The Newtown Festival and Holidays!

Went to the Newtown Festival yesterday. Basically spent the day looking around at stalls, met some new people and just hanging out I suppose. Didn't actually do much, especially when I think of it in terms of how long we were there. Time flies when you're having fun. It has been so nice this weekend hanging around not doing work without the nagging feeling that I should be doing work. Watched a TV series of The Forsyte Saga - books by John Galsworthy - for many hours. I've concluded writers are sadists. All they do is come up with characters who they lovingly fashion just to make them suffer. Damn writers. Anyway, here's some pictures.

Just to imprint thier names upon my memory (left to right): me, Jack (who went ot the Bob Dylan concert when he came out here), Zoe (who I'm friends with from uni), Cai (who I don't know anything about), Boris (who's from Germany), other guy who's name I din't know, and Peter (Zoe's friend, who introduced us to these other people).

Funny hair!

Omg a brush with fame (Australian fame anyway; non Australians might remember the security breach at APEC - these guys got a fake motorcade right to the hotel where George Bush was staying, and even then had to stop their progression themselves by jumping out of the limo dressed as Osama bin Laden - very embaressing for the security people!)

Starting a new job today, where I will be working probably about 20 hours a week over the holidays. Not sure how I'll do with working that much. We shall see!

Have a good one!

Live your life with so much love in your heart that if, by mistake, you were sent to Hell, the Devil himself would deliver you up to Paradise

If anyone 'spiritually inclined' out there happens to read this...

There is this exercise I've been doing lately. It's so incredibly simple, but as many great people have been forced to learn, the things of real value often end up being hidden with things that are simple. A little cosmic giggle, when you go out on some path through the wilderness, bashing through the overgrown shrub, crossing rivers, climbing mountains, and then you realise that just two metres to the side, behind a wall of shrub, there is a meadow that will take you there too. And then you realise that you actually planted that shrub, in some distant dream long ago. This exercise seems to have brought incredible growth to my life. The things that I have been striving after and agonising over just seem to be spontaneously happening, and it is so wonderful, and I am so greatful. So I will share it here, in case it may be of some benefit to someone.

All you have to do is 'breathe' spiritual energy from the base of your spine up to your head. You can imagine it as a brilliant white light.

A little background can help here.

Please note that I am trying to talk about this stuff as accurately as I can, although I may have some details wrong, or not quite right.

This 'spiritual energy' has been identified and used in many spiritual traditions, but what would I suppose be the most common term for it would be kundalini energy. It is this energy that is said to flow through the 'spiritual body' in perspectives that suggest we have two bodies: the dense and the etheric. This is the energy that is the vitality of the spiritual reality.

A slightly more complex version of the exercise is one that deals with the chakras...Let me go get a book to make sure I'm getting this stuff right...Well I can't find it right now, but the basic idea is there. It shall be as it may.

Other things:

- Almost four months off uni is almost upon me! Oooo the anticipation. And at the same time not, because when I look truely at my life I realise that it doesn't make a difference to my happiness or anything, that having all this work to do hasn't actually really gotten in the way of the fullness of my life. No, that is an independent inner state that relates to the interpretation you choose to have of what life gives you. I have had a wonderful year, and learnt so much and experienced so much 'despite' all this uni work (although despite may not be the right word...maybe 'including from', because although I don't agree with my course in a lot of ways or like it all the time, it has helped me grow).

- Willie Nelson is an amazing man. I read this book he wrote called The Tao of Willie, and you could say that it changed my life. Or just that it certainly helped. I'll go get it...Random quote from Willie time...Ok, I'm not sure that there's anything all that quotable here, but I'll put it up anyway since that's where it opened...

Our life is our own possession,

and it's benefit to us is very great.

That's not even by Willie Nelson but by an early Taoist teacher called Yang Chu. But that's what my eye fell upon. Far be it from me to judge it unworthy.

- I got a job! After a couple of rejections and starting to worry that no one wanted me, I got part time work for the holidays

- I'm going to Melbourne in February with friends, staying in a hostel, eating good food, listening to good music, doing whatever else you do in Melbourne. Excitement!

- I'm meeting up with one of my tutors in the holidays. Weird? Maybe. But he's so amazing. In the tutorial today, almost everyone was there - amazing, considering the numbers in other tutorials were much lower. But people like to go because of him. People have said that they want to write good essays because he's going to be marking them. There's apparently a group of facebook called 'I wish John Carr was my dad'

- I'm enjoying being social at the moment. It's fun distracting myself from uni work with talking to people

- Been working on my singing voice and songwriting skills (both of which have improved) in hopes of having a go at being in a band

-I'm becoming wise - one of my wisdom teeth is peeking out. No more fun and games, have to mature up!

Hmmm that's enough for now. Sleep time!

Goodnight :)

(need to add pictures for prettiness...there we go)

Here's my first piece of writing from this new more truthful place. I don't know what I think of it. It's not in line with my professed values, but it's more truthful than pretending. It's starting from where I am.
If anyone has any comments, I would love to hear them (not that anyone ever does :p). (Jared - you constructively criticise mine and I'll constructively criticise yours *nudge nudge* [if you give me the url that is]).
Goodnight!



