On Fragility and Freedom

The concept that we have some kind of permanence - some sort of "right" to be here on the Earth and that therefore anything which upsets this construct is somehow 'bad' - is a concept which has come from spurious Christian theology. If you question theology; something everyone SHOULD do; you come to realise that there is nothing special enough about we humans to preclude us from being terribly disadvantaged within our lifetimes. Just as animals suffer, become extinct, get eaten or die in drought, flood or fire, lose babies, become leaders of groups or lose power within one....so do we. We are not so superior a species that we are uniquely favoured by a Creator being. If this preposterous idea of favouritism which the mainstream religions erroneously propose WAS true, then there should be no reason for this being to 'test' our faith with the constant abjections we all suffer. It's not a test. It's what all animals go through. The 'wild ones' expect it.....we do not. Why? Because deep down we expect to be 'saved'.

I do not hold with the idea of a Creator. I do not hold with the idea of superiority. I know we are the same as any creature on this planet. We live, and die, by our wits. If we lack wit, and a certain amount of bravery, we do not experience life in the way we could....which is to say, we cannot live the way a truly FREE creature of the Earth does. You can postulate upon your superior abilities, whilst slaving for money that is squandered on useless consumerables, and making yourselves feel righteous every Sunday [or Saturday if you are even stupider] because you sit on your fat bums listening to some university graduate talk about fantasy for an hour and a half. How ridiculous. Do you not realise how fragile we are, how fragile it all is? How quickly everything you have built around you crumbles and ceases to be? Live like the free creature of the world you truly are. Revel in the moments you have to experience all there is to experience....and stop being afraid!

On Currency

Yes, I know I have already spoken of this topic...but it's weighing on my mind at the moment and therefore I feel I must talk about it or go crazy. What is this currency I have spoken of in my previous post? It's the value ratio given to one's personal attractiveness, bringing into consideration the purely physical, surface appearance of a person, along with the intellectual appeal to others, and, finally, also takes into account the way an attractive person can make another person feel when in their presence. So to have REAL currency in the world one must be good to look at, great to talk to and be able to make another person feel as though they have at least the same amount of currency. In order to be given the chance to 'show your cards', as it were, one must FIRST be attractive enough physically to be given the opportunity to show what you've got. Any flaw in one's physical appearance is a handicap.
Although it can cut both ways. If one is truly beautiful, there is a tendency for others to assume that the rest of the golden ratio is therefore less...brains not so impressive......social skills wanting ....an implied selfishness and stupidity.....
But there is something to be said for the easier ride one gets if one is beautiful....it is easy to convince others of your value if you can debate philosophy, whilst smiling warmly and telling hilarious jokes AND you look like a god. People forgive the beautiful for being beautiful....but they canot seem to help but ignore the plain....no matter how delightful they really are.

On Feeling Beautiful

It's ridiculous that this still matters to me. I should be above such nonsense by now, surely? I'm no longer young. And youth is where beauty dwells, right? Oh, that just sounds so unfair! Can't an older woman be sexy? Can't she still turn heads? No.. Not in MY world. In MY world women look at me....probably because I am VERY conscious of my clothes and the way I look, and have great taste, but men? Nope. Not ONE sideways glance. So I feel as though my value as a sensual, sexual being is gone. Time for spending my time baking, calling young people 'dear' and wearing fluffy slippers. But that's NOT who I am inside....inside I am full of magical, dark energy, fire and youthful hunger. Surely my outside isn't SO degraded? But that lack of positive attention from men makes me feel as though I can't feel free to be flirtatious. That if I do I will look stupid, desperate and slightly creepy. What is the answer for those of us older than 25? Is that why so many older women take up golf? Hitting stuff MIGHT actually help......
I just really wish it was different and I could feel beautiful again.

On Friendship

What constitutes friendship for you? Does it arise from shared experiences? Shared interests? Shared history? Or is there just an indefinable magic at work when people 'click'?

I sometimes think becoming friends with someone can be likened to falling in love. There is an initial attraction. Something draws you to this new person and you find yourself wanting to know more about them, and to be where they are. You find them funny, intelligent, likeable and your face breaks into a natural smile when they sit next to you. How much like falling for someone does that sound? But you're not falling. You have a partner....or they do. You're too alike....or not alike enough. They're gay and you're straight....it could be anything, but for whatever reason, it's not about the potential for sex. It's about the potential for .... what? What IS it about?

This then begs the question - what can opposite orientation friends really ask of one another? What are the expectations in such a relationship and what are the boundaries? What does it mean to love someone, NOT your lover, as wholeheartedly as you do your friend?

On Compliments

Somebody told me I was a remarkable woman today. What makes ME remarkable? I am shallow....sometimes unkind....fickle....demanding...naive... and a harsh critic [particularly of myself!]. But remarkable? I don't think so.

But it made me feel so good that tears came to my eyes. To be told that I impress others, that I stand out in some way, was like having a spotlight shone on me....and it felt great. I want to believe that what I was told IS true.....but just at this moment I feel as though I just don't live up to that label.

One day I will have to realise that if I choose to only see myself through the eyes of other people that I must include the lovely things that are said of me in that constructed identity....not just the negative.

Time once more for a clean slate. But my tabula rasa has never really been completely clean....as there are all these dirty smudges left behind from all the words and images written before. Perhaps in time they won't matter anymore?

On Loneliness

There is a weird energy around me today....it feels like a kind of barrier. Not only am I keeping thoughts, feelings and emotions at bay, but I am holding some bad feelings in with me. What happened to me overnight for me to feel like this today? If I analyse what my body is telling me I can source a feeling of emptiness....a feeling of not belonging. I feel a lack, a sensation of having no home, and no tribe. Like I am the last of my kind....whatever 'my' kind is.....

I am clipped, almost angry with those I love because I fear the pain loving them could cause me. I feel so alone....

When I was a child, I could escape into the wilderness around me for hours at a time....live wholly in my nightmare, but, like a children's adventure/fantasy, tell myself the story of my own rescue before returning to the world. As an adult I must stay in the nightmare, each day putting forward a face of ignorance....staying complicit in my own pain. How I need an escape....a friend.....a place to feel at home.....

I need healing from whatever it is that causes me to do this. I know the symptoms I even know the relief....but I do not yet know the disease.

On Self Help

I bought another self help book today. This one is about making time to write....ironic really, considering that the time I spend reading it could be spent on writing one of my own.

But what could I write? What am I so good at, so knowledgeable about that I could pen a whole tome on it? Shopping? Been done. That's pretty much it, really..... Not that lack of anything interesting to say has deterred most other writers of self help books from doing so. But I can hardly talk, because I keep buying the darn things!

Poem Experiment 2

I perch on the edge
So close to the plummet,
yet
so far from the fall.
What holds me
in tremulous safety?
What defeats this urge
to stumble?

love.
Always love.

Such strength to be found
in such fragile bindings.

Poem Experiment 1

Sadness - deep, inconsolable
unending
constantly remembered
relived
re spun into cords
of binding sorrow -

a cloak of helpless shame
under which my happy self
suffocates and dies.

On Self

Life is a bitch. She is a Mean Girl and she seems to be out to get me. I have been unwell in the last week with a virus, but due to events and behaviours of people around me at the same time, I feel worse than ever. Why? Because I let the beliefs of others prescribe how I regard myself. And the general consensus seems to be that I am shit. At the moment, it seems that loving 'me' is purely a solitary sport, and one that I need some coaching in.

On The Theory Of Happiness

Happiness is much sought yet clearly never found, if all of the books on the subject sold in stores are any testament. People are clearly searching, hoping for that last ingredient to add to their lives but nothing they find, in books, or possessions, or pep talks from their parents seems to be that finishing touch. There is an aura of deep discontent hanging over the heads of almost everybody one meets....why? Why is it that simply being free - free to breathe, to learn, to feel is not enough for us?

On Life

Gambling is dangerous. It's frowned upon. It causes family breakdown and ruins lives, right? But when you REALLY think about it, we gamble with[in] our lives all the time.

The way I see it, life seems to be a series of choices, made on the spur of the moment, with little or no information upon which to base that choice....a succession of dice throws, with you, the gambler, hoping to roll a six.

I'm not a gambler though, and I prefer to have more options than "Let the dice fall where they may". Although Life does seem to be some completely random game of cosmic marbles, I, like the stubborn cow I am, will continue to pull against "fate" until The Big Guy/Girl comes down and tells me otherwise. Or until I roll a six.

