Burnt Soup Stories

On the way to school this morning Z was asking me the hardest mathematical questions he could think of. Even though I have never been any good at maths, I was able to answer his 6 year-old questions with ease. After each answer he sat back in his seat, bewildered at how I could possibly be the guardian of so much knowledge.

I remember thinking the same thing about my own parents. In fact, this thought regularly crosses my mind about them.

But today it is not just my own parents I would like to applaud. Three years ago Loobylu wrote about an incident in her life and her mum's reaction to it. Still all these years later I think of her mum's words when I feel my blood boiling over something that feels huge but is ultimately not.

Burnt Soup Story:

Well - that big pot of stock became soup this evening and was sitting on the stove simmering while I read Amelia some stories and, thanks to still being a bit of a novice with electric cooking, a huge amount of pasta stuck to the bottom of the pot and burnt. The house is full of that evil burnt food smell. Big-P has just gone out to pick up two small pizzas. What a waste of stock! What a sad shame. It smelt so good just twenty minutes ago. I called my mum to moan about it and she said in all her wisdom “Ahh, life is full of burnt soup stories.”

The Dorm Room Spy

A decade ago I spent a few years travelling around Asia on my own. I loved how the language barrier forced me inside my own head. It was fantastic for my writing. In journal entries from those travels I refer to myself as the Dorm Room Spy. I was always looking, looking, recording.

It's not very often that I can tap into that objectivity, but last night I could.

I spent the night working at a wedding with my friend B. We wore long black aprons and poured drinks, cleared plates and called everybody Madam and Sir. I wondered beforehand how I'd find it (I loved it) and if I'd cry in the speeches (I did).

I was as interested in my own reactions as I was those of the formally dressed guests.

It felt like theatre; the proclamations, the conventions, the sentiment, the ritual. I observed the intimacies with tenderness. They made me soft, a softness I observed with exactitude. It fascinated me to look at myself looking. Taking note of how I was taking note.

Vantage Point

From here.

Stuck Up

In the fridge:

In my wardrobe:

Truganini

I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon clicking refresh on the New York Times website to get updated voting results. And as the perfect antidote I spent the whole of today with my hands in the soil.

Our trees don't care about Bush. Our worms don't understand red and blue States. Our hens can't tell the difference between Tina Fey and Sarah Palin. Our seedlings aren't interested in the significance of an African American president.

Our earth does so much, but knows nothing about our hierarchies of dominance and enslavement. It has no fists to fight back, no voice to yell stop, no feet to kick out in defence.

I felt inside the earth today, my hands ache from their digging.

Yesterday I was gloating and global, today I am soil-coloured and voiceless just as Truganini was before her bones were stolen and exhibited as testament to something that reviled her.

The Artist As Family

While the Democrats are celebrating their victory in the US, we are celebrating a minor victory of our own.

PJ, Z and I applied for an artist in residency at a museum in Newcastle, and we have had our application selected.

The three of us are going for two and a half weeks next year – the artist as family – and each of us is responsible for a different component of the project. Part of my section is to start and update a blog about our experience, which I will create as an example, with the students of my blogging course that starts this coming Monday.

I like the light in this room as captured in this photo. I took it at the museum we'll be going to, when PJ and O launched their book there last month.

Is This Your Wool?

From here.

Seven Words

Over the course of this week I have had hundreds of readers come to my blog by way of Claire Robertson's creative HQ, Loobylu. She has a cult following, and it's not hard to see why.

Claire and I worked together seven years ago. I remember when she first told me about her blog, I read and loved it, though I didn't completely understand what a blog really was and what it was for. As a long-time diarist, I didn't understand why someone would want to air their private thoughts publicly. 

Oh, how whole worlds change!

Here is a zine that Claire illustrated the cover for. It's called How Comics Can Change the World. Open it up and the first words you read are: "Do not pay money for this comic." I often think about these seven words. 

Despite what governments tell us, and despite how our whole lives revolve around us being slaves to it, the things that really make a difference in the world have nothing to do with money.

Seed Hunter

Last night we watched Seed Hunter, the fantastic ABC doco about the Australian scientist, Ken Street. Street is charming and candid and oh so likable as we follow him and his team on their noble crusade.

The spiel:

As Australia and much of the world wrestles with hotter weather and a dwindling water supply, mass starvation at a global scale is on the cards if we can’t find ways to improve crop resilience. Scientists are exploring many solutions to adapt our food supply, including going back to mother nature herself to locate the genes that can withstand our changing climate; genes that, thanks to a high yielding monoculture, have almost disappeared. Australian scientist, Dr Ken Street, aka the ‘Seed Hunter’, spends his life searching for the tiny seed that could play a role in helping food producers around the world.

Two and half months ago I wrote about the harvesting of the first GM canola crops since the GM ban was lifted. Then yesterday I read that this harvested canola is now on its way to our grocery shelves.

We might think we can avoid GM ingredients if we want, but we can't. How can we when the canola oil that's being sold to us as cooking oil is not labelled as being GM? How can we when this oil is being mixed into our processed foods, and the leftover meal fed to our livestock?

While biotech giants such as Monsanto are racing towards their desired 100% seed ownership, Ken Street and his crew are scouring the globe in search of ancient seeds that will help ensure the survival of all Earthlings. There's no question as to whose team I'd rather be on.

Product Placement

I love the taste of this water. I have often thought that maybe because it is sourced from a nearby spring it has all the goodness in it that my body needs to flourish. Our bodies are best when we eat locally grown seasonal food, so surely it's the same for local water?

I love the simplicity of the label and the fact it is bottled locally, and in glass.

When I was thirsty and on the go I used to buy water in a plastic bottle, refill it a couple of times then recycle it. This was before I learned about the toxins these bottles leach.

This was before I realised that although I may have been recycling mine, 65% of plastic bottles end up as landfill. 

This was before I read that 314,465 barrels of oil are used every year, just so Australians can drink water bottled in plastic.

This was before I moved up here where there are natural springs aplenty, and where Coca-Cola Amatil source the water for their Mt Franklin brand. Every day we see petrol-guzzling water tankers chugging to the bottling plant in Melbourne from local springs. 

This was before I found out that Coca-Cola pays $2 per megalitre of water they take, which is about 5c a tanker. 5c!!

This was before I read this quote by the American environmentalist Derrick Jensen: "If people will pay for water bottled in plastic they will suffer any indignity.”

This was before PJ became a water activist and made this film as part of his campaign: