The first shave: A rite of passage

A young man’s first shave is a rite of passage, one of many moments that mark out the transition from boyhood to manhood.
I wanted to acknowledge and celebrate this moment in my sons life with something ceremonious and special, not just to honour him, but to also acknowledge and thank the men in his life that have each stepped up to be a trail blazer, mentor, friend and confidante….Men who have each been invaluable contributors to the development of Asa’s character and identity as a young man.

These 4 ride-or-die men are: His uncle Demian, uncles-in-law Gary and Jordan and his personal trainer Chris.

On December 29 Asa was surprised by them all and taken to have a first shave that he will remember for the rest of his life and film maker Matty Nyhuis was there to capture it all…..

The end

 

 

I don’t know why I stopped writing in the first place…
And that ladies and gentlemen is what you call a lie. I do know why I stopped writing but with all things regrettable, lies come to our aid on horses that can gallop faster than those carrying the truth.
So the truth? Well I don’t want to say. Thats why I didn’t.
I don’t even want to now but lets just get it over with and i’ll tell you what happened. 

Beetle and The Spider

It was late and the bottle of wine was slowly emptying and the tongues of cigarette smoke licked my cheeks as they rose and assembled in haze above us. We said we hoped it would rain.
There are not many things that go together like lateness and wine and rain on a tin roof.
So when it rained we drank more wine and I told stories and said silly things.

And then there was Beetle.

Don’t be a jerk to your kids

I was at a store today and bumped into the mum of a boy in my sons class who has often been one of a few riding in my car on class trips.

He always rides shot gun.
He winds the electric window up and down while he talks about how cool his mum and dad are.
I know that he considers his dads best friend as a good and kind mentor because he literally used the words ‘good and kind mentor’ in his description of him.
He is articulate, polite, amusing…just a really cool kid. 
At the store today I told his mother that it had been a pleasure meeting her boy, that he had always behaved respectfully (he has), used exceptional manners (he does) and how proud she must be to have a son who was turning into such a fine young man.
He was standing next to her as I said this and was still at her side when she responded with this:
‘Pffft, I wish he was like that with me, he’s nothing but terror at home haha’

Nah, dont do that to your son.

I always try to make a point of complimenting a child to their parents if they have shown beautiful character in any way. Almost every time I get a flippant, sarcastic ‘funny’ reply along the lines of ‘well you don’t see them at home when they are being X, Y, Z (insert flippant, betraying comment here) hahaha’
I don’t think thats funny. I don’t think thats funny at all.

Back your kids man.

This world is going to have more than enough criticism, judgement and hurtful words to sling at our sons and daughters without us joining in with the chorus of it.
Even if you’re just being flippant or trying to be ‘funny’, its not cool.

Kids are trying to get by in this world just like we are.
I know for example, that I have irritating, imperfect parts of my own character that I’m trying to work on and deal with. If someone praised something good that they had seen in me in a remark to someone I trusted only to hear that trusted person tear me down with a sarcastic and cutting remark, id be devastated.
I’d feel betrayed.

I am a mother of two young men and my job is to stand by my sons, to give them strong and marvellous descriptions to grow into. So as far as anyone else is concerned? My sons are: Strong, Brave, Polite, Considerate, Insightful, Generous, Sharp and Beautiful human beings.
The times they struggle is safely kept between me and them, its not fodder for me to use to embarrass them or brush off a compliment of their character from another person.

Please don’t betray your sons and your daughters.

If someone compliments the character of your child: Tell them that you already know it. Tell them that your son, your daughter is not only what they have said he/she is, but that they are also brave, funny, a fast runner, a high jumper… the love of your life.
Children hear the words of the people they trust the most and those words move beyond their eardrums and settle deep into their spirit.

Don’t betray them.

I can’t put a title to this

Dearests,
My dad has passed away quite suddenly and thrown the world into a shambles. Please bear with me as I take some time off to do the things daughters have to do when their fathers go away.

I’m still here, I’m just going to be a little quiet for a little time…

Thank you for sticking around,
Yours,
Vanessa

600 of anything is a lot let alone 600 days of celibacy…

600 days! I’ve been a ghost over the last few months, but I have been very much still walking through these 1000 single days and can confirm that I am still as pure as the driven snow, I have made it to day 600 with celibacy still firmly in tact! Yahoo!
I have been neglecting the blog due to the fact that I have been holidaying in New Zealand having the best summer of my entire life. I have never been so happy and have been busy with incredible experiences and I am sorry that I haven’t published an update in so long but hey, I knew the freedom and carefree time of summer would make sticking to the single days pledge a bit harder so I have taken to keeping myself very busy to stay distracted. Oh, I have so many things to tell you about though and have been chipping away on a post when I find spare moments and will try and get that up in the next few days.

I am more content and happy now than I have ever been, now lets get the last 400 days over and done with!

Losing count…

Where are we? Do the days ever matter anymore?
Have I lost count? Yes.
When? I don’t remember. Probably around the time that I realized that it wasn’t about the days anymore, it wasn’t about counting down as if day 1000 was the goal. That day 1000 may never come just as tomorrow may never come as just as planning for the future keeps us facing the future, you cant place the future on a pedestal as being the point. Because it isn’t the point.

Now is the point. Just now.

Half way baby

 

I cant believe the date passed me by and I didn’t know it! On October 19th it was day: 500
My mother said that it has been so long since I had written and people may think I have ‘fallen off the wagon’ so to speak so before I go home now and write to you all properly I want to celebrate this moment with you and just let you know that there has been no falling off any wagon. I have just done 500 single days as true as I had promised I would on day one.
I have so much to tell you, oh so much! If I have learned anything these past 500 days it would be this: Life can change in a moment.
My next post will go into all the details and I will begin writing that now. HALF WAY BABY!

447 days and a scattered deck of cards

Its been so long since I really wrote anything and for a while it was because I felt too far away from my own mind to do so, and then when I came back to my mind I found so many thoughts collected there, and just like standing before a scattered deck of cards, I didn’t know where to begin sorting through it all so I just stood there and stared at it all for weeks.
All those thoughts…

I promised I would write about him some day

I decided I would walk back to my Hotel that day, even though I had spent all day and most of my money shopping and my shoulders were aching from the weight of the bags. Flagging down a tuk-tuk would made the trip quick and easy and with the unbearable heat rising up from the sidewalk and bouncing off the city walls and radiating down from above it is a wonder I chose to walk that day but at the time I decided that I would like to wander through the alley ways and stalls and nod my head in greeting to the people of Sukhumvit Road and thats all it was at the time. But it is only in retrospect that we see the significance of seemingly small decisions such as these. We don’t realise how our preferences, no matter how small, act as the fingers and the palms and the curves and the creases of hands to clay on a spinning potters wheel. Every single movement, no matter how slight changes the shape of the clay… just as every step favoured over the other, or every appointment made in favour of the previous day, or the day after can alter the shape of our life.

And so with choosing to drag those heavy bags upon my tired shoulders on weary legs through the streets of Bangkok that day I didn’t know that it would mean meeting him, and in meeting him, I didn’t know it would change something in me for the rest of my life.

Even the poor. Even the rich

Me on our beautiful South Coast beach, Australia at sunset.

There is a scripture, which I think of sometimes. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

I consider what people suggest life is about. I consider too how even those with all the ingredients for happiness: A family, job security and a place to call home, can then be struck with depression or ill health and so I wonder how then can someone truly be at peace, and if they can, where would they find it?

Things.

Things that can make me happy:
Orange juice
Watching someone try to whistle after getting a tooth filling
Knowing all the words to a song
Olive oil
The smell of the smoke after you blow out a match
The way my son doesn’t believe that I understand his jokes
The sing-song way the women talk in old movies
Spagetti
Fire
Films that change my life
Photographs of people doing something they always wanted to do
Live music
That cows have best friends

Things that can’t make me happy:
Things.

The first year passes by…

One year passes me by. And yes, I have remained true.
635 days to go….

Don’t be a scumbag

Life can be cruel, but it is cruel and hard on everyone in different ways. If you grew up in a shitty environment with people who treated you with disdain and cruelty and down right neglect and abuse then this is horrible. Its understandable to be hurt and then battle with confusion and disfunction as a result through your childhood and teenage years but you know what? Come adulthood turn and face that thing head on.
There is nothing that no scumbag mum or dad or uncle or upbringing can do to truly defeat you unless at some point you give up, and if you give up because it was all too much, then maybe no one could even fault you for that, but if you use that scum bag of a father or scumbag of a mother or scumbag of an upbringing to then JUSTIFY treating another human being with neglect and abuse and generally being a scum bag yourself, then you have lost a leg to stand on.
Man up/woman up and learn about accountability.
The greatest men and women in our history have created that history with nothing more than the memories of tragedy/abuse/loss/stolen innocence and an understanding that at some point you have the choice to either stop the cycle, or to keep being a scumbag.
Dont be a scumbag.

This is the very definition and beauty of true art

Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again…

At her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed the brilliant piece ‘The Artist Is Present’, a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum’s atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her. Ulay arrived without her knowing and this is what happened.

I post this for my own Ulay.

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Sometimes I play this game

Sometimes I play a game.
In the game you guess the lives of the strangers around you. For example the man using the pay phone with the glasses on the end of his nose is a security guard who stands in front of his full length mirror at night quick drawing his walkie talkie and quoting from ‘Lethal weapon’.

The baby named Baby, part 2

So where was I? Oh yes. We had just finished living at the quarry, and then we were moving.

Do you know anyone who has lived on a farm? Yes? How about someone who lived on a farm, but in a bus? Yes? Ok, well then do you know anybody who lived on a farm, in a bus, with circus performers? No? Well let me tell you the next part of this story so that you can finally say that you do in fact know someone who lived on a farm, in a bus, with circus performers.
I don’t know why we moved from the quarry I really don’t remember. I wonder who initiated the move?
My mother? Did she get tired of pulling her kids down from precarious cliff faces? Was the dust getting to her?
Or was it my father? Did he grow bored of living in that quarry? Was it too unoriginal? Did he want a more curious address?
Well for whatever the reason was, all I know is that the next chapter of our life was… interesting.

The baby named Baby, Part 1

I thought I would tell you the very strange and curious story of the baby named Baby. Some of the things you are about to read will sound too strange to be true, but it is this story that will prove that sometimes truth can indeed be stranger than fiction, and I know that everything in this story is true, as the baby is me, and the story is mine.

I call this tale, “The baby named Baby.”

US radio interview with Rowan Radio 89.7

Good morning!
I was interviewed by New Jersey station “Rowan Radio” 89.7 earlier this week for their ‘Womens room’ segment to discuss onethousandsingledays.com and what i’ve learnt so far.
I am continued to be humbled that the lessons I have learnt through my life experiences could have the power to speak to people beyond my physical reach.
Many thanks to Allie Volpe and to Rowan Radio!
You can listen to the interview online HERE