gratitude and generosity

This blog has become an entity unto itself. My friends love to rib me about it ever so slightly, but are overwhelmingly glad it provides an alternative point of release for my relatively newly found love of gardening (after 20 minutes of detailed deconstruction about the deeper meaning of dirt not everyone remains as enthralled)

I love the people who read it, and whose blogs I also am drawn to (and beleive me if you post it, no doubt I will read it within the hour, I am a postgrad afterall whose pure existance is to perfect the art of procrastionation). There are the regulars and the occassonals. But what has struck me most is the wonderful sense of community that this forum has provided. Your thoughts and prayers and actions and words about the bushfires are so heartening. Now I am in inner city Melbourne, so away from the the firefront. Though no one it seems, is unaffected. Everyone knows someone whose lost someone or someones, and even the smoke haze each morning is enough to remind one that things are just not quite right. The horror that the fireswreaked, the anguish that yes, some of these were deliberately lit can be too much to consider. It is horrific, and quite incomprehensible.

But the kindness shown here and elsewhere is astounding. I went to a poetry reading last night, what was to be a launch, was in the wake of the fires both launch and benefit. The poetry community is not immune to the losses dealt out by the fires. Now the literary set, at the best of times are a necessarily frugal bunch. Poetry pays a pittance, and the crowd, while larger than usual, probably topped out at a hundred or so. What amazed me was, despite the funding shortage and miniscule numbers, this set of folks, through a donation at the door, managed to raise $1500!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was awed, in a shocked and good way. Money isn't everything, but anything to help the fire victims is useful.

So in all thanks for the kind wishes, and those who visited the red cross donation link are the kindest souls. Keep them up, and keep these people in your thoughts, because with the hot conditions returning this weekend, it is far from over.