Boori's travels in dreamland (January 2012)

Another book my Mom bought me - I seem to talk about them almost as much as I reference the Tragically Hip - was Boori.
Again, I was in my teens. It seemed silly or weird at first. But then I picked it up one day and started reading, and was quickly hooked. It's Australian, and loosely an Aborigine myth. It's about a old man, Budgerie, who makes a boy out of clay and gives him life.
This has been a theme of the month for me, as I said in my weird little blog about the otters - intention, and making ourselves, and I decided, since it's 2012, to do a "month-entry", since everyone's changin an all..

Boori opens with a quote - "The Aborigine Law says that a man is responsible for what he does, not what he intends to do."

In the last entry I reached for the same idea, in saying we are all both a work of art and the artist, we are all both Budgerie and Boori.
Like Pinochio; Boori makes himself, by his choices, more than just a moving man-shaped piece of clay, but a real human being. The book has great art - done by A.M. Hicks (and it was written by Bill Scott, in 1978).
I copied (roughly) a few pieces of the artwork in 1989 or 1990, in High School.
The last one is a picture of Boori, his form is empty, and he is on a mountaintop throwing a spear at the Sun.
There is a poem with it;

Fly swift and true, weapon in my hands.
Find out the ways to the heart of the sun.
Bring us the fire he will give to your keeping.
Return with his blessing to my hands!

The Fire of the Sun is meaning in our lives - this is the Invisible Sun, that "gives us heat when the whole day's done."
I think meaning is a combination of things; following our dreams, and doing the hard things required to make them come true. In continually seeking meaning, and going the distance, I think we make ourselves into something different, and that always looks like - throwing a spear at the Sun. It is the farthest, the brightest thing on our personal horizon, the source of life itself. I see friends wrestling with this - finding meaning in life. I am too. It takes faith, and it takes work. Boori threw the spear at the Sun at the end of the book. It takes a warrior spirit.

I think, after 20 years or so, it's time to re-read Boori.