming power of song and dance!

Hallelujah! Join the revolution. Rock the boat or at least put your hands together for a good oarsman.It's time for change. AMANDLA!

Political adbreak : JA RASTA! Barak bebeh!

Sorry all I just could not resist posting this Blakk Rasta numba. I have said it before, I say it again: when the going gets tough: DANCE. You gotta hand it to Africa to deliver the beat.

a love affair of earth and salt water, presided over by sky and season in the long shadowed late afternoon: Doe-kag-wats

The season is falling fast through autumn blaze to winter bare with final fire. My eyes are huge and full with the colour of it all. Autumn this far north is a sumptuous feast. Late afternoon yesterday found me down by the waterline at Doe-kag-wats, Port Madison Indian Reservation, harvesting release. Clamshells and pebbles, a currency of delight

For more on some recent history of Doe-kag-wats, the Suquamish tribe wetland and saltwater marsh, a traditional place of healing and worship follow this link.

At the end of the day: sleeping on it in Mexico

Cry the beloved country: how do we measure our days?

The Jim goes to Joburg theme runs through literature, story and fable: poor man goes to city in search of fame and fortune. Bad move.

In all these stories what we usually learn is that true value was in what Jim left in the simple life, the rural life, in the village or wherever. The Pre-lapsarian life. Life before the Fall. Life in Paradise. The message: poverty and ruin lies in worldly success, the city. Greed the lesson for the day. And our fallen nature as flawed human beings.

This morning it seems to me we have the classic theme writ large: a bloated and obese developed world trembling on ah horrors! ruin in the current fantasy monopoly money economic fumble and stumble whilst the impoverished rest of the world continues to scan the sky for signs of relief.

The sky that, in spite of Chief Sealth's incredulity, we continue to sell.
Perspectives from a personal diary: I learned the rich and complex craft of storytelling beading from Zulu women who would be considered impoverished by many in the apparently wealthy nation I find myself in this morning.
I learned the powerful and protective shisha embroidery on a rooftop in Rajasthan, whilst staying with a Brahamin family whose children, though barefoot and (horrors) mostly toyless, woke every morning in their one-room-accommodates-all-activities-and-family members to their father intoning incense scented prayers, their grandma grinding flour in the courtyard.

The equation becomes simple in pre-dawn clarity: greed = poverty and oh whilst we talking accountability it does no harm to add the other deadlies: lust, anger, ego and attachment. We all lose a whole lot when those thieves come knocking. Steal our compassion and our humanity they do.

But wait; we said earlier that humanity was flawed and fallen. Yes. That is what compassion is for. Let's give compassion the prize for the greatest wealth of all.

Now there's a thought: what if, for just one day, we all practiced random acts of compassion? For just one day we became Gandhian and were the change we wanted to see in the world. Gave a little instead of listening to the shrill voice of me me me. Here are another 88 ways you could make a difference. Today.

Change facilitated by dragon tears and haircuts: the salmon stream of consciousness

In the clear autumn evening after work last night, the frost weather advisory (yes isn't this country amazing in what it tells its citizens) had me laying cardboard boxes over my tender young agapanthus clump. A three quarter moon and early stars set a sparkling backdrop to my activity.

Pots of blooming fuchsias have moved onto the porch too. With the thermometer reading 28 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, autumn is truly here in all its crisp fresh beauty. My tropical light, tropical bright cotton confection frocks must make way for more layers: it is time for scarves and socks and wool. Once more my body becomes an outline of sharp sensations of cold running the perimeter of exposed areas from ears, nose, back of neck, hands, wrists and ankles. And occasionally the gap between tops and bottoms opens a chasm of ice. Ah winter discomfort: now I remember why I bought the ticket to Africa!

The first light dusting of snow defines the saw-toothed Olympic mountain range now. A pristine definition of white moves into the hazy purple-blue of my horizons. Yes: change, the only constant. In this northern place of young geography and defined seasons, an old tropical soul does some adjusting. When every aspect of life is a moving target, survival depends upon flexibility and a strong centre of balance, or fire, within. Adaptability: Darwin's secret of success.

Since my migration here, autumn has become my favourite time for a little walk in the woods, maybe facilitate the change with a soak in sulphurous hot springs. Carving a ruthless personal day from the clamour of commitments of This Harried American Life I took a contemplative 200 miles or so round trip drive to Sol Duc hotsprings in the Olympic National Forest. It took a lot of determination to loose myself from the ties that bind, the unwashed dishes in the sink, the unmade bed, the unravelled choas of neglected domesticity, but in the end it was truly worth it after all.

The first snow, a sombre slightly gloomy wind-ruffled Lake Crescent, a salmon or two silvering their way upstream, the fiery reds and oranges of the early changing vine leaf maples, big leafed maples beginning the gentle move to 24 karat, light mysterious swirls of mist twirling the layered deep constant blue-green of spruce, cedar and fir all conspired to make it a Kodak Instamatic chocolate box day of picture perfect scenery lovely beyond the singing of it. Sometimes being up to one's neck in hot water isn't a bad thing. Geothermally heated hot water that is.

Quileute Indian legend has it that two dragons, from Soleduc and Elwha valleys respectively, fought territorially in this place. These magnificences were pretty well matched. A fierce tussle went on for years and years, scraping bare scars above the timberline and leaving patches of torn lichen skin hanging from the trees and draped across the rocks. Eventually, conceding impasse, each retreated to their respective caves to cry the sulphurous tears of the hot springs. From dragon frustration comes my soothing today. I am grateful.

It has been said and proved scientifically too here, that a little cry does a lot of good. On a dragon scale make that a whole lot of good. Yeah, I have been known to cry buckets and then move on. Dragon tears help me through change. Especially now that I am older. Teabags can take their time on ageing eyelids. As the body becomes less resilient, the soul reciprocates reaching more towards the surface. Too much crying the beloved country under the bridge. Somehow in this melting pot it seems apposite to mangle references so.

Thus it was time too, this week, to leave the retro tresses. For fourteen years I have been Medusa tendrilled, long haired, barefoot where possible. It is a complicated story but it all started with a vacuum cleaner. My old one went nova spectacularly. Thick black smoke and the most horrible smell. Yuck. So one morning before work, I went out to get a new one. Ended up with a really spiffy extremely short spikey haircut instead. It was time.

Trouble is, the pretty platinum styalist who did the do seems to think that gel is an essential life accessory. I came home and washed the perfumed axle grease off my mop. It looks somewhat different from her artistry now. Ah well. With my current fast lane stressful pace, I run my hands through the remains of the tresses enough to have it standing up on end without the help of gel.

Sweet liberation! Bring on change and that lovely road into the hills. The one that is lovely beyond the singing of it. Darwin rocks! Life has some spectacular salmon streams. When you get the call to go home, to go to ground, there's no denying instinct. Upstream, against the current.