Now and the La Nina weather system brings blessed relief to some of us who benefit from rain. A year ago and the park across the road held twenty eight fire trucks ready to roll across the Blue Mountains where bush fires raged on either side of us.
The garden of TreeFerns stretch, unfurl their beautiful fronds and settle in for summer. Birds fly in for a feed, either seed or a bit of wholemeal bread and feed their young in a process which has gone on for years. Parrots, Honey Eaters, Magpies and Currawongs grace the garden and delight the eye. Sulphur Crested Cockatoos – the vandals of the bird world – do much the same while keeping a wary eye open for me to appear with my ‘lock and load’ star wars water pistol. It’s a game with some small importance as they tend to chew on the wooden deck if left to their own devices.
I make a move in a long game of chess which is played by correspondence with an old mate who moved to the other side of the continent decades ago and who never took to computers. It’s our second game with the first taking ten years and the present one lasting longer. A month or two can go by before a move gets made and sent by letter with whatever news we feel worth writing about. Perhaps it’s a world record and we’ll, likely, never know. The games aren’t thrilling – that was never the purpose. Without the game to prompt the contact we’d have probably lost contact completely.
A new acoustic guitar finally arrives. Smaller than my Dreadnaught and with electrics it’s a delight – just got to learn how to play it. Being left handed means very few opportunities arise to just ‘have a go’ with someone else’s guitar.
Read Derek Sivers book ‘Your music and people’ – he started CDBaby and Hostbaby without which I and many others would have had no platform for our songs. While the book is chock full of excellent advice my main ‘take away’ was that this man embraces life fully – something I certainly can’t claim although I do know what going the extra mile entails when constructive group activities occur.
I find time to listen to Jordan Peterson, Clif High, Suspicious Observers and continue to be interested in UFO type material, remote viewing and much else ‘on the fringe.’
Life continues to evolve. Strange thing about illusions – I don’t know I’ve got them until something happens to dissolve them.
Time to go work for a few hours with an intelligent but autistic chap before an afternoon in conversation, drinking a few beers and playing some music with another old mate.