Author: Donald Lousley

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Building for Stillness

sunrise from awakino ski area accommodation hut

Beyond Kurow: Overwriting the Legacy Code of Scarcity

We live in a world that prizes a few specific things that make it remarkably hard to slow down time as we age. In Western culture, at least, we invest massive amounts of energy into not losing anything.

Yet, some things are destined to leave us, or to be lost: belongings, people, and eventually, our current versions of ourselves. We treat these departures like system failures rather than scheduled maintenance. An immense uptick in efficiency would come to pass if we channeled some of this “protection” energy into gaining stillness.

Scarcity in a nutshell

Fear of loss is, at its core, a scarcity mindset. I know the “Ground Truth” of this from my own lineage. My grandmother used to say, “Here is some money, Donald. Go to the corner dairy and buy some cream for your porridge tomorrow morning.”

The next day, she’d add sugar and that cream to my breakfast. It was an act of love, but also a safeguard; she didn’t want me to grow up hungry like the generation of the 1930s. Back then, in the hills behind Kurow, depression was rife. She kept my father and uncle fed by encouraging them to hunt rabbits and forage for mushrooms—subsistence as a survival strategy.

Looking to the St Marys Range behind Kurow.

Today, that scarcity is ubiquitous. It’s the “Puff” that powers our society. Marketing hinges on it: “Quick, buy this—only three left at this price!” It creates a high-RPM environment that induces “time poverty.” We are so busy clutching at what might disappear that we never question the game itself. We play the game instead of investing in our own structural integrity.

The “Bulk” Phase of Misplaced Effort

We persist in legacy behaviors because we haven’t audited the code. We see it everywhere:

  • Working for assets that are destined to dissolve.
  • Marrying because of a “Dead Click”—that fear of missing out sparked by a shoddy emotional web page.
  • Persisting in a marriage that has become the very cage we thought we were escaping.
  • Resisting Ageing—fighting a natural voltage drop instead of recalibrating the system.
  • Worrying about losing a business client or a job.
  • Clutching at opinions—defending a “V 1.0” worldview to avoid the friction of being proven wrong.
  • Hoarding information—collecting “Puff” in the form of data we never use, instead of trusting the “Stillness” of intuition.
  • Colonising the future—over-planning the next decade to suppress the anxiety of a single grey morning.

When we refuse to get off the merry-go-round, we fail the test of curiosity. We doom-scroll instead of writing the books we have inside us. Lacking reflection, the days blur. We batch-process the same old perceptions until we find ourselves at the local cafe, telling our mates how quickly the last year has gone by.

The Solar Parallel: Light, Storage, and Passing Clouds

Think of your life like a solar power system.

Sunset from Oteake Conservation Park. The Maniototo Plain

The Light is our attention—the only true currency we have. The Clouds are the inevitable interruptions: the scarcity marketing, the family dramas, the Tasman weather fronts of “busy-ness.”

If your system is V 1.1, you only harvest when the sun is glaring. When a cloud passes, your “State” drops, and you feel the “Friction” of the grey. But a V 2.0 life—one built for stillness—uses a high-efficiency MPPT solar panel controller (I’ve just installed one, digging deep into my inner geek to ensure I didn’t “miss out”). It doesn’t “clutch” at the sun; it simply harvests what is available, even in the gloom or when the shadow of a tree branch falls on the panel.

Stillness is the Battery Bank. When you have deep storage, a cloud (a loss, a setback, a rainy day) doesn’t cause a “Dead Click.” You have enough internal “Puff” to maintain your frequency until the sky clears.

The “Control”

In any experiment—and the clinical trial I’m currently part of at Dunedin Hospital reminds me of this daily—the “Control” is the constant. It’s the baseline we measure everything else against. In our lives, we often let Scarcity be the Control. We measure our success by how much we haven’t lost.

But what if Stillness was the Control?

