I found this today and saved it straight to my folder called “Speaks to my Soul”
I can’t begin to explain how deeply this speaks to my soul. That feeling of something lost. Somehow not enough.
I’ll just leave it here for you. Enjoy.
And this. This hellish landscape below could be the outer suburbs of any city pretty much anywhere in the world.
Do you ever look around and ask yourself why things are the way they are? I have the occasional freak out in a supermarket and need to sit down for a few minutes before I can resume my grocery shop.
I have a weird phobia of dying in a shopping mall.
I often feel I am doing it all wrong. I wonder if anything will ever feel whole for me?
Why did we, as a society, make things the way we did? Is it the path of least resistance? Wasn’t it always the cheapest option? Roger McNamee once said “Corporations shouldn’t be allowed to destroy society just because it’s cheaper than not doing it.”
Is it too late to change our minds on who gets to design our cities? Can we go back and change our minds about what’s important? Can we dig up the parking lots and plant trees?
I’m restless but I seek home.
I have itchy feet. So privileged. On the weekend, hubby and I jumped in the ol’ fossil fuel machine and drove south. There are a lot of trees south of where I live. To be fair there are a lot of trees north and west of where we live too, and east there is a lot of ocean. We are lucky and we live in The Lucky Country to be sure, especially in these pandemic times. We’ve had a couple of nice weekends away. We’ve been working too hard and it’s nice to ‘up stumps’ for a weekend considering we can’t really go too far at the moment.
I had been planning a trip to England and France for my upcoming big birthday. Because it’s such a long way from here, when Aussies go to Europe we stay for months at a time. I was planning to do some long distance walking for the first time. I wanted to walk from Avebury to Stonehenge, part of the pilgrimage my character Gallice walks in The Circle of Ashes. One day I would love to walk The Ridgeway which is about 7-8 days. I have been fantasising about walking The Camino for years and I bought a book last week written by a local author Claude Tranchant. (It’s right after The Secret Life of Bees on my TBR) As I have said lots of times, I am not a religious person but the ritual, beauty, and pace of pilgrimage really speaks to my soul. I had a great chat to Claude and after ascertaining that her book is NOTHING like the recent offering by a famous self-help author I quickly snapped it up.
So because I can’t go to England for a while we visited the Australian Standing Stones near Glen Innes in New South Wales. It just happened to be the weekend of the Australian Celtic Festival so we just had to jump in the car and drive for nearly 5 hours. Nuts I know. There are places in Europe where I would have been in a different country after 5 hours driving but here, I’m still in the same state by a long shot. I’ve written before about my longing for the lands of my ancestors. At dinner on Saturday night a man asked me why I wouldn’t go in search of indigenous standing stones and I replied ‘because I am white and I am not sure I’d be welcome.’ I am fascinated by the Dreaming and the lore of indigenous Australians but the last thing I want to do is appropriate their stories. I have been doing a lot of reading. Here is a great article about indigenous standing stones and here is my pic of the very recent addition to the landscape.
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