eksercize 24

The feelings of summer

1. putting on a wet cossie, because it hasn't had time to dry since your last swim.

2. taking off your cossie and handfuls of sand hitting the floor

3. Gritty Sand - underfoot, between your toes, inside the bed, in the car, clagged around the lid of the block-out, inside your bag, in your scalp, inside your ears

4. that slightly tight, weathered feeling of your skin after you lost track of time with your friends and accidentally spent too much time out in the sun, without topping up the block out.

5. The smell of cestrum nocturnum - night-flowering jasmin

6. the confusion of a grumbling tummy telling you it's dinner time, when it's still so bright, surely it's only afternoon?

exesighs 23

Christmas day.
1pm. There is a heavy police presence on "Australia's most famous beach". The beach is barricaded and fluoro yellow security guards at each gate are checking bags and confiscating booze. The no-alcohol rule is strictly enforced today. The sand is evenly spread with groups on picnic blankets. More heads wear santa hats than not. They're mostly young people. It's fair to assume they're mostly backpackers. Even the surf life savers are wearing funny christmas hats. I don't see many of them. They seem to be in inverse proportion to law enforcement today. I guess they figure no-one's likely to do anything silly.

It's cold. Backpackers lie on their towels in the traditional tanning pose but they're fully clothed. So they're probably just sleeping off hangovers.
Up on the street, are countless small groups of police, just walking around; making their presence felt. The local school is seconded for the day as the police car parking lot. The Plain clothes police are easy to spot too. The clue is the 2-way radio hanging off the belt.
On the beach, and up here, everyone is very well behaved. The atmosphere is so relaxed and cheerful that the security seems like overkill.


11pm. The main street is blocked-off by police and barricades. An ambulance is wailing towards the cordon. Perhaps the overkill has become necessary after all. The drunken misbehaviour, that was expected, has become true.

Boxing Day.
9am. Whatever it was, did not make the news this morning. Last word in the press: "last night a police spokesman said there had been no arrests, and the day had passed without incident."

So - whatever the 'incident', it was not newsworthy.

Photos: Sahlan Hayes

Yearly Roundup

As 2007 ends i'll observe the custom and take a retrospective look over the past year.
But i'll go back a little farther.

In many ways it's been an extraordinary 18 months of experiencing things and doing things for the first time ever. [Some firsts include many subset firsts, indented below].

I experienced true grief
Lost a very close (dare i say my best) friend
Suffered from anxiety and felt an almost indefinable and
    terrible fear i'd never know before
wept deeply and openly in public places
Went to pub trivia
Went into a Hyperbaric chamber (several times)
Sold stuff on ebay
Lived without a car for 6 months
Took the ferry to work
Went to the art gallery 'After Hours'
Visited China
Visited Costa Rica
        Rappelled thru high mountains
        Saw iguanas, capuchin monkeys and other wildlife up close
Visited Nevada
Went to Burning Man
        Camped in a desert
        breathed, ate, drank, absorbed, slept in, wore, saw the
                fine soft playa dust
        hugged random strangers
        took part in a group monkey chant
        witnessed enormous, shocking explosions, and large, mesmerising
                fires as various constructions went up in flames
        saw a double/triple rainbow perfectly complete from end to end
        travelled on a vegetable oil powered "stoner" bus
Skied in Lake Tahoe
Took a day trip skiiing - from Munich to the resort and back by dinner time - with K who i'd also never skiied with before
Cycled to Caringbah. My first long bike ride, alone.
Cycled to Wollongong. Then did it again 12 months later.
        Cycled intercity
        Cycled a really long way - ie for more than a couple of hours
Saw Tori Amos live, up close (front row)
Saw and heard speak the Dalai Lama, up close (4th row)
Raised my very own kitten, alone.
Rehearsed, worked and developed over months with choreographer and performed the piece 3 times.
        Performed in a Dirty Feet Season
Performed in a Fondue Set show - danced, hoofed and sang
Performed (hoofed) with the Fondue Set
Performed at the SDC end of year show
Volunteer Marshalled at a fund-raiser walkathon
Started a blog
Hosted a gathering of a dozen or more and tested the limits of my flat. It's roomier than it seems.
Took meditation classes and started truly regular practice
Joined a Mah Jong group

and they're just the things i can remember, and that are worth mentioning.

x s ii 22

For various reasons I missed my morning mediation twice last week. Other things getting in the way.
It's only then that you realise how much difference it makes.

On the second morning, as I cycled to work, those nagging voices started up again. The fretting ones that get bogged down in unhappy memories, in a past that cannot be changed, but trying to change it anyway. They go further and further down bad paths. Then they jump into a non existent future, imagining me having unpleasant conversations with the MD. Conversations that i think will be necessary, even tho they make me feel icky, and i know they'll never actually take place.

