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 can’t say I am sad to see the back of 2012. One absolutely mind-blowingly amazing thing happened – I gave birth to the most gorgeous little girl in the world (and I am not at all biased, of course). Other than that, however, and even in part due to that, it was a very difficult year – stressful, tiring, challenging, demanding…all those sorts of words. And at times heart-breaking. Why? Well, a few reasons – some of which were simply the unsurprising results of being a new mum: adjustments in my own selfish little world, and my marriage (reasonably new, at 2 years); sleep deprivation; various anxieties (big and small) about whether I was doing the right thing; and often feelings of isolation and loneliness (despite having a loving, involved husband to share the journey with). But we also packed up our lives of over 3 years in Cape Town , South Africa , to move back to Australia , via 3 months in New Zealand . With four animals and all the logistics that involved (quara...

" To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others " - Nelson Mandela. Domestic workers are such an assumed part of life in South Africa , that my refusal to have one seems strange and even selfish to some people. After all, how else will the millions of uneducated, even illiterate, especially among the older generation of black women in this country, find employment? Being a domestic worker, or ‘maid’ as old school South Africans still call them, is a good job, highly desired…so they say. But I have never felt comfortable with the idea. Firstly, I don’t see this as meaningful, rewarding or empowering employment – which is what we need more of in this country (and the world in general). But even putting aside this idealistic objection, the fact is that while people still have black women cleaning their houses, nothing has changed in this country. The domestic, social and economic spaces remain, as...

In the middle of an article on 'resisting consumerism', I hopped off the bus, just to buy that hat I had been thinking of for days. Because I don't have enough hats! Clearly. I walked into the shop wearing the hat I had bought there only a few days ago! Two new hats in a week - and I already had too many to start with. Not only that - I had no money, and still no job. Yet there I was again, at the altar of hyper-consumerism. This altar doesn't even require you to kneel. It's all too easy. It strokes and panders to your ego, and the more you play this game, the easier it gets to drop $200 in a week - a week in which you weren't making any more money.... The buying impulse seems to manifest most strongly at times like this, actually. Self-destructive tendencies. Infantile attempts to placate the raging three-year-old within, who is demanding to be entertained, demanding attention, demanding every toy in the shop. Or perhaps it's my crazy way of tryin...