Writings

Disposable Trinkets

While I was in Canberra, stuck for two weeks with only a weekends worth of clothes to work with, I went out to a friends for breakfast and decided to make myself a necklace.

The previous day, when strolling around the idyllic Canberran suburb of Curtin, I spotted these gloriously rubied leaves and picked them thinking to whip them into some kind of necklace. I thought they would in fact probably turn out to be picked and left with all good intentions not realised. But, no. The morning of said breakfast date I whipped a long thread through the tip of each leaf, strung them all together and tied them around my neck. I was that slap-stick. And you can probably tell!

The intention here is not to show you how clever I am. Because, really, anyone could make something far superior to this. The idea is to show, almost in protest, that a decorative object does not have to be made somewhere overseas, bought in a shop, worn as a trend and then only to be discarded when the trend or the mood passes. When I picked these leaves I was celebrating Autumn, when I wore them I wore them as a celebration of Autumn. The leaves were put back onto the earth where they decayed and formed part of the soil to go back into the cycle of life.

When things are bought from a shop they usually follow a linear pattern along the lines of: mined, made, shipped, purchased, used, discarded. If things are to follow a cyclical route, which is the route which has allowed our earth to survive as long as it has, things must return from where they came, or for these various metals which we value so much must return into circulation rather than into a dump.

These circular patterns, though, are so large that no one can see the whole picture and so, in my mind, it is better to involve oneself in the lifecycles closer to home. Shop locally, work locally, play locally, grow your own food, put your food scraps into the compost heap to degrade back into soil to grow more food (and so they don’t turn into methane in the anaerobic conditions of the rubbish tip), and even…make your own jewellery!

And make things out of things that will not just end up as yet another piece of junk.

Organic jewellery. Next up: edible jewellery!

June 4, 2013
Canberra Walks

Canberra owns many fine walks.

One of my very favourites is along a road that I used to pedal along as a child.

When my family first moved to Canberra it was during ‘the recession we had to have’ in the early 1990s. So we lived cheap. For the first few years we managed to exist without a car! Just imagine. So we rode everywhere and I am glad we did because those days of riding have become cemented in my memory and those memories are not bad indeed.

We rode, once a week, from Curtin to Yarralumla, where we didn’t cross a road at all, except the one leading to the Governor-Generals house, which is not really a road at all, more like a very long, hot-mixed driveway.

This ‘driveway’, Dunrossil Drive to be exact, has become slightly iconic in Canberra, immortalised in many wedding photographs over the years as about half of them have been taken along the oak and pine forests on either side of the road and very often in the very centre of the road where one gets the classic framing of receding road behind with overhanging Elms on either side. Yes, it’s a lovely picture.

Staying at my Nonnas last week I organised a walk with a couple of friends, new to Canberra and needing to be shown all the iconic spots. This was a good opportunity.

We headed to the Brickworks first, which we found was in fact closed to ‘the public’, and I was glad I had not known that the previous day when I took myself down a dirt track along its side! Ignorance is a friend sometimes.

Into the pine forests of my childhood. They are much sparser now, having been cleaned up following Canberras 2003 bushfires, but still shady and serene.

We stopped many times for children to climb trees and just do what children do.

There are a few patches of land either side of Dunrossil Drive and I was very worried at first, but I thought that surely they wouldn’t strip this beautiful drive of its beauty!? Surely not! And I was right. They are simply replanting.

I really love this photo of Sophia and her friend. They can fight hard sometimes but they love hard too, being pretty similar in nature.

The Royal Canberra Golf Course skirts this drive. That’s where all the posh people play golf.

After coming off Dunrossil Drive you pretty much come to a little wooden bridge straight away. This bridge has essentially remained the same, aesthetically, over all the years I’ve been over it, with a few wooden planks replaced as needed.

It was much safer to peer through the cracks then hang over the edge!

That, friends, is another Canberran icon, Telstra Tower, which looks over all of Canberra like a sentinel. Past the bridge there is a sweet little forest which borders the lake and hides the golf course fence. Bikes zoom past. Serious bike riders. So it was a bit of a hazard with little children buzzing around like little bees.

Coming out of this little forest you come to the grounds of the English Gardens where Sequoias and other very large trees tower, trees that may or may not be cut down very soon in the interests of public safety. For now it is a gorgeous area where there are Mulberry trees, Persimmon trees, Fig trees and Olive trees. There should be more public places where fruiting trees are grown. I really don’t know why fruit trees aren’t planted as a matter of course. We finished this walk so much later than we thought, though it was glorious. The moon sprung up and darkness descended, though walking through the well lit suburbs of scenic Yarralumla was no burden. The houses here are just as delightful as the forest along the lake. In the end my brother picked us up, though I was sure we were only 10minutes from the house!

