ISLANDBABY

a long little drive

2008-05-01T07:46:00.016+10:00

woo and i took off for 2 weeks in early january and went driving driving down the east coast of australia in woo's trusty steed of a car, ANF, all along the victorian coast in the south, along the great ocean road, until we reached port fairy with its gorgeous 200 year old huts and churches from a time when irish people were very short and they came to australia to kill some whales ... and then we turned inland. ned kelly country. gold rush country now turned grazing land. a whole driving circuit. a. road. trip.

we drove. a lot. and tented it. and caravan parked it. and beached it. and melbourned it. and just watched it all go by really. and it was beautiful.

nothing feeling better than leaving sydney. leaving sydney. leaving. sydney.
crashing in bermagui where the lighthouses start and little kids with ipods for ears sing unaccompanied for their indian supper at the cafe on the corner
driving out of jindabyne and down and through the snowy mountains national park. woo driving hours along tedious sloooow pulverous unpaved ... red and dusty ... national park driving track ... eventually emerging from the nsw bush & into victoria and the idyllic town of suggan buggan where everywhere you look is postcard heaven
tentless and grumpy and sleeping in front of ANF and under stars at lakes entrance
hitting 90 mile beach ... one of the longest stretches of white white beach in the world ... and being bitten bitten bit by flying biting sand
crashing in fitzroy with pinky u and y, gorging on home-made humous, lovely laundry and lovelier sleep in a bed
watching the surfers go out at bells beach
odd ball karaoke, fun fairs and $6 pasta in warrnambool
koalas and ancient lighthouses in otway bay ... tales of shipping lanes and straits and shipwrecks and schoolhouses and just australia being so far away from anywhere
no place for our tent at the inn in lorne
fresh prawns and chips on the beach in apollo bay
circling tower hill crater ... having been sent there by eugene von geurard
a helicopter ride over the 20 million year old 12 apostles ...
baking our bodies on a victorian beach
sitting at the top of the rugged mountain ranges of grampians national park with its rolling rocks and purple trees and surveying the wide flat world below
gold rush diaries and pottery in bendigo
in the stoop of the tent as night falls, drinking beers cooling in a bag of ice
a bermuda triangle wander along along along a solitary flat road in search of mysterious aboriginal hand paintings
an edward hopper-esque backpackers/motel in canberra ... a hard bed in a capital of wide flat streets and wide flat faces.
all the while looking looking. looking at this beautiful country really

so what can i say? every road looked different. driving through ski parks in a wildflower summer. driving along absolutely spectatcular world-class coastlines - from the start of 90 mile beach to the end of the great ocean road. watching geese fly over salt lakes and the grazing land shimmer in the distance. smashing light and tangy chips and mini flake chocolate bars all over ANF. driving through south gippsland farming country and listening to a 3 hour discussion of women living in the penal colony of australia on am radio. taking the scenic road over the main every time and watching it all fly by.

i think pictures speak better so i shall share some ...

topsy turvy

2008-04-30T18:05:00.006+10:00

lovers

wow. this week has brought some shake-ups in the professional life of moi ... things that involve a change in geography and more.

this Monday = i made a big big decision which means by the end of The Year of Alex, maybe even by her next bondei, ricebag might be living in another country ... will be living somewhere she has lived before ... having returned to another ples ...

then today my boss came in with an amazing opportunity ... too good to pass up that will see my current role drastically change by ... Monday next

everything a bit topsy turvy right now ... oooh.

so the next few posts are going to be about my life. here. in sidonee. where stuff matters. sometimes. and for now, anyway.

it is what it is

2008-04-28T14:25:00.002+10:00

today winter came to sydney. the flush of chilled air that swooshes in as the balcony doors unclick, as the kitchen window is pushed up, when the outside comes inside. this week shall be the putting away of open-toed shoes and saturday sandals, the folding of summer dresses and floral coats. winter is trundling in and the winter coat and the hot soup boy make their return. sniffle sniffle.

at least MyMama is back in town. on holiday. of sorts. with her cohorts ... her old old friends and their hagen woollies. at least. at least. at least.

so now even more i am dying dying to go home. back to png-way. but whilst the desire is deep, it hasn't crystallised as yet and baby has to book some tickets so people who haven't seen her in longa time can see her still. on their home turf. i can't wait to meet a newborn baby yavita and all my oldest and loveliest ... and most especially BabySister ...

