The good, bad & ugly (Paris)
It was my 4th visit to Paris. The city of lights. Allegedly a city of love. Just not my love.
On my first visit, as 2006 opened, my five-year relationship ended. In front of the Arc de Triompf. Champs de Elise will always carry memories of that moment.
My second time in Paris, a few weeks later, carries the opposite type of memories: new beginnings, “finding myself”, feeling naked and exposed with my shaved head I magically found my dreams found myself living in a model flat in the 16th district, looking at the Eifle Tower’s lights, strolling the Seine, running through streets and metro tunnels from casting to casting, job to job, café to café. I have fond memories with friends at the top of Sacre Cuer, fondues, parties, nightclubs, free dinners, free drinks… my brief glimpse of Paris’ glitz and glam.
Toward the end of the year I returned for another season of shows. This time with new head of hair, and an evolving sense of who I was and what I wanted to do in life.
Five years have passed. Five years! Where did those years go??? Time. It passes too fast.
My fourth visit, now, in 2011, it was good to create some new memories. I took Lisa to my favourite places, ate my favourite foods…
I caught up with some old friends and played “spot the difference”:
I added a long-awaited bridge-post photo to my series.
We took a “trip” to Disneyland with our Amsterdam doggie-bag.. enough said…
It seems an appropriate place for me to share an Alan Watt’s quote:
‘For Disneyland exists “as a mystery and a sign,” the land of the fake and the home of the bogus, prototype of the world to come. Even the birds in the trees are plastic, and sing through their hinged beaks with tiny loudspeakers. Plastic deer, bears, elephants, and bunny rabbits stand along the banks of artificial lakes and rivers, monotonously wagging their mechanical heads. Tourists, traveling by river boat through simulated jungle, have the thrill of seeing a plastic hippopotamus shot with a blank cartridge, and a varnished papier–mâché replica of the Swiss Family Robinson’s tree house which vibrates perpetually to the recorded music of an oom–pah–pah band (on a loop tape) going “Pom–pitty bom–pitty pom–pitty bompitty” for ever and ever. Though it takes hours to go through all the “shows,” a decent restaurant—let alone a bar—is nowhere to be found, since this is strictly sodapop–culture, where one must subsist upon hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, popcorn, or Fred Harvey–type meals.’[1]
I have had a few other bridge-pose photos lined up in my head for a while: on Champs de Elise, along the Seine, and the Eifle Tower by daylight with the background out of focus. When the day arrived my lens decided this wasn’t to be. A bad rattle sound. A plastic thing in the middle of the shutter…
“Maybe you would have broken your back? Maybe it’s a good thing?” Lisa tried to cheer me up.
Quite possibly I’d have gotten run over on the Champs de Elise – the spot where I wanted to take the photo was a little dangerous - where Lisa sits, between the traffic.
The Eifle Tower shot I wanted would have involved a bridge on top of a stone wall. Maybe I’d have fallen.
The shot along the Seine would have been ruined by people and the smell of piss. Maybe I’d have caught a disease.
They’d have been great shots, if I’d survived them. Little did I know at the time, the death of my lens was the first of a string of bad luck to come…
[1]
Brownies, Bicycles, Birthdays and Babies (Amsterdam)
Amsterdam greeted us with wide-open arms. The sun was shining, the people smiling, “coffee shops” inviting.
I immediately felt a sense of belonging. I guess because my mum is Dutch. Elderly women reminded my of my Oma, elderly men reminded me of Opa, and the language – while I don’t understand a word – reminded me of home.
Of all the destinations we had been this was the first I was visiting for my second time. Last time it was a last-minute decision inspired by Frank, a fellow Aussie on my train from Munich, who remains to be one of my closest friends. That time I stayed at “Bob’s Hostel”. This time we walked down the cobblestone streets, over a number of sparkling canals and rang the doorbell of my friend’s new family home.
In the three years since I last saw Nicola, she had fallen in love, got married, and brought the most beautiful little girl Zea into this world. There is something magic about that. And now, after living in New York for a few years, she had moved to Amsterdam. Her and Mike had created a list of wants, and the universe brought them everything on that list. Their apartment was HUGE. Three bedrooms, two massive living areas, a big park, pond and ducks across the road, and a roof-top terrace on its way. An example of “The Secret” in action. They were an inspiration.
Zea brought out a clucky side of me I didn’t know I had.
The two of us went to the park and I felt an insight into what my life would be like had I made different choices in my past or what my life might be like, depending on my choices, one day in the future.
Feeding ducks
Roar!
Smelling flowers
Playing in the sand
We went out, we stayed in, we cooked, we babysat, we ate brownies, we rode bicycles…
We planned to stay three nights but ended up staying four and I had my 29th birthday doing all of the above. Thank you Lisa, Nicola, Mike and Zea for making it a special day full of fruits, fun and surprises.
October-fest in July (Frankfurt)
Student life in Germany is another world to student life in Sydney: free travel, small fees, and for the most part a rent and allowance paid by one’s parents. At least that was life for my friend and his student friends. No part-time job and no living at home – lots of time to and party. Sounds good to me…
More benefits of being a student in this part of Germany include legal drinking on the street, go to a nightclub in the castle basement university’s library, and the free October-Fest-like-event-in-July a massive carnival of rides and fun…
It was a good time to visit my friend Marco. I first met Marco at a hostel in Rio de Janeiro and 6 months later gave him my “overseas friends Northern Beaches tour” when he was in Sydney. Now it was my turn.
In every city Lisa and I have tried the traditional cuisine. In Frankfurt this translated to sausages including those made out of blood, music cheese that has a squeaky factor and is smothered in finely diced raw onion, and apple wine that kind-of tasted like a watered down vinegar.
I liked the locally brewed beer better.
Joined by a group of Marco’s friends from university and the social groups of his seven flatmates, we started drinking in their large and impressively clean flat, and walked only 100 metres down the street to the carnival with “wib beers” (roady drinks) in hand.
Now I know why my friend married a German – they throw a GREAT party. Awesome music, awesome people, and while we could have easily kept dancing I wandered back for a few hours sleep around 4am, bringing to close an awesome night.
Next stop: Amsterdam.
Micro-nations & mickey mouse money (Dresden)
I hadn’t heard of a “micro-nation” until I got to Dresden. As you probably guessed, a micronation is a miniature nation within a bigger nation. Apparently I’d visited one – Cristiania back in Copenhagen. And “New Town” in Dresden was my second – well had I been there 20 years ago it would have been.
On a pub-crawl “night-tour” of what’s known as the “new town” of Dresden with Danilo, a slightly odd but insightful and entertaining who taught us about the town’s crazy past:
Mickey mouse money was the currency, seriously!
Unfortunately after a very strange herbal shot, much of what I learned got lost:
I do remember that the night was extraordinarily random. Party food at the top of church look out point:
The night closed at the Metronom-Bar with Danilo trying to tell us about the proletariat of today’s neoliberal system – the”prekariat”. I didn’t get it but a follow up email clarified a few things:
We talked at the Metronom-Bar about an new name of the proletariat Since exist the capital system,called the lower class "proletariat" Now, we have since Reagan and Thatcher a development of the capitalist system, what is called "neo liberialism system" now. Here makes not a work the money, money makes money - investors are mostly not interest about the situation of the working class, they are search to make money in a very short time. Just since this periode exanges the livestyle of many workers, artists, owners of small companies, groups of peoples with an sickness,academics and others. They have an precarious situation. So is developed a new name of this class of peoples. They have work, but can not survive on the free market, like before. This class called now "Prekariat" - precariat( lat. precarium ). 80% of the german artist living with the support of the State. Also more than 60% of the temps in Germany for example get support of the State.
I didn’t really get what Danilo was talking about. According to wikipedia ‘the word precarity literally means “precariousness“, but is now used to mean existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. It has been specifically applied to intermittent employment, sometimes plus a precarious existence.’
I’m a little precarious I guess. Am I a Prekariat?
Ok, so I still don’t really get it. At least the Mickey Mouse money was cool.
For more, or if you visit Dresden, check out Danilo’s tour and enjoy the ride: www.nightwalk-dresden.de
A Lesson in Anarchy (Christiania)
Even in Europe I seem to be drawn to South American cultures. Some hippies from Bolivia and Venezuela, as well as the Canary Islands, were selling jewelry on the street. Before long we were playing music, drinking beer, and joining the hippies and a crazy American family on an adventure to the anarchist town of Christiania.
Part of me is drawn to the idea of anarchy. Not anarchy that lets people steal, vandalize other’s property, murder, or do whatever they want to do. But I am attracted to the idea that a society can operate outside The Pyramid, and without building a new pyramid of money and power from within.
Christiania is an area of Copenhagen just a short walk from the centre of the city. It started out as a group of squatters who, after 30 years of squatting, had official claim over the land. From humble beginnings it has grown into a town that operates outside of the laws of Denmark.
The police turn a blind eye to the marijuana stalls and whatever else goes on beyond their walls.
Heading back to our hostel I wondered what is better: hierarchy or anarchy? Which is more inclined to bring about peace?
Is there a greater possibility of peace with a hierarchy or with anarchy? I guess it depends on your definition of peace…
Which brings about less violence? Which brings about greater freedom? Which empowers its individuals? Which gives them a greater sense of purpose? Which brings about more creative and less destructive consequences of conflict?
Some food for thought over the months to come…
Photo:
Christiania has some laws, including NO PHOTOS INSIDE. This photo was taken of our new Canary Island friend Moses at the entrance to Christiania, before I knew their law…
What is Life? (Krakow)
“What is Life?” Ho hum, where does one start to answer this question? The What is Life? conference in Krakow, 24-28th June, which aimed to bridge philosophical, theological and scientific insights to this question.
I started with what I see to be at the roots of our understanding of life: our stories.
We understand life ‘by locating ourselves with the larger narratives and metanarratives that we hear and tell, and that constitute what is for us real and significant.’[1]
Philosophy, Theology, Science, History, Theories of Economics and Politics …. They all tell a different story about life, explaining what distinguishes the live from the dead, humans from animals, plants from inanimate matter, atoms from their protons and electrons.
The different stories draw from different languages, refer to different layers, different systems, and emphasize different sources of agency and power.
I was to speak about the history and current state of the story of life told from a “panentheist” perspective, and how this relates to peace. This topic deserves a blog entry of its own so I won’t go into it here.
At the conference I kept coming back to a few questions, based on the analogy of each argument being a story:
- “who is telling the story?”
- “on what is your story based?”
- “which stories bring us closer to understanding Truth, and which lead us away from it?” and, most importantly,
- “which stories are more useful, more likely to bring about positive conflict, than other versions of the story?”
I found stories that started from a position of apologetics – for example a desire to defend a particular interpretation of the Bible – more restrictive and less inclined to lead to growth toward truth.
Stories drowned in incomprehensible jargon debating the ins and outs of minds of other philosophers and theologians occasionally brought my eyes to a glaze. I wrote down some names and ideas, planning to look up some day and see if there’s anything useful once the language barriers are broken through.
On the other pole of the continuum, I understand that stories based on new ideas without grounding in the history of ideas are inclined to be fickle.
The stories that seem most useful, and most conducive to bringing minds closer to understanding “Truth”, are those that enter with ideas grounded in something, but which are held open to other ideas that are grounded in different cultures or have different philosophical/theoretical roots.
Every presentation I attended seemed to have something to teach me, whether or not I understood the entire argument or point the presenter was trying to communicate.
Life – in all its complexity, as understood in different languages, from different perspectives, is an interesting story, both as it is lived, and as it is told.
An Encounter with Evil (Auschwitz)
I hate the word “evil” for two reasons: (1) because of its religious connotations and (2) because its definition is relative and constantly changing. Same goes with “sin”. Two words with definitions that change depending who is in power.
Every culture, every civilization, every person, defines evil in different ways. Evil is whatever the people in power decide is bad for the whole, or for themselves.
That being said, sometimes no other word can be used in its place. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Auschwitz was an evil place.
The erry emptiness of these sites chilled me to the bones. In particular Auschwitz II – Birkenau. Deep in my skin the grotesque inhumanness of the events that took here disgusted my entire being.
Our guide told stories of the victims, the perpetrators, the justifications, and the people who stood by and watched.
Prisoner’s belongings were sorted: valuable sent to Berlin, pots and pans given to the colonizers.
In a museum a room of over 8000 shoes, another with thousands of luggage bags, one with zillions of pairs of glasses, and another full hair, “just a small sample of the 80,000 or more that were found after the war,” said our guide.
Auschwitz II – Birkenau is a sort-of extension camp close to Auschwitz built when the gas chamber capacity of killing 400 people a day wasn’t enough. Birkenau increased efficiency ten-fold – now 4000 prisoners could be executed each day. Plans were to increase that another ten times over with the continual expansion of the camps.
We walked along the tracks where trainloads of people were shipped from Amsterdam, Hungary, all around Europe, brought to Auschwitz to suffer in the most unthinkable ways.
“Which bed would you have preferred?” asked our guide.
I looked at the three levels of stark wooden beds lining up next to each other along both sides of the building – a wooden fixture designed to be a stable for horses. Each level of king-size bed shared by twenty-or-so people.
“The top?” Lisa suggested. “Because heat rises?”
“That’s right,” said our guide, “also because those on the lowest shared their bed with rats, and worse. Most prisoners had malnutrition and chronic diahorhiea so the lower the bunk you slept in the more people’s shit you were surrounded by.”
