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.