The Worry Tree

The New Black

2011-12-26T03:08:00.000-08:00

“When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life
stands explained”

Mark Twain

Not being a fan of over indulgence and commercialism for the sake of filling human size holes in the universe, the idea of gift giving for the sake of it makes me a little queasy. Finding or making the perfect gift however is well perfect. This year my mother gave me a “Dysfunctions journal” to record all the and I quote “my immeasurably fascinating dysfunctions, neuroses, emotions, inner children, moments of shame and doubt, projection, self loathing, misanthropy, and completely normal insanity, because the only difference between me and the rest of the population is that I acknowledge how crazy I am and they’re all in mind-numbing denial.” This tells me a few things. 1) My mother knows me well, 2) she seems to also have an acceptance of this, and 3) insanity is the new black because all cool things are made into journal formats.

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity”

Jean Dubuffet

Sometime in 2010, over a familiar cup of tea, a friend advised me that I was the right kinda fucked up. Sometime in 2011 the same friend also advised me that sure I was insane but at least I was worth the effort. This friend is one of my best friends for two reasons 1) she is also fucked up in the right way and 2) she seems to appreciate this level of insanity. This is also the girl that throws messed up parties with me combining several holiday events at once and makes birthday cakes in the same form of the shower scene from the film Psycho. So why do I love her and everyone within our universe of madness? Well maybe for the fact that when she bought out a birthday cake covered in fake blood with a crazed Barbie doll being knifed to death by Ken, not one person in that room thought it was anything but normal.

“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface”

Stephen Sondheim

I had a conversation many months ago with my mother over a glass of goodness where she asked me why so many of my friends seem to be insane. Without so much of a breath or even a sip of fore mentioned grapey goodness, I replied because insane people have a higher IQ and I just can’t suffer fools. Another two reasons why I love my Mum 1) she understood this and 2) she has a very high IQ and has repeatedly earned her stripes in the other department too. Mensa is simply madness written in an acceptable language as sanity is simply another way of saying safe, stodgy, and god forbid stereotypical.

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live”

Charles Bukowski’

So the point of this piece is...Well this is none, as points are dotted by everyone but the truly dotty and sense is for those that care to seek it. I am more interested in the obscure, the challenged, the atypical and the odd.

“You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for.”

Billy Joel

Lately we have been shown many advertisements about mental illness with the familiar tag line of “I can treat my mental illness but I can’t treat how you treat me”. This campaign seems so old fashioned and last century to me as I can’t imagine a life where such things as this are not treasured traits, but I also think maybe this is because I have been blessed with people in my life that see disabilities of any kind as different types of abilities. I am not dismissing mental illness instead I am embracing it and asking why you insist on attaching the word illness to it.

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane”

Philip K. Dick

So maybe the point is to embrace the inner madman, to face reality and pick its bones until only a skerrick of sanity remains as only then we can accept that this life is not about finding happiness, wealth, or even wisdom but by allowing ourselves to be the vessel that this earth pours its prominence into. Being open, being truly open means that the occasional devil will drop in and change how we see the world and our place within it. It will be scary, it will be fraught with fear, it will be colourful but also sometimes removed of all colour but it may just make more sense which is why as a person that suffers, no experiences, mental illness I can laugh at this state of being and celebrate its clarity. I do and I’ve found others that do and they’re all awesomely insane but my door is always open for more that welcomes this state of being.

You’re nuts, but you’re welcome here.

Steve Martin

Tokyo

2011-12-08T03:21:00.000-08:00

2011 is slowly ticking away and leaving the usual feeling of presumption that plagues all annual important points in time. Christmas, New Year, birthdays always insist on absorption, accountability and advancement. As children this time of year is about counting the days till Saint Nic, but as adults we seem to spend this time looking back counting scars and successes as if deadlines were due, payment arrangements were expiring and life was suddenly meant to make more sense. December weighs heavily on our chests and bank accounts as we dress it up in preparation of ending another year. But endings are simply segways into new cycles with a whole new set of possibilities and opportunities, right? Yet endings still sit like stones in our bellies. Endings still fill our hearts with air that presses painfully on all the possibility popping within the year that we just lived, or survived, or just barely pulled through. Another year almost over, another year older, yet we are seemingly not wiser as we still have to carry ourselves into 2012.

New Year and the internal fireworks of resolutions are quickly approaching, but this time they can wait. They can sit like heartburn for all I care and singe my insides as this year I will not count the days that I didn’t do enough, be enough, lived enough.

Finally at 34 I no longer give a fuck.

Wrinkles come with the promise of wisdom and in this year where so much went wrong, I can tell you that some things felt beautifully right. These moments were not elegant, or epiphanies, or certainly not earth shattering or even exemplary moments as life dragged its feet like any other year. However this year, I finally understood how very small I was, yet how very big a place in some people’s lives I have.

When I was in Tokyo many moons ago and I climbed to the dizzy heights of the observatory building and looked over the big city smog and looked for the edge of a city that was bigger than a map could ever contain, I was left in that moment, with more loneliness that I had thankfully ever experienced before and since. I wondered with the exhaustion that only a traveler can feel how people could ever find each other in a city with no sides. How a connection could be made in a city that spread beyond even the eyes of a coin operated binocular was beyond me. It has taken me years to understand how people live within a life that is too big and busy to care. Yet billions do by creating worlds within worlds and 2011 represents to me the worlds I created, was invited into, and found a home in. When I think about 2011 I don’t feel the job dissatisfaction, the empty bank account, the extra pounds that never shift, the car crash, the confusion, the floods, instead I think of you, the endless cups of tea and beer, the wines and the therapeutic whining, the planning and the doing, the dinners and the discussions, the time spent with people I admire, adore and appreciate. My world within the big bad world without sides, without heart, without meaning was made because of you.

So for the first time in a very long time the new year does not carry the weight of dread, fear or even care as this year will not be faced alone. This year will not be another Tokyo for I have found the sides, the edges that hold me up and in.

Post-it

2011-10-08T00:59:00.001-07:00

I have this overwhelming urge to leave Post-it notes inside women’s magazines. Little notes of love, admiration and support.

‘’ You’re perfect as you are!’’

‘’Those lines means you lived loved and laughed!’’

‘’You don’t need to sleep with him to earn his love!’’

‘’Everyone but stick insects looks ridiculous in these!’’

‘’You could have spent this money on something more worthwhile, like wine!’’

These magazines have always represented all the reasons why women cannot be all that they can and deserve to be. If I donated my life, like noble people do, to one cause then abolishing women mags would be on top of my list. Does anyone else think it is a cruel and unusual punishment to actually pay for something that makes you feel worse?

I’ve spent my entire childhood shaped by a spiny tail multimedia source that told me everything I should be instead of anything I could actually be. This may seem surreal to some men but I know every woman of a certain age will be nodding their head at this statement. Yet here I stand as an intelligent, accomplished woman in my 30’s and instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what I am, I see lines, failure, ticking clocks and disposable attributes. Someone, something has programmed us to think and feel this way. When I was younger I used to believe that this social grooming was a way to stop women taking over the world as seriously we all know we can. It was a way of keeping us in cages, imprisoning us within our own insecurities. Now that I am wiser I realise that the reason is a hell of a lot more boring than that. Money, all this soul destroying ideology comes down to a couple of grubby notes. These magazines, these models, this beauty industry is not there to hold us back from world domination it is simply there to make billions of dollars by destroying everything worthwhile about being a woman. Part of me feels slight admiration for the advertising genius that destroyed an entire sex but the other part of me, the part that struggles with sexuality, social normality, and esteem, hates the fucking bastard.

Why don’t you just, like not read it, look at it, and listen to it?

Geez I don’t know as I don’t actually buy the stupid magazines, watched the degrading representations of women on TV and film, buy the so called miracle products that erase the personality of your face. I don’t wear pretty smelly stuff, revealing clothing, sexy anything and I don’t flirt, stick out my boobs, or pleasure men for acceptance but I know confused 12 year olds that do. I see women filled with goodness, overcome with the black murky clouds of insecurity, line up in newsagents to buy a glossy magazine to tell them why they will never be a woman.

A woman! Like it is a concept that has been copyrighted by beauty corporations, not an entire gender but a myth that has been concocted within an advertising boardroom by penises that want to leach them for every dollar they earn.

Feeling foolish? Degraded? Outraged? Don’t worry it will pass as soon as your anti-wrinkle cream runs out and you have to fork out $50 to replace it. I’m not sure who I am pissed off at more. The industry for destroying women or the women that allow it happen.

Either way on Friday the 14th October it is the “Blossom for one day” event where everyday people are asked to leave little notes around their city to spread goodwill, encouragement and a little splash of humanity. I think it is time that I left those little post-it notes of love within the pages of those glossy magazines.....

Things of Stone

2011-09-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

It seems that hate will always be with us, will always move within us. The difference between us continues to divide us instead of being the making of us.

I have just seen an American movie that moves in a very American way with high, lows, tears and triumphs called “The Help”. It tells the story of black slaves turned into hired help who raised a white generation but were not allowed to even shit in the same place, eat at the same table and walk on the same side of the street. I left the cinema wondering if I was meant to feel inspired by this story or repulsed or whether I was meant to digest it along with all the other crap ways we insist on treating each other. I wonder how Australia’s history would be portrayed and if the fact that people are still alive today who would remember when we considered our Indigenous people as flora and fauna. Makes me wonder if this atrocity would also be framed within a Hollywood storyboard sometime in our near future.

But it isn’t just our aversion to race but our total indifference to difference that moves our prejudices along. It is no longer “cool” to hate someone for the colour of their skin so we simply channel that into other forms...our sex, our religion, our wealth, our size, our appearance....either way it is disgustingly human and disgustingly ugly.

But there are still people that insist on putting prejudice into perceptive. Framing it within a time long gone but time is as continuous as our inability to embrace things we fear, things we can’t indentify within ourselves, things that separate us from the pack.

I wonder what outrageous behaviour of today will be immortalised in a film 50 years from now where we can watch from our comfy seats and hide behind the ignorance of the day. A few things instantly jump to mind and to all our minds as deep down they burn us like acid reflux every time we eat at our tables of intolerance and abhorrence.

There are things happening everyday that should not sit well with you.
We follow fashions of unfairness and pick on people like bullies in the school yard...we never seem to leave that yard do we? We never seem to learn, to grow, to become human. We scavenge for reasons to hate, to divide, to destroy instead of standing in awe of the differences that piece us all together, the marvellous shards that shine making up the mosaic of our lives. Ironically we all try to be original and stand out but only within the safety that we are all the same.

And then boredom was created as I’m pretty damn sure it is a modern day phenomenon. Our insistence of making everyone carbon copies of each other is boring the shit out of me and don’t get me started on genetic engineering. I don’t want to live in a world where baby’s features, sex and minds can be created in a laboratory to ensure they come out perfectly acceptable...Hitler anyone?? The super race will be super boring as there is a massive difference between attractive and appealing. If we create a generation without wonky noses, wing nut ears, and weirdness we will remove all the reasons why someone is worth loving. Instead we will be forced to look at people without fault, without character, without quirk but with perfect shapes, sizes, and dimensions...people of stone.

But who can hate stone right....but the question actually needs to be whether we can love it either. Now there’s a weird word...love....the only thing that can beat the shit out of fear and in a really corny hippy way. It’s the only thing that can stop us being so damn human and make us ....human.

Unticked

2011-08-28T00:51:00.000-07:00

We are all so eager to fill the holes we see, we forget to find out what the space was reserved for in the first place. Our obsession with defining each and everything and everyone has led to a world where space and silence is simply a canvas to graffiti, instead of an opportunity to think beyond the possibility of so called normality. Labels and check boxes have moved from the paper surveys and wormed their ways in our lives by defining who we are and what we are capable of. Despite the fact that many of us hover with the pencil between many boxes we still feel compelled to tick one box to describe ourselves and in turn our obligations to our community.

We already move within the congested systems of age, gender, race, wealth and sexuality, do we really need to restrict our impact even more?

We make decisions, life altering decisions, on who we are and what we are allowed to be based on checklists derived by whom? Me? You? Who knows, as no one seems to own up to this ridiculous practice of defining human beings, yet we all seem to file into order in a generally orderly fashion while all the time feeling ignored, misunderstood and increasingly claustrophobic. Which begs the question...why the hell do we do it? Why do we need to label everything? Why can’t we be a bit of everything and still be taken seriously?

Somewhere along the line we need to be at peace with the notion that when we relate to a particular idea it does not define who we are. We are free to move from one movement to another without losing the integrity we all seem to crave. We need to be free within the foundations that describe the feelings that make up the fundamentals of our lives without be shackled to them. Basically we need to be everything that we can in order to be the best we can be. If we live our lives like an actor with many roles then the differences that divide us will no longer exist. You will no longer see a person as a “type” but will rather see a person as a whole being. You will see contradictions and instead of trying to compress them you will celebrate them, as you will see that a person is far more complicated than we ever credited them to be. We would then celebrate the people that shade between the checkboxes instead the ones that firmly believe and pray that they belong to only one ideal.

I know people who are unsure of their gender, their political persuasions, and their sexuality. I know people who are unsure of their spirituality, their purpose, and their responsibility. Are you lucky enough to know people such as this?

Today I am this, tomorrow I may not be, but I will always be

Try putting that in a box

Thankfully you can’t. There are very few things in my life that belong within the box that waits patiently yet insistently to be ticked. I, like all others, have been pigeon holed by strangers and familiars to the point that I too looked for that box which may have defined me to only find one that kinda, not really, sorta went towards a small understanding of who I am.

I’m unticking it now because as I try to move forward it’s weighing me down and making me into something that I never was.

So I declare this day unticking day so I hope you will all join me in rubbing out the little checkbox that has dragged you down to someone that you never really were.

Nerd, slut, geek, dork, drongo, unpredictable, insensitive, conservative, right winged, communist, prude, perfectionist, boring, competitive, married, single, male, female, gay, bi, straight, unsure, asexual, human.

So go ahead and join me in rubbing the little fucker out and let’s see if we can simply be everything instead of something we never wanted to be.

Invisible

2011-08-07T00:18:00.000-07:00

Self obsession does not always come from a place of vanity. It draws from a deeper, darker place than the dainty mirror. One could live their entire life looking back at what they once had, but never knew, and still be convinced that it was the best of times. It seems that this trickery in our mind cripples us more than any other. It’s hard to miss what we never knew we had which forces us to settle on that hardest sentiment to swallow...regret. But is it harder to comprehend regret we witnessed or one we didn’t even realise we missed? In the end regret is regret and it tastes just as spiky on the way down. Do you ever get the feeling that one day you will look at back and realise that those rusted ideas that feel to an army of fears (thanks Tina Dico you rock my world) were truer than the future that screams in your face? Age is a funny thing...you earn it, yet it seems to take pieces of you every year. How can something that has such a wonderful trail to wisdom take so many damn prisoners on the way? How can something so grand look so grotesque? Perhaps it is true that youth is wasted on the young but then again knowing me, knowing you, we would waste that opportunity just as readily.

Technology these days moves so fast that people are starting to not even bother talking about it to avoid looking ignorant. This will and has changed the way we view everything. We seem to have an endless thirst for something better, younger, smarter, faster. Recently I had a disjointed conversation with another about issues that soon will be presented on our breakfast table...bigamy and polygamy to name a few. Part of me understands the link between the high divorce rate and the need to expand the fine print of our union but part of me is saddened by our constant need for change. If we give a little give on this one then we will open the door to move the goal posts on everything else...then again maybe this is why a 10 year draped in animal print posed on the French cover of Vogue this week.
Invisibility has a deafening silence about it. As a small child, no rephrase that, as a small female child I was always told that by the time you are 45 you will disappear and cease to count. You will no longer be seen as sexually desirable, or intelligently viable. You will simply be stuck between young and old, worthwhile and worthless, willing to impregnate and past you’re used by date. These days where time moves faster than your iphone can keep up it seems that cloak of invisibility hits at 30. So if you are like me, as I honestly believe many are, that fact that you are hitting your high notes in your 30 no longer counts as the last bus left 5 years ago.

On the flip side Helen Mirren’s body just won the title of best bod for 2011....which doesn’t help my argument....then again ripping up the stupid magazines that voted for her and helped create such unrealistic ideals does! So what does it leave but more confusion....

There was an article in the paper today talking about how children as young as 4 are battling with poor body image. I distinctly remember being that age and feeling the same way...which tells me at least two things...1. Nothing has changed and 2. Everything needs to. But then the devil and his advocate pops in my head and whispers with his fork tongue and taunts me with the thought that maybe it’s me and not you. Maybe the fact that I sit here at 34 and feel so undesirable is 100% my making. Maybe all the crap that you hear on TV, read in magazines and see on films is exactly that..crap. Maybe the French in all their bagetted and delicious goose liver wisdom chose that 10 year old girl plastered in makeup and high heels so we would talk about it, not desire it, but just talk about it and maybe even thinking about buying their magazine of glossy paper and unrealistic dreams. Have we become a product of our own misguidance? Do we actually believe that bullshit we have spun? If we have, we seriously need to stop telling these lies because we are all starting to believe it!

I believe in the power of being a legend in your own lunchbox and living a fabulous life excused of all boundaries and I still vividly remember as a child watching my overweight neighbour walking around in a see-through white bikini. I remember watching her half appalled and three quarters jealous at her ability to scoff at social expectations and look in the mirror and feel fabulous anyway. I have no idea where she is now but I know regardless of how she looks now she will still stand in front of that magic mirror and smile as she is anything but invisible in her world. Which leans towards an idea that has been nagging me for many years....... I have a sneaky suspicion that life is 90% fear and 10% real which means that your worst fears is really only 10% true. Life is as complicated or as simple as you choose to make it and you choose whether you are the leading lady or some unpaid extra in the background.

You decide if you are seen or if you are invisible. I also have a sneaky suspicion that it is only yourself that believes you are and everyone else has been seeing you for years.

Ball of String

2011-06-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

I've experienced many deaths from sickness to sinister but nothing had a more profound effect than when a loved one took his own life. Suicide is a tricky subject, it's uncomfortable, unfashionable, undesirable and often ignored but I dare you to find a more challenging death to grieve.

I can barely believe that last week it was 6 years since Paul died. How could it be six years when I can still hear that phone call so clearly in my head. How did six years pass when everything still seems so unfinished. Perhaps this is why suicide sits so uncomfortably with grief as grieving suggests a process, a path, although painful, to a close. There is nothing more final than suicide, however this does not equate to acceptance of it.

The strangest thing happens when someone you love commits suicide. You start to question your own life. When someone you love and admire kills themselves you dissect your own value, morals and impact. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly your ball of string can unravel.

Suddenly suicide is on the table.

It is a known phenomenon that suicide is a cluster animal. It is not unusual to find sequential suicides around the original death. It is as if suicide is contagious and it is never ever OK to just assume someone is coping after losing someone this way. Perhaps if I wasn't so afraid to admit how Paul died I could've dealt with his death better. Time rarely heals this wound.

After Paul died, time was defined differently. It actually surprised me that the sun and moon continued to set and rise as if they had no regard to the days it had given birth to before. It stunned me that the clock continued to tick. But time does not feel it simply moves forward with or without you.

It moved without me for the longest time.

Suicide, Suicide, Suicide!!!

We need to keep saying it until it no longer sits uncomfortably on our tongues. Paul committed suicide. Paul is still the most caring man I have ever met. The funniest, dorkiest, warmest, smartest, Hawaiian shirt wearing lunatic that I have ever met. His death will not change this but how I dealt with his suicide did.

I was saddened by his death but his suicide nearly destroyed me.

How can someone that I admire so much have no regard for himself? How can someone who represented to me goodness, honor, virtue and respect have so little for himself and what does this say about my interpretations of these vital values?

All of these questions where answered over the last six years when I followed him down that rabbit hole of depression. Paul is not responsible for my depression and attempts on my life but he certainly played with my string like a cat until the edge where frayed enough to unravel. I, like Paul, confronted many demons but unlike Paul, I was able to hold on to that last bit of frayed, split string. It took me three years before suicide was no longer an option for me. It took me four years to accept my illness. It took me five years to get in time with time. It's taken me six years to ask for more.

I cannot save Paul's life but I can sure as hell thank those that saved mine by not only holding on but by living but I will never forget what it felt like when I didn't believe I had that option. I don't believe that I will ever be able to communicate how profoundly Paul's death affected me as I can't even write these words without being blinded by tears. I wish I could, as like many others, I push this issue down and try to muffle it because of the pain. We need to talk about suicide without shame, guilt, or making it the last taboo. We need to take it off the table.

Mutant and Proud

2011-06-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

I seem to have an unnatural love of all things X men. I’m not a comic book geek or a geek of any kind for that matter. I don’t frequent super natural films or even action flicks but there is something about these films that really do it for me. When I was living in Japan I used to ask all my students as a warm up exercise what their favourite film was and to my surprise 80% would say without hesitation that it was “Shawshank Redemption”. Now at first I figured that maybe they were all on to us unimaginative English teachers and knew the question was bound to come up so they all learnt the title together, but 80% is a large number, so I started asking them why this film meant so much to them. Most students seemed puzzled that I didn’t understand why a film about courage, justice and determination wouldn’t naturally appeal to their Japanese sensibility.

The X men is a fantasy, it’s unrealistic but cleverly woven into modern day events. The characters and storylines challenge our moral fibre, our concepts of time, space and justice and it’s pretty, damn pretty with damn cool people with cool powers. So it has a wide appeal but this still doesn’t explain why it excites me so much.

We all know, even the blessed of our species, know what it is like to be a mutant within their own society but some of us have mastered this dance. Some of us are different in many ways and struggle to even join in the daily conversations of life. I am blessed to know quite of few of these X men and women. People that thankfully do not follow the social norm, that question the rules, explore the dark sides, and eat anything but white bread.

But even within these groups of mutants there are different degrees, different abilities that separate us, divide us. We still seek understanding within the understood. We still seek approval within our circle of acceptance. The X men dabble in these insecurities but the language they use is very different to our own. The use words like gifts, competence, and ability while we still carry the weight of disability, incompetence and burden. As a society we still see someone’s downfall before seeing what else they can actually do. We still see where they fail rather than where they may be able to succeed. And because of this we hide, from each other, from ourselves. We pour all our energy into hiding what we aren’t rather than pouring it into what we are.

