peace begins inside

just came home from a meeting/gathering of like minds to discuss ideas for a short film about peace, inspired by a speech one of the women present had written.

firstly, thank you Barbara for writing those words and sharing them with us. our discussions brought many things to the surface ... here in NZ there is heated debate occurring about a soon to be passed amendment to legislation that will make it illegal for parents to smack or hit their children and defend it as being "reasonable force". i fully support that change and the suggestion behind it that we all have a think about why it is "ok" to smack our children for punishment or "prevention of greater harm" ... when it is NOT ok for us to hit anyone else to punish them or save them from harm.

and why is it ok for us to only hit the youngest, most vulnerable children and then resort to other strategies once they are big enough to hit us back.

that was a tiny part of our conversation .... but we also brought up issues about war - how it relies on dehumanising the other side - and on stereotypes of evil. it is not natural for us to try and kill or destroy total strangers without creating an image in our minds of evil and "wrongness" on behalf of those who are "other" to us. When human minds are trained that way, they are apparently able to forget the humanity of their opponent ... that the opponent was once a small child, loved by their parents ... a child learning about the world, making mistakes, discovering new and exciting things ... learning how to be independent and venture into the world - to be blown to bits by someone who sees them only as an enemy, not as a fellow human making his or her way in the same world.

we also talked about the peace that lies within us - or the potential for it ... and how essential it is that peace begins with each of us as individuals. i commented that many women in particular, who are highly sensitive to our world, suffer from over-empathising and that can bring us into a place of mental and emotional dis-ease ... which all too often is suppressed and controlled by medication. i suggest it is actually more normal to have dis-ease in the world we live in right now, than not to have dis-ease.

more on this later. peace out.

focus!

on doing some more posting that is!! hopefully today i will spend some more time processing photos and video from the trip to Melbourne. It is quickly coming up to four weeks since we were there - unbelievable!

life has been trickling along with moments of drama sprinkled throughout over the last few weeks. We are transitioning into Autumn here i guess, with the return of non-daylight saving making darkness fall earlier - about 7pm at the moment. We had a hot gorgeous day last weekend, 30 deg celsius, and i spent the afternoon at the beach with my hubby ... we paddled in the water, made sculptures in the sand, got sunburnt (!) and had a lovely cafe lunch ... went home and napped for a bit then went to see Wild Hogs at the movies and laughed from start to finish - i highly recommend, specially if you have a present or former Harley owning partner!

i am pleased to be out of Mercury retrograde again ... things seem to be proceeding smoothly on different fronts ... new business coming into work, weirdly, three approaches in recent times that our outside our normal focus on technology companies. A reminder that it is time to broaden our scope to more general PR as had been originally intended.

i have not been productive at all on the art front or playing with my paints and canvases rather, but i did have an idea yesterday for a series of goddess works on canvas .... maybe small ones, not sure yet.

oh and i visited my friend Nicky with her beautiful new baby Bronte ... perhaps a pic of this delicious newborn when i get my photos sorted.

some video ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDZQ_jjzWo

(the gentleman appearing at the end was installing the portaloo/bathroom ... the two heroines of the piece are praxis and purple goddesses, hostesses of the event)

bad bad bad!

blogger me that is!!!

it has been nearly a month since my last confession! lol ..... weeeelll i have been a little preoccupied with something called Wenchfest, that was held over last weekend in a place called Dromana, south of Melbourne.

this incredible event was a gathering of wonderful women from around australia, nz, US and Canada ... preceded by a visit to my house of the Canadian one ... then a flight to sydney, 12 hour train trip with 6 wenches south to Melbourne ... and three days of hijinks and ritual and other stuff.

it was awesome, once again ... we did it for the first time about a year ago. i have photos, so i will put up a few here (there is also video taken with my nifty new camera, so i might give you a very funny You Tube link if you are very good).