It's so lovely to be in the garden & to feel a surge of energy, after mostly lying around sick for a few days. My first passionfruit! The rain-loving snails did their best to decimate the vine during Winter, but it persisted & there is a profusion of blossoms at the top along the fence line, chasing the sun. The new grapevine is also doing well- a couple of years I reckon, before it looks like a vine & bears fruit, but there's lots of healthy new growth on a plant which started out as a bare twig eight weeks ago. And I now also have some umbrella shade to sit in as I type, to enjoy it all: a red, oriental-style umbrella for the bigger outdoor table & green for shade on the north sun, until the grapevine matures...
Day or night, if I lie in my elevated bedroom, I find myself immersed in a soundscape that is variously soothing and disturbing. Today, as I did yesterday and the day before again, I lie here with a flu-riddled body, perhaps more sensitized and attuned to these and other sounds.
Always, although I must strain a little to hear it, and cannot see it, there is the constant daytime evidence of human activity and the built landscape. The hum of distant traffic forms the chorus, punctuated with cameos by soloing 747s- all those happy Perthites winging their way to Bali and beyond. The determined purring of the community mulcher turning twigs and bark into something reusable, a short way away on the verge. My neighbours on all sides engage in outdoor, early morning, over-the-fence conversation, at variable volumes: The high school teacher, used to addressing distracted youth; the ex-model whose finishing school elocution lessons still serve her well in the voice projection department; the woman with the uninhibited laugh .
Several nights back, a strange thooking sound halfway between bright and dull assailed my ears and woke me at roughly two minute intervals just before and just after midnight. Some sleuthing revealed two teenage boys engaging in a nocturnal ping pong match, seemingly unaware of the hour and the passage of time in their euphoric state of recent liberation from the routine of high school.The intense but usually short-lived Death Metal blasts from my easterly neighbour's vegan teenage daughter have replaced the incessant drum kit drumming from my northern neighbour, now that Number One Son has moved out. They move like wraiths about the place, the teenagers, here but not here. Furtive conversational boy-girl games and persistent doorknocking at front doors, that they think cannot be overheard!
There are also visitations from The Troubled One, a blustering Rapper of a prodigal young man in his early twenties, who has been showing up noisily most days with his wounds exposed. He arrives suddenly, his moods and insecurities most likely invoked by sultry or stormy weather. Lately, if he rages and rails for too long against my neighbour, his beleaguered Mother, a platoon of vigilant bouncers emerges to calmly and sternly have the last word, at which chastisement he skulks off again into the night.
The most intrusive human noise by far though is the police search helicopter, which arrives without warning late on Summer weekends, in its 2am pursuit of a fleeing vehicle, or with its beam trained on our gardens in search of a pedestrian fugitive. I groan at the indignity of being woken at such a time, and wonder exactly how the police are Keeping the Peace, when an entire innocent town is woken from its slumber, in the pursuit of a single felon.
The sounds that give me the most joy are those of the natural and animal world. Little dusky doves cooing sleepily in the eaves outside my room, and the high pitched, gentle chirpings of New Holland Honeyeaters whose home is my garden. This includes the smaller two-footed critters, spending many hours together in a boyish tumble of trampolining.
Sometimes, as the Summer approaches, the hot easterly off the desert sticks its obscene tongue into the open orifices of the house, exhaling its hot breath and whining irritably. More welcome are the reassuring mutterings and soothing massage of the breeze coming off the ocean in the afternoons, known affectionately as The Doctor. Unless or until it reaches fever pitch like a screaming dervish, whistling up the staircase and rattling the cowering windows in their befuddled frames. At such times, the tin panels of my roof pop and groan warily against The Doctor's doggedness to liberate them. When the breezes are subtle, the faint tinkles of Balinese mini-gamelan chimes can be heard. When the wind is fierce, they clang together like harbingers of doom.
This morning, lying here in an ailing sweat and celebrating 'the calm after the coughing fit', I became aware of another sound that signals Summer: chirruping cicadas somewhere among the shrubs and the passionfruit vine. The soundscape dropped back to the quiet traffic hum and The Doctors early mutterings, when suddenly a squadron of a dozen and a half noisy ravens alighted in a tall eucalypt not fifty metres north, on the next property. They squawked noisily for perhaps five minutes, sharing news of where to find the juiciest spoils. They split into two groups, one of which circled a few times, before returning to the tree and flying off noisily together.