At the end of the tracks stood two gas chambers, or what was left of them. After the war the Nazis attempted to destroy the evidence of the crimes they’d committed.
How did humanity come to commit such horrors? How did Hitler get away with it?
“For a starters it was the economic system,” explained our guide. “After world war one the poor people voted for extremist parties, in particular those who blamed the Jews for their poverty. They were said to be animals. Sub-humans.”
“At first they were sent here for reasons like missing a day of work, or reading the paper or listening to the radio. Then they were put to work in the fields, digging, or as cooks or in factories. Most only lasted a few weeks or months because of the conditions of the food, sleeping, work and lack of hygiene.” Our guide brought us to photos of prisoners attached to their date of birth, date of arrival and date of death.
“Over time, it just got worse. It is hard to know the number of people who suffered and died. Women, disabled people, and those old or sick, were often not even registered.”
We were shown the gas chambers.
“Prisoners were told to go to strip naked and go into a ‘bathroom’, which was actually a gas chamber, and together they suffocated and watched each other suffering and die. After that the bodies were torched.”
How did seemingly good normal people stand by or even play roles in the atrocities?
I remembered my Opa’s stories of the German occupation of Holland. Everyone had to wear identification cards. Jews had ones with big J’s on them. One day your friend was there, the next he’d have been taken away – brought to factories in Germany. Not just Jews, it could be anyone. But mostly it was Jews.
I remembered stories Opa told of working for the Underground, helping them make fake IDs for the Jews. Stories of food rations, and of eating horrible-tasting biscuits made from tulip buds just to survive. I guess there were a number of people didn’t stand back and watch.
The big question I was left with was why?
What did Hitler or the Nazi’s have to gain by killing off the Jews? Was it just a way to unite the rest of the people in a common cause? Was it about power? Can it be traced back to Hitler’s childhood – did a Jew pull his hair and steal his money?
“It makes you wonder what evil things we don’t notice today,” said Lisa. “Will future generations look back at us and ask how we stood back and let something else happen?”
Poverty and hunger? Environmental destruction? Genocides? Wars over resources? Israel/Palestine?
Which situations are we too involved? Which are we not involved enough? What will future generations think of us?
What is good and what is evil now might be different in the future. I guess all we can do is constantly question our definitions, debate what we think to be “virtue” and try our best not to let atrocities like Auschwitz ever happen again.
Time to scratch one’s head
“Give yourself time to scratch your head,” advised Prof Stuart Rees on one of our CPACS sailing trips down in Jervis Bay. These last few months I did not listen to this advice.
I have lived the last few months in a mad rush. I have packed up my life and put it in my grandma’s garage. Now I’m in Stockholm, on route to a conference in Krakow, Poland, and (after holiday in Europe) onto work at a university in North Carolina, USA, for the next 4 months.
Sitting in the airport awaiting my friend’s arrival, I can see the wisdom in Rees words.
I may have accomplished a lot these last few months – well at least in terms of words on pages and chapters and articles close to publishing – but in the process I lost something. In the rush to meet deadlines something had to go.
Besides pressing the pause button on my blog for a few weeks, I also pressed pause on the reflective process that allows a person to join the dots between the things they already know and the things they are learning. Whatever I learned these last few months feels as though it is lost in a blurred area of my brain. I was doing too many things, too fast, without even a second of time to ponder the ideas I was learning, summarising, and formulating into a chunk of writing.
Meeting one deadline after the other I have arrived at the end of the race with hardly a memory of the beautiful scenery I saw along the way. That being said I did finish the race. I upgrade from a MPhil to a PhD which might not sound like much but was quite an accomplishment, and was probably worth the head-spin.
During the twenty-something hour flight I observed my mind acting like a computer trying to process an overload of information. Dizzy from the whirlpool of ideas it has processed and outputted, my brain struggled to catch up with my new location in time and space.
It’s a strange feeling now that the rush of moving out of an apartment, saying goodbye to loved ones, finishing up work projects, and packing a backpack is finished.
Here I am, sitting in an airport with no deadlines and an uncertain future.
I sit, I wonder, where will life’s adventure take me next? And I scratch my head.
Positive Conflict (In Transit)
Daisy chains and love hearts are great and all, but most of us love a little conflict. Our books, movies, politics, religions, and even our conversations, are based on conflict. The stories we live and tell are based on the contradictions, the tensions, the heroes and villains, the differences of opinion, stories about the good times and the bad. How can we reconcile a love of conflict, with a desire for peace?
A student of Peace and Conflict Studies, preparing to present at a conference to theologians, philosophers and scientists in Krakow, I was going to need to be clear about my definitions.
And so, on the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, I recapped some old notes and defined what is, in my mind, a clear vision of peace: Positive Conflict.
“Positive Conflict” is not an official term in Peace and Conflict Studies. I made it up. Scholars infer it, but no one has stated it as a vision. And I think it’s a useful one.
Positive Conflict is conflict that leads to constructive and creative consequences and is resolved in non-violent ways. Well that’s my working definition anyway.
For me, “Positive Conflict” is a more appealing objective than “Positive Peace” (see definitions below). Maybe because the word “peace” carries an image of what Whitehead calls its ‘bastard substitute, Anesthesia.’[1] Or maybe simply because I love challenges, and enjoy the mental, emotional and physical stimulation that comes from conflicted spaces.
I don’t like violence – but conflict, positive conflict, can be a lot of fun.
‘Peace is the understanding of tragedy, and at the same time its preservation,’[2] another Whitehead quote.
This Taoist “dipolar” way of thinking of peace is a challenge when one encounters acts of horrific violence, as I would soon discover on a visit to Auschwitz… but I’ll leave that story for another day.
Definitions: [3]
“Negative” peace = the absence of war. It is the peace of the Pax Romana – often maintained through repression.
“Positive” peace = presence of desirable states of mind and society including ecological harmony & social justice. This kind of peace minimises/eliminates exploitation and “structural violence”. It is the peace of the realpolitik, advanced by Johan Galtung, the founder of Peace and Conflict Studies.
The aim of peace is to avoid/resolve:
Direct violence (observable eg war, physical harm)
Structural violence (hidden, caused by unjust social structures, eg hunger, suffering, environmental harm, deprivation of self-determination)
Cultural violence (often makes direct/structural violence feel right, or at least not wrong, eg racism, sexism, other forms of discrimination)
[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964). p. 283.
[2] Ibid. p. 284.
[3] Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, SAGE Publications: London 2009
Photo:
Got my ear pierced a few days later in Krakow, actually a double piercing… it was painful at the time, but I think it looks good… a kind-of abstract example of Positive Conflict. The long term consequence was worth the temporal pain.
Losing my Identity (Scandanavia)
Imagine a world where being 180cm, 60kg, with long blonde hair, makes you AVERAGE. In Scandinavia, for the first time in my life, I felt short. It was a strange feeling. Used to towering over people and always kind-of standing out because of my height, blending into the crowd provoked a new stream of thought.
It got me thinking about my identity, and the definitions of “self” in relation to “other”. While we tend to be drawn to people that are similar to ourselves, we tend to define ourselves by the points of difference.
In Japan I had a very strong identity – not only was a foot taller than most people around me, I also had very different hair, eye, skin colour, facial features, etc.
In South America my identity based on difference was much like Japan – eyes looking towards me with a sense of curiosity.
In Sydney, and even in Paris and most countries I’ve visited, I’m still considered tall, and combined with a quirky hair cut and dress sense, eyes tend to look my way.
In Stockholm and Copenhagen I blended into the crowd more than I have ever before. My ego wasn’t really sure what to make of it. On one hand it was nice to feel unnoticed, to feel I am just like everyone else. On the other hand I started to question: what is it that makes me me?
It made me realize that the characteristics and stories that define me are completely inseparable from the people I am surrounded by.
I guess it’s the same for lots of ways we define our identities:
If you get the highest grades class B you feel smart. If you get the lowest grades in class A you feel dumb, even if you are smarter than all of class B.
If you have a house and a car, but they are not as nice as your friend’s house and car then you feel poor. If you have food and your friend doesn’t, you feel rich.
Surrounded by beautiful people you feel ugly, surrounded by beautiful people you feel ugly.
You think your “individual identity” is you, but really you don’t know who “you” are without knowing something about the people around you.
Everything is RELATIVE, even “YOU” and “ME”.
So that was my take-away lesson from Stockholm and Copenhagen. Above and below are some photos of Lisa, my friend of over twenty-years, and our little adventures in Copenhagen and Stockholm.
Weaving my world back together: a weekend at Camp Coorong
Have you ever weaved a basket? I hadn’t… “Life’s too busy for arts and crafts…” or so I used to think. I was wrong. Weaving was more than relaxing and therapeutic, it embodied a metaphorical connection I was in dire need of.
I learned so so much during my weekend at Camp Coorong. I travelled there to discuss a book chapter that I co-authored with some of the Ngarrandjeri youth, transcribing their documentary Nukkan Kungun Yunnan – Narrindjeri’s Being Heard.
When my alarm went at 4:40am on Saturday morning I wondered why I agreed to the trip – didn’t I have enough on my plate? I made it on my 6:15am flight and arrived in Adelaide a couple of hours later.
Sitting for a coffee as I waited for my friend to pick me up, took a long deep breath. There was a stillness surrounding me. I had nothing to do. Intentionally leaving my books at home I realised why I was there, in Adelaide, visiting The Coorong. It wasn’t for the chapter.
It was for one reason: to listen.
I thought back over the week that had passed. I had been the most stressed I’d ever remember feeling in my entire life. While the run and writing from last Sunday’s blog entry helped me get the balls back in the air… on Monday they all came crashing down.
“How was your weekend?” ‘Wahhhhhhhh!”… and later … “Can we meet next Monday?” “Wahhhhhhh!” I burst into tears. Twice. For no reason at all. Now that is what I call STRESS.
No amount of yoga or running could cure it. But at Camp Coorong I felt a deeper change occur.
My friend picked me up, and we drove through Adelaide Hills, over the Murray River, and into Camp Coorong.
An air of serenity surrounded us.
A quiet peace. Time slowed down. And Ellen Trevorrow taught me to weave.
I weaved my life, my mind and my soul, into the creation you can see in the photo above.
And as I weaved, I listened and learned, as together a group of us “had a yarn”!!!
In the culture of Indigenous Australians one doesn’t ask questions. One doesn’t take turns answering. One doesn’t talk about things they don’t want to talk about. No. Instead, people tell stories.
Maybe it’s the weaving. As we weaved, the energy changed. The air lightened and gravity tightened.
I had never felt so grounded. And I had never felt so free.
In this conversation one shared information, stories, they wanted to share. And the rest of the time you listened.
On Saturday I heard some of the most fantastic love stories, and tales of the saddest tragedies. Each story was captured in my weave. Later that night I taught some of the other visitors what I’d learned. Children and adults, all weaving together. There was something magic about this activity, and about this place.
I could go on and on about the many things I learned and experienced. It was all so subtle. It’s difficult to explain. Even more difficult to explain is the incredible feeling of groundedness I still feel today. I have a feeling these things will influence me in ways I can’t yet imagine.
Instead of trying to imagine them now, I’m going to share my favourite story from the weekend and leave it with you to ponder. Surrounded by pre-school children listening intensely, Tom Trevorrow told this story.
This is the story of the Thukeri and the Bony Bream:
‘A long time ago two Ngarrindjeri men went fishing in a bay near Lake Alexandrina to catch the thukeri mami (bream fish). They set off in their bark canoe to catch the big fat thukeri. They fished and fished until their canoe was over full and they said,
“We have plenty of thukeri we will paddle to shore before we sink.”
As they paddled to shore they saw a stranger coming towards them so they covered up the thukeri with their woven mats they said this man might want some of our thukeri, when they approached the shore the stranger said to them,
“Hey brothers I’m hungry have you got any fish to share?”
But the two Ngarrindjeri men said,
“No we haven’t got many fish we only have enough to feed our families.”
So the stranger began to walk away then he turned and said,
“You have plenty of fish and because you are greedy and don’t want to share you will not enjoy the thukeri fish ever again.”
As the stranger walked away the two Ngarrindjeri men laughed at him.
When the two Ngarrindjeri men unloaded the thukeri on to the banks to scale and clean them, they saw that their nice big fat thukeri were bony and they didn’t know what had happened. The two Ngarrindjeri men went home to the campsite in shame and told the Elders what had happened.
The Elders were angry and said, “The stranger was Ngurunderi our Spirit Ancestor and because you two were greedy and would not share with him he has put a curse on our thukeri mami. Now all the Ngarrindjeri people will be punished.”
Respect, caring and sharing, don’t be greedy, and don’t tell lies. Otherwise everybody will get punished.’
This was just one of the many many amazing stories I heard and experienced at the Camp. If anyone has a chance to go visit and learn from the Ngarrandjeri people, I highly recommend the experience. There are many different ways to live and be in this world, and the more of them we can expose ourselves to, the more likely the way we choose to live our lives is actually a choice.
Visit the: Camp Coorong Website
Watch the short version of the doco: Nukkan [See]. Kungun [Listen]. Yunnah [Speak].
Find the story of the Thukeri and the Bony Bream and other information here: hurrysavethemurray.com/wp…/ngarrindjeri-sea-country-plan.pdf
The sunset on The Coorong on Saturday:
Let us listen, and learn…
Juggling too many balls
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by life? Does your mind and body ever get to that stage where it feels so limp it hurts? Are you juggling so many balls that they all come tumbling down?
