BEING KAREN

A memory from Melbourne lockdown surfaced this morning ... I might be Australian, but I am a Melbourne girl. This is my city, she shaped me and we have grown up together. My personal compass has pointed me far from home often. My cardinal points are here, they do not change. Melbourne sleeps now, her thousand eyes are closed. Soon, soon, not soon enough, the shops and galleries, arcades and bookshops, cafes, theatres and market stalls will come back to life. And so will our

It was a busy night. Saturday night. There were countless young men who had broken themselves in so many different ways (oh, being a mother never stops being hard.) There were old women who were alone sick, no-one there to hold their hand, it will be okay. And Dad. Dad who was having a moment, and it was making us a have a moment, and it was causing the nurses and interns to have a more than a moment. But they just couldn’t get it to work, they could not do what needed to be

Life is strange, and not all surprises are good ones. I am thinking about this day a year ago, which turned out to be not a good surprise. And then my thinking took me down a path of why we measure pain and recovering from said pain in time? (Or indeed any experience.) Why this need to say how long it takes? How many creatures lived out their full life span in the last year. How many didn't, having 2 months instead of their allotted 3? How many people have endured days that f

I miss the wind. The clear skies. There is no blue like an Amdo sky. And the deeply dark, silent temples, with towering deities, who don’t even notice me. Shy smiles and wide stares. Elders. Malas always moving. A constancy of chanting, soft drone of mani bees, breathing the mantra in and out, turning the world as if it were a giant prayer wheel. It is. Butter tea, hot, salty, fill my cup, please. I miss throwing a handful of lungta high on a mountain pass, the wind takes the

Melbourne enters day 200 of lockdown days since march 2020. A sober thought, two thirds of a year spent at home. Like everyone else I miss travel, even the idea of travel, so have been spending time with photographs and journals from past journeys. The Jowo Buddha is the most important statue in Tibet. It is believed to have been personally blessed by the Buddha. It came to be owned by the king of Magadha , who gave it to a Tang emperor of China. One of the emperor's clansma

This is me drinking poop coffee, or more politely, coffee made from beans that have passed through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). In Indonesian, Kopi luwak, it is also called civet coffee. Poop coffee. Yes I am drinking it and smiling, but that is the least remarkable thing about this picture. I had never been to Bali, which is practically un- Australian. It was on my radar as a beautiful place that I had no intention of visiting be