Lucky for me, i catch my mind doing this - as i'm pedalling and starting to feel more and more gnarly, and remembering how noticeably more irritable i was yesterday in the face of the end of year stress.

The solution is to meditate now. As i commute.
Sound dangerous to you?

Well, I ask. What's more dangerous? To be cycling in morning traffic, with one's mind miles away in the past and the future? Or to be cycling with one's mind focussed only on the very immediate present?
On that old bolt that could hurt my tyres if i don't steer around it.
On that red rav4 that i know is going to cut in front of me to make a left hand turn.
Seeing the shape and colour of the clouds in the sky above that shows very little risk of rain.
Monitoring the rhythm of my breathing, noting it should be going in through the nose, not the mouth. (hack hack)
Noting that police car stopped up ahead at the red light i often sneak through....

It's not the same as a proper 20 minute sit. But it certainly helped.

ecksesyz 21

invisiblility part 2

Powers of invisibility are all very well.
But i seem to have lost control of them.
I'm invisible now when i don't want to be.
Visible when i'd rather be invisible.
Like that day in that bloody meeting when i suddenly wished to disappear, to not be seen, to not be there.

On a drive home last week, not one but two separate cars pulled out in front of me. I swerved to miss the first one - who started to pull out, then tricked me by sort of stopping, as if they'd seen me, but then just kept on coming. 10 or so minutes later, with this new expectation, I saw the next one coming and braked in time. So the powers of invisibility now extend to my car as well.

I blame the holiday season. Lots of silliness on the roads.

One morning, while cycling to work i suddenly felt a presence behind then beside me. A huge people-mover brushed my elbow as it passed, so close that i could hardly comprehend. It was all over in seconds. I waved an arm at the behemoth's tail as it gained speed and i mouthed something along the lines "WTF".
Bewildering. I was in a lane that no car should have been in, unless it had illegally failed to make a left turn at the lights. I had been in that lane for quite some time. It wasn't as if i'd just appeared there. So there's no way i was invisible. I can only think the driver had turned her attention to something else in the car - her mobile phone in her handbag; perhaps she was scrabbling around under the passenger seat for something.

I kept cycling, heading down hill and gaining speed.
Up ahead i saw the people-mover swerve, across my bike lane, and into a random parking space.
Wow - she really is driving BADLY today.
As i sped past i turned and saw her face through her window, waving frantic hand signals at me, mouthing words.
Too late i realised she'd stopped for me - to apologise, or make excuses.
Too late, i was well past, gaining downhill momentum.
I imagine she was completely freaked out by what she'd nearly done.
If i'd been just a little closer to the centre of the road.....

I trust there's one more driver on the road who is now very aware of cyclists.

Note that I was wearing a fluorescent cycling shirt, in a dedicated bicycle lane, in broad daylight.
Yet still invisible.

excise 20

lately i like to tell people i feel like i'm living in the twilight zone.
Probably a terrible description of something i can't quite describe.

I've stepped outside and am observing my life..

Friday-itis.
i potter around the house in the morning, getting ready for work, finding things to do, to delay me from heading to the office.
As i cycle closer to the building i sense the unreality of everything in my life.
In one sense i feel more grounded and whole than ever. Aware of who i am. But there's nothing to anchor me to this life. No motivation.
I'm heading to a job that in someways i like - it has certain freedoms, i like my colleagues. But It's like as old shoe that's not even comfortable any more. Or a relationship that's long since lost its reason or magic, but you're so entrenched in it, it's formed so much of what defines your life and history, that you can't just walk out on it.
As if this thing i'm holding onto is the only thing between me and nothingness. And yet it is practically nothing.
I have little emotional investment in it. I'm treading water there. There's nothing to sink my teeth into or be passionate about.
It's as if it's only fear of having nothing to replace it that is the sole motivation for turning up there every day.
That, and the investment i've put in over the years. The hours and energy and brain power. Would i just be throwing that investment down the drain? Is this really worth chucking out? Does it have potential? Do i have the energy to find its potential?

I feel burned out. I believe a lot of people are feeling this at the end of 2007. Seems i'm not the only one who's had a hard year and is counting the minutes til the xmas holidays start.
But beneath that is the fear of the depth of this burn-out.
I'm afraid that if i stop i'll lose my grip on the real world and will drop out entirely. Like i did after my uni-burn out. Those rudderless, wasted years. That i'm still paying for now. This capacity in me for extreme workaholism, and then extreme depletion and apathy dangles like a threat.
it's like in that film The Bed Sitting Room, about post nuclear holocaust England. For their safety, everyone must "keep moving!"
Or that woody allen quip about sharks. "It has to constantly move forward or it dies."
Except he was talking about relationships. In my case it's me, it's life, or what western culture defines as normal life.

Something terrible will happen if I stop.

