…because on the rooftop of the world, and in the valleys below, a new year begins. May this year be the year.

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click here to see tibetan new year festivities happening in sydney.
photo courtesy of l’internaute, photographer Miguel-Angel Horcajada.

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Do you remember back in June I wrote about a beautiful book that was in the making, written about my Tibetan friend Tenpa and his family? Well, I’m so so pleased to announce that this very special book titled Our Tibet, has just been published and is now available to all…

It is filled with stunning images of Tibet taken by my friend Sophie Bouris, who accompanied Tenpa and his family on their very precarious trip back to Tibet last year. I was not able to accompany them on the journey but Tenpa, our good friend Leona who also traveled with them, and Sophie all kept in contact with me for the duration of the journey to let me know they were each safe along the way. There were many a dangerous time, and my heart skipped a beat whenever i received an email from Tenpa giving me a quick run down of events. I was more than relieved to hear of their safe return, and when I went back to Sydney in August last year, we shared a lovely dinner at Leona’s place, reviewing all the fabulous photos and discussing the possibilities of Sophie creating a book. So it’s with absolute delight for me to tell you the book is now complete and available for you to buy. Read more about it here, and click here to purchase.

For those of my readers who emailed me and expressed interest in the book back in June, please follow the links above to purchase Our Tibet – international orders are accepted. And for every copy of Our Tibet sold, a donation is made to the Tibetan community. The key project is funding schools in the region of Kham, within Tibet which is something that Sophie and I have been striving to do since we first met 5 years ago. By purchasing this book you are helping me toward my dream too. I thank you.

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…and while on the topic of Tibet I must take this opp to mention Australian Lara Damiani’s film called Cry For Freedom (I gave you a little snippet of it here). I was able to watch Cry For Freedom at a special screening hosted by Tenpa in August of this year when I was in Sydney, it is a wonderful production, I highly recommend it. Lara has a special offer available as noted in the above pic, click here to read more about the film, watch the trailer, and purchase the DVD.

xx

PS if you are interested in stocking the book Our Tibet in your store, please be sure to contact sophie directly (or you can tell me and I will pass on your message!). x

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Next weekend, on Saturday November 22nd, on South Curl Curl beach in Sydney, starting at 4pm there is an AWESOME music festival happening. Hosted by The Beats That Give Back, there will be live bands, all of varied roots: rock, reggae, acoustic, harmonic, organ drifting, singer styling, bass slinging, brass blasting, djembe tapping, solo ripping, & drum cracking… Some of the music you will hear on the day will include:

The Landlords
Jumbledat
The Sniffer Dogs
Lemonade
The Pachamamas

Let me tell you, if anyone knows how to throw a fabulous beach party, it is the organiser herself – hostess with the mostess – Bron Harrison. She has organised fire twirlers, a fully stocked bar, a BBQ and so much more, making this event one of the hottest of the season.

Tickets are $25 but you need to get in quick as past events have sold out. Click here to read more about the event and purchase your tickets.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to buy food, medicine and essential equipment for Tibetan refugees in North India. So jump online and buy your tickets and if you can’t make it, you can donate by clicking here.

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Thank you for the heads up Sue!

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Thank you to all of you who were inspired to post your thoughts about poverty yesterday. It was wonderful to click around the blogosphere and read your posts, I could barely keep up with them rolling in. Please click on each others names in the comment section of the post below to check out more of the posts, there are many fabulous ones still to read.

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Katie wrote a rather poignant comment that I’d like to share with you all…

“…I do some days feel down by people I see who feel they can do nothing and thus don’t. We all have something to give. We don’t have to fork out millions and donate funds like some of your fellow bloggers, or volunteer innumerable hours, like me, but we can share the voice, we can be mindful and thoughtful and we can make a difference in all those small actions…”

She nailed it: “we all have something to give”. Think outside the box. Look around your immediate surroundings, look around your extended surroundings, open your eyes. Use what you have. Just like we all started seeing hearts wandering all over the place when it was brought to our attention – those tiny little hearts were there all along. And so is yours. The more you give (whether it be time, love, clothes, thought, or money), the bigger your heart gets.

Image by Anna from Heartland, submitted for My Heart Wanders.

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I have spent many years researching, analysing, and observing our global Human Rights issues, privately. I have been plagued by the question all my life, “what can I do?”. One of my biggest discoveries was the affects of money – when I gave money, I wasn’t able to see the direct results of that money and I found it very frustrating. And then I would receive more newsletters saying the problem is getting worse. How can it be getting worse when I, and so many other people, are continually giving money? Where is it going?