June 3, 2013
The main thing

One of the things I’ve had to come to terms with, growing gradually older, has been my limitedness.

‘Can we have it all?’

That’s something feminists have sometimes talked about. Women can have it all. When someone like me sees someone like the beautiful Clare Bowditch who can go on a tour with 1 year old twins at home, it blows my mind. She admits it herself, that her and hubby co-parent, freeing her to do some much. Many seasoned feminists are beginning to say that women can indeed ‘have it all’ but not all at the once.

That is reassuring news for someone like myself, who does not have a co-parenting relationship going on and who doesn’t put her children into childcare (both for financial reasons and also because I just prefer to look after my own children – I couldn’t bear to be apart from them, and we do get by…just, and even did so while Henry was a full-time student for two years).

The thing is, I do still have ambitions, too many I think sometimes, and there are days, like today, where I feel them all churning around inside of me, itching to get out. That book I am yearning to write! The music I want to create. The languages I want to learn. The things I want to make, and most, most importantly the thoughts I ache to think. The thoughts that are there, so unvarnished and rough that need so much more turning over to become those polished gems that I know they are.

And then, while these things flit, tantalisingly, through my mind Sophia will cry “I need to go to toilet! I need to go to toilet!” or Gunther will come and sook all over me “I’m hungwee! What can I have to eeeat? I want coornflaakes…!?” And my thoughts are reluctantly pulled toward the reality of the present. “No, you can’t have cornflakes. You have to eat something healthy!” “Noooo! I just want cooornflaaakes! Ooohhh sob, sob, sob.” “Okay, give me a minute. I have to take your sister to the loo then we’ll talk about it!”

And so I am called from all these lofty aspirations to care for two little human souls and bodies, wipe their bottoms, blow their noses, brush their hair (occasionally), wash their faces, bathe them, mitigate their fights, feed their tummies, read them stories, teach them to read and write (which is rather rewarding!), hug them, kiss them, tell them I love them and just be there for them. Day in day out and on through the night.

I struggle because I hear of mums who manage to write between naps, once the kids are in bed or who get solid chunks of babysitting relief, but I don’t have that. I have one very high-energy child who literally plays til she drops, and even when she is lying in her bed wriggles and sings and grabs and chats and hops up and down and no amount of ‘training’ has ever stopped any of these behaviours. So by the time she finally does drop off, mid play, I am about ready to fall off my own perch myself!

And I think then that sometimes it is okay to leave the ambitions til another day. I intend to live to 112 and so I have many years ahead. My kids will grow up, they will slowly begin to look after themselves and while those days creep up on us I will slowly add things to my pile of ‘things-to-do-in-the-future’ and ever so much more slowly will begin to take them off. And meanwhile I will do what I can now. I can still play piano and I can teach the kids how to play. I can continue to slowly learn French, and do that with the kids too. I can still build a bus with my husband. And I can still perhaps crochet a rug. I can continue to enjoy story-time with the children and just pray and hope the language consumed will in turn have a good effect on my writing. I can keep blogging!

But I shouldn’t attempt to do everything right here and now because if I focus on my ambitions I will miss out on the beauty of the moment and there are lots of those, every day. I just need to look beyond the trips to the toilet, or even the missed trips to the toilet.

And the grand reality is that, as a parent, you matter ever so much to these one or two or three little individuals and your interest and investment in their lives is paramount to their current and future happiness and self-actualisation, and to me this is too vital to pass up and shrug off.

Though it’s hard sometimes and the desires still itch away.

June 2, 2013
Yarralumla Brickworks

I wish I had more photos for you. The day before these were taken I took myself along a little dirt road which ran lengthways along the Brickworks building (I found out later this was ‘not allowed’). All along the road I was just awestruck at the size of this industrial infrastructure. Nothing computerised, everything just massive and manual. Chutes coming from and leading to nowhere in particular. I could not comprehend how men would have worked here, the machinery seemed immense to my very inexperienced eyes. And how the building stood up was another matter, everything appeared to be made out of corrugated iron, rather dilapidated and very exposed. There were tunnels many feet above the ground, just hanging there.

Granted the building is 100 years old, built in 1913. It was apparently one of Canberras first buildings and many of the older buildings (which are slowly being demolished, although my Nonna still lives in an original specimen) are made of the stuff. The iconic red bricks this Brickworks produced can be recycled and are sold for $1/brick, and they are rather beautiful to my mind.

