Freedom

I’m writing from my beach house. Its serene. The children are sleeping in. The only sounds are the hum of the fridge (dang that) and a distant wattle bird. I plan to go for a jog along the beach later. Right now I have a cup of rooibos tea to drink and a bowl of porridge to eat. I have such a habit of eating breakfast as soon as I wake that last year in summer, when we were invited to breakfast at a friends beach house, I ate my muesli absent mindedly while getting ready to go. 

I went to a local farm and bought a christmas tree yesterday. It is a cute little one that the farmer has been trimming along with the rest of his slowly dwindling crop since 1997. It’d bushed up nicely. Its the densest christmas tree I’ve ever seen actually. Sally thinks its too fat. “Christmas trees are supposed to be triangles and this is a circle”, she complained. But the kids decorated it anyway. They’re not bad at making do.

I’ve had a busy week. Only three days ago I was at a five star resort in Torquay presenting my work before an intimate crowd of thirty-five. It was a strange time of year to be running a work retreat. On 16th and 17th of December there are so many other things to be doing. I made the most of it though. Prior to the commencement of the symposium with two colleagues I went for a walk along the beach there. After venturing along a track through coastal vegetation and over sand dunes we found a huge expanse of beach stretching as far as you could see in both directions. We turned left and walked with the setting sun warming our backs even though the wind was cool and strong. I strode out, invigorated. My colleagues ambled along at half my pace and I periodically waited for them. Eventually I slowed to their pace and contented myself to participate in the conversation and watch the clouds moving in from the west in interesting patterns even though I longed to run.

After ten minutes of walking they wanted to turn back. Dinner was being served in less than half an hour but the beach beckoned me to run.  I took this opportunity to part with my colleagues.”I’m going to run for five minutes”, I said, “then I’ll turn around and try to catch you”. They laughed at this. “Okay”, they said. “It looks interesting up ahead. There seems to be another track. There are people in the distance”. This they pointed out for my benefit. It was obviously not interesting enough for them to find out for themselves. “Okay, I’ll check it out”, I replied and set off.

I set my watch to zero. I wanted to play the game I’d just set up. Five minutes out and then I’d try to catch them before they got back to our accommodation. I wondered if they’d speed up their pace. Running, I felt free. For that moment I was released and by myself. After three minutes I passed a sign on the beach. I jogged near it so that I could read it. “Nude Beach” it said. 

I jogged past it. I only had two more minutes to go. There was a person by the water’s edge playing in the waves with three dogs and it did occur to me that correct etiquette may have been to remove my clothes before passing the sign. But it was only two more minutes. I decided to jog further away from the waters edge and give the person, who as I approached realised was male and naked, some space. I averted my eyes and ran on past him.

As I completed my run I kept an eye on the time. Out of my peripheral vision, however, I could still see his dogs. They seemed to be just as close to me as the moment I ran by them. I watched the seconds hand on my clock and turned exactly after five minutes to find that the naked man and his three dogs had been running behind me, keeping pace with me and possibly even catching me up. 

I looked squarely at him momentarily whilst turning. In a split second I summed the situation up as completely non threatening. He seemed intent on jogging and continued in his direction even after I turned to retrace my tracks. It was the humour of the situation that struck me more than anything else.

Later at the conference when I shared the story of the incident with colleagues there was much spontaneous laughter, followed by discussions about nude beach etiquette and the sharing of similar experiences, i.e. with streakers in fun runs and such.

Temporary Circumnavigation of Technological Communication.

For my father (who is almost seventy) the internet and email have had no intrinsic appeal. He has not been curious to know what everyone else is up to. He does not own a computer. He could not see how owning one would improve his quality of life, for he his (apparently) content with his life the way it is.

He is a very active man. He retired at the age of fifty-three, taking a retirement package to leave the government job where he spent his entire working life. In his retirement he has been through many ‘fads’. I’m sure he would not think of it in this way, but my brother, sister and I would agree on the nature of his interests. They can be plotted in waves. Initially he went through a dancing fad. He danced almost every night of the week. He went round dancing, line dancing and square dancing! That’s right: he used to dance every possible ’shape’. His next fad was a bushwalking fad. This continued for many years and resulted in my brother’s old room becoming a store room for all of the gear he accumulated in the process of becoming a bushwalker and leader of walks for others. The latest fad is for cycling. He joined a local riding group and cycles more days in the week than he stays home. He often goes away for extended trips into country Victoria.  He has riden up every mountain in Victoria and a few passes in New Zealand. 

Its the bike riding that seems to be the most enduring fad. It has the social element, the experience of the natural world and a health and fitness element without his aging body needing to shoulder extra weight. It is also through cycling that he has strengthened his relationship with his grand daughters (my girls). He used to take them riding every saturday morning. Now that they play basket ball on a Saturday, the routine of being with them has morphed into attending their games and often taking them to them (especially if the times clash and their parents can’t manage to be in two places at once).

But I digress. I was talking about his relationship with technology. However the brief sketch of his interests during retirement will give you a picture of his life and the fulfillment he feels living it without technology. 

Recently he has been considering becoming ‘connected’ technologically. Modes of communication have become largely email orientated to the point where he feels he is missing out on important planning discussions within his riding group. He feels this even more acutely with the deteriorating health of one of his friends from this club who whilst physically able (he is suffering from a degenerative asbestos-related disease) had been printing out important emails, sealing them in an envelope and posting them to my father!!