Over it… almost.
It has been a VERY long weekend.
From blind dates to lost dogs, movies with sisters, drinks with friends, pub crawls, drunken falls, sprained ankles, frustrating lockouts, more drinks, a Girltalk concert, Oxford St clubs, waterskiing on the harbour, Australia Day bbqs, more beer, and a creamy pavlova – all since my last post.
We found our dog after hours of search and worry. My real estate let me into my apartment after hours of impatient waiting. My ankle is sore and swollen but feeling better no thanks to my abusive dancing the next night and waterskiing the day after that. It was a long weekend but it was an awesome one.
On reflection, it has actually been a very long holiday.
Ever since I moved to the city I have justified almost every invitation as “making up for the last two years of my twenties spent living like I was in my eighties” and anyway, “I’m on holidays” right?
But when are my holidays going to end? Seeing as I don’t plan to officially be at uni till mid-year, it is really up to me…
It’s been fun. I’ve had enough alcohol, sugar and fatty foods to last the rest of the year. I’ve had a great summer. I love my new life in the city. But I have now landed at that point where enough is enough.
I’m ready go back to work. I’m ready to find some pilates classes to teach. I’m ready to get started on uni readings and work long and hard on my other projects. I am looking forward to getting my body back in top form – and I’m hoping a bikini catalogue in March will provide the motivation to make it happen.
As ready as I am and as much as I want to start it all right away, I can’t.
I have friends to come over for a housewarming/pub crawl this Friday – so I can’t give up alcohol quite yet. I have a sprained ankle so I can’t get fit or start teaching pilates quite yet. And I’m a bit tired from the weekend’s ordeal so I’m not sure how productive my mind is going to be. And there’s still too much chocolate in my house.
February. I’ll start in February. Just a few days to go… may as well live out the holiday mode till then.
A flea on a dog’s back
Sometimes I feel like a flea on a dog’s back. The great-great-great grand daughter of a family who decided to no longer jump from dog to dog, but instead thought it a good idea to settle down on one animal forever.
My ancestor-fleas thought themselves so smart: finding ways to prevent their eggs from falling down onto the carpet, and discovering ways to protect themselves from flea collars and other flea-rid products. Now the members of our family live for months instead of weeks.
My flea-ancestors were so “smart” that they create ways to harvest the dog’s blood – with some fleas doing the blood sucking for the “more important” fleas, who sit back and enjoy the ride.
Food was so plentiful we started to multiply. Now our family is in the billions.
But we are starting to realise something… Our dog is not well. His blood is starting to taste different. It’s starting to run out. The host of our last few thousand generations has become anaemic and debilitated. Our dog is dying. It will only be able to provide for us for a couple more generations of fleas, maybe less.
We need to find a new host. The only problem is that after so many generations on this one, living such an easy life, we have evolved to live on that dog and no other. Our eggs can no longer develop in carpet. We are stuck on our dying dog. We are doomed.
Riddle me this: How many humans on earth will it take to become the fleas that killed their dog?
…
Photo Credits:
Photographer: Brian Walker – www.lickthesun.com
Living too long and popping too many babies
Today I’m doing a little report for my Dad’s business which is in the Aged Care sector. And I tell you what – I’m learning some VERY interesting (and frightening) facts along the way…
“Around two million Australians are aged 70 years or older. That’s 9 percent of our population. Four per cent of the population are over 80 years of age. The proportion of Australia’s population aged over 70 is expected to rise to 13 per cent by 2021 and to 20 percent (around 5.7 million people) by 2051.” (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
In other words:
In forty years, one-fifth of the Australian population are going to be over 70.
And the ageing population isn’t scary enough for you, put it in this context:
The world population that has gone from 900 MILLION to almost 7 BILLION – in just 200 years!!!
According to the US government census report the current populations of the US and the world are:
U.S. 308,530,840
World 6,797,902,065
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, on 22 January 2010 at 12:25:31 PM (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:
22,124,384
This projection is based on the estimated resident population at 30 June 2009 and assumes growth since then of:
- one birth every 1 minute and 45 seconds,
- one death every 3 minutes and 40 seconds,
- a net gain of one international migrant every 1 minute and 51 seconds leading to
- an overall total population increase of one person every 1 minute and 11 seconds.
By the close of this century we could have reached a whopping 14 billion – well that’s the UN’s “high” estimate… (see graph above.)
What I really don’t understand about the “medium” and “low” estimates is what they think will cause people to stop having babies.
Sure in the rich west we are slowing down, discovering the joys of life without children…
But what sign is there that the third world are going to stop popping out their five or six per woman?
