aMusing my genius

Closed lids of peace: A Poem

2011-12-17T22:21:00.000+11:00

In the leaning towards the laying down
I veil these eyes and relax my frown.
Casting aside all earthly graces
To feast upon the open spaces,
Within the heart.
All those that flash sight behind closed lids of peace
That bring forth healing for daily griefs.
All this I lean towards in laying down;
To be a death, a little one for little while.
All this, so that tomorrow's rise can smile.

Teenagers having babies? So what's the real problem?

2011-12-06T19:16:00.001+11:00

There's a bit of brouhaha in Australia this past 200+ years.

It's been happening - off and on - since Captain Cook first spotted Botany Bay and subsequent hordes of disadvantaged and desperate "criminals" left English shores to be bound forever to the land Downunder.

Teenage pregnancy.

It's not new but every generation judges women on the basis of it.

Interestingly, it's always; always; always the young women who are "at fault" for this "alarming and unthinking act of irresponsibility". Rarely have I heard pop culture news and current affairs shows on TV, such as A Current Affair, Today Tonight, or other reports of this ilk decry the actions of the males involved.

Apparently, despite all the work of the feminist movement since suffrage, it is the fault of a girl when she has sex. It is always her fault if she has a baby.

Time this idiocy and shaming stopped.

Not the pregnancies per se: there will be pregnant females throughout time and history. Some of the mothers will be young, some will be old. This isn't the problem. The thing that MUST be stopped is the judgement. It is time to stop the unnecessary judgement of teenage mothers.

It is time to provide these young people with responsible sex education which is health and pleasure centred. I'm not insisting on abstinence only sex education but I am insisting that our young people - both male and female - are given the information they need to make an informed choice about their sexuality. They need to understand how to respect the autonomy and rights of others, including those they are sexually attracted to.

Young women who insist that remaining a virgin at age 12, 13 or 15 is "really uncool" must be asked why this is so important?

My hunch is that it's about male hegemony even now days despite the apparent progress women have made for equality. Female competition for male attention comes about through a socially embedded belief that females "control" male desire and attraction. This belief has been around it seems, forever. Women are consistently and subtly blamed for having sex, being sexual beings and inducing sexual behaviours in males.

Our young women have been, too long, educationally and emotionally ill equipped to assert their rights. This is especially true with regard to contraception and even sex itself. Our male dominated culture has ensured that sexually active young females are not only shamed, vilified or made objects for sexual gratification for males, but that they will also be prevented from making good choices under the duress of this shaming. This shaming occurs if a young woman says yes or even, no to any kind of sexual expression.

To this day, the problem is society's insistence that men are weak and entirely incapable of showing restraint in the presence of female sexuality*. It's a lie and our kids are not learning that this is a lie. It means that young men are let off the hook and are abnegated of their responsibilities. It's always the woman's fault right?

So, our young men need to have this embedded myth and their beliefs about female sexuality challenged. Young men need to understand that women are not responsible for their "need" to have sex, let alone their decision to indulge in risky sexual activity. Regardless of physiological erection, a man is quite capable of making a compassionate ethical choice as to how he will engage with another person in the act of sex. Another person, by the way, includes a woman.

Young men need to be given permission to say "No" too. They need to be taught that they are capable of engaging with females respectfully, with empathy. And if desire and attraction are mutual and consent is given with no coercion, in sexual pleasure. They need to be taught how to recognise genuine female desire and not its culturally stultified version which is often one of compliance as a favour done in return for masculine attention. Sometimes it is very hard for young women to know the difference between their real desires and the culturally imposed ones via this myth of male weakness.

Young men need to understand that young women are their equals in every sense and that that equality demands they respect a woman's right to say no if she so chooses. Young men need to be given the social and emotional tools to ensure they do not turn a sexual rejection into a backlash of sexual violence. Young men need to be educated to the fact that contraception is a mutual decision and that practising safe sex is equally their obligation.

And on the other side of the coin; young women cannot be counted on to say "No" to sex while there is buy-in to this myth of male weakness. As a society, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot expect males on the one hand to be wanton and destructive forces of nature when it comes to sex and then expect young women to be the epitome of virginal purity on the other. It cannot work like that.

Women are entitled to their sexuality and its expression. It is not their fault for owning a clitoris or a vagina. These are however, things about being a woman which should be amazing and wondrous with their discovery one of immense mutual satisfaction for both partners.

Women need and want to feel safe around men. They need to understand that sex has been created to be a mutually joyful experience; an experience they can say Yes or No to when they are ready. They need to feel that they can express their personal sexual identity without needing to use it as a form of competition against other females and as currency for male attention. They need to know female sexuality and its expression need not be attached to shame. They need to know that their sexuality is a thing to be celebrated and enjoyed; a wonderful aspect of the human experience.

So, let's stop this idiotic ranting about taking away the Baby Bonus for teenage mothers. In fact, let's include the young fathers in this payment. Let's give our young men - who are helping to create the next generation - permission to step up to their obligations as parents, empowering them to become good fathers.

On another point: let's also stop our cultural obsession with promoting the youngest of models in our advertising; portraying girls as sexually alluring objects of desire and yet vilifying women of the same age for being sexual, having sex and giving birth! The confusion is too much so let's just stop that now shall we?

Let's work to develop healthy sexual expression in our teenagers. Stop the shock, horror and judgement and instead, teach our youth, effectively, about sex and sexuality with open honesty and compassion. Let's stop being coy about sex and give it full candour in discussion. Let's provide the youth of today with healthy pleasure-centred sex information which empowers them, helping them to see themselves as precious, wondrous beings, capable of choosing for themselves how they want to express their personal sexuality, safely and joyfully.

* With thanks to Hugo Schwyzer of Pasadena City College U.S.A for teaching me this.

Alone in the crowd because I want it that way

2011-12-04T17:02:00.001+11:00

This series of photos over at the Behance Network are beautiful and tell a story about our modern lives - at least in the wealthy First World.

I wonder what the real story is though.

Perhaps it is that people "need" tools to protect themselves from the crowd. In the early 20th Century, it was the cigarette that created that elusive forcefield of protected space around a person's body. Now it's our phone.

It's like a security blanket now isn't it? It feels safe because we don't have to look into another person's eyes and see what we think we can see there.

It's like a silent statement of "Do Not Look At Me!" It's like adopting a non-threatening and passive aggressive stance when one feels cornered and in fear.

I'm not sure it's actually like that for everyone, but I know for me, I use my smartphone as a replacement for the book I used to use for the same reason... to "lose myself" in the crowd.

Crazy time: Cave time

2011-08-20T16:14:00.000+10:00

Describing 2011 as the globe's "Annus horribilis" is probably a bit cutesy! Even so, it has been one hell of a year so far, eh?

Crippling droughts to rip roaring storms and floods; riots, terrorist killings, Coup d'Etats and civilian rebellions; wobbly economies, Wikileaks and stock market crashes; earthquakes and volcanic ash plumes; the tsunami to end all tsunamis, killer tornado's, hurricanes and cyclones; nuclear meltdowns, extreme famine; phone hacking, Amy Winehouse, pageant mums and carbon tax. Whatever next?

Unless you're living - by choice - in a cave somewhere quiet and news free, you'll probably be feeling the effects of massive disaster/compassion/shock fatigue like me right?

I'm so over the manic quality of 2011.

It's as if the gods were about to use us as the ball in a celestial cricket match. Some Shane-Warne-wannabe-demi-god up there, is intently rubbing this little blue planet against his crotch, licking his upper lip with focused glee as he sights poor goddess Diana down the other end of the pitch. Lord help us!

Meanwhile, those naughty gods have forgotten that their ball is a indeed, a planet...with human beings. Human beings they're supposed to be looking out for because we're fragile and silly but ever so precious and rare. Every one of us.

The human race and this ball we call 'home' are definitely taking a beating this year. At least that's how it feels. Are we being carefully prepared for even more catastrophic happenings just around the corner? I hope not!

I sense that there is already way too much compassion fatigue. I know I have it in spades at the moment. There are just too many shocks slugging at my emotional spidey senses.

I always try to dig deep for anyone caught up in unbelievable tragedies, but this year it feels like my pockets aren't nearly deep enough to make a dent of a difference. It's easy to think 'Why bother?' It can seem so hopeless sometimes. That isn't an excuse to stop helping, just that keeping up with this apparent onslaught of tragedy after tragedy is so draining and soul destroying.

Perhaps this is why Will and Kate's wedding was I think, pretty much, the one genuinely collective joyful moment we've had this past year. How gracious of them to choose 2011 as their year to marry. A day to celebrate incredible lightness of being and for setting our hearts aglow with wonder and delight. Their wedding day gave us a tiny ray of inspiration and hope that we can overcome anything. I'm not even into the royal family that much, but I do remember the simple joy I felt on that day, knowing that True Love does indeed, exist. It was so sweet and romantic, so pompously pleasant. All those miles of lovely smiles to warm the cockles of our anxious hearts. God Bless 'em for that amazing, wonderful moment!

A few months on and again there's that uneasy undercurrent of anxiousness about what next egregious event lays in wait around the bend. Things feel uneven, distorted and the energy seems "off" - although don't ask me what I mean by that as I have no idea, it just *feels* that way.

Am I reading too much into things do you think?

I have had the thought that, given the enormity of tragedy this past year, countries around the world will soon be drawing down their metaphorical shutters, . Battening down the hatches, so to speak. I think people everywhere may suddenly decide to go back to being "tribal" rather than "global" for awhile. The more depressing the news, the more these tribes will hunker down, ever more vehemently protective of their own. And this will be true for internet tribes too I reckon. It'll be like the worlds people are under blankets, too scared to peep out into the dark, too terrified to hang a toe over the edge, lest the monsters underneath nibble at them.

The risk with this happening is that creeping fear will become blatantly open xenophobia and we all know what happened the last time somebody decided a particular race was to blame for the world's woes. That mustn't happen again... ever!

So? Is this the Armageddon? End Times? The Great Tribulation? The Beginning of The End of All Life as we Know It?

Well, I don't think anyone actually believes the world will end on the 21st December 2012 but...sheesh! With events of this year, one does do a mini double take at the concept! It does feel like there's major change afoot on all sorts of levels, both human and terrestrial. I guess my grandparents generation must have felt similarly at the beginnings of both world wars and that nasty economic depression in between. Nice thought? Not!

Maybe I'm over dramatising! I certainly hope so. But, if we are going to have more large scale floods, riots, terrorist attacks, coups, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, droughts, tornados, cyclones, hurricanes, nuclear meltdowns and mouse plagues within the next year and a bit, I'm defs off to find me a nice quiet, news free cave! Care to join me?

The inconvenience of gender polarity.

2011-07-22T20:42:00.005+10:00

Gender to most people in the North World is probably defined as being either male or female depending on biological sex at birth.

If you were born with a penis, you were placed into the gender category "Male". You were given a name that reiterated this measurement and clearly marked your polarity for all the world to know and concur with. You were "encouraged" to wrestle, explore, dissect, investigate, grunt and idealise your mum.

If you were born with a vagina, a whole host of other social polarity views were conferred on to you out of deference, indignation, hatred, and objectification. All of which were just because you ostensibly have or had a vagina.

Your sex your gender doth not make. Not anymore.

Gender in modern sexuality is becoming a blurred concept. Gender is now more than just a biological constraint of genetics; it is now a personal and very individual concept of identity.

You have now - at least in the opulent, self-actualising North - opportunity to completely and dynamically redefine the paradigm that is your sex. You can now place your gender role anywhere along a mutable identity scale regardless of whether you have a penis or a vagina.

For example:

You can be completely and utterly Cisgender. This means that you will concretely and resoundingly affirm your biological sex with your gender role. If you were born a boy, you will identify with all things society has deemed to be "Boys do as boys will". You will co-opt all the social expectations for being male unto your Self. If you are female, you will completely identify your role in society within the social structures of "Being a Woman". This is who you ARE. You cannot be otherwise! You were born with your sex and you identify your gender role with that sex.

If however you are any of the following, your gender identity becomes a little more obscure to the rest of world - if not yourself.

You can be male biologically but *feel* female and ergo *gay* - as in sexually attracted to other males.

You can be male biologically but *feel* very male but still *gay*.

You can be male biologically but *feel* female but not *gay*

You can be male biologically but *feel* either female or male and be attracted sexually to both sexes. You can be this and be attracted to only one other of these sexes.

You can be female biologically but *feel* incredibly male, whilst being *straight* according to social sexual pairing.

And so it goes on.

Gay men who like to dress like *blokes*.

Gay men who dress androgynous, so no one can really tell what sex they are.

Straight females who feel like they just never fit with the stereotype for being female...

The variations are as many as there are those who question the polarity of gender.

The simple answer is: There are no two genders.

There aren't even really two sexes as some people can actually be another type of sex altogether - Intersex. There will come a time when this term will be included in the little boxes on documents entitled "Sex".

The inconvenience for most Cisgendered people in North World societies is that we're decidedly uncomfortable with this inability to package people into either "male" or "female". It's uncomfortable because a Cisgendered person simply cannot comprehend gender outside of their experience: that being, identifying completely with their biological sex. We are so accustomed to feeling that we're male or female according to our vagina or our penis, that the idea of being anything else is confounding, confusing and even terrifying!

The reason I muse on this is because I was watching an episode of Glee Project tonight and a character auditioning on the show for a spot in the Glee cast is decidedly difficult to label instinctively as either a *male* or a *female*.

Turns out that S/He is definitely a male biologically - although I had to go to Google to source that info. How s/he presented on the show was this confusing mixture of both female and male behaviours and a decidedly hermaphroditic physique.

I was astonished at how uncomfortable it made me feel.

Of course I am ashamed of this discomfort. I pride myself on being as non-judgemental and as open-minded as I can be about people. I accept - at least on a theoretical level - that people come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, postures, creeds, races and so on. I love that about humanity - at least on a global scale. When I am confronted by the reality of this diversity it leaves my inner bean feeling more than a little discombobulated! And I need to understand why.

As a Cisgendered female, it was hard to figure out just WHO this "Alex" person actually was! I absolutely had to place this person into a gender labelled box. And there were only two boxes! Male or Female! All this transpired in my mind in a nano-second. All this in order to feel comfortable about who Alex was/is. Hence the Googling!

For me, identifying "Alex" as male made the pieces of his gender identity and his sexual orientation feel more normal, comforting, absolute and understandable. Not being able to identify his biological sex made me anxious, nervous. His gender role was too indeterminate and amorphous to understand. I found I had to focus so much on him/her just trying to figure out which sex s/he was that I ended up missing a fair proportion of the other activity on this tv show.

Accepting that gender isn't a polarity and that some people will choose to move themselves around the gender spectrum is far more difficult for Cisgendered people than I thought it would be. Of course, I do need to learn how to do this. For people who don't identify as male or female but somewhere else on that curve it must be hell. Feeling comfortable with ones identity is critical to a whole host of mental, emotional and psychological successes in life! Being unable to even pinpoint where one would fit on the gender curve must be positively awful! The simple fact of knowing instinctively that your identity is ... 'Thus'.... be it male, female, intersex or on a point anywhere around there is a rather sublime blessing I would have thought.

There is much complexity in the way our civilisation structures notions of sex and gender. A part of this is simply to keep society in some kind of order, preventing too much "difference" creating or causing anarchy, fear and the potential break-up of the Tribe, leaving it vulnerable to attack and dissolution.

Our language, art, politics, environment, our philosophies and religions all tell of the human struggle to understand identity. Polarising identity down to just two social sexual gender roles is just not good enough any more.

Diversity means we have to expand our dreaming and our concepts to new levels. Can we do that?

Can I do that?

It's time I should.

Our very survival may depend on it.

Aspiration to Resolve: The journey between

2011-07-17T11:23:00.007+10:00

As much as I aspire to nearly everything - except gardening and sewing - I really don't do Resolve very well.

Aspiration comes from the Latin 'aspiratio' meaning desire. It has various other meanings but in this context it is about a strong desire to achieve something tangible and real. It is the aim of such a desire.

Resolve is both a noun and a verb and comes from the Latin 'resolvere' meaning to unloose or dissolve. As a verb, resolve is to solve a problem, As a noun, resolve is a determination to achieve a given purpose or objective.

Resolve is not my strength. Both the doing and the being.

I aspire easily. Aspiration requires no obligation; only amorphous wishes based on self-created fairy tales. Aspirations publically announced look fine and worthy but they mean absolutely nothing after a time has passed.

Resolve however means to commit in full to stepping out onto the path to the destination - regardless of the effort required to get there. Resolve is always defined by the present - not the future. A proper resolve is evident in the actions of the Now. Aspiration is usually about something that may or may not occur in the future and is not yet proven.

Resolve means to be so sure of ones ability to achieve something that the will is set into a permanent state of determination and physical action. Perception, side-tracks, fate, perspicacity, do not sway the resolute soul.

Because I am a commitment-phobe of the worst kind, I find resolve to be inordinately difficult. Resolve is "easy" if the goal is small and achievable. If the outcome desired is practical and objectively useful, resolve becomes either a habit or a usual task that "must be done". But, resolute commitment to those dreamy, schemey wonderful illusions that make up many of my aspirations is impossible.

The disconnect between aspiration and resolve within is as vast as the universe is wide. Nothing but nothing will *make* me resolve to do anything but myself. My Self is an ornery, stubborn romantic who aspires to nearly everything so long as that Self doesn't need to physically or psychologically do anything to actually achieve those dreams.

It's not a question of "how do I achieve this dream?" It's more along the lines of... "This would be nice but it's too hard so I'll just enjoy the fantasy of it and that is all"

I'm a child in this respect. I lack the mature will to grapple with self-discipline so as to create tangible realities from dreams and wishes. I would rather lose myself in the wonders of imagination and the pleasant pain of longing than ever think through the practical implications of action for achievement.

So I will aspire to losing weight, being a beautiful person inside and out, owning a property portfolio, writing novels that sell in the millions, reading all the classics of literature, become famous without losing my privacy.... the list goes on....

but I shall never actually resolve these things. I am simply too lazy to do so.

The "Older" Woman and her relationship with her body

2011-05-30T12:27:00.005+10:00

The following has been inspired by a post from Hugo Schwyze r over at "Healthy is the New Skinny". A cause which I support if still a little in two-minds about. Skinny is still considered healthy way too much I think and for some of us older women (who don't have the genetic predisposition towards the metabolism of a race horse) - skinny is unobtainable.

**

Two pregnancies, some 20+ years, a predilection for sweets and an aversion to extreme sports has defined my body size and shape to be...well... pudgy.

Am I a victim of my genes or simply "out of control"?

The mixed messages young women receive about how they should appear and how effortless they have to make it all seem to be thin, popular and gorgeous is abhorrent. But it doesn't make it easier for us older women either to be saddled (sic) with the heavy weight of disdain for our physical selves.

When I turned 40 years of age, I celebrated this:

"I can be what I want to be now and not give a damn about what others think".

I guess it's true that I never really needed to give a damn in my teens, my 20's or my 30's but for some reason, turning 40 seemed to be a rite of passage that meant I was now "old" and that I needn't concern myself with my looks or my weight anymore because I should be proud to be an older woman. Besides, I was to all intents and purposes now effectively "invisible" to male scrutiny!

Yes! I thought turning forty meant a woman could turn off her obsessions with weight, skin, hair and fitness because it didn't matter anymore. And it didn't! But it does!

Well 6 months shy of 50 and I know it still matters. I am every bit as obsessed with weight, body size, and my looks as I was in my 20's. However, now I rarely bother with trying to make the effort because it is just too an insurmountable task to rectify the ravages of age.

Women in my age group suffer the ignominy of defeat more often than not. Why bust our weary guts over weights and jogging shoes when sharing a whinge and cake with a friend over coffee is so much more civilised and culturally acceptable?

And lets not even mention the equal measures of shame and excitement that come with sex! Having it I mean! It's okay to have sex at nearly 50...so long as one can do it in semi darkness under covers and in conventional ways that won't shine the scathing light of recrimination on your inability to control your daily calorie intake!

Women of nearly 50 should be graceful, confident with gleaming healthy skin and sparkling eyes! They must be wealthy and stable emotionally. They must carry their healthy, slender bodies with nubile grace and flexibility. They must wear their near perfect platinum hair short with carefree aplomb! Women of nearly 50 are supposed to be contained, healthy; happy to excess with their success and completely unfazed by the practicalities of managing carefully sculpted manicured and painted fingers and toes! Women of 50 are supposed to be denizens of female beauty and gloriously youthful personalities but still look like they're effortlessly 50!

it's enough to make a real 49 year old female weep from frustration!

I feel ugly 90% of the time. I feel like a frumpy, double-chinned, wangy-eyed monster! It's true. I rarely FEEL beautiful. I grasp at the desire to change my size, my weight, my lifestyle, my eating habits, my self-worth like pick-up sticks! If you do one thing wrong - the whole lot crumbles and you lose.

Lots of people - including certain family members who shall remain nameless - all try to inspire me to taking control of my "out of control" life, reminding me of my "responsibilities" to ensure that my weight remains in a healthy range and not become a slack-arsed blob hell-bent on dying from the familial blight of heart disease.

It's easy to cop out of course and therein lies the fundamental problem. Too much of my world is consumed with physical appearance as "THE" sign of health and prosperity! Too much of my world - like the world of my younger sisters - is consumed with the fatal disease of caring too much about the packaging and not nearly enough about the woman underneath.

Thing is...that woman underneath knows this so focuses most of her aspirations to being recognised for her packaging rather than her gifts, talents and strengths - many of which she's barely been able to identify within herself! This sad fact is due to nearly 40+ years of being misdirected in her attention to that packaging requirement.

I'd love to "lose weight" and be considered "healthy" but it kinda means that food becomes the Enemy. I have to corral it, infuse it with powers it shouldn't have; make it an agonising fight to the kilo.

At 49 - food should be my friend and ally. It should give me energy and a health fuelled life, full of joy. Eating should be something so pleasurable and sensual, that it must be savoured at all times, alone or with friends (and lovers).

At 49 - food should be something that I enjoy. But I do and I don't and I can't. My body - the body that is lumpy, bumpy and determinedly pudgy reminds me daily that *I* am a failure at being a woman even when my intelligence refuses to acknowledge such nonsense. I love food too much so my culture would have me know. I love the "wrong" foods according to the skinny celebrity nutritionists trolled out for current affairs programs. If they are so bloody wrong I ask you - why aren't there health warnings on the packets?

This is the war with which I live every day. My obvious "inability" to curb my female fatness and my desire to eat what I like usurps my theoretical acceptance that who *I* am is not defined by my appearance.

If health is the objective of eating then why is it so difficult? Why is eating so fucking HARD to get "right". Why do we need so many educational programs and tips, and points and "easy ways" to "improve" our eating habits? Why must food become such an enemy for the middle aged frumpy female when the real crux of the problem lies not with food but with society's obsessions with physical appearance!

Women in their middle years must be cut some slack. We need to be given a round of applause for our achievements, our intelligence, our Selves. We've raised kids, looked after others, nurtured, sacrificed, studied, learned, educated ourselves, given, travelled, exercised our rights as human beings. We've generated business, made profits, worked, invented, adopted technology, won races, run governments. We've designed, lifted the game, challenged stereotypes and loved with passion and vigour.

Instead - we are barrelled for our muffin tops and spare tyres and for what we put into our mouths. We're made to feel like unmitigated failures because we aren't the BMI of Beyonce or Madonna! Worse - we feel invisible because we aren't considered beautiful or desirable anymore!

It all really does have to stop!

I'm having toast....with margarine and jam! So what of it?

How I feel about the Opera House now that I've seen it

2011-04-27T12:59:00.003+10:00

Sydney Opera House.

For the past 30 years or so, it's been this iconic photograph for me. Not quite representative of my notions of Australia as a nation but accepted as a "National Symbol" nonetheless.

SOH is a postcard; a marker of Aussie superiority in all things just a "little-bit-out-there". It has appeared to be an aloof, austere and stand-offish kind of place reserved for those with money and elitist sensibilities.

For me, it was always two dimensional and tiny in photos. Sure! There was a sense of the building being "big" but in photos you never quite know "how big" do you? It was of course, a thing of beauty but sort of unearthly and unreal (in the not real sense of that term).

This Easter I got to see Sydney Harbour and the Opera House up close and personal for the very first time. Describing my reaction to and sense of this place though is somewhat difficult. Initially, I was more excited by the Harbour Bridge than I was about the Grand Old Dame across the harbour.

Still, seeing SOH for the first time "live" from across the harbour, on the lawn under the bridge at twilight was pretty awesome and inspirational to say the least. Sydney was lighting up before my eyes as the night sky grew darker. The awesome and mystical spectacle of the birds soaring above the bridge, under-lit by the bridge lights, making them appear like bobbing embers; surreal, strange. startling was what mainly drew my attention. But, the Grand Old Dame was furnishing her sails with lovely lights and soon appeared like a holographic postcard of Sydney at night - all that alluring etherealness. A life-size postcard to me even then though, but I stood there watching her with a growing sense of wonderment of the beauty of the building and a pull in the soul to go be there, to be under the sails and inside 'her' precinct.

Visiting SOH on the Saturday afternoon in the drizzling rain was again a different experience to what I expected. After romantic notions of her elusiveness and beauty ebbed, seeing this iconic building up close took on industrial sensibilities. It felt like it was still "Under Construction", the granite walls and forecourts all seemed very prosaic, practical and understated now. Perhaps it was the grey skies and interminable drizzle, but she felt like she was just piles of cement, bathroom tiles and textured pink granite. Quixotic, given her propensity to be so... so... billowy in photos

The grand sails, majestic as they are in photos, seemed somehow slightly "ordinary" as if the SOH was something understated and utilitarian rather than out of reach and elitist. There was something earthy about the place, a sense of more proletariat than bourgeoisie; a fecund, prosaic and down-to-earth grandeur rather than ethereal and sublime.

Being up close to the Opera House was quite, quite different to the sense I had of her in photos. In photos and on television, she glows like a spectre of transcendence, gloriously lit and wondrous. Standing on her steps, she seemed rather understated, like a stately and dignified dowager Aunt. I'd always imagined her being so much more an elusive "Prima Donna" than an approachable "Dowager" myself!

She is admirable though.

Superbly, wonderfully admirable.

My friend, MT and I did the basic tour. My legs and feet were pretty much killing me by now given the steps and hills I'm so not used to traversing on a regular basis. The tour of the Opera House included many, many more steps but we got a sneak peak at both the majestic concert hall and the understated impressiveness of the Opera Theatre.

There are other arena's too which we saw and admired.

The purple carpet was overwhelming.

The reflection of the harbour underneath her flared skirts of glass was divinely artistic.

But the thing that really got under my skin and made me love this building was how much she is about and for People. This is a building for The People. Regardless of age, colour, gender, race, religion or hairstyle, this building is a performing arts centre for the masses - however the masses choose to be or become. And there is pride in this fact. The SOH is yours, mine, ours, theirs and beyond. It is a building that epitomises the egalitarian values of artistic expression and accessibility to the theatres of every day life.

That we nearly "missed out" on achieving this building is a story all of its own. I am, however, remarkably satisfied by the experience of being there - and astonished that I found this building to be so much more....available...than I ever imagined.

Information

2011-04-03T17:31:00.003+10:00

There is a never-ending supply of information. It is neither static or fluid. Information resides. I don't think it does anything more than that. Resides.

It does change of course. Information is a collection of data. It's words, symbols, images, numeric scales. It's news I guess, in a sort of transient way. That transience is cached of course, so it isn't as transient and temporary as we might like to assume. Still, Information on the World Wide Web (WWW) has the smell of the ephemeral about it, sort of part elusive and mostly forgettable.

We talk of there being an Information Overload. A total bombardment to our psyches of bytes and bits of data that compresses and explodes our minds in simultaneous fashion. We are supposedly changing humanities neural perceptions of thought, thinking and doing through the use of our Informational tools - maybe!

David Allen of Getting Things Done fame, doesn't believe in Information Overloads. He is right I think. No one ever dies upon walking into a library which is replete with information.

The information we get from the web is not quite like books, however. Books usually have editors. This gives the information contained within a book a certain quality of credibility that is difficult for non-editors to refute.

Books on a shelf are also encapsulated. They're physical. They have boundaries. The information in them is emphatic and embodied.

Information from the WWW is jangling on the psyche. We pick at information from the web like a baboon picks at ticks. We seek, surf, scrutinise, taste or discard. We don't so much as read information as scan it for further scrutiny. There's no definition to it. There's links to links to new links to new Information

Knowing how to discern the nature of Information is becoming the skill de rigueur! To know how to tell if what's been purported has merit: to know how to sift through what is a possible truth and what is out and out fiction. This is the skill that is required of readers today. To just read without discernment is foolish and gullible. To read with an acute awareness for the potential veracity or none in what one is reading is becoming a requisite device in the cognitive toolkit.

Thought and opinion are as much on the readers bookshelf as is encyclopaedia. What one now needs to understand is that there still is no overload of Information - just that there is a plethora of crap through which to wade in order to find what it is you're looking for!

This probably happened in the past too - people were bombarded with leaflets and essays at the beginning of mass literacy! Many gullibly accepted what they read regardless too! That happens with the web even now.

It took nearly 10 years before I finally convinced people that sending me emails about some scandalous virus doing the rounds were an inefficient waste of my time - and theirs! Learning HOW to find out if those emails were indeed "true" is the key to utilising Information from the web in a useful way.

So reading isn't the same as it used to be. To read a book, it's sort of orderly; you read page 1, then page 2 and the thoughts all flow in sequential order pretty much! Reading and absorbing Information from the web is quite different. There's a sort of subconscious Occam's Razor in play within the psyche. If its boring, seems unintelligible, sounds crazy, isn't able to be verified, seems "wrong" somehow - it'll most likely go viral and thousands will accept it as the undeniable "truth".

If the Information on the web is indeed astutely edited, peer-reviewed, collectively agreed to, open to argument and discussion, it's likely going to just sit there on the web, cached for eternity, resembling a cyber version of my Dad's old Encyclopaedia Brittanica's on the bookshelf. Useful but decidedly prosaic and utilitarian, hardly likely to be anything but scanned when necessary by those who are looking for answers.

Hardly overload. Hardly transient.

Body and Soul?

2011-03-27T17:32:00.005+11:00

I just listened to the first audio file of a lecture series given by Professor Hugo Schwyzer of California USA. I shall probably listen to the rest in this particular series of recorded audio's around the topic of "Beauty and the Body in the European-American Tradition".

The topic introduces Plato's concept of Body and Mind (or Soul) being at odds. Plato contended that both the body and the soul were replete with desires but were often contradicting each other. The amorphous disembodiment of the Soul as a separate entity from the corporeal physical "Thing" which carried it, determined much of our Western Judeo-Christian historical perceptions of our Selves.

Professor Schwyzer wants his students to challenge this notion of our bodies and our minds being at odds with each other with the body being a sort of whipping-boy for its "shameful" needs and desires. He wants his students to come to a point where both mind and body are integrated into a Whole that is the Self.

It's a dangerous idea really. At least, I think it is! It means that a large proportion of Western Culture must undergo a shift in language and thought about beauty; and particularly about how much the physical body is subjected to in terms of denigration and idealism.

Only this morning I dropped the not-so-useful platitude, "Never judge a book by its cover" into a comment in Facebook. And there it was: (the comment was in relation to the idea that a young girl was "invisible" to other "because" of her looks and physical shape) there was my nod to the embedded ideology that the True person is not her physical body but that it is her essence or soul that are far more valuable and if only the other girls could "see" that! I had indefatigably bought into the common notion that the mind/soul part of a person are worth so much more than the physical body a person inhabits.

The body identifies us. The essence of who we are - our soul and our mind - are given outline and identity through the limitations of our physical self. Our bodies guarantee that we can be known in the world, that we exist. Our fingers, toes, noses and earlobes, eyes and girth all help to shape our relationships and our function on this planet as do our thoughts, ideas, personalities and temperaments. It all counts to making up the Self. We cannot be the thoughts, personalities, temperaments or creative beings we are without embodiment; not at least, in the corporeal sense of that term.

But let's be careful here!

Looking at what I just said, what did you immediately think?