Yesterday was one of those days. Actually until I left for a run about an hour ago, that was me. I’ve been stressed. My habit of saying “yes” to almost everything, without thinking through the logistics, came back to bite me.
I leave for Europe in less than four weeks. The last month has been a manic effort aimed at upgrading from a MPhil to a PhD and getting a scholarship, ie writing 35,000 words, confirming at least two journal or book publications, and a pile of paperwork with the right signatures in the right places, and every “i” dotted. And this was to be done on top of editing two books and marking political economy assignments (paid work), editing my own book (in hope of getting it to publishers before I leave), and the system/communications/database work I do for my Dad – a whole other mind-field of its own.
Amazingly enough everything is coming together.
A lot of late nights and early mornings, too much coffee, and ignoring most other things in life from friends to licence expiry dates and visa applications, I am almost there. Of course the neglect in other areas isn’t good.
I think it was Friday that I hit that wall. I know the wall well. I have hit my head on it many times after these almost adrenalin-fuelled mental marathons. I was exhausted but I pushed through it. I needed to get the visa application in, write a letter to try to get out of the $430 fine I got for letting my Learner scooter licence expire (yes that did make me cry), and try to get a little order in my life. Of course after a few drinks to try to forget it all that night meant Saturday I felt even worse.
“What about that essay you have due in two weeks? And the application to present a paper in Krakow? And getting out of your rent? And selling your scooter? And and and ….” The internal chatter of my mind wouldn’t shut up, but physically I was useless. I caught up with family for dinner and got the “wow you look tired” commentary and the same from my friend in Canada over skype this morning.
You know what has made suddenly made the whole world seem much better?
Giving myself simply a couple of hours of love: a long run, a hot shower with a cold blast at the end, a face mask, a little yoga, and entering the catharsis of writing it all down and sharing my thoughts with you. Hopefully I will start juggling again soon.
So thank you 
The Angst of Preparations, Decisions & Goodbyes
Soon I am off to Europe followed by the United States, with a very big question mark surrounding my return date. I’m booked to leave 9 weeks from yesterday and be home just in time for Christmas… but I really have no idea what my future holds. Exciting as this sounds, when it comes the details, life in the 21st century can make preparations and decisions surrounding uncertainties a massive anxiety-filled pain in the butt.
From getting my scooter Provisional-license (if I don’t I have to do a 2 day Learner course again), writing 30,000 words towards a PhD, cutting out 100,000 words from my novel, finishing up projects at work, lecturing, marking, packing, preparing, and filling out forms. And as fast as my “to do” list gets longer, the decisions grow harder.
From the little things like “do I pay-out or defer the remaining 6 month phone and internet contracts?”, to the bigger things like “do pack up my little studio apartment, or should I try to find someone to sublet it?”
I hate decisions. I like making decisions in one grand sweep. It’s not always the smartest move, but neither are the choices made after days or weeks of tedious weighing scales.
I still have a couple of months, so maybe if I don’t think about it the answers and solutions will just come to me. Hopefully same will go with my “to do”s and “goodbyes”. I guess all I can do is my best, work hard, enjoying the moments along the way. Hopefully the future will take care of itself.
Anyway if there are less blog entries for a while, then you know why… and in the blink of an eye it will be time to fly!!!
The Very Short Life and Times of Me and Kombi Xee
Love is blind. It makes you do crazy things. Spontaneous things. Fun things. And sometimes really stupid things. I think when it hits you you know the pain that lies ahead, yet you jump in anyway. The first time I laid eyes on her I knew. Maybe it was her bright orange skin, maybe it was the way she popped her top on cue, or maybe it was her cute button nose. It was love at first sight. Like the trajectory of most love stories I figured this relationship would come to an end. But what I didn’t know was how fast it would happen.
This is a story of false hope and empty promises. This is a story about living with intensity and adventure. This is a story of loving fully and learning to let go if one’s life’s optimal trajectory calls for it. This is the story of the very short life and times of me and Kombi Xee.
I had been looking for a kombi for a couple of months, but none were like her. Mirroring my taste in men the kombi’s I was interested in lived too far away or were already taken, until I met Xee. She was perfect. She needed a little work on the body, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Most importantly, so the seller assured me, she was mechanically healthy with an recently reconditioned motor, no oil leaks, good brakes and new tyres. She would easily pass rego in March. The pressure of competition bid me to jump in. “I’ll take her.” I said, offering the asked price.
Like the beginning of most relationships, the honeymoon period was wonderful. As I learned how she worked, exactly where to let the clutch out and work her gears, things only got better. I projected images of our glorious future together: long coastal drives, sleeping anywhere, early morning swims, weekend getaways, lots of time to read and write and reflect and keep inspired.
Our first trip to Jervis Bay was everything I dreamed. She made driving fun. I sailed by day, and slept by the waters-edge at night.
Ahimsa Sailing Klub Inc
It was only two nights, but it could have been weeks.
Xee slowed life down a notch. Time didn’t matter with her. I couldn’t go anywhere fast so I no longer tried. Chugging along we strived out way up hills, and sped at full speed back down the other side. The hippy inside me lit up as I embraced the things the 70s stood for like peace and freedom and all those ideals I think too much. Now I wasn’t thinking about them – I was feeling them. I was them.
Kangeroos in our backyard!
An afternoon at Murrays Beach
After one night back at home we left for our second trip: the Northern Beaches.
After a day’s work in Belrose I parked Xee in Mona Vale, up on the headland with a magic view of the golf course, beach, ocean, horizon and beyond. I went for a twilight swim, had a cold shower, read a bedtime story, and fell into a blissful sleep. At sunrise I repeated the above, and drove back to work. Work would now become a weekly holiday, or so I thought…
Men, women, kombis… who knows what causes them to crack. But when a relationship goes to hell, there’s no knowing what’s going to happen next. I’d been with Xee for less than a week when the romantic bliss came to an earth-shattering end.
In the space of one hour, my side mirror fell off doors, the drivers windows refused to close, at red lights on hills she stalled, spat, spluttered, and died. I powered her back up. Without a mirror I was scared to change lanes, I missed turn offs, and every slight hill she got worse.
People around us stopped and stared.
“Come-on baby, don’t give up on us yet!” I pleaded. But this wasn’t your ordinary domestic fit.
Xee delivered me home and took her last breath.
That night and the following two weeks were filled with doctor visits and hospital stays – from NRMA dudes telling me she was only running on two cylinders through to tow truck drivers and finally a kombi-specialist who delivered the final blast of bad news: it was fatal.
“Try to fix the cylinders and you’ll open a Pandora’s Box of problems.” Steve the mechanic shook his head. “She needs a new motor. I’m sorry to say but you bought a lemon.”
As if stealing my heart and my dreams wasn’t enough.
So here I am. In love with a kombi that just doesn’t want to love me in return.
“The timing just isn’t right for us,” she whispers to me, shedding a tear.
I could spend another $5k on her to get her back on the road, but that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, using up money I need for trips to conferences and universities in Europe and the US later this year. Part of me wants to stay in Australia, but I know that’s not my path. And so, sad as it is to say, I know it’s time to part ways.
Some relationships last a long time, and some only a short time, but all relationships must eventually come to an end. The trick is to know when to say yes and give it your all, and when understand it’s best for both parties to let go.
Xee needs someone who can invest the time and money that will get her back to health. She needs to be in a relationship with someone who can give her the love she deserves.
without
Is there something that can be learned from this story, about loving without attachment?
Might this apply to love for a friend, boy/girlfriend, and even for material things like houses and kombis?
Is it possible to love without selfish motive? To love another in a way that puts whatever is best for the other before one’s own desire to be with them?
As I look back over our beautiful week together I know I will always remember the life and times I shared with Kombi Xee.
These moments of the past that will remain present, just a thought away, for the rest of my life.
The best human relationships are like that too. Relationships where moments of the past were lived so fully present that simply the thought of it brings the moments back to life. No matter how long or short a relationship, the best one’s live on forever: continuing to inspire, energise and make you smile.
The last month – the one week of highs and three weeks of lows that followed – are a reminder of life’s roller coaster. It might be exciting at times, scary at other times, and a little dull as you wait in line to do it again. But you can’t have one without the other. The lows are what makes the highs so great. The closeness of death makes life so exhilarating.
Kombi Xee has reminded me of the important things in my life: she reminded me to slow down, to allow time to reflect, to value experiences over money and things (even kombis), to be able to shrug my shoulders when frustrations occur, to have faith in the universe, and that if you follow it’s “signs” guiding you intuitively toward your “optimal trajectory”, the universe will take care of the rest.
Xee reminded me of the importance of letting go: letting go of fear, letting go of the things I tell myself I “need”, and to remember that you never know what new adventure lies beyond the horizon.
Me in Kombi Xee
Photos: most taken by my talented friend Melissa McCullough, and a couple from Sveinug Kiplesund (who’s a pretty good photographer too 
).
HAVE YOU FALLEN IN LOVE WITH XEE???
I am going to put Xee on ebay, so if you feel you’re up for the challenge of this exciting but exhausting lover, then check it out:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260742402596#ht_614wt_905
More details about her:
This is the original ad I responded to off Gumtree:
And this is the mechanic report I got last week:
Loving What Is
How often do you think or say “I love that I’m sick” or “I love it that I got a parking fine.” Never. Well I don’t. But that was the message I took away my conversation with three inspiring minds I had dinner with on Wednesday tonight: Love What Is.
Now I know I’ve spoken about this before. I distinctly remember writing about the need to accept everything just as it is, when I thought I was going to die in the back of a crazy driver’s loud-honking car winding up the mountains in India. But as the busyness of life takes over, you can never have too many reminders of positive affirmations. And I think to love what is going a step further than acceptance. Loving what is, even the shitty stuff we face, really means embracing it. And when we embrace our pains, they disappear. But is that easier said than done?
As the antipasto was placed on the table, my friend made a suggestion:
“Name the one biggest thing you need to let go of.”
The first thing that came to my mind was Kombi Xee, and the overnight loss of around $5000 all because of her.
Attached to my kombi was an image of freedom, and attached to the $5000 was the trip to Europe I want to do on my way to America later this year. I shared the story with my new friends, and the fear I have associated with my stupid spontaneous decision – I thought my intuition was telling me to buy her. Still who the heck doesn’t get a mechanical check on a 36 year old car? (Note – I will get to the full kombi story share some other day).
The question bothering me in that moment was: Should I keep her in, or should I exchange her for peanuts?
“Now I suggest this to you… you have to let go of your attachment to stories. Freedom is found inside you, not in the kombi. You need to let it go. Let go of any fears. Accept you’ve lost the money, and do whatever feels right to you.”
It’s not easy to let go of things you love. And while I understand the need to let go of stories, and my kombi, I just don’t know if I’m ready to. I’m trying to listen to my intuition, to be open to the signs of the universe, but sometimes those signs are simply unclear.
“I love that my kombi broke down a few days after I bought it.” I’m saying it, but I don’t mean it. I really wish I got at least a few months of fun out of it, didn’t lose my money, and didn’t have to borrow my sister’s old car that I’ll have to get registered in less than a month.
“I love that this kombi experience taught me a lesson to be careful in the future.” I’m saying it but I don’t mean it. While I’ll definitely get a mechanical check next time I buy a second hand car, I’m sure this experience won’t stop my tendency to make spontaneous crazy decisions when I feel so inclined.
Let’s try again.
“I love that my kombi broke down a few days after I bought it.”
The only way I might mean it, is if at some point, some future point of hindsight, I see a purpose for it. Maybe I should put it at my grandmas house in storage for a year until I can have time and money to get it back on the road.
Let’s try again: let it go. Money is gone. Whatever happens doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
Kombi or no kombi, everything will work out.
If you let go of the stories that you are attached to, if you let go of fear, if you let go of expectations, and if you live every moment with acceptance and love for all that is, you will lead a happy life.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do with this kombi. Should I keep it or should I sell it? Can I sell it, or is Xee now a worthless piece of junk? I suppose if I ask the universe, the answer will soon become clear… Either way I have to try, to love this situation just as it is.
Parkinson’s Law: Using Time to Your Advantage
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This is known as “Parkinson’s Law”[1]. I’ve been testing it out and so far it does seem true.
I’m working more jobs than I ever have before: 4.5 days a week between two jobs, plus a part-time research degree, and working with an editor on my novel. And now I a new deadline for my research: 35,000 words by June.
I’m six months into a MPhil that my supervisor is encouraging I upgrade to a PhD and get a scholarship so that I can work less money-jobs and achieve more with my writing. I’m all for this, but 35,000 words? By June?? Not that words are generally a problem (as any regular readers of this blog would attest to this) still when I consider doing this as well as working so many other jobs, I start to freak out.
“Am I overdoing it?” I asked my dad on the weekend. “Am I going to give myself a nervous breakdown?”
He laughed. “As long as you also put a little time to maintain your health – go for your walks and do your pilates – you’ll be fine.” He reminded me of all the people that work full-time and do uni full-time. “It’s possible to do it all, and you will look back and ask yourself: How did I do it? But you do. You just get it done.”
That was when I remembered Parkinson’s Law.
I think it’s true: whatever deadlines you set for a task, that’s how long the task will take.
If I set myself the task of 35,000 words by June, I will do it. I know I will.
One month in to this crazy schedule I’m surprised to say that it is going rather well. Even with buying a kombi, doing a weekend away, and having it break down, to add to the craziness that is currently my life. I think the trick is not to think – just DO.
