Our Own Drum

Hand of Meg

Apart from a bush walk with Z early on and a visit to the library after lunch, we spent the whole day indoors today. While it poured with rain and hail outside, we made a chocolate cake, had some friends over to help us eat it, read books and played cards.

The only heater we have is a small gas one that keeps the house at an ambient 20˚C. Our windows are all double glazed and the floor, roof and walls are well insulated so our happy house was super warm today, despite the near snowy conditions outside.

After hanging a load of washing on the clothes horse in front of the heater, all the windows fogged up. We had some fun writing messages to each other on the glass. I had the idea of writing my blog name and using it as the header, but as you can see it didn't turn out that well.

Here is a photo of my monster hand the day we had the heater installed just over a year ago.

Rednesday: Number Six

I went for a three hour bush walk with Z and a friend of his yesterday. The halfway point was a visit to the house we lived in before this one.

This is our old letter box. I came home from Melbourne one afternoon and PJ had painted and stuck the number on it.

And this is the greeting I once wrote inside for our postman.

Axis Mundi

I had a meeting in Melbourne on Monday morning and then spent the afternoon with my mum for a belated Mother's Day celebration. We started off by walking up to Craft Victoria, where my friend Tash is having an exhibition of her work.

I took an entire memory card of photos, but not a single one does the show justice. The work feels other-worldly but my photos all came out flat. The porcelain, the scrolled paper, the poetic codes, the charted maps and the shadows created by the towers. How do I capture both the scale and detail? The boldness of the ethereal?

In her artist statement, Tash says:

Ultimately, Babel evokes a spiral passage both outward and inward. To unravel the scrolls initiates a return to the spine – the axis mundi, the source of a universal native tongue – love.

And here, the axis mundi of another world, a Mother's Day gift from PJ, Z and I, left in the bush for Mother Nature.

Red Pesto

After getting up early, PJ and I decided to go for a walk in the autumn morning.

We walked through the forest,

around the lake,

and up to the farmer's market where we bought, among other things, a bunch of Red Rubin Basil.

This is Ian, the farmer who grew it.
When we got home I ground up the basil and added toasted pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan and river salt.

We ate it on rye bread for lunch with some other garden goodies.

Then I stuck the basil stems in water because, gosh, they're just so pretty.

The Get Go

Two of my nieces stayed over last night and are again tonight too. Just before bed this evening, Indigo asked me what my favourite part of the day was.

My answer felt like such a grown-up's answer. I didn't say the bushwalk or the two hours on a neighbour's trampoline, or the colourful drawings we delivered to all the mail boxes in a nearby street. I didn't say picking wild apples and grapes or watching Mary Poppins or going on the flying fox, or meeting some friends up at the skate park. I didn't say playing mums and dads (why do I always have to be the naughty cousin?), or eating corn and cucumber fresh from the garden, but I did say the quiet breath I inhaled before any of this.

When I got up this morning, it was to the two girls and Z sitting quietly in the living room. They were writing all the activities they wanted to do on little pieces of paper, which they then picked out of a hat and completed one by one throughout the day.

My answer felt so goddam diplomatic. And although it was true, it was also because I just couldn't decide.

The Embers of Two Fires

After a solid night's sleep in our own bed last night, I woke and went for my morning walk. We had a great time away but coming home is a sweet privilege.

Highlights from Two Fires:

Joining the Canberra Bushwalking Club on their walk through the lush Monga Forest,

being away with PJ and O, getting some great feedback on my paper, buying a handheld blender at a garage sale, going to hear some great panels, being a tourist, learning some more about ecofeminists Judith Wright and Val Plumwood, buying some fresh produce at the local market, sharing food at some great cafés, spending time with Ingeborg and Phil, proprietors of The Braidwood Book and Print Room, feeling entirely relaxed and entirely thankful for sponsored holidays, coming home last night to our lovely village and our sleeping feathered friends.

Glorious Walks

We finished reading this to Z last night. It's the first chapter book we have read him in its entirety. It's also the first bedtime book that has caused him to request an early night.

Even though PJ and I are three and half years apart in age, we don't have as many childhood similarities – books, TV shows, films – as you'd expect. But we both read Roald Dahl books as kids, so it's so nice to share our memories with Z as he creates his own.

My friend The Dooch once told me about Roald Dahl's father. He wanted his children to have an appreciation of beauty so before they were born he spent hours taking his pregnant wife on what he called Glorious Walks in the countryside in the hope that the wonder of nature would be transmitted to their children.

Although I had no say in what Z's mum did or didn't do when she was pregnant, I feel pretty lucky that I have input into what kind of person Z develops into as he grows.

We Walked

Today PJ and I joined the Great Dividing Trail Association on their last walk of the year. We met at 8am for breakfast inside the volcanic crater of Lalgambook (Mt Franklin) and then walked 14 km to the picnic spot, a beautiful bend on the Jim Crow Creek.

Our walk leader, the very knowledgeable and very lovely Barry Golding stopped us every so often to talk about our surrounds; geologically, archeologically and historically in terms of the land's original owners, the Djadjawurrrung.

While several of us pooled our food for lunch, Barry asked us what we had learnt.

I learned, among other things, about Murnyong, also called the yam daisy; a perennial herb similar to radish in shape that was a preferred food of the Aborigines in central and western Victoria. I learned that I don't like what wearing hats does to the acoustics of how my voice sounds. I learned that some people are happy to talk about their limps and some are not. I learned that lines in rocks in Australia run North South. I learned that sharing food with people is one of the best things you can do.

Double Fudge

I guess that's what happens when you have older siblings – you inevitably get their hand me downs. In my case: toys, clothes, books and sometimes even boyfriends. 

I remember reading my older sister K's Judy Blume books. Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, Forever, Superfudge, Then Again, Maybe I Won't; I read and enjoyed them all with a dictionary on hand.

This morning on my walk I listened to a great podcasted interview with Blume, now 70. She was talking, among other things, about her writing process and her inspiration. One of her grandchildren loved Superfudge so much she decided to write Double Fudge 22 years later.

Yesterday we spent the morning with my parents who were visiting for a few days. My dad sat on the corner of our street with Z, who had an impromptu garage sale with some of his old toys as he has no younger siblings to hand them down to. (My dad blogged about it today. The above photo is taken from his post.)

I might not have been ready for Blume's books, but they spoke the right words to me at the right time. I might have thought I wasn't ready for a child, but my whole world has swollen to make room.

Having Time

Three years ago I phoned my sister K and asked what I could give J, her second eldest daughter, for her birthday. She told me time, and suggested I come up and spend a few hours with her as my gift.

K's answer jarred me; I wanted my nieces to take spending time with me for granted. And so I decided to leave Melbourne and move up here to be closer to them.

Today J celebrated her 5th birthday with a gorgeous prince and princesses party. 

Afterwards, Z and I went for a bush walk to burn off the effects of the party food. It was hot and we were keen to walk the loop road quickly. But for Z that meant climbing retaining walls, trees and embankments to find a good stick, an old can, some newspaper and what he thought looked like a wallaby bone.

There's a line in Capote's In Cold Blood that kept coming to mind: "Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time."

Public Concern

This is the first image that came up when I googled Private Public.

This morning I left later than usual for my walk and ran into two different parties of bush walkers in full Gore-Tex attire. At my usual hour it is just the native animals who spy me in my op shopped conglomeration of mismatched colours and layers.

I had my iPod and was in my own world as I listened to the latest This American Life podcast, so to see other human forms amongst the trees really punctured my sense of solitude.

The private made public.

Later in the morning over coffee I read the chapter of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine entitled, 'A Corporatist State,' in which she writes:

In some ways, however, the stories about corruption and revolving doors leave a false impression. They imply that there is still a clear line between the state and the [disaster capitalist] complex, when in fact the line disappeared long ago. The innovation of the Bush years lies not in how quickly politicians move from one world to another but in how many feel entitled to occupy both worlds simultaneously.

