Meet Hellena and Currawong

[blisterine]

her crocheting reminds me of a friend's mom who liked to drop acid and knit. she made him a gorgeous sweater during 3-day acid trip, but with one problem: the left sleeve was 4 inches longer than the right. she told him to push the sleeves up a bit and no one would notice. she had bpd and was supposed to take lithium but felt it sucked the creativity out of her, so she sat at home, knitting these cobwebby things. once she tried to run a daycare and did weird crap like paint a hopscotch grid on the hardwood floors of her rental with oil paint. that one got her evicted.

her religious theology: god is the good in each of us struggling to get out.

[OkToBeTakei]

This made me put my bra back on...and I was in BED!!!!

[Peas n carrots]

I think Hellena and Currawong should do a wife swap with Josh and Anna.

I would love to see this.

I love hippies, but these folks are looney toons. After reading the twin birthing experience I am convinced of this.

[ElphabaGalinda]

She is probably bisexual and can comfortably go either way. So when she was angry at men, she was with women; now that she is angry at women, she is with a man.

I could go either way. Right now I am in a conventional marriage, if something happens to that I will probably stick with women. People who "cure" their homosexuality tend to be people who are like me, pretty much omnisexual, and they assume that everyone else is the same way. But of course this is not the case.

Makes sense, though she made it sound like she was with women because she was a radical feminist, which is absolutely ridiculous. Also, I'm sure if you were with a woman emmie, you wouldn't say "I'm doing this because i hate men and they're evil!" At least I'm pretty sure you wouldn't, because you're awesome, and that's not a real reason. The part that pissed me off the most was that she said she was with women because she was molested/her father left/she thought men were inferior. That line of thinking is damaging to any woman with a non-straight orientation.

She also shouldn't be calling herself a lesbian, because although I don't like to police how people self identify, doing that makes it much easier for her to say to me (if she would ever talk to me) that she could realize how much she hated women and find herself a man to be with then I should be able to do it to and the fact that I've never found a man even remotely attractive in my life would mean nothing to her.

I've never heard omnisexual, and I like the term :D

[Witsec7]

I would love to see this.

I love hippies, but these folks are looney toons. After reading the twin birthing experience I am convinced of this.

I could drive 20 miles west and find the homes of people like this. Ezzarial and Moonpie raising their 6 kids on slug eaten turnips in the heart of Boregonia's coast range. Their house would be literally melting into the forest floor. The difference with the folks out in our mountains is they have unreliable internet in most of the coast range so blogging and electronic media has been left by the wayside. Consequently they are bereft of blogs. The do have the perfunctory nekkid pregnant shots on their cell phones to flash to friends while they are shopping at the co-op.

I'm glad this crazy came up I was getting so bored with religious fundies. Hippie fundies are a whole other bunch of nut jobs, ours are mostly Christafarians.

[fundiefan]

What the hell? Those pictures are...horrible. I have no problem with photographs of naked humans. Or, I didn't. What's the point? They're not artistic photographs, they're not making any kind of point or expressing any kind of message. They're just 'look at us naked, aren't we special' and that is rather disgusting in my book.

Just the kind of picture you want your kids to see; your mother, your father, your aunts and uncles and cousins and friends.

[happy atheist]

A quick question for our Aussie friends, is Currawong a real name?

[Witsec7]

A quick question for our Aussie friends, is Currawong a real name?

It's a bird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currawong

[lilith]

Ummm.... I kind of know these people.

Not personally, but I grew up in the midst of northern NSW hippy culture and my parents and sister are still heavily involved in it. Although i no longer live there i know this family by sight.

They are certainly on the fringes of even the fringe. If my sister brought them home to my parents my mother would be secretly disapproving and the middle class woman inside her would be wanting to bathe the kids and brush their hair and give them a good meal and an education. And my mother raised me in the bush with only solar power, no hot running water and a garden devoted partly to veggies and partly to my father's dope crop. She is now a professional tarot reader and teacher (and all round wise woman :? ) and my father runs a head shop. They are well and truly entrenched in the local alternative community.

