Life the universe and everything in between

Mum's Breakfast: Delicious on far too many nutritional, therapeutic & biologically invigorating levels.

LOL ‘Life’ ; what a beautiful chaos it can be. From the un-explanatory saucer sized bruises to the indescribably painful & liberating situations we find ourself within. Its nice to know where ever you turn you can always find yourself and a laugh for good measure. You get out what you put in i guess and in terms of food I have to point out this particular breakfast I had one fortunate day was a particularly legendary one!

Life . . . i guess if I were to try squeeze it into another word it could be substituted as ‘Change’.

I had the pleasure of finding some old slides of my mum’s while with her this weekend. In retrospect some of our memories can seem life-times ago from when you were someone else and yet i cant help noticing the similarities in the perceptions mum and I both have around life today. All in all what an awesome find and more importantly what stories behind them!

Well i had intensions not to write copious amounts of insignificant ramble in this blog and remain to posting only ‘worthy’ subjects. Yes it is true; I dont find it necessary for every Tom ,Dick and Harry to know how I got about my every day. However I’ll make an allowance for today

Today I went along with Pieters parents for our usual sunday walk . The weather was surprisingly and pleasently warm and spring is now very evident in every sense of the word. What you hear, smell, see and taste. I could count at least 8 different bird calls in the 2 hours we walked, You could smell fresh grass and new flowers. The sun was hot and shining strongly, everythng was a shade of crisp healthy green and unfortunatly for me i hadnt really been witnessing it all untill 3/4 of the way through the walk. At times during these last few days I’ve been struggling to stop my exessive thinking and today had its moments. Its highly frustrating at times, however i like to think ive become alot more conscious of it and the method in obtaining a calm, quiet mind. Anyways it didnt matter for long, after lunch I simply relaxed in the sun and had nothing to think about but the warm rays of light shining down on me. It was so good i fell to sleep with my book open, chapter unread and a rosey face. Dinner outside in the evennig sunlight was a nice event, the Holland i have experienced so far has been rather… chilly and indoors alot of the time. But im sure if im round for the whole summer i could be in for the complete opposite   

Some days are better than others, thats just the way it is we take the highs with the lows and go with the flow. At this very moment I am writing this post from Amsterdams central library in an aray of satisfied feelings. Today I have achieved 3 things. First and formost I sucessfully survived an interview with 180 ’s production manager and director aswell as impressing and establishing a good first impression and promising position! Secondly I managed to locate, meet and befriend a potential dutch flatmate. And last but not least, I managed to leave the flat in such a good mood I walked the opposite way to that which I intended and after 25 minutes and blisters forming from my new shoes I realised I was a little lost!

So all in all a very productive day I must say, and it isn’t over yet Im off to stay with on of my potential work collegues tonight and I am also still yet to make contact back home with my mum after her big interview today aswell.

Tot ziens!

As the saying goes “that’s just the way the cookie crumbles” and generally when it does most are small enough to not bother savouring. Its easy to ‘acknowledge’ small crumbs and then let them be, as they are not substantial enough to eat and we find (more than often) that we are happy to not fuss about trying to claim each one. But when theres a significant crumble in the cookie there is generally a different response. You take action, you cease it and you savour it.

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Okay so ponder this. Yes, perhaps a little hefty but share your perspectives…

How do you explain human nature? 

(Why do human beings act the way we do? and what do you think our underlying natural nature is?)

Well im bordering the two 2month barrier since being submersed in the Netherlands and Europe now.  How does one feel at this point in time? Well with 4 weeks remaining before some considerable decisions and directions that need to be clarified, I must say im feeling rather relaxed and at easy with life’s pace, direction and abiguity at the moment.

There have been a considerable amount of challenges since my first day here but some thoroughly unique experiences and times spent traveling and meeting new people and countries. One of the biggest hurdles was at quite a primitive simplistic level really. My diet. Okay so ive always had a choice in what to eat while here, But imagine for a moment Ninas food pyrimid. Being vegeterian and rather health conscious of what i put into my body i can confidently say that 70% of my daily intake was fresh fruit and veges. The other 30% was in the form of  pulses, yoghurt, eggs, of soya products. Evidently not much of a Dairy or processed/complex carbohydrates fiend. So picturing that lovely pyrimid of mine …  now throw it upside down, shake it around a little and drop kick it :P  and (bluntly put) you have Bread Cheese and Potatoes. :P   So prior to taking off to Spain and Portugal i made a conscious decision to happily return to my own pallete.

