Returned?

Last post, early 2008. Before that, late 2007. Dare I say that I'm going to return to my ramblings? I used to love it so much. Found it so cathartic. Reading over all that I've written here brought back so many memories of the time when I was delicately, and sometimes violently, extricating myself from all that I grew up with in the church. Untangling my brain. What follows is then a loud and lengthy blank that is surely, in itself, testament to the enormous change my life underwent after giving birth to Isaiah. And now little Atticus has just been born and all of a sudden I have CHILDREN. Not just a single baby or child, but children. So, what better time to start writing again but now. In my vast reservoirs of spare time!
I think I can do it.
We'll see I suppose.
I'm much more efficient when sleep deprived anyway so, fingers crossed.

Beanie

Little child,
we have seen your beating heart
and the secret pattern of your sparrow bones.
We watched you stretch and roll and suck your thumb.
You were oblivious to our astonishment.

I think you are a daughter,
but you could be a son...
and we don't mind either way.

You are precious and tiny and secret; hidden in the dark.
We have loved you since you were impossibly small, even though you were such an unexpected gift!
We are so glad that you came into existence
and led us to this place with your determined little will
and your tiny
beating
mouse-heart.

You have blessed us as we could never have imagined.
We can't wait to hold you.

Caterpillars

'Every creature is a word of God


If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature -
even a caterpillar -
I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God
is every creature.'

- Meister Eckhart

Nick is currently writing an essay on Eckhart. He was a very interesting man, I can't believe they were all set to burn him for heresy before he conveniently died. I was reading some of his writing today, as Nick sat opposite me, working hard in short bursts. After reading the passage above, I looked up to unexpectedly witness a mass exodus of caterpillars from a bunch of lavender on the kitchen table. Reach, slide, hover, consider; they slowly made their way up and out of sight. We watched them go.


In keeping with the theme of the day, I decided to make a birthday card for a friend's 21st tomorrow featuring a caterpillar, which said, 'Caterpillars, ringed and wrinkly, rainbows on a day that's sprinkly.' The caterpillars on my window were so small that I'm not sure if they were wrinkly. Either way, they certainly had a lot of feet.



After Eckhart's caterpillar section I read this...

'Why is it that some people
do not bear fruit?
It is because they are so busy clinging
to their egotistical attachments
and so afraid of letting go and letting be
that they have no trust
either in God
or in themselves.
Love cannot distrust.
It can only await the good trustfully.
No person
could ever trust God too much.
Nothing people ever do
is as appropriate
as great trust in God.
With such trust,
God never fails to accomplish great things.'

Auction day adventures

Today I went to an auction to bid on a house. I certainly wasn't the highest bidder. Infact, the price went over my budget within about 20 seconds, which was slightly humourous - in a sad way! I decided that it was ok though, and that it was probably the best possible outcome, for reasons that I will never understand. After that, Nick and I decided to go out to Montsalvat in Eltham for the day. It is such a quaint and rustic little place. We explored all the medieval style buildings and traced our fingers over the rough, hand carved faces set secretly in the stone work. Nick improvised hauntingly on every piano that crossed our path, then we sat on the grass to eat lunch and listened to the aching calls of the peacocks.
On the way home, we stopped at Lower Plenty Primary, where Nick went to school. We played some basketball, whilst Little Nick flitted in and out of the trees. Back in the car, we decided that we would never have guessed how good the day turned out after, what I initially though was, such a disappointing start.

I've now decided that all I need is a genetically engineered, glimmering peacock tail, instead of a house, for absolute, guaranteed happiness.

Camp...

I am currently up at camp with my Year 8 boys. I am seeing them in a completely new light. They ask me questions about what they should wear; if they will be too hot, too cold. 'Should I put a bandaid on this?', 'What are we having for dinner?', 'I've dropped the rainwater measurer in the dam, what should I do?' And many other such questions. They try so hard to be brave and cool but sometimes they cry and then pretend that they aren't. When it's time for supper before bed, they forget that they're meant to be looking cool and instead sit chomping on their buscuits and slurping big glasses of milk without a second thought. I couldn't fight the urge to tell them how adorable they all looked at this point last night and I received many stares of mock anger and grumbles of 'Oh, shoosh Miss Rowe!' and instead of pointing out the hilarity of their milk moustaches, I just smiled at them adoringly.
There is one boy in particular who has had a complete personality change since we got here. I said to him today, 'You're so different here, you seem much happier.' And without any hint of malice, but with complete innocence and sincerity, he said, 'Yeah, I just really hate school.'

