More Text message updates....
06.11.09 12:31
You rekon that's good
wait till ya see yer
apple stacking facilities!
Dan>E
06.11.09 2:16
well there's one.......
Dan>E07.11.09 10:17
Morning, how bout that?
Dan>EOur
'slow building movement' has experienced
a bit of speed lately,
we have discovered that in order to turn old things into new things
new perspectives are needed.
Tony's family home was built by his dad, John,
who used to ride his bicycle across sydney
with planks of timber and fibro tied to the sides of it.
He would catch a punt
from one side of the bay to the other,
there was no 'Captain Cook Bridge' back then.
The first structure he built on his bush block was the
outside dunny, or toilet.
He built it first in order to have shelter and a place to sleep
while he built the rest of the house.
That bit of land, where they never chopped down a tree,
became to site of Tones ever growing family home.
With each new child John built a new room.
With such an embedded sense of history
building for Tony, stands for so much more
than simply developing space.
For both of us there is always story involved.
While traveling together Tone and I
stayed in lots of small villages and participated
in many building activities.
We viewed things from the perspective of a tourist,
artist and environmentalist.
Neither of us are builders. But we have two hands.
The places we traveled used hand tools, rarely had electricity
and had little money.
In Laos the whole village came together to get the frame
of a house up. I sat with the women and made Laab.
Tone and our friend Anth followed the orders of the men,
and held things in place here and there.
The three of us would converge and debrief, astounded at the ways
things got done and then would get called back to work.
In Mexico, we built in a place where all the buildings
would be blown down by the yearly typhoon.
We started gardens in places that would be flooded under,
witnessing what we thought were extremely
unsustainable practices.
Yet the village had survived that way
for countless years.
In Elwood, in a building we don't own, we nurture a shop
and ourselves in order to exchange a more sustainable urban life.
Our adversities are many, yet we proceed, slowly, honestly and openly.
Tone and I ate pizza last night from an big stone oven
we remembered many of our meals we shared with people around the world
and with each other.
We are building a tea house,
but as it has always been,
for my whole relationship with Tony,
the 'we' is never just he and I.
It includes everyone.
In each place I have worked constructing things,
from installations in Korea, houses in south eastern asia,
dwellings and gardens in latin america to structures in India
I have learnt something about 'community',
something that exists
world wide.
In order for community to exist it must
include others.
Tone Text me this the other night after a story on slow food was aired on the
telly04.11.09 8:11
I wrote down this quote from Carlo Petrini
'It's not that we are sad environmentalists.
We want happiness, we seek pleasure but at the same time,
we also seek sustainability.'
T>E
When we traveled Tone and I used to say
'We are in search for fulfillment
and happiness, but it must be sustainable.'
Today I see that for all our adversities
our happiness has sustained.
We are building a tea house!
