Love?

I was reading Ruth Ostrow's weekly article in the Weekend Australian's magazine written in response to dialogue from a movie she had watched recently.

"I love him but I am no longer still "in love" with him".

Disagreeing and exploring further how she feels about this statement, she tells of the word "Tzigavoin" that is used in the Yiddish language to describe a highly valued form of profound love!
This describes a love that develops over many years of shared experience (Agape in Greek) surpassing the erotic from of romantic love (Eros in Greek).
She goes on to note that Jungian analyst Robert A Johnson describes Eros as a love of passion and desire that is fragile and fleeting but not enduring. 

It inspires creative acts, the soul and loins in to action fading overtime in to Agape, the more profound and lasting form of love. 

His concern is that Westerners are brainwashed into thinking that Eros is the only valid form of true love and that when the passion diminishes they no longer have a relationship. 

What is my experience? 

Well, whilst in Eros, I do seem helpless to do the things in my life that I normally like to explore and do and that it is a somewhat of a relief when it eventually fades and I can return to doing so. 

It has taken many relationships over many years to understand and appreciate.

I am comforted that my learned experience is supported by RO, who concludes her article by noting that tzigavoin gives a couple the chance to explore and mine their own inner creativity together, knowing they have a stable and enduring platform from which to work.

However, my experience also shows that it is helpful if Eros does make a return regularly to stoke the now well established but slow combustion coals.

That is the love I have - which one do you have?

When do we die.........?

".........at our appointed time - and it is beautiful!" Ram Das.

Building your House?

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and enjoy his extended family. He would miss the paycheck each week, but he wanted to retire.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go & asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said yes, but over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work.He did not put his skills to use and used inferior materials without inspecting them. It was an unfortunate way to end such a glorious & dedicated career.

When the carpenter finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door key to the carpenter and said, "This is your house... my gift to you."

The carpenter was shocked!

What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.

So it is with us. We build our lives, a day at a time, often putting less than our best into the building. Then, with a shock, we realize we have to live in the house we have built. If we could do it all over again, we would do it much differently.

But, you cannot go back. You are the carpenter, and every day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Someone once said, "Life is a do-it-yourself project." Your attitude, and the choices you make today, help build the "house" you will live in tomorrow. Therefore, Build wisely!

Hard to do all the time even when you know it is your own house that is being built!

Today I met Peter Johann Pachelbel

I got an email today from youtube alerting me to the fact that 1992peter had made a comment on a video I uploaded some time back.

I like to follow up and thank the commenter for taking the time to add a comment and so it was that I met Peter Johann Pachelbel and I thought you might like to meet him too.

Peter suffers from a bilateral cleft palate that has required multiple operations, has only 4 out of 20 vision and if you go to the very first post in his blog you will find out that this makes life pretty challenging for him.

He is a smart guy too with an enquiring mind which he uses to extend his knowledge of all manner of complex subjects.

If you have a youtube user login you can double click on the video to go to his youtube site to add a comment.

The internet has an amazing capacity to link up people from every corner of the earth. 

Finally laid my Mum to rest!

Following my Mum's wishes I have finally got around to getting to Perth to inter her ashes in the Memorial Garden at St Luke's Anglican Church in Mosman Park. Father John Phillip assisted and also said a prayer or two as I was placing Mum's ashes in the hole we had dug together.









My father Jimmys' ashes are also interred there.













It is a wonderful little church and the garden itself is tranquil and quiet.

Tardis - Our new Home!

Michelle and I are about to start building our new home on a hillside amongst the Karri trees in Denmark only 6 minutes away from the best surf beach on the South Coast.
Her studio is at this end, we share the middle section and my studio is at the far end. Perfect!

I bought my first ever brand new car!

A Hyundai SX i30 diesel and what a great vehicle it is! Drives really nicely and I find I am whizzing round corners as it just handles so well.
Great ride - firm, secure and solid feeling over bumpy surfaces.
Well kitted out and I just love that I can connect my iphone to the stereo which recharges the battery at the same time.
All this and it only uses 4.7 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres and does so whilst polluting the atmosphere less than most vehicles. Awesome!

My Mum passed away!

My Mum, Amy, left us on the 4th of March 2008 after just over a year of battling the recurrence of breast cancer as a tumour in her left lung. She made it to 85 outliving both her sister Alice and my father Jimmy by many years. She spent the last two or three weeks of her life in the comfortable surrounds of the local hospice cared for by the wonderful staff and volunteers that work there.
I think one of the hardest things I have ever done was the reading of the Eulogy at her funeral service.
I am getting used to her not being here anymore but it is still a little strange as I busy myself with admistering her estate.
I have recently sent off 30 letters to various friends of hers around the world and I am just starting to get some replies back from them which has been very interesting as they relate something of the part she played in their lives.

