"If you hide nothing you have nothing to hide." "All I want is perfection." |
aplaceof.info
extract from The Prophet's Sister, written when Liz was 19: “What of innocence lost?” “It cannot be lost, it cannot be destroyed. These are traps of the mind that the unwary fall into, we forget how to maintain our state of innocence and finding that it has faded to a slip of nothing assume it has been destroyed forever. Innocence cannot be destroyed - it can be injured, forgotten, suppressed and hindered in every way possible, but the potential for innocence will always remain. It is like a seed that waits inside every person, waiting for the nurturing that will allow itself to grow once more and express its glorious, bounteous, giving self. Innocence can be an act of rebellion; this world of ours can seem so harsh, so unremitting, so destined for catastrophe and failure. To face all this - to see every pain, every hurt, everything that is corrupt and full of despair and still be able to love the world, still look at the sky, see leaves and flowers and marvel at their complexity, to get lost in the texture of a fabric and glory in the dance of life. This is innocence, this is rebellion. Innocence has nothing to do with actions done or knowledge attained, it is an attitude, a spark, a flame that skips and sings and dances simply for the joy of it. It is easy to assume it dies with knowledge and interaction with the world, but it does not. It makes it harder to maintain the state of innocence, makes it easier to forget what innocence is, but it does not make innocence die. Innocence that is lost can be reclaimed, as a fundamental right, as something to demand from the world. Innocence is not closed eyes and fear of the dark, innocence is freedom from the fear of passion, innocence is allowing oneself to feel emotions in the full, innocence is yours if you desire to claim it.” |
... first registered in 2002, a name arising from my daughter Liz's 'place of stories.'
Liz has moved on to other domains; her great inspiring prose poem The Prophet's Sister remains accessible here. We first got into web design because of a family crisis, with Margaret's fight to live.
The news from 2003 to early 2008 is found here. An important record of times not regretted...
This aplaceof.info is now my own project site to develop again, independently.
For the moment, from May 2008 I am preoccupied by local government crisis. See this new site:
Shoalhaven 2020
I host, develop and manage several community-oriented domains, including these:
Local, relating to Australia:
newbushtelegraph.net
tomerong.org
In Africa:
ourcongo.net [currently offline with some management issues]
easterncongo.net
These and other African projects are driven by local community leaders. They become more complex — as they become more complex. The need for management skills rushes at them when funds arrive and action begins... I have a sense that they cope with trauma and change better than Australians will in difficult years ahead. See the number of children here, nursing siblings, a generation lost to war and AIDS.
Connection with these communities began via nabuur.com - a concept which has not prospered as well as might be hoped, or was envisioned in this conversation in 2005. Siegfried remains confident... but the task, theoretically simple, is complex, because for some reason people find it hard to understand. The task is to use the internet – to change at least a bit of the internet – from "yabber, yabber, look at my [parts of mind or body]" to "discuss, plan, enable, empower" — to help communities in the developing world build their own capacities, with a little outside help, on the basis of their own strengths, not some imposed paradigm of aid and external 'wisdom'..
But we are all consumers, it seems. It is hard to get people here to think and act responsibly rather than put their hands out to government, and Africa, often bereft of government, seems corrupted by charity and aid dependence. The idea of working from the inside rather than under foreign, Western, direction, is novel... the message has come back to me (from another community entirely) "We never knew we could think like that."
In 2005 I facilitated discussion related to a community in Java,
where we shifted the focus from subsidising dependence
In 2000, when Margaret was being killed by the most aggressive of brain tumours, I set up an internet brain tumour support group for Australians, OzBrainTumour. Having had a life committed to research and to the development of policy and the achievement of real results (as well as by my own period of disabling illness), I could not, struggling with the extraordinary learning curves and organisational demands of dealing with cancer, fail to want to share what I learned. Others have responded the same way. This has become a miraculous demonstration of the value of community and the power of the human spirit in adversity. The situations of individuals and families is so precarious; the depth of support and care evident day to day is uplifting. Trust is the fabric. I continue to contribute, sometimes nothing in a week, sometimes some hours a week.
...
The internet and the business of designing web pages is still in its infancy. I think that the look of many web sites is poor (as may be this one)
— but consider this.
We suddenly have arrived at a renaissance opportunity to bring together project design and action with creative quality, photography, visual design... so many exciting and contructive skills, practical organisational and conceptual! To look good and capture interest a web presence must be based on a good strategic vision.
Right now, most web sites are based on CMS - content management systems - which is why they tend to look alike (but wearing different dresses), with easy buttons to push and ease of changing content, like supermarket shelves OK if you are simly selling. My own preference is for the artistry of old-style html - but this subject needs an essay on 'internet presence', later.
Meanwhile, here are some of my web pages, things that have pleased me to do:
My retrospective:
• writing against war, 2003-2004. It was late in 2004, when it became clear that it was not worth trying to change broad national strategy from my situation, that I reaised that the individual citizen could try to change things at human level, just a little bit... if we worked out how. I found the UN online volunteers site and from there went to mentor some remarkable people via the internet, like Fred. This week Fred is running to try and get a university place. May 2008 I helped his father buy oxen and a plough as his refugee community is sent back to their ruined village. Here is Fred a year ago. He has been through terrifying illness since then. A youth leader, same age as my youngest, able to write to me: "My grandmother died aged 82, a very happy African grandmother, in 2004. She then had about 120 grandchildren alive, even though 47 of the children in the family were dead from the war in the last decade." I am not engaged in charity, I am committed to empowerment and capacity building.
• photodiary of travel to the West 2006: I did a lot of the photoshop work and page layout of this on laptop in tent. I had been wondering what the devil I was doing, why I was doing it. Then, reading Ford Madox Ford's The Fifth Queen, there in the preface was that extraordinarily pertinent quote, which I put on that page and which I quote again here:
We saw that Life did not narrate, but made impressions on our brains.
We, in turn, if we wished to produce on you an effect of life,
must not narrate but render impressions.Yes. The essence of presentation of images and ideas. Also, a core requirement if you seek to encourage people to think and be alive rather than tell them what you think.
• I don't know whether we'll ever get Cosmic's site complete and online, here is where it is at.... it's been fun! :-) The photo I took at the Denman markets, Cosmic in bright yellow, under a stripey pergola with a backyard-ish background. Thank you Photoshop Elements.
• the legs and feet that came to Dora and Marcus's wedding. An experiment in very wide pages - 7000 pixels wide whereas this box is 650 wide.
... a happy note to end on — or lovely feet to land on!
Dennis
copy, paste and correct to email me...
dennisargall [at] gmail.com
... oh, and here's another favourite photo... take care
