don't call me baby; don't talk in maybes

It's grand final week and it's school holidays and it's spring and the clematis is roaring up the sideway treliss and every single one of the many callistemon plants around these parts is thriving and is there a more beautiful sound than the magpie in song? I've taught my last class for the forseeable future. Goodbyes at my workplace difficult; more difficult than I'd really gathered. Difficult for the same reason that anything is difficult and that is due to navigating the whirlpool of interpersonal relationships. Some astounding gifts from students, and no doubt some gleeful thanks given by others. The more I see and the more I hear the more emphatic is my view that we are each no more and no less than the sum of our relationships with other people.

In the last weeks of teaching I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” two more times. Confounding signals have again struck me. For (20?) years now I have been aware of this as perhaps the dominant issue of our times. In Year 10 Science last week we handed around a copy of The Age “Good Weekend” magazine that I had saved from February 1989. On the back cover: a full page colour ad, featuring sunset, for cigarettes. On the front cover: a stylised globe of the earth, in the shape of an egg, being heated to the point of severe cracking. The feature article was about something called “Climate Change”. The central points of this 1989 article read almost identically to those of many 2008 articles. It seems that any sense of urgency has been lost in (scientific-popular) translation.

So I'm taking it on as an ACF campaigner on climate. We'll see. I hope not to bombard email addresses or to preach. But i'm not really sure where to start.
midnight oil's “blue sky mining” album is as good a place as any.
The river runs red, black rain falls, dust in my hand.

I expect to teach again. A rich and rewarding and challenging task, pitifully rewarded in our currency of money but abundantly rewarded in terms of the personal. And did I say time-consuming?
But enough – next will come the challenge of water and of spreadsheets and of a new workplace and new expectations and new colleagues and all that goes with them.

But that's next. This is now. This is a Tuesday night having played & cared for my girls this day and having them both sleeping contentedly in this very house while my lady is out with mates. This is an empty lindt wrapper and a half-full coffee mug (alright 2 wrappers). This is feeling is a cleansing feeling & like a healing feeling & like a Top End monsoon in its intensity and in its bringing of joy & of relief.
Breathe.
Music anyone? EP launch in Northcote in October*. Check it out: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=318922283
*yes this is a mate. Yes, check out the site. Songs there. & the details.

A family wedding recently. Stephanie & Kyla taken under the wings of older cousins happy to be playing the role of Big Kids; shepherding, fetching, cajoling. Perspective gained from seeing them running, jumping, laughing, sparkles in their eyes, with neither CJ nor I involved.
Pride.
It seems a great many people in my circles are suffering right now. Relationship breakdowns, illness, combinations of both. Hard to make sense of it all. No point trying, really, as I've learned.
Instead I am here. I am now.
Last week, considering this, it was put to me that it must only be a matter of time before illness/ tragedy knocks on our door here. I guess that's true. But when it does arrive, I aim to have been well rested & well nourished & well musiced & well loving in its absence. Who's waiting?
Love to all.