Hollyhock Fields

A whole field of hollyhocks isn’t a gang or something tough or something brave. It’s only a reminder of fragility which is really quite a gorgeous part of life. It’s true to say Hollyhocks don’t stay blooming all year round. It’s true to say not everyone does. There’s closed up days. There’s wilting moments. Then there’s that surprise when a bloom opens to the sun and life feels imminently possible. I started planting hollyhocks once upon a time. Sometimes I still do. The petals are ever so sweet. Sometimes those softer edges feel like home should. A hollyhock doesn’t need to stand up for itself. People shouldn’t need to either. There’s a whole ecosystem that helps a hollyhock grow; soil, sun, insects, bees, rain, people…love. You could set a match to a field of hollyhocks of course but that wouldn’t mean much more than winning nothing at all, just a field full of ashes. You can put love just out of arms reach like that, little games about chasing an outdated idea of bravado or power but that’s an illness, not a lesson. Hollyhocks are a lesson, not because they look taller or braver but because they look so quaint and gentle, up a stalk and to the sun. It’s because they stand up for themselves or sit up on a stalk with the help of an intricate system of support. Nobody can thrive without support, without love, without services and others that are ready to help plant the fields and forests of tomorrow. Be careful not to make judgements or to come to a conclusion until you lift up the softer tissue paper to find the card. Say we are all capable of being a gift, well sometimes people leave the card and forget to open it. Perhaps that’s where the most important part was, further in, deeper down. Sometimes you don’t always need the card. Be happy with the fields already planted. Sometimes that’s hard. Life is an expectation, like a garden. We expect love until it is put too far away then we crave love too much or hanker for something else. Valentine’s Day is a funny one. It’s kind of like a hollyhock gang advertising love. It’s been money for a long while, Valentine’s Day . It can be ok in some ways but it’s only one day in a year. It’s not so bad to give and receive gifts to a point. I’m thinking a good hollyhock gang could be all year round you know. Sometimes we seem to be hanging on for dear life. Oh dear what a mess can be made. Oh dear what a beautiful garden can be planted too. Happy Valentine’s Day To be Sure to be Sure. For a thousand years before and more, for a thousand years ahead and more give peace a chance and may the colours of a Chameleon blend cultures into loving and have us standing out like a field of beautiful, yet fragile and resilient flowers. Xx

