That vulnerability

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

he remembered that his wings weren't real

And with that it’s summer again in Melbourne Town and we’re all a little older. Last time I finished on music & this time I’ll start with music as that frontier really opened up for me lately. I found myself in a bit of a rut. Really enjoying the mixes of mates, but not really discovering much off my own bat. So I started looking. And boy. Isn’t there a lot to choose from? Where to go? Whose advice to follow? I hooked up to the Radiohead caravan a while ago. And I’ve enjoyed their posts on the blog they run. From time-to-time the band members add a list of songs they’ve been listening to lately. http://radiohead.com/deadairspace/

So I followed their lead. Wow. Mostly electronica & sounds I’d never known possible. I’ve mashed up some Zomby, Boy 8-Bit, Major Lazer & Vybz Kartel… And the kids have really taken to it. The family room here is often a dance floor.

In making an annual mixed CD over the past week though, I’ve mostly left off these kinds of doof-doof tracks. While they are interesting to me & new & you can’t keep still when you hear them, they don’t quite have the relaxing vibe that I was aiming for with this CD. Instead I included a lot of music I found from RRR and their “albums of the week” profiled over the year. Artists like Feist, Jordie Land, The Orbweavers and Kitty, Daisy & Lewis.

And we’ve written a few songs now, in our little guitar band of two. Great songs, too, I reckon. Perhaps we should record one the computer here & include it on the annual mixed CD….?

This little patch of creativity has me singing & collating but also painting with acrylic paints on plywood. Why not? It turns out that anyone can do it. The piece I painted though is a touch too enormous to put inside our house. Somehow the walls just don’t seem big enough. I’ll have to hang it somewhere. Probably the shed. Which is soon to morph into a ping pong hall (well-decorated). Beauty.

S is coming up to the end of her Prep year at school. It’s been an exciting and tiring time for her, I reckon. There have been performances, excursions, swimming, social dynamics, social dynamics and more social dynamics to negotiate. “Dad, you need to come to assembly on Monday cos we’ll be performing a Flaming Lips song.” “Dad, today I glued in my illustrations so my book is nearly ready to be published.” “Dad, can we have an icy-pole?” (Our daily walk home from school dangerously passes a milk bar.) A year had gone and our little girl has grown a LOT.

K will be leaving her 3-year-old kinder world (after 2 years) and starting 4-year-old kinder next year. This has been a wonderful year for K to become her own person, away from her older sister. Yes, again, lots of social dynamics to negotiate. But away from the kinder, a lot of solo time to negotiate. In this she has really thrived. Isn’t self-starting imagination a brilliant thing to behold? “Dad, Little Yellow thought he could fly but then he remembered that his wings weren’t real.” “Dad, do you know what this is? It’s a car and this hairbrush is going for a drive.” A year has gone and our little girl has grown a LOT.

CJ continues to think & plan & dream & scheme here and consequently our house and our lives have never looked better. I feel sometimes as if I’m just along for the ride. That’s natural I guess, given that it takes me about 8 times longer than CJ to perform any single task/ enunciate any given thought. I’m sure there’s a tortoise and hare thing to say there but I can’t think of it just now.

Two of CJ’s mad-cap schemes to have come off this year were building our new front fence and laying a new front path. Gee they were good fun to build, and it feels good to look at them knowing we did it. Friends and family helped out a lot with tools and ideas and materials and hands-on assistance. That added to the whole positive experience. We shared the experience of digging fence post-holes & concreting the posts in place. We shared the fitting of emu wire & attachment of gates. We know where the bricks of our front path lay for the past 20 years. K even helped me paint the fence while nursing a broken arm. Building to the stock of good memories around our house.

Had some holidays back at school holiday time – a few days in Anglesea with mates and a few more days in a cabin at Apollo Bay. These days of wandering along a windswept, chilly beach, overcast skies and crappy swell, and having kids strip off their clothes and splash about in the water are special. Nothing magical or contrived there. Just a walk and a beach. And time, I guess. That is probably it. Giving it the time.