Did you think that I was implying that a "lack" of beauty is to be empirically measured against an objective "standard"? Did you assume I was being shallow as to to subject young men and women to the torment of having to beat their bodies into a form that is "pleasing" to others? To what or who's standard?

I say no such thing. I am in fact saying that it is our current obsessions with standardised notions of what constitutes "beautiful" that is letting us all down. We are isolating our bodies as objects. We are capitulating to the notion that the body is inherently "bad" and therefore must be subdued - even extinguished - in order for our minds and souls to be freed to be our true selves!

This is where language lets me down. What I want to reiterate is that since listening to this lecture, I realise that we all deserve soooooo much more than platitudes about our bodies not being as important as essence, personality, soul, temperament, ephemeral being! My skin is every bit as much Me as what I think and the sum of my quirky idiosyncrasies which mark my unique nature.

This is about accepting the whole of myself instead of railing against my body out of a misconception that proclaims it's bad, unpleasant, unruly and "ugly".

Beauty exists. There are people for whom the aesthetic of the physical is a lovely, wonderful gift. We enjoy looking at and appreciating beauty. It is pleasurable and sensuous to admire something that pleases the eye.

Thing is, when I measure "my" body against the beliefs and perceptions I have about someone else's body, I'm doing my Self a disservice. I am not honouring myself nor am I loving myself. I even do the other person a disservice! I place them in an impossible place where my perception of their "perfection" makes them less human than me! They become objectified and I exude envy, which is not very fair on anyone.

There isn't anything less important about the body than there is about the mind or soul. We are people, complete with all our idiosyncratic personal tendencies, likes, dislikes along with a unique and identifiable shape with which we are endowed through nature and nurture.

Loving my body means defining a new language for myself. A language which is inclusive of everything that makes me unique as an individual. A healthy mind is a healthy body, is a healthy attitude, is a healthy relationship with others. It's not about grotesque, gorgeous, good and bad when it comes to my body. It's time I re-educated my instinctive Platonian good/evil thinking to a more wholistic mindset when it comes to thinking about my Self and others.

I am my body. I am my Self. I am.

Therefore "Beauty" not only refers to how healthy and cared for my body is, it also refers to how I think and feel about Life itself.

Therefore "Body" includes the thoughts I have which define my nature and ideological presence. My personality is as much the bodily "shape" I give to the world as my physical shape.

Therefore acceptance of other people as they are, becomes much more important.

2011 and then some.

2011-03-15T20:02:00.003+11:00

In memory of the vast numbers of people who have lost their lives in a series of astonishing natural disasters within the first three months of the year.

2011 - and then some.

Two thousand and eleven:
the number of waves that hit the shores
of Life
on this small blue planet:
the number of lives that waved
goodbye:
the number of questions that
churned in the minds of
the living:
the number of answers that
will forever remain
unknown.
Two thousand and eleven
wings on which prayers
will be hung.
Ten fold and then some,
will my tears wet these tattered grounds
as I pray.
Two thousand and eleven
litres of wet,
soaking our droughts
of yesterday like old dishcloths,
gloppy and fouled.
Two thousand and eleven
YouTube videos -
drawing pictures in miniature
of these lives;
tearing up screens
into which the informed helpless peer.
So sad,
so afraid,
so critical
are our souls as
two thousand and eleven -
ten fold,
and then some -
stay missing forever
at the threshold of the
Age of the Water Bearer.

michelle
March 2011

River Rise

2011-02-08T19:03:00.002+11:00

I watched the river rise
and in its flow I saw,
the depth of natures glory
and her scathing violent flaw.

I watched the river rise,
it's gloating ripples fast,
encroaching, stultifying -
engorging what was past.

I watched the river rise.
My heart? It did but still
and fret within these caged ribs
for what lay sleepless nights until.

I watched the river rise
and gathering every wit
I ascertained its victory march
upon the Walmer gauge - ill lit.

I watched the river rise
and cowered, shrinking, as the streets
vomited black water forth
under wheels and sand and feet.

I watched the river rise.
These neighbours alive and well,
who in rescue came their remedy;
thus, our commune's heart did swell.

I watched the river rise.
Palpable and fierce -
the terror of its importune,
our collective labours pierced.

I watched the river rise.
Sense and sensing, emoting strong,
such wily fear with hospitality merged
to buffet that watery throng.

I watched the river rise
and in its wake appends
the rise of a large and kinder beast -
our community more strongly wends.

M. Pitman
January 2011
Wimmera, Victoria Floods

How has the Internet changed the way you think?

2011-01-30T10:40:00.002+11:00

In recent days I have stumbled on a treasure-trove of ideas and thoughts from some of the worlds eminent thinkers and captains of intellectual analysis. www.edge.org is a collaborative conversation based around a yearly topic posed by the editors , notably, John Brockman.

In 2010 the question above was posed and some 160 thinkers, artists, scientists, actors and dignitaries have written essays to probe this question in depth.

I thought I would add my own thoughts to this mix. Not because I consider myself equal amongst these people who have already given comment, but because the internet is MY tool for thinking, learning and doing many things in the everyday ordinariness that is my life.

The question is worthy of pondering by anyone with more than a passing interest in email, let alone virtual reality worlds such as Second Life or social networking platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. And my generation... the end of the Baby Boomers... are prime candidates to ask this question too. You see? It is MY generation who straddle the pre-internet and post-internet worlds who can answer this with any integrity. For those in Gen X and Gen Y - the internet is so pervasive a tool from their infancy that I believe they are already innately adjusted to its size and shape.

How has the internet changed the way *I* think? It's a bit like asking Cro-Magnon man how the spear changed the way he hunted?

Prior to 1995, any mention of the word "Internet" would have had me both intensely intrigued and simultaneously baffled. I vaguely knew of its existence but I did not understand it's implications or use. Our family got our first computer in February of 1996. My children were little and they were the focus of my entire life at that point. I was an exhausted mother and wife, crabby and lacking in the stimulative intellectual environments I have always craved.

I thought in black and white for the most part. I was a Wimmera Girl, a Lutheran, a Mother, a Wife. My husband owned a small business and we produced things and sold them to people who wanted them. Life was mundane. Ideas were only useful if they produced results or created something useful to others. Social interaction was limited to pre-existing friendships - also with similarly aged children of their own - and immediate family. Life for me at that time was conservative, fundamentalist and apart from the joy of watching my kids grow, quite depressing! I felt lonely and detached in many ways. I over-compensated by throwing myself into various voluntary positions in the local arts community and in my church. However, these never really did give me what I was seeking.

What was I really seeking? With hindsight I can see clearly what was missing in those days. Possibilities and Words. Together these two combine in the most magical way.

All my life, from the first memories I have of being able to think about the world around me, I have been seeking the magic kingdom of never-ending possibilities. Ideas are the spring board to possibilities. Words are the medium by which they are given life.

Intellectual critique and investigation into everything I didn't know I didn't know has been my heart's desire for a long, long time. From the time I was little, I used books as my tools to discover these possibilities. All my learning about things had until that point been from books. Family life in 1995 was wonderful on the surface but it was replete and without my books, I knew I would be on the brink of a black and foreboding malaise of the mind.

It was 1997 before my then partner, 'Baz' decided to put our family on the internet. Ostensibly this was to facilitate the running of our business. About the same time, I re-entered the workforce. My place of work was also connected to this vast strange world of emails and information on the World Wide Web (aka the 'Web'). I learned with faltering steps, how to start interacting with this awesome and amazing thing called "The Internet" and it's offspring "The Web".

I quickly discovered there was more to the internet than mere emails. Tentatively, I eyed message boards, seeking to find like minded others with whom to connect and exchange ideas with. At the time it scared the crap out of me... the thought of engaging with strangers whose faces could not be read or bodies seen was frightening and alien. I decided that I would "protect" myself by finding a message board of other females... mothers... with whom I could discuss things, in a general way.

My first real foray into social networking was through a little Australian message board for mums. Downundermums quickly became a second "home". It was here that my proclivities for words, text and the ability to type suddenly took on momentous importance. Here were women from the far reaches of my own nation who understood what it was like to be mothers to young children and yet still feel isolated, despite the strong sense of family. We all became firm friends. I still count many of them as my friends to this day.

My thinking grew outwards. I learned so much about the possibilities of the internet through this forum. I learned how to hunt down websites for factual information. I learned from these wise and strong women how to discern a "troll" and how to sense integrity in the information presented. I learned how to "emote" over electronic media - an important skill given there is no body language per se. More importantly, I learned that it is very very possible to love and deeply admire people you have never met in person and yet can be incredibly close to despite the distances. Never in my youth could I have imagined that having "pen-pals" in this way would become such an immediate and powerful means of connecting to others. Downundermums was my sanity saver.

13 years have past and the internet has become a critical tool in my everyday interactions with people. Even people I see regularly face to face, I "meet" with online as well. It's as if the internet adds a facet to the personality that isn't obvious in person. How a person interacts in text online can be very different from their physical persona. I've learned that how a person presents online is as multidimensional as the person face to face. There is a character and shape to their persona that is embedded within the syntax and semantics they use to express themselves. Facebook, for instance, is - quite frankly - a fascinating portrait of the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of human psychology.

With exploration into virtual worlds like Second Life, the advent of Google to search for what I want to know, the calls I can make across the globe using Skype, the networks I've formed through Facebook, the checking of hoaxes and spam emails using breakthechain.org and so on... the internet is both my pen, my paper, my resources toolkit, my encyclopaedia and my diary.

Thus, my thinking has changed. Dramatically.

I think through these fingers on the keyboard. Typing out my thoughts as they occur is both cathartic and energising. I "see" the world differently now. I see endless possibilities. Ideas ripple at every corner of my peripheral attention span. Everything is mutable, changeable, less solid and it's constantly metamorphosing into difference. Life feels fluid, hyper changeable and exciting viewed through this electronic window. The limits of the collective imagination are being pushed in all directions.

Once there was a time when I believed there were only two genders in the world. Now I understand that Gender is a purely personal perception and can't be pinned onto another person like a name-tag. There are scales of gender with a moving slider that can fall at any point across 4 dimensions! How freaky is that?

Once there was a time when I believed that information by experts was irrefutable. Now I understand that that same information can be queried by the masses en masse. How incredibly democratic (rightly or wrongly depending on the information in question) is that?

Once I never even knew that such a thing as a 10,000 year clock could exist but thanks to the World Wide Web - I know this is a fact!

Only this week, I have been able to seen incredibly detailed overhead photographic maps taken during our recent floods! This technology would have been considered far too fantastic even 10 years ago! Now through the connections I have with others online, I'm immediately able to access this information for myself! Incredible!

The internet is, at its weakest, the vilest of perpetrators for misinformation and depraved thinking. At its very best, it is a collaborative tool for humans to exchange the information which builds up and edifies for the collective good. It can be used to teach, to heal, to inform, to disseminate, to query, question, critique, amuse and yes... change. It isn't so much three dimensional as fractal in its audio-visual and psycho-social appeal.

The internet will change our antecedents in ways we can barely imagine right now. I for one am just glad I saw its birth and am able explore just a few of the infinite possibilities it creates through words, sounds, images and interaction. :)

sweeping cobwebs

2011-01-01T21:58:00.005+11:00

It's a brand new year.

2011 sees my fifth year in this blog. 2010 bombed a bit for me in the writing game. I had little energy for much else other than work.

There's a few things I'd like to change of course as one usually does as we turn a calendar page to a "clean slate" so to speak.

Thing is I just want to clean up. At least for now. I've tidied house today and it's looking not too bad after the scuz and shambles of the past month or so. Again, I simply lacked the energy and drive to achieve much other than dragging my butt off to work every day. Weekends have been pretty much a casual slog through laundry and internet surfing and not much else.

There was a bright spot on my 2010 horizon for awhile but he has faded, somewhat, into a genteel, soft focus, tender-hearted memory. I shall always be fond of Bear and hope to remain his dear friend through the ensuing years.

2011 ushers in hopes of new horizons both within and without. I may have spent today cleaning up the house - even the cobwebs from the front door - but next and most importantly will be the process of cleaning up internal spaces, both in the physical realm and also in the psychological realm.

I'm tired of lumbering along with heavy thoughts. This will be a year of hard work - mostly on my inner bean. It will be a year of lighting the inner fires of joy and laughter and changing landscapes of the heart and mind (and maybe a few physical landscapes as well here and there :)).

Seismic Shifts and Wikileaks

2010-12-10T18:06:00.007+11:00

Julian Assange.

His name is everywhere!

Literally, everywhere!

He's on the tele! He's all over the internet. He's taking up headline space in the papers.

Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Youtube is going gang busters as the World scrambles for opinion, history, re-framing, defamation, and everything else in between.

Now, for the purposes of this particular blog post, I make the following disclaimer. The current rape case/s before the courts in Europe alleged to involved Mr Assange are not the focus of this post. Rape is a very serious crime. I do not condone it. However, I also do not necessarily know if Julian is either guilty or innocent. Under the law of most countries, he is currently innocent until he has been PROVEN guilty (forgive my shouting at you - emphasis etc).

Okay enough said on that particular conundrum.

There appears to have been some kind of seismic shift under the tectonic plates that social and political 'normality' have hitherto been built upon. The populaces living under regimes - which we have long accepted with laissez faire despondency - as being despotic and cruel, are fuming and foaming at their proverbial bits; defying the arrogance of those who have held power for far too long at the expense of liberty and the right to opine freely.

Wikileaks for all its possible naivety has given current major governments - both despotic and moderate - The Bird! You know? Middle finger extended upwards while all the others point down? That one!

It's about time! When a government decides that "Free speech" is a luxury only for those who have the currency (financial as well as social), to tweak things to their advantage... then its time for whistleblowers to go to town and blow, blow, blow!

There will probably be a whole slew of whistleblower sites springing up on the net from here on in. I haven't taken too much notice of the whole USA cables leak debacle, but it does seem they're being aired in the media on a pretty regular basis.

It is embarrassing to be caught out with your dirty little secret. But, if that dirty little secret is affecting hundreds of thousands of people around the world...it's not so little anymore. It's a collective - global - problem and one we all have to face and deal with.

Julian Assange has struck a mighty blow to American hubris and of course the government's not happy! More and more, America's empiricist brand of politics is being whittled away fiscally, socially and politically. People, collectively - if not necessarily individually - are not gong to remain tolerant of the kind of government that interferes, lies, abuses trust or lacks integrity anymore.

But the good thing - if there is one - is that the Middle East is changing before our very eyes. Well educated, savvy and intelligent men AND women have been armed with the information they needed to "prove" that what they want is not what their respective powers are offering. The force of change occurring before our very eyes cannot be underestimated.

As I watch the riots and bloody revolutions taking place in countries I've never been to, it seems to me that people are ruthlessly beginning to model the past subversive styles of their governments. Whilst it is true that Facebook, Wikileaks and the Web itself did not create these revolutions, it is certainly true that they have served to fuel them.

The Web is creating Wild Governments of its own. There are Cyber Tribal communities on the web now. They're becoming organised, politically savvy, and even militant and/or as Machiavellian as their geographically placed governments.

These are cyber tribes are made up of many cultures and even languages, but all the individuals within hold certain tenets to be of especially important value - regardless of any actual law for or against these tenets. These cyber communities are forming their own "laws" and "jurisdictions" across the globe and becoming 'as if' they were nations in their own right. To me it seems that the one overriding factor common to many of these communities is the infallible right to free expression of personal thought and idea.

This may prove to be of grave concern in the future if the pendulum swings too far towards nihilistic and/or anarchic individualism. Still, I have noticed that the Web appears to be creating a social imperative which implies that everyone is "entitled" to the right to express him or her self as he or she sees fit.

Governments, particularly despotic ones, don't like this notion at all. Hence, the bloodbaths we are witnessing all too frequently on our televisions and computer screens!

Perhaps national boundaries, long drawn on printed maps and hung on walls are going to be redrawn; this time, in the cloud?

Where will the lines be drawn to confine those of like beliefs and perspectives? Politically, this will be almost impossible to control. Socially it will be as ephemeral and quixotic as the individuals making up the cyber tribes.

I don't yet know - nor can I foresee - how this could play out in practise, but already it seems to me that cyber-social connectivity is creating a sort of Diaspora from geography to ideography.

I sort of feel as if the Julian Assange/Wikileaks story may perhaps mark the beginning of this seismic shift in human social and political history.

As always, time will tell.

Walk a little more

2010-09-26T19:02:00.000+10:00

bone ache in my heart
i've lost the candor of my youth
emotional resonance is difficult
I just want

to

walk a little more

thin down mortal flesh
fatten bank accounts
and lose the blackened fog
I just want

to

walk a little more

break down mental barrier
create a finer future aging
love ignores inspired invisibility
I just want

to

walk a little more

Why I culled my blogroll and other overloads

2010-09-05T15:46:00.003+10:00

Some weeks ago, I decided to check my blogroll over at bloglines.com

Ugh!

I used to read approximately 20 + blogs on a regular basis. All of them entertained, inspired, intrigued, or taught me something.

Then I think I must have got RSS as in "Reading Sucks Syndrome" or something because I started letting my blog roll languish. The more prolific bloggers - generally those who do it to make a buck - were left unread for a few weeks.

When I went back recently to check them out - I found over 200 + posts to chug through. Needless to say - I simply baulked at that and decided then and there to stop the rss feeds on many of these formerly beloved blogs.

The amount of words generated every day on the net must be fast exceeding the word count of all the printed books in libraries around the world. That's every day! Day after day! The sheer volume of ideas, thoughts and musings must be enough to make God cringe and want to have something very strong to drink before getting out of bed! Luckily for Him, all these words don't count for prayers for "something" or he'd be right tetchy - I know I would be! I know what its like to live with demanding children eh?

Even so, publishing is obviously changing at a rate of knots that must have book editors in a flurry. Tapping into good writing is like mining a reef for gold. Much of it out there is mere Fool's Gold. Blogs are the driving force for this massive rate of change in publishing and for the emergence of new writing; new writers.

Thing is - blogging still doesn't quite have the credibility of books yet. At least not in my experience. Blogging is still considered introspective and self-indulgent. Much of the blogging world is just that - this blog a case in point! There are some damned fine writers though out there in bloggers land. Finding them requires the patience of a digger in a gold rush.

I had to cull the brilliant minds of many bloggers from my rss feed simply because I was becoming overwhelmed with the obligation to keep up with their word count. Their ideas still sway me, but there's only so much of my attention to go around and right now - that attention is being pulled in about 50 different directions and quite a lot of them are NOT online with at least two fairly major online ones which are time and focus consuming to the nth degree.

Blogging isn't going to go out of style anytime soon. At least I'm guessing so! The blogs come and they go. Some wax and wane like my own poor sorry excuse for a blog. Other blogs will stand the test of time and become like books in libraries with a long-standing value that exceeds their original purchase price. Other blogs will simply have to go by the way in my feed reader because I just don't have the attention span for them anymore.

Publishing gone transitory and ephemeral I suppose.

Word count overload. I'm as guilty of it as anyone. I don't do writing sparely. I write to please myself and given my aspirational literary snobbery - I'm wordy in the extreme. I shall forthwith not be offended if I discover that no one is reading my blog anymore because of sheer overload elsewhere.

Will the "Good Writers" of the future be as wordy - as prolific? I suspect not. I honestly think that the Good Writers of the future will say what is profound, meaningful and relevant without the word count overload. The rest of us will simply blog - for our own purposes.

The 2010 Australian "I couldn't give a f@#$%" Election

2010-08-22T17:04:00.002+10:00

Well here we are.

It's the day after Election Day 2010 in Australia. We still don't know who is going to lead our nation into the next three years.

To all intents and purposes, it's being called a "hung parliament". This means that the few men - who claim to be independent of the major parties - are suddenly the King/Queen Makers rather than ineffectual voices amidst a majority rule government: perhaps the most powerful men in Australia.

The deals these men strike with the minority government by the end of this coming week will determine not only the Government of Australia but also the Prime Minister. It's highly possible, we'll be back at the polls to vote again within 18 months to two years - perhaps even less.

I took such little interest in both of the major options this time around. I barely followed both campaigns and when I did try to drum up some interest, it was almost immediately crushed by the boring platitudes and the quibbling.

The Australian Labor Party actually didn't do that badly this past three years all in all. Australia survived the first onslaught of the Global Financial Crisis and kept unemployment and interest rates manageable. The economy stumbled along with vast amounts of the massive surplus stockpiled by the excessively thrifty Howard Government spent by the Labor Rudd Government on infrastructure. This kept our economy ticking along pretty steadily and it was probably the most effective thing we could have done given the financial and economic debacles happening in Europe and the USA.

Sure! Labor had a few hiccups. Note the following:

The staggeringly stupid Broadband Filtering Plan proposed Stephen Conroy.
The very swift and Machiavellian removal of Kevin Rudd from office.
The painful and ineffectual monitoring of the Home Insulation program.
The backing down from the Emissions Trading Scheme.
The Mining Tax fiasco which could have been successful if Rudd hadn't been so blimmin' obstinate about negotiating with the mining companies on the terms.

There's probably tonnes more.

Even so, Labor still dragged Australia through the first three years of massive, world-wide global financial turbulence relatively unscathed. They really could have played that one up a lot more during the electoral campaign.

I guess Julia Gillard had no choice though, except to keep saying "Let's move forward". Because the previous 2.5 years had been the work of the very man she ousted from the leadership, she probably didn't feel comfortable spruiking about the things the party had accomplished under his leadership.

This is the burgeoning problem with Australian politics. It's more and more becoming about the person at the helm, rather than about the party itself and what it offers as real choice to the Australian people. I think this is what has disenfranchised the people of Australia in this election. The informal vote was the highest in history. People couldn't give a flying fig about either major party. Telling? Yes!

The people of Australia clearly demonstrated that this election campaign was so far removed from what we wanted to know, it seems that a fair majority voted passively. The "problem" with a two party preferred voting system is that we know that the preferences attributed by minor parties will flow to either major party depending on the deals struck during the election lead-up. It means that no matter which party you vote for, your vote is pretty much likely to end up with two - three if you count the Greens - choices, Labor or Liberal/National Party. There's no genuine way to cast a protesting vote so I gather some have opted to not cast a vote at all. The sad thing is that trying to wash our hands of our political parties doesn't really solve the problem effectively.

I, myself, deliberately voted for a minor party as my personal protest at the lack of useful choice available to me between the two major parties. However, I also know its a moot point, given that the preferences will flow to Labor or Liberal as the case may be. I still however, consciously objected to the lack of choice available. My vote wasn't informal, but I, like apparently many others, didn't give a flying F@#$% about either Labor or Liberal in this election. Both parties were unremarkable, practically indistinguishable (on the surface) from the other, and appeared to be more about public smear campaigns rather than telling me what they were genuinely and ethically prepared to do with my taxes.

The crapola dished out to us through the publicity campaigns on either side was a disastrous mish-mash of hyperbole, shit-faced tantrum throwing and outright fear-mongering. It bored me. It desanitised me to listening to real commentary. I could have cared less about the fact our PM was female, atheist, and not married to the man she is shacked up with! I could have cared less for the Opposition Leader's budgie-smuggler bathers, his 'christian values', his old-fashioned views about females, his climate scepticism or his polyphasic sleep experiment in the final hours of the election. It all means nothing to this country's future. Maybe.

There are issues out there in the real Australia that are crying out to be heard and its not all terrorists and immigrants in boats either!

For me personally, broadband infrastructure is begging. If Australians don't want their major cities clogged with even more burbs and ghetto's - then just as rail and road in the previous century opened up the nation - so with efficient and effective high speed broadband in this century. Filtering content within this infrastructure is just plain idiocy of the most asinine kind. The defence of free speech is still just as paramount.

And another thing...

If Julia Gillard had been serious about this election - and don't get me wrong, she's done exceptionally well to keep Labor in the running - she'd have told the Australian electorate about the stuff that the Labor team, together, had been able to achieve regardless of who was leader at the time. I may be naive on this score perhaps.

It sucks to have a hung parliament but it may also be exactly what Australia needs to manoeuvre through the very delicate waters of the rest of the GFC. It's possible that there's a bigger financial crash to come what with the Euro teetering on the edge: so what happens now will determine how well we cope with it, if that crisis eventuates. A hung parliament may be just what we need to shake us up and get proactive. It also may be a total disaster, which we brought upon ourselves with our "Couldn't be f@#$%" attitude.

The four or five independents whose doors are now wide open for "dialogue" with either potential PM will have a massive responsibility to demonstrate courageous wisdom along with a very large dose of ethical consideration for this nation as a whole. Short-term thinking cannot suffice. This has to be long-term stuff: stuff that resonates with positive vigour in 10, 20, 50 years from now.

I mean long after Iraq, Afghanistan, climate change argy-bargy and the internet as we presently know it.

Good luck to these men is all I say! It's going to be a tough gig, even if its also lucrative for their electorates notwithstanding.

Awareness of Perception

2010-07-18T12:56:00.004+10:00

In 1995 Seth Godin, marketing guru of the new Millenium, created, along with his team, a website called "Squidoo" with the intention of making available a place for the masses to report on what they knew about a particular subject through a "lens". Essentially a lens is a page of information about the subject. The metaphor of a "lens" to describe this information dissemination seems logical. On each page a user shares their knowledge with others in a singularly focused way.

Wikipedia does something similar. The many sharing with the many what it is they know about a subject. Filtering, capturing and distilling information is becoming a crucial skill in this age of the digital information highway.

But my question is - how do we know that what we know is actually what it is?

Much of what I read on the net is filtered through my own personal "lens" of perception. Some pieces of knowledge I take in and absorb, integrating them into a sort of personal encyclopaedia of "facts". I accept these as truths; often unquestioned. Other things I read, I discard and relegate to the informational rubbish tip called "Crap".

Regardless if the original information was correct or not, I take on board - or discard - stuff, which through my perceptions of its accuracy - or inaccuracy - is based in large part, on a part of me which is entirely unaware I'm filtering anything at all! I am pretty much unaware, most of the time, why I accept or discard what comes at me.

What I label as fit for the Crap Tip - others perceive as entirely a Truth to be imparted to the masses! What I label as Truth has the potential to be mocked as sheer lunacy by many.

No one can always have a handle on the true facts about everything, because, the fact is... truth is distorted much of the time, by the personal perceptions of those who impart it.

The only basis for establishing hard fact is through collective acknowledgement that a larger than usual number of perceptions from other individuals concur. Or is it?

Fact is - lots and lots of people tend to concur on stuff which is hardly ever likely to be a genuine hard-core "Truth". Not on the whole anyway! People are quite mad about adopting something as truth; stuff which is unlikely ever to be a genuinely real Truth - if indeed we could spot one of those and agree! For pities sake! It's hard enough defining the meaning of Truth let alone trying to explain this queer human habit of filtering things through perceptions rather than actually knowing things. Perception changes things. All the freaking time! This whole paragraph is written from my own perception about the nature of fact and truth eh?

It makes for a rather frightening future really. Given the huge amount of information now available to us, how will we learn to discern? How will we ever know that is actual and True - trustworthy? What kinds of perceptions am I developing that I am unable to drop or keep when I read or absorb information? How do I know from what I see and hear that which I need to accept as the Truth? What do I need to toss as dross into the Crap Tip? What must I laugh at, what can I action; which truth can I sell on to others?

It's a mind melt-down!

Indefatigably, I will have to continue to master the art of questioning my beliefs and learning how to discern what perceptions exist within me and if they are actually useful for determining a Truth from the information I'm exposed to everyday.

I think perhaps - and this is purely based on my perception - that in the future, it will be those who are aware of how and why they filter the information coming at them, who will be best placed to impart that information to the masses.

Anyone can write a Squidoo page on a topic; very few will be erudite and humble disseminators of true knowledge. Even fewer will be able to perceive the latter.

The music is gathering

2010-07-11T16:29:00.002+10:00

It's taking me ages but I'm slowly getting heaps of old CD's back into iTunes again.

I had all the CD's from the family collection in my old hard-drive. Sadly, that HD crashed and burned along with all the music about two years ago. I've finally gotten around to adding the music to this current HD in my beloved MacBook.

The bonus of being able to share favourite music with dear friends via dropbox has also added lots of depth and variety to my listening selection.

Methinks though I'm due for another back up session :) So...off to find the external hard-drive and save all the recent stuff.

Push me and I leave

2010-06-13T11:25:00.005+10:00

For a little while now, I've been playing in the MMOG called "Evony".

Essentially, its a medieval kind of strategy game where you build up cities with resources and troops by the thousands in order to conquer other cities and troops. All this so as to get your name at the top of the leader board.

It's supposedly simple but its not. As will all games there are "rules" and "cheats" which one is advised to know well in advance rather than stumbling blindly in and fumbling about like I tend to do.

I joined a reasonably powerful alliance of other players in the game within a couple of weeks of building up my city. Bad move apparently!

Just one month after joining and putting in time and energy and even some of my rl resources (yes! I admit I spent real money on an online game!), I have left. Bitter? oh yes!

So why did I leave?

Because if there is ONE thing that climbs up my nose more than anything else its to be DEMANDED by others to do things a certain way!

I will not be pushed, coerced, stridently bossed, or nagged - by anyone! As soon as I feel like I'm being pushed around or entrapped like this I do either of two things; I leave or I get sick. I left evony because I could. It was easy to do.

With other stuff in my life currently, it's a tougher decision as much hinges on the outcome. I'm right now, sick with a cough/cold. This tells me that all is not well in my world (apart from viruses traversing the airwaves). I get sick a lot when something in my world is pushing me into corners, entrapping me and forcing its 'authority' onto me. In the real world one can't always push back without a fight and that's the other thing that gets up my nose! Having to fight. I will avoid that at whatever cost including my health if needs be.

Alpha Type I most certainly am not but stubborn yes. Stubborn in a low-key, say-nothing, subversive kind of way. I back off and back out quickly if the threat of being forced to do something against my will, is evident. Bossing me around doesn't make me productive at all.

Honesty would have me say here at this point that I'm proud, wilful and independent with a massive catch. I'm passive-aggressive to the core. I will not initiate a fight but back me into a corner and I will lash out - sometimes violently.

On the other hand - I will walk over burning coals for anyone in "authority" if they praise the stuff I do well and salve my irrepressible ego with kind words and deeds. In any given situation where I'm confronted with having to perform, I do so much better when the stuff I've done right is acknowledged rather than the stuff I'm doing wrong. This also means that I am easily manipulated although as I get older I can at least spot manipulation for what it is. Doesn't matter though; I'd rather be talked up than beaten down.

It might be a matter of the projection of my beliefs onto the words of other people maybe. Not that fussed about it really right now. I just know that if someone tells me I HAVE to do this, this and this, when its a bloody game and not a life and death thing - I get out.

I reckon there are only two things worth fighting against in this world. Cancer and Injustice. That's it. Everything else is just pride, arrogance and stupid competitiveness talking.

Jessica comes home

2010-05-15T12:37:00.005+10:00

She's going to be 17 years old this coming Tuesday the 18th of May 2010, but Jessica Watson is capturing Aussie imaginations as she sails Ella's Pink Lady into Sydney Harbour in just under an hour or so.

She's been alone in her little pink "boat" for the past 200 plus days circumnavigating the world. She can't be recognised by any "official" bodies as being the youngest person to sail the world....but no one seems to care! She's so far the youngest person to sail across every longitude and the equator that has ever lived! For all the criticisms and the doubts... Jessica's determination and vision has proved that when a person craves something enough... they usually get it.

Her site is currently "down" at present so I can't link to her quote that is sweeping the television broadcasts and online. I'll do my best to recall it...

You don't have to be anyone special to do something big, you just have to really want it.

Sorry Jess.... you are wrong! A person who does something as unique, challenging, courageous and as intense as what you've achieved needs to have some very special qualities indeed - regardless of their age.

I'm approaching 50 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up! I've drifted through life absorbing experiences without really claiming a vision of my own to challenge myself to conquer.

I've "promised" myself all sort of idealistic desires...but they amount to mere wannabe dreams.

Jessica humbles me because she realised her vision . All the fears, the unknowns, the boring parts, the criticisms, the self-sabotage, the procrastination were, no doubt, there within Jess on the journey leading to today. But, there was something else that mitigated those querulous voices and conquered them so that in her mind her achievement becomes something "any ordinary person" could do.

