Take a Seat

From here.

Ogori Mystery Café

On our last morning in Newcastle when we were packing up our things, we had very much in our minds the artist-in-residence who was arriving two days later. When we had arrived, there was some food leftover in the fridge and pantry from previous artists, and we were wondering what the next artist would think about all the goodies we had left in the kitchenette for her.

I felt the same way when we left our home to go to Newcastle and the afternoon we returned. I was conscious of leaving some nice food for our friends who were housesitting, and was thankful for the things they left for us when they departed.

I tell you all this by way of an introduction to the Ogori Café in Japan that operates on the same principal as the above two scenarios. When you order something, what you ordered goes to the next customer, and what you receive comes to you courtesy of the person who ordered before.

Image

The rules are:

1. Let's treat the next person. What to treat them with? It's your choice.
2. Even if it's a group of friends or a family, please form a single-file line. Also, you can't buy twice in a row.
3. Please enjoy what you get, even if you hate it. (If you really, really hate it, let's quietly give it to another while saying, "It's my treat…")
4. Let's say "Thank You! (Gochihosama)" if you find the person with your Ogori café card.
5. We can't issue a receipt.

From the blog where I first read about it:

It forced one to "let go", just for a brief moment, of the total control we're so used to exerting through commerce. It led you to taste something new, that you might not normally have ordered. It was a delight.

A great way to stimulate an outburst of social warming activity, don't you think?

Hand Knitted Homecoming

Thank you to our lovely neighbour Maria who came over today with a pair of hand knitted socks for each of us.

PJ and I had an incredibly productive and relaxing week away, and are both very excited by what we found hiding in the recesses of our blank pages, but it's always nice to return to our darling boy, cosy home, chooks and water tanks a-brimming.

Hope you had a great week too.

Rednesday: Number Six

I went for a three hour bush walk with Z and a friend of his yesterday. The halfway point was a visit to the house we lived in before this one.

This is our old letter box. I came home from Melbourne one afternoon and PJ had painted and stuck the number on it.

And this is the greeting I once wrote inside for our postman.

Fence

This morning before Z and I set out on a bike ride, we knocked on the front door of our new neighbour's house with a batch of homemade cookies to say, Welcome to the neighbourhood!

Here is the fence between our houses. PJ built it at the end of last year. We call it our Social Warming fence as it's slatted and only runs part way along our boundary.

This afternoon, Z and I went to visit O and his niece Lily. For his birthday several months ago, O was given a copy of Home Beautiful magazine from the month and year he was born. I laughed when I saw this advertisement – a social warming fence from the 60s.

Coming Together

And we're off!

This morning PJ, O and I are heading to Braidwood for the Two Fires festival of art and activism. The theme for this year's festival is Coming Together, which ties in well with our panel's theme of Social Warming.

The title of our panel came from this drawing of PJ's that was published in Going Down Swinging last year.

Click for bigger.

Thanks for looking after our house and chooks, Jo! xx

Gift Economy

An article I wrote about the first time I went to Burning Man is on Travel Generation today. In it, I talk about how the festival operates on a gift economy. The gifts I took that year were button badges. There were 18 designs in all, six of which are above.

I have been thinking a lot about gifting. I disagree with Derrida's claim that the gift is impossible since, from the moment you receive it, it becomes weighted with obligation and no longer qualifies as a pure present. But I agree with Marcel Mauss's argument that solidarity is achieved through the social bonds created by gift exchange.

On Monday I left the house on three different occasions and each time I came back someone had left a gift near the front door. 

I mentioned to my friend Jo that I was looking for a recipe for pickling cucumbers as all our plants have fruited at once. She left three cook books with pickling recipes bookmarked, O left a stack of gleaned pears and Chris gave me a betting ticket for a horse called Good Red.

It's like when people ask me what I do for a living, I ask them if they mean for money or not. I operate within a capitalist template – I have a mortgage and bills to pay – but I exist within a gift economy where I care more about the exchange than my change.

ChillOut

I love living in a small community. It's like living in the heart of a city that doesn't have any suburbs.

I love this town's terrain and small population and I also love that it's a popular tourist destination that attracts weekenders in the thousands.

This weekend our lovely town is playing the hostess with the mostest to around 25,000 gay and lesbians who are here for the twelfth ChillOut festival, the largest gay and lesbian festival in regional Australia.

And today we played the hosts with the mosts to Sharon and Deb, who are visiting from their lovely home in Tasmania, next to my folks' place.

The Upside

I didn't learn anything at the town meeting today but I'm glad I went. The CFA, police and mayor discussed the position of the fires in our region and the hot, windy conditions expected on Friday. They talked about leaving early and not waiting until you can see flames, or having a damn good fire fighting strategy in place if you decide to stay.

My sister Kate's house is surrounded on four sides by beautiful bushland. Last night and this morning the fire gobbled the bush on one side, right up to their house, though their home is untouched.

Today's meeting brought the community together and brought out people's best sides – expressions of love and concern for my sister and her family, offers of meals and vegetables from people's gardens and a place to stay if people need safety or some company.

Thinking about the camaraderie and kinship, PJ and I marvelled that one of the upsides of global warming is social warming.

The Lucy Boot

Our town awoke inside a wintry mist this morning.

But when I opened the front door at 7am to go and let the chooks out of their coop, I realised that it wasn't fog at all but the frightening smell of smoke from the bushfires.

In the city on Wednesday my relationship to the fires was about the individual people who had died or were effected. Now I am back home it is about the people still, but in relation to their families, communities and to the land – the practicalities, not just the emotions.

O came over last night and we talked about fire behaviour and CFA recommendations and what we are going to do if our dry surrounding bush goes up in flames.

So many shops have charity tins for the bushfire appeal, so many local venues are having fundraisers. Momentous events such as this tend to bring out the best in people in the most surprising ways.

Since my grandmother died I have received emails and messages from people in similarly unexpected ways.

My friend Gil for example who runs a successful leather goods business came over with her man on Saturday. She reminded me that a few years ago she named a boot Lucy after my grandmother. At the time that range came out I knew, but didn't think twice about it. 

Now I see though that the individual ways people experience the world affect us all.

Social Warming

Since we decided on the theme of social warming for our panel at the Two Fires festival, I have been thinking a lot about the kinds of things people do for, and say to, one another in social settings.

My grandmother who died recently was a gifted social warmer. She had an innate ability to know how to disarm people. Step one: Making people feel comfortable.

In Melbourne at the place I have been buying my sushi for lunch, there is a bowl of homegrown fruit that is there for the taking. Step two: Making people feel included.

In the kitchen at work this poster is stuck on the wall, listing how everybody takes their tea and coffee. Step three: Bringing people together.