Up Before the Sun

I'm not really a morning person. There's nothing new in saying this. So to get up at body-clock time of 3.45am this morning was an unusual experience. It's an eerie time of the morning, and having organised well the night before, I could take a moment to pause and look out from the balcony in Clovelly into the trusting sleep of Sydney.
I felt good. I was on the road from 4am to 9am to get to a day of work. It's really fun to visit and leave, and make variety and vibrancy a destination. The sense of sleep deprivation and dislocation gives a detatchment to seeing other people's everyday. Now I'm winding down and starting to digest all that happened, and didn't happen. I've printed out a snap of ordinary grafitti from Camperdown and in Ipswich it is cool urban art on my grey cubicle wall.
That's kindof what travel is about - cross pollinating places and people, rewiring things in ones' own brain, stepping into another time in the same place.
Glad to go, glad to come back, booking the next one soon.

Flushed with Life

A trip to my hometown has been a welcome expedition this weekend, and it's a blessing to be able to fill every hour with loved faces and voices. Food too, of course, for what other ritural do we have that so beautifully encapsulates trust and friendship than to share the staff of life? All my troubles and the troubles of the world and worries of my future have been laid down for 3 days and it is wonderful. A reminder that things don't always need to make sense or conform to a big plan.
Old friends have come home, and it is so very good to put flesh back onto the email. To see the delectable V&B back in Newtown was to see something put right in the world. I met some new souls too - Ross, writing in Stanthorpe; Stephen, funny and clever from Canberra.

Walking down King Street yesterday, chatting on the phone, I had been feeling uneasy I might run into someone particular with whom things for me would be uncomfortable. That queasy feeling of unrealistic expectation that can sometimes overtake a sunny day. Glancing up, I sawa tall man looking directly at me and there was a split second of mayhem in my brain and the entire system shut down. Was it the man I was wanting so desperately to avoid? He clearly recognised me, and I him. I had stopped mid word, stopped mid step, was literally standing gaping at him. His lights changed, the person on my phone said something, I stepped, he crossed the street we all moved on. Who was it? Where was I? God, he was beautiful. How could I know him? A few more paces and it all came back. I had worked with him briefly two or three years ago, and he had been beautiful then too, but arrogant and laughable. We had been telling his story just last December to entertain, as he'd been booted from the most tolerant workplace in the world. Here he was, etched into my mind, and I couldn't help but wonder what the river of life had bought to him in the years since he had earnt my emnity. There seems to be a current of meaning in running into him in this way at this time, but I can't figure it out right now. Coming home I saw him again, and neither of us had the mood to stop or acknolwedge the other. But we looked, and in looking what did we say?
I don't know.
But I'm writing again and the mysteries of human life are the most precious secrets in the world.

Australian of the Year

Congratumalations to Tim Flannery for being awarded the Australian of the Year. Yay! In "The Australian" he was refered to as 'a successful alarmist'  - well I guess you have to take what recognition you can get in Australian when you're not a  sportsperson.Still, it put climate change back on the front page for a day, and with an entire state on fire, floods and drought, that can only be a good thing.
Keep on alarming the bastards Tim!

and we're funny too

"Vegetarians take their place at the head of IQ"

THE elite high-IQ group Mensa has more than its fair share of
vegetarians.

That might be more than coincidental, according to new research which suggests that people who choose the vegetarian path are smarter than their carnivorous counterparts.

The study, published in the medical journal BMJ, traced 8000 people from birth and found those who became vegetarian by 30 had an IQ five points above the average at the age of 10.

They also tended to be better educated and of higher social class, but even after adjusting for this, they were still more intelligent, the University of Southampton study showed.

It's only logical that smart people are more likely to spurn meat, said Trish Kennett, chief executive of Mensa in Australia and a non-red meat eater.

"Smart people consider all aspects of their life very, very carefully. People who think about the ethics of killing animals will naturally choose vegetarianism, and variations of that, more often."

The nutritionist Rosemary Stanton said a vegetarian diet could not enhance intelligence, especially if people eschewed the brain-building qualities of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish.

But people with high IQs were likely to be thinkers, "and thinkers are probably going to realise the ethical and health-related benefits of not eating meat", she said.
(SMH)

Long Summer Weeks

Well they felt long, until I started working.

Isn't it amazing how sometimes life can just scoop you up and bundle you along. It doesn't feel like I've been doing all that much, but three weeks have flown by. Now the days seem packed to the gills with nothing but just getting through everything that needs to be done. Perhaps that's an outcome of the travel, of having a 9 - 5  type job, and being too tired to scratch by 10pm.

Some parts of the country have started to get some rain, and it seems like every newscaster in the country feels the need to quote the only line of Dorothea Mackeller that anyone knows. And no, I don't mean the one that goes "Green tangle of the brushes, Where lithe lianas coil" even though it is the best to say. It astounds me that in the one snippit of one line, they manage to get the sing-song voice in so you know it must be kulcha. We have a great range of clouds moving over and around our property. Riley found a crack in the ground last week that was so large, he put nearly his whole head in it. His whole head. I grant you, you doesn't have a really large head, but for a split moment, the scene shifted, and it looked like the earth was eating him.

 

Now I'm stuck on "My Country". I prepared that poem for a reading that didn't happen a few years ago. I do really like it, but there's some funny things about it that, if I had less irony, might be problematic to enjoying it. Did you know that it, one of the most famous Australian poems, is actually in part about the joy of watching grass grow! Hilarious. no really! Don't believe me? Fair enough ...here's the second-last stanza:

 

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

Puddle!

We got some rain! There was a puddle!!!!!

The mountains were all misty and greeny grey with their tops stuck into cloud and it was gorgeous!

Cracks in the ground have mostly closed up and one of the tanks is full again.

Yay!

New Year's Day

Another day of watching the sky - plenty of rain clouds around the country - none of them interested in lingering over our patch.

 

A fence needed mending this morning, and the lost cows were found. Guests from last night drifted off throughout the day. I had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, and crocheted myself to a standstill. I cooked moroccan lentil stew/dahl for lunch and vego shepherds pie for dinner. Here's 2007 - do I have the energy to be optimistic about it? I've been caught out so many times, that this year I'm feeling that whatever will be, will be. I'll just use last year's resolutions and goals, no use re-inventing the wheel now is there?

Full moon tomorrow night. I'm sleeping with all the curtains open so I can drift off looking at the stars.