Day 61 - BELLINGEN.....(Kombu/Biodynamic/Dentist/Aborigine Language/Dark Mountain.)

hmm. I am going to have to recalculate the days soon... to differentiate between "day" and "riding day".

In Bellingen, we get our provisions from Kombu run by Kevin and Lowanna Doye who cycled from the UK to Australia a decade ago. Besides organic food (local and foreign), bicycle bottles, and a myriad of green stuff from seeds to shampoos, I came across mini flyers for Bio-dynamic farming that has long fascinated me.

Anotherday, I hope either Roland or I can interview some of the youth engaged with EYE on the planet.

Meanwhile the fact that I have had to see a dentist, here in Bellingen, at short notice (left molar tooth out) and have to see the dentist next week to look at another tooth, means we have an enforced stay, and are taking the opportunity to evaluate how effective have we been, what works across the board on all issues relating to the ride and how we work together, and what doesn't. And can we resolve these issues to improve how we work together?

Three hours after leaving the dentist's chair, Roland, Olivia and I attended a class studying snd speaking the Gurrimburr language from this area, and now back home I am inspired by Edward Hill from Transition Westcombe, sending me the following:

the Dark Mountain: http://www.dark-mountain.net

"The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.

Deeper than oil, steel or bullets, a civilisation is built on stories: on the myths that shape it and the tales told of its origins and destiny. We have herded ourselves to the edge of a precipice with the stories we have told ourselves about who we are: the stories of ‘progress’, of the conquest of ‘nature’, of the centrality and supremacy of the human species.

It is time for new stories. The Dark Mountain Project intends to conjure into being new ways of seeing and writing about the world. We call this Uncivilisation.

Our aim is to bring together writers and artists, thinkers and doers, to assault the established citadels of literature and thought, and to begin to redraw the maps by which we navigate the places and times in which we find ourselves.

We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality. The Dark Mountain Manifesto."

Yarri yarrang --
(or See you, as they say in the Gurrimburr Aborigine language)


Chris