In a world where (as a by product of being integrated into an unjust system created by the West) their quality of life is getting worse – why would they suddenly give up their source of joy – their desire to have a big family?
It’s not like they are going to be brought out of poverty any time soon seeing as (very unfortunately) our system is intentionally designed to keep them poor. Don’t believe me? Think that maybe the wealth will trickle down, bring them out of poverty and then they will stop having babies? Then consider the fact that under the current system, reducing poverty to a state where the poorest receive $3 per day, ‘an impossible 15 planets’ worth of biocapacity’ equivalent to our earth would be required. (says Andrew Simms, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation in London in New Scientist article ‘Trickle-Down Myth’ 18 Oct 2008 – p. 49)
In other words ‘we will have made Earth uninhabitable long before poverty is eradicated.’
Ok – this has led me far too far into distractionville and procrastinationville. I’m supposed to be doing the report for my Dad on Aged Care but have spend the last two hours thinking and writing about fleas… (see next entry)… Ok, now back to work Juliet – back to work NOW.
Chapter 25: The Fall (Iguazu)
Oh man these waters were powerful. Arrgh! We had so much fun!!!
MUSIC CREDITS:
Learn Yourself, The Beautiful Girls
When you lose your peace narrative….
Last night during some deep anthropological discussions, the subject of depression came up.
“Depression is the incongruence between creations of your mind and soul, and the creations you are manifesting in the material world.” Lauren explained. “A depressed person feels as if their mind is disconnected from their emotions and from their body. One’s feelings take over their body and although their mind might be wanting one thing, their energy levels prevent them doing it. It’s like the disconnection felt by a person who’s had a stroke… It seems to come down to a loss of hope.”
I know I’ve talked about depression when I was feeling down and lost, but my self-diagnosis may have been a little over the top. I might eat when I’m emotional or annoyed – as a “fuck you” to myself – but I’ve never been unable to get up in the morning and I’ve never lost hope in humanity and life. I guess there are different degrees of everything.
Western societies today have the greatest rates of depression than ever before. Why?
When I woke up this morning after a night of processing all we had discussed, something dawned on me… my last entry was wrong:
NOT ALL of us live by a narrative of peace.
And what happens when we don’t? I guess our minds might travel down a narrative of destruction. A narrative that affirms in our minds that nothing is going to get better. Depression being a possible consequence.
I guess the thing about narratives is that they do change over time – a narrative of destruction can turn into a narrative of peace. How? I’m not really sure. I guess that’s what I’ll look at in my phd if I do it.
One thing I know for sure is that I’m loving narratology already. Simply the idea of interpreting the world and our minds as different narratives seems to provide so much opportunity for understanding. And I haven’t even read a book on it yet!
We ALL live off a Narrative Of Peace
Ok so I’m laying in the water enjoying an early morning swim at a nearby harbour-pool when all these thoughts stream into my mind. A sign that my mind has had enough vacation? I’m not sure.. Narratives of Peace is a topic I’m looking at doing a research project on in the second half of this year…
We ALL have a Narrative Of Peace (NOP) – that is, a story we tell ourselves will bring us toward a more peaceful place.
Even suicide bombers have one – acting with the conviction that their action will bring about eternal peace for themselves and their families, and bring about a world of greater peace for their descendants.
Religious narratives are quite obviously based on a NOP. If you do this… believe this… say this… then you will go to heaven and live in eternal peace.
In a capitalist world a majority look for the next purchase that they hope will bring them peace. Or maybe it’s a mortgage paid-off, moving to a bigger house, a better street, buying a boat, accumulating a certain digit on a bank statement. After this and this and this, then I’ll be happy, then I will be at peace.
Politics, ideologies, even the histories as told by the winners – are told in a narrative, one said to lead toward peace. Even our culturally defined pursuits of love and success – are narratives with at root a narrative of peace: a desire for happiness, harmony and completeness.
Evolution is a narrative, although the scientific one might not set its sights on peace. Is that the missing link? Over and above whatever other “missing links” exist… what meaning can be drawn from this 14 billion year process of evolution? What is it that we are evolving towards?
Which narratives are right, which are wrong? I guess that depends on the storyteller. It depends on the lens he or she sees the world through.
Is there a “grand narrative” of truth that transcends them all? If a grand narrative does exist we can be sure we will never know it, not in our present conscious anyway.
I understand where the postmodernists come from – the rejection of a grand-narrative, the rejection of absolute truth. I do see their point.
