Science

Monday 9.19pm

There were once two tribes who feuded constantly. The cheif of the Waimarama tribe had a champion, their cheif Te Mata O Rongokako, he was unbeatable. The men of the Herataunga tribe just did not know what to do against this man, but an old woman spoke up. Let Te Mata meet our chief's daughter Hinerakau, her beauty will soon turn his mind from war she said. And it worked, he fell in love, and decided to woo Hinerakau instead of fighting. But the people of Heretaunga had not forgotten his past evils against them and persuaded Hinerakau to set him many difficult tasks to prove his love for her. These he all accomplished easily until the last. Te Mata, she said, our tribes live so far apart, you on the coast us here on the plains. If you really love me you should eat through the hills that seperate us and we could meet more often and more easily. Te Mata took a huge bite out of the earth, but choked on a rock and fell down dead. He still lies there today on the skyline, surrounded by the beautifull cloak that Herekau had covered him with before leaping to her death from the cliffs, for she had fallen in love with him in return.

As people we seek an explanation for the world around us. Stories provide this explanation. Science of course, though never described as such, is just another such set of stories.

Do not believe everything you are told.

Dawn Chorus (and cat legs)

Thursday 2.30pm

It is 5.30am on a Spring morning. The sun is rising but hasn't yet made it over the horizon, the sky is grey and the air has a chill to it here in the garden but it is not unpleasant. A new day, my day off so there is no pressure. The rest of the family is asleep apart from the cats who have been fed and are out here with me ears twitching. We are surrounded by sound.

As you may have realised, I am a very visual person. My head is full of pictures. When I talk my hands move to describe what I am saying into the air between us. And if you talk to me I construct a vision of what you are saying and then describe it back to you to check that I have understood. If I want to remember something I'll write it down or draw a picture. I see the patterns, colours and shapes around me, first, before anything else.

But when it comes to relaxation, then music and sound is much more important. When I look at something, my brain is full of questions. How did they do that? Why did they do it like that? How would I have done the same thing? But music cuts past all of that, going straight to my emotional core which seems to be just below my breast bone, in my centre. Poetry too does this for me, evoking feelings rather than thoughts, but music is quicker and more direct. To me, modern living places too much emphasis on thinking, we need to make time for feeling as well. It would make us all more balanced people. Those few minutes spent outside in the morning do it for me.

Jack Johnson says in one of his songs "You don't always have to hold your head higher than your heart."

I like that.

Ink

Monday 7.40am

When I was younger, ink came in hard glass bottles with big black shiny plastic tops. It was for fountain pens but you could also draw and paint with it, and this is what I did. And just for fun if you dropped some onto wet paper the ink would spread through it separating out into it's different colours like a bruise. Ink came in different colours of course - blue, black, red, green and brown I think, and also one called "blueblack". This was my favourite. Black was just black, a little plain and a little flat whereas blueblack was blacker than black, such a deep, deep indigo that you could stare into it forever and never see the bottom. Since then if I can I will not use straight black as a colour, although this is much more difficult now with ballpoint pens and inkjet printers. The slightly off colour that can only be got by doing things by hand gives life and vibrancy to what is created, your eye is drawn into the colours and kept interested. Like notebooks in the computer age there will always be a place for the handmade.

Blueblack is also the colour of the sky just before the sun comes over the horizon in the morning.