JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
Storms and sunshine
At around 5.30 on Saturday morning the storms rolled into Melbourne and crashed and flashed and by all tokens made a bit of a fuss. An angry wind bent the new trees in our new garden this way and that and then both ways at once, sending droplets flying sideways as rain the size of grapes began to tumble. I watched it from my window, pyjama-clad, hands wrapped around a mug of too-hot-to-drink tea, and it was glorious.
By the time my cup was empty, sunshine was making rainbows out of the leaves on the fledgling hydrangea. I vacuumed the downstairs part of the house before everyone woke up, then stepped into the shower and washed my hair. When I came out, wrapped in a towel, I was greeted by an almighty clap of thunder. Soon, the rain began tumbling…
Melbourne did this all day, rolling in the thunder and rain and then rolling them back out again, to be replaced by steaming sunshine. Thankfully, by the time I stepped outside at five in the afternoon with a three-year-old Belle from Beauty and the Beast and an almost two-year-old Fireman Sam minus the fire helmet that he refused to wear, each with jack-o-lantern buckets in their hands and in the company of old friends and new, the sun had finally won the day.
We blinked and squinted in the sudden light, and put up our hands to shield our eyes from the white glare of the giant Halloween spiderwebs that laced half the houses in our street. There weren't as many as last year, it has to be said, nor were the crowds of miniature humans in adorable costumes as thick. Maybe because Halloween fell on a weekend this year, everyone had better things to do? It didn't matter to Scout and Ralph, tramping the streets shod respectively in pink plastic high-heels and blue gumboots, and calling out "trick or treat!" (and also "twick-a-twee!") at each new door, while I waited with the other parents on the footpath and prompted "Don't forget to say thank you!"
When we grew tired and the children's buckets grew heavy with loot, we ambled and stomped back to our place, where there were dips and fruit and four different kinds of cheeses waiting in the garden, alongside juice and water for the kids and various alcoholic options for the grown-ups, plus a cubby house and a bubble machine with flat batteries. Scout hurt her finger and cried inconsolably until her little friend Izzy came to the rescue, first playing doctor and then nurse. Izzy sat down and Scout rested her head in her lap and cried and then laughed while Izzy patted and sometimes cuddled her and not long after that, the Nurofen kicked in and she leapt up to play again.
All afternoon and well into the night the doorbell kept ringing. Each time, Mr B would race the length of the house to hand out lollies and chocolate to more and still-more spooks and monsters and Disney princesses and medieval knights and vampires and dinosaurs and ninja turtles and fairies and ballerinas and at least one walking, talking pumpkin. Later that night, Mr B complained mournfully, "My feet hurt!"
Night settled. The jack-o-lantern I had carved the night before, which was more accurately an owl-o-lantern because I had purchased the second-last pumpkin in all of Barkly Square and it was rather non-traditional in shape so a tall owl made more sense than a wide grin… The jack-owl-o-lantern I had carved the night before began to glow, and the doorbell kept ringing, and we ordered pizza for those who stayed on in the garden, and there weren't even that many mozzies.
Later I sat on the floor of the children's room and read them a story, two hours past their normal bedtime, and minus a bath. Scout sat on my lap and leaned heavily against me, playing with my hair. Ralph eschewed his usual place on my other knee and instead simply lay down on the floor, face down, snuggled against my leg, and sucked his thumb. I rubbed his back and kissed Scout's flushed and sugar-sticky cheek as I read, and my heart felt just about ready to burst.
These are the days. These minutes and moments tumbled about with storms and sunshine, real and metaphorical, that I want to remember. My children, my friends, my community. I will cherish them and hold on to them and I hope I will never, never forget.
Mail art: ghost post + monster mail
Some outgoing Halloween-themed mail-art from this week...
ps. have you heard about my letter-writing and mail-art e-course?
Over five weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here.
Why I write letters to strangers
It is an odd thing to do, I know. But in case you're thinking I'm a bit strange (you wouldn't be alone) and you wonder why I spend so much of my time writing letters to people I've never met, here's a tiny sample of what greets me in my own letterbox, on a regular basis...
"Hello Naomi, You couldn't have timed your aerogramme more perfectly! My 90 year old dad went into hospital the day before and we found he would need surgery - at 90! I was feeling so blue but then arrived home to find your aerogramme! It was such a bright spot on such a tough day."
"Your beautiful letter was such a lovely surprise in my mail box this week! Thank you for taking the time to write to me!"
"Your package that arrived a few days ago just MADE my day!... I've been so inspired by your beautiful letters that I'd like to start a snail mail project of some kind here for the students."
"I want to thank you for your beautiful letter. Was a wonderful surprise!!! Really made so happy my day."
"Thank you so much for the beautiful letter you sent me! I was blown away by the care and attention you gave to it, opening it was such a joy!"
"I just wanted to say a huge thank-you for the beautiful snail-mail package that you sent me in the post. It arrived on a Monday and was so perfectly timed to brighten up my week."
"I was beyond excited when I saw a deliciously decorated brown parcel in my mailbox"
"Just wanted to tell you how excited our children were when they got your fantastic letters. My daughter is going to show her teacher..."
"Naomi! Oh your beautiful, beautiful letter. It arrived today! And what perfect timing..."
"Dear Naomi, I was trying to hide in the garden and weed the wild shady patches out of the blistering sun. My son was yelling with much excitement at clearing the letterbox. Time stopped! We gathered and sat on the porch, I held your magnificent letter in my hand. We studied the tangerine pigeon and slowly opened the letter. My Mum sat with me and my son, all sharing the moment. THANK YOU. It captured our hearts and was so filled with surprise and treasure. I have shared your letter with friends and I have begun to remember a time when I wrote letters often... Your envelope of joy reminds me of the simple power of human kindness. I think it's contagious (ain't that a wonderful thing!)."
Public transport scenes
Yesterday while walking to the tram stop during peak hour I saw traffic banked up four or five cars deep around a roundabout, at every entry point. Nobody was going anywhere, but nobody was honking their horns, either. When I came closer, I could see that a mother duck and her nine ducklings were waddling across the road, and all the cars were cheerfully, patiently, waiting for them to safely pass.
You know when you are talking really loudly over music and then suddenly the music stops and everyone hears you say something and it's really embarrassing? That happened to a lady at a tram stop in the city today. One minute she was having a perfectly private conversation with the young man next to her, and the next minute two trams rolled away at the same time and all the traffic stopped at the lights and she yelled to just about all of us, "LET'S GO TO A SEX SHOP ON THE WAY HOME."
On Bourke Street, a busker was playing the didgeridoo to a hip hop backing track. I don't know if that was culturally appropriate. Is it culturally appropriate? Anyway he was pretty good and the music was pretty catchy, and I think the old woman in front of me thought so too, because she started singing "bap-bap-bap, bap-bap-bap" along with the beat. The old man next to her disagreed. "I'd pay him $50 to shut up!" he said, and the old woman stopped singing. "Yuhumph," she responded, and I'm guessing that answer was deliberately obtuse. Then, subtly at first but with increasing gusto, she began to nod her head to the music again. "Do you think that music this loud is even legal?" grumbled the old man, and the nodding stopped. "Hmm, it's loud," she gave him. The old man huffed and puffed and turned his back on the busker. And then I saw the old woman's foot begin to tap...
Middle aged?
Please add two more items to my list of Things My Parents Did That I Thought Were Really Boring But Now I Like Doing Too: 1. Looking at other people's houses, and 2. Going to garage sales.
I remember traipsing around Berowra Heights with my mother while she delivered pamphlets for a part-time job in the 80s, and she would get SUCH a kick out of looking at the way people designed their front gardens, the facades of their houses, even their letter boxes. It was kind of interesting but kind of boring and I never could quite understand why she found it so compelling… until I owned my own house.
On Saturday, as we strolled through the perfect spring sunshine and in and out of unexpectedly cool spring breezes, hand in hand with two pretty adorable children, through Carlton North and into the back streets of Brunswick, I could hear my mother's 1980s words coming out of my 2015 mouth.
"Look at what they've done there - I like the gloss on the paintwork on their fence," I said, without a hint of irony or sarcasm. And, "Hanging plants like that would look good on our balcony, too," and, "I don't like this street as much as ours but imagine how amazing it would be to have a big front yard like that."
Maybe home ownership makes us all middle-aged, whether we are six or sixty.
And also, garage sales. Oh my gosh. Garage sales were so bo-o-o-o-oring when I was a teenager. By this stage we were living in the bush without electricity and Dad was building our house, so my parents would scour the newspaper every weekend and circle garage sales, then off we'd go, looking for second-hand floor-boards and fence-posts and old generators. It became a truly monotonous way to spend the day, weekend after weekend.
But now! Apparently Mr B and I are little old ladies because there is nothing we love better than a garage sale, full of miss-matched teacups, old books, kooky clothes, 70s glassware and ceramics, and enamel just about anything. One of our favourite things is when the warmer weather comes about and all the students in our street host impromptu garage sales on the grass strip that divides our street.
Our walk on Saturday, through the sunshine and the breeze and past all the houses we admired, had a purpose. Our goal was to visit one or 10 of the several thousand garage sales being held in Melbourne that day, as part of the Australia-wide Frankie and Friends Garage Sale.