Then one day, being the rebellious girl that I can be at times, I decided to by-pass all those various charity organisations that were not answering my questions, and found a way to send my money directly to a person I wanted to help in India. He was a young Tibetan school teacher and was so very dedicated to his pupils, so many of them orphans, having lost their parents from the hardships of poverty in their occupied homeland. I had visions of my new friend buying his students the pens they needed, the textbooks they were craving. He kept me up-to-date as often as he could with emails and letters, and I spoke to him on the phone a number of times. With his broken English we somehow managed to communicate about deep, profound issues. Then he told me, rather shyly, that a boy had arrived at the school the day before, and he had come all the way from Tibet, without his parents or any family member. He said this boy was so skinny and dirty, and he had no shoes. His only pair of shoes had turned to rags on his 15 day trek across the Himalayas. I could only imagine the state of this young boys feet. My friend apologised profusely, he said “i’m so sorry, but with some of your money I bought him some shoes, I’m sorry, I know you wanted the money to go toward the books but I just had to buy him shoes”. My heart lifted – I had just helped to buy this young boy shoes!!!

Image courtesy of the Art of Peace Foundation.

I could hear the birds singing outside and i asked him to describe his surroundings. I could hear an instrument being played, he told me it was a man sitting by the roadside with a guitar. I had never met this man, my new friend that I was talking to, and I have never ever been to his exiled home. But there I was, in Australia, talking to a teacher in India, and I could feel the power of our communication, together we would be able to make a difference.

My friend had decided that he wanted to start a magazine for his students with the money I was sending. The magazine was to be called THURSTE, and it would be a means for his students to let out their emotional feelings through writing. He explained that most of the students did not have any parents at all, or the parents were in Tibet, now a place they would never be able to return. He said “…they really need a place to express their feelings.” I thought this was such a wonderful idea, and I couldn’t wait to see the first issue and read these students thoughts, feelings, and drawings. I knew this would be a wonderful project because I knew how much writing and creating had, and continues to help me to express my emotions. My friend had had such a horrific experience himself, of being pressured to leave his family in Tibet who were living in extreme poverty, to try to make a better life for himself in a foreign land, and he missed his mother so much but he was too scared to go back to Tibet as he knew the consequences for him and his family.

The first issue of the magazine THURSTE was never published: My friend was found hanging from his tiny room’s ceiling just a few months later.

Image courtesy of the Art of Peace Foundation.

The state of his poverty, and the state of his people and his land, was just all too much for him to bare. It is very, very unusual for a Tibetan to commit suicide. My heart bled.

This was about 6 years ago, and this is the first time I have ever written about it. I had absolutely no intention to write this today, or any day. But when I titled this post ‘final thoughts’, this is what came out. It seems it was meant to be shared today.

It is my belief that communication + education is the key towards a world without poverty. Every one of you who posted about poverty yesterday are huge contributors to the communication part of the equation. And you brought awareness to the fact that poverty is everywhere – in our own homelands, not just ‘far away’. Educating the Western World on the importance of everyone having the right to Basic Human Needs and teaching ways to how this can be achieved, and helping to provide education in the Third World make up the second part of the equation. Please think about this.

Some of the highlights from posts yesterday, as well as my own personal research toward our plight of poverty are below…

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Thanks guys, for taking the time to read this. And for those of you who do not feel that poverty is an issue close enough to home to worry about, please, think again.

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Holly from Decor 8 wrote a post the other day suggesting bloggers post about the music they are currently listening to, and it reminded me that I haven’t done so for a while. So here is what I am listening to now, Songs for Tibet, with beautiful ballades from a nice slice of my favourite artists like Joan Armitrading, Imogen Heap, and Dave Matthews. Funds raised from the album go to support peace initiatives as well as Tibetan cultural preservation projects important to the Dalai Lama. It is music to my ears.

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Sydney photographer Jamie Williams is one of my favourites – he photographs all the Tibetan events back home and beyond, and has a way of capturing the moment perfectly. I will be featuring more of Jamie’s work soon, but for now I just wanted to show you this one which I love. It is available as a card too, and I bought a set of them a while back for birthdays and special occasions. This image is titled Enlightenment. He also shoots such events like Australian Fashion Week, and various festivals. Check out his flickr set here.

