I have always loved the gift of marbles found in random places: solid mandalas, as one of Patrick White's characters calls them in the 1966 novel of the same title.Digging for the nascent garden in the backyard lockup of Skunk House today, I experience more Church of the Old Mermaids moments in finding two marbles.
The first marble I find is an orange, white and blue flame of colour in clear glass. Just another marble, until one considers the significance of the oranje, blanje, blou colours in the history of the country at the southernmost tip of Africa, and the fact that this weekend ET , who never really seemed to have all his marbles anyway, finally met the bloody end he's been courting all his life.
Finding the orange, white and blue did give me pause to consider history and connection to the land of my birth, even as, here at the world's end and up to my elbows in the mud of another county, I examined the earth's gift.
The second marble, however, brings me up abruptly. Not only is it a "smokey", which any marble player will know is way precious, but in it's clear black and white delineations it indisputably depicts the tao. The way, path or truth.
This from the same little piece of earth which gave me the aloha shard not so long ago. Seems to me it is the way of the Old Mermaids. Little signposts of synchronicity just keep turning up these days.Now tell me I am losing my marbles!
'There is another world, but it is in this one.' - Paul Eluard
