You see, I have been browsing Lynne Sanders-Braithwaite's photos on Facebook.
I am, I suppose, an old-fashioned type of person.
I don't want a modern brick venereal house that crowds out its block. I can do without a microwave, although they are helpful. I don't mind the odd draught. I object to spending multiple hours each day travelling just to preserve a "life style".
The things that I value are just those that you cannot get in Sydney. A sense of belonging, of community. A biggish house with plenty of space for books.
My family is locked into this place, rusted-on. I cannot enjoy driving to Bondi Junction to spend hours in a nondescript Westfield shopping centre looking at shops and especially clothes. The artificial light and air conditioning quickly creates a sense of oppression.
Don't get me wrong. I love the city life style. I love London and Paris and Rome, I enjoy visiting Venice, New York, Florence or Melbourne. It's just that I enjoy them as visitors. I even enjoyed Sydney when I did not live here!
I am a fairly simple person. To me, dropping down the road and the feeling of interaction are central.
I have to accept that I can no longer have the life style that I once knew. It just is. But the sense of loss is there all the time. It hurts, sometimes as today it hurts very badly. I just don't know.
4 comments:
Tangentially: Our nearest neighbours live about 3 km away. I see or speak to them more frequently than I did to the people who lived in the neighbouring apartments during our two year stint in Sydney (Glebe).
I think that that captures it, Gordon.
I heard on the radio once way back, that as soon as a community needs to be named "community", then it already is not one.
Noone calls this Community but it surely IS one.
I, too, am not the Mall Success. I am easily confused within air conditioning. Today is the first day of my daughter's unemployment with a month before her baby is due so i called her in Bellingen to see how she was as a 'worker' and first time mother to be at 30. First day off work and two other mothers were there visting. I LOVE VILLAGES. Even within Cities, we need Villages.
I did see the left foot of a mummy at U.N.E. Antiquities Museum, Jim. That cheered me up.
I think that's right, Lynne. Traditionally when I have spoken of our loose on-line community I use the word village. Community is one of the big words like the economy, polity or society. Like you, I identify with the smaller.
How exciting for you and your daughter! And its so nice that others dropped around.
Do you know, I have never actually been to the Antiquities musuem. I must go!
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