worse, better,faster

it’s all going too fast

....the planet earth is spinning faster, the etheric web of time has shifted to another frequency, our DNA has changed, transformation, moving to a higher vibration, end of the Mayan calendar, a comet heading straight for us, the world about to end....

These are the sorts of conversations you routinely overhear at the farmers market on Friday morning in Mullumbimby, while buying your organic avocados, macadamias and locally grown ginger; or while sipping your local organic coffee or lemon myrtle tea, munching on mediterranean omelette or home made cake. 

It’s all very Northern New South Wales. I quite like it  - I prefer a bit of New Age wah wah  about energy and earth and spirit, to the conversations you might overhear elsewhere about drab (and equally abstract) concepts like say, the stock market , the economy, or interest rates.

Also, I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t some sort of truth among the ‘everything’s getting faster’  theories.  I sure feel like my world is spinning faster than it used to. The school week from Monday to Friday seems to be gone in a blink, the term, the year, flying past. I’m trying to hold on to my hat.  

Other people I chat to seem to feel this sense of acceleration too. Perhaps it’s the headspinning  speed of modern communication. It wasn’t so very long ago that we wrote letters, posted them, waited for a reply, the whole process taking days or weeks, which nowadays takes only minutes. Remember going to libraries, to find information, remember looking things up in books? I am nostalgic for those sleepy screen-free days of  the late twentieth century.

I feel kind of  speeded up in myself lately. Leisurely market mornings not withstanding. Lovely afternoon singing group at school, marimba group, writers’ group - I have all these grounding here-and-now activities in my life, and a garden to potter in, yet there is still an undercurrent, like a sort of whirring vortex. 

I reckon its more than just the whirl of my own anxiety or my caffiene-pumped pulse-rate. It’s the sense of the whole human world spinning faster, the rate at which we are trashing the earth, water and air, the madness of corporate greed and our own crazy consumeristic feeding frenzy while others starve, the exploding human population and extinction of other creatures on the planet. It feels like a runaway train with us all on board...

Am I being too ‘negative’? Not really, because these things are happening - there truly is a sort of madness in this world, and a feeling of rushing headlong towards....what?

I like the quote I heard ( via Pema Chodron) “Things are getting worse and worse and better and better, faster and faster” 

Because there is good stuff happening too...And thank god for the daily miracle of the garden. Time to go and water the veggie patch. 

the marimba bug

where F and i spent the weekend...

at marimba music camp

out in the back hills, south east queensland

where the air smells of grass and trees

eco-village nestled in the valley

out of mobile reception range

unplugged

the annual gathering 

of we who love 

hitting wooden xylophone keys, making music

jamming in time, playing in the moonlight

plink plunk bink bonk bang

interwoven rythyms

with trumpet soaring over the top

and clarinet

hungarian (bulgarian?) bagpipes

bass drum

circles, dancing, (old hippies us)

hugging, sitting on rugs on grass

yellow flowers falling like snowflakes 

tinkling down

from the giant tree

by the open deck of the cafe

where the marimba-kids perform on sunday afternoon.

waking early to mist, whipbirds, wompoos

birdsong forest orchestra.

campsite coffee, then strolling down the hill

past  lake

and grazing kangaroos.

Many familiar long-familiar faces 

so many children, grown so big!

we exclaim.

new grandchildren

old stories heard for the first time

chai, and enough time to chat

going nowhere

old tunes,

and new tunes 

while the little kids swing to and fro

and bounce endlessly on the trampoline.

to hear some marimba magic:
http://youtu.be/g2kXcvDJ18s

the doodle

*

This morning while I toiled and sweated at gym I listened, as usual to a podcast. It was a  short TED-talk by someone called Sunni Brown, and her subject was Doodling. According to Sunni, doodling - the making of spontaneous marks - actually helps us think. Far from being a distraction, or a time-waste it engages several modalities simultaneously (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic etc.)  and thus helps us to retain and process information. 

She reckons doodling has long  been misunderstood and maligned by teachers and employers.

She says that our culture is too intensely focused on verbal and written information, at the cost of our visual literacy and creativity. 

A quick look on the web indicates that lots of people agree with her. Someone’s  even done some ‘research’ showing that doodling helps people to stay attentive in boring meetings.

Which made me think of another TED talk I heard a while back - Temple Grandin talking about being a visual thinker. I think my son is a visual thinker, so I’ve been reading up on it a bit . Seems some of us think - and learn - primarily in pictures, not words. These ’visual-spatial’ learners are often highly creative big-picture thinkers, but  may have difficulty with the lineal, verbal way in which most  school subjects are taught. 

Which made me think about how different we all are ( while being deep down the same) in so many ways... 

Which made me think of Dr Gary Ghapman’s “Five Languages of Love” and how we all communicate differently  too. He claims that couples, especially, can avoid a lot of conflict if they understand this. Some of us express our love with words - and  feel most loved when we hear the right words, but for others what matters most is the  receiving of gifts, or touch, hugs and sex. 

Still others express their love ( and like to receive it) primarily as acts of service and caring  - wash the dishes, cook the dinner, put out the rubbish. And for some of us the most nurturing experience is spending ‘quality time’, eye-contact, a sense of deep connection...

All of which is my mental doodle for today.

*This is the much doodled-upon blotter that was on F’s desk at school last year.

Purple, gold, red

I drive past this tree every time I go to town. Today I finally got out and took a photo. It’s already peaked, is now past its most intense violet moment of the year.  Summer green is coming through.

 October/November is the season of purple, gold, and red, here in this subtropical zone. Jacarandas, Silky Oaks, Flame trees. Harbingers of summer. Later, the crimson poncianas. And did I mention the first frangipani flowers are out ?