I love that these two shots turned up on the same day earlier this week, one on The Beast (based in Bondi) and the other on Common Ground (based in Byron).
There’s something so still and intimate about both shots. It’s a half-life we don’t always see.
“It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.” W.B. Yeats
This quote struck when I came across it the other day.
It does take a long time to believe our feelings. I think I’ve lived most my life distrusting them. Feelings are reactions. Ergo, irrational. Ergo, not to be trusted. And so, off with her head!
I’ve lived in my head and ignored the stomach aches, the ugghhh! feelings, the drabby black and whiteness of life in my mind’s eye when, CLEARLY, things aren’t right. And my feelings are falling over themselves to wave flags at me.
It’s an imprecise sport, learning to believe feelings. Messy. Is my anger at someone about my being angry with them. Sometimes, when I truly feel into it, it’s regret. Or it’s disappointment in myself because their action reminds me of a failing of my own.
When people say, “what are you feeling right now”, it shits me. I don’t always know. I’m still learning to trust that they work. And it conjures such loose, sappishness.
Going forward the focus of the climate debate is going to be food. All the experts are saying wars will also be about food in the future. The fact is, we’re fast reaching a point where the planet won’t be able to feed us. And we’re going to be falling over each other to get at resources.
To be honest, I’m kind of glad the debate has come to this. It’s a tangible concept. I’m hoping that as the discussion shifts to food and food warfare, we’ll care more. We’ll wake up. Because we won’t have a choice. We need to eat.
In the US last week a report found that eating healthy has become too expensive for most. It created much discussion over there. Soon it will be the same with junk food.
Anyway, in the meantime, what to do, both from an economic and an ecological POV?
It’s simple and elegant. Waste less.
I’m unashamedly militant about using every last bit of food. And I get incensed when I’m around people who don’t. It’s a pet issue of mine and I don’t hold back.
Some principles I personally live by:
* I don’t buy more until I’ve finished what I already have (in the fridge/pantry). I completely run out of yoghurt before I set out to buy another. That way I find myself then using up the last of the sour cream or cheese in the interim.
* I cook the leaves from beetroot bunches as I would silverbeet (and eat with oil and pepper and salt). Ditto the leaves from cauliflower and broccoli (just don’t do with rhubarb – the leaves are poisonous)
* I don’t peel anything. I eat the rind/skin on pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, beetroot. A lot of the nutrients are contained in the skin.
* Celery leaves – great in soup and salads. I use as I would parsley. I make a pistou using the leaves, too.
This week in Sunday Life I use my hands (which, admittedly, when coupled with this picture below, reads a little wrong!)
As kids, my brothers and I had a ritual. In the school holidays we’d sit on the back step with an ice cream bucket full of kero, a few rags and an old toothbrush and clean our bikes. We’d pull apart the hub and crank set and clean out our BMXs and mountain bikes right down to the ball bearings. Crud. There is little more satisfying than sitting in the sun picking crud from a rear cluster, I tell you.
When done we’d go for a test ride. Oh, the smoothness! It was joy on two wheels. We’d revel in our handiwork for days. Poor Mum. She must’ve turned inside out with the tedium of our post-mortem gloating.
Nowadays I get a similar kick from making my own mung bean sprouts. The soaking and sprouting takes three days. I become a helicopter parent, fussing over the sweet little things, perfecting technique, trying new approaches. Sometimes I just stare at them as they sleep. When done I’m so damn proud and, can I tell you, they taste unfathomably better than the packaged versions. I tell everyone. I post the results on Twitter. Look what I made! (Don’t get me started on my recent fire lighting efforts.)
Since no experience these days is left unphenomenon-ised I wasn’t surprised to learn this week my crud-scraping and bean-sprouting passion has a name. Harvard Business Review has dubbed the phenomena The IKEA Effect.
This has become a fixation with me – finding THE satchel that I can carry my laptop (and wallet, keys, glasses etc) in, which also works on a bike. If you ride, you’ll know that not all satchels are created equal. So I’ve been exploring…
via copenhagencyclechic.com
via downtown from behind tumblr
The sling over the shoulder deal is great…but I’ve been finding it mucks with my left shoulder over time. And it does a swingy-forward thing if I’m not careful. Worse, to avoid this swingy-forward thing, especially when going up hills, I find my body tensing – including my right hip – to stop it doing so. Which leads to lots of niggly pains. Ooooh, I have many!
On Sunday I met Louise Hay. For anyone unfamiliar with this true gem of a human, she’s the author of You Can Heal Your Life, which has sold more than 50 million copies! And she owns Hay House, which publishes the Big Gurus (Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Doreen Virtue etc).
I’ll be writing more about the very particular lesson she taught me, soon, for Sunday Life. It caught me off guard and I got very teary because her lesson spoke straight to my struggle right now. She knew this and sat with me for an hour, smiling at me as I tried my usual tricks for explaining myself away (words, words, words!).
But in the meantime I thought I’d share some other little insights I gleaned. Because she shared many. Today I read her new book You Can Create An Exceptional Life, which goes into detail about how she runs her life.
Louise is about to turn 85. She healed herself of cancer many years ago and has gone on to live an extraordinary life. She’s as upright and fit as a 40-year-old. Slim, tall, a vibrant, natural face and a playful energy. She’d just got off an international flight and has been presenting and signing books for days. And yet she said she felt great. So her tips ‘n tricks for a well life are worth sharing:
1. Eat protein and vegetables. We sat and she ate breakfast. This is what she ate: peppermint tea, scrambled eggs, 3 sausages and some prunes. She ate the prunes with the sausage. Nice. As a rule, she follows the Westin A Price diet (as do I). Not strictly (ditto). So no sugar or gluten, limited grains, plenty of natural fats and a lot of veggies. Like me (via my Integrative Nutrition studies) she’s tried many different eating approaches and has settled on WAP principles.
2. You don’t need things. When she sat down I got rid of the clutter on the table. “We need less stuff,” she said, in a broad way. “Less clothes…I go shopping and I think, I don’t need this!” I instantly wanted to hug her. It’s been reported that while she’s a very wealthy woman, she lives minimally. She drives a Smart Car. And grows her own veggies.
3. Don’t worry whether you can do it….
As readers of this blog might know, I can’t do gluten or sugar, which makes breakfast tricky. If not toast or porridge or muesli or fruit, then what? Eggs. And more eggs.
zucchini ricotta cheesecake, via 101cookbooks
Not a sad predicament, but variety is required. Lately I’ve also been experimenting with cutting back on grains overall. I’m not wholly paleo (caveman diet follower); I tend to follow Weston A Price’s eating ideas (although not strictly). I can see merits in not eating so many carbs…doing so does curb my cravings…which I have problems with. I still eat carbs, just not as many.
So back to breakfast…no sugar, no gluten and… less grains. A challenge? Yes, but one I’m up for.
Tell me what you think of these ideas, and please add your own.
I use a springform pan, but you could use an equivalent baking dish or deep tart pan as well.
serves 8
Preheat oven to 170C degrees. Butter/oil a 7-inch springform pan.
In a strainer, toss the grated zucchini with the salt and let sit for ten minutes. Now aggressively squeeze and press out as much moisture as you can. Set aside.
Combine the ricotta cheese, Parmesan, shallots, garlic, dill and lemon zest. Stir in the eggs and mix. Now stir in the zucchini. Fill the pan with the mixture and place on a baking sheet and in the oven and for sixty minutes. Sprinkle with the goat cheese and return to the oven for another 20 -30 minutes or until the goat cheese is melted and the cake barely jiggles in the center (it will set up more as it cools).
Let cool five minutes, then release the cake from its pan. Serve at room temperature drizzled with a bit of olive oil and a few sprigs of dill.
This week in Sunday Life I break the Catch-22 bind
Back when I used to work stupidly long hours in a normal office job I would spy people on my way to meetings sitting at cafes – on a Tuesday, at 11am – and I’d think, “How do they have the time? What have they got right that I haven’t?”.
Your sun-basking, Sudoku-doodling café lingerer might be the neighbour who gets to a 5pm yoga class each week, or the friend who can spontaneously take a long weekend when the weather turns nice.
“How do they have time?” you cry out, half in envy, half in contempt. How come they got their life so sorted?
Recently I was invited on a meditation retreat. The idea of withdrawing from life – from email, laptops and planning dinner each night – for five days is something I fantasise about. I have an image: people who go on meditation retreats have interiors magazine-ready homes and organised spice racks and cherubic blonde children and wear leather-soled shoes. You see (my logic goes), they have their life sorted.
So they’re able to.
Personally, I don’t know that my life will ever be sorted. And I’ll never have blonde kids. So this week I took the plunge, left my iphone at home, and signed up to the retreat. Regardless.
Goodness. You’d think I was heading off to Siberia. Or whatever other outpost where Vodafone doesn’t have coverage. Of course, it coincided with my busiest period all year. Sitting in the hall with a dozen others, I fretted as my brain slowed to a blunt, foggy stop. It rained outside. I clung with white knuckles. But eventually I had to give in to the atrophy.
On day three the following occurred to me. Have you read Catch-22? I haven’t. I think it was a real early “70s thing when people had time for holidays and dense reads. But I know the gist. A bomber pilot wants to quit his job due to the inherent dangers. But he’s denied because the fact he understands the danger means he’s sane, and only mad pilots can be relieved. So he has to keep flying, even though it’s insane to do so.
My philosophy is this: when more people ride bikes in cities, the safer that city is for cyclists. Actually, it’s not my philosophy. It’s a fact. And the raison d’etre of my Campaign To Ride a Bike.
via meetup.com
But I know many of you get stuck on how to start out riding – how and where to buy a bike. So let’s get back to basics. If you build bikes in your area, or if you know a great mob who sell bikes and look after green kids to the scene, please add to the list in the comments below…
1. Always test-ride. Bike shops will always let you do this. If you live in a hilly area and are planning to buy a single-speed, test-ride up a hill.
2. Try a three-speed. The retro look is rad. But if you’re new to riding, having no gears can be tough. Think about a hybrid – retro in look, geared in functionality. I’ve written about this here.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc0LjbYTnJQ[/youtube]
(apologies for the blip at the end of the video…)
3. Learn how to carry a bike up stairs. I’ve given some tips in this funny little video we did outside Bondi Bikes, above.
4. Switch to slick tyres if you have a mountain bike. It’ll make your bike faster, and cleaner if you’re keeping it indoors. Again, above.
5. Get a bike lock that you can sling over your shoulder. You can then stick the key in your pocket or down your bra (with an ATM card or $20) and the lock over your shoulder and off you go. No bag. No clutter.
6. Don’t be a complete cheapskate, says 7PM Project’s Charlie Pickering. “You don’t have to spend thousands on a space-age carbon fibre uberbike, but if you buy the cheapest thing you can find it will be
Every now and then I answer a question from a reader that I figure best to answer en masse…here’s one that struck me recently:
It’s come up a few times in comments on this blog. What’s the deal with my two speeds – my heels/red carpet/hair extensions/smile-for-cameras existence, and my live-in-the-hills/simple/non-shopping/biking/no makeup life? How do I do it? Does it tear me?
via 79ideas
It seems to confound a few people. Or suggest to some that I’m inconsistent.
Normally I don’t feel obliged to explain myself (should we ever if we’re not harming anyone?), but I have put some thought to the issue lately.
I think many of us have two speeds. Our busy, crazy self and then the self we try to come home to with friends and family and with ourselves.
I think many of us feel that somehow we need to be marrying the two. Uniting them. Or finding a middle ground between. We call this balance. We seek it.
I ask, though, is balance about finding a middle?
Or can balance be about dancing between the two, or three, or four aspects of ourselves? Can we not be all the things, authentically?
BUT, cry some, that’s fine if your values are consistent across the selves. I agree. And this part of the dance isn’t always easy.