It's that "something else" within that changes ordinary to special.

I believe its that single-minded determination to achieve what one sees clearly within their minds eye as being completely possible. Not everyone has that gift...very few know how to quell those ambition-killing voices either! It requires a vision so crystal clear and a belief that something is possible regardless of everything.

That's the difference Jess. This is what makes you above all others today ...very very special.

cry baby

2010-03-23T21:49:00.003+11:00

What is it about myself that any kind of argument or confrontation causes me to shed tears?

I have been a cry-baby ever since I was a little girl. What I ask myself though, is "Why is it, that at age 48, I still feel an instinctive urge to shed tears the moment I am being confronted?"

There are a few things I do know about myself.

1) I feel guilty in any kind of conflict or tense situation whether I am or not.
2) I feel like I have let people down more often than I feel I have been clever or useful to them.
3) I feel like I may have done the "wrong" thing in any situation where my integrity or intelligence is being called into question.
4) I always feel like my integrity and/or my intelligence is being called into question.
5) I consistently doubt my intelligence and abilities. Sometimes my integrity too (I have a memory that isn't that pragmatic when it comes to facts or details).
6) I feel too much.
7) I categorically, never want anyone to think badly of me no matter what I do.

Now the big question, in answer to all of these is "Why?" Why should I feel any of the above when it is neither necessary, convenient or apparent I should do so?

My simple guess is this: At some point in my formative years, I intuited that I am not capable. As a result, my inbuilt pride barometer rebels at this core assumption and triggers a violent emotional reaction within me resulting in those embarrassing tears.

There must be some kind of internal revolt switch going off the moment I am in any kind of situation that, I believe, demonstrates my incapability.

My pride says "You are not wrong", whereas my conscience quavers, fusses and fumes that I might be "wrong" perhaps, because the details are blurry, and the facts are not at ready-reckoning distance in my mind. Ergo - I'm "bad" to have let someone down. "I am unreliable, unintelligent, unwise, imperfect". All my wanton flaws are exposed and I rail within, in a maelstrom of emotional factionalism between self-hatred and the primitive rage of an abused pride. And I cry!

This is no easy thing. To change my propensity for weeping when confronted will take an enormous shake-up of my mental landscape. It may well be that the very synapses, that formed during the early development of these core beliefs, will never be entirely eradicated of this pestilence! But accepting it? I am not sure I can at this point.

I DO get angry when I feel my integrity is being called into question! But I very often squelch that anger because if I have to express it - it comes out as an unabated flood rather than clear-eyed, cool-headed and reasoned argument for the defence! I want to be able to argue efficiently for my case but my unequivocal lack of eloquence when full of charged emotions stalls this ability and then some!

The thought-tapes inside my head need erasing and re-recording. Would my ego actually allow this? I am not sure! The Self is a funny thing! It gets rather comfortable with the status-quo. Surreptitiously, ego channels our energies into paths of least resistance. My intuitive and instinctive crying response to conflict situations is a well worn path to a known resolution and result.

Generally speaking, (and this is purely, a theoretical analysis stemming from my own biases about crying women): a crying girl disarms most people. A crying girl is diminutive and "sweet", her vulnerability and fragility exposed through her emotionalism. She's every man's "Perfect Little Daughter" whether he believes it or not, she speaks to the hero in him through her tears. She's in need of protection from a cruel world. Her naivety and demure femaleness are on show through her subjugation to the more powerful party. She is a victim in need of rescuing. She demonstrates a perverse and ironic strength by rallying forth if treated gently, her inferior Self stroked and soothed with kindness rather than harsh judgements on her lack of wit or intelligence. A crying girl is not really a grown woman yet - even if she may look like one! A crying girl makes people feel guilty. A crying girl is powerfully manipulative of others through her genius in the use of emotional blackmail.

This makes me gag at how pathetic it makes me look. Here I am! A weeping girl incapable of standing clear-eyed and strong in the midst of inaccurate (or accurate for that matter) accusations of her part in fault. My head believes none of the insipid trash above, but it seems that somewhere, somehow, I learned to behave like this for at least some of these reasons!

How horrible it is for a girl child to learn such things; how sad for the woman to realise she's learned them!

Will I accept this flaw in my character and nature? No! I shall rail against it until I have determined its source and healed this rift between my emotions and psyche.

Rectifying my propensity for being a cry-baby could take me the rest of my life and it may not stop the flow of my tears in an argument - but then again - it might help me grow up, and that is no small thing either.

My feet hurt!

2010-03-19T21:50:00.001+11:00

Forget achy breaky hearts... let's try achy breaky feet shall we?

Feet that have stood too long.

Feet that have walked too far.

Feet that have been - it seems - forgotten during sedentary jobs.

Feet that get hot and bothered.

Feet that aim for comfortable shoes but which never quite manage that task.

Feet that hurt.

Feet that throb and throb so violently, if it were a noise, it would be the sound of a kettle drum pounding directly into your ears.

Feet that sing - loudly - all by themselves like Brynhildr does in a Wagnerian opera!

Feet that kill, thrusting spears of hot molten core straight up the shin bone and into the knees.

Feet that will allow you to stand but only if you are still enough that they stop throbbing and go completely numb.

Feet that blow up, so that it looks like you have bubbles on the ends of your legs.

My gosh! One finally feels their feet when their feet feel.... everything!

writing style

2010-03-17T19:39:00.003+11:00

I spent hours writing a speech for my boss at work today. It nearly killed me! A mere 1612 words too! Not much of a drop in the sentences bucket really. I enjoyed the work but I was vaguely stressed about it too. Thing is, writing a piece for someone else to read aloud is extraordinarily difficult.

The considerations to take into account are the prospective speakers language style, their fluency of speech, their personality and their interests. It isn't easy if you don't know someone "that" well, to come up with a clear and concise presentation of thoughts that reflect what they may have inside their heads.

My style of writing is - well let's face it! It's verbose! I'm every bit the "story teller". I can barely write a departmental report to save my life not given as I am to the concept of "dot points"! I like to explain, iterate, construct and delineate all possible angles of interpretation within a text. I write to construct a kind of fluid coherence more akin to that of poetic prose rather than succinct documentary. I use words where none are necessary or required but they go in anyway because it feels like its required; that the fluidity of the writing needs that kind of accoutrement!

This is a problem in my current job! Truly it is! I can't read anything to my colleagues, because to their ears it "sounds fine". However, to those experienced in the way of all things "Government Department", my writing style is is only a smidge short of total crud! The red biro gets a regular workout when my work is presented for "Editorial Comment" to my boss!

It sucks!

Perhaps, I was designed to simply tell stories rather than define the vagaries of volunteerism to the unwilling masses through my style of writing?

If I could write really well, I'd certainly be in demand job-wise. As it stands, I am too wordy; too florid and far too expansive for the kinds of writing required in my industry. It can be very frustrating. I still love doing this work though. I enjoy the process of writing for the most part, even if I have to edit things a dozen times before they're ready to go "live" so to speak. I guess its all good training.

I try very hard not to take it personally now. I figure, I might as well learn how to write a bullet point or two before I leave this mortal coil. It can't harm, surely?

Ah, but I do admit to a shameful desire to be able to write exactly what I please: my style, my words, my thoughts, my syntax: all mingled together into some prosy, rich and delectable word-soup for the edification and entertainment of others. I like having an idiosyncratic style all my own. It feels good to place words next to each other, matching them for the weight of their simpatico sentiment.

I'll be very surprised if my speech-writing skills will pass muster in the next day or so. The hours of labour spent on that thing today is, probably, similar to the amount of expensive film left on the cutting room floor. Someone has to gather it all up and discount the cost of making it and hope that some day, it might prove "valuable" to someone else!

I thank God for the blogging art-form. It's the one of the few spaces I have available, to construct sentences my way - in all my verbose, grandiose, wordy, littérateur way! For that I'm truly grateful.

The safest harbour 2

2010-03-16T23:25:00.004+11:00

The Safest Harbour 1

Next morning the man woke stronger and ravenously hungry. He scanned every corner of Millie's hull and upper decks for items he might fashion into fishing hooks, spears and other meat gathering devices.

The gulls aloft, were nonchalant, not realising the man's intentions. His spear, thrust with an expert eye through the breast of a young gull, scattered the rest in shrieking horror.

The man did not have a way of cooking the bird but he stripped it of its feathers and then used the meat as bait for his fishing rod made from line and hooks found in the stern. Fish could be eaten raw - gulls could not. Millie was so proud of him! She admired the way he worked so efficiently. She admired his wisdom and clever thinking. She all but forgot her predicament of being so lost at sea in her fascinated observations of the man and his labours.

The man did indeed feast on raw fish that day. He made faces and threw up over Millie's sides a few times, but in the end he ate and it was better. He sat in Millie's cockpit and pondered what to do. He tested her rudder and was surprised to find it had survived the storm and she could be steered. Somehow, he had to get that old heavy sailcloth up from below onto the deck to work it onto the gear and catch the winds. It would be difficult work. He looked at his hands, bleeding in places from working ropes and hooks, blistered and peeling on the backs from the sun. He was determined to survive and this little boat was going to help him - no matter the cost!

It took nearly two whole days of hard labour - in between running to check his fishing lines and eating raw fish - for the man to get the sailcloth up onto the deck. Finding an old box of line and tackle stashed deep in the hold, he fashioned gear that would take the sail almost half way up Millie's empty mast. By day three, the man was ready to haul the sail aloft but found it so heavy he struggled against it for most of the day. He almost gave in and then an idea came to him to leverage the sail lines around the large spindle in the stern. The spindle had once been used to let trolling line out to sea.

The man spliced and cut line into other line to lengthen it enough to reach the spindle. He fastened the line to the spindle and prayed this approach would work to raise the sail. He bent at the handle, pausing briefly and speaking the first words Millie had heard from his lips "C'mon girl! Don't let me down now!". She clenched her eyes shut and willed the spindle to work with all her might. The handle turned, creaking and squeaking. The line strained and the man held his breath fearing his splices might tear apart. He turned the handle slowly and slow centimetre by centimetre, the sail was hauled up to fill with the westerly breeze. Millie could feel her keel shudder as her rudder started to flap with the promise of speed.

The man locked down the handle on the spindle when he could turn it no longer. The sail was up high enough to fill with breeze and move the little boat across the ocean. A running ocean current gathered pace beneath Millie as if in answer to her impetus. The man raced to the cockpit and grasped the tiller in his blistered, bleeding hands and tacked Millie with the wind. She was moving! Zigging and zagging across the ocean heading for "Somewhere".

For five nights and five days, the man tacked Millie. At night he scanned the horizon for the North star and fixed his sights on it as if it were a lighthouse showing the way. He slept with his arm draped over the tiller during the day and moved Millie towards the star by night. On night number five, Millie saw a real lighthouse. Her little heart fairly leaped out from within her. The man whooped and hollered and danced a merry jig on the deck. He guzzled the precious water he had collected and threw the rest of the rotting gull carcass over the side in celebration!

At the break of dawn on the fifth day, Millie entered the narrow head waters of a beautiful harbour. The waters were calm and deep. Dolphins chattered and giggled beside her as the man steered her towards the town on the other side. As they got closer, Millie could see that this town was so very unlike Brae as to be almost alien. The streets bustled with people and cars. The esplanade that followed the shoreline was peppered with people walking, running, fishing and chatting. There were young lovers on seats kissing in the morning sun and children shrieking as grandfathers dragged fish from the sea with their rods. There were boats lined up in a small marina, gleaming and loved. Millie felt suddenly embarrassed at how shabby she looked but the man, sensing her thoughts, patted her deck and said "You are the most wonderful boat I ever owned", with a catch in his voice that held a reverence and pride. Millie sobbed. She cried out all the fear, trepidation, and grief of the past week into the harbour depths and soon felt so light and airy that she thought she might start to fly.

A patrol of boats came out to greet Millie and the man. When the sailors all heard the man's story, they slapped him on the back and wrapped him in blankets and poured whiskey into panniers for him to drink. News travelled as if on wings back to the people on the shore. Soon, a large crowd gathered at the pier to welcome Millie and the man and cheer their amazing survival against the odds. The man thanked the sea patrol men and made a simple request.

Six weeks later, Millie could hardly believe how her life had changed. The man had requested only one thing in exchange for his story of survival and hope. Millie was now gleaming with new paint, polished decks and equipped with new sails. Her hold had been cleaned and her keel scraped. She was fitted with the latest nautical equipment. Her old spindle was oiled and now spun as lazily and easily as a spinning wheel. She had all new line and her anchor was rust free.

The man? Ah... well he shone too. His hair and beard were trimmed and clean. His hands were blister free and the wounds of his ordeal were healing over to become scars to be borne with pride. He stood tall and even handsome. His eyes sparkled with intelligence, wit and good humour and he longed to be out on the ocean again, fishing - making a living.

Millie found herself being taken out to sea once more. This time as a working boat. Her decks were scrubbed every day. She was given opportunity every day to earn the man and his helpers an income. Together they became a team. Nothing fancy. Just a solid working team. She was owned by someone who cared about her - loved her even. Millie's heart swelled with such happiness and joy that she practically near glowed; for Millie had found the secret to a Good life: she'd found the safest harbour of all. Companionship.

End

Trust: the thing we must do for others but not for things

2010-03-15T19:51:00.004+11:00

Something wicked this way comes...

One of those slightly dodgy "current affairs" magazine style shows on commercial television was proclaiming the horrors of new kinds of mobile phone spy technology tonight. Yes! It was indeed a rather scary concept - that there are applications out there which make it really simple to track your every conversation and text message. In the hands of the wrong kinds of people this would cause an enormous amount of stress and inconvenience to anyone! I believe it is actually illegal in Australia, for ordinary citizens to bug other people's phone conversations and read their private texts. Obviously the technology exists to make it easy for the less than ethical to breach trust! Not a good thing.

However, this modern day breach of privacy horror aside - I was more appalled at the final comment from the journalist covering the story

"The simple message is - trust no one!"

Hmm!

Coincidentally, the very next story was on purchasing cheap specs and the comment here was

"Go for brands you can trust!"

This is insidious and dangerous talk. The juxtaposition of these two themes around "Trust" make it clear that this television program's producers believe that all individuals are to be suspected of all manner of malicious dealings whereas companies, who produce "Stuff", are the ones to "trust" implicitly, for their "ethical marketing and customer service".

Hmm! x 2

I'm not happy about it. When human beings are taught that it is better to trust a brand name than it is to trust their neighbours - something very wicked and disastrous happens to a civilisation. It breaks down from the ground up. Suspicion, secrecy, deception and corruption ensue. Friends are no longer friends; families can no longer believe they are safe within the confines of home and hearth; business colleagues are left bereft of congenial support in the workplace.

Above all, it is ones privacy that suffers! Yes! The disastrous irony of this kind of thinking results in people actually losing the very thing they feared losing in the first place. Once trust is no longer a valid reason to conduct a relationship - of the kind between individuals - suspicion leads people to paranoia and the desire to spy on others anyway.

The television may be soliciting advertising revenue through this ploy too and that is indeed a massive breach of trust. It is one thing to inform - it is quite another to consciously manipulate. One does need to view these kinds of piece-meal, sound byte styled affairs shows with a certain level of scepticism it seems! Ergo - it is in this instance that the gift of trust must be most carefully practised. It is heinous to assume that individuals must always be assumed untrustworthy before the most widely marketed brand name! At least that is my personal opinion on the matter.

Trust is a currency. It is the payment given for relationship. To breach it is grievously wrong.

So... I ask this: protect the people around you. Trust others first before believing they are out to destroy or maim you. Give trust and trust returns. Do not let anyone (least of all - television shows) tell you that "no one" can be trusted for many, many people can be trusted and are above reproach. Build the foundations of trust between people with a smile and an aware but open heart

and lastly....

.... always remember that when it comes to buying "Stuff"....

Caveat emptor

The safest harbour

2010-03-14T22:23:00.002+11:00

Millie sighed and bobbed unhappily in the briny sea next to the broken down jetty near the miserable little sea-side village of Brae. Her mast paint peeled in the blazing sun, her decks dull and spattered with the ruminations of seagulls, she eyed the forlorn little street that fronted the harbour above. No one came by to gaze out over the sea. No one stopped to cast a rod for a lazy afternoon of fishing. No children shrieked or shrilled with the joys of discovery from ocean depths. There were hardly any sounds in the street. It was as if it were a ghost-town with nary a ghost.

Millie recalled days long since gone when the town was a busy little port, with sweet girls in pretty frocks watching from the street above, for their fisher boyfriends to come in from a long days haul. She remembered how she felt after a long day out in the wild ocean, near-to-bursting with fish in her hull, coming in to moor at her little place by the jetty. The feeling was one of relief and utter exhaustion from a job well done.

The harbour was now almost abandoned except for the occasional visitor who scurried more than paused to take inventory of boats, and nets and then spin the wheels on their terribly posh cars out of the village of Brae back to the big city to frown and mutter at the costs of keeping "such rubbish" such as the likes of Millie. She felt so utterly abandoned.

The ropes that tied her to the moorings on the jetty were rotting away. She could feel the swell of the ocean deep below her keel, telling her that something was changing. She was frightened and did not know what lay ahead.

One morning the sky broke dawn in shades of red and gold so vivid that Millie woke from her sleep with a terrible trembly, burly feeling deep in her hold. Something was not going to be right today - she could feel it. The sky changed colour, everything became tinged in a kind of unearthly green. Even the clouds had bright green linings to them that had to be seen to be believed. The day went very quiet. Birds stopped ruminating from aloft. The town above ceased even the few noises it did have during a normal day. Things seemed deathly quiet. The horizon switched to a menacing blackness, with angry marching clouds galloping and fuming their way across open seas towards the village of Brae.

The Storm hit sometime around noon. Violent winds battered the few miserable boats in the little harbour so that some released their moorings and were cast adrift to an angry sea. Millie squeezed her eyes shut to brave out the vicious attack of wind, sea salt, sand and flashing lightening. She tried not to think of her mast standing still tall and bare to the open sky but sail-less being struck by one of those brilliant frightening bolts of power. Her own moorings suddenly released her to the mercy of the raging sea. The little harbour became a death trap for many of these unmanned boats. Some were dashed against the rocks and were scuppered. Some capsized to become bobbing hulls and nothing more and others again were thrown though the mouth of the harbour to be beached further along the coastline.

Millie however, seemed to be held by some unseen hand and her rudder, flapping wildly as it was, kept her from the rocks or from capsizing. She was however, cast out from the harbour into the wide and violent ocean to ride impossible waves for an interminable night of pain and gut-wrenching fear.

Silence reined once more and Millie found herself, alone and exhausted, but mercifully intact, on a wide-blue ocean. The gulls soon shattered the surreal calm with shrieks of joy at a place to rest on their journey to land.

"Where am I?" she asked the gulls aloft.

"Half way!" said most of the gulls inscrutably.

Millie cried. Half way to anywhere was nowhere to "Somewhere" and right now, as much as she was just a little bit glad to be free of her entrapment in that sullen little harbour, she was quite terrified at what lay ahead. Drifting in a quartering sea, she believed she was quite possibly, going to be alone for a very long time until she sank beneath the waves to the bottom of the ocean. Closing her eyes to sleep off her exhaustion and belay her fears, she let herself drift, not knowing how or where the whispering winds would take her.

She awoke with a start as she felt a feeble tug at the Jacob's Ladder on her Port side. She'd not realised that the ladder had become loosened in the storm and had been dragging through the ocean along her side for how long she didn't know. But here it was again... a gentle insistent tug. She felt it grow a little stronger and more determined.

A man's arm hooked itself into the sodden rope rung of the ladder and he clung there, a mixture of shock and relief plastered against his storm ravished face. The planking on which he had lay from a vessel torn apart by the storm was sinking beneath him as he hauled himself with the last of his strength, slowly, up the ladder to her deck. There he lay on his back for a long time dazed and confounded.

Millie's heart ached for the man. She could not tell if he was alive or dead. She wanted very much for him to be alive! Someone to steer her, guide her through this blue desert would be a godsend of unspeakable miracles! She willed the man to be alive!

Many hours... perhaps days... later he awoke slowly, his mouth parched and his joints aching. He stretched himself slowly, checking if he was still indeed alive and not a ghost on a miserable little boat in the middle of an enormous sea. He sat up, holding his head in his hands as it throbbed wildly in pain. Dehydration! He must find water and soon. Knowing boats as he did, he eased his way to the old cockpit. He searched but could not find a waterbottle. He went below deck, staggering and slightly unsteady on his feet, his eyes affected by too much salt and sun. Below he found old tin cans in the galley and a knife - a miracle really. He also found sail cloth and with the determination of survival hauled these treasures above as best he could. The sail cloth was heavy and he cut a section away from it to take to make a way of turning sea-water into potable water he could drink. A simple case of using the sun and the wonders of evaporation. Using utensils from the galley he made a filter with the piece of sail cloth, scraping away some of its greasy coating with the knife to bare the pure linen underneath. Hauling up seawater he set it into the contraption and very soon, the salt crystals formed on the topside of the cloth while underneath the water dripped into a panniken clear and drinkable. He spent most of the day sipping at and in turn hauling water this way. Each sip he seemed to grow stronger and more alert.

Finally he slept above deck near his water making device, the sleep of a man in determined recovery. Millie was so proud of him. Her little heart entranced at his strength of will and his determination to survive no matter the odds. She vowed to be like him and mustered her courage to face whatever lay ahead.

.... tbc (though given my track record on finishing stories like this? we shall see)

Hugo and the irrelevance of logic in Christ

2010-03-04T21:40:00.004+11:00

Hugo Schwyzer is a pretty broad-minded, leftist, feminist bloke! He writes insightful discourses in all manner of subjects about gender and sexuality as well as history and other esoteric things.

He's also a professed christian.

It makes no sense of course. There's that lovely Rennaisance assumption alive and well to this day, that says that rational and intelligent persons who "believe in science" cannot in all seriousness also believe in Christ. For me, science is as much an aspect of God's bountiful blessings to be a non issue. I have absolutely no problem with science and so on. For those who believe in Science, the issue of Faith is very difficult to grasp. Faith as a thing isn't easy to pin down in objective laboratory tests. It's not logical.

As I always say... You cannot know something until you're inside of it. You cannot understand the experience a thing until you're actually experiencing it.

Faith.

You cannot know Faith until you are living inside Faith.

There's no greater conundrum than to sit outside Faith and simply not "get it". It's like trying to make sense of a painting by Dali or a optical illusion by Escher. Even Rorschach tests make more sense than having Faith in Christ.

Hugo is correct when he implies that logic is irrelevant to Faith. Faith is something slightly to the left of actual belief too. One can believe many erroneous things as well as good and logical things. I believe in gravity and I also believe that man has walked on the moon! Some don't and that's still a belief which may - or may not - be wrong.

Faith however isn't "just" a belief - it's also a medicine, a crutch, a prop, a hope, a plea, an intuiting, a knowing, an emotional construct beyond mere beliefs in illogical things. It's watery, amorphous, esoteric, utterly illogical and asinine. Faith is a living, breathing entity in the metaphysical hearts of some people who cannot imagine life without it there.

The HOW of living out ones Faith is however, dependent on reason and logic in many instances. Even I have a wariness and scepticism of miraculous signs. One must weigh all things from the perspective of an altruistic love which can be difficult enough even with Faith. We're such a selfish kind of creature. Certainly, there are some scientific facts that one believes on the tangible, touchable, sniff-able evidence and to bend these can create a storm of protest in the mind too.

The WHY of living in Faith is a different matter entirely and its mostly subjective and emotional. It's so deeply set in the parts of a human being untouchable by the logic of science that unless you somehow tap into that untouchable "knowing" - you will never know.

This reminds me of the scenes in the recent movie Avatar where the Na'vi entwine nerve endings from themselves into the literal fabric of their environment. For many Christians, myself (and it seems, Hugo) included, this entwining into the Godhead gives us a perspective that's just not possible to convey to those who do not have the same entwined symbiosis to it.

To nearly misquote a line from Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" ....

Without Faith:

god is an overwhelming responsibility

Which I think is entirely true and quite logical really. There are many who profess to be Christians who's version of god is utterly reprehensible and I will have no part of their interpretation of the Christian Gospel at all! I cannot however, question their Faith - for I do not have the power to pass judgment on it when my sort of Faith is so exclusively my own

So, given that Faith is so hard to convey, the miracle in all of this is that lives continue to change - for a resounding "Better" to those who experience it - through the impact of Christ. It's as if there's some kind of magnetic attraction between the illogical dimension and various and sporadic persons. Once enmeshed inside that dimension, Faith eventually may (or may not) take root and flourish in the spiritual centre of the person. For me the embodiment of that dimension is Christ.

I may perhaps gain everything but I will lose nothing in owning this "foolishness".

Indian cooking: a symphony for the nose

2010-03-02T18:25:00.001+11:00

A new Indian restaurant is opening today just a few doors down from my workplace. The smells emanating from their kitchen today, drove my salivary glands giddy with desire and my belly with hunger.

I've thankfully, refrained for now from indulging in the massive range of delicacies on offer. I'm sure this won't last long! Goodness knows how many kilojoules of wonderment await in this den of culinary vice!

Indian food!

There is truly a symphony of gastric song in just the words alone. Nuanced spices structuring basic ingredients to culinary heights of gastronomic beauty; basic ingredients, such as rice, chicken, vegetables and fish steaming with fragrant possibilities for the palate!

The heart - and the belly - crave the promise of such a siren's song to the nose!

There is no other international cuisine quite like the scents and flavours of Indian food. It is a law unto itself. Not all Indian food is spicy hot of course. Even so, the piquant blending of selected spices, herbs and condiments adds notes to food just as music adds notes to sound, morphing them into pleasantries for the senses and the soul.

I can't wait to sample the food at our new Indian Restaurant! If the smells coming from there today are anything to go by - the food promises to be utterly divine. Today however, I shall have to be a gastronomic Odysseus and tie myself to a dietary mast in order to listen with my nose but make my body wait for this wicked but potentially satisfying grace.

Such sweetly fragrant agony!

from encyclopedia's to Google: thoughts on portals for information collection.

2010-02-27T22:31:00.001+11:00

Once upon a time, information was power. Those who controlled the information had the power to make, break, change and iterate their particular polemic. The rest of us accepted that those who "knew", knew what was in our best interests. Those who controlled information flow could control not only its dissemination but also its generation. What was written, kept hidden, made public, exposed, created, imparted and expressed was in proportion to the benevolence or malevolence of the arbitrators of that information.

This state of affairs has changed markedly in the past 40 years or so - my lifetime so far. Information - good information - is probably as valuable now as it ever was but with one significant difference - it's now accessible by much greater proportion of the population. This means that information - even good enough information - is cheap, ubiquitous, ever-changing, endless, and it has the life-span of nano-seconds compared to the information available even as late as 30 or 40 years ago.

When I was a little girl, growing up on a farm kilometres from the closest town, with little access to television and little understanding of the pompous and esoteric murmurings of public radio - my only source of reliable information at the time was my father's beloved set of Encyclopedia Brittanica. This was the place my father sent me when I wanted to know the meaning of something, the history of some event or the workings of the human body. I was forced to learn how to use its indexing system - complicated enough as it was for an 9 year old - I would spend hours pouring over the 24 gargantuan tomes in their maroon bindings searching and cross-referencing to learn whatever I could about what it was itching in my brain. Most of the time, I could barely comprehend the language, but learn it I did for there was no other way for me to access the information I wanted. Effectively, I was controlled to know whatever it was that EB deemed it appropriate for me, my father and others blessed enough to own a set of Encyclopedia's!

Now, I Google! It's easy, it's fun, I can sift and sort information quickly, making pretty reasonable judgments as to its accuracy and intent - I hope! In this day and age, Information is not deemed "of quality" until that fact has been intuited by the consumer of that information. This makes the information available today quite a bit more subjective than it was many years ago I think and its perceived "quality" may be often questionable. It's also a probably truth that what EB imparted as information back in the first half of the 20th Century was just as "questionable" to the biases of those in control of its dissemination - we may never really know.

The web has distinguished itself as an inexhaustible vault of Information. Qualitative and quantitative information may be harder to find but its there. I already see a kind of frenzy happening around me - particularly in my work in community development - in reining, boxing, corralling, sorting and sifting all this information in so that it becomes "easier to handle".

Government departments are attempting to make online "portals" to collect vast amounts of information into isolated repositories for different sections of the population - much like a kind of limited encyclopedia of knowledge about one subject at a time for one kind of group at a time. It's all about control but in the guise of making this information easier for people to find. A part of me fears this kind of approach. To me it smacks of an inability to both accept the impossibility of being able to control information and the sheer effrontery to assume people want that information controlled in the first place.

There's no question that the web can make hunting down scraps of information a bit like sifting for needles in haystacks but I'd rather people were given the options for how to make the search than having others dictate to certain groups via "portals" or "info exchanges" just what information they "need".

People need to be skilled up and educated in how to search the web for what they want and need to know just like I was trained to hunt and understand the information I wanted from those precious books as a child. Search engines need to be impartial and not geared to show the information of the highest bidders. We simply cannot easily decide as collective groups what is qualitative information anymore and the quantitative aspect of information control is most likely impossible anyway. The skills for assessing and utilising quality information from across the web must taught - to individuals, so that they can decide for themselves what is useful to their needs.

We value freedom of speech. Let's now also value and encourage the freedom of people to find and use good information for themselves rather than corralling it for them in the mistaken assumption that its control and manipulation is required.

the email test blog

2010-02-26T22:20:00.001+11:00

I'm actually writing this from within my email account. Bizarre but true! If it actually works it may yet revolutionise the way I blog! For the past four years, I've conscientiously gone directly inside blogger.com in order to record my impressions, thoughts and creative ideas. I'm always up for a trick if it makes life easier and in the past year, writing in blogger has succumbed to a malady mainly called "Can't be bothered!".

I still yearn for my blog. I still want to write in it and express myself within its hallowed virtual halls. It's just been too tedious a process to open a blank page and begin writing. Yet, from my email account, where writing is almost as natural as breathing for me, I might perhaps find the wherewithal again to bare my soul and aMuse my "Genius" in the cosy glow of blogger's footlights.

Let's test this puppy out and see if the possibilities are there!

a little pool of freedom

2010-02-17T07:49:00.003+11:00

Hold me lightly
cupped like water
and do not clench
or grasp
or squeeze;
just lightly
soft -
carefully casual like,
precious even.
I shall rest there,
in your hand
so soft -
courageously gentle;
a warm resting place
for freedom
to lie still a moment.
A little pool
of freedom
inviting you to sip
but not hold.

michelle
Feb 2010

Just because he's not famous...

2010-02-13T10:11:00.004+11:00

Matt Stevens huh?

My little journal entry about my trip to see Porcupine Tree last week seems to have generated far more interest across the globe than I might have expected! Bizarre how the blogging world opens up microcosms of connections really... but that aside:

I had a rather strange email land in my inbox this morning - in the Junk Folder. I'm not inclined to trash junk just too willy nilly and probably just as well too or I'd never have had a listen to Matt's music.

Matt invited me to write "something" about his music here in my blog for him! hahahaha!! How CUTE is that I ask you? Blatant promotion aside, I confess to being just a little chuffed that he at least appeared to have read my blog! We hobby bloggists are so egomaniacal ain't we?

Okay... so I checked out Matt's site via the long trail method rather than accepting his blatant call for action - in my junk folder no less - as gospel variety truth.

Glad I did!

Sure! The guy apparently CAN play the guitar - and then some. His album is available to download at his site http://www.mattstevensguitar.com/. You can offer him anything you want for it it seems, which seems to be the way of new music now thanks to the innovation of "Radiohead" a few years ago.

Matt sounds like he's classically trained as there is lots of classical riffs and spanish influences on his "Echo" album. I gave it a good listen and quite enjoyed it but I still sorta think the man needs a full band to round out his compositions with more depth and layers than the acoustic guitar layers he's added. I yearned for driving bass fills and the tight patter of drums. As it stands some of this stuff begins to sound much like the other to the untrained ear - a bit like chewing on gum for too long, it gets all bit "meh" once the initial flavour is gone.