At this poignant point in my blog entry I have been interrupted by this question and collection of following statements:

'Miss Rowe, what do you think is the worst smell in the world? Garlic? Rotten eggs or something like that? Rotten fish?!'

There was no need for me to answer.

A night in my old bedroom...

I woke up last night in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, crying. I’d had a bad dream and was aching for an unknown baby from whom I had been long separated. In the confusion of all the darkness and semi-consciousness and guest room pillows I couldn’t distinguish the emotion of my dream from reality. I sobbed for a while, as Nick patted me sleepily and murmured comfort. I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so sad.
The night just gone had been the wonderfully festive occasion of my dad’s 60th birthday, and was filled with speeches, stories, songs and wobbly-voiced toasts in celebration of the brilliant person that he is. I haven’t laughed so much or smiled so constantly in a very long time. Nick and I had trudged up the stairs to my old room at the end of the night, exhausted and happy. Throughout the night’s speeches there had been many, many references to my paternal grandparents, Bertha and Les, who both died very suddenly, six weeks apart, when my dad was in his late 20s. In fact, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the party was for them! They received so many mentions, “here-here”s, nods and raised glasses that it was almost as if they were there with us. I never met them, as I was born after they died, but that night after I had woken up, crying for my unnamed baby, my thoughts turned to Bert and Les and my tears were for them. I was crying because of all the struggles they’d had, all the good times they’d had, and all the memories of them that everyone else possessed, which I didn’t have. I got up after a little while and padded off into the darkness to get a tissue from the bathroom adjoining my old bedroom. Even in the dark I could still remember the steps to the door and how to turn the knob so it doesn’t squeak. As I did this I remembered that, sitting in a small bag on the floor near the door, were my maternal grandparents, Ted and Ethel, whom I remember vaguely. To be precise, their ashes were in the bag on the floor, as mum had recently retrieved them from the cemetery for scattering at Rosebud. This didn’t seem strange to me at all and, to my mild surprise, I was rather comforted by the presence of all four of my grandparents there with me in the darkness.
I dried my tears and thought of the absurdity of it all; weeping in the night, surrounded by the memories, dreams, ashes and physicality of loved ones; living, dead and as yet unborn. I shivered back over to the bed where a loved one with skin on had kept a spot warm for me. He shuffled over and hugged me tightly and even let me warm up my cold feet on his legs, without complaining. I smiled into the darkness and had a fleeting sense of my family’s ongoing, communal spirit outside of time and breath; grandparents, parents, siblings born and miscarried, unborn children and one single lover. Everyone. All of us, all together. Regardless of who was alive. For one moment, we were all just there.

The Taradale Railway Viaduct and further ramblings…

Recently, I went through a short phase of wanting to live in Malmsbury and spend my days eating apples and reading books. This was because Nick and I took a trip to Bendigo, last week, and stopped in Malmsbury and neighbouring Taradale on the way home. What a beautiful part of the world! So green and hilly and fresh and quaint. I fell in love with a number of little weatherboard cottages and we stopped and had a vegie pastie at the famous Malmsbury bakery. What really got our attention, though, was an enormous and astonishingly robust railway bridge that was built in 1862.
We were drawn to it, not only because of its brilliance, but because we are climbers from waaaay back, and it was calling to us with its big rusty voice, flaunting its high heights and promising beautiful views. Our last irresistible climbing experience culminated at the top of some building scaffolding that crept high up the spire of a church in Fitzroy - a frosty and exhilarating experience. However, on this day it was a big, slopey hill that we climbed so that we finished climbing at the bit where the tracks became a bridge. This photo does it SO little justice, it looks as if it would be a mere stoll in the park, but I was absolutely gasping by the time I reached the top, it was very steep and high.Needless to say, the view was amazing and I wobbled about on the tracks for a bit, whilst Nick did boyish things like trying to climb even higher (unnecessarily so, as we were on top of a fifty thousand zillion foot bridge) and throwing rocks into nearby pine trees. We listened to the clack clack clack of the stones falling through the wood and then realised that a train was coming! I got all squealy and I reckon Nick was hard pressed not to follow suit. We stumbled off the tracks and half heartedly hid behind the wall. The train flew past us as such a speed that we barely got to see it. It was literally across the whole bridge in a few seconds. It's such a shame that they don't make bridges like that anymore. It was so solid and rustic and handmade. And there is something so pleasing about stone blocks as opposed to cement.
The sun began to set while we were up there and I thought about all the people in all the houses around us who couldn't see what we could see.