What if we measured our day not by high-RPM output, but by the integrity of our connections and the “Windsor Air” we breathe? To some, “Windsor” might suggest a Royalist leaning (and though I’ve met the King’s sister at a school opening, my interest is in the tradition of solid ground). To others, Windsor is a Canadian city where, if you look North, you see the US—a geographical factory for lateral thinking.

When Stillness is the baseline, you realize that the “Control” isn’t about power over others, but about the Sovereign Control of your own internal grid.

It means resisting the urge to “colonise” a moment or set a hook into a relationship that is still just a beautiful probability. By suppressing that static, we become friction-free—gifted with the time to reflect and simply be our own Sovereign Lens. You stop reacting to the flickers of the meter and start observing the beauty of the harvest. Walking in nature, meditating, or praying are the ancient antidotes to scarcity. And so to is fishing. They make it hard to hold a negative thought for long. They return us to the stillness we were built for.

Whitebait'r at the Waitaki River Mouth. With gulls flying overhead.
Whitebaiting at the Waitaki River Mouth. A High Stakes endeavour for this “in the moment” person.
Crepuscular rays - Lake Pukaki in the foreground
Crepuscular rays, sometimes colloquially known as god rays. In this case reverse ones – Lake Pukaki in the foreground

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Capturing the “Ground Truth” of the 45th Parallel

Personal values labels on a blue background

The “taking” of thirteen intensive stares and turning them into a cool, blue-and-silver blueprint of the human condition.

Almost a week ago I had a whole new experience: I had an afternoon of being a model for the annual Wanaka Autumn Art School, portraits in watercolour class.

What was new for me was the constant attention of being stared at intensively – my face and therefore my eyes, and while I didn’t have to be totally motionless I would stare into the middle distance and imagine that I was in a tree watching us all and then I practiced the making of connections – imaginary lines which ultimately all formed triangles and as you may well imagine between the sketching pad, the person’s hand and their eyes looking into my very being.

Students holding up a transparent card. An aid to understanding the ratios of the important facial features.

While in my eyes looking into the middle distance became my way of participating in the experience and it then mostly became quite meditative. And occasionally glancing at the eyes of any of my admirers, of course I found myself contemplating on the essence of being in the sovereign seat.

The “Sovereign Seat” by-the-way, is my own personal 45th Parallel. It is a line of balance.

In my photography, I’m the Observer, controlling the light, timing and the framing. On this day however, I became the Fixed Point for thirteen different lenses of perception. My job being maintaining the pose, but I’m also observing the observers.

Twelve + 1 Interpretations: Each of those twelve ladies and the one Asian gentleman was looking at the same “Fixed Point” (myself), yet each watercolour will result in a different “Data Set.” Some will capture the “Warbird” intensity, others the “Musterer’s Hut” calm, and some might find the “Windsor Air.”

A shared experience of presence!

In essence though it’s all about taking a situation that could have been invasive – the “Intensive Staring” of thirteen strangers – and transforming it into a high-fidelity “Dig” into the nature of connection.

And (as mentioned) when projecting myself into that tree to “Watch us all,” I know I can achieve a perfect Systemic Dissociation. I wasn’t just the subject; I was the Observer of the Observation.

And then I drew the lines of connection: it turned out that in my imagination they were thin and blue.

In a portrait class, the energy isn’t a straight line; it’s a three-point “Circuit” that maintains the build of the artwork:

Point A (The Eye): The artist’s intake of your “Data” (the light, the lines, the essence).

Point B (The Hand): The mechanical output where that data is translated onto the pad.

Point C (The Subject): Myself, the Fixed Point providing the frequency.

It’s a Triangle of Intent: All about focusing on the lines between the artist’s hand, the eye, and my own stillness. This provided the “Shielding” necessary to prevent the past from “Hot-wiring” my afternoon.


The fact was that those imaginary lines were “thin and blue” therefore a high-fidelity data point.

Analysing the colour in a waking meditation or a dream is like checking the “Post-Production” settings of our subconscious. It tells us which part of the “Observatory” is running the show.

