Geographic Hearts

Author Archives: stellacarr20

• The Weight of a Joyful Thing

  Posted at 12:47 pm by stellacarr20, on December 7, 2019

  I admit it. I’ve joined the Marie Kondo bandwagon. But as I like to think of it, the better sort. As in I’ve actually read the book, examined her sock folding diagrams, and even asked Google about what it defines this thing called Joy as. Google dictionary states that joy is ‘A feeling of great pleasure or happiness.’ I interpret this definition as where joy is a slightly more intense experience than pleasure. Possibly with a greater underlay of physical energetics than the emotion of happiness alone.

  For the last year I’ve been slowly getting rid of the Things that I think weigh me down. I pick items up as Marie Kondo states we should do and ask the essential Kondo question ‘Does it spark joy?’

  

  And, contrary to mocking popular belief, I have found I can rid myself of almost everything that does not spark joy. Even if it is an associative joy. For instance, functional things like my running shoes make me feel good because, hello – exercise equals endorphins. They are also orange. And orange is my favourite colour.

  Equally, my fry pan enables me to cook up healthful stir fries of Chinese greens in sesame oil. It too is associative of joy. The joy of nourishment. Of feeding myself Good Foods. Of cooking (a hobby I find a great amount of Joy in.)

  This ‘Simplification of Stuff’ jag was sparked by two things. Firstly, shifting into a tiny studio bedsit that literally had no room for most of my belongings. I had stuff that had to be stored elsewhere initially. Having access to a friend’s garage was useful. As was access to my mother’s car for transporting said stuff as I sorted and culled.

  Now however, I’ve destuffed enough to say I can fit all I own into one room and a small bathroom/laundry space. This is inclusive of a mountain bike which (just) fits behind my bathroom door.

  It was partly a situational thing that sparked my journey into getting rid of belongings. But there was nothing joyous about this time. I was leaving a living situation that wasn’t great for my wellbeing.

  It was a running away time. A running for cover time from my own ballooning feelings. It was a free falling kind of getting rid of things. I was trying to make room for better things and to get rid of the things that might reminded me of the bad…

  –

  Also of relevance to my simple living journey was The Minimalist’s documentary on Netflix. Even if I found Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus rather irritating in their uniforms of oh-so-cool-label-jeans and black t-shirts stretched across their nicely taut biceps (and yes, I did notice.)

  Despite this, I did love the idea of reducing to what you need so you can live better. For them that seemed to be telling everyone else about what they thought ‘Better Living’ was. Good for them, I guess. But I wasn’t totally sold on their enthusiasm of getting rid of everything to show you cared about your life. It felt a little polemical. Possibly taken to the wrong end of extreme.

  I also found their podcast immensely boring – just two guys riffing off and ranting at each other for hours on end. Maybe I just didn’t ‘get’ the podcast medium – I don’t know.  

  Anyway, to me, it felt a bit like ‘The New Minimalists’ were just selling yet another lifestyle. (Sell being the operative word here, America where they are from is after all capitalism’s king and both Joshua and Ryan came from business backgrounds…) It felt to me like they had made minimalism yet another idea to sell to the world.

  

  I did find myself following much of their advice though because I really felt I needed to live better. And they both seemed so totally enthusiastic about their made-minimal-lives. I wanted to feel that enthusiastic about my life too.

  By combining Kondo’s Shinto influenced interior and emotional design principles with the New Minimalist’s more gung-ho dude approach of cut your losses and reduce-to-rebel I felt like I’d almost found an ideology that worked for me.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  Because Kondo’s obsessive clothes folding techniques and the fact, she had a whole chapter devoted to it in her book irritated me. It felt way too close to OCD. I’ve already mentioned my hesitancy about what I term ‘the sell’ of minimalism by Joshua and Ryan.

  However, both these philosophies got me going in the right direction. I assessed the piles of fabric that I’d collected for sewing/ craft projects and that had sat stewing in moth- ball-laced-boxes for months untouched. I sorted all my yarn stash by colour and fibre type (yeah ok, I too have a touch of Kondo OCD.) I organised my embroidery threads by colour and weight. They lay like mini rainbows in the sewing box I had inherited from my grandmother.