Jenna Carlyle


There was war even here. The tiny vessels of single men who could not stand, they made their way in undetected to the home front itself. If you don’t go to the war, it will come and meet you where you are, my grandmother used to say. She was there on the day the city way down under was filled with the sounds of that creeping battle. A shell went right by her head, she said. How surreal, when you think you’re so far from the perils of that elsewhere battle, safely tucked away in an unimportant continent, but the war comes to you. Meets you on your own turf.
My grandmother was always talking about war as though we were still in the middle of one. I remember when she lived with us. Even the house was a battle zone to her. Nothing was safe from the war, she said. She spoke as if The Enemy could come in any second and slaughter us all. When we were on the phone, she would stand there, staring, monitoring what we said, to make sure we didn’t let slip any details that might betray us – address, name, plans for what we would do tomorrow. The moment we uttered the first syllable of some vital detail she would snatch the phone from our hands and slam it down, cutting off the call, then look about wildly and tell us we were mad.
The first time I brought a friend over, Tamryn, I think her name was, she grabbed her by the shoulders and started interrogating her. Who are you? What do you want? Tamryn looked so afraid, I wondered what my grandmother saw in her. I could not see anything but a shocked little girl with tears in her wide eyes. What was it that my grandmother saw there?
She was afraid of shadows. She insisted we take her bed away and leave only a mattress – that way there could be nothing hidden, waiting to get her as she slept. Sometimes at night I thought her fantasies had come true, and I ran to her room to find…just her. Just her, shouting, crying out for help. Midday was the only time of calm. I remember standing with her on our quiet street, straight underneath the sun, feeling so relieved that the shadows had disappeared, while she held my hand and looked down at me, not as though I was about to die or about to betray her, but as though I was her granddaughter.

I don’t imagine her in heaven. Even when she died, when I was eight, someone told me she was smiling down from a better place, but I couldn’t see that. I imagine her as an angel of the world. A shadow angel over my shoulder. Her body died, so she took up sentry duty in my life. Once when I went for a job interview, I heard this inaudible voice in my ear, and I just froze up and couldn’t answer any of the questions they asked me. Then a few months later the company went bankrupt, and the CEO was caught for fraud and sexual harassment of an emplyee. And one night, this unspeaking voice came again suddenly, and I tripped and my shoe fell off, and I had to stop to put it back on. When I got to the bus stop, the bus had just pulled away from the curb, so I got a taxi. Near home, we passed by the bus – T-boned by another as it came up the hill.

Last night an angel hovered over my bed. A different angel. An angel made of light, who was before me, not behind. I looked at her through slits of sleeping eyes, and she whispered secrets into my heart. At midday the next day the voiceless tone, a very different angel, sounded in my head again – and I ignored it and kept walking, out to the middle of an empty football field. I waited. Silent, poised. Slowly, the shadows began to reappear as the sun descended through the sky. They grew longer and longer, and I just stood there, stood in a world of shadows, until I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around, and there was my grandmother, smiling.

Poverty Level Decreases Globally
(read on and it's not just other people's writings ;)

By Steve Radelet

Steve Radelet is a development expert that has lived for many years in Africa and Asia, taught at Harvard, and worked at the US Treasury. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington and economic advisor for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.


Unicef announced this week that the world reached a remarkable milestone in 2006: for the first time since records have been kept, the number of deaths of children under five years old has fallen below 10 million a year, less than half of the 20 million that died in 1960. The percentage of young children dying has fallen even more dramatically, from about 184 per thousand in 1960 to about 72 per thousand today. That means that out of every 1,000 children around the world, an additional 112 who would have died in 1960 are now living beyond age five.

This terrific news is the latest indicator of the dramatic fall in world poverty over the past few decades. While the percentage of people in the world living with incomes less than $1/day has fallen steadily for several hundred years, world population has grown faster; so the absolute number of people in poverty continued to rise – until it reached around 1.4 billion in 1980. Then one of the most important changes in world history occurred: for the first time ever, the number of people living in absolute poverty started to fall. Actually it started to fall in the 1960s, then it spiked up again during the commodity price shocks of the 1970s, before falling permanently in the 1980s. Since then it has fallen very rapidly to less than 1 billion today.

That’s right: after rising steadily since the beginning of time, the number of people in the world living in absolute poverty has fallen by nearly one-third in less than three decades. Amazing.

Of course, much (but not all) of the reduction in poverty is centered in Asia. But one of the most remarkable things about the fall in child morality rates reported by Unicef is the fact that it occurred in every region of the world. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, under-five mortality has fallen from 277 per thousand in 1960 to 160 per thousand today...

