'Our' dream house has sold.  Last week, the stunning Burringbar house was sold to some lucky family.  Felt quite sad for a bit.  However, if we haven't got it than it's not meant to be.  Have found another property (6 acres) near Cobaki for $730,000.  Beautiful old refurbished place with a view, much better grazing for the horses (one of the few drawbacks of the Burringbar house), much closer to the kids, the coast, the amenities.  Not that it will last long.  It's such a nice little place in a prime location that someone will soon buy it.

But I am not dismayed!  Have decided not to look at any properties until we have a contract on this one.  Have also decided that we will drop the price in the New Year, perhaps hitting the psychologically significant below $400,000 mark, like $399,999 or some such silliness. 

At the moment we are enduring heat waves.  Was 40 on Saturday.  Will be 38 for the next two days.  Doesn't make the idea of showing the house very attractive.  And it's been so miserable that we've done little outside.  I need to do the whole sweep rake cobweb thing again.  The geckos, bless them, are prolific poopers so every sill is peppered with two tone poo, rather like bird poo, which is just another clue to indicate birds descended from reptiles. 

Still working on the same drawing.  Slowly slowly pulling it into shape.  Sometimes, looking at the stunning work on Pinterest, I wonder why I persevere.  But then, whether my work is good or not, I cannot NOT draw. 

My sister has started following me on Pinterest.  At least we are in touch, by one remove but better than nothing.  Was so satisfying when we were emailing nearly every day when she was in Charlevoix.  I'm my own worst enemy because I'm not social and social occasions are difficult for me, yet it is sometimes lonely.  Richard is my darling but the relationship has changed because of his illness and mentally we aren't covering the same ground anymore. 

But I'm not going to slide into complaining and sadness.  We are healthy, have everything (can almost feel the solid tug on my bootstraps) so shut up and get on with it. 

Will go do yoga, with all fans blazing.  That always helps. 

Paris and the Terrorist Toddler Tantrums

Feel the need to write about the tragedy unfolding in Paris but am somewhat lost for words.  Back to the same conundrum - the nature of evil, black because we have white, light and darkness, on and off?  Having to accept these opposites to know the existence of, well, existence? 

But I can't excuse it that easily.  The mind of someone who, despite being indoctrinated, brainwashed, trained and promised glory in the afterlife, can indiscriminately kill and then, without hesitation, blow themselves up, is beyond me.  It's like trying to understand the thought processes of a dung beetle.  And I like dung beetles.  They do a great job and they're fascinating to watch but still, they're dung beetles. 

It's an alien intelligence.  I suppose if you think the world is coming to an end, which isis apparently does, than anything goes.  But they aren't mercy killings.  Drowning men in cages, setting them alight, beheading, all acts in the Theatre of the Cruel - acts which proclaim the pure evil of isis' allah.   Killing the infidels, the *apostates*, seems an exercise in futility when the end of the world is nigh.  Why bother?  Why establish a caliphate?  Why do anything? 

I suspect these terrorists, hate filled as they are, are really frightened.  Becoming a jihadist  - isn't it really about belonging?  about being recognized?  If you die killing others in the name of allah, then you will be one of the beloved of the prophet, surrounded by your admiring (dead) family and friends.  You are part of the group.  You're not alone.  You have a purpose (of sorts) and the scared little boy (or girl) has a support system for eternity.  The extreme cowardice and selfishness of the needy baby. 

Nevertheless, they must be stopped.  I have no sympathy.  They have chosen their reality and it is one of death and destruction.  People should have the right to choose their destiny and when they've chosen to have a nice meal at a good Cambodian restaurant on a Friday night in Paris, they should do so without toddlers having tantrums with AK-47s.

A Small Tribute to a Small Black Insect

Rushing past the kitchen sink this morning, I glanced down and saw a small black insect, about the size of a tomato seed, drifting drowned and dead through the wash water caught in a plate.  I stopped, and bending, peered closer to see what kind of insect it was.  It had short legs and antennae, a round body and seemed uniformly black.  It might have been a baby cockroach.  I don't know.  But it stopped me, at least momentarily, in my tracks. 

Just a tiny death in a world of death and destruction.  Hardly worth a second look, much less a second thought.  Yet it looked so forlorn, this tiny black insect wafting through the tiny current of splashed water.  It had existed, now it did not.  A chord was struck.

How valuable is life?  I am almost vegan yet I vacuum daddy long legs and stable flies while tenderly removing baby praying mantis, moths and wasps outside.  In playing God, I feel a slight, very slight, shadow of guilt when an insect is condemned to the swirling death of the vacuum. 

But it doesn't keep me awake at night.

Isn't that fly or spider as worthy of life as the praying mantis?  A thumbs up or thumbs down is determined purely on how I perceive the insect.  Flies are pests,  black and hairy, connoisseurs of dung and carrion and therefore doomed.  Praying mantis, with their humanlike folded arms, and despite eating flies alive starting at the head, are *cute* and therefore allowed to live.

But all creatures are different.  In flocks of galahs, all the birds look exactly the same,  yet I know from experience they are not.  Why should it be any different for smaller creatures? 

Loren Eiseley, the author, if I recall correctly, once wrote about stumbling on a curb, falling and bloodying his nose.  Rather than lamenting the accident and the pain he endured, he lamented the red blood cells, spilling on the pavement, to die in the sun. Thousands, perhaps millions of red blood cells, all alike yet all individual.  All dead.

When I sometimes cut myself and bleed I remember that.  We are not what we think we are.  We are a community of creatures, working more or less harmoniously, so that we may have the illusion that we have an identity, the identity of a smallish singular god, absolute and independent and complete. 

But we are not.  Whether we like it or not.  We are connected to everything and everything is connected to us.  Even to a small drowned insect in a not too special sink in a not too special house on a not too special Saturday morning in the country.