My mind has started to approach the world differently. This situation is forcing me to live fully in each moment.
I’ve had moments where I think I’m going to send myself crazy – but they only come when I am thinking about everything I’m doing. If I look at my week as a whole, at where I am using my time, I feel overwhelmed.
But if I live in the present, always focused on doing rather than thinking about doing, I am happy and extraordinarily productive.
On that note, it’s time for a walk.
[1] Parkinson’s Law is an adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955. Wikipedia.
Yhprum’s Law and a New Moon Wish
Yhprum’s Law is the opposite of Murphy’s Law. As opposed to the idea that “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” Yhprum’s Law states that “everything, that can work, will work.” (Yhprum is Murphy backwards).
Tonight is a new moon, the best time to light a candle and make a wish. My wish tonight is to take all the Murphy in my life and replace it with Yhprum.
Not that things have been that bad. Not everything that could go wrong, has. Or at least the way in which everything that could go wrong went wrong, could have gone more wrong than they did.
I could have broken down going up the Wollongong hills, but instead Kombi Xee conked out just when I made it to my street. My iMac problems could involve losing files but instead the blue screen freeze takes 5-10 minutes to disappear. When I walked into a pole sticking out of a truck (a blonde sending a text) I could have ended up doing more damage than the blue bump on my forehead.
Things could be worse.
But I am up against little annoying things that require my time to get fixed, and that’s too much Murphy’s Law at work in my life for my liking.
I like it when things work. I like it when my everything runs smooth. I like it when I approach a traffic light and it immediately turns green.
Life is at its greatest when everything that can work, does.
This is a shift I want to see happening, not only in my life, but in the world around me.
I want to see quality goods and quality services. I want to experience and be around people with a higher level of awareness – of self and world – and a stronger sense of interconnectedness and synchronicity that makes everything run as if on its optimal trajectory, actions and actors living as if produced and directed by a divine director.
So if you read this tonight I think let’s all light a candle and make a new moon wish: may Yhprum’s Law play a greater role in our lives.
Murphy’s Law Day and a Couple of Lifesavers
Have you ever had “one of those days”, where everything that can go wrong, does? There’s a name for it. Murphy’s Law. Today was one of those days… but thanks to a couple of lifesavers, a Jacuzzi and a taxi driver, it ended on a high note. Let me tell you the story of five lows, six highs and how everything turned out ok.
HIGH #1
It started out a typical Saturday morning: sleep in till 830am, espresso and Brazil nuts, walk, breaky, yoga. I was ready to scoot to Bondi for a quick dip and read a book in the sun when suddenly the wind changed..
LOW #1
I had arranged to check out a Kombi at midday, my latest little dream. The seller was having a Murphy’s Law day like mine would turn out to be. For the first hour I sipped a poorly made coffee with a British dude who also wanted the kombi. We agreed it was a good price, sounded like it was in good mechanical condition, and underneath the niceties we both knew only one of us would get it. The seller messaged again: “Just another 20 minutes…”
HIGH #2
I decided to scrap my swim, scooted home, and got ready for the evening ahead, leaving Jo to look at the kombi first. A dangerous move I know. I then scooted back to finally check out the bright orange 1974 kombi. I took Xee for a drive, and fell in love. I’ve never driven a big car, especially one with a long pole for a clutch and ridiculously huge steering wheel. Geez it was fun! Jo had made an offer, inside my head the pressure was on. Not one for thinking first, I acted: “consider her sold,” I told him. I called my sister to tell her the good news that my Festiva would now be hers, and agreed to meet her and my mum at circular key for a celebratory drink.
LOW #2
Just one problem: my scoot keys were nowhere to be seen. I emptied my pockets, my bag, and the kombi’s interior. “It has to be here!” I exclaimed helplessly. A vision of an expensive locksmith coming out was making me desperate (No, I don’t have a spare). I called my sister and cancelled, then I said a little prayer.
HIGH #3
In desperation I checked the street, under leaves on the road and footpath. What do you know, there it was: my key, on the street, where I’d first met Xee. I hugged the kombi seller. By now it was 4pm, the time I was supposed to be at a friend’s birthday drinks on the other side of Sydney.
LOW #3
My mum called with sensible words about checking the price of the kombi, having my uncle check the mechanics, all that blah blah blah (that I do appreciate and know is important, but can’t be bothered to do..) Anyway when she called for a second time I had just arrived home, and after two coffees and not enough food my hands were so jittery that as I answered the phone, I dropped it in the sink. It wasn’t full, thank goodness, but a saucepan full of water fell on top of it.
Now if I had one of those sturdy old Nokias, all would be fine. But these temperamental iPhones are not so forgiving.
“Cough cough, splutter splutter.” It said. “I do not recognize whatever you are doing to me”. Or some weird error message along those lines appeared.
“Please come back to me!” I cried, followed by another little prayer.
I opened it up (as much as an iphone can be opened, i.e. took off it’s cover) and tried to revive it with a hairdryer. At first the speakers refused to breathe.
HIGH #4
In time, with a lot of love, my recovered back to it’s good ol’ self. I called mum to apologise for being short.
LOW #4
I made it to my friend’s b’day drinks in Manly, only one and a half hour late. First problem was finding a park. Then there was a sound. A strange sound. “Is that my car?” I thought, turning my music of. Then, at a traffic light, “You have a flat”, a dude across the road pointed. SHIT.
HIGH #5
“A beer will fix everything,” I said to myself. I found a park, downed a couple of icy cold ones, and contemplated my tyre. Basically a new tyre too, two days after my car had been serviced. How depressing.
I sweet-talked a couple of the boys at the party, and went to double-park the car somewhere closer. On second thought not to tear boys away from their beer, I decided to go to the petrol station.
“I’m going to figure out how to do it myself,” I said optimistically, asking the guy behind the counter for a little direction. He showed me how the jack worked, and with a set of pliers I started to lift the car.
Enter my lifesavers: two elderly men walking by.
“Do you need a hand?” they asked, “do you have a jack handle?”
My face must have said it all. Before I’d said a word they had some long handle thing joined to the jack, my car was lifted, hubcap off, bolts undone, spare tyre on. Done and dusted.
“You guys are lifesavers!” I exclaimed a few minutes later.
“Actually we are,” they laughed, pointing to the Manly Surf Lifesaver logo on their shirts.
LOW #5
Hoping in my car, the next heart pounding moment was the breath tester.
“Have you had anything to drink?” The copper asked.
“Yes.” I gulped. I was pretty sure I wasn’t over the limit, but you can never be too sure.
“Count to ten,” he ordered.
HIGH #6
“One, two, three, four…” BEEP. “Your ok, good to go.”
I thanked God for the sixth time that day.
“A bad day makes for a good night,” a friend said at the pub. And it did. Back in the city my friend picked me and, dressed in a Brazilian flag, we went to a United Nations themed party.
So you wanna know what the funniest part to this whole long winded story is? Well, in my opinion it’s actually not the fact that I ended up swimming in an indoor pool and sitting in a hot bubbling Jacuzzi at 1am, but the taxi driver who at 2am delivered me safely to my door.
He (the taxi driver) was Pakistani, had done more degrees than me – from computer science to commerce and another couple I can’t remember – and was telling me about his dreams to go back and do engineering. “The problem is jobs.” He said.
After my last entry about the gap between education and real-life, that point really hit home. I can criticize the education system all I like but it’s not going to change the nature of the jobs that are available, which is ultimately the priority of education: survival.
In tribal society education must teach children to hunt and build huts. In our society education must teach us to survive within the system: to fit into a boxed up job that gives us money to buy our pre-killed meat and pay for our pre-made houses.
If we are lucky enough to find a job we can survive from and enjoy, then kudos to us. And if there’s a way of surviving, enjoying, and helping improve our survival system so it’s less destructive to our mental states, to the 4 billion people condemned to poverty from it, and to the planetary ecosystem that future generations need to survive on, then even better.
Murphy’s Law may say that “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, but Juliet’s Law (as this day’s high notes and low notes exemplified) says that “whatever can go wrong can be fixed”. Now all the world needs is a couple of lifesavers.
Photo:
Xee, the kombi I’m about to buy!!! (XEE is her number plate, if I remember correctly).
Brisbane’s Narrative Wreckage: Cataclysmic Interruptions and Redemptive Solutions
Content in living out your life: work, money, weekends, holidays, home, kids… and then something happens: a cataclysmic event changes everything.
Be it a sudden illness or a natural disaster like the flooding Brisbane is now facing, everything you know – everything you care about, everything you have dedicated your life to, everything you imagined for your future – can disappear in an instant.
As I write, Brisbane faces 12 people dead, 43 missing, 20,000 homes, and 3000 businesses under water. No words can convey my sorrow and empathy for all those whose lives have been upturned.
The events reminded me of an analogy I came across in my narratology studies. The analogy of a “Narrative Wreckage”.
Events like are described as an “ontological assault” that throws even the most ‘basic, underlying existential assumptions that people hold about themselves’ into disarray. [1]
I imagine many people living in Brisbane are presently feeling such pain, among the many physical ones.
Occurrences like this cause worlds to be “unmade” – one’s identity and thoughts about the future are thrown into sudden disarray.
One’s basic sense of time is destroyed. Storytelling takes a massive turn. One’s life-narrative must be reconstructed.
At points like this that the Buddhist philosophies of non-attachment show their value: the less attached you are to the things lost, the easier the loss is to deal with.
Even if attached to the things lost (which most of us are), the incoherence in your life narrative can still be repaired.
The repair, depending on the damage, will likely see the creation of a new narrative: one of renewal and redemption, one of hard work and incredible reward. I don’t know if in these situations it helps to consider “the hard road to the good life.”
In an article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, a collaborative group of narratologists write about ‘narrative variations on the good (American) life’ that describe:
‘a gifted (chosen) hero whose manifest destiny is to journey forth into a dangerous world in order to make it better (to redeem it), and who, sustained by deep (intrinsic) convictions, confronts many setbacks along the way, but learns from each of them, and continues to grow.’
The stories ‘celebrate personal growth and redemption stories’ while also affirming ‘the sense that one is special and destined for greatness, that the world is dangerous and in need of the protagonist’s reforming efforts, that the righteous protagonist should never conform but always trust his or her inner convictions, and that good things will come out of suffering, no matter what.’ [2]
This narrative is so familiar – in our literature, movies, religions and even in our daily stories – yet that doesn’t take away from it’s deep psychological value, nor the difficulty of the experience as it is being experienced. Hindsight is great.
Each of us may be an Average Joe yet through narrative we turn into heroic protagonists, setting out on our own quests and adventures, most likely with something narratlogists call a “generative” aim – leaving some kind of personal legacy, creating positive value for future generations, demonstrating the meaning of one’s life (be it lives created eg via making babies, or through lives touched eg through relationships). [3]
No doubt cataclysmic events like this change lives. It changes the future. You may even look back one day and be thankful for the path the cataclysm led you to.
As an observer of the cataclysmic trajectory humanity’s narrative seems to be heading, I hope it isn’t insensitive to think about what the Brisbane floods can teach us all?
Human induced global warming or not, our radical global population growth and unsustainable lifestyles indicate our collective narrative is near wreckage.
People may argue that our population will slow as people come out of poverty and women are educated, but where is the sign that either of these things will happen in the near future? The economic pyramid depends on the large base and a huge gap simply in order for the middle and top to move up and live better. The lifestyles of the rich rob the poor of their choices, and rob future generations of their resources. I am, in every aspect of my lifestyle, a cog in this system. While this system poses threat to the narratives of many individually, and collectively, the institutions and society we are born into is not easy to escape, and even harder to challenge.
At difficult times like the Brisbane floods we see the media, the government, the nation, and much of the world, unite in effort to help those in need. Our common humanity triumphs over the economic, cultural, religious, and ideological differences that so often tear as apart.
As we join together to restore the order, to help those in need get back on their feet, I am reminded that humans care. When we see others suffering, we know that it could be us in their place, so we treat those people how we hope they would treat us. Our more superficial aspirations may distract us at times but at the end of the day I think we each feel connected to everyone and everything that surrounds us and that we are a part of.
This gives me hope.
I hope we can find ways to repair the cataclysms that face us in this moment, and to avoid the cataclysms that (on our current trajectory) appear to lie ahead.
References:
[1] Crossley, Michelle, (2002) Introducing Narrative Psychology, Narrative, Memory and Life Transitions. pp. 11-12.
Michelle refers to Narrative Wreckage analogy from Frank, A (1995), The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
[2] Bauer, J. J., D. P. McAdams, et al. (2008). Narrative Identity and Eudaimonic Well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9, p. 98.
[3] Baddeley, J. and J. A. Singer (2007). Charting the Life Story’s Path: Narrative Identity Across the Life Span. in Handbook of narrative inquiry : mapping a methodology. ed. D. J. Clandinin. Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage Publications: xix, 693 p. 191.
Photo:
I snapped this in Budapest 2006
Feel the fear, and do it anyway
The first time I sat on my scoot I trembled with fear. I drove it around the block, parked it, and waited half an hour for the adrenilin to calm and my heart rate to slow.
The second time I did some drills with a friend. My thumb hurt too much the next day to even look at it.
Third time lucky, well sort of. I tried to ride to Bondi, but too scared to change lanes ended up in Double Bay.
The fourth time, still feeling the fear, I rode first to the petrol station (even filling up some strange hole under the seat felt scary) and I continued on, through multiple lane changes, all the way to university.
The fifth time the fear faded. My senses hightened to face the life-threating forces from in front, both sides, behind and below.
I rode, and I enjoyed.
There is real thrill in facing a fear, so when I read “feel the fear, and do it anyway”, a Susan Jeffers quote in a Community Mediation manual I was editing at work, I just had to blog about it.
You know, every day we find ourselves surround by things we fear – physical fears, psycholgical fears, relationship fears, financial fears, fear of failure, fear of what other’s think, fear of uncertainty, fear fear fear.
Often we let fear guide our decisions. It is easy to let fear rule over our lives.
I almost didn’t get a scooter simply because of my fear of getting hurt. My fear of ripping apart my skin, breaking my neck, or dying, the latter which would be my preference of the three…
So I held off for months.
Every scooter that passed me tormented me.
I wanted to be on a bike, and that was that.
So I asked myself, “If I was to walk onto the road and get hit by a bus tomorrow, would I regret not having a scooter today?” YES.
“How about if you get your scooter and have an accident and become a paraplegic, won’t you regret that even more?” Well… maybe.
So which might I regret more?
A fear of getting hurt still remains. I will probably feel it every time I hop on the bike. But the fun that I am having on the bike, makes it worth it.
Life is short – I want to live it to the full. I would rather live a shorter life, living each and every day to it’s max, then live a long life dominated by fear.
The thing to remember is that what we fear most are usually the things we least need to worry about.
“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.”
Baz Luhrmann Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen).
You never know what tomorrow holds – stockmarkets and currencies and even civilizations eventually fall. I could die driving in my car or walking on the street or even laying in my sleep. If we live in fear, we are not truly living.
All of us will one day be old, and will one day die.
“Do one thing everyday that scares you.”
Life’s too short to let fear play a dominant role in it: feel that fear, and do it anyway, and (unlike me in this pic) don’t look back.
Picture:
Since I’m still at work filling in time waiting to go to dinner friends I grabbed this pic from my facebook. Sometimes it’s annoying that this is a photo blog. Anyway it’s from an old editorial for the German magazine Shape that I shot in Sydney a few years ago. Don’t worry, I won’t be scooting around town in heels
Ending 2010: Evaluating one’s story
The end of any period is the beginning of another. Transitional points like the end of a year are great times to take a step back and reflect on the year and it’s place in your life story. How does the past year fit into the narrative of your life? What direction are your decisions taking you? Are you living out a drama, a comedy, a tragedy or an adventure? Are you happy with this genre?
Times like this are a good time to ask: am I happy? And if the answer is no, to ask: what can I do to change this? Life is short, very short, and I don’t believe the gift of life should be wasted.
Learning about stories in literature we can identify the following elements, each which we have the agency to change:
- Events – am I happy with the events and sequence of my narrative?
- Time – where do I prioritise the time allotted to various elements?
- Action – what decisions are coming up, what actions am I going to take with other characters?
- Location – is the setting my life is taking place where I want to be?
- Relationships – am I happy with the relations between actors, events, locations, time and other (symbolic, allusive etc)?
- Point of view – what way to I chose to frame my experiences of the above elements? [1]
So am I happy? In general, yes, but there are many things I wish to change. I wish to add more adventure and comedy into my life, and leave at least some of the elements of drama and tragedy behind. I wish to take more time finishing the things I start. I wish to make time for more yoga, swimming and running, and to spend more time with fewer characters – remembering it’s all about quality not quantity.
What can you expect from this blog in 2011? As this blog follows my life and research, I can imagine the types of entries you can expect next year will be engaging in questions like:
- What role do stories play in my life?
- How do the stories in my mind relate to the stories in the reality I experience? What is the relationship between “me”, my “reality” and “others” and our collective “Reality”?
- How does the society I live within impact who I am, what I value, and how I live my life?
- How does language and framing create categories and realities? Can we rely on these? Can we create new ones?
- What is the trajectory of my life-story? What is the trajectory of the story-of-humanity? How can we ensure this is a trajectory we desire?
The above questions will be explored from a range of literature on “Narratology” (the study of narratives), “Social Construction of Reality” (sociology), “Phenomenology” (philosophy of the mind), “Process Philosophy” (the idea that nothing is static, everything including one’s self is a dynamic process), “Panentheism” (the idea that we are inside a macrocosm we call “God”), philosophical reflections on Health and Happiness, and “Ecological Thinking” (that looks at the unity of self and the world we are a part of). Hopefully I’ll manage to combine these with life experience, photography, travel, and humour – variety is the spice of life.
How has this blog developed since it’s birth in September 2009? Below is a list of titles – click a heading to read the full entry.
September 2009
At the moment so much is happening every day that I feel like three days fit into one. This morning I finish uploading the basics of this website and “took the next step” – announcing it on facebook. Facebook is interesting – with the click … Read More →
Some of my stuff from a few years back. Most of these are from Paris and London. I can’t hardly remember the feeling of having a shaved head… it was liberating, that’s for sure.
Exhibiting at Manning Artspace, Sydney University – July 2009-December 2009. The title of the series, Alchemy, was inspired by Paolo Cuelo’s The Alchemist; a four-part series taken over a three-month journey around South America. The first shot of the series was the one in Huacachina … Read More →
Galapagos is not the only awe-inspiring place in Latin America. Here are some of the most mind-blowing sights that with my camera I did it’s best to capture… Uyuni Salt-Lakes, Bolivia Lake Titicaca, Bolivia El Calefate, Patagonia Iguazu Falls Salvador, Brasil Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
“A Little Inspiration for a Big Idea”
The Art Tree Exhibition – my series is called “A Little Inspiration for a Big Idea”… The little inspiration The Theory of Evolution is a HUGE idea. But like all ideas, it starts with one thing: a little inspiration. Something happens to you: a feeling, … Read More →
South Americans are different. There’s some powerful energy inside of them unlike any other people. The eyes of these children say it all.
“Love Is” by Juliet Bennett Love is lost in eye’s oceans butterflies a breathe unknowns potentials innocent bliss Love is innate desire a constant distraction unexplainable energy a potent seduction soft lip’s tender kiss Love is beyond your control the wish of God ecstasy and … Read More →
Creativism – a philosophy for life
Creativism… the beginnings of a new philosophy, with positive implications on social, political and economic theories. Ok – with that amazing very creative photograph that won “Portrait of the Year 2009” by Sydney photographer Pippin Schembri – I now divert your attention to something close … Read More →
Lindt chocolate is NOT slave chocolate!
I emailed Lindt a year ago and pretty much got a ‘no comment’ response but I emailed them again today and got a response already and guess what?! They DO NOT GET THEIR COCOA BEANS FROM THE IVORY COAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They do not use slave labour!!! … Read More →
“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” In Japan, people would look at me and gasp “Kirre!” “SagoiI!” “Chiisai!” (translation: “Beautiful! Wow! Small!”) as they motioned a small circle with their hands and touched the skin on their face. This was followed by broken … Read More →
“Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.” George Orwell. Some of the most inspiring people in my life: Leigh Stark Blogger, photographer & the creator of this website. Thank you so much! www.leighlo.com & www.sackboyliveshere.com Chelsea Haywood Author and my wonderful Canadian … Read More →
Sorry about the photo. A bit rude. Rachel took it not me (I think) – one of the millions of photos we took of graffiti art in South America. This one was in Bariloche Argentina. I thought it was appropriate. I never really read FWD’d … Read More →
Something sure to come up a lot on this blog is the question of meaning – why the f**k are we here on this planet??? It is something I contemplate regularly. The human condition is a strange one - born no different from other animals … Read More →
Two entries in one day! Don’t know what’s gotten into me but I’ll probably be scaring off any readers if I have any… it won’t happen too often, I promise. I just got home from Warringah Mall. I was standing in line waiting to return … Read More →
This may sound strange but I LOVE our universe. I love that we are conscious of our selves, that we understand so much about our location in space and time, and I love that there is so much we don’t know – the mystery and … Read More →
As I go through my studies, learning about the world and the peace and conflict that exists on different levels, and even as travel through my own life’s little challenges, I find I coming back to one question: HOW CAN I FIND PEACE? Is peace … Read More →
Empowering women & the role of men
Empowering women has been said to be the “silver bullet” to ending poverty. Studies have shown that an increase in the income of women directly correlates with increases in the education and nutrition of children. These children will lead longer and more fulfilling lives, and … Read More →
Temporality & my chocolate belly
Ok I know that’s a shocking photo (it’s from a family celebration for my sister’s engagement last night which makes it even worse)… but I think it’s worth a laugh. And I tell you what, the chocolate semi fredo I’m licking is the very best … Read More →
October 2009
The journey of an inquisitive Christian
This is a 70-page book tracing the questions and answers encountered in my journey from a conforming, narrow-minded fundamentalist Christian into a passionate free-thinker – without losing my spirituality, my connection with “God” (albeit with a new understanding of what this word means, namely a personification of the macrocosm we are a part of), and reifying a passion for truth, people and our planet… Read More →
An Ethical Dilemma: Childhood Conversion in Christian Fundamentalism
My MA Dissertation completed in June 2009. I got a HD… pretty ridiculously stoked!!! Click here to download my PDF Abstract The rise of religious fundamentalisms and the implications of the dividing polarity are a topic of increasing attention in scholarly literature. The induction of … Read More →
Written as an appendix to my masters thesis “An Ethical Dilemma: Childhood Conversion in Christian Fundamentalism” in June 2009. My ‘Thunderbolt’ Moment This brief account of my personal case is provided to make known the perspective from which this paper was written, to demonstrate how … Read More →
Things aren’t always what they seem
Back at bikram yoga yesterday I looked back into the big horrible mirrors and smiled – my tummy looked thin and flat. This was only my third class and I was already getting great results. Then I stepped to the left and the image changed … Read More →
“I have an excellent idea – let’s change the subject!”
My blog has gotten a quite intensely serious. Religion, philosophy and peace talk. Interesting but reflective of the subjects going on in my mind, it has become a little draining. Or maybe today I’m just a little tired. Either way I do believe I should … Read More →
The Animal Question: Darwin’s Bastards
I’m working on a concept for an upcoming exhibition entitled “Darwin’s Bastards” that will be held at Verge Galleries on City Road in November. I’m not yet sure yet my photos will be accepted but it has been an interesting exercise to contemplate how Darwin’s … Read More →
Time is my most valued asset. Time is money. And money (in its intended design) is a store of time. Money effectively allows us to trade our time for the time of others. Numbers in bank accounts provide me no pleasure. It seems to provide … Read More →
Death, life-commitments & a horse’s penis
It all began on Friday morning when my Opa said to me “I’m not well. I’m feeling dizzy.” I held his hand. He was freezing. I called the Doctor, and then the ambulance. I put a blanket on him, the heater next to him and … Read More →
“Only on the brink of disaster do people find the will to change.” “Our sun was dying, we had to evolve.” “Nothing ever truly dies. Everything simply transforms.” (I found these quotes in my diary. I think they are from The Day the Earth Stood … Read More →
Live life for money Accumulate many things Get into debt Rejoice what this brings: … More work, less time Fear material loss Forget impermanence Decay of time is boss … What’s left is a story A story of Capital Of slavery to a system Of … Read More →
Sometimes life just sucks. For no reason in particular. And for every reason in particular. You know that feeling? Or am I the only one… The funny thing is that nothing has really changed. I’m still living with my Opa, I’m still at uni, I’m … Read More →
THE CRAB – IN ENGLAND I love learning where words come from. England, according to wikipedia, comes from the Old English Englaland, the “Land of the Angles”, the Angles being a German Tribes from the Middle ages. Learn something new every day – I always … Read More →
November 2009
Internal battles of head and heart
Sometimes the battles inside your body can provide many insights on the battles of the world. The last couple of weeks have been a struggle – a battle between my head and heart over what the two of them inside my body are going to … Read More →
Geez I have been bad at keeping my blog. I’ve had a lot on I suppose… what with uni essays, exams and my Opa slowly dying before my eyes … So yeah, haven’t really been so inspired to write just for the pleasure of it. … Read More →
Hmmmm….. I feel like a capitalist. How this reconciles with my hate for what capitalism does to the world I’m not quite sure. Yachting on the Cote de Azur was pretty frickin cool…
Just a cute little post to encourage a laugh and smile on a Friday afternoon. The sleeping puppy above (small black mound of fur) is Bella, and that’s my youngest sister in 2004 – the only photo a sleeping dog I can find atm to … Read More →
The memoirs of Willem Van Leeuwen… and the magic of life.
