It is Christmas Eve 2009.
Mellow air and warmth caresses this evening like a kind of balm. Christmas Eve has always had a sense of the unabashed Holy about it. Years ago I used to spend this night in a frenetic anxiousness and the crazed and over-extended ardour of The Director. I revelled in the Chaos of Christmas Eve and relished the crowds at Church, the heat and noise and blustering nerves in my belly as my theatrical homages to Divinity were splashed across the Worship/Premier Night stage.
I always spent Christmas Eve essentially alone even amidst the people. My children were my saving grace, giving me purpose and reason beyond the recognition of the Christ Child. I was a studious and well organised Christmas Eve Mum so as to ensure my babes were able to wallow in the magical wonder of Christmas morning surprises.
I was married back then but still effectively alone.
Tonight, I am also alone. I am observing the ever present beast named Loneliness, wending its way around my ankles like a black smog, slung low to the ground and threatening; but I am used to being alone on Christmas Eve, so it can never really harm me. I am used to being immersed in the silence of this night. Loneliness will eventually give way to contentment again but it can be a struggle sometimes even so.
It may well be that there is a rhythm to my character that defines Christmas Eve as a sort of sacrosanct hermitage of the soul... of my soul. It seems that each year at this time I do retreat into the centre of my inner world more and become more reflective and muted - less inclined to socialise or engage with others in grand gestures and party oriented persona's. Not that I really engage with others much these days anyway. The dynamics of my current lifestyle are not conducive to it.
There was a woman alone on the street today. She was stranded and surrounded by all her belongings in suitcases and bags, sitting on a box and sobbing for she has nowhere to go. She had apparently been thrown out by her partner from her home. My cynical suspicious nature wonders but well yes...she was...she is... effectively homeless. Her bruised and beaten soul screamed "Victim" at the top of its metaphysical lungs. Even the Salvo's had no place for her in the inn tonight.
Is she the Christ child come to earth in disguise to find those worthy of grace?
There is none before or since who can be worthy such a thing! And besides, it has already been given and it is sitting there waiting patiently for us to unwrap it like a child on Christmas morning. That's all. Christmas Eve is supposed to remind us of this Truth. More often than not, we just see what we want to see and never mind the rest.
So, Christmas Eve has a polish and a patina of its very own for me. It's a haven and a hell, a beautiful paradise of impeccable spiritual retreat as well as a kind of purgatory I must travel through towards genuine humanity - and elusive intimacy - again.
Tonight is THIS Christmas Eve. in 365 days I will have grown and been moved, and changed by the circumstances of life and will have most likely re-shaped my perceptions yet again. We will see!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Thursday, December 03, 2009
affairs of an online monster
Short, short story time! :) Dashed this one out in under 30 mins. It probably needs 'work' but hey? I just blog for the fun of it - not because I'm a perfecto editing freak. This is really just to ease me back into this space gently. If you enjoy it - good for you! If you reckon it's autobiographical...*smirk* ... maaaayyyyybbeeeeeee......but I'm not telling! :p
***
Judy was an affable and rather entertaining girl with a quirky grasp of English and a despotic attitude to all things prudish.
In the real world, she daily presented herself with a kind of equanimity that was at once baffling and intriguing because people got strange sensations and vague hunches that she was really a mess of chaotic undercurrents of troubling emotional genius under all the placid crust.
She beguiled people into thinking she was a sweet, vivacious and very contained soul. An easy laugh and a wicked sense of humour belied her rather straight-laced and kind of primmish posture.
In truth Judy lived a double life of sorts. Every bit her Self in both of them though. In one life she had all the hall-marks of the complex simplicity, we call Average, which all human beings are prone to displaying in society. She was both an individual and yet she '"belonged" to the groups she was aligned with, absorbing their customs, emotional energy and directive pace, easily in sync with anyone else in the group. She was simply an Average woman. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the other life, Judy was anything but Average! In her other life she was Extraordinary. She was beautiful - extraordinarily so. She was incredibly clever - extraordinarily so. She was wise and charming and witty - extraordinarily so. For Judy, there was no masks to be worn or persona's to adopt. She was intrinsically her Self in this world no less than she was her Self in the other world.
But the difference remained. In one life she was stymied by the faulty misappropriation of identity through absorptions of other people's expectations. In the other life she was utterly free to be everything she was - as she perceived herself to be. In one world she had to use voice and gesture and body to convey her nature and she was embarrassed by that, perpetually so.
You see, her body was not beautiful. Her face was neither beautiful but nor was it grossly ugly either. She was, if anything, merely plain and ergo invisible to most people. Just another person - no more - no less. No one knew her clever turn of phrase or her biting intelligence and her skill in pulling eclectic and unrelated data together into coherent concepts that actually made some kind of logical sense of the world.
The other world knew this about her and apportioned it; but in this world, there were also words and a characterised representation of her Soul, drawn like the wife of Roger Rabbit. Her avatar was in effect the very mirror of her Self as she aspired to be but could not for genetic and rather mundane earthly reasons (like food and exercise for instance!).