BabySister. be strong baby. please be strong. always always always always always. always. me.

quentin

2008-04-16T10:01:00.003+10:00

Big up to my old college principal Quentin Bryce who Kevin Rudd has just appointed the next and first woman governor-general of Australia.

Quentin Bryce has spent the past five years as the Governor of Qeensland. But her much-lauded career has taken her from being one of the state's first female barristers, into academia and the public service as federal sex discrimination commissioner. And a mother of 5!! I can attest to her elegance and fortitude and influence and am very proud to have her as a personal referee - let alone the next GG.

long sight

2008-04-10T09:35:00.008+10:00

my eye balls have been hurting. for months. so i finally got to the eye doctor yesterday and ricebag needs glasses. yes i am verry long sighted and my eyes are constantly correcting themselves to do the one thing i do about 12 hours a day - read. read. read. read. read. :(

and for the past few weeks my watch has been slowing down. so off i went to the watch doctor. and my 14 year old watch needs a $350 "overhaul" - not cheaply done. :(

and last sunday night i had an incredible screaming match with a housemate that we are evicting. and all week dealing with him has been terrible. terrible. terrible. his extreme passive aggressive behaviour scares me. yesterday he left a huge (unflushed) shit in the toilet in my bathroom. :(

today. the sun is shining in sydney. :)

last saturday i had the sweet pleasure of meeting bear's baby - isabella patricia lee - what a beautiful baby baby baby. :)

i wanted to walk the pilgrims walk of the Camino of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain this coming august but last night lucylu told me i should stay home that month and write. write. write something. and i am so glad that she reminded me to write. :)

lucylu is moving into my house on saturday. :)

le grande

2008-04-09T14:41:00.007+10:00

cannot believe i was taking these pictures less than 10 days ago at cape le grande national park just off esperance in western australia ... miles of white sand for a black baby

sad

2008-04-06T12:40:00.004+10:00

i know i said i have been feeling better. and i have. but yesterday i walked into a dusty little shop down newtown and and the african mother behind the counter with red eyes says to me "why so sad honey. dont be sad honey."

how is it that a perfect stranger on a perfect day at the corner of king and enmore saw through my glassy front to the splinters inside and could articulate that sunshine is not coming through the cracks.

most of the time i feel like crawling up into my own universe and hiding there for a long time but i every day i put my face on and that gets me through. and most of the time the cover works ... but it seems that its the people who are truly suffering that can see straight through me anyway.

and i tried to smile my way out of her shop but it turned into a grimace and she wouldn't let me pay. she wanted me to stay. inside her shop. like the act of letting me leave would mean i might disappear.

and i am just praying she read too much. in me.

being here and not being here

2008-03-31T16:45:00.010+10:00

hola readers, listeners, perusers, friends, foreigners ...

baby had her march in sydney but was very sick for 3 weeks, caught an awful virus that wiped her out. her spirit leaked from her sides and her desire went with it. yes, i was ill. ill. ill. awful. my energy and enthusiasm just fell out the window and took my like and my play with it. that was my yucky awful month of march. a grey march which followed a blue february ... 2008 not starting off so wonderful.

but baby is finding her way back now. just as i started recovering, at easter i took off to western australia with some old gal pals and we just lunched it right up in margaret river and then i took off on my own and spent a week On The Road jack. baby hit the turf and kind of didn't stop. until yesterday, when she came back to sydney ... and felt good about it.

so if i have been absent from this page ... it's because i really have been away. in sydney with illness and in south western australia with play.

___________________________________

and just so you know, for the last week, this is what I have been looking at.

just me, myself and i. driving. music blaring. singing at the top of my lungs. sleeping in the desert. watching a blue blue sky never unravel.

i got away away and i have just started smiling again.

now that kevin is here

2008-03-31T16:34:00.004+10:00

When the Australian elections took place late last year, I was celebrating. Celebrating!! Wow. Never thought I'd feel so much joy at the change of government other than my own ... but there you have it. A women deputy PM and just not having John Howard anymore - what a breath of fresh air. For so so many reasons ... not the least of which is a renewed hope in reestablishing the somewhat tattered relationship between PNG and it's most important neighbour - Australia.

And what does Kevin do? He comes to PNG. He comes and is welcomed like royalty. He brings with him hope and a clear sense of direction in what are definitely muddy muddled times. And the plan of his new government has its babis in the Port Moresby Declaration - a list of 20 objectives and plans signalling Australia's greater commitment to the region.

