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.
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).
ReplyDeleteI think that that captures it, Gordon.
ReplyDeleteI heard on the radio once way back, that as soon as a community needs to be named "community", then it already is not one.
ReplyDeleteNoone 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.
ReplyDeleteHow 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!