It’s exhausting, it’s counterproductive and it’s slowly killing us.

I hate the idea of perfection as this concept has perhaps tainted our society more than any other ideal. It’s stripped us of our productivity, sensibility and decency. We have formed a society akin to a greyhound chasing that stupid fake rabbit around the beaten track. We are never going to catch it no matter how fast we run and even if we did we would soon realise the that it is nothing but a piece of fluff tied to a pole. We are not perfect, we are human, we are disgusting, disgraceful, devilish, deformed, drunken, debilitated, delightful, detailed, deep, divine we are fucking X men. So what if I’m anxious, fearful, unfashionable, uncoordinated, spotty and asexual, I’m also passionate, hopeful, insightful, fiercely attentive and forgetful all at once. I’m a mess yet the most together person you will ever meet. I’m self critical yet incredibly accepting of others faults. I’m obsessive yet casual, I’m feisty yet flippant, I’m everything, and I’m nothing yet rarely anything in between. I don’t understand physical passion yet I love with a passion that few would comprehend. I am anything but something you can box; I am anything but white bread.

My power is not my ability to fly, control the weather, and read you mind because it’s bigger than that it’s who I am, my power, your power is who you are.

So thank you to all the mutants I know all the people that don’t follow the rules or even read the manual in the first place. Thank you for being different, for being a mutant.

My private army of X men is hardly going to save the world but they sure as hell saved mine.

The Cave

2011-05-21T02:09:00.000-07:00

Much to the amusement of my parents, as a kid I struggled with pronunciation. Coat hangers were always hoak cangers, hospital came out as hopstickal and so on. However today I’ve mastered most words but the main offender has always been “Monogamy”, ironically enough whenever I try to pronounce it the word “Monotony” comes out. This could also explain why I’m always single....

The Terminator or as he has been dubbed, The Sperminator, has made headlines this week due to his long time affair. The fact that he had an affair does not surprise me, however people’s reactions have.

The longer that I work with animals the more I understand humans. Or maybe I understand the essence of humans rather than the modernised, desensitised copy we encounter today.

As humans we are quite comfortable with accepting animal instincts however, in our endless pursuit to deny any relation to the other creatures that walk the earth, we dismiss our instincts and expect people to rise above them and behave in a very unnatural way in this very unnatural existence we have created for ourselves.
I’m not sure where the idea of monogamy came about and I’m not sure why it came about, but I think we see the consequences of that decision every day. Also, I’m not sure when the act of sex became such a big deal or even an emotional act rather than a physical sensation akin to quenching a thirst but it did, and as a consequence, has changed our culture. It seems that achieving monogamy entitles that person to some sort of high authority, a superior being status, and hell knows we need more reason to make people feel superior to others. Yet what does it mean to be monogamous? You’re committed? You love them? You’re better at keeping it in your pants? I don’t believe it means any of these things as I’m still struggling to understand the concept that you can only love and be committed to one person at a time.

Pies are cool so let’s look at a pie, and being an Aussie I must go with a meat pie, so a meat pie is a circle that can be divided into as many or as little parts as you like. You can have one or two massive slices or lots of little slices. Now who is to say that bigger is better? Well western society, which could also explain the obesity crisis and the high divorce rates.

But seriously, because I’ve been told I should take such matters more seriously (being 33 and that whole old maid thing and all), I fail to see how commitment and love equals monotony, hang on I mean monogamy. I fail to see how monogamy has improved our lives, enriched our culture. I fail to see why people still put on their surprise faces when someone steps outside that monogamous pie and slices a new sliver. Sure cheating hurts, but is it the lies or the act that stings the most?
Maybe I’m off the mark, maybe there are actual living, breathing people out there that only want to be with one person till death do us part. If that is the case then peace be with them but for me I can’t even imagine that one person should ever have to harbour all that responsibility, all that weight, all those expectations. That one person should satisfy all my needs and I theirs. People are amazing and they all have such different nooks and crannies, perspectives, gifts and contributions.....there’s more than one slice and stance to life.

Now this is a modern concept to a modern disease.

Today in the western world we do not live within communities. We live in modern caves and close ourselves off to the rest of the world. We huddle in fear, terrified of temptation, unwilling to be moved. We create people, children, not to contribute but to strengthen our tiny little world in our tiny little caves. Sadly we live in a world that is very much close together but so very alone. We use monogamous relationships as our weapon of possessions rather than experiencing a life with another life form. I’m all for experiencing the wonder of another but I will never be for possessing and deny another human being.

This does not mean that I cannot love another with the same intensity, commit myself to another with the same integrity. It simply means that once more I will not bow to the beliefs of this wayward world. We as a species have taken something as wonderful as a human connection and labelled it, judged it, chained it and controlled it until all it can do is fail. But we will continue to be shocked and continue to judge others that dare to slice that pie. I have no idea why we are here and what we are meant to achieve but I’m sure we won’t find it in our tiny little caves.

If love has no boundaries then why must it lie with only one.

Blinded

2011-05-06T02:44:00.000-07:00

We must become the change we want to see in the world -Gandhi

I've always struggled to understand why people choose to have children. Perhaps it is a way to make amends with our world and our worth within it. Perhaps a child represents everything you could change, every learnt lesson, every earned heartache, every chance to change yourself and in turn the world we live in. Perhaps some really do see Parenthood as their second chance.

Despite good intentions it seems the world is locked in a constant comic book battle between good and evil and, depending, which side of the fence you sit on depends on which side you believe you represent. It seems illogical to fight for what you believe in with those opposed, believing in their beliefs just as strongly. It seems pointless to fight for what is right when their wrong is just as right as what they believe your wrong to be.

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love - Gandhi

Revenge has been on everyone's lips lately, some find it sweet and satisfying, while others have struggled with its bitter taste. Some believe that good has triumphed, while others will believe their hero is dead. Despite their differences they look incredibly the same and seem to feel with the same amount of passion and love, or is it hate, but we all know how similar those two emotions are. The world, will however, continue to spin off centre, weighted down with the hurricanes of hate we all insist on fuelling. The funny thing about revenge is there is no end to it as the act of revenge is a retaliation which means there must be another act of retaliation to avenge that revenge.....and so on. So who was keeping score? Will America be satisfied with his death? Have they been taking a body count and then crossing them off each time they lose one of their own? Do the thousands of civilians count for two bodies or does every death, whether it is a soldier, civilian, evil mastermind, just deserves one strike off the bed head?

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong - Gandhi

So back to the children as aren't we meant to be doing all this killing for them so we can make the world a safer place? Are we teaching our children to hate by the act of our own hate? Are we teaching our children to be excited about the death of another human being when we cheered when he died? Are we allowing our children to believe that revenge is a noble thing? That revenge is something that must be sought as a form of justice? And when did Justice become mixed in with revenge? It seems that we have not learnt a thing since the beginning of time and, despite all our technology and advances, we still fight for that revengeful eye. If there is one thing that darkens the light in this world it is this. If there is one thing that holds us back it is our inability to change.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind - Gandhi

Smart man that Gandhi now who is going to be the modern day messenger of peace, forgiveness and more importantly change? Who is going to be brave enough to forgive, fight with love and show the world how to change?

I know

me

you

everyone should step up to this plate.

The Accountant

2011-04-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation at work this week about a fellow workmate’s relative that had driven a vehicle while extremely intoxicated and fatally hit a cyclist. This man spent many years behind bars and has since been released. This man chose to use his time in jail to better himself and was released with not only a high school diploma but an accounting degree. So 10 years later he walked out educated, perhaps even employable and free.

My fellow workmates were outraged

I was elated that our justice system had worked.

When I asked them why they were so upset one stated that he should be in jail to suffer not prosper while the other was hurt by the irony that the dead cyclist was actually an accountant.

The idea of jail makes me uncomfortable. As humans we get a lot of things right but to me, jail isn’t one of them. I’ve never understood the concept of locking people away.

In the animal kingdom there are ways that species deal with the undesirables, the anti social, and the genetic failures. They banish them or kill them....we lock them up.

We poke the bear with a stick for a month, year, decade, decades and then we let them out. Sure we isolated them but we let them back in. Actually we don’t let them back in, we try to integrate an angrier, more violent, frustrated version of themselves back into our lives....and we expect them to behave, to live by the law, and to contribute to the society that failed them.

The accountant is a rare story and perhaps if it wasn’t I wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable about jail. I’m not a bleeding heart...anyone that knows me understands this. I have seen what jail can do to people. I’ve seen the person that comes out of jail and I know it is never the same person that went in, and I know it isn’t a person that many people would like to meet. Locking someone up doesn’t teach them a lesson. It doesn’t make them repent for their sins and it certainly doesn’t make them want to belong to society again. If they were given opportunities to better themselves, to learn skills, to value themselves then I can guarantee that they will come out better people, they will come out with the skills to survive in society and they will value themselves and their place within society more....put simply they will not NEED to reoffend....and isn’t that what correctional and rehabilitation facilities are meant to be about?? If we focussed more on the rehabilitation rather than the correctional side our jails wouldn’t be overflowing, they wouldn’t be filled with 80% of re offenders and crime...well that’s the funny thing as people that belong and find their place and value in society don’t need to commit crimes.

I’m not just speaking on behalf of the criminals as I have had loved ones taken by crime. If they ever do find the men that killed my grandparents, I hope they would have the opportunity to rebuild their lives, to feel a part of our society, to want to actually contribute to our society again. I say this not from a place of forgiveness but because I don’t want another family to lose love ones to the barrels of their guns as well. As rehabilitation is hard, like most things worthwhile, and is 100% our responsibility. It is so easy to condemn these people, to wipe our hands of them but the next time you hold your children tight out of with fear of the big bad world please know that everyone of us made that world and the danger of it is simply a reflection on ourselves.

The good news is we have the power to change it.

Might as well face it

2011-03-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

Suffering through several hangovers recently I have questioned my need for alcohol or if it is indeed a need at all. I consider myself a very disciplined person...perhaps too disciplined as I often feel fun walks out of the room as soon as I enter it, but in saying this, I have my vices like any other warm blooded, imperfect being. I like to have a drink but only on weekends, I like fruit far more than what is considered the healthy portion and my love of salt may just be the death of me. I’ve never considered myself an addictive personality as I’ve seen addictions close up, the type that tears you in two, so I feel I can safely say that I have the discipline to not fall into this destructive pit.

But what really is addiction? And does not having one or believing that I don’t, mean I am stronger, superior in some way? We all know the big three; drugs, drink and gambling but are there hidden ills that control our lives? What about love? Is it possible, as Robert Palmer told us, to be addicted to love? Or is this simply a need and not an addiction at all, but a fundamental need, to need another human being to simply survive being human?

The word “need” has always sat awkwardly with me but perhaps this goes back to a lesson in grade 5 where my wart infested, dragon lady teacher advised us that all we need is water, food and shelter and everything else falls into the ‘’want’’ category. This idea has stayed with me for 23 years and sends my stomach into knots whenever I ask for something outside the scope of survival. Unfortunately for my stomach, I want so much, more than anyone could ever give me. More than I would ever dare ask for.

But what about those that do ask for what they want? Do they get it just because they asked or do they just return dishevelled, disappointed and more desperate than before? And why is it that I associate desperation with someone that has wants...or is it just the people that confuse their wants with their needs that upset me?
Is love a need or a just a cherry on top? Are people addicted to being with another? Is love more worthy when it is a want and less worthy when it is used to fill a need? Is a need simply a bottomless pit as addictions seems to be?

Addiction = need
Need = weakness
Weakness = survival?????

This brings me back to love and my ceaseless conflict to comprehend it. For some reason I need to compartmentalise every damn element of my life and your own, so can someone please tell me if love is a need or a want so I can justify its pursuit! Or perhaps this isn’t a debate about indulgence but rather a sad soirée into my scared, silly state of mind. Perhaps the answer lies with whether it is the brave or terrified ones that love anyone at all.

But this question, like so many that I insist on asking, have many answers because we all love different things and people for different reasons at different times for very different reasons. Apparently we are all so different, even if we all seem so damn the same. This is not where love falls down, this is not love’s undoing, we fail at love because what we want and need are rarely the same thing. We fail, because what we need now is never what we need in a few moments time and what they needed was never even addressed, except by some past person in a past time that provided it in a precise moment that unfortunately never addressed their needs in the first place. It’s all a mess, a mathematical mess and I never understood maths in the first place. So like in math class, I tune out and talk to the person behind me about anything else to distract me from the fact that this is a world I will never understand and may as well not participate in.

So should one love because it is a need under the shelter of food and water or should one love because it is want, a little bit extra that makes everything brighter, bigger, and better? I guess that depends on what you want love to be, what you want love to do for you.

Can love change you? Maybe, if you believe people can indeed change.

Can it make you whole? Maybe, if you believe that it’s ok to believe that you aren’t a complete being

Can you live without it? Maybe, but what do you define what living is?

Can you survive without it? Possibly

But we all know that survival is a whole lot different than living.
I can survive, I’ve proved my stripes without a doubt, what I haven’t proved is whether I can allow myself to live, to love, to love living.

And perhaps this is the true test of a person if this is indeed a test in the first place.

But on the flipside maybe love means nothing at all because it means everything and it is just a given. You live, you love, and you love living. If we had a purpose, if we were meant to achieve something surely love is worthy of that pursuit? Surely it is the essence of a human being, the one magical ingredient that separates us from others in the kingdom of animals. Our ability to fall in love with one another is unique, a little awkward, often painful, and a little bit wonderful. From love we create art, we open our mouths for no good reason but to sing, we tap our feet for no good reason but to dance, we open our lives for no good reason but to feel the skin of another warm body beside us in the coldest corner of our rooms. This can’t be about survival, it must be about living.

It seems Math has nothing to do with it.

But my beef is not with love but with the reasons why we try to find it. The things that we do to each other and ourselves to find it, and eventually to lose it, define us. I don’t know much but I do know that we seek love for the same reasons that we feel we can’t. Fear pulls us towards it as magnetically as it repels us. It benefits us as much as it harms us and it destroys us if we need it, but it isolates us if we don’t understand the need to want it. This just means that some needs are even more complicated than I first believed. So, for now, it is solved. Love is a need that we need to want to understand why it is a need or do I mean that you need to want to need it to want to need it at all..... No survival is..... This blog was never about that it was about addictions and these are needs that destroy our lives and the way we control them determines if we survive.

Ever heard of the man that died of a broken heart? No? Because it never happens as you can survive without love. But this blog was never about survival either ;)

Live

2011-03-17T02:51:00.000-07:00

I've written about the terror industry before but there is so much more that needs to be explored. When I say terror I'm not talking about the kind that was sold to us in the last decade, you know the tea towel wearing Middle Eastern kind, I'm talking about the shiny new brand of terror, the environment, and how Mother Nature seems determined to destroy us all. The things I talk about in this blog need to be taken with a spoonful of honey. My honey is I lived through the floods and still deal with its consequences every day, I lived in and fell in love with North Queensland and Japan and have many loved ones in both areas. This is my honey and it shouldn't be forgotten that I have a personal affiliation with many of the natural disasters that have ripped through our world in the last 3 months. In saying this, I believe the media have turned a disaster into pure terror and modern journalism has a hell of a lot to answer for.

We all know about sensationalism, we only have watch a local current affairs program to understand this concept, but it seems that the media outlets have ramped up their coverage of world events to an all time saturating high. It has been said that the Vietnam War changed the face of combat forever by transporting the war into our living rooms through the wonderful invention called television. Seeing it for ourselves changed the way war was digested by the general public and perhaps even brought a small amount of accountability into the senseless act of war. Surely this was a good thing...

With the introduction of new medias and instant medias like the web, we now not only see every war and natural disaster but we see it live. Was anyone else disturbed last Friday afternoon as we watched live a giant tsunami hit the shores of Japan? Did it seem macabre to anyone else when we watch live updates of people being stretchered dead and alive from the rubble in Christchurch? Did it seem almost voyeuristic watching Yasi ripping through North Queensland? Did it feel wrong to watch the family floating away in their 4 x drive in the QLD floods, over and over and over again, especially when we knew that one member of the family died.

Was it really necessary? did you feel more informed or just more traumatised? Did you feel a solidarity with the victims or even more detached?

Does anyone else feel exhausted by this 3 month old year?

There is no wonder why on the news they are giving tips on how to reassure your children that the world isn't coming to an end. Who is going to reassure the adults?

Journalism has changed so much in the last few decades that it makes me wonder if they can even use the same textbooks at university that they did even 5 years ago. Everything seems to demand live coverage, rolling coverage and media personalities on site. Investigative journalism seems to have gone out the window as this new in your face style takes over. However I don't ever remember asking to be so "informed”, I don't remember demanding that my news be brought to me live and updated continuously as if I have constant thirsts for information. I don't remember asking for live coverage of disasters and then seeing the same images over and over again, and I certainly don't remember requesting to watch pain so damn close up. Privacy is nonexistent, dignity simply doesn't matter and the effect of such coverage on us has never been researched.

The media seems to determine what news is and what we want from that news, despite how this is impacting on our daily lives. Can we avoid it? Sure, just turn off the television, radio, internet, don't visit any social networking site and certainly don't buy the paper.... on second thought it makes it pretty damn hard to avoid. The sort of coverage that we are seeing on the 5 and 6 o'clock news should come with an MA or R rating yet we gather with our families in front of the of television and absorb it. Every earthquake, every super storm, every fire, every flood and every famine. I'm not saying that these events are not newsworthy, as they certainly are, what I am questioning is the way they are delivering this news to the public.

These days a natural disaster not only means a tragedy, but now it is used for political leverage, distraction, sensationalism and television ratings. The news industry has become a big business and is less about keeping us informed and more about keeping us enthralled, and if terrorising the crap out of us gets the ratings, then that is what they will do. It is hard to even believe what is being reported to us as the integrity of the news has been thrown out of the window as it is simply all a game now. In their eagerness to jump from one hair raising disaster to the next, to be the first on location and bring it to you live, over and over again, the real stories are being lost and quantity takes over quality. One disaster is dumped for another and the people and their plight are being left behind. A good journalist would dig a little deeper and highlight the effects on people involved as the real effects are felt for months, years and generations, but once the aftershocks or nuclear dust cloud settles the news crew move on in search of the next front page story.

So I will ask the question again...Does anyone else feel exhausted by the last 3 months?

I do, I feel drained, emotional and just plain scared.

Yet all these events, as terrible and real as they are, are nothing new and have gone on for centuries as the only thing that has changed (despite what Bob Brown says) is the way we are being told about them.

I think we should all declare a week, no let’s be more ambitious, a month, where we don't have to watch terror over and over again and maybe then we won't have to reassure the children and some adults that the world isn't ending.

The Inconvenience of Truth

2011-02-05T02:00:00.000-08:00

Fear is a wonderful thing....that is if you’re the one yielding its power.

Fear is a powerful thing....just ask Hitler, Hussein, Mao, Bush...just insert dictator/terrorist here.

Fear is the weapon of choice for the evil, unscrupulous, immoral, extremist.

But fear is also so damn convenient, so damn tidy, so damn simple.

Control is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that millions take medication just to tame it, industries tell lies to caress it, leaders will do anything to seize it.

Fear has always controlled us. Fear of spiders, heights, failure, jail, the poorhouse. Fear pretty much maps out our lives, forces us into certain decisions, down certain roads, in fact most people live their lives doing everything to prevent the things they fear instead of living for the things that surprise, delight and excite them. We call these people thrill seekers, renegades, foolhardy....terrorist even but us no, no, no, we are law abiding, god fearing people who can proudly say that we don’t cheat the system, speed, take drugs, steal, cheat and anything else that seems remotely fun. Yet why don’t we? Why don’t we question, move in other directions? Why do we always do what we are asked to do?

A sense of community?

A sense of right and wrong?

Why don’t we riot in the streets? Why is it so hard to for us to imagine that what is happening in Egypt could happen here, in Australia, Queensland, Brisbane?
It’s not like we don’t have things to fight for?

Complacency ...maybe...possibly....not sure as I can’t see through this veil of fear.

But we are in the best country in the world, we have democracy whatever the fuck that is. We aren’t run by a dictator...a robot maybe but still she sways on the side of democracy for the most part. We have nothing to complain about.

But I wouldn’t know as it’s been a bloody long time since I heard anyone speak.

I’ve heard 24 hour rolling broadcasts of floods, cyclones, pain, destruction. I’ve seen macabre countdowns to natural disasters prior to the event and 24 hours of predictions. I’ve seen images of ruin, desperation, tears every time I turn on the TV, no matter what the time of day, the timeslot, the station.

I’ve seen fear, I’ve heard fear and consequently I feel fear.

Now I’m not saying there haven’t been things to fear in the last few months in our country, I’m not dismissing the tragedies that have unfolded right in front of us. I’ve seen it, heard it, touched it. What I am questioning is how the media has covered these things.

I know Queenslanders, I know they “breed them tough north of the border”, I know they will survive this, as they survived what has happened before (and happens every wet season), and what will happen again. We live in a country of extreme climate and, no Bob Brown, this has nothing to do with climate change – look at history you baboon the weather has rarely been our friend. But we continue to build our lives here and we continue to accept that every now and again Mother Nature will tear it apart.

But this isn’t about the floods, the category 5 cyclone, this isn’t even about Australia. Actually it is as I love this country and everyday this fear epidemic terrifies me...more than any flood could. Ever since that awful day we now globally refer to as 9/11 the media has taken it upon themselves to not only inform us down to the second but to manipulate us. There is no denying that we have a fourth estate on our hands.

But we are informed! And we all know that education is power and power is freedom...

It’s funny how easily we confuse 24 hour coverage with being informed. How easily we believe that having 24 hours of news channel now means we will be more clued-up. It’s funny how much westerners jump up and down about censorship when our media (and politicians for that matter) censor everything that we touch.

Democracy, whatever the fuck that is.

