TALKING TO THE RADIO

Dr. Dolittle used to talk to the animals, some people talk to their friends or spouses, I talk to the radio. The radio is responsible for initiating a multitude of emotions with its music, news and talkback but the one that makes me speak out loudest and most often is interviews with politicians. Take today, for example. There I was driving down the hill to get some ingredients for the cake I had to make for the gardening group to eat for morning tea. All very skippity-doo and so on, thinking about the jobs I had lined up for us to tackle and also about the post I had just finished writing for the blog. ABC radio announced the Minister for Climate Change and Water and began an interview about the newly-released plans to save the River Murray and all those who depend on it - Adelaide being at her (the minister's) mercy. All very predictable were the answers as they have been busy announcing this for months! Next question : "There is a chance that the water-allocation buy-back scheme may end up buying water from people who have an allocation but have not ever used it, so will more water actually flow down the river, after the government has spent $3billion of tax-payers' money?" At this point I arrived at the shop, opened the car door to get out, and said loudly "Of course it bloody well won't!" to the minister on the radio, just when an old lady emerged from the doorway of the chemist shop I had parked next to. She looked at me and I at her. Without explaining or even speaking to her I continued on my way....sometimes I just wish I had kept my big mouth shut!

ADDICTIONS AND PREDICTIONS

There are a lot of things that make people feel good and there are all sorts of good feelings. One of them is something I get when I write something that I am happy with. You would think that after 49 and 3/4 years there wouldn't be any good feelings that I hadn't, at one time or another, experienced. But the feeling of putting onto paper some words that convey accurately and colourfully(?) some idea or event, and more than that, which come to some conclusions through following paths in my head that I never knew were there, is a most enjoyable feeling. Mostly I set out with nothing in mind and see where it takes me, then adjust things a bit to follow new and creative pathways which just leap out of the keyboard in front of my eyes. Rarely do I even have a topic to get me going. Sometimes I get a spark from another person's blog or something else I have read, like the seedsavers handbook which I wrote about recently or some photos from my garden. But because I don't have to, I can. That is what freedom is and that is like a magnet to me.

I am only worried that this feeling is a little too all-encompassing and will lead me to some sort of addiction to writing. I can tell it is a drug-like thing and quite incomprehensible, really. Another kind of wonderful thing sometimes happens when I am in the vegetable garden. Like today, when I came in and wrote crazy lines about that song Mambo Number 5. I felt totally euphoric, which is very nice, but why should I feel quite so skippity-doo from a couple of hours with my hands in the soil? It must be those soil bacteria Chook wrote about once, which actually do have some effect on people. But really, these two things take me so far away from what I should sometimes be doing that it is very hard to leave them.

Poor Roger. He said to me yesterday as I headed off to the blog - "maybe I will catch up with you online!" I wake up at a ridiculous time - usually around 5.30am, bursting to get up and so full of energy all over again. It must be all those fantastic vegetables, I think. So, what is to happen? Gardening and writing are a perfect match which exercise body and mind. That sounds good; lets just hope it is.

GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS

I have been watching that new Australian show on the ABC called 'East of Everything'. I am enjoying it - its a bit like 'Sea Change', and that bloke, Art, is so....appealing. Any way, in the first show it referred to a book he was writing, called "Gross National Happiness". I thought, what a great way to measure a country's success that would be, instead of Gross Domestic Product (or Gross Dire Predictions and other alternatives!). Imagine, instead of a tax form, having to fill in a happiness form which might ask you things like :

1. How many times per week did you put someone else before yourself in order to make them happy?
2. How many times did you tell someone you love them?
3. How much did you give away, on average, per week? Include all garden produce, home-made preserves and other home-made goods, gifts to charities, time spent helping someone, clothes and other household items that were not old or worn out?
4. How many times did you laugh?
5. How many times did you make someone else laugh?
6. Can you count on more than one hand all the times you felt like singing along with a song, in the last month?
7. Would people say you are kind?
8. Do you feel you have achieved anything really worthwhile in the last 2 months? 6months? 12 months?
9. How often do you feel bored?
10. List all the things that make you really angry, then throw the list away!

Lots of people are not happy. Lots and lots. Not really happy, inside. I think western-ness is getting a bit anti-happy. Everything has gone topsy-turvy and there are not the community bonds to hold the fabric of life together - the cloth is wearing out fast and humans were never meant to lead a solitary existence. We need a certain amount of connections, even me who is more solitary than most, to keep mending the tears in the fabric we weave, otherwise we become lost and directionless and float about hoping to get caught in someone else's web, somewhere.

It is all about the community basket of life. Inside the basket of a strong community is sustenance and hope and sharing and these things fill the basket with rare and beautiful experiences. These baskets, of which there were thousands, seem to have decayed and lost some of their precious contents - some spilled over into the bottomless pit called greed and some has been chewed up and spat out by governments making false promises while others have just not been replenished because time has called people away from their hearths, where so much warmth used to be found.

I think we have to offer 'community' and have people take it up willingly. I wrote about this in the post on the 2020 vision. I really meant what I said. Giving, not money, is the only way forward - give all Australian families a plot in a community garden near them, some seeds, a fork and a ho-mi or trowel and some gardeners who offer their time to help anyone who needs it and watch the transformation. As people gather to see their space - strangers at first - tiny seeds of friendship, hope and potential will be sown along with the vegetable seeds and all will grow, in their own ways - some better than others, until a new fabric is loosely woven and the softness of the cloth begins to attract the outsiders who want to feel its richness and it begins to draw them under its shelter.

If there is just one thing I would ever like to accomplish for the earth it is this. With a renewed sense of connection between people I think we could make some serious progress towards extending our thoughts and actions to encompass the earth at large. I just don't see how else we can concentrate fully on the severity of world degradation if we can't even hold together long enough to get a grip on any solutions. First we need to make the cement that will hold the bricks together.

Gross National Happiness. Today's solution for tomorrow.

BORN FREE

I loved this song even as a child of 8 years of age. It featured in a movie/documentary of the beautiful book "Born Free", a true story about the Adamson's raising and re-release into the wild of several hand-reared lions in Kenya. Even at this young age I was attracted to the idea of being born as free as the wind blows. This blog is about freedom and I want to start by dedicating it to this book which started me on my love of Africa, wild animals and thinking outside the square. Here are the words:

Born free, as free as the wind blows
As free as the grass grows
Born free to follow your heart

Live free and beauty surrounds you
The world still astounds you
Each time you look at a star

Stay free, where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free

Stay free, where no walls divide you
You're free as the roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living
But only worth living
'cause you're born free

DOWN BY THE SEA...AGAIN

Sorry, but when the mood takes me somewhere I just have to go...
Each time it starts the second I get out of the car....a kind of aura begins to lift me out of whatever thoughts are in my mind. It can be the music I hear wafting along the esplanade from a nearby house or it can be the tinkle of the sea on the shore or the height of the blueness of the sky but it always happens and only today did I stop and register that thought. Every week on the same day I do a simple thing - go for a walk on the beach with whatever dogs I and my mother happen to have and I have been doing it for as long as I can remember.
It is not something I want to do with another person, but something almost secret because aloneness is special to me. Only in being alone can I use all my senses at once, or separately. Recently I have spent a few minutes of this time walking along with my eyes shut and relying on all other senses to keep me going straight, at a normal, brisk walking speed. It is so beautiful to hear the sounds of the sea so accurately, to feel the cool water as it laps over my feet and to detect the wind direction by the touch of the breeze on my face and arms. As soon as I open my eyes, sight takes over in a powerful way and dulls the other senses a little.
The sea is only a 15 minute drive from the centre of the city and the shore is crowded with houses old and new, jostling for space, but from the long, straight beach the sea stretches out to the horizon making a panorama devoid of human interference. It takes me about 10 minutes of walking, usually, to be totally free of my life and to be in a space centred on the moment. I think modern-day people pay money to go to meditation and all sorts of classes to reach this place but it is there, free to all, at the beach, if you just give it time to find you. And once you find it, it can stay with you all day, if you are lucky.
On a perfect day like today there is also time to see the changing details but when the wind is cold and howling and the sea is deafening and the walking is hard it is easy to be distracted by these personal battles and get back to the car having missed some of those tiny things that make the beach an ever-changing canvas. Ripples in the sand, tiny pieces of brightly coloured sea weeds, a seagull with one leg, stones of a certain shape and colour, shells of a different type, a pelican gliding inches above the sea, the texture of the sand, the sun appearing from behind a cloud, a dolphin fin only metres from the shore - all these and hundreds more nuances are like a kaleidoscope in slow motion, changing weekly or monthly or seasonally.
This is not so different from what is possible for us to experience in the garden but I find growing food provides me more with that skippity-doo feeling compared to the freedom and solitude of the beach.

DISCONNECTIONS

Reading Scarecrow's blog this afternoon I wandered off to look at The Sietch Blog , as recommended, and I found it to be very thought provoking as well as entertaining. Scroll down to Jan 14th "Where our food comes from" and you will be transported to a quirky series of still life productions of which this is one. They are created out of real food - as you can see there is cauliflower and broccoli under the sea and carrot stalagtites hanging from the cave roof etc etc This reminded me of some musings I had whilst snorkelling at our shack.

When you enter the world under the sea it is, on the one hand, a foreign land which we cannot fully participate in without the wearing of special underwater gear but on the other it is totally familiar. There is sandy soil, rocks, undulating hills and craggy cliffs. There are plants adapted to all these situations, just as on the land. There are animals happily going about their daily lives on the bottom, in amongst the shrubs and trees and some on the water surface. Waves and tides are the weather and the sun provides daily rhythms, just like on land. When snorkelling we get a view as if we were a bird, flying above and we can dive down and catch glimpses of what's going on in the caves and crevices below. It is silent and awe-inspiring and can make you feel totally focused on observing your surroundings - something we sometimes don't do when on the land because we are so used to it and so busy doing things.

As I tuned in to the 3 dimensional environment below and around me I wondered about the huge variety of plants I could see, just 10m from the shore, but invisible from above. Could I eat and enjoy some of these? I know other cultures do and I am sure the local aboriginal people would have. How do I find out, I wonder. As the years go by I get more and more sorry that I am of British descent because they seem to be the race most disconnected from their surroundings, and most stuck-up and arrogant to have gone all over the world killing the locals so they could take their land and attempt to grow cabbages and potatoes there instead. All the time dressed in stupid, crazy clothes and "teaching" the people about their god! How I would love to be almost anything but 3/4 British !

We had some work people around for a BBQ before Christmas and one bloke brought a Thai friend. I had tried to talk to her during the day but she was shy and her English wasn't very good and I was busy with all the food etc. After lunch someone else asked if I would show them around the garden and this Thai lady came too. Immediately she saw some herbs and my kaffir lime tree she became so animated - explaining how to use them in cooking and medicinally - and continued chatting and exclaiming all around the whole vegetable garden when she saw something familiar. Her knowledge was astounding and obviously a part of her background and I envied her that connection with her culture and her history. It is the same with the people whose stories appear in the book "Community Gardens" - their connection to their culture is so deep and moving and, again, I felt shocked that I feel no deep connection to the native foods of Australia, only a desire to learn about them, and the culture of white westerners, in general, appalls me.
Here is another of the creations with potatoes for rocks and pieces of chocolate cake too....

As I read the Cherokee book(see below) I suddenly remembered something from my childhood that my mother had said. My great-aunt Dorothy looked unlike any other member of the family - with skin the colour of a dark summer tan, straight, black hair and a round happy face. We all loved her different way of thinking about things and her happy nature. My mother said how odd her looks were "like a Cherokee Indian" . Maybe she knew something ! She never had any children but maybe her genes jumped over the generations to me and that is why I am so weird !

ANOTHER SHACK DAY

I have had a lovely session in the garden - sowing some seeds on the full moon (well, not actually ON the moon more like DURING) and a few other nice little jobs. I have come in to have my one delicious home made espresso coffee per day plus the last piece of my Christmas cake. Despite feeling almost skippity doo about picking up a roll of carpet underfelt from the front yard of a house nearby, I seem to have fallen into a peaceful and calm time and I can't for the life of me write something humorous even though I desperately want to - maybe its got something to do with the moon ! So I will type in another of the bits I wrote while at our shack and I hope you enjoy it...
There's not much less you can do, really. Each day stretches out and could, theoretically, be filled with things to do, jobs to get done, words to be said. I reckon that after 2 weeks here, its unlikely I could do any less in a day than I do today - I have achieved that perfect state of non-busy-ness.
I said to Roger yesterday, after a lovely snorkel at a remote reef we know, that we have to work pretty hard over summer to fit in all the activities (such as this one) that have become traditions since we got our shack 15 years ago. I mentioned 2 such activities and he said "Yeah, its tough. That's one activity per week so far" ! He was right. As I explained at the beginning we couldn't do less if we tried.
This morning I announced that I thought I'd go for a nice, long paddle on my board - an hour or two's quiet movement through a magical scene, with just the sounds of the water and the birds and, if I am lucky, my favourite sound in the world - that of the puff of air being expelled when a dolphin comes to the surface nearby before it takes in another breath . I worked up to this yesterday but didn't go in the end. Roger said he might come too, since he wasn't all that busy today. So off we set. After about 15 minutes paddling the wind came up and then got too strong to make it a pleasure so we headed in to the beach and went for a swim instead. Maybe I will head off again tomorrow or maybe next holiday. You see, whether I complete the journey or not is of no importance to me at all. When I reach this state of mind, I am interested only in the now and if the plan falls through, its because I choose to do something else better suited to the conditions - mental and environmental. It is pure life. Something to think about while having a coffee out the front.
That's interesting - "out the front". Some visitors call it "the back" but to us the sea is much more important than the road, so it gets the title of "the front" since it is on the seaward side.. The shack only has 1 door and I say its a "back" door because it faces the road and when you look out through it you see the shed and the clothes line which are between the shack and the road. A man we met brought us some whiting he had just caught as he said he had too many (I wish that was my problem!) and instead of knocking on the door he walked around the shack probably looking for a back door. He was a bit confused about there not being another door so he called in through the window! Of course we met up at the door eventually !
Today, after the paddle, the swim and the coffee I thought I would turn on the radio for the first time these holidays. But it was hard work having my thoughts guided by someone else and I kept taking out the earphones to hear the sounds around me - the birds, the sea, someone arriving at the shack next door, a car or boat starting up, even Roger ! Soon I gave up and turned it off - I am not ready for that yet. Ah....pure life again. Time - plenty of time - to sit and think about stuff or about nothing - just open the senses and let it all come by itself.
You know that song that has the lines "...I've been to Georgia and California and anywhere I could run. ..I've been to paradise but I've never been to me.".
Well, now I have been to me.