ALWAYS TRUST YOUR CAPE

I heard this song for the first time yesterday and I thought how it is like my philosophy of taking a leap and seeing where you land, all put into words and made into a song. (I liked the Australian version I heard but it is not available online). If you never move outside your your comfort zone you are not really living, it seems to me. I always encouraged my boys to be the ones to say yes, I will give it a go, even when they didn't know if they could do it....always trust your cape.

Eight years old with flour sack cape
Tied all around his neck
He climbed up on the garage
Figurin’ what the heck
He screwed his courage up so tight
The whole thing come unwound
He got a runnin’ start and bless his heart
He headed for the ground

Chorus :
He’s one of those who knows that life
Is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold you breath
Always trust your cape

.

All grown up with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his dream
He’s full of piss and vinegar
He’s bustin’ at the seams
He licked his finger and checked the wind
It’s gonna be do or die

He wasn’t scared of nothin’, boys
He was pretty sure he could fly

Chorus

Old and grey with a flour sack cape
Tied all around his head
He’s still jumpin’ off the garage
And will be till he’s dead

All these years the people said
He’s actin’ like a kid
He did not know he could not fly
......So he did

Chorus

THE EDGES OF THINGS

Sometimes we can spend a lot of our lives amongst things - surrounded and sometimes suffocated by them. Life throws arrows, bouquets and rules at us continually and we make our way as best we can through them, picking up and keeping the best bits and trying to deal with the worst but most of it is just stuff to get done.

People often seek out safety and security and that's fair enough. But, once we have these it is worth peeking out from there and taking a wider look at what is going on. If you are in the right frame of mind and let yourself absorb the knowledge of those who have gone before you, you are ready to become a part of the evolution of thinking that makes humans different from all other species. Philosophies for living, sciences for exploring and arts for creating are all human inventions. To move on through the ages we must encourage stimulating thoughts and greet alternative thinkers not as outsiders but as an aid to the development of ideas and ideals for us and the earth as a whole. After all, as far as we can tell, life only exists here, on earth. It is unique and precious and anything we can do to assist its survival is worth thinking about.

If we want to, we can all be a part of the rolling ball of life; not by always going with it but by giving edges to the ball that will make it swerve and twist and turn as it rolls on through time. These are the edges that will make tangents for future generations of thinkers and shakers to use in the moulding of their own ideas. These are the edges that can turn adversity into potential, despair into hope, chaos into civilisation, and the power of one into the power of all.

Edges are sometimes scary as we don't know where they will lead but it is the not knowing that is the advantage, the not knowing that gives us the energy to find out and the not knowing that gives us a spark of an idea that can turn into something good.

Lately I seem to have either made or come across more edges than smooth surfaces! They are challenging me and changing me as I change them; it works both ways. Sometimes it is clear where to land from jumping off an edge and sometimes it is foggy and the way more treacherous and uncertain. Now I am comfortable with edges and seek them out. I now have the confidence to know that I could deal with almost any outcome of leaving an edge.

Why, when I was a shy little girl have I developed such passions for things now? Why do I care so much for these things that I am willing to go through huge changes in myself in order to further a cause? I have no idea. But every time I take on a new challenge or say yes to something I never thought I would it is a stimulus to keep doing it. Now 'yes 'comes more easily than 'no, thanks' or even than 'let me think about it'. I can always change things and mould things later but now I just want to take that ball and roughen its edges and to be a tiny part of turning the power of one into the power of all and of steering ourselves away from the disintegration of civilisation into chaos, instead using the edges to roll the ball into a peaceful and sustainable future.

That is scary stuff. But I am up for it. Are you coming with me?

UNDERSTANDING THE FOOTPRINTS OF LIFE

What I am wondering is if it is possible to really leave only your footprint and take only photos, on this planet, if you have not spent time in a wild place. I mean, do you need to have a connection with the earth, in order to feel a need to respect and cherish and care for it? This came to me over the weekend when Roger and I went camping down in the rugged coastal conservation park south of Adelaide called Deep Creek. At one time I was sitting there, in the bush, thinking how lost I would feel if I couldn't spend a few days in a place like this, once in a while where I am totally comfortable, with the bare essentials, surrounded by a landscape, a feel and a smell that I know with no evidence of any others having been there.

