Practise kindness

"When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace."

- Dalai Lama

Image credit: Michael Quinn (licensed under Creative Commons)

Fred & Lorraine

This love story made me cry a little bit. In a good way.

When 96-year-old Fred’s wife of 75 years, Lorraine, passed away, he sat in his front room and started to hum a tune, then he wrote down some words for her. “Oh Sweet Lorraine,” he called his song, and he said “it just fit her.”

He saw an ad for an online singer-songwriter contest and thought “why not, I’ll just send it in.” But Fred didn’t post his song online, he posted it old-school, in a manila envelope, to the studio. And he wrote a letter explaining the song, adding “I can’t sing. It would scare people HA HA.”

The studio was so touched by Fred’s story and his love for Lorraine, that they produced the song for him. Here's a little video about that process. And LOOK at Fred's face when the song starts!

(ps. There's something going on with the video I've embedded. If you can't see it just below this text, you can watch Fred's story here)

A Letter From Fred from Green Shoe Studio on Vimeo.

Thoughts about writing letters

Yesterday while I was walking home, a man came out of the post office just ahead of me and opened and started reading a letter as he walked. By the time I had caught up with him he had stopped dead in the path, oblivious to me or anyone else on the street, reading intently. I could see the letter was hand-written. As he devoured the words, a little smile played about the corners of his mouth. I walked on, smiling too.

Earlier this week I saw a segment on The Project on Channel 10. They were talking about Australia Post and the cost of sending mail. After showing the segment, Carrie Bickmore told the panel that she had recently read a letter that one of her grandmothers had written to the other, several decades ago. It was beautiful, Carrie said, and it highlighted why snail mail would still have a place in our lives today, and tomorrow. "Nobody is going to keep an email I send."

The STUNNING blue-and-gold letter in these pictures is from Maria, a truly generous and talented woman from Mexico. Maria is a writer, and a literature professor, and in her letter she told me about her cat, among other things. From her simple and heartfelt words I feel like Maria is already a kindred spirit. I can't wait to write back to her.

I posted a photograph of Maria's letter on Instagram yesterday, and a friend of mine in Sydney left a comment that her grandfather used to send them all mail-art. She's going to try and get hold of some envelopes that her mother has kept from the 70s and 80s to show me. Even 30, perhaps 40 years on, the love and care he put into decorating his letters to his children and grandchildren is still physically manifest, and able to be shared and loved with and by others.

I declare today the International Write A Letter To Someone You Love Day. Who's with me?

How I overcome creative block

How do you overcome creative block? Here is a trick that always works for me.

To start, I go for a walk while listening to music (the music can be Tracy Chapman, or Bob Dylan, or Lamb, or something classical. I don’t tend to choose anything else because for whatever reason, for me these artists/genres don't get in the WAY of other creativity - do you know what I mean? This is also the ONLY music I can stand listening to while I’m writing creatively).

Anyway, I let my walk take me to the art gallery. When I’m there, I wander around looking at the paintings and sculptures and thinking about them or not thinking about them as the mood takes me. I don’t force anything. But (and this is very important) I keep the music going. I have it turned up loud enough, inside my headphones, that the other sounds of the world and the gallery all but recede into nothing.

I don’t know what it is, something perhaps about the combination of music and art and exercise I imagine, that triggers the creative side of my brain. So far, this trick has never failed me. I always walk home creatively unblocked, and brimming with new ideas.

If I'm not close to an art gallery, I still go for a walk while listening to music, but instead I bring my camera and take photographs. I notice different things through the camera lens when I'm inside the soundtrack of my walk.

How about you? How do you combat creative block?

Image credit: photo by S Zolkin, licensed under Creative Commons 

Happy things

This little project, a tiny zine. I’m writing a book about snail mail and, while I’m at it, I thought I’d make this as a kind of a sneak peek to help get people excited about the post and open their eyes to what’s out there for them.

The lemon tree is fruiting again. I like to run my hands along the branches when I walk past and then cup them to my nose, breathing deeply of the perfect combination of blossoms and zest. Last autumn, we were swimming in lemons. Get your orders in now, folks, if you’d like some.

Yesterday afternoon a storm rolled around and around for a couple of hours and the rain-drops were fat and full and fresh. Then the wind picked up and, finally, the seemingly-interminable heat washed away into the storm-water drains, and the world began to feel alive again.

How to make iced tea

On the weekend, a small group of bloggers and one two-and-a-half-year-old girl relaxed in the leafy and floral courtyard of the Travelling Samovar Tea House to chat, giggle, taste tea, and learn about how to brew and blend and make the best of all the (non-alcoholic) summer drinks: iced tea.