Today I was thinking about post modernism and the (very little) understanding I have of quantum physics… if all possibilities exist simultaneously until the observer observes one or the other, then surely we, as observers, are the creators of whatever individual truth we wish to create? Maybe postmodernists are right – it seems like at least on quantum levels no one truth exists until we select it.
Ok, crap. Now I think I’ve tied myself in a knot.
I do believe there is a grand narrative in the non-quantum dimension we find ourselves in. Sure I will never know for sure, maybe there are millions of grand narratives sitting, awaiting us to select one to observe. But I like to think there is one grand narrative that exists, one we can engage with and move closer to… and let me tell you why.
I suppose it is reasonable to say that some narratives that exist today are more true than others – depending on the sources of one’s data and the mental processes one engages in.
If we were able to look at our world through a lens that sat outside our universe, observing past, present and future all as one… I suppose it is reasonable to say that this non-earthly perspective or “Godly” perspective, we would be closer to the “truth” than any earthly lens we look through today.
If these to propositions are true then shouldn’t we be setting our sights on discovering this grand narrative, and drawing from it a narrative of peace? What would the world look like from the perspective of The Universe or even from a perspective outside our universe?
What is the point? How will it help us?
Ok. Consider the fact that fundamentalist religions are experiencing the most rapid growth they have ever experienced. Why??? I think it is because they offer a grand narrative. Granted they are a grand narratives based on words of historical men misinterpreted in our modernistic mentalities (mythos interpreted as logos, Jewish midrash as literal event, symbolic meanings stripped to create historical “truths” that our degenerating modern minds can understand)… but what they do offer the masses is something that evolution as it stands is often not presented to offer. Religions offer people a sense of wholeness: a sense of completeness; a sense of meaning; a purpose for one’s life.
Ok, now consider the “clash of civilisations” predicted to come from the clash of such fundamentalist movements. And the growing animosity between atheism and theism. Surely that is motivation to identify gaps and seek bridges?
Evolution as it stands, particularly since the dawn of post modernism, has failed to provide such a perspective. Where does my tiny individual consciousness fit into the big monstrous picture of an expanding universe? Evolution provided us a grand-narrative but somehow we abandoned it after WW2. We don’t need to look for a new ideology or new religion to replace it, we just need to take another look – reinterpret what it means to be a part of the grand evolutionary process.
If we little humans are but tiny pieces of a universal puzzle that continuously becomes more complicated as the space expands, what the heck can we do about it? Can we actually have a role to play?
Yes, I believe we can. I believe we do. The self-awareness of human consciousness is more advanced and complex than any other form of consciousness that we are aware of. And rather than running away from this gift we have to embrace it, figure out whatever the heck we are going to do with it in the millions of years to come.
As far as we know this awareness is new, extraordinarily new – given that our bodily shape has only been in this form for 700,000 years, and our minds have expanded exponentially faster through to the speed of change and information transmission we are witnessing today.
Recognising this gift. Living in awe of our awareness. And hopefully preventing it from imminent self-destruction has surely got to be a step in the pursuit of peace.
Have I lost you? I might even have lost myself in this one. Somewhere in my mind this makes sense but the rest of my mind hasn’t quite caught on. Maybe when these ideas are clearer in my own cognition I’ll be able to share this a little better than I’m doing today.
Chapter 24: When in Rome (Buenos Aires)
Colours, fashion shoots, tango and a lost bat. Buenos Aires Part 2.
MUSIC CREDITS:
Juanito Alimana, Hector Lavoe
Chapter 23 – Melting Ice (Patagonia)
A long long (but fun) bus trip down route 40 brought us to El Calafate in South Argentina where we thought we would see “Climate Change” in action. Glaciar Perito Moreno melted before our very eyes but it is interesting to note that it has always done this and is actually one of the few glaciers that is still growing. We then made our way back up along the East Coast up to Rio Colorado where Rachel sought the secrets to sharing it’s water… my favourite moment was the ant at the end… and sorry – I couldn’t help but add my corny subtitles 
Music Credits:
Across The Universe, Jim Sturgess – Across The Universe Soundtrack
Across The Universe, Alicia Keys, Alison Krauss, Billie Joe Armstrong, Bono, Brian Wilson, Norah Jones, Steven Tyler, Stevie Wonder, Tim McGraw & Velvet Revolver.
Chapter 22 – Doing a Bariloche
Argh! Holiday season had hit. No where to stay, and no way to leave – we learned an important lesson for the remainder of our trip: book accommodation and transport at least one day/night ahead.
Don’t “Do a Bariloche” again!
Music Credits:
With A Little Help From My Friends
Jim Sturgess & Joe Anderson – Across The Universe Soundtrack
Alcoholic flowers
How would it feel to have consciousness without a brain?