The Anatomy of the Blue Signal:

The Frequency of Stillness: Blue is the colour of the “Middle Distance” – the high-altitude sky and the deep lake. By drawing thin blue lines, my brain was likely reinforcing my #1 value of Stillness.


The Structural Blueprint: In technical drafting, blue lines are the “Foundations.” They are non-aggressive, precise, and orderly. They provided the Structural Integrity for the room without adding the “Red” heat of social anxiety. Which was exactly where it was best for me to be – low pulse rate and all that. A Coolant to stabilise the “Mahi.” Simply all about keeping the interaction “Non-Serious” and playable!

Having got to a relaxed state it was my turn to examine the fixed human points: And I’d look at each and everyone of the budding artists (into their eyes even was easy if unsettling a tad – as they were very focused on mine) and wonder what their stories were. The very essence of the human condition – lined faces, the look of mothers, the look of being wives. They’d presumably all done the hard yards on the sea of life. And then the Asian gentleman; was he a Kiwi by birth, and if not then, goodness what depth of cultural richness or adversity could his stories be lined with!

During the session it was made considerately clear that I should get up off my stool and walk around, and this I did when I was sure my likeness had been recorded on paper and by camera (for later).

The first washes of colour hitting the paper were intriguing. However, what truly became a new “Fixed Point” was seeing how, in pencil, an artist had captured my “World-Worn” look – validating my very being in a way that was both uncanny and humbling.

The lines on that sketch were Silver! It was a “Silver-Grade” experience.

In watercolour, “silver” isn’t just a colour; it’s the medium an artist uses to capture light on a weathered feature. It is the shimmer of experience in the eye and the wisdom held in the hair. Silver is a conductive yet “Cool” colour, and the graphite foundation I witnessed was the “Primary Build” of their perception.

I realised then that my own curiosity – wondering what their stories were as mothers, wives, or travelers – was my own “Silver Eye” at work. I was “sketching” them in my mind with the same respect they were giving me on paper.

A “Silver Eye” is a powerful tool for capturing the Ground Truth of the 45th Parallel. Unlike a clinical diagnosis, the “Silver” of an artist’s pencil provides a non-clinical validation of a person’s journey. It looks for character rather than pathology.

But then, for the next few days, I was in Dunedin—removed from that “Parallel” both literally and geographically. I was back in the hospital clinic and for my annual CT scan.

This was a “Fixed Point” of a whole other flavour. Believe me, holding a Sovereign pose in the presence of clinical facts and opinions is a much greater challenge than modelling for an art class. In the clinic, a subconscious knowing of past trauma lurks, ever ready to up-end the stool. Efficient as the health system is at “healing disease,” the associated facts can become heavy lines of indeterminate colours.

Our health system looks for the Ground Truth of the body via the CT scan, but only the Sovereign Eye can find the Ground Truth of “Well-Being.”

True well-being surely begins in these early stages of modelling (for) life!

PS, the scan was clear 🙂

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The Anatomy of the Fixed Point

The Anchor and the Airspace

In a week where the sky was filled with the artificial roar of the past I would have liked to have found the most data in the silence of a rusted hinge.

However, I have never succeeded in muffling the opening of the tool shed container where I work. It is raucous and annoying—yet it is my “Fixed Point” just before I head out into the wild blue yonder. There is an immense grounding power in that noise; it serves as a mechanical reminder to rise above being easily unsettled.

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Being a ‘Fixed Point’ isn’t about standing still; it’s about maintaining the structural integrity of your own airspace so that others have a place to land when their own engines red-line.

While it may seem that those “others” could be a drain on energy, it all depends on one’s intent and the context—family versus strangers. But if there is a “Sister Intent,” then it becomes easy. It is a form of thinking ahead; a Preemptive Empathy.

We don’t fix the wind; we just build better huts. Before the winter snows, we provision them with another vital fixed point: firewood.

