Update - Flinders Ranges etc...

Hello all, I'm in SA at the moment :) this is from the past little while, if you can be bothered reading lots of stuff, some of it's a bit boring. Fractionally abridged, I've probably left stuff in that I might have normally taken out... hrm. oh well. 12:30pm 18/9/05 I fail to understand caravan etiquette. Mum first said it as a bit of a joke – to wave to other caravan drivers, like coaches and tram drivers do. Sure enough the next few we passed waved. We are somewhere between Bendigo and Melbourne. Mildura is still a depressingly large number of kilometres on the road signs. It is the kind of day you wish you were elsewhere, outside doing something you normally don’t do, like riding your non-existant bike along the Warburton trail. The sky isn’t that rich blue that you get in the Centre (Central Australia) but the clouds are the perfect, well spaced roundness of those on a kids picture. An hour or so back we kept passing these fantastically ancient bluestone houses and worn out bridges. If I was driving we would have stopped numerous times for the ‘photo opportunity’. As per usual we have an eclectic variety of music; from Relient K to the Police. Folk to rock, to punk, to pop, to reggae, to purely strange. I am getting really warm with the sun blasting in the window. I may have more leg room this side of the car, I didn’t think of potential sunburn. Mum hasn’t been too frustrating with her commentating and despite nearly four hours in the car, I’m almost enjoying sitting here. It’s funny, you think if reading makes you feel sick and talking is better left alone that you’d begin to think about all manner of things. It’s been fairly mindless – music and endless staring out the window at the ever-changing view. Hannah just took off her shoes, it stinks. Piano Man by Billy Joel. I could be entirely Rebecca’ish and work out some aims/goals for the holiday, write myself an extensive to-do list, if it happens it will develop itself slowly. There’s a long way to drive yet. 3:50pm 18/9/05 Driving almost 7hrs now. Emily is asleep and looks quite beautiful in a messed up tired kind of way. Hannah is wearing these ridiculously huge sunglasses and sitting with her feet curled up, Mum has a map and Dad – I can’t see his face. It’s very flat and the road is very straight. We have passed the shockingly yellow canola fields and the crops are now a blended green, the sky is cloudless – more white than blue. Mum just asked me if I was writing. The obvious goes without saying. (I don’t think my family know quite how much I do write). I’m making quite a mess of it, I hope I can read it well enough later to decode it onto the computer. I flicked back the notebook and realised I’d left two sides blank each with writing on the back, not much you can do about that. I ended up deciding to read and coped quite well. Finished I Capture The Castle. The first half was better. I know where I left it last time was an opportune moment for a, “Damn, this is good, where’s this in reality?” – which is an odd thing for me to think as I don’t think I’ve ever been overly inclined to use that word. It was incredibly easy to associate myself with Cassandra as the book is very much journal style, yet it thankfully lacks entries (dates). Oh it is interesting sometimes to wonder if I could ever do the same, or worse still present my own life to the world. Normality is the closest word I can find for an average day in our house, yet I somehow always seem to find something to write about – even if it’s nothing much at all. How incredibly different we all are – my sisters and I. I’m sitting here in my muted clours, vest, my hair half falling out of it’s ponytail with a notebook, scrawling to pass the time. Laura is at home no doubt revealing her deepest to her best-friend or writing to John in Canada. For twins, and despite our sibling closeness we have turned out remarkably different. She with her ‘one’ by the age of twelve, and I ever waiting. Her willingness to commit to close friendships, her goodness, her fast recognition of who God is and what an important part of life that is; and me, reserved, closed and taking things slowly, thinking always thinking things through to their complexity and entirety. Me with the words that feel nice in my mouth that I cling to, until I overuse and slowly wean myself off them. Me when I feel so removed and external yet so incredibly naïve and at the same time old. Me with friend scattered, never quite committing, forever unsure about how to go about things (relationships). Welcome to a pity party. I like it when people have noticed I’ve changed. When Burkie told me I was much freer in talking about relationships than I used to be. I could fool myself sometimes that there are people interested maybe even fascinated (although a bit too strong a word) with my