  I sold a few of the things I’d decided to discard on Trade Me. I also upcycled what I could for practical domestic use. Old t-shirts cut into rags for cleaning. Bulk glass peanut butter jars for storage of dried beans and lentils. With the jars sitting in regiments gleaming with their contents of small circles of plant protein, the pleasure I got from my well organised pantry sparked a joy that surprised me.

  

  Now, as at writing, here at the start of December 2019, I can classify my belongings into five sections.

  • Clothes; which includes shoes and coats.
  • Books of various topics (mostly poetry, vegan cookbooks, novels by women writers and simple living texts). I set myself to one medium sized bookshelf full. I kept to this restriction.  
  • Work papers and the associated technology – SEE: smart phone, laptop, gadget chargers and an extra computer monitor because I like working with a double screen.
  • Kitchen gear; teapots, capacious mugs, food processor, vintage plates, muffin tins, soup ladles etc.
  • And, craft gear. Yarn. Embroidery threads. Fabric scraps. Needles of various kinds. Crochet hooks. My sewing machine. A biscuit tin full of buttons. And the associated craft books outlining techniques or serving as inspiration.

  These categories do merge in the way that life is not made of clear demarcations. See the craft books as a cross genre example. My possessions are also not clearly demarcated. Neither is how I go about using them whether it be referring to a book on how to knit lace or writing up vegan recipes on my laptop.

  I think this refinement of Stuff is pretty damn good going for someone who used to be a bit of a packrat. In my ‘Angsty Artist’ days I collected a heck of a lot of crap… I had ideas of being a mixed media upcycle artist who made paintings of distraught faces out of packaging waste, magazine cuttings of skinny celebrities, medication tabs (there was a message here) and how I’d splatter these faces with black ink as a metaphor for my depression.
  
  Angsty Arty Stella was all about Getting the Bad Feelings out. Messily. Because that was how they felt. Fucking messy. Collecting crap also felt a bit like having some semblance of control. And I needed that when it felt like the whole world was spinning faster and faster like a kid trying to dizzy itself and succeeding until it fell over and had trouble getting up again.

  I’m feeling less messy these days I’m happy to say. I only ever made one distraught face painting. I have it hung on my wall as a reminder of where I’ve been and how far I’ve come. Its full of lace and fabric pieces and photos from films. It is slashed open in lots of places. The very body of the artwork is wounded. I love this artwork immensely. It is full of pain. But because it is full of pain that means that that pain is no longer inside me.

  

  
  And because of that I have space inside of me for Other Things. I have space to make the yoyo flower brooches that I gather and stitch slowly as a break between typing sessions. I pin these blooms to the breast of my purple tweed jacket. It is like I wear a meadow on my chest.

  I have the energy to do yoga stretches twice a day and cook healthy plant-based meals rather than live off fried potato all the time.

  I also have the emotional fortitude to now run writing workshops for other women and listen to their stories. To offer comfort when they are brought to tears.

  In the New Year I’m also facilitating sustainable living courses at my local community adult education centre. I’ll be teaching about ethical shopping, low-waste living and communicating lifestyle tips from a previous era where little was thrown away and household items were valued enough to be cared for and repaired.

  I hope that in these workshops I will present the best ideas I have gathered from Kondo and The New Minimalists. Maybe not the main ideas they proposed within their personal ideologies. But the ones that resonated most with me as someone trying to live joyfully in an oftentimes difficult world.
  Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged Marie Kondo, Minimalism, Simple Living, The Minimalists

• Rory Gilmore: A Debatable Woman

  Posted at 8:38 pm by stellacarr20, on November 17, 2019

  Even good girls can grow into debatable women. Perhaps all the more so for they have so much to live up to. Perfect GPA’s. Perfect skin. Perfect relationship track records. Which is why Amy Sherman Palladino’s TV character Rory Gilmore is of interest. She started out as the archetypal good girl. Good at school. Good to her grandparents. Good at being good. And she dated a nice guy too. Kudos to her.

