Let's Live Forever! » Personal

My Last Blog Post

Robin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 08:17:13 +0000

Goodbye from the LLF office (it’s very hot here).

I’ve decided to wrap up this blog.

I’ve thought for some time I might be able to keep doing occasional posts, but I don’t think that will work—not for me, anyway.

The main reason is to do with focus—I find when I am writing posts, and even commenting on other blogs, that I’m constantly running the words through my mind. I’ve been known to go for a walk around the block and on returning enthusiastically add a comma to what I had just written before the walk—the perfect comma.

This is fine when the project is what you want to be doing with your life, but that’s no longer the case for my blog and me.

Mainly I want to focus a lot more on our musical endeavours, and to that end I’ve done some considerable tweaking of our website The Sound Sculptor—more tweaking yet to come— and have started building up my Myspace page (Myspace is essential to musicians, in Australia, anyway). Because, you see, in the past few months our sound business has been taking off. We have been busy, and we love it, and we want more of it.

I’ve also recently done a couple of websites for very good friends of ours. One, not nearly completed yet, is for some Melbourne film-makers. If you look closely through the images you’ll see my hair before I had dreads and Frank being a “bastard” (bet you can hardly wait).

The other is a site for a Melbourne artist and photographer. You might want to check out Wayne’s gallery.

Since my last blog post in November we also did a weekend music and arts festival—we were in charge of sound on the main stage. This meant planning the sound equipment, doing a large slice of the sound engineering, and dealing with “issues”. It was intense and we loved it.

The site was really pretty—here are some pics:

our hut in the middle, with jam space complete with drums that set up next door, on the right

path to the camp ground

the chai tent (source of morning coffee)

Physical immortality

I just want to say that I have never seen myself as a “teacher” of physical immortality, mainly because I think it will happen to everyone anyway, whether I do this blog or not. I just intensely wanted a blog and thought this might be an unusual topic – to me I was an opportunist riding a wave – heh. The wave will have to happen with me focusing on a different wave (I always did see physical immortality as a context).

One annoying thing is that subscribers for LLF is the highest ever, lately. But maybe this is to do with the way it gets calculated—my subscribers have gone up before when I haven’t done a post for ages.

My first blog was about clouds and I had one reader, so it had a grand subscriber count of two! (me and H)

The future for LLF

I’m going to leave little LLF up on the internet, and will probably gradually convert him into a static website. Then I can add info here and there if it suits. I’ll probably do another (commentless) post some time after this, with a “welcome to this website” type of spiel. I don’t know if I can change the Home tab to Blog, and create a new Home page—and not mess with my permalinks.

I eventually did get to buy the dot com version of letsliveforever—maybe I’ll think of some hugely lucrative project for that domain name. And maybe I can plaster LLF with ads and make heaps of money from the huge amount of search traffic he gets – ha ha ha ha ha ha – ho ho ho ho ho ho – he he he he he.

Friends

Thank you to my blogging friends—you have no idea how much I have appreciated your friendship (well actually, I suspect you do). I won’t list you here, because I’ll end up leaving someone out, and we can’t have that! You know who you are. Thank you.

And good luck to you all with your projects!

I know I’ll be keeping in touch with many of you via email and Facebook—I’ll probably delete my Twitter account because I can’t stand it.

To those of you who have been reading this blog but I haven’t got to know you, thank you so much for taking an interest, and I wish you all the best, too.

See you around!

– love from Rob x

PS (Jan 15) – I’ve suddenly got a new project – a website about righting the wrongs the state government here are doing to our music culture, Music Doesn’t Make You Violent. If there are any bloggers out there who feel like linking to this site I’d REALLY appreciate it – the goings on over here are truly ridiculous (and damaging).More posts, a random selection:

Blogger Meet-Up!

Robin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:24:51 +0000

I met Kelly from SHE-POWER! She and MusicMan and Bunny came all the way down to Melbourne from Sydney for a wintry holiday, and we actually got to MEET each other!