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But unable to secure finance for post production, the project stalled a little while ago until a generous donor unexpectedly came to the rescue. As Lara says, “It’s a perfect example of what can be achieved when people who really believe in something come together”. Please give a large round of applause for Lara as I introduce you to her film “Tibet’s Cry for Freedom”, with this exclusive trailer, narrated by actress Kerri Armstrong…


Find more videos like this on Candle4Tibet


Congratulations Lara, this looks to be a fantastic production, I can’t wait to see it! For more information, please visit Lara’s site here.

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well you may be aware that I have alot of things on my mind right now. My plans have become my unplans, and my focus has shifted for the moment. I’ll keep you informed of my whereabouts in due time. For now, I want to share one of the things at the forefront of my mind: I have been receiving many messages over the past few weeks… and I won’t pretend it’s not a little bit exciting to get an email from Richard Gere in my inbox. But I know it’s only because we just happen to share a common interest in humanity…

Today, being the eve of the Olympics, I will be starting another series of posts about Tibet and China for the duration of The Games in Beijing. I love both these countries for the positive attributes they offer the world. And I will be showcasing some of the things that I love about them and how they inspire me.

Starting with this message from my friend Dorji Dolma la in Sydney, with thanks to the ATC and Get Up Australia – two associations that have worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the plight of the Tibetans. Please watch and listen to her message and remember, humanity needs Tibet.

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images courtesy of The Art of Peace Foundation.

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“A TibetSydney hand-weave isn’t a rug; it’s a story. A story where one becomes part of the narrative… Here it becomes a calm controversy of textures, palette and meanings between the occidental and oriental, futurism and antiquity, noise and contemplation, skin and intellect…”

I have found I have become so fascinated in the art of weaving – it is such an art, and just the sight of a loom makes me a little giddy. The TibetSydney showroom in Queens St, Woollahra is not only an inspiration for it’s weaved creations, but is also an interior masterpiece, created by famed architect Donavon Hill…

I first learnt about TibetSydney in Vogue Living, and I remember drooling over the images and carefully digesting every single word…

And I remember thinking, how does something so ‘everyday’ like a rug, become so evocative, so rich and layered, so full of depth. And I thought – it is culture. It is influences. It is one’s personal experiences and attachments as an artist that is interweaved into each piece, creating and weaving stories into each creation.

This is something I hope to achieve in my own work, in whatever medium it takes. The idea of weaving one’s cultural experiences and intimate moments into an everyday artefact makes an interior sparkle with life.

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Click here to read the story narrative of the TibetSydney rugs, and the inspiration of the designs.

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I will never forget, because my store was not exactly child friendly. But these children were so well-behaved – surrounded by loads of strangers, in a frenzy of chatter and bustle as cushions, tables, clothes, and jewellery were being ogled and passed over the counter. Sophie and I connected on that one fleeting first meeting, and looking back we see that our chance encounter was perhaps, no chance at all.

I tell you all this because it is my meeting Sophie that led us both to meeting Tenpa, and both of us individually yet concurrently, developing a special connection with him and his family.

Fast forward to today, and Sophie and my other dear friend Leona, recently returned from an incredibly sacred journey to Tibet with Tenpa, his sister Thongga and their father who is known to many as Rinpoche, but who I call pala (father, in Tibetan). The journey was perilous as the risk of Tibetans travelling back to their own country can be fatal. I was distraught when they all left, and I sent them my positive thoughts every moment of every day they were away. I hung on to every email Tenpa was able to send me to tell me they were all safe, and I was a wreck when I would receive mail that sounded tentative and less than reassuring. But they all arrived home safely and live to tell the tale.

And here it is…

Sophie has compiled this incredible book filled with stories and events from the journey, including her stunning photographs and the journey details through the eyes of pala, Tenpa and Thongga. I have been lucky enough to have sneak peaks over the last few months as the book has been developing, and I will give you only five words to describe it: intimate, captivating, intriguing, heart-breaking and inspiring. A must read for not just those interested in Tibet, but anyone who has a heart.

I am so excited to announce that Sophie has given me the go-ahead to offer the book for pre-order. Just email me your name and contact details and I will put you on the list for the first books off the printing press in August. The aim of the book is to raise awareness of the Tibetan situation and hopefully raise some money from sales.

The book will initially come out of Australia but we’d like to offer the book all over the world, and in lots of languages – so if you are interested to volunteer translations or to help subsidize a print run here in Europe or America, please let me know.

Thank you Sophie, for creating such an incredible body of work, and for sharing it with us all.

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