Caroni Swamp, Scarlet Ibises, Caimans
William Holt, my business partner, and I spent 3+ years making trips down to Port of Spain, Trinidad, working with an oil company there. On one of our trips, we heard about the scarlet ibises that come home to roost in a specific part of the Caroni Swamp at eventide. That sounded interesting. I hadn’t been to a swamp in a long time, unless you count parts of Houston after torrential rains!
So off we go to the swamp with our good friends, Liz Jolley and Chris Dodd – about four in the afternoon. It didn’t seem very ‘swamp-y’ at first, as our boat glided along the waterway. It is a clean swamp, versus 
one with a lot of rotting vegetation – at least what I saw. But then the trees starting meeting overhead, blotting out more of the sun, a caiman (a smaller version of the crocodile) slithered into the water from my right, while different birds chirped and twittered a gentle cacophony overhead – very soothing, actually. (But given the caiman, I decided against trailing my hands in the water, which, if I hadn’t seen the caiman, I probably would have.)
Eventually we came to a stop in a lagoon, across from a stand of very green trees – not sure what th
ey were, but they weren’t mangrove trees. And we waited, quietly, preparing our cameras. And then we waited some more. And waited some more. Life testing my patience yet again. Eventually, we saw 5 birds winging in from our back left. Oh, yes! Scarlet! An impossibly scarlet scarlet. With a wing span of 38", they make quite a sight flying against an azure sky.They flew in from the same general direction, 3’s, 7’s, 15’s, slowly, but surely filling in the blank spaces on 3 of the trees opposite us. And only on those three specific trees did the ibises perch. Soon the very green trees with the large splotches of scarlet begin to resemble a Christmas tree decorated only in red velvet bows. Every once in a while, a stray egret would nose (or beak) its way into a vacancy on a tree, adding a splash of white into the mix. It is truly an awesome sight.
So there is the caiman, brown, reptilian, dangerous, gliding beneath the surface of the swamp water, and the outrageously brilliant red bird flying free in the air; each playing their part in the ecology of the marshland. One is easy to fear, the other easy to admire. Are they not reflections of my own internal "caimans" and "ibises," that lurk and fly in my own psyche? It’s so easy to extol the virtues of one and downplay the existence of the other … or concentrate on ridding myself of the caimans and not enjoy the ibises! Or, I could accept both as part of my personal ecology. Why not? They are both there!
Love to pay attention to the synchronicity of events …
as this is what I wrote this morning …
in a forum, where I write regularly …
” Strange dreams…
between worlds of light and shadow forms…
disguised by shades of gray …
undefined …
and yet …
as if weaved with threads of gold ..
like a shawl of Gods grace …
here on earth …
followed by a clear instruction…
” and now write about the unifying theory” …
ah …
the challenge …
when the tendency is to get glued to the low density forms…
while the soul yearns to rise up and to shine forth…
ah…
the dance between the destructive power of our unconscious survival thinking patterns and the wisdom power of the heart …
a central point …
as a symbol of illumination and eternal love …
guiding us …
in our thinking …
towards the sun …
we are born to be…
in alchemy and transcendence…
as ultimately…
in the depths of our inmost primitive and instinctive ego nature lies the miracle of the power of our souls …
brought forth …
through the quality of choices …
we choose to live by …
moment by moment.. ”
Dear Ann
again, thank you…
for being who you are …
and for the grace and majesty of your spirit ..
I love to dance with…
Rituals
My grandama was disabled and cared for by grandfather – this meant that their travel was restricted.
Whenever we would go to the seaside we would be asked to throw in a pebble for them, which we always did.
They died in the seventies but I continued to throw the stones. And in the eighties I started to add a stone for other people who I would have liked to have with me who couldn’t.
Last year when in Greece I threw in for my grandparents, my mother who died in 2004; Martin, my best friend who died aged 13; Vicki and Lynda, good friends who died in their forties; my sister, still living thouhg now afflicted with the same disablity that restricted my grandmother; my other grandmother and my great aunt who used to love walking the beach.
It is a way of remembering them, and of being grateful that I can walk on the beach and throw stones .
I am now fifty, and I recognise that my pile of stones may grow year by year, and pray that I will be able to continue throwing them for a good many year.
Hi Sally,
What an exquisite ritual. Thank you for sharing. I will add it to my inpirational tool box.
oh yes …
my dream last night …
exploding reactive moments …
of a volcano fury intensity…
while hearing guiding voices…
what do you choose to do NOW???
ah…
the ultimate test we cannot escape …
if we are serious about becoming channels of transformation and healing …
rather than complaining about the violence in the world …
as if we are separate and faultless …
oh the power of delusional thinking …
seeking itself…
in truth…
that remains…
through the power of spiritual alchemy…
reinforced recently by the wise advice of a great inspirational speaker …
“Do you want better relatioships?”