And so I cheer once again and keep my fingers crossed that our own politicians will meet him half way and start acting in a way that truly represents a desire to act in the best interests of their constituents and not their clans. We need to grow up and learn to eat at the big people's table rather than squabbling over left overs. People are suffering all over our great land and now we have a very real opportunity (for the first time in over a decade), through Kevin Rudd, to be as constructive as we can be.

______________________________

Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor of the Australian newspaper published this article on March 15, 2008

KEVIN Rudd wants a new beginning with the South Pacific, especially with Melanesia.Last week in Papua New Guinea, Rudd issued his Port Moresby Declaration, which promised more aid and a new era. And yesterday the Australian Strategic Policy Institute issued two new papers on our policy in the region.

The focus, both in government and think tanks, is Melanesia rather than Polynesia. There are three reasons for this. Melanesia is closer to Australia than Polynesia. Melanesia is in much worse crisis than Polynesia. And New Zealand tends to take the lead in Polynesia.

The four big nations of Melanesia - PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji - are each in a version of their own long-running crisis.

Rudd and his team believe they have a chance just now to make a difference in Melanesia. This is partly simply because they are a new Government. A harsh hostility had arisen between PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare and John Howard.

This was not a result of any particular mismanagement by Howard but because Somare was opposed to the Enhanced Co-operation Program through which Australia inserted personnel into PNG to try to improve the delivery of basic services and to bring some control to the endemic corruption in PNG.

As was evident in his effusive welcome, Somare doesn't have the same hostility towards Rudd. But whether the new goodwill amounts to anything, with Canberra's efforts to make aid to PNG accountable and to limit corruption, remains to be seen.

As with Australia, there is a new Government in Solomon Islands. The old government of Mannasah Sogavare was opposed to the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and gave shelter to the fugitive Julian Moti. The new Government reversed both those positions. Both Canberra and Honiara now want the emphasis of RAMSI to shift from security to nation-building.

The Government is also alive to any possibility of a little movement with Fiji, an indication that the elections will be held on time, a chance perhaps to resume some greater level of contact. This would be very well advised. Fiji's economy is suffering. Everyone, certainly Australia, has made their opposition to the coup in Fiji clear. Now is the time to draw Fiji back into dialogue and co-operation, not to impose any additional pressure that could exacerbate internal tensions. Rudd's speeches and press conferences in PNG and the Solomons were important and under-reported. They followed his policy in Opposition and begin the process of giving greater flesh to the Pacific Partnerships for Development that his Government will construct with the South Pacific nations.

These are ambitious and promise more aid and improvement across all sectors of Pacific society. Rudd was naturally up-beat in his speeches, but he did acknowledge the scale of the problems. For example, he spoke of the HIV-AIDS problem in PNG, noting that there are 40,000 to 60,000 sufferers in the country. With a business-as-usual approach, Rudd said, this number would swell to half a million by 2025. This would be a truly catastrophic outcome for PNG, and for Australia.

Rudd deserves praise for recognising the urgency of the problem and giving it priority when no other part of Australian civil society is really doing likewise. However, there is scant prospect of Australian success in Melanesia.

This is not because of any particular weakness in the Rudd Government but because of the sheer, bloody intractability of the problems.

Australian policy towards the South Pacific is like an old-fashioned upright clock. The hands are ever in motion, yet they pass through familiar positions in an endless cycle. First we emphasise our small neighbours' sovereignty and give them some aid; that's no good, so then we intervene a little in an emergency; then we intervene a lot; then that causes resentment and we retrench, and on and on it goes. Meanwhile the overall social and political indicators just get worse and worse.

The two new ASPI documents on the South Pacific are both very good: thoughtful, practical, modest, sensible.

Two big ideas animate them. The first is that we need to integrate South Pacific, especially Melanesian, economies into our own. And secondly that to do this we must open our labour market to Melanesian guest workers.

The first idea is plainly right. The second is less clear.

There are more than seven million people in Melanesia and only 21million Australians. It is hard to see labour mobility operating on a big enough scale to make a fundamental difference. Nonetheless it is true that Polynesians, many of whom live in New Zealand, have more opportunity to work abroad, and this benefits their homelands in many ways. First, they can send back remittances, which are a vital, non-bureaucratic and precisely targeted de facto aid flow. But also, their exposure to foreign ways and foreign standards gradually helps them have higher expectations of their own societies.