Yesterday at 5pm my Opa (that’s dutch for grandfather), passed away at the ripe old age of 93. Born 20th February 1916 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Willem Frederik Van Leeuwen lived a long and inspiring life. He was a wonderful, caring father and grand-father. Me … Read More →
On the 19th of November last year I left Australia on the most exciting adventure of my life thus far – a crazy fast tracked expedition around South America. A desire had been growing ever since I’d noticed the incredible energy of my Brazilian friends … Read More →
December 2009
Indecisive Spontaneity and Noncommittal Commitment
“Ok Andressa, how much to fly to Brazil for carnaval? Via New York? How about via Mexico? Ok, how about I just go to Mexico and make my own way there? … How about Africa? Tasmania? Uluru?” In the span of one week I have … Read More →
Potentialism: a philosophy for life
Potentialism: a philosophy for life Discovering your ultimate creative potential: you as your individual conscious, you as your society and you as the universe – playing your role in the creation of a future reality you desire. Syncretic paradigms: 1. The purpose of life is … Read More →
Arrrhhhh moving house ain’t easy. I am writing now from a chair that’s too high for my desk surrounded by piles of clothes, computer gear, papers, and empty boxes; frustrated that the internet connection I was waiting to be delivered was (after many-a phone calls) … Read More →
Dilemmas of the Mercury Retrograde
“Since Mercury rules communication, it’s said that everything goes haywire in that area — emails get deleted or bounced back, mail is returned, calls go out into the ethers, etc.” (www.astrology.about.com) So put it into your diary: December 26th to January 15th, 2010. In 2010 … Read More →
Sydney is my New York. And I am Carrie Bradshaw, sitting at my computer with an apple (or cachaca & pineapple as it is), pondering and writing about life, love and the city that is my new home. I’ve been here just one week and … Read More →
“What do you think?” She asked me. “Ah… It’s ok.” I said, frowning at my reflection. “I’m not quite sure how you got that,” I looked to the mirror, “from this” observing the photo in my hands. The cut is not so bad. Nor … Read More →
Consumerised misinterpreted pagan traditions
Surrounded by the mayhem of people spending money in desperation to tick the boxes and announce that those glorious words: “I have finished all my Christmas shopping”, when something dawned on me. It is not the nicest thing to day one day before the holiday … Read More →
Chapter 15: Old Peak (Machu Picchu)
This was my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day last year. It was absolutely positively fantastically magic. I highly recommend!!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
No thanks to my preluding complaints I ended up having a great Christmas. I still don’t think gifts are a necessary part but who am I to complain about receiving money, new yoga mat, vacuum cleaner and other very useful and yummy and generous gifts? … Read More →
January 2010
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! … Read More →
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. … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
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 … Read More →
February 2010
It is interesting to see you operate with no drugs in your system. No using coffee and chocolate to wake me up and stimulate my mind. No using alcohol to relax and escape. Following a big night to farewell to the month of binges, the … Read More →
The first shot blows me away. I focus my eyes, level the gun and POW! My arms jolt up. The bullet hits the paper target. The second shot. Ok. I’m getting used to this. No idea where the bullet landed. The third shot. Bulls eye! … Read More →
So, all was going well, the swelling on my ankle was very slowly starting to disappear when… OUCH!!! I DID AGAIN… On my first morning walk in two weeks, as I enter Trumper Park, it goes on me. I fall to the ground and hit … Read More →
“There’s no such thing as balance.”
The fourteenth day = detox half-way mark……. It’s after midnight. I’m a little tipsy. What happened to my detox? As I’ve mentioned in my last post, I “fell off the horse” by no fault of my own – the 3rd ankle sprain in three weeks … Read More →
This is a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh taken from: Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. Can we recognise ourselves in each other? Please call Me By My True Names Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I … Read More →
There is no such thing as enemies. They don’t exist UNLESS YOU CREATE THEM. Australia sends “modern warrior’s”, off to “wage war against new and real threats” in the Middle East. Their mission is to: “kill the enemy,” “attack rogue states,” “stop terrorists,” and “protect … Read More →
Lateline is an abc news show that I only ever watched with my Opa. We watched it most nights and from there we would talk about politics and the depressing state the world is heading toward. Before I moved in with Opa, I didn’t know … Read More →
My sprained ankle had it’s benefits – LOTS of time sitting on my arse. And so, one week ago, I finished my first draft of my first novel. A first draft is a big achievement I suppose. The only problem is that it’s far too … Read More →
So I (finally) finished reading Shantaram!!! It is a very long book, but well worth the time. My favourite parts, besides Gregory David Robert’s incredible use of adjectives, is the philosophy of life that Khader Bhai, the Mafia don, shares with Lin. Khader Bhai calls … Read More →
So the other day I’m in a bar and I run into a student from a Pilates class I used to teach. We have a nice catchup and he asks for my number. Without much thought I give it to him – not cause I … Read More →
Reading some diaries and writings of my past it is interesting to see how my consciousness today is embedded in them. I can trace most of my ideas in an almost spiral movement back through time. I can see the exact points in time where … Read More →
March 2010
Have you read The Alchemist – by Paulo Coelho? The first time I picked it up it didn’t grab me and I soon put it down. But the second time I picked it up, the simplistic beauty of the allegorical novel suddenly clicked. I’m going … Read More →
Ok, so you’ve seen True Blood right? If not you should… From wikipedia (I’m too lazy to write today): True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries (informally known as The Sookie Stackhouse Novels / Chronicles and retronymed the True Blood Series) is a … Read More →
What lens do you use when you look at the world? Is it a 35mm – where everything is pretty much a “normal” proportion? Is it a micro-lens, magnifying the small details? Or is it a wide-angle lens, taking in the big picture? Just as … Read More →
Time is the most valuable asset we have. We count as weeks and years go by, as we get older and our borrowed energy starts to dwindle. There’s not enough time in our day. Not enough time in our weeks. Not enough time in our … Read More →
Do you ever send a text later wonder if the receiver interpreted as you intended? Do you ever receive a text and wonder what the sender meant? On my walk this morning (my ankle is finally better!!!) I found my mind applying narratological concepts to … Read More →
Richard Dawkins and WHAT is God?
Interesting interview on SBS with Richard Dawkins last night. Stream it at this address: http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/600352/n/Interview-with-Richard-Dawkins I left this comment and thought I’d share it with you: There is a God VS there is no God.. haven’t we forgotten to define WHAT is it we refer … Read More →
Saving the Planet with a Sense of Humour
We are a funny species. And immensely arrogant… George Carlin on saving the planet: … BUT our arrogant species IS causing damage to our habitat. If we don’t want to go extinct it is in our best interest to stop destroying it. The good news … Read More →
Quixotic means: 1. extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable. 2. impulsive and often rashly unpredictable. 3. (sometimes initial capital letter) resembling or befitting Don Quixote. 4. caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard … Read More →
Come with me on a journey through time and space… the mighty booooooshhhh! (If you haven’t seen The Mighty Boosh, do yourself a favour – watch it!) Searching for a Postmodern Grand-narrative…. I deferred this semester’s uni in hope of getting a scholarship to support … Read More →
A fear of death. A fear of life.
Juan, my new friend on Galapagos islands saw the look of horror on my face when I saw the iguana carcass. “It’s part of life,” he shrugged. As time on the islands passed I would see many more examples of the cycle of life and … Read More →
You MUST check out this awesome animated map of history. It shows when each religion starts and how each one spreads across the globe – all in less than two minutes. http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf It’s been a busy week so I will start the Big History series, … Read More →
Big History Blog Series: Introduction – Our Story
I wish to share with you a story: The Story of the Universe. My Story. Your Story. A True Story – well as true as true can be. Our Story has gone through many filters: of limited human knowledge developed through our limited human senses, … Read More →
Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
Once upon a time, in the land of Quantum Nothingness, there was a BIG BANG and an infinitesimally small something started to expand, possibly faster than the speed of light. For some unknown but much talked about reason, matter in the form of quarks (the … Read More →
Among my Internet surfing I came across a “creationist” website – the belief that the world is around 6000 years old – a figure derived from tracing back the genealogy in the bible from Jesus to Adam, and the seven-day creation. This belief is growing … Read More →
To do, or not to do? Avoiding regret.
I’ve come up with a new little set of questions I ask myself when making a decision. 1. Will I regret doing it? If I answer “yes”, I don’t do it. (Reason being, if I am pretty sure I’m going to regret something I think it … Read More →
Where are we, where are we going, and how?
‘I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got … Read More →
April 2010
Yesterday EVERYTHING seemed tangled up in knots. Even my washing. Ahhhhh! I screamed. I had been trying to write journal articles and my mind seemed to mix up the concepts and ideas. I had been trying to edit my book but it seemed muddled up … Read More →
Easter is celebrated at Spring equinox, a time that for thousands of years was a celebration of the goddess Ishtar resurrecting the Babylonian/Sumerian god Tammuz/Dumuzid – the god of food and vegetation. Ohhhh, it makes so much sense! The burgeoning of spring: a time of … Read More →
Oil does more than run our cars. Oil runs our cities, oil produces our food, oil fuels our flights and hence industries of tourism, and oil powers the weapons of war. Oil = Power. And as demand increases, supply is peaking… hence the “war on … Read More →
City living and neighbours screaming
I didn’t sleep last night. My sisters were visiting and I doubt they did either. I love city living, but sometimes it takes it’s toll. “Dirty cat, dirty cat,” some chick sang at the top of her voice. CRASH! BANG!!! And a few minutes later … Read More →
Yesterday morning’s crazy events almost repeated themselves that night. The girl who sang dirty cat, was back. In a hat. No not really in a hat. I just added that. Okay…. moving on. So she was back, and drunk again. No screaming or glass shattering … Read More →
Big History Blog Series: Ch2 – Star Formation and Another Big Explosion
To recap, in our first chapter of this Big History Blog Series, we learned that the Big Bang theory is based on the observation that our universe is expanding and hence that it must have once been smaller. Winding back time we imagined the infinitesimally … Read More →
“War is like a chess game – operated by a few key people, everyone else doing what they are told.” “In war, who is the real enemy? The real enemy is war itself.” War is “preserving democracy, not practicing it.” Crimson Tide I was talking … Read More →
Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
So yesterday I enjoyed a little rant about the game our governments, supported by the people’s consumer-driven values, are playing with military pawns, strategically placed towers, and other oil-powered weaponry. We established the difficulty in knowing what sources we can trust, but decided that either … Read More →
‘If a single phrase could encapsulate society in 2015 it would be “more difference and starker differences”. Those differences will be between individuals and households: those with high skill levels and those without; those with property-related inherited wealth and those without; those who are fit … Read More →
The Spirit of the Times (Zeitgeist)
The word “Zeitgeist” comes from the German word Zeit, which means time, and Geist, which means spirit. So basically Zeitgeist means the “spirit of the times” and according to wikipedia this means the “general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or … Read More →
Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
Bored? Never! Check out this website: http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php In particular I recommend: Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky … if you haven’t seen this one you better watch it NOW! The War on Democracy – The US manipulates politics of South America The Power of Nightmares – … Read More →
Small talk. How will we be remembered?
‘What do you think our generation will be remembered for?’ a friend said at dinner. ‘The generation who ruined the planet for everyone.’ I replied without a thought. ‘I was thinking more about what architecture style or something… but….’ Oops. Yep – I’m great at … Read More →
Yesterday I had a bit of a rant about the money people earn and spend in the world I live in comparison to the money people earn and spend in the developing world. Here people work around 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a week … Read More →
There is plenty of evidence that ‘the work-dominated and materially encumbered affluence of today is not giving us enjoyable lives, and that switching to a more sustainable society in which we work and produce less would actually make us happier’: – the ‘stress, congestion, ill-health, … Read More →
So I’m still writing my book – the novel on South America – well, I’m editing it. It’s a tough. I like writing, but not a big fan of editing and filling in the gaps. Does anyone knows a good editor? Anyway, while searching for … Read More →
Buddha’s charter of free inquiry
From the Kalama Sutta: Do not accept anything on mere hearsay (ie oral history/ just because many people believe it) Do not accept anything by mere tradition (ie just because it has been handed down generation to generation) Do not accept anything on account of … Read More →
“We got greedy in the 1980s, grungy in the ’90s and geeky in the noughties. This decade, we’re eager to explore our potential.” [1] On my flight home from Melbourne I read an article that excited me. It was called “Meet the Potentialists”. A movement … Read More →
When I was in South America, one place I missed was Easter Island. If you want to go here I believe flying LAN Chile is the way to go as they give you a free stop over if you’re flying from Australia. We flew Aerolinias … Read More →
May 2010
The evolution of “Man’s Best Friend”
I stole my sister’s schipperke Bella for two days of doggie companionship – it’s pretty clear why they say that a dog is a man’s best friend. Not only are dogs adorable and fluffy, they (especially Bella) give you cuddles and snuggles when you ask, … Read More →
Why did the goose cross the road?
