Canberra- Day 3 Blogging A-Z Challenge.

“The hardest thing about living in Canberra is that almost everyone who doesn’t live here asks: ‘Why on earth would you live in Canberra?’ Loudly, and in a way they would never use to discuss anywhere else. And they never listen to the answer.”

Judy Horacek, Cartoonist

Welcome to Day 3 of the Blogging A to Z Challenge.

Today, we’re leaving Europe behind and leap frogging across the globe to Australia’s capital city, Canberra, which started out as a city in the sheep paddocks and has evolved into a dynamic cultural centre despite, or perhaps because of the politicians. Indeed,  “Canberra” is often used to refer to all things political going on down there, becoming an entity beyond place.

Parliament House, Canberra

However, before Canberra became “Canberra”, the indigenous Ngunnawal and Ngambri people had been living in the area for thousands of years and the name ‘Canberra’ is said to be derived from an indigenous word meaning ‘meeting place’.

Canberra only rose to fame after Australia’s six states and two territories federated to form Australia. As there was intense rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne  to become the nation’s capital, it was my understanding that it was decided to locate the capital   half-way in between in Canberra. However, it turns out that at a premiers’ conference in Melbourne in January 1899, NSW Premier George Reid won support for the capital to be located within his state. However, as a trade-off, section 125 of the new federal Constitution specifically stated that the capital  could be no less than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Sydney. In the meantime, Melbourne would act as the interim capital. The first Commonwealth Parliament met in Melbourne on 9 May 1901. However, Federal Parliament didn’t move to Canberrra until 1927.

Don’t you just love politics!

However, when we’ve gone to Canberra, it’s had nothing to do with politics. Rather, we’ve always been driving back from the snow, and were more interested in its museums.

Being the nation’s capital, it’s home to the National Gallery (art), Questacon (Science), and the Australian War Memorial, which I’d place on an equal footing. However, I doubt the rest of the family would concur and no doubt our teenagers would want to see more than galleries these days.  I also wanted to mention that both our kids went on what’s known as “The Canberra Trip” when they were in primary school. It’s a right of passage (at least around here) and it’s a big excitement for them to head off in the coach with their friends, and an emotional time for their parents as the coach leaves.

Obviously, all three of these museums are currently closed due to the Coronavirus. However, perhaps this will inspire you to visit later. Alternately, these brief stop overs might satisfy your museum urge while you’re in social isolation and I’ve actually been able to provide links to online exhibitions. So, I’m pretty chuffed, and am not such a bad tour guide after all!

The daily Last Post Ceremony, which is held at the Pool of Reflection. Geoff and the kids presented a wreath in honour of Geoff’s Great Uncle, Pte Robert Ralph French who was killed in action in France. 

The Australian War Memorial

“Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we

guard the record which they themselves made.”

– Charles Bean, 1948

For anyone with a passion for history, I strongly recommend visiting the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, especially if you have a family member who served in any of our armed conflicts, or even if you simply want to know how war has impacted our people on and off the battlefield. It’s absolutely riveting. Indeed, I believe we’ve been there three times as a family, and each time we’ve stayed much longer than intended and had to tear ourselves away. Moreover, now that my research into Australians serving on the Western Front during WWI has taken off, I could probably spend the rest of my life in this place and not blink an eye. Indeed, if I snuck down while the place is in lock down, nobody would even know I was there…!

Over the years, the Australian War Memorial has moved from being a physical, concrete entity and added an online counterpart, which is an invaluable resource. I am particularly grateful for this, as it’s not that easy for me to get down to Canberra and it’s so much easier to click on links online than combing through boxes of files.

If you’d like to read more about the history of the museum itself, please click Here.

Questacon – the National Science and Technology Centre.

Questacon is like a huge playcentre for science and engineering nerds. Yet, I also managed to find my own niche as a photographer by capturing the freaky lighting effects on film. That was a lot of fun and really extended my powers of perception (see above).

Of course, that wasn’t why it was there. Besides, I love science anyway.  It’s just that some of it can get beyond my pay grade, or is in areas I’m not interested in and that’s okay. We don’t have to love everything.