Robot

Atoms

I've been on holiday! How quaint. Nick and I drove all up and down the Great Ocean Road for a few days and it was so beautiful. When the ipod battery ran out, whoever was the passenger grabbed the djembe and had the job of singing songs to the driver who, in turn, had to harmonise. Luckily Nick was often the driver, as my attempts at harmonising were pitiful, yet it was great fun and, subsequently, I 'forgot' to charge the ipod on numerous occasions which left us harmonising all over the hills of Victoria. However, when the ipod was working, we listened to a lot of Ani DiFranco, as I'd just gotten her new 'Official Bootleg' album from a concert in Boston. On this album there is a new song called 'The Atom'. We listened to it over and over again and it gave us both more and more shivers each time. Something in the words brought to life the whisperings of thoughts that I've been wrestling with of late. It helped to solidify an understanding of God that was characterised by, more than anything, a lack of understanding. As dear Ani howled on about 'the magnificent consciousness incarnate' in an atom, I was filled with a sense of the absolute diversity and indeterminate nature of God, and instead of fearing such a lack of solid answers, which is often my response to those kind of thoughts, I felt peace and freedom. Even in the face of confusion that such a possibility might bring, I felt surrounded by a fierce, yet quiet uprising of grace, as if I could sense a pulse of joy existing in the tiny, humming orbits. I suppose the incredible beauty of nature at our fingertips helped these thoughts along, as well as the fact that we were united with such beauty in the most intricate and inextricable sense. None of that may make any sense, but that's ok. It was such a beautiful song.

I've posted the words below and am painfully aware of the angsty-teenager-ish nature of such an act, but I decided to do it anyway.

The Atom - Ani DiFranco

The glory of the Atom
Begs a reverent word
The primary design
Of the whole universe
The smallest unit of matter
Let us bow our heads
At the magnificent consciousness incarnate there

Yeah, the smallest unit of matter
With its orbiting electrons
Echoing all of the solar system
Like a hawk in the hills at dawn
The smallest unit of matter
Uniting rock and bird and tree and you and me

Oh holy is the atom
The truly intelligent design
To which all of evolution
Is graciously aligned
The one single structure
To which everything distills
The air, the woodsmoke there and the hills

Leave me here surrounded
By everything that's real
Far outside the boundaries
Of the digitised ordeal
Leave me here awake
Leave me here to heal

Human beings are a cross between monkeys and ants
You can see us from your spaceship
Melting the polar icecaps with our arrogance
Yeah, summon a congress of angels
Dressed in riot gear
We got a serious problem down here

I have a great, great uncle
Who worked on the atomic bomb
He got a nobel prize in physics
And a place in this song
And I bet there were no windows
And no women in the room
When they applied themselves to the pure science of doom

Yes, messing with the atom
Is the highest form of blasphemy
Whether you are making weapons
Or simply electricity
Someone fashion me a pulpit
I have been called to engage
With the maniacal heretics of the nuclear age

Let the religious get religion
Let the consumers get a clue
Let the scientists get perspective
Let the activists get their due
Let the industry get a conscience
Let the Earth inherit the meek
Let the divinity of nature speak

Oh the glory of the atom
Deserves a reverent word
The primary design
Of the whole universe
Let us sing its praises
Let us bow our heads in prayer
At the magnificent consciousness incarnate there.