And I wondered if I could live in another country, such as NZ, where I would not be able to take the power of this connection back to my everyday life, even though the scenery and the mountains there draw me to them so strongly. And does that rooted feeling of belonging to this landscape, here, in South Australia, allow me an easier inroad into being a low impact person and is it actually a prerequisite to understanding and accepting whatever it takes to end your life in an equal balance of giving to and taking from the environment?

These are pretty challenging questions and I don't know if there are any answers. Last night, sitting by the campfire with Roger, after the hardest walk I have done for many years (in painfully steep terrain), I felt so attuned to the experience and so relaxed and content with life. Not far away were other campers, with huge tents, blazing lights, massive bonfires while we had a tiny campfire, a 2 person tent and not much gear - enough to cook on a fire and to sleep cosily in the tent. When we leave a campsite you cannot see we have been there. Which is just as well because often we disobey the rules and set up our camp in a no camping area so as to wake up in the morning enveloped in forest or surrounded by birds and kangaroos, alone. Our fire takes up no more than a 30cm (1 foot) circle and when we leave we bury the ash and dust the ground again with leaves and disappear quietly. If you have never done this, can you feel in your heart the purpose to it?

(We rarely camp near other people or go somewhere popular but we were only an hour and half from the city this time so it was unavoidable.)

If you have never cooked on a fire made by you and struggled with the logistics of it how can you appreciate the luxury of electricity or gas? If you have never done all this with only the light made by the fire itself, why would you ever understand the need turn off the lights at home? If you have never gone to the toilet in the bush, in the dark how can you see the pointlessness of fancy toilet paper?

....The track here goes straight down from where I am sitting to the sandy lagoon below. Then it goes around the corner and straight up the other side....

Once you get this far, it's several hours before you are back to the tent and there are no other routes. If you have never done something challenging on foot how can you appreciate the ease of going by motorised transport?

Really, camping is such a fundamental need in me and it draws me to the bonds of earth, fire, wind and water - those things that make up the essence of my life. If you have never done it, what are you drawn to? Where do you go to recharge yourself? How do you stay in touch with yourself and the world?

TO ALIGN OR NOT TO ALIGN, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Just a moment ago I was in the kitchen having a cup of tea with son Alex who is home from Sydney for a few days, on other Google business. We cut through all the crap pretty quickly in my family and soon we were discussing our views on life, the universe and everything. It is so nice when your children become adults and it was interesting to hear Alex say, "You and I both have a similar outlook, Mum, - we align with the left wing." I protested somewhat, saying that I didn't know that left-wing was how I would describe myself. Rather, I care about things other than economics - does that make me left-wing? Alex doesn't beat around the bush, and replied "I describe myself that way and generally people know what that means and therefore understand what my views will be."

Of course, he is no doubt right - he nearly always is - but it doesn't sit comfortably with me to align myself with a political stream of any sort. I don't think, for example, that my love of nature and wild things has anything to do with politics at all, although I do usually vote for 'The Greens' because of the leader, Bob Brown's stance on wilderness and non-logging of old-growth forests in Tasmania etc etc. I don't like taking sides in a general sense and would prefer to see my views as independent of anyone else's. Life has somehow taught me that, once confined to a set of rules - any rules - the first thing I want to do is break them because sometimes I need to change my opinion and I want to be free to do so. I am nothing if not open to other points of view.

When your children become adults you can stand back a bit and see what you have created, or at least had a hand in moulding into shape. This is much more evident when you only see them once in a while. What then can happen is that you, the adult, become influenced by them. In the same way that you start wearing their cast-off clothes which they leave behind when they move out, you begin to feel a great sense of connection to their generation through them and want to understand and sometimes absorb their adult outlook into yours. Someone recently and innocently said to me, when I was answering a question about Alex from them, "It sounds like you take after him." We both laughed and laughed but it certainly has a ring of truth to it.

So, what exactly are my views and where is that square when I need it to refer to?? I do not see the human race as superior to any other species and I feel no need to go out and develop medical science to a point where humans can be cured and healed of illness simply because they are people. I would prefer it were the opposite - we go all out to save the earth and in the process make a world where the human race, not individuals, can exist in harmony with everything else. The big picture needs help, while we spend too much time choosing the colours of paint to use!