The job used to be huge part of my life. It defined me. Now it's not.
But i still hold that memory and the contradiction of what was and what is, is a problem.
Sometime my job is a downright an inconvenience.
A necessary source of income that gets in the way of all my other little projects.
And that's not like me.

But anyway, how real is this other life outside of work?

My life has felt ungrounded and strange and surreal for so long now.
This anchorless-ness. Nothing to root me in the normal day to day of life. The things that other normal people do.
I have my habits and hobbies and pleasures. I get up and do things. But i often don't really know why. Except it's better than NOT doing anything.
I'm not about to take to my bed and never get up.
Maybe the urge to entertain/distract myself - to not be bored - is my sole motivation.
It's bizarre.
Where is this all going?
Why can't i just take a leap and dare to sample that nothingness?
Why do i cling to something that's half dead to me now. As i try each day to resuscitate it. Somedays trying harder than others.

And yet i'm not unhappy. I am possibly more peaceful in myself than i've ever been.
Maybe this is a part of the process of learning and wisdom.
To finally see thru the facade, past the unreality of all these surface things, preconceptions and conditioned ideas.
It stops me getting caught up in silly things and being upset by the unimportant.
And it's somewhat terrifying.

These are strange days.

exesise 19

men are odd.
you ask them to tell you about their emotions and they tell you what they're thinking. In all sincerity. As if they can't tell the difference.

Examples.

Male Number One is going thru a bit of personal upheaval - what i'd call an emotional experience. I ask him how he feels about it.
"Confused" he says.
Confused? Isn't confusion a state of mind, rather than an emotion?

Man Number Two's niece is very ill in hospital.
How does her sister feel about all this, i ask.
"She doesn't want her sister to die."
I am in some way shocked by the obviousness of the statement. If the situation weren't so serious i'd say "Well Der. No-one wants her sister to die. Tell me something i don't know."
And so i am left to infer, from this factual statement about her thoughts, that she feels all the unhappy emotions things you'd obviously expect one to feel in this circumstance.
What else could she possibly be feeling?
Maybe therefore his answer was fair.
Ask a stupid question...

But i'm not here to defend these men.
Maybe it's a deflecting mechanism - to avoid having to face up to emoshuns. Maybe it's simply an inevitable function of how their brains are wired up.
And is it only men? Have i just not noticed women doing it?

eksersighs 18

amazing.
My gut did it to me AGAIN yesterday
I woke feeling i weighed a million tonnes and had zero energy.
I could barely move.
If i was the sort of person to call in sick, i'd have done it.
But
a) I'm not that sort of person
b) i had a meeting that could not have been re-scheduled
c) i wasn't technically sick

As i drove to work my head felt bigger and bigger. Huge in fact.
Not long after i arrived, a tiny petty thing set my cranky-level straight to high.
I tried to breathe calmly and drink chamomile tea and rationalise this.

Then in the meeting the surprise event that explained it all.
This is what my body had been expecting. This is why it wanted to stay away from the studio today.

But i have no regrets. We don't learn anything by hiding at home, safe.

ex arse eyes 17

i woke up earlier than expected this morning to a typical sunday.
No outward signs of upheaval or cataclysmic change.
It was several minutes before i even remembered that we finally have a new government after such a long long too long time; that our country's second longest serving prime minister had finally taken a fall.

The last two elections i'd hoped for it. I'd thought "this will be the one". Surely he's been exposed in enough compromising situations to lose credibility and trust. But he was like teflon. Scandal and bad press just slid right off. The blame was cleverly shifted. Somewhere out there, outside my social/community network, there were a whole lot of people that voted for him, and my expectations were continually surprised and disappointed.

So i didn't even get my hopes up this year. I ignored the polls and predictions. This year was going to be just like any other. And now the result's in i still can't quite believe it. That's why i was hoping for some outward sign. Some shift in the way the locals go about their usual sunday. Some proof. Because our new prime minister is just like a younger version of the old one.

I know it will take time for the new regime to start making its impact and undo 11 years of their opposition's handy work.
So i wait with hope and, as they say, with baited breath.

ecksasise 16

Grumpy old people have no peripheral vision and after all their years of life on earth you'd think they'd have finally grown eyes in the backs of their heads. How useful would that be?
they probably all suffer hearing loss as well.
like small children they have no awareness of people around them.

i remind myself this as i am stuck in a supermarket behind an elderly couple walking v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and w-i-d-e-l-y down a narrow aisle.
they seem oblivious that i'm behind, and it seems intentionally belligerent and grumpy of them not to step aside and let me pass.
they are probably not belligerent; they are probably perfectly nice folk.
But they really ARE oblivious.
so i accept their pace and slow down too.
and notice things i normally rush past and ignore - foodstuffs i've been oblivious to.

i end up at the checkout with strange food that will probably sit in my cupboard for years.
producers are now making money from grumpy-old-people TV series.
so supermarkets should cash-in on this too and start hiring grumpy old couples.
they're the human equivalent of those unsteerable shopping trolleys.

exasize 15

Some days are hard days.
Most days are normal but sometimes you wake up and just know.
Or sometimes, like this morning, it takes a few minutes...

i woke up happy with the sense of having just left some reassuring dreams but it soon crept in on me. I knew it was going to be a hard day:

- when I couldn't meditate. My mind wandered everywhere, down long tracks I could hardly drag it back from and i often forgot to drag it back.