The Government is continuing to give this matter serious thought. I am constantly undecided about Melanesian guest worker schemes, in part because I have always believed that anyone who comes to Australia to work ought to have a pathway to citizenship. I certainly think it would be a great mistake for the Australian Defence Force to recruit Melanesians as soldiers without citizenship.

More basically, we need to understand our commitment to Melanesia is long term and therefore to train a permanent cadre of language and regional culture specialists throughout our military, diplomatic service, aid agencies and the bureaucracy generally.

Australia is poor at language training (something Rudd knows all too well) and our bureaucracies have a bias against regional specialists, and no one these days wants to specialise in Melanesia. But if we're actually going to make a difference there we need a core of long-term Australian Melanesianists. Training such people is a long-term investment but an essential prerequisite for all our ambitions.

for instance?

2008-02-22T08:26:00.007+10:00

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed the old-fashioned Values? You - you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.

Saul Bellow, Herzog, 1964

______________________________

Some of you may wonder why I, as a strong woman and as a black person, I might choose to quote this racially unsophisticated neo-conservatist, but the truth is, that Bellow as a novelist was a stylistic tour de force of brilliant intensity ... before he deteriorated into his deep paranoia later in his life.

Bellows' novels investigate the disorienting nature of modern civilization, the "many flaws in modern civilization, and its ability to foster madness, materialism and misleading knowledge" and the subsequent isolation and spiritual dissociation that envelops its citizens. I think anyone living in our modern world of studios and sublets and apartment complexes and middling malls, of franchise love and solo 1am sushi bars ... of bio electro magnetico metallico gadgets that get slimmer and thinner and skinnier and whiter all the time and hold more and cost less all the time all the time ... my sleeker, my bleaker, my my my ... so that anyone today can hear and see that he writes some kind of truth. And that is powerful. Perhaps because our alienation and otherness is what gives us our commonness. And I quote Bellows because he believed that despite (or because of) our human frailty, we have the power to overcome that very weakness (that lets in all the ugliness) by increasing our awareness of it.

And I'll be damned if I am not sitting here or wandering there or thinking inside or reading along, or writing about ... if not but for the sole purpose of increasing my awareness of the world in which I happen.

2008: THE YEAR OF ALEX

2008-01-15T09:52:00.001+10:00

Yesterday, walking through the 6pm rush-home crowd with their cloudy faces and downcast eyes, sidling along in their grey suits, scuffing along the grey pavements, all under grey skies ... I looked ahead and there was someone someone someone from the past. Alex. He looked tall and bigger and really more like the Man that his body always promised he would be. And what did I do? I turned around and ran into a convenience store until I was sure he had passed and then I came back out again.

One word: Chickenshit.

Or just: Shit.

And it just amazed me that when I saw him I felt so shit inside, so crap about myself, so ugly, so mean, that I couldn't bear to face him, that if he saw me he would know how awful I am and feel nothing at all.

And I know that sounds extreme, but there is some truth there and so ... I have decided, this year, 2008, is THE YEAR OF ALEX. By the end of 2008, if I am walking down some street some afternoon some day and should someone like Alex pass me again, I want to be so emotionally and physically and spiritually well (ie not perfect, not ultimate ricebag, but just well ricebag), that some kind of radiance is just is flowing from my eyes and my neck and my breast bone and my calves and my hips and my hands and just from right inside of me and reflecting off of every dull surface. And the only thing that that radiance says is that I know who I am and I love that person.

So that a Man like Alex would look at this ricebag marching to her own beat and have only one word: Damn!!

________________________________________________________

Felis Navidad. Hepi Niu Yia. Etc Etc.

Wish I could say it has been a ball of laughs since everything started spiralling and unravelling since I got to Sydney, but it hasn't it. And, to a great degree, it's been my fault that I let my work take advantage of me and consume me and my family hijack my emotions and my time and my frenetic life exhaust me and spin me. The result is that in the new year, upon some reflection and introspection, I have realised that I have been running around in circles in order to avoid some of the big questions ...

Like Who Am I? Who Do I Want To Become? How Do I Get Better?

How Do I Not Become A Bitch.

How Do I Not Become A Lonely Old Bitch.

Aaaaaaah.

So I need to sit down and clear through the white noise and simplify simplify.