Here is a picture of some atoms we saw on our holiday... lots and LOTS of them!

Saved by a fig.

Yesterday I woke up and felt like everything might be ok if I just sat still forever and kept breathing. I tried it out for awhile but then realised that sooner or later someone would come and make me get out of bed, or else I'd die of a burst bladder.
So I got up.
I didn't have a really, really good excuse to be feeling like that, but it was just one of those dark days. Everything was too much for me and my mind felt as if all it could manage was stillness and the intake of oxygen. I ate breakfast and then spent a lot of time staring at things for no reason. I had a shower, got dressed and put on the brown coat that lives in our house. Rachel's mum bought it for her years and years ago and then Rachel gave it to Kate because she didn't want it anymore. When Kate moved in here she brought the coat but then decided that she didn't want it anymore and gave it to me (more of an 'extended loan') and then Rachel moved in and now we laugh about how the coat has drawn us all together. If that's not recycling, I don't know what is!
Anyway, I put on the coat, stuffed my ears full of ipod and hid in the nice warm hood as I made my way down to the shops. I had to buy stuff for afternoon tea, as I was having friends over, so I headed for the fabulous shop, 'Naturally On High', also known as 'Al Wadi'. The man who owns this shop made me smile because he knows me now and he said 'hi' and even told me that our fruit and veg order had gone through. I like it when people in shops remember me, it makes me feel like part of the place. The other day the girl who works in Devour said, 'Where's ya man?' when I was having coffee with girlfriends. I smiled all the way home.
So anyway, I bought stuff, (turkish delight, dried pears, dates and mountain bread) which took me ages because I shuffled around feeling lost and couldn't muster the desire to pick up things that required reaching. Finally I headed home. It was cold and despite the Al Wadi man's greeting, I was still feeling heavy hearted. I headed for the laneway behind our house, cos the back way is quicker and I love cobblestones. All streets should still be cobbled, I reckon. It would slow everyone down nicely. Just near our back gate there was a massive fig tree looming over the fence from someone else's backyard. It was dripping with figs and they covered the ground in a purple mush. I reached up, although I had never eaten a fig before, and picked one that looked nice and ripe. I took it inside and put it on the chopping board and looked at it for awhile and then sliced it open with a strange sensation of ritual and solemnity. This is what I saw.



I literally gasped, out loud, as the two halves fell away from eachother and lay rocking on the wood. The picture really doesn't capture the beauty of that little fruit. I was mesmerised. It was so intricate and pink and delicate and hidden. And to think that outside, in my very own cobbled laneway, there was a whole tree bearing hundreds and hundreds of these little encased treasures. Seeing as I was having a staring kind of day, I stood and stared down at the fig for a few minutes then took it over to the window and put it down in the light and watched it for a bit longer. The flesh started to bleed shiny, white fluid and the crimson seeds glistened. Pink tendrils clustered together like coral and a sweet, satisfying smell arose. My heart started to feel full and red and fleshy again, as if it was as secret and precious and alive as the inside of the fig. My dark day had been overcome by crimson.
When Nick came over last night I told him about it and he understood completely, as I knew he would, and didn't think it was at all strange that I got teary over fruit.
I got up this morning and picked a fig for him to cut open too.


In other news, I have a fringe (as seen below) although my mouth seems to have disappeared into the silly face I was pulling. Such a comedian.

I don't like it here.

It's funny how something as little and seemingly insignificant as being excluded from the usual office photocopying round can indicate something much larger. I teach 80 teenage boys who I trust and like more than the grown up people I work with, which is isolating and kind of weird. This is my desk.


It bears all the things in my life that I really love.



I don't like it here.

The Day Began At Nick's Place...

