A short dialogue on belonging

I heard they were sending pregnant women, babies and small children back to the hell hole detention centre at Nauru... Where there is now reliable evidence of child abuse.
It seams all manner of appeal has been made for mercy but fallen on deaf ears.
There appears no way to reason with this Government which appears to have gone completely off the reservation. Without an informed democratic

At this stage I slump back into a state of morbid disbelief. Sit on the couch with the kids and zone out in front of a movie. The truth is painfully obvious but over and over we endure bullshit rationalizations and even engage in arguing against nonsense.

As I watch a kids movie the answers to these challenging questions appear to me regularly throughout the plot of the film. The answers are simple and can be presented clearly enough in a two line conversation in a children's movie, in this case Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007).

As I think of the children born in Australian territory to stateless parents who wait in a legal limbo for acceptance as refugees. Where they belong and who should care for them is blatantly obvious. Mr Magorium answers the question in the film when Henry the mutant inquires:

 Henry Weston (Mutant): You have a tenant living in your basement? 

 Mr. Edward Magorium: He was born there, I can't very well ask him to leave.

Where do all the children born in Immigration detention belong?The answer is simple.

Whose streets are they anyway?

Today got fairly difficult filled with anger and despair. Only now at 11pm have I been able breath out and find some peace and mental quiet... quiet.

Life will always present us with adversity... but how do we fight a society that would seek our demoralization?

I have to confess I occasionally struggle with the obvious futility and meaninglessness of many things in this life. I know I am prone to seeing the darker side of things but most of the time I manage to keep it fairly real and just get on with things... Actually I'm not a depressive kind of person, I just don't like to kid myself too much about what's going on. Honestly I try to get a great deal of pleasure out of this world, but today I got a glimpse of the dark side and have struggled not to be overcome by it.

(Side note)

I recently received word that a man who has been on hunger strike for the past two months may soon succumb to severe malnutrition and all the unpleasant consequences that go along with it! I am not writing this to invoke an argument or stir any kind of reaction. I include this piece of information only to suggest that there is cause for despair! If a person has gone to these lengths to defy the callous nature of his imprisonment and the dehumanizing system that would treat him and other asylum seekers the way the Australian Government continues to do, then any human being with a heart must ask themselves is this justice? To loose all hope for a future and be driven to take such action must surely be the response to an absolutely intolerable situation. My heart goes out to this man and his family. I believe it is too late to rectify the harm starvation has done to his body and he may only have days to live.

"When I was your age...."

Yep I think it and I say it all the time and I know that every generation seems to struggle to relate to the one before it or after but!

The tipping point for me today came when this happened!

When I got home from work the kids and wife appeared having just ridden their bikes back from the local park. It's not far and they only had to ride on 'quiet' suburban streets. Sadly there is no such thing as a 'quiet suburban street'!

In just a few hundred meters ride my boy was nearly hit by a car and apparently soon after another car passed my family, and in a completely unrelated incident some dickhead yelled at them to get off the road and ride on the footpath! (Not on a major road but a suburban street with a speed limit of 50km per hour and 40 during school days!) This scared the crap out of my children and caused my wife to feel vulnerable and intimidated! 

The kids got home and were in tears, they vowed never to go out on their bikes again! We talked through what had happened and the kids were reassured to know they'd done nothing wrong but this did nothing to restore their faith in their fellow humans or their entitlement to be outside at all! I could not lie and tell them that on the whole people are OK. As a cyclist on Australian roads generally we have to assume that our countrymen and women are NOT OK! They act with such a sense of entitlement on the roads and an almost narcissistic disregard for human life that they need to be regarded as extremely dangerous.

Recently in an eight week period Darwin has had 5 hit and run incidents.

This incident coupled with the knowledge of the condition of a man who'd rather starve himself to death than entrust his future to the care of the Australian people has left me once again wondering if humanity is only a romantic myth.

Things were different when I was a kid! And the differences cannot be ignored!
When I was my kids age, I was free to play outside without any great fear of being killed by my neighbors. We all played in the street. Cars slowed down when they saw people on the road and it was expected that we would share the road! Without that kind of liberty how long will it take for our children to reach the same level of despair experienced by our friend who is now lying in his death bed? If we allow the bullies to determine the culture and don't actively start caring for each other pretty soon we may lose the capacity to care for ourselves!

Peace.

Old friends passing through...

Recently a deceased friend visited me in my sleep.