An exciting discovery i made today whilst on my run was that Spring is litterally about to spring! All the disiduous trees i passsed had the inklings of tiny tiny green shoots peaking out from the tips of their limbs. I actually felt genuinely uplifted with anticipation for a season which is something ive never really felt before, in that way.  …On second thought maybe it was all the endorphins pumping through my viens :)  Hmmmm on that note another positively wonderful thing that fights homesickness and the lonely kiwi syndrome is 2hour phone calls with mums, acompanied by 1 & 0.5 hour calls to dads and to brothers.

Oh yeah and this Monday i am bound for Amsterdamn with an agency interview at 1400hours and contacts to cross paths with. Every one seems to say ‘theres Holland and then theres Amsterdamn’….  i am yet to experience and decided upon that myself

Anyways thats my  2 euro cents for today, Hope your all safe and well out there.

A passage some of you out there might have read before. It might be a bit “hippy-ish” for some but love it and just wanted to share it.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Ive been in contact with Rach since she left our flat & spontaniously took off globe trotting to satisfy a bad case of itchy feet. She writes beautifully on every eventful and non eventful situation life throws at her and i always find her stories so facinating and inspiring to read.

“My lasting impression of Paris I think will be that everyone is lost, Parisians and foreigners alike, not figuratively, but physically. Nonetheless, I do like to ask myself, what exactly it means to be lost, because this implies not being able to find what you are looking for or unfulfilled aim or desire and excludes any positive connotations.

I guess everything comes down to the means/ends debate. If you are not really aiming to get somewhere, does getting lost lose all significance? Is the means an ends in itself?

A couple of weeks ago Gibbo and I spent several hours looking for the favourite Parisian street to have a beer, and upon arrival only decided may as well have a beer given we had been looking for so long. Although I can’t speak for Gibbo, for me, the enjoyment of having a beer and looking for a beer were pretty much equal, and so the question is, were we really lost?
I thought this feeling might merely have been the result of the overwhelming “old(ness), big(ness), and cool(ness)” (Gibbo, pont something, 200 of Paris, but meeting Bran and subsequently Kathleen and Duncan, confirmed that yes, we were little fish in a big grey pond, and that getting lost, but not lost, is perhaps the defining characteristic of Paris.

Despite this, or maybe as a result, I have been able to create a picture upon this grey Parisian canvas. I like to call it “Melancholy and the Infinite Happiness”, and it goes something like this: No matter how lost you feel, physically or figuratively, friendship and solidarity are the magnetic north of life that sandpaper away the rough edges, and create a pastel blue background upon which the greys lose their power.

I went out in the world to get lost, and I think rather than travelling round, I should have cut straight to Paris, where, according to one drunk, bet-up, and amnesic Peruvian, it is naïve to try one’s luck.
Trying one’s luck clashes with the light blue. When we are completely content with the melancholy, is there any point trying to strike it lucky?, because, luck may just be misfortune.“

Well.. thou hast just retreated to my aunty`s humble abode at 1am in south west london. My first 24hours in london/England have been eventfully filled with Hampton Court Palace this morning and The Stone Henge this afternoon, whilst recently followed up by night out in Fulham with five Kiwi lassies! I think its fair to say i have had a `minnor pivital moment` several hours ago whilst momentusly listening to Bon Jovi and drinking “Snake Bite*” in an Australian bar by the name of “The Slug” (LOL!). My minnor pivital moment was triggered by the lyrics “It’s my life - It’s now or never - I ain’t gonna live forever - I just want to live while I’m alive!” Haha! woohoo! go Bon Jovi! yeehaa! What a blast my thursday night has been, with the company of two highschool mates and three other kiwis tonight has totally lifted my spirits in the sense of making the most of now. i was experiencing my first mild and initial homesickness during the last few days but ive had a rattle and now things are back on track. Also id like to put a quiet word out there for a close friend that past away on the 17th of january 9yrs ago… always thinking of you xo

hope everyones safe and well back home… xo

NB* “Snake Bite” = A beverage consisting of a blend between Beer, Cider and redcurrent juice. Illegal in most countries except England due to the ambiguity of its alcohol content. … D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S-!