Scout had begged to come with me and I was proud as punch to bring her along, but she did make it somewhat more difficult to listen and concentrate on everything we were learning. In between supervising toilet stops and watching her twirl around a garden umbrella and having half-an-ear on the shutter-click of 555(!) photographs (of the ground) being taken on my phone, here is what I learned about how to make a delicious iced tea.

Step 1: Choose your "base" (for example, black tea, green, yellow, or something herbal)

Step 2: You might want to blend some fresh or dried herbs in at the brew stage for flavour. For example, perhaps you'd like to add rose buds or peppermint

Step 3: Brew up the tea. Make it a fair bit stronger than you otherwise would because if you're going to pour it over ice, that will dilute it

Step 4: A good tip the Travelling Samovar gave us was to pour strong, HOT, freshly-brewed tea over ice, which will immediately cool and dilute it. Alternatively, you can store brewed tea in the 'fridge for several days, as long as it's properly sealed and you haven't yet added anything else like fruit or sugar

Step 5: Does your tea need sweetening? Experiment with fruit, sugar, honey, fruit cordial… To the yellow iced tea you see Scout making in these photographs, we added a strawberry coulis and some squares of mango for sweetness. It looked extravagant and tasted delicious

Step 6: Try to make your tea pretty. Apparently, we drink with our eyes as much as we eat with our eyes. The ladies at the Travelling Samovar suggest serving the cold tea with frozen fruits instead of ice: not only will it look beautiful, the tea won't become diluted as it warms up

Are you an iced-tea drinker? I confess that before the Travelling Samovar opened its doors in our neighbourhood, I wasn't a big fan.

I mean, there was THAT TEA I'd had in New Orleans that was pretty close to perfection, but other than that, the pre-bottled stuff you can buy at service stations really didn't float my boat. But the subtle, sweet, refreshing and gorgeous-looking teas these ladies serve up (there's easily half a dozen iced teas on the menu on any given day in summer) have completely won me over.

A big thanks to the Travelling Samovar for hosting such a fabulous event, and to all the ladies who came along and made it so much fun. I loved learning more about the history of this drink, and how to make it at home. And at 36 degrees by later that afternoon, you couldn't get a day better suited to the drinking of iced beverages. Just ask Scout, who got home and announced to her father "I DID MAKE THE ICED TEA" along the lines of "I JUST INVENTED PERPETUAL MOTION."

ps. This was not a sponsored event - we all paid our own ways

Box 469 is smiling

The little box at PO Box 469 has been such a happy place of late, with beautiful mail and thoughtful notes arriving from all over the world. Thank you to you all, dear snail-mail friends. I am beaming.

Gorgeous mail (top to bottom) >> colourful envelope bursting with crafty ephemera from Emily (Squiggle & Swirl) // sparkling, slightly magical envelope of gifts including a crocheted snowflake from Adrienne (Misfits in Toyland) // true comfort in a pink-and-grey knitted mug warmer from Wendy (Blink Blackburn) // gorgeous card from Mr B's hometown and hollyhock seeds for my garden from Jennifer // more seeds for my garden, drawings, notes, and a letter that made me cry from Natalie and her children

The postcard that took a month to write

I am writing this post in tears. I had planned it earlier and everything was OK, but then Mr B started reading aloud to me from the little journal he had been keeping for Scout since the day she was born. Little anecdotes: everything from her birth story to her first Christmas, her cousins, her favourite toys, and her first pink and perfect sunset (last night).

Tears! Remembering those moments as he read to me was emotional overload. I kept imagining Scout reading this book for the first time when she was 12, or 16, or 21, and knowing how deeply she had been loved, from the very first moment. I said "Quick! Start writing one of these for Ralph too!" Because he will need this. I want both of my children to enter teenaged and adult life buoyed in the knowledge of their parents' forever love, with physical proof in their hands.

Which leads me to this post.

I've been wanting to write this post for a while now, but I've also been wanting to write a certain postcard, too, and I couldn't get it right in my head. I think I was giving it too much weight, putting too much pressure on myself.

You see last month I received a letter, out of the blue, from a young woman called Jessica (she has a sweet-as-pie craft blog called Jess Made This). Jessica was writing to invite me to take part in a lovely project she had launched, called Dear Holly. Essentially the concept was that you and I and just about anyone who had made it out of our teen years more-or-less intact, were invited to send a postcard sharing our words of advice or encouragement to young people all over the world.

In Jessica's words, "The idea is to cross the generational divide and provide a place online for young people to hear stories and words of encouragement and advice from those who have experienced more time on Earth than they have."

Isn't this a simple and beautiful idea? Do you want to take part? All the details for submissions are on the Dear Holly website (basically: a. send an encouraging, anonymous postcard to the address provided, and b. nope, that's all you needed to do). Their favourite submissions are shared on the website each week.

