The great thing about uni holidays is that you can do whatever you like on the weekend and not worry about studying.

You can sleep in, you can go for 7km runs, you can go for walks along the beach or up King Street checking out all the book stores and second hand clothes, you can go to parties, dance clubs, musicals, movies and you can spend heaps and heaps of time with friends and family. It is wonderful.

You can also read books and I am reading a pretty interesting book at the moment too. It is called the “man who feel in love with the moon” by Tom Spanbauer. It is really full on so I am not sure if I would totally reccommend it but it has some interesting things to say about telling stories, sexuality, abuse, indigenous cultures and family. One of my favourite parts in the book is when the protagonist is comparing how white americans (tybos) tell stories and how the indiands tell stories. He says:

“Indian people talk about how the world is. Their stories are about how the wolf got the name wol. How mosquitoes got to be such nasty little things. How elk got antlers, what bears say to bees when they wan the honey, how river sings a song to trees and how trees sing back.
Indian people talk about the mountain – the mountain the morning sun rises behind – how it is the reason that we are acting the way we are. We may think that what we are doing is what we are doing, but really what we are doing is being snagged by the mountain.
What tybos talk about is: gold, money, dollars and dollars but even though that’s what they’re saying that’s not what they’re talking about. What tybos are talking about is hoe they’re going to be – somewhere down the line and around the corner – talking about themselves as though they weren’t living yet. Afraid of being who they are now.”

The stories that we tell are so much part of who we are and how we understand the world and he goes on to discuss that this difference in story telling led to to so much misunderstanding between the indian americans and the white americans and therefore much poverty for the indians. I don’t really know but that seems to be the case here too.

This has also challenged me to talk more about the present. To live more in the present. I know I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about where I am going and what I will be doing. So much so I don’t notice the present just flying by. Birthdays always remind us of how fast time goes and I want to be flly present for as much of it as I can be.