Borrow your own restaruant, change the world: Millet Sisters of Melbourne

This Sunday I will be eating utterly unique 'peace cuisine' , created with hope and love by the Millet Sisters at a restaurant they have borrowed on its day off.

Millet Sisters Cuisine photo by Ponzu

Its exciting, because I can also be sure that not only will the food be good, the other guests who turn up for this 'Family lunch' are highly likely to be active, creative lovers of Japanese culture, people who are quite satisfied to go about quietly or exuberantly changing the world.
"Share the surplus" is the most exciting of permaculture's design principles. Exciting because so many un-resourced dreams suddenly seem possible. It just takes a few seconds of creative thinking to realize all the surpluses out there, waiting for you to skillfully, responsibly claim them, and add value. Empty bedrooms in lonely houses, empty restaurants, long-parked cars, unused paint in garages.

Detail from Wabi-Sabi, where every element of decor
gathered here has a history to wonder at.

How do you persuade a restaurant to give itself over to you?
There is a skill to claiming a whole restaurant though, in this case, Wabi-Sabi Salon in Collingwood
I suppose you would have to give the owners two things:

• Desire to support what you do, because its admirable and lovely

• Confidence that everything would be in perfect order, better than they left it, when they turn up for work the next day

Oh, and of course there would be the networking factor of introducting new batch of customers to the establishment and all its charms. "If Tokyo and Collingwood had a love child, it would be Wabi Sabi Salon" The Age, Epicure

On Sunday, I will ask the Millet Sisters and Maki exactly how they approached 'Wabi Sabi', and see if I can work out why the restaurant said "Yes". These are answers that have the power to make our lives amazing.

When: Sunday July 5 , 12 noon～ （Last Order 3:30）
Where: Wabi Sabi Salon 94 Smith St Collingwood
　　　　　 Melway ref. 44 B5 or Tram 86 Stop 15

Pre-booking is not necessary but highly recommended.
zakkokuaus@hotmail.com

Sydney's other most beautiful building - Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano's Araura place, Sydney

Like a flower rising amongst gravestones.
I had unavoidably glimpsed this tall building many times in my recent holiday on Sydney harbor, but hadn't seen it until I approached it strolling in from the Botanical Gardens.
Maybe its all about foreplay - it had been a day of wandering though, being ambushed by the small and grand treasures of Sydney's Darlinghurst, Paddington. I was all ready.

Then this building appears from across the water, amongst hard, hard company.

Aurora Building by Renzo Piano

Its veil of almost-imperceptibly curved glass, with a sheen like the bluish-light on a lotus leaf, makes the building seem to breathe and sway. Its walls unfurl as do leaves, but in shapes that keep you captive, trying to work out the puzzle of which way the layers really curve.
There is something gently optimistic and celebratory, the way this building widens as it rises, all culminating in this lovely anther of an antenna.

Arum lily

The sail-shape at the top borrows the love we already have for that other building, its near-neighbour on the harbor. But I love this building more: Look at the function it is obliged to carry out.

Its not unlike the hero Katsumoto, from Hollywood's The Last Samurai. Though the purpose of its existence is a terrible one, in one breath it has both playfulness and dignity, strength and delicate beauty.
Which brings us to the why this 'falling in love' first happened.

Just imagine my life, if I could be like that.

I never, never thought of it until seeing this building.

Title: Selbstbildnis mit Hut und Schleier, 1906-1907

Artist: Paula Modersohn-Becker (German 1876–1907)

What to do when people make you feel bad on purpose?

This is a question I came across on Kemps creative happiness blog.

I just recently realized that its a usual in our culture that if somebody makes you feel bad, you should make them feel bad in return - that's fair, just, you have a right. People do it to people they love, even.
Like they feel obliged to.
We even do it to ourselves, cause ourselves pain, thinking it will help us behave better next time 'How could you be so stupid!' etc.

There are arguments for and against just avoiding people who do this pain-inflicting. But since 'these people' are most people, self included, if you get good at managing this cultural curse we have, you will become an amazing person, with a rare, useful skill.
Id like to some of that.

Reality-feedback is a multi-purpose problem solver. "Hey, I feel bad. Did you intend that?"

Imagine being told such a thing with a simultanious communication of love: held hands, hand on back.

Many a monster can be melted by simple illumination, just being seen.

hot mail box - aussie Ingenuity

Hot mail box

Driving from a perfect day of hiking, I saw this Hotmail box.
The perfect day just got perfected.
This is where the ingenious hotmail-box owner probably goes to walk his dog and get his inspiration: the Mt. Worth Hiking trail, a temperate rainforest just over an hour out of Melbourne. The lovely Meetup hiking group let me tag along. I was happy all day long.

New Zealand Apple Mac mailbox by applefritter

A google image search, I found the New Zealand version.
"Marry a New Zealander", my dad once said. I never got a chance to ask why, and though he never went there, pictures like this mailbox make me think he must have been onto something. In my experiance, there are more Eccentrics per capita there than any other country in the world. The island mentality - maybe it gets them thinking that their contribution really counts, they can do something to change the world.

Imagine coming home grumpy to that. How could you not start smiling?

Edgevertizing - story of the itinerant Japanese knife-sharpener

knife shaperner photo by Cecilia

Marginal overheads
This itinerant Knife sharpener does the rounds every few months at my neighbourhood in Tokyo.
No office, no rent, no clocking in necessary, just a bike, a wetstone, and some slips of paper in mailboxes to tell everyone he is in town.

knife shaperner photo by Cecilia

Edgevertizing
Because he does his work where we can see him, we feel we already know him. We see other people's knives being sharpened, and wonder why we should miss out, so just put in our orders too.

"Spend one month learning somthing people need done, spend the rest of your life doing it" Bill Mollison

Now I live with a Nobu Sushi Chef,the quality of my kitchen life has risen, my knife collection glistens. Most Aussies don't sharpen their knives. Even permies. We just use more brute power, put up with things being slower, difficult, just because...it doesn't occour to us. And we have no neigbourhood knife sharpener

Cecilia in boots, Japanese demonstration garden edge

Become an Edgetrepreneur
if you were in my neighbourhood, and had a good reputation, I would pay you to do these things on my doorstep:

1. Green Clean my car
2. wash my dog (if I had one)
3. Train me to train my dog (if I had one)
4. put a dripper water system in my front garden
5. put in a better lettbox (mine is squeezy for my mail)
6. put in urban swales to catch my downpipe water
7. graft me some replicas of my favorite fruit trees (you would bring the rootstock)
8. Tell me a very funny story
   

Thats just the doorstep. There are 100 things I need help with inside, but thats for another day.

Got any good edge stories?

The left wing kitchen sink at 3CR radio station

Recording a Community radio show the other day, I enjoyed 3CR's approach to keeping the studio kitchen sink clean.
A clear kitchen sink achieved without Nagging is a sign of great design skill.

If you'd like to hear how to get an edible balcony garden going, tune in to 3CR on 855AM, at 5.30 tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. Cecilia and some very nice left wing ladies had fun.

If you come across a well-done kitchen sink message, please send. We could put them together for an undeniably life-enhancing exhibition.