Here's what else Jess has to say, on the website:

Together we can create a living, breathing collection of real, gritty and heartfelt advice that teenagers the world over can can share, gasp at, learn from, and live by.

No longer will teens have to rely on the repetitive, commercialised advice found in any given women’s magazine or lads mag. This project aims to paint a picture of teenage life to help inspire, support and comfort those currently entering or going through it.

I’m doing this for the Holly in my life. You should do it for the Holly or Olly in yours, or the H/Olly that you once were. Join me.

So anyway, yep, I decided to answer this call, and join her. Of COURSE. But then I spent the next month wondering what was the best thing to say, in the space of a postcard, that I would have wanted said to me. And I thought it over and then I rethought it and then I guessed it and then I second guessed it and, in the end, I felt completely paralysed by the weight of what I would write.

Which was so silly of me and, ultimately, that was what I decided to write about. Because the whole dilemma felt unsettlingly familiar. Reminiscent of my teen years. Do you remember what it was like being a teenager? I remember putting on a facade of confidence and nonchalance while inside feeling completely, utterly, lost. Hopeless, useless, unworthy. Incapable, indecisive, inadequate.

So I decided to write to the teenaged me, because I imagine it's a fair bet that I wasn't alone in those feelings, and that a generation hasn't necessarily changed things all THAT much. I haven't shared the postcard here because they are supposed to be anonymous, but I don't mind you knowing the gist of what I wrote.

I told the Hollys (and Ollys) of this world that they were doing it right. Being a teen, I meant. That they weren't supposed to have it figured out yet, and that it was OK to be themselves. I also urged them to be kind to others, because confused teens are as guilty as the rest of us of sometimes overlooking the needs of others, or forgetting that each of us is fighting a battle of our own, and deserves our compassion. But most of all, with Mr B's loving words to our daughter still hot inside my heart, I told them I wished I could give them a big, motherly hug.

What advice would you give your teenaged self? Will you share it with "Holly?" All it will cost you is the price of a postage stamp, and a moment's (or a month's) thought. In case you missed the link earlier, you can find all the details about this snail-mail project here.

Milly the community cat

I want to tell you a story about Milly the community cat.

When we first moved into our neighbourhood, we were on a walk one day when we saw a sign on some people's front fence, advising passers-by of the health of their cat, Milly, which had apparently been attacked by a dog. It was sad and sweet, but also kind of strange. We felt for the cat's owners, of course, but we also thought it was more than a little bit odd that they felt the need to inform the entire community about their cat's misadventures. I mean, our cat Ruby hurt her nose recently. I didn't feel the need to leave a missive on our front gate about it.

But that was because I hadn't met Milly.

Milly is a raggedy-looking, duck-footed, white cat who belongs not just to the family she lives with but to the whole neighbourhood. Apparently she was a stray until adopted by this family, but a friendlier stray you could never meet. She lives only a few houses down from the primary school, and waits out the front to collect pats and cuddles and kisses from all the children on their way to class each morning. She lives around the corner from the park, and joins random groups of strangers on their picnics.

She has tens, hundreds, possibly thousands of friends and admirers. So when she went missing from her front gate after the episode with the dog, people began asking questions, which led to the note we first discovered on her front gate. While Milly was stuck indoors recovering, children sent her cards and flowers, and tins of tuna.

Not so long ago, somebody created a stencil portrait of Milly outside her family's house, and another on their back fence (then they left a bottle of paint remover behind in case the owners took exception to the art. They didn't). Her family also leaves a little bucket of chalk on their front gate so that anyone who wants to can write a letter to Milly.

Scout adores Milly. When we go on walks, she begs me to walk past Milly's house, so that we can say hello to her. When we stop and smile at Milly, she runs towards us. And once our little greetings are over, Milly tries to follow us wherever we're going. More than once I've had to turn up a side street so that Milly wouldn't follow us onto the busy road only two blocks away.

That's Milly the community cat. Friend to thousands. Local identity. Kind of a big deal on Facebook. And best of all, at least in our family, sweet friend to my two-year-old little girl.

Image credits: these beautiful photographs of Milly are by pet photographer Erin McNulty, who also shares a much more detailed story of Milly here. Used with her kind permission

Geometry + colour

I've been painting triangles. Scenes, events, glimpsed through thick-paned, antique windows. I'm not exactly sure what I'll make of them, yet. Perhaps I'll create prints: a set of postcards, maybe? Or some note cards?

ΔΔ Wet autumn watercolour, gouache and pen-and-ink on paper

ΔΔ Passing parade watercolour, gouache and pen-and-ink on paper

ΔΔ School fete watercolour, gouache and pen-and-ink on paper

ΔΔ Toy store watercolour, gouache and pen-and-ink on paper

ΔΔ Brush-fire watercolour, gouache and pen-and-ink on paper