Perhaps they got wind along the crow grapevine of the ponds full of motorbike frogs here. Over the last fortnight, I've heard the mating calls of the frogs getting closer and closer- starting out in my neighbour's garden. Apparently, after a particularly wet winter, we've had an unusual spawning of tadpoles who, even more unusually, made it to maturity this season. The young froglets conversed for a while in the open expanse of garden between our houses, and eventually made their presence felt in my own garden where they can take refuge among the burst of pond reeds without fear of predation .
And now, they cavort each night, fat and horny, close to my bedroom window, like a bunch of rowdy youths on two-stroke trail bikes, showing off to an audience of girls. One even made its way into the house, where it was accosted by our Jack Russell Terrier, who remembers how disgusting they taste and no longer tries to eat them, but won't give up the thrill of the chase. The high-pitched squealing sound of a terrified, cornered frog is a disquieting one. In concert with excited dog barking, it has woken me and propelled me into wee-hours rescuing (frog) and quarantining (dog) mode, a few times already this year.
The frog song is both reassuring and irritating. A sign of a happy garden ecosystem, which will presumably keep mosquito numbers down this Summer...but it keeps me awake at night if I indulge my preference for open windows at night to allow the sea breeze to apply its cooling balm to the interior of the house. With the result that I'm not getting enough night sleep and have ended up with a cold...
The motorbike frogs' song reminds me of, but is nothing like, an animated Rupert the Bear video, Rupert and The Frog Song, featuring a marvellous froggy chorus written and sung by Paul McCartney, who is also the voice of Rupert. I'm nostalgically fond of the song (which we have on a hand-me-down, dinosauric VHS video). As is my son, who knows all the words by heart. Rupert's frogs, the stereotypical top hat-toting, politely ribbeting froggies of the verdant English countryside, who apparently sing in exquisite harmony, are perhaps to their two-wheeler-impersonating Antipodean bikie gang cousins what the sweet-voiced English robin red breast is to the uncouth raven rabble of our rugged Western Australian landscape?!
Although I've been mostly resting in my bed, when I can I venture out into the garden to be among it all. I can see but not hear the frogs at close range and, ah what's that? A passionfruit, the first of the season, emerging from a profusion of blossoms that has burst into bloom with the advent of hotter days. The lone fruit is fully formed, still green, shiny and not yet wrinkled, promising more Summer delights ahead.
I consider myself a Francophile. I love speaking the language. I've spent time living in France. I have studied university level French, and apparently speak convincingly with almost no accent, so I guess that almost 30 years after my first visit to le beau pays, my spoken French is still not too shabby. More recently, I've been enjoying translating English songs into French.
I love French food (as long as too many wacky animal parts aren't involved). I love the French countryside. I love Paris in the Springtime. I even love the love. J'adores l'amour. I love the idea of watching French films on SBS (Australia's most significant multicultural television channel) so as to retain and hone my French language skills.But (with the exception of the animated series Miniscule, Delicatessan and the cult classic The Triplets of Belleville) I confess: absolutely CANNOT STAND most French movies themselves!
That's it, I swear, I've done my dash. Je m'en debarrasses. I expect nothing more than two hours of torture, unrequited love and petulance. Impossibly pouty, Audrey Tautou-looking bra-less gauche girl-women being ravished by paedophile-minded men at least twice their age- repulsively ugly, severed headed, manipulative, sociopathic seducers.
I just watched this one, The Ring Finger, on SBS hoping to prove myself wrong. Granted, the plot was more unusual and interesting than usual, but it had that predictable air of under-stated French mystery about it. An all too familiar theme of the self-destructiveness of lost female souls. The done-to-death disturbed, misogynist, sado-masochistic eroticism throughout, the dream state where you don't know if something is happening in real time, in a past epoch, or being hallucinated. And really lame ending. I mean I can't generally stand overstated, in-your-face, give it all away rather than leave it to the imagination, explain-every-joke Hollywood either, but less, as the pearl of wisdom goes, is not always more.
Merde! So, the Alliance Francaise can have my band for a bit of a tongue-in-cheek French sing-a-long, by all means. But they can shove their film festival la ou le soleil ne brille pas!
"We really should credit the nouse Of the tiny, tenacious head louse: Wash and comb all you like, Still they'll boldly hitchhike To be shot of them, that would be grouse!"
It's becoming an almost nightly ritual: vinegar, or conditioner and essential oil, or olive, rice bran or coconut oil. Smother the head, stick on a shower cap and hope that Pixie Munchkins does not scream the place down. Lice and nit free for a while, only for some to jump back on within the week. We even use pharmaceutical preparations, but they mostly leave a lasting, god-awful, chemical stink.
On Wednesday, as I performed my one-handed maternal duties, Pixie Munchkins nearly lost an eyeball. So let's just say I've been writing a lot of limericks to stay sane!
'Mr Fingey' was devastated to lose the top of his head during school cooking class today. Suddenly, and without warning, a machete a hundred times his size descended, and he had no time to duck for cover. It did get a bit messy and histrionic (puddles of red against white floor tiles is really quite impressive)...but it turned out the wound was deceptively shallow and did not require a trip to hospital requiring stitches.
Furthermore, there was enough of the curry (into which said head tip had been lopped), to go around, as well as delicious-smelling choc chip biscuits baked that morning, and he was invited to stay for lunch. So his face went from sad to happy as he sat at the colourful table with all the kids, who found the unfolding kitchen drama, and his presence, entertaining, and his smile reassuring.
If only the same could be said of the incident involving a small boy's eyeball, some peppermint oil and said boy's semi-deaf, one-armed Mother, fresh back from the tropics. Mr Fingey's face went from anxious to happy to anxious to relieved again, as the kid progressed through pain, cold with shock, hot and bothered with discomfort and finally cracked a few jokes to indicate his complete recovery. Again, a narrow escape from a scary ambulance, but only just!
And all because some microscopic hitchhikers had set up camp again in Hair Village and started to burrow most annoyingly, and the fumigation process had gone pear-shaped. Now Mr Fingey's face has been known to go from disgust, to alarm, to relieved happiness, as these pesky little head-invaders are flushed down the gurgler. Tonight, it went from alarm to relief to exhaustion in quick succession.
So today, he did the full gamut of emotion. Dear old 'Mr Fingey', may you sleep well tonight!
Occasionally things pop up on Facebook and elsewhere, on the subject of IQ. They make me feel a little tetchy. Why? Because I already believe that we live in a society that totters precariously on its collective left brain, while allowing its right brain to atrophy in a jar; that IQ tests are culturally biased (Aboriginal kids do not, as a rule, fare well in them). And because, all too often, what is missing from the topic of achievement and genius, is a parallel discussion of emotional intelligence and what that means for the planet.
Don't get me wrong- my brother is a Mensa candidate and I myself was an academic high achiever, even early in life- in advanced everything, dux of primary school, and the recipient of a swag of awards in various subjects throughout high school. I know myself to be a skilled and natural teacher, which is reflected in the High Distinctions I achieved for units in a post-graduate teaching diploma...yet I ran from it screaming, unable to complete the necessary study. I'm also an eclectic songwriter and have received a modicum of acclaim for it...yet apart from two EPs some years back, have baulked at recording my not inconsiderable archive of songs, allergic to the whole intense, studio experience. I have a number of manuscripts sitting waiting for submission, born of my love of the process of writing...but I am yet to become a best-selling author, since the process of getting published completely floors and bamboozles me.
I've been giving quite a bit of thought to this in relation to the notion of 'life purpose'. While I've carved out a reasonably satisfyingly creative life for myself, and am grateful for my little patch of the universe, I still don't think I've entirely found my niche, so I'm asking myself (not for the first time): "what, exactly, got between me and my potential?"
The short answer lies in the discover some years back that I am what is referred to as as a Highly Sensitive Person or HSP, one of a normal and healthy 15-20% of the population. Go here, here and here for some excellent information on the subject of HSPs and it's enlightening relationship to traditional notions about introversion and extroversion.
In a nutshell, being HSP means that no amount of academic success, in and of itself, ever helped me to survive and thrive in an overwhelming world. Indeed I made the difficult choice to 'de-institutionalize' myself , with the consequence that, while I do have something of a 'magical mystery tour' story to tell about what has happened since, I do not have the publically-recognized credentials one would expect of a smarty pants renaissance multi-talent, and indeed I am rather more of an underachiever than an overachiever, by many people's standards.
Having manoeuvered my way through an alien landscape as an adult, I've made the best of my life and responded to what life presented me with. Equipped with a greater awareness of my HSP nature, my history now makes total sense in a way that it didn't in earlier epochs, when I judged myself lacking. There were periods in my life when I didn't know that I was allowed to trust my own nature and intuition, instead of buying into ideas about success and failure, and what I 'ought to' have been able to do to survive. As a non-HSP, I might have made more purposeful choices, been rewarded with greater social approval and found a more 'successful' path. But I didn't. The question now is: am I satisfied, is it enough (for me) and what does that mean anyway?