Check out these flowers! My cousins gave them to me sometime between Christmas and New Year when they popped by to check out my new home. I didn’t have a large vase so we hunted around for something and settled on the empty cachaca bottle awaiting me to put it in recycling. I’m not the best with changing water on flowers, or watering plants for that matter, and look what I discovered!
Flowers like alcohol!
It makes them all genki and happy and stuff.
The flowers in the water diluted ever so little with a remaining drop of cachaca (the best spirit in the world – that comes from Brazil) look like they’re going to last forever, while the ones in the glass are whithering away. And the water with alcohol stays clean too – I’ve only changed the water in the Cachaca bottle once, while the small vase that had the left-over flowers in it has constantly gone mildewy and needed changing many-a-times.
What does this mean?
Do flowers have a consciousness and are they high on this water??!
Should I be feeding my plants a drop of spirits too?
Can alcohol have similar life-extending benefits for me too?
Or is it just making the dying process a more enjoyable one?
Either way… another bottle of cachaca please!!!
Walking through Rainforest
Sometimes I walk with music playing in my ears, sometimes I walk reading a book or editing parts of my own writings, and sometimes I walk with no phone, no music, no book – nothing. The later is my favourite – that’s where I get my most inspiring thoughts.
Sometimes when I walk with nothing, I pay conscious attention to sounds, to the music of the streets. To the cars that drive passed, to the birds in the sky, to the machinery and hammering – to the fact that at times you can walk for hours through fairly busy streets and hear almost zero human voices. Yesterday the only voice I heard was my own – when I complimented someone’s teddy-bear-faced dog. Another day it was just a woman siting in a car talking on her phone.
I hear plenty of music – from other people’s ipods – and I do tend to wonder how such a volume will affect their hearing. I even notice that couples walking together don’t say much – at least not as they pass another person. Sometimes you see lips moving from afar, but as you approach they close them tight – I’m not quite sure why. Some people walk with a smile, some people walk with a frown, some people seem happy, some angry, some sad. I throw a smile when it feels appropriate, or some positive energy their way when it doesn’t. Sometimes I get it wrong and I smile and get a frown in return – as if they have never seen a person smile before. And sometimes after the first initial shock, they smile back.
And again this morning, with nothing in my hands and nothing in my ears I walked to a nearby park – one I hadn’t heard of till my friend recommended it yesterday.
A park? Hmmm… a tropical rainforest seems more appropriate. Somehow as you walk through Cooper Park, your eyes able to look at nothing but tall trees, large caves, a small prehistoric creek, green moss and sunshine filtering through in between. It makes you wonder how it can be possible that this is, in fact, in the middle of a busy buzzing city. It’s like a half-a-square-kilometre of the Daintree has miraculously been uprooted and replanted, capturing the history and the energy with it. It will definitely be one of my regulars – and there seem to be many different little paths you can choose – today I took the Rosewood Walk, and maybe tomorrow I can do the Peppermint Walk. There’s even the cutest little bridge called Moon Bridge that goes over Cooper Creek, a trickle of water that is said to follow ‘the line of a volcanic dyke of Jurassic age.’ Sounds pretty cool, even if I’m not quite sure what a volcanic “dyke” is.
Someone told me that the park used to be a secret sanctuary for women – no men allowed. I like this idea – men have it with their Free Masons and secret mens clubs – so power to the women I say. Whoever came up with the secret female facebook status the other day was pretty brilliant – did you notice it? It took the boys I know a while to catch on to the meaning. (We all put a colour as our status. It was for breast cancer awareness, so take a guess what those colours meant.) A few boys had colours as their status too – I wonder if they figured it out yet…
Anyway I did some research about Cooper Park, and I can’t find anything about secret women’s clubs. I did learn on the Woollahra Council website that the original owners were two Aboriginal clans, the Cadigal and the Birrabirralah, who during 1789 half the populations was killed by disease brought by European settlers. The website also talked about an Aboriginal rock engraving of a fish and one of ship and men, so I’ll have to hunt them out next time I’m there.
The best thing about this park is that dogs are allowed (they are forbidden from the bush walk I used to do in Frenchs Forest)… and they are even allowed of the leash in certain areas. Now all I need is a dog.
Oh, and there are some tennis courts inside this little haven too. Anyone up for a hit?
Note – there are disadvantages when it comes to choosing not to take a phone on a long walk… no phone = no phone calls and no photos. So the picture above is one a took two years ago in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Chapter 21 – Errupted Interruption (Pucon)
Climbing volcanoes, swinging from trees, spotting condors, and drinking wine in this Swiss-Alps-like setting.