The media believes they ARE the news. They subdue us with fear. They scare every question, every complaint right out of us. Put simply they occupy us. Distraction prevents Destruction. A clever politician, campaigner, climate change orator knows the power of the media. Propaganda comes in many guises and not just a 60 foot poster on a China wall. Al Gore knew the power of the media, George Bush used it as effectively as Hitler, and Peter Beattie was the master. Yet when this juggernaut was used for good instead of evil, when Julian Assange burst on the world stage, outrage prevailed. How dare he! How dare he tell the truth! How dare he question? How dare he probe? How dare he feed the truth to the spoon fed millions!

Because being informed has nothing to do with the truth.

If you believe that censorship is not alive and kicking in our democratic lives then I ask you why are they so afraid of WikiLeaks? Why international events are either ignored or shoved between sport and the weather report, and why the highest populated government departments are the spin doctors...or why is there even such a term in our language. When did Truth become so uncool?

Because the truth is uncomfortable, fiery, and dangerous, and sometimes worth rioting for. The truth is indeed bloody inconvenient.

Community

2011-01-20T19:59:00.001-08:00

Watching the flow of the river under the bridge it engulfed a mere week ago, it is clear that it is still angry.The sepia toned Highway once more speaks of its fury and shows undoubtedly that something happened here.

For weeks our television screens have filled with images from our northern and western neighbours being beaten and bruised by life's most precious gift. We watched as whole communities disappeared under its weight but it seemed far from here. It was upsetting, unpleasant but, can there really be a but? Can we write off our entire mining and food sector with a but? However, if there was a but, if the fact that we couldn't touch it and smell it created such a thing, everything changed once it hit Toowoomba.

It's been called an "inland Tsunami" and perhaps this is an appropriate word to describe the monster that has plagued my dreams ever since. The fury that unleashed that day down the mountain annihilated everything in its path. After seeing the images of that monster tearing through those towns we didn't need to touch it or smell it to know that it was real, it was coming, it was creating history.

By Wednesday our city was leaking, by Thursday....well can I really talk about something that is still happening? Is there any point in describing something that we all still see around us? We have seen the destruction, we all know someone who has lost everything, someone that is now homeless, broken, without employment, without power. We all know that these things are consequences of a natural disaster.

But I don't want to talk about hurt, and fear for the future, I want to look into the sun of hope until my eyes sting and everything goes fuzzy. I want to talk about the service men and women, volunteers by the tens of thousands. I don't want talk about the looters or the rubbernecks, the people that sit in their nice dry homes and switch off the tv as the images are too unpleasant or even worse were untouched by what surrounded them and just carried on their lives in the same petty fashions as before. These people are not worth the lead in my pencil, the space in my head.

These people didn't stand on the broken roads, surrounded by broken people within their broken homes and see the ten's of thousands of faces they had never met come to their aid. They didn't see the army of strangers arriving on the streets of all ages and abilities. They didn't see how amazing this city can be.

Feeling pain on mass, sharing an experience with millions, no matter how painful it is, can be truly inspiring and one of the most profound human emotion you can ever experience.

Natural disasters remind us that we are human. It humbles by overpowering us but it also lifts us up by stripping us down to our basic human form. In the days after the flood we were no longer doctors, bakers, white or blue collar, rich or poor, we were all wet, sore, sweating, crying, broken. Seeing the streets lined with ruined furniture and ruined people was strangely one of the most uplifting things I had ever seen as amongst that rumble were thousands. For the first time in my life I saw community, I was part of a community.

I'm baffled by those that chose to stay indoors, who didn't join the conversation, express the shared emotion. I'm disturbed by those who carried on as if nothing life changing had happened...I began to question the values of those lives, the contribution but then I let it go and the weight of that judgment and instead worried over what they had missed out on and wondered if they even noticed the community forming before them.

10 days later there is still no power, the walls are still leaking, the wood swells more each day, the ground is still bearing the scars, the air is rotten, gritty and hurting the back of my throat but this will all be resolved in good time. One day I will walk in and see no evidence the day, all will be new again.

I hope we all recover quickly, I hope we all remember the day when the water won, the day when we were nothing against it's force, nothing but human. But more importantly I hope when all the evidence of the flood is gone that our humanity stays as it was truly awesome.

The Price of Having it All

2010-11-27T00:34:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been reading a feminist text from the 70’s and I’m not sure which is more frightening...how much has changed or how little. Being a woman today means so many things, too many things. Some people may believe that the feminist movement was something of the past that the bra burning all but a distant memory. It’s true that women no longer march the streets but does this mean that they have been heard, or is it a case that they have stopped trying?

I don’t believe it is any of these things.

I just had lunch with some of my favourite women, 2 intelligent, confident women that have successfully been shaped by the sweat and struggles of our past sisters. Each of us sat at the same table but stood a world apart on what aspect of womanhood we embody. And from this lunch table we talked about other women in our lives that represented other universes of what a woman is.

A man is simply man, unchanging against weather, unmoved by circumstance, driven by instinct. A woman must always change, be changed, move, make things move, endure circumstance and often pay the price for changing, moving, and their endurance. The world is constantly spinning yet it often seems that women are the only ones becoming dizzy.

Now this is not about men bashing, bra burning or even laying blame on the burly sex. As in most marginalised groups it is often their own kind that complicate, control and constrict themselves. It is women that demand more of themselves, it is women that take on the world’s problems, it is women that want a career, a family, a personal life, financial independence, freedom....it is women that want it all.

Because only everything will do women now face more ethical and financial hardships than their 1950’s counterparts which will only increase when paid maternity leave is introduced early next year. In small business circles women of the fertile age are seen at the best with suspicion and mothers of small children can forget it. It takes time to raise a family, more time that small business can afford, more time that women seem to be willing to give. It seems to many women that having a family is simply a checkbox waiting to be ticked.

Talking about fertility, being a driven woman also inevitably means you drive your eggs out of the picture too. But if you want to travel, live free, and then work your way up the career ladder and fatten up the bank account then children will simply have to wait...and waiting produces miscarriages, birth defects and even infertility.

If you are a woman that chooses not to have children then you are isolated, whispered about and little devil horns are drawn on your photos by your peers. You are broken, selfish and well unfeminine.

If you are a woman that chooses to have nothing but children you are isolated, whispered about and patronised. You are weak, draining the system and probably stupid.

If you a woman that somehow manages to have a career, a life and children you are isolated, whispered about and selfish. You are overtired, underappreciated, probably heading for an early grave and not giving enough...time to your career, time to your children, time to your partner. You are a jack of all trades and definitely a master of none.

But the bra burners told us that the world was at our feet. They said it was there for the taking so take it for god sake! But who will have children, who will look after the children, who will clean and iron your shirts, prop up your ego and endure your sexual needs????

Women of course

As a man is simply a man, unchanging against weather, unmoved by circumstance, driven by instinct.

There are no more marches, protests and revolutions but the women’s movement is alive and well in many women’s hearts but that’s the thing about having everything you want ...you simply don’t have the time or energy to ask for anything you need.

The Fury

2010-11-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

History is such a painful thing. The sum of us is so much of what has been that it is difficult to move forward without it..if indeed we move forward. Most of us move crab like into the next day with hardened shells from yesteryear. Sideways is a way, maybe not the best or most productive way but it beats the hell out of being stationary.

Amnesia would be a blessing to most except the confusion of the known expectation of coming from somewhere or something would drive you into inaction. We are all expected to come from something, from somewhere and even though we all accept this idea we still forget that we all have a past that moves us, scars us, and influences us in every way.

I know a woman that claims to never live in the past, claims that it is done and dusted and has no bearing on her present state. Unfortunately this woman has children that echo every mistake, trauma and hurt from her often raw past. She is in pain

I know a man that lives in the past. He is a man that only dances in déjà vu by reliving every moment and every day until he is unable to live another. He is in pain

I know a woman that laughs at her mistakes, wrinkled and toothless beyond her years she relives with a sparkle in her eye. Her past and its pain is a trophy in the same way that the lines on her face tell her story. Pain never settles on her face.

But is this about acceptance? Accepting something isn’t always our friend as it often bends us, breaks us into accepting the often unacceptable. It seems that it can be just as fruitless to live in our past as it is to accept it and let it change our future. So do we face it, fight it? Spend endless hours in expensive chairs, talking to even more expensive people? Do we run away from it, from everything that even carries a scent of our past?

There are certain things that I cannot do because of what has happened before. I wish you could accept that.

Forgiveness it’s the toughest of human emotions but I believe it is important not to challenge those that cannot.

I will always carry this. I will always butt heads with you over this. I will always see this when I close my eyes. I cannot forgive as it will mean that I will accept that I deserved this, that I couldn’t do better or be better if I tried. If I forgive this it will mean that I no longer exist as I will be telling you and the rest of the world that is OK for you to treat me this way as I have forgiven another for it before.

It will bend me, it will break me, and it will make me accept something that is unacceptable.

Sometimes you need fury to find and fight for a future.

A Woman

2010-10-10T01:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve just spent the last month being a complete idiot and I will never get that time back. No rephrase that I’ve just spent the last 32 years of my life being a complete idiot and I will never get that time back.

For a month I consumed diet shakes in the hope of fitting back into my jeans...the sad thing is my 70 year old mother also consumed diet shakes to fit back into her jeans which just proves this cycle never ends.

Just buy bigger jeans for fuck sake.

In my pursuit for barely acceptable I have done many a dumb thing because I like millions of other women believe the beauty myth. I, like millions of others, pay money to starve myself, to apply poison to my face and try every miracle pill on the market. I have exercised excessively, read every “helpful” diet article, bought ridiculously expensive clothes, makeup and wrinkle cream all in the name of this pursuit. I have gained and lost over 30kgs, dehaired in painful ways, spent hours getting ready all in its name. I have spent years avoiding mirrors and then seeing someone no one else did in that same mirror. I have played over and over in a continuous loop the same negative messages in my head about why I will never be good enough, look good enough but rarely have I ever asked why.

So I owe it to myself and the last month I spent without beer to ask why.

Life wasn’t meant to be easy but I’m damn sure it wasn’t meant to be pretty either.

I have no doubt that if women spent 5 minutes a day less thinking about their insecurities they would achieve everything they wanted. I have no doubt that if women spent 10 minutes a day less thinking about their bodies they would rule the world.

Are we wired this way?

Is it some global conspiracy to hold us all back from world domination?

But seriously when did looking good become so deadly important? When did we allow every waking minute to be consumed by this? When did weight loss become a billion dollar industry?

Intelligence has nothing to do with it, hell even logic doesn’t play a part. This is an emotional issue, and we all know how crippling emotions can be. Have an intellectual debate with me and I will match anyone, tell me I look fat in those jeans and I will crumble into a rocking ball in the corner of the room. Our emotional state has very little to do with our intelligence or personality but when we are vulnerable everything goes out the window and the smartest of us thinks a cream could erase a wrinkle or drinking two shakes a day is healthy and a sustainable way to live.

To live

Most of us wouldn’t understand that concept as our days are too full dealing with our own insecurities and negativities to have time to actually live. I’m often teased about my bad memory but the truth is my mind has been too busy bashing itself up to form any worth keeping.

I know many of my female friends will be reading and recognising themselves in this blog entry. The sad thing is I don’t know how to fix it. I believe that negativity spreads but unfortunately I’m not sold on the idea that positivity is contagious. I know the mantra of “you’re shit and will never amount to anything” isn’t working for me but I don’t know how to change the track. I know that the mirror lies to me but I don’t know any window cleaners that can possibly unsmug the ugliness I’m so convinced of. I know that I’m intelligent and have more common sense than most but I still factor in beauty products into my budget. I’m a woman and I don’t know how to be one without the self disgust and guilt.

I will always want to be thinner, prettier, to make heads turn, to be desired. I will always crave acceptance and I’m afraid I may never gain my own. I’m an idiot, I’m beyond ridiculous, and I’ve missed more than half my life on this game.

I know all this but knowledge has nothing to do with it.

No Sex Please...I'm Asexual

2010-09-18T22:37:00.001-07:00

I went to bed last night overtired, grumpy, craving a cup of tea and sick of sex. I woke up this morning to the front page of the Sunday Mail with the headline ‘Six Weeks to Sexy” staring at me. Now maybe this is an indication that no news, good or bad, happened in the last 24 hours or maybe it’s an indication of how bad this already bad newspaper is becoming or maybe it is just a typical reflection of the over sexualised society we live in.

Representation of sex is everywhere to the point where it is comical, if it wasn’t so damn serious. I personally believe that people think about, talk about, try to get sex, because they think everyone else thinks about it, talks about it, and is trying to get it. It’s like Iphones and LCD TVs on a massive worldwide scale. I also believe that if we were completely honest with each other and really thought about what we wanted, desired, and needed....most of us wouldn’t even give sex a thought. But life is about that constant longing to belong, to be the same as the man standing next to you, to connect, communicate and be a part of something greater than ourselves.....unfortunately somewhere along the line sex became mixed up in that wonderful message of humanity.

But what is Sex? Is it power, it is porn? Is it dirty? Is it love? It is a physical communication? It is probably all that and more. Many decades ago it wasn’t talked about and like all things we deny ourselves it exploded into a revolution, and now we have swung too far the other way so we are constantly bombarded with messages of sex wherever we go. With this we have also seen an explosion of eating disorders, low esteem, depression, Botox.....need I go on.

We are a troubled society indeed and every day I feel less and less a part of this world. Personally I have always struggled to understand the lure of sex. I don’t talk about it, I don’t think about, crave it, in fact I avoid it, I am asexual. It is believed that perhaps 25% of the world population is asexual however a much smaller percentage of that actually admits it and lives by it. It doesn’t mean a quarter of the population are boring sexless loners as a lot of Asexual people still want to fall in love, they still crave companionship, still wish to belong but they just don’t feel sexual attraction to the potency that others may. This is indeed a very confusing time for an asexual living in a society obsessed with something they cannot relate to, it is like living in Melbourne and hating AFL or Darwin and hating the taste of beer. It’s confusing, isolating and depressing.

When a woman dresses up does this mean she dresses to attract sexual attention and if she isn’t interested in attracting such attention should she not dress up? When a man wears cologne does he spray to attract sex or does he just stink and need to mask his boy scent? When I go for a job interview should I wear a skirt in case I am interviewed by a man? If I’m not interested in a man should I not even talk to him...wouldn’t I be leading him on? Why do I even go to a pub or a club anymore if I am not hunting for the opposite sex...am I out of place in such a place because I’m not looking for sex? Should I not even bother reading magazines, watching TV past 8.30, and going to M rated movies? How am I meant to fill my time if it is not thinking about it, seeking it, and having it? Am I deemed to wear daggy sexless clothes and stay home every Saturday night because I don’t want to play the game?
It feels that way

But I love to look and feel pretty, to be looked at when I look and feel pretty.

Who in the hell defined sex and who in the hell allowed themselves to believe it.

Without sex I feel like I’m not entitled to love.

Without sex I feel like I’m not entitled to feel pretty.

Without sex I feel like I’m not entitled to participate in...life...to be human

Without sex I don’t feel entitled to a partner, a family, a dream.

Sex must be pretty damn powerful to take that from me....

If you feel this way check out this site.....you may learn something...you may even learn that you do belong.

http://www.asexuality.org/home/

KISS

2010-09-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

I still vividly remember sitting in a lecture theatre in 2001 at university being advised how to apply for a writers grant. A blank faceless man told the next generation of writers to make sure you tick as many boxes as possible and show how your creative piece will include as many minorities as plausible. He gave the example that if your piece is about a gay Jewish Aboriginal woman that was sexually abused then they will throw money at you.

9 years later I still see evidence that political correctness has stifled creativity in one of the most potentially innovative industries in the world.

Money is hard to come by for any industry but money to film makers is rarer than well gay Jewish Aboriginal women that have been sexually abused.

Yesterday I saw yet another New Zealand film that touched me. In my top ten greatest films of all time NZ films would make up more than half. In a country with a population of 4.3 million it defies belief that it can have any impact on the world scale let alone in the film industry.

Now I’m not bashing the Australian film industry...well maybe...but I firmly believe it is a case that the talent is there but the industry has failed to support it. In the early 90’s we saw something of a heyday of Australian Film and then the weird shit came out. The films that tick all the boxes. Unfortunately they may have been politically correct but they also alienated the Australian audience and the industry has been struggling ever since until the situation developed where people wouldn’t be seen dead watching an Australian film....also unfortunately some real gems slipped by with hardly anyone noticing.

Australia has always struggled with its identity caught between something it doesn’t want to own and something it never will be. Our identity or lack thereof has been a raw point for generations and something that has stumped artists for years. Ironically the beauty of our country is the lack of common history and the opportunity to be...to be anything..something..to be Australian.

But back to NZ films and what makes them so good. Whenever I see a NZ film, regardless of the content, I feel moved usually to tears, in fact I want to cry for hours for everything it was and everything it wasn’t. They are usually simple, beautiful, joyful, raw, unashamedly unpretentious and completely grounded. They are spiritual without being isolating, they are moving without being forced and manipulative, they are cultural without shame, suggested guilt or entitlement. They are simply a few hours spent looking through a window to another world.

When I see a lot of Australian films I feel assaulted with images and themes that are meant to invoke shame, guilt, ignorance, repulsion and often leave the near empty cinema feeling like I’ve just spent $16.50 on a piece of self righteous shite which hurts as an Australian and as a writer more than you would know. You have a choice of wannabe cringe worthy American films or obscure often violent Australian films about some random minority that serves as more of a community announcement than a piece of cinema.

Maybe it’s a culture thing....maybe there are kiwis sitting in near empty cinemas cringing at their own material hoping to god Australians don’t judge them by their films. Maybe it is simply hard to watch your culture on film.

But I doubt this as other countries have not allowed political correctness to dominate their every waking moment. Other countries’ films seem to present what they are, not what they are trying to be or trying desperately to hide.

Not Guilty

2010-08-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

On Friday I woke with a stone in my belly. As I walked my dog I imagined what you were both thinking, whether you had time together to reflect on the coming day or if you were separated until your met your maker. When I dressed for work I imagined you also getting ready for the day, ready to be judged. Were you nervous, vomiting with fear, resolved and calm, in a state of acceptance, arrogance, denial? Did you think of your father, our grandparents, and the path that led you here? Did you whisper god’s name.

I remember as a child you told me that I would go to hell as I was never baptised, do you still believe you’re going anywhere but?

Were you scared?

I thought of you both on the drive to work with a stone in my belly. I secretly prayed to the god we both know I don’t believe in that you wouldn’t make the 6 o’clock news. I prayed to that invisible god that your names, our name wouldn’t sound from the TV that is constantly turned on in the waiting room at work.

I was scared

I was flinched ready to be smack by the shame. I was waiting for the beating, just like old times.

I felt naked, still named in our family name, I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t taken a big enough breath to submerge myself long enough in these murky waters you stirred up. I was exposed like a deer in the forest, just waiting for the hunter’s gun.

Should I defend you? Should I distance myself from you? Deny being a part of you? Should I stay as silent as I have always been taught to be?

How did it come so quickly, why wasn’t I more prepared for this? Would people come knocking at our door late at night again? Would they start watching our house again? Would the police find any reason to pull over our cars, raid our houses? Would the threats start again? Would the families of the victims track me down again? Would it all start again?

I was scared

Is it easier to just change my name, to never speak of them again, to pretend that I came from a different family, a different life? Lie myself a new life? And what would that life look like? What should I be called and how do I find meaning in that new name? There are too many people in my life already that know, too many that I want to keep. I feel less and less a part of something as no one will have the same name, a family with no name....is still a family right? But even if we do, does this mean they won’t find us anymore?

When you put on your suit for court this morning did you think about us too? Did you even give us a moment’s thought? As you stood on the stand and smugly pleaded Not Guilty did you think that maybe others would pay for that plea? When the judge reserved 8 weeks in January for your first trail did you think about the tax payer’s money that would be wasted or did you just smile at the thought of 8 weeks away from your cell’s vacant walls? Did you think anything at all?

On Friday I woke with a stone in my belly and a thousand thoughts of you in my head. On Friday night I went to bed thinking of January, counting the months that I had left to breathe, to plan, to be called by another name.

Even if I don’t want to be.

In a Word

2010-07-30T23:24:00.000-07:00

I met a woman who spoke nothing but filth. She could’ve be lovely, I could’ve missed out on getting to know a wonderful, intelligent, fascinating soul but I couldn’t see through the smoke of her profanities. She spoke, I cringed.

The older I become the more I steer away from aggression. To me bad language screams two things; aggression and stupidity....two things I can no longer stomach.

As a reader, a writer, a social commentator words mean the world to me. But my words are censored, not because I would ever waste them on a blasphemy but they are censored through fear, self preservation, and social niceties but in a perfect world where I am brave, burly and noteworthy I would use words to describe all the things that have held me back, and I would write a manual to get the hell out of here, out of this world of things unsaid and consequentially undone.

I would use words of beauty, words that fall short, words that would fill the last leaks within you, words to leave you wanting more. But words are just words after all. So I leave them under rocks and pretend they didn’t enter my mind along with all the other night terrors and inappropriate thoughts that plague my psyche.
I know people of action who really speak...I believe most Australians are more comfortable with this person, and goodness knows how badly we need a leader of this calibre. But in the ordinary homes where the ordinary people live words float all too freely around the room but without much conviction or worth. Empty words fill their empty homes.

When was the last time you told someone the words that pop into your mind when they entered a room. Words of annoyance, words of love, lust, heartbreak, disappointment, or words describing the nothingness that fails to move you when you see them. Words hurt, keep us up at night, pigeonhole us, destroy us but they can also change us, a situation, a relationship. They can take amazing amounts of pain away; they can breathe air into your winded lungs, they can save a bad joke, an awkward conversation, they can release you by defining something that has always been lingering unnamed above your head.

I want to name all the things that have lingered above me for so long, holding me down with its bony hand on my throat. I want to say them aloud to one person and to crowded rooms. I want to tattoo them on my skin so I never forget to own them, to live them. But most of all I want them said, done, digested so I can move on.

I lost everything years ago and I have been fighting, sometimes half-heartedly, ever since to find them again. “them” or “me”...whatever that entails. At first I concentrated on one section and sweated until I could see “me” within that slice of my life for more than a day, week, or a year in the future but by doing this I created these black holes in all the other areas of my life. I was blindsided to the point that I couldn’t even fathom anything more than being one dimensional. I dared not ask for more.

