When does a groove become a rut?
The phone rings. It’s Hannah ringing to ask if I’d like to do the night shift at work. I’m playing tonight - thank goodness. I slept yesterday for fourteen hours straight, recovering from the two prior night shifts and the broken rest which goes with it.
Hannah is Maori and is one of the great souls to whom the Maori turn when ‘the wheels fall off’, for their errant sons and daughters, living in Australia. She doesn't see herself that way.She has the observational skills of an eagle and serves her people as true royalty does. She is part of the reason that I say that I work with profound women rather than ‘men and women.’ The men - generally speaking - don’t really ‘get it’.
When does a groove become a rut? I’m ready to move on..... and - if you understand English enough to understand nuance - you’ll know what I mean.
The groove was set by the Romans - moving to a different track - when they set the standard for the width of the roads across Europe two thousand years ago. They did this by standardising the width of a chariot, at the rear end, to just accommodate the width of two horses arses. This, in turn, set the width of the axle and wheels.
As time passed, wagon makers across Europe found that , if they didn’t adopt the same standard, their wheels would not fit the grooves in the road - which soon became ruts - and would break far more frequently than if the wagons had adopted Roman custom.
When railways arrived many standards were used for the width of the track. We have different gauges within Australia. Get off at the border and change trains. America adopted a width, from the British, which goes back to the Romans. This action resulted in a railway tunnel through a mountain having a track width of ‘just over the width of two horses arses. This, in turn, meant that the booster fuel rockets on the sides of the space shuttle had to be reduced in size to what would fit through the tunnel - two horses arses.
What a story and thanks to an article on rense.com which I’ve paraphrased.
When does a groove become a rut?
I start my path on either an existing road or I break with tradition and tread my own way. The first exists because it has proved to be useful for the purpose of getting from one situation, in space and time, to another. One of the prices paid is that the rules of that road are set. The groove is already there and you follow it. If it turns into a rut - that’s one of the implicit possibilities and is also part of the price. Of course, there’s no-one there to tell you the price.... that’s also part of the price ... and so the width of two horses arses affects the exploration of space and we try to determine the pathways of our lives without much understanding of the foundations upon which those paths are set. The thought comes to mind that nothing is as it seems and that every tradition requires re-examination over time. What was the premise and does it still hold good.?
“White men have no Dreaming” said an Aboriginal man as part of a radio snippet. It made me prick up my ears as this is the first time I’ve heard this stated so bluntly.
I’ve been blessed on the path I’ve taken. I mean no harm - which matters if aligning oneself with the Divine. Intention matters. This doesn’t mean that I do no harm but, again, intention matters.
The cup is half full. What this means, in effect, is that you have my respect until or unless you prove otherwise.
Thirty years ago, I had the opportunity to ask - of a fair dinkum tribal elder - whether The Dreamtime would exist if the Aboriginal race disappeared from the Face of the Earth. His response was that The Dreamtime exists irrespective of belief. Not only that - you don’t have to be Aboriginal to experience The Dreamtime.
The profound implications, if this is taken to be statement of fact, contain the revelation that all of humanity has the capacity to actually experience another dimension of reality.
Mathematicians accept at least eleven dimensions yet we experience the same three or four.
We don’t really believe the idea of a Dreamtime because - as the Aboriginal bloke on the radio said so bluntly and, probably, with so little effect. “White men have no Dreaming.”
I say ‘with so little effect’ because - ultimately - ‘we’ as white men don’t have a Dreamtime to experience and thus we don’t ‘know’. You can describe purple to the blind but they won’t know it and thus can only believe or disbelieve. Same principle applies. We have religion, we have spirituality but do we gather as a group to discuss what happened in another reality?
The trackless territory is much of the mind as it is a physical reality.
When does a groove become a rut?
If you move off the road you pay a price. Again no-one tells you the price. There is no rut to get into. Each footprint matters. You make all the critical choices. You are not ‘asleep at the wheel’.
My dad took the somewhat dismissive view - in respect to Aboriginal Culture and culture - which says ‘Where are their cathedrals? Where is the written language? When we look at Aboriginal Art, Song and Dance, we see it as Aboriginal Culture instead of a physical representation of another reality which, in turn, overflows into this reality. It is that reality which is encompassed by the word ‘Dreamtime.’ Any attempt to understand Aboriginal Culture which doesn’t understand this is doomed to failure.
It must of come as an enormous and almost incomprehensible shock, and which is still rippling over the collective Aboriginal spirit, to gradually understand that Natural Cathedrals of a living spiritual world which they, as a race, have experienced are completely missing from the reality of this invading race and are, thus unseen and ignored and, at best, relegated to legend and myth.
White men are capable of Dreaming. So my brother told me, thirty years ago. He did not lie. He has lived here continuously for aeons. He wears his antiquity as a light and luminous garment that we don’t perceive. He has too much dignity to point it out. I’m not so constrained.
I don’t know if the Romans - who had little time or understanding for my ancestor Druids - understood or cared that the grooves of their chariot wheels would cut across the natural tracks of alternative ways through the landscapes of life and almost obliterate the signs.
‘Walk with care.’ says the first of the signs.
‘Welcome.’ says another.
'Not wide enough for two horses arses' says a third..... a statement which would have had no meaning for me yesterday but which gives me a cautious chuckle today.