well good morning/evening folks, tis a fine autumn morn as i look out over the rolling hills of northern new south wales - the byron bay region, which some of you may have heard of.
includes the famous 'nimbin' which hosted the aquarius festival in the early 70s and lotsa folk never left. marijuana capital of the state - police don't like that much though - they have to keep up appearances and make you go down an alley to buy it....can't be seen to endorse the second biggest industry in the region but then again it is the second biggest industry in the region. byron is a backpacker mecca now (biggest industry) and it is obvious why - beautiful beaches, great surf, forests,... beautiful people from all over the world, a lot of whom have ended up here permanently - legally or otherwise. the local government here is green - the only one in the country - has been for a while. u won't find any mcdonalds, kfc etc in byron or surrounds. new age is big here. the local radio 99.9fm (motto - nearly perfect) is community owned and commercial free. you get used to there being interesting people on the radio after a while: folks talking about jungian psychotherapy, entheogenic practices and shamanism, art therapy, writers, musicians, filmmakers, as well as a great variety of music. new age rubs me the wrong way sometimes - it becomes a bit like a beauty spa for the soul - people like to look good here: they think it is a reflection of their spirituality too. hey sometimes it is, but in other cultures, african for instance, the most spiritual elders usually look and smell terrible - they have lost interest in keeping up appearances and are more in the spirit world than this one. but to be somewhere like this - where u feel fine no matter what you wear, where there is a great respect for the environment, where there is a great range of quality healthy food, where the indigenous are treated with (comparative) respect....is good. i don't live here - i am housesitting. i spend a lot of time here at my ex-partner's house - bel. she and her husband michael have twin baby boys - river and banyan - and i am a very affectionate uncle to them. i spend the rest of my time in and around brisbane. west end is where i used to live and i still spend a lot of time there. west end has a little bit of byron going on too, but it is expensive to live there now...i can't afford it. i sleep at friends or sleep in the back of a van that bel lends me. other times i stay with my folks or my sister on the sunshine coast north of brisbane....this pattern has been the norm now for 5 years. i have travelled the east coast a bit too, and lived in west end for 18 months. but for the most part i have been drifting around. i am not young anymore: 37 this year. i have tried to make a go of it in society: i have been involved with permaculture for many years now but it is slow going. brisbane city council is enormous - nearly 2 million people under one council - crazy size - more like a small country. needless to say it is a bureaucratic behemoth. i have taught workshops, ran my own business, subcontracted to another lansdcaping company. now i sell some hemp products and do some gardening work here and there. it isn't enough to live on. but i am happy most of the time. i feel good around bel and michael - they are the closest to me. i feel natural around them and they appreciate my help. but i have become more and more an outsider, which is a dangerous thing. when i first tried the gypsy life i fucked out - i broke down. if it hadn't been for bel i would have been hospitalised or medicated at least. this time round i am more aware of the dangers. i can't spend too much time in the city and i have to be careful who i am with. i have to be careful with what i put in my body. the key is bel and michael, and a few others (john for instance - thankyou!). a society of one is insanity; but a handful that understand, that can be enough, if you are careful. and there is nature still - although it is cordoned off more and more. still it always there and will eventually overrun any boundaries. nature is sanity. i don't know what my function is yet...or if i have one. i am a good gardener, a good writer and speaker (i think so anyway); i am good footballer...(well, getting a bit creaky now). yep i don't belong. the old brujo story. perhaps me and those like me are the new culture bearers - i hope so - gives me a reason to keep plugging on...... u know when i was at uni studying philosophy i found the religion department more open minded - more philosophical - than the philosophy department. me and michael, bel's husband, went to a philosophy debate at UQ years ago. there was a big debate about dawkins 'god delusion'. over a hundred student turned up to hear the argument. but there really wasn't one. both guys agreed with dawkins - although one had some qualifications. generally they both agreed that religion was stupid, just like dave. michael and i spoke up afterwards during discussion. michael eloquently explained that religion cannot be interpreted like science, that we must approach it mythopoetically; i pointed out that a lot of religions don't even have a 'god' and that the neo-darwinist model that dawkins espouses as a replacement to religion is mathematically incapable of accounting for the world around us. we were both shouted down....which was surprising to us both. we were due to take over running the student philosophy association, which had organised this debate. we both left UQ for good soon after.... know how we get pumped full of hitler and the holocaust...ad nauseam? well maybe there is a warning there. i mean hitler really thought that the problems of the world could be put down to jews, and he must have persuaded a few others of this too - so simple solution: let's off the jews. guess the catholic church thought the same about witches. and now look at israel and judaism. it is like, as a reaction to this constant paranoia about its past, it has become what it most feared and hated - it has become the destroyer, the hater - and it is the arab and islam that is now the problem - eradicate islam and hey presto - no worries! and the same can be said for a lot of us that dig on nature, on paganism. we look at catholicism and perhaps all religion by extension as evil - look what they did!!!!! look what they do!!! and we become the persecutor in turn because of this morbid fixation. forgetting that mysticism is the thread that ties all religions together. forgetting that *it is power that does these things*, not religion; it is the giant playing his trump card. more division and blame and hatred is (obviously?) not the answer. but well i guess that ain't so obvious... so for the time being it is adieu and adios and fare thee well. i have become disenamoured of the list of late....i don't like the tenor - the intolerance, the arrogance, the cult of reason. i can't seem to do anything about it by writing so maybe my resignation will have a more salutary effect. john made me think twice - but then i realised that, as he is always agreeing with me, there is no need for two of us!! been a pleasure for the most part all the very best to all of you take care gavin ps [email protected] for anyone who wants to keep in touch Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