But that first generation to drop out brought educated middle class values from the city and applied it to their children. We were fed regularly. Maybe we were fed very crunchy organic veggo fare, but there was breakfast and lunch and a hot meal at night where we sat at a table and manners were expected. Not just me, all my peers. We were educated. Maybe it was at home, maybe it was at a community school, but education was highly valued, and those of us that have wanted to have had no difficulties gaining higher education and integrating into the mainstream. Some have achieved very highly. We were clean and socialised. Our mother's middle class backgrounds would not tolerate anything less, even if they had dropped off the grid. The kids at the local high school always teased us hippie kids about our "posh" accents.

But the next generation, both born to it and from the cities, is different. My sister is part of that. They want to go more radical and they have no real grounding in mainstream culture to guide them in what it is wise to question and reject and what has value and should be retained. I see it in Lauren, my sister, this Helena, and many other second and third wave hippie mothers. They don't educate, because they never chose the mainstream and can't contemplate why their children would. They don't value routine and structure, because they see it as something their parents forced on them, not something their parents valued enough to retain when they dropped out.

I'm rambling, and I could go on forever, this is one of my pet subjects. But I fear for the kids of see couples, and the hippie matriarchs do too, but they are usually busy trying to give their grandchildren some security and structure and subsidising the children who choose this life, and don't have much energy left for the wider community.

[Sola]

I think Hellena and Currawong should do a wife swap with Josh and Anna.

I would pay good money to see that!

[lilith]

I would pay good money to see that!

Oh, me too. Seeing Anna walk into the bush hovel and try to get a dozen feral kids into their "jurisdictions".

And Helena taking all Josh's fast food and replacing it with organic scavenged grass then insisting on sweet fellowship documented by camera ( he could post it to instagram!) and letting Mike and Mac express themselves by trashing the house!

[emmiedahl]

Makes sense, though she made it sound like she was with women because she was a radical feminist, which is absolutely ridiculous. Also, I'm sure if you were with a woman emmie, you wouldn't say "I'm doing this because i hate men and they're evil!" At least I'm pretty sure you wouldn't, because you're awesome, and that's not a real reason. The part that pissed me off the most was that she said she was with women because she was molested/her father left/she thought men were inferior. That line of thinking is damaging to any woman with a non-straight orientation.

She also shouldn't be calling herself a lesbian, because although I don't like to police how people self identify, doing that makes it much easier for her to say to me (if she would ever talk to me) that she could realize how much she hated women and find herself a man to be with then I should be able to do it to and the fact that I've never found a man even remotely attractive in my life would mean nothing to her.

I've never heard omnisexual, and I like the term :D

Omnisexual is my personal term for people like me. Whether I am attracted to someone has nothing to do with their gender. I don't even have a type beyond "I know it when I see it". I suspect that a lot of "cured" gay people are people like me. I can be happy and fulfilled with a man, or a woman, or whatever. Gender is for some reason not a big part of my attraction. Age really isn't either. I am married to someone much older than me and I find him incredibly attractive. I am attracted to a certain type of spirit and everything else is negotiable.

I would not identify as a lesbian even if in a lesbian relationship unless it was very important to a committed partner that I make a firm statement about my sexuality. Lesbian is not something that goes away with a change of mind, and it is so disrespectful to actual lesbians to pretend it is.

[JesusFightClub]

OK, that was riiiiiiiiiiiiight out of my comfort zone *shudder*

Not the nudity, though I have been more impressed. Nor the crochet, which bizarrely I kind of liked though would never wear (so not my style). But the general tone of it all. There was an air of....desperation? Like someone trying to talk themselves into believing everything's fantastic when they're really thinking "How the FUCK did this happen?"

I don't like hippies at the best of times, I'm a very straightlaced Trot. People do hippyish things on FJ but they are cool hippyish things. These are the scary kind.