Why do any of us cross roads??? To get to the other side of course… still it was quite a funny sight. Today I took Bella to Centennial Park. As we approached a large flock of swans and geese Bella instinctively led me away from … Read More →
Next Thursday I am going to India and I have a feeling I will be making up for the failure of my February detox. My sister tells me coffee in India sucks, so that’s a start. I wonder if they have chocolate? … Suppose I’ll … Read More →
These are some roads I drive on all the time but have never seen from this perspective… So while I should be packing and practicing my presentation here I am testing out the blogging application on my iPhone (thanks Leigh for making this work!!!). This … Read More →
The first chapter – Culture Shock and Stage Fright
Don’t worry, I’m not writing another book (not planning on committing to that ginormous task again in a hurry…) but the first chapter of my 5 weeks in India/Nepal started out with 4 nights in Mumbai, or Bombay as people tend to still call it. … Read More →
Chapter 2 – One Country, Many Worlds
There seems to be a great reverence for Gandhi throughout India. His face features on every rupee note, and his philosophy and practice of non violence gained a mention in almost every Indian speaker’s presentation at the conference. “Truth is God”, said Gandhi, dedicating his … Read More →
More than any other country I have visited, in India you have to trust your instincts. Look into someone’s eyes and you know. Even if people who should know assure you it is ok – that you can trust this taxi driver and that the … Read More →
India is curing what my mentor used to call, my “incurable optimism.” I’m not it’s a good thing, it’s definitely a more depressing state of mind. But hey, the truth hurts. And I’d rather live and be aware of the truth, no matter how painful … Read More →
Accepting things, just as they are
“No seatbelt ma’am,” said the driver who picked me up at Coimbatore airport. This is one habit I just can’t shake. As we drove up through the mountains, toward my retreat, I turned on Deepak Chopra affirmations audio book. The first one seemed appropriate: to … Read More →
June 2010
6am “knock knock” my revolting tasting medicine (of who knows what) arrives at my door… 630 yoga; 730 walk and feed monkeys; 830 breakfast (fruit and random-looking-but-delicious Indian vegetarian goop); 10am reflexology; 1030 continue reading “Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure” (awesome book btw); 1230pm massage (naked … Read More →
I say another little prayer from my prime position laying down in the back seat with my eyes closed. It is raining and the same crazy driver who overtook on blind corners on the cliff side on the way up was to drive me back down. The special requests for … Read More →
A not-so-golden Golden Triangle (Agra)
I have never felt so dirty and disgusted in my entire life. A thick layer of smog and filth covers my skin. My feet are black. My finger nails are blacker. It is definitely one of those all-I-want-is-a-shower-and-bed moments. But my disgust is far deeper … Read More →
A more-golden Golden Triangle (Jaipur)
If you read my last entry you will probably remember it was written in an exhausted and over-it state of mind. But, as we all know, for every down there is an up. You never know what is waiting for you around the next bend. … Read More →
A golden farewell to the Golden Triangle (Delhi)
Counting the days in Mumbai and the Golden Triangle I probably spent a total of one week in what most seasoned travelers would laugh at me for calling raw-India. It was raw enough for me. And I definitely didn’t shed a tear as I stepped … Read More →
From Bangkok to Bikes, Bollywood and Bongs (Kathmandu)
On the plane from Sydney to Bangkok, a some three weeks ago now, I met Bipeen – a Nepali who has been living in Australia the last couple of years who was on route to visit his family in Kathmandu. “I’ll pick you up at … Read More →
Hippies and happiness (Pokhara)
We arrived to eat dinner and sip cocktails with a perfect view of this beautiful lake. I had no idea what I was expecting when I left for Pokhara, but I wasn’t expecting the quiet little Queenstown-like town it is. Before long, with more new friends, … Read More →
Overnight Change: One day you’re here, the next…
One day a prime minister, the next you’re not. A captain thrown overboard by his crew. Why? Was he really so bad? Was he leading the ship in a direction they didn’t want to go? Was a pirate about to overtake his ship? Was he … Read More →
Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
I knew I would leave India with a new perspective of life – but the upturning of my worldview has happened in a far different way than I expected. I thought I would arrive home more passionate about social justice, more inspired to make a … Read More →
Good, bad and the thinking that makes it so
No animal was harmed and no blood was shed, in the making of this photo… looks can be deceiving. So can words. Reality itself can be deceiving. Distinguishing deception from truth begins with accepting it is there. There is a funny story behind this photo, … Read More →
July 2010
Capitalistic karma: reinterpreting reincarnation
Walking up in the mountains outside Kathmandu I contemplated the connection between the world’s inequalities today, the actions of one’s ancestors, and the idea of karma and reincarnation that I had been reading about in some books on the Eastern Religions. Be they the ancestors … Read More →
The eye of the storm and the calm that follows.
I knew my final peaceful week of yoga and relaxation in Pokhara was the calm before the storm, and boy I was right. The eye of the storm hit the day I arrived home with every day and night packed full-to-the-brim with hens parties, farewells, … Read More →
Envisioning the future of humanity-on-earth
While in a recent entry I concluded that I simply need to accept the world as it is, today I wonder, does this mean accepting the projectory of the world’s future? If we have the foresight to see that the present path we are on has … Read More →
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back … Read More →
MOMENTO MORI (remember that you will die) so CARPE DIUM (seize the day)!!!
Whoever we are, and whatever what we have accomplished in our life, we all eventually face the same fears: fears of being old, ill, of being a burden to our families, fears of going insanity, of losing liberty, losing dignity, of being neglected in our … Read More →
Can Buddha help us deal with the elephant?
I am starting to understand what Buddha meant when he said all life is suffering. No matter which financial situation you are born into, we always want more. It is very rare we reach a stage where we happily say “enough”. The more chocolate I … Read More →
Greed: the JOY of having more than you need… Taoism and more about that frickin elephant.
I used to think we could all be less greedy – that if we wanted less “stuff” we would be happier, and some of that wealth would be shared with the poor. Apparently this simple shift has the power to end world hunger – the … Read More →
Population Vs. luxury… QUALITY OR QUANTITY?
“On the technical side there is no limit to population,” said a scholar after talking about solving world hunger. “We just need more efficient systems, and for the rich to eat less.” This may be true, BUT the greater question (in my opinion) is: Do … Read More →
Human rights or a collective future? The problem with definitions.
If the pursuit of peace is an attempt to rid the world of violence, we must ask ourselves – “violence” through the eyes of who? Defining violence from the perception of a collective-humanity, is very different form defining it from the perception of each individual: … Read More →
Potential: innate or situational?
Does the value of life reside in a life form’s innate potential – the potential that their DNA allows one to have, or to the potential that a life’s situation provides the opportunity to achieve? There is quite a difference and the implications are quite significant. … Read More →
Leftist idealist or right-wing conservative?
Have you noticed the reoccurring pattern of almost hypocritical contradictions contained in my most recent entries? There seems to be a battle going on inside my mind:a battle between my leftist idealistic side (a perspective largely shared at the peace conference) that seems to abruptly … Read More →
Microcosms and macrocosms – we are specks of dust in a giant’s eye
“India’s chaos was bigger than your ego,” said Farhad Azad. “You have to remember we are but drops in the ocean.” He was right, India’s incomprehensibility had put me back in my place. Somewhere along the line I came across this song, it’s pretty funny. … Read More →
Lifting the blinds, and curing PISD
My PISD – my Post-India Stress Disorder – has been cured!!! Well, at least for the most part, for now. This post concludes over a month’s worth of writings on re-adjusting to life in Sydney post India’s turning my worldview up-side-down experience. I feel more humble … Read More →
August 2010
Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
So I watched The Men Who Stare At Goats for the second time, and loved it just as much as I did the first. I’m not joking. I know it got terrible reviews, but I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. And I … Read More →
Chocolate slavery and the tragic flaw of humanity in the 21st century
Didn’t they abolish slavery a couple of hundred years ago? Well no – it continues… and it continues such to provide the “haves” with what (in my opinion) is the most delicious tasting delightful experience of all my being: chocolate. In my opinion there is … Read More →
Of the emails I sent, Nestle was the first to reply. I didn’t realised that they purchase 11% of the global supply of cocoa-that’s massive! Read their correspondence for yourself below if you wish. While I haven’t heard of UTZ certification, I have to say … Read More →
“Are you happy?” A friend asked me a couple of months ago. “Yes, of course.” I answered without a second thought. Things were up-in-the-air at the time, and I was struggling with this and that, but I was enjoying all of that. For sure I … Read More →
Inspire: To Be Inspired – Sydney laneway ball photos
Event photography at a fundraiser for The Inspire Foundation – a charity established in direct response to Australia’s then escalating rates of youth suicide. www.inspire.org.au Dress as “something or someone that inspires you”. I was an angel AND a devil, with the philosophical justification that the existence of … Read More →
If you don’t wanna be doing that in ten year’s time… then
“If you don’t wanna be doing it in ten years time… THEN STOP DOING IT NOW!!!!” a wise chick said to the sister of a hen. Among the haywire of my sister’s hens party, Nadine McKenzie shared what has now become one of my new … Read More →
Inspiration: angels, devils, and suicidal ants.
While in the past I’ve aspired to balance, I’ve come to embrace the imbalance, accepting that balance is found in the wholeness of all that exists, and over time – it doesn’t have to exist in every moment I experience. The yin and yang – … Read More →
Lindt LIED. No more chocolate for me.
SEE THIS ENTRY, AND IT’S CORRECTION, IN THE NEXT ENTRY http://www.julietbennett.com/2010/08/18/correction-lindt-didnt-lie-we-can-eat-lindt-chocolate-in-peace/]
Correction: Lindt DIDN’T lie. We can eat lindt chocolate in peace!
There are two parts to this entry. One that was posted earlier today, which I am redirecting to this one so to ensure I don’t communicate any misleading messages. Lindt LIED. No more chocolate for me. While about a year ago I posted the good … Read More →
“Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question which is whether or not to commit suicide,” said Alan Watts, quoting Albert Camus (going on to say he believes there are five serious philosophical questions… see audio book on you tube below) It is … Read More →
San Churro, gluttony and my fair trade chocolate question
San Churro, if you don’t know, make the best hot chocolate in the world. The Azteca is full of chili and very thick hot chocolate goodness. A few weeks ago after a session of indulgence, my friend asked me how my drinking chocolate fit into … Read More →
The “PAPER ECONOMY” and the GFC
Why did the Global Financial Crisis actually happen? The best explanation I have come across was when about this time last year Canadian professor Jim Stanford came to speak at my uni – he tries to demystify the economy by explaining the concepts and jargon … Read More →
September 2010
Are the laws of science and “God” the same thing?
”Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist… The question is: is the way the universe began chosen … Read More →
Okay, so we draw in two dimensions, live in three, and think in four (I guess seeing as most of our thought is based around time…). What would a fifth dimension look like? And a sixth? Or a tenth? Could other dimensions exist outside our … Read More →
Potentialism: a new system based on humanity’s collective creative potential
I posed this question to Q&A, a political TV show in Australia, sometime last year. They didn’t air it but it’s had a lot of views on their website, and a comment or two… “We need a new system” There is something fundamentally wrong with … Read More →
Time is an aspect of life I have always been a little obsessed over. It ticks by, “tick tock”, and never returns. When you are bored or doing something you hate it, goes by far too slow; and when you are busy or doing something … Read More →
Have you heard of Peace Day? It’s the 21st of September, every year. Do you know the story behind it? Peace One Day is the story of one man trying to get the global community to establish the first ever annual day of global ceasefire … Read More →
Homoerotic “platonic” eulogies to Love
“I have to tell you that I’m really in a pretty bad state from yesterday’s drinking, and I could do with a break. I think the same goes for most of the rest of you as well, since you were there yesterday. So what do … Read More →
“It’s easier said than done.” I think we all have discovered this at some point or another. A couple of weeks ago I was struggling with a few big decisions and I punched the following rant into my phone on my way to work. In … Read More →
Optimal Trajectory: your choice, or chosen for you?
Is your optimal trajectory something that you choose, or something that chooses you? I think the answer to this question can be found in the study of narrative, quantum physics, and process philosophy – the topic areas I’m studying for my Master of Philosophy – … Read More →
My Blog’s Birthday: One Year On
Birthdays, for me, are a time of reflection. I started this Blog on the 7th of September 2009, which means I have just missed its one-year birthday. That makes it due time to reflect and evaluate this blog: where it’s come from, where it’s going, … Read More →
Mastering Conflict: A Journal on Peace & Obesity
Welcome to Peace and Conflict Studies. First assignment: to write five journal entries that reflected on the learning process throughout the first half of semester. Written on the first day back at university, after five years of working, travel and a six months teaching … Read More →
Mastering Conflict: A Journal on Cyber Conflict & Celebrity
11 March 2008 (Journal entry #2 – part of an assignment for “Key Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies”.) Tonight when I arrived home my Opa was watching the channel 7 news. Two stories of conflict caught my attention. The first was ‘cyber conflict’. Personal … Read More →
Mastering Conflict: Ignorance is NOT Strength
25 March 2008 (Journal entry #3 – part of an assignment for “Key Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies”) “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” It’s our Easter vacation and I just watched George Orwell’s ‘1984‘ for the first time. Propaganda, ‘big brother’ … Read More →
October 2010
Can nice guys they finish first? Or is it always the bad boys who win the game? While you probably thinking I’m referring to my choice in men, I ask this question in a more general evolutionary context – inspired by a BBC documentary by … Read More →
Mastering Conflict: A Journal on the Business World
9 April 2008 (Journal entry #4 – part of an assignment for “Key Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies”) Something dawned on me this week while learning about security threats. My undergrad degree is actually relevant! When we learned about the inter-disciplinary nature of Peace … Read More →
Mastering Conflict: Journal on Peace & War
19 April 2008 (Journal entry #5 – final part of this assignment for “Key Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies”) “If you want peace, prepare for war” The last few weeks have focused on the concept of Security, and at the Iraq Never Again conference … Read More →
What motivates our decisions? Pleasure/pain; authority; social contracts; or some kind of internal judgement mechanism? Kohlberg identified the development of moral maturity as having six stages within three levels. The pre-conventional level involves punishment and pleasure-seeking orientation enforced by authority and observed mostly in early … Read More →
2am Saturday morning Isn’t it funny how when things change, it’s usually overnight. One day I have a social life – like every day and every night filled with some kind of pre-organised plan. And the next – NOTHING. Not one little thing. Oh yeah, … Read More →
More Chess and Sex – talking Peace with Army boys
This is a story within a story – an episode among Friday night’s random route home. A conversation between a peace lover and army dudes – about war and love and perceptions, and chess and sex. “What do you do?” A visiting American army boy, … Read More →
You are what you read (and watch and hear)
“You are what you eat” – yes, this is true. But also “you are what you read” (and what you watch and hear)… My mentor once told me that what you are reading now, and who you are talking to, is the biggest indicator of … Read More →
Today I got my first rejection from an academic journal I submitted a paper too. Today I was reminded of my lack of knowledge and lack of experience. Today I was reminded to be humble as in approach. Today I stressed about whether I would … Read More →
After facing rejection and depression that followed some emails and the lecture on Palestine and Israel, I went to the library and found myself inside my own little metaphoric story: I was looking for a book but I couldn’t find it. The number system can … Read More →
A deeper exploration of Resolution Theory
Following a question from someone who came across this blog, I was inspired to revisit Resolution Theory – Gregory David Roberts’ philosophical and cosmological model shared through Khader Bhai, the Mafia don, in Shantaram: The Novel. Roberts writes: “The whole universe is moving toward some … Read More →
Population Growth and Climate Change – A Debate
Last night I went to Population Growth and Climate Change – A Debate at Politics in the Pub at the Gaelic Club in Surry Hills. I had had a long day at a Post-Graduate Law Conference where I presented my paper A Breach of Child … Read More →
November 2010
Ikigai – a reason to wake up in the morning
Why do you get up in the morning? Does an answer come into your mind straight away? It does for the people in Okinawa, and it thought to be one of the key factors in their longevity – estimated to lengthen the lives of the … Read More →
I like experimenting, trying things I’ve never tried, testing one thing against the other – whether it be conducting little social experiments, buying the strange looking packet of dry fish from the Asian section of the supermarket, or giving the superstitious options on society’s menu … Read More →
Mastering Philosophy: A Love of Wisdom
Before I even properly knew what philosophy was, I knew I wanted to study it. I remember being drawn to it and religion when I first finished school, but my UAI and father’s advice lead me to study Business. I know the world in the … Read More →
Don’t be so hard on yourself… sometimes its soft
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” said one of my friends over coffee today. “Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s soft,” he laughed. “It’s important to have goals and dreams and expectations, but it’s more important to have a sense of humour about them.” I can … Read More →
Have you met TED? Introducing “Narratology”
Which Ted? Ted from How I Met Your Mother, or Ted-Talks? While both are wonderful sources of inspiration, today I will using the former to introduce “Narratology”. Narratology is the study of narratives, the stories lived and the stories told. The stories in one’s head, … Read More →
Mapping out religious beliefs and learning to think
I drew this up flowchart / map of religious beliefs about three years ago. I agree with this quote in part. Thinking can be terrifying. At the time I drew up this map I was at the beginning of an emotional process of learning to … Read More →
So I’ve been talking about this book for far too long – the travel memoir about South America. I’ve been working on it for too long, editing it for too long, putting my favourite snippets next to my favourite songs in attempt to get back … Read More →
“Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour,” said the William Cowper, an English poet of the 18th century. Food tastes okay without spices, but can anyone deny the enhancement of flavours when little salt and spice is added to the … Read More →
On Monday I did my first fashion shoot for the year. I was modeling my sister’s fashion line (she’s a fashion student at Sydney Tafe) with Gilbert Rossi, an amazing photographer who I’ve remained friends with over the years. Rossi was standing about 8 metres away … Read More →
Mastering Philosophy: Heraclitus, Parmenides & Zeno
Is reality undergoing constant change or is change an illusion? Heraclitus, Parmenides and Zeno were pre-socratic early Greek philosophers (before Socrates), living and philosophizing around 500 B.C. These philosophers had very different ideas about metaphysics – the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature … Read More →
A Conversation with Plato on Being and Change
Plato (428-347BC) is known for putting words in other people’s mouths – into dialectical scenarios where each of the characters take turns expressing an opinion, for example in Symposium they speak of love. (See entry: Homoerotic Platonic Eulogies to Love) Following what Heraclitus, Parmenides, and … Read More →
December 2010
Jessica Jackley: Poverty, money and love
Just thought I’d share this inspiring story about Jessica Jackley who set up Kiva – the world’s first peer-to-peer online microlending service – which allows people in rich countries to lend small amounts of money directly to people in poor countries, and from this dramatically … Read More →
Humanity: are we an empathic civilisation???
Something many of us probably do not know is that connected to our drive to survive, is an empathic disposition driving the evolution of “civilisation”. Humans have a long history of empathy that unfortunately our history books tend to forget about. The book The Empathic … Read More →
“The surprising truth about what motivates us”
Money is a motivator, but only so much as if you don’t pay enough they won’t be motivated. Dan Pink says, in this RSA production, that after this basic benchmark is reached there are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: 1. … Read More →
It was the burgeoning of the Dark Ages – a time where a blog like mine that questioned the “truth” would have me (like my new heroine the philosopher Hypatia was) called a witch, stripped naked, skinned alive, torn into pieces and burned. Tonight I … Read More →
Tonight I had a decision to make: dinner with mum, PeaceBeliever Tribute to John Lennon at Oxford Arts Factory, bed (I was up late blogging last night), try to keep awake and study, or go to a yoga class. My body craved the hot room, … Read More →
Support Wikileaks Protest – Sydney Town Hall Tomorrow
I’ve never been much of a hands-on activist. While I support many causes, I tend to action my support in different ways. But tomorrow’s protest is different. Tomorrow is about making a stand for our fundamental freedoms, for democracy, free media and free speech. The … Read More →
All my life I have had a tendency to “go with the wind” so to say. It hasn’t been a completely submissive relationship. It sounds strange to say but the wind has tended to listen to my requests. It blows me around a little but … Read More →
Protests and balls, left and right…
There are two sides to every story. We all know this, even if we choose to only see our side. Seeing the side of others takes empathy, a virtue that (unlike patience and many other virtues) I think I’m not half-bad at. Lucky so, given … Read More →
Protests and balls, another Wikileaks rally (Town Hall 530pm TODAY), and the Left-Right Paradox.
Today the Westminster Magistrates’ Court will decide the fate of Julian Assange, well at least whether or not he will get bail. And so while I haven’t even told you much about last Friday’s rally yet, I had better briefly inform any Sydney readers that … Read More →
Preserving “The Pyramid” – the reason things are the way they are…
“Things are the way they are because they have been designed to be this way,” a friend of mine said. “It’s all about preserving The Pyramid.” What’s The Pyramid? Let me tell you… “The Pyramid” (according to my friend) is a method of social, economic … Read More →
Rethinking “The Pyramid” – do alternatives exist?
I want to revisit the social, economic and political pyramid I discussed in my last post, sharing my evolving thoughts on the question: do alternatives exist? While it seems overall human civilisations only really know the pyramid, if we think outside the square – could … Read More →
Stories, Boxes, and Things that Don’t Fit
Christmas is full of stories and boxes, as are our lives. Every day, in every interaction, and in almost every thought, we seek to put the things we see, hear, smell, taste or feel in categorical boxes, and attach stories to them. For a simple … Read More →
Photo:
The latest edition to my life narrative – my scoot!
References:
[1] Michael J Toolan, Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London: Routledge, 1988). p 47.
Variety … the spice of life
“Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour,” said the William Cowper, an English poet of the 18th century.
Food tastes okay without spices, but can anyone deny the enhancement of flavours when little salt and spice is added to the palate?
When it comes to life, I see nothing wrong with a life that plots along – working, watching television, catching up with friends, etc. etc… but like spice to food, variety gives life a whole new flavour.
This year I have experimented with some new spices – a new home, a new job, a new degree, a new sport … but in the process I seem to have let some of my old favourites expire.
Last week I pulled some out of my pantry, and made the most incredible dish (so to say): I taught my first Pilates class and did my first photoshoot for 2010. Somehow in my bookish ways I had forgotten the joy I get from these things.
While it’s great to embrace the new, and to get focussed on something in particular, life seems to get better the more varied the activities it involves.
Of course there are limits. Like a tummy after over-spiced foods, we don’t want to overdo it.
In the pursuit of balance this week has reminded me that in the process of discovering new spices, try not forget the old. Looking ahead to 2010 I see no reason not to mix the two together… and I wonder what creative flavours they may concoct?
I will keep this post short and sweet, and leave you with a little question: how tasty is your life?
Photo:
Taken by Tenda in Tokyo (sorry Tenda, I forget your last name) back in 2006.
Have you met TED? Introducing “Narratology”
Which Ted? Ted from How I Met Your Mother, or Ted-Talks? While both are wonderful sources of inspiration, today I will using the former to introduce “Narratology”.
Narratology is the study of narratives, the stories lived and the stories told. The stories in one’s head, and the stories that become one’s reality. The story of you, the story of your people, your culture, your religion, the story of humanity, the story of the universe… stories surround us.
Roland Bathes, sums up narrative better than I ever could:
The narratives of the world are numberless. … Able to be carried by articulated language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting, stained glass windows, cinema, comics, news times, conversation … [and] narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society… Caring nothing for the division between good and bad literature, narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural. It is simply there, like life itself. [1]
Narrative is, in the words of another great narratologist Theodore R. Sarbin, our “root metaphor.” [2]
How I Met Your Mother has some of the cleverest scripting ever. Besides the fact that it has me laughing, and that it has even had me in tears (when Ted got hit by the car), my favourite thing about this show is the way they play with narrative.
In case you haven’t seen it, every episode is told from told from the viewpoint of a father in 2030 telling his children “how he met their mother”, recollecting his friends’ stories from and seemingly never getting to the part where he actually meets their mother. Episodes don’t always follow exactly on from one another and stories are played out as they would be told – with parts forgotten, exaggerated and imagined. Stories within stories within stories are told from individual people’s different perspectives, capturing many truths about our culture, social nuances, fantasies and life issues.
This is one of my favourite examples… “Blah Blah” and the hot-crazy scale!
Ok, so if you are a keen follower of this blog, you will notice that (once again) I am jumping eclectically from one topic to another. The other day I introduced my plans for studying philosophy, and now I’m talking narratology. Where is my structure? My staged methodolic organised research? It might make no sense to anyone else but it is there, somewhere in my unconscious and subconscious mind, I just haven’t identified it yet.
My approach to research is more intuitively led – and I like it this way, it keeps things fun. I’m also interested the application of the concepts I’m studying – rather than just the theory. The different theories I’m reading about seem to overlap and shine lights on each other.
What does narratology mean for philosophy and religion and big history? What does Social Construction Theory have to do with Faucault’s Discipline and Punish, with power, structure and agency? What does this have to do with our ecological trajectories? What does this mean for me, and the life I am living? These are the sort of questions going through my head.
It might seem mind-boggling, with complicated topics layered upon one another, but I get bored easily, and this keeps me entertained. I would much prefer move organically through the literature, reading whatever topic makes me excited in a moment, rather than over-indulging in one of them and moving sloggishly onto the next. How this pans out in pulling together a large body of academic work… I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.
As I learn about these very interesting mind-twisting concepts, I will share them. If you get lost in my brain, in the hopping from one topic to another, then I appologise – it probably means I’m just as lost as you!
Long story short – if you haven’t met Ted then you should meet him soon!
References:
[1] Barthes 1966 essay Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, quoted in Michael J Toolan, Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London: Routledge, 1988). p. 6.
[2] Theodore R. Sarbin, ‘The Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Psychology’, in Sarbin ed., Narrative Psychology : The Storied Nature of Human Conduct (New York: Praeger, 1986b).
Farewell Superstitions
I like experimenting, trying things I’ve never tried, testing one thing against the other – whether it be conducting little social experiments, buying the strange looking packet of dry fish from the Asian section of the supermarket, or giving the superstitious options on society’s menu a really good shot. But in my mind, three strikes and you are out, and I’ve now done three pretty long experiments with fortune tellers and “make a wish” superstitions. In each of these experiments I gave the superstition the benefit of the doubt and gave it a full go, yet not even the placebo effect brought an ounce of truth from these experiments.
One was an old fortune teller on the streets of Amsterdam, “Baba”, who in 2006 sat me on a park bench and he told me I was having dilemmas about two men and gave me dates for marriage and children. At the time I thought I was having dilemmas only about one guy, but my imagination stretched it to include another guy I was traveling with. I can’t remember all the details but I’m pretty sure those dates included marriage at 28, and kids at 29, and… (thankfully) NOTHING! Even if I only recently turned 28 I think I’m safe to say Baba was wrong.
The second was an “intuitive life guidance” chick in Sydney who among many career and life projections about marriage to a human rights lawyer when I’m 33, and kids at 34, said I’d have a summer romance in Bondi that would start in September with someone just a couple of years older than me. It’s now November and… nope – NOTHING! Well, nothing of the nature she described.
The third strike happened yesterday. I have been wearing one of the “Fita do Senhor do Bonfim” ribbons (in photo above) since a friend wrapped it around my wrist in Brazil in February 2009. “Three ties and three wishes – when the ribbon comes of you wishes come true…”
The ribbon after almost two years:
For almost two years the ribbon on my wrist got thinner and thinner, uglier and uglier. I covered it up for photoshoots and weddings, playing out this superstition (of course for the fun of it more than anything else). Granted I made some pretty big wishes (that I still think will come true) but the ribbon fell of yesterday, and… NOTHING!
That’s three strikes.
So while I still have my own slightly superstitious beliefs about how personal intuition can sometimes be connected to some universally connected source of intuition (through “the power of intention” or “law of attraction” or “prayer”), I will definitely think twice before bothering with another experiment that something kinda annoying like a ribbon, or paying someone else for their “intuitive” time…
Goodbye superstition, hello personal agency.
While there are some societal structural limits on what I’ll do with my life, these little experiments have reminded me that most human-created superstitions are bull****.
No one can know your future better then you do.