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Flying over this wide brown land [cliches become so because they are the most apt description for the event] made me realise how beautiful it is.

South Australia though, from the air, is a monstrous patchwork of geometric shapes cut into the landscape. Sure, we must survive, but I wonder how often we really stop to think about the fact that we are dependent on our environment for our lives and it is at our own peril that we remain impervious to that concept. I was disturbed at how destructive our activities are on the environment. The straightness of the lines, the way it was carved into such artificial shapes, it was disturbing - so unnatural.


It made me think about the way we are - we have lost our understanding of nature and that we are part of it. So much of our lives is artificial these days. It's no wonder we're disconnected from our environment, especially in so-called 'developed' countries. It seems that the more developed we become, the more ways we are able to put distance between ourselves and the natural world.

Clothes, shoes, cars, garden paths, pavement, processed foods, houses, and so on. We are able to disrespect our environment because we are not forced to experience it every day. People who do not have the same "quality of life" (a questionable idea), who must, for want of our modern comforts (e.g., brick walls) deal with the elements and other random components of nature daily, have so much more respect for it. I'm not suggesting a utopian existence is to be found in stripping naked and living in the bush but that there needs to be some more happy medium.

It is outrageous that we are outraged by the havoc of a tsunami or a hurricane - this is what nature is. It does not answer to man, it should not be controllable or controlled by man. We are not more than the ecosystem that sustains us - Georgie take note!

Anyway, I reached the sun today. It is beautiful.

Park Ramblings

Sometimes, in this city of thousands, where you can never be alone, alone is really all you wanna be...

Sometimes there seems to be no end to the people.

I just crave that separate space where you're not under the constant scrutiny of others; where I can just be.

But I don't think 'being' is allowed here. 'Being' is something people can do when there is no importance in who you are, and that just isn't Melbourne.

Don't get me wrong, I like the place; in fact, in a lot of ways I love it... but I also hate it.

I love the beauty; I hate the crowdedness.

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But maybe part of the loving it, the part of loving anything; being able to see the good things about anything, is about loving yourself.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Mum, and about how easy it is to hate yourself. Coz I also spend a lot of time doing that.

And I realise that there are things I wish I'd know, and I wish I'd known how to do but then, in so many ways, there was no way to help her.

She didn't want to be alive anymore.

And I think, because of that, and because we all know that, we have a different kind of peace and acceptance with her death. Maybe that's part of the anguish that other people feel, you know, that isn't there for us. So hey, lucky us huh?

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It's strange, I feel so absent. So empty.... no, not that. Not empty, that's not true. Separate. And too afraid to bridge that gap; so afraid. God help me, I'm afraid of myself.

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Be, be going, there must be somewhere to go. Somewhere, nobody has time for nowhere.

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Look at these trees. They're so beautiful. I dread to think about they day that they won't be here. But we're not going to care enough; they'll go. The modern utopia, glass and steel. Afraid of the outside world, afraid of nature and its randomness.

Already, modern parents are afraid of their children, they do things that haven't been diarised, factored in, thought of. Children don't follow the rules that now suffocate our daily existence. People have no time to just let things be. To stop and take in the feeling of being alive. When you have touched death, nursed it, watched it take over. When it is there, around you, next to you, inside your heart, the slow whoosh of the automatic morphine drip, your heart beats in time with its blinking green light, you have time to think about life, and being alive.

When death comes at you with the force of a semi-trailer, the absentmindedness of an errant driver, when all you have to shield yourself from its blow is your own skin, then there is time to remember life.

Touch the grass, the trees, feel the sun, open your nostrils and breathe in the smell of the air around you. When will we connect our minds with our bodies and remember what it is to be alive?