By the way, I should also mention there’s a great shop at Questacon. If you’re getting a bit sick of wearing Pyjamas everyday, perhaps you’d like to splurge on a Questacon lab coat?

 The National Art Gallery

The National Art Gallery has made my job a lot easier, and is currently holding a couple of online exhibitions. So, I’d love you to join me for:

Matisse & Picasso

Australian Artist Hugh Ramsay

Hugh Ramsay: The Sisters, Art Gallery of NSW

In case you’re unfamiliar with Hugh Ramsay’s work, here’s a brief intro posted by the gallery: “Hugh Ramsay (1877–1906) was an accomplished Australian artist whose portrait paintings achieved success here and in France before his untimely death at the age of 28. This retrospective, the first to focus on Ramsay in more than a quarter of a century, brings together paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and letters from collections around the country to celebrate his achievements.”

In terms of their regular exhibits, my favourite is Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Series:

Well, that concludes our very brief gallery tour of Canberra, but I’ve left you with plenty of places to wonder off to online if you follow through to the links.

Have you ever been to Canberra? What were your favourites? Please leave your thoughts and any links in the comments.

Best wishes,

Rowena

Barking Up the Wrong Tree…Friday Fictioneers

“Jess, joining us at the pub tonight? Emily’s bringing her brother along…David Wilson, the famous tree sculptor. His works have been in The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Being a taxonomist, we thought you’d get on.”

“Jane, if he’s so famous, why can’t he make his own dates? What’s wrong with him?”

“What about yourself? When was the last time you had a date? It’s not his fault that his sister inherited all the extroversion genes.”

“Jess, just promise me you won’t mention anything about their Latin names.”

Something told me, they were all barking up the wrong tree.

…..

103 words

This has been another contribution to Friday Fictioneers hosted by Rochelle Wishoff-Fields. PHOTO PROMPT © J.S. Brand

Best wishes,

Rowena

 

 

Electrical Sex Fixing…What the @#$%!

Research was never meant to be a straight road. Quite often, there’s an astounding story right alongside the one I was looking for, which turns out to be “the find”.

Night, while reading through my grandmother’s music column from the 1950s, I stumbled across this gem:

Unfortunately, a quick Google search fails to elucidate the matter any further. Does anybody know any more about this?

Best wishes,

Rowena

Not the Taj Mahal! Friday Fictioneers.

“Bill, you’ve stretched the boundaries of science with your bare hands. Teleporting a mouse to Australia is freaky smart, but teleporting us to the Taj Mahal? You’re mad!” Jessica fumed. “If you beam Scotty up, you’ve gotta bring Scotty down. I’m staying home.”

Yet, it was too late. Bill had already pressed the button.

Still wearing her pink fluffy slides, Jessica gingerly opened her eyes. Either the teleporter had a wild sense of humour, or no sense of direction. This decrepid hotel  was NOT the Taj Mahal, and Bill mumbled something about Guatamala.

That was Bill’s last experiment.

——-

While ostensibly about the perils of teleporting, that scenario illustrates that age old tension in couples where one is more this, and the other is more than that. One is a risk taker, while the other’s a home body. How do we negotiate these differences? There lies the challenge and quite frankly, I think Bill’s in deep water.

xx Rowena

This has been another contribution to Friday Fictioneers hosted by by Rochelle Wishoff Fields. This week’s image from JS Brand captures I’d encourage you to read some of the other contributions and see just how many different takes can emerge from the same photo.

Word Count 98 words.

 

It’s Been Flubberized!

While intrepid jungle explorers receive all the kudos, quite frankly, I feel any parent brave enough to delve through their child’s school bag deserves a gold medal, a statue in their local park and their own TV show. This is where such lofty ideals as COURAGE, BRAVERY, PERSEVERANCE and PERSISTANCE  hit the road, and you find out whether you are mighty… or a mouse.

You’d never suspect this neat girl would have rotting yogurt or a squished banana in her bag, would you?!!