life, which sounds remarkably like boasting, but in some ways I don’t mind. However untrue it is. How easily I slip into this partially fantastical world. The surrealness in my realness. My external altering. And Emily, in her bohemish ways. A much more gentle person than I will ever be. Creativity that in many ways seems bound. Hannah, she’s asleep now, her head is rolling spontaneously in motion with the car. She reminds me a lot of myself at fourteen, stubborn, her concerns unlike mine playing themselves through fashion. Mum just said something that made me privately pleased and annoyed at the same time. “Watch out, Bec will write a book about you one day.” Unfortunately she carried it too far and it lost its hidden niceness. 4:40pm 18/9/05 Just stopped in Ouyen. A dead town. It’s only life in the elderly playing lawn bowls in their pristine (life) white (funny how I wrote life then). Could I ever be happy like that? The music has toned down considerably and I managed to get some lonely smooth Dido in before Em’s Michael Buble request. A mackerel sky now, interesting how quickly it changes. Mum’s talking about Malley Fowls or something – very much to herself, no one’s really listening. I will no-doubt read over this later and realise I’ve put across quite a bored/lonely/depressed sounding time. It hasn’t been really. I’m fairly surprised at how fast the day has gone. I have been vaguely happy for most of it for no real reason. Mackerel skies, just struck me how alike they are to upside-down bubble-wrap. I am happy. Things are surprisingly peaceful and I am constrained in a place where I cannot really be busy. I have café music and room to think onto paper. I can daydream about anything of no particular consequence and I an in someway enjoy God and enjoy life. And here I’ll stop and live the moment instead of trying to capture the experience. (and here I wanted to write: I am insanely content, but never did – I’m not entirely sure why). 10:10pm 18/9/05 A single star and a large moon, the night is beautiful. 9hrs of driving today. Read Romans 1 – Belonging. Questioned God about uni or Tabor next year (this was earlier). Hardly had an agonizing wait for a response, however much I try to talk myself out if it, I know I should be at uni next year. That’s where I’m wanted/will best grow. I do not doubt it, I almost wish I could. How does free choice and following God’s will work out together? 11:43am 19/9/05 Mildura last night in a caravan park near the Murray river. NSW actually. We went back to VIC for dinner and had it at a pub/mens club thing. Driving again now. A shorter day today about 4hrs drive maybe a bit longer as we were stuck behind a slow old car. Em and I in the tent last night. Always interesting putting up a tent with her – can’t say she’s overly competent – ‘how very Emily’ quite funny. 3:00pm VIC, 2:30pm SA 19/8/05 Well and truly in South Australia now. On our umpteenth CD. Keane at the moment. The road is flat and straight. Tiredness of this morning has worn off considerably, I (half) slept the past few hours. Have been watching aimlessly out the window – the clouds, the sky, the scrub, low wattles or some other bright yellow along the road’s edge. Barren and populationless, aside from he oddly shaped powerlines. You think I’d use this time to explore more in mind. I have been thinking about people a bit and found a little of the hope in slowing down. I was going back over earlier this year, thinking about my creative living project and what I must have been struggling with then. This year has changed me considerably. I think I’ve come from quite a naïve position of where God was mostly (just a) source of affirmation and a pathetically one-sided relationship. (Typing this out now I know that is not entirely true but it did play a large part). I’d like to think I’ve moved a bit beyond that. Hannah’s asleep on my shoulder. Took my shoes off as the sun’s on my side of the car – getting rather hot. Stopping for a break in about 10 mins. 3:45VIC 19/9/05 I like Morgan (where we stopped for a break) very much. Went barefoot, reminded me how much I like doing that. It’s almost warm. The Murray (river) is beautiful. Funny the conversations you randomly remember, I remember telling Paul that I probably wouldn’t ever want a song written for me and sung to me, but I take that back. Maybe I’ve changed, maybe grown, maybe I’ve just gotten over some pig-headedness, some pride. How many situations do we imagine daily? Multiply that by the millions of people in the world – how many lives do we live in our heads collectively? I felt like I was on holidays back then (at the Morgan stop), however odd that sounds. It is saltbush and nothing but flat with the occasional small tree, grey and green with the contrast of the oddly placed purple and yellow, wild and barren and beautiful. 9:30am SA 20/9/05 “And we live in a beautiful world.” – Coldplay. Yesterday’s barren saltbush plains developed into these amazingly smooth green hills. Mum decided it looked English. Admittedly, the green with the colour of the sky reminded me of a common Windows desktop theme. I am beginning to overuse the word beautiful, there are plenty of kinds of beauty this is a comfortable one. Burra (where we spent the night). We all decided to cram into the caravan to sleep so we wouldn’t have to bother with the tent. Heritage listed, the town has a little the feel of Bright (two holidays ago?). Like Bright it has it’s decent splattering of ugly yet useful conveniences. Green, it is so green. We are driving again and today should finally get to the Flinders Ranges. I’m tempted to set up the tent (rather than share the annex) so that I have some space to myself. About 350k’s to drive today. 4-5hrs, depends really. 10:38am SA 20/9/05 Where before had the smoothness of a golf course, now is the green stubble of a badly shaved chin. A little drier and more varied, there being patches of browns, yellows, reds and greens. Stopping for a break at Petersbourgh. I’ve been sitting in the sun too long. Late (pm) 20/9/05 No reception here (mobile). Fairly annoying, not that I call, or get calls too often, but I had hoped. Internet. $2 for 10 minutes. I can check email hooray! Dad taught Em and Han 500 (card game) tonight. Thanks to Nathan, Dave and Katie I remembered it from camp. I play to not let the others win, not to actually win, which is an odd sort of tactic that works pretty well. I don’t like risk, hence I don’t bid unless I have a really good hand. I came second, Emily won. Dad lost. Flinders Ranges. Rawnsley Park Station. Strange and wild here, beautiful though. Finally at where we are meant to be. I verbally committed to a 5hr walk/climb with Dad. Ho hum. I’m in the tent by myself, which is wonderful, space away from everyone! It’s been fun so far (what a boring word). Mum’s grating a bit, but I’ve been fairly good if not quite restrained at holding my tongue. Went for a walk by myself this afternoon and hope to get more done the next few days. 10:37pm’ish VIC 21/9/05 Incredibly out of the box I sit here, lie actually. In my tent – sleeping bag, my elbows on my pillow, I have the computer running, music (Fur Elise, of the strangest things) playing. I can hear a cricket or something outside my nylon walls above the piano in my ears. It’s an odd attempt at combining two worlds and producing a very different, yet at the same time very intriguing place. I have not enough light to write on to paper and the little I have is battery dependant so the familiar white screen has taken it’s place. Less than half an hour ago I finished April Fools Day, I picked the book to get a taste for Bryce Courtney’s writing. I did not check beforehand however, it is a novel and at the same time a biography of his son’s life, so hardly typical of his fiction. Damon, a hemophilic who through blood transfusions becomes HIV positive and eventually ends up with AIDS. Very much a ‘wake up and smell the roses, because it sure ain’t pretty’. I don’t know what to think. It is an incredibly real, incredibly moving, hard book. I think I am the better for having read it – at the same time it leaves you so powerless, so incapable of doing things. Oh I know time has advanced medicine remarkably and the worlds understanding of a misunderstood, feared ‘disease’ has broadend, acceptance widened, how little we still know. I’ve never thought much about AIDS, sure there are kids over there in Africa or whatever dying from it, the homosexual and druggies community is ravaged with it (so the theory goes), and Renee once referred to it after she had to be tested after helping a drug addict that collapsed on her work’s doorstep, but nothing aside from that. It was mentioned in biology last year – on account of it affecting your T-cell count. But no, I essentially know nothing, not enough to have ever been concerned (beyond the standard I think the western world sits in – a petty comprehension, shaped by television and words that are toned into niceties for our sheltered ears). Emily and I stumbled across the perfect time to take over the showers – which are a bit of let down in regards to this holiday. If you cut quick smart up the hill after dinner, the four showers are not only free but dry, being rather small, this is important. I came back from the shower in the dark and felt my way into the tent. I was putting some things away, when I hear a bagpipe of all things. I turned off the light, and had left the glow of the ‘neighbours’ fire. I sat/lay in the annex bit of my tent, sheltered from seeing anything but darkness and the tree branch directly outside. The three little boys next door were laughing and stuffing around (it being someones birthday). It was entirely magical. I’m not sure how long it lasted. I sat and listened. He played Amazing Grace at one stage – a faceless bagpipe player, who was applauded by other faceless campers who called for “More!” each time he stopped playing. Bagpipes are haunting and perfect in the right setting, and crass and awful in the wrong. I don’t know if I misheard but one of the boys was moaning about the music and his brother cut him off, “This music goes really well with this fire.” That just about summed it up. At about 4:30 this afternoon, I took myself off, away from the attraction of paper (books and pens) and went on a walk. Alison’s Saddle, pre-recommended. I didn’t particularly want company – nor was likely to get any (my sisters preferring to keep their noses stuck in their books, their bodies in the caravan) so I went alone. I unfortunately picked the same time as three others for the same walk/climb but they nicely let me ‘go ahead’ as they would be, “Quite a bit slower”. I felt somewhat obliged to not take a huge number of breaks, but coped pretty well despite the steepness – maybe dog-walking does pay off. I sidelined away from the track when I got near the top. 360 views of slightly sun glared grandeur. I don’t know how to describe the feeling really. It’s not foreign, I’m guessing most feel it when you reach the peak, the destination, be it a mountain or a far less physical/visual experience. The feeling also of being somewhere totally without other human beings (after the three had, ‘had their look’ and returned the way they’d came). I liked it – as a temporary thing. I plan to do it (or similar) again before we leave here. And today, as it seems I’ve worked backwards, from finish to start. The experience of being able to comfortably wear shorts and t-shirts is worth oh, I don’t know, something good. I am very much a warm weather person and despite liking winter’s rain, it’s a very long slow kind of season that you get fed up with far too quickly. This morning, we drove to Wilpena and haven’t yet made it inside the pound. Instead we explored the old homestead/station, in which I spent the vast majority of it through a camera lens. The best find of the day was the dried, very dead kangaroo in a hollow tree trunk, of which Dad decided would make very ‘macabre art’ suggesting I take a photo of it – which I would have regardless. Anyway it is getting late, I must look strange in my tent (from the outside) an oddly shaped silhouette by computer light. I think it is time to sleep. 10:49pm VIC 22/9/05 Spent the day circumnavigating the southern/central Flinders Ranges. Some rather amazing gorges which we had to drive along – these being shallow and creek like. It did get a bit repetitive, it was hot enough to swim, Hannah and I were annoyed we weren’t back at Rawnsley in time. Explored some old ruins, very nice place for photos, though it was a bit glarey. I started the DaVinci Code today. So far, a decent mix of thriller and fascinating bits of info… I don’t half know what to believe of it, if any, which is a pain in the butt. Nothing massively whacked out yet. Saying thus I’d rather not read it a night in a tent, it was beginning to half scare me. It is too enthralling not to finish. I think I’ll just have to treat the whole thing as fiction. Dad and I decided to attempt the 12.6km walk/climb/hike to Rawnsley’s Bluff tomorrow, it should take us about 5hrs (so the thing says) we are starting early, which means a 6:30 wake up. Argh. What possessed me? I can’t really back out now, honestly lazing around here sounds rather nice, but I’ll go, even if just to prove to myself that I can. Longest hike I think I’ve done before was the 9km Kings Canyon one on Centre Trip, so here goes further experience. I’m going to be so stuffed tomorrow afternoon. The view from the top had better be worth it. (*edited out) 9:13 computer clock time, (VIC I think) 23/9/05 We did the aforementioned ‘climb/walk’ today. Climb is the better adjective. Started early, just dad and I. 7:17am we left the car-park and headed up. By 9:00 we were at the top of Rawnsley’s Bluff. Quite hard going particularly when it reached the scrambling stage. The view on the way up was worth it though. We decided to do the secondary walk to Wilpena lookout as it was only 1.2km return to a junction in the track we were already on. There I discovered mobile reception, I confess the view there was pretty boring after the last lot. Going down was painful, very hard on the knees. Whoever decided to put distance markers along the path every 200 metres is an absolute genius – no sarcasm there whatsoever. I need goals, they were plenty adequate. Made it home by 12:30. 5hrs later. We not only had a 30min break at the top, but did the extra walk on top of that. 13.8km to be precise, but to add in various extra’s including one short section where I missed the signage (faded yellow lines) roughly 14km. Came back to the caravan/tent, we drove the 200m to the store to get coke (for dad) and a drumstick (for me) as we couldn’t face the walk. It is 9:21 or so now. I am in bed. My legs are going to be unbelievably painful tomorrow as they already hurt quite a lot. I have a headache and I am sun-burnt. All up, I feel quite sick and wish I was at home in my bed instead of on a thermarest in a sleeping-bag in a tent. I want a bath and not a shower in crummy toilet block. I’d complain out loud to someone but I think they are too preoccupied with their card game, it also takes too much effort. The walk was worth it though. I think… … I forgot to check email this afternoon, I was going to – ah well, something for tomorrow. Da Vinci Code was a brilliant book, a little weird but fantastic all the same. I don’t want to think about the essay thing I somehow have to do shortly, might leave it until Adelaide, might try get an extension off Rowan. And to borrow a phrase off Jess D, “I’m buggered” I think I’ll go to bed. 5:18pm VIC 24/9/05 Grand Final day. I haven’t heard Dad and Hannah come back from the camp kitchen – where they were watching it. I had a brief look, but the TV is tiny and the colour is bad. I like footy, but not that much. (side note: Dad came into the room – we were ‘late’ and said ‘oh it’s very quiet in here’, a guy replied, ‘yeah we’re worshiping’. That put me right off. Kind of interesting that he used that terminology though.) Strange kind of day today. (So Sydney won, 4 points, wow I feel so deprived for not watching it). Anyway. Strange kind of day, pretty hmm shall I say ‘black’ morning? My legs didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected but my sides feel bruised, all along my ribs. I think it’s from sleeping on a crappy kind of bed thing for too long. I haven’t really been sleeping too well, I keep waking up cold, and had a colourful mix of dreams last night. Crying my face off in the first one – involved a lot of YITS people. The second I can’t remember, but it was better. Checked email this morning had a few (thanks to all who sent them). Came away from it feeling really let down, I don’t know why. Driving later (to Wilpena Pound). I had the discman and Switchfoot playing, basically to drown Mum out. Somehow isolating myself with music, headphones and a vacant stare out a window helps me think. Leaving YITS is going to cut me to fried potatoes. At the moment I don’t know if I could face another ‘goodbye’. Oh I know how I’ll respond, I will cope as I’ve always coped. I will distance myself from the ‘parting’ and attempt to deal with it later. Its very hard to make other people understand why I find changing situations so difficult. Sure, everyone feels some kind of loss, and I don’t know if it’s entirely fair to say mine is greater. I have left people and places I love far, far too often. I’ve realised how much I tie my God relationship up in other people. It is seriously easier being a Christian in a community where you are surrounded by people to help you along. This needs to change to a certain extent, not to isolate myself, ha no way. But how much I still treat God as relationship filler acutely responding to my every whim. Happiness, it seems as if the world continues to look for it and never quite finds it. It would be nice to be like the little girl outside twirling her red umbrella. Happy. I’m so incredibly serious. I am happy when I am surrounded by people I love and I know love me regardless, I’m happy when I’m in a position where I am serving (often, not always), I am happy when I feel close to God. When else am I happy? Why should ‘happy’ be the ultimate, the highest good. That’s just stupid. What am I talking about? How little I understand about God. I also realised that however much I want a relationship right now, and I dare say I’ve said this a million times before, but if someone were to ask me out or whatever (to use stupid clichés) that I would have to say no. I honestly need a bunch of good friends at the moment and I don’t think I am in a position for that other. I get too consumed in others sometimes. And although I am a staunch individualist, the ‘need’ needs to become less of a fascination. Oh I have certain friends that would debate that there is a ‘yes I am ready time’ – saying that there is not, you are just you, “ready or not, here I come?”. I know myself, and I know it wouldn’t be so good for me at the moment. To be ready, sure I think I’d cope ha, more than cope, enjoy it rather a lot, but it’s not for me right now. I don’t doubt it wouldn’t grow me, challenge me in ways I haven’t really experienced and probably might benefit from, it’s not that I’m ‘afraid’ so to speak of relationships, or commitment – that’s not the withholding factor, but not yet. How can I explain? If this ends up in the blog, I need those people to know just how much I appreciate their friendship and how I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I get so amazingly lonely sometimes and I forget very easily when I’m not given exactly what I’m looking for – which I doubt is something I could define anyway, for this I’m sorry, because looking for others to fill me is never going to work. It’s crazy how you know this, and you say this all the time and you think it at fairly regular intervals when you come out of a ‘lonely pit’ and you never really recognise it enough to begin to live life for what you already have. The people God has placed in my life – I don’t know if I could ask for a greater variety, for better communication (however strangely some of my friendships have developed), they each care in their individual ways, and I love them for who they are – which is more important than what I may get from them. I’m sad and sorry I overlook this so much. Something else, that I have come across occasionally. Spirituality scares me. Quite a lot sometimes. The weird stuff, not necessarily stuff to do with Christianity, but other – cults, Masonic stuff, rituals, new age, anything, and then I look at aspects of Christianity and God even, and that really freaks me out. How weird it is. How hard to comprehend. Sure it leaves gaping holes for doubting, and that’s not good and scares me other ways. I know how much I need God. I wish religion didn’t play into it. And I wonder (yet again) how can anyone ever walk into a church and find something that connects. “I need love, not some sentimental prison, I need God, not the political Church, I need fire to melt this frozen sea inside me, I need love.” – Sixpence. …and I’ll have to leave things there, so I can pack before it is too dark, so I can eat dinner. 10:11pm 24/9/05 No stars tonight. I left off before from what I was thinking about and what’s been eating me, a little unobserved for quite a while. I’ve avoided tripping on the guy ropes of my tent this whole week, only to realise I’ve been tripping over the same old ones in my life that have been there so long I tend to ignore them. Sometimes I feel as if I’m being melodramatic, but in any case it’s probably better that I get things written down, out of the way and onto paper where I can at least visualise what’s been going on in my head. So, these ropes – to continue being metaphorical. a) loneliness b) fear of change, of moving on, of so easily cutting ties and hating myself for it. c) needing to understand the ins and outs of God and not really dealing with that, in that it’s not the way things should be dealt with, it’s in a sense playing God, and I guess not trusting God for who he is. Regardless of how much does and doesn’t make sense. d) Attempting to ‘fill me’ with something, and at this time that refers straight back to a) loneliness. And here’s where, if this was a conversation, a certain person would wisely say, “You are analyzing too much” (ie: Stop it Rebecca, it’s not always the smartest thing to do). I’m glad God takes me for who I am. I find it strange in some ways that I’ve never really bought up the issues I had with leaving the Solomons with YITS people. Most of what I’ve grappled with, what I named as ‘fear of vulnerability’ or something so pathetic as that, really comes from that – or is well illustrated through that. If that opportunity comes, I should take it, as for bringing it up, I’d have no idea where to start and if someone asked a question about it, I’d again have to be in the right place. Being an MK is part of who I am, a part I wouldn’t give up for the richness of life it’s offered me, but being one brings it’s own set of problems and obstacles. God is and has been working in me a long time about this stuff and he’ll continue doing so. I watched Sabrina tonight. (The Harrison Ford one). I don’t know whether I was testing myself or what. Chick flicks are disaster zones for lonely females, no joke. It’s like pouring kerosene on fire. It may set you on a temporary high getting wrapped in someone else’s story but leaves you feeling sorry and empty and more lonely. I’ve always liked this movie, from the first time I saw it and from the many other times I’ve sat through it. Sure Sabrina ends up with ‘the guy’ she should have had in the first place when she still didn’t realise. But the movie says a heap about loneliness, about foolishness around infatuations, about cold heartedness, about willingness and opportunity for change. I finished it, no let down… more thought. I’m a strange one. It’s raining now. Getting later. I’d better pack this up and attempt to sleep. God thank you for using this time, this writing, this thought, for the music that you’ve been rather influential in um ordering. Thank you for your love. The love I don’t understand and don’t have to. Thank you for grace. Forgive me God. I need more of you. 10:50pm VIC 25/9/05 (Adelaide) I’m too lazy to work/change computer clock, I think SA time is 30mins earlier than VIC time, could be the other way around. Drove all of today, personally found traveling that particular way from/to Flinders Ranges far prettier than the way we came from Victoria. It rained the majority of it, low cloud…. J here’s me wanting to use the word beautiful again. Got to Wendy’s house by 5:00ish. I scored the bed, and a room to myself, rather pleased. And in typical Bec fashion, must criticize the curtains for their lack of taste, being old lady flower print. Bad, bad habit, that I should work on breaking, I’m always looking to improve, overly quick to pick a negative – I do it everywhere. I read Mere Christianity in the car on the way down. I don’t know if I quite got it all in, but found it excellent nevertheless. I think, maybe that God had a bit of hand in timing yet again, I really needed to read some of that stuff after the past few days thinking. Folded a few bottom corners, so I’ll attempt to return to them tomorrow or something. I did manage to find something for Jonny – re: the conversation we had ages back about ‘Why bother studying theology’. Ha, why do I always remember abstract things? Worked out this evening, that I’m semi allergic to ‘paraffin’ (methyl/ethyl/whatever) after Emily overloaded my hands with some body butter of hers (hey, who says no to a free hand massage?) Anyway, they now itch rather a lot, after washing them rather extensively. Knew skin was ‘thingish’ due to previous problems, nice to isolate it… (the paraffin stuff is what the problem will be, according to Wendy. *shrugs*) Tomorrow I’m hoping Mum and the others don’t have a huge amount planned, I really need to do that homework – Statement of Personal Identity, so it can be postmarked before Thursday, such a pain, submitting by snail mail. Also have to read Marks gospel twice (for NT, with different perspectives), and work out 3min public speaking thing: ‘What has YITS meant for me’. I have rough ideas on that already. So. Second week of holidays has begun. I have a proper bed, good coffee, real shower, even an electric blanket… I like my niceties more than I previously realised. Could be saying something that I lugged a whopping load of technology with me camping, computer, music, camera etc… and didn’t hesitate to use it. Mum made some horribly daggy comment about me approaching ‘it’ (it being the ‘nature experience’ pfft.) in my own kind of ‘technological’ way. Gag material. This is what frustrates me about her, that and her continual stating of the obvious. I love mum, but sometimes I’d rather have something else in my ears :\ to be deadly honest. Best I’m managing at the moment is to just bang my fists against the wall of my mind instead of verbalizing it, which is really just as bad. …why do I always end up saying something about how frustrated I am with her. That has to change. Bed time. Bed. 9:42pm VIC 26/9/05 I’m attempting to write my Statement of Personal Identity and I’m finding it really hard. I decided to approach it a bit differently, in talking myself (that is writing) through working out what I wanted to put in it. I have one short assignment description to go off and some listed Bible passages. I couldn’t find the notes Rowan gave as an example before I left home. I don’t want to make it clichéd, this could be a really helpful thing to have, I’d like it to be done properly. Listening to Michael Card – as a general rule, it makes me homesick for the Solomons, homesick for the past, but the lyrics are beautiful, they allow me to think, it’s very God based and I find it easier in a sense to ‘connect’ (which is a bit of codswallop in the sense of having to) but yeah. 8:26pm VIC 27/9/05 Left off abruptly last night. I got fed up, and I find myself in a similar position again. I am frustrated, I can’t exactly put my finger on why. I’m getting a bit tired of holidays, I’m annoyed I miss the first day back at YITS, I honestly want to spend as much time with them all now, before it all has to end. I keep dreaming about Year in the Son people all mixed up with school people and Solomon’s people – oddly it’s mostly of people ignoring me, that is, I’ll go to talk to them and discover them talking to someone entirely not from yits – from school or whatever and then I feel all intrusive and completely lost as to how the two know each other. I wish I knew sometimes – if people let you know that they were praying for you. It would be welcome encouragement, not that I can talk though – I don’t often say if I am. They had some ice-cream before – which reminds me, they either haven’t started or they have, in either case, I think I’ll go find out. Not the hugest ice cream fan, but it sounds kind of nice right now.