Visiting Lemuria

http://101nights.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/ancestral-link-to-lemuria/

(Posted by Suzanne)

The wonderful thing about Lemuria is that you don’t need a Passport to get there.

Today I applied for my Australian Passport.  Just getting the Application form approved has taken weeks.

The first issue was the fact that I have changed my name.  “You need a paper trail to explain it,” a woman at the Post Office said.  I spent time and money getting copies of my original Birth Certificate, Marriage Certificate, Change of  Name Certificate and amended Birth Certificate.

“You must get authorised photocopies of these,” said a different woman at the Post Office.  I took photocopies and got them verified at the Police Station.

I got my photo taken (at the Post Office).  “You must get someone who votes, has known you for more than a year but is not a relative and who has lived in the same house for more than a year to sign the form saying that this is a true photo of you,” said yet another woman at the Post Office.  Figuring out who met the criteria and would be willing to sign such an officious form took a few days.  Explaining the form to her took ages.  The question demanding to know the exact number of years and months she had known me  had us both wandering down memory and counting on our fingers.  After a fit of  giggles my friend signed the form and I took it to the Post Office.  I also  took $208 to pay for the actual Passport.

“You have cut the photos too small,” said a woman at the Post Office (it was the one who’d demanded the paper trail but she didn’t remember me).  “You don’t need all these documents,” she said.  “The Change of Name Certificate and the amended Birth Certificate are enough.  You need to fill out the form again.”

I filled out the form again and got my friend to sign it again.  I took it to the Post Office this morning.

“These photocopies are not required,” said a woman at the Post Office that I’d never seen before.  “We take our own here and authorize them ourselves.”  She did that but had trouble understanding the Change of Name Certificate.  She pondered it for a good ten minutes before accepting it.  Even more worrying to her was the fact that I had once had a Passport in the 1970s.  I misplaced it when it expired and do not recall the exact date on which it was issued.

Eventually she stamped the Application Form but I could tell she wasn’t very happy about it.  I paid the $208 and left  completely unsure as to whether I will get a Passport anyway because I can’t recall a date in the 1970s.

The idea of travelling overseas has lost some its appeal.  I think I’ll travel to Lemuria instead.  All I need is my imagination and my new computer.

During the time I was off line I read a lot of novels.  In a fantasy novel I came across the idea that  fairyland and ancient mystic sites have been desecrated with car parks, housing estates, MacDonald’s and the  like.  As a result the supernatural beings that inhabited them have  left the physical plane and gone to  live on the Internet.  Many, I’m sure, have taken up residence in Lemuria.  I think it’s time I paid them a visit.  I have a feeling they’ll  respond to me for who I am regardless of name changes and the fact I’ve never been good with dates.

A curious new year

http://www.outbackonline.net/rookery/Day23_HeatherBlakey.html

Excerpt from ‘A Cabinet of Curiosities’ by Heather Blakey

A cabinet of wondrous curios
A delightful collection
Objects,
Carefully placed
Lying, seeming unconnected
Next to each other
Evoking,
Triggering memories
Permitting the mind to
Wander to faraway places

Yesterday (New Year’s Day, Australia) I heard a man on the radio talking about how curiosity keeps our minds alive and active.  Trying out new things, exploring by ways we have not taken before and allowing our minds to ask ‘what if’ questions are all ways to excite our curiosity.  Our minds become engaged and our enthusiasm for life is renewed.

Reading Heather’s poem about a cabinet of curiosities where unconnected things lying next to each other permit the mind to wander to faraway place led me into a series of ‘what if’ questions.

What if I used my new camera to take pictures of things around me and played with the images in Photoshop?

What if I combined digital photos with photographs and scans of art work I’ve done?

What if I used these images to create a kind of digital journal – a kind of virtual cabinet?

I quickly realized the idea would work best if it had some kind of thematic framework.  I went back to Trains of Thought and wandered about Soul Foods looking for inspiration.

I followed links to the Sanctuary of Dodona http://www.dailywriting.net/imagery17.htm

and read ‘On the advice of Athena you come to Dodona to sit within the sanctity of an Oak-tree and ask a question of the oracular spirit.’

I then read:  ‘Demeter welcomed me with tears of joy, the leaves sang happily, a butterfly danced, skipping lightly above the delicate cyclamens that grow amid the old ruins…..
from the diary of Heather Blakey 2001.

Demeter in the garden - digital - Jan. 2010

My New Year’s Resolution is to nurture my curiosity.  I’m liking the places it’s taking me.

Posted by Suzanne (Almurta)

The Duende and my new camera

The Duende really spoke to me when I got a new digital camera.

This fiery eye is actually a photo of the inside of a green glass bowl resting on a red bench top.

The blue stone in the photo below glows with a red gold fire whenever the light hits it.  No one knows what kind of stone it is.  One of my daughters picked it up at a street stall in Vietnam about ten years ago.  When it is away from the light the stone is a soft powdery blue.  The stone itself is relatively soft and marks and chips quite easily. (If anyone out there in Soul Food land knows what it is – I’d love to hear from you).

The diamond shape behind it is a lead crystal stopper from a bottle and the two objects rest on a stone my son found at the beach – I think it’s called mudstone.

Realms of gold and other jewels

http://www.outbackonline.net/choc%20box/choc_imaginarylands.htm

Today I sampled a chocolate at the Soul Foods chocolate box(http://www.dailywriting.net/choc%20box/chochbox.htm) and found this  creativity prompt: Make yourself a passport and prepare to go to an imaginary land, to journey into a realm of gold.

The passport that I made consisted of a question which I asked my computer search engine. “What was before the big bang?” I typed.

I received a number of answers.  The one that intrigued me the most is the idea that the big bang emerged from a singularity.  This singularity was the last remaining traces of a previous universe.  This previous universe had gone through a period of expansion after the big bang which created it.  After eons of time the energy released at during this big bang dissipated and the universe that preceded ours became to implode back in upon itself.  Eventually all that remained was a singularity.  This singularity exploded in a big bang which released the energy from which our universe is created.  In time the energy that causes our universe to expand will cease and our universe will implode.  Eventually it too will become a singularity that will explode in a big ban.  A new universe will then come into being.

This cyclic procession of universes reminds me a story from Hindu cosmology.  When the God Brahma breathes out all life comes into being.  When Brahma breathes in all life ceases to be until the God breathes out again.  All existence is Brahma breathing in and out, in and out in vast cycles of time and no time.  When it comes to cosmology it seems science and religion are sometimes in accord.

All this thinking about universes reminded me of a time some years back when I visited an observatory high in the clear mountain air of outback New South Wales, Australia.  There I saw an  exhibition of images from the Hubble Space Telescope. One showed a golden cloud of gases that had been sighted at the centre of universe – vast, glorious cloud of golden light  pulsating with energy.  A true realm of gold – a realm both real and imaginary for the mind stretch necessary to accommodate the knowledge that such a golden mass can be seen at the centre of the universe requires a leap of imagination.

Around the same time I also visited a small observatory set up for tourists.  There telescopes had been set up on a large outdoor platform.  Peering into the telescopes I saw an orb of piercing white light that was star Sirius.  It shone like a street light on a pitch dark night.   Through another telescope I looked at the twin stars of Alpha Centauri. They glowed warm and golden and reminded me of car headlights appearing out of nowhere on a country road in the black depths of night.  Yet another telescope pointed to a constellation the scientists had named The Jewel Box.  Gazing into this telescope I saw a cluster of stars in every colour of the rainbow glittering in the darkness of deepest space.

Driving back to my hotel after witnessing these miracles of scientific exploration my understanding of life felt larger than it had before my visit.

Realms of gold - digital image - Dec. '09