Kelly is on a blogging break at the moment, but we have been reading each other’s blogs for some time now, and I must say that when we met it felt to me like we already knew each other. Which we did, of course, because when you meet online, you get to know someone from the inside – out, whereas in the outside world you get to know them from the outside – in (I hope that makes sense).

They came to our place and we all walked down the street for coffee, and then we wandered to another cafe for lunch, and then we hung around our place for a while before they were off to take Bunny to the pictures.

Frank and I loved meeting Kelly and family—I wish we could have had a little longer… we didn’t even hardly get to talk about blogging! Hopefully we can do it again some time.

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Just this morning a wonderful comment came in on my post: Wanting To Look Young. It was from Jeanne (on the right), and she put in a great poem she had previously written about aging. I KNOW many of you would like it, but it’s a little long to repeat right now—if you would like to read it, click here: Jeanne’s comment.

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Comments are OPEN!

Cheers – RobinMore posts, a random selection:

An Eventful Month

Robin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:56:53 +0000

I bought these flowers to celebrate Frank coming home and my birthday – I thought they looked nice in the late afternnon wintry golden light. Mum gave me the glass jug for Christmas after we spotted it together in a second-hand shop in Bendigo.

I’ve had a fair bit going on since my last post—and I hadn’t intended to leave it this long before posting again. Frank (my partner) ended up in hospital for 5 days in mid-June, and the whole thing wasn’t exactly fun for either of us. I took him to the emergency department of The Austin late on a Thursday night, and after numerous tests and treatments he was released on Tuesday lunchtime… on my birthday!

It was a fantastic birthday present—not just because we could spend my birthday together at home, but also because he was okay. At the final follow-up appointment last Friday the doctor said to just go home and forget about it… there was nothing wrong with him. We thought this anyway, but it was very nice to have it confirmed.

Distance healing

One thing that Frank said helped him during his hospital stay was the two distance Reconnective Healing sessions I organised for him with my blogging friend Jenny Mannion. Jenny is in upstate New York and we are in Melbourne, Australia. Jenny has written about distance healing in her blog post here: Distance Healing.

For the first session, late on our Saturday night, Frank didn’t know about it until I told him the next day, and for the second, late on Sunday night, he knew in advance, and he lay still and told the others he was meditating! He felt a warm glow/energy descending over him during the session, and some other sensations and awarenesses—he felt that it really made a difference.

So thanks Jenny! I met Jenny through blogging and had never heard of Reconnective Healing before starting this blog—I remember saying recently on Vered’s mommy blog that the benefits of blogging may not necessarily come through having thousands of readers. I think I have confirmed this for myself very nicely.

Reading material

Another thing that Frank said helped him throughout the whole thing was reading the Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East books.

He says he loves these books, and he is on book 3 at the moment. I got off on book 1, but found myself skimming through the others… we are planning to order the last book, book 6, from Amazon soon. On the right is him reading one of them before we decided we had to get him to the hospital—I think the lamps look pretty funny, especially his halo (it was his idea I put this photo in).

Hair-dos

At least Frank’s hair looked tidy while he was in hospital, because he had his dreads fixed up by the rasta guy down in Smith Street the day before being admitted. I’ve had my dreads fixed, too—I figured I may as well keep my hair appointments while I was too distracted to do anything useful. I think my hair looks better—Frank said I look like a little Dutch girl, which I’m not sure is a compliment to the sophisticated woman of the world that I am. He said it was a compliment.

Celebration

So now I am 56! We went down to the pizza place for dinner, and unfortunately were harassed by a woman with mental illness who roams around (we always sit outside), and as we were both feeling rather vulnerable and shaky we didn’t handle it as well as we usually would, and things escalated and got very upsetting.

After she was dragged off by the police we ended up having an enjoyable night (she was back 20 minutes later but didn’t bother us).

I had tiramisu with a candle and a sparkler for birthday cake and Frank and Rachael the waitress sang Happy Birthday!

