Freedom Beauty Truth

I am haunted: There’s a landscape behind my eyes. It’s the backdrop to everything I see. A longing, emotional landscape... While looking out at inner city squalor, bleak buildings, traffic and cement... I am also looking inward, at mountains, forest walks, beaches of whitest sand. One, my current neighbourhood in Sydney, Australia - the present. The other, one of the most beautiful corners of the world, the Western Cape in South Africa. The past. Aside from missing friends and family in the beautiful country of my birth, I always knew I would miss the spectacular beauty of the place we called home for over 3 years. But other priorities, other considerations, of which I have written in many of my previous blog posts, caused us to make this move – back to Australia, where we have citizenship and lived for many years before too. We have good reasons to be here. And we won’t always live in this inner city suburb. Sydney, and Australia, has many beauti...

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela That quote from the much-respected Mandela is all well and good, but if you can conquer that fear by moving somewhere else, for your own safety, and for the sake of your child’s future...then I don’t see why you wouldn’t grab that opportunity. Background: We left South Africa at the end of 2012, for a variety of reasons (already explained in previous blog posts). However, the escalating crime rates in the country, and the alarming degree of violence and cruelty, especially towards women, children and animals, were a huge factor in my own decision not to raise our daughter in our so-called ‘home’ country. Instead, we returned to Australia, to Sydney – a large city with many issues of its own, and of course crime is still a fact of life for people living here, as it is in cities anywhere i...

Last week on the bus, I witnessed the driver losing his temper, quite spectacularly. So over-the-top, it seemed to me - but then I had no idea what the rest of his day, or his life, had been up to that point... A car tried to turn at the same time as the bus, by pushing its way into the far left lane - overtaking from the inside - and the bus driver cursed him loudly (through the door he had opened, to ensure all the other motorists and pedestrians could hear, and see his gestures). This went on for a few minutes, as all around us came to a stop to watch two grown men vent their frustrations on each other in this rather strange public display. I felt a bit sad about it all, but that didn't stop me feeling a bit amused, and judgemental, at the same time. yet how many times have I lost my temper, in situations that would seem ridiculous to a casual observer? Anyway, many buses later that day, I caught myself pushing in at the frantic semi-queue, which heaves and surges as...

Thoughts on the pope's visit, human rights and the freedom to speak... I walked past the pope having breakfast today on my way to work. He was surrounded by many red mini-popes, but not much obvious security – it seemed as if I could easily have walked up to him and started a conversation. What would I have asked him? I wondered about this as I continued walking up the street, and nearly bumped into a group of students protesting about ‘victims of hope’ – I wasn’t sure what they meant exactly, but felt strangely tempted to tell them the pope was just around the corner, if they wanted to move their protest somewhere more noticeable…I resisted the urge, and continued through the grey streets in the chilly early morning – noticing the gradual build-up of fluoro-daypack wearing pilgrims filtering into Sydney’s CBD. What do they all hope to get out of this week? Are they ‘victims of hope’ too? Their youthful hope in such a materialistic, ostentatious religion seems to me misplace...