Friday, September 28, 2012

Loss.


Today has been hard. 
The cruelties of life were brought just a little bit close to home.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

For those who have come before.


This is not a joyful post. But it's not without joy. Stay with me. 

I often think about the dead. Sometimes irrationally, sometimes maturely. Often.

It's so easy to think that it's just all about us isn't it? Those of us living at this moment.

I look at those beautiful black and white photographs of (mostly famous) people who have come before and they feel so un-real. Who are all of those other people? Were they just constructs of our imagination? But then someone well-known will die and I feel sadness. A real heart-pang at reading or hearing the first newsbreak. And I remember that people like Marilyn Monroe and Martin Luther King Jr died when my parents were alive so they were real, not just one-dimensional people in gorgeous vintage photographs and old 8mm frames.

The first two years of my life on this planet were shared with some familiar names who were in the last one or two years of their own: George Balanchine, Ira Gershwin, Joan MirĂ³, Tennessee Williams, Ansel Adams, Truman Capote, Michel Foucault and Marvin Gaye.

I share my January 8 birthdate with Elvis and on that same date, many years ago of course, both Marco Polo and Galileo died.

In the past I've often thought that we all need to write serious journals as a record of the things we learnt and discovered and dreamed and thought. About how amazing it would be to read about the lives of my ancestors in great detail. But lately I've been so enamoured with the concept of each of us disappearing. Quietly, gracefully. As the generations forget, one at a time.

Hopefully for all of us we have many, many years before we have to think about this, but it's sometimes good to ponder, don't you think? Oh those who have shared this world.

Monday, September 10, 2012

The Smokehouse.



It's Monday in Australia which means that some people (hopefully lots) are springing out of bed and heading off to their jobs, eager to take on the world. And of course there are also many people who are perhaps not so excited to be heading off to work. Perhaps they're a bit hungover, perhaps they hate their boss, didn't have a good sleep or are stuck in a soul-less job.

So I am perhaps a bit cruel to be sharing this on a Monday morning. I'm being far more friendly to those of you overseas who are able to watch this as a last little bit of inspiration on a Sunday eve.

My dear friend Rohan Anderson is a dreamer. But rather than just romanticising and wistfully dreaming of his ideal life he has worked his butt off to create it and live it.

It's not easy.

Ro chronicles his adventures hunting, fishing, foraging and growing his own food on his ridiculously popular blog, Whole Larder Love. And the best part is that he pulls no punches. He shares the crappy bits too.

One of the most exciting things he's done in the last few months was build a smokehouse for Smith Journal magazine. A step-by-step account is in Vol 4 of the mag (on sale today) and the amazing filmmakers at Commoner captured the build for you to watch here now!

Dream away.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Beginning, For the Second Time.

University College, Melbourne University

I first moved to Melbourne in February 2001 as a wide-eyed country girl ready to take on the big city. I had just celebrated my 18th birthday the month before.

I lived on campus at Melbourne University (just to the north of the city centre) for two years and then in the four years that followed I mostly lived within a couple of kilometres of that first site. That was until the bright lights of bigger cities called my name.

A couple of weeks ago I moved into my very own pad in Brunswick and I now drive/walk/tram past my old college stomping ground on a daily basis. In oh-so-many ways it feels like yesterday, as if the past ten years hadn't even occurred. But then, of course, at the same time it feels like forever ago. As, indeed, it was.

Although so many of my biggest and most cherished memories of these past (hugely important) years have been set in Sydney and L.A., Melbourne's streets still remember my stories.

It's always funny isn't it when you move house and then you realise you used to party at the bar around the corner, or once parked down the road or shopped at the bakery across the street? At the time you'd never imagined that you could be living just around the bend one day. In my new-old neighbourhood memories are evident on every corner.

I see a muddy, mouthy girl traipsing through the park after a college sporting match; an overexcited teen, bouncing at the gate of a college across the road for her leggy best friend to claim her birthday present; a desperately sad early-twenty-something lugging bags into a friend's sharehouse after a messy breakup (twice); and - in the depths of my memory bank - a very small child peering out the windows of the car that wound its way through the northern streets for special city weekends.

And so, here I go again. I'm back in Melbourne. I'm back at the beginning. Ready to make some new memories.

It's so darn exciting.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Honey Bees.



There's a not-so-quiet food revolution happening in Australia, and specifically in Victoria. It's so wonderful.

And two quiet achievers who are building a seriously great profile are Vanessa and Mat at Melbourne Rooftop Honey.

Check out this gorgeous video (shot by Mark Welker for Milk Bar Mag) to hear more of their story.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Spring.


Hello, first day of Spring.
We're going to have a terrific time, you and I.
*Smiles*
(pic by insanely amazing photographer, Anna Wolf)