Crisis today. When else do I post? I'm moving (again!) and I saw my new room today. It was horrible. Cold. Dark. It Smelt. And the key didn't work. So I didn't really see my room, just the house. Why do I have to move again? A home is supposed to feel safe. It's supposed to be a place where you don't have to pretend or feel bad about who you are. A home is supposed to be where you go when you want to get away from the world. This place didn't feel like that. It felt like another room. Another potential for people I'll either dislike or (hopefully) like. It felt like another cramped place where I don't fit literally or metaphorically.
Everyday I hope for a place of my own. An apartment. A house. A flat. Some place where I can arrange the kitchen so that when coming home any messes are mine and mine alone. A place so when I clean and go to bed it is clean when I wake up. A place so that when I want to watch TV or eat dinner at the dining table or cook I don't need to worry about what some other people are doing. A place I don't feel like I have to justify every item I own.
When I moved into the room I am in now I spent several days trying to justify everything I owned. "Oh I like to try new things. I like to experiment. I can't take stuff home, our house is being rented out." Now the thing is most of these things were true but that's not why I own a lot of things. I own a lot of things because I've been counting on getting my own place since I was about 18. That isn't a ridiculous thought. I thought it was normal for someone to move out, get their own place, begin working and possibly begin studying. Now it's almost a decade later and I'm still living out of one room. Cramming more and more into a space which is, in effect, designed for a teenager who doesn't own anything except clothes and make-up.
I'm not a teenager. I wish I was. Life would be simpler. Living here would be less hard if I were a teenager. But I'm not. I don't really want to go home, even if our house wasn't being rented. I want my own place. A place I can be me and no one else.
I watched Julie and Julia tonight. Like both Julie and Julia I love to cook. I too love butter and like Julie I too am keeping a blog. That's where the similarities end. They loved French food, I like Italian. I like cream more than butter and I love cooking desserts more than anything else.
My very first Pavlova worked beautifully. I've baked bread and profiteroles. I've make pasta and pizza and rolled Sushi. I could live on salmon and tuna all day if I could afford it and so you can see I'm not really like Julie or Julia except for one thing...I love food. In the movie the character of Julie speaks of how knowing that adding eggs to a dish and getting a certain outcome is comforting after a day of uncertainties. I certainly agree with that. Cooking, no matter how much I mess it up makes sense. If it doesn't work out it's something I know I've done wrong. There are variables of course but that isn't the point. Like Julie I find great comfort in the certainties which come from cooking. For example this evening I cooked chicken in butter, potatoes mashed with cream and vegetables. So simple and yet so tasty. Food is and should be a pleasure!
Last night I was writing a story. I do that a lot. I have hundreds if not thousands of pages of stories I've written over the last 5 years. No 6 years. This particular story however is slightly different. 90% of my stories are diary-like. They are written to express things I've felt or wanted to feel. This one however was created for a different purpose and as such has a different feel to it.
The story itself is about a girl called Sophia who time travels unexpectedly back in time to a country before modern technology took over. Now the country itself, although on Earth, is made up. Think Australia before the British got here but with different plants and animals and a completely different culture. However the culture of people she encounters are a sort of cross between the Navi from the movie Avatar and the Aboriginal people. They live off the land, lightly farming, hunting and gathering to eat. They sing and dance as part of a group and move about once a year or every two years when the land looks like it needs a rest.
The character of Sophie wants to go home. I think she will get there eventually although the thing with writing is I don't know how yet. Me on the other hand...I want to go there. I would trade with her in a millisecond. I feel more and more overwhelmed by the modern lifestyle. The people she is staying with and learning to survive from live with a very light footprint. They live, work and eat as a group. They are fair and understanding and don't waste or harm unnecessarily. That's how I want to live.
