Suzanne's Poems and Short Stories

I wrote this piece for a Writer's Group Home -work assignment. Our task was to write a story on the title topic.

'It was as clear as daylight to me.'

Sometimes we can go all our lives seeing something without really having any insight into what we are seeing. For instance, hands in prayer position.  Because they are praying we assume people will put their  hands flat together.  It looks very neat and reverent but beyond that not another thought,  until recently  when I saw a very bright picture of a reflexology chart of the hand, just before I was about to meditate.   I don't meditate with my hands in prayer position but I had a sudden connection in my mind between the reflexology chart and the symbol of prayer.  Was there some power gained by this action due to the energy fields being directly opposite. I located some of the points on my own hand and stimulated them. I could definitely feel something happening so, I did an inter-net search and sure enough my hunch was as clear as daylight.

The article stated about reflex points  and noted ," Thus when the hands are brought together, not only are all opposite energies brought to a meeting point, but right in the centre of your hands (the reflex point for the heart)  is the centre of your being.  The article went on to say, "In placing one’s hands, palms together in front of one’s own heart, there is a point in the middle from where all these opposing tensions of left and right, past and future, male and female, giving and receiving arise - a still point where all opposites meet.  This point is also reflected in between the palms of our hands.   No matter how hard we try, there is no way that the hands can be placed so flat against each other that there is no space between them. From this point, all thoughts arise and are manifest according to the pressures and conflicts acting between the hands.”

 It seemed to be a week of sudden insights because as I was lying in the spa in our courtyard relaxing, I looked over at our stag-horn fern which has gown so big, and looks like a perfect set of massive green antlers.

  "Why? I wondered to myself would a fern imitate a set of stag's horns.

Later I shared the thought with my husband and he offered the opinion that the stag developed their horns to appear like the ferns, as a kind of camouflage.  Of course I thought,"as clear as daylight." From a distance, a stag standing in a forest would blend with the trees  and his horns would appear to be like one of the stag-horn ferns protruding from a tree trunk. 

 How many things do we take for granted until the deeper meaning is suddenly revealed- just by asking a simple question?


© Suzanne Delaney

Staghorn Fern- Mermaid Beach



Best of all Possible Worlds.

To understand something, first you must be able to define it. To go somewhere  you have never been you need a map.


For mankind history is our only map to the future.  The human mind is set apart from all other species because of the ability  to communicate through language.  Through the interaction with others of our species our deductive powers enable us to analaze events from the past and to predict possible outcomes for the future. But it is here that it gets tricky. 

For hundreds of years mankind has been operating from the notion that he has free will.  Recent studies on consciousness argue that we live in a deterministic world.  That there are no real options for changing it, only apparent options.
   In the book," Freedom evolves Daniel C Dennet quotes: " As Hume noted, we expect the physics, that has held so far in our world to hold into the future, but we cannot prove by pure logic that it will oblige us.  Wev'e had conspicuous success discovering regularties that have held in the past.......and wev'e even learned how to make real time predictions about seasons and tides and falling objects and what you'll find.......if you heat this  or mix  that with water and so forth.  These transitions are so regular ......in our experience.....that we have been able to codify them and project them imaginativlly in to the future."
In the search for the best of all possible worlds there are a number of options, once we define our objective. 
In choosing between an assortment of possible worlds with different qualities -the most perfect world may not neccesarily be the best .  As well there are other options -finding a new and better world somwhere else in the Universe or withdrawing into your own world.  After all our world is what we make it and, well we know, that the behaviour of others does have a direct impact on us in our daily life, for better or worse.

William Morris stated in a letter to an acquaintance, ".....to me society, which to many seems an orderly arrangement for allowing decent people to get through their lives creditably and with some pleasure..........is grown so corrupt, so steeped in hypocrisy and lies, that one turns from one stratum of it to another with helpless loathing.   Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones 1886

This quote could have been referring to society today.  It seems that the behaviour of mankind hasn't changed much in their reaction to the world around them.  There are  oppportunists that prey on others all through history.

 The psychology of individuals can reflect in the Nation as a whole.  To me the best of all possible worlds can only exist when individuals treat one another with respect and caring relationships are worked on.  It is scary to look around our world at the moment and see the abuses of human rights by cruel regimes which is going on virtually un-checked. Mob psychology always seems to escalate into war.

 It is beyond the scope of this short story to tackle all the aspects that make up the complexities  of society. The human mind and the concept of freedom are still evolving.  An excellent book on the subject, that I am still reading is, "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel C Dennett.  Another small delightful book is, "The Earthly Paradise of William Morris."

 My own conclusion is this- the human mind is capable of the most heroic and kind acts but  can also be terribly barbaric and cruel. Until we find an equilibrium between these extremes, we cannot hope to have the best of all possible worlds.


© Suzanne Delaney






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