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

Also, willing to bet that she'd change her tune if her kids were "gambolling down the aisle" at a supermarket and someone DID cuff them round the head for being annoying.....

(I think the headlice were metaphorical. Please let them be? :pray: )

[ElphabaGalinda]

Omnisexual is my personal term for people like me. Whether I am attracted to someone has nothing to do with their gender. I don't even have a type beyond "I know it when I see it". I suspect that a lot of "cured" gay people are people like me. I can be happy and fulfilled with a man, or a woman, or whatever. Gender is for some reason not a big part of my attraction. Age really isn't either. I am married to someone much older than me and I find him incredibly attractive. I am attracted to a certain type of spirit and everything else is negotiable.

I would not identify as a lesbian even if in a lesbian relationship unless it was very important to a committed partner that I make a firm statement about my sexuality. Lesbian is not something that goes away with a change of mind, and it is so disrespectful to actual lesbians to pretend it is.

:clap: Well said. I like the term omnisexual for people like you. You should try to get other people to use it if it fits, it sounds cool. And i've found that people for whom gender isn't a factor in their attraction have a hard time defining it for other people. Yet even if gender or age doesn't matter to you in who you're attracted to, there's still no choice in the matter. You don't see a person and decide, hmmm I might like to be attracted to them today. It just happens, no matter what gender(s) you're into, and anyone who's ever been attracted to anyone should know there's no control involved.

There has actually been a lot of research to say that "cured" gay people experience some level of same-sex attraction. People who think lesbian goes away with a change of mind make me angry beyond belief, so thanks for saying it so eloquently. For me, if a woman wants to be in a relationship with me, all that matters to me is that she loves me, and wants to be with me, and only me. I wouldn't care how she identified, unless of course she said she was straight, which would create obvious problems. There are many things to be offended by in what Hellena and Currawong do and say, but acting like being a lesbian is something one decides to be makes her automatically inuriating.

It also pisses me off when people say everyone's a little bisexual, but that's a whole other thing.

I'm not remembering who's in your avatar, but that's basically my type :D

[Witsec7]

Oh, me too. Seeing Anna walk into the bush hovel and try to get a dozen feral kids into their "jurisdictions".

And Helena taking all Josh's fast food and replacing it with organic scavenged grass then insisting on sweet fellowship documented by camera ( he could post it to instagram!) and letting Mike and Mac express themselves by trashing the house!

I think a bit of Curradong would be good for Anna :lol:

[emmiedahl]

:clap: Well said. I like the term omnisexual for people like you. You should try to get other people to use it if it fits, it sounds cool. And i've found that people for whom gender isn't a factor in their attraction have a hard time defining it for other people. Yet even if gender or age doesn't matter to you in who you're attracted to, there's still no choice in the matter. You don't see a person and decide, hmmm I might like to be attracted to them today. It just happens, no matter what gender(s) you're into, and anyone who's ever been attracted to anyone should know there's no control involved.

There has actually been a lot of research to say that "cured" gay people experience some level of same-sex attraction. People who think lesbian goes away with a change of mind make me angry beyond belief, so thanks for saying it so eloquently. For me, if a woman wants to be in a relationship with me, all that matters to me is that she loves me, and wants to be with me, and only me. I wouldn't care how she identified, unless of course she said she was straight, which would create obvious problems. There are many things to be offended by in what Hellena and Currawong do and say, but acting like being a lesbian is something one decides to be makes her automatically inuriating.

It also pisses me off when people say everyone's a little bisexual, but that's a whole other thing.

I'm not remembering who's in your avatar, but that's basically my type :D

It is Tori Amos dressed up as Delirium from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. She is totally my type as well.

It is really easy if you have a more fluid sexuality to assume that everyone is the same. I think that is the reason for the "everyone is bisexual" hypothesis. But they aren't, and that is cool. Most of us seem to find people we love, that is all that matters.

