ideas hanging around

G’day to you,

What happens when we question who we are and what we do and why we do it?

A lot.

This year I’ve given up facebook, for one thing.
A simple everyday example of changing something in life after questioning its worth.
I’ve given up facebook and maybe coincidentally I’ve started coming across so many great ideas. Challenging ideas. Thoughtful ideas.
I feel like preaching it or at least sharing it as I sit here in a café in East Brunswick on a Sunday arvo. If café’s are the new temples, and this being Sunday, perhaps this is preaching..?

Some of the ideas?
That the earth is full.
That sharing vulnerability is a true way to find yourself and to unlock creativity.
That schools are killing creativity.
That we each need to face up to our inner shame.
That poems can be powerful.
That both sides of the atheism v. religion sideshow deal in arrogance.
That standardised testing in schools is bad.
That having a go is the best thing you can do.
And many more.

Where to start? I feel like I’ve got volumes to say. I think I’ll post here links to some thought-provoking clips I’ve watched lately.
The earth is full? Well we need about 1½ earths’ worth of resources to sustain the standard of living of currently existing on earth. Given population projections and rising affluence, we’ll soon need more than that. But we don’t have any more than one earth. So the model is doomed to fail. The model built on unlimited economic growth will fail. It’s not a theory. More a statement of fact. So the economic fundamentals are in for a shake-up shortly. There’s no real getting around it. But hopefully we can find a way to house, feed and satisfy 9 billion people on this planet in a sustainable way. It’s possible, but not with the current economic assumptions.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/paul_gilding_the_earth_is_full.html

That’s a nice topic that should resonate with each of us, but is also comfortably distant enough from us to allow us to ignore it. At least for now.

But vulnerability on the other hand, is something to face up to. How do you see vulnerability? As a sign of weakness? What’s your history with vulnerability? Has it been welcomed? Shunned? Expressed? Repressed?
I remember sitting on a flight to Cairns back in 2009, talking with some colleagues about this idea of shared vulnerability as we left Melbourne. By the time we’d landed in Cairns, not only had we agreed on it’s value, we’d shared things and exposed such things that we had become strong friends. Of course. This topic is close to me. Each month I catch up with a great bunch of gentlemen who share things and expose vulnerabilities that inspire.
I can’t explain how valuable it is to have these different outlets for discussing vulnerability. That’s where I’ve found myself to live. That’s where I’m at my best. That’s my thing.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html


I thoroughly enjoyed reading Alex Miller’s Lovesong s few months ago. And this passage really grabbed me (p287).
"Looking at John it seemed to her that men are
forever alone. Men, she said to herself, are not like
women. Their aloneness is in their souls. In their
deepest place, men remain solitary all their lives. No
matter how well loved they know themselves to be by a
woman, men are always on their own. We never touch
them in the place of their solitariness. John is alone
now, lying here beside me sleeping. And when he reads
his books, then he is also alone. He looks in those old
dead books for the answer to his own aloneness, seeking
a confirmation of his solitariness in the thoughts of
other men, hoping to hear in their thoughts an echo
of his own deepest aloneness. And when he meets
it, he says to himself with satisfaction, There! I knew
it already. And when he drinks too much wine he
embraces his aloneness as if it were a punishment that
he has deserved. And when he goes out on the Seine
at night with Andre in his boat and they fish together
and share their friendship, then they are alone in their
hearts and they know it and it afflicts them, and they
can't be honest with each other. And their dishonesty
twists their thoughts around each other and around
their friendship and makes them dissatisfied, and they
withdraw into themselves and into their solitariness for
the grain of solace that is there for them. Solitariness is
a man's only truth. And that is the difference between
us and them."

Again I understand the vulnerability and the sharing of that as a thing of strength and of community.

Brené Brown gave us that crackerjack vulnerability talk 18 months ago.
Here she discusses Shame. She talks about not being scared of failure.
And includes Theodore Roosevelt's "man in the arena" quote.
At the 12:00 minute mark. It's a ripper.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html


As if to underline this learning, confirmed on a flight to Cairns, re-confirmed on the first Wednesday of each month at pubs around the inner north, re-confirmed again via TED talks, during the past months I came across these. Some lines from Brendan Kennelly's poem "The Good."

The good are vulnerable
As any bird in flight,
They do not think of safety,
Are blind to possible extinction
And when most vulnerable
Are most themselves

It made me wonder: who is themself? Truly themselves? Are you? Does it depend on who you’re with? Why? How often do you reveal yourself? How have you learned to be you? Who is the real you? How have you been shaped by society’s expectations of who you should be? Or who you should aspire to be? How did your schooling shape who you are? How were the presence or absence of choices instrumental in shaping you? What choices should we offer to young people today?
What is creativity? How important is it anyway?
All of this becomes really interesting with a couple of young people in your care.
My favourite TED talk is given by Sir Ken Robinson:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Of course our man Ken Robinson would not be much of an advocate of standardized testing in schools, now, would he? We have that in Australia now. The NAPLAN. The myschools website. The insidious creep of management-speak into education outcomes and learning goals. The viewing of children not as members of a community, with brothers, sisters, neighbours, uncles, best friends, dreams, ideas and hopes, but as dots on a curve. The normalizing of students. And woe be you if your child is an outlier on that curve of society’s expectation.
Of course that standarised testing should be a guide only for measuring attendance on the day.
This conversation, both sides of it, is a very hot potato right now.

Outside of school, we’ve had some good old theological discussions lately. There was that rambling Q&A featuring George Pell and Richard Dawkins a few weeks ago. Which I didn’t watch, as I thought the whole spectacle could not advance anything. But subsequently an interesting piece appeared online:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-10/stephens-questions-without-answers-in-the-kingdom-of-whatever/3941740?WT.svl=theDrum

So our day-to-day life goes on.
This year the dance is smooth. S is off to Grade 1 these days. Mondays I’m home with K as CJ works. Tuesdays CJ is home & takes K to afternoon kinder. Wednesdays I’m home & take K to morning kinder. Thursday CJ is home with K. And on Fridays CJ is off to work early while I drop the kids off at school and kinder then go to work. CJ picks them up while I work a bit later. And va voom, it’s the weekend and we get ready to dance again.

It’s a fine life of parenting and sharing and being.
Sibling rivalry, Buddhist approaches to impermanence and living in the moment are all in my mind right now.

To finish – thanks for the ping pong table. It’s Game On.

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.

living away from home

to remember this time; it is the Time of Living Away from Home. Since Grand Final weekend (the second one). We moved out of our house & into the house of my parents. They are overseas. We are renovating.
And we squashed everything into our shed - tables, chairs, bikes, beds, you know - look around you. Brought some clothes with us here and some of the toys. And it's been about a month now.
What have I noticed?
I've noticed we drive everywhere now. Except to post a letter. They have been some good walks, kids in dress-ups, traipsing along wearing a beanie & a blow-up life-saving ring. But no bike riding. Driving to buy milk. Drive to get the paper. Sheesh.
I've noticed that we get by with the one car no worries, 6 days a week. That seventh day, however, upon which C & I each work for cash & the kids each check in at kinder for the duration, has us performing an intricate car shuffle.
It's difficult to overcome the prevailing culture. Difficult to swim upstream. Difficult to ride around the relative Alps of this suburb compared with our Dutch-like topography of our home suburb.
I've noticed that the kids are rolling with it. Life is good for them. whole days go by spent in exploration & imaginary lands, taking on imaginary characters, performing amazing feats - all with running commentary ("she muttered, as she escaped from the gaping jaws just in time" (for example)).
I've noticed that electronic communication is bad for your thinking. A much reduced value placed on editorship & revision of thought in this world of instant gratification and wall-to-wall OPINION. "I've had a thought - better post that." Or even "I'm yet to have a thought - better post that."
Came across an interesting article arguing that web culture is altering our brain's wiring & how it would be a Good Idea for us all to DISCONNECT once in a while. e.g. every weekend for starters.
How would you go with that? No internet all weekend, every weekend?

Work on our house is on track & looking good. The place is a mess, of course, but we aim to get back in there in a few more weeks.
My Mondays & Wednesdays are the gold of my week these days. My Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, regrettably, not much fun. As we say around here though, you make your own fun. And really, no one is responsible for my having a good time, except me. So I'd best pick up my strides.
Read "A Long Long Way" by Sebastian Barry just now. My word. I'm amid what I would call a reading period of my life, yet this one stands out from the recent pack. It had me laughing and crying and everything in between. It had me disembarking the train at Southern Cross, unable to stop reading, and instead standing off to the edge of Platform 9 as train after train arrived, spewing its passenger cargo round me, before I reached the end of a chapter. My best read of the year, to date, without a doubt.