Not something I’m great at. I’ve gotta watch that. If ever I’m fretting, chances are it will be about the time. The time the kids are going to bed. The time it’s going to take us to brush teeth, hair and put shoes on before leaving for school. The time I have to reply to a massive document at work. The time it’s going to take to cook this particular tea right now. When I write it like this, I can see it’s all forecasting. Live in the moment, they say. (that’s nice, but we still have to get ready for school).
Hmm.

Work is ticking along OK for now. A couple of changes for the better – working in a team is helping me. I’ve had two trips to Perth in the past month and really enjoyed some time to relate with colleagues. I bang on a bit about that relating, I know.

And I’ll keep banging on.
I was saying the other day that I like relationships that go “beyond the superficial.”

Last week I again came across David Foster Wallace’s famous “this is water” speech that he gave. The one suggesting we take the time to look around us, as each of us have it inside of us, every day, many times a day, to DECIDE how to act. We have our default settings, sure, driven by culture, but we can do better. I was really glad I found that again. I believe it’s a ripper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction

That’s a nice spot to finish. I recommend that piece very much. All the best to you & yours.
This is water.
cheerio, dave.

lofty giraffe

Winter in Melbourne with gloves on hands for the ride to work and Jack Frost’s work on display through the Edinburgh Gardens this morning. Lunar eclipse last night. Winter solstice next week. We are little organisms down here, that’s for sure. The lack of sunlight usually affects moods, I reckon. Something I’ve been watching a bit. Something others have spent their lives researching. But coming into the solstice this year, I’m picking up on a fair bit of gloom about the place. It’s mainly at my workplace, though, to be fair. Everything else is sailing along under full spinnaker.
Work is somewhere I don’t want to go, these days. That’s not so good now, is it? I suppose it’s all temporary, as the Buddhists and as the Lunar eclipse would attest. But spending time amongst those who feel downtrodden is not a happy time. Unless you are the Bringer of Meaningful Relief. That ain’t me, babe, no no no that ain’t me babe, that ain’t me you’re lookin’ for babe.

So I’m thinking a lot about that little pearl. For how long do you hang on in an unhealthy environment? What are the relative merits of a stable job with ongoing status and superannuation versus obvious daily gloom and mental anguish? Do you wait out the bad patch? How long does a bad patch last? When do you declare the bad patch to be not just a bad patch but a bad entrenched culture? How Much Is Enough?

At times like this it’s good to go for a walk. Or a bike ride. This week I’ve experimented with 3 different routes to and from work. The first is my old tried & true. It’s the whole length of the Canning Street bike highway through North Carlton to the Exhibition building. I take in the old terrace houses of Carlton, the glory of the World Heritage Royal Exhibition building, but then I run the gauntlet of LaTrobe Street in peak hour – hook turns, trams, delivery vans, pedestrians and headphones. It’s high drama, down to the docklands footy ground and then across to work.
Second is the Moonee Ponds Creek bike track. Very safe, as the whole LaTrobe St mania is forgone, but in its stead is a relentless panorama of concrete, shadows, steel, shadows, barbed wire, shadows, urban drain, shadows and the underside of the citylink toll road. There is a wide open stretch of wide open parkland up around the zoo, but the overwhelming feeling is one of claustrophobia and urban decay.
Third, the longest but my favourite. Cut along Park Street and into the Edinburgh Gardens, cross the road near the Fitzroy Pool and then take the length of Napier street. Little Fitzroy cottages, the Rose, the Napier, the Fitzroy Town Hall. Cross again and skirt two sides of the Fitzroy Gardens, hammering down down down the hill to the MCG, past the enormous D K Lillee in his delivery stride and up & over & into Birrarung Marr. Along the Yarra all the way to Spencer St and then cut into work.

Working only three days/week is great for me presently. CJ is doing the same. Steph “I Love school dad” is going great guns in prep. The 3 Rs are flourishing, but so is her sense of self “I’ll have one plait and one pony today thanks, Dad.” Kyla “I did this painting for you Dad – see it’s all orange and that’s your favourite colour” is well at home at kinder. We enter the kinder and about 4 other girls stop what they’re doing and come to greet her.
Knowing that our kids have their own worlds is brilliant. Other kids who I’ve never met say g’day to ours in the school yard. I went with Steph’s class on a research trip to CERES the other day. They were going as scientists to research what kinds of things are in a market and in a café. They intend to build a café and market in their classroom. The kids had clipboards, pencils and were encouraged to record their observations. Brilliant. Picking up Kyla from kinder not long afterwards, “I don’t want to go yet, Dad. Can I fill this cup?” was great. She was climbing up a frame to grab berries from a tree. Four girls all collecting berries together to mix with the sand and thereby create magic dust. That’s the stuff.