When the weather cuts up rough and a party arrives in what has suddenly become a place of safety, the act of starting a fire assumes an unimaginable importance. There is a “Descent” here, from the high-altitude philosophy of the high-plains traveler into the grit of mitigating a hazard and doing the mahi in the correct order.

Recovery by a fire with a warm brew transitions into something greater than the sum of its parts. The “2.5 uplift” of traveling through an inspiring landscape is surpassed by the simple arithmetic of human connection. When all is reflected on, it’s who we are with that really counts—and that includes the version of ourselves we find when traveling alone.

The Fixed Point isn’t a destination; it’s a maintenance schedule. We stack the wood not because we are cold today, but because we know the nature of the mountain. We remain stable so that the ‘1+1’ of human arrival always equals more than the sum of the struggle.

While the Warbirds still scream overhead on the day past Easter Monday looking for an audience, the Fixed Point sits in the silence of the high country, waiting for the one who actually needs the heat. One is a display; the other is a life-line. I know which build I prefer.

The “2.5 uplift”
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Stepping from Time to Perception

There is a structural truth found in the repetition of the step. Whether traversing the flatlands of the Netherlands or the high-altitude tussock of the Snow Farm, the movement serves to quiet the ‘Story’ and sharpen the ‘Lens.’ When the internal noise recedes, the world begins to author the observer. We are no longer searching for meaning; we are simply recording the Ground Truth.

These mountains have authored me deeply. I find myself back in the hangar of this blog, but this time my focus—through the camera or otherwise—has shifted from ‘Time’ to ‘Perception.’

Today I’m contrasting a Sentencing Vortex with Warbirds Over Wānaka, our biannual air show. One is grounded—and indeed demands it. The other is airborne in its appeal.

The former landed this morning during a coffee with an old friend from my DOC days. We’ve shared some hard miles, even picking up the bodies of dead climbers on Mt Aspiring years ago. His report today was the opening detail of a recent prostate cancer diagnosis—a systemic shift in his internal landscape—and the ‘where to from here’ regarding treatment. As you can imagine, he already knows how to ascend this mountain, and more importantly, how to descend to get home safely.

On Mt Aspiring. The RNZAF ferrying in search and rescue personal.

Yet as I write, my ears are assailed by the roar of piston-engined fighter planes putting on a free display over the lake, “amp’ing” folk up for the big day tomorrow. I reflect on the name ‘Warbirds’ and why we continue to glorify instruments of death. Many will say we do not, but my journey has taught me to be aware of the subconscious. The name is a subliminal hook, one that has drawn thousands into this small town—so much so that traffic is near gridlocked. We are staring a “Dry Pumps” possibility in the eye, tying the spectacle to the systemic failure of the town’s, and perhaps the country’s, infrastructure.

Looking towards Wanaka Airport yesterday (Thursday before Good Friday 2026). A practice day.

I am witnessing two different types of “Killing Machines”—one biological, one mechanical—and the hooks they use to capture our attention.

While the planes provide the crowds with artificial adrenaline, my friend is engaging in Somatic Navigation. He isn’t looking for a ‘Free Display’; he’s looking at the topo map of his own biology. Having retrieved bodies from the high glaciers of Aspiring, he knows the mountain doesn’t care about the roar of an engine—it only cares about the ‘build’ of the climber. His diagnosis isn’t a death sentence; it’s a change in the weather. He is simply recalibrating his gear for a different kind of ascent.

As the traffic stalls and the piston engines glorify a past designed for destruction, the Sovereign Lens looks elsewhere. The fuel will run thin, the planes will eventually land, and the crowd will disperse. But the ‘Wait and Watch’ protocol remains.

We choose not to be hooked by the subliminal roar, opting instead for the silence of the hangar, where the real work of ‘getting on with getting on’ is done. Right now, people are mesmerised by the mechanical power, yet remain blind to the mechanical cost.

The plane that perhaps inspired the first Warbirds over Wanaka airshow. A Spitfire about to undergo a test flight after restoration. circa 1985.
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