Naughty computer… good computer

To top it all off I have been dealing with not one but TWO hard drive failures!

About a week into June my iMac wouldn’t start up, and the prognosis from Apple telephone support was that the hard drive “table” was corrupted and I would have to erase the hard drive and re-install the operating system, which I did.

Luckily I had a backup of my home folder and all my downloaded software DMGs on an external LaCie hard drive, which I update with a program called SilverKeeper. I hadn’t done a backup for 5 weeks (I’d been getting slack), but luckily all this coincided with my computer break, so I didn’t lose much. It took quite a while to get her up and running again… installing this, updating that.

Then 10 days after the first failure it all went pear shaped again! This time it was obviously a hardware failure—and two local Apple guys came around to replace my hard drive. While standing there watching the grey screen as the iMac was trying to start up, they decided that the dark grey smudges in 3 corners of the screen were a warranty issue too, and they could replace the screen too, but they would have to take her away.

Which they did, and after 8 days of me having no computer except for Frank’s laptop for checking Facebook, my iMac now has a new hard drive, screen and logic board (the logic board happened last November), and my 3-year AppleCare warranty expires in 3 months time. I can only conclude that this is a good thing!

Except that it is taking me a while to gradually bring everything back (a cleanout isn’t such a bad thing, though).

I’ll finish up with a photo of me with the caterpillar Frank gave me for my birthday – we had been admiring him in the window of the local bookshop, and Frank went and bought him over a week before my birthday!

Well that’s it for me, for now. I’m hoping to be back to posting once a week again, and I’m looking forward to dropping over to my blogging friends over the next few days to see how everyone is going. Cheers!More posts, a random selection:

Fires In Victoria

Robin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Image from The Age, a couple of days ago

I want to write something about the fires here in Victoria, but I don’t know where to begin.

I mainly want to let you know that none of my family or personal friends are directly affected – so at least I am doing that.

My friend Kelly has also done a post about the fires: Victoria Burns and a Nation Weeps.

I have been feeling so overwhelmed by the tragedy that I am not functioning very well – mainly just depressed and distracted, I suppose. The whole thing has come on top of immense heat waves and for me, dental issues that have involved a lot of pain but are being resolved now. I wasn’t in a really great space before it happened, is what I am trying to say.

The fires

I live in the city of Melbourne, which is the capital of the state of Victoria. We live in an almost-inner suburb, well away from any bush or risk from bushfires. Melbourne’s population is about 3.8 million people, and it is fairly famous for its “suburban sprawl”—the suburbs stretch on and on forever.

Last Saturday, the day the fires broke out, Melbourne had its hottest day since records began in the early 1850s. It got to 46.4 C (115.5 F), and it was even hotter in some places outside the city. The previous week we had several days of extreme heatwave as well, and there hasn’t been any rain for ages.

I want to stress that all this is not normal! Victoria has a pleasant, temperate climate—it has its hot spells and cold spells, but is generally easy to live in.

On Saturday the heat was accompanied by gale-force winds across the state, which gives extreme fire danger. Warnings were put out, sport and horse races were cancelled, the governnent said not to go out unless you really had to. Frank (my partner) and I stayed home—we were not going anywhere.

By Sunday morning the news reports were coming in about the fires and the death and destruction they had brought. I tweeted the following on Twitter, at about 1 p.m:

“Heartbreak here in Victoria – state still on fire – many dead or lost homes”

At that time they were saying there were 35, then 50 dead—I was sitting there looking at The Age website, and the page reloaded and it said “65 dead”. I couldn’t believe it. There were reports of burnt-out cars everywhere with human remains in them, and large burnt-out areas that hadn’t been searched yet.

We also discovered a fire a few kilometres away from my mother’s place in Central Victoria had destroyed homes—we only learned a day or so later there was one death and 57 homes lost. I felt like there was a big black hole in my heart. I went up to spend some time with Mum, and as I write this on Wednesday, I have just returned to Melbourne.

Reporting the fires

By now the horrific stories from survivors are filling the newspapers. I don’t normally read the newspapers or watch TV, but I did both while staying at Mum’s. I do read The Age website, but the stories are much more graphic on the telly and in the Herald Sun (Melbourne’s tabloid newspaper).

The worst stories are the ones about people who had to flee and leave others behind, people losing family members, the horrific injuries, and pets and other animals that didn’t survive.

I thought the reporting on the telly has been fairly sensitive for a change, and not as nausiatingly intrusive as it can be—maybe the situation is so grave that the media don’t need to go for that extra “shock value”, like they usually do.

Firebugs

Many of the fires are thought to have been deliberately lit. The tabloid newspapers make more of an issue of this than other news services, and I suspect from what people are saying online that news services overseas are emphasising this.

While it’s awful that people do this, I don’t personally think it is as prominant an issue as it might seem—simply because the conditions that day were so extreme that anything could have started those fires. I was interested to see that Kelly downplayed that side of it too, in her article [update note - see Kelly's comment below].

Current situation

As it stands, there are 181 people confirmed dead, and the Coroner is preparing for 300 – there are many people still missing. The fires are still burning—firefighters are struggling to stop two large fires from joining together at the moment.

Here are some websites of interest:

The Age - Melbourne’s quality newspaper
The Herald Sun – Melbourne’s tabloid newspaper
Australian Red Cross bushfire appeal
ProBlogger’s post about fires fundraiser

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More posts, a random selection:

Guy Finley Followed By An Illustrated Meme.

Robin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:08:29 +0000

I’m very pleased to be involved with a publicity event for Guy Finley’s book, The Essential Laws Of Fearless Living, which was released last June.

It’s all happening today, January 27.

You can go here now to find out what’s going on:

http://www.EssentialLaws.org/special/1242/

There are lots of free bonus gifts!

The following is an excerpt from the book:

Any time our attention is given to some thought or feeling, it animates that condition; our attention invests what it falls on with a certain kind of life energy. Another unknown phenomenon about attention is that when it is given to something—for instance, a timeless night sky—it facilitates within us a union with the qualities of that “world”. And this dynamic is in operation all the time: to consider something is to be connected to it.

If this is the case, it’s probably in our best interests to be careful what we give our attention to!

After its initial release last June, this book became the #1 best-selling title on Amazon.com, in 12 hours. I’m pleased about that, because it shows people are interested in breaking free of fear, and are wanting to be the real, authentic selves they know awaits inside.

Chapter 1

I’ve read the first chapter—I read it before going ahead with being part of this promotion—and I liked what I found. It begins with:

There is no brighter gift, no greater potential given to us human beings, than the presence of a timeless Light within us whose power makes all things possible. Its celestial character knows we have not been created to live as the captives of any fearful condition, let alone those we unconsciously create for ourselves.

Chapter 1 goes on to give practical examples of how we can reclaim our true selves—for example, this exercise:

Several times each day, whenever you can remember to do it, deliberately disconnect yourself from your own thinking. Choose awareness of your thoughts over being absorbed in the sensations they produce as they carry you along to get what they want.

I think it’s interesting that so many people today even think it’s possible to become less fearful, and more fulfilled and satisfied with their life. They are willing to see beyond being a helpless victim of random circumstances (e.g. their health, their workmates, the economy) and deliberately choose the world they want to belong to.

The popularity of Guy’s book attests to this! If you feel drawn to the writing you see here, you might like to check out today’s event. Here’s the link again:

http://www.EssentialLaws.org/special/1242/

Here’s to a fearless life!

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An illustrated meme

My good friend Dot from Deeper Issues has tagged me for a meme! (To non-bloggers – a meme means a set of ideas, and on blogs it usually means saying things about yourself.)

I don’t usually do memes, but I thought I’d make an exception this time. As I’m pretty boring, I thought I’d jazz it up with some pictures!