There is a lot to like here of course. He has this layered loop thing going on with other acoustic guitar work doing the part of what other band members might have done with other instruments. For purely acoustic instrumental sound - its definitely pretty cool. For the "right" context anyway. I imagine this is the sort of stuff you can play unobtrusively in the background over a dinner date with friends.

Some of it is clunky and uninteresting, other parts are warm and intimate; other parts again, are just plain weird like all good prog should be in places *wink*. I have listened to some tracks more than once already. There are catchy melodies here, repeated lines that capture the mood and encase it like sticky honey on a spoon. There are chords that grate on the teeth like metal against fillings and then - just to mix it all up a bit - there's lilting Spanish classical picking juxtaposed against rapper-like background staccato sounds. It might be too much of everything trying too hard to be all one thing but most of the time it kind of works, the occasional glitch aside. This isn't polished production - it is however, an ordinary blokes' music and just like I blog for fun - he writes music for fun. He no doubt does it as much for himself as for the world.

What does interest me is how he is marketing his stuff! Direct email to blogger's who write just for the fun of it is a new one on me! Does it smack of desperation? Yeah! Perhaps!

Does that matter?

Not in the least!

My own reaction was one of suspicion and distrust initially but there was also something inherently "natural" about his email in my junk folder as well, which piqued my need to go Google him up! I am duly impressed by this effort to market his sound to the world on a bootstrap. And this is effectively what this is.... bootstrapping! This is obviously, his real business - his music - aside from his day job if he has one! He is using what is already available and working at it, strategically, using just the tools at hand to generate public interest and in time more sales. It's risky, courageous and determined and not lacking in passion.

It is unlikely that any major music producer would conclude that Matt Stevens had "something" marketable to make lots of cash from. That's the point here though. More and more we are going to see talented, highly creative and determined young men and women taking charge of their own artistic destinies and risking a chance on fame and fortune through a niche of other ordinary creative people taking notice. The tools are within their grasp to do this now on a global scale. Matt may be the harbinger of a new kind of Minstrel plying his trade across the ether rather than on a road.

The way Matt approached me to write about his music is to me, marketing by the incremental, rather than grand splash flashy advertising with sink or swim outcomes. This is the slow crawl towards making the music heard by as many as necessary even though the Matt Stevens of the world who are making this stuff, may remain relatively incognito throughout!

So good on yer Matt for having a crack. Your music is perfectly okay and yeah...just because you're not famous doesn't mean you don't deserve to be promoted or listened to. I have been happy to oblige by writing this post even as I listen to your new album on your site. I still think it's weird you think my blog will make a difference to your journey to fame and infamy though! *snort*

Oh what the hell! I reckon I might download "Echo" after all *grin*

Cheers :)

Porcupine Tree and mini-breaks for over 45's

2010-02-08T20:22:00.004+11:00

I've had a wee holiday. A "mini-break", if you will.

It all started yesterday. Sunday 7th February 2010 (and yes... the fact that it was the anniversary of "Black Saturday" does not escape me as I shall never forget the 2009 version of this date for the rest of my days). I left for Melbourne on the bus + train combo we endure just because we live so far from the "suburbs" etc etc (dramatic eye-rolling of course).

The trip was uneventful and restful. I was pretty sleepy for most of it but did manage to get a listen of the new album by Porcupine Tree on the ipod. The music made me smile as always. Dramatic, theatrical, eminently moody and exacting - listening to PT is a surreal experience akin to a joy-soaked bath in healing but ominous looking black mud! I couldn't wait to see them live even though I little knew what to expect other than that their sound seems to thrill me ways I can barely describe.

It was really quite hot when I arrived at Southern Cross Station on the edge of Melbourne CBD. I generally like to walk the CBD, eschewing the fantastic public transport system for "Shanks Pony" because well 1) I need the exercise any chance I get and 2) its faster than waiting around for anything and 3) everything in Melbourne CBD is tucked within a very compact 2.5kms walk from anything else really...give or take a few metres. It only ever takes me approximately 20 minutes to walk to Bourke St. Mall and not much after that to get to where I generally stay on solo trips such as this one, the trust old Victoria Hotel in Lt. Collins St.

Mind you... that last 5 minute crawl up the hill to the doors of The Vic is torturous and will guarantee burning hamstrings and the feeling of blades turned upwards into the soles of ones feet on really warm days - particularly for the grossly unfit and overweight such as myself *sigh*.

The Vic's rooms are are arranged in an Escher'esque way - aka. in labyrinthine but sort of logical confusion. It took me nearly 15 mins from alighting from the first floor lift to find my room. I got hopelessly lost up in there you know! Then again, I'm the "Least-likely-to-know-which-way-is-East-even-if-the-sun-were-rising" kind of girl so that was probably to be expected.

I finally found room 119 tucked into a tiny cul-de-sac through doors, down stairs, up a ramp, down a corridor, around a corner. It was spacious with a double bed made from the off-casts of some cement factory; however, given as I am, to preferring firmer mattresses than overly-soft, it suited me fine. The room was really hot though, so I was grateful for the small air-conditioner set into the wall. The one small window above the air-con was darkened with a small slatted blind, the slats closed, making the room very dark. I rather liked it this way. My bathroom was barely the size of a postage stamp with the barest essentials required for ablutions. Quite frankly, having a door on the bathroom was superfluous and my feeling is that swinging saloon doors or a sliding door would be a far more agreeable option. The swing door took up most of the space and as I was on my own, the need to close it seemed a bit over kill really except for the fact I kept banging my hip against it as I washed my face or brushed my teeth.

When I had finished surveying the room, I dumped my bag on the bed and grabbed key and wallet and promptly wended my way back down the labyrinth of corridors and ramps to the lift well. I was on a mission now - food! One of my biggest weaknesses as a single 48 year old female is the obsession with both food AND girth all in the same breath and mindset. It's the most fundamentally annoying conundrum.

I want to eat really great tasting food but on the condition that I add not one iota of a gram of fat to my already overburdened frame. In fact, I want to eat really good food such that my body says with grateful happiness "Oh Thank you so much! I am very well fed! I do not need to reserve all these extra calories you just devoured and store them in your thighs and arse, just in case I need them for later when I think I might, potentially, be starving; so I will release these calories into the ether and stay thin because I'm perfectly happy to do that for you!" etc etc.

Sadly, my metabolic rate is such that gaining weight is easier than breathing - no matter how "healthy" the food is or appears! These days, losing the kg's requires the disciplinary skills of a regimental instructor in an army boot camp and I actually rather despise following "rules" - even the ones I make for myself. So, there I sat in bakery eating great food and I am still purring at the memory of pastry crumbling over my lips in all its decadent, delicious, and malevolent beauty. Sluggish metabolic genetics and a predilection for sugar + butter is a cruel disease!

I digress:

I wondered if I should go "do something" while there in Melbourne on my own. No children to groan at me as I perused the Masters in the National Gallery: no friends to get tetchy with me as I wandered around the alley ways looking at cafe menu's "deciding" where I was going to eat later - having just had lunch: no schedules other than an 8pm appointment to see a band. Bliss.

I opted instead, for a "Nanna nap" in my cosy little hide-away hotel room. And just as well I might add. My day had started at 5am that morning and the thought of having to fire on through until well after midnight just made me cave. The nap was divine except for a surreal and rather realistic dream where I kept hearing noises from my minuscule bathroom and on rising from my bed (plank), noted that there was a coterie of American High School girls and an older female "Chaperone" who looked like she might have come straight from the set of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest"! Their room was apparently adjunct mine and we were forced to "share" the bathroom. This did NOT please me one bit. They literally invaded my space and as the room shifted and morphed into other rooms with doors that wouldn't close I was "forced" to stand my ground and demand that everyone fuck off immediately in the nicest possible assertive way I could. This was a blimmin' dream I might add and I was rather bristled by it but also sort of assured that my confidence is perhaps coming back. Despite that dream though, the nap was restful and I got up about 5pm to prep for the concert.

Now, given that I AM 48 years old, I decided not to get just too carried away with all things "primping". The chances of me needing to impress anyone were far too preposterous to give any credibility to. I just wanted to look presentable and as "normal" as I possibly could. I had had an inkling for days that women in my demographic are not normally associated with 'Difficult-to-categorise-progressive-hard-rock-bands', so I just preened enough to feel comfortable that I was not going to frighten children and left it at that.

I decided that I actually wasn't "that" hungry and eschewed a large meal for dinner. I walked up Bourke St to The Palace so that I could get a sense of the lay-of-the-land so to speak. I wasn't sure if I was going to actually hang outside the front doors or not at this point as it was a good two hours before they would open: I did however, want to be sure that I had the right place and that all was in order. I opted for a small take away meal that I actually didn't finish and knew it would be enough to tide me through. I had packed "light" opting only for the two pockets in my pants to carry bare essentials.

There was a queue already forming outside the doors of The Palace. In the end, I bought a bottle of water from the 7 Eleven just a bit further down and chose to go stand in that queue. There were perhaps 20 or so people already there. Most were youngish, slightly geeky looking and they appeared to be the sort of expected "type" who would probably choose to listen to the music of Porcupine Tree. A young woman was standing in front of me with her boyfriend chatting to some blokes in front of them. She looked at me and without batting an eyelid said aloud but quietly and quite politely

You do not look like someone who would normally be seen at a concert like this!

We ended up laughing and chatting, both of us amused and amazed at how the power of music has a way of drawing unlikely people together. Personally, I was awe at the lengths people actually went to, to get to this concert. The girl and her partner were from Perth, opting to visit Melbourne for the first time ever just to experience Porcupine Tree up close and live! Another guy just in front of them in the queue was effectively a bona fide groupie having been to heaps of PT concerts in Europe and who had apparently, travelled from "Goodness-knows-where" to see them in Australia too. I met another guy later on from New Zealand who had travelled over, specifically to catch these guys in concert! A band with that kind of geographical pulling power must be worthy of attention surely?

The two hours waiting in the queue for the doors to The Palace seemed to go by really fast! I didn't even get that nervous "need" to go find a tree so to speak! That in itself was amazing (or I was very dehydrated! One of those options!).

Once inside I was surprised to see that this was in fact not so much a theatre as a club. The floor space dropped in graduated stages via short steps. The huge boarded space directly in front of the stage looked inviting and I "might" have stayed down there for the duration except my feet and legs were killing me and I needed to find that "tree" by then anyway! I went upstairs to the first level mezzanine and found what I was looking for. I also found a rather comfy armchair perched on steps. The whole place is effectively one giant bar with alcoves where one can be plied with alcohol or water in exchange for vast sums of money! I decided that since I had what I thought was a pretty prime piece of real estate - aka that big squishy and comfortable armchair - I wasn't going to go frolicking about looking ridiculous by ordering Lemon, Lime & Bitters and a bottle - small - of water. I parked my weary butt and waited.

The support act finally came out not much more than an hour later. Sleep Parade were cute, young and yet just seemed a bit desperate to me in some ways. It might be a common problem for supporting acts starting on their journey to fame and infamy. To me SP just seemed to be trying so very hard to be counted as serious prog musicians - which I suppose they are. To my naive and untrained ears they sounded tight but not really relaxed enough as a unit to lift their originals into the Memorable category. They definitely show promise though in the progressive rock market. So? That being said, they'll no doubt be on the lips of generations much younger than me in the years to come. Indeed they are probably to quote the lead singer:

...luckiest bands in Australia to be chosen to support Porcupine Tree. [unquote]

Watch this space. :)

At approximately 9:45pm, Porcupine Tree opened. I stood immediately, mainly because the two TALL guys just in front of me also stood. *sigh* Why is it that tall people don't naturally select the very back row as a matter of course? I will probably regret in the ensuing years not being pushy enough to scramble a spot on the railing right down at the front of the mezzanine overlooking the ground floor and with a perfect view of the stage! I could see okay though from where I was if I ducked and dived and generally stretched in and around the tall men in front of me. I could see the bare footed Steven Wilson (be.still.my.beating.heart.) and the amazing Gavin Harrison on the drums, Richard Barbieri on the keyboards and other eclectic sound morphing devices and Colin Edwin on the bass. They had a fifth member as a guest performer - an Aussie - but I missed his name and did not recognise him unfortunately. My apologies if he ever happens to read this (*smirk* - astonishing ego have I yes? *smirk*). Let's just say he fitted in perfectly well! :)

The band played most of the first seamless track from their new album "The Incident" which was released last year. I'd been listening to it for a few days prior so by the time they started playing it I was beside myself with joy and excitement. I just could not stop grinning like a fool! I had no children with me to embarrass and it was...is... highly unlikely I will ever meet anyone of the people at that event again, so I let my body "talk" with the music as it is always inclined to do so. I moved, jiggled, swayed and generally bounced along with sheer unadulterated pleasure! I had fun!!!! Amazing, awesome, wonderful, In-this-moment-I-am-happy fun!

The visual effects on the screen behind the band lent a surrealist landscape to the sound. And what sound! Effortless and inspired sound coming from depths of human suffering and yet morphing that suffering and pain into irrepressible cause for joy within my own soul. HOW can music be this Good? Guitar riffs morphing into psychedelic arpeggio's made of synth and keyboard then crashing over you suddenly, wave upon wave of heavy metal beat, interwoven with poetic, melancholic and ethereally beautiful melodies. I am awed at the musicianship quite frankly. Not one member of the band grand-standed; nor did they make a big show of anything - it was all about immersion in the sound; the music.

I of course - being very old and very practical - had brought along earplugs! I AM very grateful I did this because I snuck my right one out periodically to get a sense of how loud it was. Oh my giddy aunt! If I had have been down on the floor in the crowd - I am sure I'd be in the emergency dept by now screaming for my hearing to return and holding bloodied towels to the sides of my head. It was deafeningly loud. The earplugs actually made the experience MUCH better for me. I could clearly hear every note, every beat, every melody and every word! I went to bed later that night with no ringing in my ears and I can still use a phone without having to shout at people to "speak up"! :) A worthy addition to any concert attendance.

After a short break, the band returned to sing some old favs from earlier albums such as "Fear of a Blank Planet" and "In Abstentia", both of which get a regular airing in my iTunes playlist and on the ipod too :) Bliss....pure bliss to know this music even though I hardly know what the titles of the songs are really. I realised this because a bloke kept turning in the quieter moments (rare and profound), to ask what song they'd just played. I never knew what to say other than I "knew" the song but couldn't remember what it was called! *blush* I know - I am hardly an expert on these things. He kept saying "Amazing band!" over and over with each new song having never heard of PT before in his life until that night when a mate had dragged him along. A new fan born I reckon :)

When I finally made it out not long after midnight, I was so pumped and excited, I felt as if I was 16 years old again and as light as air. I sent a few text messages to let the kids know I was okay and proceeded to walk the few blocks back to The Vic. I had been more than a little worried about being on my own at this hour walking back but it was fine really - lots of people about and very well lit, much safer than it all seems in theory I guess. I settled into my room after a lovely hot shower. I hadn't realised how sweaty and icky I'd become standing for hours in a darkened club but there you go - live and learn! :)

I lay in this morning and leisurely pottered about my room on waking, packing up and moving through some exercises to relieve the stiffness in my legs and ankles. I guess this stiffness came from having to teeter on the edges of steps in order to see over tall people the previous night. :) I had a divine breakfast/brunch at Gordon's in The Causeway of light rye toast with sausage, tomato and cheese and a long Earl Grey tea *mmmmmm*. Then I wandered, rather aimlessly, and very leisurely, back towards the station for my train/bus home.

Again, the journey was uneventful and as I read my book and listened yet again to PT on my ipod, I could not stop smiling and feeling utterly relaxed and content with the state of things in this moment.

A blissful couple of days and I'm still purring.

Hope for Haiti Now Album

2010-02-04T09:00:00.003+11:00

Apple cobbled together a few of its pals to make a music tribute and raise money for the victims of the recent Haiti Earthquake.

The album is definitive 2000's pop + 20th Century classics, some apparently re-worked by the artists especially for this album.

Most tracks have a slightly more down-tempo feel which I suppose is to demonstrate respect but also appeal to a much wider than usual audience. As a result, I find it a bit a heavy on occasion as if its too earnest, too forced. I imagine most rock and pop stars must absolutely dread a world disaster these days! Disasters must mean an expectation that their profession will automatically line up for the fund-raising effort. The charity burn-out factor must be becoming a bit of an issue. Surely? Making and selling a music CD IS an easy way to "raise money" but its getting a bit tired! Where are the big Hollywood movies being donated to "raise money" for example? I might just be naive perhaps.

This album features most of the male and female A-Lister's of modern pop including Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Wyclef Jean, Bono, Justin Timberlake and so on. I am listening intently but did they HAVE to include Beyoncé's vocal theatrics? *sigh*. Might be just me - but her version of Halo on this album grates and comes across as forced and overly theatrical "compassion". It's the most irritating track and I skip it on each listen now.

Stand-out tracks for me are Bruce Springsteen's version "We shall overcome", Taylor Swift's "Breathless" (beautiful pop!) and Dave Matthews and Neil Young's version of "Alone and Forsaken" (brilliant stuff!). Then there's "Lean on me" by Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock and Kieth Urban. The weirdest track is Wyclef Jean trying to do a out-of-sync coolness (not!) version of "River's of Babylon" which is just "meh!".

At AU$13.99 (via direct download from iTunes) its not too bad value though its hardly going to be a memorable album in years to come I reckon. Overall, the album is too chunky, too serious, and feels more like a brick - albeit plated gold - than a feel-good treat and a thank you for my donated funds!

The album is apparently doing well though in sales and has raised a modest amount for the Haiti Appeal. Yes! US$3m + to date is "modest" in this situation. The Haiti crisis is going to take years to mend. It will cost billions to fix and a few sales of a CD aren't going to make too big a dent in that required amount. Truth be told - the money raised doesn't always get to where it is meant to go either! Once the ordinary folk of the world realise this travesty of justice... who knows what will happen to "Charity" then?

The organisations that can clearly demonstrate an ethical distribution of donated funds will prevail. Let's hope so anyway!

carpets in the halls of hearts

2010-01-26T21:49:00.002+11:00

Soft. Deep, like the coat of a wintering cat,
my heart feels full and sensuous;
luxuriating as I am in the pleasure of this touch
upon its long, un-walked halls.
Toes curling in delightful wonder,
on a carpet of alluring possibilities.
It's not the room at the opposite end
that holds my enthrall,
but the sense of the way there -
each step a wondrous epitome of discovery.
New love in every sinuous move -
every fibre beneath my feet,
a growth towards completion.

the ubiquitous resurgence of emotional turbidity

2010-01-17T10:13:00.003+11:00

Cloudy. Cloudy thoughts like those kinds of clouds raging across an unsettled sky. The questions are the clouds.

What is actually necessary? What is actually required? What is beneficial?

I "know" idealistically what I want but what I want may not be what is beautiful or perfect or desirable over the long haul.

The answers are feint; hidden as they are behind impenetrable mists of confusing needs and wants, idealistic propensities and zealous pragmatism.

There are times when my desire to know the future and its promises, becomes an intractable and unwieldy yoke. This may be one of those times when I probably could allow the question clouds maelstrom their way across my Thought Sky, without wishing for those answers to upset the swirly chaos.

Perhaps in the interests of simple Experience, its time to allow my questions to remain unanswered and be unfettered by fears of an impossible-to-know future and simply enjoy the ride.

Welcome romance...eschew what if's....

....simply enjoy the ride.

The cool, calm quiet

2010-01-08T07:30:00.003+11:00

It's going to be hot here in the next few days! Damn hot! Forecasts suggest in the realms of the low 40's Celcius (104F and then some). The temperatures these past few weeks have been up and down and all over the place. The highs and lows of the weather seem to be matching the roller-coaster ride of my life this past few years!

Right now it's very mild. There's a tinge of coolness on the air as if Mother Nature is blowing softly across the landscape with her lips pursed: much like a mother blows on her little child's food to take the edge off the heat. Respite.

Inside my own heart, I am also aware of a kind of coolness of spirit. A calm gentle mildness of Being. It's nice! My life has seen all manner of upheavals this past few years. Death, disease, anguish, pain, intense loneliness along with mountain top highs and euphoric moments of pure joy. It's been a roller-coaster that's for sure.

I used to think I would be partial to a roller-coaster but having experienced a real one in recent years I know I am not. Either I left my roller-coaster riding experience too late in life or I am simply far too acutely aware that these mechanical beasties have way too many bolts and bits that could shear off at ANY moment catapulting the riders all over the place! No thanks! The rattling, straining, speed and hurtling downhill pace of the roller-coaster is not for me. Far too scary.

Thank God (literally), we really can't read the future for if we could know about the little bolts, the noises, the squeaks, the down hill runs, the straining up hill climbs too well.... most of us would probably stay at home - in bed - under the covers and plead for Him to make us die!

Yes! My life has been a roller-coaster this past few years. Has it been fun?

*wry smile* No!

Yes!

Sometimes maybe on occasion.

Today as I sit here before heading to work, I am blissfully aware of an inner calm - a sort of peaceful acceptance that my life is my own and my roller coaster ride is perhaps coming to the end of its current session. However brief the hiatus between this last ride and any prospective future one will be, I will enjoy the cool, calm quiet of these moments very much indeed.

Silent Night

2009-12-24T18:01:00.004+11:00

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!

affairs of an online monster

2009-12-03T19:50:00.005+11:00

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.

Waves

2009-12-02T18:57:00.005+11:00

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 :)

I will be back ... eventually

2009-11-16T07:58:00.002+11:00

The tides of time and the phases of the moon have kept me from this space of late.

All is okay. I won't forget to keep musing and hoping and striving and creating.

Moving with the flow of things for now :)

I'll be back!

Zero to wine

2009-10-09T08:00:00.004+11:00

Eating her sandwich she glanced desultorily at the bottle of coke zero in front of her and noted that the use-by date on it was the day before her next birthday.

She wondered if that meant she'd be "passed her useby date" too, once it had slipped on by.

Sighing she mused on the fact that beauty these days, seemed to be more like soft drink with its quick-to-consume use-by dates, instead of like wine where it was presumed to get better, the longer it stayed on the shelf.

She wanted to be wine.

Thing was... at least a Coke bottle knew it would eventually be taken from the shelf in the not-too-distant future. A wine bottle, on the other hand, had to accept that mouldy labels, rats, cobwebs and a fair amount of surface dust would be its lot for quite possibly a very long time. Even then, there were no guarantees that whoever took it from the shelf would discover an exquisite elixir inside or vinegar.

She so hoped she'd not turn into vinegar while waiting!

of inner bag ladies and screwy humanity

2009-09-27T18:35:00.003+10:00

lessons are learned when we hit our metaphorical heads against the obvious, which hitherto has been invisible to us.

I'm learning lots of lessons in this microcosm of time called a "Weekend".

Lessons about the art of practising loneliness without letting the human will rise up to scream that "It's not my fault!".

What one feels is always, at the human core, one's "fault". Not a fault that is bad mind you - just a thing we own; a conscious muddle of reactive and proactive, miniscule decisions based in part on our history and in part on our natural inclinations in the processing of thought. The mush of messages we interpret through the miasma of feelings decipher for us what these feelings might mean - though we often get it wrong.

Emotions are neither good nor bad. Emotions just are. They're the responsive tendency of our nature to life within and without. Much of what we emote we choose, even if we're unaware at the time of our actual decision. Much of what we emote is based in part on our sense of ourselves; the way we view ourselves in relationship to others.

Many human beings have a strong sense of unworthiness or fear of that. I do believe that many of us - myself most of all - are incapable of seeing ourselves exactly as we are in perfect balance to the world and other people around us. I for instance, teeter and totter between the attitudes of exclusive "Above-ness" over others and mortified "Below-ness" under others. My moral compass has thus far been mostly, skewed to the latter and I am apt to measure myself, relative to others as below them, albeit not to be humble but rather out of some vain hope they will elevate me over them in gratitude for my humility. Screwy humanity indeed!

Loneliness is one of those emotions we like to ignore for as long as possible. I have recognised its crumpled hang-dog face this weekend and have been a bit shocked at how unkempt and ragged my self esteem has become. I've done this - no one else. I've fought valiantly for a long time to be super independent and so on but now the shuffling feet of my inner bag-lady - so alone and crazed with lack of social engagement must be made over.

What I've yet to work out is just how to do that without frightening the poor thing completely into total isolation from the world.

More lessons to come I guess. The "how-to-overcome-loneliness" journey begins.

back

2009-09-24T20:56:00.004+10:00

It's been a strange thing not writing in this place of late.

The heart is definitely willing but the will has been left high and dry through the use - and misuse - of a multitude of other distractions. Right now, my life consists of the treadmill of work, family life and Second Life and little else.

But anyway... I have plenty...plenty...of people telling me that I need to "get out there" and "meet new people" but quite honestly, I just can't be bothered you know! I'm in recluse mode this year and quite frankly, I think that's perfectly fine. At least for now! I'm having fun being on my own actually, and not being beholden to anyone. Well, more or less, as I do miss the "man-I-can-cuddle" thing if I was really being honest about this. Still, I'm not sure what I genuinely want out of life yet. I'm still figuring it all out. I do know I am way too shy to even think about going out and meeting real life men in real life situations and places.

Solitude is apparently only good in small doses and if one takes on board all that stuff about no man (or woman) being an island etc. then solitude is something that most people expect a person to give up eventually. Some people are naturally more inclined towards solitude than others and I may well be one of these types. I'm not sure how long this extended bout of solitude - and real life isolation outside of work hours - will continue, but I suppose it will be for as long as it is necessary for me to make the internal shifts I probably need to make in order to desire a different kind of life. Who knows?

I will admit, that mine is a bizarre kind of solitude though. I am not given to solitude in isolation! *smirk* (gotta love that little conundrum of a sentence *wink*). I may well be 'alone' on weekends despite kids and cats, preferring to be relatively undisturbed by other flesh and blood personages; but my social calendar is full to brimming with personalities all vying for my personal attention with stories to tell and banter to ply and flirty fun to be had

Oh yes! I am very much partial to long distance relationships where the full bottle of human behaviours is nicely chilled in a bucket of virtual fantasy. Second Life is like a zoo where I can observe the social proclivities of my own species from a slightly detached perspective. I learn so much in there about people! It's a cornucopia of chemistry through, mostly, written language and its fascinating to engage with and indulge in.

My imagination can fill in the gaps in between words with an entire picture of the person I am talking to through the screen. I actually "see" the metaphysical "shape" of a person through a miry world of story pictures, created from the syntax and rhythms of their speech in text.

Whether this image is truth is barely relevant because it is most probable that I will never meet their real life self. Often, in my experience, the magical quality of mystery which surrounds a person, never met, but known intimately in an online context, is severely mitigated once the real life, in person, meet up has passed. Sadly, this seems to often mean almost zero re-connection when back online in the virtual world. It surprises me how the intensity of online intimacy changes into mere aquaintance territory after real life meetings. There is a sort of kinship yes, but it's definitely less intensive than before a real life meeting. I've never really figured out why that is but I suspect its something to do with disappointment. This is natural of course, given our tendency to imagine finer and more lovely pieces fitting into the mysterious jigsaw of a person's physical self than is warranted. Rare is the human that under imagines things!

The interesting thing is that I believe I am perfectly myself in Second Life. Even though in there, I am not fat, I do not have wrinkles, zits or tuck-shop-lady-arms, I am quintessentially the woman that I am in every day life! My persona is fully intact except that I can express vanity in much more attractive ways :) I do not have to wonder where my blind left eye is actually looking and I do not have to worry about body odor, smelly socks, gas or garlic breath! In Second Life, my avatar is my beautiful, shiny self that can instantly engage in conversational banter with strangers without all that nervous, jittery angst. I can be witty and confident, playful and intelligent in there.

I soooo don't feel like that out here! And, barely anyone in real life knows that I am these things anyway, because I rarely feel its possible to display these aspects of myself due to real life social conventions which constrain and restrain my quirky esprit. Besides, I speak better through the written word than I do in my voice so that makes it even harder to be what I want to be out here anyway!

I am also exceedingly scared to have to "perform" like a seal for prospective new friends and lovers in real life. There is too much at stake, from how I dress, to how much weight I've gained (or lost), to an almost limitless capacity for gaucheness and a paucity of actual practical intelligence on my part! I'm a ditz and a goldfish (as in 3 second memory) and so implausibly skittish around men it's a wonder I ever got married!

It's a freakishly more difficult concept to get my head around in being told to "put myself out there" in the real world to meet people, than explaining to my sceptical work colleagues how to shop for hair and feet in Second Life, I can tell you!

Meeting real life people requires from me an emotional investment in courage I'm not yet willing to explore. The process feels unnatural and contrived for me right now. I'm more inclined to feel comfortably at ease talking to men - and women - from the United States, the Ukraine, Greece, France, Holland, New Zealand, W. Australia or India in Second Life and for now, that's where I am... and shall be, happily ensconced in my solitude :)

For now Second Life and Solitude are my hand-in-glove partners in emotional healing. I have not abandoned real life - I just want to escape its vicissitudes for a little while. When the time is right I shall most likely change spots yet again, and do something completely different. It's what I do!

unsure of everything

2009-08-22T13:20:00.003+10:00

There is a line from one of my favourite songs from the mid 70's by the Steve Miller Band that goes

Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping into the future

Ergo the phrase is a little mundane given that time is such a difficult construct to pin down with any philosophical accuracy. Still...I need to go dig the track out and play it loud I think. It may actually soothe and answer where other balms have failed.

Bemused can hardly describe the conflicted emotional state I've been in of late.

Perhaps it is my work that is consuming my focus that I find it so hard to express myself as freely as I once did.

I feel shy. Impossibly shy. It's hard to know why other than the depths of self-consciousness and horror at my inadequacies as a person are overwhelming some days.

Once upon a short while ago, I was able to write creatively in this blog without fear of retribution or rancour. Now, I find myself scared to write in here.

Blogging is a public domain gig. You are, in effect, playing karaoke to a room full of critics with the sum of your thoughts. One needs to wear the consequences of the occasional "flat note" and ride the waves of derision that come afterwards with good humour. Not as easy as that sounds. How can honesty prevail when cloaks and/or masks must be worn to protect the innocent?

This is flux time. A time when words are re-directed into other pursuits. It is a time of curtailing and a time for exorcising inner demons in other ways than through the power of writing a basic introspective self-important blog.

Perhaps aMusing is coming to an end?

Perhaps my genius... formerly named 'constructing coherence'... is re-baking its usefulness for other purposes?

It is a time to be aware that everything is unsure and uncertain and accept it is so.

As my dear friend bat always said, "We shall see".

never the same again

2009-07-27T06:37:00.004+10:00

Life has changed a lot!

Some for the better, some not so for the better.

When I chose to leave my marriage of 18 years, I knew that any changes to come could be difficult. At the time I thought little of what might be positive about the future other than a chance to start again and for life to be "different". Certainly, I was feeling there would be more pain and distress in the staying than in the leaving for the Big Unknown.

Over a year now and there have been tumultuous tides of change and yet hardly any to be seen on the surface of life per se.

After the initial shock of catastrophic physical change and the tumult of emotional pain passed, and time has morphed into days of more smiles than tears I still find that I've been huddled inside a shell of sorts this past few months. Like a tortoise or some ascetic hermit on a lonely mountain - I have battened down the emotional and social hatches of real life social engagement to recoup and thus nurture a changing emotional and social landscape within me! How ironic it is to say it in that way. I both cringe at and welcome this new phase of growth. The old wood is withering and I am in wait, under the ground, for the blooming season of Spring to begin something new. I now wonder if old tree trunks feel this kind of quiet accepting remorse as they shed one history in preparation for a move to the next.

The people I used to know are busy and I do not bother them. I have nothing to say. There are no common interests anymore, no familiarity of spirit ... just a bit of shared history now tainted with suspicion, repressed anger and the repose in their demeanour, which to me, suggests I am now a proven, betrayer in their eyes. I knew this would be so and I had prepared myself for its inevitability.

When it is cold outside, we close the doors against that cold; we light a fire at our hearth and sit beside it to wait out the bitter seasonal winds for the duration. All that frosty blustering, clamouring for reproach against us outside our emotional doors? I do not want it right now. It has been ....it is.... a time for nurturing me.

Normally, I feel guilty during phases like this. I am so hive-minded for the social collective I have an innate distrust of cloistered self protections. Depression, when one lives under a blanket of fear and isolation, can be ever present. But as much as I am wounded by the loss of what was before, I am positive that what will come will be worth the wait.

The changes being wrought in me during this shut-in time are in response to the changes being wrought out there where I do not yet have the courage - or the tools - to tread. The old life passes. A new life will emerge. In between - as it is now - is the Wintering of the Soul.

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 9

2009-07-16T21:19:00.001+10:00

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

The Psych-doc was sitting in a large faux-leather chair, the back of which towered above his head. The top of the chair had a panel, which incorporated a camera, sound equipment and recording devices. The person sitting in the chair merely had to pose the questions and all information was processed through his or her chair into the mysterious chambers beyond the Perspex walls of the “Counselling Room”.

“Tell me Ariadne, about your request?” the man said smoothly. Ari knew that each Psych-doc they sent her was trained to keep their emotional feelings and thoughts as quiet as possible. They were drilled in the art of merely asking rote questions, prepared well in advance and rehearsed with as much repetition as to inure the questioner against imprinting the question with their own emotional energies. Ari never got to really “know” a Psych-doc because “They”, on the outside of the Perspex, deliberately kept them on a wide enough rotation that she only saw each one a few times a year, at most.

She could still sense the rush of their heightened emotional energy as they entered the Counselling room, they could never quite mask the combination of fear, awe, excitement, self-focus, horror and sadness inside of them when they initially entered. They would never engage Ari in “idle” chit chat while they composed themselves for the session, and she would often find herself sitting in her own chair, watching them shut their emotional radars down as best as they could. Some were better at it than others. Women were always easier to read for the most part.

In a way, it was like the Psych-docs were as manipulated and controlled as she and the other mutants. They seemed to be almost hypnotically induced once they sat in their own chair, and their initial rush of emotion was quickly pulled in and down like shutters against the glare of a high noon sun. Their voices would change and all of them would speak in a similar tone, a deep, soft, mellifluous drawl as if dark chocolate were pouring from their mouths instead of pre-rehearsed questions. Their personalities, temperaments and their uniqueness were quelled and subdued to the point where each Psych-doc, male - or female - blended one into the other. It was deliberate, strategic and very, very costly. A good Psych-doc on a program such as this, earned Leverage Credit very much above that of the ordinary citizen, sometimes in excess of ten times more!

Ari always felt a little bit sorry for the Psych-docs despite hating what they made her say and do in these sessions. They were considered Normal Human Beings, whilst she and her fellow mutants were considered mere crops to be analysed, studied, genetically modified and controlled. She was not a Normal Human Being. The irony to this was that she at least could behave uniquely, different insofar as possible from her own genetic group. Uniqueness was encouraged among the different varieties of Ariadne. She was a special case in point as she was only the second mutation to display such strong empathic powers. Her predecessors’ genes had been a freak of nature, the cells of which had been quickly grafted into the next crop. Ariadne was the only one of this next crop to show any evidence that this particular genetic accident might be reproducible. Being empathic, as well as her extraordinary art, had kept this Ariadne strain from being re-integrated a lot longer than most.

The argument still raged in scientific papers as to whether this Ariadne should be sacrificed to scientific progress again or kept for further developmental studies. Her additional attributes, empath and artistic genius, in addition to her designed inability to shed tears meant that, so far, the camp for keeping her alive, were winning the debate.

The Psych-doc sitting in the chair was looking at her silently. Up until now, his focus had been entirely on himself, going within to quiet his own capacity to throw emotional information Ari’s way. Now, that he felt contained, he was studying Ari intently. Waiting for her to reply to his initial question, he looked down at the small table between their two chairs facing opposite each other. On the table were two glasses and a pitcher of water and a little packet. The packet was transparent and vacuum-sealed. Ari noticed it was a new bottle of eye drops.

“They’re different” she commented, avoiding his original question.

“Yes Ariadne. They are,” answered the Psych-doc matter-of-factly.

“What will they do?” she asked again

“We will find out.”

“Oh” replied Ari disconsolately. Some of the eye drops they’d given to her in the past had made her eyes very sore and they had burned constantly. Some had made her vision particularly blurry and the shapes of things had been difficult to make out in low lighting. Other eye drops had had the effect of blinding her temporarily in the eyes. She’d learned to not drop the other eye if this happened, so she could still see enough to draw her spirals, at the very least. Sometimes, they would refuse her the basic saline tears she kept at hand all the time. However, the dryness in her eyes would eventually cause her to pound at the Perspex and scream for it to wet her eyes in relief. She hoped that these eye drops would not have too many side effects.

“I need more saline,” she said, placing her own bottle, almost empty, on the table.

“It will be arranged,” said the Psych-doc simply. He never said when.

He repeated his question, more slowly and deliberately, his voice a study in the deep rich tones of conciliatory calm. “Tell me, Ariadne, about your request.”

To be continued…(I hope)

it's hard not to comment on the MJ thing.

2009-07-05T10:01:00.003+10:00

So...

This past couple of weeks, the world "lost" a couple of iconic personalities that have graced our screens and magazine editorials for many years.

Farrah Fawcett died as a result of her long-running battle with cancer. To all intents and purposes, she appeared to have displayed great courage and fortitude and a clear desire to help others going through a similar battle to her own.

She was known in the 70's for her hair and her amazing smile. There was a fresh-faced "All-American-Girl" style to her that typified the perceived beauty standard of her day. It made her famous. She also did some strong and gutsy performances in 80's and 90's tele-drama's about domestic violence. She never really made it "big" in the movies though but despite that, she did attain a kind of iconic status for simply being her unique self as a talented and privileged woman.

Micheal Jackson is iconic too but more infamously so. His mysterious persona and outrageously anti-establishment approach to his life, career and life-style since a young and very talented child in The Jackson Five, polarised the world into two distinct camps - those who loved him and those who loved to loath him. We know little about him really, the real MJ.

For all the media reports of his strange habits, desires, needs, wants, diseases, attire, and family history, Micheal Jackson is and will probably remain something of a mystery.

His music legacy will certainly live on - there is no question that he gave the world some catchy tunes that will probably be on Karoke playlists for some years to come but I am rather bemused by the fact that so many people are now embracing a man they disparaged barely three weeks ago.

Human beings are so bloody fickle! We denigrate weird people, but if they are particularly famous - and if they pass way suddenly - we flock to the shrine of their memory as if we had always lived there, happily bathing in the luxurious fantasies of having connection to their fame and persona. We celebrate the carnival of their famous life and we can't get enough of the intense chimera of their persona in death.

I wonder if we might have treated Micheal Jackson with more respect if he had had cancer and had died quietly after a courageous battle, extending good will and good humour to others in the process? The fact that he died "unexpectedly" is I suppose, the match that has lit this flame of hysteria and hype.

Micheal Jackon's memorabilia from his many years as a pop icon was dropping rapidly in "value" in recent years because of the accusations against him about pedophilia and his public mistakes regarding the safety of his children. He was too weird; too strange; too mysterious and other-worldly and was the butt of many ribald jokes. Disrespect for MJ - the man - was pretty much evident in most casual conversations. For some, his music was a cute passing wave at the 80's and his trade-mark dance move, the Moon-Walk was a gesture of silly fun, re-enacted when remembering the decade of excess.

Now that he has died at THIS time, people are clamouring to purchase pieces of that same fading memorabilia and the prices are sky-rocketing. It apparently pays to die famous...but only if you go suddenly while you're still more or less famous (or infamous)... and young it seems!

I think there has been more respect paid in death to Farrah than there ever will be paid to MJ. Farrah died as a courageous woman - or so it seems. There is no question of her integrity or her character. She fought a very human battle and lost it and we have respected that I think.

However, even I have bagged MJ out and taken pot-shots at his strangeness, post death! It seems he has become something other than mere human, maybe a sort of cute, grotesque monster perhaps. Certainly, we have not respected him as we have other famous people who have died. He has been fair-game in a mystery story, in life and now especially in death.

MJ isn't so much a man or a person but seems to have become, over the years, something of a reflection of the uncomfortable weirdness we sense in ourselves but cannot define. MJ has become a Thing, an un-person and that's kind of sad really.

The brouhaha of Micheal Jackson will die down eventually I guess. It took approximately 20 years before people began ignoring the anniversaries of the unexpected death of Elvis. I suppose it will be similar for MJ.

I could write some platitudes here about him "resting in peace", or that he was a "great talent that the world will always miss" and so on, but I can't really. I can't feel anything remotely warm for the man that he was because I simply didn't know him as a man in that sense. He's always been a circus to me. Fantastic, surreal, other-worldly, weird, grotesque, NQR and so on. The hype surrounding his death is like a thriller movie already. There is melodrama and edge-of-the-seat wonder about what will happen next.

It's bizarre and it tells us more about how weird WE are ...how weird *I* am... than it does about who the real Micheal Jackon is.

A wave just took on a new meaning

2009-07-04T18:16:00.004+10:00

I've just spent a very pleasant and informative hour watching a YouTube of the "preview" for "Google Wave" at a web development conference.

The little YouTube vid might be one giant ad for a new product but because the product is going to be Open Source (more or less), it means that it has the potential to become one of the most revolutionary communication tools to hit our desktops and mobile devices since the advent of email!

I watched the entire presentation! That's saying something for me! I usually lose interest pretty quickly on this under the hood techy stuff. I don't fully comprehend the inner workings of the www but I like what it produces. This video presentation however, is not that dull really and there wasn't much in it I didn't understand either. I am no developer and I can't read code other than a smattering of HTML. On this video, which explains what is intended with Google Wave when it launches, I could understand the implications of - and the amazing potential - to transform live, real time 'over-the-net-at-a-distance' conversations and collaborations, with people all over the world.

Dave Pollard pinpoints the potential of Google Wave nicely in a recent post of his and I'm grateful he's shown me the link! I'm quite blown away by the potential especially for community building.

Describing Google Wave is quite possibly going to be the hardest aspect of the whole thing I think. Many of the people I associate with outside of the www - in so-called "real life" - barely seem to grasp anything other than the usual suspects of online communications such as email and Instant Messaging. Web tools such as Facebook and Twitter are slowly becoming more common amongst friends and relatives but these are also reasonably linear and static in functionality. Google Wave appears to be a zillion times more interactive than ANY social media could conceive to be, (except maybe for Second Life - which is viewed by many in my immediate circles as totall NQR as in Not-Quite-Right. I'm apparently, more than a little "weird" for being a Second Lifer in these parts).

Google Wave is going to be tough to describe to friends, co-workers and family. It will be like trying to describe a spiral staircase - without using your hands - to demonstrate that concept to someone who has never seen one before.

So what IS Google Wave? Well....... let's see if I can encapsulate it, although I think Dave's story in his blog does this better really.

It's email; it's IM; it's a wiki; it's capable of supporting many innovative applications; it can interface with multiple kinds of social media, such as Twitter and Blogger.com; it's as private as you need it to be and as public as you want it to be. You can have multiple threads across several different waves and cohere them into one wave if necessary or you can take the threads of one wave and dissect it into multiple offspring conversations that can evolve into their own waves. It even has live real-time translation of other languages built in so that conversing in someone from France or Germany, Japan or Holland will eventually become as seamless as conversing with others in English. It uses the language protocols of the web to intuitively surmise your spelling AND context as you go. You can embed photo's, blog posts, tweets, vidcasts, podcasts, documents, and whatever else the current tech allows us to do online within a wave for others to manipulate or utilise or comment on. Google Wave will make Facebook look like a chalk board I think in time. Community is now officially "Global".

I can see so much potential for this type of online interactive tool. Thing is, here in my corner of the physical, real life experience, many people don't seem to fully grasp the possibilities of tools like this. We're so used to the linear versions of snail mail, email and telephone that applications like Google Wave might remain largely under utilised for some time here, except by those in the world who are highly invested in web based technology anyway. They would most likely include corporate business privateers, web developers, online marketers and a few hobbyist bloggers like myself. For the masses who are only just now tapping into the wonders of Facebook and Twitter - Google Wave is going to have to be a real snap for people to grasp....and explain to their friends!

The beauty is that Google Wave doesn't NEED to be on every computer in order for it to work! Just like with email and IM, it won't matter which service provider you have an account with, if you have the interface....ANY kind of wave interface.... you can access whatever wave of information comes your way, even if the other users in your wave have a different interface than you! That's the really cool thing about this new tool, it's open and adaptable to the market. The sheer flexibility of that will make the product probably work very seamlessly and I guess most people will just catch on regardless if they understand it or not.

What I'm really excited about is the possibility for a collaborative learning system for isolated rural communities. If we can bring high speed broadband into the regional areas of populated Australia, applications like Google Wave will revolutionise these tiny communities to strengthen relationships not just online but also within their own real world settings.

For example, communities can communicate with elected members of Parliament, educators and health advisors more efficiently. Kids won't need to leave their communities to go to Uni unless they really want to. Small business can have markets that don't rely on local populations to sustain them. And, I think there'd be a whole raft of conversations between linked rural hubs where meetings, networks, and grass-roots social exchanges would take place.

For example, someone says on a Wave, "Let's go down to the local hall and play 500 next week to raise money for the childcare centre"... from that one question, local members of the community can plan, iterate, select, argue, debate, execute all the required planning needed for the project to happen all within the Wave itself, where everyone can participate either in real time or when they log on later. Google Wave has the ability to allow people to "play-back" the threads of conversations they have come in on half way through. That way they can catch up with the conversation and they'll know exactly how it has played out so far. No more having to attend meetings physically to arrange community meetings! Wow!

This will not only save small communities a lot of time, it will revolutionise the way we plan and conduct meetings. We will still meet! But the getting to meeting will be handled more effectively via tools like Google Wave. It's not about replacing face-to-face, it's about having access and more importantly, input, into the process of conversation that will make the difference. The success of actual face-to-face will be that much greater as people will still effectively have been included in the process and the conversations for making that event happen.

If you have enough bandwidth to view the presentation, I heartily recommend you do. Google Wave is set to launch late 2009.

freaky mind things - a slightly whingy post about nothing much

2009-06-25T17:39:00.003+10:00

The vicissitudes of life have caught up with me this past couple of months. Since starting in my job full time a few weeks ago, I seem to have relegated a few of my favourite things to the backburner.

1) Being organised at home: This is a nightmare really. I love having a tidy home and things in their proper places but currently, my in-tray is overflowing and the kitchen floor looks like it needs scrubbing with a diamond cutting device! The bathroom is in dire need of sterilisation and the second lounge room - where son and band regularly congregate for jam sessions - looks like the remains of a hobo's abandoned campsite. You'd THINK I could manage all this and I always have in the past, but for some unknown reason (other than sheer "don't want to know" on my part after work each day), it's all falling apart at the seams.

2) Going for regular walks: Well... there is really no actual excuses for this one because I've rather been too fond of chatting to friends online after work than going for a long walk in the dark and the freezing cold! Enough said! I'm hiring a treadmill (as soon as I can dig my way into the second lounge room to find floor space for it).

3) Writing in my blog and continuing to write my story about "The Girl who couldn't cry". I write tonnes nearly every day now. It's a bit like glutting oneself on too many chocolates; after awhile, you become a bit "meh" about the idea as a fun thing to do after work. I promise I'll get motivated very soon and write like Dickins to get that wee story rounded up! (I hope ;)).

So! there you go. Whinge complete for today. At the very least I have written "something" here in my little blog I love so much. That's a good start yeah?

I haven't mentioned that a part of the "problem" is my own propensity to want to shut the world off and enter into Second Life as a way of chilling out. I admit it now. I have been using sl as my device to turn off from reality and it's showing. I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to make definitive promises to "better" this arrangement for now. I work... I come home...and I have every intention of playing as well. Sl is my play ground - my sandpit - my "pub" where I go have a yarn with me mates after work. That work above will get done in its own good time - when soul, body, mind and emotion are ready and willing.

You know though... I've been thinking! It occurs to me that in regards to this blog writing I do have one interesting conundrum. My muse is currently, wandering the cyberworlds on new missions and due to time zones and other constraints the stuff that normally gets generated in my mind from the hubhub of our conversations, has been missing of late. He's presently a bit more low key than usual and not as available for sounding off about stuff with.

I started this blog before I really knew him but I do admit that his input into my process of blogging has been pretty high over this past three years. How interesting!

Could it be that I write only when inspired by external creative inputs from others? I hope not! I had thought this was all "my own work" - but maybe I have relied on my muse - and others - to fill in the thought bubbles a bit, imbibing the essences of their unique character recipies and added spices.

I wonder if other writers also absorb their writing from the external experience of relationships to things and people more than creating the experiences from pure ideas alone?

Honestly... I'm really too tired to philosophish about this one in too much of my usual wordy detail today... have to go make something for my family to eat.

I'll be back.

vogue's version of a wedding

2009-06-08T16:26:00.005+10:00

Vogue Australia had a rather creepy fashion concept in the past edition June 2009. Sadly I can't find the pics I want to show you on their website so you'll have to go fishing for a copy at your local dentist waiting room now I suppose.

I happened to pick up a copy to read at a local cafe while having lunch last week. A couple of articles were read...yeah ..they were okay.

But then I turned the page to reveal the Vogue Bride section.

Well.....haute couture aside, the poor model acting as resident clothes rack for the day had an appalling dose of the droopies!

I've never seen an unhappier bride in all my born days. The surreal backdrop of a wedding day complete with gorgeous gown and glowing accessories were utterly undone by the repose of the model herself. It was as if the photographers (all males I might add), were trying to tell the oggling masses out there reading, that marriage is a sucky business of vastly over-rated proportions! Which may well be true for some...but hardly a pretty addition to an over-priced fashion magazine! The idea is to make girls want to have all that - to sell clothes I thought!

Perhaps they were borrowing from the thriller novels of the era portrayed - the theme was very Victorian era in many ways - I recall "The Woman in White" in this instance. But even this was creepier and gloomier and about 10x more confusing really!

The model's shoulders were drooped down in the most cringe-worthy slump of depressive malaise ever seen on anyone! Let alone a bride! Her hair was mussed and frizzy, unkempt and disorderly. Her face was pale and devoid of colour. She could have perhaps looked a little bit like the love child of Tilda Swinton and our own dear Cate Blanchette really - but sadly I think those two fine actresses would be mortified to have birthed such a maudlin child as this...and showing up as much on her wedding day too no less?

So anyway... if the blokes that put this spread together were being cheeky and having a dig, then fine but the tone was too downbeat to show the cloth in my laypersons opinion (I be no fashionista afterall and haven't a clue what is trendy or otherwise - don't sue me!).

I am already sceptical of marriage enough without having a set of pictures feeding me a concept of it that implies it's actually more a funeral than a love commitment made public!

Nice one Vogue Oz? Ha! No! It was stupid and a wasted display of some lovely fabric.

choosing to go with the flow

2009-05-31T16:15:00.003+10:00

I've chosen a hard option.

To celebrate that which I do not have.

I have it but I don't.

I have generally railed and ranted and complained and whined and moaned about my propensity to choose that which is - in my perception that is - the unavailable and out of reach.

This time I choose to say "well yes...in this context its unavailable but in that context there it is very much available"

This time I choose to say "I'm totally able to accept and embrace this choice I have made despite the angst is causes me outside of the present moment".

My heart wants to do this.

it's crazy.

wrong.

stupid.

unavailable.

NQR. (not quite right).

It makes beautiful, wonderful, amazing sense exactly where it is.

I'm celebrating the ubiquitous ambiguity of unavailable love.

..................................and the theme song for the week is

Franky Goes to Hollywood's "Relax"

"Relax"

Oh oh
Wee-ell-Now!

Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
When you want to come

Relax don't do it
When you want to to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to suck to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Come-oh oh oh

But shoot it in the right direction
Make making it your intention-ooh yeah
Live those dreams
Scheme those schemes
Got to hit me
Hit me
Hit me with those laser beams

I'm coming
I'm coming-yeah

Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come

Relax don't do it
When you want to suck to it
Relax don't do it (love)
When you want to come
When you want to come
When you want to come
Come-huh

Get it up
The scene of love
Oh feel it

Relax
Higher higher

Hey-
Pray

heresy or insight...the dilemma is Now

2009-05-19T16:49:00.008+10:00

NOTE: For those of my readers who are opposed to, or find any kinds of ramblings about the christian faith somewhat annoying, please stop reading now. I don't profess to be a complete fundamentalist when it comes to christianity but every now and again, I have to muse on stuff that butts up against my faith in significant ways. This blog post is one of "those".

Some online friends and I are currently discussing a book called "The Mandala of Being" by Richard Moss.

The book is definitively a "New Age" self improvement book and to all intents and purposes would be immediately considered "Heresy" by most scholars and lay persons of the Christian faith.

Why would I do this? Read this book? Given that my faith is a stubborn attribute of my nature and I refuse, point blank, to renounce the divinity of Christ or subjugate him to the realm of "mystic teacher", I am probably playing with "The Devil Incarnate" from a traditionalist christian perspective.

That is sad! You see... most westerners, who have little time or understanding - or even knowledge - of the Triune God, will immediately renounce Christianity on the basis that we preach "Freedom" but in fact jump on followers for exploring "a new age book" (or any kind of "new age" book); one that aims to help people be better and whole, enveloped in Love, no less.

Christianity is supposed to be about Love...such love that defies logic! Impossible Love. Love of infinite and immeasurable proportions. Mostly, we limit this love by our feeble attempts at describing obedience and our brandishment of our dogma. So much of my faith wallows in the halls of fear and guilt - when we are supposed to be consistently within that joyous space of contentment that Moss describes as the Now but for which for "us" as christians, is buried in the nature of Christ Himself.

Richard Moss is somewhat scathing of the traditional expressions of the christian faith. It is as it as always been for christians... we're "nut cases"; "stupid creatures" who have no wisdom or logic to be believing in such a capricious and over-bearing god who demands we obey and has the audacity to call it 'freedom'.

The book attempts to describe a way of centering the Self into a place of timeless joy, presence and wholeness that has no bearing on time, place, imagination, history, story, emotional response or reaction. It is a place of Being and a sense of the Now, that precludes all judgments and imaginations. It is a no_Thing place of centered calm and illuminating Peace.

I have expressed myself, vociferously, in my small group (and I congratulate them on being so gentle and tolerant of my emphatic statements. It is after all, a "story" I am telling that I refuse to negate) - that for Christians, this material in the Mandala of Being, expressed so rapturously by Richard Moss is a GIVEN when we centre ourselves IN CHRIST.

Christ is the NOW.

Well! He is supposed to be! When christians are asked by God in Scripture to bury ourselves "in Christ" we are in effect, being asked to come back to the 'Centre of our Being', that place in the Now, unattached to the past, the present, the future, others and even our selves.

"There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ" (Rms 8:1)

It is language that lets all of us down. This incredibly difficult material that I am reading and working through with my friends, both intrigues and frustrates me. Moss does his best to bring clarity to the material but it is so elusive. His yogic practise of centering the attention on ones breathing just doesn't do it for me (probably just as well), nor do I find many of his other exercises engaging and centering for me personally. His mandala concept is kinda cool, all I can see is a cross of course and you know where that will lead if I bang on about that stuff just too much ;)

However, I will say that I have had many, many occasions of being utterly lost inside prayer. When my focus is on God or elevated within some sort of spiritual process of discovery which is directed at the Divine as I understand that to be, that is my experience of the kind of elusive centeredness Moss tries to describe. I don't find any "no-Thingness" about this experience for me though, rather - the place I experience is FULL. There is a full-blown sense of being in the company of someone else, other than myself, who is much, much larger than the sum of all time's parts. There is a sense of being complete, of being safe, centered definitely - but not as Moss describes it - alone and yet merged into everything at once etc!

If ONLY it was easy for others to see what I see! But that is a value judgment of others that I am asked by the world, to not make. I am to keep quiet about God because God is an overwhelming responsibility that makes little logical sense to anyone who refuses to or cannot know him. My shockingly perverse attempts to find language that will have meaning to those who don't understand are too fraught with overtones of fundamentalist christian dogma.

Love cannot be seen if your art forms for describing it are too cryptic.

Still. For me there is the fundamental flaw of Self-Aggrandizement in this book. Mankind, since the days of Babel, has aspired to establish the divinity of Mankind. Richard Moss compounds this aspect of mankind's craving to be godlike by reiterating the ancient pagan and new age belief in our superiority and ability to be Masters of our own Making. We all, supposedly, have the power to find our own peace and our own joy and our own sense of centerdness. I disagree!

Be that as it may, if I place myself outside of my faith system for a moment and try to view this from the perspective of one who cannot or does not know God, I can see how wonderful this promise of Moss' can be. To lose fear and to love - in spite of ourselves - is not only challenging it is elusive. We're all caught up in spectral disorders of fear, hope, nostalgia, me, you, competitiveness and self aggrandizement. Richard Moss is offering non-christians a kind of new "wonder-drug" of zen calm; a place of perfect non-anything where there is sympatico contentment with the Self. The Self becomes the spring-board for Superior-to-everything-else equanmity. It's very cool. Very edifying for the ego to be in that kind of space. There is supposed to be humility here - it is a "no-Thing" place we recall! My cynic slip is showing now! ;)

Maybe its impossible for me to imagine this material outside of the lens of my faith system? Christians will rail against such philosophies of course. There is not much that can be done about it except understand that we as the church have really let God down in the way we communicate Christ as the Now of our being.

more fool us I suppose.

Note 2: Those who are Christians and read my blog please note - that I may muse more on the Mandala of Being as I plough through it (it's really heavy going), and that I may, in fact, find useful pieces of information within it that I will want to talk about here - not necessarily from within the context of my faith system. So ...no feeling smug about this piece of preachiness here, please, dear brother or sister in the faith! *smirk* thanks.

it's been awhile dear blog hasn't it?

2009-05-03T18:37:00.002+10:00

I've become a little slack at a number of things of late not the least of which is writing in my favourite corner of the WWW; that being this little amusing blog of mine.

I don't know why I have these long periods of "whatever" about writing in here! After a week, this blog calls to me like a Siren from across a vast ocean of responsibilities and tasks. I long for it but the thought of tapping out "something" in here that is witty or profound enough can still my answer to her insistent call. It's like I get cement shoes on for a bit and dig in and won't budge! I fear responsibility so much and even a blog won't boss me around!

That being said...writing does win out eventually! Here I am after all :).

I love writing so much, I can't help but do it every day in one form or another. One of the best gifts I ever paid myself was when I was in year 10 at College back in '76. I decided in about term 2 of that year that I probably "should" do typing in year 11 the following year. This meant I had to catch up seeing as I hadn't taken typing as a subject from the pre-requisite year 9 level. It was night classes or nothing!

For two terms, I slugged it out for two and a half hours a week with Miss Obst, a skinny woman about my fathers age who's eyes seem to glint like flint steel whenever she said my name or looked at me! She had it in for me and subsequently my sister after me. Nothing we did could please her. Needless to say, even after all these years, if someone stands over my shoulder while I type...I have a spaz attack and can't type a single legible word for crackers and salt! Honestly? She done fair put the wind up my holes - that woman - when it came to typo's!

Typing was a duty in those days. A skill that was still a left-over '60's pre-requisite for all young ladies to master. Only of course that it made them somewhat more employable before the inevitable marriage and babies gig, society had rigged for our lot. I slogged away at typing hating every minute of each and every second! It was drill work, boring, inconsolably so. That height of modern 70's whiz bang technology, the electric type-writer became like a Mephistopheles to me; a laughing demon of exacting and proficient letter positioning.

I made so many typo's!

I sucked at typing!

I could barely get 50 words per minute with half again the accuracy! But I stolidly plodded onwards, determined as I was to be "employable" eventually.

Secretly, I just hoped some man would come along and marry me forthwith...even at the ripe old age of 16 years and 10 months and I would retire to being the farm girl I'd always been, with romantic kisses for real instead of in girlish fantasies instead!

Life never matches ones fantasies! Of course!

I learned to type.

In about 1995...thereabouts... we (being my ex husband) got our first computer. My kids were young and I was suitably impressed that my husband was trying so hard to keep "up with the times". I'd done some word processing courses as an Adult learner in long periods of unemployment...in order to make me more "employable" (story of my life really..a blog for another day this employability quotient aspect to the back story of my life)!

It didn't have the internet at the time! But I slowly picked up the skill of typing again. It's apparently one of those things that once you learn, your fingers never forget! Given of course that some idiot doesn't decide to change the traditional QWERTY keyboard of course! If that happens I'm in a big big shitty hole! *gasp*

THEN a year or so later, we got dial up internet and my life changed inexorably! Now I had a window to a world of words I could have never dreamed possible. My innate sense of story was unleashed and I WROTE like I'd never written before! My typing flew off the scale in terms of speed and accuracy. I still make mistakes, but whereas Liquid Paper had previously been my best friend in the past, the computer made typo's a relatively non-onerous event! I could edit on the fly and no one be the wiser! :)

What joy! What a pleasure to be able to write like the wind as fast as my brain could fathom the words!

The key to this process was a little mums world forum on a chat website I came across. I learned so much that year from other women around Australia about the intricacies of web talking! Talking in text, in words in pixilated print!

Never have I felt more at home than in this environment. On the screen, inside of it, the ideas in text burgeoning forth like the spraying mist of a Niagrian Brain.

Words! I love them. I always have. I wrote poetry as a teen and stories. I read books voraciously in holidays and I have always enjoyed the art of the great story-tellers like Henry Rider Haggard and Jean M. Auel and M. M. Kaye and so on! I even read James Joyce Ulysses (though I didn't understand it really)!! And Homer's Illiad and Odyessy! I was and am the classic lit snob. I collected ancient books with musty mildewed pages and read the stylistic syntax of Victorian prose and poetry with all the snobbish sweaty palmed drooling capriciousness of a budding scribe herself. Only, I had NO IDEA I was meant to be or wanted to be or love being a "scribe"!

Not until the internet gave me the gift of being able to write and I pressed that old skill of typing into its proper ethical and purposeful use...did I know that I was and am and will be some kind of writer.

It will be here, maybe just this blog or elsewhere on the World Wide Web that my writing will be of any significance. I aspire to a book or a number of novels but in all seriousness, I highly doubt my skill enough to warrant such a claim. I seem to be suited to the transient freedom of eclectic writing in an introspective blog.

Alternatively, it is in the 1000's of conversations I have with people from all walks of life from across this small green planet where my writing is in its highest expression. It's in text - in Instant Messages and in chat screens on my computer. That is where my writing develops a context and a meaning far beyond any Rider Haggard aspirations in literature could take me. It is in the development of relationships via chatting in text that my writing takes flight and my typing speed spikes! I love it!

Go figure!

So what does all this mean?

It means I've been busy! I've been chatting to people from across the globe and typing my little heart out in conversations and emails and creative works. I've also been hard at it at work, writing text for inclusion in brochures, in letters, in flyers, in reports...I have been TYPING and WRITING...daily...and my life is replete with a satisfaction for the journey I can scarcely describe!

My joy in this is insurmountable even while the evidence for it may not be at all.

I so suck at voice though :)

hahahaha

Where have I been?

I've been writing!

If I knew how to write I'd...

2009-04-22T17:27:00.006+10:00

write enough "Love Actually" scripts to sink the Titanic.

I'd write a "Gone with the Wind" or "The Fountainhead" classic every year.

I'd write love poems, tragedy, comedy and I'd be as prolific as Ben Elton with even more of an edge.

I'd write for the New Yorker. I'd write for Time. I'd write for The Boston Review.

I'd write the lyrics of songs that would be sung in a hundred years time.

I'd write essays of thoughts so philosophically profound, people would wonder if Emerson or Thoreau had reincarnated themselves via me.

I'd write children's books that J.K. Rowling would write the preface's for.

I'd write travel tales every bit as extraordinarily touching as those of Elizabeth Gilbert (and I'd be every bit as gorgeous too!).

I'd write stage plays so astonishingly insightful into the human condition, even George Bernard Shaw would rise from the dead to tip his hat.

If only I knew how to write!

If only I knew how to make clear the prose that resides in the mind of my Muse but which for me, resides as mere hints of shadows in phrase and syllable: just broken fragments, pieces of ideas and thoughts, juicy hints of poetic genius, swooshing about, unable to be grasped or seen clearly enough to snatch onto the page or remain there.