That Big Important Kind of Love

I used to collect leaves and bark and flowers and feathers. I didn’t need a reason. I didn’t need a mug of hot chocolate or a chance to share it on Twitter or Instagram or money or fame to enjoy this little hobby of mine. I didn’t need for anyone to be there either at first. Sometimes there was peace in the bush and me, well me and the beautiful world of plants and wild animals. I was a child. I kept journals to remember. It’s remembering the beauty of it all that made it all worth trying for I suppose. I met a boy I called Jurro-Jurro and a girl named Suzie. A lot of the memories are faded and then like a brilliant sunrise they jump out from the blindness into laughter or tears. I found it annoying at first to share my journals with Suzie and Jurro-Jurro. We were very small, not even yet at school. I let them in eventually. We would walk and feel the trees with our bare hands. We would smell the leaves and crush eucalyptus between tiny fingers and the smell wasn’t tiny. It was strong and brave like. We kept the memories. Delicate flowers petals seemed so fragile. We would nurse them in stories and paste them into paint and crayon pictures. Sometimes we annoyed each other. Jurro jurro once said; ‘It’s hard to be big in other people’s eyes so let’s do little things and little things until it adds up to something big. I think there weren’t any little things about what we were or what we were collecting. All of it was beautiful in its own up and down kind of way. Later I shared the books with someone who said he’d only got into bark books because he got a hot chocolate out of it at night when we went through them together. I’m ok with that reason. Sometimes people teach you how you see the world or how others do. I didn’t feel like hot chocolate after that so much. I don’t have bark books either but I still run my hands down the bark trees when given the chance. Jurro- Jurro said; ‘If I die I’m gonna be a tree spirit so you can still be near.” Suzie said; ‘I’ll be the water nearby. Take a photo and paint the ocean or a river then you can be near me even when the water isn’t right there. It will be on the page.” Suzie was blind. So was Jurro-Jurro. People treated Suzie poorly at school. It wasn’t a school for blind people. That’s something small that can feel big. It’s so small to bully, troll or congregate in the name of hatred or persecution. You might call someone a wobbly jelly fish, a cross eyed thingamagig or whatever words you use; faggot, homo, leso, nigger, boong, too fat, too skinny, too tall and on it goes but it’s so small compared to the opposite. The opposite is like freedom, it’s like a flock of wild birds or the brilliant sun or the textures of bark that never seem to end up exactly the same. The trouble is the feeling is so big and so deep in the hurt that’s left over. You can wrap trolling in the idea of a joke, you can wrap bullying in the idea of resilience but it’s just wrapping that’s old and flimsy and boring and outdated. I’m not trying to prove Jurro-Jurro wrong. It’s to say we are all more than little in the first place. Jurro-Jurro said; “If I die, can you tell people about me so I’m not really dead.” I said; “I won’t have to. You’ll be more than just me, you’ll see.” Suzie said; “If I die, no need. I just want you and Jurro-Jurro. That’s big enough for me.” Jurro-Jurro was a bit cranky then; “Now I look like the dickhead Suzie. “ And she said; “I want you to be big. Everyone’s different. Maybe I’ll change my mind too, one step at a time cowboy.” Sometimes I do keep journals now. There’s sometimes pieces of nature on there but I keep the bark in tact. I asked Jurro-Jurro to make me an “I Love you” letter on the driveway with bark and he didn’t end up doing it. It’s when he left from visiting in Coffs when we were on holidays. Someone else made me a letter on the driveway with bark because I was upset about it. I never found out who it was, but it wasn’t a little thing in life, it was something I needed to read right then. We still shared some loving moments, myself Jurro-Jurro and Suzie. He asked me to retell the story where he didn’t forget the I Love You sign. I’m not going to lie but just to say, nobody is perfect and that I honour my promises as best as possible. Someone at school once asked me; “Why are you the only one who talks to blind Suzie, Mother Teresa?” I said something that wasn’t good enough, brave enough or completely true; “She’s sad and alone. And I’m not Mother Teresa.” The truth is I sometimes played board games with Suzie because she loved me a long time ago, because she was a weird funny girl with a strange but brave way about her, because she was sometimes sad and sometimes incredibly annoying but sometimes happy and mischievious and because no child should ever sit alone or be sidelined socially or make someone feel bad for stepping out of the norm to shake up the rules about who is who or what is cool. I painted the ocean lots of times, even entered one in a competition so I could say; you’re more than me and Jurro-Jurro. I didn’t’ win that competition though I thought of her words while I tried. I also wanted that competition to make me feel bigger too. I didn’t win that feeling. I got over it especially remembering what she had said all those years ago. Thinking about the great outdoors, there were some children I loved who were very important. They got right into nature when I was more of an adult. They started to learn about Yabbies. It was a little farm and the yabbies became a little cottage industry. I’d forgotten this time and how I’m not entirely sure. It came back to me recently. When one of them learnt the yabbies weren’t just going off for a little play to someone’s house but were going to be eaten he was distraught. The children had beautiful big hearts in that way. Wanting to keep nature alive is so lovely, especially in children. They would learn about keeping water life alive, even without a hot chocolate. Sometimes it was urgent; “Let’s read the farming books first, then we can have a drink.” I hope they feel like breathing that life into themselves and out again to the wide beautiful world because it could make all of the difference. One little step at a time might be bigger than you think. Xx

Jurro - Jurro

He was blind....but could see into my heart....Like the most....clear of all eyes.... Like the ocean had come into watch....and bring peace....He was blind....but could see all my smiling.... Even before I was laughing....In a front-yard pool....That was more makeshift....Than his stable gentleness.... And amazing grace....And cheeky spirit....His Bapa cried....At my Grandmother’s funeral....Like a real mourner.... So that tears flowed....Like a beautiful river....Like the bush in a storm....Like those tropical storms in Coffs.... That were like an open wound let out....Weren’t trapped behind bars....Or barricades....Or Missions of stolen generations.... He was blind....But not to me.... Though we played Marco Polo in the pool....He was better at it than me.... He felt me, knew me and sensed from deep, from the Earth, The pulses of nature, From his people - Gumbayngirr people. ps They didnt need to be saved, just loved.

