Another photographic triumph

Back out to the lagoon in search of a repeat performance from yesterday’s whales.

Sadly, they didn’t show up today. However, we did spot a Southern Giant Petrel (Macronectes giganteus), which was a first for me. Small wins.

This guy isn’t a Southern Giant Petrel (Macronectes giganteus). He’s a White-Breasted Cormorant (Phalacrocorax lucidus). Fairly common on the coast here.
But it takes a special sort of talent to catch him like this:

Perfect timing. Just lovely.
I thank you.

Self-googling hippie takes offence after 6½ years

Trigger warnings: Whale Death, Middle Earth Dwellers

Something of a record, this one. Elephantine-memoried readers will remember this post from June 2009, in which I passed comment on the Kommetjie ceremony to honour the 55 pilot whales which were daft enough to beach themselves and then got shot by local authorities because they weren’t stretchy enough (or something).

Well, Chief Shaman and all-round resident of the Dark Lands Beyond The Lentil Curtain, Shelley Ruth Wyndham, was googling herself over the weekend (Halloween actually, but I’m sure this was just a coincidence) and found that she had been mentioned in that 2009 post. Presumably, the goblins in Noordhoek who archive the internet using quills and parchment so that the “magic shiny screen” doesn’t scare people in Misty Cliffs have finally got around to documenting 2009.
Well done them.

It seems that Shelley disputes the report that I used when writing up the post, and instead suggests that we read her version. I did, and it’s quite funny. Here’s how she begins:

Thank you all my loved ones, colleagues, those adversaries and my friends all of whom have helped me become who I am today, to know who I am and who I am not as I continue to awaken myself, like us all, growing, evolving and continually finding my place in all of Creation. Aho.

A ho? Unfortunate spelling error there.
But she continues, and she’s not alone. She’s brought the rest of the Loony Toons Crew too:

I am Shelley Ruth Wyndham; I am a Shamanic Healer Teacher. I stand here together with fellow Earth-walkers Sean Caulfield, a Shamanic Artist and Drummer; Kate Ann Spreckley, a Spiritual Healer Teacher; Mandy Scanlen business entrepreneur, Change Facilitator and Project Manager and Jennifer Godwin Registered Professional Nurse and Reiki Master. We five people walk the Good Red Road together.

The Good Red Road is the Deep South version of Blue Route, I think. It was originally going to be called the Yellow Brick Road, but they had to change their plans after a copyright claim by the estate of the late L. Frank Baum.

Anyway, despite the nasty little “Earth-walkers” dig at the recently-deceased whales, who, as they’d comprehensively indicated, are fatally incapable of “Earth-walking”, she expects us to respect her message:

I have been trained and guided by ancient indigenous teachings steeped in the wisdom this world needs to remember. Although I speak in ways which are coloured by Native American principles, from the First Nation People’s of the Americas, I speak a Universal message of Universal principles that needs to be respected.

Well, I would have respected the Universal message, but sadly, I was having trouble waking my consciousness and aligning my spirit that day. My chi was totally off – probably brandy related, I’m guessing.

So, what did I miss?

Whale carries the history of Mother Earth.

Heavy, man. Have you seen the Encyclopaedia Britannica? No wonder whales are so big. No wonder they are so difficult to push off a beach. If they were a bit more evolved, they could stick it all on a Micro SD card. Simples.

Whale medicine teaches that sound frequencies can bring up records of ancient knowledge from within us human beings and teaches us to use the sounds and frequencies to balance our emotional bodies and heal our physical forms and ways.

Presumably, this is like when that orthopod did an ultrasound on my ankle? Weirdly, I do recall several records of ancient knowledge flashing before my eyes. That could just have been intense pain though.

Seek the whale song from within you; in this way each of us will enable connections to be made to the ancient ones, to the ancient aspects of ourselves, on a deep cellular level for all humans to remember.

Aho! A-ha! Now cellular communications, I do know about. You’re talking about G-protein coupled receptors, receptor tyrosine kinases, and ion channel receptors? And all this can be triggered by the whale song within me? I never knew. Actually, I never even knew I had whale song within me at all, let alone it’s triggering ability on trans-membrane receptors.
Whales (which are mammals, not fish), are chock-full of whale song, though. Their cellular receptors must be firing all over the place. No wonder they get sommer distracted and swim into beaches. It’s like the tannie driving on her cellphone and crashing into the parked car.
Thus, perhaps a little less whale song (using your cellphone while driving) might result in fewer whale beachings (cellphone related road traffic accidents).

I can like to be the king of the analogy.

But, all jesting aside, I thank Shelley Ruth Wyndham for her rather tardy, but very welcome interaction with us here at 6000 miles…. And thus, I think it’s only fair that we leave the final words to her, as she (finally) signs off her June 2009 speech.

Each of us is a key, today this is a door, let us walk through this door together and be the change that is needed in this world so that we have a thriving, balanced, sustainable future for all life here.

WE ARE ONE.

Mitakuye Oyasin
Aho
Four Winds

(Yeah, ok “Four Winds”, but let’s face it, mainly a strong to gale force South Easter most of the time.)