  But then she grew up. Life got complicated. She fell in love with someone else who was, I have to say it, a hell of a lot more interesting. She broke someone’s heart. Had hers broken by said more interesting guy. She went to college. Cheated with her ex. Stole a boat. Lost her confidence. Found solace in a beautiful rich boy with few morals and a lot of cash.

  Fast forward to The Revival where she’s in her early 30’s. She’s dating someone so forgettable the joke is she doesn’t recall his name and leaves him behind at coffee shops. She’s still sleeping with said beautiful rich boy (now man) even though he is engaged to someone else. She is The Other Woman. Her career is on the edge of that much touted End of Journalism as we Know It. She ends up with no job. Moves back home. Fights with her mother. Tap dances at 1am. Gets pregnant. The latter two points not necessarily related.

  

  I guess what i’m trying to say is that Rory Gilmore is both a fictional character and a trope. As a trope she is the aforementioned Good Girl we all (supposedly) are meant to aspire to be. As a character she is messy and real and human and actually, i found, kind of unlikable as a fully-grown woman.  

  This felt like an enormous relief. Because living up to trope Rory Gilmore is next to impossible. It makes us feel like we’ve failed before we start. Because we’ve had acne or didn’t date during high school or didn’t get A’s in calculus. We’re already never perfect. We can try to be good. And that is an admirable goal and one I fully support but perfect is to set yourself up for failure. And that sucks. It really, really does. To be a loser before you’ve even begun.

  Fictional character Rory is however richer. More meaty as it were. She seems lighter in some ways. Heavier in others. And i don’t just mean in the boob department; actress Alexis Bledel in the break between series and revival had a kid so you know…

  Adult Rory wavers like a star struck teenager at a rock concert, dithering to surge forward with the crowd and meet the Rock God they have been worshipping for years. Whose music got them through a hell of a lot of crap. We don’t know all of Rory’s crap in the preceding decade but we assume there has been some, least of all the death of her beloved grandfather Richard. There’s definitely been loss. We assume several levels of heart break.

  

  But in watching her flail as an-early-thirty-year-old it made me as a late-twenties-woman feel better because here, finally was a Rory i could imagine being friends with. The sort of friend you definitely don’t like all the time. Who you may find annoying and love to hate but a friend none the less because she screws up and gets drunk and sleeps with Wookie’s and needs to stay with you when she fights with her mum just like she did when you were both sixteen and didn’t know any better.

  Now you both should know better and yet there are still fights and running away and you both make all sorts of mistakes but you’re in it for the long haul. As we were for seven seasons and a revival’s worth of Rory.

  A constant for Rory, both the girl we know and the woman she grows into being, who we get to see a glimpse of in the Revival, is that she writes. This love of words, of literature, of exploring the world through writing is a quality I hope she will always cultivate. Both as trope (the Quiet Reading Chick and Smart Girl) and as a character where she starts to find herself again when she starts writing a book about her life growing up with Lorelei Gilmore as a mother.

  

  
  That is one story I would love to read even though it’s a made-up book in a TV universe. But why is this imaginary book on my To Read list?

  
  Because I am The Quiet Reading Chick.

  Because I am The Smart Girl.

  Because I am the Rory who is beginning to find out about herself through the words she writes. That is, telling her own story and not just those of others.

  Because I was a Good Girl.

  And because now I am proud to call myself a debatable woman.

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• A POEM: Baby

  Posted at 9:20 pm by stellacarr20, on August 14, 2019

   

  You’re all striped hair extensions and

  Bubble-gum pink lips and lids.

  Glitter is your middle name.

  It is calligraphed on the labels you wear and

  The decals stuck to your nails,

  Some hearts.

  Other’s stars.

   

  You laugh and talk

  Lubricious

  In your words of parties

  Up The Valley and beer tags tossed

  Like wedding confetti.

  There is no bouquet of flowers.

  But there are plenty of daisy tatts and

  The women throw themselves at The Men

  As desperate as any satin-dressed maiden.

   

  You’re different though.

  Even though you’ve got the same clothes and hair and makeup.

  It’s in your eyes.

  Something darker.

  Like the shadow of a bird.

  A crow with its heathen connotation.

  Or a vulture, circling on the winds

  Of carrion.

