Ricky Martin is a dad!

This was a headline I was hit with in the last couple of days and puzzled me somewhat. I like Ricky's music and think he has certainly done well for himself, I wish to take nothing away from him personally.

My puzzlement arises out of the premise that when you are rich or famous, it would seem that you can buy children and pay surrogates to give birth and whatever else you wish. A line I once heard from a film may hold true. The scene was a policeman interrogating a wealthy man that through his funding and viewing had caused shame, humiliation and death in a "snuff" film, that had been created. The policeman asked So why did you do this? his answer in the film was simply, "Because I can!"

I just feel somewhat sad, that if the surrogate is not going to be the mother in the truest sense to these twins, what sort of life awaits them. I doubt they will ever want for the things of life, but I cannot imagine their world without a consistent powerful force in their lives like the instinctive and protective love of a mother. Father's try as we might, can simply not provide all the emotional nourishment we often take for granted.

Another headline this past week here in Sydney was the lost whale calf whose mother had abandoned the calf. It was following ships and large boats into and around Sydney Harbour thinking that they could be whales. An international call was filed for help as to ways that the whale could be saved, and yesterday they came to an end. A lethal injection was given, fearing the ramifications of a whale that would become dependent on feeding and being hand reared, being unable to again take it's place among the wider whale community. So it was felt by some the best alternative to "save" the whale was to terminate it's life.



We tried so hard to save a young whale. Japan, despite international treaties and condemnation, still kills them for "research" and does so irrespective of what the world community thinks. There were tears in the eyes of wildlife experts when the lethal cocktail of drugs was administered.

I have a CD of a concert of John Denver live at the Sydney Opera House, and when he spoke before singing one of his songs he said some things that had troubled him, and I am paraphrasing here, he noted the senseless killing of the great whale, to a tumultuous applause, and then he said his desire to end world hunger and you could have heard a pin drop. We seem to care much more about these great animals than people at times. We, they, are ALL important.

I learned yesterday about the mines in Papua New Guinea that are killing the environment and the oceans by offloading their wastes from gold mining which includes a deadly cocktail of industrial cleaners and arsenic by pumping the liquid waste by the hundreds of tons, back into the ocean. I can only assume the company involved does so thinking it will all be OK, there is no environmental laws in that part of the world and so, who gives a damn! I do.

We humans can be very arrogant at times.

We live in a delicate eco-system and the growing incidences of people who make choices that impact many people and perhaps even the whole human family are done so on a whim it would seem. We seem to think only for right now, and if money or wealth creation is the basis, it makes everything that is questionable seem justified.

One of the things I love about the Maori people of Aotearoa (the land of the long white cloud - New Zealand), the people of my birth, is that they feel a connection to nature, to the world and appreciate and love the balance that exists. They feel and believe that there are forces much higher than ourselves, that extend beyond what we simply know and that there are things that we respect and love without a lot of question. We do so somewhat out of tradition, and somewhat out of acceptance that we are but a small part of a much bigger circle that involves generations before us, and after us.

It is an interesting thing being Maori, speaking purely of myself here, and living in a western society. It is hard being sensitive to many influences and subtleties of nature and people, and yet existing in a sphere where to have such in your possession and to identify these connections, is seen as being weak or effeminate. I just think that there are so many people who "think" they know me, and who really have a fleeting glimpse and somehow think that a nibble at the table of life is sufficient to understand and appreciate the whole 4 courses. If people want me to be a performing seal at times, I can certainly be that, and do it well. BUT, there is so much more to me than that. There is so much more to ALL of us than that. Some of us have yet still to discover that.

Finally on this point, I just feel that there are very few people who are on the same page as me. I say that not in condemnation or judgement. I mention it as recent times would suggest that it seems to be true. I love my differences and embrace each and every opportunity to live, to grow and to learn. I don't think my life could ever be painted in pastel shades. There are lots of bold colours in that growing piece of art. I am so engaged and busy lest I pass and find that I never really lived. I am grateful to note that will never be said of me, by me. What an interesting, complex, beautiful, crazy and rich life I am a part of.