So time at home is great. Still sticking with the weeknight vegetarian plan. Feeling good for it. Had the outside of the house painted just now. It’s come up well, too. Otherwise, I’m looking forward to the school holidays and to a couple of adventures. We’ve been planning a group holiday to the Prom in early January. That prospect is a ripper. We’ll have the following week doing more group camping down at Cumberland river. It’s looking great.

So while work is dreary and not rewarding, the approach I’m taking is this: work is not my life. I work only 3 days per week. The rest of the time I’m up & about and the work lets me do this. It’s means-to-an-end stuff.

Next time you see me, who knows how it will be going? There are plenty of people worse off than me – I’m going fine. So fine that I bought myself a new hat, in fact. The hat that the kids call my “handsome hat”. I think of a book when I wear it, by Mem Fox, called The Magic Hat. The first line is: “One fine day, from out of town, and without any warning at all, there appeared a magic hat…” A good read. Steph &Kyla both recount this bit just now: “Oh the magic hat, the magic hat, it moved like this, it moved like that, it spun through the air for a mile and half, onto the head of a lofty giraffe.”

Best book read recently? Apart from The Magic Hat. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott. Set around Albany at the time of first European contact. A great story of relationships and consequence and had me thinking about what might have been. If only. Really good.

Really good having the First Wednesday crew. We six fine gentlemen have been meeting up for a yarn on the first Wednesday of the month for a few years now. Gee. Some really open and brilliant and tricky and challenging conversations over the time. The recent introduction of guitars to the night gave a new dimension to things. We’ll see how that pans out. Though I’m really excited to be pursuing that guitar/ music/ creativity angle with a very good and supportive friend now.

Had my grandpa’s 91st birthday last month and while I dressed up as him for the day (shirt and tie, hair slicked over with Bryl cream), I liked the look so much I’ve taken it up semi-permanently. A bit WW2, a bit Mad Men. I find it interesting that some people seem to have a fixed image of themselves that doesn’t change year after year after year, but others grow beards, shave them off, dye their hair, grow it, cut it, re-style left, right & centre. We little organisms are interesting, aren’t we?

CJ is at a kinder committee meeting as I write this. The kids are now in bed. Tomorrow is a Friday and that’s the day we both work. CJ will ride into work early tomorrow & I’ll do the rustling so we’re at school by 8.45 and kinder by 9ish. I’ll hop the #96 tram and be at work between 9.30 and 10. CJ will knock off work ~3 to do the pick ups and I’ll drift home a bit later. That’s our dance on a Friday. It’s working really well.

I’ll finish with music – loving the Avett Brothers (thanks Chambo) and Gareth Liddiard (thanks Rocky). Just tonight though, it’s the Barrett’s Privateers, that grabbed me a fortnight ago on the Weddos live double album. Will go great around the next camp fire I’m at. Reckon I’ve got the lyrics sorted.
“Oh the year was 1778, how I wish I was in Sherbrooke now…”