I’m asking

With a pretty please

Maybe even a cherry on top.

When I move forward it will not be with your expectations. It will mean very little to you but everything to me. It may happen when you hardly notice as my norm; my reality is very different than the majority. There are words to define it. Words I love, my words.

Words that will define me.

So for now they will remain unsaid because delightfully so I’ve learnt that they don’t need to leave my ribcage in order to set me free.

xxx

Witless

2010-07-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

It seems the younger generation are so bored with politics these days that many don’t even bother to enrol. Dinner parties and BBQ were once filled with lively debates over who was running the country and how they would do it differently. I can’t even remember the last time I actually discussed this topic which was once was so close to my heart.

Election season is now in full swing and even though this would usually delight me, I find I dread it as much as a trip to the dentist. So what is turning me off this once great game? Is it the current batch of listless leaders? The dirty school yard tactics of the modern campaigns? The exaggerations, or should we say lies that bombard us during prime time viewing that turns me off so much?

Even the exciting outsing of Rudd the Dud has not moved me to care.

Is it our fault? Do we expect too much? Demand too many things? Has our dependence on the government forced us to fall out of love?

Or maybe we just don’t buy what they are selling anymore? Or perhaps the real issue is that we don’t know what they are selling because everything they say relates less to us and more to their own...own people, own egos and own agendas.

But I love to watch great minds debate great issues, to thrash out the big questions in stately rooms, for fierce competitors to clash with intelligence, passion and most of all wit. Today we see a very different breed of politicians. We see men and women with big gluttonous guts and bigger expense accounts. We see public servants who serve no one expect themselves. We see bullying, pettiness, and childishness.
Where has all the wit gone? The informative, fair debates?

These days you listen to a speech from a politician and find yourself counting the number of times they repeat their catch phrases instead of hearing what they actually stand for.

The media is not without guilt here as since September the 11th 2001 the media has been under the impression that they are the most important members of our society. That they alone not only deliver the news, they shape it, create it, and are the news. Unfortunately when we were all sleeping we allowed this to happen. Now the media can solely and has many times determined who will run this country. The bias in the media these days is so blatant that news articles should come with an advertising warning.

But back to the men and women of politics, to the men and women that make everyday decisions that affect your life...your job...your bank account. Why is it that we spend so little time learning about the people that affect our lives the most? Are we ignorant, stupid, lazy...god I hope not? I hope we all on some level care, listen, read, and absorb something so when we go to the polls on August 21st we are armed with some degree of information. It is our responsibility after all.

But it is hard to believe in someone that treats the honour of their position with such disdain. It’s hard to care about someone that plays gutter politics and reduces discussions to “he said, she said” games. It’s hard to listen to repetitious catch phrases that annoy you rather than leave you feeling secure. It’s hard to feel excited when you just expect to be screwed, when you see senior members of society cause destruction without consequence to anyone but you. It’s hard to believe in these people anymore.

I know this, I understand this, and I understand how easy it is to turn off, to zone out. But this isn’t a soap opera, even though the lines sound familiar, the actors all look the same. These people as much as we bore of them, loath them, avoid them determine how successful this country can be.

What is truly frightening is not that a small group of individuals can determine this but the kind of person that has actually put up their hands to do it. I hate to tell you this but those very people put up their hands because we the people didn’t care enough to stop them. Ah the vicious circle of politics but the truth is our politicians 100% reflect us because we have the power of the vote. Many people, particularly people under 30, have no interest in politics, they believe it doesn’t relate to them, it bores them, but the truth is that very attitude has created the problem as you with your actions or inactions have created the politicians of today. So when you go to the polls and look down the list and can’t stomach either candidate or even worse don’t even know either candidate you only have yourself to blame.

They are nasty because we don’t hold them accountable

They are boring because we don’t bother asking for more

They are ripping us off because we don’t demand them to stop

They are only there because we voted them there...with or without information.

There are only a few thousand of men and women calling the shots

But there are millions of us asking them to.......

So maybe we should be asking for a little more.

Busy

2010-07-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

So the rush hour is upon me and even though I enjoy the madness, I find myself once again for the millionth time staring outside my window at the Blue Fairy Wren.

I really hope there is such a thing as reincarnation, not just for the environmental benefits, but for the fact that we could come back in another costume and try it again with new perspectives, new priorities, and new privileges. I would pick the Blue Fairy Wren and not just because he has a cute ass and wicked 80’s eyeliner blue feathers.

From the millions of hours of lazy studies I have completed it seems the wrens have the perfect position on life. They frolic all day, they fly (which would have to be the coolest superpower), they are always surrounded by harems of lady wrens (who never fight and raise each other’s young), and they never cease to bring a smile to a human’s face. I’ve never seen them cry, show distress, do algebra, break a sweat, in fact all they do all day is have fun, make babies, and eat.
But alas, unless the games they played continued to challenge me, the babies I make continued to amuse me and the food I eat doesn’t make me fat I would bore of the life of the Blue Fairy Wren.

Complicated people need complicated lives because mediocrity is a form of Chinese torture. I have realised that the busier I am, the more stressed I am, the more challenge and overwhelmed I am the more I can live, breathe, contribute.

If life is stale I am mouldy.

I’ve been growing a hell of as lot of penicillin lately.

But now it is all systems go and I find myself thinking less about......me.

Which is exactly what I need

Maybe I should come back as a worker Bee.......

Open Spaces

2010-06-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

I love the fact that we are all so different however this does not stop me wanting to be more like you.

I have no idea what or how to express these things. Lately shock has stripped me of my power of communication, my desire for...
I am frightened. Not of the bogey man as that and that sort of demise does not threaten me.

For three years I have not been able to plan further out than a day or two. I have drifted with some or little purpose and lived by the hour, by the security of no tomorrow.
Today I look into the forwarding years and see a massive clearing. Not a pretty one full of wild flowers and light just a space carved out. But carved out for me nonetheless.

Progress

How I hate that word. That idea of celebrating small goals and small accomplishments. It sucks to measure such a huge thing in tiny steps. And it’s all about bigness. The bigness of it all, the inability to measure it, contain it, comprehend it. As after all it’s all just too big.

But I plan, like we must, like we have always been told to.

So I did. I cleared away the trees that were collapsing into my chest, blocking my view and I opened everything up.

Now I sit naked and fucking terrified in this massive clearing made for me and my future.
Grassy areas with nowhere to hide.

I would like to steal certain things from certain people. To break into their homes and hearts in the middle of the night and take something from them...just to get me through the thick of it.

Anne’s acceptance, Ally’s tenacity, Karen’s kindness, Jo’s fight, Jodie’s fire, Carly’s nerve, Shell’s heart, Hayley’s grace, Cass’ courage, and Mum’s resilience.

Just to get me through the thick of it.
Just so this clearing is not so empty, so deafening, so demanding.

Just to get me through the thick of it.

Against my better Judgement

2010-06-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

I was close to closing this blog down. Recent events in my life have made me feel like I couldn’t have an online personality, a presence, a voice. Strength came from the most surprising place.
So much of who I am has been determined from dark places. This seems at odds when I look at the light in my life and the people that radiate it. I’m surrounded by some of the most creative, generous, and warm people you would ever need or want....maybe I even deserve that but I do cast a shadow...I know that...I’ve always known that.
I have been censored so much in my life by myself, others, people that protect me, understand me, ones that do not understand me, do not protect me. I filter more words and actions than most. I need to as my life is something not everyone would understand...maybe this is why I write this blog. I’ve often questioned why I do.
Someone I love told me yesterday that I shouldn’t talk about these things; I shouldn’t ram it down people’s throats as they don’t want it and they certainly don’t understand it. I agree and disagree. I agree as I have always sensed that things that happen within my family are not normal, nice, or favourable...it appears I sensed right. But I also disagree as I believe others read to understand, to see the other side, to experience something different and new. But I also know that the most talented writer could never muster the words to conjure up true understanding which is why I stay silent, which is why I censor these things.
But there are some things, particularly in recent time, I need to express, I need to gain some understanding. So please read without prejudice as I will show a window, not a whole story, not the whole melodrama but a window nonetheless.
There is a gene, a rogue gene within my family. It travels in the men and its hostile, angry, mean, cruel, erratic, and remarkable charming. Some men in my family make the 6 o’clock news, the most wanted lists, they clog up the courts, fill up our jails. They all have a similar look, presence, mind and they scare the women of our family to death.
We fear for them, we fear them.
We could be any family, we could live next door to you, you wouldn’t know as we don’t talk, we filter, we censor, and we keep the peace. But we do our part in different ways.....we stand by them, we visit them in jail, we support them, clean up their messes, make excuses for them, and we take their hits, their abuse...... we become a part of them as we live our lives through them. We hold our breath and wait.....
For the next crisis, the next victim, the next arrest, the next threat, the next....
We build our worth on them, we build our lives around them, and we change our names for them, because of them.
I’ve recently had the honour, terror of being in contact with a victim of my family which has churned me and turned me. In a fortnight where my family has been under fire the most surprising voice came to the forefront and expressed what it is like to be on the other side of my family. Someone that has been terribly affected by the terror of my family.
All I felt was....
Understood.
And that is all I can say. There is too much to write so I choose not to.
I will be changing my name as it seems we have been found.
But on the horizon, beyond all this messiness, this horror, there is a chance to be something else.
And that is amazing.
Soon in your newspapers and on the television sets you will see that consequence of that gene, big, bold and terrifying.
Yes it is my family, yes I know what they did, and I know all the names.
But No, I don’t know why they did it, why they even could.
But please don’t hate for not being surprised that they did.
As there is a gene in my family, one I have hidden for so long, it appears that it’s been taken out of my hands, I can’t control what will be said in the coming months, years so I have just let it go.
I’m not a part of it but it is very much a part of me.
Digest it however you can...... with or without prejudice.

Spoiling the good stuff

2010-06-04T00:08:00.000-07:00

Icky, sticky, sickly June.

I explained last year in my blog why this month fills me with dread. I’ve carefully mapped out what this month has taken from me.

Celebrating a birthday seems such a silly thing to do. One year older…doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me.

Was it a year where much was achieved?
Did you smash milestones?
Face demons…..conquered?
Is a better version of you heading into that new year?

Yes
Awesome! Crack open the bloody bubbly already
Drink up
Dream up
Celebrate

If like most of us this year flew so fast past your ageing ears that you can’t even remember what made up the time that is now lost then maybe birthdays are just well….another day

To lose
To abuse
To waste

Now I’m not a girl that believes in letting the good bubbly spoil when you wait for a reason to pop the cork but I don’t believe in celebrating something that isn’t quite

Right
Ready
Dare I say worthy??

I look around and see I am blessed in many ways
I’m a thinker
A dreamer
A friend
A daughter
I’m capable with every working moveable part
I have animals in my life, everywhere I look…just as I planned
I have skill, talent, ability to…….

Do….to do….to do so much

But what have I done

I’ve survived another year since the breakdown

JUST

I’ve woken each day and franticly imagined something within that day that will keep those capable moving parts going.

BUT

I did somehow, by some means I found something to wake to.

I did it

Another year

I made it

Something worth celebrating……NAR

Not yet…..not while I have to measure everything by hours and days…..not while I have to write head lists of reasons to sleep, rest and wake up….not while today is every day as the thought of tomorrow is too overwhelming, too demanding, too far away…….not while I’m still picking up the shrapnel that the breakdown blow apart.

So don’t ask me to celebrate, don’t keep reminding me that my birthday is once again creeping up.

I know and I also know that a part of why I’m here is because of the people that are asking me to celebrate. Love you

I know it’s been three years….believe me I’ve felt every day, hour, second.

It’s taught me patience…..please let me lend you some.

Please understand that my gratitude to you all is more than I can muster into words….please understand that I will wake with an ache on the 11th……..please understand that I will celebrate once I find a reason to…..in MY heart of hearts, in MY conscious, in MY life.

I hope you all will be there when I do.

Jesus is Coming

2010-05-22T00:14:00.001-07:00

This is a story about a man
A man obsessed with the Geelong Football club

I first met Paul Boddington in ‘99 at university. With our mutual loves of writing, beer and AFL football we instantly clicked and become close friends. Paul was in many ways my hero, he was funny, daggy, a terrible dresser, an even worst joke teller, and the gentlest, kindest man I had ever met. Every Monday morning we would dissect the weekend’s games, each ribbing the other about our opposing teams. See Paul was a Cats man and his dream was to see Geelong win a premiership. Paul was 2 years old when Geelong won their last cup in 1963 and every year he blindly believed that this was the year. I advised him ever so politely that he would be a very old man before he would ever see this happen. Which he would always quip “but Jesus is coming” Now Paul had talked about this Jesus character since the day I met him, all Geelong supporters did. Even before Jesus was out of school Cat fans around Australia were waiting for the day that he would be old enough to strap on a pair of footy boots like his father.

Gary (God) Ablett was a freak of nature, and arguably the greatest player in AFL history until Jesus that is. In 2002 Gary (Jesus) Ablett Jr debut for Geelong. Despite some promising signs he hadn’t quite reached the expectation of his great father but by 2006 every AFL fan knew they were watching something special and 2 premierships and a Brownlow Medal later Jesus had arrived. Gary Ablett Jr confirmed that he was just as fabulous, fast and freakish as his father and Geelong had finally broken their 44 year drought.

Now back to Paul as this is really about him and his devotion for this team. It is sometimes difficult to explain to Queenslanders the passion people hold for their AFL team. Rugby League may be splashed all over Queensland newspapers but it is really small fries compare to the religion of Australian Rules Football. Paul used to always say that the day you were born your football team was tattooed onto your armpit and you followed them, through thick and thin, until the day you died. Turncoats or deservers were a form of blasphemy and his world was seen through one eye in nothing but two colours – navy and white. Everyone that knew Paul seemed to discover a different side to this incredible multi faceted man but every single one, from ever area of his life, knew he loved the Geelong Cats with a passion only Melbournites can muster.

His passion for football was so fierce that I along with 1800 others sang the Cats team song at his memorial service. See Paul took his own life in 2005.

Not once in our thousands of conversations over hundreds of coffees and beer did he tell me he was depressed. He told me many stories about his sister who was battling depression …… stories I now stupidly realise was about him. He protected me until his death and his last words to me where about Jesus and his stupid football club.

I remember sitting in my living room two years later watching Jesus take Geelong to their first premiership in 44 years. Watching them again in 2009 take the cup and watching Jesus do something his father never did, winning the Brownlow for best and fairest player in 2009.

I remember sitting there with a beer in hand thinking of nothing of Paul and how long two years could be. Because he was right … Jesus was coming….coming for them both.

This is a story about a man that was obsessed with a football team.
About a prodigy called Jesus
About a new era in AFL
It seems such a silly thing to live for
But I know he would’ve done anything to see it…..

The Little Pink Boat

2010-05-15T22:45:00.001-07:00

When school girl Jessica Watson was asked why she wanted to sail non-stop unassisted around the world she simply replied “to see if I could”.

Maybe it was the unflappable bulletproof stupidity of youth that kept her calm, cool and collected through-out her entire journey or maybe this kid is made of some pretty special stuff. Either way Jessica Watson has just achieved more in her short 16 years than most of us ever will in our lifetime.

Gutsy, confident, talented Jess put it best when she announced on the steps of the Opera House that she was just an ordinary kid with a dream. The ordinary part may be in dispute but she certainly touched on something there. Everyone has dreams right?? I’m not entirely sure if they do or if it’s more a case that dreams for most people stay…. well just dreams. Having a dream and making a dream come true are two very different things in fact the ability to live ones dreams define the line between ordinary and extraordinary.

The tricky part is overcoming the fear. The fear of failure, or even more scary the fear of success, the fear of unpleasantness, of ridicule, and set backs. Fear is huge and it is a huge part of our lives, it’s a powerful instinct that keeps us safe from predators and danger, keeps us on the straight path, and occasionally knocks common sense back into our thick sculls. But fear is a double edge sword as it can paralyzes us, makes fools of us and holds us back, and worst of all it makes us ordinary.

But let’s look at ordinary …..Is it such a bad thing? I mean ordinary brings home the bacon right? It builds the roads, empty’s the bins, drives the trains, cleans the toilet, keeps us clothed, fed and warm. I love ordinary things, simple things, and simple pleasures. Fancy stuff doesn’t always pay the bills; it isn’t always practical or functional. Ordinary people in very small ordinary ways build the societies we live in.

But would ordinary exist without the extraordinary goals that many of us never reach? Wouldn’t everything simply stay simple? Wouldn’t everything stay exactly as it is with no advancements, no discoveries, nothing more, and nothing less than the day before? It would work, it would even work well but it would never be anything more…….
More thrilling, more dangerous, more exciting, more overwhelming, more challenging, more.

We ordinary people only work because there are extraordinary people like Jessica Watson out there and vice versa.

So thank you Jess for the voyage, for expressing it so beautifully on your blog through-out your entire journey, for making us fear for you, care for you, and dream with you. Thank you for your courage or blind stupidity and thank you for capturing our imagination and being extraordinary. But mostly thank you for being you, a girl that took on the world and returned home completely stunned by the fact that all of Australia was watching and waiting for your safe return.

Underbelly; the real guts

2010-04-30T23:04:00.001-07:00

On Friday June the 11th 1993 I turned 16
On Sunday June the 13th I called my grandparents and thanked them for the card and birthday wishes. I asked my grandfather to take care of himself.
The very next day my grandparents were murdered.
Two weeks later I spoke at the funeral on behalf of their countless grandchildren in front of thousands of mourners.

On Saturday January 20th 2007 my cousin Anthony Perish was arrested for suspicion of 9 murders and 2 attempted murders in a complicated maze but all relating back to actions of revenge for the murders of my grandparents. Since then my other cousin Andrew has also been arrested on similar charges. NSW police have advised that the information relating to this case is so multifaceted that it may take years to sort through and bring these murderers to justice. Rumors have emerged in the press that channel 9’s “underbelly” writers have approached all parties for information for another installment of the record breaking show.

On Saturday January 20th 2007 I sat in my living room with my mother and watch our cousin being arrested and her beloved parents being once again splashed across the television screens.

This blog is personal

This blog will hopefully show you why “Underbelly” should never have been made.

I could tell you about my cousins, about how they freakily look like my brother so much so that when Anthony was named the second most wanted man in Australia I thought they accidently used a picture of my brother as the mug shot. I could tell you about the holidays I spent hiding form them and their cruel games but this isn’t about that time, even though this time is so virtual to my memory and makeup it bears no relevance to the events that took place since that grisly day when my grandparents were drawn into a life they never knew, a life of violence, crime, drugs, a life lived within the underbelly.

My cousins first victim was the man he believed killed his grandparents. He was found in more than 20 pieces in garbage bags in the river. This man was scum, he was the bad kind. Is this how you justify it?

I will not talk about all the killings as some involve the Morans and I rather not dip into that devious pool but I will tell you about two of them. A mother and a young boy. The police are unsure whether they were pushed or forced to jump off a cliff to their deaths however the only link was made when the father (also deceased) pissed my cousin off in some way. Cool hey? Awesome ? Forgive my sharp tongue and cynicism.

Revenge is so sweet, revenge drives many a writer, many a reader. The bloody snowball effect it seems is not just reserved to prime time viewing at channel 9. Except this time the players are not introduced with comical gunshot sounds and cool looking titles and played by has been actors.

To be honest I don’t give a shit about the real people and the second rate actors that think they can play the role to over 2 million viewers a week. Isn’t it funny how the camera doesn’t swing far right enough to the others that are affected? Isn’t it amusing how the camera never shows how this senselessness shapes everyday people? But as long as it looks cool, sleek, and sexily dangerous then its OK.

These men and women that make up the stories told each Sunday night are idiots in both action and IQ. They live in fantasy worlds like a two year old with an imaginary friend. They are dealers, killers, rapists, robbers yet you are all glued to your television sets because it is wrapped in pretty paper.

The success of “Underbelly” is the one of the biggest indictments of the shrinking IQ’s of the Australian public. Harsh? Uncalled for? Then why was Carl Williams’ funeral covered like a royal wedding? How cool did that gold platted coffin look coming in a stretch black hummer. All that money, all that dirty money. And what about that little girl that laid the “daddy” wreath on his grave?

Talking about press. My grandparent’s funeral over 16 years ago was also covered by the press, I remember having to be escorted into the church….. Not even those bloodsuckers knew how big of a story this would eventually become…..

I know some things for certain.

My grandparents killers will never been know
My cousins will never see the light of day again
And channel nine will never get their hands on my family’s stories
Because despite the entrainment value these are MY family stories that happened to real people like me.
Please remember that next time you tune into “Underbelly” at channel 9.

Shame on you channel 9 for forgoing your morals for cheap ratings.
But mostly I’m ashamed of the ones that watch this every Sunday
I would love to sit with you all on one Sunday with a cup of tea and a thousand stories of how this flawed seduction underbelly life ripped my family apart.
But then again you would just hang on every juicy criminal word……

Security Blanket

2010-04-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

In our contemporary lives we don’t often talk about courage unless great tragedy touches us. But it still exists in the very small things we do in our very small lives.

We also see the opposite, the ones that stay in dead end jobs, loveless relationships, and suffocating friendships. The ones that err on the side of caution, who dare not challenge the status quo, who sit within comfort in sometimes very uncomfortable situations.

It’s so tough to make changes, to actually put dreams into action; it’s so tough in fact that most of us never ever will. Because it’s so hard and it exposes you to the unknown and let’s be honest there is nothing scarier than the unknown. So maybe it is better to just do what we have always done, continue in our safe lives never asking for more that what is before us. Maybe it is normal to feel suffocated, to be held back, to feel frustrated, to feel comfortable in a very uncomfortable situation.

Even sitting here right now I can find hundreds of reasons why not to.
Change, achieve, change, move forward, change…

It’s too easy to stay the same
It’s too easy to stay and complain
It’s too easy to blame others for your failure
It’s too easy to be held back by your situation
It’s too easy to fall off the wagon
It’s too easy to die here

There are a few women in my life that have shown great courage in the last few weeks. Women that may not even be aware how big of a step they have taken. Women that have shown a rare courage by taking a big scary step towards a new beginning. One has taken her career by the horns and dared to ask for more and the other has left a great love and friendship that was holding her back.