Become a better partner!
“Do you want a better world?”
Become a better citizen!
a remindir of Ghandi’s timeless message
“Become the change you want to see in the world”
the single focus …
that has become my home…
o
I love rituals and very often find myself longing for more opportunities to step up and create them. I noticed just recently that I was very sad that we did not have a ritual to say goodbye to the Johannesburg centre. I think it would be important to say thank you and remember all the wonderful events which took place there, the many people who’s lives were touched. How we laughed and cried and created over and over. And the space held us, we were safe there, and it was a place we liked to go to.
When we were at 7 days I discovered that Anu, my room mate, loves rituals too. I had taken some smudge sticks with me and discovered that there were others who love rituals as well. Anu created a ritual down at the river with our clay pieces, we used fire and kindling and said some words to each other before releasing the clay back to the water and the earth. Then, on the last night, we had a ceremony and 6 women came to be smudged. We left behind us what no longer serves us in a simple ceremony …. (Wondering all the time if Pascal was smelling the herbs and wondering what we were up to). At the same time that it was releasing it was also binding, of Caro, Stockie, Lisa, Laura, Vijay, Anu and myself. Strong feminine connections to each other. Standing under the moon and remembering in a ceremony all that we are.
I love smudge sticks which I make whenever I trim the lavender outside my kitchen. The sticks we make here contain Mpepu which is a herb used in Zulu )and other?) rituals. Its not a new thing, and for a while I did have some reservation as my “fundamental mind” had it that the sticks were used by “witches”. Well, that has all changed and I now notice that when I turn up at parties people often ask if I brought the stick with. At Anu’s recent 50th birthday, I brought a stick with. It was a last minute decision. As I was leaving the house I saw them in the basket, and carefully prepared one for her with ribbons. At the same time, the other side of Joburg, the host was wondering what we would do as a ceremony to celebrate not only her birthday but the onset of her Menopause! So imagine our collective surprise, when I walked in with it and everyone there said “oh great you thought of a ceremony” ….which I had not, but was now feeling some kind of pressure to create. We created it together. We all spoke of menopause and what it was in our lives (or not yet) and there was a grandmother who spoke most eloquently about it. We were mostly women which was great, but Devin (Anu’s brother) also was there and joined in!
I love the idea of the apron cutting you refer to and when my son finally leaves the nest in a month’s time, I am also creating that ceremony. I am sure that my family will be tickled, but it is really an opportunity for me to let him know that he no longer needs to take on the role of the surrogate father that he has hung onto since his father’s death. Its great- I cant wait!
Scarlet Ibises and Caimans in Life
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the symbolism that came up for me in reading this post. I not only listen with my ears but with my other senses as well. And sometimes the pictures I see in my mind become the building blocks for other pieces.
The caiman represented to me the fine line I dance whilst being on an adventure (aka my daily life) between Fear and Caution. If I shrank from everything that frightened me, if I gave up at every possibility of danger, my life might not be as rich. If I ran my life like this I’d never walk down the streets of New York, Washington DC or London by myself, daylight or after dark. The noise of what once was and what could be blotting out what this Now has to offer.
Caution is usually found in the moment. It’s that prickly instincty feeling that is hard to explain but somehow manages to keep me alive and safe. It’s the feeling I get when I’m about to change lanes on the freeway and don’t because it doesn’t feel right. A moment later, a sports car comes whizzing by at high speed and my lane change could have made a difference between life and death.
The way I learned the difference between the two was to press on Fear and squeeze the Lies out of it and see what was left. Usually there’s not much. On occasion there’s a small seed of Caution and Truth. Sometimes.
The scarlet ibises and Anne’s description of her experience with them was also very symbolic for me. This is the fine line between Looking At and Seeing. Every moment of everyday, I Look At thousands of things designed to grab my attention – advertisements, neon signs, glossy magazine covers, Flash animations on a webpage, moving pictures projected on a glass tube in my living room, etc. I Look At them and likely won’t have much of an emotional response. Even though of it is designed to play on responses from my past or play on my desires for the future. I’m used to it no matter how artfully, comically, dramatically it’s done. Frankly, I filter a lot of it because there’s just so much.
Seeing requires all of my senses and my heart and my soul and my emotions. Seeing anything in the moment can be breathtaking and breathgiving at the same time. Seeing can be in the presence of thousands of Scarlet Ibises roosting amongst the trees in a distant wetland. Or it can be all of the things I normally filter creating a spectacle of color and light on the corner of 43rd and Broadway.
The Present, the Now, is what makes the difference.
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