a south gippsland holiday

A family holiday with mates making 4 adults & 5 kids aged 5, 4, 4, 3, ½ & we head south east. Inverloch and a holiday house near the town & near the inlet & near the park & what more could you ask for? The thrill of little ones taking their shoes off to paddle in the water (“we’ll impose a knees-down rule”) and the thrill of little ones making it up for themselves as they all got nude & waded up to their chests and the thrill of the massive stingray foraging for scraps off the fishermen’s jetty and the roar of the kids not cooperatively heading home afterwards & the cook up in the new kitchen for all. The (big) kids all down in a bedroom of 4 single beds, whispers, stories, floating through the blackened doorway into the evening. Spending a full day in the park, chasing a footy, climbing on the playground, riding scooters, balance bikes, snoozing, feeding, roosting the footy into the distant canopy of an enormous Eucalypt, spending fruitless effort hurling pinecones at the footy, spending more fruitless effort attempting to climb the enormous Eucalypt, days of riding the mood and following our noses. Cooking up roast lamb & vegies, battening down for an alimightly storm, retrieving the washing from the line as the first large drops fell. Kids down amid whispers and laughs ("it's a fine line"). Night of self-saucing chocolate pudding and conversation and music.
Up in the pre-dawn storm, walking down to the park to find footy lying on the ground. Bingo.
Packing up the house for a dash across South Gippsland. Hovering in the Inverloch library, hot cross buns & donuts, into the car and on through the flooded Tarwin valley (sheets of water everywhere) and on to Toora. Water across the road into the farm. Mud, mud, mud. Welcome from farm family relations and the handover. Onto the quad bike, raining, mud flicking up, balancing 3 buckets of grain, alongside the flooded river, through the gates and into the bull paddock. Feeding 7 bulls here. 9 in the next paddock. The size of them. The bulk, the muscle, the power, the scrotum of each of them... Further instructions for cows, chooks, cats, 3-legged dog. Sheep & peacocks will look after themselves. Cooking up a curry. More self-saucing chocolate pudding. Indeed.
The rain, mud, gumboots on kids, boots on all round. Go for a walk, up the hill. Through the gates, through the puddles (squelch), dog limping along, breaking off the Eucalypt leaves, the smell, walking up, up & up & up, mud & more mud. A sheep skull. And the view as the cloud clears. The wind farm. The ocean. The Prom. Wind whipping at faces. Hooray. Museli bars to celebrate. And the down, down down, through mud, mud, mud. A full morning there & back again. The rolling on of the day and the interests. Quad bike out to feed the bulls again. Good for the adrenaline. Lunch at the waterfall. Conversations with strangers, photos taken, water loudly spilling, fizzing, floating by. Into Toora for supplies & a playground. Afternoon drifting by amid sleeps, rockwall climbs, swings, songs (goldilocks woke up & broke up the party…) and social roundabouts. Conversation. Nachos all round for dinner, photos, showers, bed time for little uns & music and grown up time. Guitar out and going well.
Up for weetbix and toast and the kittens and the 3-legged dog and the rain abating. A morning walk into the sheep paddock. No sheep keen to for a pat, leading us a merry dance and a merry walk up & over the hills of South Gippsland.
The laughter & the smiles & the songs. Two little boys. Hurricane. Happy holidays.

life at 36

Hi it’s Saturday night and I’m older than last I wrote having a birthday and having it well celebrated with some grand mates out for a saturday dinner & celebrated again with family for a grand Sunday lunch at home & celebrated again on the day itself with a lunch at S’s school with kids everywhere wearing orange & coincidentally celebrating world harmony day. Brilliant.
CJ gave me all of that and also an iPhone, which has thrown up a few conundrums. For a guy who preaches quality time and face-to-face contact, to have in my possession this device of the e-world has been strange. I’m loving some features, not using others. It’s exciting, though.

Camping trip with mates over the Labour Day weekend. Bush camping. Pit toilet. BYO water. State park up past Daylesford called Mt. Franklin. If you like pine trees you’d love the place. Pine trees and volcanic craters, you’d never want to leave. Four families sharing the life, sharing the kids, sharing the food, the fire, the time. That’s something.

(Last blog, I was looking forward to some camping down the Ocean Road over summer. Well the La Niña delivered flooding rains to Victoria that week & we evacuated after 2 soggy nights. Had a crackin time though. Very much looking forward to doing it in the fine, perfect conditions of next summer.)

And I’ve been reading some beauties. Lots more writing of the Irish; Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle among them. And I got to thinking about my allegiance to language and to story-telling and to all of it. And so I purchased myself a brilliant Ireland rugby jersey. I’ve worn it on most days since it arrived here inside a plastic white parcel. Very happy with that, I can tell you. It feels good. I then went ahead, swept up in the romance of The Burren and a grand week spent in Ireland back in 2002 or 2003 or something, and I bought myself a hurling shirt of County Clare. Trouble was, though, that the GAA shop couldn’t send it to an address outside of Ireland. Ahh. A minor setback in this age of e-communication and strange e-networks, as I called upon my distant and great friend to let me use her Dublin postal address as a proxy. Set up. Looking forward to the gold and blue shirt arriving at our place some time after Easter. What a world. Thanks so much, S.