What we bought:
1 x quirky painted enamel cat-brooch 1 x succulent plant and pink-painted concrete pot from Pop Plant 2 x sweet, vintage little fruit-embellished glass bowls from Pip Lincolne 2 x chocolate and hundreds & thousands doughnuts from All Day Donuts 1 x jingly jangly (but a bit smelly) gold necklace for Scout 1 x truly hideous gold-glitter purse, also for Scout 2 x lucky-dip parcels (resulting in glitter transfer-tattoos and stickers, plastic dinosaur, rocket-ship pencil) 2 x adorable edible teacups made out of biscuits and lollies
What we resisted:
Seriously, you will never know what it cost me (other than money I didn't have) NOT to buy some of the amazing handmade stoneware, super-fine gold rings, limited-run letterpress prints, vintage Little Golden Books and beautiful vintage clothes also on sale that day. Budgets. Le sigh.
And so it came to pass that spending the day with the people I loved, doing things that my parents used to do that I once thought were quite boring, turned out to be one of the best kinds of days a weekend can throw out there. I guess I'm middle aged.
Or old.
Weekend links
Hello! Happy Friday! Is it just me or is this weekend taking a re--a--lly long time to roll around? We are off to the Frankie Garage Sale tomorrow, assuming I succeed in getting the kids out of the house before it finishes. Other than that, I have a big pile of Halloween craft to complete, in order to get it into the post to HOPEFULLY make it to its destination before the 31st. What are your plans for the weekend? Here are some links for your viewing and reading pleasure.
* What a delicious twist on the old-fashioned toffee-apples: bacon caramel apples
* On my to-get and to-read list: 1. Indoor Green: Living With Plants, 2. The Creativity Challenge: Design, Experiment, Test, Innovate, Build, Create, Inspire, and Unleash Your Genius
* Really beautiful wedding suit idea
* Magical Christmas markets in Europe. Oh, to dream...
* Nature + cut-out shapes. I'm not doing this art project justice. Just look at the link!
* Apple butter sounds pretty delicious but I like this post best because of the list of "Things That Sound Like Fun with Kids, But Are Actually Not at All." I can COMPLETELY relate
* Desperate to try bonfire eggs!
* The vulnerability hangover. Sound familiar? (Me too)
* A reader Anke sent me this link when I announced my decision to quit Facebook. It's a pretty great read
* Halloween candy bark looks easy to make and wickedly delicious
And now, to see you into the weekend, I present Scout, lost in the groove. Man I love this kid!
Image credit: photograph by Miguel Gomez, licensed for unrestricted use under Creative Commons
Kindness, both knowing and unknowing
Sometimes kindness is a cup of tea, shared between friends. Sometimes kindness is the vessel that holds the tea.
Things have been a little less than peachy around here of late. A few weeks ago I was unwell - for three weeks - during which time I also suffered a rather devastating loss of a loved-one. Mr B was overseas for work so I had to deal with the combination of grief, pain and illness while caring for the children on my own, and keeping up appearances - whatever that means - for the sake of the little ones.
It wasn't easy and I'm not going to lie: more than once I locked myself in the bathroom to cry in private, then rinsed my red eyes and emerged, beaming like a mild maniac, "Who wants to play with play dough?"
I'm not the kind of person who finds it easy to open up or reach out when times are tough and so, as a result, I carried the first week of sickness and sadness entirely alone, before eventually the lump in my throat began to relax and allow me to share.
During that lonely week, completely unaware of anything that was going on, Tommy knocked on my door, bearing the gift of this lovely ceramic cup, made with his own hands.
I first met Tommy in the sandpit of Scout's childcare centre, where he used to teach the children. He transferred to a different childcare centre not long after that, but we used to bump into him all the time: at a school fete, at the local deli, in the park. And then one day Tommy reached out to me via this blog, and I sent him some mail art (it was this envelope).
Recently he switched directions in career, and is now pursuing ceramics full time. When he knocked on my door that day, handmade cup in hand, it was Tommy's way of saying "thank you" for the mail art I had sent him way back then.
He could not have known how horrible a week I was having, or just how much his gift could have cheered me in that moment. It wasn't a small gesture, either. Often I talk about how precious snail-mail is to people because it's hand-written, tangible, and permanent: I put it to you that there is not much more hand-made or tangible than ceramics.
Thank you, Tommy. I think what you created is beautiful but, more than that, every time I drink my tea from this cup I will be reminded of your kindness, both knowing and unknowing, at a time when I really needed it.
Morning at mine: pictures + proverbs
Lessons learned lately:
The first cup of tea of the morning is the best cup of tea of the year
One mango can make a whole house smell like Christmas
Sugar is harder to give up than Facebook
Clean house makes happy heart
Spring starts when the flowers bloom
Two children napping at the same time is a rare and precious jewel
Kindness & chocolate
I watched this wonderful interview with writer, poet and holocaust survivor Francine Christophe yesterday, and it moved me to tears. What a beautiful, touching story about the power of kindness.