Broken

Yesterday a screen broke because I let it balance on the edge of an old chest of drawers and it toppled over. Yesterday an old computer screen I grew attached to bit the dust. It made me think of Charlie Chaplin in the Great Dictator. “We are not machine people” and it also made me think of why It’s Charlie who gets mentions so much via all the old original films. He was a terrific performer no doubt but we all wear the clothes of each other’s ideas and especially those closest to us. There were more women in the first days of film anyway. Don’t you think that means they probably did more of the work? If you say Charlie Chaplin, even kids today know who you mean. If you say Mary Pickford or Lilian Gish, they might not so easily know it. Don’t you think they had something to do with that movie? No it’s not “were” it’s not before. It’s still now. It’s still an issue. And who would have thought after all those years, it would be. That’s not to say there aren’t men who were hidden, used, mistreated, made to do other people’s work, standing half way between living on a prayer and taking the hand of others that would love them anyway, no matter what. Sure women stuffed it up sometimes, for other women too. Imagine, just imagine if thousands of girls were dancing around to a feminist song about just having fun when the real women who made the song or paved the way were left hidden in the shadows of something they did never do wrong. Yesterday I broke a screen and I was feeling all cut up about it even though the colours were so beautiful like a piece of incidental art. I was feeling all cut up as though the machine was a heart, was a person, was a hope, was tomorrow, technology, a grammyinsta star studded kapowchah, chance to hashtag a high out of life or something. Do you think Mary Pickford would feel she was “picked” or picked over? I think she would feel a little more picked over. I once met a man who thought Mary Pickford would have been the silly one of the old black and whites. Is it silly to be silly? No. Is it the case that if a woman was acting up or playing the fool or having a laugh she might be a bit silly? Isn’t Charlie the one who got about looking like Jemima Puddle duck with a walking cane? Do I love that walk? Oh of course, yes. The perceptions I’ve listened to as a woman attempting to find her own way in the world in more formal and less formal educational places (and both as important as each other) about women, always baffles me. Even today. Take Joan of Arc for example. I’ve read a lot of reflections on the “mad saint who put herself forward to be burnt at the stake.” What about, no women at all got to do anything men did at that time and so she joined the only opportunity she could to do that in a battle over religion to pave a way for women to be included. Do you really think she was a martyr? Do you really think it was just about some formal religious framework like Catholicism (and hasn’t that church fucked up a fair bit, excuse my French)? Does anyone want to be burnt at a stake. Nah. It’s funny how in hind sight people actually judge characters or people as though it was the same time as now and yet there’s still issues of inequity. All the worlds a stage and we are the actors in it, says Shakespeare. Did you know he had a sister? Do you know her name? Did she write with him? I reckon she sure did. Did you know Mozart had one too? Did she play the piano, hell yes and she wrote a ton of music? Have times changed, well, yes and no. Has the lead up to the inauguration of Joe Biden been a disgusting display of bigotry and enslavement of people’s rights? Oh that’s for sure. Is Trump the only culprit. Oh hell no. Society was in a declining spiral before that happened. But he sure caused enough trouble anyway. Are the smartest and greediest operators, those who had others work as slave labour, inventing the news, trolling the civil liberties of people in America, Australia and everywhere to be loved and counted and celebrated, greedy power mongers behind the scenes? Oh yes they are. And may they be found out and held to account. Anne Frank was a Jew. Joan of Arc was Catholic. Guess, what they would never have hated each other. Why? Because none of the wars, are really about religion. They are about machine hearts, they are about money, they are about power. When the song was written “Imagine”, remember that song was really written off the backs of people who were tired of religion being used as a propaganda machine. But the reason people really dabbled in religion was philosophy, meaning, wanting to belong, wanting to be loved, community, engagement, rituals of celebration and not who might get to the top. It’s only the greedy who propagated hierarchies and monarchies through religion to keep the poor in place and the richer ones at the top. It’s funny how some people started to blame Jewish people for the wars of the world even though Christianity itself was at the heart of deliberately trying to make poorer classes stay poorer. Look at the feudal systems during Henry the Eighth’s time and before. That was all so the world would be a laddered system of which some people might never escape slavery. Sure, under his regime that system started to die in the arse so to speak but that’s more because of a peasant uprising not because of a psychopath like Henry the Eight That was so in love with his own prowess he blamed every single woman he ever forced a hand with for his faulty sperm issues or morbid obesity which may have caused the infertility in the first place. Just goes to show how dumb people can reach the pinnacles of power. On a personal level, let’s use this analogy…this one time and a few thousand times more, not at band camp but more at band camp than the bloke and the dumb chicks he brainwashed, would like to think it was for him, someone took some music, ideas, scripts, memories, they never made and presented it as their own. Then they proceeded to run down the real creators. Isn’t it an age old problem? Of course those people aren’t stimulating. Of course they attracted the worst people into their lives. Of course that idea would eat the world up eventually. Of course they would be the sort of people to call the creators a wobbly jellyfish for example, because they were the wobbliest and broken and plastic filled, butt implanted lacking in much talent at all, sort of drongos. Of course they would have to focus on tabloids about attending events nobody cares about that much or unfunny jokes at the expense of others, of course they would have to withhold love because they didn’t have enough to give because of their own lazy ways. Of course they would have to use cult ideas or troll conquests to justify their behaviour, of course the dumbest people would congregate in their lives and of course it would eventually lead to a decline in values. Hate spreads fast. Can you even believe that in the Second World War 7.4 million Jews were killed over a six-year period and that doesn’t count the untold story of what Hitler and his subsequent disgusting crew went onto to do after that. Don’t forget too that Hitler was a gay hater, hitler hated blacks, hitler indeed hated everyone and was severely disabled by his own inadequacies. Can you even believe that white seprematists exist today and they continue to help make the world an inequitable and unsafe space? Well they do but the worst ones don’t even believe in those ideas they just get other people to believe in cults to stay rich, to keep those haters down down too, because we all know that a life lived in fear and bigotry is a life half lived anyway. It’s harder to do well in life if you are hating. If you can get other people to hate while congregating with a relatively small ruling oligarchy you can get very rich indeed. Can you believe that during the reign of Pol Pot 2 million Cambodians died because of hatred, well they did and it sucks because the pain of bigotry of slavery is unending. How many indigenous Australians died at the hands of a British Invasion? We don’t even know the numbers for sure but we sure do know now how painful it is even so many years later. How many black American slaves died under some of the cruellest conditions known to people ever. Too many, just too many. Even a small group of haters can do a lot of damage. One person in a playground can. One little voice that says… you’re too fat (I know I said Henry the Eighth was obese but that chubby blobbo murdered his wives so no need to be excused), too dark, too light, too weak, too smart, too boring, too silly, too loud, too soft, can cause terrible harm. Imagine if a woman was singing a song she didn’t even write about not being pretty enough while telling the world to love women and picking up the cash for it? What if people found out about the lie? What should we all do in the case of such lies. Well we should look to justice. We should look to people to dig deep, to come forward, to tell the truth, to make those accountable who stole, to start again, to rebuild, to not make it one man’s job at the event of an inauguration and beyond, in a worLd gone a bit mad but everyone’s or anyone capable of loving and I still believe that it’s possible. So my computer screen broke but I’m the one behind the screen. There’s no great wizard of Oz on the other and even if there was he was just a man remember and there’s no place like home unless it’s sad or broken or very very poor or full of child abuse and then it aint no home at all. So make it so. Make it so - home is heart. Choose love and choose life and don’t take away the person’s right to say I said that! I said choose life. I said it. I MEANT IT AND I STILL DO. CHOOSE LOVE. Let those be heard who said it in the first place. Don’t make a fuzzy screen kind of pain for people who really were being sweet. Nobodies perfectly sweet. But we all really do know what to do deep down. Just do it, but for god sake not because Nike is on your god dam feet or on your shirt. Do it because u owe it to love. To peace and to those people who are just a little bit sad now or on the edge of goodbye. Live Love. Now…