So here it is:

7 things you probably don’t know about me.

1. I used to work as a tour guide, both through the streets of Melbourne, and at the old astronomy observatory here. Melbourne is a Victorian gold city (as in Queen Victoria) – here is the observatory, followed by the old Stock Exchange, on the right, and an 1880s bank on the left.

2. I lived in the country for 4 years, when I first started school teaching. My housemate had a mare and a gelding, then we had a foal – this is me with the gelding, at our house (1978).

3. I grew up in a family who worked as volunteers keeping the Puffing Billy railway going.

4. My first ever paid writing job was about Melbourne’s sewerage system. The original sewerage pumps, installed in the 1890s, were steam ones, so my background in steam engines came in handy. This is the pumping station:

5. I used to play the flute and piccolo. The photo is me in about 1977.

6. I am a fully trained breathworker (rebirther), and Reiki practitioner (level 1). I’ve never hung out my shingle for either of them – but I am very grateful for the experience of integrating these two practices into my life.

7. My overseas travels consist of visiting Europe for 6 weeks, New Zealand twice, and Bali. And Tasmania and Kangaroo Island – but they don’t count.

The idea is that I tag 7 more people to do this meme, but I feel uncomfortable at the thought of tagging people who might not want to do it. So if you would like to do it, consider yourself tagged! If you wish, let me know and I will put your name and link below – to a limit of 7!

Cheers! – RobinMore posts, a random selection:

Festival Of Life

Robin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:09:19 +0000

Here’s my partner Frank sitting outside our tent at the music festival we went to last weekend. We got there Thursday afternoon and left Monday afternoon, so it seemed more like 5 days.

This is a relatively small festival—about 2000 people go. The site is in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, not far from the snowfields. Here’s a Google Earth bookmark of the festival site, to download, should anyone be interested… you double click on it and Google Earth will open, if you have it.

The festival was great, and we feel different. Apart from the sheer pleasure of mixing with the people, and enjoying the music, there’s something about camping in a bush setting that makes one feel more physical.

Or connected with the earth, or something. Perhaps the physical feeling comes from a mixture of using lots of different muscles while negotiating a tent over a few days, from having no showers, being surrounded by beautiful bush, and using the fancy composting toilets—I won’t describe them, because they would sound worse than they are, but let’s say they make you feel very ORGANIC.

The toilets have their own website, actually, called Natural Event, should any of you be interested in things like that.

Here’s a shot of some of our neighbours in the band camping area, with the toilets in the background—the hessian walls are the men’s pissoir.

I should mention that though there were no showers (other than some ‘bush showers’), there is a creek and a swimming hole that lots of people walk to—but we were too busy WORKING, to go.

Someone’s got to do it

I was doing stage managing and Frank was doing sound engineering. Frank’s first shift for the weekend was the late shift on the main stage on Friday night, which finished at about 4.30 a.m., and I stayed up with him, and we got to bed at about 5.30. I was rostered on the main stage Saturday night from midnight till close, which was 5 a.m., and Sunday night 7 p.m. to close at about 1 a.m.

The morning light before we went to bed on Saturday and Sunday mornings was beautiful. However it turned into bright sun which wouldn’t let us sleep more than 2 hours—especially when combined with the noise all the kids camped next to us made in their excitement. I would have liked some sleep—stage managing is quite high energy, with lots of rushing about… in this situation, anyway.

I was rather upset by Sunday afternoon, from exhaustion and an array of things going wrong from an organisational point of view, but we were both on a high after my Sunday night shift—Frank was able to assist me, fortunately, which made things easier.

It’s pretty exciting stuff, being in such a pumped environment. Here’s a photo Frank took while doing lights from side of stage, on the main stage:

This shot is one we took another year, of the main stage area during the day:

The people

The people make a festival, and the ones who go to this one make it great. There’s a feeling of connection between people, whether you know them or not. We had fun with people we already knew and with others we had just met.