--see the rest of the article at http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php?story=2007091611512481


Isn't that amazing? I mean, amongst all the doom and gloom that dominates our talkings of the world in terms of cultural criticism, there is real, quantitative data that would tell us we need to consider the true complexity of the situation and think 'hey, maybs this idea is more based on the way I perceive things than how the world actually is'. Cultural studies, i'm talking to you!
The thing with cultural studies is that it ignores everything else but 'well, i reckon it's this way becuase I do' - yes, there could be things to support it, but then there's also things that don't support it, that support something entirely different. Which makes me think that of postmodernists, poststructuralists, cultural constructivists etc. By looking at the world and saying 'oh look, heaps of people see things in heaps of different ways; therefore there is no such thing as anything innate or true' and yet people disagree with this position based on their own experience, so it really contradicts itself...
Anyway, I'm just trying to explore an approach that is not common in cultural studies and against which there is a definite bias (although I am studying a field that's all about 'power relations' and how those dominant meanos are oppressing everyone else, so perhaps the answer is that I'm in the wrong field...).
I'm on a break now (well, not officially until Friday, but all I have to do before that is a 600 word story, which is not like an essay) - such a relief. (The lovely sounds of mum's crime show are coming in from the other room...don't you love hearing terrified people screaming for their lives to some psychopathic murderer? music goes on...ah, much better). This essay I handed in today was horrible. I just couldn't get words out, so that something that could have taken me a couple of hours ended up keeping me up until 2:30 this morning and then stressing to finish it in the break between my lecture and tutorial. Not to mention yesterday I forgot my wallet (thankfully did not get fined - the nice station guard man let me off with a warning [honesty pays in these situations]), left my usb lid at the library (not a biggie, but part of the picture), finished an assignment right when it had ot be handed in and ran around trying to print it, drove a few hundred metres with the handbreak on, got half way to the podiatrist and realised I forgot my orthotics so had to turn around and go home....A crazy day, was yesterday (although it is nice to realise that i was a bit stressed, but not really so stressed, and if this is the hardest part of my life, then I'm pretty freaking blessed, ay).
And after all this crazyness and many things coming together in my life, I spent a little while last night (in a break from not writing my essay) experiencing something that I never have before - truth, or the inklings of. You see, everything's culminated in the realisation that I'm trying to walk before I've even learnt to crawl. So I'm really back tracking, or so it seems, although it's really more like going 'back' in order to go forward, which isn't really back but it's so very forward. Back tracking to real basics.
It's really nice.


"Do not accept anything simply because it has been said by your teacher, or because it has been written in your sacred book, or because it has been believed by many, or because it has been handed down by your ancestors. Accept and live only according to what will enable you to see truth face to face."
- Buddha, as quoted in *Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life* by Thich Nhat Hanh


A dedication to knowing the truth
Rather than knowing about it.

It's simple really -
simply a step,
like a toddler
just learning to walk
who has to really stretch themselves
to climb that big person's stairway.

It helps when the load is lighter
The hike becomes easier
When you look through your pack
And sort out all that stuff,
When you put it down for a moment
And assess the situation -
Where you are,
Where you want to go,
What you need to get there,
And what you don't.

Apples are delicious.

The more in tune I am with love and joy and life the less I want junk food and the more I want 'natural' goodies (such as apples).

Expecting the hours to be the length that they are makes standing around at work that much more pleasant.

The gift shop up the street is a veritable repository of tear-inspiring beauty.

Regina Spektor is made of love. By that I mean that her voice is magnificant.

Hi! I haven't posted anything for a while, and didn't really think I would post any more, at least for the moment, but I just had to post this!

The Prayer of the Teacup

Never get tired of staying awake to pray for the saints. Ephesians 6:18

In this beautiful reminder to pray for one another the author of Ephesians is certainly not talking about the saints in heaven. The saints spoken of here are the saints at your elbow, the saints in your household, and the saints you shop with at the supermarket.
I used to worry about how to be faithful in praying for all these ordinary saints. While looking for a way to pray for those who are a part of my life, the way found me. I call it the prayer of the teacup.
The first 15 minutes of each day I reserve for the saints on earth. It is one of my favorite morning rituals. I begin my day with a cup of tea or coffee. As the steam from my cup ascends to the heavens I pray for friends and strangers. I see their faces in the ascending steam. I receive the persons who come into my memory and give them back to God.
So many folks are brought together in my dawn ritual: my family and friends, my community, those I have worked with in the past, political figures, and church leaders. Often the faces of people whose names I don’t know come to me: people at check-out counters, folks I’ve seen during my travels, in the airport, or on the streets. There are even the faces of those I read about in the newspaper or see in the evening news.
I like this prayer because it is so simple. When we pray for others we often get bogged down with words. I need few words—just a name or a glance is enough. I simply gaze at all these people whom God loves, and I yearn for their good.


I stand at my window and watch

one by one the stars all leave me

I am having tea with the dawn

the first ray of sun descending

into my teacup

into my heart

The steam of my tea ascending

to the heavens

into God’s heart

The yearning in my heart streaming

to the heavens

into God’s heart

And God, standing in the heavens

watching the sun rise in my heart

leans down to breathe in

the first rays of my yearning

and names it morning prayer.

-- Macrina Wiederkehr

Can anyone tell me why it is that whenever I post things divided into lines like the previous post, it always double spaces them?

You are to gather up the joys and sorrows,

the struggles,

the beauty,

love, dreams and hopes

of every hour

that they may be consecrated

at the altar of daily life.

-- Macrina Wiederkehr