And I am starting to do that by focusing. Focusing. Making a simple plan for the year, the year 2008 and focusing on a few simple goals. Mind. Body. Spirit.

And while I am sorting through some of it at the moment, I am going to start doing a few simple things as I tread water:

smile more and talk less
listen more and talk less
sleep more and sleepless less
read more and think less
rest more and worry less
walk more and bus less
like myself more and hate myself less
write more and publish less

THE YEAR OF ALEX isn't about bagging Alex.

THE YEAR OF ALEX is about my self-esteem and my phyiscal presence and my emotional strength and my spiritual power. It's about never running into a convenience store again to avoid the past and strangle the future.

so so proud : usa humiliated by papua new guinea

2007-12-17T08:42:00.000+10:00

Kevin Conrad, a young Harvard business school graduate and currently executive director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (which BTW, was formed earlier this year at the suggestion of Papua New Guinea, the coalition now includes 33 nations representing Africa, Latin America and the Pacific), born and raised in Papua New Guinea, made headlines on the last day of the United Nations Bali Climate Change Conference when, as the representative of Papua New Guinea at the conference, he spoke truth to power.

At the United Nations Bali Climate Change Conference last week, the US representative first said that the US would not support the proposed agreement to hash out a new treaty to supersede Kyoto and actually be meaningful, then was sternly rebuked by the PNG representative, at which point, the US did a complete 180.

BALI, Indonesia (CNN Article) -- In a dramatic reversal Saturday, the United States rejected and then accepted a compromise to set the stage for intense negotiations in the next two years aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

The White House, however, said in a statement that it still has "serious concerns" about the agreement ... The head of the U.S. delegation, Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, announced the United States was rejecting the plan. Her comments were met by booing from other delegations. Under the global warming pact, negotiating rounds would end in 2009.

...The Saturday session, unpredictable and charged with emotion, was a roller coaster ride for delegates and the media.

After Dobriansky's announcement, the delegate from Papua New Guinea, Kevin Conrad challenged the United States:

“We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”

Five minutes later, when it appeared the conference was on the brink of collapse, Dobriansky took the floor again to say the United States was willing to accept the arrangement. Applause erupted in the hall and a relative level of success for the conference appeared certain.

_____________________________

To put into context what PNG did, I am also copying parts of an article from a British newspaper, The Independent entitled "The World Gets the Better of Bush":

The mood had been building all week at the negotiations in Bali on a replacement to the present arrangements under the Kyoto Protocol which run out in 2012. For months the United States, and President Bush himself, had been insisting that it would not block progress. Spin-doctors were dispatched to assert, ludicrously, not only that the President was as committed as anyone to avoiding catastrophic global warming, but that the man who had spent years trying to destroy any attempt to tackle it had always really been on the side of the environmental angels. But once his hard-faced negotiators took their seats in the steamy conference centre at the Nusa Dua resort the pretence slipped away. They blocked virtually every constructive proposal put on the table, refusing any suggestion of concrete action by the US, while insisting that other countries do more and more. Ever since Bush first rejected — and set out to kill — the Kyoto Protocol, he had cited as his main objection its exclusion of big developing nations such as China and India. More recently he has indicated that the US would move if they took the first step. Sure enough, they came to Bali ready to take action on their own emissions — and still the US refused to budge.

It is simply not done in international negotiations for one country to single out another for criticism; it’s the equivalent of calling someone a liar in the House of Commons. But from early last week other delegations were publicly, unprecedentedly and explicitly blaming the US for the lack of progress. Worse, they were beginning to point the finger at President Bush himself, suggesting that things would improve once he was gone. That is the kind of humiliation reserved for such international pariahs as Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein. But even they were never subjected to the treatment that America received yesterday morning. When it tried, yet again, to sabotage agreement the representatives of the other 187 governments broke into boos and hisses. When Papua New Guinea told the US to “get out of the way”, they cheered.

The US buckled, as it has always done in international negotiations when it has been isolated. The same thing happened at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, last summer, and two years ago in Montreal, when holding the Bali negotiations was unexpectedly agreed. That is why Tony Blair’s fatal flaw of constantly trying to let President Bush off the hook — while doing so much to raise the profile of climate change internationally — was so destructive. That is also why it is so deeply disturbing that an EU source told The Independent on Sunday that Britain had helped the US water down the Bali agreement after a phone call from the White House to Downing Street. We must hope, as Hilary Benn insists, that this is wrong. The last thing the country wants, or the world needs, is for us to have replaced the poodle with a Pekinese….

