Yoga with the elephants

At lunch on Friday, Maureen had a whole heap of free tickets to The Melbourne Zoo which she'd been given, and she gave me two. They had to be used today, and there was going to be 'yoga with the elphants' in the morning.
So this morning me and Ray caught the train out to The Zoo, and indeed there was a yoga class, and they brought an elephant out to take part in the exercises. Was a bit strange. I don't know much about yoga at all, but I don't see why you would get an animal to take part in a spiritual exercise that it probably doesn't understand.
After that, spent a few hours wandering around watching the animals, and trying to avoid all the noisy kids and their noisy parents.


I don't think I'd been to The Zoo since about 1998, and I saw it fairly differently today. I didn't like seeing the bigger animals like the lions and tigers and seals in their little enclosures. Seemed like they'd be pretty bored spending their whole time there, and not even getting to hunt their food like they would in the wild. Was talking to Maureen about it, and she reckons it's okay because we and the animals are all one. She thinks the animals choose to live in The Zoo, because they're becoming extinct, and they want to stir people's consciousness.

This city is different

It was pretty amazing taking off from Avalon Airport at six yesterday morning, and seeing my home from so high up in the air that the CBD just looked tiny.

The sunrise was amazing. For ages, while the land was still pretty dark, I was trying to work out whether I was looking at clouds or trees covering the land. Was sure we should've been way, way to high up to see trees, but didn't think we'd be anywhere near that high above the clouds. They seemed to just sit on top of the land in patches.

We landed in Sydney at about 7:15.
When my train to Central Station arrived I got a big surprise, because the windows were right down at the same level as the plantform, as though the whole train had been rammed into the ground, or the platform had been built way to high. Then I had a proper look at the train and realised that it was actually a double-decker train, and I'd been looking at the windows of the bottom deck. When you get on you can either go upstairs or downstairs. All very nice, but someone had spewed on the floor.
When I arrived in the CBD I found my way to the backpackers where I'm staying, which is in Chinatown. There were a lot of noisy drunk people around the city, and there was a lot of garbage, and it smelled yuck. Reminded me a bit of Melbourne, but perhaps a nightmare version of Melbourne. After I'd locked my big backpack and my computer in my cupboard at the backpackers I went out to explore. Ended up walking around Cockle Bay and being overwhelmed by the amount and size of the hotels there. It looked unAustralian - whatever that means. Was also overwhelmed by how big, tall and crammed together the buildings of Sydney's CBD are compared to Melbourne's. It's like the buildings just form one great big solid block of city. The fact that the roads just go all over the place (the roads in Melbourne are in a grid) was really annoying and disorienting as well, and it's really weird how there's so many bridges going all over the place. There's road and railway bridges going right over outdoor shopping centres! It all feels pretty chaotic. Apparently when D.H. Lawrence visited Australia in the '20s, he wrote,

'There was the vast town of Sydney. And it didn't seem to be real, it seemed to be sprinkled on the surface of a darkness into which it never penetrated.' (Kangaroo)

I think I understand something of what he meant now. The city seems kind of fake, like it can't really be serious. It doesn't really seem like it's meant for people to live in.
I decided to try and find the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House by following the coast. A lot of the rock that Sydney's built on seems to have been cut into terraces, which remind me a lot of the big concrete walls in Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing.

I ended up finding the Bridge and then finding my way back to Chinatown.
After I had lunch I decided to try and find Glebe, because I was wanting to visit Cafe Church in the evening. By this time I was starting to get used to the city, and know my way around a bit better. I eventually found my way to Glebe, and I actually really liked it there. One of the first things I saw in Glebe was this big park where people play soccer, which has a lot of fig trees around the edge and a really old bridge going through the middle, for trams to go over. There was some familiar-looking street art on the bridge.

When I'd found where Cafe Church was I caught the tram back into town. I was surprised to find that there wasn't a ticket machine like we have in Melbourne, but a tram conductor selling and validating tickets. I can hardly remember when we had tram conductors in Melbourne, but it seems like it would be a more enjoyable job being a tram conductor, and giving people their tickets, rather than only having the unpleasant task of checking whether people have tickets and fining them if they don't. It would be a lot easier to not seem nasty.
Hung around Cockle Bay until it was time to go to Cafe Church. There are a lot of water features around the city, particularly around Cockle Bay. I suppose water's a pretty important part of this place, seeing as the harbour goes right through the city.

At Cafe Church we had a look at some of Henri Nouwen's ideas about silence as a spiritual discipline. Had already been thinking about the fact that I'd hardly spoken to anybody all day, until I'd come to church, and I thought about how much that contrasts with the big, noisy, chaotic city I'm currently in the heart of. So while I'm here, I think that one thing I'll try to to do is keep enjoying being quiet.