Most people I even mention fraction ideas of this to think I'm either quirky or crazy. I pray sometimes (even though I'm not much or a praying person) that one day I'll find some people who feel the same. People who watched "Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood" with the same amount of disgust and horror as I did. People who didn't just wish it wasn't like that but plan to live differently. I've begun to since I saw that. A world without proper children and a life without a proper childhood isn't a world I want to be a part of.
I'm old fashioned. I like books and sewing. I like to cook good, tasty food which isn't full of chemicals and preservatives. I found out there was added sugar in my cream recently and that to me signals everything wrong with the modern world. To add sugar to something which already is a)unhealthy and b)tasty on its own is crazy.
I have this ridiculous fantasy. All the time I see people creating religions on TV where one person gets their head full of power. I don't want that. However I love the idea of buying a large area of land with some people, putting up some simple huts and living off the land together. Growing our own food. Owning chickens and cows. Eating together, singing, reading, playing music, drumming, dancing....
It's crazy I'm sure but I can't help it. The more I look around the more I'm sure I don't want to do what most of the people around me are doing. My cooking is my escape, my way of finding something in the world which does make sense sometimes.
I dream of finding a partner who feels the same way. Someone who will stand by me when I say I'd rather make my own marshmallows and blackberry wine than buy it. Someone who will support me when I say I'd rather home-school my children (when I eventually have them of course) than send them to public school.
There was an ad on TV recently about violence and several bullying among girls at school. I watched the ad with confusion not because I want to know why the girls were violent but because I don't get how people don't know why they were violent. Every day we are bombarded with images and ideas. War, fear of being too fat, too thin, too brown, not tanned enough, the wrong religion, the wrong height, the wrong hair colour, wearing the wrong clothes, wearing too little, wearing too much, not getting into a good school, not playing enough, not working enough....then we show them TV shows like CSI, NCIS, Underbelly, Real Crimes, True CSI. We tell them they are unsafe, uncool, too smart, too dumb...and it goes on. After all of that of course children and teens are scared and violent. They don't get given anything positive because it all has an underlying message.
When I was little I watched a cartoon after school and I read Enid Blyton. I would like to tell you about my encounters with them again.
I recently came across my Enid Blyton books and shortly after reading them I found a review. The review trashed the books, saying they were without real character development and encouraged smoking. Firstly the book was published in the 1940's. Secondly it was aimed at children of around 7-10 years old. Character development...most children then probably couldn't even read that, let alone know what it meant, let alone identify it. We should lay off kids. So much is expected of them these days and I feel sorry for them considering the constant pressure. At least two or three generations grew up on Enid Blyton. I've never smoked in my life and never even noticed it being referred to in the book.
Now to the cartoon. The cartoon, known as 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' was a British cartoon about some animals whose home, Farthing Wood, is being destroyed by humans. They decide to journey to a nature reserve and that is what the first season is about. I LOVED this cartoon. Living in Australia it introduced me to different animals and had a wonderfully real feel to it. It didn't beat about the bush, with some of the animals being killed, but didn't glorify it either. There were no graphic deaths (with sounds indicating one of the bird characters being shot) however it had a underlying educational scent, although I never noticed that as a child.
I realise I have just contradicted myself however both the books I read and the cartoons I watched helped me see the world differently. I am not sorry about this. It is because of Enid Blyton, The Animals of Farthing Wood and even Captain Planet that I care about how we as humans treat this planet and each other. And it is remembering these messages of peace and care that I am sad now that no one else seems to remember as well.
Perhaps you do. Perhaps as you read this, whoever you are, you remember things which made you feel the same way. Perhaps you read Enid Blyton, watched cartoons or listened to music which means you understand me now. I hope so. I hope I'm not the only one sad that we don't seem to care for each other any more. I believe we must learn from and remember our past. Only doing that can we find what we need in our lives today. I need my own place out of the city; what do you need....?
Give me your thoughts - Do you feel the same? What do you need in your life to make you truly happy? Can you honestly say that you are happy with how humans treat each other and the planet? What changes can you make in your life which will help you and those around you?