Music credits:
Honest Goodbyes, Bic Runga
Loving the city but missing the burbs…
One minute I’m out, the next I’m at home. No more driving hours to see my friends. Now I just walk. No more “designated driver” (hence water above) – no doubt I love living in the city.
But… since the “moving in” hype along with Christmas and New Year celebrations has finished, I have to say I miss a lot about my suburban life. I don’t want to go back there or anything, but I do miss it. A lot. I miss the quiet streets and the comfort I had walking around in more-or-less my pyjamas – which I don’t quite feel comfortable walking down Oxford Street in. I miss saying good morning to my mum and sisters as I pick up Bella, my sister’s schipperke, in the morning so that she can sit on my lap for the rest of the day. And more than anything I miss my Opa.
I miss his sense of humour. I miss his bright eyes. I miss looking after him, buying his groceries, cooking him dinner. Most of all I miss his company. I miss watching the news with him – I don’t think I’ve watched a single piece of news since he passed. I miss having him in the room, reading his paper as I do my writing and read my books. I miss drinking cups of tea, making his coffee with endless amounts of sugar and cream. I miss his insights into life – it’s shortness, it’s joys, it’s true meaning. I shed a tear for him every day. Today it’s been many. As time goes on it seems to be getting worse, not better. Maybe because “normality” is setting in. I’m going back to writing the book I wanted to finish writing while I was at his house. But now I’m not there. And neither is he.
I’m still receiving my Carer’s Pension, for the 14-weeks that follow his death. I’m trying to see this as his gift to me – as if there weren’t a enough already. But I’m trying to see this as the justification for me to not work for what must be another eight or so weeks. But it’s not easy. Not when I’m used to juggling hundreds of responsibilities and deadlines. How do you do that? How do you focus just on ONE thing???
But I will try. For him I will try. And for him I know I will succeed. I want to share this video of him, but I’m struggling to get the VOB file converted to youtube files… This may show some of the video, but not sure…
My favourite part was when my uncle asked, “If the whole world could see you now, what message would you have for them?”
And my Opa replied: “My message would be, first try to make peace everywhere. Instead of bashing each other up. With all these terrorists, there is no more love in the world. The world will go to pieces, I tell you that.”
You’d never guess I’m his granddaughter hey…
My second favourite was when my uncle asked him to “smile for five seconds” to which after about three seconds of showing big grin he laughed and said: “My dentures will fall out now.”
Anyway now after watching him on the video, and writing this, I feel a bit better. I am happy to be where I am, in my new home, and I know I’ll carry my Opa with me where-ever I go.
The Religion Debate
1. “Is there or isn’t there a God?”
2. “Is my god the True God or is yours?”
These debates are entirely based on one’s definition of the word “God.” So, shouldn’t we be a little more focused on the question as to what is God???
People define God in different ways, and then we call those different definitions “different gods”… but they are not. They are different definitions of God. Different interpretations of God. Different personifications of God – or a decision not to personify the force behind evolution.
That’s why religious debates don’t get anywhere – they have become identity battles that disregard the linguistics they are based on.
Why do religions still claim to know the “real God” and that everyone else has been deceived into believing in “fake gods”? Why do atheists debate that “there is no God” rather than explaining to theists that they are simply choosing not to personify the force behind evolution while accepting that some people prefers a more personal construct? Does not a rose by any other name still smell as sweet?
I don’t think any religions still believe God is a super human-like man sitting above the clouds. We know how big the universe is. We know the mountains don’t hold up the sky and we know that angels aren’t moving our sun, moon and stars into their place at night. Religions imagine God as a transcendent being that is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (present everywhere) – so might we consider the physics of such a claim… is it not a cause to consider quantum physics and what that might be telling us about the “mind of God”???
Sure, we are not useless consequences of some set random manifestations reacting to other random manifestations of a single particle of matter, which appeared from nowhere. But nor are we hand designed by a super-human who lives above us reading our every thought and watching our every move, awaiting the day he or she wishes to bring us into his realm or cut the rope, destroy life on earth and reward “His” chosen people with eternal life in heaven – simply based on the background of the family one was born into. This concept no longer makes sense in my mind anyway.