Global warming is now the defining issue of our times, and it will determinie almost exclusively how future generations judge us.

november rain

2007-12-09T19:17:00.000+10:00

its been raining. pouring. buckets and sheets and floods and down and sideways and even back up. the rain has been relentless. and my heart is being blown in. deluge. of water water.

i am in a deep funk.

mymama is way way low and things are happening to her i cant control and noone can and somehow i have become the parent and not the child but she dont listen anyway and i dont know how to fix this broken thing.
babysister is MIA. in physic and spirit. and i miss her deeply but i also have to stop. stop saving her. and nothing makes me feel more disloyal than waiting for her to swim out of the deep end while my back is turned.
last week i had the worst week at work i ever had in my life. my little boss made me cry. not easy cry. but hard cry. in the ladies toilet. on the 38th floor. heaving cry. alone crying. and it didnt matter that he was wrong and off his nut - it mattered that i didnt walk out of there before he completed his rampage through my self-esteem.

and so on and so on.

i feel like things are very slippery right now and i dont think anyone can stop it. i certainly dont know how. i think i've learnt to read the current, but not to rule it and now i am close to my last ... and the problem is i am shit. i am shit at handling my life, is what all of this feels like.

november was full-on. and fast. and fucked.

and thats ok. is ok. is ok. it is ok. i guess down is part of up. but i just am tired. thassal. am just tired. and scared. quite scared.

we need ...

2007-11-23T12:33:00.000+10:00

haifa or redfern : its all soul

2007-11-21T13:02:00.000+10:00

if you live in haifa, israel, then i urge you to attend this exhibition (flier above) - my friend, Naama Son of Josef, is an artist. and more than that, a beautiful soul. when i was lost and wandering literal in the biblical desert, naama took me home and said "rest" and when i was ready she turned me around and said "this is the way home. go."

___________________________

if you live in sydney, australia, i urge you to attend this gallery opening (flier below) - my friend KZ, Man of Woo, is an artist. and more than that, a beautiful soul. he seems to love, very well, someone that i love, very much.

billy

2007-11-21T12:22:00.001+10:00

on saturday i had the greatest pleasure to meet gutter's new baby baby boy. billy.

beautiful beautiful boy.

billy is the first baby to come from our troop of boarders. long time coming baby. so glad you're here.

so sydney

2007-11-21T12:10:00.000+10:00

ooh. on a sunday evening. after yum cha with mymama and then basking in bondi, ricebag walked home through the park.

so beautiful. so sydney.

off of wall street

2007-11-15T21:53:00.000+10:00

this morning, around the corner from my house, in the very street i described 3 days ago, there was a fire. in the building of my dry-cleaners.

and 4 people got saved.

champion idealist

2007-11-14T15:44:00.000+10:00

today at work baby was mildly psychometric tested. and told i am a champion idealist (also known as ENFP - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving using the Jungian Typology test).

it's not rocket science i spose. and i do think a lot of what is said below is true. for ricebag.

The Champion Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in accomplishing their aims, and informative and expressive when relating with others. For Champions, nothing occurs which does not have some deep ethical significance, and this, coupled with their uncanny sense of the motivations of others, gives them a talent for seeing life as an exciting drama, pregnant with possibilities for both good and evil. This type is found in only about 3 percent of the general population, but they have great influence because of their extraordinary impact on others. Champions are inclined to go everywhere and look into everything that has to do with the advance of good and the retreat of evil in the world. They can't bear to miss out on what is going on around them; they must experience, first hand, all the significant social events that affect our lives. And then they are eager to relate the stories they've uncovered, hoping to disclose the "truth" of people and issues, and to advocate causes. This strong drive to unveil current events can make them tireless in conversing with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out.

Champions consider intense emotional experiences as being vital to a full life, although they can never quite shake the feeling that a part of themselves is split off, uninvolved in the experience. Thus, while they strive for emotional congruency, they often see themselves in some danger of losing touch with their real feelings, which Champions possess in a wide range and variety. In the same vein, Champions strive toward a kind of spontaneous personal authenticity, and this intention always to "be themselves" is usually communicated nonverbally to others, who find it quite attractive. All too often, however, Champions fall short in their efforts to be authentic, and they tend to heap coals of fire on themselves, berating themselves for the slightest self-conscious role-playing.

i've been called worse.

way to work

2007-11-12T16:32:00.000+10:00

hola peeps

those in sydney know it has been raining. RAINING!! last week it was raining like it hadn't rained in lifetimes.

healthy, clean, washing-away kind of rain.

and heavy. heavy rain.

and when ricebag walked around the corner of her house last weeks view was like this:

and this weeks view is like this:

oooh. pacifica.