Nevertheless, Judy was simply incredible online. Masterful and confident. Assured and gracious. Warm, witty, lovely and very nearly darling. She was also completely and determinedly independent. She could date male avatar representations without ever having to pine for the smell of their skin on her own. She could fuck them without ever having to flush with utter embarrassment at the mere thought of nakedness in a real life man's presence. She could engage males and females in warm and intelligent conversations with nary a flicker of small talk - the usual dance of wary guarded anxiousness between strangers.
In that world, she was a queen of her own making. She could be free to be exactly her Self with no apprehensions on how that Self might be rejected, engaged with, entertained or absolved. She was everything and nothing and it didn't matter and that mattered a very great deal.
And all the while, Judy crept backwards from having to be courageous about engaging in one world and leaped forwards to being utterly poised and self-possessed when engaging in the other. One world had to have her... the other world was her choice.
No one else was the wiser as to the dichotomy of her being.
***
Judy was an affable and rather entertaining girl with a quirky grasp of English and a despotic attitude to all things prudish.
In the real world, she daily presented herself with a kind of equanimity that was at once baffling and intriguing because people got strange sensations and vague hunches that she was really a mess of chaotic undercurrents of troubling emotional genius under all the placid crust.
She beguiled people into thinking she was a sweet, vivacious and very contained soul. An easy laugh and a wicked sense of humour belied her rather straight-laced and kind of primmish posture.
In truth Judy lived a double life of sorts. Every bit her Self in both of them though. In one life she had all the hall-marks of the complex simplicity, we call Average, which all human beings are prone to displaying in society. She was both an individual and yet she '"belonged" to the groups she was aligned with, absorbing their customs, emotional energy and directive pace, easily in sync with anyone else in the group. She was simply an Average woman. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the other life, Judy was anything but Average! In her other life she was Extraordinary. She was beautiful - extraordinarily so. She was incredibly clever - extraordinarily so. She was wise and charming and witty - extraordinarily so. For Judy, there was no masks to be worn or persona's to adopt. She was intrinsically her Self in this world no less than she was her Self in the other world.
But the difference remained. In one life she was stymied by the faulty misappropriation of identity through absorptions of other people's expectations. In the other life she was utterly free to be everything she was - as she perceived herself to be. In one world she had to use voice and gesture and body to convey her nature and she was embarrassed by that, perpetually so.
You see, her body was not beautiful. Her face was neither beautiful but nor was it grossly ugly either. She was, if anything, merely plain and ergo invisible to most people. Just another person - no more - no less. No one knew her clever turn of phrase or her biting intelligence and her skill in pulling eclectic and unrelated data together into coherent concepts that actually made some kind of logical sense of the world.
The other world knew this about her and apportioned it; but in this world, there were also words and a characterised representation of her Soul, drawn like the wife of Roger Rabbit. Her avatar was in effect the very mirror of her Self as she aspired to be but could not for genetic and rather mundane earthly reasons (like food and exercise for instance!).
Nevertheless, Judy was simply incredible online. Masterful and confident. Assured and gracious. Warm, witty, lovely and very nearly darling. She was also completely and determinedly independent. She could date male avatar representations without ever having to pine for the smell of their skin on her own. She could fuck them without ever having to flush with utter embarrassment at the mere thought of nakedness in a real life man's presence. She could engage males and females in warm and intelligent conversations with nary a flicker of small talk - the usual dance of wary guarded anxiousness between strangers.
In that world, she was a queen of her own making. She could be free to be exactly her Self with no apprehensions on how that Self might be rejected, engaged with, entertained or absolved. She was everything and nothing and it didn't matter and that mattered a very great deal.
And all the while, Judy crept backwards from having to be courageous about engaging in one world and leaped forwards to being utterly poised and self-possessed when engaging in the other. One world had to have her... the other world was her choice.
No one else was the wiser as to the dichotomy of her being.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Waves
I have Google Wave!!!
Woooo hooooo!
Thanks to my daughter who now has her own blog, I got an invite to the "beta" version before GW gets released into the wild some time in 2010.
I don't have very many contacts in there yet but the whole concept has appealed to me for a very long time anyway. I do think Google Wave and others of its type may well revolutionise how we go about email and how we learn and/or communicate as a collective community in a few short years.
Connectivism has never had such a timely and important addition to the practical application of theories about learning and collaboration.
Hmmmm!
Waves inside Clouds! The internet has become a little bit poetic :)
Woooo hooooo!
Thanks to my daughter who now has her own blog, I got an invite to the "beta" version before GW gets released into the wild some time in 2010.
I don't have very many contacts in there yet but the whole concept has appealed to me for a very long time anyway. I do think Google Wave and others of its type may well revolutionise how we go about email and how we learn and/or communicate as a collective community in a few short years.
Connectivism has never had such a timely and important addition to the practical application of theories about learning and collaboration.
Hmmmm!
Waves inside Clouds! The internet has become a little bit poetic :)
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