Isn’t it funny how these things can happen in a dream and not feel at all out of place? She was right there with me talking to me as if it was perfectly normal for the dead and the living to converse in a normal manner. I do not find it strange to be visited like this anymore, the memory of deceased friends has come to me many times before and I accept the visits graciously. But what do they mean?

A lot of people will say the dream state is nothing more than the ticking away of our subconscious, stray thoughts with no meaning… at most a symptom of anxieties or unfinished thoughts. Yolngu I work with have a very different opinion of dreams and will often become very interested to hear about dreams or visions. Somewhere in the middle is me. I’m not confused by the events and don’t have any sense of foreboding about being visited but know better than to pass it off as nothing. Something inevitably happens to connect my dream to what is going on in the material world. 

Lately my kids have been fascinated with Ghosts, zombies and skeletons. They are working through the information available to them to create their own understanding of the lore of the un-dead. We discuss it regularly and they have determined that Zombies must be killed, my boy has a stick designates for this purpose, Ghosts aren’t necessarily bad, are like shadows and cannot be killed and if a skeleton ever gets up and walks around it will be treated like a zombie! My son was at first scared of ghosts, he wanted to kill them like zombies but is now content to talk to them without fear. Although not un-dead Aliens (from outer space) are also on his hit list…  We’ll need to discuss the possibility of not all Aliens being  bad guys.

Zombie killer... (Even so called zombies have a story to tell. I wouldn't class Frankenstein's monster as a Zombie)

 

I am not sure why my friend would come to me now or what will come next but there will be something.  My friend died last year, hit by a car as she crossed the road. I still don’t know the exact details of the incident and was never satisfied with the answers given. I tried to find out more but at the time I didn’t want to do anything that would cause distress to her family. 

Every weekday on my way to work I ride past the place where she was hit. I often wonder how it happened. Was she careless on the road (it was suggested she rode against the flow of the traffic, but where is the evidence?) or did the driver simply not see her? At the time it was announced that the driver wouldn’t be charged and there was a lot of speculative comment in the media about the cyclist being negligent but no facts to back-up these opinions.  People got all self-righteous about helmet laws and bicycles on the road etc… but we never heard what actually happened.

Maybe I need to find out… Maybe I will.

The day after my dream I received an email which mentioned the friend from my dream, a request for help for her family…  I cannot help them in the manner that was requested and I don’t necessarily need to interpret my dream to mean that I should but the message was another one of those coincidences that reminds me something is waiting to be done.

My Yolngu friends get a bit nervous when the spirits of the dead are not dispatched. Nobody sleeps easy until everything is cleansed with smoke. The dead must complete their journey… They cannot be left wandering their old haunts, tormented and confused.

It might seem odd or even disrespectful to be talking about the life of a friend who has passed away in the same conversation as kids imaginings about 'monsters' but seeing the peculiar goings on of the world through the eyes of a child can help put things into perspective. The kids are playing with ideas and concepts of things. The world of the spirit and the material blend, fantasy is not necessarily fiction it's more like a philosophical sand pit, until they discover for themselves what is true or untrue every idea, every story or crazy idea could be true. They understand most physical boundaries but to them so many things are still possible. I like that. 

Family drama reveals detention contortions - Eureka Street

Over the past few months I've been attending a weekly vigil at the Darwin Airport Lodge Detention Centre.

The Darwin Airport Lodge is listed as an 'Alternative Place of Detention'. There has been a lot of criticism about locking children up in detention centres so the government swapped a few words around and now everyone's happy. The dumb ass Australian public who want to punish people for seeking safety but don't want to be seen to hate children are satisfied that an 'Alternative place of detention' is far more caring and humane than a detention centre. The government invents some crap about creating a deterrent in order to prevent drowning at sea and the Australian public are overjoyed. We get to condemn the evil people smugglers, punish, confuse, condemn and antagonize asylum seekers who risk their lives to find safety simply because the last mode available to them is by sea and continue to feel righteous about ourselves because we are doing all this so that we can assist the refugees who go through the appropriate channels first. What a joke!

Meanwhile there are real human beings who had the misconception that Australia is a safe place with laws that could protect refugees from persecution. When they get here and realize the bitter truth they are crushed! They are completely confused by the lack of humanity in the way they are treated, the lies they are told and the brutal way they are herded up without being told what is happening and shoved around like cattle! We condemn them for not following rules that don't actually exist and then place them in a system that arbitrarily creates and dismantles it's own rules on a whim and expects them to be aware of every policy change being applied to their lives. Reality is continually altered and readjusted by an authority they have very little access to, time is warped by waiting and disappointment, justice is overridden by the incapacity for detention facilities to hold the numbers that are being held for artificially long periods in order to create the illusion of an appropriate length of time one might wait in a queue that never existed and people never know where they will be moved to next. Maybe Melbourne, maybe Sydney maybe Nauro or Manus Island... Maybe sent back to danger because there's no space in the waiting room and nobody wants to asses your claim! 