It took me a long to come to terms with the idea that I was not straight and not a lesbian either. I have very accepting parents who would embrace any partner I brought home, but it was still a journey. I think it is really important to be open about sexuality, especially if you appear on the surface to be mainstream. I look normal because I am normal. It is all normal.

[meda]

I'll be the lone voice of dissent here and say that I think some of her fiber art is quite good. I confess that my sister in law produces and exhibits far worse than this stuff, and it sells. Hellana's work compares well to a lot of the stuff I've seen on the crafter circuit, although faux tribal stuff always sets my teeth on edge.

Apart from that, this is a rough way to live, and not fair to the kids. I am also in an area where Mooncricket and Dweezle can raise some dreadlocked kids off grid...but it gets effing cold here in winter, so usually Dweezle knows how to hunt deer, chop wood, and get the van off the road by October. These people seem to lack basic survival skills.

Edit: found the naked pics...yeah.

Although I don't think she is bad looking for a woman in her 40s with eight kids who lives rough. A bath would help.

[Naga Viper]

Currawong basically seems like Vaughn Miller—Eric Christian Olsen's character from Community—taken to his logical conclusion.

bv5XlcdAyoM

[Witsec7]

I'll be the lone voice of dissent here and say that I think some of her fiber art is quite good. I confess that my sister in law produces and exhibits far worse than this stuff, and it sells. Hellana's work compares well to a lot of the stuff I've seen on the crafter circuit, although faux tribal stuff always sets my teeth on edge.

Apart from that, this is a rough way to live, and not fair to the kids. I am also in an area where Mooncricket and Dweezle can raise some dreadlocked kids off grid...but it gets effing cold here in winter, so usually Dweezle knows how to hunt deer, chop wood, and get the van off the road by October. These people seem to lack basic survival skills.

I wonder if it isn't the mild climate? All the hippies that I'm reading from OZ follow the sun and leave the rains behind them. The exceptions would be those who aren't suitably 'rainbow' and 'trapped' in a bourgeoisie house.

I love Hellacious and Curradong, I wish she would blog more.

[fundiefan]

Ummm.... I kind of know these people.

Not personally, but I grew up in the midst of northern NSW hippy culture and my parents and sister are still heavily involved in it. Although i no longer live there i know this family by sight.

They are certainly on the fringes of even the fringe. If my sister brought them home to my parents my mother would be secretly disapproving and the middle class woman inside her would be wanting to bathe the kids and brush their hair and give them a good meal and an education. And my mother raised me in the bush with only solar power, no hot running water and a garden devoted partly to veggies and partly to my father's dope crop. She is now a professional tarot reader and teacher (and all round wise woman :? ) and my father runs a head shop. They are well and truly entrenched in the local alternative community.

But that first generation to drop out brought educated middle class values from the city and applied it to their children. We were fed regularly. Maybe we were fed very crunchy organic veggo fare, but there was breakfast and lunch and a hot meal at night where we sat at a table and manners were expected. Not just me, all my peers. We were educated. Maybe it was at home, maybe it was at a community school, but education was highly valued, and those of us that have wanted to have had no difficulties gaining higher education and integrating into the mainstream. Some have achieved very highly. We were clean and socialised. Our mother's middle class backgrounds would not tolerate anything less, even if they had dropped off the grid. The kids at the local high school always teased us hippie kids about our "posh" accents.

But the next generation, both born to it and from the cities, is different. My sister is part of that. They want to go more radical and they have no real grounding in mainstream culture to guide them in what it is wise to question and reject and what has value and should be retained. I see it in Lauren, my sister, this Helena, and many other second and third wave hippie mothers. They don't educate, because they never chose the mainstream and can't contemplate why their children would. They don't value routine and structure, because they see it as something their parents forced on them, not something their parents valued enough to retain when they dropped out.

I'm rambling, and I could go on forever, this is one of my pet subjects. But I fear for the kids of see couples, and the hippie matriarchs do too, but they are usually busy trying to give their grandchildren some security and structure and subsidising the children who choose this life, and don't have much energy left for the wider community.

You make very valid, real points. I see the fundie world the same way.

The adults now - Dougie, Stevie boy, etc... - all chose fundie-ism. They went into it after having been educated and given a foundation in life, society, culture, obligation, etc. Even that which they outwardly rejected was still part of them. They raised their kids without that which they rejected. The kids have no choice in the matter; they can't choose how to live because they are not equipped to do so. They cannot take a foundation into adulthood because they aren't getting it. They're getting only bible thumping rules and legalities; they're getting their parents chosen path for their future and nothing more.

[princessjo1988]

Quite interesting _lilith. And I would have to agree with you- I have followed a lot of 'crunchy' families from Australia out of sheer curiosity for a long time now (I grew up on the other side of the spectrum - fundy!), and have seen a lot of what you have described. I think a lot of the same can said for 2nd/3rd wave fundy families too.

I really just feel for the kids because they have no choice in it. I have talked with adult children from both sides of the spectrum (fundy and hippy), and most have ended up somewhere in the middle (or like you said, gotten more and more extreme), but all have struggled, and found it difficult to relate to wider world. The fact remains that regardless of how different the 'extremists' want this world, it is the way it is, and their kids will at some point, have operate within its rules and regulations.

Would love to hear more _lilith, feel free to carry on. ;)

As for Helena, I would be very interested in meeting her to see how the words on the blog translate into real life. Frankly, I think I would be too much of a 'worrier' for her - I am very careful about kid's safety and supervising them. ;)

I don't mind her fibre art either. Not totally my thing, but I can see how some would!

[lilith]

I wonder if it isn't the mild climate? All the hippies that I'm reading from OZ follow the sun and leave the rains behind them. The exceptions would be those who aren't suitably 'rainbow' and 'trapped' in a bourgeoisie house.

I love Hellacious and Curradong, I wish she would blog more.

It is. In NSW anyway. The southern hippies from Katoomba and surrounds go to the far north coast (Byron Bay, Lismore, Nimbin, Mullum) for the winter then go back south in summer if funds and vehicles allow. But a lot end up stranded up north and just stay there.

[pixydust]

I'm loving the nakey pics on her "about me" page. Because you can't really enjoy a blog without first seeing the writer's and her partner's genitalia.

John and Yoko they are not.

[ElphabaGalinda]

It is Tori Amos dressed up as Delirium from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. She is totally my type as well.

It is really easy if you have a more fluid sexuality to assume that everyone is the same. I think that is the reason for the "everyone is bisexual" hypothesis. But they aren't, and that is cool. Most of us seem to find people we love, that is all that matters.

It took me a long to come to terms with the idea that I was not straight and not a lesbian either. I have very accepting parents who would embrace any partner I brought home, but it was still a journey. I think it is really important to be open about sexuality, especially if you appear on the surface to be mainstream. I look normal because I am normal. It is all normal.

She's really hot:) I think it's the hair and eyes combo. My current love is Deborah Ann Woll because of her hair and eyes. Also in love with Charlotte Wessels, I recommend looking up pictures :D

The "everyone is bisexual" hypothesis messed me up a bit as a teen. I took it as everyone was supposed to be bisexual, as it was people older and more experienced than me who said so, so I felt like there was something wrong with me because I wasn't. It took me a lot time to accept there was nothing wrong with me.

I think it's a journey for anyone who isn't 100% straight, because 100% straight is still the assumption. I agree with how important it is to be open about sexuality. I'm often told that I look/act very straight and my goal in life is to educate people that there is no look, or no way to act.

I'm hoping someday no one thinks there's some sort of mythical gay agenda. Hellena obviously thinks the agenda is man hating, or it's only something you decide after being confused. It makes me wonder if she really loves her husband, or is attracted to him at all. Because if you can say you were with someone because you hate a whole gender or because of your ideology, who's to say you're not doing the same thing again?

I'm hoping some day

[Arete]

These people...........Wowza! :shock: