fat pavlova

xmas day 2011. raen & i prepare an epic 10 person pavlova in the bush, far off the grid where prying eyes may not witness our gluttony. we pile atop it as much fruit as we have managed to procure. these are a few of our favourite things...

then we carry it to the creek. and eat it all. just the two of us. guilt free. for a moment we don't consider the third world or universal hunger at all buying into the luxury of our first world privilege. then we rainbow vom. drink. sleep. and eat some more.

we call it mother/daughter bonding.

fast track to a slow life

so i bought this book yesterday. actually i didn't. i chose the book & my sometime sycophant gifted it to me. we were hanging out because i'd canceled the rest of my day as my mind sharks circled, i realised i was spinning stuck in an uncontrollable vortex amongst them not swimming, not treading water, just spinning & plummeting deep into the cancerous ocean which stress drags one down into. i had to pull the pin because it was already stuck half out.

me = a frozen rabbit on a spinning grenade top. yes, there are deadlines but ultimately i blame poverty which is a ridiculous thing for an arguably smart person to be frazzled about [especially cliche at this time of year], which begs the question if one is so smart why so poor?

i fell into a deep healing sleep early last night whilst reading the book in bed. i deigned not to work on any level & spurned any associated guilt. the wedding, the festival, the feature, the bank, the house: they would all wait. it worked, i woke up able to work once more. christmas may come early this year but deadlines will always crunch at the last moment like frozen grass blades underfoot. the sensation is delicious, almost erotic. january will soothe their memory into sweet oblivion.

slow life/slow food movement very much encapsulates most of my core philosophies so this book screamed out to me in a soothing way amongst my mind's chaotic clatter in the new look berkelouw books [my would-be twenty second home] in newtown last night.

but it raises a really big issue which is core to the fantasies of rat race excapism to which many of us aspire. this book is produced via the luxury resort chain "six senses" a place undoubtedly many of us could spend our lives at. they are doing some very cool things & actually practicing what they preach, operating in an often bio-dynamic sustainable way. they typify the future of planetary aware slow luxury eco resorts placed in some of the most desired spots in the world. for jetsetters. and jets go fast...

i don't want to go to six senses for a week or three & then go back to the city. can't our whole lives be a resort... why should people slave all year to look forward to their token holiday break to then come back & serve the machinations of industry once more? what kind of life is that? perhaps these islands exist purely as carrots to subjugate us into the continued enslavement for the benefit of the few. pyramids have not lost their relevance.

in order to go slow do you have to speed first? this seems so terribly back to front. we whore and slave our lives away at amphetamine like pace utilising as many tools & devices as we can muster to go faster, faster, faster to achieve the holy grail of financial sustainability to then go slow and live a simple life. i love what i do but barely survive doing it, and essentially scrub the toilet bowl of urbanity in order to supplement some kind of acceptable lifestyle. wouldn't it be better just to live rather than survive all along? and fuck cancer off along with it.

why should the idyllic life harmonious with nature be only the stuff of dreams or heinously rich people? creation of desire which is the ultimate marketer's mantra when directed back to the source makes it seem almost impossible. 

technology more often than not serves us poorly in this endeavor enslaving us further. there is no release, nowhere to hide. the earth has shrunk as has our lifestyles & our ability to genuinely sustain ourselves. which makes me wonder as i consider my monthly outgoings & the ridiculousness of all this money paid out to barely survive in this metropolis, can one truly live a slow and fulfilling life, have freedom, independence & be sustainable without the nest egg/inheritance/celebrity sex tape first? or will i just be a dirty outcast scavenging through people's rubbish to build makeshift solar panels with no freedoms when i grow up & be forced to attempt to opt back in and fail later. even bag ladies are often rich with rumored stashes & houses hiding far from the trollied fray. can we truly live without the system?  how much sense do we really have.

fear and greed. that is what binds us all to this fabricated existence. if only we could dispense with them both. both our own lives, other species and our planet as a whole would be indisputably healthier & happier. you don't need six senses to tell you that, but it can help.

please don't buy presents this christmas. give time. these days, it is the most precious gift of all.

i don't even like christmas...

...and have fallen victim to the associated hysteria.

even as a non-worshipper of false deities and mass consumerism my life has been additionally plagued by the panic to finish everything prior. somehow it seems much worse this year than previously. perhaps it's just perception.

but the cars which fill the roads with only one person in them have multiplied since december fell like an overweight kamikaze moon and now oprah is in sydney. i don't even watch oprah. but the tourism board has whored out australia like a penal colony rent-boy to lick at the glorious cunt of american daytime television. and oh how we lick so greedily, stuffing our replicant digitized faces deep into the folds of that which we hope to emulate.

what is that line in chuck palahniuk's fight club? "we've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd be millionaires, and movie gods and rock stars. but we won't. and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very, very pissed off."

oprah is the ultimate sales woman, another napolean hill if you like but with more feelgood factor. if fame and fortune are on your agenda like we're all apparently supposed to aspire towards, then the best way to get there is to talk about it. write a book, run a seminar, have a talk show. think and you will grow.

i just choose not to in that particular direction. it's not that i don't like pussy julia gillard, but there's already three at the corner shop and we're happy sucking on our stocking'd coal this xmas eve.