Creativity Journal - Day 11 (Leftie)

Work on the other hand. Pick a medium you're comfortable with, then work with your nondominant hand - if you usually favour your right hand then only use your left and vice-versa.

I've said it before tonight and I'll say it again, with apologies to Father Mulcahy, "I'm incensed! I am outraged! Where is your decency, man? Your humanity? I am acrimonious!"

The boat people debate in Australia makes me so mad. The government, the opposition and the media all tossing about lies and fear mongering to rival the bad ol' days of the 'yellow peril'. Here's some figures, all of which come from the Parliament of Australia or Department of Immigration websites:

• Boat arrivals account for less than 5% of all permanent migrants (asylum seekers, migrants and all others) to Australia. 
• Arrivals by boat account for only about half of all asylum claims in Australia. 
• Until very recently plane arrivals vastly outnumbered boat arrivals. 
• Those arriving by boat ultimately have a higher rate of being recognised as legitimate refugees. 
• It's estimated that there are close to 54,000 illegal immigrants in the country at any one time - tourists, students and temporary visa holders who just decide to stay, NOT refugee or asylum seekers. Compare this to just over 18,000 boat arrivals in the past TEN years, and nearly 47,000 asylum seekers arriving by means other than boat (I presume plane, motor vehicles being a little problematic). 

 So, in the grand scheme of things, boat people are pretty much a non-issue. They're not our biggest immigration issue (a small proportion) and they're not our biggest security issue (mostly genuine). These are people who have been through a hell that very few of us, sitting in our safe (if somewhat stupid) democracies can even begin to imagine.

As Les Murray pointed out on a recent episode of Adam Hills Tonight, when the refugees were escaping from the Communists, we welcomed them with open arms; we celebrated the people smugglers as heroes. Somewhere in the last 50 years we've lost a bit (a lot) of our humanity. We've become selfish and insecure. We no longer see people; we see threats and boogie men. And the sad irony is that statistics show that boat arrivals are the least likely to be the threat or the boogie man.

And Kevin Rudd's grand plan of sending boat arrivals off to Papua New Guinea and leaving them there. I cannot find words to describe my reaction. Except to say WHAT A STUPID LOAD ... well, anyway. I really do think Father Mulcahy said it best.

I am so outraged that I have emailed the Commonwealth minister for immigration to tell him what a load rubbish I think this policy is. And you can too. Either go to his website: http://www.tonyburke.com.au/get-in-touch/ or send a direct email: Tony.Burke@aph.gov.au.

What's all this got to do with working with my left hand? I'd like to use my left to smack a few heads together (such a humanitarian response). It's actually got nothing to do with working with my left hand. It's just a topic that has incensed me, so I thought I'd just go "blurgh" and spew my frustration onto the screen.

I've sat on Day 11 for a while now. Mediums I'm comfortable with include sewing - my machine doesn't convert to left handed mode; paper craft - rotary cutter in the wrong hand? I don't think so. Embroidery - working on heirloom pieces at the moment. Again, I don't think so. I didn't want to skip another day, but I was running out of ideas that would fit my theme (even a little).

 Tonight as I flicked the Pinterest sites, I saw this:

http://heartofthematteronline.com/3d-hand-drawings/ To someone who's studied art, it's probably old hat, but I've never studied art, so I was fascinated. If you've never studied art either, it's really quite simple. Draw a light pencil outline of your hand (or other object). Starting outside the object, draw a straight line until you hit a pencil line, draw a curved line across to the next pencil line, continue with a straight line. The deeper the curve, the 'higher' the 3D.

Because I'm mad, I thought that's what I'd do. I did a section of my drawing with my left hand. My goodness, that is hard. Straight lines? Consistent curves? Not chance! Part way through I swapped back to my right hand. Mainly so I could finish before midnight. The red line shows the change over.

Mad

Close up view of the jerky left-hand effort (above the line) and smooth right hand effort (below the line)