slaínte

monday (great)

yep i might forget this in years to come but right now Mondays are ace.
Why is that? Today i'm sitting in our house after lunch - two electricians are climbing around the roof with a view to a bit of renovation work happening here. Two sisters are playing happily by themselves. K is creating a the life of magnet doll in her bunk room. S is separating her dress-up clothes - classifying them as dirty, clean, hang-up, bags, etc in my room.
Mondays I stay home with the kids. Wednesdays, too. It's been a couple of years now.
This year, our routine has taken us to the pool on a Monday morning - withdrew S from formal classes last week & instead the 3 of us splash around and do a bit of copy-the-nearby-lesson.
Wednesdays the kids each have a morning at kinder - so I get a morning TO MYSELF.

why was that blogged, again?

Up til now I have sent emails to a large group of contacts, advising them of the latest entry in this worldsafari space. I thought of it as like sending a postcard. Like an update. This began in late 2004 when we moved to Darwin.

So, nearly six years later, what’s changed? Well we’ve settled in East Brunswick, CJ & I have worked at a few different jobs, we have two kids and made new friends over that time. That’s the obvious stuff.
The world had changed too, of course, and I’m thinking of cyber-world for a moment, like identify theft and remotely accessing your machine etc etc. It makes the idea of public blog kind of odd. Why would you do it? Why do millions of people continue to post personal information about themselves online? Facebook is a good example of this. Why, oh why, do many of us spend our lives doing this?
There must be a need, unmet through our regular day-to-day lives, to contact people. But instead of sharing, it’s more like a kind of platform, or podium from which we can launch an “identity”. A brand. A way that we would LIKE the world to see us. It’s dressed us as being about people sharing, but from what I can see, there’s a helluva lot of talking/ typing/ posting going on, but I doubt how much listening/ reading/ thinking is taking place.

Yes, everyone seems to have a story to tell. Mini autobiographies in 140 words or less. They have a sore knee. They are thinking of going to Tibet. They are eating a steak sandwich. They heard their child say a word. They were awarded a pig on Farmville (huh?) . Here’s a photo of them in front of Westminster. And another at the leaning tower of Pisa. Golly.

Online social networking would have us believe that we are becoming closer together as we share this stuff with friends. But I think it’s less about “sharing”, which is clearly best done in person, and more about people creating their image and fanning their little fires.

Which leads me to the blog space. Why would I keep posting on a public forum personal information? Do I pretend that other people care? No. Do I try to create an image of myself that I hope others buy into? Maybe.

I’m grappling with the idea of letting it go. When our computer & back ups were stolen last year, without the blog being online, I would have lost the whole record. Because it’s online, it will always be there.
I plan to keep posting online, but to stop sending notifications so regularly. Maybe that’s a compromise for now…

end of a decade

g'day,
so the naughties are ending.
Haven't seen many "best of the decade" retrospectives yet.
But I'm interested -
what are your top 5 albums? books? movies?
what do you reckon?

i'll have a crack:
books:
1 the secret scripture - sebastian barry
2 the road- cormac mccarthy
3 true history of the kelly gang - peter carey
4 life of pi - yann martel
5 oxford big ideas science 2 (especially the engineering chapter) - yes, heavily biased

albums:
1 in rainbows - radiohead
2 up all night - the waifs
3 gurrumul - gurrumul
4 a rush of blood to the head - coldplay
5 tea & sympathy - bernard fanning

movies
pass (I haven't seen 5 movies in the decade)

anyone? click on comment to post...

and what of Our Common Future, eh, science?

On inspirational readings - on a different level, but the transcript of the Chief Executive of CSIRO, Megan Clark's speech to the National Press Club, 30 September.
Inspiring for anyone pondering our human struggle, I think. Sets out some challenges for us all & how to use scientific ideas to have a crack. Full of interesting posers, too.
One of my favourites is the realisation that in the next 50 years, we (humans on earth) will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history to date.
As she says; "That means in the working life of my children, more grain than ever produced since the Egyptians, more fish than eaten to date, more milk than from all the cows that have ever been milked on every frosty morning humankind has ever known."
jeepers.
http://www.csiro.au/science/Megan-Clark-Press-Club-Address.html

That book it has me - The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry. It's dynamite.
sharing a good story. can i do this? sharing. borrow it. buy it.
cheerio.

"My father's happiness. It was a precious gift in itself, as perhaps
my mother's anxiety was a perpetual spanner thrown
into her works. For my mother never made miniature legends
of her life, and was singularly without stories, though I am sure
there were things there to tell as good as my father's.

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes
that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more
likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following
them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing
entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad
black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling
after and a question mark.

My father's happiness not only redeemed him, but drove
him to stories, and keeps him even now alive in me, like a second
more patient and more pleasing soul within my poor soul.

Perhaps his happiness was curiously unfounded. But cannot
a man make himself as happy as he can in the strange long
reaches of a life? I think it is legitimate. After all the world is
indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man
we might be continuously happy in it."

And I'm walking round bumping into things you said...

And the daylight stretches again beyond 7pm and with it stretches my wonder that of course the world continues apace at this hour, when all is regularly drawn & blinded & darkened in the house of two little uns.
Getting out & about from time-to-time has brought the realization anew. Spilling out with mates into Errol Street for a Fringe Festival comedy show on a Tuesday night. Riding in the daylight to a north Carlton pub for some scheduled & much sought after conviviality on a Wednesday night. We made it. Another winter down.

Riding to the G in the dark & the rain, racing the clock. Floodlights looming over Fitzroy all the way. Arriving. Chaining up the bike. Finding Gate 3, scanning the ticket & running up the escalator in footy shorts & gore-tex coat. Could the Woods do it? Heart pounding with effort & expectation, rounding the bend and onto Level 2 as the crowd all shuffle up out of their seats for the anthem. Hide away up the back, swap the wet shorts for dry jeans & take a seat just as the siren sounds. A rollicking first half of missed opportunities. We will get them again? Jimmy Bartel teaching me about the setting of screens and only then becoming aware of a whole new game within a game to an extent I’d never seen before to set up Ablett on his own. And the dancing, prancing second half, soured by cocky Geelong supporters around me to the point that I even left early (to beat the (bike) traffic).

But this spring has a special fizz, don’t you think? Can you feel it? There’s a spark of something floating on the wind. Or maybe it’s a loose willy-willy that flicks up the dust and makes anything seem possible? The skies are brighter. Bigger. All is fresh and new and again.

Here we’re debating house plans & looking forward to a 4th birthday and also to a little family getaway. CJ will be running 10km leg of the Melbourne Marathon on Sunday & will then pop up to the Gold Coast for a work conference. Nice! SJ is coming up to 4 now & has been seen ringing imaginary friends (on an old disconnected phone handset) quite a bit lately. KT is 2½ and took it upon herself to cast aside the Age of Nappies last week. These kids are growing and growing and revealing more of themselves seemingly every day.

And me? I’ve been in the business of watching & observing & relishing my Slow Talker status around these parts.
My (fractured) coccyx gives me less pain than previously, though it still aches to sit. Sometimes a sharp pain, rather than an ache. This experience has taught me new lessons about Australia’s health system, overturning some idealistic naïve ideas. It turns out that without private health insurance, a public patient cannot simply offer to pay for a consultation with a private specialist. This had been my understanding. But no. The private specialist in his/her private rooms opts instead to not even allow an appointment. No private health insurance = very limited access to private system.
This situation has meant I will not be seen by my first-choice specialist in Melbourne, though thankfully my referring doctor was able to find a private specialist prepared to consult with me.

But I’m back on the bike at least once/week now, taking in Edinburgh Gardens, the MCG and the Yarra on the trip to work. And still working a 3 day-week. Clocked up 1 year at the Bureau of Meteorology this week. I’ve found it very supportive and interesting and challenging and fun.

Books? I enjoyed the many characters & life stages of those characters in The Good Parents (Joan London), found The Boat (Nam Le) interesting rather than riveting & had trouble with The Spare Room (Helen Garner). Yesterday I stopped reading The Time We Have Taken (Steven Carroll) as I couldn’t get past the continually sighing internal debates of every character but today have found a cracker in The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry). All hail the Brunswick library.