Writing Groups

As much as I enjoy meeting with like minded people and doing that which I love - writing - the concept of writer's groups is scary to me. I find it far too easy to imagine bad writers, blindly determined to hang onto the belief in their own genius, despite never having had anyone say anything other than "You're very brave....." after reading their work, seated, scowling at me and awaiting my awed response to their verse novel about their messy divorce. Scary. And arguments. There WILL be arguments. About topics, or critiques, or venues, or who is 'in charge'.

But I want a group. I NEED a group. Surely it will all turn out? God. What if it doesn't and it breaks my spirit?

Or worse.....What if I am the 'bad writer'?

Childhood and So-Forth

Despite having much of what I wanted as a child, there was such a sense of lack in my life, and this is what I think I have been trying to make up for ever since. I love expensive things, and beautiful aspirational things. I have always tried to get approval from others by either being beautiful, smelling beautiful or behaving beautifully. I am seen as ‘together’, but could I possibly be?

I was a beautiful baby. Photographers would stop my mother and ask her if they could photograph me for their displays. I had huge chocolate eyes with long eyelashes, rosebud lips and black curls. I was one of those “Oh! She’s SO beautiful!” children. And I was shy. So I would curl myself up in my mum’s arms trying to become invisible. Of course this made people want to be the one to get a smile out of me.

Worse was the impression that I should never be unhappy, or ungrateful because I was triply blessed. I had been chosen. I was pretty. My family was well off and I wanted for nothing. As I grew it became clear that I was also an intelligent child. But shy and insecure. So despite having it all...I became the brunt of other children’s taunts. This persisted throughout primary school, and this, along with my own general sense of being a piece of flotsam, helped to make my life miserable. Yet I loved school. I just didn’t like the children I had to share it with. If school had been me, the teachers, stationery and the library I would have been in utter bliss!

This impression of “it should be so easy for you” has been passed onto me and I now feel guilty if I’m not bouncing around in solid gold happiness. But I’m a person. I have stuff happening to me. Aging for example. I’ve been so focused on my physical appearance that the reality of getting older and finding grey hair and wrinkles is appalling. Who am I if I’m not beautiful anymore? If I’m not being clever all over the place? If I’m not rich like my parents? Actually I’ve found that my money personality is so far from what I grew up with. I long for simplicity. I like simple homes, rustic homes, shabby homes. I buy all my designer clothing from op shops...love the chase. I’m not against money, it can get you a sense of freedom, however, when it becomes the backbone of your life it gets more credence in life than it deserves. I think that having money conscious parents with lots of stuff made me want to be the opposite of that. Maybe. I just enjoy simplicity. I like homes that feel like homes not showpieces. I remember Danny’s parents had a room that housed a piano and an antique armoire with precious pieces of crystal and bibs and bobs like that.....no one even used that room. It was there purely for awe value. And it was sort of crap anyway. Why have something so pointless? His mother also had a pearl ring worth as much as someone’s home which never saw the light of day. Why? At least wear it. Pearls need body oil to keep their luster anyway so the poor ring wasn’t fulfilling it’s real purpose in life. Maybe that’s why I’m happy to have very little. It makes the few things I do have all that more precious.

Philosophy-esue

The eternal search for meaning in an existence you have had very little, if any, choice in being involved in is seeming just a little bit silly to me at the moment. I mean, really...no one said “Hello. I’m God. I’ve got a proposition for you. I built this place, you see and I was wondering if you’d like to come down and spend about 87 years – approximately - hanging out there?” That would have been nice. Just to be asked, you know, if it was what you thought would be a good use of your time.

Well, the place is nice on the whole. It’s got trees, well there’s still a few left at least, and there are all these pretty birds that hang out in them. And cats. I love cats. I quite like rivers too and the beach rocks! Mountains are awesome and there are great things like wolves and the moon and boys. But there’s also questions. And difference. Not the interesting kind as in “that’s different....I should try to find out more about that” but the “That’s different...let’s eat it/destroy it/drive it off” kind. And then of course there’s the whole concept of God in the first place. Doesn’t THAT one cause some issues? So in that climate of confusion one is supposed to be searching for one’s own purpose in life.

On Fashion

I don’t know exactly what it is about fashion, but there’s something magical for a woman to have ‘the’ bag, or ‘the’ coat. Fashion, despite all the wrongs committed in its name, has a genuine beauty and wonder attached to it. Although most of us aren’t able to afford the latest in designer ‘must haves’, knock offs are available freely to give the illusion of the ‘real thing’, but for those of us searching for the unmistakable high of having something truly beautiful, that ‘real thing’ is our holy grail. This desire, and that is what it genuinely is, is what makes the high end designer filled magazines sell. Until we do find that Hermes scarf or Chanel jacket we make do with their gorgeous photos of “lust have” designer pieces and ads with iconic labels that fill their pages.

My designer desire has made me happiest in op shops and markets. My wardrobe is filled with clothes that other women envy, all designer labels, and all beautifully second hand. I still can’t really afford to indulge my passion as much as I would like to but at every opportunity I forage and fossick and almost every time I find a treasure. I once found the most perfect Max Mara pants for four dollars in my local trash and treasure market. They fit like they were designed particularly for me and are made in the finest dove grey wool. Timeless! And the piece I will never sell is the black vintage Chloe tunic in purest cotton which I found in the oddest place. I couldn’t believe that a messy shed filled with acres of saggy track pants and huntsman spiders held this indescribable treasure. For three dollars! So, I indulge my passion frustratingly slowly but at minimal cost to the family budget.

I have just finished watching a show where a woman’s desire for designer clothes and shoes, particularly shoes, helped her choose a career that was probably not one her mother would have wished she had chosen. She spent two years in prison for solicitation and what was the first thing she did when released? Ripped open all her storage boxes and went straight for the Bally and Cartier. Oh, and go shopping - for Chanel fragrance, Chanel cosmetics and Charles Jourdan sandals. If it wasn’t for the prostitution and jail thing, she could have been any woman!

We women truly LOVE fashion. We’re particularly obsessed by shoes. Look in my eyes and tell me it’s not true! Oh, if only shoes grew on trees and they sold the seeds at Bunnings! Designer shoes are jewels for your feet. And we want them so bad. We can all afford the fragrance and the occasional lipstick but shoes are another story. For a mother several hundred dollars is just a silly amount to spend on her feet. But we do want them so bad.

This is why the woman I spoke of before became a high class prostitute. She wanted purple suede Bally pumps. And she wanted them bad! And she mustn’t have had the patience to trawl through the salvage stores in her Parisian home town. I, on the other hand, would almost be tempted to kill for the opportunity to trawl through Parisian salvage stores! If you were there at the same time as me you would see a crazy haired woman with darting eyes pulling clothing from boxes with a look of insane determination on her grimy face. Nothing is too buried for me. I can sniff out labels and know the best fabrics by running my hands along a rack. I love the chase almost as much as I love the treasure.
This obsession for the mythical designer find ensures that credit cards are always maxed out and husbands are always sweating on the end of the month. It means that we are always chasing that promotion or that big account with a steely determination a dictator would covet. It means that an otherwise sane and intelligent woman can be found head down in a musty box squeaking about what’s inside it. It means that a young woman will move to France and find herself selling her own and other people’s bodies for that designer fix. Our methods of getting those designer classics may be varied, but the madness behind the chase is always the same. Absolute desire.

So that eternal question of what it is that women really want has less to do with what a man can offer than popularly thought. They’re simply a distraction. They can smell interesting. They have shoulders which, for some reason, we go funny over. They have hands that ours look tiny resting inside. We want them to understand us and we love them completely; but they’re not perfect tangerine suede ballet flats. They’re nothing like a soft buttery camel tote bag with toggle ties. They don’t match your fabulous new LBD like Jimmy Choos do. Because what women REALLY want is this. We really want yummy designer pieces to keep, to wear and impress all other women with, and then to pass down to worthy younger women. And it’s better if we get them ourselves – not with his Gold Card. A treasure found is a pleasure for life. No matter how we do it.

On Writing

Ever since I was young I have wanted to use words to explain my world and the way I feel in it. I, like many others, had thought the world of the writer to be a sacred place, filled with mists and coffee, situated high up in the mountains away from the concerns of ‘ordinary’ people. And naïve as it may seem, that’s how I thought I had to be living in order to have that life which I so long for. I have moved several times since I left my husband. I have searched for the most beautiful of places. High up in the mountains with coffee shops and mists and valleys and hippies and wonderful vistas...but still I only wrote in my journals; disjointed bits of my life, hopes and dreams for the future; the future I didn’t realize I had to build with what I had to hand.

I moved once again, to South Australia. I immediately started working for a large retail firm as a manager, which was the job I had been doing, unhappily, in Queensland. And this is where this tale begins...

I have started to stop telling myself lovely arty stories of what a writer’s life looks like and I have started to just write. Sometimes what I write is really bad. And sometimes I say something utterly beautiful. I left my job. Oh, the fear! Now I’m poor. Yet I have become rich in other ways. I listen to music. I watch TV. I have a laptop now which is a so much better writing tool for me than to write longhand. My brain moves too fast for pen and paper. My journal, in contrast, demands a beautiful pen and a gorgeous book. I sit in the living room on the couch next to our huge picture windows and look outside at this new world I find myself in. Not mountainous, no mists; it’s dry and arid and the only vista is of the stolidly working class, tattooed men toiling on their cars or motorbikes in the front yard across the road. Yet I write and write. I have waited so long to do this and now this is my chance to do it. I must take this opportunity to do what my heart cries for.

Now that I have made the decision to simply write and not wait for the stage to be set as ‘writer’s garret in the mountains complete with steaming mug of rainforest blend coffee’ I need to start thinking about what it is I actually want to say. What is my voice? If I was to use my journals as a guide, I think my voice would be complaining about something. Not exactly what I want to present to the world. I know I have something to say. I know I have a lot to offer but I don’t know where to start. “Start where you are” is the advice in a lot of the books I have read and that’s what I’m doing here. However, the road feels as though it has run out. From this point on I might simply be ambling about waffling on about nothing in particular.

This is where Writer’s Groups are so useful. Having a group as a ‘destination’ once a month and an exercise to complete can help you to write. But is that even something you can build on? Not in my experience, at least not thus far.

So I have to continue along alone. I hope eventually I get something good out of all the writing I am doing. I keep going though because it has been my desire for so long. I’ll keep reading all of the helpful books I can find, I’ll keep reading what I think is similar stuff to what I write and see where they do things well...I’ll keep dreaming so that the dreams are always fresh. I enjoy coming to the laptop every day to see what I put down in writing. It’s often as much a surprise to me as anything could be. I try not to have anything firm in my mind when I start and I try to just let the words flow out. And I then come back, often days later, to revise or even add to what I have said. It’s such a relaxing thing to do. Such a pleasure. Such a relief. I’m still very uncertain about my talents but through having this outlet maybe, just maybe, I will step closer to my dream.

Work To Live or....

Friday night shifts are hard. First you think "Great. I can sleep in" but, despite only actually being a half hour longer than a regular day, Friday night shifts feel like a much longer day than normal. Why I don't know. Maybe it's because there's a long period of time spent at work before you can have a break. Parking costs so much more than when you start at nine a.m. And then you have to drive home, alone, at ten o'clock at night, all of which sucks. Especially since we live a fair way from the city and it takes at least an hour to get home. LONG day.

I would be so happy to be able to make a living doing something that I love, either from home or from a little 'office' or shop, decorated by me, to my standards, with my music playing and tea on demand. At the moment this is but a dream. But every now and again it seems so close that I can touch it....a little brush against my skin as the feeling that this WILL happen prompts me ever forward.

But for now, I work to live.

June 11th - and so it begins.....

Today I begin my Great Experiment. Can I write anything interesting? Am I a 'Stick-at-it' kinda gal? This is my test run for living a writer's life, and if I can't stick at this being a writer thing online then I wonder at my ability to do it at all. Whew! No pressure then!

God! I wonder if anyone will ever be interested in anything I say? But I journal every day and this is just an e-journal after all, so even if I am the only reader it is done for, that's okay. [No it's not! I want to succeed. ] Great. I just lied. In sentence Number 8. This is a liar's blog.
Not only a liar though.....hopefully there is more to me than fibbery and scarediness. We'lll see.