A New Job!

Today, I started a new job as a Workplace Trainer and Assessor with Worklink, a training, employment, business and personal support organisation.
I am pretty impressed with this organisation so far, in particular with the mix and style of the services they offer and their philosophy in relation to the clients they support. There is great scope and opportunity to add to my skill set which is very positive.
The induction process has been very thorough and there is still more to come!
I have not started any training yet and look forward to that.

Happy New Year - All the best for 2008!

Just learnt to make text conform to a path in Inkscape!

Michelle is fine!

Michelle had an abdominal hysterectomy on Monday afternoon and after only 4 days is home and doing really well already! Still a bit sore and bruised obviously and one can see why from the image on the left as the abdomen is stretched radically in order to facilitate access.
Michelle has suffered terribly from Endometriosis since her teens and has had to use anti-inflammatories every month for years to control the pain.
Recently a large fibroid had developed behind her uterus which was starting to cause her great discomfort and diminishing her ability to lead as active a life as she would like. She is a keen surfer like me!
A hystorectomy is a major operation and not a procedure that any medical practitioner would recommend lightly, but Michelle had decided that she had come to the end of her tether and that something needed to be done.
Normally, patients requiring a hystorectomy would have to travel to Perth as Albany has been without the services of a resident obstetrician/gynaecologist until the recent arrival of Dr Johan Herholdt from South Africa. This clearly highly skilled and professional gentleman indicated to Michelle that going ahead with a hystorectomy was advisable in her circumstances and carried out the successful procedure.
We are lucky that we have a great little hospital here in Albany (finally to get a 50 million dollar upgrade) staffed with wonderful nurses, orderlies and other ancilliary staff, all of whom did their bit in looking after Michelle generously and with great care.

An acronym for the new marriage - HUC

For such a long time now I having been searching for a new description of my relationship with Michelle other than defacto, partner etc all of which I hate and do not describe the relationship. I am sure many other couples feel the same also too.
Finally I have come across a possibility and that is that we are a HUC! Happily Unmarried Couple!
So that means I can now describe Michelle as my TOHOAHUC. IE. The Other Half Of A HUC. It sorta sounds Polynesian so may actually suffice! Oh Well an acceptable try, I will keep working on it!

Free Documentaries!

I love a good documentary and I was delighted to find this beta site offering a whole swag of documentaries absolutely free which they appear to have gathered together from various video sites such as YouTube and Google Video etc. A great idea! I am half looking at the "Dixie Chicks - Shut up and sing" doco as I write this. I am going to be spending a lot of time at this site!

Categories include:

• 9/11 and London Bomb
  
• Activist
  
• Animal Abuse
  
• Environmental
  
• Election Fraud
• Female Focused
  
• George Bush
  
• Globalization
  
• Health
  
• Human Rights
  
• Media
  
• Politicial
  
• Religious
  
• Slavery
  
• Societal
  
• War
  

Happiness as a habit!

I have pretty regularly posted videos from TED as it has so much amazing stuff on it and here is another for you.
I am not huge on the importance of the notion of happiness as for me a sense of contentedness (is that a word?) is probably more attainable and reasonable to strive for.
However, even though I don't believe that Tibetan Buddhism has all the answers, the speaker in this video has explored the notion of happiness from a scientific point of view also and it is an interesting take on it.
So enjoy the monk, Mattheiu Ricard, on the "Habits of Happiness".

Help to get rid of daylight saving in Western Australia

We are subjected again to daylight saving here in Western Australia and nobody I know is in favour of it.



The image to left says it all- a blazing sun that you wish would just disappear at the end of a long hot day.
The best part of the day here in WA in the summer is the early morning and you will find literally thousands of poeple up and about early walking. exercising etc before work.
Daylight saving just reduces that opportunity by removing an hour of time before people have to get to work. The urge to jump on the civil disobedience boat and refuse to wind the clock forward must be so tempting.
It is just not a sensible idea in a state that is so hot and already has more sunlight in the day than other parts of Australia.