And it seems just now that I’m finding inspirational people everywhere I look. Really helping my perspective & meanderings & wanderings around this world. So what are the ethics of finishing off the last 50 pieces of someone else’s 500-piece jigsaw puzzle project? Can routine and the presence of order help to rekindle the feeling of independence and of lost self? Life is scary, but courage is knowing your own role and your own values. How do you measure the success of your life? What’s the best way to make a difference to this world? Where can we do the most good? What is happiness?
Conversations over lunch, at the pub, over email to Darwin. Conversations with the people with whom we share this life.
Happy spring.
It’s happening.

there is room for make believe out in the jungle

There’s a man with an overly long trenchcoat who gets on the tram and when he does so he pushes past the assembled commuters towards a bright yellow pole. His eyes take in no one and nothing. He greets not a soul. He is in his own world. Alone, perhaps, save for his iPod. Around him, as the tram eases again towards town, are his kin. Ironic. The kin of the alone. There’s the woman with the constant suspicious look, eyes darting over the top of her newspaper, folded crisply to the crossword page. The school girl reading over some hand-scrawled notes, iPod working away. There’s the Swanston Street crowd, work-a-day uniforms of corporate worlds on bodies matched with resignation on faces. There’s the William Street crowd, similarly fitted out, but with more tailored corporate uniforms (sometimes even a waistcoat!)
At Spencer Street the mass of humanity spilling from the train station each morning pushes against me and my travels. I, the rainbow trout, jostle against the current of scores of trenchcoats, pleated skirts (and matching runners), wet hair and rush. Everyone rushing. Must be important. So very important. Fighting at the pedestrian crossing to weave a path against the tide. I must have made face-contact with hundreds by now. And not a single smile amongst them.

Most mornings, at this point, I sing. Singing my way across the pedestrian crossing has advantages. My repertoire is limited, but the song that most aptly comes to mind, observing these great shoals of business–fish is “across the universe,” and in particular its opening line of: “words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they make their way across the universe…”

The city in morning rush hour (no kidding!) is no place for emotional sustenance. Or for children. Where are the children? My school teaching days wash fondly forward as I traipse up the concrete & steel hill; yet more windswept grimaces surrounding me, cigarettes lighting en masse. (“Hi Mr Wilson – hey did you see the show last night? Mr Wilson – nice tie. Hi Mr Wilson – why are you wearing footy shorts?”)

Thinking of this now, I am reminded of a message shared recently with a great friend. I’m sure they won’t mind.
----
Think of the mundane & the trivial & the challenges & the exhaustion & the last time you were furious with your lot.
I thought of this and then i thought of a patient and watchful gatekeeper.
Like an elder.
Someone of gravitas and of unspoken wisdom.
Someone who doesn't shirk anything.
Who doesn't flinch.
Someone who bears all before them and who listens and who accepts.
And who is sought.

I was thinking about this person & how I reckon that's a valuable person and then I thought of that daily load again.
I'm picturing that person. it's a woman & now she is lying on the ground.
She lies down to rest.
It's not as easy as it looks - this wisdom that she carries.
She lies down on a big flat rock that sits in the late evening sun.
The floodplain is below her.
She sighs and she breathes.
She breathes deeply through her nose.

She knows that this clutter of emotion and of noise in life is constant.
But she breathes again and is rested.
A light breeze shuffles branches & leaves overhead.
She hums and she smiles.
----
Who are we? Who are you?
I shared a week in Cairns with work mates. Truly shared. exhausting. wonderful. Meanwhile, at home, we were burgled - back door smashed in, computers & jewellery & video camera & hard drive (with photos, stories, etc) stolen. No one was home, so family are all fine.

Breathe.
Breathe.
That photo there was taken off the coast of Cairns. Snorkled with a turtle! Yes siree.
Breathe.
adios.

australia 2 - 1 japan

Ah yes, rolling down rathdowne street, past stationary cars, on the way to the pub, ignorant of the possibility of bike seat thieves being AT LARGE and weaving among the Imperial throng, empty-handed blind turn at the (severely understaffed) bar, laying eyes on a posse of blokes i recognised well and getting amongst it.
"and g;day to you, too." from simon, some minutes after my arrival. Champagne email banter going un-replied-all to.
The Great Seat Heist. The rueful prospect of a quad-tearing marathon to footscray later in the evening. The even-more-rueful prospect of telling Claudia about it. The rise and fall of Gary Neiwand.
Picking up the meandering pace through the Treasury gardens and moving at a fair clip by the time ground announcers could be heard. "Kick off in 10 minutes; we want you all to be seated..."
Navigating well the famililar flood of the MCG pre-game, but navigating with less poise the unexpected jog/ light run up flight after flight sucking in air of diminishing oxygen content. The dizziness of first arrival on 4th deck. The craned neck to see if, yes, there are more seats behind me. And yes, ours are among 'em.
A strangely subdued first half, wondering about tactics and individual versus team contributions, and strategy and imagined complexity versus real complexity and how much of this game comes down to chance, anyway?
The Tim Cahill double.
Rocky's "It's just like world war 2 all over again! At half time they (japan) were in Darwin!"
The roar.
The roar.
The drums, the flares, the songs.
Threading among the stationary cars through East Melbourne and thinking, yep, that was the go.

hope suburban life swallows us all tonight.
Life in the Big League is hard to take.

He hears nothing but the water, and the sound of it has been in his ears all his life.

Do you twitter? A teacher mate of mine asked me that the other day. Twitter? No idea, I said. So I signed up (yet another alias assumed) to check it out. Just the same as the facebook status updates, but without the photos. You get 140 characters to say what you're up to/ thinking/ doing. And it all works on the premise that other people will want to to know exactly what you're up to/ thinking/ doing several times a day. Crikey. Not unlike blogging, I guess. But a drawcard in this Age of Celebrity, is that you can search for anyone and start “following” their updates. So to test this idea, I'm now following Hugh Jackman. Would you believe it? He's just been sitting in Miami airport and is looking forward to going to Disneyland with the kids. Noise, anyone?

Noise? I popped along to the Shrine of Remembrance this year for a bit of dawn service. Not really my idea, nor something I'd ever done. We caught the tram there in the darkness, people emerging from the gloom at each stop. Strangely packed tram by the time we reached central Melbourne.
-so you're down from Canberra are you?
-yeah i'm here for the long weekend. We get the public holiday Monday in Canberra.
-gee that's alright. How's yer work?
-oh I was in Papua New Guinea last week and before that I was organising the Chinese delegation to Perth but we were only there for 3 days so it wasn't really enough time to catch up with anyone, you know?
Happy to be off the tram and walking in darkened silence with the pilgrims. Past some seedy gents just emerged from an all-night bar. Strangely sheepish in the face of the silent, solemn looks of the sober. Walking up the grassy slope, among the darkened trees, branches in the face, when the Last Post rang out.
I wondered about the whole “glorifying war” angle of the day, but I reckon it's a totally personal issue. What someone gets out of the day, recognises of the day, attributes to the day, is their own business and for me it was a remembering. I think the workaday soldiers of the lines are people to be remembered. Not so the politicians or decision-makers of the era. Nevertheless the occasion intrigues me still. Why do so many get out of bed to be there? So many kids. So many people so far from home.

Lately we've had mates & kids staying with us in our house. Playing & eating & sleeping & living. Holidays to the beach, cavorting with a dolphin. We've had an Easter at home, painting & washing & sandpapering. And we've felt the cold snap and realised the heater stopped working sometime over the summer. We've enjoyed many many birthday parties of little people; including a 2nd birthday party held at our place. So for the first time since October 2005 there is no one at our house under the age of 2.

And I learned last Friday that my coccyx is in fact fractured. Tail bone. Cracked it back in the first week of Feb, throwing myself backwards onto a low low couch. Expecting to be enveloped in the loving embrace of several cushions. Instead crashing CRASHING my tail hard onto a sturdy, non-cushioned armrest. Crack. Yeah, it hurt at the time. Since then it has stopped me running. Stopped me riding a bike. Stopped me sitting down on the tram. Stopped me sitting down at work. Fairly inconvenient. So I finally had an x-ray taken, and yep, crack-o-rama.
Fingers crossed for a decent recovery.

Tram-riding much more frequently now, me and my broken tail, and this means book-reading nirvana. Talk about a silver lining. Have you read any of Roald Dahl's short stories? Or Cloudstreet? These stories and story-tellers are worth a look. He says. Seriously.

So two days each week I'm home with the girls, so no book reading of my own then; rather plenty of Possum Magic and The Very Hungry Catepillar and Tikki Tikki Tembo. And lazy walks to the market and maybe a tram ride to the museum this week. Ahh yes, it's cold and slow at our place these days. Putting another jumper on and easing along. Hope you're fit & firing wherever you are.

sometimes when this place gets kind of empty

Looking back, it's been coming for a while but tonight, with New Order bobbing up on the shuffle, a view of our kitchen in front of me (dishes washed, Steph's painting on the bench) I realise that I've got life worked out. Ba bing.

And do you know, with that, everything has slotted into its place.