It sounds like the simplest thing to do. Leaving a situation that was making you unhappy makes so much sense……on paper at least. Leaving behind the security, the certainty that only unhappiness can assure, walking away is anything but easy.

Besides if it was so easy more would dare to do it.

My fingers are crossed for both of you and now thanks to you I have some of my own dragons to slay.

“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway”
John Wayne

Team.....Mormon???

2010-04-14T22:19:00.001-07:00

I have a confession to make.
It will shock many of you, even appall some of you but it doesn’t change the fact that I Evee Frances Perich read the Twilight Series.

WHAT

Me, yes me, the same girl that won’t even glance past the literature section in the bookstore. I have in the past rightly or wrongly been called a book snob so why in the hell did I slum it with the “Twihards” (isn’t that what the cool kids call it?)

2 reasons

I justify this fall from grace in two very clever ways

1. I’m obsessed with Mormons – we all know it, we all like to pretend that my gift of slipping in Mormon references into everyday conversation is quirky and endearing but lets be honest it isn’t even healthy.
2. I’ve been guilty of that really annoying trait of bagging something that I haven’t even read or seen so I clearly had to read all 4 books so I could bag the shit out of it with some sort of authority.

What I found within those pages both delighted and disgusted me.

Delighted because those books were FULL of Mormon goodness! You couldn’t even look sideways without a delectable Mormon undertone. The temptations, the isolation, the abstinence, the discipline, the imprinting was all so mouth-wateringly Mormon. But that fed my obsession not really sure what it would’ve done for you……

Disgusted because the books were full of other coded messages. Now I do get the romance of it all – a handsome vampire and a hot werewolf fighting over a klutzy plain girl – I mean it’s a winning script and lets be honest a worldwide hit and I’m not taking that away from the author but what I am questioning her about is the outdated and dangerous messages she is sending to young girls across the globe.

A lot of shit happens over the four installments in this saga but I could sum up the plot in a few sentences.

Girl meets boy that she believes she isn’t good enough for, changes her whole life to be accepted by him, when she was rejected her life stops she becomes depressed almost catatonic, boy comes back saved her from her boringness, she become obsessed again because she feels she is nothing without him and changes her entire life (including leaving her mortal life) to be accepted into his world. (And that is not even addressing the sick themes of abuse and pedophiles)

By what about the magic, the mystic themes, the romance.

Dress it up with vampire teeth and werewolf claws but the only dangerous thing in this series is the message it is sending to MILLIONS of teenage girls (and the older ones that are still waiting for their vampire in shining amour).

There are many people and many organisations that are trying to ban this book from schools and young peoples reading lists and it’s not just because of the heavy religious themes.

If I had a daughter I would tell her that beauty is the greatest myth of the modern world.
I would tell her that her worth is solely dependant on her actions and beliefs and not wrapped up in what others think of her.
I would tell her that true success is not finding a husband but can be measured in far more interesting and life changing ways.
I would never let her wait for a phone call, a ring and an ugly white dress to validated her and I would certainly ban her from seeing any boy that would change her in the smallest way let alone take her family and mortality.

It’s just a silly teenage series right?

Wrong it’s just another book, another picture, another distorted message sent to the most vulnerable of our society. It’s just another reason for girls to reach for the impossible and hate themselves for not reaching it.

But it’s the dreamy Robert Patterson and that hot werewolf guy and the third film is coming out in a few months and I can’t wait to see what happens to Bella. Plus everyone else will see it and talk about it……

Stephenie Meyer thank you for encouraging teenagers to pick up a book once more it’s just such a shame that you created this addictive text to further convince them that they are just not good enough.

P.S thank you for the Mormon goodness although the fourth novel kinda took it too far and went into the whole creepy area of your faith.

Fly me to the Moon

2010-04-10T22:26:00.001-07:00

I have a dream…………

I had a dream. We all did

Once

They would sprout freely from our juvenile minds with a certainty only innocence could muster. They were naturally going to come true. Even the fantastical, the absurd, the ridiculous would come true as dreams in those days were simply windows to the future, inner knowledge of what we would become.

I’ve never met anyone who fantasised about being an

Accountant
Public Servant
Factory worker
Unemployed
Ordinary

In fact all out childish dreams centered on being extraordinary

I believe the biggest heartbreak of growing up is realising how very ordinary we are. How very ordinary life is, work is, love is.

Evolution is our undoing. Intelligence is often our enemy.

This is all very bleak and selfish, self fulfilling, self-centered, self

There are some people that never stop dreaming, who never stop achieving, challenging, believing. There are people that climb mountains, sail solo around the world, volunteer for the needy, win gold medals, lead countries, save pandas. There are people that take our breath away, inspire us, and move us.

We are all so willing to be moved

From our couches, our homes, our jobs, our lives.

We are starving for stimulation

We are famished for everything other than food

We turn dreams into achievable goals to avoid disappointment
We move so fast in order to confuse the reality of tedium
We are busy, busy, and busy until we burn out
We consume to fill holes in our houses, our lives, and our hearts
We buy, buy, and buy until there is nothing left in the shops or our wallets
We eat because we’re bored; we drink because we’re sad
We breed because we’re bored; we buy because we’re sad
We sleep because we’re bored; we fight because we’re sad
We fuck because we’re bored; we cheat because we’re sad
And then we eat again.

Our hearts still beat so we look around for leaders
We look, we look, and we look some more.
We look for something that will change this, us, the world
Yet we still scoff at the ones that choose to believe in things unseen, that choose to read from ancient pages, and pronounce ancient prayers.
We come up empty, we barely believe in ourselves so how could we ever believe in something like god?

But this isn’t about god (although many may dispute that fact) this is about human beings being human. In the evolution stakes we asked for more than our share and tortured ourselves with the consequences ever since.

We have been to the moon

Which brings me back to childish dreams and fantastical things like astronauts.

When I was six years old I dreamt of becoming a writer and living in a stylish black and white apartment in New York City.

I write these words from my black and white room 27 years later

I’ve been to over 20 countries but I’ve never been to America, I’ve never seen New York City.

I could
I could get on a plane
I could plan a trip
I could sell everything and go for it

But I’m 32
I’m tied to this life
People depend on me
Bills need to be paid
Bills need to be created
I can’t leave everything behind
I can’t
My time has passed…….
I can’t, as the truth is, my heart would break to see how far I’ve fallen from those beautiful childish dreams.
My heart would break to see how adult I have become.
So it’s best not to upset the apple cart
To rock the boat……

Taking about boats
Welcome back Jessica
Good to see the Pink Lady in Aussie waters once more

The Justice Men

2010-04-04T00:10:00.000-07:00

Kicking back in our comfy chairs it’s very easy to cast stones. To judge over our gluttonous guts of smugness, righteousness and entitlement. To point out the places of less worth, less humanity … less money.

Things are just
Equal
Things are done right in our society.

If we peel back the feeble layers that make up our society it would shock many how thin those layers actually are.

If you stood close enough and peered in hard enough you would feel a slight breeze, not a ferocious wind, not even a gust but a breeze that runs between the tiny gap dividing war and peace, shelter and the street, justice and injustice.

We are only human after all

Human in all its brilliance and blunder

We are only one thin layer between right and wrong.

We are only animals after all

Animals in all its hostility and harmony

We are only one thin layer between walking on all fours and dominating the world.

We base our superiority on the strong, righteous idea of justice. Westerners have built a society fashioned around the idea of Justice. Finding it, keeping it and controlling it.

Justice is a thing of beauty, its safe, it keeps us safe.

The one mistake we made is that we trusted ourselves to keep it.

We fashioned a society around the idea that justice was bigger than us all, the blueprint to our lives, a greater being…. Controlled and determined by us, mere humans.

19 years ago a 12 year old girl called Leanne Holland was brutally snuffed out from our world. Righteous men in uniforms and badges focused in on a 28 year old Graham Stafford and despite evidence to the contrary sent an innocent man for killing innocence to life in prison.

19 years later he still maintain his innocence
19 years later the justice man realised they may have caused an injustice
19 years later the justice system has refused to look for justice any further

17 years ago my 91 and 94 year old grandparents were brutally snuffed out from our world. Righteous men in uniforms and badges focused in on my 61 year old uncle and despite evidence to the contrary attempted to send him to jail.

17 years later he still maintains his innocence
17 years later justice men realised they bungled the investigation so much they doubt the real killer will ever be found.

I could go on
I could bring up hundreds of cases.

But we are mere humans after all.

There is nothing I can do to find my grandparent’s killer as the justice men were so focused on framing the innocent they didn’t even collect vital evidence.

The case is cold, stone cold

But there is something we can do for Graham Stafford.

We can’t give him back those 15 years, we can’t be there to soothe his nightmares for the rest of his tortured years but we can ask for the decision to not have another retrial to be overturned.

We can ask for justice

His
Leanne’s
Her family's
Queensland’s

Justice

If you have been following this case please show your support and sign this online petition.

Because we are only mere humans, but with your support we are many

And many cannot be ignored.

http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/35248.html

Lost on You

2010-03-21T21:45:00.001-07:00

Certain animals are known to habitually kill younger members to enforce authority.

Sitting there dumbfounded, speechless and close to laughter and tears, words deserted me. They formed beautifully in my head but my wise lips stayed pressed together. We all have those self fulfilling fantasies of telling our boss what we really think and exactly where to stick it but in the majority of cases they stay within our trembling lips.

It’s surprising how this feels both powerless and powerful at the same time.

Emotion is dangerous as the truth is emotional people are not taken seriously in the workplace; words spoken emotionally are dismissed out of hand as much as words spoken during an emotional time.

So we say nothing, we do nothing, and nothing changes

We leave with words unsaid, sentiments unexpressed, but with a little hint of smugness that we have left a less than worthy place with a person who can never really know how you really felt.

But still nothing changes.

If I could steal that moment back in that hard plastic chair in front of the hard faced woman I would say more….for me, for them, for her sake??? Words that would never be heard or would simply be written off in the name of a disgruntled, bitter, ex employee.

But If I could steal back that moment I would gently tell her that a little kindness goes a long way. I would quietly tell her how wonderful the people are that walk within HER walls, who breathe the life into HER livelihood, who are the backbone of HER business. I would calmly tell her that an employee shouldn’t go to work terrified of how they would be bullied that day. I would tenderly question her motives of ruling with fear, dividing staff, and forbidding laughter. I would ask her rationally why she believes treating people like shit makes them work harder.

There are many leadership styles but there are very few leaders.

In a few months when that slamming door on my butt doesn’t sting so much I will more than likely thank her for dismissing me. I will be grateful that the nightmares have stopped, the anxiety has dissolved, and my beaten down confidence has returned. But until I find that serenity I can still hear the bully walking those weather beaten halls beating her chest, flashing her teeth and terrifying everyone in her wake.

Because nothing was said

I just left, silently with nothing but my life intact.

Welcome Back Sweetheart

2010-03-06T02:58:00.001-08:00

My favourite part of the day, my favourite part of my job is waking an animal from anesthesia. The vet has left, the attention seeking beeping machines have been turned off and it’s just me and an animal trying to breathe. I love the rush of the sudden wake up and the ripping of the tune from its throat, the confusion of the consciousness, the madness of the blinking, rolling eyes trying to focus on you. The haunting noises the animals makes, the flipping, struggling, grasping for air.

Most of all I love the calm before the confusion sets in. The lazy animals the refuse to wake up to breath on the own, the animals you have to stir from their slumber, shake the dear life back in. The childlike look they give you when they are cold and confused. When you wrap them in a blanket and rock them gently to being again.

I particularly like the ones that take a long time to wake. That spends more time than they are entitled in that land between life and death.

Quiet

In quiet times my instincts kick in.

After the visual Smorgasbord of gorgeous gore and guts of the operation is complete and the animal’s insides are sewn back in, the animal is no longer a science experiment, meat on the slab but a pet, your pet. This is also when the vet leaves.

Vets cure, nurses heal.

A nurse told me the other day that she wanted to be a vet.

How could anyone that has been privileged to the “wake up” ever want to be anything else.

Yes a big part of my day is spent sorting through poo, vomit and other animal juices or cleaning all of the above mentioned. Waiting for dogs to do any of the above mentioned. Sticking thermometers up their bums, needles in their skin, and telling people their pets are fat.

But I also carry sick animals away from anxious owners and then I generally get to walk them back into their owner arms.

I get to soothe them before an operation, I watch over them when they are under and best of all I get to wake them.

Welcome back sweetheart

Well Worth The Wait

2010-02-26T23:19:00.001-08:00

I couldn’t see a thing just a pitch black ocean before me. I could hear the hum of 44 thousand bodies next to me, creating much needed breaks against the freezing wind.

Then he began

In darkness with nothing but his velvet voice.

The entire first song was delivered in this way – no fireworks, no fanfare, no lights, no music.

I remember exactly what I was doing when I first heard George Michael sing. I also remember where I bought and heard each of his new CDs. I remember the endless teenage hours I devoted to memorising each of his songs. I even remember the childish love letter I penned to him. Many of my memories have been created around this man and his music.

Yesterday I crossed off a major entry on my bucket list. I saw George Michael live and despite the build up of over 20 years, he didn’t disappoint in fact he exceeded all my expectations.

There were no special effects, grand stages, and famous support acts – in fact there wasn’t even a support act. All there was on that stage last night was a man in a black suit and one hell of a voice.

I’ve seen showman on stage, I’ve seen spectacular sets, blaring music that deafens you for days but I’ve rarely seen a man stand naked with his talent and silence thousands with his words.

Last night I understood why he meant so much to me. Why his music can transport me to another time, place and why I will always regard him one of the finest artist of the last 50 years. I know many people don’t scratch beyond the surface of his dance tunes, indiscretions and fluro past but I also know that if they were there last night they would understand that only truly talented artists can show their craft without the distractions that so many “artist” do today.

In complete darkness, with nothing but his velvet voice.

The Queenslander

2010-02-20T01:02:00.000-08:00

A few years ago a tortured soul walked into his father’s vet surgery climbed into the attic and swallowed a bottle of euthanasia preparation. His father’s colleague found him days later as his juices had seeped through the ceiling of the old Queenslander roof onto her consult room floor. Since then all by one staff member has left the practice, and made room for a whole new batch of vets and nurses.

I am on of those nurses

This place is haunted, by animal and human kind.

It is known
Not talked about
But accepted nonetheless

I have personally seen and heard the many ghosts that haunts this old Queenslander

Some bring me peace, others scare me shitless

This place is also tortured.

The new owner is very much alive but haunts the place like a living poltergeist.

Mean
Complicated
Controlling
Suffocating
And surprisingly funny

I often escape to the laundry to hang out with one of the ghost cats to avoid her harassment.

His persistent meow from the death freezer keeps me alive, alert, and centered.

Safe

The whole house creaks with our breathing, rattles with the past, past lives, past aches, past tragedies. The new owner has equipped the whole place with fancy devices that shoot out pheromones every few minutes to calm the visiting animals, to sooth them, put them at ease over whatever veterinary experience they are about to encounter.

Despite this I’ve never seen so many feral cats, agitated dogs, and terrified rodents as at this vet surgery, this place of healing.

Animals have senses that we cannot even fathom, senses beyond our senses, they taste the air literally with their tongues. They breathe the air and all that haunts it.

In this place of healing no one has healed over the bosses son, the lost animals that will not return home, the pain that has been painted into the walls and seeped through the roofs onto the consult floors.

No one can heal without healing.

From past and living demons alike.

The Lamb

2010-02-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Numerous wolves in sheep’s clothing are circling my life once more. I successfully filled my life with nothing but substance but to be honest in order to do that my life became very small indeed. The more you venture out it appears the more wolves you welcome into your life.

Not everyone means well.
Not everyone has your interests at heart

In fact if you could name more than 1 person that does you are either very fortunate or living in fairy land.

Insecurities and Selfishness drives most human behaviors – unfortunately these two traits as common as they are never cease to sting the fuck out of you.

I scale the well beaten wolf trails that surround me and see surprising faces snarling back at me.

Friends

Friends with juvenile teeth gashing against condescending spilt tongues. Spitting poison all in the name of love or lost, resentment, uncertainty, and the green one.

I am a lamb
Weak
Lost
Succulent

I’m unsure of my flock, yearning forever for greener pastures, and always overly observant of pending dangers.

I am vulnerable

YOU KNOW THIS

Yet you still steal bites at my exposed flesh like a wolf on the hunt.

You helped find me when I was first lost but now that I am back with that familiar enemy you will be the first to go.

As wolves, even those wrapped in lovely wool, are not welcomed here.

The Butterfly Effect

2010-01-25T02:23:00.000-08:00

I think every little thing is connected.
I feel we do one thing because of another thing that happened somewhere, somehow to ourselves or someone else.
I imagine that we are so connected to one another than we can never possibly ever get along.
I sense that everything that we as humans do is symptoms of a far away sickness or maybe one that is so close we can see the bruising of it on our skins.

I don’t believe in fate

I don’t suffer religion and the men that declare it

I believe in a higher more powerful object.

I believe in consequence.

Of your, mine, their mistakes

I distinguish it doesn’t always fall evenly, fairly, justly but nonetheless it falls on us all.

The greatest threat facing western society these days is not a man in a turban, a nuclear weapon, the GFC it’s our government’s inability to make the link between actions and reasons, decisions and consequences. It’s their inability to ask …..

Why?

Why do we drink ourselves stupid?

Why do we gamble our paychecks away?

Why do kids take drugs?

Why do record numbers of people self medicate or even more frightening allow the pharmaceutical companies to pour antidepressants down their throats?

Why have we become self reliant, immobile, paralyzed without government interference?

We are so quick to criticize the culture that we have created without even a thought to why it has deteriorated at such a rate in the last decade or two.

Pain is a warning that something is wrong

Yet we continue to ignore the pain in our collective lives.
It’s all too hard, it’s too high a mountain to climb, maybe it is the kids of “these days” fault.
I think I’ll just drink myself into oblivion to forget and call it a celebration.

No wonder why the police fear Australia Day.

Pancake

2010-01-23T21:21:00.001-08:00

I’m feeling flat and mean – maybe it’s the lack of carbs in my diet, lack of booze, sugar and all things nice. My frustration is seeping out of my pores lately but at nothing I can actually put my finger on.

January is one of the hardest months of the year.
Bills are high and lined with the guilt of last year spending
Waistlines are bloated with the regret of the past season
Everything on TV is a repeat and crap
And there is no bloody football!

The heat is also soaking us up, lapping up our energy and drowning our motivation.

January is a hard time of year.

It must feel different in the other hemisphere – I wonder if the coldness of their season crisps up their optimism for the year ahead.

It’s so hard to care when the air around you swims past your ears in waves of humidity and heat.

Its 42 degrees in my backyard, I’m sure my chooks are cooking KFC style in their skins today.

No wonder I’m so flat

This is my first blog for the New Year and it is the 24th day of the year – I hope the above content explains my delay.

Hot, flat and mean

I grit my teeth against the scathing words that want to pour from my fingers but I resist as you just don’t make/keep friend that way.

Do I have hope for 2010 – not at this stage.

Ask me again when the weather cools down to humane levels, the beer is once again flowing into my cup and the carbs can find a way onto my place. Ask me when my new job is not the most stressful, scariest thing on my mind. But most of all ask me when the footy starts and then you will hear my heartbeat once again.

Buried

2009-12-27T03:03:00.001-08:00

There is a feeling of unease almost dread swimming in my tummy. It has been building for a week or so and I’m now finding it hard to contain. I’m suffocating sobs, breathing deeply, wiping memories just trying to get through this tough time. I feel that balloon of depression pressing on my chest as another year approaches.

I have no idea why a single day can bring such trepidation – one day is just another day but when it spells the beginning of another time, period, moment, butterflies always hit and hits hard. I’m uncomfortable with moving forward as I’ve been digging my nails in for so long that if I released my grip my hands may be overcome with unbearable pain as I’ve been clenching them so hard letting them go may just break them in two.

I can’t help but always be amazed that I’m facing another year that I’m actually here, time ticking on always takes me by surprise. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t move on and it’s simply my outer self going through the motions almost dishonoring me.

This year I took bounds not just steps forward – I started a whole new career – something that feeds my mind as well as my soul. I meet so many new people, people I proudly consider friends.

Yet I still return empty

I can count many fortunes but I can also recoginse dangerous patterns in life, ones I never had before.

I so hoped to fill this with hope as I have so much hope for others.

I’m not medicated, I refuse to pollute my body that way but I must also accept the slow, naked recovery that follows this choice. I never imagined that it would take this long that I would still be battling the same demons for 2 and half years now. I’ve controlled them, toned them down, even stood up to a few but in its raw essence they still very much have a home within my head. Another year of this honestly terrifies me so I tend to get nervous this time of year. Instead of imaging the year ahead I try to just imagine me in it, any of it, somewhere, somehow a part of it. But sometimes even that is too much to ask as the image of me often gets lost in the smoke as if it’s possible that I did leave the truth of me behind.

It’s hard to read melancholy, it’s even harder to write it so I’ll just slip this one in, publish it without fanfare and allow it to be discovered.

It’s enough that it came from these fingers, from this tummy of trepidation.

My Oath to The Poodle

2009-12-25T21:21:00.001-08:00

I’ve tried to write this many times and I keep deleting it to a blank page. Ironically it is about a blank page, a new start, an oath to the poodle.

This is hard for me to write as I’m one of the villains of this story.

I work in a vet surgery that is attached to a pet shop. No one can tell me how cruel pet shops are as until you works in one you have no concept of the cruelty.

This story is about a poodle that didn’t sell. A pure bred beautiful boy that lived in a glass box for 10 weeks. The only human hand that touched him in those 10 weeks was frustrated staff members that used to push him away while they cleaned his glass cage.

Over the weeks he began to fear….. Human’s, noise, other animals, meal times (he was beaten daily by other pups for his food), lights, crowds, and life in the glass box. He became less loveable by the day, less sale worthy. His price kept dropping but no one was willing to take a damaged pup.

How do I know this? I was a part of this crime, I cleaned his cage everyday, I pushed him aside everyday as I was too busy, too resentful, too piss off that I needed to care for this pet shop animal while others got the more interesting nursing jobs. I hated this poodle so much. I hated the man that put it in the cage that ignored it, cruelty dismissed it. I hated myself for working there.