The tall chimney, which can be seen from around Canberra proved difficult to get to, the whole site being closed off excepting the workers of Thors Hammer. You can get in to buy wood from these guys. For now they are the caretakers and I am glad such a worthwhile business has their hand in it.

The building stopped functioning as a brickworks in 1976 and has had a few attempts at a new life since then. When I looked at it I saw a potential vibrant community of craftspeople entrenched in history. It is a perfect venue for a craftspersons marketplace, a music venue, gallery, even perhaps a recording studio and artists space. The kind of things that should happen here ought to reflect the building itself and in a way hearken back to the days when most things were done by hand and by people with real skill. Bootmakers, woodturners, painters, glassmakers, weavers, spinners, food producers and makers, musicians. I would love to see something like this installed in this beautiful old building and if, one day, I had the money I would invest it heavily into this place, it is worth restoring for the preservation of Canberras history and ought to belong to all and be freely accessible, and not as it is now, locked behind fences with security signs strung up.

Here’s a photo from wikipedia. I don’t often include these pictures, but the Brickworks is a very sentimental building to me. My childhood was spent very much under its gaze in the surrounding suburb of Yarralumla and its beautiful pine & oak forests. The chimney is worth showing off.

This is the back of the Brickworks, I kept my walk to the other side where there are piles of discarded bricks embedded into the side of the hill and the old quarry where the red clay was mined can be clearly seen.

This is the entrance to the brickworks, I remember going under the front part of this building while it was still neglected and there were no fences to keep anyone out. We saw the smaller kilns and invented spooky stories for the vast, darkened interiors. There used to be market days here, held in the outer area.

The road leading to the Brickworks passes Yarralumlas beautiful pine forests and antique houses, the Brickworks are hidden at the back of this suburb.

June 1, 2013
Change of View

“The Ottawa Conference was one more expression of the growing consensus…that not simply this or that part of the present global development pattern needs to be corrected, but that the entire model of modern industrial development is seriously awry. Not only the economic values of competition and consumption but the expectation of unlimited material growth; not only the prevalence of technology but the view of the world as a machine; not only the hierarchies of power, wealth, status, or sex but the idea of hierarchy itself; not only the dichotomy of resource conservation versus ecocentrism, conservation versus development, humanity versus nature, theory versus practice, intrinsic versus extrinsic values but the need to think in dichotomies at all. In other words, the basic world view or image of social and cosmic reality in terms of which scientific, moral, political, and most other questions have been asked and answered since the beginning of the modern industrial era is being questioned….

…the failure of modern society is primarily experienced as a failure to provide a fulfilling and sustainable way of life, a good life, for all.”

J Ronald Engel & Joan Gibb Engel, Environment and Development.

May 31, 2013
Loving my kids

I’ve been pouring love into my kids and realising that loving is the main thing for us parents to do.

When love goes in it comes back…but that’s not the reason to do it, it just helps us to keep on doing it. Love shines back from their eyes. When they have erred their eyes ask, ‘am I still loved?’ and the answer is always ‘Yes!’ and so I show them right there and then that I love them.

And I am finding that loving them makes me better and it makes them better. Love is the essential element.

I just love my kids.

May 30, 2013
Thoughts on Simplicity

‘The Simple Life’ has undergone a few overhauls over the years. These days minimalism and ultra simplicity seem to be all the rage. Back in the day ‘the simple life’ or ‘the good life’ equated to some kind of wholesome, outdoor-living, preserve-making, family-friendly, pig-raising escapade.

Things change and I guess that’s life.

The thing is, ‘the simple life’ never seems to lose it’s charm, whatever the definition. We seem to be ever searching for ‘a better life’.

I have been reading a bit and thinking a bit on this new reincarnation of simple living and the thing is: I hope it’s not a fad. But. It will be a fad if the lifestyle is not whole-of-life and sustainable.

Firstly, I guess the basic premise behind Simple Living is to consume less, take away the unnecessary and only do what’s left or, equally, what you are passionate about. I guess the idea is that you get rid of the things, the tasks, the busyness in order to focus on the relationships with family, friends, society, nature, the world.

It’s alluring. I really like this ideal.

But I’ve noticed a few things. Sometimes when simplifying we can simplify our own lives whilst making other lives more complicated and, inconsiderately, putting undue expectations on others.

For example:

Paring back on your own grocery items, cooking basic, bland food, but then relying on other people to feed you your essential vitamins and minerals and your meat (if so inclined).

Getting rid of your car to either a) take public transport (relies on a reliable and sustainable transport system) or b) rely on other people for lifts (relies on them having a car & money for the petrol) which can put pressure on your community to provide for you, when you are in fact well able to provide for yourself.

Perhaps choosing not to go outside of your area while expecting other people to come to you.

Or taking away the television only to expect to visit other people’s places to view the box.

I guess all these thoughts point to a central idea: In simplifying we must think outside of our own little box/apartment/house/self/family. If simplicity is to last it must be undertaken with the wider community in mind. Consideration of those around you must be your issue. Expecting other people to provide for your needs (or as one blogger put it: stealing from plates on the dinner table.) builds resentment in the long run and can not lead to a long-term sustainable lifestyle of simplicity as in order for any lifestyle to succeed it must be supported by the community around it.

It is in the simplicity spruikers interest to encourage, even assist others to pursue simplicity, not simply to use others to maintain ones own lifestyle or budget.

As my friend says, it’s best to live simply and generously. Simplicity should not stop us from being generous to those around us. And simplifying should not in turn rely on the unending generosity of others, especially when we are well able to provide for ourselves and just choose not to, for whatever reason.

P.S. Pics and adventure updates to come soon. We’ve been living on low internet for a couple of weeks while away from where home is currently. We are back to high-tech living soon!

May 24, 2013
Blogs that excite me

I have discovered a couple of blogs that are really exciting me.

First I found Sarah Wilson of I Quit Sugar, a recipe book a friend of mine has just discovered and is using.

That led me to :mnmlist which in turn led me to Zen Habits.

Wow. These blogs make the rest of the internet look dull. They use the internet for the best of purposes: Communication and the sharing of ideas. Not just: the making of money, using readers to get advertisers to get money.

It’s just nice.

These are popular blogs. I’ve only just found them.

I particularly like these posts:

The best goal is no goal (something I have been becoming convinced about myself over the years. Goals can create stress. Goals can make us thunder over other people in order to achieve our own ambitions. Goals can stop us seeing the beauty on the way. If you’re a parent you might have experienced this. I sure did. My kids suffered when I had a goal I just had to achieve in spite of them. That was not good and so I stopped having these admittedly pointless & selfish goals that were actually not making my or their lives any happier. Now I am even more convinced than before.)

Uncopyright (This is exciting because it’s a new way to think about our ideas. I truly hope the world will move away from economic drives. We are becoming to populous and there are just too many new ideas to patent. If we go on like this we will just be stuck, unable to do anything for ourselves, always having to check before winking. Things are changing. Fleet foxes thank piracy for their success, and I wonder if Plato had blogged all his thoughts and copyrighted them, would they have had the same influence on the world?)

Wanting Stuff.

And I love this post related to parenting. It embodies many things I aim for in my parenting. Things that I don’t always communicate very well.

These are some favourites I found, but with ten or so years of blog posts collectively, there’s a lot of good stuff on these blogs. I could spend a lot of time here. But I won’t. Instead I’ll share it, with you. And now I’m going to go and play with my kids and breathe a little.

See ya.

May 23, 2013
A weekend turned into two or three

We came down two weekends ago. It was only supposed to be a few days. I was going to get my essay done. He was going to earn us some big bucks to sink into our little house-to-be-on-wheels. We have a fear of reaching the end of our funds before we reach the end of fixing our bus, effectively leaving us s t u c k . . . but…well, let’s not talk about that. It’s not gunna happen.

We will be victorious.

We will conquer this project.

Anyway. I was having so much fun, and I hadn’t yet finished said essay, that I decided to stick around until Hank had to come back for yet more work. Cut to a weekend later and the day before we are due to go back to Young again Henry gets a conveniently timed text asking if he wants a weeks work of cushy-public-service-wages working at the Canberra Theatre. He’s been asked many times before, but never been free. I wonder if he was technically free this time around?

Public Service work seems to mean lots of paperwork, lots of bureaucracy, very few tasks-per-person, all jobs neatly divided up and assigned, so that to do one thing requires several hands, effectively leaving no one person solely responsible for any mishap. Effectively making a thirty minute task stretch out to three hours.

With this kind of work ethic one might as well stay home and just get the government handout.

Inefficiency creates jobs. Money continues circulating. Taxes are paid. ‘Things’ are purchased, creating more jobs, further circulating the money. That’s this life. That’s money for you. Money is no mans.

Well, apart from all that.

I feel as though we are just waiting for the cushy-public-service-job to end so that we can get back to our baby, the bus and really focus. But there’s another weekend to come down for. More work.

Is it worth it? All this transiting? It really stretches us in all directions. Not that we can’t take it.

I’ve been loving the socialising this fortnight. The bus will heave, like a ship, across our horizon once more and then we can focus all our energies yet again. For now we are in the land of (not so) cold Canberra where there are the warm friends of recent wonderful years. The bus calls us outward and onward to hotter climates and presently unknown friends.

So, in the spirit of enjoying every moment and making every moment part of the adventure of life and life’s lessons, these two weeks spent living out of one small bag of clothes have been eternally worthwhile, and how much so we won’t perhaps know for some time.

I am just so grateful to be living crazy like this with my big dear and my two little dearies. It’s really precious to share ones life with ones children and I just love being with them so much. We laugh a lot together.

La Vita e Bella.

May 22, 2013
Entirely themselves

Ah kids. Such a gaping, huge puzzle to those of us grown up to better things. Kids to do as they’re told. Kids to be polite. Kids not to talk or yell or shout. Kids not to climb or jump on things. Kids not to ask too many questions.

Shy kids don’t get yelled at so much. Those naturally ‘good’ kids who are pretty content to do as they are told. Sit in the corner. Not to speak out. They are ‘cute’ because they are too scared to talk, they don’t get in our way or demand our attention. We can give attention only when we feel like it.

Kids like my fiery red-head get told off more. Curious kids get told to stop touching, stop asking questions, stop gawking. Kids with more energy get told to sit still.

Kids have to live with the world and some rules help this assimilation.

But why do the shy kids get let off (until their shyness becomes an obstacle at least) while those struggling, curious, energetic kids are molded into…something they are not.

I read a blog post about one woman’s shy little girl. She is accepting that her child can be just her. If her is shy then be just that…gloriously…says she.

My girl is not shy. She is spunky, bold, curious, energetic, questioning, interested, fun-loving, mischievous, loving, wriggling, happy.

She can be a bit rude. She needs to learn to sit still through dinner. She mustn’t hit her brother. And she needs to learn to respect the property of others.

But her curiosity, her inquiring mind, her energy, her funniness. I want that all to remain. I want to foster her true nature so that as she grows she will be in no way conflicted and she will follow the path she was made to follow.

I remember being puzzled at grown-ups rules. I remember feeling frustrated that no one would take the time to explain ‘why’. These days when Sophia asks ‘why’ I take the opportunity to ask myself: ‘Yes, why? For goodness sake, why?’ Sometimes the ‘why’ shows us where our true priorities lie and shows us that we are caving to a value that we actually do not hold dear. The ‘why’ must be asked.

Growing up, the rules still held me back. The rules were not liberating. I felt fear at crossing some unspoken line and bearing the consequences. Rules are not always helpful. Rules can bind us. Rules only go so far. I would rather teach my little girl to understand the consequences and make good decisions, than just follow a long list of arbitrary, obsolete, valueless rules.

I feel that, as the world goes on, it fills with people and fills with rules. I feel that, in the future, when my girl is facing this world full of people and full of rules, I would rather her be able to see the rules and navigate around them, possibly break some of the stupid ones (there are stupid rules), and live a life of freedom and decision. And not always be the one who lives by the rules. I’d like her to have the courage to break the old rules and make new and better rules, to be able to think outside the rules box.

I guess this is my parenting aim.

This society of ours builds a bunch of common values: Values money, values property, values power, values relationships, values career, values government, values safety.

Values change.

Not all values are ‘good’. Some values are destructive (e.g. the love of money often takes place in peoples hearts over the love of people). So, I am open to raising my children outside of societies normal values. Every parent passes on their own values. Self-control may be a big value for some, so they raise their children around this. For others sleep is a big value, this is what they instill in their child, and the value gets passed on. Adventure can be another value. Creativity another. An inquiring, scientific mind another. Stability another. Strength (physical, mental, emotional) another.

And so all our children grow up to be different. Just like us.

As a parent I sometimes struggle with how I think others think I should be raising my children. There’s pressure from everywhere: Family, School, Government, Society, Friends. They all seem to have something to say on the right and wrong things for parents to do.

We’re all different. And that’s okay. We need stable kids. Stable adults. Law-abiding kids. Law-abiding adults. Creative kids. Creative adults. Risk takers. Kids that challenge the norm. Adults that challenge the norm. Strong kids. Strong adults. Wimpy kids. Wimpy adults. We need leaders and followers and managers and visionaries. So, our kids won’t always fit into one little box of ‘obedience’.

And that’s okay.

May 18, 2013