Something greater than us exists. There is something more than what we see. We are a tiny little component of a fantastical, expanding, creative universe. The ultimate unexplainable creative force behind the evolution of life; the energetic force that caused the first cell to split into two; the power behind and inside everything that exists, and everything that doesn’t… the power we can label The Universe, or as has been done throughout history we can personify as God, Allah, Dios, YHWH, the great “I Am”, Krishna, Bhagwan, Zeus etc. etc… is quite an incredible power, and almost just as incredible is our ability to be conscious of this force, to be aware of it, to be in awe of it. I don’t see anything wrong with personifying this force differently depending on our understanding of ourselves in a culture and at different points history, but essentially (and quite obviously no?) we are personifying the same force. The Jewish name YHWH, which means I AM, makes a lot more sense than most definitions. There is what there is, and that is God, that is The Universe.
I speak of “God” and I speak of “The Universe”, depending on my mood. I still pray. I still speak to “God” and I understand that the “person” I speak to is my personification of an abstract unknowable force, and I’m ok with that. In fact I even see some value in it, a personal interface to an abstract energy.
“My religion has done some good, so can’t we just forget the murderous bad it’s done these last couple of millennia?” Forgiveness is one thing but I’m not so sure the Inquisitions, the Crusades and the myriad “missions” imposed on indigenous peoples around the world are not exactly easy to forget.
But what is most important is the future: is a religion causing good today, or is it still a source of violence? If a religion can see itself in its historical perspective, and not make exclusivist claims over their particular personification of God or about their particular interpretations of physical and spiritual realms; and if they can avoid using their connection with people’s identity as a cause for destruction – they can be a cause for good. But if this perspective can’t be found then maybe the atheists are right… maybe it is better for religion to end. It all comes down to the clarity from which a religion can bring, to one’s creative purpose in life. Can religion be a force for good? Maybe.
Coming back to those debates:
1. “Is there or isn’t there a God?” Yes AND No. Yes if you personify the energy behind life, and no if you prefer to refer to it in a scientific, abstract form.
2. “My God or your god?” Mine AND Yours. Surely we can accept the cultural roots of different personifications developed throughout history, and understand that they were “right” and “true” in their day, and that there is something to learn from all of them.
Can someone please explain to me why, when the human mind is capable of thinking through these questions logically and we know these debates are based on a loaded word that is not properly understood, are we still debating them?
Isn’t it time to look for the meaning of our evolution, the meaning of our place in this universe, the meaning of our connection to “God”, our connection to What Is? To look at how this impacts on our lives today, and how it can provide a positive impact on our lives in the future?
I think these are more important questions that would be much more beneficial to society than illogical ego-driven debates over identity… but what do I know
Chapter 20 – Sex Changes and Serial Killers (Valpariso and Santiago)
Ok, I know this sounds like a very crazy title, which doesn’t at all suit the video you’re about to see… but when you read the book it will all make sense 
Music Credits:
Call me, Blondie
SHANTARAM
I’m revisiting one of my favourite books, that I actually never got to finish (it is 933 pages long), and typing up some of my favourite quotes (I do that with my favourite books) and I thought I’d share some with you as I type them. Next time you have a spare chunk of time on your hands, I encourage you to read this incredible true story of Gregory David Roberts, a man who escaped an Australian prison and lived in a slum in Bombay, works for the underground and gains incredible insights into humanity, and our place in the universe.
“No happiness exists without its woe, no wealth without its cost, and no life without its full measure, sooner or later, of sorrowing and death.” (Roberts 2007:129)
“Friendship is also a kind of medicine, and the markets for it, too, are sometimes black.” (Roberts 2007:215)
“Justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us… justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.“ (Roberts 2007:229)
It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would have annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive. (Roberts 2007:370)
Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but it’s worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in the end. (Roberts 2007:426)
Greed without control, or control without greed won’t give you a black market. Men can be greedy for the profit made from, let’s say pastries, but if there isn’t strict control on the baking of pastries, there won’t be a black market for apple strudel. And the government has very strict controls on the disposal of sewage, but without greed for profit from sewage, there won’t be a black market for shit. When greed meets control, you get a black market. (Roberts 2007:446)
There’s a little arrogance at the heart of every better self… and there’s an innocence, essential and unblinking, in the heart of every determination to serve. (Roberts 2007: 451)
Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love. (Roberts 2007:471)
“So that’s it,” he concluded. “The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards. The rest of us, all six billion of us, do pretty much what we are told!” … This set of number is the cause of empire and rebellion. This is the formula that has generated our civilisations for the last ten thousand years. This built the pyramids. This launched your Crusades. This put the world at war, and this formula has the power to impose the peace.(Roberts 2007:350)
I wonder – is it possible to change this to:
One million peaceful man, ten million smart men, one million confident men, and six billion people who do what’s right rather than what they are told.