Thinking back to my own school bag, there were definitely some serious horrors in there. Indeed, there were horrors of Elm Street proportions. Undoubtedly, the worst of it had to be the burst yogurt. Don’t ask me which fool put a yogurt in their bag without a raincoat or any form of protection. No one likes a dobber. However, I still remember the stench, and fishing out wads of soggy paper caked in the stuff and trying to salvage affected exercise and text books. Of course, I didn’t clean it up very well and the smell only got worse, and no doubt even mould set in. This was pure YUCK in capital letters!! A school kid’s equivalent of a toxic spill. I don’t remember Mum cleaning it up either. That was my job…along with cleaning out the squashed banana, which was also brutally slaughtered in that very same school bag. I feel ashamed to admit it now, but I was evidently a repeat offender,  who didn’t learn from her mistakes.

Unfortunately, my daughter has followed in my footsteps. While she did a fantastic effort with a squished banana, she’s now found a whole new catastrophic realm. Her school bag has “flubberitis”.

Flubber is a type of slime. If you’re from my era, you might recall that you could buy slime in a little green plastic can. I loved this was fanastic, goopy ooze.

On the other hand, this slime is quite different. You make it yourself and it looks and smells like some deadly toxic pestilence straight out of Ghost Busters. Slime replicates very, very quickly and is currently spreading through schools and homes faster than the common cold. If you have a good look around in the playground, you’ll see its tell-tale \ smear on just about everything, just like another substance we’ll simply call> “nasal secretions”.

Flubberitis…goopy slime on the march inside my daughter’s school bag. At least, it smelled like fresh apples. 

My daughter’s been operating a slime laboratory in her room for the last six months and I haven’t been impressed to find slime stuck to her sheets, carpet, school hat, skort. Depending on the type of slime, it’s footprints vary. Not quite as bad as chewing gum, it still likes to stick around and can be a beast to get rid of. Moreover, there’s all the apparatus used to make the slime. That’s simply mess on mess on mess, even if you can appreciate that it’s “art”, “science”, “an alternative to screen time” or “better than drugs”.

My daughter is keen to export slime to even the remotest corners of the globe…a budding entrepreneur. 

I have mixed feelings towards my daughter’s obsession with slime. On the positive, making slime is a creative and scientific venture. She not one mixes the core ingredients together, she and her friends add things to vary it’s texture and colour such as foam balls and glitter.  There are a multitude of different recipes and kinds of slime out there and it really is quite fascinating for anyone with a science bent. Moreover, many people also enjoy the sensory stimulation of playing and fidgeting with the slime. This can be a lot of fun and may also relieve stress. On the other hand, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t like stuff sticking to your fingers, some slimes won’t be for you. I personally find many of the slimes feel quite icky on my skin and I don’t like touching them at all. Smell is also a problem and has caused breathing difficulties in our family. I also find the mess and the smears across just about every surface annoying. I’ve also been concerned about her sniffing all that glue, and she’s now been told to make it outside.

Like Mother, like daughter. This was where I made potions out of wildflowers when we were living on acreage out at Galston, Sydney. This was my happy place and this has always been a much-prized photograph. 

That’s how I see the stuff. My daughter finds it mesmerizing and a real sensory indulgence, especially when she’s added things like foam balls, sparkly glitter or sand to the mix. I’ve seen her squishing it for hours, as it releases some kind of magic I struggle to understand. Yet, that doesn’t matter as long as I can show some interest and listen to her accounts of the ducks’ guts of slime.

It could be better. It could be worse.

Have you or your kids had much to do with slime? What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

xx Rowena

 

Mothers’ Day Is Floating Away…

Mothers’ Day is inevitably full of surprises. Not that I’m naive enough to script the day. Indeed, the older I get, the more I let it go. Run by itself.

That says quite a lot, because I can be something of a control freak.

Anyway, as I said, Mother’s Day is full of surprises and usually goes off script.

The Family with the balloons before blast off.

So, this morning as we’re heading back to the car after Church, I’m wondering why the kids have wandered off AGAIN. I wasn’t impressed! Started wondering why we can’t all get to the car at the same time and why our family herds like meandering sheep…

Trying to round everyone up, I could see our son was clearly distracted. Indeed, all his attention was clearly focused at the sky and nowhere near the car, going home or my Mothers’ Day lunch.