I sometimes wake up in the little hours at Nick's place and listen to the sounds of Collingwood swirling around in the streets below. It seems that this is the only time that Johnston street isn't just an endless river of traffic, with only the occasional lonely taxi drifting aimlessly along. Men stumble out of the city and around the streets, drunk and bleary, smashing bottles and shouting at inanimate objects, whilst Audrey Hepburn, perched pristine above the Vespa shop next door, smiles serenely down upon them. The giant purple graffiti dragon, who guards the front door, shifts irritably in his sleep and flicks his forked tongue in annoyance.
He slides softly around the wall, circling until he is comfortable, then winks at Audrey and settles back into his slumber. I pull the doona up around my ears and watch Nick sleep until the circus outside becomes a hum. Then I drift off again.

When we woke up this morning the river of traffic had solidly returned, the drunken stumblers had disappeared, and the dragon was pretending to be graffiti. We lay in bed for ages talking about truth, love, God, life, freedom and the act of 'seeking' when it isn't a verb. There was some misunderstanding in our communication, at times, and some conflicting views, but I'm currently learning to regard that without anxiety. I'm trying to work out how to see difference in a relationship as a good thing and not something to be feared, or viewed as a threat. It's quite hard. Some people seem to be completely fine with that idea and see it as something rather obvious, which makes me wonder if many other people find it as difficult as I do. Anyway, it was a great conversation, concluded with a prayer, and I think we were both left feeling fairly alive and enlightened as a result.

We left the house, through the door that shrieks in pain every time you open it, and headed for the convent to have breakfast/lunch at Lentil As Anything. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! A buffet lunch of really good curries and stuff, for which you pay whatever you think they're worth. After eating like hungry piglets and barely speaking a word, we decided that a visit to the Collingwood Childrens' Farm was in order. I SO wish I'd taken photos... but I didn't. So I've had to make do with what i've got at home. Here is a list of exciting things we did there:

1. Patted goats with weird eyes like green marbles.
2. Patted a silky-soft baby goat that was three days old.
3. Made deaf jokes about a black and white cat that had no ears. (Here is a picture of a black and white cat... although this one has ears.)

4. Laughed at our jokes about the black and white cat with no ears.
5. Caught a giant, puffed up, white chicken and held it, patted it, clucked at it and touched its red, wobbly chin bit. (Here is a picture of one of my chickens. Red, wobbly chin bit and all.)

6. Made fun of the peacocks for being all dressed up with nowhere to go. I think I only did this because I am jealous of their tails.
7. Patted a lamb
8. Learnt that sheep don't 'Baaa', but make more of a 'Maaaaaaa'-ing sound whilst sticking their tongues out really far.
9. Got in trouble for attempting to feed cabbage leaves to a enormous, hairy, black pig.
10. Looked at cows.
11. Patted a brown horse. (Here is a brown horse.)

12. Met a goat with three legs called, 'Tripod'. (The closest I could get was a three legged horse... not too different... I was pretty pleased with myself actually!)

13. Laughed at Tripod.
14. Sat on a bench next to lots of little kids and held fat, squeeking guinea pigs.

Then we had a chai and a coffee and a scone and I tried to work out a way that I might be able to live at the Collingwood Children's Farm. It's SUCH an amazing place. You look around and, if you didn't know any better, you'd think you were out in the middle of the country. It is so quiet and cheerful and green, nestled under Studley Park Road. It's literally about two minutes from Nick's place (the raucous Collingwood I described earlier!) yet it is peaceful and full of gum trees. I love it there.

After that we went to the Salvos in Collingwood and put heaps of our clothes in their bins - a very cleansing act. I love getting rid of stuff. It's very satisfying. But then, of course, we went inside the op shop and I bought three rolling pins and Nick bought a video called 'Exciting Basketball Endings' which I, for one, can't wait to watch.

It's getting late now. Time for sleep. Today was a golden day. It made me feel like this,

Poet Miles

Two Worlds - Miles Allinson


Above the lazy Saturday crowds
two electric apparitions
or lorikeets existed.
That colour is from another world

where fires still work in the black gleam.
I existed there briefly, once
and rain fell
into our naked open mouths.












This is a poem by a friend of mine.
I read it whilst 'supervising' an exam this morning.
I felt such a surge of joy as I read it, that I had to hold back happy tears.
I'm not sure why it affected me like that. Perhaps is was the rain... or maybe it was the other world.
It was posted on his blog and I coveted it for my own!