2007-11-09T15:15:00.000+10:00

oooh. pacifica. pacific memories really. having a few echoes this week.

a lover to take back?

yeserday an old colleague, the cool cool JB rang to say "don't stay away so long you forget what it's like here [in png]". and i hear you lady. i mean, i know how close to the line all of this is and i promise i will do my best - i think that's all a baby can do (although i'm not sure just doing my best means i live up to My Promise (??)(and does that really matter??)).

ultimately (the way i feel right now) i want to be in png and thrive there and make babies there and create futures and ignite fires ... but right now i just can't envisage myself doing that without a Partner For Life and ... and ... and it seems to me i am just going to have to find a boy to take back there because when i was living there none of the men i met seemed to think i was the kind of woman they could throw their arms around and hold tight and say all of that feels like they were born to it. and i am not going to apologise for not being with someone unless they think i am magic.

so while i am away i shall play and pash a little too and get some funny and some hurt and maybe give some away ... but when i meet the man who says I Dig You, I Can Do This, Lets Play Forever ... Together. then i'll be ready to come home. i think. coz i dont want to go home trying to find a man to give me babies. if i did i dont think i'd have much luck. and if i am going to png. to live. and make babies. i definitely need a Forever Man to facilitate.

a lover to go back for?

a certain MissingB in Melbourne writes to say leaving PNG 4 months ago is also leaving ripples in her life and moving closer to Melbourne than Madang doesnt mean that one door closes - especially when you leave a part of your future behind and he calls you back there

and soon she goes back. not forever. but still returning.

lovers can wait

then of course i have pinkyu - who writes me well and hears i miss melbourne and understands me when i say i miss moresby too. pinky says baby should play and play in sydney. keep playing. soon a man is going to Stand Up and say You Totally Rock My World and Let Me Be The First Person You Call ... Ever Again.

and baby will say mwah!! and kiss off all the frogs.

until then pinky u says come come, she says to ricebag:

Hello darling,

It's time for you to take a break and come down to Melbourne.

You're coming to stay with us, and we will:

wander around;
sit in the backyard drinking wine and smelling the jasmine;
eat the best food ever;
drink tea in the middle of the night;
eat goats cheese rolled in ash;
giggle lots;
paint the town red, yellow and black;
wear sparkly things;
watch the sun rise;
eat copious amounts of vietnamese food;
bemoan the demise of the op shop, but still shop in them;
play;
hug;
etc.
I miss you!

Love and hugs and kisses,

Pinking

yesterday

2007-11-07T19:30:00.000+10:00

yesterday i did not get out of bed. until 8am. pure. indulgence.

yesterday i was jewellery naked. i did not wear any jewellery. no bitty earrings. no silver fish bracelet. no london whitby. no glittering headband. nada.

yesterday was melbourne cup and. my horse. didn't. come in.

yesterday i wanted to. be. in melbourne.

yesterday i left work when it was still daylight outside - i havent done that on a weekday since august

yesterday i cooked dinner while it was still daylight outside - i havent done that on a weekday since i got here. not. in daylight.

yesterday i hugged a verrry good looking boy. goodbye. in my kitchen.

i offered him tan, turqoise or black. and he said. black. is. best.

yesterday i took my colleagues to the best yum cha in the city. yum. yum. cha.

yesretday i had. one tsingtao. too many. at lunch. and should have gone another.

yesterday a taxi cab driver took me the looong way around the city, across darling harbour and down the rocks. cost me $10 more. than it should. but i didnt complain. in the 4 months since i got here, that's the first time i have been down to either. darling harbour. or the rocks.

yesterday. it. rained.

just october

2007-11-02T17:37:00.000+10:00

oooooh.

all my personal correspondences (read: email & textmail & voicemail) start with the word "ooooooh" these days.

wow. october was a hectic month. HECTIC. my Beautiful Girls from PNG came down and we stirred some shit and struck up a few fires and fell in Friend all over again and it was just a beaut 2 weeks. I felt SAFE.