There is a marked anxiousness in the Spirit's desire to write frantically all the potential of the universe onto the page under my hand. Alas, but my hand hovers frozen in stasis, and my mind which is controlling this ''twixt heaven and hell' state of play, is grinding gears, frustratingly obfuscated to the very things Spirit knows to be truly there for the writing.

Muse plays and cavorts with my moods. I feel her knocking at my spirit door seeking entrance but if I fling open the door, I can hear her sparkling, cynical laughter as she floats down the passages of my thought processes while I chase after her, silently screaming for that which she was hinting to tell while the door was 'ere closed.

If only I knew how to write!

To feel the unhindered quality of text pouring forth in casual, easy rhythm; the words moving on the page like living entities all collectively related to each other by the blood ties of an effortless syntax so strong they form a genealogy of prosaic providence...always imaginative... that has a reach throughout all time.

If I only knew how to write and write WELL; so freakishly, so insanely, so unequivocally well.

My blog would reach millions and not just a few. Even Seth Godin and Tony Robbins would want to read me. I'd be able to teach the world through the musings that would arise from the very core of my soul and my "Genius" would be engaged with my Ultimate Purpose all combining into a synergy of limitless potential for change and growth, a constructive coherence...for the better...for everyone...

If I only knew how to write... Oprah would mark my words.

If only I knew how to write.

who do you think you are?

2009-04-19T18:49:00.003+10:00

well?

Who do you THINK you are?

What we see of our Selves as we go about our lives, is a screwy combination of a lot of assumptions about things that have happened to us, or are going to happen to us, or are happening to us.

We perceive ourselves through a rather faulty lens most of the time. It's really hard for most people to be completely honest about who they think they really are inside.

We generally fall into one of the following categories:

a) We believe we are so utterly beneath most people, we consistently believe and sell ourselves short of our talents, gifts, value and purpose.

b) We believe ourselves so utterly above most other people, we consistently alienate others and yet blame them for "disappointing" us all the time.

c) We waver between these two poles and consistently over-compensate when engaged in either a) or b) swinging wildly between them and losing all sense of security in our identity at all.

Much of the time we can blame our upbringing, our genetics, our environment for all the cumulative "failures" we believe we endure. Thing is, we sometimes forget that what we THINK in any given moment - whether as a reaction to our emotions or as an impetus to emotion - will trigger a slew of things we can never quite believe or accept or understand or aspire to or we underestimate them or overestimate them and so on.

Thoughts beget new thoughts and our emotional re-activeness can lead to thinking that is at best, mildly wise and at worse, a completely irrational and gross over-assumption of the real.

Many of the self-help gurus' would lead us to believe that thinking positive thoughts and having a much more optimistic 'glass-half-full' bravado, will generally lead us to a better life because we'll begin to "manifest" a better life as a result of thinking better.

I still think this is pretty much BS for the most part. It's hard to argue against it though. If we THINK something is bad then it can't be anything BUT bad because that's what we think and assume it to be! It's hard to think of having a brain tumour as something positive isn't it? It's hard to think that missing your flight for a very important job interview is going to lead to new amazing opportunities isn't it? We're led to believe that we either brought these things on ourselves through our thought processes and that we actually wanted them or that somehow, there is a positive outcome that an arbitrary universe bestows on individuals further along the time-line just because of our predicament in the here and now! It's a cruel thing to believe. I'm not saying it's not entirely untrue even so.

I have no idea! For the most part, I'm still very much of the opinion that despite man's insistence on bending truth to suit, there is such a thing as Absolute Truth that cannot be bent by either Science, religion or man's equivocal and super quixotic tendencies to try. There is "something" that exists in the world, in nature and inherent within Life itself that is exactly what it is and can be nothing else. We keep looking for it and we probably ignore it for the most part because we assume that something like that is probably really hard to find but just as likely, it's probably easy as all hec to see - we just consistently expect it to be other than what it actually is!

If our thoughts do indeed create the world and our environment in which we react so vociferously and willfully, then seeing ourselves for what we actually are is mind-blowingly difficult. At least it probably is for many people not the least of which is me! It's like we live with this spectre of intense Self love and even more intense Self loathing, battling inside our deeper psyche, warring it out over which one will get the upper hand; our 'Terrified-I-don't-fit-in' little selves or our 'Super-ego-inflated-over-the-top-of-everyone-else' big selves.

Finding the spot where we're exactly who we are and KNOW that to be True - Absolutely True - is a massive test of character, wisdom, humility, patience, acceptance, Love and of pure objective compassion.

Strange isn't it? That we can probably only see what we truly are when when we are at once brutally honest and utterly, completely and unsentimentally compassionate with ourselves at the same time. Nothing in our past, our future, even around us in our present world is the mirror into which we can look with any accuracy as to our Absolute Truth of the Self. Our eyes are like a carnival hall of mirrors that distort and refract what is presented to them and from those weird and grotesque deformations, we construct a view of our Selves and how we fit into this world that is most likely largely inaccurate and silly.

Neither abject self debasement, nor total self aggrandizement, of our person hood, in this life, will help us see ourselves clearly as we truly are.

The truest form that Nakedness takes is to stand utterly stripped of the mirrors that are our eyes and the thoughts we contrive from the evidence of our eyes, our ears, our nostrils, our tongue and our fingers and without thought, allow our Self to feel this moment.

No scanning, no judging, no assuming, no forecasting, no musing, no alluding, no naming, no wondering, no acknowledgment, no hindering, no moralising, no debasement, no aggrandizement, no fretting, no pride, no smug assuredness, and nothing else that causes or reacts to human thought: just THIS moment and - without naming it or giving it labels to rationalise it away - what you feel within and without is exactly who you are. It's never what you think.

Celebrate that.

Musing on my relationship with food

2009-04-12T17:30:00.002+10:00

(NB: This is pretty much a stream of consciousness ramble. I'm thinking aloud sorta in words. It is probably too long and boring for most to read but for me it's my way of figuring out something baffling. You're welcome to read it and hopefully you will have an insight that can help yourself or someone else - including me - along the way).

I am an eater.

Nothing new about that per se. Most living creatures eat - even single celled organisms almost invisible to the naked eye eat - sort of.

Eating is at the crux of the sustainability of Life. Nourishment from an external compound creates a looped system of Birth - Life - Death complexity that can boggle the mind if you let it.

Food, in order to make that Life part between Birth and Death has to have just enough of the right chemical compounds to bring the right kind of sustaining nutrients required by the various cells in the body to continue to function even while they are in decline and decay. The aim of food is to delay the decay process of Life towards death for as long as possible so that the propagation of those cells can be as successful as possible in new generations. Life is incredibly selfish that way!

That's the simplistic side to the food story. The base understanding that food is necessary for my very survival and fitness to live for as long as possible, is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Thing is - food - and I - have a complex relationship superimposed onto the mere survival one that is so in your face, its spinning obviousness is akin to a Catherine Wheel! It's somewhat dangerous and even a little bit incendiary. Food is both my saviour and my nemesis; my god and my daemon.

Love and Hate for this substance that gives me life or could just as easily kill me before my body has had a chance to live out its natural and slow decay process to a peaceful death, gives me both chills and thrills: and sometimes the order of those are mix and match to the order of the others. What gives me a thrill is likely as not to be incredibly dangerous if consumed in too great a quantity over a sustained period. What gives me chills is likely as not to be the very thing my body craves to nurture it to continued life. And vice versa.

Three years ago, I weighed in excess of 105 kilograms. For those not yet familiar with Metric measurement that equates to approximately 230 pounds (16.5 stone for the UK people out there).

Right now, I am not game to stand on the scales to see for sure what I currently weigh. About 6 months ago it was somewhere in the vicinity of 75kgs (165lbs or 11.5 stone). I suspect I may have gained in under two months, approximately 10kg (22lbs or 1.5 stone approx.).

The question I ask now is "Why?"

I am eating again! That's why.

But wasn't I always eating? Even when having lost so much weight?

Yes! I had been eating. I had been eating in a disciplined, controlled, self-denying kind of way. To lose in excess of 30kgs over the course of two and a half years, I went into a kind of mindset that essentially said "Do not eat THIS or THAT no matter how much you want to!". I eliminated a lot of the carbodhydrates from my diet. Actually I eliminated or at the very least, severely reduced the following:

Caffiene
Sugar
Wheat
Potatoes (except sweet potatoes)
dairy
yeast

I lived on rice grain products such as rice milk, and rice floured breads, meat and most vegetables. I cheated a bit on the dairy as I'm a big fan of cheese and cheese became my main "treat".

Including those restrictions, I began walking - a lot. I was going through some massive internal changes as well. My marriage was slowly disintegrating; I was seeking love in other places; I was spiritually changing some of my perspectives; I was also craving new challenges and new experiences. Essentially, the weight loss was an expression of a vast 'iceberg' effect of internal change being evidenced by a smaller external surface change - aka weight loss.

Three years on and my life is in a new place. I'm single again and I am living under very different conditions to the past life I had. I have different wants now and a very different set of priorities. I don't walk nearly as much as I did. I work in an office now which is a lot more sedentary than I've been this past three years. And - the main culprit? I eat what I want when I want even if it's not necessary or good to do so.

I'm eating not out of the need to survive but because there is no emotional set of circumstances strong enough within me to govern my sense of having to control my world.

Is my world under control now? I do feel more "content" within myself. Yes! I am a bit lonely on the romance front but that is to be expected and quite frankly - I'm getting rather used to my nice unfettered independence. The only thing I am out of control with is food.

Again I have to ask "Why?".

I do wonder if it's boredom sometimes. I wonder if it's to do with instant gratification. It may also be do to with sensual pleasure. I have always enjoyed the sensory pleasure of food. Eating is very much an "In the Moment" kind of thing. Its very present, as in "right now", is eating. It's right here, right now: a canopy of sensual experience across the spectrum of the senses. Touch, taste, sight, smell, sound. Food answers the sensual need to FEEL the physical world as real.

I live in such an intellectualised state of being most of the time - that I wonder if perhaps, I am over-eating because there is within me, a subconscious need to strike more balance between my physical reality and the intellectual/fantasy thought life I tend to adore too well. My body is literally pleading with me to balance the realm of thoughts and ideas I frequent with sensual, physical sensory experiences. My body is trying to tell me I need to breathe and ground myself into more Earth rather than continually focus on the Air of Ideas.

It's a novel thought really and one I hadn't considered until writing it just now. My body is conditioned to use food as a device for connecting to earth; for finding sensory experiences springing from the subconscious and conscious thinking I do so much.

Then there is Emotion! Watery, fluid, morphing, moving emotion. I have always said I'm an "Emotional Eater". I do eat when stressed, tired, bored, anxious, happy, content, placid, busy. The few times I don't eat are when the stress reaches a critical mass and I am physically incapable of eating too much, which was exactly the case not long after I left my marriage of 18 years in May last year. For nearly three months, I found it difficult to eat a lot at all and spent most of my time attempting to find work, crying and walking to meditate and pray about my lot in life.

Right now, I suspect my base emotional reason for over-eating all the foods that "do me no good", is the fact that I am frustrated and bored.

I have a great job! I love my job really and am enjoying the learning curve involved very much. My job is however, very Air oriented. It's almost pure intellectual thought and idea and both the absorption of idea and the dissemination of idea - hopefully as creatively and as inspiring as possible. What my job is not is very Earth. The office - meaning the people in that office - seem to subconsciously try to correct this through the use of food as a means to provide balance to our very cerebral kind of work. Interesting!

I don't need a lot of massive control in my life right now either. My house needs attention in the housework department of course but it's okay - I don't feel unduly pressing need to organise straight lines and the stuff as much as I had done in my previous home. The energy is "different" here - but that's probably a musing for another day.

Where my base frustrations are springing from and triggering my instinctive impulses to overeat certain "not-good-for-me" foodstuffs is most likely in the realm of sex and romance. It seems that I might be the kind of woman who literally needs a certain level of physical sensuality and gratification of the kind usually presented in the bedroom between lovers. That's about as delicately as I can put it without sounding too crass or TMI about it *blush*. Not just ANY kind of physical sensuality mind you - I did get very fat within a perfectly "normal" marriage after all!

No! What I mean is that I currently desire something I am simply not getting. Intimacy of the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual kind. I am not "in love" and nor do I love anyone with enough limerence to create the endorphins my brain says are satisfying enough that I can do without the need to eat!

Part of this is the pure fantasy of romantic Hollywood style "perfected" love of course. My Knight in Shining Armour coming to whisk me away from my mundane life to one of sensual pleasure, delight and utter adoration of ME! etc etc etc T'would be nice I suppose if I wasn't also looking for someone with a good brain as well! ;)

I'm eating because I'm frustrated emotionally and romantically. Food is my drug, soothing and smoothing the edges to this frustration. It's my crutch and comforting friend when no other actually exists in my physical reality. I'm not choosing foods I CAN eat without needing to worry about gaining weight. I want to eat those foods for which the conditioned pleasure of eating them outweighs the emotional and physical sense of loss and discomfort.

I eat a lot of bread! Bread and high carbohydrate foods tend to become a looping system of addiction for me. I eat bread, I crave more bread. A little like giving up smoking, giving up bread is fraught with cravings so strong as to be almost impossible to do - at least for me. Cheese in all its varieties is another of my chosen comforters. Giving up cheese equates to a feeling of such utter depredation as to border on criminal punishment. Sugar is my final nail. Sugar is the fuel that adds the exhaustive flame to the bread and cheese debacle that is my current diet. My body is actually exhausted by the combination of these three main fuels. The more exhausted I feel, the more frustrated I am, the more likely it is I return to them seeking relief from the very thing they're creating within me.

So? How should I solve this dilemma so that I can sustain a gradual weight loss to a healthy weight zone again?

One would think that I need to eliminate the culprits from my diet! I did that. See the above "DO NOT EAT" list? I did that for not quite 12 months - that sparse and highly disciplined diet. It's not going to work for me over the long term. That kind of focus and self-denial thing isn't sustainable or wise. I can't yo-yo my weight up and down 10kgs on a constant treadmill of weight-gain then guilt then self-denial then collapsed motivation then weight-gain over the years. That would be even more unhealthy!

What I do need to do is address two things in my life.

a) I need to get more balance between sensual in-the-now physical reality and my propensity to live inside my head without resorting immediately to the foods I love to address that balance. The possible alternative may be to spend some time walking again out in nature everyday and touching the earth - literally touching it. Bark, leaves, dirt, flowers, grass. Smelling, sensing, breathing in, hearing and seeing the earth. Taking note of it and feeling it IN my body.

b) I need to examine my basic desires for romance and intimacy and how they form within me. Why do I assume subconsciously, that I am not a whole person if I do not have a partner/lover? Why do I not see the potential within me to be a whole, complete and independent woman even without a man beside me? Possible alternative is to begin telling myself deliberately that I AM worthy of love and that I AM very okay right now as I am within my own skin. I also need to come to a deep acceptance of my current circumstances and trust that whatever happens in my future, I will be very okay anyway. I may feel lonely from time to time and I may certainly need a lot more physical affection than I'd previously thought (perhaps; it may be just coz I don't have it right now that I want it and when I DO get it - I'll perversely think I don't need it anymore! *sigh* Women!) - be that as it may, my romantic frustrations can be acknowledged and identified and that latent energy put towards self-actualising goals that don't need to involve bread and sugar!

Food is such a dichotomy of both desire and subsequent repulsion for what it can do to my body, it could be something I'd talk about for quite some time. One more thing - I am currently addicted to my computer screen for the "company" of others. Strange that idea huh? That I should choose the computer, to seek intimacy and human connection. This is probably also, another blog post for another day, but I do know sort of why I use the computer in such a way. I get both the freedom of controlling my own world without having to put up with the In-your-face realities of person to person contact and I can control how I present myself (I feel more confident and constructive in text than I do in voice) and I also get quite different feedback from the intimacy of chat than I do face to face with people. Part of it is illusion and Story, the other part is being able to control the conversation to tell that Story. This environment taps into a part of my psyche that fundamentally fits with how I think and feel and perceive the world...ergo, I sit here too much seeking that feedback loop and not moving my body through space enough to burn up the bread I just ate for my tea.

:)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 8

2009-04-05T14:47:00.001+10:00

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Ariadne did not feel like eating but it was against the few rules mutants had to skip meals. She went to the servery and seated herself in her usual place. A meal was placed before her, the gravy spilling a little over the edge of her pannikin. In her mind, she was sculpting a dead tree, every nuance of the carving taking up her imagination. The throbbing inside her head had lessened significantly since she had started the dream. She was suddenly thrust back to reality by the sensation of emotions pulling in beside and across from her.

She looked at the mutant faces of the people she shared her life with. She did not love them or hate them. They were merely people who lived with pain like her.

"I'm going to sculpt a spiral from a dead tree,” she announced to the group at her supper table. "It will be my fountain of tears and with it I will mourn a river."

The group looked at her balefully and sceptically. She felt their questions and their disbelief. "I'm going to." and she began eating as if to end the matter there and then. The others looked at her for a few more moments, and then one by one they bent over their meal and ate in silence too.

Ariadne pulled her imagination forward so that all she could see were its pictures in her mind, reminiscent of, and built upon her dream - that of turning the giant dead wood thing in the imaginary lathe around and around, carving the grooves that would become the spiral of her tears.

As the pannikins emptied and the diners were satisfied, they stopped and in silence sat and bored their eyes into Ari trying to fathom if she had gone mad or if this was yet another mere moan regarding her plight. Ari could feel the rising heat of enquiry poking her in the spot behind her eyes like laser swords.

“What’s wrong with paper and charcoal?” Said the round shaped young woman at the end of the table. It was a pertinent question. The charcoal alone, being black market and extremely valuable a commodity, was enough to warrant jealousy of Ari’s abilities to use it. No one else in their Section could draw like this Ariadne modification could so many denied themselves such extravagances as charcoal by virtue of not being able to do such a commodity justice. Paper on the other hand, was still a common device. Available to everyone in every section of the laboratory, it carried no special merit save that it was made not from wood anymore, but from papyrus.

The civilised world had turned full circle in many ways and the ancient plant, once used by the Egyptians thousands of years ago was now used again, only with much faster and more efficient harvesting and processing techniques. Of course it was genetically modified to endure conditions its ancient predecessor could not. It was whiter, thinner, hardier and far more resilient to moisture and mould. Normal Humans paid a premium price for this paper; it was considered a luxury outside the Perspex cages of the laboratory. Mutants used it as people had historically used – and abused – paper in the century preceding them, with no compunctions about wasting it.

“Nothing is wrong with paper and charcoal, Carol,” Ari replied, looking up at the speaker and feeling the jealousy and envy pour from every cell in Carol’s rotund frame. “I simply want to carve the tears I cannot shed into a spiral on a dead tree.”

“But, Why?” Asked the James Modification, the gills at the sides of his neck flapping as he spoke.

“Because I want to!” Ariadne could feel her anger beginning to rise. She needed to escape these people. They couldn’t - and wouldn’t - listen to her and she could feel their frustration and distrust of her as a firebrand on her mind. Because…I…want…to!” She reiterated the words slowly and deliberately to try and make it clear.

The bell sounded to announce the end of their meal and they each rose from their places, taking their pannikins and cutlery and dumping them with a cacophony of metallic thuds into the dish bins as they exited the mess hall. No one spoke or commented to Ari as they left, but she could feel them. She could feel their questions; their mistrust, their envy and she determined once more, to carve her tears so they’d finally know what it meant to not be able to cry.

... To be continued. (I hope)

The mystery of emotional attachment to animals

2009-04-04T17:49:00.003+11:00

Sevvie is our 6 month old moggy. A cat of no fixed pedigree who came into our lives on a whim one fine November day in 2008.

I had originally called him "4711", that being the date we got him, all wobbly back legs and tiny thing of fluff and innocence. Four legs arriving on the 7th of the 11th. Seven being shortened version of said weird name for a cat and "Sevvie" being the normalised version of "seven" which is apparently only cool for StarTrek beauties so far as names go!

So, anyway... he's been re-named "Severus" by my teenage daughter who deems fantasy stories about wizards far more normal than names derived from logical naming tools such as file date numbering systems! We can still call him "Sevvie" as a result in this twist in the furry tale (sic).

Sevvie is ostensibly an "indoors" cat. I had every passionate intention of keeping Sevvie an indoors cat permanently.

Sadly, young Severus is as dodgy in character as the person in said fantasy literature, and increasingly attempted absconding outdoors as often as practicably possible.

Finally, I relented! I let him outside to "go play", after a long and active session of "Bug the Mama, while she sleeps" session in the early hours of this morning.

I'm currently so tired now on my Saturday off, I've hardly done much at all. I was awoken by naughty kitten at 0430 with screen climbing, curtain hopping, Mama pouncing, computer rampaging, and general episodic attempts to chase naughty kitten from bedroom. Then came three hours of scratching at my bedroom door.

Squirting with the water pistol has had limited success. It basically sucks because I STILL have to get up to sevvie to do the actual squirting for scratching at the door of our rented house! Most annoying at 0530 I can tell you!

So, I let Sevvie outside to a world beyond his control and experience. He enjoys himself and meets another cat who surveils Sevvie with all the caution of an older cat patronising an impertinent young upstart!

Suddenly, an hour slipped by and lo and behold, Sevvie is missing. My mood, already beaten into a pulp by lack of restful sleep and abject general "blue'ness" dived! I felt awful.

I sobbed even!

I had wanted to kill this kitten only two hours previous and now that it was missing I was mortified. Not only did I count the cost in dollars recently spent on surgical bills for Sevvie, I hadn't taken into account the impact such a critter makes in one's life thus far.

Sevvie has literally become a member of my immediate family. It seems like "overnight" and yet it's 6 months. It is literally like having a baby in many ways. I felt so responsible for this animal! So heart-sick guilty for the rashness of my responses to its behaviours.

Thankfully, Sevvie was found. He'd gotten lost in the neighbours back yard and had no idea how to find his way home! Such is the way of kids. They get distracted and take no notice of land marks to find their way home again, they're always lost in the eternal moment of new discoveries and new friends to chase.

Sevvie must have realised not long after finding himself in the wrong backyard that he really wasn't as ready for big outside adventures as he'd assumed. No doubt he'll forget all of this learning curve tomorrow and want to go outside again!

The Mama in the mean time has to figure out how to stay one step ahead of early-rising felines if only to prevent the early morning angst that threatens dire consequences on furry black hides.

cloud cuckoo's pine for the fjiords too

2009-04-03T20:30:00.003+11:00

I live in the future a lot. I plot and plan, design and idealise phantasms of perfection in my work habits, my romantic aspirations and my personal development.

I want to be perfectly formed physically, glowingly attractive both within and without - whilst still enjoying cold pizza for breakfast on lazy Saturday mornings.

I want to be with 'The Perfect Partner', who "gets" my every mood. You know? A man who can read my mind to know what my mood is at any given moment - and know how to accommodate it ;)

I want to be highly organised and efficient in the daily running of my duties and responsibilities, so much so that people will clamour for my organisational expertise, paying deliciously large sums of money for the privilege, while I pay for a gardener and a house-cleaner to tidy up after my perfectly anonymous quiet life at home.

I want to have a new super green, hydrogen fuel cell car, parked in the garage of a big, beautiful low-energy use house so I can join couchsurfing.com and invite strangers from around the globe to share their travel tales with my children and me in homely and world-changing civility and cross-cultural understanding.

I want a "firm" pocket spring mattress and base set bed for my nice lean and well exercised back after I've been out walking for 10kms every day.

I want the perfect tattoo, designed by my own hand from my own innovative concept in the perfect centre of my lower back where it will be discreet and only viewable by the very, very, privileged few.

I want an inner city serviced apartment in the CBD of Melbourne overlooking Southbank with large east facing windows and a balcony overlooking the river.

I want to write the 21st century version of a "Gone with the Wind" epic so timeless and classic, it will outlive my Great Grand Children. And every day I shall struggle and labour to write the words for this blog, beautifully, coherently; inspiring others through my experiential musings.

Oh yes! I have a lot of fantasies.

Now, many in the professional development industry might say that if these were genuine desires, nothing should be able to stop me from intending and creating them as a part of my reality. It's a nice theory. It apparently works for some too so I won't quibble too much.

Obviously, I haven't properly mastered that little bit of fluff between intention and realisation yet. I'm a work in progress I guess.

So? What do I really want?

If everything in the above list was mine to have, what else would there be left to want? Family, friends and faith notwithstanding, what else in my Cloud-Cuckoo Land could I possibly want?

:)

High-quality stationery! That's what I want.

I decided it today. I decided that if I lived in a perfect world with the "right" man and the "right" house and had the "right" income as well as the "right" level of business acumen, I would want a beautiful, elegant, gorgeously designed concept stationery store where I could sell people the most astonishing array of quality paper ephemera.

Thing is...I wouldn't sell "just" paper...I'd be helping people! People who also had a love of fine stationery, like - glowing, gorgeous, sweet, elegant me, all beautiful and lean in a black pencil skirt, naturally tanned elongated looking legs in black patent leather Manolo Blahnik's, and a white button down pure linen blouse - me, with the stationery supplies they needed to create mastery of their own aspirations.

Beautiful paper notepads, filing supplies, pens and planners...

ahhhh...such heavenly bliss!

I'd help them own a Moleskine too :)

........................In a perfect world!

1000 buzzes

2009-04-01T23:09:00.003+11:00

It's late and the sleepy, eyes-half-closed quality of horizontal avoidance threatens to lay me flat despite the insistence to remain up. I am resisting sleep and yet I must. A thousand thoughts burble and bumble their way across the canvas of Ideas. Things to do. To say. To be. To want. To buy. To sell. To think. To read. To muse. To blog.

Things too innumerable to be anything but transient, soft buzzes. Buzzes akin to an errant mosquito against the ear late at night when its dark. The sound burrs inside your brain large and insistent but reach out to SMACK it down.. and you will fail...everytime.

No such capture device exists to slam down these bursting-with-sound mosquitoes of thought. No notebook or digital device can lay its thick, solid permanence to transitory murmurings of eclectic, passing, tiny, large, insouciant, pressing, niggling, angling, careering, noisome thoughts.

If I wrote, I'd write for a hundred lifetimes. Lists. Lists so long they'd wind the sands of the Sahara into clouds of watery tears, begging me to stop with the lists, the words, the hapzard and non-sensical array of buzzing thoughts in my head.

Some would say to turn off this mind-trap of aMusement. But I won't. It is a vibe for the moment and nothing more. A creative bursting of mosquitoey bubbles of sound, flexing their syllabic muscles and capturing words into coherent messages for the future read.

One thousand buzzing ideas and ideas about ideas and thoughts about thoughts and then thinking thoughts about thoughts of ideas, all spinning like crazy string, electric taut and buzzing.... a mind without edges, print or byte expanding beyond the reaches of the known Mosquito Universe...

bzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz.....

getting things right with getting things done

2009-03-29T09:17:00.008+11:00

I have more than a passing interest in organisational and productivity tools and concepts. Most of my life, I've made repeated attempts at finding the synergy between being productive, organised and creative and I've used many tools in the past to find the magical formula that works for me.

It's not always simple as I'm also easily bored with too much routine and tend to knock my life out of whack - usually unconsciously - just to shake things up and experience a new direction. This means that I will have a system down to a fine art and be ticking along with it really well and then voilá! A new life experience and pattern changes the "rules" for using the tool and I'm thrown for a loop and subsequently get myself into disorganised trouble once more!

It's kinda fun for awhile...that chaotic roller-coaster ride...but really annoying if left like that for too long. The internal war for balance between chaos and order, forever rages in my dramatic heart.

From when I was a little girl, with a penchant for sticky-taping complex numbering systems onto the backs of my extensive collection of books; to early adult hood with various fetishes for tidy pantries, linen closets, Debden Day Runners and Palm devices; I've climbed back on - and fallen off - the "Organised & Productive" wagon many times. I envy people who can stick with it consistently over the long haul but for me its a lot more ad hoc and spontaneous. No one system ever stays with me ubiquitously and I'm always on a learning curve, or quest, to find one more that will match my current life choices. Oh - and I am a ridiculously slow learner too btw - so a 2 year stint of no cohesive organisational tool to speak of, when I already know the value of having one, is quite "normal" for me!

That being said, I swoon with delight in an office stationery store and you would most likely find me buried in the planners and organisers section (both digital and paper), perusing the wares with a kind of crazy, lustful glint in my eye. I love the look, the feel, the innumerable possibilities available to that Organisational, Control Freak part of me, with that kind of stuff!

Getting Things Done is one methodology that I love and that I often talk about in this blog. I have mentioned in recent weeks, that I have fallen off the GTD wagon these past two years. Essentially, one of those right-angled Life turns I made in recent years, subsequently changed how I used the system and because of that I lost "faith" in my original trusty Palm Tungsten E2 and when it died, its successor, the very plain bottom of the pile Palm Z22. Palm was my tool of choice for capturing and processing the stuff in my head, until I lost focus and wasn't as reliant on it as I had been due to my changed life-style patterns.

I still use my plain no-frills Palm! Don't get me wrong. I will still put an appointment into the calendar and I use the Memo function pretty much ALL the time because I can hide the private stuff. You know? Like personal medical information etc. I love the notepad too for quick jotting of phone numbers and the like. It is a brilliant device. I love all these aspects of this technology and will most likely continue to use an electronic organiser for that sort of thing for many moons to come.

Where I've fallen down is in managing my Tasks Lists on the Palm. I just don't look at it enough to keep my next actions in front of me. I "forget" to trust it as my external reminder system. There has been a breakdown for me in using the Palm everyday for the everyday stuff. I'm not entirely sure why because it is the most logical device in my mind for this sort of list making efficiency. However, there are a few issues with my little basic Palm that may be contributing factors. For one thing, The model I have chosen seems to be really clunky for directly putting in the information. I can't sync it at work as my PC there doesn't have the software installed and I have yet to find out if I can have permission to do that. The interface of the Palm software, on the computer, is a bit cumbersome too. It's just not fluid enough and a little bit unattractive so of course I don't use the context task list functionality on it like I used to with the old E2 back in the day.

Solving this dilemma has required a multi-pronged approach in figuring out exactly HOW I currently operate and finding a complimentary tool which will be a natural context task list capture tool without sacrificing what I already use the Palm for. It has to be quick to use, almost instant. It has to be mutable and easily up-dated. It has to be highly portable and light. It has to be as simple as possible. It has to be cheap. It has to be Stupidity Proof!

I spent a lovely afternoon yesterday cruising the web and reading up on lots of GTD ideas for capturing those ideas and next actions or project ideas. Notebooks are fine to a point but I refuse to get a crook shoulder, carrying around the lumpy Day Planner type diary or even a largish notebook. I did that years ago for a long time and my back and shoulders thanked me when I finally gave up the heavy paper and leather planners grafted to my side!

I had designed and used a small list styled notebook once before and had spent hours sectioning it off into list headings... but of course, there is always a certain amount of wastage of both space and paper with this idea. It didn't last very long! Too fussy not to mention really messy in the end! It did have a few pluses going for it - being the immediacy of its availability - always at hand - and easy to check up on etc.

Then I remembered Pocketmod from a couple of years ago and searched it out again. It's been quite cleverly updated so I played around with it for a bit and learned a lot in the process of printing and folding of the little "book" made from one sheet of paper. There was still a "problem" with that though. The pocketmod is designed for American Letter sized paper...which is slightly smaller than our standard A4 paper here in Australia, so my pocket mod needed trimming and for some reason, things never quite aligned like I wanted them to in the printing. It always came out messy and scrappy looking! The widget on screen for customising some of the pages also didn't appear to work on my computer/printer set up. That was frustrating!

About ready to give up, I ducked over to YouTube, while following some pocketmod links, and happened across this variation on the pocketmod theme. And then...an AHA! moment. I figured if I could put my various context task lists as headings, instead of the days of the week, it might actually prove to be a useful tool for me.

