Unconditional Love ...

It is said that babies love those whose voices they hear while still in the womb. I am prepared to accept that that sometimes isn't the case but certainly it was the case for me. I love my mother's voice. I not only heard that voice while still in the womb but felt it's vibrations and rhythms while my body was part of hers.  I love my mother. I love her so much I don't know how it will be when she dies. What will I say at her funeral? Surely what I feel is beyond words. Or is it the muffled words and mixed emotions of travelling inside someone for nine months? I love her more than anyone, and that love is unconditional.

I have written in an earlier e mail that I have made recent contact with a teacher of my youth after a forty year separation. Upon seeing her and particularly upon hearing her voice I realised that I loved her. I have loved her since she taught me in 1968 and 1969. I was not the only one, and can say with some confidence that most of our class did, and still do love her.

So, some teachers are very important to young adolescents on the very first step of adolescence with blurred and muffled hopes and dreams of adulthood on  their horizon and in their imaginary. Unfinished songs playing inaudibly in the background. It all merges. This young woman - not much older than we were ... still only twenty one or twenty two years old -  became the rock that held those dreams and unfinished compositions in an important place.  She held them in the place of possibility - of hope and trust in the future, of hope and trust in our young selves. Afterall, what more does a good teacher have to offer than a belief in her students - in their ability to succeed, to grow, to flourish? If a teacher can't communicate that then surely a student can't flourish. Surely to offer subject content on a plate without trust in her students would have been to doom them to failure.

So, when the times became tough, that is the vibe I held. I was found to be interesting by this teacher. As the third of four daughters I often felt like a fifth wheel in my family- the same as the other wheels, so of no real consequence. That is not unusual and no blame is intended. As the third repetition of the same what can one expect? I grew up expecting very little. Yet in my ninth and tenth year of schooling that changed slightly and forever.

I know I will hear my mother's voice for ever - metaphorically at least and hopefully in my imaginary. This is unconditional love. Recently I sent the fave teacher an e mail, though  in my somewhat autistic way it came across all wrong. I perhaps severed something very important then. It has been weeks and she has not replied. I have apologised by e mail but know that one cannot unbreak an egg.  Unconditional love is an egg that when broken can be unbroken. It's a magic pudding which will nourish us for ever. A rare and wonderful thing. A security.  Perhaps the love between this teacher and myself was unconditional in my heart and mind but not in hers. We'll see. I wait, and hope, but expect very little ...

First impressions: Helsinki.

My partner and I recently arrived home from a European trip. When the rubber hit the tarmac at Brisbane airport I felt relieved. It isn't easy living out of a suitcase for a month. It isn't easy feeling compelled to visit every tourist attraction imaginable, including run down castles; another bloody church; and markets selling reindeer antlers attached to bottle openers. It isn't easy eating Finnish food. No. It's hard. So why do we do it?

Well maybe we won't do it again, but being easy is not the point. Being easy is never the point. As tiring and at times disappointing and frustrating as travel may be, this time my life feels changed. Was it changing already? Well, maybe. But I'll reflect on some of differences - different thoughts perhaps - that occurred to me on or because of the trip, before I forget them.

Firstly I did not know, before going there, that I would find Helsinki and surrounds to be the most easy going, desirable, friendly, creative place I have ever visited.  I did not know that if someone said that I had to live in a European city I would choose Helsinki - well maybe I'd negotiate a concession and live in the country just outside Helsinki, from where I would commute. I'd choose Helsinki-ish ...

Interestingly, and surprisingly,  on day one, when leaving Helsinki central railway station with luggage trundling behind, I heard a sharp crack as two young women, dressed for work in a Brisbane kind of fashion,  walked towards us. Looking down - following the sharp sound - I saw a clear takeaway plastic cup with a few centimeters of ice in the bottom, roll briefly from side to side on the uneven Medieval cobble stoned street before coming to a halt. I looked up just in time to take in the appearance of the young woman who had just thrown it down with such decisive force, before she passed us by forever.  I commented to my partner that that was something I had never seen before. But surely I had. Was the difference the sound the ice laden cup made against the stones of the cobbled street? There are no such streets in Brisbane.

Vaguely bemused and even a touch shocked, with the crack of the ice on the cobbles ringing in our ears, we continued our trek to our hotel, all the while aware of the very unusually uneven cobbled streets and footpaths of this as yet new city, which was still a stranger to us. After covering at least half the distance between the station and our hotel another young woman - still well dressed but this time in a different style - a touch Goth but moneyed, not in any way unkempt - cut across our path from the right as she crossed the street and stepped on and walked across the foot path in front of us.  Synchronous with her crossing, a clear plastic takeaway ice cream cup - empty but with a coating of ice cream or yoghurt clinging to the inside - left her hand, hit the ground, more softly than the previous one,  and rolled from side to side, briefly and gently on the cobble stones.