Yet, in a moment which would’ve made his science teacher proud, he’d launched a shopping bag with a Mother’s Day card into the clouds powered by a bunch of helium balloons. I just managed to catch it visibly heading into the clouds like a dream. Apparently, he’d carefully tested the number of balloons required to achieve the desired amount of lift. This was a scientist at work, being observed by an absolute dreamer (his mother).

This spontaneous gesture filled me with such immense pride. He might not have broken any records, or invented the first shopping bag in space, but my heart was glowing.

That’s not something you can count on with a teen, especially on Mothers’ Day.

Although we did manage to get some photographs, he might just have to: “Play it again, Sam!” (Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca). These pics were hastily snapped on our phones.

It truly was a magical moment!

More Mothers’ Day entertainment to come.

xx Rowena

Featured Image: Photo Credit – My daughter “Miss”.

Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World.

If you could see my desk and take a panoramic view of my house, you’d immediately understand why I bought Tim Harford’s: Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World.

It’s not because I’m anally clean. Rather, it’s because I’m naturally messy, chaotic yet delightfully creative. Indeed, I rarely have any trouble with writer’s block and have more of a problem with creative overflow and all my neurons going off at once.

I didn’t need to think twice when I first spotted the book in  a Surry Hills bookshop in Sydney (the one with the rainbow bicycle out the front). I’d finally found an ally…someone else on my side of the messy desk debate. After all, I’ve long been an advocate of: “Messy desk, active mind”.

However, with the rise of the dreaded Declutter Movement, I’ve been becoming increasingly outnumbered. So, I welcome this book, which will become a handy weapon to defend myself against those marauding armies of preachy declutterers. While it might not be the size of a telephone book or antique Bible, it could still inflict a bit of damage, sending them packing along with their almighty bins.

However, Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World is far more broad reaching than the state of your desk. I guess it’s saying that you don’t have to be tidy minded to be creative. Indeed, Harford is suggesting quite the reverse. That chaos, shock thinking and juggling multiple projects across disciplines has led to some incredible breakthroughs. That being focused might not be the best approach to generating creative solutions after all. Indeed, he suggests the reverse.

I am still reading Messy and am only up to Chapter 3. While I appreciate that you usually finish the book before you write about it, I couldn’t wait.  I am finding this book so amazing that I’m not just reading it, I am studying it…scrutinising each and every page. That in itself is not exceptional. I always read books with a pen in hand to underline stuff and also jot down striking vocabulary such as “monomaniacal tendencies” in this instance. However, when it comes to this book, my scribbling has reached new heights and I am Googling bits along the way. There’s just so many valuable insights to investigate and explore that I really want to take it as far as I can. Just how far can these revelations take my writing? The way I think? I don’t know but I have very great expectations and am savouring every word along the way.

That’s why I thought I’d run through the book as I go on the blog and I’d like to encourage you to rush out there and buy it, so we can read it together.

When I studied creative writing at university, I was told that “writing is a thinking process”. Therefore, if we’re going to improve our writing, we also need to work on our thoughts, how we think, what inspires us and what helps us take those incredible creative leaps which take us way beyond anything we’ve ever written before.

As a reader, one of my pet hates is the number of writers who write about what it means to be a writer. Added to that, is the high percentage of novels which have have a journalist or writer as the protagonist. There’s such a plethora of characters out there, so why do so many writers stay within their comfort zones?

You might be surprised to know that I’m not only a writer but also a photographer,  am learning the violin and for the last 3 months, I’ve been taking adult ballet and lyrical dance classes. That’s alongside living with a disability and chronic health issues. This enables a lot of cross-fertilisation. I actually think of this as creative cross-training in the same way a swimmer might run, lift weights, do aerobics and yoga.

Have you read: Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World?

If not, I’d personally recommend abandoning your current read and getting stuck into it before you let the opportunity pass. It won’t just get you thinking, but will also inspire action, change and growth beyond writing. After all, we as humans should be in a state of constant refinement. To sit still, is to stagnate.

Well, I apologise for putting on my motivational speaker hat, but who doesn’t want to be their best? The only trouble is putting in the work.

Anyway, rather than stuffing all these insights into one humungus post, I’m breaking it up. My next post will be looking at Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategy Cards and then I’ll be looking at how to keep multiple projects on the boil without blowing a gasket.

That’s just looking at Chapter 1 on Creativity. So, stay tuned for more gems to get those synapses firing…really firing!!

xx Rowena

M-Dorothea MacKellar Replies #atozchallenge.

Dear Rowena,

Thank you so much for lovely letter. It has been so many years since I wrote My Country when I was in England as a young woman and thinking of home. I was touched to hear that it spoke to you in a similar way when you were in Paris. Well done on the reading!

What you might not appreciate me, was that I am a fighter. Writers and poets have to speak out. Words weren’t only created to sound pretty but to also serve a purpose. Each of us who indeed calls themselves a poet, must ultimately take a stand. Improve the world around us.

Bearing that in mind, I am asking you to fight for your country. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about going to war. Rather, the battle has changed and the mountains, plains, oceans and clear skies I loved so much, are under threat. This means that the battle is now within and unless we rapidly change course, we will self-destruct.

Tough decisions need to be made. However, Australians have always rallied together through a crisis and have what it takes to act!

Yours sincerely,

Miss Mackellar

 

F- Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

Dear Mr Frost,

Sometimes, when you reach a fork in the road, you don’t get much of a choice about which road to take. Such as when you’re a dead poet receiving a letter all the way from the 21^st Century and you’re being expected  to think, respond, answer questions when your only conversations have been with the worms and other subterranean guests.  That’s what makes life, and I guess even death, exciting. There’s always the challenge of the unexpected…that wake up call. So, Mr Frost, this is yours.

Welcome back!

Through your poem The Road Not Taken, you’ve become known as the man who stuck the fork in the road, creating that ultimate dilemma…which road should you take? While in your original poem, both roads are almost exactly the same, it has been reinterpreted as making a choice between the freeway or the road less travelled. Are you a follower or a trail blazer?

Now, I’ve reached my own fork in the road.

Should we explore what your poem was originally about or what it’s come to mean to so many?

Choosing Which Road To Take

While it can be really difficult to decide between two evenly weighted options, it’s either win-win or lose-lose. Of course, you’re closing off a possibility and with that there’s that sense of loss but if we are to carpe diem seize the day, we acknowledge that loss and move on.

The Road Less Travelled: The Freeway or the Scenic Road?

So, moving onto a different fork.

On one hand, you have the Freeway with its smooth, well sign posted conditions and faster speed limits but bland scenery.

Then, there’s the Scenic Road with is beautiful scenery, photo opportunities, slower speed limits and unpredictability. You’re constantly needing to monitor for hazards, take evasive action and possibly even navigate by the stars. Anything could be down that road and there could be a very good reason no one else is using it. After all, the flock might not be mistaken.

Which road would you choose?

That’s what I asked my family over dinner tonight.

My husband pointed out that your choice depends on the circumstances. If you’re in a hurry and need to get from A to B as fast as possible, then take the Freeway. However, if you have plenty of time and are looking for interesting places to explore, adventures  and photo opportunities, then take the scenic road. He also grew up in the country and loves nothing more than burning down a dirt road, where the car almost dances going round a corner. That’s an Aussie bloke for you and possibly quite different from your New England experience.

So, rather than setting hard and fast rules, we need to be flexible about which road we should take. However, does this leave us sitting on a barbed wire fence going nowhere?

Forced On the Road Less Travelled.

As much as we like to believe we’re in the driver’s seat, life can dump us on the road less travelled without a bottle of water or compass. There is no choice. I was born with a mind-altering neurological condition called hydrocephalus, which went undiagnosed until I was 25. With a harbour inside my head applying pressure in all sorts of funny places, I was bush bashing with my machete to create any kind of path. Surgery saved my life. However, then I developed a rare life-threatening auto-immune disease where my muscles attack themselves. This goes in and out of remission and even when I’m well and look fine, there’s still stuff going on.

However, through being dumped on a rough and rugged road and having to survive, I’ve become much stronger and tenacious. I’ve also been shattered, bruised and battered along the way and it’s been incredibly hard going. At times, nothing short of anguish. However, like coal enduring all that heat and pressure, I’ve emerged a diamond. Well, at least in theory!

That confirms some of the virtues of travelling along that rough, unchartered road.

A Choice

Taking the road less travelled, can also be a personal choice. Perhaps, you could call it lively curiosity. That pursuing all my unanswered questions, automatically takes me over unchartered ground.

Kids and the Road Less Travelled.

A recent family photo.

While I am accustomed to taking the road less travelled myself, I am much more perplexed about whether our kids should undertake the journey.

As a parent, protecting your children is an inbuilt, natural instinct. Of course, you want to give them a smooth road. Make their journey as easy as possible. Yet, is that what they need? What will be the ultimate result?  That concerns me.

If the kids are going to bounce back from life’s inevitable challenges, they need resilience. They’ll only develop resilience through being challenged, encountering problems and learning how to overcome them. You don’t develop these skills sticking to the main road where everything’s being done for you. No work or imagination required. Stay between the lines and under the speed limit and you’ll be right.

That’s very well when it comes to pitting themselves against the great outdoors but how about taking the road less travelled in the school context? Going against the flow and flaunting their differences like neon signs in the playground where kids can be brutally cruel and survival of the fittest is the modus operandi? What might be a bold, creative or adventurous move, can have a kid torn down and thrown to the wolves. Bullies know no mercy.

Knowing this, do you as a parent step in and gently redirect your child back into the flock or do you leave them be? After all, do they really need to sell their souls to belong, be accepted and have a few friends?  Surely, that’s not asking for a lot!!

These are tough questions. What would you recommend to parents? Should they be encouraging their children to conform and stick to the freeway? Or should they be and develop themselves, tackling the bumps and unpredictability along the scenic route, hoping they emerge a diamond, not crushed?

Personally, I also have to believe that shutting down independent thought is a really bad thing for the future of our world. That we need problem-solvers and thinkers who can put a heap of seemingly random things together and find that cure for cancer, develop ways of containing climate change and can help people live more harmoniously together. Cloned thinking has never led to discovery, invention or the answers we need.

I’m sorry I’ve jumped up on my soap box and have given you more of a lecture when I should be asking you. I guess I just needed to get all this out. See what you think.

Anyway, it’s now time for me to get some shut eye and for you to get to work.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best wishes,

Rowena

 

 

The Question Mark.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
…live in the question.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Living with the question mark has been a life long journey through such incredible terrain…a real roller coaster ride through life’s ups and downs never quite knowing what is possible…for better or for worse.

Grappling with the question mark has lead to some incredibly thrilling voyages both  through my philosophical wanderings inside my head and also through exploring and investigating the world around me and beyond.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science”.

– Albert Einstein

At the same time, there have also been difficulties. Scary questions which hyper-inflate into terrifying and intimidating beasts…monsters!! Once the question mark reaches such mammoth proportions, it’s very hard to force it back into its box and re-establish some kind of inner peace or equilibrium. After all, questioning leads to growth, expanding your horizons and making incredible discoveries but it can also leave you incredibly anxious, fearful and afraid of your own shadow.

Weird, isn’t it!

The reality is that nobody know what’s about to happen. What the future holds. We can do our analysis and make a best-guess assessment but anything can happen at anytime and no matter how focused we are or perhaps even because we are too focused, we could get run over by that proverbial bus. It’s all over red rover. Yes, you were planning to rob a bank today and you were going to “make it happen” but it wasn’t meant to be. When it comes to difficulties predicting the future, we need to look no further than the weather forecast. Despite all the latest scientific bells and whistles, they still get it wrong.

So what hope does a mere mortal have?

This uncertainty works both ways. Just as we can be side-swiped by bad luck, our journey can take a radically different path when we encounter the good…winning Lotto, meeting our soul mate and riding off into the sunset. You were expecting a boring day but instead you had what Dr Phil describes as “a defining moment”.

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
John Steinbeck

These questions also extend beyond the journey exploring who we are and the world around us.

The Diary of Anne Frank

While researching The Diary of Anne Frank recently, I was reminded of her intelligent, questioning spirit. She relentlessly asked why and had a real quest for unraveling and knowing about people and the world around her and what was going on in her crazy world as well. She wrote:

“Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word ‘why’ has lived and grown along with me. It’s a well-known fact that children ask questions about anything and everything, since almost everything is new to them. That is especially true of me, and not just as a child. Even when I was older, I couldn’t stop asking questions.
I have to admit that it can be annoying sometimes, but I comfort myself with the thought that “You won’t know until you ask,” though by now I’ve asked so much that they ought to have made me a professor.
When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can’t or shouldn’t ask in public, or questions which you can’t put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word ‘why’ not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex

Why is it so? Professor Julian Sumner-Miller.

Why is it so?

When it comes to asking why, I always come back to a popular Cadbury Chocolate advertisement from the 80s Professor Julian Sumner Miller manages to get a boiled egg inside a glass milk bottle and then asks: Why is it so? . It was an impressible piece of science.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM-0FBu62MA

“I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”

– Arthur C. Clarke

When it comes to exploring life’s imponderables, I personally can’t go past Michael Leunig’s extensive wonderings. An Australian cartoonist, visionary, philosopher and poet, Michael Leunig would have to be the undisputed King of the Question mark. The key figure in his cartoons is Mr Curly who has wandered and wondered life’s conundrums, providing insights for millions of fellow seekers. You can visit Leunig here: http://www.leunig.com.au/ and read his story here: http://www.smh.com.au/national/leunig-its-a-curly-old-world-20141119-11p4to.html

While it can be quite stressful and intense grappling with all life’s questions, what is the alternative?

Well, look no further than Manuel, the lovable Spanish waiter in the hit British comedy, Fawlty Towers. Manuel’s command of English is not the best, which makes for a host of misunderstandings and frustrations.While others have spent a lifetime pursuing “why”, Manuel gets stuck on “what” with his infamous catch cry: “Que?”

The inimitable Manuel from the British hit comedy Fawlty Towers.

When it comes to the question mark, perhaps nobody has expressed it better than Manuel from Fawlty Towers with his infamous: “Que?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mpClSPyhk

Manuel strikes again!

And: “I know nothing!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6EaoPMANQM

The thing is that when it comes to knowing what lies ahead, perhaps Manuel is right on the money. Indeed, no matter how determined we might be to “make it happen”, most of us aren’t blessed with a crystal ball and have no idea what lies just around the corner…for better or for worse. We can take steps which improve our chances but there’s still that side swipe which will send us on an entirely different trajectory. Like it or lump it, we, too, “know nothing”!

Not unsurprisingly, prayer is a common approach to handling uncertainty. While many of these prayers could well be classed as trying to bully God into giving us the desires of our heart (very much like a nagging child), the Serenity Prayer is more ubiquitous:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference”.

However, I must admit that I’ve never been that good at spotting the difference but that’s another story!

Perhaps, however, the ultimate question remains: how do we live with the question mark and life’s inherent uncertainty without becoming a nervous wreck? There is indeed a lot of strength or even misplaced power when we believe we’re all-powerful and somehow rule the world and control each and every roll of the dice…including the weather.

This is indeed one of life’s greatest unanswered questions along with how many days each of us will be walking this planet? We just don’t know. How long is a ball of string?

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”.

John Lennon

Inevitably, busyness usually distracts and refocuses our thoughts away from unanswerable questions redirecting our efforts onto something more tangible like cleaning the toilet.

More than once, I’ve cheered: “Thank goodness for that!”

This has been Q for Question Mark in the Blogging from A-Z April Challenge. If you are doing the challenge, please share what you have written today and how things are going? We’re now on the homeward track.

xx Rowena

 PS Found this great quote today as I approach W of the Blogging A-Z April Challenge:

 “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet