What's Up at #42?

I saw a story about a famous Brisbane house that was recently sold to a mystery buyer who turned the house over to be used for local artists -
Cottage in Brisbane’s West End sandwiched by towers to become artists’ centre

"An inner-city Brisbane cottage sandwiched by apartment buildings, just like the house in the 2009 movie Up, has been given a new lease on life as a place for local artists to collaborate.

42 Mollison Street in West End gained widespread attention in November 2015 when it went on the market for the first time since it was built in 1927, after owners Janet and Norm Richards turned down decades of offers from developers to buy the cottage.
Mrs Richards, 84, decided to sell up after it became difficult to get up and down the stairs, not long after her husband passed away. 

She told Fairfax Media in a statement: “I am very happy that the old house will remain and be used to enhance West End’s culture."

42 Mollison Street in West End 

I had walked past this house a few times in my life, mainly at night when I would stop for a coffee at the 3 Monkeys coffee house.
I never noticed that this house was numbered 42, until I read the above news story about the house, which reminded me of another movie where a house was wanted for demolition.

I had never seen the movie Up before, because it looked pretty stupid to me, but since I had heard this movie praised a bit in random conversations I had heard and then reading the article above, I decided to hire out the DVD and see for myself what it was all about.

I've got to say that the movie Up was as bizarre as I feared it would be, but there was a lot of synchromystic elements in viewing this movie for the first time in 2017 for me personally.

2017, the Year of the Rooster?

2017/Rooster?

The thing is that before I had watched the movie Up, or read about the house at 42, I had already booked lunch at a French restaurant not far from this house, because I had decided like I had written in an earlier post -
Fibonacci, French Food and Synch?
that I wanted to try escargots (snails) this year, since I had just finished reading the book pictured above and decided to look for a Brisbane restaurant that had escargots on the menu.

Escargots actually taste pretty good I found out:-P

A Crow, Six Snails and an Ant
So, after lunch I went for a drive to West End to get some photos of the house at #42 and to re-visit another street I hadn't been down for years at West End.

Mollison Street in West End

I think that the movie Up is popular because of the emotional notes it hits, such as having to abandon the family home because of failing health that old age brings, sooner to some than others, and then having to sell that home to pay to go into a modern "Shady Oaks" type home where the only thing the owners of such facilities care about is milking the old folks of their assets.
I know this all too well as my own father spent the last year of his life in a "Shady Oaks" type home where the food was the cheapest crap they could get away with serving and the staff were all probably hired on minimal wage.
These nursing homes are all the rage now and just big money-making rackets to force old folks to sell their homes to pay for their last days on earth.    

The street my father lived in as a boy, but the house is no more

The street that my Nana used to live in.
She passed away in her own home, so never had the ordeal of living in a nursing home, but she had sold her house before she passed to someone who was willing for her to rent it back and let her live in it until she died.

Ah ... look at all those nice "Shady Oaks"
surrounding the new house

The corner of the street where my Nan's house once stood

The thoughts that ran through my head as I stood looking at the spot where my Nan's house used to be were many and varied.
When my father was in the old aged home suffering from dementia and the nurses would ask him his home address he would always give them his childhood address, as he could never remember the home that he had worked for all his life to pay off. 
His house that the old age home he was in was pressuring my mother (who had/has cancer) to sell so they could have their $200,000 deposit sitting in their account.

That photo is the only one I have of my Nan's old house and I remember all of the old oil barrels that the oil refinery that used to be over the road from Nan's house would stick next to her house on the vacant corner lot that they owned and the petrochemical smell that would waft through her house when the wind blew through her windows.
Now there is a big old tree where those stinky oil barrels once were.  

Nan wouldn't believe her eyes if she could see her street now.
I don't even believe it myself, looking down a street filled with high-rise apartment buildings.

The only thing that hasn't changed much in West End is Davies Park, but weirdly enough after my meal at the French restaurant at Southbank I noticed when I was stuck at the lights across from Davies Park on the corner, that there is a French cultural centre selling French books and French language courses.
And on the top floor is the 'Brain Injury Association of Queensland' ironically enough, considering what old age inflicted on my father's brain in his last year of life.

I have to say that while UP is not one of the best Pixar movies in my book (I think that the writers of this movie must have been high 

(up?-) while writing the script) it really seems to resonate on a synchromystical note in the year 2017, for some reason for me.

2017, a Republican President from the clouds?

A French breadstick and French type music in the soundtrack?

My oldest son is named Kevin, as well.

I guess the thing I really liked about Up was a subtle shamanic theme throughout the movie, even if nobody was drinking ayahuasca, or being guided by native shamans.

Sweat Lodge? Is that a shamanic practice?-)

People were still being guided by talking animals and their own hearts and signs.
And half the movie was set in the South American jungle;-)

"You want to see the bird, well here it is". ;-)

The bird line in the movie above reminded me of my trip on Saturday to a Taoist temple complex where I walked in and was greeted with "the bird", in a metaphysical way;-)

Not to mention some weird cloud spotting on that day at the temple, too.
Something Strange Happened to Me on THE WAY out of a Taoist Temple

A flying luck dragon in the clouds over the temple roof?

Would you call this practice TO DO?-)

"...should I live near a village"?!

I noticed on my walk to #42 ironically that the building built around it is named 'The Village'.

And right across the road from #42 is a new development being built called 'West Village'.

Poor little number 42

Go with the flow?

Maybe that's why the garden hose of the house got so much screen time in this movie, because the screenwriters were implying that most times it's best to go with the flow?

It's not easy to watch the things we cherish slip away from us in this life, but I think that self-proclaimed "atheist" Douglas Adams summed life UP best with this quote below -

Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything

I think that Douglas Adams is well aware now that there was more to life than life.

Life may seem like a big game of Monopoly, especially to us in the West (village;-), but it's really more like poker, I feel.

No wonder my dad always liked that Kenny Rogers song, and he died in his sleep, as well.