Bike riding as mindfulness meditation?

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Two bridges rideAfter a week of rain, my cycling excursion now seems a little like a delicious dream rather than a reality. But it definitely happened! Last weekend was sunny and I really did go on my first bike ride in absolutely ages. I even got a bit of a tan!

It was a glorious almost-spring afternoon, perfect for a ride around the two bridges. It’s only a 7.4km loop – although the extra 6.3km (each way) to and from the bridge turned it into a 20km round trip. Not an epic ride, certainly, but a personal best for some time.

As I started down the first hill and started to pick up speed, I felt indescribably free. For no clear reason, the mental soundtrack to my ride was  I’m Free – from the Pete Townshend musical, Tommy.  The opening lines encapsulated the moment perfectly: I’m free… I’m free… / And freedom tastes of reality!

Freedom is generally understood to be the ability to think or act as one wishes, whether an individual, group or nation state. In a world where so many people have so few personal freedoms – where they are denied freedom of movement, religious belief, political outlook and expression – my taste of reality may seem exceedingly superficial.

However, in the particular, freedom has specific connotations for every individual – and I’m very conscious of my good fortune. The freedom to do something like hop on my bike and go for a ride – just because I feel like it – is a gift beyond compare.

        If I told you what it takes / To reach the highest high, / You’d laugh and say, “Nothing’s that simple”.

But, for me, it is. Those two hours on my bike and on the river bank provided me with a mindful appreciation of my environment – which included seeing a small group of dolphins frolicking in the river, exercise, time to think, and renewal. Time well spent.

Spring garden project ahead

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In 2012 we decide to remove 20 pencil pines from around our pool. The trees had provided a very effective barrier for many years, screening us from both an unsightly wall and our neighbour’s garden. But their day was done. The narrow garden beds couldn’t contain them any longer; they were overcrowded, sections were dying off and a lot of leaf litter was ending up in the pool.

My plan was to replace them with a range of less messy plants, including  citrus and rosemary one one side and an evergreen screen of passionfruit vines on the other (to hide the ugly wall). To this end, we recruited help, removed the trees and created an enormous amount of pine mulch – to be used at a later date. It was an epic task spread over a few weekends and the food bribes in no way compensated for all the hard work. Thanks again, everyone 🙂

pencilpineremoval_2012

In due course we planted three citrus trees (dwarf orange, calamondin, sunrise lime), along with some rosemary and various fillers. Himself then built some outstanding fan-shaped supports for the proposed passionfruit vines. They were perfect – and by Christmas that year we had three hardy little vines starting to creep up the trellising.

Our Nellie Kelly  flowered abundantly and produced prolifically – an excellent choice for WA gardens. The Panama Gold vines we planted on each side were also very productive, but the fruit didn’t go the purple colour I associated with ripe passionfruit. You’d think the name would have been a clue, but… I chucked half our first crop when they fell of the vines because I thought they were green and the rats had been at them.  I only figured it out when our dog found a small pile of the fruit I’d put aside to throw away. She tossed one around like a ball until the skin broke open – much to her surprise. Even more so for me when I saw the ripe pulp in it – and in all the others I then checked! Oops 😛

passionfruit oopsTo be fair, rats do love passionfruit and will eat through sections of the skins to lick out the contents – even if the fruit isn’t ripe. We’d found enough empty fruit casings under the vines for my leap of assumption to be at least plausible – however misguided 😛

What I recently discovered about passionfruit vines is that they really do need regular pruning in spring. Cutting back the denser growth allows for better air circulation and fruit development. It also keeps them from getting overgrown and heavy. Sadly I only realised this once the wooden trellises had collapsed behind the vines, crushing many of the major stems.

In order to repair or replace the trellises, the  (mostly dead) vines have had to be removed – probably several years earlier than was strictly necessary, since it turns out that passionfruit can produce reliably for about six years. So this weekend we got the last of the vines out and now it’s time to re-evaluate what we want to do to screen that ugly wall. We look at it from the kitchen windows every day, a constant reminder and prompt that something will need to be done. New trellises and more vines… or some other option, like an epic mosaic project? The debate continues.

ugly wall reveal

How much space do we really need?

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Just down the road from our house there’s a new development – a veritable suburban mansion that’s just about ready for its new tenants. It’s taken about two years from the demolition of the pre-existing house to completion of this new epic abode – and I certainly hope the new neighbours will find it to be all they wished for.

local suburban mansion

For my part, however, I see it as something of a monstrosity. It fills the block of land almost from edge to edge in all directions and has great big columns out the front. They’ve also painted it a sad shade of grey that, whilst apparently the colour of the moment, I find most unappealing.

Coincidentally, I recently watched a documentary on tiny houses – and they were the cutest, most practical little abodes one could imagine! The tiny house concept is apparently a relatively new one to Australia, largely due to building regulations, but it’s really starting to take off. This is hardly surprising, given the current housing and rental costs!

These little houses are the polar opposite of our local suburban mansion. They tend to be under 40m2  – which is definitely pretty cosy, given that the average house size in Australia is somewhere around 227m2  …which means many of the tiny houses are probably not a lot bigger than some lounge rooms I’ve been in!

So they’re small. But they’re also adaptable (can be moved to a new location if necessary), are relatively low cost to build and maintain (due to size), and are very functional. Starting at a base price of under $30,000 for the tiniest of houses, you can then option up to include any number of convenient extras, such as solar panels, loft space, composting loo, appliances, and so forth – depending on your budget.

What I really fell in love with was the idea of a converted school bus. This one, for example, ticks most of my (all new) tiny house boxes. Really, what’s not to love about this?

Couple-Convert-1993-School-Bus-Tiny-Home-002

There are a few things that need to be thought out carefully before going down this pathway, of course. I’ve listed a whole bunch of them here as they’ve occurred to me, so that we can think about them if we ever take the leap.

  • downsizing and dejunking
  • general storage to maximise the space and minimise chaos
  • deciding whether the tiny house would be on wheels (so that it could be relocated if we chose to move elsewhere)
  • where would we park it? (DaugherDearest’s property is starting to sound rather appealing….)
  • designing in appropriate lighting, heating/cooling, and sanitation
  • then there’s the layout: a loft bed wouldn’t really work for me, so we’d need a cunning plan that wouldn’t involve ladders (or hammocks or stairs)
  • the biggest gotcha of all is building/local government approvals, particularly if we buy some land and plan on parking the house on it as our primary dwelling – this would need a lot of attention and could be a right headache!

Further to this, it’s worth having a look at the planning codes for your state to establish what the general rules are – and then following up with some research into local council rules as well. Some councils are coming on board with the idea and I imagine that more will over time.

I think the biggest challenge for us would be to adapt to a compact, tiny lifestyle – because it would mean downsizing in a big way from our current 4×2 (etc.) house. I think I could do it… but Himself is super attached to his workshop and garage and we are midway through a number of renovations on our house… So it’s not a scenario that would play out well for us at present. But who knows what the future holds… so I’ll start keeping an eye out for a retired school bus… and on successful bus-to-tiny-house conversions in Australia.

An Eish Frame of Mind

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Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you use an expression that fits perfectly, but isn’t part of the local vernacular? A word or phrase that you’ve picked up somewhere, perhaps when living in another country or from popular culture/friends/associates?

Most often when I find myself doing so, the context makes the meaning apparent to others – even if the word/phrase isn’t in a language they’re familiar with. Sometimes, though, I get an odd look – admittedly this is usually when I make some obscure exclamation out loud to myself in public.

For example, when I try to carry too many things at once and end up dropping something… as often as not I end up exclaiming something along the lines of ‘Ja, jy wil mos!’ Unless another ex-South African is around, this sort of exclamation generally results in variations of the odd look. I guess I could use the English equivalent, but somehow it doesn’t feel as though it means the same thing. When I say ‘Jy will mos!, what I mean is Oh, come on, you knew that was stupid, but you would just go and do it anyway, wouldn’t you?’ And, seriously, who says something like that to themselves in the heat of the moment? 🙂

This use of random wordage came to mind earlier in the week, on one of my increasingly rare free-from-puppy-duties days. I’d crammed the day full of appointments, gym visits, shopping and so forth – racing from one to the other in order to get everything done before picking Cassie up from the vet after her sterilisation procedure.

CassieMolly_nap time

provitaOne of my stops was at the local Tastes of Africa shop, to pick up some of my favourite crackers (Provita) and to enjoy a vetkoek lunch. For those who have no idea what that is, vetkoek (pronounced fet-cook) is a traditional South African bread product made from yeast-based dough, shaped into medium-sized balls and then deep-fried. The result is something rather like a bread roll, but crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. You then add your preferred filling and eat it piping hot. I chose to go all traditional and have mine filled with delicious savoury mince, chutney and grated cheese. So much yum in every mouthful!

But I digress…

Having placed my order, I took my table number over to my chosen seat. When I put it down on the table I had to laugh out loud – the table numbers are all South African expressions or place names, and mine expressed to perfection in one word my general take on the day.