Confest

A couple of people have asked about Confest. Well, it rained really bad all the way up, then stopped just before we arrived. So pretty much veryone who set up their tents before us got flooded out, but we didn't, and we walked in the mud the next day. The weather was a lot cooler than it is supposed to be usually, so there were hardly any naked people, which was a relief. It was really really cold at night. Eco forgot the canes for his tent (apparently his sister's fault) and reckoned he was just going to wrap himself in his tent and sleep on the ground, but he ended up sleeping in Nomes' car and eating Russian elephant garlic to keep warm.
Oh yeah, EcoPaul ended up coming, which hadn't been certain when I blogged the day before we left. We met some of Nomes' friends up there, and camped with them, so we had a pretty big camp, tweleve people.
I was amazed at how much stuff Don brought. He had a little landcruisery thing full of stuff. He had a fridge and a freezer with ice cream in it. He brought more food than me, Ray, Karen and Nomes brought between us. He had a stove and he cooked pizzas.
Didn't actually end up going to many worshops, just one of Christian meditation which wasn't very good and one of spiritual vegetarianism. The guy who was running the mediatation workshop kept getting all defensive whenever someone disagreed with him on something, and he seemed to think that it was more important for men to respond to God than it was for women, and that women could only be connected to God through men. And I wasn't real sure what to do with much of the stuff he actually talked about because most of the discussion didn't end up being about meditation.
Saturday night, when me and Nomes and Ray were trying to find the fire circle, these people aksed if we'd play drums for them. Was fun. They're in a band called Stoked. Can't find their website. Nomes has one of their CDs, so that might have it. Afterwards we found the fire circle and watched the firetwirlers. One of them was a guy who did Production at the Arts Academy in Ballarat whose name I can never remember, but I don't think he can ever remember mine iether, so it's okay.
There was a group of Christians from around Sydney who were running a kids tent, whith games and music and stories and toys and stuff, and they also ran a Jesus gathering for easter Sunday, which we went along to. Lots of music and a sermon on the topic of Why You Have To Become A Christian and a hand washing ceremony.
Sunday night there was a concert, which anyone could take part in, which was opened by Wendy Rule. We went to watch Wendy Rule because one of our friends from Credo likes her music, and it was pretty interesting, and some of it was pretty freaky.
It was really nice being away from the city for the weekend, and that people were so friendly. We had a few of the people who were camping near us over for tea, whereas normally when you go camping it's not surprising for people to be annoyed at having other camping nearby.
Monday morning we almost left without Eco because we'd told him we wanted to leave by 11, and it was 12 and no-one had seen him all morning. (Last time he went to Confest he stalled for five hours because he didn't want to go home.) But he turned up just as we were about to leave without him. And we told him that he couldn't open his 'yoghurt' in the car. On the way home he read the Melways to us. Hurrah. That's enough.

Lenten Reflections

Tom Sine has uploaded Mark Piersen's Lenten Reflections onto Flickr, here.

Black GST

I didn't end up staying inside all day after all.
This afternoon I went with Gin to visit Black GST's camp, at King's Domain. When we got there we were asked to put some gum leaves in the sacred fire (from the Tent Embassy), and then stand in the smoke, to get rid of any bad spirits from outside the camp.
It turned out that Mary, who worked on one of the murals in our laneway, was there painting a map of the camp. There was a lot of painting going on, as well as music, cooking, football and preparation for subversive action.

The Hare Krishnas

This afternoon EcoPaul asked if I wanted to go down to Albert Park, to have tea at the Hare Krishna temple, and then go to the beach.
So after Eco had finished work, we caught the tram down to Albert Park, and then walked to the temple. We went through a garden, to the back of the kitchen, to grab some steel trays to eat off, because Eco won't use the disposable cardboard trays.
One of the monks in the kitchen was talking on his mobile phone, so Eco yelled at him to turn it off, reasoning that it'd give everyone cancer. The monk said he wasn't going to get rid of his phone, because millions of cows are being killed every day, and he can use his phone to organise action against this. Eco asked the monk what he thought about whales being killed, and the monk said that cows are more important, because we drink the cow's milk, so the cow is like our mother. Then Eco said that whales are the cows of the sea.
We went into the prayer room, where there were statues of various forms of Krishna, paintings of Krishna's story, and a statue of Srila Prabhupada. Eco explained what some of the pictures were about.
Then we went and sat in the garden for a while. There were a few people chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, which sounded a lot like Pentecostal christians when the speak in tongues (just like the Indigo Children do when they speak Star Language).
Eco was saying stuff about how he reckons Jesus was a vegetarian. I said I didn't think he was, because a number of times he gave people fish to eat. So Eco said that that was the same as me giving people meat to eat in Credo. So I pointed out that I'm not actually a vegetarian, I just try not to eat too much meat. So Eco started yelling out to everyone, 'He's not a vegetarian! He eats meat!'
Later we went upstairs to eat. We had buckwheat, tomato, zuccini, tofu, potato, a dessert that had coconut in it, and an orange drink. When we had finished eating, we went back to the kitchen to wash our trays. I went over to the bins to get rid of my polystyrene cup. One of the monks was hosing the concrete around the bins.
I said to him, 'Is this bin one for garbage?'
He said, 'What does it look like?'
So I walked across the patch of concrete he was hosing, to put my cup in the bin.
Then he said, 'Fine, would you like to clean the concrete yourself?'
So I said, 'Sorry, I just had to get to the bin.'
He smirked and said, 'Have you ever been to a temple before?'
I said I hadn't, and he gave me a smug look. Most of the other people were very nice. But that was probably the worst conversation I've had with a religious person since I visited a certain church last year, where the pastor said that if he wasn't a Christian he'd punch me.
After that we walked down to the beach. Eco turned off someone's sprinkler system on the way.

Star language

Monday night I watched Speaking in Tongues (John Safran and Father Bob's new current affairs/spiritual/talk show). Their first guest was Solreta Antaria, an Indigo Child. They believe that some people these days are psychically evolved, and can communicate with each other using 'star language'. So they got her to say some stuff in star language, and if anyone thought they understood it, they were supposed to email their translation in. It sounded a lot like how a lot of Pentecostals sound when they speak in tongues.