I love...

jandals- choice holiday footwear, originally uploaded by Shanti, shanti.

jandal* days.
Please let us have a few more weeks of summer. Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...


*New Zealand English for flip-flops

language

Before you can read, your discoveries revolve around bright colours, noises, touch, taste, and love. And then you get language. Language that helps you express your needs and wants. Beautiful language that allows you to understand the stories that your parents read to you before tucking you up for the night. Then you start to gain more control of language and, if you're lucky, you learn to read. When you start to read you get to add the element of wonder about those other places and people that, for now, only exist on the pages. Even when I was small I remember wanting to meet people from other cultures and go to places that I read about in books.

Before I began my life of wandering, it was language that helped me to find out what I liked and didn't like about school. It was language that allowed me to learn about myself through journalling and reading Anne Frank's Diary and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The stories of others informed my own.

It was also language that helped me through my teenage years. Song lyrics, important scribblings on covers of notebooks about who liked whom that week, and notes to pass in class (probably also about who liked whom). These writings were crucial to me in those days. Words of dire importance that made or broke friendships.

My favourite use of spoken language in those days was to make carefully scripted yet inevitably naff videos with friends on the giant VHS recorders of the day and to talk in "outrageous French accents" as dictated by Monty Python. These silly little linguistic episodes tied some of us together for life and much of the language re-emerges whenever we converse.

Who knew then that our interest in manipulating language for a laugh would be the thing that indicated our alike-ness? Language won over career choice, political or religious views, or any of the other things people think are important. It's a pattern that has repeated itself over the years whenever I've met new people. I seem to warm instantly to people that enjoy a similar interest in manoeuvring language for effect and those are the friendships that have lasted.

I'm blessed to have been born into a situation that allowed me to take action on my dreams to explore. My love of language, my own and that of others, has been the foundation and that which has allowed me to connect.

Everything is beautiful today

I had full intentions of coming home and writing something, but on the way everything just looked so beautiful today that I couldn't resist taking a few photos.

I love...

Tết markets and night time flower displays.
Chúc mừng năm mới!!

Trapeze lessons

I'm struggling with the need for money versus the need to feed my creative soul. I don't think I'm special. Everyone who creates in some way knows this dichotomy. Although I'm a wee bit spooked by swinging on the trapeze without a safety harness I'm about to leave the edge and do it. I've got three more weeks on the teaching contract I've taken on and then it's sink or swim. The teaching safety net is there, but it's a long way down and to be honest I'm hanging on tightly to the bar. I want to be up here. I love swinging through the air and kicking out this story and that. I love the idea of letting my stories support my life. I love the idea of doing something on my own terms without a ringmaster.

But there are people, creative ones, who've been teaching me how to hold on. I'm not sure if they even know who they are or what lessons they have taught me. Some of them are bloggers or colleagues or writers or photographers who I've been in touch with for a long time. Some of them are family or friends. Some of them are people I've met recently and have maybe even only had the briefest of interactions with. Many of them I have never met in person.

Is it in our nature to look for ourselves in others? When I find someone who holds the same things dear that I do and they are doing what I want to do, I'm inspired. I'm lifted.

She is doing this thing?

Then I can do this thing!

Lately there have been many of these people. I don't know where they are coming from or how they are finding me (or am I finding them?) but I'm extremely grateful. I'll thank each of these people in the little ways that I can, but until I can get round to all of my amazing teachers, thank you. Thank you for your the trapeze lessons that you don't even know you've taught.

I love...

wooden blessings, originally uploaded by Shanti, shanti.

wishes and blessings and people thinking about other people.

I love...

Bush track to a sandy surf beach, originally uploaded by Shanti, shanti.

three day weekends that allow time for tramping through native bush to discover remote sandy surf beaches.

Happy Auckland Day!!