When  arriving in a new city all my senses are very much open to discovering the salient characteristics of this city of my imaginings, but not as yet of my knowing. I gave voice, in this second moment, to my surprise at witnessing this wanton disregard for rubbish bins, by young, well dressed and purposeful women.  The young woman in black - the young woman of the ice cream cup- swung around on hearing my words, briefly and dismissively making eye contact, but just as quickly - as quickly as she had discarded the ice cream cup - turned her head and thoughts to the front again, to what was important to her, as she lost not a beat and continued on her way.

So these are some reflections on the city of my dreams. They are not the only reflections I am able to share, but they are kind of interesting,  helping to develop a little the idea that travelling is not easy, and frequently contradictory. I have created not only contradictions but a knife edge in the telling of these anecdotes however. Is Helsinki indeed a livable city, as I claimed I found it to be? Or is it a city whose sights and sounds   are hijacked by a tendency for the well healed to dispose of disposables unselfconsciously, loudly, and in public view, like an unconscionable belch for which no apology is forth coming?  Happily I cannot claim the latter to be true - such observations did not dominate my six days in Helsinki. First impressions can, indeed, be misleading ...

School Reunion...

I recently attended a school reunion. Forty years on... Not a youth in sight... Furthermore I went along  despite a bad case of the flu, leaving home at 4.00am , driving 30 kms to the airport and catching an hour long flight. While apologetic, 'me and my germs' just had to be there. And it was well worth it, for me at least.

This was our second reunion. Perhaps we broke the ice at our first. But it is ten years since then and forty years since we were at school together and we connected instantly, as if we had seen each other the previous day in a Science or English class. Forgive me if I am a little speechless. The sleeping giant awakes. What more can I say?

Friendship is important, and shared experiences at an important time of one's life count for a lot, I guess. I have had time to experiment with friendships in the last forty years, and have not always found them easy. Furthermore any that have been easy I could claim were forged from the stuff of shared experiences - experiences of some gravity or significance - shared fun comes to mind.

So, the kiln has been cooking my high school friendships for some forty years now. Some characteristics have shattered in the firing; yet, as is not uncommon when the creative process throws up gems, some human potential, long dormant, has not only weathered the firing but has realised a more sublime object than the artist ever imagined.

I'm sure I'm talking about more than my friendships and myself when I speak of the reunion in question. Many friendships make a successful reunion, of course. If so, the topic is beyond the scope of this brief blog, and beyond the scope of my imaginings. But allow me to start with my gaze upon myself and those I connect with and to see what is realised in the process of reflecting, which by its very nature requires time ...

The intelligent eye ???

As a visual artist who had always had an uncomfortable relationship with schooling, and hence with the idea of intelligence as judged by teachers in schools, I always pride myself on my visual intelligence - for example my visual memory. I have been known to choose a bra from a display in a shop from some metres away, and on at least one occasion,  found it to fit perfectly. On another occasion, when living in a workers' cottage, I bought a traditional tin window shade from a restoration  station, without measuring the window of the cottage  first. The carpenter hired to attach it to the house looked at the window and said, "I don't think it's going to fit." But it fitted perfectly.

I don't mean to sound immodest when I say that that was not mere coincidence. It was, I reasoned, attributable to my visual memory - or spatial memory perhaps. Who knows which. Still, neither are really taught or rewarded in school.

I was therefore a little bemused to hear on Radio National during the week that a prize winning scientist had been studying a sea creature - was it a  squid-like creature? Perhaps. And very small. Without a brain in fact.

Yet the scientist claims to have found that this creature, while without brain but with many eyes, is capable of responding to visual clues.

Sure, I am not a tiny brainless squid with many eyes, but it makes one think, doesn't it? Perhaps there is a message here for visually gifted or oriented creatures. Were schools right after  all? To recall visual data expertly may not in any way be worthy of academic reward - if one were a brainless squid, that is ...

Sea change, tree change, regional change ...

My partner and I bought a caravan on line from a Ballarat address. We set off with some excitement, from our home in regional Queensland, to collect the van and bring it back through inland New South Wales and Victoria. Both from country backgrounds, and recent escapees from an increasingly hectic Brisbane, we had, as recently as last year, opted for regional peace and quiet, reduced debt, and part time work, over growth and capital gain in the big smoke.

On our trek to and from Ballarat we met others. The most memorable of these was a woman in a small road house in an even smaller town, not far from Stanthorpe. As she greeted us with a big smile and bare feet our  minds summed her up in stereotypical ways.

Her story unfolded, however. She and her husband had been in this place - let's call the place Dry Gully -  for ten years only. Before then they had a place in Sydney from where she commuted to Western Australia to teach miners how to lay cables under the sea.  Our earlier picture of her stated to unravel, a bit like like a butterfly from a chrysalis, as had the life of this woman and her husband some years earlier.

The move to Dry Gully was set in train when her husband bought a farm - yes, at Dry Gully - in her absence. On returning to Sydney to be told this she informed him that she had just signed another three year contract in WA. So they put a manager on the farm. Upon returning to Sydney after another three month stint the hubby had sold his mechanics business and bought the road house at Dry Gully. At least this is the story and sequence as I remember it.

The long and the short of it is that they moved to Dry Gully to run the road house, and a mechanics work shop behind it;  to milk cattle and raise sheep on the farm;  and to have fun riding motor bikes and shooting rabbits together. And, you guessed it! They've never been happier ...

Boiled egg : lost and found

I often take a boiled egg to work. Packed as it is in its natural packaging it is quick and easy to boil it up, throw it in my carry bag, butter some bread, wrap it, and voila!! A protein sandwich for lunch. The carry bags I take lunch to work in, are those environmentally friendly shoulder bags most of which are easy to launder and hard wearing. I have one, however, that is stitched imperfectly and when the stitching lets me down a hole appears, always, initially, undetected by me.

One morning, about a year ago, I arrived at work with my environmentally friendly shoulder bag, with its secret hole, and on my way across the car park lost an apple, which I soon retrieved. Later in the day when I read my emails, however, it occurred to me that the apple was not all I'd lost. The e mail  read: "Boiled egg found inside the back door. If it's yours please collect from  reception."

I bravely retrieved it from the reception desk and yet was asked by a colleague in the school corridor later in the day: "Did you get your egg?" How did she know?

Odd is good !!!

Wearing odd socks is a bit of a sign; a sign of a number of afflictions one of which could be broadly termed disfunction. Many of us do it anyway, especially when the sock we are looking for just isn't there. The closest "match" will have to do. People will be fooled.

Have you ever heard of odd shoes? Or odd feet? Well I have a pair of the latter. One foot is longer than the other and also more elegant. There have been times - particularly in adolescence - when I have been mortified by this. Most of my life I have kept my feet hidden. Now it doesn't worry me too much. Beauty in all its forms has faded so why worry about the feet?

Yet isn't life ironic? No sooner do I decide not to worry about my mismatched feet, and by extension my mismatched shoes - since two same sized shoes never fit both feet - than I meet a podiatrist who can sell me two different sizes - one shoe that fits one foot and a different sized shoe to fit the other.

I was amazed by the difference between my feet when measured. One foot is wide and size seven; the other is medium width and size seven and a half. And the corresponding odd couple of shoes fit me perfectly - at a price I hasten to add. Only those with modestly good incomes can afford this luxury.

Yes, I guess it's a prerogative of the reasonably well off, but it is interesting to reflect on how deformities  know no boundaries. Ordinary or beautiful feet or normal feet cross class and other boundaries. Furthermore if it weren't for the foot conditions suffered by people with diabetes the option of shoes to fit odd feet would not exist at all. So who of us is really odd? Who is really normal?

acoustic bass

acoustic bass

I bought an acoustic bass guitar with pickups some months ago. With the idea of living locally I walked to my closest  music store and paid off the only acoustic bass they had in the shop. All the time I was fairly confident that I was making a foolish purchase. I don't play the bass .... 

But isn't there something exciting about an acoustic bass? Big wooden body, thick black strings, the challenge of learning a new instrument. Sure I can't even play the bass line of musical notation, but I can learn. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Love that sound. 

In time I became more realistic. I'm not really going to learn the bass. I have my time cut out for me playing the guitar in a half decent fashion. So I determined to sell it. How would I word the ad.? Hmmm. I needed to research this instrument, to find some words.

You tube was helpful. Some clips of people playing it. A bass player in a ukelele band - a very good one - plays it. The bass player in the "The Cure" could clearly be seen playing it. A seller of fine old Renaissance Lutes in Germany often stocks and sells this type of acoustic bass. The price ? I couldn't tell. They were all sold. 

So, not a bad instrument, huh? Wildly popular in the late 1960s. Stopped producing them in 1987. And where can you buy them these days? Well, you may find one on e bay, if you're lucky. And this German dealer in Renaissance Lutes sometimes has one for sale. I have one in my home in regional Queensland, too. But I'm not sure I want to part with it, just yet....