Today's mini piccolino holidayette-chen kecil, a trip to our local dog beach, was inspired by July two week school holiday break drawing to a close, and to reward Charlie Brown for his patience. Stormy days and his Mistress' illness have diminished our darling pooch's opportunities for walks of late, so it was his turn to run feely in the only part of Fremantle where he has permission to do so as yet another crisp sunny day dawned. We talk a lot about 'taking turns' in this 'single child' household, so I informed my beloved son that it was Charlie's turn!
Bryn was nose-out-of-joint grizzly all the way there in the car and down to the sand, but once absorbed in beach play- gathering starfish washed up by the storm, throwing rocks at the cliff, running around with Charlie, and even at one point lying on the sand day dreaming he (predictably) thoroughly enjoyed himself!
His Mum was engrossed in with her camera, on a picture book day with a blue and fluff ball cloud sky, and had a particularly satisfying photo shoot, what with the picturesque and highly photogenic backdrop of sand, ocean, saltbush and melaleuca trees. Again I say- how lucky we are- even the local dogs enjoy an unpopulated, sometimes private beach, surrounded by pristine coastal scrub!
Afterwards, we stopped in at Peter Kennedy's barbershop on South terrace to render Bryn's head less attractive to lice.Then we went for a 'fish and chip' lunch and cake at Kailis Brothers, Fishing Boat Harbour in downtown Freo. My Tourist in My Own Town discovery of the day is that Kailis Brothers is famous for fish and chip flavoured gelato- "hmmmm, think I'll pass" says Bryn!
The lad was dropped off en route home, to spend time with Dad. And so I type this in the afterglow of my leisurely yoga class/swim/spa/sauna session at the gym, and the prospect of a sleep-in in the morning!
Look Mum, I'm an eagle (me horizontal on the sand)
3 minutes drive away- we live in a truly idyllic place...
look what the storm washed up mum!
I snappa da mama
lemon meringue pie?-yum! fish and chip gelato?- pass!
So cute in the 'gumnut' beanie I crocheted last winter!
A week of lurgies, storms and resultant housebound-ness gave rise to a compulsive need to flee towards sunshine and the great outdoors again today, another Tourist in My Own Town small adventure. I've taken to calling these day trips 'mini piccolino holiday-ette-chens kecil' as tribute to all the languages-other-than-English that I speak. I figure if I 'talk global', I will feel more like I am on holiday somewhere exotic!
And so, Bryn, Oupa (my Dad) and I headed for Heathcote, via the scenic river route.
Heathcote, an ex-psychiatric hospital, was built high on a cliff in Applecross, in the Melville district, south of the river here in Perth, and east of where we live. It was born in 1929, an era progressive in its thinking about the milder forms of 'mental illness'. The theory was that in-patients would benefit from the calming vistas of a spacious, green-gardened facility overlooking the water. I dare say they were right. A friend of mine once spent some time there as a vulnerable young adult and reports having enjoyed it because of its riverside location and comparatively 'softly softly' approach to her well-being. How lucky we are to have access to such gorgeous sites, reclaimed as public-access open spaces, with such a rich history, south of the river in Perth.
Even Charlie Brown didn't entirely miss out on today's reprise of (mostly) splendid blue sky- Heathcote itself is a dog-free zone, so he slept in the car awhile, however we made various stops en route to and from, on the flat land down by the river, that were dog-friendly, with plenty of interesting river weeds and stinky fishy things for him to sniff.
The playground at Heathcote is sensational- all timber and corrugated iron, with tunnels and bridges and a maritime-themed allusion to shipwrecks. The Lad spent a happy couple of hours there before coming a-cropper on a bridge, at which moment (at least after a consoling cuddle), I decided it was time to point the car back towards Fremantle, via as watery a route as we could manage.
Said lad turns seven in ten days, and I'm pondering the what and where of a party. I toyed with Heathcote, which has barbecue facilities and a café for the grownups...but I'm inclined towards something closer to home - a Sensational Seven Sausage Sizzle - and to keep it simple- 'hotdogs' on the barbecue, vegetarian and non, popcorn, hot drinks for the grown-ups, Yours Truly's annual cake creation, and some free play.