   

  But the real truth is one neither of us forgets.

  That the swaddle of tight clothes

  Is to calm you as you try very, very hard

  To take even a gasp of breath.

  ***

  This poem was written in response to a certain kind of girl we recognise in pop culture as the ‘popular girl’ trope. It imagines and considers perhaps some of the darker thoughts and feelings hidden beneath the perky, pretty exterior. This exterior can be interpreted as a mask carefully made up to attract not only the opposite sex but also validating responses for a particular self-concept. In this poem I tried to take apart some aspects of that mask and to create empathy for girls, who, like all of us, are just muddling through…

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• Getting By

  Posted at 7:43 pm by stellacarr20, on July 15, 2019

  As Winter gets really under way here in the Southern Hemisphere I’ve started thinking about how bloody miserable it is to be cold. I’m OK  though. I have a decent job. A reasonable cost flat (with double glazing I must add!) And power is included in the rent. It also helps that this space is a tiny studio, so heating equates to the equivalent of one room with a super-efficient heat pump. I also like to knit so have a nice array of warm-as sweaters and socks.

  I do OK in the colder months, I state again.

  But many people don’t

  

  I want here to acknowledge that I write this from a place of privilege. White middle-class privilege. I was lucky enough to go to university. And to go debt-free due to an education fund set up by my parents when they were young and rich and had the means. This education has enabled me to work in an area I love (libraries.)

  I left university with a BA and no debt. Later, I paid for my library diploma out of my savings from oral history work done part time as an under-graduate and was the grateful beneficiary of a partial fees-paid scholarship. I incurred a little debt for my final course fees, but it was nothing compared to most people’s crippling indebtedness. And, through scrimping and saving I’d paid it off by the end of the summer after I graduated from library school.

  I now work at a university in its library. I have two undergraduate level tertiary qualifications. I have no debt. Thus, I am not only lucky and privileged. I am also highly unusual.

  For most millennials, at least my peers and friends, they have thousands of dollars of debt to pay off. It’ll take years. Decades for some. I won’t even talk about the interest.

  I now also want to briefly mention money… We all need it. But it’s just a thing. Well, increasingly it’s an electronic transaction prompted by the beep of a plastic card. I don’t think you can discuss the costs of daily living (aka survival) and its socio-economic effects without mentioning dollars. It’s how our world works at present. Capitalism is king.

  And even though I am a no-student-debt-owed-white-middle-class-privileged-well-educated-late-20’s-woman, I know personally how hard living in a money driven society can be. I know this because even though I have no debt and a decent (ish) job and a warm (ish) house I am still poor in the eyes of income levels and pay scales.

  Admittedly, I do choose to work less than 40 hours a week. Some of that is imposed by chronic health problems, sure, and I’ve made allowances for that in how I set up my working life, but the rest of it is because I like the lifestyle and value the quality of life working less gives me.

  However, it still doesn’t mean I do not worry about money. I live on less than $500 a week inclusive of all expenses, including rent. I’m frugal sure. I’m careful with my money. I don’t drink alcohol frequently. Trips to the movies are treats rather than a weekly thing. I cut my own fringe. I don’t run a car. I use the library. But I still buy lipstick and scented hand lotion and op-shop designer dresses (op shop for eco-values as well as the affordability.)

  This concept of eco values has played an important role in my life as someone who does not have a lot of money. It justifies sacrifices and rewards certain choices and behaviours within the framework of environmentalism.  For, as an eco-chick, I try to live low waste and this is an excellent way to cut costs. (Note, I think zero waste as a term is an impossible goal and not necessarily a useful form of terminology, so I say ‘low waste’ instead.)

  

  I buy most things package free and fresh. This cuts costs on food immensely even before we’ve even begun. And as stated above, I buy second-hand clothes and well, to be honest, second hand everything. I like the stories the items carry as well as the values of re-use.

  These already mentioned actions save money, sure, and that is great and makes my current lifestyle tenable. But they also work on altering social and political ecologies. Values of reuse and repair are touted and, if I use myself as an example, show how little I think we really need to be able to live well.

  Most people would probably think that if you live on $500 per week (note I am single with no kids which does make things easier…) then you’re living in poverty.