His blog is www.mrcurly.blogspot.com

My troupe is performing! Come seeee!

Highlight of the social calender

Tonight marks one of the four highlights of my social calender.



The Year 8 Social.



The other three highlights are, obviously, the Year 7 Social, the Year 9 Social and the Year 10 Social.
Now I have typed the word 'social' so many times that it just looks weird.

I was thinking of taking some fashion tips from the school of Nick,









but then decided against it.

The night's highlights will be posted ASAP, because I know my vast body of readers are eager for the goss.

Boys n Girls

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a really interesting blog that is written by a person who I went to uni with. I say 'person' because when we were at uni, she was a girl, and as I stumbled across the blog, she began the process of becoming a 'he'! To be honest, I don't know how it actually happens, except for injections that he has mentioned, which I assume are testosterone. But I am finding it really interesting all the same. He posts little daily anecdotes, such as the bus driver thinking he was a teenage boy and refusing to sell him a full fare ticket! This is a little extract from his blog after the inital conversation regarding the bus ticket had been described:

"So there you have it. Read as a teenage boy (again). This time in full daylight, in public, in front of other people, under sustained scrutiny. I am happy in my toes. The best thing about it was that it was completely unexpected - I wasn't even trying."

At first I couldn't comprehend his excitement, but as I've continued reading I'm beginning to understand these small triumphs. He describes daily ups and downs; not being able to cry as readily as he'd like to, plus continued periods, seem to be lows. Growing a moustache is a high! The idea of this experience is completely foreign to me, I've never come across any one who has undergone such a process. I imagine that it would take up so much of your emotional and intellectual space, and consume your thoughts daily until your gender became settled... and probably beyond that point as well. SO many questions!

In other news, my lettuces are growing well, which is terribly exciting. This is them:

Penguins

I love this boy.

Isn't he pretty?

The other day, in a text message, he said, 'I love you more than other people love other people.'

It made me laugh.

Well, that's all I have to say, and this has been a thorougly indulgent post! It's lucky that next to nobody reads this. hahaha.

Annoyance in Westgarth

I felt marginally frustrated as I drove through Westgarth today on the way to Nick's house. I usually enjoy the quaint little shops (especially that antique, aka 'junk', shop that is run by a delightfully eccentric old lady). I also love the dragonfly wings on the power poles and the fantastically macabre brass castings of bones that serve as bike racks. It's a special little place. Yet, as I was rolling down the hill, admiring the view of the city, I was accosted by this huge, ugly billboard that was advertising Watties' spaghetti. (I just learned how to spell 'spaghetti' today, in order to write this blog.) Anyway, the inital advertisment is on the radio and it begins with sexual innuendos such as 'take my top off', 'get me hot', 'do me at your place' and 'have me in bed', which all apparently relate to spaghetti. The punch line of this advertisement was printed on the billboard, screaming out at me, "THIS AIN'T YOUR MOMMA'S SPAGHETTI" As seen below.


Momma's? MOMMA'S??

Apparently sex plus American colloquial language is supposed to convince US to buy spaghetti. I tell you what, it's lucky they had a possessive apostrophe, or I'd have blown my top! Since when do we here in Australia know what a 'MOMMA' is??? It's so ridiculous that I am using multiple questions marks, which I always tell my students off for doing! In a completely unrelated incident, two separate people said to me, in the last week, that they were 'dating' someone. Yikes. Soon we'll be watching cheerleaders down at the mall.
Anyway, it was just a thought, but perhaps I'm being a bit over the top (or, pre menstrual, as I'm sure Nick would say today). Perhaps this blog would've been better had I had the guts to take a photo of those two grown ups I saw whooping and laughing on a minature merry-go-round at Northcote plaza yesterday, or if I'd managed to capture a picture of Birdo making love to his ladder. He is so weird. This is him. (G rated.)

The people I see everywhere

There are two groups of people in my life who I see all the time, yet have no idea who they are. I don't know their names, professions, the location or their homes or anything about them, really, but I just see them everywhere. The first group appear all along the path of my daily routine, especially on the bus ride or drive to school. And their continued presence is expected, really. Most people have routines; I am part of theirs, they are part of mine. One such person is the old man who walks around our Thornbury streets most days, holding his hands behind his back as they noticeably shake. I think he must have Parkinson's disease and walking probably helps him. I painted a portrait of him once, because I like him so much. It was just of his hands. He never looks at me, though, so I don't get to smile or say hello as I pass. But that's ok. This is a picture of the painting. (First painting I've ever done, so don't get excited!)

There are also two school girls who I see whenever I drive to school. One wears big fly sunglasses and walks with her arms crossed, looking thoroughly poised and closed. The other waits at a bus stop a bit further along the drive. She has a very severe, orange fringe. Then, there is also the boy on the bus (when I say 'boy', he's probably about my age) who has a very strange, contorted sort of face. In my own unjustified, fearful way, I was inititally quite scared of him whilst we waited at the bus stop together and hoped that he didn't get off at my stop. Then as the bus pulled up, he stepped aside at the door and ushered me through first. I felt silly and ashamed and have smiled at him ever since; wishing every time that I'd just smiled at him in the first place, regardless.
Then, there's the second group of unknown people in my life who are often not in the same place each time. It's as if they roam around Melbourne, intentionally bumping into me and pretending not to know me. They are so familiar to me that I am not even surprised when I see them anymore. Today, on the way home from pilates (pronounced, in our household as 'PIE-Late-S') I saw one of my beloved randoms walking up Blythe street. This little old lady is a walking machine. She is everywhere... not just in my neighbourhood. I have seen her walking so far from here that I wonder sometimes if she just walks and walks, all day every day. I also wonder why she does it. But I don't know. She is very, very small with huge glasses, bright white runners and a colourful scarf tied around her head. Today was exciting because I actually took a sneaky photo of her from the car, without revealing her face, so I don't feel too bad about posting it on my blog! This is her.

When I showed Kate, she was like, 'Oh I see her too!' so, perhaps a lot of people do. I would love it if one day someone I didn't know came up to me and said, 'Hello, you're my person who I see everywhere.'

It's raining!

It's raining! How unsusal. This is a photo of a rain drop on a tree in my backyard.

I realised today that there are so many things I've forgotten about rain.

1. The smell of the roads as they steam during the first few minutes of a downpour.
2. The swirly, purple-green sheen of oil on the surface of the water in the gutters.
3. The icy shock you get when you take off your shoes and the wet bit on the bottom of your jeans hits your legs.
4. Wiping your feet properly at front doors.
5. The noise on our tin roof.
6. The funny line of dryness that forms on our shed and the fact that you can't leave the peg basket out, otherwise the pegs get soggy. (Both are pictured below... see the line?!)

7. The hammock needs to be 'tucked' otherwise it gets wet and smelly. (Again, pictured below.)

The chickens don't seem to mind the rain at all. In fact, they are almost oblivious to is. They just wander around going about their business as usual. This is them.

I was shocked at my instinctive feelings of annoyance at the rain this morning as I carried the vegies in from the car. How easily we become self focused! Droughts and floods are good for one thing, if nothing else; to remind us of our frailty, and how very few things in this world (least of all the weather) revolve around us and our selfish desires!

Hi Tim

Hi Tim. hahaha! Just acknowledging your sneaky readership. xx

Colour rivers

I just had a very slight argument, but what I think was a good conversation, with Kate about house stuff tonight. It's funny how someone can be feeling and experiencing so much behind their skin and bones, yet when you're just standing in the kitchen, stirring soup, talking and watching them, you'd never know. It's as if we are walls that surround a whole river of swirling colours, which other people just have to guess at, at the best of times. Colours are so hard to describe with words. Sometimes conversations like that make me think that the original issue is almost irrelevant, and that the act of sincerely trying to understand someone's colours behind their wall is more important. I suppose that's part of the beauty of intimate relationships; you have someone who learns all your colours and makes an effort to stay updated.

If all goes as planned, one of my form group kids will return to school tomorrow for the first time after his mum died at the end of last term. I am overwhelmed by the thought of what kind of colours might be surging around in his little frame. I have no idea what to say to him. And I hate to think of him being isolated in what he's feeling. But it's hard to know how to approach such a topic with a teenage boy. I guess i'll just open my mouth and see what comes out.

So that I don't end on a sad note, here is a photograph of a photograph of my dad wearing Nick's rockstar sunglasses, which he left down at Lorne. My goodness, my parents are hilarious. They crack me up sometimes. It is possible that I actually have the best parents in the world. Better do some marking.

A glittering bowl of ocean

I went down to Lorne over easter with Meg and Nick. I read two and a half books and welcomed mum's pampering. The moon rose out of the ocean each night, glowing an eerie yellow and through the telescope it was trembling as if surrounded by great heat. We walked around to the pier one day and I took this photo of the bay. Nick, being allergic to the sun, had to wrap my cardy around his head in an attempt to ward of the nasty vitamen D. People looked at us strangely and it made me laugh. I love it how he uses his weirdness to conduct his own little private social experiments - although sometimes I get embarrased, but that's just me. He looked like a big, tall monster with a bandaged head. The bay was a vast, glittering bowl of ocean.

Words are coming back again

I’ve decided to start writing again. I need to move beyond photographs of strange vegetables.

Kate told me today that she is thinking of writing a novel (which I, for one, would love to read!) and it made me realise that I am itchy to write again. I used to spend so much time writing, but over the last year I have stopped. I don’t really know why. And I guess I don’t really know why I’m going to start again. But that’s no problem… now’s just the right time. I wonder how long it’ll be til somebody notices… hehehe. We’ll see.
At the moment I have two main things on my mind. One is teaching. The other is Nick.

I’ve been doing a lot of marking over the last 24 hours, seeing as today is the last day of my holidays and I haven’t done any of the marking that I promised to my dear, smelly little boys. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the amount of absolute rubbish that I have to mark. And, when I say ‘absolute rubbish’ I am, by no means, referring to the quality of the kids’ work. What I mean is that the assignments that we set for them are dull, dead end, lifeless assignments that don’t help them engage with the world in any useful or exciting way. Marking them is painful on two levels. Firstly, I feel like I am wasting my time. Secondly, I experience little stabbing heart pains each time I realise how much effort some kid has put into something that is so meaningless. That’s the heartbreaking thing about teaching teenagers sometimes. They are part adult and part kid, which means that you can tell them to do stuff (that’s the kid bit – they obey you) and if that stuff is pointless (eg. a lot of the things I have to teach at school) then there is this sense of humiliation about them. Sometimes I look at them working away really hard at something that has absolutely no bearing on their lives and I feel like I’m degrading them in some way, like they’re just doing something pointless because they’re told to. Adults, often, are in a position of power over themselves and so can choose whether or not they do something pointless. But the kids can’t. It makes me sad that I am the pointless-assignment-enforcer.
Although, we do have fun in my classes and there are some aspects of the curriculum that I feel are valuable, which helps. I just forget this at times such as now, when I’m swamped with book reports full of mind numbing plot summaries and character profiles. Oh, kill me.

The other thing on my mind. That Nicholas boy. He has been silently and patiently suffering from acute pharyngitis over the last few days. He reckons his pharynx is a bit of a looker. I have had him here at my place for three or four days – and have been secretly and guiltily savouring the opportunity to look after him and bring him water, feed him lentils and watch him sleep. He slept endlessly in my bed, only shuffling to the loo every now and then looking startled and hilarious in my pink dressing gown. Now he’s better and I miss looking after him! Damn penicillin! But, I am actually glad he is better – it was a pretty nasty illness and I didn’t like seeing him in pain. My goodness I love that boy. The other day I told him that I love him like jellyfish love plastic bags… but I just don’t think he really gets it. I spose it was a rather random analogy. Time for bed.

Tomato

This is a tomato that Rach bought from the orchard shop out in Warrandyte. I don't know how we'll bear to eat him.

Carrot Lovers and Chicken Ladies