An ice cream and coffee break a the Bluewater Café, Heathcote with the stunning
Swan River
vista in the background.
Bryn of course made a beeline for the amazing Heathcote playground
The funky automatic loo down on the river in Applecross!
Plans for a holiday to Bali went pear-shaped, due to nothing more than an internet banking glitch. As winter truly sets in, the sudden whisking away of the prospect of some restorative 'time out' in the tropical sun, free of mundane responsibilities, weighs heavily. But sometimes, and in small ways, things can be done to achieve the sense of being on holiday, softening the disappointment.
So it was today, when I availed myself of an opportunity to head for the hills to go orange-picking with my beloved boy. The plan was to collect the fruit from the orchard of a friend of someone at school, and to make an array of delectables such as marmalade and cordials, back home at Pinakarri, to sell at our school fete later in the year.
Winter in the hills of Perth can mean cold nights with crisp sunny blue sky days, and that is exactly the weather that blessed us today. It was a day of marvellous, small synchronicities as well: the supermarket en route there had exactly what we needed- sushi and fancy pants freshly-squeezed juice, on special for a dollar apiece, which allayed my anxiety about how, when, where and what to eat for lunch, simply and inexpensively.
With a carload of fruit boxes bulging with fresh-from-the-tree oranges and mandarins, I decided it would be fun to explore the sights near Bedfordale. So Pixie Munchkins and I drove from Bedfordale through the bush to Churchman Brook reservoir, where Bryn and I examined the contents of the dam, then he spent a happy half hour swinging from the monkey bars and playing peek-a-boo in a tunnel. We spent time photographing the gorgeous golden wattles (acacia), which bloom in profusion in the winter in Perth.
We continued on an ice cream quest through the winding narrow roads to Roleystone, where I serendipitously ran into an old friend outside the antique shop. She recommended a divine little vegetarian café close by called Genesis- all scrumptious home-baked cakes and cosy sofas on higgledy wooden verandahs, with paintings adorning the walls and a decidedly spiritual and new age energy about it, set among the verdant bush landscape. A talented local artist holding his exhibition opening there, whose ocean-inspired work I coveted, offered me a champagne and a pre-opening viewing, and we bought a book about Vikings for B's imminent seventh birthday. I plan to return there to work on my novel, imagining myself, laptop at the ready, on the two seater sofa at the end of the verandah with the stunning bush outlook !
As the sun dipped, we meandered back down the hill and, on account of the chill and my disinclination to cook, settled on a pub dinner next to a roaring fire, where Bryn immersed himself in some kids games and puzzles after tucking into the hearty, warming, generously-proportioned good value meal, easily enough for two.
And so, I felt like a tourist in my own town, fortuitously and gently shaken out of my coastal comfort zone and offered fresh, altitudinous perspectives. As I drove home with the tiredness that comes of physical labour and time spent outdoors, in the company of a pint-sized energy ball, I couldn't help reflecting on the parallels between Bali and Perth: Despite the climatic differences, Rottnest Island is to Perth what Nusa Lembongan is to Bali, and a trip from Oceanside Fremantle to our lusher hills inland is a little like the journey from the southern Kuta coast to cooler, greener Ubud, only more tranquil and less polluted, with a conspicuous absence of gnat-impersonating scooters. For now, I will feed the fantasy, finding small, doable ways to be 'on holiday' in my heart and in my head. It's soul-nourishing to embark on manageable explorations of new, strange and greener pastures, yet in my own beautiful, pristine Perth, returning to my own, comfortable bed at night.
Golden Wattle in bloom
Bryn has his own camera, courtesy of Oupa!
At the dam
Delicious chocolate coconut cake treat at Genesis in the bush (instead of ice cream)
Stunning bush setting of Genesis café
Cosy sofas and verandah heating in the bush at Genesis café
Elizabethan Village. A bit pricy with an unappealing menu, so we ate by the fire at
The Vaccination Issue has reared its unpleasant head again in Australia, as the New South Wales parliament stands poised to pass legislation which makes it compulsory for children to be vaccinated in order to attend schools and day care centres. Unless there is a 'good reason' not to. I'm hopeful that the conscientious objection clause will remain. Hopefully, the NSW decision (which, I'm disappointed to hear, has the support of all parties, including the Greens) will not set a precedent across the country.
And so the debate rages on. I am clear on my position, and I am tired of the debate, so I will not got there again, nor do I wish to persuade anyone in either direction. What disturbs me however is that, whenever The State promotes a particular policy or ideology over another, permission is effectively given to the general populace to persecute those with dissident views. Although it may seem like a step far removed from our own form of democracy, there are countless historical examples of where this leads. Here, to cite a recent example, is an article on the rise in gay deaths in Russia since Putin's recent, actively homophobic stance.
I do not think the Australian government's coercive pro-vaccine policy augurs well, indeed such decisions have often preceded the slippery slope towards a more autocratic form of government. Although I am thankful to have not been on the receiving end of a pro-vaccine rant from a reactionary, Herd Theory-spouting ignoramus, recently (indeed there has only ever been respect for each other's decisions from within our own school community) I fear that pro-vaccination parents, who already feel entitled to shame and make pariahs of conscientious objectors (whose beliefs may came from a different yet well-considered paradigm) and their otherwise healthy children, will interpret the move as giving them even more license to conduct a scare-mongering conversion drive. I get that parents just want to protect their children, truly I do. I just don't agree on how they sometimes go about it.
The analogy I draw is this: A region of Australia is subject to bushfires. Emergency Services persuades the community that, in order to escape the likelihood of a fire, a minimum of 90% of people will need to be pre-emptively airlifted out of the danger zone of predicted widespread fires that Summer and parachuted down to safety. Despite the obvious cost and complicated logistics of such an intervention, the community defers to Emergency Services, assuming that it is the leading authority in such things. 'Stay and defend' is no longer an option and people will be fined if they do not submit to the airlift. This is also welcome news to the parachute manufacturer, which unbeknown to most, has links to the chief of Emergency Services, and whose subsequent advertising campaign perpetuates the fear of a major bushfire. It is also known that, given the large numbers, 1% of parachutes will fail to open, and a further 1% will get snagged on trees, rooves and other obstacles on the way down. They do not disclose this predicted failure rate to the public however, and the project goes ahead, even though a known number of people will die and be injured anyway, albeit not from a bushfire. Furthermore, to speed up the implementation of the project, the parachutes are made from an inferior silk from a batch that has been idling away in storage, and are not thoroughly or rigorously tested before leaving the factory. They are distributed purely on the basis that the manufacturer, the pilot and the chief of Emergency Services deem them 'safe'. In fact, there are no major bushfires that year. The predicted wind patterns and conditions do not prevail. The valley is saved, but several lives are lost in the pre-emptive rescue mission.
It's a ridiculous premise to suggest, isn't it? And yet, isn't this effectively what we are doing in unquestioningly accepting vaccine theory without peering closely at the actual multiple toxic substances being injected into small bodies (expedient for the manufacturers and those administering them only) in quick succession?
There is currently no vaccine damage agency or path of recompense in Australia. Such agencies as VAERS, however, exist in the USA and other countries, which is tantamount to an acknowledgement that a A KNOWN % OF VACCINE RECIPIENTS WILL SICKEN OR DIE, YET VACCINES ARE MADE MANDATORY.
How can any mass medical intervention be taken truly seriously, unless it demonstrates that there will be a casualty rate of zero, and that it upholds the Hippocratic Oath under which doctors pledge to 'first do no harm'? How is it that the state can blithely decide that some individuals are expendable, in the course of supposedly providing immunity to a majority? And due to the negligible onus on vaccine manufacturers to provide adequate proof of the efficacy and long term harmlessness of vaccines, we simply do not know what the implications will be down the track, of mass vaccination. Even respectable scientists such as epigeneticists, the doyens of a balanced nature-nurture hypothesis, counsel caution in messing around with our genes and our bodies natural defences, precisely because of these unforeseeable effects.
I find the stepping up of attacks (dare I say the witch hunt) on vaccine information providers and whistle blowers, such as Meryl Dorey of the AVN, abhorrent. I find Isaac Golden's writing and research on the subject pretty compelling. Predictably, Golden is also currently receiving a slagging in the press, from the AMA and other threatened quarters, despite his rather moderate position. This includes persuasive evidence and statistics from homeopathic trials conducted overseas, where vaccination is prohibitively expensive and homeopathy better-known. In countries such as Brazil and Cuba, medical doctors are often also registered homeopaths. There is also a growing mountain of credible anecdotal evidence, and a growing personal faith and experience in a more holistic, less barbaric health paradigm.
And just to link the gay and vaccine issues, go here for a bizarrely homophobic extrapolation about the dangers of vaccines from some nutter of an Italian doctor, that I reckon we can all do without!
At not quite seven, my son Bryn has already figured out a lot of the 'nurture' attached to gender. By that I mean social rules about colour and toy preference, in relation to being a boy. At four, he already knew that pink clothes were 'for girls'...yet almost always chose the pink cup, the pink balloon, etcetera, as a way to get around that. By five, he was declining pink things and into the red cup, the red balloon etcetera, as a badge of boyhood. Now at almost seven, he is still very fond of a pair of slightly-too-short purple yoga pants, which he will not let me pass on, but he is otherwise very choosy in a slightly boyish gendered way.
A few days ago he found my hot water bottle and started holding it to his chest by my bed and rocking it like a baby. Our ensuing conversation went something like this:
B: Mummy, when I grow up and marry a girl, I'm going to have babies. Me: Oh? How many? B: Four. Me: Right, how many boys and how many girls? B: Two boys and two girls...like me and Aleisha and Brett and Hannah (his much older half-siblings). Me: Okay. What will their names be? Bryn: Well, the two girls will be named Sweetie and Sweetpea, the boys will be called John and Paul. No, wait! The girls will be called George and Ringo, and the boys will be called John and Paul (laughing uproariously at his own joke)!
Clearly his love of The Beatles outweighed his perceptions of gender. I have absolutely no problem with that!
Bryn aged two in his favourite mauve all-in-one suit with the butterfly motif
Sometimes we surprise ourselves. I did! After what felt like an eternity of putting one foot in front of the other, chipping away at the fallout from a separation via various means (yoga, ocean swims, meditation, network chiropractic and EFT), whilst being saddled with the lion's share of care for a small person, and chronic body ache, I did something uncharacteristic- I joined a gym! Not just any gym. Mine has crèche, a café with a licensed bar, comfy chairs, free wi fi, a quiet 'ladies only' area and two saltwater pools. The wet area (pool, spa, steam room and sauna) is clean, with a pleasing view of the garden via a large sunlit window. Not to mention there is a choice of yoga, pilates, tai chi, and pump classes, most of which are available during the day while B is in school and the place is quiet.
It's almost as though the clouds parted enough to find the momentum and to be in 'the right place at the right time' for a good deal that costs me no more than the 'one-yoga-class-and-a-couple-of-swims' weekly routine I am used to.
The last two weeks have been an experiment- time spent trialling a few options and group classes. I'm pleased, and not exactly surprised, to find that I like Tai Chi the most. I admire the integrity of the cute young Asian-Australian teacher. It's like a dance- all standing poses, but nothing held for too long, so my aching feet and hips rejoice. I've also experimented with pilates, pump and yoga...all good options but perhaps not my 'thing', and a tad demanding of my sore tootsies. Tai chi is it, for now, on top of any cardio workout I do.
I love that I can nip to and from this place, en route to and from my son's school. Indeed a quirky, unexpected aspect of joining has been that I have had chance encounters with other Mum's from our school- sometimes we converge in the spa where there is time to chat and relax. And bitch about being single Mums!
The thing that blows me away is how comfortable I am to stay there for periods of time...relative to any gym I've ever been in. It's like a home-away-from-home, a nest that I can hang out in. I love that there is included wi fi- how marvellous that I can noodle away, doing this kind of thing, in between doing stuff to take care of my body! I'm starting to identify my favourite spots- the small set of chairs near the window on sunny days, furthest away from the doof music and the black Jamaican-English guy with the Londoner accent, who loudly conducts business from the adjoining executive lounge, which has glass walls but no ceiling!
Now is a time of observing- experimenting with how much is enough and what feels right. At the moment, it all feels unusually effortless. Can it be that the EFT, the clearing, the support from a bunch of other HSPs dispersed across the globe and converging in cyberspace, the inviting of all sorts of hopeful, restorative practices have finally started to pay off? I hope so- time will tell...
Don't get me wrong. Gadgets have their place. I myself am the proud owner of a smartphone, a laptop, a digital piano, an "ay carumba!" recording device for song demos which is the envy of most blokes, a camera with Super high definition video capability and a downstairs router which talks to the one upstairs.
And sure, computer games are fun. It's just that my son, my only progeny, the sole product of my loins, is not yet seven. I breath such a sigh of relief when I see him climbing trees, and befriending fellow climbers of his own age, instead of dumbly installed in front of the tube- or asking to be- again.
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