  I’m not.

  While I live in a rental, my rent is not extortionate, and my landlords are fantastic people. I eat well. Some of which I grow myself, more of which I hope to produce from my container garden come Spring. The rest of my food is bulk bought or from the farmer’s markets. I don’t have a lot of money, but I have enough to not just get by but also live well within my means and according to my personal values system.

  This personal values system has helped me craft a lifestyle where I have one thing in abundance. And that is time. I have time to do yoga and go on bush walks and cook (not just because it reduces costs but because I genuinely enjoy it.) It gives me time to garden, a new hobby I am getting more and more into because I find working with plants calms my anxiety and (excuse the pun) literally grounds me. And, I have time to write. To write these blog posts with time for careful consideration and reflection. To pen poems. To work on the draft of my novel. To write short stories when I want to. Equally, I have the time to investigate issues I feel passionate about like environmental issues, food politics and sustainable living.

  Today I ask you to consider the things that are important to you. Ask yourself what inspires you? Identify what you are passionate about. But also ask, what is currently costing you having more of these things in your life?

  Think also, about the cost to the environment from the political and economic systems of capitalism and consumerism that currently run our society. Ponder the cost of living.

  

  By asking and really thinking about what you are prepared to pay to live well (and this comes with a variety of definitions), I believe you will think about factors such as environmental degradations and plastic waste alongside the national mental health crisis and child poverty. Clearly, this issue of cost is as complex as it is broad in scope.

  Lastly (and most importantly, I feel) I ask you as an individual, as a member of a community, and as a human in Society, when will the price be considered too high? The price not just of ‘Getting By’ but of Living in the largest sense of this word where all life on Earth is respected and protected…  When will the books get re-balanced and new margins drawn? I won’t say profit margins, as I think that is part of the problem. I think we need a whole new way of accounting for ourselves in the world.

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• A Breath of Fresh Air: A Book Review

  Posted at 11:23 am by stellacarr20, on May 3, 2019

  Book Reviewed: Dark Winds Over Wellington by Tabatha Wood

  From the opening story of Tabatha Wood’s debut short story collection Dark Winds Over Wellington, Wood expertly combines the horrible with the familiar, the extraordinary with the commonplace and by doing so makes our world feel more real in the process.

  I’m not saying that her stories lead us to believe in vampires and werewolves and take-over-the-government-bee-aliens and oceanic monsters although Wood’s writing is so vibrant and real if anyone could, she would. No. Wood’s stories of the weird and horrible make her adopted city of Wellington, and my home town, more real because of the depth of humanity they portray.

  In the opening story, Heat Pump, a young woman waits anxiously alone in her home for a tradesman to fix her heat pump. This story has a surprising twist on the age-old trope of sexual prey narratives and alters ideas of victimhood. It also deftly explores the nature of gendered power plays.

  The story A Good Cup of Coffee starts out with its protagonist feeling ill at ease within herself. This sense of personal discomfort grows to envelop her world. As the title suggests, this story develops observances of Wellington’s almost obsessive coffee culture and considers a more sinister underside to the city’s favourite beverage.

  Wood has a lovely physicality to her writing that further supports both the beautiful and that which is less so. She writes about the heat of coffee and weighty warmth of summers as well as the coppery tang-taste-of-blood and things seen and heard that characters wish they hadn’t been witness to.

  Additionally, any Wellingtonian would appreciate her references to iconic places. The Bays of The Miramar Peninsula. The wild Southern with Red Rocks at its end. The fountain in the central city beach of Oriental Bay.

  Wood not only references the sea and the city’s coastal areas multiple times, as a reader, I get the feeling that the sea plays a large role in her revisioning of her adopted town. Her stories wave in and out of each other as characters appear and disappear and are revisited across her narratives. Tensions rise like dangerously high sea levels and readers are flooded with emotion as they along with the characters, lose loved ones, face challenges with courage and maybe even feel some part of themselves die, only to be reborn.

  On completion of the book, I was left wishing I hadn’t finished it. I wanted more horror stories (note, not my usual genre) because they made my daily life feel more vivid. More real. More lived. Wood’s stories imagine winds that cry and curse to make us murderers. They postulate on insect-alien takeovers of our parliament buildings aptly named The Beehive. They tell the stories of sickly boys that long to have super powers and get them. The age-old Vampiric tale of those who feed on the living so they can live forever is also a narrative strand revisited within the text.  However, Wood’s quirky and face paced stories made me not want to live forever, but better. To make more room for fantastical fiction where kids find runes and can calm sea monsters and where encounters with death make people live larger as well as better. For me Wood’s book is part of that living larger. It made me read outside my usual academic feminist theory and literary texts. It made for something else less serious but still meaningful. It made me, as I feel good literature should do, look at the world anew.

  See below a link to Tabby’s website:

  http://tabathawood.com/

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• “Be the change you want to see in the world”

  Posted at 9:20 pm by stellacarr20, on April 28, 2019

  I used this quote by Gandhi in the final article I wrote for my high school magazine. High on the energy of a climate change conference where a real live orange-robe-clad swami strode in and spoke very fast with lots arm gestures, I was ferociously sure I was going to change the world. Not just my world. The world. The whole thing. You know.

  

  Freshly medicated with mood stabilisers and a hefty 100 hours of therapy clocked in I felt better than I’d felt for a long time. However, I got sick again soon after this and spent the next seven months volunteering at a native plant nursery and teaching myself how to quilt. I knitted all the time too. It was not just moving meditation, although it was this also. It was movement because being still with how bad I was feeling was too painful. I made a huge peggy-square blanket to cover my not-quite-a-double-bed. It has now been washed so many times it has fallen apart.

  I’ve tried not to think about the micro-particles from the acrylic yarn seeping into the waterways. Instead I’ve focused on the way the knit and purl of the-not-found-in-nature-colours soothed my troubled mind. How the repetition of needle-click-and-clack was comforting. How despite falling apart emotionally again, I could make things from balls of twisted fibre. Pretty much something from nothing. And how totally cool was that?

  At that point in my life (over ten years ago now) the change I wanted to see, of moving garbage heaps and cleaning up oceans, did not happen. It still hasn’t. Both on a oersonal action level and globally. But I do my best to do my bit. I live low waste. I now knit with natural fibres. I use soap nuts instead of chemical-leaching-laundry-powder. I watch Attenborough on You-Tube advocate for The World and think what an awesome angry old man he is.

  

  My world has however changed quite dramatically. That sickness at seventeen was not my last. My worst episode to date was to come when I was twenty. I almost didn’t recover from it and in some ways still feel I am putting myself back together from its after effects, even seven years on…

  But now my life is good. It is the life I hoped I would be living at seventeen when sickness hit. It is the dream-of-a-life I held onto when at twenty when I struggled so much and was seeped in sadness.

  I now live in an amazing little studio with an expansive view over The City. I often sit out at night with a steaming mug of fruit tea and it’s like the stars have fallen and become night clubs and reflected towers. It. Really. Is. That. Beautiful.

  I work in a library which I love. Most of the time. I like helping people. I like finding things. I like putting things back in their proper places as well. I feel, finally, now I’m in my proper place. Still in The City I was born in (at least for now, but that is another story.) Still writing. Still talking to her plants. Still stitching.  But now she is also dancing under a star-stolen-sky for all the world to see.

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• What Matters

  Posted at 6:29 pm by stellacarr20, on April 20, 2019

  I applaud anyone who has the courage to start making a difference. Because I really do believe that small gestures can grow into larger movements. The grasping hands used to hold the handles of jute-tote-bags can then reach further, hold on stronger, to the little fists of children as they teeter along walls. Our holds need to be strong. We are their protection between balance and falling.

  

  I write about a metaphorical wall and I use it to comment on a level of care for future generations. It acts as a nice poetic device. It can, however, also be used as a comment on a certain world leader and his tantrums about a different kind of wall. One erected to keep some people out. One that serves as a barrier. One that is all about dividing things. People and land specifically. And these according to wealth ratios and generalised demographic values.

  The gesture of a hand hold is so simple. So small. But oh so significant I feel. As a gesture it acts as a beginning grasp, a foundation for possible chains of connection. It prompts people to stand united in picket lines. Kids sing of peace on earth under dark triangles of trees. They are often holding hands. I sometimes want to laugh at the naivety. But I don’t. Because that would mean I would have lost hope.

  Because I believe that gestures like hand holds, can become movements, in both senses of the word. The comradery of gesture can inspire body movements in the foot steps strode on pilgrimage. People sit their bodies down next to the statues of long-dead-leaders. They wish they could hear their Wisdoms.  Because the world sure as hell needs Wisdoms. Lines are walked holding placards. Voices are raised, not so much in song this time, but in shout.

   

  

  They shout out to give voice to an un-balanced climate. They shout out against the inequalities of sex and gender. They make noise for the right to choose. They seek redress for past wrongs. They want apologies for things that have happened. They want promises to prevent them from happening again.

  Protesters are often photographed falling to the ground, their blue knees thread bare. This seems to be part of the common experience. Being pushed down has been part of protest for millennia. And yet, while they fall, as individuals, as groups, at the same time some ideas about who can say what and when and how, also fall. Its who gets up again, often with the aid of a helping hand, that matters.

   

   

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• You Made It

  Posted at 9:56 am by stellacarr20, on March 9, 2019

  I’m considering a review on GoodReads for a peak oil book I’m thinking of buying. I’ve read it before, from the library, but I’m thinking it’s worth adding to my personal library. It’s by Sharon Astyk, one of my favourite Futurists. I like her practicality. Her socio-historical contexts where she talks about domestic labour and the industrial revolution, of formal and informal economies, of the gendered nature to work.

  I also like that she is a female writer in a pre-dominantly male domain. For most peak oil and climate change writers are men.

  This male—as-expert focus surrounding the writing and thinking about certain global issues is an interesting phenomenon and not one I plan to try to answer here. It is too large. Too complicated. What I do want to do is explore a little of what Astyk writes about from her female point of view. That is, its nuances and focuses of small-scale actions on the domestic stage.

  

  Astyk was an academic. She was studying towards a literary PhD. Then got concerned about The State of The World and with her husband left graduate school, moved to live in rural upstate New York and became a farmer, stay-at-home mother and writer. She now grows and puts up vegetables. Sells meat and eggs. Raises kids who know the names of plants as well as Pokemon.

  She lives a Good life. She certainly thinks so. It’s not an easy life by her own admission, but it is a good one. There are few sleep ins. Not a lot of extra cash. Patience, I imagine, is tested daily. But there is also an incredible sense of security. She knows how to be nearly fully self-sufficient in food. How to heat and cool her house according to the seasons in a low energy manner. She can survive without electricity for more than a few hours. She’s done so. Tested it for a whole week. She made do.

  The book she has authored that I am considering buying is called ‘Making Home.’ This phrase seems to me to be at the heart of the much-needed attitudinal shift from ‘buying all’ to ‘making do.’ Home making in this sense serves as a way of living where there is a sharp change from habitual consumption patterns to a more dynamic and creative approach.

  Living with less does not need to only be about doing without. It can also be about living more creatively and using what you already have in a different and more imaginative way. This, to me, is not only hopeful regarding the sheer mass of stuff produced by our current industrial capitalist world but it also heralds a more fulfilling way of living. I really do believe that we can change the world for the better through the things we make.

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• Resolute – A Re-evaluation

  Posted at 9:41 am by stellacarr20, on February 8, 2019

  So far this blog has been a haphazard poetry blog where I have explored issues relating to my personal feminine experience. There was also the poem titled ‘An Arthritic Love Affair’ that chronicled some of my feelings of living with a chronic pain condition.

  2018 served as a year where I used pain as creative material. This was useful. Cathartic even. But I want the coming year to have a slightly different focus.

  I will still use poetry and words to process the world around me. If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be being true to myself and the identity called ‘Writer’ I so wholly and fully embrace as part of who I am.

  But in addition to my creative lyrical work of poems, stories and my longer ongoing novel project I seek to write a bit more about The World ‘Out There.’

  It’s not going to be a Trump rant. Or an environmental diatribe. Although it would be easy enough to do either. No. I plan to write about the ways I manage a very frightening world. This is a world that is shit scary even for someone who does not struggle with anxiety. And I am a worrier. I worry well. It’s a not-very-well-kept-secret skill. One marked by bitten nails, nervous tapping feet and a sometimes too inward focused self-obsession.

  As a feminist I hesitate to ascribe myself to such words as ‘domesticity’ and ‘women’s work.’ However, the areas I find myself gravitating towards in my daily life in order to cope with this (I quote myself) ‘shit scary world,’ are those of the hearth and home. Cooking, baking, gardening and textile crafts like DIY dressmaking and knitting.

  This gravitation towards the domestic is a theme I hope to explore more in future blog posts drawing on the writings of investigative journalist Emily Matchar and peak oil writer Sharon Asytk as well as radical homemaking advocate Shannon Hayes. These three women all negotiate women’s roles and rights in the 21^st century in slightly different, but I feel, equally interesting and important ways. But more on that later.

  The domain name of this blog ‘Geographic Hearts’ was created on a whim of fancy. I liked it for its poetic effect. And its intended obscurity of meaning. I imagined it as a fashion label marked in a flowing cursive script adorning locally made eco-dyed clothes in soft earthen hues. It would claim rights to upcycled denim dresses with gradations of blues like a twilit sky. It owned the look of nana knit cardigans upcycled with velvet flower and bird-in-flight-embroideries.

  However, as cool as it would be to have Geographic Hearts purely as a poetry/ fashion blog, I have evolved alongside it. I now realise how suitable this name is for all I hope this blog will grow to be. The title (as stated in my bio) is about loving where I am in the world.  While that is my little South Pacific city of Wellington and the islands of Aotearoa New Zealand it is also, I think, a feeling one finds inside themselves. This is a feeling most of us search for with no map, compass or even any sense of direction.

  So, this blog will contain (as well as poems) missives about the World I find myself in. Both daily routines where tea stews in vintage tea pots, i harvest herbs from my container garden and I make time to watch the sky, but also the Wider World and my interactions with the politics and issues of our times.

  How I negotiate, process and make sense of them is the story I hope to convey in this blog. It is a little bit alternative, or ‘hippie’ as my brother would say. There is a distinctly green tinge to its politics. There is also an overarching theme of believing in the power of creativity to get you through.

  I leave you with these questions. Where is your ‘Geographic Heart?’ Is it a place? A feeling? A person? A pet? A favourite dress or pair of denims? Is it all the above? Do you feel safe in your skin? Do you want to change the world by loving it from where you are right now?

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• A POEM: Apology

  Posted at 12:01 pm by stellacarr20, on December 16, 2018

   

  The world is saying sorry today.

  Sorry for the things she can’t control.

   

  Like Earthquakes.

  And Volcanic eruptions.

  And over-population.

   

  The first two are functions of geology.

  While the last is the fault of humanity.

   

  Yet we blame Her and ignore her warning signs

  Like self-obsessed teenagers with back

  Pocket-flip mirrors and candy-flavoured lip gloss.

   

  The Earth’s apology is so beautiful though.

  It is so genuine.

  Even if we don’t recognise it for what it is.

   

  Her peace lily skies

  (they are that pale, that sensuous)

  Lick the face of the world

  And with a heart full of flower buds and

  Glitter-penned letters we watch her glow

  Into being.

   

  Today she just wants to be looked after,

  To be cared for,

  She just wants to be loved.

  –

  The State of The World has been on my mind what with the Climate Talks in Poland occurring at present. As the talks are extended I am both filled with Hope that Change will be sparked and also a belly-ache-dread that The Signs will be missed and we will continue to hurtle towards climate catastrophe…

  So to process these feelings I wrote a poem. Because writing is how I process everything… Words are how I make sense of My World and The World.

  This poem, titled Apology, personifies The World as a Gaia type figure, a romanticized heroine who is saying sorry for the fevers and the fires she creates in gestures of rebellion against the hurt being done to her. Humanity is the mean teenage girlfriend who is more interested in how she looks than listening to the words of Earth.

   

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