It’s been a funny old time, though.
On the one hand, bubbling along with the kids. S starting school & thriving, really thriving. “Dad, I love school.” Tired, though. Shattered. K emerging in her own right at the kinder. Getting to spend some grand one-on-one time with her at home. “Dad, let’s ride the tag-along to CERES.” Really healthy. Exciting.
On the other hand, I’m seemingly surrounded by busyness. Caught the tram on Friday. Observed many conversations beginning identically:
Step 1. Hey, how are you?
Step 2. Busy, Yeah, I am flat out.
Busy is the new black. Not that new, though.
Everyone is doing it.
Is it a status symbol?
Is it something to be desired?
Something to be defined by?
Surely we don’t have to be busy.
I guess that means we’re choosing to be busy.
So what’s going on?
I think we must secretly want to be busy. This artificial busyness then means we don’t have time to think. And if we don’t have time to think, we don’t have to make decisions. If we don’t have to make decisions, we can go on acting like victims. Whingeing. Complaining. Whoah is me. My life is so full I can’t fit another thing in.

I don’t know. Stop it? Make different choices? Enjoy what you have? I don’t know.

But I do know that a sense of perspective is important.
A couple of weeks ago I lost mine. Lost it at work. Felt trapped and overwhelmed. Felt like no one was listening. Felt used. And I didn’t like it. I couldn’t face it. It’s a funny place, isn’t it, where employees publicly receive awards that recognize contributions made during overtime?
Had some time off & regained my perspective (quickly, thanks). CJ helped me to remember that it’s just a job & to remember there are plenty of other jobs out there. It’s brings a fresh freedom. Who ever knows what the future holds, anyway?

Well, the future always holds the unknown, at least. And adventure & all that. A new life has entered the world since last I wrote. Now that is the biggest of the big. That is where perspective starts & ends for me. I haven’t met this particular little fella yet, but his mum was pretty pumped on the phone last week.

The climate change debate, national politics, footy, all sports to be fair, all fade away to the minor league pissing contests that they are in the face of family & friends. It’s what makes & breaks you, I think. It’s what defines you. But then, one person’s personal aggrandizement is another’s achievement. 2nd grade batting trophy? Cricket grand final? Gaining a promotion? Eating only vegetarian foods? Why do we do what we do?

So again I can see the humour in our elected representatives’ behaviour. I can see the humour in the earnestness of the shock jocks, the placard wavers, the footy supporters with painted faces. I can see the humour in anyone taking this sideshow seriously. Seriously. I feel some sympathy for them all too. And especially for their families.

The way I see it, most are taking this world too seriously. Look it. At the species level we won’t be around forever, just as no other species has been around forever. We’re just passing through on this Earth. Accepted.
At the national level, we don’t we act more as species? Who are we to turn away fellow humans from this bit of land? It’s ridiculous when you think about it. At the national level, why do we not fund only free universal health & education? Why do we give better deals to those with more money and call it opportunity? Think.
At the local level, why do we not know the names of twenty people who live in or own street? What’s going on? Think.
At the home level, why do we choose to battle the clock/ bank balance/ each other?
For each of us (individual, family), the clock is always ticking. In our own lives, the clock is always ticking. But if your circumstances let you, why would you not take the slow road? The road of genuine contacts, relationships, listening, sharing. I think it’s all I’ve got.

I do feel very lucky to have those mates in my life who share themselves & who allow me to share myself with them.
I remembered. I did forget there for a while.
So I’ll slow it. Laugh it. I won’t really be here that long.
What have I got to lose? That's life at 36.

D, S, K in the matrix

http://www.acmi.net.au/timeslice/Timeslice.htm?file=ts-20110113-be431f9dbe0a86c7ab6a1c1c1131f77f.flv

Doo, Doo, Doo, Lookin' out my back door

So I burnt a CD while we were living at my parents’ house. A sing-a-long compilation for the car that the kids would hopefully get into. I called it the “Children’s CD” and have subsequently listened to little else in the car since November.
If you call past you’ll hear S & K dreamily bumping along singing the lyrics of “Good Vibrations” or “Lookin out my back door” or “I want to hold your hand” or “Magical Mr. Mistoffeles” as they go about their days of exploration and invention.
It’s not a bad soundtrack. Though it has helped me appreciate the sponge-like nature of the kids’ interests and enthusiasm for shared experience. ”Oh, Mum & Dad like this; I’ll give it a go.”
Happily musical range has widened effortlessly. Today I fielded requests: “Dad, can you please play Clap Hands again? (Tom Waits) “Dad, can you put on The Talking Lion Blues” (that’s C.W. Stoneking). S & K each love the titles and the stories and the music, music, music. Their kinder teachers planted the seeds of ABBA during the year. Mamma Mia would be the Number 1 song at our place, I reckon, for popularity. Though my personal album of the summer is Dan Kelly's Dream.

We’re back home.
The renovation work went (mostly) to plan and certainly to budget and (just) to time. I guess in hindsight it was a low stress, very successful case. Bingo. We had some stresses - days of painting, CJ took time off work, kids lived for some days in Moe with grandparents while we painted. Mind you, reno talk is not my cup of tea. It strikes as the epitome of middle class affluenza. Like the Tim Rogers song “Twenty Eight” says, as his character bemoans the direction his (ageing) life has taken: “Art house movies and flat renovations, newspaper politics & dinner reservations, oh, what a breeze, just help me off my knees.”

Saying that, we’ve changed our house for the better & I’m really happy to say so. This house is kind of the twenty year proposition. The base for schools and community and work and activity and family. So it’s grand.

Christmas passed with a rush and one day of personal anxiety regarding presents and what-to-get-at-the-last-minute, which at the time seemed to lack perspective, and from this distance seems to have been a storm in a tea-cup. It’s funny the things over which we get worked up.

That’s a nice lead in to me saying that I’ve been reading “Buddhism for mothers” lately and learning a lot. Or rather, having some ideas reinforced. The upshot is that I’ve been chewing people’s ears off about the transient nature of our lives. Everything is temporary. Acknowledge any emotion as it arrives in your head, and say goodbye to it as it leaves. Just passing through. Happy? Pissed off? Confused? Excited? It’ll pass. Far better to sit tight & ride out any negative emotions, rather than act on them. The damage you may do to others while cranky will probably last much longer than the original emotion ever did. Yadda yadda.
I like this. It’s like a light switched on. The book is a ripper.

The other thing I’ve been pouring into unsuspecting mates is this idea of Having A Crack. As Ben Lee sings: “Whatever it is, just do it. Whatever it is.” And no, Matt, homicide doesn’t count. Like building a three-legged coffee table for a quirky little spot in our lounge. Had a crack today. Done. Like resuming the running. Had a crack the past week or so. Habit resumed.

I married someone who constantly inspires me in this Have A Crack department. She’s running rings around me and we’re all living a great life here.

We saw in 2011 with some very close friends; people you just want to share with and live with and learn from and be around. S failed to fall asleep on that hot night before the sounds of celebration rang in the New Year. Great to see the look on her face as she took in the unexpected (very) local fireworks and, in the near-distance, those in central Melbourne.

So we’re living the summer holiday life presently. Long evenings of sunlight. Riding (K on the back of CJ’s bike, S on the tag-along towed behind mine) down to the Gelo Bar for a lemon (or maybe chocolate?) after dinner ice cream. Cricket at the G. Trips to Rays Outdoors and Bunnings with the throng. Had a camping weekend in Drouin with five other families before Christmas. Great to be sleeping out & all together in the tent.

And later in the summer we’ll be sharing a week camping down the Ocean Road with some great mates. Roll on summer, roll on.

This coming year? S will start school this year. K will be in the 3-year-old kinder 2 sessions per week. CJ & I will be each working 3 days/week and living this life. Amid music and dancing and laughter and imagination. May we all shine on. May you shine on. On & on. Slainte.