Simplicity

Our most recent discovery has been the Collingwood Children's Farm. In the heart of the city and yet utterly bucolic on the banks of the Yarra River, it is a working farm and community garden. It reminds us a lot of Shelburne Farms, which is an eco-yuppie kid paradise in Vermont that we have visited the last few summers, except without the grand robber barron architecture and expanses of estate-style pasture. Collingwood is distinctly simpler and deeply appealing in its simplicity, although there is something elegant about the peacocks perched in the rafters of the barn. There is a small blackboard at the entrance that keeps a talley of the spring births, and chicks, piglets, kids, lambs, calves and foals arrive daily now. Jake milked and brushed Bella the cow and spent a great deal of time feeding the goats. Lucy chased all the chickens and ducks under the picnic tables and than got up close and personal with a lamb, until it very gently head-butted her and she burst into tears. More than just a petting zoo, the kids watch and participate in some of the farm chores, like collecting eggs, making goat cheese and shearing sheep. The place was made to appeal to the pastoral nostalgia of urban-dwelling parents, and Matt & I are total suckers for it. And the kids happily indulged us.

The imagined simplicity of the farm made me think about how simple our life seems here, shorn as it is of many of the obligations of regular life, like house and car maintenance, juggling two jobs, coaching soccer, helping out at Jake's school and the endless odd tasks. Many of our obligations at home are joyful, such as walking Roxie, teaching, seeing friends and family. But with enough of them missing there is a strange and wonderful quiet to our lives here. As if we were camping, we go to bed earlier than usual because it is dark and the wine is drunk and the dishes are clean. Even when you add in an episode of some HBO show and the occasional night out, we still get more sleep than we do at home. Also like a camping trip, we look at the unfamiliar constellations and landscape and always see how lucky we are to be in such a beautiful place together having so much fun.

But simplicity is double-edged. Life is simpler here because we do less, we know fewer people and we have not put down roots. We are less attached to and entangled in a community of people, which in some ways is liberating. But it also sometimes makes us feel like what we are--long-term sightseers. And every once in a while, when I near the edge of the existential abyss that I try to avoid at all costs, I suspect that what we really are is superfluous. Then I wonder if we avoid the sinister possibilities of too simple a life by ornamenting and buttressing it with acquaintances, adventures, collections, commitments and convictions that our lives are more than that. Even the idyllically simple Collingwood Children's Farm keeps a few exotic breeds--like the magnificent Black Leghorn and Chinese Silky chickens--to decorate and anchor the farm yard.

Moral of the story: life would be simpler for everyone if self-indulgent psuedo-philosophers were not allowed to trot out their cosmic angst on blogs!