Happy Easter!

As a non-Christian, I don't usually celebrate Easter in a religious fashion, but I will gladly take any excuse to have a family get together and eat some chocolate, and I found that hiding eggs for a two year old to discover the next morning is almost as hunting for them!

A day in photographs

First stop was £1000 Bend, easily one of my favourite cafes in the city, for a coffee. After running a few boring errands I walked past the new H&M open in the city centre and contemplated popping in but swiftly changed my mind when I saw the huge queue! I hadn't been in the Block Arcade before, but it's a great shortcut between a few of the main streets, and is full of beautifully ornate walls and arches. Perfect for some snapping practice. Lunch was at The Little Mule, a delightful combination of bike shop and cafe, tucked down a laneway. I had a delicious salmon bagel and a juice full of many fruits, all of which I cannot remember. One of my favourite things about it was that it came in a jar with a retro looking straw. Easily pleased. My big cultural activity for the day was a visit to the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, to see an exhibition of Indigenous contemporary art called The world is not a foreign land. I shan't go into detail here (that's for another time) and photography wasn't permitted in the gallery, but it's safe to say I'm glad I went; it's opened a small can of worms in terms of my questions about and interest in Aboriginal art. Last stop was the cafe at the gallery, the Potter Espresso Bar, for a cup of tea and a hedgehog slice for a sugar hit to keep me awake until I got home.

All in all a productive and interesting day.

Pilgrimage

'A journey, away from home, in search of spiritual well being' is a preferred definition of writer, traveller and presenter Simon Reeve, who's BBC programme 'Pilgrimage' I've just been catching up on.

Before I go any further, I'll take this opportunity to forewarn you that this might get a bit deep and possibly meaningful, and could lead to me sounding like Sex and the City's Carrie as she voices over her own musings on life in that ponderous tone, never really making a point but just asking further questions.

The first of these questions that has popped into my head is, by choosing to come to Australia, did I make a subconscious decision to make my own pilgrimage? Isn't some sort of well being what I'm striving for by choosing to spend time in a county and a city with vast amounts of sunshine compared to my home and which features year after year in lists like 'top ten cities to live in' and 'most desirable places to live'? The logical, less spiritual part of my brain says not really; I have family here who I've wanted to meet since I was a child, and the idea of going as far away as I can go on this planet appealed immensely to my adventurous side. However, I think I like the idea of my mind and the universe having drawn me here, to undertake this journey, because they knew I needed it. Whilst my physical journey was nowhere near as arduous as the old pilgrims' on the Camino de Santiago, for example, and is not connected to a major faith, my spiritual and personal journey is definitely shaping up to be one that's showing me more about myself than I could have imagined.

One practice I have begun is that of Bhava yoga, mainly because my cousin teaches this style of yoga and encouraged me to come along to a class. Without warning, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I had thought of myself as fairly well in tune with my thoughts and feelings but actively opening my mind to let them flood in made me realise I was actually quite shut off from them. Since then, I have been trying to let myself become immersed in the sessions, to see what my mind is doing, which aspects of my life are enriching it and what it is lacking. For me, this is calming and, I think, makes me more productive in my thinking. It's like an escape, but one who's effects I can feed back into my daily life.

Something I've come to notice about my 'pilgrimage', if you will, is that it is mine, and mine alone. Of course it is constantly influenced and shaped by the actions of others too, but in the end, it is mine and only mine. A thought like this would have scared me in my teenage years, when, as many teenagers do, I yearned to be accepted into groups, cliques, to not have to wonder whether I belonged. Maybe I've realised that I do belong, with the family and friends that I've made and kept over the years, or maybe this yearning has weakened with growing older. Little things remind me of this, like being completely happy to sit in a cafe and eat lunch alone. As I did just this the other day, I looked around and noticed lots of other people doing the same; in our solitude, we become a collective.

After all, isn't life one big pilgrimage in itself? Maybe we're all taking the journey together, and sharing it is what makes it so great.


photos here and here

Appreciating

I unintentionally spent yesterday appreciating various things in life, something which I all too often forget to stop and take time for. There are so many good things going on right now, and one of my current priorities is to concentrate on them and do more of them rather than dwell on the negatives. 

To borrow from the well known quote, I am trying to accept the things I cannot change, find the courage to change those that I can, and practise gaining the wisdom to know the difference.

Some things I find helpful for realising this little mantra is, productivity, fresh air and a walk, so that's what I took. After running a few errands I spent the afternoon around the Shrine of Remembrance and the Royal Botanic Gardens, an area which I haven't explored yet at all. The weather was perfect for a walk, and an hour for lunch and reading a book under the shade of a tree.