i dont know how else to say it. but i knew i would didn't i tell you?

so yeah. we played and ate and played some more and ate even more. we sunned it up and legged it around and danced a bit and prayed a bit and it was all promises and futures and the kind of giving that families do, not friends and so they re-ju-ven-at-ed me.

and then they left me. back. they left me back. while they flew back home. to pom.

so here i sat. and played 22 for a while. and its been fun.

riecebag has been one Serious Social Butterfly. baby. from sunday fishing on the harbour with little brothers of old friends and baby showers with beautiful mommies, from long leisurely 5 hour wednesday lunches at Watsons Bay to poetry readings in little dark theaters filled with affection; engagement parties on fairy-lit lawns in well-heeled burbs to naughty cones in the park; champagne breakfasts with ancient friends and beery afternoons with newer ones; old faces and older faces; festivals in the park with jazz on the corner and capoeria in the shade; a bottle of rose and balcony over the edge of history; boys met 7 years ago and boys met in the lift; juggling work and wise and the commute and the walk and the stalk and the drive and the thrive; dinner parties in bellevue hill with publishers and dancers and bowling in blacktown with MyMama and her crew; tuvalu on my corner and coconut bread in my local caf; twinkling lights above my head and a book a boy wrote for me to read; pubs called the rose and beers called yum with fried whiting and sunny hi; and all the time the same backdrop ... sydney.

ricebag has been a Whirlwind Of Play. just october.

22

2007-10-24T11:10:00.000+10:00

i am living with a 22 year old. and he is turning back my clock. i kid you not.

i arrived in sydney feeling kind of 35 and 22 now has me feeling 25 when the truth is i am somewhere in the middle.

so whats he doing? i dunno. its a pisces/libra thing. we talk and talk and talk and because 22 is ... 22 ... most of this conversing takes place in the Contemplation Of, during the Consummation Of and the through the Morning After The Night Of copious amounts of alcohol.

so i have become this walking wreck. if i drove, i wouldnt be fit to drive - at any time of the day - really its been happening over the last few weeks with things being amazingly hectic. very (very) much so at work and now, very much so out of work. normally on a school night baby gets out of the office around midnight and goes home too tired to raise her head let alone raise a bottle to it. but noooooooo. since october began, baby gets home and 22 is there. waiting. with beers. and funnies.

so baby drinks with 22 and makes funny with 22 for like ... hours ... and somehow grabs a couple of hours of sleep before beginning the whole day again.

and then of course there are the weekends ... one loooooong drink basically. ouch.

but baby knows the secret ... its called "drip-drinking" ... basically drinking without a break but slowly. none of this binge-drinking rubbish. its called Getting Sloshed Politely. you'd be surprised how effective this method is. although its not cheap. drinking more only enables one to drink ... even more than before.

ai yi yi yi yi

22 is leaving australia in a month or so and we are feeling an escalation in beerage and funny-making.

yikes. i cant remember a day in 2 weeks i havent drank and heavily. heavyweight baby has hit town.

i could tell you lots of things about 22 but - he's 22. so you can probably guess some of them. like the time i came home at midnight to find 22 and his right-hand-man snorting cayenne pepper and skulling vinegar ... just for funny. and then of course there are the litany of pretty-pretty 20year old girls that 22 used to bring home ... for another kind of funny. and then 22 making his first roast ever and roasting the chicken on handtowel paper instead of a metal tray (i kid you not). and then other things 22 year olds do like drink and ... drink ... and develop scurvy from never eating a green or a fresh thing ... you geddit.

yeah yeah. but when all is said and done. 22 is just fun. funny fun. 22 kind of fun.

so i am going to be sad when he goes. 22 thinks he is lucky to meet me but the truth is baby is glad - i dont mind entering this alchoholic-funny-making phase. and i have been giving it a pretty fair whack. and while its making me suffer and making me exhausted (and draws long looks from my beautiful secretary who has recently had to bring me nurofen and berrocca in the morning - sometimes together) - its been bloody fun.

cheekiness

2007-10-19T10:23:00.000+10:00

ooooooh. i miss my little sister, i miss her. Babysister. miss her cheeky cheekiness and lovely loving. miss her huggy buggy and her smile. man, that smile can blow you away.

yes she can be a pain in the ass. but there are some stories only sisters know how to hear and only sisters can understand to tell. so there you have it.

missing cheeky.