The opposition leader here in West Australia is due to lodge a private members bill to have a referendum due after a three year daylight saving trial brought forward.
You can indicate your support for this bill by going to the following address. http://www.loop.wa.gov.au/feedback.asp

This is what I said:

"I am a resident of Albany and I am writing to offer my support for your private member's bill to force an earlier referendum on daylight saving.
I, and many, many people I have spoken to, are vociferously against daylight saving and are appalled at the thought that we may have to suffer for another two summers before we have the opportunity to yet again vote "No"."

If you agree with the sentiment of this post:

http://thewizardalbany.blogspot.com/2007/10/help-to-get-rid-of-daylight-saving-in.html

I would urge you to send it to other people on your network so as they can also lodge their support for the referendum being brought forward and the likelyhood of daylight saving ever occurring in West Australia again removed with a resounding "No" vote!

This is the 100th post on this blog!

Happy 21st Tim!

My oldest son Tim turns 21 soon but I am blogging about it now because he is coming back to his hometown this weekend to celebrate the occasion with family and friends .






I would like to tell you some stuff about Tim.

• He is way taller and carries a lot less weight than his Dad!
• He has been with his delightful girlfriend Kelly since he was 15 - longer than myself and Michelle have been together!
• He is in his final year of a Nanotechnology degree before entering what looks like a very exciting honours years developing an industry supported project!
• When he was very young, his word for music was murket!
• I knew he was pretty bright when he rode down to our house at the Wolery on a two wheeled bicycle he had taught himself to ride without us knowing at the age of 3!
• He is a nice guy!
• He is heavily in to games and associated technology - I wouldn't mind a Wii either actually!
• He just about drowned at my one of my favourite surf breaks - Matterhorn at Nanarup and I can understand why as it can get a bit nasty and Michelle has also got in to a bit of trouble there also!
• He has had a good shot at learning to kite board!
• He plays a bit of guitar and bass and when he was very young had a crack at the violin too!
  
• He loves his mates and thoroughly enjoys getting together with them if he hasn't seen them for awhile!
• He and Kelly have a Jack Russell called "Shauna"!
• He has a younger brother Oscar, already a well respected manager at McDonalds and yet to turn 18 , and an even younger half brother Angus who was reading before he went to school!
• He is in to philosophy as well as science because he is a number 9!
• His Dad loves him heaps and tells him so - something I never heard from my father and am making sure that my kids hear from me because it is important!

I love you heaps mate and Happy 21st for the 11th!

I am still here!

But I have been busy, busy, busy! with:

• 2 assignments
  
• 3 tutorials
• listening to or reading lecture material
  
• trying to memorise Edgar Cruz's brilliant transcription of "Bohemian Rhapsody"
  
• trying to fit in a surf or the gym in between
• going to training and assessment course classes
• and a job application (part-time of course)
  
  Oh Yeh! and fitting in some work to earn money so I can pay the bills etc!
  

The astute amongst you will note there is a smile on the face of the character above and a certain balance to life that others may not enjoy! :-)

A blog about Michelle!

I was relating to my partner Michelle how much I enjoyed Sir Ken Robinson's talk that I posted the other day and how I really wanted her to visit the blog and view it herself.



"Oh!" she said "I don't visit it anymore because it is just all about computer stuff and nothing about me anymore!" (She is an artist so that explains her response to a degree).
So I said "Right then, my next post will be about you" and here it is.


Michelle is a Cancer/Rat, so she is always very willing to express how she feels and has a lot of junk hanging around the place.
She is also a very loyal, generous and talented person.

Michelle has been an artist since she was 15 years old and is currently studying for a Masters in Visual Arts at Curtin University. She is considering transferring to a Doctor of Creative Arts as she reckons a Masters is just not going to be big enough vehicle for what she has to say.

Michelle started learning to surf when she was 40, a late starter like myself (although not quite so as I was 49), and now our life is organised around the opportunity to surf.
Well it was until Michelle managed to score herself a 0 .7 job this year teaching an indigenous visual arts program at TAFE which has meant I have been going on my own a bit lately much to her disgust as she has had to go to work.





Michelle also loves music, particularly singing, so I talked her into letting me teach her to play the bass guitar and we started a band, Floodgates, with some other surfer mates Brad and Simon.
The band parted company amicably at the beginning of this year having achieved everything that we set out to do including the creation of a few originals.




Michelle owns 2 toy poodles, Hamish and Hermyne, who she totally dotes on and they are in bed with her as I speak having morning quality time. I have a half share in them too, Hermyne, in the blue and yellow jumper, in effect being my poodle and Hamish hers. They are very spoiled and Hermyne has a few psychological problems that result in the odd internal mishap but she is slowly getting better. (Actually, that maybe more of a wishful statement than anything, as a relapse has just been noticed). She is Hamish's sister from the same litter but she had a bad start in life and has only been with us for awhile as her former owner was not very responsible it seems.


