h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I decided to take this out of the main thread and put it here instead:

>> There is a gentleness to the land in NZ that Australia doesn't have as well, and I think this has influenced both peoples.

I met a girl from Kent when I was in Oz. She was waxing my legs, and in the 20 or so minutes we had together we had one of those extraordinarily close conversations, the sort you can know someone for twenty years and never have. She said 'the goddess isn't in Australia' - which I found hard to believe at that time, the female principal being universal, surely. However, I think she is right. I am not sure what the goddess needs that isn't there, maybe woodlands, maybe farmlands, maybe rural women, rather than a mix of urban women and nomadic ones. The desert is powerfully asexual. No oestrogen, but no testosterone either. An interesting experience.

Thanks for keeping your cool and handling my attack with such grace. I am impressed, ans well as grateful.

B

No worries about the other thread

I've been thinking that last day or so about the Australian land and where the goddess is. Maybe she is a gnarly sort of goddess, one not easily recognisable to those of us now so long used to an easier life.

>>The desert is powerfully asexual. No oestrogen, but no testosterone either. An interesting experience. <<

Maybe that's why the colonial peoples all settled on the coasts. It might also explain why Australians seem to not understand either the land or the native peoples very well.

I haven't been in the desert - only a day's drive or two inland along the Eastern seaboard. I loved it there - it so BIG of course compared to NZ, and the land seems so solid and strong (not surprising though given my own land is essentially a fault line)

I had a real sense of ease in myself and my body too, even when I was living in Sydney. Maybe that was the climate and not having to wear so many clothes, but I think that warmth and energy comes out of the land as well.

I picked up some stones in the desert and took them home. Not something I am entirely comfortable with, but I planned to swap them with stones from an American desert, and so on.

What struck me was that they were hot to the touch. I gave a couple to friends, (strange friends, but the best sort, who like stones as presents), and it felt wrong to give these cold hard lumps when they had been warm and red in the sun.

A different sort of goddess? A dessicated crone, full of silence then. I am so used to mother and maiden here in the fertile UK...

Landscape matters.

B.

It must have been such a shock to the psyche for the Brittish settlers arriving in Australia - they probably had litte idea of what they were coming to.

In NZ there is a strong tradition of usually men going out to battle the elements. All that beating back the bush stuff and establishing a little England. Today still in the wilder parts of the country the men tend to see the bush as a very masculine place. I don't myself, but maybe it's the strength of the goddess that they feel the need to test themselves against. Alot of it is quite grim.

I'm sure it affected the Australian Brits differently - there was no way they were ever going to tame that land.


I've had to stop taking stones with me - in the end it felt like such a responsibility. But then I was never very good at giving them away.

Thanks for the Kipling poem. I haven't had a proper read yet, but am just posting the link here so it is easy to find

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/land.html

Thanks also for the Naomi Mitchison recommendation. I have a copy of Memoirs of a Spacewoman but have never read it. It's now in the to read pile, along with The Left Hand of Darkness (a repeated attempt).

My pleasure on all counts. The Kipling is irritating, but appropriate to the converstion we were having. I confess to being slightly daunted by the Left Hand, myself. I much prefer her fantasy stuff.

B

Hiya

If you want to IM me, then my details are on U145850. It would be cool to shoot a breeze or two. No particular agendas, though.

B

I'm afraid I don't know what IM is....well I know it by what people have said I guess, but not directly.

It'd be nice to shoot the breeze sometime. Maybe I'll check out the IM thing finally. Things don't move very fast in my life though, so not sure when that might happen

kea.

p.s. check out the U number you gave

U148580

IM is cool, but a *real* time-eater.

Take care.

B

As it's the time of year when Brigid is celebrated (in the Southern Hemisphere) I have been thinking about whether the Celtic goddess came all that way across the sea with the European settlers. How they carried her here and what she made of the place when she arrived. Not to mention what the indigenous goddesses thought...

Hope you are ok btw. I've had a brief look at the thread being modded but not enough to really get the picture yet.

It looks like an interesting thread.

take care,
kea.

>>
>> We are evolved as social beings. Rape is a learned behaviour. (kea)

Huh? Where do you get that from? Surely it is consensual sex that is the learned behaviour?
<<


blicky picked up the topic in another thread

F117154?thread=924755?thread=&post=10702413#p10670627

I'll take a look.

You are being very zen-like in your posts my dear. My anger hisses through, and I wish it didn't.

B

Zen-like eh? That's cheered me up.

It's probably related to me being exhausted as much as anything. I'm often posting when tired and more so than usual at the moment, so I'm probably erring on the side of caution.

Maybe I'm also too tired to be feeling angry about NO etc

I've been enjoying your posts. Strong emotion well expressed is an asset at time like this. There is something good happening in that NO thread, some kind of tolerance for a range of views (leaving aside the troll) and some useful information and knowledge being generated. I don't know why it still surprises me that h2 is such a major source of current affairs information for me.

International ones of course. We have a general election here in 10 days. One of the most exciting and interesting elections I've experienced. It would be amazing to have a forum like this one to discuss it on

Hey there

I see your PSs are clear at the moment and I haven't seen you round for ages. Hope you are ok. Az said you are still posting at Lil's, good to hear. If something's happend on site to give you a break I must have missed it, but am glad there is a way to find you if you ever leave fulltime.


I did have something I was going to ask you, but my brain is a complete sieve these days and I've been thread jumping as pages loaded and totally lost what was on my mind


I'm curious though to see if this post appears on your PS - intriguing to know how you got them so clear (you surely couldn't have unsubbed every convo).


kea.

Oh, you have unsubbed all your convos. That is serious

Unsubbed, but able to find most of them when I need them. I got a bit rattled by the weight of history dragging around after me.

In answer to your question in the other thread: yes I am.

Ben

Well that's very clever on both counts.

Sorry for asking on the other thread, I usually don't try and pin people down about offsite stuff, but was being lazy because it had already been mentioned.

It's been lovely seeing you around again As well as increased Italic presence I've been heartened to see some of the oldies coming back.

Don't worry. The lines between my internet personae are blurring anyway and - wrongly or rightly - I feel reasonably safe on h2g2 and reasonably comfortable that my worst excesses are buried far in the backlog.

I'll be well and truly toasted if they ever fix the search engine for conversations though!

I was hoping you'd turn up in THAT thread


>>I was struck by the similarities, but struck by the differences too. <<

Me too, although of later instances. I'd be interested to know how you saw that (similarities and differences).

I do agree with you that we're better at getting it now and different in our response. I'm mindful of this with the upcoming redesign which I assume will bring some influxes of newbies.

One thing that strikes me about that thread is that, apart from the sock puppet, there is no-one who has turned up in her defense. My memory of other times is that someone would always post slamming the oldies for being so mean. But then maybe the meanness hasn't been as over the top as in the past (I'm sure Hoo's absence is a big part of that, but also other's who've been gone for a while who were more blunt and less well mannered ).