The public made private.

And then just now I read on (Text)ure and (me)aning about artist Sophie Calle's fascination with the interface between our public lives and our private selves.

Calle's followings, recordings and wanderings are her work.

She brings the public/private space to the gallery.

To the published page.

To the archive of the extraordinary ordinary.

The private made private made public.

Porridge Picnic

Yesterday PJ and Z met me here, at the half way point of my morning walk, with pancakes and coffee on the open fire. This morning it was porridge that awaited me.

Just as we learnt a few days ago that coffee made with carbonated spring water doesn't work, so too this morning we discovered that porridge tastes much better made with water without bubbles.

Carbonated Capers

After a delicious home-cooked breakfast, PJ and I set off through the bush towards a mineral water spring about 45 minutes away. It was a beautiful spring day and we wore backpacks containing a small gas stove, coffee, cups and a stove-top coffee percolator. 

Something went wrong: the coffee rose to the top but it was cold. Maybe because we used carbonated water, we're not sure. We stood around the spring and drank cups and cups of the delicious water, then things soon deteriorated transpired to us taking lots of photos and video clips of each other spitting the water out again.

Fighting For It

This morning on my walk I listened to a podcast interview with Emmanuel Jal, who at aged 8 was a child soldier carrying an AK-47 rifle in the Sudan People's Liberation Army. (He was later adopted by a British aid worker and is now a rising international music star.) 

The interviewer said that by 18, the usual age for conscription, people can determine right from wrong, but at aged 8, you haven't yet developed a conscience.

I heard this and thought nothing of it. Until Z saw this poster and asked what it was.

PJ and I explained to him that Fair Trade empowers farmers in developing countries, (though we left out that John Pilger has an argument against some Fair Trade agreements, saying they are constructed by the privileged).

In response Z said he wishes he were a policeman. If the greedy people are mean to the farmers, he would put them in jail for one day. If they do it again, he would jail them for two days. And if they do it again, in they go for three days...

I look at a lot of the injustices in the world and the generation of the perpetrators and I think: up until what age can our behavior escape scrutiny?

Redar

I rode my bike past this red grid the other day that I had to dismount to pick up. It's usually to fill my basket with gleaned fruit that I stop, not discarded bits of plastic.

I like red things. I like red things for lots and lots of reasons. And have done so for almost a decade. One of these reasons is as a means to filter because the world is just so big. Someone once called it a redar, like a radar, but only for red things.

My mum has come to stay for a couple of days. We walked through the bush first thing then read and wrote for the majority of the day. The plumbers came to hook up our water tank and we walked to a nearby trash, treasure and collectibles market, where I once again noticed how I notice.

I notice red. It doesn't matter what: sparkly shoes, capsicum, olive oil tins, tattoos and forsaken bits of rubbish I can wear around my neck.

In Bed with Murderers

After recently seeing the film Capote, I thought it was high time I read In Cold Blood. Before a late lunch and a bushwalk this afternoon, I lay curled up on the couch reading it.

Last year I read Tony Parker's fantastic book, Life After Life: Interviews with Twelve Murderers. It didn't take me long to finish; all I wanted to do was read it. "I'm going to bed with my murderers," I'd say to PJ before retiring with the book.

I am having a similar experience with In Cold Blood. I know what happens and how it ends, yet the writing is still so compelling. Oh the details! My favourite style of writing is Creative Nonfiction, and I can definitely see why Capote is called the grand daddy of the genre.

This is the rock that PJ and I sat on in the bush. We climbed a hill that overlooks the path I walk each morning and we sat in awe of where we live. We talked, among other things, about our writing in relation to the world, our output, our egos, our ideas. We talked about life during life and death during life and the ethics of Danish artist Marco Evaristti turning the body of a death row convict into fish food in the name of art.