NO METAPHOR COMPARES

Back in business. Smooth as silk. Good as gold. Fast as fire. Here I am. Back in town. The locus of all my offshoots, the place that it all began: That is, all of my writing, publishing, modeling and true living. I guess I learnt to LIVE here. It’s nice to be here. Truly a pleasure. I have been seeing many great people upon the streets who I know and love. One type, ancient (not just old) friends. Another type, industry people I haven’t seen for donkeys years but who I love to bits and pieces. A third type, the birds. There is a strange bird in Sydney that woop-o-wills away, and it never ceases to transport me to a dusky dark Centennial Park.

I’ve lived in just about all the Eastern Suburbs here, and yet nothing compares to being close to that one deep sea of cool green. The wildlife is still, the trees are alive, the moon is always watching it all, yellow and fat like a poisonous flower. Oh I have missed you blank white page. My brain is so rapidly filled these days by meetings and more meetings, catch ups, castings, love-letters of the mind that I send to my man, to friends, to myself. I am astonished at my life right now, and am absolutely in love with what appears to be my ride. I wake up in the morning thinking, oh wow! So this is mine. So this is Christmas, every day! (Judging by the fact that my last Christmas consisted of oysters and champagne in a hospital at my mother’s bedside, I think my daily days of April madness are true Christmases repaid, repetitively, over and over, in bliss)

So I talk to you white page, and what shall I spill? That I am turning each corner and stumbling on faster greatness and smoother rapids? Thank you white page of life for these things: my car that treats me extraordinarily well in these busy days. My health that never falters, inside and out. (touch wood) My clarity and sense of immense, purposeful direction. I have nothing to fear, nothing to lose, nothing to grasp onto – and I am immediately grateful for falling, right now. Because I recognise that I am, in the greater scheme of things, not falling, but mid-flight. How magic it is. How exhausted I am. But how in love I will stay, and feel, and be. Calm and whole and light.

How did I get to this point? I just did what I could and walked with the grain of my compass. You’ve GOT TO let go. You’ve GOT TO give up what doesn’t work. You’ve GOT TO stop kidding yourself that you’re alright. Be kind to yourself, be good to your soul. Every inch of your body may deserve attention, and at the end of your century it will all crumble to dust. Flesh rots. Skin sags, disintegrates, your bones will be cracked in flames and furnished to a crust. Then it will be scattered and dispersed. Or, the carnage of your body will descend down a six foot hole (shorter than me!) into the earthen peat and your body will stay there for the micro-organisms of the deep to breathe over and crowd in upon.

YOU meanwhile, not your body, will be remembered. YOU will have said something, done something, meant something to someone, and meanwhile, YOU, as in WHO YOU ARE, not what you are – which is essentially, just like the rest of us! Human flesh blood bone skin tissue cell organ feces urine semen placenta lymph oil nail cartilage hair water! I digress…. WHO YOU ARE is not what you are. Who you are is what spirit moves all that aqueous matter and animates it down the boardwalk at 7pm on a Wednesday night in April. Who you are is lit up by the lanterns of lights on Bondi beach, is met by the backdrop of indigo ocean and gray moon sand under the ancient black sky that breathes us all in. Ahh, the sky is grand and it is clean and deep and whole. It is who you are. All of us are in it, and it is in all of us.

“An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger. Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes.
” (James Baldwin)

“For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
 Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
 Then I walked outside.” (Rumi)

I’d also like to share this, which I found tonight. I have grown up being involved in the Landmark Education seminars, and what this man writes about the film that has very recently been made about the work that Werner Erhard set out to do for man and womankind on this Earth, the conversations he started and the training he stuck by, is something extraordinarily worthy of recognition. I recommend Landmark Education to all creatures of the human world who seek a fulfilling, utterly unstoppable, blast-into-space freedom-infused life of possibility and sheer satisfaction, in each and every moment. I can tell you honestly that I could be in the rain on a rock and be seeing the possibility available to me in that situation. I have an immense love of people; I love the human spirit; I want everything in the world for everyone who is alive today – those who are about to be born (welcome!), those who have just a month left to live.  A weekend like one of these (participating in the Landmark Forum, or even watching this film) will shift you, towards all your poised dreams. I promise.

NB: I’ve been recommending Landmark for a long time, but usually one person by one person, beginning with the people closest to me. Now my readers are close to me and I love you all too, and I’ve got too much here inside to hold onto – these are my offerings. I’m not selling anything, not cajoling or advertising my wares for a profit. In fact – my wares are contentment, joy, effervescent love and radiant, ridiculously overwhelming, orange blossom bergamot scented dappled shade pulsations of peace. Those are my wares – and my profit is feeling human beings present to the same experience! Isn’t that what being human is about? This is what I feel. Would you like to share it, because I have made a lot of food in this feast, and feasts are only fun if my friends are here with me. Eat on! Live up. Love forever and live well. You heard it from me first.