Is that left-wing? I have no idea and I don't care because until it is mainstream we are all stuffed anyway and we might as well start believing in a god for all the good it will do us. Today was one of the best days I have had for ages, in a funny and unremarkable kind of way, and it illustrates what is meaningful and what is window dressing. Again we weeded and extended Sally's vegetable garden. It is the first time this year that my toes have been cold in my gardening boots = winter is finally arriving; Sally's soil is now rich and beautiful and ready for production; we had a great talk together about some meaningful things; I spent the rest of the day in my garden, alone and deep in thought, until Alex arrived home; I got some lovely emails that made me feel appreciated by people I have never met and I have a husband coming home tonight who I love and trust. I didn't buy anything or go very far from home or need entertainment. I listened to the birds, ran my hands over the soft fennel fronds, saw the light changing on the hill, sowed some special seeds from Glenys and stood for a moment in a little spot in my vegetable garden from which I can see the sea. Is that left-wing?

My views on biodiversity, food production systems, water usage and a whole lot of things have been developed primarily because I don't like what I see happening to the earth and I want to find better ways to do things which will rebalance inputs and outputs to an even zero impact. Why others think differently is a little bewildering to me but I respect people's rights to have an opinion, never the less, and very much would like to dig deep into the minds of other humans more often than I have the opportunity to. Alex and I have this in common, I know, and find it frustrating when people won't voice their opinions. For me this is partly because I don't know anything about the square - like I was born in a different world - and have no preconceived ideas of what the hell anyone thinks about anything.

Alex may well use left-wing as a means to describe his views but I will continue not to align myself with anyone and shrug off constraints at every turn in the quest to improve the life of the earth that we inevitably rely on to provide us with everything, including the air we breathe and the food we eat, every day. Life is not to be wasted on oneself....(I have just - 1 day later -realised how hypocritical this is because I am writing this on a blog I set up entirely about me!)

MOTH OR BUTTERFLY?

The last few days have been another of those defining moments, perhaps - I will only really know later. It it time to metamorphose from the caterpillar - to finally grow up into something, but what to turn into is the question. There are 2 opposing schools of thought here and both were brought home to me within minutes of each other, a couple of days ago. There are so many people in my life just now that it is good when a phone call makes it all seem so clear; only to have the opposite seem so much more sensible, by another phone call only a second later. Both these people, from our seedsavers group, may read this and may or may not realise the effects they have on me.

Slowly, like a snail creeping towards its leafy dinner, have I become firmly and single-mindedly attracted to food-growing and seedsaving and all they mean to life - from the beginnings of flowering plants on earth to the future life of the planet. All of it. All that deep and meaningful stuff I think about and write about all the time plus a whole lot I haven't even become aware of yet.

At the same time, other people have begun to want to reach out and push forward these same ideals; as threats of climate change and its turmoil just begin to become visible and agri-business takes over the very roots of our existence, in direct conflict with all that I see as paramount to basic survival. Various of these other people seem to think that I would be a useful person to have as part of their teams to make a truly international influence in the food-growing scene, from poor, struggling villagers left starving because of agri-business interference to the affluent, city-dwellers of the western world.

One night there is the phone call, out of the blue, from Jude at Byron Bay Seedsavers Central - the people who wrote that great seedsaving book and who started Seedsavers Australia 20 or so years ago. I am very excited about that call. A couple of nights later there is the phone call from the USA, asking me to be part of what could be a great group of people world wide doing what I want to do. Another whole hour spent chatting and discussing and luring me out of my safe place. Then there are comments and encouragements/discouragements on the blog and emails from people who, I feel, have become some of my best friends, in such a short time.

Just when I need an answer comes the first phone call from someone who is very wise and seems to be able to see right through me. We talk about lots of things, as always, and she manages to make me feel so worth-while and kind of special but in a very down-to-earth way, despite my protests. She says that although I say I am not all that keen on being with most people, obviously I have found people with whom I have a lot of things in common. She says it is time for change in my life and she puts me on a pedestal that I don't deserve.

I hang up the phone and immediately it rings again and it is someone else whose opinion I respect and seek out. We also talk about lots of things and she sees me quite differently and maybe more realistically, maybe not. She reminds me that I am always telling her I don't really like being with people that much and that I enjoy solitude and should, perhaps, stick to the peace and quiet of my garden and not get all fired up about things so much on the blog. I have a cocoon, in other words, and I am comfortable in it. They are both right.

I am just a woman with a passion for the earth, basically, who grows stuff and writes stuff on a little blog in Australia. Of all the 6 billion people in the world how the hell did I get here? And should I just stay put and turn into a moth, with my wings out flat to shield me from predators? Or should I stand tall like a butterfly and use my colourful wings to attract attention in the hope that, in the process, I may join others and together begin to lead people down from the precipice we are on now to a safer, happier, sustainable place, one vegetable garden at a time?

Until I get this off my chest I am finding it difficult to put my mind to writing anything useful at all! There is a lot more to it, as there always is, than this sketchy outline but it is not worth spending much time on so this will have to do. Hopefully putting it down in words like this may get it off my mind because really, I am a butterfly ready to fly off that precipice and see where the wind takes me. Are you coming with me?

10 DEFINING MOMENTS

I was thinking about the post I wrote on the seedsavers blog about the trip to Tasmania all those years ago and the fact that I wouldn't be the same person now if I hadn't done that walk. It started me thinking about defining moments in our lives and also crossroads where we took a definite change of direction. Sometimes they are obvious but more often you can see them in retrospect, I think. Here are mine so far:

1. The day I decided I wasn't going to study to be a vet because it would have meant going to live a long way away and I wasn't ready (because there weren't any vet courses in my state universities). I gave up my desire to be a vet for African wildlife that day. So, I went the way of Japanese, French and the study of language, in general.

2. The day I told my year 12 maths teacher I was not going to her lessons because she was such a bad teacher and then, that same day, being voted class captain by my classmates (for standing up to her) and since she was the class teacher too she then knew that they were all behind me. I had been a nobody at school until then. That day I learned to have the confidence to stand up for what I believed in and that, once I did, others would stand up behind me but I would always be the one to act first and take responsibility for it.

3. One day I came home from uni and said I wanted to grow vegetables. I was 17 or 18 and I have no idea why I felt that way, but start I did, over 30 years ago. and never stopped.

4. The day I met Roger at a friend's 21st birthday; I was 18 he was 20. Also over 30 years ago! I knew that night that we were made for each other but it took me 6 years to convince him! I always get my way eventually.

5. Here slots in that walk in the Tasmanian wilderness, followed by many more wilderness trips.

6. Getting married - the proudest day of my life.

7. Being pregnant and having a baby. No words to describe how that defines you forever!

8. Then not much time for defining moments for about 20 years!...next one 2006 and the start of the Hills and Plains Seedsavers group and that first meeting at Fern Ave Community Garden.

9. Making the blog for the group. This has been the greatest change in my life since having children. Connections, writing, growing food for other purposes than just eating it, developing ideas and plans and looking at the 'why' in everything.

10. Deciding that this whole earth-care thing is what I want to do and realising that I am really happy with where it is taking me. Creating my motto:

"Life is Good. Get there fast and then take it slow."

Where to now? My idea for Australia's 2020 vision. Making it happen.

HARMONY

I just used that word in a comment on someone's blog and I like it more than peace or tranquility etc because it emphasises co-operation. Why is it so difficult to achieve? There is so much discord everywhere; co-operation seems to have disappeared in favour of competition. People don't seem to be in search of harmony any more; they seek success and this has dollar signs flashing in their eyes. To me harmony is the ultimate success and, although I am not very good at achieving it, it is what I desire more than anything else. It does not have be an either/ or thing, you can be comfortably off and in harmony. I never can feel comfortable with people who strut about, preening, and acting like the cock of the roost. My mother-in-law has a great saying for such people - "cock of the roost one day, feather duster the next"! To me, such people are simply demonstrating their insecurity.

Spouses of a couple of my friends give off that 'smell' of success - putting other people, like me, down to make themselves appear superior. Little do they know that, if I was as rude as them, I could cut them off at the knees with my comments, faster than a speeding bullet. Acid can leap off my tongue if provoked far enough but I try to make peace and leave them to self-destruct as I don't want to offend my friends. You cannot have harmony with such people.

Nature has evolved to be in harmony. This does not mean it is at peace, as each creature must compete with others, but there is a greater harmony that pervades the whole structure and only humans are stupid enough to think they can live outside its force. Humans are but a speck in evolutionary time; nature is forever, and that is a long, long time. It would be a good idea to be on nature's side, therefore, but there are few of us who are. It would be easy for me not to participate in this whole communication thing and go back to my solitary garden, with nature. Garden, nature and me. Lately I have considered it again, but that would be giving in and I am not going to let those like my friend's husband win.

Respect goes together with harmony and respect is a fading virtue. I love people to have a view and share it but so often these days it becomes disrespectful and a personal attack, rather than a discussion of opinions. Somehow, I cannot go that far, although I dearly want to point it out, respectfully! Without respect for one another we can never find harmony, even here in blog-land. It will be interesting to get together in person with other bloggers, where you cannot delete a stream of invective before you click publish! You cannot leave a comment unsaid and just walk away when the person is right in front of you! At least people will know what I think beforehand as it is all there in 650 or so posts; everything, from the heart. If nothing else I hope my posts convey harmony with nature and a respect for other views and people's rights to have them and express them and my right to disagree, without malice.

Thinking outside that stupid, nebulous and elusive square is fraught with danger like sticking your head up out of the trenches of war. Expressing yourself well and, at the same time, maintaining a web of harmony and respect requires constant gymnastics, vigil and restraint. None of these 3 traits are my natural strengths and I hope they don't stifle what I want to say, and say with a passion about living in harmony.

NATURAL BALANCE

I saw a wonderful programme on TV just now which led me to think about other things and here we are. This is an Adelaide idea - I don't know if they do it elsewhere. The idea is for 'natural burials' where the body is lowered into the ground in a fabric cloth and allowed to rot away naturally (unlike currently where the body is in a plastic bag inside the coffin!Yuk!). Then native trees and shrubs are planted at the site so, as time goes by, the whole area becomes rehabilitated to nature. It brought more than a few tears to my eyes as I thought about this because it is an answer to a question I have always had. I hate the idea of being buried in a cemetery and cremation is so polluting and violent. This is perfect. No headstones, nothing but nature and other dead people who care in the same, quiet way. Just dissolving into nature.

Nature is a quiet thing - no traffic, no loud talking, no machinery. Totally in balance. That is the key. We cannot escape to somewhere totally peaceful because nature incorporates all aspects of life, but each keeps the others in balance. Human lives seem to have become unbalanced and tip wildly from one path to another, often toppling off and skidding along in a ditch. Some of us seem to have sided with nature and are able to keep balanced even amongst others who are not. To me it seems supreme idiocy to follow the tumultuous man-made roller-coaster called 'modern living' or 'keeping up with the times' and forego the simple euphoria of a life with nature as your guide. Euphoria is not too extreme a word and is something I am constantly surprised at feeling when doing the simplest of things. Today, feeling the soft fronds of the fennel and smelling their fragrance as I touched them with my hands was such a moment. When I stood up I felt like I had been in another place. I am sure that is often the feeling people seek when they take certain drugs; in fact it happened to me once when I had given birth to one of our children. I was given a double dose of pethidine, accidentally, and it was fabulous and euphoric and just the same feeling as I get now naturally.

There are crevasses as deep as canyons between myself and most other people and I often cannot be bothered trying to bridge them but every now and then a spark leaps across and connects a fine web between. Even then I usually ignore it and go my own way - the distance is just too far. But sometimes it sticks and this is what blogs can do - create tiny filaments that then strengthen slowly and firmly, seemingly effortlessly. This is a new kind of nature. There are no pressures to conform or even to converse. Natural feelings and expressions sent out into the air seem to have a natural attraction, sometimes to people far away. These webs are being woven quietly and naturally, far and wide, and each filament is keeping the others balanced.

Surely this is the ultimate in 'modern living'. Future generations will look back and see that this is when everything started to turn around and 'keeping up with the times' began to mean 'learning to live in balance' because blogs began to join people into webs of support where no-one can topple off. Natural becomes mainstream.

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.