It's as if, by understanding my own vantage point, all worries, all concerns, have hoisted their own little white flags.

It feels a bit weird right now, but as I said, I think it's been coming for a while.

The top of my head has flipped open like on that old ad for a toothbrush.

Going. Going.

I'm left with the core.

That's all I need. I'm ready now. I feel ready. More ready that ever, to be truthful.

Crikey.

I feel clean and confident and natural and if I was to liken this feeling to an image that image would be of the (southern) night sky. Not so much an image, but the feeling of being underneath it it in the bush or in the desert country. Open. Without limit. Forever.

Noise is something I've just learned to actively avoid. This is helping. Noise as in extraneous, irrelevant, meaningless facts, information, statistics, etc. By golly this type of noise is pervasive. This very writing is now part of the Earth's noise. Time taken reading and writing is time we are not thinking. Unless we are, I guess.

Is there a struggle taking place? It would appear so. I buy the Saturday paper here and read it over the rest of the week. News of the city is mostly grim. News of the world is mostly grim. Is this what “sells papers”? Do journos and editors set the agenda or do they follow the lead of their marketing department?

But everywhere noise. Junk mail. Junk telephone calls. Junk email. Stereo aural assualt even while sitting at the Test cricket. Advertising bombardments. Absence of time to ponder. Time to think. Do we think?

The Noise and the struggle are linked, I think. Noise, a useless clamour for our attention. Buy 2 get one free. 100 free SMS. New facebook layout. Amex membership rewards. Peter Costello. Credit card payments now by SMS. Now online. Recharge using this card get 75 hamburger vouchers. Sale This Week Only. Inside 50s. Online friends. Clangers. Germ free. Write something about yourself. Make $50-$100/ hour. Easy currency trading. Jacko's brother asked out that girl from video easy. Free trip competition. Wash the bathroom floor. 6 months interest free. The clamour. The clamour. Our attention. Our limited and very sacred attention.

I'm turning the Noise off.

Off.

Footy is a case in point. The overwheling media fixation and (consequent?) population fixation on an imperfect, physically arduous, tedious brand of provincial football growing each year. Now players of that sport are treated by media and betting agencies alike with a significance rivalling and in some cases even outstripping their own (employer!) clubs. Made a bet on the Brownlow voting yet? Filled in your Super Coach team? How many points is he worth per match? Sum the points, watch the rookie, loose ball gets? Someone turn off the Noise.

But hey, I like the game. Love the game. Just take me away from the 7-day-a-week media circus & the audio visual assault at each match. Leave it as a game. (must be local footy, I reckon).

Noise. The Dalai Lama has been in exile for 50 years from his home in Tibet. Global village -style noise. Keeping up with the shared experience of the global Joneses. Posh & becks -style. Liverpool, manchester Utd -style. Do we need it? Do we need it?

Could drop into conversation with anyone on earth – howabout that Obama? Howabout that Fritzl? Howabout that Pakistan?

So i'm learning that a noiseless life is a thinking life and a reflecting life.

Quiet.

Struggle.

Quite a struggle.

You say you want a revolution.

Doorways to the past have opened in the past week. A message from a former Year 8 student that had me laughing out loud. A dear friend not heard from in five years appearing at the door, partner, daughter, staying & playing & eating & bathing together. It's a wonder.

Life is beautiful.

Opening some books.

Talking.

Listening.

Thinking.

That's it.

That's me for now.

I've had a birthday just now yet i feeling younger than before. The sky is open.

put me in a cage full of lions, i'll learn to speak lion

G'day from our rattletrap house,

Have you read any good books lately?Any books at all? Books and reading have made a triumphant & appreciated return to my life in the past few months. Roddy Doyle's "The Van", his "The Woman who Walked into Doors," Christos Tsiolkas' "The Slap," Robert Drewe's "Our Sunshine," and this morning I'm into Richard Ford's "Independence Day."

I've been alongside a couple of Dubiner's setting up a chipper van outside a pub. I've been witness to horrible physical abuse. I've pondered life from the perspectives of a teenage girl, a septuagenarian Greek man and egotistical men suffering mid-life crises. I've ridden with a widow's son outlawed whose requests Must Be Obeyed.

And it's been grand.

The pace of life has slowed here in the past months. Maybe this is due to my new job – I'm certainly not bringing any work home any more. We all feel that like a cold change across the bay on a day of stifling heat. And I'm attending a workplace only 3 days each week; giving me the rare gift of being at work more than I'm not (3 outta 5 days) while also being at home more than I'm not (4 outta 7 days). Presto! What a trick!

Breathing space is noticeable around our place. Unexpected contacts & visits! from long-ago friends have burnt a warm & welcome dizziness. Special to think & to remember & to share. To clap eyes on & embrace & embrace the history & the shared experiences worth more than you can say.

Breathing space.

Running. Running for the sake of running has always perplexed me. Laps of the oval? Something for the greyhounds, mate. But this week I've gone 25km (total) in four runs & am feeling really good for it – if a bit tight around the calves. It's a kind of tiredness that I'd forgotten about. That tiredness that says "yep, you've done a physically tough thing today."

Breathing space.

Stephanie turned 3 in October. Family lunch at our place. She is full of questions and full of opinions. She reasons and rationalises and explains. She remembers. Her standard position is the contrary one. "Steph, would you like the blue or the red bowl?" "No, the yellow bowl." She reads (memorises) her books with an uncannily accurate and fast ability. And she will then sit with Kyla and read them to her. Stephanie loves jig-saw puzzles. And she will help Kyla with puzzles, too. On Wednesday Stephanie drew a picture and wrote the letter M at the top, saying "This is M for Mummy and I'm going to give this picture to her." She takes herself to the toilet now – calling for help when a bum wipe is required. She has started riding her bike (birthday present – with training wheels). She regularly rides to the park now ("Dad, you and Kyla can walk behind me.")

Stephanie knows and remembers. She places people and events better than anyone I know. Meeting up with friends last week she stood in the centre of the gathering & gave a rollcall of attendees, matching couples together as "best friends" ("There's Jack. And over there is Amy. Jack and Amy are best friends.") She can recall events and places of a similar gathering months ago. I find it extraordinary.

Stephanie runs and jumps and slides and does it all with a fair bit of caution. When meeting someone new or going to a new place, Stephanie's retreat for comfort manifests in a kind of baby language – she mimics Kyla's language. For a while that confused us, even annoyed us a bit, but we realised it's just her security net and that she soon warms out of it. She relates to other people well, I think, after the initial feeling-out period. We are fortunate to have close contact with friends and their kids. Fortunate to watch skills learnt from 4-year-olds put straight into practice (You mean I can walk up a slide backwards? Why didn't anybody say so?)

Kyla is about 20 months old now. She is a funny girl who has a sneaky and crafty way of giving you a side-ways glance before making a joke. She is energetic and bold. She is a cuddly huggy girl who loves contact. Kyla slides and runs and screams and pushes trolleys and trains and prams around and around our rattletrap house. Her language is incredible ("Dad, Stephanie has enormous cup, doesn't she Dad? E-nor-mous!") I'm certain that she enjoys the benefit of an older sibling to play with & learn from. Though they have their disagreements (Me: "Steph, Kyla can use those bells in two minutes when you have finished." Steph: "No, she certainly can NOT"), the constant policing of a few months ago has ceased. Squabbles occur less frequently now. Maybe Kyla's language has developed enough to enable clearer communication. Who knows?

Kyla tries things. Climbs. Picks herself straight up when she invariably falls. Stands on top of the tricycle seat and throws her head back, arms out wide. Grins. Trying to placate her writhing wriggling squirminess is like trying to harness a fiery young filly.

Days at home are wonderful. There was a time when the prospect of spending a day at home caused anxiety to rise like a water spout. Nowadays anxiety has dropped to virtually nil.

Other happenings?

With Justine's help (thanks Juz!) CJ has introduced a Sunday night Muppets night at our place. After a bath we all catch an episode of the Muppets on DVD. What a treat.

And CJ & I got away for 2 nights recently – without the kids. Shock! They had a holiday (and a terrific time) at Grandma & Grandpa's house. We had a holiday (and a terrific time) at Airey's Inlet with mates. Extremely restful in a way we haven't really known in years. Talking about it, we reckon that rest came with the complete absence of decisions to be made. Instead we could just BE. We've got a family holiday lined up soon. Looking forward to it very much.

All is well at our place. Hectic activity & uncontrollable screaming spins out-of-control a couple of times a day but this is the natural order of things & something to be cherished. The kids begin their first experience of childcare (1 day/week) in a fortnight from now. No doubt there will be tremors. And so life continues to be entirely about our relationships with other people. Go well.