EishEish is another weird South Africanism – it encapsulates exasperation, disbelief, resignation – and a whole bunch more. It’s not a word I used when I lived there, but I found that I picked it up when travelling around Tasmania with my brother last November. He uses it quite a lot as we had a number of eish-moments, many ending in laughter. Perhaps that’s why it’s embedded itself in my vocab and made me smile over my (very tasty) lunch. Nostalgia’s a funny old thing.

Thinking about this later, I realised that there are quite a few random expressions in my lexicon: some Afrikaans-based ones from my childhood, some Yiddish from my high school years and so forth. This is just the start of the list and it’s by no means comprehensive, but it may help people who experience my occasional odd comments / outbursts in public places 😛

  • Aarde Genade (good heavens!) – actually a combination of earth+mercifulness, which makes no sense at all!
  • Oy vey (dismay) – a lot of this at high school
  • Chuzpah (cheek/gall) – and a fair bit of this too
  • Great Zot! (good grief!) – BC comic meme from my youth
  • Padkos (travel provisions) – literally: road food
  • Klutz! (clumsy twit) – usually what I say to myself immediately after saying Jy wil mos…
  • Jy wil mos (yeah, well, you would go and do it, wouldn’t you)
  • Muchas gracias (thanks heaps) – one of the few Spanish phrases I retained after our visit in 2007
  • Now now (soonish) – this one confuses the locals regularly 🙂
  • Oh my giddy aunt! (amazement) – I blame my friend Vicki for this one!

On writing – and growing an audience

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I recently came across a snippet of a quote from Letters to a Young Poet. It struck a chord, so I went looking for the original and found that, in the first of the letters, the author advises his reader to

Find out the reason that commands you to write… ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And… if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity…

I take this to mean that if expressing your thoughts and imagination as the written word is a compulsion that’s with you at all times… then you’re a writer and need to incorporate this fact into your life. Perhaps, like me, you fill up journal after journal with thoughts and observations. Perhaps you write for your own pleasure and self-expression… perhaps you have book contracts to fill (or aspire to). Maybe you’re a freelancer and have targets to achieve or a blogger with weekly blogpost deadlines you’ve committed to. Whatever your style or medium, if you write because, like me, you must – then you’re a writer.journals

There’s another part to the equation, of course, and that’s the reader. Having someone (or many some ones) read your work adds another dimension to it. They provide feedback that, whilst fraught with possible dangers, enriches the writing experience. This requires finding and developing an audience (other than your nearest-and-dearest).

So, for those of us who don’t have a commercial publisher behind us, how do we do this? Two very scary – although hyphenated – words: Self-promotion.

Many writers (including me) find that we stall out at this ‘look at me’ stage, feeling self-conscious at the thought of big-noting ourselves. Certainly, my social/family background impressed upon me that this simply isn’t something that one does. (It’s not nice to boast, dear.)

But, unless there’s a marketing team behind you doing all the hard work, how do you get people to read your blog/book/work if you’re not going to promote it? Short answer: you won’t.

I pondered on this  at great length – both before and after publishing Girdle of Bones – and concluded that blogging is a very useful tool in this arena. It allows for a level of self-promotion that can initially feel almost anonymous. But, as time goes by – and my audience grows, I feel increasingly connected – and surprised.

Anyhow, this is the short list of self-promotion tips I came up with, garnered from a combination of experience and research:

  • If you don’t have a blog, start one. If you do, then provide a social media sharing option to encourage your readers to share. I use the social media feather plugin on WordPress – it’s free and it works well.
  • Write good stuff. Or, more precisely, always strive to write better stuff – ideally, the very best content you can.
  • It’s a good idea to try to get your readers/audience to react to your blogposts – and to be interactive with those who do. Ideally, this generates chatter on a topic, which makes it more visible, which generates chatter, which…
  • Don’t push your barrow to hard – it puts people off. Instead, keep your content interesting and be responsive to reader/audience comments.
  • Social media. Yup, it’s here to stay so just hop on board for the ride. Base your choice of platform/s on your mythical/actual audience. If they’re into Facebook, use that. Choose one or two others (e.g. Twitter and Instagram) and update reasonably frequently – this helps to keep you in the public eye.
  • And then there’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – this is something I’m new to, but it’s doesn’t appear very labour intensive. I’ve installed the All in One SEO Pack to see how that goes.https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
  • Use a free keyword tool  to see what comes up when you enter key words or phrases relating to your blogpost topics. Some combinations of words get more hits – so try to use variations of those in your posts and title if you can. This will make it easier for a potential reader to hunt you down and join your community – or, as I think of it, my pack 🙂

Simples, right? 😛