So it all comes down to changing: evil to peace, stupid to smart, coward to confident, and ignorant to aware. It almost makes a turn for peace sound simple…
If you haven’t read this book, I recommend you do:
Roberts, Gregory David, Shantaram : A Novel (Sydney: Picador, 2007). And more of his philosophies at: www.shantaram.com
The Christmas Pudge… and a Love of Beer
So I borrowed my mum’s scales to check the Christmas damage. 64 kilos. What the f??? I don’t step on scales so often, judging by measurement more than kilos. But, well, “in the day” I weighed 55kgs. And on average I think I’m around 58-60kgs. I’ve seen myself at 62kgs, and I know I’ve complained about feeling fat on this website before. But 64???
Ok, time to get back into routine: a walk in the morning before breakfast to reconnect my mind and body; a yoga or pilates session a few times a week, teaching it if possible so I can get paid for it rather than pay; and no more beer. At least for a little while. The poggy beer belly has to go. Or chocolate. And no more cheese. Well that’s was my resolution this morning.
I got home today from working a good three and a half hours at the office (being a casual has it’s pluses, and its minuses – depending on how you look at it) and had the choice: beer or pilates. I surprised myself and put on some ultra relaxing yoga music, pulled out the beautiful yoga mat I got for Christmas and did, well, at least I did thirty minutes of it. The stretching felt insanely incredible, as it always does but particularly when it’s been a while. The repetitions of butt exercises killed more than usual, again as it does when it’s been a while.
And then, the gorgeous funky little bar stool I bought today (when there wasn’t enough work to justify my being there) was calling my bottom, singing out: “come on, sit, try me out, do some writing, check your email, write something for your blog…” So here I am, drinking a beer and writing this entry. Hey, my friend left me coronas after NY, along with far too much chocolate and cheese, what am I supposed to do?
But it’s ok, I’m back on the upward spiral. I did half an hour of pilates and literally looking in the mirror I can see the difference: in my fresher-looking skin, brighter-looking eyes, and straightened up poster. “Half-an-hour did that?!” Yep – that’s what proper breathing does – it pumps oxygen through your system. That’s what mind-body connection and good posture does – encourages a central nervous system that works efficiently. My mind felt relaxed, centred, alert. That’s right – now I remember why I like pilates.
I’m not in a huge hurry to loose my Christmas pudge; I might even enjoy it for a (hopefully brief) moment. In good time I’ll be teaching pilates again and seeing as out the window the blue sky seems to have pushed away the clouds, I guess my “it’s raining” excuse is pushed out of existence too. These two little tricks seem to speed the metabolism enough to carry me through my little vices… so metabolic rate you had better bucker up – cause I’m not ready to stop enjoying the beer, or the chocie or the cheese – at least not while they’re lurking in my fridge.
Chapter 19 – Feminine Serenity, or Not (La Serena)
Three girls on the road again, this time speeding down the Chilean coast. Regrettably we only spent one night in La Serena as it really was a beautiful little beach town. But voices from Pucon in the even more beautiful Lakes District in southern Chile were calling us loud and clear.
Music Credits:
Before The World Was Made, Carla Bruni
Green porn
I can’t remember who or when someone told me to look this up but today on this rainy summer’s day besides enjoying calm pitter patter,working on my book, and sending a few happy new year messages, I have been looking up green porn. Soooo funny! Get on you tube and you can find many more of these short little clips by Sundance Channel.
Glad I don’t have to eat a male’s head… well, ok, I’m not going to go say anything more about that. The praying mantis:
Sadistic snails:
Chapter 18 – Chilean Deserts & Spicy Desserts (San Pedro)
Atacama desert at the top of Chile. We didn’t spend long here, as we were somewhat deserted out after Boliva. But was still a very funky sandy desert town. And we bumped into some friends we’d met in Lake Titicaca too. And. as you can see, our Brazilian friends we’d traveled with in Boliva were still with us
Mmmm mmmm – did you see that crepe? It was filled with Dulce de Leche… it’s seriously to die for.
Music Credits:
Why I Stay, Black Heart Procession
DREAMS FOR A NEW DECADE
Today is 010110. Another year gone by, we farewell another decade. As a society following a human-made calendar we have reached our century’s teenager years.
Time is ticking on, the completion of a rotation. I count my age, evaluate my place. I think about the future, scenarios I desire, those I hope to avoid. It’s a time to reflect. A time to resolve. A time to dream.
I ask myself where I see myself in ten years? Where will I be come 2020?
Will I be rich? Famous? Am I a writer? An academic? A teacher? A photographer? A student? A mother? A wife? Divorced? Unemployed? Am I satisfied? Am I happy???