I hated it so much that I took it home. I believed that if I spent some time with it and tried to socialise the stupid dog it may be more attractive to buyers.

It never went back to the pet shop but this isn’t a fairytale.

I bought him into my home out of guilt and shame and mistakenly I kept it for the same reasons.

He was a constant reminder of my shame, a constant reminder of my resentment over working in that pet shop, over missing out on nursing training. I treated him like the punishment I thought I deserved.

He was skinny, so boney that he crackled when you picked him up, he cowered from your touch, he wouldn’t go outside, he wouldn’t behave like an animal as we stripped him of his natural instincts.

Mollymop my gorgeous 1 year old dog accepted him with the openness that only an animal can do. She shared toys with him, food, and spent all day every day with him. She didn’t know his history but she seemed to sense that he was a dog in trouble and adopted him instantly.

Once again a dog has put me to shame.

I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and everything is a lesson in disguise.

The poodle (he has a name but we rarely use it as he is generally referred to as “the Poodle”) has exposed many ugly truths to me. Sides that make me uncomfortable with my chosen career. The past month have been hard work but not without progress. He now walks on a lead, eats all of his food without fear and you having to stand next to him, still flinches to the touch but willingly shows affection now. He loves grass, loves my chickens, adores Mollymop and his little face lit up when he received his first Christmas present yesterday. So he is getting there, slowly…..

His progress is faster than mine. My guilt still sloshes in my stomach when I see him. I still want to cry when I see him cower, see his frightened eyes when I try to touch him, wondering if he remembers all the mornings I pushed him aside without love, without tolerance. But too much of my life is about shame, guilt and inadequacies. Too much of my life is measured in punishments for my wrongs.

I made a Christmas wish, a new years resolution, an oath to the poodle. I opened my heart a sliver to him and it grow even more over night. This morning when he woke me up instead of yelling at him and pushing him away I picked him up and let him snooze nestle into my side and patted his soft wool until he fell back to sleep.

The poodle has been in my house for over a month now.

But the poodle now has a home.

P.S. I start my new job this week, its time for both of us to leave that glass box behind.

Silent Witness

2009-12-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

There are things I want to say that I won’t. In a previous life under a previous name I said too much, too fast, too harshly, and way too often.

I lost my voice 2 years ago interestingly enough I have a lot more friends now.

My tongue stays at bay while my heart lies its guts out.

These words are not things of war but rather love but that doesn’t mean they don’t sting like a slug to the guts.

I feel more helpless without my amour of words; this sitting back and letting things go isn’t moving me anywhere closer to where I want to be.

I let things slide, avalanches of wrongs, I let love ones get crushed under the rocks and snow.

It isn’t about diplomacy as diplomats move the earth with gentle words; I move nothing, certainly not my lips.

I affect nothing, I just keep the gentle waves rolling and rocking and never making anyone seasick.

I’m scared for you, I care for you, I don’t want you to go, you have to leave this place, you need to care about yourself more, you take advantage of me, you isolate me, you disappoint me, your dying inside, your spinning out of control, I don’t know if I can catch you, I wish you would stay in one place long enough to fall in love, I want you to miss me when I’m gone, I want you to wake up and see what they are doing, I want you to find joy again as its been so long since you last laughed, I want you know that I know you are hurting and I’m tired of your tough guy act. I need you to step up, stop being a victim you’re stronger than you think. Stop waiting just stop waiting for others to complete you, to me you are whole. Stop moving for one second and realise the joy right in front of you.

I was a communicator; I even won awards for my skill.

I’ve seen the world when nothing made sense, when everything was upside down and violently wrong. When even my screams made no difference at all so now to keep things upright I simply say nothing at all.

Mad World

2009-11-28T21:22:00.001-08:00

Woolworths on a Sunday is enough to turn you off the human race. I only hope that when/if the aliens come for a research field trip they don’t land on a Sunday well at least not near a supermarket.

Bad moods, bad language and bad behaviour seem to sum up the public these days but the public are us, you and me. Filled with people like you and me and the ones we love. Everyone is an asshole until you know them; everyone seems a little weird, boring, and dead until you take the time to know them on one, two and any level.

I work face to face with this species everyday and I must admit I generally curse their arse off under my breath even though I know it must show up in my eyes, tone and body language. Humans are pigs yet ironically I love a lot of them – the ones I bothered to get to know. I know secrets, hidden talents, and sense of humours, idiosyncrasies of many people that I have opened my world to and I am better for it. Yet I will swear at that moron standing in front of the fucking shelf where my milk is.

We forget so quickly

Every stage of our lives are forgotten the instant it is over

Mothers of adults swear at mothers of toddlers
Adults roll their eyes at loitering teenagers
Kids hold their ears when babies scream

It is as if it never happened and the only moment that matters is the one I’m in now.
We talk about new age mothers these days with their self righteous hippy shit yet my shit smells just as bad

What the fuck do we care about anymore??

Well actually heaps of things. I have several friends obsessing of different causes at the moment, attending rallies, drumming up support and yelling their little lungs out.

This is passion, this is humanity, this means fuck to me.

Sorry I’m too sidelined by my own self interests to care about yours so don’t send emails asking me to fight for YOUR cause, don’t guilt me about issues that have nothing to do with my stage in life!

No wonder why I choose to shop on Sundays!

There is a little article in the Q weekend every Saturday called “ordinary people”
and it makes the whole magazine. Just a little snippet about an ordinary person’s life. No matter whom the person is, or what the think, do, and say it makes absolute fascinating reading. A window into someone else life is truly a gift.

People are astonishing because we all look, feel, talk, love differently yet we are all exactly the same. My favourite thing in the world is to sit with a person and drink and talk and talk and imagine and flirt, and talk, and create, and be present with another heartbeat, another dream maker, another soul.

I want to hear everything, absorb everything; I want to know something no one else has known and know you, just you for whatever you want to be right now.

But fuck I wish you would move away from the milk.

A Fairytale

2009-11-21T23:35:00.001-08:00

I need to tell you a story about a girl who lost her spark.

She had an accident, a terrible, terrible accident, a fall that broke everything and nothing but her heart. She was pulled up by the blades of her shoulders by the ones that loved her best. They still believed in the spirit that once flowed from her barrel even though all that was left was the fragrance in the old wood of the spirit of before. She drifted up to the surface by the sheer force of love until one day a little tiny glow ignited inside her and pushed her shaking foot forward. She made another step, and another and another and soon she was facing forward, moving forward.

But something was left behind, something she kept forgetting to go back for.

This girl looks pretty much the same as before, maybe a little less.

Young
Confident
Outspoken
Alive

But to the naked eye she is back.

With my magnify glass I can see the empty space. When all the king’s men and all king’s horses put her back together again I can see the piece which they missed, which she misses the most.

I see her stand in rooms she once enchanted with nothing to say.
I see her protect and hide the nothing she has to give.
Because nothing is the hardest thing to give.

This story is about a girl that had a terrible accident.
A girl that was put back together with all the right parts
With everything but what made her…her.

But to the naked eye she still looks pretty good.
Just a …… little less

Mean Girls

2009-11-07T22:38:00.000-08:00

Hyenas are ugly creatures, all teeth, razor like hair and let’s not forget they prey on the weak. They move in packs, laughing so loud that the sounds resonates anything but legitimacy. They have arched backs like their bones don’t quite fit their skin and it’s all about skin, how good people look in skin, how good they feel in their own skin. There is nothing honorable in a Hyena as they essentially spend their lives looking for the half dead, the depleted, the worm out, the weak.

We all know them, seen them, felt their bite, hell some of us have even been them.

They always move in packs of many – many unidentifiable faces molded into masses of humiliation, pain, and sequins. Ugliness beyond what any artist could smudge away. They come in every age and shape but all with the same qualities of sneering, ugliness, cruelty and fear.

Fear is what binds them, moves them forward, makes them do the unthinkable. Fear is the essence of the Hyena.

I know a story that isn’t story because it’s true, of an amazing woman who was fed to the Hyenas. She built a life of quality and walked into a room of quantity and became confused. She was weakened by a tough week, month, year just the sort of prey these scavengers love. She walked in with a smile and had it swiped from her own face.

I work with animals and the kind of confidence you can’t fake as they sense the sweat before it drips from your brow.

Self esteem is a wondrous thing, we all seek it, read about it, and learn ways to capture it but in the end submit to a life without it.

But I know a secret something I’ve learnt with the sewn on stripes of years, on my face, hands and heart.

Hyenas are scared stiff and all it takes is a BOO to scare them away.

This story about a girl that isn’t a story as it’s true is licking her wounds but one day, and I think one day soon, she will realise that those people with the blank faces and hearts were viscous because she possessed something they will never.

They will never know her humility; they will never match her intelligence, her grace, her kindness, her spirit. Their hollow logs will never be filled with the gooey love she possesses.

Animals and humans alike move in pack for protection. They think like the crowd in fear of not being the crowd, they move in synergy to confused, startle and distract from the fact that they have nothing to offer, think, say, give.

This blog is personal as it’s about someone I love, someone I wasn’t there to protect, instead I was stuck on the train station without a train. Yet all the harm, humiliation and hurt were dished to her with a purpose, with a lesson that I could never teach with mere well intended words.

There is a place where, if we are lucky, we belong. In this place we feel brave, strong, sexy, funny, complete.

Hyenas melt on contact in this place.

xxx

Speechless

2009-10-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

Words make up so much of who we are.
Yet it’s so hard to rely on the words of others when we know ourselves how many we say that are untrue.
I try to say only what I believe yet fall short everyday to hide, protect, encourage, and deceive the ears that hear them.

I believe actions do speak louder than words yet I’m a person of very little action. We all are in some ways yet we all talk more than we need to.

In the last 24 hours I have talked, texted, typed many things to many people and meant only a few.
Yet I have relationships build only on words so perhaps they are my actions.
Surface relationships, obligation associations, acquaintances some call them. Yet I struggle with half way love, commitment, need.
I crave all or nothing
I want everything said, everything meant and followed through.

I rarely say everything I need to say, everything I mean, I rarely follow through.

I’m full of shit

Yet I think you all are too

But words can enchant, bewitch, soothe and change you. Some people wait all their lives to hear certain words said in certain ways. Certain words can also destroy you, make before and after moments that are forever stolen and never to have back. Lyrics can reduce you to tears; speeches can divide us, inspire us, and even seemingly change the world.

I have a dream….

But regardless of empty sounds we crave them, demand them, and wait for them yet the moments when we are speechless are the most powerful moments we ever have.

I’ve seen a few people around me let down by actions this week. In a week when nothing was said, not a word was exchanged, not a sound uttered. People were hurt, left out, cut out, and left behind.

Sticks and stones will break my bones…

But words are all I have.

I will not change and I dare say either will you.

The Luckiest People

2009-10-10T04:16:00.001-07:00

I’m completely self obsessed. I’m incredibly conceitedly insecure. I’m surprised I have any time for anything else in my life. I’ve often been described as aloof, snobbish even autistic yet the shameful truth lies within my own self. I live within a fantasy world with magic mirrors that instead of producing an image of lovely escapism it blinds me with an even uglier truth or lie or something left of the middle. Reality has always been an issue for me – I’ve always escaped it, fudged it or missed entirely – I find that fuzzy line blurrier and furrier than most.

Yet in calm moments I have nothing but eyes and ears for you, only you.

I’ve persuaded people to believe things that even I don’t. I’ve allowed others to see the other side of the mountain even when it is nothing but a sheer cliff. I’ve empowered the weak, enraged the boring, and killed the romantic within.

I really should’ve been a politician.

But time ticks slowly for those that live within.

Last year I met a girl that needed and screamed it out to the world and the world came. I’ve always known that dreadful Barbara Streisand song had some god awful truth to it but the thought of needing anyone sickened me.

I now say “Yes” to everything and I’ve learnt that it is the same as me saying “I need you”.

Scary and a little awkward but a little less empty which is nice, warm even syrupy like a date pudding. Mmmm pudding.

I never believed in regret, I always believed that everything that happens moves us forward and teaches us something. The older I get the less I believe this as regret and the grief that follows it now sits on my hips like a 10 pound cake. I know that this moment, this very moment will go down with the thousands of other moments I have spent in my thirties as a time that I will grieve over, again… if it is possible to indeed grieve over grief. I’ve always describe my depression as a feeling like I was grieving for something I couldn’t remember, touch, describe.

I think I just did.

Words sound funny when you say them over and over and over again. They lose their impact, their power, their interest, their meaning. They just become silly little nonsense sounds that when heard people find them hard to take seriously.

Evette, Evette, Evette, evee, evee, evee, ev, ev, ev.

Nonsense

Evee needs people too.

Now that makes sense.

Damn Barbara Streisand.

How to create a killer

2009-10-02T04:02:00.001-07:00

They stalk rather than walk, with lion like chests and piecing eyes. Their backs can be equal height with a young child’s throat yet they still remain one of the most popular breeds in our suburbs. The beauty of the German shepherd would rarely be disputed but their place in our homes and hearts needs to be.

It is foolish to believe that breeding alone can determine the disposition of a dog but it is ignorant to turn a blind eye to potentially dangerous breeds. Yet people with small minds and even smaller back yards sentence these beautiful beasts to a life of confined spaces, boredom, frustration and finally aggression. People in every suburb are making and keeping killers.

In the surgery 90% or even more of dog attacks are carried out by German shepherds. Dogs of all sizes are ripped apart by the jaws of this breed. I’m not bagging large dogs as I love giant breeds but they don’t mix with smaller yards. They need stimulation more than most breeds and our busy lives and small blocks just can’t provide this.

I can see a day in the not so distant future where councils will regulate dog size to yard size. I welcome this move and even tougher laws and hope the “do gooders” step aside and ……
This is turning into a lecture…

If you saw what I did this week you would understand my rant.

Human have a wonderful way of possessing things and destroying them. We consume the world with one overfed gulp and rarely look at the path of destruction we left behind. I’m tired of the takers, the ones that mix up privilege with rights. The gluttons that chomp their way through life, always hungry, always stuffed to the brim.

People adopt animals for more reasons that many may understand. The power of animals have re-written the medical textbooks and shaped our lives in extraordinary ways. Personally I can’t live without them; I ache for them more than I would ever for one of my own kind. I have many theories on why some love them too much and some too little but I can’t wrap my head around why people choose certain breeds and stifle their nature by their forced lifestyles. I cannot understand why some people choose to create a killer.

Soon another German shepherd will be destroyed because it has killed a cat, 2 chickens, and attacked a dog viciously threes times. It is less than 18 months old and maybe less than a month away from tearing out its owner throat. A large, beautiful dog was thrown into a tiny yard with nothing but a fence to look at. A large, beautiful dog was rarely given exercise and went stir crazy. A large, beautiful dog become a killer right in that family’s backyard.

If you are judging the family right now you need to caste your eyes to your neighbors, the house down the street, the house where you hate walking past because the reaction from the stir crazy dog makes you shit yourself everyday. This is going on in more households than you may realise.

You ask these people if they would cut off the hands of a talented painter, remove the voice box of gifted soloist, crush the legs of a sprinter and they would always say no of course not. Instead they just take a living, breathing thing of beauty and place it in a space they control and lock away its instincts, beat its nature down, and turn it into pure rage.

Unfortunately we are only allowed to put down the dogs.

The 6 year old Queen

2009-09-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

When I read her words I’m ashamed. I feel petty, stupid, ungrateful and healthy. I remember her as a kid – blonde hair and fat shiny cheeks standing near the oval with my next door neighbour, smiling, watching like a 6 year old queen. Her name stuck in my head like a tumor as did that day – one of the few days her health allowed her to come to school.

I was stunned she remembered me as that memory was mine.

There are very few people that stop you in your tracks – I know she is that person for an extraordinary amount of people. I also know she would be silently cringing to read this blog which just makes us walk further into her light.

I know very little about her disease and I also ask very little which either makes me thoughtless or a relief. My only memory of her as a child was her golden hair and fat cheeks so it’s hard to associate her with the pain of her illness.

We never talk about her health – I guess the subject is very tiring for her yet I follow her blogs like a bloodhound and I inhale every word.

A blonde bombshell with the wisdom of 150 years or more.

Life isn’t about comparing luck (good or bad) – maybe this is why Christmas songs about poverty piss me off so much. I know there is uncontainable pain out there and yes I could do more (there is always more to do) but I don’t want to sit with people I love and feel guilty (don’t fuck with my Christmas!).

I came back into her life last year when mine was hanging by a thread.

She tied a safety knot in that thread and allowed me to my pain.

Some of my closest friends have not shown me that dignity

Friends with juvenile teeth have made me feel less, further away than before.

If you stride towards completeness and your knees go weak with bravery you must save this page to your favourites. I’m not talking about a moaning string of words, an empty page of pain, these words on these pages will change who you are as they are written by someone that lost too much yet still came out too whole.

http://chasingawaysaltwater.blogspot.com/

I lost my mind and thank god I did.

2009-09-16T22:32:00.001-07:00

I use to dress every morning in my lovely skirts and high heels and walk to the train station to go to my well paid government job and psych myself up to jump in front of the train.

Every morning I rose with the same thought.

I used to think that our lives were divided into three areas – job, family/friends and love. I also used to think that it was impossible even greedy to have all three sections running smoothly. If things were great in the love department, then work usually sucked and so forth.

I was wrong on two levels. Firstly there are, and should be more, than three sections to your life and secondly the toxic waste of one area can leak, and usually does, into the others areas contaminating them.

We spend the majority of our lives at work so when work doesn’t go well we overcompensate in other areas. We dig holes and try to fill them with dirt from other piles in the hope that we can ignore the huge mountain building up behind us.

I know this; I’ve done this too many times.

After my breakdown I looked around at what was left and saw lots of space. I lost my job, my boyfriend, some friends, my apartment, my sanity yet in the strangest way it gave me permission to move.

I see people everyday that cannot move within their own lives. They have tied up their lives with so many expectations, so many restrictions, so many financial responsibilities that they cannot move even sideways.

I know this; I’ve done this too many times

In the past 6 months I have been building up a life that is very different than the one I lost. In fact all that I had then that I don’t have now is money and that urge to jump in front of a train.

I lost everything in order to find something that mattered.

Everyday my life is filled with quality which surely is the meaning of life.

I don’t have a lot of money yet I don’t wake up wanting to throw up because I have to face another day at a job that makes me miserable.

I guess by now you will know I am talking to you.
I say it with love as I’ve been there.

I’m not going to say that life is too short to do the things that you don’t like because the fact is life is long and painful and miserable when you do something you hate.

You light up every room you walk into so don’t let them take that from you, don’t let them take that from us.

xxx

In the name of the Father

2009-09-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve attempted to write this blog so many times and I keep hitting the delete button. Nothing is coming out right, everything seems uneasy; the words on the paper are just not sitting right with me.

Appropriately I’m trying to write about my Father.

My father left when I was10 yet I don’t have many memories of him before that. I imagine he was at work or something as I struggle to visualise him within my childhood home. I don’t even remember being particularly fazed when he left in fact I even recall thinking how lucky I was that I only had one parent to answer to.

When I was growing up my father was forced to make an effort with his children which slowly whittled down to one hour a year – another thing that didn’t bother me as time with this awkward man was like pulling teeth.

My brother harbored an anger towards him that to this day still surprises me. I never felt that sort of passion but I did develop a growing discomfort toward my lack of relationship with him. In my mid twenties I started to build a bridge and extend a hand of friendship towards my father. He seemed surprised, maybe a little chuffed but if truth be told a little reluctant to allow me into his life.

My father’s father died at war before he was born so who taught my father to be a father?

This question rang in my ears a lot when I was growing up and now I simply file it away as another excuse for him to not be there.

Even absent Fathers can teach you so much.

My father taught me that nothing lasts forever but it’s OK that it doesn’t.
I learnt that its takes a lot a bravery to be a dad and he just didn’t have the courage and that’s OK too.
I learnt that I’m a lot like my father and I’m too tired to fight those traits anymore.
I learnt that blood actually isn’t thicker than water and that water can be gooey and warm and everything you need.
I learnt that I search for my father’s faults in other men and I probably always will and that this isn’t fair or OK.
I learnt that my mother was everything he never could be and I’m very lucky even blessed to be of her blood and this makes it all OK in the end.

Last year when I walking the thin line between life and death my father didn’t pick up the phone, drive to see me, or even send an email.

I thought about all the effort I put in to try and build a friendship and I realised that it was what I wanted and not him. That he wanted to leave this life behind and it was just me who was trying to pull him back which in the end wasn’t right or OK. I was so hurt that he didn’t care when I was sick but then I found peace and the discomfort just left.
I feel at peace for the first Father’s Day since I was ten. I can walk away knowing I did everything I could yet I still lost him anyway.

And for the first time for me that’s OK.

Yes, Yes, Yes

2009-09-02T18:19:00.001-07:00

Quite a few years ago I heard an interview on the radio about the “yes man” and I still think about it to this day. He was a young guy in his twenties that for a social experiment decided he would for a whole year say “yes” to everything no matter how ridiculous, dangerous or strange. He set off on a path to see what his life would be like if he took every single opportunity that came his way. The interview was full of crazy, wild; hilarious experiences that he had inevitable found himself in but before the interview was over he was asked a simple question – Where are you now?

In Canada, doing my dream job and engaged to my dream girl.

If you’re like me and have more routines that a two year old then maybe this guy has something worth listening to. My first reaction to any question is No or at the best maybe. Sometimes I don’t even hear the question I’m just so conditioned to ruling out anything remotely different. A consequence to that is I spend a lot of time alone, sober, borderline bored. Luckily my friends are persistent and invites still come my way. However I’m very aware that everything has its limit and everyone has theirs.

You’re a fool if you keep doing the same things and expect a different outcome.

That has been my mantra of late. That gets me out of bed each day. I changed my entire career because of that. I enrolled in TAFE because of that. I joined Vervah (Brisbane based social network site) because of that. I went out there and met strangers because of that.

Has anything changed?

Yeah it has but I kinda sabotaged it a little as I let “no” creep back into my vocabulary. I cancelled willy nilly, I created excuses, I stepped back in my box and once more spent too much time alone, sober and borderline bored.