Michelle is my surfer buddy, musical partner, lover, confidant, inspiration and best friend!

The fitness campaign!

Some weeks ago I posted that Michelle and I had joined one of the local gyms as we have come to the conclusion that if we are to remain fit as we get older then we have to factor exercise into our daily routine on a permanent basis.


Well, I am delighted to report that both of us are still in there doing it.

Surfing, of course, is a preferred form of exercise, but we go to the gym on the days we don't get the opportunity to surf and we have already started to reap the benefis of that decision.

Both of us have lost a considerable amount of weight, are fitter strengthwise and aerobically especially as both of us have added swimming to our exercise schedule.


Yep, our gym has a 25 metre swimming pool which is a huge bonus, is unique to our gym and which the use of is automatically included as a part of membership. It only has three lanes but that seems to cater very well for the gym's clients who are required to make a booking to use the pool. We have never had a problem getting the opportunity to use it.

Rod and Kerry who run the gym along with offsiders, Lara (also a surfer) and another young guy whose name I am unacquainted with, are great, friendly and informed people who keep a watchful eye over our progress.

Another essential component of our fitness program has been an important change to diet. We have removed carbohydrates from our diet after midday ie protein and salad/vegies for the evening meal. This has taken a bit of getting used to as we were accustomed to having pasta and rice etc in the evening. For a few weeks we would constantly feel hungry until our bodies got used to the lack of carbs at that time of day. Most of the time we are able to stick with this but Once a week we do have a chinese takeaway in the evening so we are not silly about the regime.

My goal was to lose 10 kilos before we travelled to Bali for a surfing holiday (unfortunately put off until next year) in early April. I am well on track for that goal and will weigh in on Tuesday the 3rd of April in 10 days time.

That will mean I weigh 99 kilos! Still too much but I aim to lose another 10 kilos in the next three months to get below 90 kilos and that is probably a pretty reasonable weight for me at my age and height. If I could get down to 85 I would be a happy chappy!

Michelle has also lost a lot of weight but her progress has been somewhat curtailed due to a gynaecological issue which arose recently that she hopes to get resolved as soon as possible. She is still able to surf and go to the gym but has to take it a bit easy until the problem is resolved.

Apart from Michelle's aforementioned gynaecological issues both of us are way fitter and healthier and surfing better for it!

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I am a Melanoma Survivor!

But only because it was caught early!






A slightly squeamish subject I know but Melanoma's are nasty, nasty things.

There are 4 types of melanoma

• Superficial spreading melanoma: grows initially in the top layer of the skin, the epidermis. This type becomes dangerous when it invades downward into the lower layer of the skin (dermis).


• Nodular melanoma: often very dark brownish black or black in colour but can be pink or red. It forms a raised lump on the surface of the skin as it invades deeper into the skin.


• Acral lentiginous melanoma: most commonly found on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet or under the nails. This type is more common in people with darker skin.


• Lentigo maligna melanoma: appears in areas of skin that get a lot of sun exposure, such as the face and upper body. It may grow slowly and superficially over many years, later forming lumps as it grows deeper into the skin.

My Melanoma story
I went to see my doctor 10 days ago being some months after my partner Michelle had noticed that a small raised mole was looking red and discoloured on my left shoulder.
It had been irritated by my rashie and wetsuit when I went surfing and I had scratched the top of it off a couple of times.
Anyway I eventually went to the Doctor when my concern about it became greater than my fear of the consequences.
Interestingly, it was an irregular mark on my other shoulder that also caught my Doctors attention and he booked me in to have them both removed under local anaesthetic,
Not a day I was looking forward to!

The result:

• The mole on the left shoulder turned out to be a relatively harmless Nodular Basal Cell Carcinoma and
• Yep the other mark on the right shoulder turned out to be a melanoma! The last of the four types mentioned above as it was not raised in anyway but quite large and irregular in shape.
  Dangerous because it was not that obvious which is gist of my message!
  

So, on the recommendation of the specialist, yesterday I was back under the scalpel having the initial incision reopened..........!and more of the area excised as a precaution thereby resolving the issue.

Whew!

So if you have any marks that are:

• Assymetrical
• have an irregular border
• are a dark colour as shown in the image above
  
• More than 6mm in size

Please go straight to your Doctor and get it checked out!