“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” ― Marcel Proust

I'm really interested in memory and the way it works. The recollecting and retelling of the memory actually alters the memory - we smooth out the bits we want to and focus on others until it is more a story than a true detail of events.

I recently learnt of the Collective Imaginary in a course, and they gave the example of how if you ask people to visualise the Civil Rights movement, they will see images of the march on Washington, hoses and protests, Martin Luther King and so on. But ask them to see the Suffragette movement and they draw a blank, even though HALF the population won the right to vote, it spanned decades and it was photographed so there are images. It was big but slips by with little context in our visual memory. Some images are fed to us as iconic and some are not. In the course I did on Gender and Intersectionality on Edx with the University of Iceland, they said 'History is written by the victorious and the powerful; in most cases, men. Women, people of other genders, the weak, the vulnerable, the uneducated*, those without access to the corridors of power -these people are rarely included in the ways in which history is recorded, disseminated, or remembered' and I think that is probably what was in play here. Our historical memory (of events we weren't present at) are curated for us in a narrative that someone shaped as 'important history'.

I wrote of my own surprise at the difference in Collective Imaginary here and here, long before I knew what it was. This week I had another real life example of the fluidity of memory and how we can alter things without realising it. We are watching the Godfather of Harlem at the moment and I keep commenting how the actor playing Malcolm X looks EXACTLY like him. It's uncanny. Last night I decided to google the actor to see what else he'd been in. I discovered he also played Malcolm X in Selma and the penny dropped. I wasn't remembering what the real Malcolm X looked like, I was remembering the last time I saw Malcolm X depicted! I was actually remembering this actor as Malcolm X five years ago...

For the record, he does look a lot like the real Malcolm X too, but not as identical as I thought!

And so it goes with all memories, we shape our narrative, whether we want to or not.

“Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Have you caught your memory playing tricks on you?

*Note uneducated doesn't mean stupid but if you can't write your story down, it's very hard to get it preserved.

Linking with

Inner City Colour

I came across this old post of random photos and thought I'd share some more as I'm feeling a little unmotivated for blogging at the moment. Not sure why. Stopped to write a few stories and don't seem to get my head focused to get back into it.

I love the midwinter light in this one.



























Love the reflected tree.

Not my feet but made me smile

Linking with #Skywatch

Book suggestions - what's a good book for book club?

I need to pick a book for book club but am drawing a blank. I'm reading the Portrait of Dorian Gray and thoroughly enjoying that. Just finished David Breashears High Exposure and loved that.Loved This is going to hurt. Enjoyed When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann.

The last few books we did were Phosphorescence, Mrs. Dalloway, American Dirt and The Authenticity Project.

What's a good book club book?

Linking with #Booknificent

The weight of things...

Slowly as we come out of lockdown and embrace our life again, it seems for a lot of people, that involves talk of diets or needing to lose weight.

If you have spent three months housebound and your head is full of weight loss upon release, I'd hazard a guess you aren't living enough.

Sure, cut out the desserts, slow down on the comfort food - maybe cut back on the alcohol and up the exercise, but don't taint your day but filling you head with the negative and frankly the infinitely boring. Try to eat healthily but don't make food, diets or weight loss your focus. Don't fill your head or worse, conversation with it. It only makes it bigger than it needs to be.

As I said when recounting the following tale, I didn't get to this age to bore everyone by talking about my weight, even myself in my own head.

The other day I put on my beloved but twelve year old Miro leggings. I thought 'I'm probably a bit too fat now for these to look good' but then decided to wear them anyway because I had places to be. Some noise is just too tedious and annoying to pay much attention to.

As I headed on my way, a complete stranger stopped me and asked me where I got the tights, because I looked 'fabulous'. And there you go. Who would I listen to? The voice in my head that's spent a life time chipping away unhelpfully or a complete stranger who went out of their way to let me know how good I looked?

It put a spring in my step and I thought, the Augusten Burroughs How to be fat chapter in his wonderful book This is How had obviously sunk in. For those that remember my Epiphany, I feel I've come a long way since then, weirdly without even realising it.

This COVID shutdown has been hard, there's been a lot of stress for everyone  - both emotionally and societal. If you have come out of this happy and with enthusiasm, don't drop the ball now over your weight. If you want to lose weight, lose weight but don't put yourself down about it.

I will lose my excess weight but it's not my focus. It can be a by product of getting my life back and really savouring opportunities and experience. We had everything stripped back for over three months. It's been a lesson in appreciating all the great things on offer and not to let events slip by. We lost a lot of time. What we should have gained is motivation and drive to experience more.

“Everything is irrelevant but this: to embrace life. To feel it. To savour it. To love it.”
― Marty Rubin

I know this isn't a fashionable idea, and as I said to my friend (who prompted the post) 'I'm very uninspiring when it comes to weight loss' but I've lost 2 kilos just by cutting out nightly desserts in the house and potatoes with dinner. Hoping switching to apples when snacking will finish the job. The cocktails are staying! I will need to do a bit more than that to get back to my old shape but as a by-product is fine by me. 

Little by little

As I wrote here, I was struggling to come out of lockdown. The overly cautious person didn't really feel like the real me.
However, this weekend we finally had a weekend that felt like a real weekend!














We went out to dinner on Friday night, just for pizza but ate in the restuarant - a first in over three months! On Saturday friends invited us to go whale watching on their boat and it was FABULOUS! I got as much of a kick being on the water and seeing out beautiful city as I did seeing the whales up close! I did unfortunately forget my real camera so the shots were not that good, but always better to see with the real eye anyway....

Sunday was lunch at friends....a fullish diary for a change. And a lot of time out of the house....I'm still watching the numbers each day but I'm getting there.

Feeling a little more like me.

I was ditching #SundayCovers link up as it never took off but then I heard this song. Original here. So I might keep posting them as I find them but the link up alas is no more....

Linking with #DND

Long weekend housekeeping

This shot makes me think I'm on holiday somewhere else

I think I might take this week a little slower on the blog. We have a long weekend here and I've a story to write in the next week (and so far no ideas for it).



So have a wonderful week and if you are after ideas for things to do, here's a few:

A Virtual treasure hunt. It's free but a donation is requested to help pay their staff during lockdown.  You use google maps and websites - and get a feel for places even if you've never been there...This is UK based but travels across the pond.

Tom Hiddleston is in Coriolanus for those in need of a theatre fix - also free.

In Sydney, get out and about if you aren't having a weekend away. Share the spending to places that will have been hurting. Lunch at the Shed or Cottage Point Kiosk could make a nice day trip. Or check out the ferries to Patonga or Ettalong. Or drive to Bilpin or on the Grand Pacific Drive.

I'll be on Insta until I return. Have a good weekend - remember double demerits apply so does Social Distancing. Stay safe and let's get this thing down to zero!!!

 Still loving looking at the moon and linking with #Lifethisweek #PictorialTuesday #MCoW #WWOT #WWOAT #ThruMyLens #TheRandom #NaturesNotes #Nanahood #KiethsRamblings #WordlessWednesday and #SundayBest

Big Life Decisions

There is a wonderful scene in Dispatches from Elsewhere where the character, Simone, goes back to her former college professor for help with something. He tells her he was hoping she was coming to re-enroll. Simone responds that she feels she's not in a position to make big life decisions. He points out that it's not a big life decision, it's just a decision for now and she's allowed to change her mind. He himself had started in Marine Biology before deciding he was passionate about art. "We make a decision and then if we need to, we make another decision".

With kids at school, they fall into a path or hobby (or parental pressure) and it grows, and they're pushed along, forgetting that at any point they can decide to follow another interest. They need to pick subjects to carry them through the last years of school, with limited experience in any of them. They need to pick University courses or jobs with a long career in mind, more or less when they're fifteen years old.

But it's not really how life works, so why do we set them up with this expectation placed upon them?

At a talk at one of the Universities, they asked everyone over 35 to put their hand up if they were still doing the thing they started when they left school. Not a single hand went up, including lecturer's. The conversations framed around the HSC are completely unrealistic.

I think we'd take a lot of pressure off school leavers if we made them understand this. The next step after the HSC means very little, in the grand scheme of thing.  Perhaps better advice for these kids, pressured into deciding their future at 18 is, as the art  professor says "Find something that makes you feel good, try it out. You're allowed to be wrong".

It doesn't matter if you don't know what you want to do next, just do whatever is in front of you, but do it with purpose and dedication, and to the best of your abilities.

We have mistakenly somehow turned the HSC into some sort of achievement in itself, and done a disservice to the students in the process. Rather than preparing for a new beginning, the focus is too sharp on marking the end of school. The students feel enormous (and unnecessary) pressure for the HSC exams, but as we see with the University drop out rates, they also aren't prepared for the expectations of what lies beyond the school gate.  We have failed them in their final year of school and their readiness for their choices afterwards.

There is a new push in schools to make pupils see that year 12 is actually a transitional preparation year, preparing the pupil for work or study after the completion of their school years. We need to remember the HSC is merely the starting point of adulthood, not a destination in itself and in no way should it be viewed with the importance of a 'Big Life Decision'.

Linking with #MLSTL as a reminder that in life there are really very few Big Life Decisions.