Early autumn and our sun begins setting around five.
We head out for a walk before the evening chill sets in.
My youngest son and daughter walk, then run, then walk.
Youngest is speedy, fluid, fast – he loves to run but not in competitions even when asked to consider the school cross country team. Instead running is, moving like the wind, being in the moment of freedom.
My daughter sometimes wants to catch up, to attempt to pass the speedster, but he just turns the speed on and then playfully circles back to run and walk with her.
Their Dad and I walk behind, observing the siblings chat and race, and walk, as well as having our own chat.
There are cyclists everywhere on the track, some just ‘ting, ting’ others yell out ‘bike.’
The joggers count their kilometres and listen to their plugged in music. …
Ong argues that writing can “enrich the human psyche, enlarge the human spirit, intensify its interior life.” [1] In other words writing can be moulded to fit those who use it, and can extend rather than diminish subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Max Van Manen describes the power of writing:
Writing fixes thoughts on paper. It externalises what in some senses is internal; it distances us from our immediate lived involvements with the things of our world. As we stare at the paper, and stare at what we have written, our objectified thinking now stares back at us. This writing creates the reflective cognitive stance …[2]
Writing has a paradoxical power that comes from its ability to objectify as ideas are placed onto paper, yet as it objectifies it subjectifies. It can do this because writing can represent a dialogue with the self. Even though many Indigenous women write in…
From newdressday.com Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance on air
I loved watching Fred and Ginger dance.
Late at night I would watch old movies
waiting for the impressive scene
with the big dance number
where they would tap, and twirl.
I wanted to trip the light of elegance and rhythm.
But I never shared that with anyone.
My mother took my youngest brother to tap.
He used to watch the movies with me.
He also loved Michael Jackson
and his moon walk dancing.
He loved them and his lessons.
But then he had an accident and was in a wheel chair.
Eventually he walked again and now he can shuffle dance.
I never learnt to tap.
Sometimes I wish my brother was just as he was,
and then I know that can never be and we must love him as he is.
He likes to laugh and play a bit of cricket.
He talks in slow motion but still tells great stories if you’re patient.
He can still watch Fred and Ginger dance on air.
His elegance is his courage to get on with life
and ignore the tears of others
tripping the light of endurance
outliving Michael J.
to do his thriller shuffle.
Visiting Kiribati 1999
Today I’ve been working on a story about a trip I made to Kiribati when I was in my twenties to include in my memoir. I had been thinking about this experience a lot lately and vivid memories of some of the incredible people I met have been resurfacing.
I’ve been particularly thinking about how travel to somewhere quite different from where you have been raised enables you to see yourself more clearly.
I was looking up some of the online photographs and websites to further trigger my memories and came across a story site Kiribati Stories. It was such an amazing site that I wanted to share the link here on my blog, I encourage you to visit Kiribati Stories.
It is so heartening to see cultural repositories like this springing up on the internet, and being supported in their development. It makes me think about the possiblities for my blog Follow the Crow Song, as a family repository. I really ought to get some video and sound captures happening on that blog now that I have those kind of skills.
It will mean visiting, and skyping family and inviting more of their input. How far do I want to throw the net for writing to include on this blog? I definitely want some grandparent stories happening there! Is it just my own memories or do I want for instance to get my dear husband to write more of his stories, which he tends to tell to the children over and over and would the people who inspire me like to make an appearance.
I wonder what will become of all the blogs and websites being created.
Will they need custodians who create new ones that link back to them? What will become of my blogs when I am gone?
I am thinking I will ask my children to do this for me, and hoping they will want to take it on board, or maybe a grandchild if I have one will. I will see what the future brings.
I will keep the future generations in mind as I work on my blogs, especially my memoir, cultural one.
"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists" Eric Hoffner