Sunday, April 30, 2006

Construct of a dream.

What do you regularly dream about?

My most intriguing and absorbing dreams are about houses and buildings!

I have had dreams where I can still remember tiny details about the configuration, space and style of the buildings in my dreams.

I have only ever had ONE dream, once, that I wish I could repeat over and over again. It was the most wonderful experience of the subconcious I've ever had the pleasure of dreaming.

The place was central Melbourne. The building was typical on the outside of much of the victorian styled architechture of Melbourne. It was large, grey and imposing. The ornate cornices gave the building a slightly gothic quality that was at once eerie and yet very beautiful.

Part cathedral, part hotel, part house, this building lay abandoned and empty on a large allotment in the heart of Melbourne's busy streets.

My brother-in-law and sister were looking to buy a home for themselves closer to family. They were intrigued by this amazing but rather forlorn looking place and needed to get a peek inside of it to see if it would suit their needs.

At the back of this building was a tangled, overgrown fairy garden laid out in many levels, like terraces. The bones of the garden were still visible when you stood nearer the top and looked down the swirling mess of steps and levels that led, like a maze, out toward the street below.

It was green. A verdant and crystal emerald colour of amazing vibrancy and energy. Dots of lurid colour would peep out from among overgrown vines and creepers giving the garden a mysterious but quaint feel to it.

We climbed to the highest terrace of the garden which led to the giant stone foundations at the back of this enormous house.

For some unexplained reason, I knew where to find the hidden servants door behind the bracken and we entered inside into a darkened cavern that became a short passageway leading upwards into the heart of the building. I did not need a key.

The passage way was gloomy and dusty, but unlike a Hollywood set, there were no rats or cobwebs! It smelled like the underground vaults of a winery, musty and sweet like turned earth. The passageway led to a small flight of spiral stairs that took us up toward a back room which was lit in a pale soft light from the cracks around its main door.

I unfortunately, don't remember the particular details of this room because the splendour of the room behind this door completely overwhelmed the memory of it.

I opened this door and we entered a vast - and I mean vast - open space such as you would find in a very large hall or empty narthex of a large cathedral. The walls were made of grey granite blocks that stretched high above our heads either side of us and touched the sweeping vaulted ceiling, made from large oak beams, gently supporting it, not in a clumsy or contrived way, but gracefully and sweetly as if the ceiling were being caressed and nurtured to fit its place rather than perfunctorily supported.

The room was nearly empty except for a large table near our entry point and some high backed chairs arranged at different places down the east side of the building. All the furniture was covered in dusty sheets, once white, now yellow with age.

Each vaulted archway along the east side contained either a door to another room or a storage cupboard. Two main doors were centrally located drectly East. We did not however enter these (I'd have liked to though). These archways themselves, were a triumph of beauty in architechture. They had high points directly centre of their perfectly symmetrical curvature. They add to the room a kind of warmth that belied its cavernous lonliness.

There were large tapestries in dark red colours on the walls but not a lot! Just enough to give the room a kind of ethereal beauty and to break up the expanse of grey stone. The floor of the room was also made of large granite flagstones. It was covered in rich but faded rugs rampant with intricate patterns and designs.

The most breathtaking feature of this room was an enormously tall, rectangular window that started about 3 meters from the floor and then reached very high up at an oblique angle, toward us, into the highest point of the vaulted ceiling.

Someone in their idiocy had once placed a long roman blind on this window which faced due north. The blind was now a tatted, yellowing, dirty wreck of a thing. Light entered the room by the edges of the window where the blind did not meet. The swirling particles of the dust, recently disturbed, gave the room a kind of eerie glow. I remember thinking that getting a blind up there some 10 metres up from our position on the floor was a major risk! They would've needed some kind of crane to reach all the way up there! Surely?

I remember trying to find someway of removing the blind. I eventually found the thin, darkened, dirty cord for it tied to a small nail embedded near the base of the furtherest part of the west wall. The cord was also hooked to a position further up at the base where the window began. Because the window was at such an angle, it required some careful engineering to ensure that the blind followed that angle and was anchored appropriately at certain points to prevent it from sagging or flopping down straight from its highest fixed point at the top of the window.

When I released it, the blind spun, with a reverberating clatter, straight up the window to it's source. With a further short, sharp tug on the cord, it came falling down from its lofty place with an almighty crash, relieving that amazing window once and for all of its grimy blockout.

The window was made of hundreds of small panes of glass. They were dirty and almost opaque but the light from of all these panes of glass illuminated the large hall with breath-taking golden glory.

The room, despite its large size was simply the most beautiful room I'd ever ventured into. It was simple and yet remarkably complex because of the strange juxtaposition of that oblique window on the northern end. Dusty, empty, life-less and yet brimming with promise and potential, which it seemed only I could envisage.

My brother-in-law and my sister had long since disappeared from this dream as I surveyed the main hall. This building had become "MY" building! It was as if I had stumbled onto a glorious architechtural treasure that had lain in plain sight, but invisible, from Melbournes gaze.

I remember the wonderful colours in that hall. The deep reds, the dark purples, the soft sandy gleam of the dust, the granite grey of the stone, the dirty yellow of that blind, the golden beautiful light! Then there was verdant green of the garden with hints and wisps of vermillion and lapis blue. But it is the scintillating, golden light from that remarkable window that moves me most of all. I felt so amazed and in awe in that room. I was completely and totally lost in the mesmerising portent of it's form.

I remember feeling passionately that this window should be cleaned (I also remember thinking through just "how" to clean it too) - so that the sun would be able to penetrate the room better and so that the stars would be seen at night. I wanted, almost desperately, to have this building come alive! To help it live out its purpose and potential and to give it back its eye - that wonderful window - to look clearly at the sky once again.

That building - though a dream - stays with me. A simple construct of something that will never come to pass and yet still haunts me with a happy memory of a place where I found light, immense wonder and a window I would give anything to own!

I dream about buildings!

What do you dream about? :)

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Kokoda.

The following poem was inspired by my viewing of This movie last night.

A surreal experience to say the least and even though it didn't make me cry - (it did make me angry) it still stays with me these many hours later!

Kokoda

Bloody but unbowed by the wound inside
I’ll crawl through mud and thicken my hide
In solitude with mates
In high mountain places
To bring forth the freedom
So my kids can wear braces.

Bloody but unbowed by this wound inside
I’ll strip back the wrappings and bust my pride
In the jungle with mates
In low valley places
To bring forth the freedom
So our kids have bright faces.

Bloody but unbowed by your wound outside
I’ll carry you back through the mud with my pride
In between mates
In New Guinean spaces
To bring you to freedom
So these kids know your graces.

CC M. Pitman 2006

Danger! Will Robinson!

s'okay...

I'm just trying some on some "Associative Thinking".

Like clues from a mystery novel - these words decided to make a brief and intriguing appearance inside my mind just as I went to type some "thoughts" into this blog!

They have subsequently led to me to a brief jaunt around the internet to find articles and ideas on the nature of thinking itself!

I love that about the internet! You can instantly Google up a plethora of information about any subject you choose to investigate.

Sure! You DO need a certain ability to hone basic critical thinking skills into this mix - after all, there is some mightily "wierd" and really "out there" stuff here in cyberspace (this blog notwithstanding! ;)); but on the whole, if you look carefully, you can find a lot that is worthy of absorbing into the psyche and that old grey file drawer of mind.

Thinking! We all do it! Some of us are inclined to think in linear "just the facts ma'am" kinds of ways and others of us are inclined - like myself - to think in associations and "maybe it's like this" kinds of ways.

Even disparate geographies generally think "differently" than each other, which to me explains a whole lot about why we tend to misunderstand our neighbours so much!

I like thinking. I like that other people think and have different opinions and although we, ALL of us, are inclined to assume that ours is the BEST available conclusion to the thinking, it's nice that perspective and idea, philosophy and ideology are not too simple or easy to understand. It's in the process, of discovering each other that we find the greatest and most pleasant rewards of community.

There'd be no point in trying to develop entente between people if we couldn't practise thinking differently about each other and thereby increase our flexibility for compassion and identification with each other too.

So Will Robinson! There is a danger in thinking too narrowly about life and there is a danger in thinking too little about life; but there is a major danger in not really thinking through anything at all!

Life isn't all reaction - it's pre-meditation too - and THAT is where all beautiful thinking, no matter if its creative thinking, critical thinking or cognitive thinking, becomes very important indeedy!

Think beautiful thoughts today little one and be happy. :)

Friday, April 28, 2006

The art of my spouse!



My husband is an artist.

He sculpts raw ingredients and shapes them into form and coherent structure. The results are a synergistic experience in taste, texture, colour, and form.

His sculptures are yummy! :)

See this picture?

This is what my husband makes nearly every day. Consistently, day in and day out, my husband creates these taste sensations that satisfy that deepest of human needs - hunger!

For over 20 years - 16 of those in our own business - he has demonstrated a zeal for excellence in the quality of his work that I have yet to see in many others. He is is adamant, passionate about creating product that is the same yesterday as it is today, as it will be tomorrow.

He is happiest in the process of his work, in its intrinsic rhythm and pattern. Once he has decided and practised that which is the BEST way to make it come to pass - then he is not easily swayed from that path.

He is brilliant! A quiet, steady regular hand in a world where form and product are ever changing, morphing into new shapes, tastes and possibilities. He constructs a solid foundation of familiarity with what is consistently and beautifully perfect - every single bite.

My husband is an artist! One of the best there is because he feeds peoples need for simple gratification, through the consistent (and persistent), excellence of his work.

The little things.

It’s in the little things you do
that makes me love you!
The way you pour my tea
just so.
the way you sip yours with
care.
It’s in the little things you do
that brings me closer to
understanding what makes you
so unique and special to me.
It’s the little things -
the tiny inconsequential
moments,
where simple being
becomes beautiful truth
and everything is made
worth the effort
because of what you bring
to me,
every day of your life.


© M. Pitman 2006

Thursday, April 27, 2006

It's all in the feedback.

Feedback.

This word has been buzzing inside my head all day today.

Feedback can mean different things to different people. A roadie might interpret feedback quite differently from a college professor I should think.

One is thinking maybe in terms of sound through equipment, the other maybe thinking in terms of receiving rapport or augmentation to an idea from students and peers.

Both are important.

We all need feedback. It's hardwired into us.

Feedback is like food. It gives us energy, creates positive (or negative) growth. It sustains us and keeps us alive. Food is important to our survival. So is feedback. GOOD food will make us happy and healthy so will positive feedback!

We all need to hear, see, touch, taste, smell and know what is real. What comes back to us through our senses is feedback that we are alive, we are real, that lunch is ready!

Bloggers like feedback! It means we are saying something that stirs inside someone "out there" in cyberspace. Feedback helps us to keep writing, making our thoughts ever more clear and resonant.

Feedback can be nasty! It can hurt like crazy and can ring in our ears like that screech from an audio speaker long after it's given. Feedback like this is horrible but sometimes necessary; afterall you can't leave a microphone in front of a speaker forever without doing some damage so it's best if the sound is heard briefly and the problem resolved quickly through some minor re-adjustments in position and frequency.

Conversation is feedback. Eye contact is feedback. A hug is precious feedback!

I don't like negative feedback! But then I'm a big wuss :) I'm all for positive feedback that makes me feel warm and welcome in the human family.

...and may I feed back to you the same. :)

Alexys!

I love you! :)

This Post from your hand and heart today is dripping with so much love and confidence in the potential of God to meet our deepest need that my heart bleeds with satisfaction and gratitude!

Thankyou my dear!

What wise and merciful words you wrote today! :)

Mitch

Practise!

Okay! So... here I sit in front of the computer. My fingers are poised upon this keyboard, ready to come up with something profound and wonderful!

Nothing!

So maybe let's not force it. Let's experiment with just typing and see what comes from it. I need the practise! Let's see if this writing thing really is within me to do! Lets test the universe and make it bite us back!

here goes... straight from the keys...no edits - no tweaking - this... is straight from the heart.

Much about us is a wonder! Musch about the world is mystery. What we see, hear, taste, smell and know is about as extraordinary as a thousand galaxies of stars!

There is much beauty in this world and much that is not beautiful.

There is plenty ofhope in this world and there would be more if only those of us who had hope - you know! clothes, shelter, homes, families with loved ones who were not dead and dying from the ravages of survival - could stop grasping for that which makes us feel hopeful and shared hope with those who didn't have any.

It's not the world that is at fault, it is ourselves! it's the capactiy of our selfishness and hunger to have it all to ourselves that prevents Joy from floating over the saeas and making things right where they are not.

I long for a world where we loved not for ourselves but wanted - no needed - love for the other; to exist on a plane of beautiful mercy, where the kindness of hearts and minds made having "things" obsolete. Where my need to listen to music on the latest gizmo was far outweighed by my need to help others play their own music and make it heard.

Maybe I live in a fantasy construct of never-ending rose-coloured taint. maybe I want to live in such a world where the utopian dream were possible - where men and women in australia shared the grief and pain of a mother in africa losing a child to aids - where we white anglo-saxon aussies were able to understand the compulsion of others to leave their homelands in order to create that hope for their children - their legacy.

Life is messy! It can't be cleaned up with wet-wipes and towels. it can't be made hopeful and peaceful and beautiful when we deny opportunity to those who are not able to "be" like us.

I long for a world where people are kind and hopeful and gentle. A world where our self - that part of us that intends to hurt and harm for our own greedy gain - that old Eve inside of us who wants to eat forbidden fruit and ignore the warnings - I want a world where this part is nullified and given over to a transcendent and glorious sense of ONE-NESS with each other. Where the colours of our skin and our being are blended into a glorious pattern of light and beauty. Where the world is caring enough to know that it is only the gracious and gentle giving of hope that makes us what we are

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

More words from my history...

Okay... let's get some of the REALLY strange stuff I wrote in my youth out here in cyberspace! ;)

It's not courage folks! It's a quirky method of ensuring that I remain always humble about what I do! :D

The White Witch Enigma

Listen!
Call the wind, your enigmatic visions;
Let it whisper your hearts content;
Prosper on the leaves of lust, then
Burn the hate that has you bent.

Listen!
Candid smiles, taste this mountain hop;
Let it warm your souls desire;
Pour it on that crystal hope, then
Ban that hope like bane of briar.

Listen!
Curfew calls, the toil is vanished;
Lament the day with a sorry cuss,
Pain the dusk, endure its bounty,
Borrow in its flighty fuss.

Listen!
Call the breeze, your visions change,
Let them bring a speckled light,
Price of mystery, this mind is cursed;
Banished but for one mans plight.

© M. Pitman 1978


Yep! I have NO idea what it means either! LMAO!

Hey! I was only 16 at the time! ;)

Mitch

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The strange coincidence of a conspiring universe.

With all my musing and amusing of late on this VERY introspective journey, I'm at a crossroads.

Where to now?

And then out of the blue and into my mailbox came this newsletter.

Concern Australia has long been a popular charity for our family to support. It's practical christianity where the rubber hits the road (and I don't often want to!).

But here's the thing! My hero who founded this amazing service, has conspired with the God-Head of our faith and has written something that not only resonates completely with where I'm at right now but also drops a gargantuan hint as to the living out of my Genius and my
Purpose.

I sent him an email! I offered him my writing to encourage, lift and support someone within CA that may need such a thing!

I wasn't going to send it for a start - I wanted to "pray" about it! Which was really an excuse to delay having to actually do anything about it. I do that you know! Pretend to be interested in helping others and then committing it all to prayer so as to alleviate the need to do anything PRACTICAL and loving for them in genuine servanthood. I am ever the selfish one and I lack courage! I know that! I'm working on it okay! ;)

Of course, God had other ideas and it slipped out into the ether as effortlessly as if it had been designed that way!

I'm so scared now I'm literally buzzing from the fear!

It feels FANTASTIC!

Mitch

The virtual deep of connection.

I have a friend on the internet!

I have a friend with whom I can communicate all that is in my mind, heart and soul. I have a friend with whom I can safely transcribe in detail what is at the core of myself. I can pour out my heart with integrity and honesty, with laughter and tears - and sometimes both at once! :D

We've never met in the flesh and probably never will. However it's the most refreshing and inspiring friendship I've made in recent years. :)

I can say things to this person that would freak my 3D world friends & family completely out! :D I can say the deep stuff of the soul that is on my mind and know it will be heard and if not immediately understood, then appreciated all the same.

This person is amazing in how they seem to accept me despite my impassioned typing of thoughts and ideas! They are ever so gracious, so gentle, and so unconditional in their support and recognition of who I am and what I want to be!

They are a light of genuine hope and love in this world to me and I thank God everyday for them! I just hope I can return even a fraction of this blessing back to them in gratitude!

My prayer for you this day: That you find such a friendship as this!

Light Always! :)

Mitch

Monday, April 24, 2006

The beauty is in the numbers.

If I were given an injection that gave me the choice between being a genius (as in I.Q) in the field of writing or the field of pure mathmatics, I might just choose mathmatics!

It's only because I barely know my times tables that it fascinates me so.

Mathmatics was a love/hate relationship in school. When I "got" it, I loved it. However, more often than not, I couldn't grasp the basic functions let alone complex ones.

I literally "see" words and language inside my head. I love knowing what words mean and where they come from. Some of my friends have been known to phone me at odd hours of the day and night for the "correct" spelling or meaning of a particular word. I love words! it's how I'm wired naturally and instinctively.

But numbers? The brain fogs, the eyes roll inside out and I cannot think at all! I have to physically transcribe them into some sort of external reference portal - either paper or calculator - to process them; and I process them slowly and laboriously. I get them wrong even with these time honoured methods! I thank God for the calculator of which we have many in this house.

But what I would give to be able to "get" complex dynamics, large numbers, complex numbers, quadratic polynomials and thereby create beautiful images such as this.

What synergy! What energy! What incredible complexity refined into simple beauty. What an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, marvellously coherent form! I just wish this computer were fast enough to be able to change the iterations for this construct quickly and make this image flex and change through its various permutations.

A changing Julia or Mandelbrot Set is at once mesmerising and alluring, eternally different and always the same. The shapes and patterns flex and mutate in a graceful spiralling waltz of colour and pattern and each time, one is surprised to see the basic pattern repeat over and over again into seeming effortless infinity. Order out of chaos. Pattern and shape out of incomprehensible disorder. Symmetry and asymmetry dancing together in perfect accord.

To be able to see life through the application of pure number theory would open up worlds I could hardly imagine within the limited confines of words. To be able to computate and iterate experience through mathmatical formulae would be, quite frankly, awesome!

I envy those who understand mathmatics. I envy them this ability to create form through number. I envy them the opportunity to explore the world through such a construct, through such logic, such cohesion of shape, colour, pattern and idea. There is a kind of esoteric quality about pure mathmatics that seems other-worldly and almost removed from the constraints of messy life. Sure! It's another language, another way of processing the world, of making it make sense; of constructing coherence. But the difference is that it is a language so confined to those who speak it, who can make sense of it that's it becomes a kind of alternative reality for the rest of us; too mysterious and too strange to comprehend. I suppose that is what makes it so intriguing.

I deal with life through english words as a way of filtering and ordering it to make sense to me. But to be able to go places, mathmatically, that words just can't go...well... that is a journey I, unfortunately, cannot travel and I'd really love to if that injection were available! Even if for a little while. Instead, I will be content to gaze upon the beautiful results of our mathmaticians labours.

And I'm grateful!

Mitch

A number of alternative images of Julia and Mandelbrot Sets can be found Here

Words from my history.

As a young woman I wrote a LOT of poetry. It seemed to be a consistent theme for me around the late 70's, early 80's. Poetry was a way to help me process how I viewed the world at that time.

It was also a way for me to "play" with words and meaning. I guess it was a kind of construct I used where expressing deep feeling was done through mysterious and melodramatic choices of unusual words juxtaposed together in rather strange verses.

Today as I look back on my old poetry, I can see my love for the "shape" of words and the rhythms they created. The meaning in some of my old poetry is somewhat clouded because of my use of unusual sounding words though. It's as if it was secondary to the structure of the poetry but not negated all the same.

Of course there are the usual suspects of youthful poetry - angry railing against death, love, and gloom; but there are also poems that are quite lovely in their innocent simplicity even now.

I particularly like this one from 1981... (I've only edited some minor grammatical glitches)

Love is what you gain
in the years that
add to life:
It is beautiful, like
a sweet spice that
adds flavour to
the meal but doesn't
overwhelm it.
In your love, the
food, that is life
will be sweet.

© M. Pitman 1981



Sure! It might be clumsy from a technical point of view but I also find it quite powerful. It continues to resonate long after it's read and the words soak into the mind like ink into chalk.

I'm trying hard not to boast about my poetry. I'm trying hard to be as analytical as possible about it. There is some really EMBARRASSING stuff I could show you too, and I may yet - just to keep me humble! ;) But... it's nice to know that I still have this part of me recorded for posterity and I can finally share them with the world.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

It's been a long time,

my friend called Poem! I haven't written you for YEARS! This is my second attempt for the new millennium :D

I’m suspended
I’m suspended by the
Thought of you
In night time dress
In cares caress
In beauty deep
And to truths in sleep
I’m suspended
I’m suspended by the
Need of you
In daytime clothes
In jeans and throws
In beauty deep
and to heart's full heap
Of you
I’m suspended
Being with you
Makes me better
Makes me whole
Being with you
Brings me closer
To heavens
Tiny door
I’m suspended
I’m suspended by the
Thought of you
Take me there
Inside of you
Show me the thoughts
That make up you
Suspend me deep
Inside your need
And bring me
With you
Through Heavens
Tiny door.


© M. Pitman 2006

Knowing the heart of things.

Millions of people around the world are "into" looking deep into life, things, other people!

We seem to have this fascination and desire to want to know, to be "in the know" and to understand how it all fits together. It's as if we seek understanding beyond mere immediate facts but also try to gain some kind of coherence in processing that information. To make it all make relevance and sense to us is what is quintessential to making us human.

Does this then make my genius less unique than I first thought!

I don't think so. The odds on the surface of things might suggest that it would be nearly impossible to have so many billions and billions of people born throughout history and not have at least TWO people with an identical genius name!

But then again, maybe not! It's a moot point! It could never be proved either way. For all anyone knows, my genius "double" could have lived sometime in the early half of the first millenium which would make a rather interesting project if you had a time machine and a very nice computer!

So, despite the fact that I think we are all more alike than we like to think of ourselves, it's in the interpretation of our alikeness that makes us each so different.

When we get to knowing intimately what is at the heart of ourselves, process that information through the filter of a multitude of external factors, bringing coherence and logical reason to bear upon it, do we find profound uniqueness in our being here.

The strange thing about people is that at their core, they want to belong and be identified with. By the same token they want to express their individual selves in a coherent and distinctive way to ensure that they are not the same as everyone else. It's a strange dichotomy of the human journey.

Self Identity vs Group Identification

I identify with people who are "like" me but I also feel more comfortable about myself when I contribute my uniqueness to that equation.

It makes for a more interesting life this way. If we all expressed our sameness the same way, there'd be a lot of very bored and disinterested people in the world - no colour, artistic expression, ideas or extenuating discussions worth having. I think that violent behaviour in groups is often marked by a tendency for group members to identify TOO closely with each other, negating all expression of individual uniqueness. We NEED to express our individuality in order to create harmony within our group context.

On the other hand: if we all didn't instinctively crave for the wisdom of crowds, through identifying with the sameness of each other, there'd be no family, no tribes, nations or boundaries to our being here! Rampant, unchecked individualism, it seems to me, leads to a rather pessimistic, perverse view of the world - all the colour becomes a rather muddy brown as a result.

So sameness is mixed together with uniqueness to create a wonderful truth about us as a people. We are all alike but each of us different. My constructing coherence may resonate with your own sense of felt "rightness" about your core process, but YOU will express it quite differently.

And that is as it should be. :)

Friday, April 21, 2006

Propehetess of the blogosphere...

Sarah Hepola
is my new heroine of writers and writing!

....Thus the blog that I started, thinking no one would read it and secretly hoping they would. The blog was the perfect bluff for a self-conscious writer like me who yearned for the spotlight and then squinted in its glare. When I needed to pretend that people were reading, I could. When I needed to pretend that nobody was reading, I could.

Wow! I am in awe! What a feast of pithy wisdom this is! I identify with this so much it almost hurts.

... btw Sarah,

....when the word blog was still something you had to ease into conversation, like an obscure scientific term.

That conversation still happens! If I had a cent for every time someone looked at me blankly at the mention of the word "blog"!!! Yiiyiiiiyiii! I'd have more christmas spending money than I'd know what to do with! :D

In the meantime...I'm baby steps in the writing arena (I've been baby-steps on the whole writing thing for too many years), so I shall labour over this more immediate form, called "blog", for now just because it IS so satisfying. Hey! I need all the practise I can get anyway so I might as well do it in here where it feels cosy and possible!

But I note your words Ms Hepola and have taken heed! Ask me in 5 years if I still agree! :)

Mitch

Raging against the bigotry...

Well... that was cool! :)

I just "unleashed" some steam on a dear friend (in the nicest possible way I hope ;)).

I was telling him about the conundrum of my life as a christian.

Now I'm about as biblically fundamental as you get when it comes to the expression of my faith. I actually believe all that stuff in the Bible! It makes me wierd yes! I know that! I like wierd! I embrace wierd! Wierd is what I like to be!

The irony to this though, is that all my closest and most abiding friendships, all the acquaintances that give me the most satisfaction and pleasure are with those who are non-believers!

I wonder why that is so?

I seem to attract non-believers to my hearth and home like lost pennies!

Is it because I relate to them? Yes!
Is it because they might be "attracted" to something of the Divine through me? I doubt it!
Is it because they aren't hypocrites in the expression of what they believe? DEFINITELY!

Now, don't get me wrong! I love my Christian family with a defiant passion and will go through hell on high water to defend her to the death!

When it comes to individuals as Christians - that's where it gets a little more....murky :/

You see! There is something about some christians that doesn't ring true! They speak of obedience and following Christ and all that but they forget the fundamental thing of their nature! THEY CAN'T!

Not on their own! We can't follow Christ anymore than a statue of Buddah could untangle his limbs from the lotus position!

Don't speak to me of obedience christian! Don't give me waffle about following Christ out of sense of pious duty!

You are saved by undeserved Grace on a cross on calvary! There really isn't anything more to it - the ressurrection notwithstanding!

The thing is, there are some christians who are too danged difficult to like because they don't particularly enjoy themselves while still here on earth!

That's what I like about non-christians! They love life, they indulge it, they don't deny themselves pleasure for the sake of it! Some of us christians need to understand that we've been given insight into a whole BIGGER pleasure and to forsake the wonderful bounty of what is here is like biting off your nose to spite your face!

So go ahead! Drink your wine (yes! I said wine), eat your food. indulge your passions and thank God he has rescued you while you EMBRACE life instead of trying to wallow in "obedience". I don't want to tip-toe around you for fear of offending your sensibilities and propriety's sense of what "should" be! What SHOULD be is an overwhelming joy in life not some laboured expression of dour sonambulistic faithfulness!

You cannot BE faithful without the spirit! It cannot happen! Our very nature makes it not happen! We are about as obedient as wilful toddlers chucking a wobbly on the lounge room floor! God knows that but he loves us anyway!

Give it up and come on over for a laugh and a scotch eh? ;)

Thursday, April 20, 2006

"And it's only the giving...

that makes you what you are"

These lines are from the song "Wond'ring Aloud" which I posted about
yesterday.

They've been like a kind of mantra in the back of my mind since I listened to them.

...and it's only the giving...

What KIND of giving?

That is probably the point! We give all sorts of things, we people!

We give love
We give money
We give hope
We give submission
We give power
We give honour
We give dishonour
We give nothing
We give everything
We give surety
We give pain
We give wisdom
We give pride
We give nurture
We give subjugation

We give of all that is both of The Good and all that is not. We give with one hand and take with the other.

We give of ourselves in the hope to win ourselves back!

We give altruistically not at all! We are too feeble to ever give altruism its purest expression - we need reciprocation too much.

It is in the expression of the sort of giving which brings the greatest benefit for all, that we can ever hope to achieve a certain form of altruism close to the ideal. Where our personal need to be sated through our conscious expression of goodness is mitigated by our communal need to elevate others to "better" things; there will we find the best of what we are.

I'm adopting this as a kind of meme for myself for now. A way to interpret my Purpose and to demonstrate my hope in everything possible through the expression of The Good.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

My Purpose is...

I was wondering yet again how to cohere my genius with my life's purpose.

Up until yesterday I had no idea what that purpose might be.

My personal document file on this computer is brimming with wee treatises on what I "thought" my Purpose in life was and there is a lot of stuff there that I've written about my intrinsic values and beliefs. I wrote it from an intellectual point of view. These were ideas that I took from the pattern of my life that I was certain contained the truth of my reason for being. There were no tears that I recall writing all that though. It IS still meaningful to me but in a technical, perfunctory kind of way, more like road-map than fire!

I wrote them then left them all to languish in my hard drive with hardly a thought of rememberance. It seemed that I was still no wiser as to why I was really put here.

Then, quite by providence, (or coincidence, depending on your point of view), I stumbled across one of Steve Pavlina's articles this evening.

I've been reading his stuff for months now and gleaning what is of value to me from his wisdom where I could. But, I'd missed this particular gem.

Yes! It sounds completely crazy and weirdo and silly and stupid and moronic and artsy-fartsy and all that etc etc. But I did it anyway!

To say I was reduced to tears is a complete understatment! To say that my life has been somehow changed is, maybe, slightly more accurate. I have been trying to dam the flood of emotion ever since I did this exercise (and it really DID take no more than 20 minutes!).

I have repeated the exercise twice now just to be sure! (I'm such a sceptic! LOL Sorry Steve! ;)) Each subsequent time was very much shorter. With each successive "session", it was as if the computer keys could not wait to write the same inspiring words out again for me.

Every time I read this purpose statement, I want to cry again and again and again! It humbles me, warms me and encourages me. It frightens me too. To be used to create such power in the world is a formidable opportunity that I cannot take lightly.

Despite the fact that I speak of my own genius as "constructing coherence". I'm often unable to make myself heard or be clear in my intention. I write with a convoluted style and I imagine it can be incredibly tedious to read at times.

When I write I am "home"; it is where my heart belongs! However, I'm not a technician. I write from feeling more than intellect so I make fundamental grammatical errors consistently. It is my style and wont to do so and I try to correct it whenever I see the problem. Forgive me this peccadillo then, if you will.

My purpose? The reason God has placed me here in this time and in this way? The reason I am who I am? The reason that I've experienced all that I've experienced? The reason that I am eNFp? The reason that I live and breathe the beauty of the English Language? The reason why I grew up loving dictionaries, spelling lists and thesauruses? The reason I write poetry, drama, stories and blogs like this? The reason that I have read so many books? The reason I treasure the power of words? The reason why the irony of my genius name is that it is also a term used in the study of English grammar? The reason that I feel the connection of all things so deeply?

This then is the answer...

My Purpose is...


To write of all that is in my heart, mind and soul;


To write clearly for all to understand my meaning;


To resonate with understanding;


To make my words poetic and beautiful and to make my words sing
with lyrical hope and joy;


To construct coherence in the hearts of mankind.


Mitch

The astonishing synergy of communicated thought!

I was reflecting this morning on my past history as a young woman and in the process was revisiting the poetry I'd written in the discontent of my youth!

I am going to put some of it up here eventually. Some of it surprises me even now in its message. How "could" I have known such things at 18, 19 or 20 years of age?

Then I visited my blog feed and lo and behold! One of my favourite bloggers has written a beautiful tribute to poetry.

The stuff about Jack Gibert is simply the best!

Thanks Mr Pollard. How incredibly timely of you to feed my introspection this day! :)

Mitch

Wond'ring Aloud

...and yet again we have more Tull on the stereo! It seems my mood of late NEEDS this music!

Today it's Aqualung

....This line is what has grabbed my morning mood today....

"And it's only the giving
that makes you what you are."

From Track 5 "Wond'ring Aloud"

I'm going to muse on those line today - they sing of deeper things and I need to process them.

...BBL

....

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Jethro for the morning; Jewel for the night.

ABC2 are showing a concert with Jewel Live at Humphrey's by the Bay!

She just sang This Song and I was touched to core of my being!

Heaven knows why - it just resonated deep inside!

Besides! It does say something about "glue"!

When it comes to things such as love and loving - I tend to want to be "glue"! It's my achilles heel.

Oft am I unhinged, unglued, undignified and incoherent when it comes to love!



*read more of Jewels wonderfuly poetic and intense lyrics here

..and then the music came to me in the morning

After sundays morbid and seriously dark (and slightly embarrassing) post about "the dark side", I needed to move out of my head and into my body once more.

So today I put My Favourite Band of All Time on the main stereo and cranked up the volume LOUD.

The Tull can only ever be fully appreciated LOUD! :D

The album this morning for your listening pleasure (and it IS pleasure)... is Stormwatch

Crumbs!

Ian!!! What a musician!!!!

The synergy in this music for me combines so many elements that I find so engaging to my sense of coherence.

From the lyrics to the complexity of rock and classical styles melded together in sympathetic and powerful harmony!

Ahhh! I danced! How good it feels to dance!

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Careful Mitch! Your coherence is showing....

Oh dear!

I can see the "dark side" of my genius looming like a sith lord riding over the sands of Tatooine.

I hadn't realised until today just how cloistered I've kept my Mind these past years! It has recently glimpsed potential freedom to roam and it scares me. I have restrained the excesses of my Mind and kept them well hidden. I had forgotten how it feels to have my Mind go free, to wander through pastures of thought and idea, to glut on the lush fruit of The Possible, and to drink from the fountain of Intellectual Communion.

It's heady, it's intoxicating, it's romantic and it's fantasy is too alluring to resist!

The pragmatic, "traditional" side in my nature ensured my survival 16 years ago by marrying a reasonably well grounded man who does not think finding "genius" names worthy of his time or thought. The whole concept of blogging leaves him cold! Communicating on the internet for him is beyond his capacity to fathom. For me it holds a vast untapped capacity for coherence!

...and then I joined The Genius Workshop and my Mind was given license to roam freely across the plains of creative expression and my lord! It feels sooooo good!

I want to grasp this new romantic delusion I've developed and hang on to it for dear life! I want to feel the warm glow of personal endorsement when meeting others INSIDE their skins - to know their Minds and have them know mine!

This is the "demonic" side of my Construction of Coherence! I become too passionately and intensely involved in the lives of the Minds I've seen and connected with. I become grafted to them in an idealistic, and romantic fortress of my own making, essentially trapping them in order to try and make them mine forever! I feel compelled by this dark force to keep on re-creating that intoxicating sensation of COHESION in thought, spirit, mood, joy and understanding!

How selfish I am!

How RUDE of me to assume control over these Minds and the creative territory they've opened up, willingly, for me to explore! How manipulative could I be to want to hold them fast in my grasping fist called "My Desperate Need for Validation".

I love being loved! But I fear I want to be loved on my own terms! I want to be idealised just as I idealise! I want to feel the thrilling concert of intellectual comraderie between myself and another! I am in love with the IDEA of Mind. I am literally turned on by the intellectual processes that create vivid pictures in my head. I am inspired to incredible depths of soul and emotion when my own Mind is engaged in communion with another "like" Mind. When wit and wisdom, idea and possibility combine in a chorus of mutual "getting". Oh the passion! The wonder! The Joy! The incredible complexity of souls made so simple through the exchange of words and details; of meanings hidden and values expressed between lines; of intrinsic character exposed and walking naked for me to appreciate and enjoy.

...and I need to let it go! To let that bird called "Another" to fly away to freedom from my stranglehold. I must shut my eyes to this fear of abandoment and let the bird fly away from my starving heart so that it is given it own worth and not my imposed idealistic and romanticised value.

This is the truth of Love; that what we wish most to hold tightly to our heart, must be allowed to go free if it so chooses. Love is always a decision. It's a choice to be made for right or for wrong. True love chooses the right way all the time for it identifies that the proper path - though the most painful - will always bring the greatest rewards in the end!

I've learned something this Ressurrection Sunday! I've learned something really deep and dark about myself; about the way my genius will work against me sometimes. It is both terrifying and exhilarating in the extreme. Writing this post has exposed it to the Light. I pray that Light will also empty this darkened tomb of my psyche and bring transcended, pure coherence back to me.

Mitch

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Carrying Joy

Joy! What a wonderful word this is.

I was thinking about it today after I'd posted in The Genius Workshop.

It was a lovely cool morning today after some fabulous rain yesterday (it's been very dry here in S.E. Australia for a number of years), I was walking to work to our wee bakery. My hubby is a pastrycook extraordinaire which may account for my inability to minimise my girth these past 16 years! Hence the walking!

Anyway, I was mulling on the whole concept of Joy. I felt so good today. Despite a restless night last night and an incident where my beloved cat "Billy" decided to throw a coniption fit at 4:30am, which was extremely bizarre and scary to say the least, yet it didn't seem to cast a shadow across my morning. I just felt so... I don't know... Alive!

It was like the kind of feeling you have soon after falling in love for the first time. I've been "in love" with my husband for these past 16 years - and let's just say that some of those years have been conscious decisions to STAY "in love" with him despite our foibles and inconsistencies as people! But the feeling this morning was like re-discovering that glorious sensation of being at one with the world, of being at one with another person; it was a feeling that made the air thrilling to the touch on my skin, of being happier than one had a right to be happy.

It felt so danged good to be alive today.

So what changed?

Joy!

That confounded, elusive and wonderfully mystical thing called Joy!

As a Christian, I've heard the little ditty along the lines of J.O.Y. = Jesus, Others, Yourself. I've liked that description for many years but unfortunately, it doesn't really count for those around me who don't believe, so it's one of those things I've tended to keep to myself. Basically, for those of you not in on this dogma, it's a christian persons way of saying that true happiness comes from these following priorities. Simple, neat, effective and somewhat exclusive to that most wierdest of clubs - Believers in Christ! :)

Joy for everyone else is more elusive still! There is a generalised world view of joy that implies that personal happiness is also one of personal success and the acquired equanmity that goes with that success.

But it's more than that! Joy isn't "romance". It isn't financial gain. It isn't "stuff". It cannot be bought or sold, traded against or forced into existence. Joy just is! It's not so much a feeling as a condition of the mind (and soul if you're so inclined). It's synergy is part confidence, part good humour, and a unique perspective that says LOVE is the action required here!

Joy isn't just "feeling" happy although happiness is what one may immediately recognise. Joy is the sum of those moments of paradise on earth where life is beautiful and there is a hope to be sought. A knowledge of a wonderful, inspiring, gentle and eternal hope to come. So one can be "down" and still feel joy deep inside the heart. It's a kind of "knowing" that there is something that is more beautifully profound than can be described and it lives deep in the soul.

Happiness is fleeting! Joy is beyond fleeting, it is the stuff of wonderous, wide-eyed, child-like, exploration of ones genius in action!

I had that feeling this morning as I walked in the early autumn sunshine! I had that amazing capacity to "see" the glorious possibility of a positive future.

What a moment to experience!

May you experience Joy this day.

Peace!

Mitch

Friday, April 14, 2006

Coherence means....

understanding?

apparently not for some!

I've been trying to figure out a way of making the words Constructing Coherence - the two words of my name I decided on for my particular core process - easier for people to understand!

I've always been into "big" words. I used to read the Dictionary for fun even as a kid! And I have recently re-discovered my love-affair with Roget and his Thesaurus! Crumbs I love that book! All those words, all that synergy of meaning, subtleties and shades of meaning. Gives me chills.

One of the BEST presents my parents ever gave me was a tiny little book called -appropriately - The Superior Persons Little Book of Words - by Peter Bowler! I spent MONTHS reading that book over and over. It has all these wierd and obscure little words in it that you can use in polite conversation to obfuscate and bamboozle your listeners.

Of course I was never actually very good at using them in conversation but the fascination with them remains to this day.

I even said to my kids when they were toddlers to make sure they scrubbed the "bathybius" ring from around the water line in the bath! They never seemed to look at me with that "What the...?" question flashing in the space between their eyes! They just scrubbed that soapy line off the walls of the bath - just like that!

Adults however, are less inclined to "get" words of more than 7 letters!

I'd written an article recently in which I inserted the word "Vicissitudes". A perfectly sensible word describing the ebb and flow of lifes daily occurrences. One of our friends, Jeff, didn't know what it meant much less how to pronounce it and confronted me with it. The article was a deep and meaningful article with lots of pathos and sensitive thought - but nooooo! That particular word was all everyone seemed to hone in on and want clarification for!

*sigh*

It transpires that this is what I do. I have all my born days been into using words - new words, different words - words with specific definitions that suit that particular message. For me it's about Coherence! It's about making the meaning clear. It's about sticking the meaning to the page and being completely congruent in the message. But for others, who hear/read my words, it's apparently about "huh...?".

I just want to be understood but I find that my own "genius" makes me less understood than if I had the vocabulary of a teenage male, merely grunting my way through life!

I've told a few people about the whole Genius concept and they seem vaguely interested but when I tell them the name I've chosen for my own particular genius - I can literally see their eyes cloud over with a faint milky substance. Their eyes go from looking at me to looking inside their own head to try and make sense of the words I've just said!

Constructing coherence is too hard for others! It's easy for me! I know EXACTLY what these words convey to me. An enormous repository of syntax and meaning. But it doesn't seem to do that for the very thing I want to do it for! It's MY gift for me but not The gift I'm giving to others.

So how to make "Constructing Coherence" be coherent for others???

My Giddy Aunt!

What to do? What to do?

It has to be words that convey all that meaning and words that make sense. Words that help stick things and people together in total, mutual friendship and understanding. Words that make it clear that I'm about building people up, getting them together, building entente, (now there's a word! :)) - not confusing them into disintegration.

I want to convey the sheer joy I experience when there is the GLUE of coherence between people. The glue of mutual respect and understanding, love, peace, and joy and all that! I'm always trying to make people happy and it frustrates me no end that my very genius can't even make itself heard and be clear!

What to? What to do?

Off to find new depths to this whole construction process!

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Chasing Muse in the genius' playground

I've been "helping" someone else find the name for their own genius.

Oh My giddy aunt! What a ride it's been.

Super intense, super energising (for me anyway) and super FUN!

Martin Spernau lives far away from me but we've been engaged via email in one of the most involved and incredibly interesting conversations I think I've ever had with a "stranger".

We are not so "strangers" anymore except for the fact that we've shared pretty much NIL small talk about the normal stuff you do when starting a relationship! It's been cut straight to the quick in every convo and that has been extremely gratifying as there hasn't been any... flotsam to filter! You know! All that fluff and nonsense people say to each other to "set the boundaries" of their relationship!

In fact I think we set the boundaries from the inside out. We were dealing with the subject of his Genius. His core process.

Pretty intimate stuff really when you think about it. This is like the internal workings of ones soul. This is where your idiosyncratic nature, your inherent God-given birth-rite is given air-play and public exposure on rather a grand scale!

It can be really deep and stirring stuff!

Anyway! to cut a long story short, we found Martin's Genius - or I should qualify that by saying that he INSPIRED us to find it!

As for me and my own process!

It was definitely about cohesion for me! I couldn't stop thinking about it for the past week. I've spent nights, and minutes in showers, in bathrooms, shopping, and even sitting in church just mulling (should I say MUSING) on this conundrum.

I don't quite know WHY I wanted - needed - to help fix this one - I just felt compelled to. It was like the perfect meshing of minds except through the medium of the written word. A wierd juxtaposition when you think about it!

Somehow, I think - I believe - I would NEVER have been able to help Martin with his journey if we'd been face to face! There'd have been too much "noise" in the air - trying to read body language and misunderstanding on all sides of nuances of language and speech. Sometimes, things DO have more coherence when written and this exercise has strengthened that observation for me. Maybe it's just the playground my particular core process prefers to play in I suppose.

I did have to laugh coming in here again today. For some reason I hadn't made the connection that Martin's genius is "Being Muse" and I have named this blog - well before the name came - aMusing my genius! Whew! Heavy portent in that I think! LOL Which makes me think we probably have a lot more in common than we both realise in many ways despite living so far apart!

Psssst! Martin if you are reading this .... I would totally bug you if we met in the flesh - I'm too intense and way too ditzy for 3D land!!! LMAO!

Mitch