I've got white skin, stare at me!!!

you get stared at a LOT here...
i am in an internet cafe with people who are PAYING to use their computers, but instead you'd think that they had paid just to stare at the white girl with curls!!!
I dont know, maybe the netcafe has a sign out the front advertising "white people sometimes come here, want to watch them? only 20 rupees"... i wouldnt know... i cant read an ounce of gujurati...
its so awkward...
i cant even bare to have hari looking over my shoulder, let alone a group of sweaty indian men, who havent yet worked out the perks of deoderant, wearing their striped office shirts and way-too-tight-on-the-bum flare jeans :(
this place is weird nah!
we are something like celebrities here, all the kids clamber around you trying to squeeze their way in for a handshake, every old folk gives you delightfully-ghetto head nods, every young man calls out "what is this!?", "hello", or "good morning" [even if its dark out], or whatever small english they know. All the street kids ambush you calling out "gora, gora" [white, white]... its because we're white... and we're not even that white!! well, i am... but hari's got some kind of tan :P
I'm gonna miss being a "star" on the indian streets...
at home, my neighbours don't even know me, let alone scramble for a handshake :P
who wouldnt miss that! haha.

sometimes, no... ALL the time, drivers spend so much time staring at us on the street side that they cause way too many near death experiences for the drivers around them. I'm just hanging out for a crash!! All year, and not one of them are yet to crash... sure, its a little nasty but i want them to learn their lesson.
[their "lesson" being something about not staring at white people or you get horribly [but cure-ably] injured in car crash... that'll work]

All for now.

Books.

So, here is some more of our marriage-making. These puppies happen to be books. We have done them ourselves as much as possible, with the long-distance help of some wise friends of ours who contributed to the content  I’m really excited about these ones!! I’m thinking of making these little books for ever, as some kind of focussed hobby, and selling them at my future market stall for $1 each, just to spread the good-news that’s inside. [not the gospel, but it’s good news all the same]. We can update the content every year :) Anyone want to contribute?? :P
The paper is from a hand-made paper factory that is located over our back fence. We go there quite often, it’s a kind of paper-paradise, and it has me mad at barbed wire because there is wire ferociously lining the top of the fence and, because of that wire, we can’t jump it… So we have to walk out along the road, the loooong way, only to finally walk into the grounds and be directly behind our house, only a barbed-wired-fence away…
We’ve spent days and days and days and days lining and cutting out paper, and editing the content and finding the right place to print it and, well, all that went well and we have just yesterday finished binding them all!!!!!!!!!!! Which was a pain in the arse and the hands and the upper back!! And even with all the painful memories and my currently sore back, i am missing the book-work... It kept me busy for ages... and now, pettigew :(

marriage/dress/more questionable thoughts...

I bought my wedding dress material today!!! The exclamation marks are not simply for excitement…

You’ll find that they strongly symbolise fear and the unknown, because I have NO idea whether what I bought will be appropriate when it comes to actually making the dress in Australia… So yes, I am getting married. Marriage huh? Who does that these days…?

My answer to that is –people who feel an unspoken pressure to make their parents proud by doing what they would deem as “the right thing to do”, and doing this thing that their parents see as “right” mainly to keep said parents comfortable with the relationship that the child is in and –people who want a chance to draw up, make and wear a very pretty dress :D I think I will always love a chance to dress up.

Point is that I love the romance of marriage, the whole wedding biz, but I don’t feel any need to get married. All it is for our society is a piece of paper. A legality. A useless legality these days too, considering the way that “legally” un-married couples and married couples are under the same kind of laws… eg, the whole defacto divorce thing. I mean, these people didn’t even get married!! But she still gets to take half of his things if they’ve been together for long enough… So. I am getting married. I love having the excuse to get everyone together for Love!! Even if I wasn’t getting married, I would still want to plan the event, just without the joining in holy matrimony. Less marriage, more love! Like a big fat love festival!! I use to dream of having a week long love-fest as a wedding… but now I realise that even a week long love-fest, however d.i.y you do it, would still cost me too much money that I don’t actually have and may never have… haha. Money :P I laugh in the face of money, and smile sometimes too when it manages to make me happy.

So, I could happily get married without getting married, if you get what I mean. Like, that I don’t need the piece of paper to commit my life to someone. In fact, the piece of paper means shit when you think that it’s possible to sign it without sincerely meaning it!! Bastard pieces of paper. There are too many of them out there…

Anyway, I’ve already committed my life to being a particular mans partner. And I’ll sign a silly piece of paper too one day, but not because I see much significance to it. Since when do I want to be so “legal”??!! And why would The Man want to know that I’m married anyway…? What’s it to him!? “The man” being the one that we all try to stick it to in our own way…

So the material I bought is nice enough. You’ve got to come to India if in any way you are inclined towards enjoying a nice piece of AFFORDABLE material J It’s such a good price here. And there are so many different kinds of fabric types and designs and prints that you would never find in Aus. It’s a wonderful thing, the options. And the price… did I mention that, the price?? I have no idea why our Lincraft and Spotlights are so freaken pricey… Useless country.

I had to buy it now because I only have 24 days left here and I had recently realistically identified the fact that I have never done embroidery before, and probably wont be so quick or fluid with it to begin with, so decided to get some embroidery done here by an amazing organization called Gramshree. It’s an Income Generation Organisation that provides underprivileged women with excellent skills and work, they make such beautiful clothing and home wares!! So, it’s all for a good cause. Several good causes really, for me and for them J So, I started drawing up an embroidery design that was perfect for the sizing of the pieces and everything, and I have slowly started realising over the past 3 days that I actually COULD do it myself, quite easily. I was watching the women do it and, well, easy enough, but time consuming. I’m leaving it with Gramshree though. No need to screw them around. If they manage to NOT pull through then I will consider it an auspicious sign to go ahead with doing it all with my own hands.

I have a strong instinct to do things with love, with my hands. Particularly strong for all this wedding business. I will show you some other things that we are successfully trying to hand-do, maybe another day.

Enough about my Marriage/India/fabric/dress-making thoughts. Go look at something else now. But come back later…

"master is not here"*

We are Masters of this Universe, as long as we let go! I’ve been telling this to everyone. It’s the only thing I know…






*every time i go to my tailors shop his little indian workmen tell me 'master is not here' with dissapointing expressions... master is never there, which i why i am making my clothes myself.

I have discovered...

I have learnt so much this past year. At home and abroad. I’ve changed my home several times, and I expect “home” and my concept of “home” to continue to change. And while these changes keep occurring, there is still nothing better than being in the place I have grown up in and spent the most time in and experienced the most truth and growth in. All of the friends and family and community that I have spent the last 21 years growing older with. The countless familiar streets and landmarks. The many comfortable systems of basic existence that I am (to my own destruction) very well adapted to. These things are all home and present my “abroad” mind with the prospect of endless excitement and adventure in these familiar lands.

These things can be suppressive also…

They can cause the greatest frustrations and create the biggest longings. We all want to escape the nest, leave the fishbowl, take to the sky, etc…

But this has little to do with “leaving” for me. I’m trying to leave the fishbowl everyday of my life. Trying to break out of the things that stifle my dreams and desires. And I’ll continue trying until the person I am today fades away, until my body dies off, or until I’m an old woman who forgets herself…

Did you know that you can physically leave your fishbowl and still be completely stuck in it, swimming the same monotonous circles, the same mistakes, the same bad decisions, the same insecurities, the same confusion, the same lack of knowledge, the same miss-education…

The same stagnant water and bad fish-flakes can follow you wherever you go, if you allow it.

Change is nothing if it is only physical.

This is something that I personally know, but just because I know it doesn’t mean it’s right for you. It might be wrong for you, personally… All I know is that I know that we don’t know.

But I don’t know what you know…

Of all the things I’ve learnt this past year, I cannot think of one thing that is easy to share, to teach, to explain… The thing is that I can’t teach you anything new. I can’t give you any knowledge that isn’t already living somewhere in the recesses of your heart. As The Prophet say’s,

“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge”.

I will be “home” soon. Back in Australia, back in the Central Coast. Back with the verandah and the washing line, back with my mother and her pending Sewing-Machine lessons with me, back to my brother and his loud noises and spoilt behaviour. Back to the energy-consuming, planet-murdering A/C, back to a house that leaves way too many lights on and watches way to much T.V. (or doesn’t watch it, but still has it on all the same). Back to the garden that I want to grow Vegies [Subjee] in, back to the melodic passing trains and dinners at Terrigal Thai. Back to spending too much money on petrol, back to yet another country that is using too much fuel, back to frozen meat, packaged in plastic, lining the walls of the supermarket. Back to my amazing friends who never forget how to have a good time! Back to a life I love. And maybe even a life I am now a little more uncomfortable in…

So many “normal” things will be a discomfort after such an amazing 8 months of living a simple life in A’bad, India.

I don’t want A/C.

I don’t want T.V.

I don’t want to be brainwashed by our supermarkets.

I don’t want to ignore my conscience.

I don’t want to eat meat (but it tastes so good!).

Let’s see what happens when I get back yeah J