In the midst of all this there are children! My daughter recently asked " If the people that I go to visit love Australia, why doesn't Australia love them? Why don't we adopt them they could do nice things for Australia?" 

Over the past few months I have met many lovely people, many people who have far greater respect for our country than most of the citizens I have met but they are broken... first by the horrors they have fled but now even worse their sense of hope for any kind of future is being stolen from the by us! No amount of rationalization  can mask the injustices we are perpetrating against these people and the to subject innocent children to these conditions is inexcusable!

If you have any sense of justice you might like to read the story below about Ranjini and her family. How have we come to this place where we as a nation are prepared to rob children of their childhood and their potential to flourish and grow? We are poisoning the roots of our own future!

Here's a story from Eureka Street... food for thought.

Family drama reveals detention contortions - Eureka Street

"...Ranjini's story is another indictment of a collective failure or refusal to imagine the injustice endured by others. We allow ourselves to be distracted by endless abstractions peddled by politicians and the media because if ever we acknowledge the humanity we share with refugees, then we may be compelled to treat them accordingly.
Still, sometimes, despite our best efforts, a name surfaces, photos of a smiling woman emerge. A baby arrives."

 (Author. Fatima Measham)

Emotional

Bleary eyes aren't great lenses for reading but after a full 7 hours sleep I was awake, the house was quiet and I had a great book. After a coffee and a wander around the garden I fell into a comfy lounge chair and picked up that big fat book by Paul Kelly 'How to make gravy'!

HAPPY Drawing by the boy

A chapter for every song in his A - Z kit, every story a slightly different angle, and I'm connecting with every word! The writing is pure! Clear.... A thousand lies couldn't be more true. When I reached a really interesting chapter, Emotional, I heard the bedroom door creak and eldest child came out of her room. Also bleary eyed but keen to chat... It often happens like this, just when I think I've got some time to myself... This chapter surprised me. Paul Kelly's writing can do that. Shifting from amazing introspection to compassionate empathy.

As I read Emotional' I realized that I had misunderstood the lyrics of his song. It was not about what I thought it was. Kelly recounted the intense experience of visiting people in the Baxter detention Centre and the disgraceful treatment of those stuck in the Woomera hell hole! The scenarios are quite familiar to me since they started converting Darwin into a giant emigration detention centre! The sad and horrific stories are not uncommon among people I've met who have been transferred from Christmas Island or those who dread being sent out to Nauru. Living in limbo, having their hopes and spirits crushed at the whim of the Immigration Department who consider punishing them as parto fo some master plan to deter others from seeking safety in Australia. 

As I tried to read this unexpected chapter, which I found particularly interesting, on account of there being at least four detention centres within half an hour drive. my daughter decided it was time for a meaningful conversation about the nature of dragons and unicorns.... I persisted with the book and tried to answer her questions along the way, luckily the chapter was quite short, Kelly got his message across loud and clear, didn't waste any words and told it like it is!

I am so glad he has taken the time to tell this story and that he felt it was worth including in his book. So many Australians couldn't give a flying f-ck about the way Refugees are treated! It seems all the country is now against these people but here's one of our national heros openly declaring his compassion for them, he even wrote a song about it!

My head is swimming with emotion! Love for my kids, connection to the legendary song writer and mostly thoughts of the people I've been meeting at the DAL just down the road from where I live. The latest arrivals are from Iran. They shared their stories with me about the terrible journey across the sea from Indonesia. They all have hopes to see their children grow up in a peaceful place and to learn English and to be happy. It's nearly Christmas and a group of local people I'm involved with are trying to get Christmas presents for the kids.... nearly 180 of them (kids)! We've only got $10 to spend per kid and there's just 9 sleeps until Christmas so the next few days will be busy.

When I'd finished the chapter I put the book down, my was swimming with ideas and emotions. Thinking about the gifts I've got to find with a very limited budget I jumped up to grab the discount store brochure from the dining table... maybe something there. As I strode forward I kicked over my coffe cup! "NOoooooooo!"

Coffee cup with a crack

My favorite coffee cup! I smashed it! The cup I got from the Op Shop two years ago. That one I love with the romantic 1950s Hawaiian scene, with the girls dancing and the colonial American tourists and the flying boat.... Oh... Bleary eyes and foggy mind! Why do you mock me!

I'll try to fix it, no big deal really. What's a broken cup? I heard a fella got charged for smashing up some plates and shit in one of the detention centres! If you fuck up in detention and smash something they can charge you with destruction of property. I reckon if I was in there I'd break every frigging cup I had. What good is a favorite cup!

CROSS Drawing by the boy

Friends

Feeling lonely?

Make some friends!

My kids whipped these little beauties out the other morning, they're sitting on the wall right beside the computer desk...
Not sure where this is going... Gratitude I guess.
Few things are as precious as happy kids!

They're all precious!

Managing the mischief

"Don’t throw sticks at butterflies in trees!"

That’s the conversation I had with child 1 recently… That's the sort of conversation we have on a regular basis... Sometimes it drives me crazy! "Don't stick those skinks in the bucket full of water, they'll drown!" Don't shake the bush with birds nest in it the babies will fall out and die!" "Clap your hands together to catch the moths, you'll crush their wings!" If you like a peaceful life and think settling down and having kids might be some kind of serene dignified way of growing older with grace… Good luck to you! You might find it an adventure into the limits of sanity, tolerance and acceptance. If you struggle with feelings of powerlessness and wish to seize control of your own life, if you want to develop a set of values to live by and never falter, you're in for a big surprise if you think this will be easy when raising a family! You might find that every day is a battle to maintain even a thread of who you aspire to be. You might find that as you trudge from one day to the next you are lucky if you can make the vaguest of symbolic gestures toward the life you intended to live. You might find that your daily routine, directly contradicts those virtues you were hoping to nurture. The design you had intended to live by might now only be nothing more than a wistful dream you had selfishly harbored in the space between changing the dirty nappies and washing a pile of dirty dishes. Or worse still clawing your way through a swathe of plastic toys to the front door, clambering out of the air-conditioned unit, with an arm full of Mac Donald's wrappers for the bin!   

Marrying someone doesn’t make that person your minion and spawning fry does not guarantee the children will be a physical representation of all you aspire to be.  Ha! If you wanted that you could have created an avatar in Second Life!

This is real! This is where the rubber meets the road! This is where the shit can sometimes ‘…hit the fan!’

Am I Bitching? Nahhhh! 'It's All Good!'

There are funny times as a parent too. Amongst all the madness and fighting there is a lot of humor!

Yesterday the kids were arguing over a toy. One of us told them if they didn’t sort it out we’d switch the toy off! By now the youngest is really annoying the eldest child, it went something like this:

 Eldest child :   “If you don’t stop that I’ll turn you off!”

Youngest child retorts promptly and quite seriously : “But you can’t…! I don’t have any button!”

We all burst into laughter, our little one fancies himself as a comedian. Although he was serious about the fact that he had no switch that could be pushed to turn him off, he immediately capitalized on the situation to try and keep us laughing.

Damn these kids are funny!

As I've posted previously, I feel like I am lacking in originality, however that is not true. I am surrounded by it! If I quoted half of the crazy stuff my kids have said I'm sure I'd have a best seller! 

Oh yeh, Child 1 received a prize for colouring-in a picture for a local supermarket. She has also completed the poster that Sam copied for her (minus the corporate branding). The final product was pretty good.

Child 1 painting a Christmas Poster

Rest - a Parasympathetic imperative!

Last night I actually got to bed before midnight!

Burning the candle at both ends has worm me down... way, way down! I have ignored all the signs and laughed at suggestions that I get some rest. I don't operate heavy machinery, I sit in an office for most of the day, who should care if I stay up every now and then? Surely I'm entitled to a little bit of me time!

Well every now and then has once again become every night! After a day sitting, mostly at the computer I come home, get straight into taking care of kids and family and once they are all settled and sleeping, the adolescent in me says great! Now it's my time! And so I switch on the computer and catch up on all the stuff I'd really like to be doing if I had more time! I convince myself that there's no harm in it but I recently read an article in Kindred magazine titled A Place to Rest that made reference to the Parasympathetic Nervous System. 

My lifestyle would appear pretty easy to most people but the reality is that I am suffering from stress! TRUE!

Having virtually collapsed from unhealthy exhaustion last night the article reminded me of all the aspects of life I've been pushing to the side for too long. Physical exertion, meditation and most importantly some healthy Rest! I have refused to rest! I know I need it but I've fueled myself on caffeine and insisted on getting my fair share of time to do what I like! The problem is that the most available time, when I don't have other commitments is late at night when everyone is asleep... and when I should be too! I have no energy to actually do anything so I jump on the computer! I can defrag the computer but my mind remains over wound.

I have never coped well with sitting around at other people's leisure! Not that I have miles of strength or energy but I am one of those people who is much better off put to productive use! The sedentary life is like a slow death! I enjoy the comfort of working in an office and I love my family but I respond to captivity like an animal caged. I have developed a neurosis! Reading this article which mentions the Parasympathetic Nervous System reminded me of the harm I know my lifestyle is doing to me... It's gotta change!

Well actually it is changing, little by little. Just for today I have managed to counter this problem! (I say as I type about it so close to midnight!) Today I spent the whole day outside with my boy! It was hot and we sweated... Spending the morning laboring down at our community garden in Nightcliff was a great way to exercise the demons of idleness! Then off to the pool for a swimming lesson, followed by a fairly long cruise along the foreshore on our bike, visiting a friend and eventually returning home at about 4pm exhausted (and sunburned...). Physically exhausted and completely happy. Ready to rest! As my boy gets older I am gradually finding ways to get us both out there. I think he's a lot like me and enjoys the stimulus of being amongst the plants, working in the soil, meeting the Frilled Necked Lizards, the people and the weather!

This morning it rained on us while we rode down McMillans Rd. We sang and laughed as we cycled through the tropical shower. When we arrived at the garden it was hot but we were happy to see the chooks and eat snake beans off the vine! We inspected the Banana Circle that we'd help to make the week before and found the compost rich and steaming, full of life! The boy happily wandered off to find lizards and collect cicada shells while I cut bamboo and chatted with my gardening friends... As far as I can tell this is about the best way to prevent:

• Heart disease
• Sleep problems
• Digestive problems
• Muscle tension, pain, and headaches
• Depression
• Obesity
• Memory impairment
• Worsening of skin conditions, such as eczema

• Anxiety
• Restlessness
• Inattention, lack of focus
• Irritability and aggression
• Sadness, depression, and lack of motivation
• Over-eating or under-eating
• Smoking, drug, and alcohol abuse

(List of ailments as per that article in the Kindred magazine)

It's been really difficult to get any time to Rest at home since we had the kids, (Several years) Today was one of the few days in all of that time when I could actually lay down on the bed for half an hour, during the day without having to break up a fight, change a nappy, prepare someones food, or attend to any number of other domestic responsibilities or demands. I actually managed to get half an hour of real Rest! BLISS!

Now that the boy is getting older we may be stepping into a new phase of family life. My mission will be to wear him and myself out physically whenever the opportunity avails. This will be our path to peace!

How's the weather?

Some people make a profession of reading, interpreting, understanding and then predicting weather patterns, others study the weather for practical reasons like when to plant their crops or whether or not it is wise to go to sea... and others listen intently to weather forcasts so they will have something boring to talk about at picnics and dinner parties... Personally I am none of these and tend to just enjoy what the weather dishes up to me when I step out the door each day.
Even as a postie I was only ever mildly interested in weather forecasts... Don't get me wrong I am not disinterested in weather; I just don't see the point in studying up on it as though I can have some influence on the outcome! OK if someone tells me it's going to rain I'll dress accordingly... But don't try to start a conversation with me about how the weather is going to be over the next 12 months because I've had one too many of them... (After a few years of living in Darwin you will understand why conversations about extreme weather events can become a bit droll!)

Apparently we are currently experiencing a La nina weather phenomenon. That is pretty interesting actually. Most of Australia has received so much rain that it has caused major flooding in areas that have been dry for more than a decade! Dams are full to overflowing and people are now beginning to wish they hadn't wished so hard for rain.

Here in Darwin we've had exceptionally high rainfall for this time of year and have also been blessed with regular thunderstorms. It's quite wonderful to experience the Tropical thunderstorms we get here, but there is always an element of danger. There are some things a person should avoid doing. Things that might increase the chances of being struck by lightning... Things like playing golf, riding your bike or talking on a conventional telephone (you know the ones that still use a wire).

So after a storm had just passed I was reading my boy a children's story about the rain thinking it would be kind of fun and keeping in theme with the current weather.. I was kind of shocked to find that apparently for the sake of staying true to a rhyme the book gave some very dangerous advice!

(...Umbrellas up and all get under?) - Click on image for clearer text

What is wrong with this picture?

Are they CRAZY?