Experimenting in Word, I learned how to align the text in such a way that when the page was printed, and then subsequently folded, the wee headings for my task lists were neatly at the top of the little space created by the folds in the paper. When folded as per the "db pocket planner" method on YouTube, no trimming was required, it opens out for "at-a-glance" viewing of my different lists and it's really easy to quickly throw in a notation. I even printed the headings on the reverse side to recycle the page when the front gets too full or messy. I figure I may only need to print a fresh page off every other week or so. Its a simple matter of refolding the other way to use the reverse side of the paper! Very frugal! :)

Of course, I don't even really need to fuss around with printing out the headings on this tool. The simple fold and write method could work just as well. There is for me though, a innate need for a little bit of sophistication which has a sharper than average edge to it. The headings typed onto the sections look good. It has a less "scrap-paper" kind of feel to it by typing in the headings. That's just my personal choice though. For every day use...writing the tasks, quickly, by hand with a pencil is going to be the usual method of capturing things. The printed headings just gives it a bit of personal tool cred for me is all.

It looks great. It's so insanely simple and best of all...I felt really pleased and excited to have found potentially, the "right" tool to help me get back into GTD. Even if I don't use this system permanently and end up with another one down the line - I do have rather high hopes this basic little "book" will prove to be an invaluable aid and addition to using my über basic Palm. I'm hoping to upgrade both Palm and mobile phone to an iPhone in a couple of years so I want to ensure I have a workable strategy for capture and action reminders until then.

One of my biggest failings these past couple of years has been capturing the stuff I need to process and think about. To get it out of my head into a place I trust. Even something as simple as forgetting to put a blimmin' shower cap on the shopping list has been an irritant of growing proportions of late: I'd only remember I needed one when I went to grab the very old loose one in the bathroom! Ugh! So last night...on my "@shopping" section of my little capture list, I wrote "shower cap". For things like this, that vague feeling of "I've forgotten something" will hopefully disappear forthwith! :)

The list will live in my wallet so its guaranteed to be with me pretty much all the time and within easy reach. The idea is that it's a working document always in flux. At present I'm using pencil so that done tasks can be erased to leave room for new ones.

It may seem like it's fussy but I don't think it is, really. At least not yet! I "thought" my original notebook idea was going to be simple too but it also had some pretty strong limitations. The use of a pencil does help though. Like for instance - I just went and did some grocery shopping, I got what I needed from the list (including that bloody showercap! yay!) and when I got home just erased that part because items on other sections of the list are still pending.

I could probably fuss around by typing the lists into the main doc in Word and then deleting the done items off and reprinting and refolding, but that doesn't seem very 'Green' or all that efficient in my circumstances. That could change though too, as I ease into a rhythm with this new tool. Maybe anyway. Time will tell if this tool is workable for me over the long term. It's true that the size of this small booklet limits the number of things you can have listed at any given time. I'm not sure yet if the size will prove to be a major disadvantage and I am already suspecting it could.

This is, however, meant as a quick reference tool for the various contexts I'm most likely to be in, like going shopping, running errands, stuff to remember to take to work, things to do with and for the kids etc. It's a mutable, transient capture device to jog my memory. Anything more substantial than a discrete next action is likely going to need recording into a proper project planning tool. I'm looking into Ta-da Lists for that kind of thing at the moment. Baby steps etc.

The key should be that I instinctively trust this little pocket list as a sort of "external brain" so I don't actually have to contain any of this information inside my head. And when it boils down to it that is the crux of the GTD mantra! DON'T keep it in your head! Put it - the stuff you think about - somewhere outside of your head where you know you'll see it, and be free to decide (or do) later when the time is right.

So beta testing of my new 'pocketmod variant context task list capture tool' is off and running. I'm excited to try it and that's a good sign. If it doesn't work - it's back to the drawing board to figure out a new option! :) Edison Theory in Action!

Diigo Update

2009-03-25T20:41:00.005+11:00

I've been using Diigo for nearly a week.

It's been interesting so far if a bit of a mind meltdown just for the sheer amount of reading one COULD do if you really got into this application!

All over, I've found it okay so far. It does take a lot of getting used to the interface for a very slow only basically web savvy lay-person like me. Just explaining Diigo to people with basic computer skills is actually quite difficult. You do have to pick your crowd to market the idea. Eyes glaze over and the concept either scares people or they simply don't quite understand what you mean.

There has "always" been del.icio.us for Social Bookmarking and I think it's been pretty much the "Google" of its time that site. I never got into del.icio.us at all! I simply couldn't quite make head or tail of it and yet now I reckon it's probably a much simpler type of social networking and bookmarking application than Diigo - by far. Go figure! I picked Complex to start learning from huh? That'd be me *smirk*

Diigo does have some quite cute features though. The ability to make public or private sticky notes and whack them onto a webpage, much like you would in a text book you are studying, is quite clever. It is a bit freaky to come across a webpage of a friend and find their comments stuck all over it though; that could take some getting used to. It is nice to have the exchange of ideas and the interaction of others though even so. I do wonder if the wars of the future will be started over a virulent disagreement in virtual sticky notes now though ;)

The issue of "Private" as opposed to "Public" is still a little muddy for me using this. I am careful now to check that any messages sent to friends are appropriately set at the privacy level required for the content. I'm also still getting my head around making some websites I visit private due to the fact that they're a login for a personal webpage etc. Such as logging into Blogger here to write this blog post. I guess I'll figure that all out in due course. They will have to make the public/private aspect a whole lot clearer though I think. At present it's confusing and you have to already know in advance to check the privacy settings, otherwise you could make a very embarrassing faux pas.

My next goal with Diigo is to begin ascribing the articles, blogs and links I have accumulated into defined "Lists". This is very similar to assigning specific subject folders in your Bookmarks or Favorites. I imagine this will be a bit time consuming as I do want to attempt to keep the lists relatively uncluttered and more overarching themes rather than have too many precise headings. I hope that is possible anyway. Given the scope and range of the material I have in Diigo, it'll be interesting to see if I do actually have common themes for topics.

Tagging is new for me. Those who read my blog here know I am a "hopeless" Tagger of blog posts. The reason for this is that I could come up with so many key words for an article as to render the tag list an exercise in repetition of the actual content of the blog! My Kingdom for an Auto-tagger! Diigo does actually attempt to do this, by having some suggested tag titles you can simply click into the tag window. It does make it a bit easier but they're not nearly comprehensive enough for me yet! Again - my propensity for bogging down with too much detail rears its ugly head.

The Friends Online function is a bit dodgy for now. A green dot is the only indicator that a friend is online at any given time. The rest of the time the dot shows a nice boring grey! :) That's okay but I guess applications like GTalk and Facebook have spoiled me somewhat in that I want to choose to IM someone once I know they are online. It seems a bit...well... old fashioned now, not to be able to IM someone when they're showing up as being available to chat to! It's a bit like not being able to say hello to your friends down the street even if you can see them.

I still have to get my head around the incredible amount of reading that has come my way just from having a couple of people aka "Friends" connected to my Diigo. You can "follow" the bookmarks of any of the friends you have or groups you've joined. I've joined just one group so far. This means your Diigo "dashboard" can be updated with a significant amount of very interesting material you'd never have seen otherwise - well maybe have never seen perhaps. I have approximately 200 bookmarks in my Diigo. That may not be as impressive as some I should think but I do have to ask myself "Do I NEED this much information?" I am insatiable when it comes to learning new things but I'm seriously questioning if this could all just get too confusing as to which stuff deserves my attention and which doesn't.

As it is I have three or four paper books to read - one of which I am half way through - approximately 50 Blogs in my Bloglines, a large number of e-comics, e-books and about 60 "short-shorts" by Bruce Holland Rogers on my computer to catch up with and, now, a rapidly growing number of interesting blogs, articles and bookmarks to peruse in Diigo. My reading opportunities have exploded in recent months!

David Allen, when asked about the modern obsession with "Information Overload" is quoted as saying:

You don’t manage information overload – otherwise you’d walk into a library and die, or the first time you connect to the web, or even opened a phone book, you’d blow up;

He's of the opinion that Information Overload is simply a matter of making decisions about what we want to focus on. What we want to focus on is simply a matter of what context we're currently in. Essentially, context is a combination of Time, Location and People and Priority Needs. The key is to do that which is obvious to do given these indicators. Therefore, if I'm in Diigo, I need to have some way of very quickly deciding what is worth reading, commenting on, annotating, slapping a virtual sticky note onto or ditching as a "waste" of my time. THAT is what's going to take some getting used to - that solid, decisive action'ing of the stuff coming at me each morning when I open up my Diigo Dashboard.

Getting through this burgeoning virtual reading pile is weighing on my mind. I don't like things weighing on my mind. It makes no sense to feel guilty about stuff I DON'T HAVE TO DO. I might want to do it...very much... but to feel guilty for not doing it takes away the pleasure and the freedom of the choice and the desire. Diigo could very easily become more obligation than a pleasurable indulgence for infotainment.

I'll definitely continue to learn how to use Diigo effectively though despite this real challenge to keep things in perspective. I can see enormous potential for schools, universities and Adult Learning Centres in the use of this technology. The ability for students to share information and collaborate on their learning through conversation and exchange of the vast resource that is the web is promising and exciting to say the least. Knowing how and why to use this social bookmarking technology is not a futile exercise for geeky tech-fashionista's but a cutting edge means for keeping up with the pace of virtual change in our lives. It's another tool. Something to think with, learn with, do stuff with, create with. That's ALL it is and ergo it needs to be used respectfully and creatively and skillfully and the last bit only comes with repetition and practice of course!

Once I know how to use Diigo effectively, there is the possibility I could teach others how to use it here in my corner of the world. And therein lies Diigo's biggest weakness of all actually...that for the ordinary folk of my town, many will need to be shown how to use it rather than being able to "just use it" straight out of the box so to speak.

Diigo has some cool features for sure and it's kind of fun to use if you really WANT to learn how to use it. It is however, cluttered, a bit scary for the web technology illiterate and some of its privacy functions are confusing and uncertain. So a matter of "Keep on keeping on", just in case its worth it. I believe that might be possible at the moment! :)

From the Diigo Ugh to the Diigo aHA!

2009-03-21T23:37:00.002+11:00

I've just done something "unusual" for me!

Normally, I'm very careful about the kinds of things I download to my computer. I tend to trust only the stuff recommended by trusted friends or I do careful research first before I hit the "Install Now" button on any new application for my beloved "Preciousss" (aka my MacBook).

Today, however, on a complete whim at the suggestion of a stranger, I downloaded the Diigo Beta toolbar.

I hardly know what it's supposed to do really but I'll plod along until I have it all figured out.

Basically, Diigo (pronounced Dee-Go), is a new Social Bookmarking tool - I think! The tag-line for the concept is "You are what you annotate"...ergo, the stuff you read and research, subsequently bookmark and make commentary on can be made available to friends and of course the world - if you so choose. Now people can define themselves not just by how they chat in IM, how they Tweet in Twitter, how they network in Facebook or Myspace, or how they look and behave in Second Life... they can define their online identity just that little bit more by sharing what they read and watch on the net. Being the Wannabee Geek I am, this is a rather delicious prospect. I quite like the idea of people knowing I like reading The Long Now blog or watch the occasional TED talk! Makes me look super hip, with-it cool. Well? Doesn't it? ;)

This is - so far as I can tell - a sort of Web 2.0 version of a Book Club. A really, really BIG Book Club mind you. Or, it's like going to the library, (those big buildings they have in cities with lots of books made of paper in them - I jest of course) - you go along to read books there but can also end up meeting the love of your life behind the Humanities section - well, we live in hope yeah? :) Diigo and other Social Bookmarking websites are like this I suspect. This is literary sharing on a very grand scale.

The interesting thing about the internet is that for sociability, it is probably easier, faster, and more efficient at helping people reach out and make friends than it is in Meat Space. It's true! The judgments of physical appearance, social etiquette, the cultural protocols of simple first meetings are eliminated somewhat from the equation. On the net, you simply open the conversation, not with "Hi, my name is .... What do you do?" to more like "Hi, Did you read the new XKCD comic today?".

The conversations are more focused and immediate and the interactions are less fraught with self-conscious noise. At least that's how I see it for me. I don't have to worry about my tendency to see myself as I think I'm being seen through a strangers eyes! Ugh! That is such a horrible waste of emotional energy and I've tried hard - very hard - to scrap that bad habit of mine albeit only marginally successfully. The social web relieves me of some of that kind of personal torture! The veil of the computer screen predisposes, what I believe, is my TRUE self to emerge through the power of words!

Diigo is yet another tool in this social revolution. None of these things will ever replace the intimacy of first life contact...yes, yes, yes...I do understand all that! I really do! But it does make first meetings so much more entertaining, less charged with anxiety, and it's really easy to choose who you want to spend your time with! You can quite literally "shop" for the right crowd for you on the net. That last bit may prove to be a bad thing though in time. We will see!

I'm not entirely sure I'll become a devotee of Diigo though despite all I've said above. I have a lot of places on the net where I can share quite a bit of my online self with strangers and friends alike. This application does fascinate me though, and if its going to make finding information, sharing information, learning, studying, researching, and simply making new friends "easier" then I'll give it a jolly good go anyway.

At present, I feel like I did when I first landed in Germany last year - more than just a little lost but having just enough of the language to get me out in a pinch. Diigo is very "difficult" to get right off the bat. I'm pretty web application savvy for the most part but it can take me time to adjust to new UI's and tools. For those with barely any Web 2.0 knowledge of even applications such as Skype or Facebook, Diigo may seem like an off the scale learning curve requiring a doctorate rather than basic web skills! It's going to take me awhile before I fall in love with this thing - if I ever do!

If I do "get it" - Diigo that is - I'll be very excited and let you all know how cool it is!

BTW - just an aside: I raved about Dropbox a couple of months back. I am still using Dropbox and it's become an absolutely fantastic sharing tool for larger than average files than email will often allow, with far-far-away friends. A remarkable and incredibly useful application and worth getting. I've been sharing comics, music and bat likes to read ahead on my "The girl who couldn't cry" story, (coz he's my friend and he's allowed ;) and he has been very good and not made any edits to the doc without me knowing so far! hahaha).

The Feminine Getting of Things Done

2009-03-20T22:33:00.004+11:00

The GTD Times, a blog I've recently only started reading due to the fact I "found" it by accident on Twitter, raises an interesting point about the massive GTD craze sweeping the corporate world. Namely, the dearth of women at the top of the GTD "game".

Now, granted, The David Allen Company does have women, good women too, who regularly spruik the GTD mantra but there are very few of them outside of the DAC in this field of productivity development.

I have read Getting Things Done and I even followed it very closely for a couple of years. I still want and aspire to follow the basic principles of GTD but I've yet to develop the external capturing system I will trust enough to rely on. My PDA lost its impetus around the time of my personal surgery, back in 2006, and so now my use of its various list and calendar functions is sporadic to say the least! It was a case of I didn't need to use it for three months so it left my field of vision so to speak and now my brain won't trust it enough to pick it up again - at least not as many times a day as I USED to use it anyway according to "good" GTD practise!

In principle, I adore the GTD system! It's all about list-making, something I have done practically all my life. It's good for doing the myriad of daily tasks I do in my life. I'll probably always find 'The List' my tool of choice for keeping track of my tasks. I do tend to forget to make my list "next actions" though - I often put project headings on my to-do list rather than the discrete actionable items as is espoused by David Allen for the GTD practice of context list-making (GTD proposes using contexts rather than the usual to-do list suspects. So actions near or on the computer would go into that list and actions requiring you go somewhere on the errands list etc.).

So? Why aren't there more women in positions of corporate power and change telling the world about why and how they use GTD? Why is this such a male dominated craze? Does GTD tap into a genetic predisposition in men predominately more than women? Is it a chemical brain enhancement thing or is it simply that women don't so much talk about their GTD as simply go into the flow of it and "get things done" just because they have to and talking about it won't change the fact it has to be done anyway!

Is that last impression a standard stereotypical one of females? Why do we assume so easily that women are such fabulous multi-taskers capable of juggling more duties than Shiva has arms? There is some evidence that women's abilities to snap from one task to another quickly, are indeed built into our physiology and brain structure. The two hemispheres of the female brain have more connective tissue between them and hence more synapses firing across the left and right halves of the brain. This means we can switch from the use of different parts of our brains more efficiently and quickly. Logic and creativity can be lightening quick and so intuitively woven into the fabric of female thinking and consequent actions as to seem like they're capable of doing multiple things at the same time - and for some - incapable of being nothing but emotional about it too!

The interesting observation about females and GTD is that GTD is so linear in its approach to doing stuff. I like linear! Linear is goal orientated. Linear is objective. Linear gets you from point A to point B by the most efficient route and you don't have to stop to ask anyone directions along the way! The logical, clean, objective, goal-focused, zen-like objectivity of GTD is like nectar to hoardes of men. They eat this stuff by the spoonful!

Actually, I reckon GTD is something like a car. Forgive me if this sounds very "Blind men and the elephant" but... have you ever noticed how men and women IN GENERAL approach the subject of motor vehicles? Men can be singularly dotty about their cars! They want to know the working parts, they want to know how fast it goes, they want to feel the sublime pleasure of sitting in a vehicle with power roaring under their bums, speeding them in a blissful cohesion of power, torque, thrust, design, art, colour and sound to "somewhere" way over there...in the distance. Men tinker with cars, they get to know the inner workings of their cars intimately and can discuss with other men for HOURS the technical details of this love affair. The right car for a man is like a Holy Grail of sorts - a synergy of quest and the attainment of Perfection!

Women - in general remember - treat cars like tools in a box of other tools. It's a necessary tool mind you but it's got to be pretty and functional and we don't care all that much about what's under the hood so long as it gets the kids to school on time - every time - and can assist in the art of whipping up dinner for 10 at the drop of a hat! Pragmatic, useful, necessary, and it "just works" etc. We like our cars to just "go" and don't usually care that much if there's a number of working parts under the hood that need any kind of TLC on our part...that's the mechanics job!

Women are just as disorganised or as organised as men. As ironic as it is, that there are few females in the echelons of GTD power mongering in recent years... it's also just as head-scratching that there are so few male Professional Organisers. Those who help others get sorted of their clutter and the arrangements of their closets and pantries! The two skills are not dissimilar in objective but the process by which they're done is very different indeed. Both are about stuff but one is about mental clutter and the other is about physical clutter. One helps ones self get sorted, the other helps others get sorted - interesting huh?

It's not that women or men can't do what the other can etc. We're not very, very different as such... women can do and are extremely good at putting the data collection of GTD into place - loving their "car" - and getting a tonne of things done as a result; it's just that there seems to be a slightly different set of priorities in place for the practical application of these tools between men and women. Men seem to get excited about the process of discovery and the ideas at play within the GTD game plan. Women seem to enjoy the end game aspect of getting things done - aka. better relationships, both with stuff and with people! Certainly, both are not wrong! Quite frankly, women don't NEED a game plan so much as they just need a method to achieve an end - any method will do so long as it's simple and doesn't require too much time. GTD has a baaaaadd habit of being time-consuming if you get into the game-plan aspect of it too much! I know a few men in my life who would rather spend a freezing winters night tucked away in their shed tinkering on their cars than actually driving them around with the heater on!!!

But I've been sucked into the time-consuming tinker side of GTD too - and I'm a girl! Go figure! :) It's possible for girls to be grease-monkeys' too you know, it's just a bit "unusual" due to genetics and social conditioning of the genders! Girls treat things as extensions of relationships for the most part. Boys treat things as they do because they like the wholistic sensual appeal of those things. Girls talk to other girls, and sometimes patient boys, about their ideas on relationships. Boys like talking to other boys and sometimes knowledgeable girls, about their ideas on things.

That's why I reckon it's so rare to see women talking GTD!

But then again... maybe I'm wrong...

So I tend to believe that women are into getting things done but men are into Getting Things Done(Tm). The difference isn't in the philosophies so much as in the practice. It's more about what we're each looking for under the GTD hood

The Edgy thing!

2009-03-17T18:22:00.003+11:00

I have it right now... a deep underlying sense of tension and vague anxiety sitting down in my being like a lump of exposed and foul-smelling flesh in the sun.

Where does Edginess come from? Why is it that some days we can feel like a "Cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof", jumpy, uncertain, fearful and yet have no basis in fact or reality for that feeling. Is it just a mutable kind of energy in the "atmosphere" or the collective consciousness? I noted a few other people exhibiting a kind of edgy tension in their clipped sentences and brusque approach today. Then again, that might be a kind of empathic sharing of our emotional states too! It's now known that that is possible. Was I just picking up on The general Office Vibe today?

I have ticked the boxes for things past, present and future that would or could be making me feel this way right now. The list reads like a pin cushion of tiny needles, none of them that threatening on their own, all of them together, more than a little daunting.

We had a staff meeting today and I got lumped with more "stuff" to sort out and do - but this edgy tension was there at the start...it was there before I knew I had extra work to do. That's not it.

I have a presentation to give on Volunteering to students at the local school, tomorrow...maybe that is it? But normally, I don't overly stress about public speaking so much - "Just wing it!" is my strategy for public speaking - even if I'm a bit unclear on my stuff. Speaking to groups is nerve-wracking of course but I've done it enough now, to have a kind of "She'll be right" attitude to it. It doesn't necessarily phase me just that much. At least I think it doesn't!

There's something else that is clanging about deep in my psyche which is giving me this anxious vibe! I make a list of possibilities for Edginess:

* I feel overweight. Check! I can feel the kg's creeping back on yes! I don't like it.
* I need to go for a walk. Check! I can't right now but I do feel guilty about not going for a daily walk right now.
* I miss a friend. Check!
* I have a family member undergoing a new situation. Check! Yeah... this one resonates. It does feel like this could be the clincher as to that knife-like sense of agitation I can sense inside of me today.
* I was angry today. Check! If I'm honest about it, I was annoyed and irritated at work today during the staff meeting about a minor issue and have only just acknowledged and admitted to feeling angry. I can at least, let that go now.

Feeling edgy inside is an indicator that all does not sit well in your perception of things. Digging in to find the core reasons for one's anxiety and agitation is a skill and one that requires a lot of forthright honesty, analysis and observation. It's about deciding on the things that you have seen or are seeing in the world around you and noting how you're reacting to them emotionally.

JUST FEEL IT!

Shouts the non-analytical world! Feelings, emotions, states of Being are just there to be as they are with no qualifying analysis or excavation! So say some!

I'm not very good at doing this. I do feel the feeling but the analytical thinking kicks in very shortly after that and whilst I can confuse the logic and thought for the feelings themselves sometimes, I am getting better at honing in on the actual feeling and acknowledging it for what it is.

I've felt edgy this afternoon but I've yet to really know exactly why - despite my list above with all of those things contenders for first prize in my Edginess Quiz. Maybe it was something else that was said, done, or simply a lack of perception on my part about what is happening in my world.

But, SOMETHING made me feel this - I want to know exactly what it was.

Does it matter in the long run if I DO know?

For me it does! I learn more about my inner processes when I can make sense of the cause and effect of that interconnected loop we call Life. I experience, I feel, I experience. Knowing how one affects the other potentially gives me a better chance of having better experiences and taking more responsibility for those symbiotic feelings. For me - emotion IS experiential and experience IS emotional.

So for me, analysing my emotional state brings clarity and coherence to my world. I accept now that I feel anxious and edgy. What I want to do is dig deep within to find out exactly why so that I know how to handle Edgy in myself - and others - in the future.

The pure essence of Being

2009-03-11T22:23:00.005+11:00

Roughly around this time three years ago, I helped bat name his 'Genius'. We stumbled on the rather strange name for his innate and wonderful gift as "Being Muse".

It's an odd conjunction of words for a man really.

A Muse is generally considered in classical mythology as female. The Muses were the 9 daughters of Zeus and each brought a special focus to the culture of their mortal subjects below.

Ironically, I named this blog 'aMusing my Genius' only a week or two before we named bat's Genius. Muse was already on my mind apparently, so either, it was a synchronicity that the two of us would employ Muse as a theme in our lives or it was a simple case of associative thinking on my part that happened to be applied by bat to his Genius purely out of his generous nature to my suggestion. He's still not 100% sure that this name we found for his Genius is the "right" name but it rests there even now, in a kind of gentle, subtle, hood-ornament adorned kind of way as to describe the energy of his ephemeral and difficult-to-define gift.

Dick Richard's call to naming ones Genius required one to find a verb to express the action of the gift you carried. The THING that the gift does. This word invariably ends in "ing". There are many words in English that end in "ing", but within the context of searching for a name that will define with singular clarity one's gift, it can make finding that word incredibly difficult.

In bat's case, he IS a sort of male version of Muse. His gift inspires, cajoles, leads, dances, tricks, eludes, conspires, and injects Art into practical reality. Sleight of hand, the sprinkling of spices into a symphonic meal rich with flavour, a trickster who teaches, a wise teacher who seems like a young child too old for his years; 'Being Muse' is a conundrum and sprite who gathers up all the yearning creative spirit of their protege and draws that elusive miracle of Art out of them into the world.

Being is the NOW. When one is being, one is what one is and cannot be anything else outside of that essence. It's not even as corny or as clichéd as Shakespears Hamlet lamenting "To be or not to be?". Being is simple, uncomplicated, unreserved, it's purity in the here and now without another thing besides.

Being Muse. Maybe it's not really the name for bats innate Gift - his Genius - as explained by Dick in that book that began this relationship three years ago! I don't know. Only bat will know when a better name comes along that resonates in his soul like the clear tones of a brass bell tolling from a steeple on a hill.

It is in part, due to bat's gift that I still write in this blog today. 400 posts and rising, I'm slowly building a library of thoughts and stories, musings and rants in part inspired by the conversations, and passing jibes of Muse. My strange and convoluted friendship with bat these past three years has inspired some of these thoughts. Not every artist can claim to know their Muse by name :)

Writing here is also in part my own innate Gift. I called my own Genius name "Constructing Coherence" back then and even now, it still has that slightly pretentious ring to it. It's clumsy but then so am I for the most part. It's convoluted and hardly inspiring but it IS what I "do". I AM about trying to build a view of the world that makes complete sense - at least to me anyway. I am about pasting concepts and ideas together into coherent forms that build new perceptions and new ideologies - new analogies even. I don't always succeed but I am always at it...it's just what I do and it's impossible for me to do otherwise.

aMusing my Genius is the tool I use in the construction of my personal brand of coherence. It is in text that I feel the power of my gift flowing through me. I may not always construct my sentences well but I do occasionally build something that does make sense. I may not always speak clearly in this forum, this blog, but I do build a picture, in words, of the whole. I may look under rugs and beneath floorboards to seek out hidden aspects of truths, slotting these dusty concepts together like building blocks to create wobbly towers of possibility and epic dreams.

When I write in this blog, that is when I am Being. I am utterly in this moment, building the words to make sense of something indefinable and indistinct. I literally stick together metaphors for concepts and ideas that redefine and reshape the original. I am a story-teller crafting a world of ideas from these tools we call Words. It is my essence.

Finding a name for the personal and uniquely special Gift which only you have in all the world, is possibly a Narcissistic exercise in self-aggrandizement or... it is a key to unlocking potential yet to be expressed and explored. Life isn't meant to be the former but it does ask us to know ourselves well enough that we can do the latter. I'm still on my own personal journey of discovery of what it means to "construct" and to "cohere" in the fundamental every day of my Being.

I hope you find the path that's right for you too.

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 7

2009-03-11T22:18:00.002+11:00

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

The dream she had that afternoon changed things. She dreamed she was sculpting something from wood. A tree, old, extremely large, but utterly dead was in front of her. She could feel nothing from it and it pleased her. The tree was caught in a giant lathe. Ari was tiny in comparison. She climbed a hover-ladder and began to carve into the trunk of the tree. All she was using was a small woodcarving tool, a laser carver that melted into the wood cleanly and precisely. She looked down the length of the giant dead hulk of wood and smiled. This was her life's work. She would carve into that tree a ring for every tear she ever wanted to shed and couldn't. The tree would become her last remaining spiral before she died.

When the supper bell rang later that evening, Ari was sitting on the side of her bed. She wanted to make the dream come true. She wanted to sculpt her tears and leave them behind her as a lasting reminder to the world. She went to the communications console on the wall panel.

"Ariadne Modification Sector 12 request please?” She pronounced into the speaker. The blue communications 'On' light lit up.

"Yes?" came a stifled male voice through Perspex and metal.

"I want to sculpt a spiral in wood. May I be provided with a dead tree, a large lathe and wood carving tools please?" She asked with the complete knowledge that it - or something close to it - would be provided to her no matter how strange her request.

"Yes Ariadne Sector 12. Tomorrow we will send in a Counsellor to obtain further details about your request. Do you need more paper in the meantime? Charcoal perhaps?"

"Yes" she replied simply.

"It will be in your room when you return from your meal. Enjoy your evening Ariadne Modification Sector 12." The disembodied voice trailed off and the communications "On" light faded out.

…to be continued. (I hope)

The Quest

2009-03-09T14:55:00.004+11:00

All human beings are on a Quest once we are born.

As children we instinctively, but without being able to form that instinct into words, know what it is we are here to achieve or simply do. In the mire of social responsibility and in the encouraged internment of our fantastic and "silly" dreams, some of us lose this knowledge and wander aimlessly seeking that which is our purpose.

Not so much a Quest, as a living death sighing about the past and fearful of any kind of future.

The blessed few who discover their life's work for which they have been created - their Personal Legend - go through a series of stages on a Quest of a different kind. The challenges on that journey test their level of commitment, courage, fortitude and the strength of their desire and will to achieve the end result - a treasure of great value.

The intrinsic worth of the treasure isn't the point of this Quest. What makes the treasure so worth everything is what you learn along the way to finding it. In fact, in Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' - you cannot ever hope to find the treasure you seek unless you travel through the obstacles and learn what you need to learn along the way. One thing leads to another, leads to another and it is a matter of accepting and listening and heeding the signs as they build upon one another.

How do we find our Personal Legend - the one thing we are put here to do against all the odds?

Ask your heart. It has always known what it wants. It's the thing you have dreamed about and wanted since you were a child. Want it - with all your heart - and the Universe will do everything in its power to make it yours. For when you are living what you are meant to be and do, you benefit all of creation throughout time and the Gift cannot be wasted.

I may be a bit late on the uptake but reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist yesterday in one sitting, was a profound experience that I can't shake off as mere cute new-age mumbo-jumbo. This small story is a modern fairy-tale containing truths of unmistakable human significance. Wisdom borne of experience and distilled in the fires of Love.

Thank you Mr Coelho for your gift.

The validation of Jorga McGuire

2009-02-22T12:50:00.007+11:00

Jorga smiled anxiously at the screen. Its light was the only one in her room, the rest of which was all dark shadows and deep blue recessive pockets of gloomy distortion. Her brightly lit laptop screen fluoresced and accentuated the shadows under her eyes and the red, inflamed zits she'd been picking at.

"'Only14U' has winked at you" said the words on her screen. She clicked the underlined name noting the obvious intent of the name as she did so. "Only14U" obviously meaning "Only one for you". So many men made this pitiful attempt at being clever with their online screen names. She'd seen one or two screen names that had indeed, been clever, but most were vague attempts at wit and were largely seen by Jorga as somewhat childish, inane or grossly stupid! Winking via an online match-making site only meant you were indicating an interest in pursuing a potential friendship or date with another person, but even something as innocuous sounding as a "wink" began to exhibit for Jorga, a whole Pandora's Box of emotional self-mutilation.

Jorga often found herself hesitant and anxious when she received such names as 'Only14U' in her online dating service inbox. None of the inane,stupid username profiles had interested her so far. None of the cutely named, clever, sensible, adorably profiled, lovely looking men she'd sent winks to accepted her either, for that matter. Jorga was very used to having rejection replies in her inbox. She was caught in between stupidity aiming 'up' for her and her own stupidity for aiming higher than herself!

'You'd think we were over this class status via physical attractiveness factor thing by now' she mused to herself as she looked at 'only14U's' profile. As was usual in her online dating experience thus far, 'only14U' had declined to add a profile photo of himself as did so many of the men that had previously 'winked' at her. 'Probably as ugly as all hell or wanting a mistress' was Jorga's usual summation of such profiles.

Sometimes, she just sent them a polite "Thanks, but no thanks!" and at other times, if the words of the profile seemed more or less half intelligent, she would send a "I'd like a profile picture please" request. Usually, they were "as ugly as hell", at least according to her version of what "Attractive" meant.

No chemistry at all! She knew logically that to base a potential romantic relationship on two hundred and fifty words and a poorly thought out photograph - if they'd bothered with one at all - was nonsensical and arbitrary in the extreme, however, she wasn't into old, craggy, frowning, aesthetically challenged faces so much.

She knew it worked that way for her in the minds of the pretty men she winked at and who then clicked on her own profile. "As ugly as all hell!" rang in her ears as a challenge to her own vanity and sense of herself as a woman. She knew she was getting on in years and that her looks were now fading but she often felt pretty - sort of - if she wasn't looking in a mirror or at her own photograph.

She felt intelligent, witty, clever, honest, practical, romantic, sexy and adorable most of the time. It was just that her physical representation in two dimensional space continually let her down over and over again. No amount of preening and makeup, lighting or angles of head tilt in her profile pictures could disguise how ordinary and aging she really was!

With this fact in mind, she would often be plagued by a mild case of guilt when turning down, apparently, shy, aging and very ordinary men, whom she could not find attractive but were really very okay. She knew how it felt to be relegated to the dating dustbin by very physically attractive men. She felt bad on the one hand for rejecting men on the basis of how they looked and perversely gratified for being considered attractive by anyone.

When you get a "Thanks but no thanks" in your inbox after sending a 'wink' to a nice looking person with a really clever profile, you feel the jab in your self-esteem quadrant, like that very large needle into your gum at the dentist. It hurts and it can smart for a long time after, but you ignore that because you know its better to take the icky stuff now than suffer any pain, during and after. Jorga was over taking needles. Very over it!

Ordinary and utterly cool women, like herself, spending decent Documentary-on-the-tele viewing time shopping for dates online instead. It was insane! Lovely girls, looking for men who had both smarts and good looks with athletic bodies, along with an above average grasp of the English language, but getting their shy winks knocked back by these men because of what? Her face was too round? She was carrying too much weight? She was too forward? Not forward enough? She was the wrong star sign? She lived in the wrong area? Her profile too perky? Her profile too mundane? She wasn't thirty something? WHAT?

She could never find out what it was that prevented her from finding a genuinely attractive man. And then she noted what she turned down in those ordinary, average men who had winked at her profile and she listened to the subtle, silent judgments she made on the basis of their profiles. She too was mercenarily shallow enough to base her assessment of them by the words they used, if their faces were too round, they were carrying too much weight, or they were inarticulate and silly sounding. She was little interested if they seemed inordinately "dumb" even when she knew they probably were great people despite appearances. They were often too old and their profile pictures made better mug shots for Police Wanted posters than romantic lures. It begged the question as to whether these men were merely desperate or just needed some feminine guidance on personal presentation. Jorga decided it was probably both.

Staring at the screen and observing 'Only14U's' very average profile - sans profile picture - she concluded that the slave trade had not yet died. The exchange rates were different of course but this stuff was voluntary human trafficking nonetheless and therefore a romantic grand disillusionment. A meat market with a large promise of lifetime romance that only rarely delivered and then mostly to the lucky, gorgeously endowed few.

She clicked "Cancel subscription". Her anxiousness passed and her smile widened on her round, aging face. She knew she was better than any online date could guess from two hundred words. She was more intelligent than her attempts at being clever with words could convey, better looking in real life than her photo's suggested, sweeter, kinder, more warm-hearted and far, far more lovable than a page on an internet dating site could ever display. She was Jorga McGuire and that was enough.

A large weight shifted slightly, in her heart and she felt the first flutterings of her self confidence rising up again. She would meet someone...eventually.

Watching butterflies

2009-02-19T22:18:00.007+11:00

In the strange story that is a life, you can never take too many chances on letting the butterfly of happiness rest awhile on your shoulder.

Happiness - the Butterfly - is a flighty little thing. She won't be caught in a net or trapped in an enclosure or pinned to a board. She can't do her softly, softly magic dead now can she?

Happiness - the Butterfly lands artfully where she pleases and it just so happens I can see her fluttering near my woe begotten brow and I'm breathless in anticipation for her to just alight on me and take her time to rest there on my little soul.

I once dreamed of a giant butterfly with blue wings with jeweled colours underneath. It spoke to me and asked me if I could let it "feel the cold" for just a little while. I let it rest in my hand and I took it through the Butterfly enclosure in which it lived, all warmth and wet air with nectar stations every few feet - a butterfly paradise really - and I went through the door at one end and then the second door on the other side of that wee space between doors.

The butterfly rested with wings wide open on the palm of my hand, after the humid heat of the enclosure. the cool air was a shock even to my senses, . She lay very still, and very open. I remember thinking how strange it was for a butterfly to keep its wings so open in such conditions. In my understanding, butterflies tend to close their wings to conserve their body heat in the cold. This butterfly, however, was a mystery. She wanted to feel...really feel the cold air against her wings. She needed to know what that was like and needed me to help her find out.

I was getting worried for her. She was so still, so unearthly and beautiful. I thought she had died a soft, quiet, strange death in my hand and I felt remorse that I had done such a thing to something so lovely. I turned and took her back into the enclosure.

She remained still in my hand for a few moments more. Then with a ticklish flutter, she wrested herself free from my hand and floated away on the soggy air to find a nectar station on which to re-fuel. I was amazed at how well she had recovered. And eternally pleased as well.

Later in the dream, when I was standing on the open grassy field that sloped gracefully upwards to a rolling hill towards the horizon, where the hand painted sun smiled down on the Badger and me, the butterfly returned and simply said "Thank you" to me. I knew why she said thank you. It surprised me nonetheless, that she had valued her near-death experience so much.

I've been separated now for 9 months. I think I too, have had my wings spread on the palm of God's hand feeling what it's like to be cold. I have felt the lowest of lows and the most excruciatingly lower lows than those. I survived.

And now the butterfly that is named Happiness awaits her turn to rest awhile...but only when she's ready and only on her terms. I will watch her dance about my head in the meantime.

Fractal Love

2009-02-13T22:32:00.000+11:00

Back story - Sierpinski Triangle

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 6

2009-02-08T22:20:00.003+11:00

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

"Tell me why do you draw spirals again, Ari?" His look made her close her eyes as the throbbing sensation behind them threatened ever louder.

"Because it’s the only way I can cry, Dwayne" she said simply, her eyes shut tightly, willing back the violent surge of emotional intensity behind them. Dwayne stared at them for a moment, trying to understand, then he moved forward again and crouched down to carefully poke the finished drawing in amongst the other papers inside the portfolio. Once it was inside, Ari let the flap fall and she pushed it back under her cot quickly. Dwayne continued to crouch in front of her on the bed. Ari could feel how it was making his knees and ankles, back and neck hurt. He looked at her with his brown, round eyes and excessively aquiline nose. Dwayne said nothing, but Ari could hear his emotions like the shrieking of gulls roaring in her mind. “So? Why do you need to cry, Ari?”

The shooting pain inside Ari's head began to spin like one of her spirals. It was a pinwheel of light boring into her mind, the fiery tendrils spilling outwards to burn and frazzle the edges of her thoughts. "Don't!" she breathed. Dwayne put his fingers against her forehead in the hopeful attempt to cool her mind. The cool of his hands momentarily thwarted the spinning but then it came back again, stronger and more unavoidable. She lay down on the bed. "Kill me!" she whispered.

"No." Dwayne said as quietly.

"I want to cry Dwayne. I can't. My body refuses. I feel everything inside my mind but my body can't react or respond to it. I might as well be dead."

"Bit melodramatic Ari. Even for you."

"You sound like Margot! I'm being a 'baby' now am I?"

"You are in pain. We all of us are sweetie."

"You don't know the pain I feel every moment of my life!" she retaliated raising her voice now a little.

"True, but you only get a reflection of mine, you don't feel how my knees burn that clearly, especially at night when I am trying to sleep."

"Just go D. I'll be fine." she sighed, the spinning maelstrom of pain jettisoning electrical surges of intense heat throughout her head. Dwayne left the room. She could feel the depths of his sadness for her and she ached to weep once more.

She deliberately spiralled herself inside that pinwheel in her head, immersing her sense of herself within its core, at its hub. There she imagined herself to be the spiral's nexus, the place where it began, tiny and untarnished inside the maelstrom of spinning light and heat. The pain diminished a little and she gradually drifted into her usual, fitful pattern of sleep.

To be continued… (I hope)

Satans Saturday Playground

2009-02-08T07:16:00.004+11:00

As the state of Queensland in Australia sinks under king tides and rising flood waters and they achieve rainfall totals to break records - my corner of Australia is tinderbox dry and as of Saturday 7th Feb 2009, is burning up!

Around my own home town, a large fire that skirted the town on three sides came close to ripping through this city, flames surfing on the viciously hot and powerful winds. The temperatures in South Eastern Australia yesterday had to be experienced to be understood. Imagine a Saharan Sirocco, blasting across the desert sand at high speed with the intense heat of a blast furnace oven, scorching all in its path. For the past three weeks, we've had temperatures daily in excess of 37+ Celcius. Yesterday, temperatures reached into the high 40's Celcius. My town reached a top of 46C (114F)

The only difference between here and the Sahara right now is that we have stuff that can burn! 5000 hectares of land, three homes, the Golf club (one of the best in the state), stock, native wildlife... we are actually "lucky". Around the rest of Victoria, lives have been lost. As I write, some 20 + people have lost their lives in this terrifying war by heat and flames.

100's of houses have been lost on the outskirts of Melbourne. Over in the far South East of Melbourne, the fires still rage, threatening annihilation on whole communities.

Nothing really totally prepares us for these events. The Country Fire Authority, stretched to absolute maximum capacity has barely enough resources to cope with disasters of this magnitude. They rely, almost entirely, on the fortitude of an overburdened volunteer force, our main defensive weapon we have against the onslaught of a fire storm.

People will demand the Australian Government "do" something, of course. The Government is now fraught with an almighty conundrum. We had been promised financial packages to continue to "stimulate the economy" in light of the current economic climate. Now however, that AUD$42 Billion package may seem an appallingly short-sighted announcement given that that money is likely going to be needed to help the people of Queensland re-build after the worst flooding in living memory as well as the people who've been burned so badly in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

Lives, property, land! It's easy to be numbed to the numbers, they are just not able to be seen in the mind in order to comprehend their scope.

Touted as worse than the disastrous Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, this past two days will be yet another day marked by a name - as opposed to a date - that many will immediately identify as this moment in time when our land seared and was razed to the ground to ashes.

Phantasmic adventures over the roads of maddening distance

2009-02-05T18:21:00.007+11:00

Dakar!

Associated with born nutcases obsessed with wheels and riding or driving them over the roughest terrain imaginable, at the fastest possible speed.

Having purchased three DVD's in recent weeks, I have been following the series called "Race to Dakar" which is one of a set of three armchair travelogues by Charley Boorman and his team of savvy adventure entrepreneurs.

The first dream was to travel east from London to New York over land on three motorcycles. That epic was filmed and became the documentary series "Long way round" and featured Charley's best mate, the affable and oddly laconic Ewan McGregor.

The third motorcyclist was the impossibly impetuous cameraman Claudio Von Planta who's presence was graciously acknowledged (which to me, was kinda new really for this type of doco - at least at the time I first saw it. Usually the camera crew is presented as utterly "invisible"). Claudio is pretty much a klutz on a motorbike - or he was in the first series it seemed - but his skills as a cameraman are super human to say the least! He captured the heart of these documentaries which told grand stories of genuine courage, survival, terror, comedy and landscape. He also showed the dynamic relationships between a group of incredible men who had such different temperaments and even louder ego's but who all cohered into a Team - Capital T. Amazing to watch this aspect really.

Then came Charley's decision to have a bash at doing the Dakar Rally. It nearly killed him...twice! He broke his collar bone just training for this gruelling event. In the event itself, just five days into the 14 day, 9000km ride, he broke bones in one hand and dislocated his thumb on the other. In sheer agony, he continued to ride another 400kms to the next bivouac and the "comfort" of his team mates. A testament to his determination to try his absolute best to succeed when he felt a "failure" at this task from practically day one!

It's gritty, dirty, romantic Boys Own Adventure Series realism of the first order. LOTS of swearing, whinging men and sand! You feel the horror and the insanity of Dakar and your admiration for the men and particularly the amazing women who do this race, sometimes many times over, suck the air out of your lungs.

Charley's, and most of the rest of the team's experience of Dakar left a slightly sour taste in their mouths. Too gruelling, expensive, life-threatening and utterly MAD to be considered worth trying again?

.....Well..... maybe!!!! Many who swear off Dakar the first time find themselves toying with the idea of trying it again not that long after they're home. It must be like some kind of dirty drug or something. One that is so insane and so addictive and which is such a "bad trip" at the time but you want it in any case because it has that kind of phantasmigorical element to it that says...

It's when you're nearly dead that you're most alive!

Alexys' game

2009-01-31T21:49:00.003+11:00

1. So far in my life I have... learned that my mind mostly observes what I'm feeling, likes to discuss it philosophically as open source material for observation and comment. However I am actually not very good at understanding my own emotions, let alone accurately - nor often honestly - expressing them.

2. I am happy about my life because... I learn something important every single day. It morphs into my being like suds into a sponge and I keep growing into the woman I was created to be.

3. One of the worst/best experiences I have ever had was... The best worst experience I have EVER had is my team experience back in 87/88 when I was a member of Rainbow of Promise with Youth Encounter. A cataclysmic wave of growth and pain so profoundly life-changing, it was a crucible more than a 'trip overseas'.

4. I am most proud of... having given birth to two rather clever and unique human beings :)

5. I define love as... the ability to forget what I need or want because the other person is more important than me right now, and being really happy about it too! :)

6. I am grateful for... Christ.

7. I want to be best remembered for...my writings and my sense of joyous playfulness. I want to be remembered for the essence of youthfulness and sunshine.

8. Nothing makes me laugh more than... wit, irony, word play and cleverly insightful parodies.

9. If I could sum of my life in three words, I would say... Anticipation, Words, Experiential.

10. The best gift that I can give is... my courage and my hope.

11. If I was told that I only had 1 year to live, I would... move to Germany and master that bloody language properly!

Thanks Alexys. :) That was fun.

too hot to handle

2009-01-30T18:18:00.005+11:00

too hot to think
too hot to do anything
too hot to muse
too hot to decide
too hot to sleep
too hot to play
too hot to be green
too hot to be amusing
too hot to cohere
too hot to know
too hot to gel
too hot to write
too hot to walk
too hot to run
too hot to dream
too hot to create
too hot to attend
too hot to wear stuff
too hot to game
too hot for shoes
too hot for clothes
too hot for standing
too hot for sitting
too hot for laying down
too hot for prayer
too hot for the river
too hot for birds
too hot for my cat
too hot for our house
too hot for paint
too hot for tar
too hot for concrete
too hot for trees
too hot for hades.

burning in a sea of heat so constant, it feels like I'm being broiled for serving on a fine china plate for creatures I can little comprehend.

Wednesday 28th January it was 44.5 degrees Celcius (112.10F)
Thursday 29th January it was 44.6 degrees Celcius (112.28F)
Today - Friday 30th January it is right now at AEDST of 1830 hours, 43.0 degrees Celcius (109.4F)

Next week, we are forecast to receive the following day time temperature peaks...

Saturday 31st Jan 44.0C (111.2F)
Sunday 1st Feb 40.0C (104.0F)
Monday 2nd Feb 40.0C ( " )
Tuesday 3rd Feb 39.0C (102.2F)
Wednesday 4th Feb 38.0C (100.4F)
Thursday 5th Feb 39.0C (102.2F)

...and a wonderful "cool" change will bring us back to a "pleasant" 34.0C (93.2F) on Friday next week ;)

Air conditioners have been cranked up to the max this past few days. It's highly doubtful we'll be using them by the end of next week though. If Victoria's energy requirements can't be contained and in the event of a major bushfire, I may end up being offline and incommunicado for awhile.

Is it Global Warming? Don't know! It depends on which experts you read really. My dad is doing the Salmon thing and flailing about against the main-stream current of popular opinion and emphatically declares that there is no such thing as Global Warming from CO2 emissions! It's simply "Climate Variability". Every few thousand years, the earth chucks a bit of wobbly and either has an extreme freeze or in our current case... a deep heat rub!

Any which way but cook or chill for us average mortals.

By August this coming year... I may well be posting how damn cold it is!

Millenium Gen mi

2009-01-22T20:20:00.003+11:00

It's my birthday and I am 47 years old.

I feel right at this moment, 17 years old, giddy with the fullness of loving attention being shown to me on this my "special" day. In many ways, I do identify with the modern and current trend of youthful expression, the strange mix of youthful exuberance for self-expression and individualism. I am just on half way through a full life. What lessons will I learn from here on in? What lessons have I learned that will bring value to those who come after me?

Today, my kids have shown extraordinary generosity in their gift giving. Friends have gone way and above the call in wishing me well on this day.

Even the gang in Second Life organised a surprise birthday bash for me which blew me away as I had no inkling they were up to something! They even had a rainbow which is a portent that holds significant meaning for me spiritually and personally - and they didn't know that fact either, which of course, lends awesome power to its providence.

I've eaten enough junk food today to sink the Titanic and have thoroughly enjoyed every morsel of it.

There are hardly words to describe how I'm feeling right now. I feel buoyant, optimistic, energised and positive. I feel extraordinarily loved. Within a week, I"m sure my mood will perhaps be different - as moods often can be - but for today, for THIS now that I'm living, I feel alive with the wonder of love and potential.

Thank you God for days such as this. Thank you for the bounty undeserved, in the love of family, friends and you.

a slightly weird saturday

2009-01-17T11:39:00.002+11:00

Well... it's not like it's anything extremely out of the ordinary as such.

I got up a bit later this morning after having HAD to get up very early to an energetic kitten (as you do! *sigh*).

But she was still driving me nuts by 8:30am so I resigned myself to getting out of bed and doing my morning "check my mail" routine on the computer here. I do live a rather sad existence, counting on mail from around the world each day *smirk*

But anyway... the upshot of it was that I was pinged left right and centre by a bunch of people in Skype and Googletalk and found it all rather frenetic and busy for someone still waking up and feeling dopey and annoyed.

It must have done me good though, because a few conversations later and I feel pretty good now. Something feels lighter and there is less drag pulling on my inner spirit.

The boys from the band are all here to rehearse now for this afternoon's gig at Northfest (a new mini festival here in my town). My JD plays the drums. They're definitely getting better at this band thing I must say...despite the rather ad hoc approach to rehearsing. Needless to say, my house can get rather loud on occasion.

I might pop along to Northfest later to check it out. I did have grand aspirations today of going shopping at the second hand clothing places for some clothes this morning and haven't managed it. I am really desperate for some new clothes, especially for wearing to work! Will get there eventually, I guess.

As of next Saturday morning, I'll be out earning extra money cleaning a home for a local family. I'm not sure how long this will last but as the goal this year is to get the kids their own computer (instead of nagging me for the use of my Preciousss), I need every cent I can scrape together.

I don't know why today feels slightly weird really. Just that there feels like there is this heavy portent in the atmosphere - an instinct that there is a change in the wind on its way perhaps. I feel as if I'm on some kind of bizarre threshold of something surprising and out of the ordinary.

Maybe I'm projecting too. I do that a lot! It's possible that this will be a rather ordinary Saturday.

Porena is leading a workshop in Second Life at Perfect Paradise Island on Imagestreaming later this evening and I'm really looking forward to it. I've only a rudimentary understanding of this tool for creative visualising, so am keen to learn more. Maybe that could be what I'm feeling right now at this midday hour... a heightened sense of something interesting on my knowledge horizon... maybe. :)

So, anyway - all things considered, it is nice to finally be in a place where my spirit feels much lighter, more joyful, less burdened by the innumerable vicissitudes that seemed to be the theme I constructed for my life in 2008. There HAS been a shift inside of me - a big one but also a quiet one too, my perspective and my outlook have definitely been adjusted and I am enjoying the process of that adjustment.

After Winter comes the Spring! See, Badger? I do understand the seasons after all :)

overwhelm good: overwhelm bad

2009-01-14T16:42:00.002+11:00

Seems to be a big week for me.

Overwhelmed is the catchphrase of each day. My new job as a Project Worker with a Volunteer Resource Centre is taxing my brain to the hilt. I'm being thrown in "gently" by trying to absorb as much information as I can. Once January is over, and the year finally begins with the kids going back to school and volunteer groups all re-convening, my job is bound to get extremely busy. The sheer networking task I have ahead is amazing, contacting people and getting to know them and their needs with all things Volunteers! Wow! What a job this will be!

That is the Overwhelm good. I walk home each day around 1530 and I muse on the providence of being given a job that matches my skills and interests. This is the kind of work I wanted and I whisper prayers of gratitude for this chance to do something useful with my time and talents.

There is so much to learn though. Just sifting through the expectations of my position and what is required under the funding agreements with Government is quite daunting really. I only vaguely feel out of my depth, but thankfully, each hour makes me more sure that I am in the right place at last. At least for now.

The other face to the Overwhelm coin is "bad". Some weeks ago, I began a friendship with an Australian man online via Second Life. A sweet, wonderfully enticing connection with someone I really liked - and still do very much. Sadly, at least for now, that won't continue as it had. It hurts a bit and I get quite emotional about it if I think too much on it. I'd give in and re-connect but for different reasons, which I won't elaborate on here, it isn't feasible.

I already miss our conversations and the laughter. It's nice to have that "click" with a member of the opposite sex. That open camaraderie and rapport that is so easy and just flows between kindred souls... he is a terrific person and I wish him well.

Someday we may actually catch up in 'Meat Space' and enjoy a wine and a laugh. I hope so. For now though, the pinching ache of sadness lurks around looking to poke me in the heart strings and remind me of what "might" have been "if only". That may dissipate in time but nevertheless, it's always going to be a sad thing - and even a little "bad" - that some friendships just aren't easily available in the here and now.

Already, this is proving to be an interesting year! Overwhelm is good or bad or both... dealing with it is as much about "flow" as anything else. Emotional flow is not my strong suit but I'm learning as I go :) For which I am grateful.

volunteering and do I even care?

2009-01-12T21:57:00.004+11:00

I started my new job today.

I work in an agency delivering resources and information, training and options for all sectors of the volunteer community.

My role is as a Volunteer Management Program Project Worker. A rather dry sounding mouthful for a job title really. It's more or less community development work with a focus on assisting Not-For-Profit organisations with all their volunteer resources and training.

The old days of "just" chipping in to help out are fading away. Government - at least here in Australia - are recognising the huge value volunteers make to the community and social fabric of our Aussie society. It's not only good economic sense, it's also good ethical sense. A community bonded is a community that is healthy and less likely to drain services. Volunteers are integral to that goal.

But...

Do I care enough about the concept of volunteering to do my job well?

Good question!

I have been a volunteer over the years in many different organisations and guises. When I adopt a project...I really adopt it! To the point of fanaticism sometimes. I can become so deeply entwined into a group as to be utterly consumed by it.

In recent years, I've been very cautious about becoming "too" involved for this reason. I don't really like being told what to do. I rather like bossing people about and telling them what *I* want done for the most part! At the same time, I feel so obligated to my chosen group that the burden I put on myself in meeting those self-imposed duties can literally suck my spirit dry.

Looking back, I can see a distinct pattern to my involvement in groups. Three years! Yes! Nearly everything I have ever had a strong focus for and have been passionate about has lasted for approximately three years, give or take a few months. That was rather eye-opening!

I did a rather brief and perhaps a little perfunctory muscle test on my new job today, to find out what my core "thinks" about this jobs prospects - given my poor track record in recent months with retaining employment - Answer? Three years! hahahaha

It's like it's some sort of hot wired genetic code thing in me or something. My gene for Hyper-Focus Passion Facility is set to three years max!

So back to the question. Do I CARE enough about volunteering in general to do my job well. Actually... you know what? No!

And that is a very, very good thing! It means, that just maybe, I can be a lot more impartial, less emotionally involved, less Hyper-focused and definitively less inclined to have my body, mind and soul eaten up by the Group Mind!

And that means...I could very well keep this job longer than I expect! Just maybe!

Do I care? I care enough to not want to care overly much.

Think about it.

my tenuous home

2009-01-09T22:46:00.002+11:00

This fragile circle
holds only enough to soothe us -
there isn't much left over to grow us.

Do not sleep
Do not cry
Do not breathe unnecessary thoughts
into the ephemeral chemistry around you.

Think smaller rather than bigger
in the practical application of
bigger dreams.

Life is a Law. Law isn't life.
Be free to challenge the unnecessary.

It may well be gone tomorrow or last
one hundred thousand lifetimes more -
who cares how long - but for Now,
the miracle is that it is even here at all.

Inside the marble of water,
inside the bubble of air
you and i are sharing,
rests a canary that sings before it
stops breathing.

This planet is my tenuous home.

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 5

2009-01-06T08:33:00.000+11:00

Everything about Dwayne was long. His legs were long and very thin, his torso similarly long and wiry thin. His neck and even his face were long and thin. His ears looked as if the lobes had been stretched downwards, his nose was ungracefully long and very thin, the tip pointed and sharpened as a result. Only his eyes remained round enough for him to be considered reasonably human. He was a research modification in the genetics of dwarfism. By tweaking the gene responsible for shortness, The Dwayne Modification elongated out of all natural proportions to something just slightly less than a human spaghetti noodle. To watch Dwayne walk was like watching an over-long reed move through space.

When sitting on the bed beside Ari, Dwayne looked twice as long as she in his body - and thinner, if that were possible. When he stood beside her, he was a skyscraper in comparison. The pain in Dwayne's joints and muscles from the sheer force of will in keeping his length upright in space was obvious in the dark blue circles under his eyes. He lived in constant physical pain and only Ariadne could hear his silent weeping at night, in his room, in the other wing. She never mentioned it.

The pain behind her eyes throbbed a little harder. She tried to thwart the onslaught of emotional and physical mental torment this young man was permanently carrying. She could only go inside of it and immerse herself in it and simply feel it. She imagined herself one of her spirals, going down inside the cave of pain she felt emanating from Dwayne. Somehow, this process helped, especially in proximity. She was able to relieve it somewhat if they kept the current emotional levels at this keel - if they changed...she would have to spiral again and it took a lot of energy to do that.

"What's up?" she asked making small talk. Her voice was low and soft.

"Nothing much" lied Dwayne equally quietly. "Margot was a bitch to you at lunch time, again, I hear" He was somewhat overprotective of Ari and she smiled a wan smile. She knew he would have liked to make her his woman but the thought of that kind of emotional pull made Ari sick and she had always refused his more obvious advances.

"Margot is doing what Margot always does," she philosophically replied.

"Yeah. Well, she needs to keep her big blue mouth shut n’ go outside and fry some eggs in the sun on her blue-tinged arse." Dwayne mumbled ungraciously, growling these words in deep throbbing tones. He paused and then he changed the subject quickly on feeling Ariadne tense beside him. "Nice picture by the way."

She wasn't tensing so much for herself as tensing from the assault of his emotional responses toward Margot. It worried Dwayne that everything he felt, this girl could feel too on top of her own emotional state. He tried very hard to keep his emotions and status as neutral as possible even though he found incredibly draining and hard to do. He cared so much for this girl, some nights he would lay in his cot and feel the ache in his heart was stronger than the pain in his joints. He pulled these thoughts in and down to try and protect her from them.

"Stop trying to disguise what you're feeling Dwayne" Ari said softly. He relaxed and she winced "It's okay...I got it," as if his emotions were something he'd dropped and she had picked up.

She held the completed image up for both of them to see. Dwayne looked at it and then took it from her hands and got up off the cot and moved towards the door. "I don't like it D. No sense in showing it to me from a distance," said Ari, knowing his reasoning. He turned and held the top corners of the image and looked at her.

"You realise you are a genius? Don't you Ari?

She sighed and bent down, her head diving between her legs to peer under her cot. She pulled out a large portfolio of previous artworks and leaving it lay on the floor, she opened the mouth of the portfolio, dozens of art pieces encased inside, their edges appearing like the pages of a mottled book, and looked up at Dwayne.

"Just put it away Dwayne. It's over." Her words were ludicrously filled with despondency. It would require a fresh canvas to alleviate the foreboding doom she seemed to be implying under those words.

…To be continued. (I hope)

The final Gathering

2009-01-04T08:43:00.002+11:00

My father's side of the family is "unusual". So I have been told by those in the know on these things anyway.

Dad was the eldest of six. A big loud, brusque bunch of four boys and two girls. A close-knit and cohesive family unit growing up with an extraordinary father and mother of their own during the greater part of the 20th Century.

Those six kids went on to have families of their own. I am the eldest child of this next generation. The adored, feted upon, darling first Grandchild of my beloved Grandfather Lou and my darling Grandmother Sylv.

I watched as my family grew to include a large number of gorgeous cousins. Every so often we would gather all together at Grandpa's and later, after he died, "Grandma's Place". Wonderful family get-togethers filled with argument and chatter, laughter and debate, cigar smoke and jocular teasing. The best part was the collectively sung opening grace at the beginning of each meal, our voices all blended into a unique harmony. It always stirred my soul.

When, my grandmother died some 12 years ago it seemed as if we would lose that quality of wider family that had been so incredibly grounding for me, as a child. I assumed we would all go our separate ways, the younger ones would find wives, or husbands, I would never meet. They would have children I would never know.

An Uncle and his wife changed the dynamic. They opened their home to the possibility of re-creating those noisy, wonderful, close clan gatherings of our heritage. We established, by consensus, a post New Year date, the first or second Saturday in January. It became a Clarion Call for the clan to gather. Those who could make it did, those who could not waited another year. A very few have never been able to attend for whatever reason but have always been there in Spirit.

All of us are committed to church, faith, home and family. No matter where we were in the world, the depth of connection and love between all of us transcends petty rivalries and minuscule hurts. My ex partner "Baz" attended yesterday, for to exclude him by virtue of our separation was unthinkable - even by me. Despite our own failures and pain, he is as much a member of my extended family now as he ever was and I will never begrudge him belonging to it.

Nothing is worth the expense of losing people through anger and pride, the goal is always to reconcile the differences toward peaceful agreement. My family is gifted at this and despite all their natural human flaws, the arrogant tendencies, the silly politics, there was and still is, in my family, a resonance and a quest for harmony that was stronger and more substantial than pride and willfulness.

Over the years, I have watched as, gradually, my younger cousins - predominately boys - went on to marry exquisitely beautiful women, and men with the same values, goals and faith, so that they blended into the greater unit like greased cogs in a freely moving flywheel. The family gatherings grew larger.

For ten years, my Uncle and my Aunt have prepared their home, opened their door, organised the catering, and provided the atmosphere that became known as "The Hedt Do".

A new generation of children were born. My little cousins, once removed, are so gorgeous and precious to me. I held the youngest of them in my arms yesterday. I am 46.5 years older than him, but we are connected via the blood that flows through our veins. He is no less my family, than his Father, my first cousin, and his Grandfather, my Uncle. The tree grows.

Most of these early January events have averaged between 30 and 50 people. Loud, noisy, boisterous, filled with cigar smoke, beer, excellent food and much laughter. We are all still connected through our faith, and our willingness to never become so proud, we cannot forgive the ones we are bonded to by blood.

Yesterday, was the final regular Gathering of the Clan. It is time. The family has grown so much and is spread so far and wide now. The organisation for this event was a major burden on my Aunt, in particular. The unit cohered and solidified through her efforts and others.

Now it is time for those tiny cousins, once removed, for whom I am an Ancient Person to learn a different history of their family, through their own parents. They will never fully know the Unit I grew up with, the amazing coherence of familial understanding, love, generosity that I have held in my memories and experiences. But, because their own parents hold it in their experience, maybe they will re-create it down their own family lines. Through this, the power of faith and love within family will keep spreading out into the world beyond the borders of this time and my Father's generation.

We aren't unusual in who we are...we are as anyone else... the difference, I think, was - is - that we shared a bond that went beyond blood. It was called Faith and it was - is - rock solidly entwined with love.

Thank you Pam and Brian for bringing our Clan together for all these years.

Be present at our table, Lord
Be here, and everywhere, adored
These mercies bless and grant that we
May feast in Paradise with Thee

Amen