Where to I want to be? What do I hope for? What do I dream will come of this decade?
I don’t care about marriage but I would like to be in-love: in a relationship that shares a love that grows stronger every day; a love that asks no questions and requires no promises. A love that is true in every way, one that in every moment we are not together because we have to be, but because every day we choose to be.
Children? They are a big responsibility to bring up properly, but the ultimate expression of creation is one worth it’s pain. To create a new life, to see two lives become three… something I’d like to do once, one day.
I don’t care if I have money. I don’t care about fame. I care about my health. I care fulfilling some kind of purpose, doing whatever it is I’ve been put on this planet to do.
I care about my family and friends, and about the state of our world.
I want to be satisfied with my life. And most of all I want to be happy, with happy people surrounding me.
Come 2020, the most important thing for me is that I am still wearing a smile. How can I best give myself a chance at making this so?
I have big dreams. I have lots of goals. Am I setting myself up for disappointment? What if my dreams are never fulfilled? Won’t I be unsatisfied if I don’t make it?
If happiness is based on meeting expectations, would it not be better to set easy goals, have low expectations so they can easily be met? But if I do this, I won’t get anywhere.
“It is better to shoot for the stars and miss
than aim at the gutter and hit it.”
Decisions gone wrong, opportunities denied, a life of regret. There are many sources of fear, sources of sadness, all of which can be avoided – it all depends on the perspective we take, it depends on the lens through which we see the world. Here’s my theory on the spiritual/quantum mechanical side of dreams, goals, plans, expectations and regret:
I think we should dream, plan and make goals, but hold those plans tentative. Even dreams are transient. Dream and strive for those dreams in the conscious you exist in today and if our consciousness evolves to dream new dreams, strive for those dreams in the same way. Give it our all but don’t try to achieve it in our own might. Let the greater energies behind life guide the way.
I seem to find the most happiness and satisfaction when my dreams are connected with the dreams of the greater good, and my timing connected to nature’s time. It is when I share my dreams with “God” and say to “Him”, “not my will, but Your will” and “in Your time, not mine” – it is then that my dreams seem to come true.
I don’t believe the “power of attraction” means we have the power to bring into our lives ANYTHING and everything we want. I think means we get what we wantif it is also what the universe wants. When analysed in a century’s time I think we would find that what the universe wants in fact what we want too. I don’t actually know much about the power of attraction past documentaries like The Secret, so this is more of a reflective observation of my experience of prayer, dreams and attraction... it seems to me that the power of attraction is not a one-way pull – it is a two-way process. Us attracting something from the universe, and the universe attracting something from us.
So I sit here evaluating my place – my little spec of awareness within an 14 billion-year expansion process, inside a universe of incomprehensible distance, conscious of a shallow number of layers within a deep ocean of frequencies – I feel like I am one cells inside a body. I and you, and everything we can see, and everything we can’t see, all together comprising the body of the universe.
I’m not sure yet if we are cancerous cells, or if together we create a useful organ, maybe the universe’s heart or brain. What I do know for sure is that the six and a half billion of us, together, are a pretty powerful energy. We have the power to destroy the most creative expressions of the universe that we know exists. But also the power to continue this evolutionary expression in infinite new ways, exploring wider and deeper layers of existence.
I guess from the perspective of this body, of the universe’s totality, my wants, your wants, and the wants of the universe are in fact one and the same.
So how will I live my life in this new decade?
Like an actor in a movie I will play out my role, with a director who values his actor’s input. I understand that from where I am standing I cannot see how my scene fits into the final cut. So I must trust the director’s instruction, for he is the one stringing it together. If in 2020 I find myself with dreams fulfilled or with plans that have failed, if I am in-love or if I am alone, if I am a mother, a widow, rich, poor, famous, healthy, or even if I’m dead – whatever happens I trust will be for the greater good, for the benefit of the me inside The Universe, and for The Universe inside me.
…
A note about this photo, taken last NYE on the Bolivian Salt Lakes. This is the original, turned on it’s side:
A friend who has studied Sacred Geometry saw the landscape and immediately identified Angel Wings in the clouds. I rotated it clockwise to check them out closer and on a whim made it black and white. I guess now it’s a bit like one of those pictures where you interpret it for yourself…
What do you see?
In closing, I wish you and your friends and family a very HAPPY NEW YEAR, and HAPPY NEW DECADE. May you DREAM, may you HEAR THE UNIVERSE, and may you FIND FULFILMENT BEYOND YOUR EXPECTATIONS.
And thank you for reading my blog – if you keep reading and I’ll keep writing.
With love,
Juliet xx