how I survive...

***The following, brilliant article was written by Australian columnist and teacher, Tim Mallon. The article may have been penned 3 years ago, but it continues to be relevant... For me, it nails how I view the world ...not from an indifferent distance, but rather from an awareness, necessary for the mind's mental safety.  
Meantime, the intimate treasures of life, the soul foods continue on...and it's these that I value the most...

Grapes, choc tops, and the joy of a good book - January 18, 2017 

- Tim Mallon Maitland Mercury

They’re picking the grapes again dear reader. Out in yonder vineyards, below that beautiful curving crooked range, it’s harvest time out there.

And the way things come round again - the way life has a cycle.

Soon enough those sweet soft marbles will become wine, become part of the human story: civilising us, unifying us, perhaps even inducing us to a state of romantic readiness. Such is the power of the grape.

And I like the seasonal things of the world, like how the simple perennials of life continue discreetly, while the big mad stuff blunders brazenly across our screens and pages, the little intimacies persist …
We could, however, easily be excused of believing that nothing happens and matters in the world but misery and super-power cyber-hacking shenanigans, or what ‘the Donald’ tweeted, or that another politician claimed a work expense that wasn’t really a work expense.

But thankfully, there’s more, much more than all that. And it’s uncomplicated stuff and it’s right here and all around us.

Take summer reading for instance.

People reading books on back veranda chairs, in holiday tents, under shady trees and beach umbrellas, in bed and on the dunny too – it’s a sweet seasonal ritual that enriches and soothes the mind.

Yes, while Mr Putin was scheming in the Kremlin on how to subvert Hillary, in Maitland a young girl hired The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from the library and dreamt of sleuthing and hounds and the red-headed league.

And down the road in the greatest bookstore of them all, a man purchased the novel Cloudstreet at McDonald’s, and the vividness and beauty of the words illuminated the dim corners of his own history. A novel containing sentences so wonderful, that at their completion, he could only sigh and smile and walk awhile, and think on how magnificent a thing it is to read a story about Australia and life back then...

And while Julian Assange has been unhappily ensconced in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for 1673 days, and while the police and world have watched and forgotten and remembered the whole ordeal, at the Maitland Reading Cinema 32,879 choc tops have been happily licked and inhaled in the cool celluloid darkness.

An unremarkable but important statistic which points to how life goes on; how despite the bizarre madness of the world, we find simple ways to carry on, ways to live ...

And so it goes …

While organised crime rings were staging workshops on how to separate people from their funds, while cartels cartelled and Barons baronned, Maitland families took multiple hour Australian summer drives.

They saw the hot country fill up the windows, they sang and ate Minties and chips a played the ‘spotto’ game and ‘how many windmills can you see between Jindabyne and Cooma’.

 And it’s a way of persevering, despite the horrors of the news, it’s our own harvest, our own grapes of living, and not wrath …

 And so it goes.

 Goodnight.


P.S. Perhaps Tim should publish a book of his stories including his Twitter moments... They are timeless...

NOTE TO SELF: I think it's time to read The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Arnim