We didn’t get to take many photos, but here’s one of the guys camping next to us making a coffee table out of some wood lying around (it turned out their band played on my stage on the last night):

This festival is held in an old gold mining area, and the small town nearby is called El Dorado. One of the bands on my stage were singing something like the following, at one point (to an up-tempo rhythm with people dancing wildly):

There’s gold in the hills
but the gold’s in the people
the gold’s in the people
the gold’s in the people

I thought it was great… ain’t it the truth?

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Bloggers’ Recording Project

The deadline for recordings is now December 17… there’s still time! I’ve added tips to the Bloggers’ Recording Project post.

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Friday The 13th.

Robin — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:06:56 +0000

It’s not Friday the 13th today, but it was the other day.

Our plumbing got blocked and we had a crowd coming over on Saturday the 14th.

We rent our house, so should have been able to ask the estate agent to get it fixed, but we knew from experience that it wasn’t going to happen in time. So we called a plumber ourselves, and $332 later he announced forlornly that he could not fix it—the blockage was terminal and the pipe would need to be dug up and replaced.

By evening Frank and I were exhausted. We were standing there collapsed in each other’s arms, barely able to move. The plumber did get things flowing enough for us to feel our plans would not be threatened, but we had been doing all that cleaning you put off till the last minute, and combined with the stress of the plumbing dilemmas (and extra not-so-pleasant cleaning), we wanted to fall into bed early.

But we had to go out because Frank had a sound mixing gig he couldn’t get out of. And it was FANTASTIC!

There were three acts, and they were all boys still at school. Kids that age aren’t allowed in pubs without their parents, so the place was full of both teenagers and their parents. The quality of talent was amazing. First up was a singer-songwriter, followed by two bands.

Saturday the 14th

Our party went off great, and the plumbing held out (and is still OK). It was based around a fire in the backyard—we put carpet on the grass and chairs out. We love having a fire in June when it is freezing cold. At this time of year the weather is usually cold and clear—the rain doesn’t really set in till July. We have a great fire dish and a friend supplies us with hardwood that doesn’t smoke. The fire is really hot, and no-one seems to want to go inside. Here’s a photo:

About half the people there were musicians. There were some guitars and other instruments seeing some action around the fire, and the piano inside got a workout. It was different, because at our other fires we just had iTunes playing most of the time. This time they kept wanting it turned off so they could play!

One really exciting thing for us was getting hold of a CD Frank recently recorded. It’s the second CD he has done where the artist went off and got it duplicated to sell it. The artist’s name is Sanna Lund, and she dropped into the party for a while to give us a copy. She is a traveller from Sweden who came into our lives via the open mic night Frank and I run on Tuesdays. She is a wonderful singer-songwriter with a fantastic voice.

As I write this she has not had a chance to upload the new songs to her MySpace—she has just left yesterday in a combi van for the warmer climes of northern Australia, as Swedish travellers are inclined to do at this time of year. When she does upload them, I’ll put one of them on the music player on our website. Here’s a photo of the CD being proudly held by Frank:

Sunday the 15th

The last people left at about 6.30 am—Mike was too sloshed to ride his bicycle so he fell into our spare bed. I guess we must have put the carpet and chairs away and cleaned up the mess, because it’s all gone now—I don’t really remember.

I do remember staggering down the street for pizza like we always do on Sunday nights.

Monday the 16th

Well it’s my birthday today! Fifty-five years old! Oh how we Geminis like to chat about our birthdays. Frank and I are going down the street to the Indian restaurant for tea—at the moment I’m just enjoying writing this and not doing much else. I just want to say thanks to my new blogosphere friends—when I began this blogging adventure 3 months ago I didn’t anticipate the feeling of community that has come with it.

I seemed to have strayed off-topic. I promise I will be back to ernestly discussing physical immortality next post—I know you are hanging out for it. Oh to have a niche with more than one person in it. (And I must say I REALLY appreciate everyone who has taken the time to leave comments.)

Cheers – RobinMore posts, a random selection: