This, is what it means to live

The room is dark, but for the lights on the faces of the players,

on their hands as their fingers move
over the keys of the accordion,
the clarinet
the strings of the violin
the skin of the drum.

Their eyes are closed

as the notes lift, into
a tumble a line a swirl,

as the notes make stories,
vivid things I see with my own eyes shut.


I sit
hands folded in my lap
and see

a figure on a dock looking over wild water
the water slate-blue and wind-whipped
no boats or ships in sight

the music changes
and I see

a man struggling up a hill alone
through white-swirled snow that makes
his old cloak flap
he is a cloud, walking

the music changes
and I see

three girls spinning
skirts fanning out in circles
bright red, yellow, stripes of blue

the sight becomes sound becomes the music becomes one

And now my body moves
not consciously
not intentionally
not the toe-tapping, foot-stomping, body-shaking groove of me
rising to dance or doing a jig in my chair
but the here-and-not-here of me,

soul moving.

I've been taken
it seems
in this space,
through and to a dream;

my body follows the spirit it
hears
and I am not here
but floating.

I am in the note
the song

the beat
the drum.

I am in the mist outside
in the sea just below the hill
in the wet sky as it leans
down to kiss the grass.


This.

I see,
suddenly

know,
vividly and feel,

to the deep to the light to the bone,

this, this,
this!

Is what
it means (it must),
to live.

I'll be back…soon!

Oh, I have so much to say, I really do, but I don't know how to find the time to say it—do you think we could ask the Powers That Be for more time?

I sure hope you are all well out there…I hope your days have been a whole soup-pot full of goodness. I haven't been here in ages, but it's not for lack of wanting. I think I have written a blog-post in my head every single day.

In the meantime, we have been so well here, what with all the learning and the doing and the getting to places and being really very busy since the 'school' year started again, and the being happy.

We're walking on the beach (lots). We're cuddling cats (even more lots). We are writing and juggling and playing music and doing science and seeing friends and learning about Everything and Anything and writing some more (so many stories!) and eating scrumptious food (lots of it—these kids just keep on growing) and running workshops (at least I am—three writers workshops now!) and grabbing life and kissing it. I am even back to writing my novel. There. I said it. I am. It feels…beautiful.

And my girl was sick, but fell deeply asleep last night as I was sponging her fever away, and that was a gift. She slept for 9 hours straight after that. I kept reaching out in the bed and touching her skin with my hand to see how she was. Sometime in the night her fever broke, her skin was cool…and so I slept.

Life has been like that, this last month. I've stayed close by my kids. We have spent every second, it seems, together, and we keep our hands on each other all the time, to see how we are.

There's a lot of love going 'round in this house.

But not much blog writing!

While I've been away, lots of spammers have stopped by to say hello.

Here's a note from one of them:

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Isn't that a lovely note? Thank you, quick cash loans website!

There were other notes like this, but this one was my favourite.

I can't wait to post again here, a nice long blog post filled with photos. I can't wait to share lots of news. I can't wait to say hello.

I can't wait for the next moment and the next. I wonder what each one might bring…?

after the storm

the thunderclap was so loud that
we, standing
under the verandah to see the
rain slam down in sheets,
jumped a mile
and ran
back inside
scaring the cats and dog
who were perhaps already
scared
by thunder louder than any thunder in the history of
thunder

if there is a such a thing.

if such a history exists it isn't in a book somewhere but
waits
written in memory alone

for all or one of us to
pull out some day far in the
future or tomorrow
and say
remember that storm? the one where
we jumped and ran and laughed
so hard? where we were scared a little but
at least we
were together?

and after the storm
which rolled and
rolled

after we waited in light so
dim it felt like night

after the sun came back and power too,
all the lamps and clocks
dancing on with a click

I walked through the
garden

and under a just-washed sky

to see and take note of the wet
and the life,

to look at
all the small bright things.

tell-tale signs

You know you're at a folk festival when…

• so many people have beards this long you stop counting them after you get to 10.

(At first I thought I'd keep a tally of super-long beards, medium-length beards, and plain old scruffy faces… 

but then I forgot and watched the music instead :) )

• People fill a hall to hear a man with a voice and a loop pedal sing about water bears.

(…and did you know water bears can survive in a vacuum? 

…and can survive a hundred years without food or water? Fascinating!)

(…and here's a video clip of the singer, Mal Webb singing about water bears at another festival—very silly!
This song comes with the tiniest of language warnings. My girl didn't even notice it, which never happens.)

• The program for a single day 

is two pages long, 

is this packed, 

and lists a Woodie Guthrie theme concert.

• Chinese Lion Dancers 

steal your friend's shoe

(just because they can).

• Stalls sell everything 

from henna tattoos to hare krishna vegetarian curries

to sno-cones.

(my girl's first sno-cone!…and last. Too sweet and too melty!)

• The performance sheds are decorated with chandeliers.

• A woman from this band plays violin while sitting on a man's shoulders. Wild!

credit

• Bagpipes happen.

• A man plays with a ball on the grass

and makes it look super cool…

(…which my boy would have loved to see, but this day was the beginning of 

a week-long jazz camp adventure, with his dad. Very cool.)

• Hay is everywhere.

• You see a whole lot of violins…

• …  and even more accordions!

Most of all, 

you see a lot of happy faces like these

and you're awfully glad you came. 

:)

in this we are all connected

Our ginger cat made the strangest sound tonight…while squatting over our brand new day-to-a-page diary where we've just begun to write the many, many things we have planned for the coming homeschool year. You see, Term One is about to begin, and all the kids' classes are about to get going. Circus class and Band and Piano Lessons and Tennis are in their flashy shorts, some jogging in place, packed with the others at the starting line, their toes against the paint. People in this house are getting pretty excited about that.

"Woah," we said. (About the cat noise, I mean, not about the classes, although I know they will be fun)

Then, "Ohhh…"

And we whisked the cat to the floor and watched as he upchucked all over the tiles.

Afterwards, he repositioned himself and went for Puke Number Two. And then he just kind of sat there, in that post-upchuck daze we all know (don't we?) and really, really don't like.

I said, "Huh. I bet you feel better now, buddy."

I am sure he did, poor guy. But then…my husband and I looked at each other. This was the special moment one of us got to put their hand up. Who'd be so brave?

Well, my husband, the hero, went for it. He grabbed the paper towels, and with a swift and practiced motion, began to unroll great reams of paper for the Mighty Clean-Up.

But! Then!

With the swift and practiced thinking of a lifelong environmentalist, I said, "Hey. Why don't we just use the dustpan instead? And maybe the litter scooper thingy? That should work."

(In real life, I called it the Poop Scooper. But I wouldn't like to cheapen this blog by calling it that here).

My husband was fine with that. With a swift and relieved motion, he put the paper towels down, stepped (far) away from the puke, and let me do my Save The Planet One Paper Towel At A Time thing.

It was so easy, two swipes with the scooper and dustpan, and a quick scrub of the floor with dishwashing detergent and the job was done. Voila. And the roll of paper towels lived to see another day.

Which got me to thinking!


About how easy it is to grab a paper towel to wipe a mess instead of a sponge you'd then have to rinse or a dustpan you'd have to go and clean.

How easy it is to throw wet clothes in a dryer instead of stepping out to the line to dry them in the sun.

How disposable things are, mobile phones and television sets, junky toys and all those bottles, cans, jars and plastic tubs. How easy they are to buy, and replace, and buy, and replace.


And that got me to thinking some more…

about where everything, all these Things, come from. And how we are connected to them—sometimes only distantly, invisibly, but still and always, connected.


How a paper towel comes from a tree, a lot like that one on the street or in your back yard or the one in the Amazon Basin that helps you breathe.

How the sun is always there, constantly shooting down heat like a dare devil, blasting wild uv rays on our skin, and absorbing moisture magically from clothes without a second thought. How easy it is to use this Great Ball of Fire, the thing that gives us sunshine and makes the daisies bloom.

How someone made that phone, the phone we all seem to carry these days. In a factory, somewhere, someone with worries and wants put the pieces together.

And someone operating a machine somewhere created that glass bottle.

And that bottle, well, it came in part from sand, shaped and turned somehow into glass…

and that sand came from years of shells or rocks, rubbing against one another in a simple silence.

And we walk on beaches and trust those beaches will always have that sand, those timeless tiny rocks, that, if you're lucky (and the sand is fine and white enough), will squeak under your toes as you walk.


It is all connected.

Bottles and sand…connected.

Cute kittens and cute lambs… connected.

Canned tuna and those mega-fishing trawlers…connected.

Plastic and pollution…connected.

Trees and paper…connected.

Choices and consequences…connected.


Sometimes it makes you want to sit down and take a moment,

once you see the tiny lines,

the spider threads that interweave between you and me and him and her and it and that and those.

When you see how each action, each choice you make contributes to that web.

It's dazzling. And it's beautiful.

And it's scary and it's sad.


But once you see,

it's hopeful, too.


Because the Earth is an extraordinary, living thing…and we are part of the Earth.

We are the living web. The trees and lambs and daisies and rocks and the vibrating worries of a woman on the other side of the world?

Connected, incredibly to you, as you sit here, reading these words. And to me, as I write them and breathe the air we share.

The Juggler

My son adores juggling, so I thought I'd post some videos! Grab your popcorn, sit back and enjoy!

In this video, taken in June last year, he had only been juggling for two months…



Here he is, a month later, juggling to jazz master Michael Brecker…



Here is a routine he worked on for a performance at the end of the year. Look at all that hair!



And, now he is working on playing jazz piano while juggling!



Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the show! :)

UPDATE! 

This just in!

A video taken just minutes ago… drums meets kazoo meets juggling meets jazz. Very cool :)

growing Compassion

When I was a girl, about 12, I remember standing at the bus stop, waiting for the school bus with my sister, and stamping on the ants.

"Stop!" she said. "What did those ants do to you?"

Of course the ants had done nothing, but there was a quiet thrill in me, to have so much power. Tiny ants; what was the point of them?

A couple of years later, a friend of mine at his birthday party put a ring of some kind of gasoline around a group of ants on the sidewalk. Then he lit it on fire. It was a small fire, but all his friends and I crowded around to see the ants in a panic, feeling the wall of heat, with nowhere to go, no protection, no possibility of escape.

I don't remember feeling anything much other than perhaps this wasn't a fair fight. This was a step up from stamping. I don't remember watching for long. I think, at some point, I walked away. At least, my 40-plus-year-old self hopes I did.

Then my sister became vegetarian. I was fourteen. Being vegetarian in the 80's was very different to today. We would go out to dinner and the waiter would be stumped, totally unable to fathom what my sister could eat. My relatives would have big family dinners and serve ham salad, telling my sister she could just pick out the meat. As a university student, I would eat big t-bone steaks in front of her at family get togethers.

I ate meat without a thought. I killed spiders without a thought. I felt distant from other animals, and to be perfectly honest, I think I felt better than them. I remember thinking, "It's okay to eat chickens, because they are stupid." (Not actually true, it turns out). I felt the same about fish. I was a bit wobblier thinking about cows as they were so gentle and placid-looking. As for pigs, rumour had it they were smart, but I put that out of my mind to eat them.

My sister, in the meantime, remained vegetarian, never wavering, raising her kids as vegetarians, and quietly, slowly influencing me with her steadfast refusal to eat meat.

Some years ago, we had a problem with some mice. It was an infestation; a bunch of mice had found our house and decided to move in. We could hear them, scrabbling about contentedly in the walls, and sometimes popping, darting, dashing into our house to look for grub. We were told to bait them, so that's what we did. One day soon after, I remember finding a sick, scared mouse in our house. It could hardly move. I can't write or describe what I did to dispose of that mouse, but I will never forget it. That mouse was terrified. It felt shocking to kill it.

By this time, I was the mother of two kids as well as the carer of a dog, a cat, chickens, fish, birds. I cuddled my cat, walked and talked with my dog, watched as our two birds tried to have babies. The chickens would run to us when we dug in the garden, looking for worms. The hens shouted to let us, anyone, know they'd just! laid! an egg! My kids and I adored our pets.

Then about four years ago, I saw a friend's cat get run over.

I saw the whole thing from beginning to end. And I thought: I can't do this any more. Separate myself.

I went vegetarian then. I lasted about nine months. But no-one else went with me, and I'd just been diagnosed as wheat intolerant, and I couldn't think of what to eat. It seemed suddenly so hard. So I returned to eating meat, but I had to consciously switch off my mind when I went to buy steak or sausages or chicken at the shops, when I faced the shelves and fridges filled with meat. Switch off, don't think, don't think. Once it was at home, it became just another food, in its packet. It was easier to eat when it was just stuff in a packet. Nothing more.

Three years ago, around February, we went on a camping trip, to sand fly territory. Those sand flies were crazy. They'd bite you the minute they saw you, no introductions, no hovering about just to say hello. My son was really, really scared of them. On our last day, we were driving away from the camp site, and a sand fly came in through the window. There was shouting and panic.

We pulled over the car and I grabbed a tissue box and thwack! I got that fly. Job done. I turned back to face the front. My husband began to drive. I heard a sound and looked over to see my son and he was crying so hard. Face collapsed, weeping.

Why? I asked.

Because, because…

Oh, sweetheart. Because I killed the sand fly?

Yes, Mum. Yes.


That's when I realised how deep compassion could go.


Four months later we became vegetarian. A year and a half after that, we became vegan.

And our compassion, our "sympathetic concern for the suffering of others," has grown and grown and grown.

We have read, seen, discussed, learned so much. We are more aware these days, not just of animal welfare issues, but of global and environmental, political and human rights issues. We talk about everything, and our eyes are wide, wide open.

It's like we opened some door, and in came this sense of the World, all around. Our "Selves" stopped mattering so much. Now we talk of giving more, not needing as much, of wanting to speak out about the things we care about, making a difference, small or large. We talk of being the change we want to see in the world. We try, daily, to BE the change.

This might all have happened whether we became vegan or not. I know some extraordinarily compassionate people who eat animal products. I know people who are mindful and seeking to make positive changes in the world who also hold barbeques and eat chicken curry.

For us though, our choice to become a vegetarian family, and then vegans, was our door to compassion, opening.

And it's so bright and clear in here!

Sometimes it's a bit too bright, too clear. Sometimes there's too much knowledge, because once you look…you see that real suffering is all around.


But for us, whatever sadness that knowledge brings,

is countered with hopeful, positive acts.

Like my husband removing, the other night (and over the course of two more nights) more than 30 teeny tiny baby spiders from our house.

Spider by spider by spider…!

And my son learning to cook tofu scramble this week, making breakfast for himself and his dad…

And my husband (not a pet lover) speaking to the dog and cats with a whole new voice, a whole new language…

And all of us sitting and smiling over dinners that taste so very, very Good.

Peace and love and hope coming out to you all! 

I hope you feel it, because it's big and growing,

and there's so much to share.