It's part of a new film called "Human" by Yann Arthus-Bertrand that looks to be extraordinary. You can watch the trailer and find out more here.
Image credit: Padurariu Alexandru, licensed for unrestricted use under Creative Commons
I'm quitting Facebook
I've decided to quit Facebook. This time next week, I will delete my Facebook profile, which also means my public page will come down at the same time.
If you are my friend on Facebook, and especially if you have made the effort to "like" or "follow" or whatever the terminology is these days my public page, I want to thank you for your support and the sense of community you have given me over the past eight years.
Thank you, thank you! I'm not unaware that your support has been a huge part of bringing readership and community to this blog: Facebook is far and away the biggest referrer of traffic to my blog, and I know that in freeing myself from what feel like the "shackles" of this particular social media platform, I will also be losing a lot of valuable support from the people who help make this blog a happy place for me. I wish there was a way to do it differently, but you can't have a public Facebook page without also having a private profile, so when I close the latter down, the former will go too.
Once upon a time, Facebook was a wonderful way to stay in touch with the people I love, who live all over the world. Often it was the ONLY reliable way. Email addresses change, phone numbers change, but Facebook profiles rarely do so we didn't lose touch.
Since those days, though, I feel as though Facebook has become such a negative influence in my life.
Over time, Facebook has taken it upon itself to decide whose updates I see and whose I don't, so I can no longer REALLY stay in touch with what all my friends near and far are doing, only the friends whose statuses and shared links get the most interaction (you guys are great too, but it's like only talking to the most popular people at your own birthday party: I like my quiet and shy and geeky friends too!). And when I like or follow a page or business, Facebook decides whether or not I get to see updates from them, too, so all the events and innovations and deals and campaigns I signed up to see frequently get missed.
Facebook does, however, make sure I see frighteningly-accurate advertisements. For example if I research a particular brand of audio equipment for a work article, the next time I log in to Facebook, competitor brands of the same technology will just-so-happen to be advertised in the side bar, as Facebook trawls my browser history and uses it to "target" what I see.
Facebook constantly changes up and jeopardises my privacy (this move was particularly annoying for me in avoiding a stalker-type person) and the ownership of my content (for example read 1. underneath "Sharing Your Content and Information," here), and even thinks itself entitled to conduct social experiments on me and my friends, without our permission.
But the worst of my falling out of like with Facebook is not down to Facebook's behaviour, but to my own.
I resent the time I spend on Facebook, but I use it anyway. I don't want to log in but, when I do, I'm drawn into its rabbit-hole of links and photos and videos and shared content and wind up clicking through to articles that aren't edifying and don't add anything particularly positive to my life, and insist on reading them when I should be spending time with my family. The other day I was sitting in the playroom with the children, and caught myself being terse with Scout ("YES Scout, what do you WANT?") when she "Hey Mummy hey Mummy hey Mummy"-ed me, because I was annoyed that I had had to read the same paragraph three times. It was a paragraph in an article I hadn't known existed five minutes earlier, about some celebrities I wasn't particularly interested in, but somehow here I was so desperate to read what was said and join in the comment thread relating to whatever mild controversy the story was recounting, that I ignored and then grumbled at my own children.
I'm time-poor and yet I waste my own precious time AND the time of my family on something I don't enjoy, and that's crazy. So I'm quitting.
I really hope that you and I can find ways to stay in touch and that I can keep drawing inspiration from you. We managed before social media, right? I am hoping (possibly naively) that we can do it again. So if you would like to stick around with me, I would LOVE that. The personal connections and creative inspiration found on Facebook were what drew me to it in the first place, and my love of friendship and community and creativity certainly hasn't changed, only the forum through which I hope to find those things. So if you want to stay in touch, here's how ...
* The best way is right here: I will keep this blog going, and it's a mix of personal stories from our lives, food I like to eat, places I like to go, my snail-mail and other creative projects, and a celebration of other artistic people and projects. There's a "subscribe" button on the right-hand side of this page that signs you up to receive email notifications whenever there is a new post
* You can find me on Instagram at @naomibulger
* You can send me an email at nabulger (at) gmail (dot) com
* We can write to each other the old-fashioned way! My postal address is:
Naomi Bulger PO Box 469 Carlton North Vic 3054 Australia
So that's it. Goodbye Facebook, and hello freedom. I must admit, I CAN'T WAIT until next week, when I can hit "disable my account." Already the decision to do this has lifted a weight from my shoulders.
What about you. Have you ever considered quitting Facebook? Have you already done it? What are your experiences of social media? I do realise that not everyone dislikes it as much as me, and for many people, it is a wonderful, social place. How do you keep it positive?