So back to the “yes man” I’m doing it – this time I’m actually doing it. There are only 3 reasons why I can say NO.

1. finances (sorry Ally I can’t come to Denmark)
2. already have a clashing engagement
3. morals (being a girl it’s best to pop that one in)

But apart form these it’s on.

I’ve lined up a few things already and I’m a ball of nerves but I’m convinced that if I keep doing what I have always done I will never meet anyone new, do anything new, or achieve anything again.

I will keep you updated.

Tequila and Chocolate

2009-08-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

Tequila and chocolate is running through my veins and I am once again pondering my future. I realised last weekend that I lead a good life indeed yet I still crave more. My downfall as always.

I’ve always overachieved, asked for more than was due, stretched beyond my limitation and always felt I ended with nothing at all.

A true friend is harder to find than most realise or care to admit. I have at least 3 amazing women in my life that see beyond the piles of bullshit I mound up and see me for what I am and cannot be and love me regardless.

Not many people find this, have this, know this.

One lives with me – a constant strength that not many are privileged to. One is so far away my very soul aches and one is as close as a late night text message, a boozy lunch, a call for help. I am indeed blessed.

In this world of love I still search for the excuse of loneliness. My downfall as always.

All this, all this stuff floating in a very private belly of tequila and chocolate is the very essence of me and all I never can seem to be.

In these moments I think of those that I wish I had a greater connection to. People that drive me forward from afar. People that inspire and terrify me all at once. People that make moments like these feel so alive.

I may follow their updates and blogs in awe, marvel at their strength from afar, rave about their beauty to empty rooms all the while staying safe within their shadows.

People can be terrible and beautiful all at once. They can move you and destroy you, complete you. Yet a life without them can be so snug, so warm, so secure.

I feel shaking and lost treading this path alone.

Yet in its purest state we are all alone, all shaking, all scared, all resisting everything that makes us fail, makes us human.

The tequila makes me fearless, fearless enough to publish this blog, the chocolate make me womanly and weak, weak enough to hold the universe in my hands like every woman must.

I have no idea what I want to say in this piece, maybe the pointlessness is the point of it all.

I’m tired of feeling like the model of malfunction yet the ache is so familiar that I steer my wheel to it everyday.

The hardest part of depression is allowing the brain to recognise the good in your life and not allowing your heart to experience it. The world is harder to take when the logic has been removed.

I’m so tired of hearing my own words, of writing darkness; you must be so tired of reading it.

With all that has been given to me, with all that I have fought to keep I would still give it all away for a just one moment of peace.

My downfall as always.

Grant me the Serenity

2009-08-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

I’m 32 and I’m seriously starting to notice the little signs of ageing. Now I’ve been going grey since I was 16, and as long as there is hair dye, I’m cool with that but lines that stay beyond the pillow creases are starting to freak me out.

I’m a huge fan of character lines just not my own face. I love a storyteller and a face that begins conversations just leave my face out of the plot. It’s not that I want to stay young, I want to shrivel up with wisdom but only on the inside.

I spend hours every week pounding the treadmill running away from my age but all I seem to do is encourage my bouncing girls to travel even further south. (must invest in a good sports bra!)

I lather my face in the anti 7 signs of ageing cream everyday cursing that fact that there are as many as 7 signs to this sickness. I stay out of the sun to the point that I now look like Dracula’s bride, eat stupid healthy and limit alcohol to a sad ration every week all in the name of staying young.

I spend so much of my youth on ways of staying young that I have no idea how to be young.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

Oh I bloody know it but it won’t stop me pouring my 2 cents into the $162 billion anti-ageing industry. I know it is going to happen but I still feel cheated somehow.

I spend my entire life hating my body – I remember even hating it in pre-school – don’t remember much else about pre-school but I sure remember the inadequacy I sentenced myself too.

Thighs too big, arms too wobbly, chin – too many, stomach too bloated, too many rolls and bumps for my liking. A few years ago I lost over 30kgs yet I still see that in the mirror everyday – well the days I can actually look in the mirror.

I’m convinced that when I’m 60 and looking at old photos I will realise that things weren’t as bad as I believed and I may even regret the thousands of hours I spend dismissing my beauty.

Thousands of hours! Maybe this why woman are yet to rule the world – who has the time!

I love control – actually I hate it but it drives me so I need it and seek it wherever I can. Ageing rules me out – defeats me – I must submit to it. Things are going to change whether I like it or not and it isn’t going to be pretty. Yet I think this is one of the reasons that I’m drawn to ink. I’m leaving a mark of my own choosing, I’m creating lines under my terms. I’m in some way choosing how a particular body part will look like to the end of my time.

I’m designing my next tattoo and it’s consuming me. I’m marking my skin once more.

Some people ask if I ever regret my tattoos – what’s to regret. I can point to many things on my body that I regret are there, what’s a couple more! At least it will be art and meaningful and not just sagging tits and an orange peel arse to boot.

Step 8

2009-08-24T00:26:00.001-07:00

An innocent invite from the past has thrown me in a spin.

I feel like there needs to be a 12 step program for Depression as surely there needs to be a time when I confront the ones I have hurt, confused, used during my breakdown.

It is very much like recovering from an addiction – an addiction to a life of bad choices and meaner consequences, destructive patterns and fruitless dreams.

In retrospect the fall was dragged over many years and there are many people that came along for the ride. Not always people of great significance but people, breathing, feeling people nonetheless.

I’m ashamed of the fall and the people I used to break it.

Yet I can’t step back – I can’t cross that line again not even for a sorry for what I did, said, thought, not even for a handshake of forgiveness… if that is indeed coming my way.

People can be the habit, the trigger to beliefs, feelings, and actions. If after all that I have lost and all that I have fought to regain how could I possibly walk back into a life I left behind? It’s not possible – it is as if my past needs to be erased in order to survive my future. I need to kill the addiction, wipe the patterns, re-learn to act, live, think, breathe.

I’ve been caught in these circles for too long, round and round and round the same shit, same mistakes, and same reactions. I can’t be the same person and if you knew her then that’s not such a bad thing.

I could make apologies in this public forum but neither of us needs that in order to move on and that is what we all need in the end anyway, isn’t it?

To move on

Step 8 is to make amends for those that you have hurt during the time of your addiction.

I don’t see any of you anymore – I can’t remember the names of you all but I’m still haunted by every one. I won’t seek you out but I will make amends.

I will recover

That is my amends.

Amnesia

2009-08-22T00:32:00.000-07:00

I find the older I get the more I forget.

Not where my keys are and if I put on deodorant that morning but memories, events from the past have simply slipped away.

In fact I have a freakish memory for the present day as thousands of little things are meticulously filed away in my head. Ask me about last month and I can bore you right down to the shade of lipstick a client was wearing, ask me about my childhood and I draw a blank.

I find the more the months march on the less memories I have from my childhood. It is like I only have so much room in my head that old memories must be shipped out in order for new ones to be formed.

Facebook is so confronting in this way as I struggle to remember old school friends by face or name and when people bring out the “old stories” I have no idea what they are talking about – even when there is photographic evidence! Even embarrassing memories have left via my right ear. It’s very frustrating when I don’t even remember the names of boyfriends I had 5 years ago so I can look them up on stalkbook. It’s not like I have replaced them with a shiny, slightly exaggerated version I just don’t have anything there.

Obviously they are there somewhere, stored somewhere within my brain I just don’t have the recall skills to find them.

I guess I don’t need to.

I know the people that have shaped my past in positive and negative ways so I guess it doesn’t matter that everyone else has sort of molded into a grey, hazy fog.

Maybe some things aren’t meant to be remembered.

The boredom, the pain, the fear, the heartache.

Increasingly there is a division between my life before the breakdown and after. I can almost see the line in the sand, the point where I died and learned to slowly live again.

It takes all my energy to live everyday that my mind cannot afford to trip down memory lane.

Maybe when I am stronger every memory will come flooding back but until then no embarrassing photos on Facebook please!

The Tight Rope

2009-08-14T04:46:00.000-07:00

You see it but it’s not yours to see.

Fly wire eyes, without missing a beat or taking a breath, asked me if I was once a cutter.
I, without missing a beat or taking a breath, laughed and said yes.

That’s all I said and for her that is all I needed to say.

No explanations were needed or called for. No time lines were offered and none were asked. Just a laugh and a nod seemed enough for fly wire eyes. It was enough that it was once a part of me, a pain that had simply leaked rivers across my arms. She didn’t dwell on it, question it further, she simply continued doing what she was before.

The strangest thing is I doubt she will ever look upon it again as she seems to simply move within one non judgmental second to another.

I had spent over a year dreading the moment that someone would ask about my scars that when the moment finally arrived, and then went unnoticed, I must admit that it left me a little hollower than before.

Don’t misunderstand, I don’t want questions, I don’t want to find answers, I don’t want to feel that I need to offer reasons about something seemingly unreasonable. I don’t want my sanity questioned as I’m all too aware that I still and may always walk that unsteady tight robe that draws the line between well and unwell. I don’t want you to ask.

Why? How? When? Did it hurt?

Who cares? Do you really want to know?

How about asking if I miss it? If I still crave it? Fantasise about it? Ache for it? Imagine it just to calm down, to freeze a moment in time so I can catch up, cope, handle it and move onto the next moment that’s waiting for me.

People only ask what they do not understand.
People only answer what others will understand.

Even if you had the balls to ask these questions, these answers would not be for you.

Yes I have scars, thick, shiny, raised scars. You see it but it is not yours to see. With or without prejudice.

Fly Wire Eyes

2009-08-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

When I was very young my teacher asked my parents if I was deaf and dumb as it was August and I was still yet to utter a single word. This made my Mum scream with laughter as she used to lock herself in the bathroom as a form of respite from my constant chatter. I was a painfully shy girl who at the age of 4 was already excruciating aware of my downfalls.

I said nothing in order to hide the fact that I believed I knew nothing.

My parents told me that unless I made an effort and spoke to my teacher I couldn’t go to the Ekka. The thought of missing THE BEST GOD DAMN DAY OF THE YEAR forced me to rock up the next day and say "hello". Nothing fancy, not even delivered with a smile but a good start nonetheless.

I spend most of my childhood looking through eyes covered in fly wire. Those eyes never quite saw everything or at least anything in focus. It was as if I had actual fly wire fixed over my eyes. Shyness, low self esteem, awkwardness, dyslexia (at least in my case) can cause the strange condition of fly wire eyes. I was too embarrassed to peer passed the screen door, I was too devastated by my own shortcomings to look anyone in the eye and really take in my surroundings. My memories are confused, chopped up, and just plain missing from my childhood due to this condition.

Yesterday I was taking to someone I often do but for the first I realised that they too suffer from fly wire eyes. My heart leaped out of my chest as I was watched this funny, friendly, lofty blonde mumble an apology for being herself.

I wished I was anywhere but there as I wanted to take her away, preferably somewhere with loads of alcohol, and tell her in a thousands different ways that I understood her apology.

She began to paint a picture of her childhood and the pain that followed it around and it become increasingly clear that despite the fact that she had grown, had beautiful children of her own, found success, stability and love that she was still looking at the world through fly wire. Her gaze was still a haze of tightly woven metal obstructing her eyes from reality.

So much of her makes sense now, not good sense, not the kind the makes you smile but a good start nonetheless.

Whatever happens to ones that are left behind? The haunted? The ones with fly wire eyes?

I didn’t offer her solace, answers, or even a weak pity compliment. I said nothing in order to hide the fact that I believe I know too much.

The Tom Cat

2009-07-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

A Tom cat came into the surgery last Wednesday with his body all twisted in torture. A tick had settled into his chin paralyzing him from the waist down. He was barely a year old but his body already held the scars of a street cat and his glands stunk of man.

On Thursday morning at 6.45 I opened the door to the surgery and nearly passed out from the stench. Anyone that owns a cat would’ve at some stage smelt the stink of a wandering Tom cat. The smell was so concentrated in the surgery it had permeated the walls and sent off my gag reflect.

I’ve been walking around since then with the lingering scent of a Tom Cat on me.

Tom Cats are the reason why the council changed the cat laws on July 1 this year.

Tom cats also exist within the human variety – you know the type – walks around usually with their own stink, trying to get into anything that moves. I also think the council should extend their castration rules to this variety.

I received the strangest text message from a male friend yesterday. “I’ve found a girl I enjoy spending time with, sorry to waste your time.”

It was strange on a few levels. One I didn’t realise I was in “the race” for his affections. Two I didn’t realise that he actually thought I was an interested candidate and thirdly when did a couple of drinks with a friend suddenly turn into a date?

I would have to assume from this strange message that he is one of those men whose belief fall into the category that men and women cannot be friends. Sad thing is I didn’t realise he was. Am I so removed from romance that I cannot even pick up on someone’s intentions? Am I so naïve that I assume having great stimulating conversation with someone doesn’t mean I want to have sex with them? Or is he just the ass?

Its tough finding good company in this town (or any town I’d imagine). The message alarmed and confused me as I never flirted, or encouraged him yet I obviously gave him some reason to think I was shining a green light. Or perhaps he was like the Tom Cat – roaming the streets, splashing his stink and trying to find a nice, warm hole.

I understand the need to find someone amongst the endless sea of faces that will pause with you, for you but to sum up every woman with a pulse that is single as a possible chance reeks of more than an overpowering male scent. Why can’t I just have a drink with the guy, play some pool, watch a game of footy, go to the movies, have dinner, a chat without him thinking I want a bonk? It’s a sad state of affairs if life is determined by these rules. Please help me out guys as i am desperately searching for reasons not to want you all castrated or put down.

Talking about putting down, the Tom cat finally went to heaven today with the help of the Vet’s needle. I held it this morning, even though the black discharge and urine seeped through my clothes, I held it until his heart stopped. He died because his owner (if he ever had one) didn’t believe in castration. He died because all he knew was to follow that magnetic pull of his sexual desire.

I wonder if he ever wanted more from his life.

The Weaver

2009-07-12T00:07:00.001-07:00

People are boring when they are in love. It’s like they disappear inside someone else’s life and no one but that person can find them. We lose people to love all the time. Love tests friendships, defines them, reshapes them and often destroys them. I’ve lost many to love but in the end I guess they just join that long line of others that simply pass, pause and move on.

We are weavers; we weave into each other lives sometimes in a wonderful way, often in a destructive way, always with a different thread, a different colour, a different coarseness to our contribution. If we don’t hold too tight and cause a snag or ask too much, others can leave their own special pattern even for the briefest time.

But people ask too much, they take too much. I am guilty of this too.

I want you to be everything even without the benefit of time. I want you to disappear and leave no trace, no snag at least until I want you to be everything again. I weave violently or not at all. My thread is rarely golden or finely spun but more like a rough untreated hessian.

Yet I give more than I have rightfully, willingly to give. I chuck it at people so fast I’m often left grasping for breath.

My biggest fear is being trapped yet I follow the dead animal scraps right into the cage every time. I’m sure in many cases I even lay the trap myself, carefully suspending the hidden door in place for hours just waiting for the sucker, which would be me, to walk right in. I’m smarter than the average bear Boo Boo as I can even corner and capture myself, hog ties and all.

I’ve done it again. I’ve allowed others to ask too much as I’ve done the one thing you should never do to people – let them! I’ve given my all, chucked my best work right in their faces. Take it all I said and even take a little more if you can squeeze it in as I’m sure I can even do without vital organs if it would please you.

It is a curse of a lot of women with pride to try and be something so unforgettable, so vital, so needed that when it’s time to move on, you simply can’t. To be needed is to be held back unless we are talking about love but people in love are boring and who the fuck wants to be that right?

June

2009-06-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

They say that we are more likely to meet our demise on the month of our birthday than any other month of the year. It is as if the full circle has been drawn and our maker chooses not to bother with another year.

My birth month is June and this idea does not surprise me as historically this month has plagued my family with tragedy.

In June my grandparents were murdered.

I believe in Fate but I also believe in random which usually blacks out the other and keeps me grounded, nailed to the floor. I like to see, hear and feel what’s real yet I have no doubt that spirits exist. I’m such a realist that it breaks my daydreaming heart. I’m half empty, half full, everything and nothing yet even I can draw a line through the month of June.

In June my brother’s life fell apart and he went to jail for the first time.

June is cold even in Brisbane the first chilly wind whips around your ears but June also has the most incredible blue skies like paint that is thick, and chunky to touch. I look forward to June because it’s my and my mum’s birthday which means cocktails, long lunches and spoiling but I also grieve sometimes for things I don’t understand.

In June I lost my dear friend Paul to suicide and I had no idea he was sick.

I cry a lot in June. For things I have lost by adding another year to my life. Things that is now further away from me.

In June we discovered my brother’s addiction to heroin.

I move very quickly in June and often rush what shouldn’t be rushed. I make huge bounds in a matter of a month. I usually cut my hair short, leave my partner, and start looking for a new job, new friends, anything new. I shed my skin in June.

In June I left my de facto, changed jobs and moved twice and then turned 30.

I won’t write in here what happened last June as it still breaks my heart and it’s simply not ready to live within words of a page.

In 2009 June has once again been a rollercoaster. Lately I can’t help but ponder if the theme of the month is sealed like a self fulfilling prophecy. Have I created June? Have I invited it in like a houseguest and welcomed it so warmly that it continues to reappear each year?

One part of me believes this while the other part, the one without the ego, just believes in bad luck. Just believes that something bigger is at play, something magnetically drawing in disaster on this month of my birth. Either way June is foggy, tiring, and overwhelming. Either way each June I become a year older, I complete a circle and start on a new one. I shed my skin and I grieve for all that June have taken before.

A Thousand Words

2009-06-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw the World Press 09 exhibition at the Powerhouse museum. Although it wasn’t as impressive as past years some of the images still burn my eyes.

True Photo Journalist can bring the world into your heart in one devastating shutter. There are still images that I saw in the world press 2003 exhibition in Japan that are tattooed in my brain. Images of sorrow, terror, despair and hope are still with me to this day. If you are thinking of taking in this year’s exhibition it may not touch you as deeply as past years but there are guaranteed images that will overwhelm you with gratitude that we live in Australia.

The news never covers all of human heartache. For some reason, perhaps lack of time or maybe censorship, what really happens out there rarely enters our living rooms or newspapers. After walking around the walls of the Powerhouse and absorbing the photographs on the wall you soon realise that fodder like swine flu and petrol increases mock what is really happening out there and sometimes in regions you have probably never heard of.

It has been said many times that the human spirit can adapt to anything. If your life is filled with torture, murder and poverty you adapt your expectations in order to survive. Images that display this human adaptability always scar me deeper. Seeing children play around dead bodies, people cooking amongst rumble, and woman accepting their fate of slavery wound me. These images are the ones that stay with me the longest.

I believe the biggest heartbreaks are the silent ones. Not so much the natural disasters, the diseases and the deaths that make sure a big noise in our lives but the slowly changing landscapes that change us, mould us and slowly harden us.

On the smaller scale, and lets be honest most of us live within the smaller scale of things, we too accepts fates beneath us, fates that crept in slowly and moved in piece by piece over many years of apathy. Whether it is a 40 year old woman who wakes up with a husband she never really loved and 3 children she never really wanted and wonders whose life she is living or a man about to retire after 45 years of doing something he hated. These things happen every day. Hearts break every day for these same reasons. We live with crimpling pain because we know no better, we ride the train to a tedious job everyday because we don’t know what else is out there, and we kiss a husband every morning while secretly scheming excuses on how not to be intimate with him tonight. We live everyday the same as before even if it is broken.

I wonder how we would show that sort of heartache in a photograph.

The Race

2009-06-10T18:39:00.001-07:00

Today I’m 32 years old. I programmed this into my CrossTrainer at 7am this morning and it seemed to give me an easier ride as if to say the extra year I was now carrying around was some sort of burden.

Birthdays lose their shine after about 10 years old. Years mount up, sometimes unnoticed in a rapid fashion from about 28 years old. After 30 it all seems a little ho hum.

I barely remember the last 2 years of my life as it was such a blur of sickness. It was a day, a month, and before I knew it 2 years. Knowing this it is a strange sensation to turn 32 when I don’t remember blowing out 30 candles let alone 31. But here I am today cold and full of sugar (as you should be on all winter birthday) and 32 years old.

I have a feeling that age in this middle before middle age years feels exactly the same. Same amount of pain or lack there of, same amount of fitness, same needs, same amount of aging to the skin – things are frozen for awhile at least. I could be 30 or 39 and still wake up feeling the same. Or maybe that was spinning complete bullshit and a sad case of denial.

Do I care that I’m 32 – not really but then my concept of time has always been warped. I still look the same as I did when I was 30 – in fact in some little ways I may even look a bit better.

Some women race against time all their lives. I’m not really sure why I need to run or what I’m meant to be running towards. What exactly is the end game here?

Should I be married with kids by this age?
Should I own things…. Cars, houses, a couch?
What if I don’t even want those things? If I’m running a different marathon then what are the damn rules? Where is the finish line?

It’s very difficult to measure time and space when what you want is so unconventional.

The Bride's Nightie

2009-06-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

Indecision really shits me; it grates all the way from my back teeth to my bones. It’s funny that I used to avoid Librans as it was deemed their nature but I now take the crown.

Being in two minds is a sure sign that I’m never sure of anything these days. I chop and change as much as the Pacific and it drives people crazy. They are not alone in that thought.

I was stubborn, and I say “was” as it is becoming increasingly obvious that I will never quite be what I was before. I was determined, single minded perhaps even a little closed minded if I had to be perfectly honest. I was black and white, open and shut a book that could be easily read but generally shut too quickly in your face so you only gathered the gist of who I was but never the whole story.

Now I’m, well not really sure who I am, hence the indecision. Yes, no hang on, No, definitely not! No hang on maybe I will, maybe I can, fuck it cancel the whole thing.

Sorry.

I want so much I can’t possibly find it, I want so little I can’t find the energy to grasp it. I want everything and nothing all at once so it’s understandable that I will change my mind.

My birthday is on Thursday. It will be the 3rd birthday in a row spent confused, scared, sick, on the edge, anxious, a mess. The last two I didn’t even acknowledge but this one I attempted to mark it I even tempted fate but suggesting a celebration.

I want to cancel it, I want to hide away, ignore it, pretend it never happened and pretend that I don’t feel as confused, scared, sick, on the edge, and anxious as the last two.

BUT HOLD ON! What ever possessed me to want to celebrate in the first place? Why did I even put myself through planning it and inviting people? Maybe I felt that this year there was maybe something different, brighter, more hopefully; maybe I even (I can barely write this) found something worth celebrating with people that helped me find that something.

Anne saved my life with sweet blues, unrelenting support and stability.
Susan saved my life by lending me her courage, making me laugh and getting me drunk.
Carly saved my life with her stunning gift with words and her frightening audacity.

Another was there as well, in a faraway place called Denmark but in the last year she was as close to my skin as possible. I can’t celebrate with her, as much as I want to, need to, but the others are here on my doorstep wanted to share the day with me. Wanting to celebrate the mere fact that I actually want to celebrate.

And that is the reason why this birthday is different.

Forever

2009-05-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

4 days ago Lion's paws were tattooed up my forearm. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last as I’m drawn to body art and even enjoy the sensation of the artist’s needle.

It’s an extraordinarily permanent thing. The magnitude of its consistency is almost unfathomable these days.

I will always have Lion's paws walking up my arm regardless of how I feel or how old I become.

Change is something that plagues us all. Even good changes can be a mouthful to swallow in one go. Things move so quickly in our world now that it was no surprise that the “Chk Chk Boom” girl was on YouTube and t-shirts before the night’s end. Things move faster than we can ever comprehend so meaning naturally blurs.

I believe that everything means less to people than it did 30 years ago. And I mean everything from money to love, from responsibility to security, from birth to death. Things have defined values – maybe it is the fault of our compensative society but people move through things faster than they ever did before.

I still believe that we seek and desire more, but I don’t believe we necessarily find it. An emptiness crept into generation X and took over the Y. Even with seemingly everything that emptiness still hollows us out. We simply move too quickly to allow anything to stick.

I meet people, enjoy what they offer and go home. I plan ahead and even look forward to the future but I always leave with what I had before. Sure I learn things, we all do, even when we don’t plan to absorb we ultimately soak something up along the way but whether we learn the things that make us stop, pause, evolve is another thing.

I’m not in the past, moment or the future so where the hell am I?

Maybe the paws represent the animal within me, the animals running through my veins. Maybe the line of paws up my arm remind me to always follow my love, my love of them and how animals pulled me through this last year. Maybe they just represent my love of the Brisbane Lions and the game of football I love.

Or maybe they are just one of the few permanent things in my life. Something that won’t pass through me, move too quickly and finally leave me.

I would like to hold people still for one hour and ask them to stay in my space even for a little while.

Life isn't fair so get use to it

2009-05-09T22:25:00.001-07:00

I sit slurping a cocktail and I know that I’m the fairer sex. There are so many cool things about being a woman that regardless of the attitudes out there I wouldn’t change it for the world. Despite the fact that woman have a license to drink green cocktails without looking like tools shouldn’t take away from that fact that our lives are lived very much in a “man’s world”

I’m 31 and its 2009 yet I still encounter sexism in the workplace.

I hope that I don’t sound bitter and I’m certainly not writing this as a way to “bash” men. There are bad people period. Bad men, bad woman, bad children, bad black, yellow and white people everywhere. Worth is not confined to race, sex or creed.

I worked in a company full of men that paid me less to do more. When I confronted these men about this I was told that “life wasn’t fair, so get use to it”

I worked for the government where I was sexually harassed by a manager. I raised this with higher management and was told I would lose my job if I spoke of it again. Yes this is the Australian government and it was less than 3 years ago.

I now work in a job that is my future but is also an industry stained with this ism.

A wonderful, bright, hardworking woman is walking out on Thursday because she can’t take it anymore. I will miss her beyond reasons that we are the same sex.

I’ve always left, I’ve always fled. Fight or freeze. It’s all very well when you don’t have bills to pay.

My green cocktail is nearly empty and I’m having a good hair day – it’s so great to be a girl.

I’m tired of the same fight. I’m tired of the fact that we still make opposition wherever we go.

I prefer to deal with men as I can have power of them. I like to be interviewed by a man and if there is a panel then hell yes I will concentrate on him. I’m more likely to get the job if a man is judging me.

I remember reading an article once that said the biggest problem that black Americans have is black Americans. They are so busy killing each other they can’t even confront the racist the experience every day.

Women do this. Women undermine, manipulate, and form opinions on petty jealousy. Women destroy women long before men have their chance.

On Thursday I will lose a valued workmate and friend because the men are driving us crazy with their sexism. Yet the person I blame is another woman because I expect more from her than I ever will from a man. I expect her to fix it, control it, stop it.

No wonder why men are still getting away with it in 2009.

The French Man

2009-04-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

On Friday I met a French man that had run away.

A very ordinary man that believed that if he left behind his wife, three small children and his boring job he could become something extra-ordinary in a new country.

My closest friends know that I have a fantasy where I run away to Mexico, make beads on the beach and wash my life away with copious amounts of tequila. But I know that it is simply that, a fantasy, as even if I made the trip I would still be the same person, with the same problems, regrets and life – maybe it would involve more tequila but essentially it would still be me just in a cool sombrero.

I also met another man who embraced all life’s consequences. A smart, sexy man who spoke freely of his mistakes, misadventures and the mayhem that had made his life what it is today.

I sat opposite him drinking up his thirst for life, as pretty or ugly as it can be, and I realised that I could learn so much from this man.

Priceless

2009-04-17T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today I woke with a belly of mixed emotion. I’ve been treading through this day smiling, excited, constantly on the verge of tears and confused.

I was asked to place a price on all my worldly possessions – my almost new leather couch, my table, chairs, cutlery – everything even the toaster. Furniture that has had less than 6 months use and more than a year pilled to the ceiling in my Mum’s spare room. Furniture, that although beautiful and almost brand new, sends a shiver up my spine every time I walk past the room. To me it is a room jam packed with memories not wood or leather or cloth, just memories of a time I have to forget.

It is hard to place a price on something that is so valuable yet so worthless to me.

I’ve spend the day moving these things out of the room, out of the house, out of my life. I’m hoping the memories attached to them like ghosts pass with them.

Am I a fool for attaching memories to mere objects? Am I a fool for not being about to sleep in the sheets I woke up in a year ago when I was too sick to even want to wake up? Am I a fool to practically give away a leather couch that I sat on when I was someone I’m trying to forget? Am I a fool for wanting to never see the table again that I ate at when I had no appetite what so ever for life? Will a different house without these objects help me to forget the time I lived in a place when I was barely living?

It is hard to place a price on something that is so valuable yet so worthless to me.

Today I woke with a belly of mixed emotion as today may just be the end of a life I’ve been trying to leave behind. The price? $1000 – that’s all it takes to take it all away, everything I own, every bad memory I have.

Maybe you can put a price on happiness.

Alone and in Love

2009-04-11T20:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve fallen in love once more with the seduction of conversation. The ability of people to open up a small window into their life for others to see. It is a great honor to sit with a person for the first time and listen to the parts of themselves they wish to share. That first hour or so of conversation can say so much about a person.

In the past fortnight I have had a wonderful opportunity to meet, sit, listen and talk with people I have never met before. Some where touchingly warm, some were shy and guarded and some where fascinating leaving me wanting more – more conversations over more glasses of wine. Some also sent of alarm bells of a life darker, a need deeper – a place perhaps where I visited a year ago.

I want to sit for hours with nothing but conversation and bottles of wine. I want to hear the sense when we are sober and the nonsense when we are not. I want hear the tick, the clock that moves them within. Nothing else, nothing hidden, nothing more just great conversation, a bottle of wine and a slice of who they are.

“don’t you feel like something is missing?” – a gorgeous old soul asked with innocence last night at the bottom of the first bottle.

I’ve been asked many questions in the past fortnight but this one still plays on my mind. I knew that this answer would have to be true enough to justify my choices to myself. I knew I had to face up to the fact that I was essentially choosing a future spent alone.

Many people confuse alone with lonely as they also confused love with being loved. However this doesn’t mean that being alone won’t bring loneliness or that having love in your life will not mean that you are indeed loved. I know this, I’ve seen this, I saw this last night.

I saw a man look at his woman with uncontainable love when he was lost in the moment of watching her deep in conversation with another. I also saw another lost in his own loneliness, alone on the balcony looking at the best view in Brisbane but perhaps only seeing the emptiness of the night before him. These two share a name but their world is a universe apart. I am neither of them, I am not at either end of their scale. For now at least.

For now I’m in love with the seduction of conversation, the chance to laugh, be inspired, be challenged, fascinated, and drunk with new possibilities. I am alone and in love and for now that is the best place I have been in for 2 years. I am not lonely and I am not loved but for now that is exactly where I want to be.

So maybe for now I don’t need to find the answer as nothing is missing… yet.

Take me, not them

2009-04-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

I merge with arrogance sometimes even without a glance as I just expect others to do the right thing. For those who know me this is such a contradiction to my nature or is that nurture?

Sometimes I act with total disregard to my own safety – I secretly believe these are my finest moments. Anyone that was forced to be a good girl will understand that thrill that comes with reckless abandonment.

I figure seeing I don’t have a family I can be sacrificed to a road accident or freak occurrence. Better me than a woman with children, a partner, a home. I hate how our government rules to the whim of the family man yet I too place those strangers above my own significance. These same strangers that drive me nuts with their modern Mother rage in supermarkets. For Christ sake, take me, not them.

It is really possible that we were born as halves and we only finally become complete when we partner? I’m terrified that this is true, that with all that is wonderful and captivating in this world it would simply come down to something so plain.
I watch unhappy couples with arrogance. Fools, fools to fairytales, predictability, and night time TV.

Am I just bitter, twisted and torn up or do I stand on tippy toes for reasons less acidic? There must be a higher purpose than squeezing out pups. Talking about pups – we are animals too yet no creature comes close to our emotional maturity, our superior intellect, our ability to evolve and adapt. This alone must call us to a higher purpose.

I am the difficult kind, I struggle to just be, I fight against the middle line – this is the thing that pushes me to the edges I have danced alone for the last few years. I am the difficult kind.

Yet I love silly things, stupid things, worthless things. Cups of tea, red dresses, and the sound of chooks. I spend hours on things less honorable, less consequential, less scholarly, less on a life more meaningful. Life is like that. It can’t always been about scientist discoveries and Noble peace prizes as occasionally we need to drink too much wine, watch hours of soapies, dress in red and love someone less worthy. Sometimes we need to merge with arrogance without even a glance as in the end it doesn’t matter or does it?

Maybe that is why others seek others, why they search for someone else to find some reason not to collide on the freeway, a reason to look, indicate and merge safely so they can return safely to the loved one, to their children, to their home and their night time TV.

The Grateful File

2009-03-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

The grateful file is meant to bring you closer to inner peace. Simply taking time out of everyday to take a photo of something, anything you are grateful for will over time remind you what a wonderful world this is indeed.

My well meaning Mother read somewhere that a woman who suffered from severe clinical depression found her road to recovery by creating a grateful file and believed that this too may help me find my path.

Grateful is a funny word. Can I appreciate the small things in life? Absolutely, as my Mother taught me how to do that. Here is a woman that day can be made by starting with the perfect cup of coffee and ending with the perfect glass of beer. Here is a woman that taught me how to not only smell the flowers but how to mend the garden as a form of therapy. Small things are everything in the end. I learnt this as a very young girl and even though sometimes I seem to be thrown off the track by the big, scary picture I still take many moments within everyday to just stop and absorb beauty.

It pains me that she doesn’t know this about me…. Or believe it. Perhaps the fear on my face distracts her from this truth.

I’m taking steps towards recovery, wonderful, overpowering steps. I’m working for the first time in a year. But not only that – I’m working in the industry I always wanted to. I can proudly say I’m one of those brave people that has taken the step to actual find a job that I want to go to everyday. It has been a long time since I had things to look forward to so please take a moment to realise how huge that is. I don’t need a grateful file to know that.

I still wake with fear, I still sleep with terror. I lost two teeth last week as I shattered them while grinding them through unease while I slept. These teeth can be seen while I smile – something that I have been doing in the last few weeks. My scarred arms and missing teeth is the only physical sign of the life I’m trying to leave behind. Everything else I show you is blank normality – it’s all I have the strength to show at this stage.

The black dog is still chasing me. I know it is there, behind every corner, in the face of everyone I try to trust .. again. I think that it might always be there. Some days it may be placid, merely lying in the sun but other days it bares its teeth and growls its warning. I’m prepared for this, for the first time, I’m prepared for this chase. I know that things will never be the same but I also know that some things will never be as bad. That some decisions, promises I have made to myself has changed my life for the better. I’m grateful for every day that I get through. I’m grateful for everyday I don’t let myself and other down that I can actually contribute, turn up and be present. How do I take a photo of that for my grateful file?

Inner peace is something so far away. Right now I’m just here for the now, for the getting through the day, for making a step forward – how far have a come? Amazing! That, and that alone, is the thing I’m most grateful for.

Health Pack

2009-02-05T23:13:00.000-08:00

Is it possible that part of us dies? When we encounter trauma do we leave a part of us behind? Is life like a video game where we use up lives along the way? Is it also possible that a person can give you a health pack and restore one or all of those lives? I believe one so I need to believe the other.

I’ve been living in shadows for over a year, hiding from the world. My fingernails have scrapings of dirt under them from a year of crawling my way back. But I’m not back; I’m still here, in the shadow. I’m not me yet or again? I don’t think a person can comeback as another or can they? We have all heard the stories of people who disappear forever, drop off. What about all those people that still believe that there loved ones died in the September 11 attack? Some of them are out there living as someone else and I’m sure it isn’t the first tragedy that people have taken advantage of as a way to disappear and re-invent themselves. A way to start anew, perhaps debt free, drug free, spouse free, or just free. It is strangely appealing isn’t it?

I haven’t disappeared forever, well I hope I haven’t. I hope I have the opportunity to come back as me. But it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what that is? What is the true sense of me? Will I like the same things but be a little more toned down? Or maybe I will suddenly not allow things to beat me and come out stronger, fiercer, and savvier. It’s hard to rebuild, to start from scratch, to rifle through the life you once had and work out which parts are worth keeping and which parts destroyed you in the first place. Should I still be outspoken or should I keep those things in the shadow? Will I still love the Blues or will that music remind me of a darker time? Do I still want to be the best or am I happy to be just ordinary?

Depression teaches you above all else that you are extraordinarily ordinary but surviving it teaches you that this is OK. It makes you plan for a life more ordinary, without choking expectations, were obsessions are wasted energy, were life can be lived on a smaller scale and still be OK. I’ve realised that recovery is not getting back to where you were but getting to that level of OK.

Another thing if any of my friends read this please understand why I say NO. Maybe I don’t deserve to even have friends but I haven’t ventured into the daylight for so long I’m afraid of getting burnt. I do love you all and want more than anything to go out and do things, anything but I can’t yet. I’m not whole yet. I’m not OK yet. I have nothing to say, to contribute, to give. Please don’t stop asking as I hope one day I can say YES.

Express Train

2009-01-12T22:51:00.000-08:00

I’ve been writing a play that I just can’t finish. I started it before I became sick and often think it was the catalyst to it all, but now after spending hundreds of dollars in the shrinks chair I realise that finishing it may just be my recovery. This light bulb still doesn’t remove the unfinished script from deep inside my PC.

It’s about a place that is sick, not just the people inside it but the actual place, the buildings, the suburb. There is an underground station where only express trains scream past and a girl that’s stuck there. Even though the train station is symbolic and the character of the girl a mix of fact and fiction I now feel trapped on that platform.

Of course it is a mix of truth and lie – all of life is. Truth is only a perception of what you believe is right and time fudges things, changes them, evolves them. Writing a play about this smudgy line is what I do so why is this one so damn hard to complete? I’ve written tougher truths than this and about people still living, still in my face. This story is about a loss and the road of forgiveness one must travel down to accept sudden death. This is my road and I need to via off to another path instead of just walking around this damn ring road all the time.

I know how it goes in fact I’ve already written the skeleton of the piece so I know the beginning, the middle and the end. But a sketch is just well exactly that, there is no meat there, little meaning and that is the part that fails me. So I continue to pay $160 an hour to sit in an uncomfortable chair and talk about uncomfortable things… things about my childhood, my obsessions, my family, and my body everything but how to get off that damn ring road and finish the play that is about being stuck in the underground station where only express trains scream past.

The Passenger

2009-01-04T03:28:00.001-08:00

It’s about time you dropped off that passenger she said.
Like it’s simply a hitchhiker I offered to take as far as the main highway.
Come to think of it when did I open the door to this traveler? Let it in to devour my person, to take away my once sweet dreams and peaceful awakenings? Did it choose me or was it some twisted way I lashed out at myself when I was a child?

I can’t remember the precise moment guilt climbed into my life or even why I choose to house it, all I know is that since I was a small child I have carried a burden beyond my years.

I am not religious, my parents made that decision for me. I have not sat for hours surrounded by sinners and sermons or even saints. I have not read the good book or even touched its pages trimmed in gold yet I carry more guilt that a ripened, god fearing catholic. The emotion seems to have climbed upon my back and placed its wrinkled arms around my chest until I can smell the stale breath of its inflexibility. So since I was a child every move I make is measured in the consequences of culpability.

The innocent comment about dropping off the passenger was made by my bewildered mother this morning. She was raised a fierce catholic yet bears not cross for her time amongst the hateful nuns of high school and simply doesn’t understand why I choose to feel this way.

Is it a choice? Can I drop it off as she suggests? Drive to the local dog park and ask it to shoo over?

In the last year I have turned this guilt into such an art that I even feel it before the action is completed. I stand in the kitchen watching pasta boil in a pot and feel physical ill over the carbs I will soon be required to inhale. I hyperventilate near alcohol in case I overindulge and piss vinegar in the morning. I organize my day around exercise in case I miss a day and wake up with the 30 kgs I have previously shed.

I have forgotten how to forgive myself if I ever even knew how.

This passenger has taken over my life and transformed who I am. It has made me tighter, more timid, and terrified. It has made me a masochist.

Last year I couldn’t leave the house for 4 months. It seemed too big, too mean out there.

I have forgotten how to forgive myself. But for what?

My brother lives without guilt but my brother lives without a lot of things. He lives with other burdens, like we all do. Maybe his monkey is failure, worthlessness, maybe yours is regret, crimpling shyness, ignorance, vanity or submissiveness. I know we all for some reason have a cross to drag. To drag us down.

If my car was large enough to carry my guilt I would take it for a ride to someplace if I knew the directions and leave it there if I knew how.

The Year that never was

2009-01-03T02:38:00.000-08:00

I pulled the plug on my last blog. A writer friend of mine asked why? Maybe the fact that she was the only one to notice that I stopped should’ve been enough of a reason but the truth was it exposed an ugly truth of mine. The content I was writing come from an ugly place like a dodgy roadside motel where psychopaths hang out, the same place I was. I didn’t even want to read it – no wonder why no one else wanted to ;) Fact is I haven’t exactly checked out from that motel but I think I’ve at least opened the stained curtains a little.

The start of another year always seems to lure people into the fantastical idea that Jan 01 means a clean slate, a time to change. Whoever invented that word or its dangerous concept? Sure small changes are doable even healthy but the change that we humans crave is down right debilitating. How many of us make a new year’s resolution that they will lose weight only to find they fall off the wagon by weeks end because of the next BBQ? Or maybe even more disheartening, how many work their butts off for months and still find a pair of thunder thighs dangling off them that won’t fit into the jeans they want? Genetics are a cruel master indeed. The fact is you may want to have the slender legs of Jennifer Aniston or the tiny waist of Kira Knightly but the reality is if you’re Mamma don’t have it then it’s a slim bloody chance you will! However most of us know this but nearly all of us can’t accept it and that is where the concept of change can be dangerous.

Jan 01 wakes us all with thoughts of “this year I will be different” – I will be less needy, more conscientious, more caring, more generous, less egotistical, less self indulgent, slimmer, fitter, and stronger. But time is teaching me a very malicious message which is time simply doesn’t change us. If you were needy last year then I can predict that trait will dominate this year too because simply you are needy. What should change is our acceptance of that. If every year you are woken by the same chant of change then maybe the only thing that needs changing is your acceptance of your own downfalls – which is a oxymoron because it ceases to be a downfall when it is accepted as it simply becomes a fact. How simple that sounds, how easy was that advice? I wake every day let alone every year with the same promises of change…. Humans are so heartbreakingly imperfect.

My heart is breaking for an old school friend on Facebook. I have not seen him or spoken to him since I was 17 – all that has passed between us is a friend request. Yet I have been thinking about him non-stop for days. We weren’t even that close at school – familiar but not close. It seems that he is separating from his wife but like all separations he is the party that it is being forced upon. Judging by his status lines lately it appears that he is clinging onto his two little boys wondering where in the hell his life went. Her profile simply reads” I’m going through an interesting stage in my life I am rediscovering who I am” - sounds awfully like another Jan 01 mission to me. What is it about we humans that always seeks the greener pastures? Why can’t we just stop the world from spinning for one second? Be happy with our lot? I’m not against making small improvements to enrich your lives but changing your whole world and the ones of those around you is soul destroying. I have no idea who this woman is – to be honest I don’t even really know him and I’ve lived long enough to know there is always at least three sides to the story but I hope for their sake and the sake of those two little boys that their world is not changing because one member is out to “change herself”.

I know life changes every second – people are born, people die but I don’t believe that we can ever truly change who we are. We are merely players on a stage that is constantly evolving but if we are really honest with ourselves we may grow older and some of us even may grow up but we still say the same lines with the same joy, pain, frustration, anger that we always did. We may put on a different costume but the laughter ripple from our same mouth and the tears trickle from the same eyes. Our heart may lose its strong beat after time but it still pains in the same places with the same intensity when wrong is done by us. We are who we are whether that is needy, lazy, cold, selfish, vain, chubby, slow or weak. Yet like your author perhaps the thing we most are is a fighter and Jan 01 simply means we put on our gloves and try to beat it out of us because who knows maybe this year is the year. I say give up spend the energy on just accepting who you are and you may even find you learn to love it.

If only I could learn that.