I have been reading “Emotional Alchemy” by Tara Bennett-Goleman (yes married to the Emotional Intelligence guy Daniel Goleman) which is about Buddhism and psychotherapy. It was really inspirational. I found the part 4 where she touches on spiritual matters very resonant with where I am at the moment. She talks about mindfulness and that moment when you are fully mindful which you may recognise as “flow” when you are caught in the moment. This quicksilver time, this in between space is what I want to capture when writing. Expressing it and the joy of it to others is difficult.

My piece “Acceptance” has been accepted by Alice Pung to be in the “Growing up Asian in Australia” anthology. I’m really chuffed by this, the anthology is going to be so important in Asian Australian terms so I’m glad to be a part of it. Phillip Tang one of the writers we published in Peril is hopefully going to have his piece published on Peril put in the anthology too which is fantastic- Peril has already achieved one of its’ aims by this happening!

Alice asked me a question in a series of Q and A for the anthology about what was the most important lesson that I’ve learned (or something like that). It really set me thinking. What I came up with is that your story, experience and voice is important and valuable. It’s something that drives my work as a psychologist- and what I’d like to do if I wander down the community arts path or story therapy path (story therapy is a term I’ve just made up for today! I’ve brushed with narrative therapy and in my oodles of spare time (NOT!) I’d like to read up on using story telling in therapeutic practice).

I’m having another story published in the upcoming HEAT magazine titled “The Daughters of Au Co”. It is also the title of a short story collection that I’m massaging into shape. Joy of joys my writing group is having a dedicated writing day this Saturday! I’m delighted- the first bit of concentrated creative writing I would have done since returning from the US.

Stuck in Las Vegas having missed a connection back to San Francisco. We stayed here for three nights- Alister wanted to laugh at the city- but ended up getting a headache from the pretty flashing lights after 2 hours. We stayed at a casino hotel called Excalibur (see castle picture). There are also mini Paris, New York and replicas of Italian and French monuments. Found it pretty sad- even the airport has poker machines in it (not tempted).

Here I am in Houston on new years eve in Sugar Land a community that is ten to fifteen years old that has a playground where only “First Colony residents and their guests” can play. My sister in common-law Michelle has reported they are not able to have a clothes line because it is ugly and the neighbours would be able to see it from their backyard. Welcome to upper middle class facism. We have been to a ice hockey game where when two players had a blue “macho macho man” was blared on the loudspeakers the crowd got up and cheered and the refs did nothing to interfere. On Capitol Hill in Austin there is a memorial statue to the Confederates the side that supported slavery and lost the civil war. And the cheese is bright orange, the coffee tastes like piss and the beer is well…On the other hand Houston is home to the second largest concentration of Vietnamese in the, US (Orange County is the first). There is an Asian American section in Barnes and Noble (like Angus and Robertson). The national parks are gorgeous (see picture of Yosemite, Sequoia coyote and Death Valley sand). And Christmas is a full on affair with mega electric decorations outside everyone’s houses.
Happy new year.

Went to the Asian/Australian Values Workshop in Wollongong on Asian-Australian Literature which you can read about in Peril Issue #4 at www.asianaustralian.org.
Once upon a time in the West a series of short films of which I made the first- Remembrance- is being shown at the Big West festival this week. They are really good short docs (except mine which is a fiction) portraying life in the West, The sort of hour that I would like to sit John Howard and Pauline Hanson in front of and make them watch.
Kathleen Fallon my creative supervisor is leaving Melbourne Uni. I’m currently doing a masters in creative writing and this throws things out a little. I really value my creative life and want to make it more of my life- and it appears one of the ways to do that is get a Phd and move into academia/creative writing. The other is to move into psychotherapeutic story telling which there isn’t the space for at RMIT Counselling Service. I could do more community orientated art work, and group projects- Caitlin Nunn is doing a Phd which involves getting us (meaning the Vietnamese-Australian artists I hang out with) to interview our families and talk about the return home and home and produce themed art from it. It may lead to production at Big West festival 2009. I had initially thought that I would concentrate on getting a book out or in process in 2008 and this is already happening to a degree.
Silence has got production dates 21 May to 1 June 2008 at La Mama Theatre. This fulfils another one of my dreams and I’m thinking of converting it into a film script.
There is so much I could do- and not enough time or money to do it all at once. I tried to draw up a life plan for the next few years to sort out what I want to achieve (and the best way of doing it). I did this two months ago and I’m already roving all over the place!

Finally I got out the video camera and downloaded the pictures from Thay’s tour. The best are selected here.

I’m halfway through the Acceptance Commitment Therapy course. They have a concept of no-self- what they call the observing self- sort of. Some of their techniques are very similar to Buddhism, such as accepting your emotions and not judging them, and viewing them passing like clouds in the sky. But ACT differentiates itself from religious practices in that it does not prescribe which values you should aspire to- whilst Buddhism definitely does. As a result I have been thinking about my values and what I aspire to in the near and more distant future. I either want to be a Buddhist psychologist- and go into private practice, or be a practising Buddhist with psychological underpinnings. I’m actually very happy working where I am with clients and ACT is teaching me new ways of approaching things.

I managed to get another short story “Heroic Mother” to be published in the Griffith Review coming out in November themed “In the neighborhood” - meaning Asia. And at the moment I’m in production for a short seven minute film called “Ma”. Yes there is a mother theme running through all this! ‘Silence” has gotten $8000 in funding from Melbourne City Council which will launch it off the ground for production next year. So even though I haven’t actually done much in the way of writing over the last two months- thanks to working full time- there are things on the way.

Just read a transcript of a dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh about our continuation with our ancestors. His talks can be accessed at www.plumvillage.org
What he said made a lot of sense to me. He said that Western psychology is centred around the self which means it can only heal up to a certain point. Buddhist psychology encourages the concept of no-self - the connection of you to your ancestors and other beings so you go beyond yourself. I came to this conclusion while on retreat with Thay in Vietnam- that it did not matter who I was (i had been wondering what and who I was for sometime) but my interconnection with all beings made me who I am.
I have found so far with some of my clients that I see that they take to viewing their thoughts as being outside of themselves very readily. I have not yet taken that step of trying to teach mindfulness but I will soon.

I’ve been doing more reading on mindfulness and three models that it is used in- Acceptance Commitment Therapy which I’m going to do a short course on, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Stress Reduction Therapy. I also bought a book The Mindful Way through Depression which complements what I was taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. It has been seeping into my counselling practice slowly. I’ve also started reading Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh before I go to bed- which reminds me of where I want to be- in reality and interbeing. A friend asked me what is being Buddhist- for she has Buddhist beliefs but does not consider herself to be a Buddhist. I compared it to describing yourself as a feminist which some people do and some people don’t - but still promote the core values of being feminist.