PhD Genesis

In the now distant past of my late teens I found myself bobbing endless days (and nights) on the flight deck of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. My thoughts often went to wondering how the ocean worked. What forces were at play? Did water flow around the entire planet or was it confined to the basins? If it circulated, how long did it take? What was the driving force? The rotation of earth? The tides? The wind? How was water exchanged on the surface with water thousands of feet below? How with the endless heat of the sun did not all the water evaporate? How fast did the water move at ocean floor? Why was it always a certain salty-ness? And so on, and so forth, the questions came. So after leaving the USN I headed off to University in pursuit of answering these questions. Intent on becoming an Oceanographer. In achieving that goal by earning a Masters of Science in Ocean Science through UC Santa Cruz I gained a keen interest in data analysis as it relates to earth science and particularly the ocean.

Languishing

The road today was gnashing it's formless teeth at my progression forward. There is sense of long passages in open landscapes when the strong wind over varied terrain forces air to rise, cool and condense. Set against the backdrop of effortless blue, beyond which lies the unforgiving vast vacuum of space. Yet we look up and see only beautiful effortless blue and so forget of how precious the beauty. So clean, this day, that one forget it's just a mirror; one which humanity cannot help but reflect on. The light on this afternoon especial when the sun is 2/3 past it's solar noon. Possibly it is the freezing level dropping down that adds to the light, enchances it. Not vibrant and saturated. No, natural and pure.

A Little More

It is not easy, but it is also something that must be done. Each day we move forward and do more with our consciousness, in our actions and/or with our thoughts. None of it easy. The truth in humans is readily there but spread thin across the communication links. Social media connects us but by its design focuses us on the ditches in our path and rarely do we look to the sky therein. However, that is likely a speed bump on our evolutionary path.

Connie — The Uninvited Guest

On Sunday it was bucketing down with rain as we had a big fat depression form just off the coast here and create some very wild weather; 50 knot winds and 250mm (10inches) of rain in 48hrs. There has been some minor flooding. It was a really good storm! My foul weather cycling gear was put to the test and passed! Ok, that aside, going back to Sunday arvo. The storm had just set in and our house was very snug, as a drafty tiled house, fireplace-less house can be. I was in my exposed study working on WeatherEye code. Leña was baking peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies with periodic naps in front of Fried Green Tomatoes and Dirty Dancing. While the kids Disneyed it up cuddled in Bodhi’s room in front of Laney’s computer. The cats and dogs were lounging. Alas when what should I spy in the rug there in front of me, but a fat little funnel web spider on a leisurely stroll through our living room! Well at first I thought what kind of spider is that!?!? Carl became curious at it too? He gave it a bat. And that’s when I saw it rear off the mat (well, rug, really but we’ve been reading a lot of Dr Seuess of late so ...). Anyhow, the spider looked to be some ground dwelling type, about the size of a 50 cent piece (legs included). So I shooed Carl from killing it, retrieved a small empty glass jam jar and coaxed the frightened funnel web into for the safety of all. However, at that time I was still dubious about the type of spider it was — could it be a trapdoor, or a mouse spider, or a funnel web? How did it come to be crawling across our floor? Curious! Even curiouser still, it did not see to be mature (fully grown) for any of the above species of ground dwelling spiders. So after the excitement of our little house gawking at this guest now in a glass jar, I thought I had better investigate. So we cling-wrapped the lid, and rubber-banded-it to be sure. Poked some holes in the top and placed her in a spot unmolesting.

That night while tucking Sailor in, and after singing her a song (a nightly request of hers of either her mom or I), Sailor was curiously talking about the spider, and I thought we should name her. So I asked Sailor what a good name for our uninvited guest should be, “Connie” was her reply. 

So on Monday morning after taking the kids to school, and before I headed off to work, I took Connie to the Shoalhaven Zoo for their opinion on the type of Spider. They thought, most likely a female funnel web (either an Illawarra variety, Illawarra wisharti, or Sydney variety, Atrax Robustus), but were unsure due to her diminished size (immaturity) and the fact that no one there was a entomologist or zoologist. They suggested I take her to either Symbio Wildlife Park (https://symbiozoo.com.au) or Australia’s Reptile Park (https://reptilepark.com.au). As there are concerns about their numbers after the recent fires, if it indeed is the Illawarra variety, and breeding and milking her they might be interested in. In either case, neither of these parks are right down the road. Ok, well, I supposed, and thus went to our local Fins, Fangs and Feathers shop in Nowra and spoke with an enthusiast of spiders and keeper of them as “pets” ; a young adult in her twenties who seemed very confident in her husbandry. 

Alas, Connie now resides a top a cabinet in our living room in a 25cm cuboid transparent plastic container with a red lid filled to 2cm with mixed Eucalypt and sand substrate and two small rocks. They rocks, mind you, Sailor found and reckoned Connie would appreciate. We have fed her two Australian Wood Cockroaches (Panesthia cribrata) and she has buried herself in the substrate.

The plan is to phone one of the parks and take her there when the opportunity presents itself. She’ll be in our care until then. 

Some interesting facts and asides:

Connie can live up to 10 years and does not reach maturity until she is 5 years old

Her venom is not considered as dangerous as the males. In fact, there have been no reported deaths from female envenomation. The last reported death due to male envenomation was in 1980 right before an anti-venom was crafted. In any case, we will not be experimenting with Connie and ourselves with regards to envenomation. She is respected for the dangerous critter that she is as well as her being an integral part of our natural environment. 

Connie smells like an ant — likely paying credence to her being of the Illawarra variety of funnel webs

Connie will live the first five years of her life in a single burrow

Still unanswered:

How did she come to be in our house?

What type of spider is she really?

The slush is more than the ice before

With the hustle and a bustle and the wind and the rustle it's a wonder we get anything done at all. Progress, measured in decades worn stale, like pleather recliner in the smokers home; now forgotten but still being used. If you believe I'm grasping for straws and speaking in metaphors then welcome. In is this age of donning eight billion thoughts per minute into the pipeline of conscious streaming humanity, we welcome all who play. Though the conformists have defined their edges and imposed so clearly to see, yet the illusion is looking through them; wrapping oneself in them. Till you and the edge are no longer discernible. In this way we see beyond.

Maybe this is all a dream, but I imagined I was talking to dragons on the edge of a hill. They were curious on prey in the land of the setting sun. Billy and I were more interested in the surf and thusly ignored them. Neither Billy nor I had any instruments fit for entertainment of this company and we both could tell from their veiled smirks, they were up to no good.

Though, who am I to judge good, no? Or rather, know! I know, I know. I know, I know what good is. As good is felt and good feels right. Right through feeling not through calculation. Though, under this logic those Dragons feel right I suppose, but I argue that their's is an immersion into the feeling of wrong is right. They know still are aware of the opposing feeling of rightness, to them no longer good. Moralism. Though, that word seems stunted in its aspiration to apply to definition of knowing the difference between right and wrong. It implies learnt knowledge. I suppose, most directly, I am saying that we humans, and possibly all mammals feel right from wrong; innate. From all walks of life, in mammalia. Possibly even the shrew with it's social habitats and life driven what seems like entirely biological needs, and incapable of higher thought, possibly it is dreaming and when it wakes feels that it is part of something greater than itself. Alas, we will never know, as we are not the shrew and through no power can you divine your cognition so.

I digress, as this was not Billy and mine's train of thought this day. No we were questing for more simple delights of the senses; ocean waves and boards. So we wandered down the path with barefoot gaze and parched spirits. The elements of breathing were fledgling and I was boy in mind but a man in form. The kind that bring forth this sense:

Dark sky water winter cold
Waves high clean break on my travelled soul
Where did this distant swell come from?
So clean your lines
Like peeling back the fabric of space-time

The flow
Rise up, take form
From angles curved you were born
Build here now your smooth slope steepness
That gradual ascent from heartfelt deepness
Own this shore for this moment in time
Let me work here now to find

That spot
Paddle long to get out past the lot
That cold frothy white water wash
Takes all my effort and focus not to get lost
To pass through the mess
And find that place
I saw from shore

Out beyond the point
You break like lion roars
Just watch now as slight offshore lures
And blows
Watch you move like slo-mo show
And groove
Feel the bottom I hear your tune

This is the spot we ride together
Balanced like an eagle feather
Staring at the moon
Watch ten thousand sunrises
Cradled like a spoon

Infinity’s door step
On the edge of this barrelled break
Now deep inside I feel your wake
I see the shore I once stood on then
Distant now like I knew it when
Thunder boomed in a wet hungry jungle
My hearts awake come sleep lets rumble

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Then all was quiet for just one moment. Me in my chest. Heart bounding. Another quest fulfilled.

It is only now that I recount the effortlessness with which two decades can be inhaled and exhaled. Though, whence, is not referring to time rather place, and so to am I, like all, bound to the details that shatter effortlessness and reveal the quiet sparkling details that flicker like quartz in sand on a beach under full moon bioluminescent wave wash. Rare? Not at all. Open your eyes. It is happening all the time. And if you have no eyes then you already know what it is being said here, as it has been said before; King Carl Gato's decree, the light is for everyone all the time.