- When I remembered that the problem I'd unhappily gone to sleep with, was not magically solved this new day. And that the problem could not be solved, only sent away. And that was sad. It felt like failure, defeat, giving up the good fight.

- when it became almost impossible to decide whether to cycle or drive to work. Will it rain? Will it not? Are they clouds? Is that blue sky? Is the weather website really accurate? What would happen if i drove? Would it really be the end of the world to get a little rained on while on and are the slippery roads too dangerous fror cycling? Does my body feel fatigued? Is it really up to the ride up that hill?
Whatever decision i make, i'll probably wish i'd made the other one. When simple decisions cripple you, you know something's up.

- when I arrived at work and a cold empty heaviness filled me as i reached the front door and my head felt big and pressure-filled.

I sat at my desk and worked with a tiny, indescribable sense of edge - the fringes of worry or fret just held at a distance, unacknowledged, un-permitted.

I went tensely to the internal meeting i didn't want to have. And survived it. It wasn't too bad at all.

Then finally a phone call from my Dad, who i've not heard from for weeks, with sad, worrying news about a family friend. And that was it. That's what I'd been unconsciously dreading all day. After that, my equilibrium returned - replaced with a concern that actually had a real focus, a reason.

And I was reminded yet again, that my gut is strong, and i can trust it to warn me.

exasyz 14

i have certain emotions surrounding the annual Sculpture By the Sea.
And they're geographical.
For most people, it's a relaxing and cultural excursion, a day out with the kids, an excuse to walk by the sea, get some fresh air, enjoy some art.

This year is the 11th anniversary.
I was oblivious to it for the first 4, until i changed homes and moved into the area. Partnered. Settled down. Set for life.

The first year i was dropped off at Bondi and walked it alone. Needing space and giving it. My partner's son had not accepted that i was living with them now. And this was a custody night. So i left them to go home and have some time together. I walked the sculpture walk alone, wondering if this is what 'marriage' should be like.

The second year we walked it together. It wasn't bad, but often when the three of us tried to do something familyish together there were the attention struggles and i felt i wasn't wanted there.

The third year i missed. Maybe because the previous year was so un-fun or maybe because of the car accident. A P-plater drove into me. I flew off my bike, over her bonnet, landed on the road, on my chin, and my bike landed on top of me. So walking was out of the question for several days. I didn't ride again for 6 months.

The fourth year was hell. That was the first time we broke up, and I was distressed. He'd told me he "wanted to be alone" so i moved into an apartment for a while and suffered loneliness for the first time in my life. I did the walk with my sister and her new husband. They felt it would be good for me to get out and walk, which is a proven help with depression. But all i saw were happy couples walking the walk together, and happy families picnicking around the sculptures up on the grassy hill and i just wept.

Between then and the 5th year we'd ended up back together again, but for his son's sake I was still living half in the apartment (on custody nights) and back in my home the rest of the time. And still feeling slightly anxious for no real reason. I did the 5th walk with some colleagues, after an office lunch. It was strange and sad to be walking past the sculptures towards my home, but knowing i'd have to take a taxi across the city to the now hated apartment in a soulless new inner-city development. I smiled and told myself it would be ok, that the space and time alone on these nights was good for all three of us.

Eventually i gave up the apartment, moved back into my home and the anxiety dwindled away.

The 6th year, last year, i walked it in a kind of stupor. He'd really left me this time, in a painful and messy way, of course. I was deep in shock and grief. My over-stressed brain was incapable of laying down memory. I don't remember much about it at all. My brother was visiting from the states, so we walked together. He took some nice photos and i just walked, placing one foot in front of the other.

The 7th year, this year, was to be finally my own: my walk with the sculptures free of all that past crap. But it can come back to bite you on the ass when you least expect it. The trouble is that the walk connects my current home with my past home. And therefore with the people who are now living in my past home: him and his new flame.
I did it in two stages. First i enjoyed a cluster of the major works - on the grassy hill - one drizzly midweek afternoon after a relaxing massage and acupuncture session. But the second stage - the pieces along the walking track - was marred by a single idle thought. It occurred to me as i started out on an overly-crowded, sunday afternoon, that i could feasibly encounter or pass them on the path. Of course they'd do the walk at some stage. A happy couple, hand in hand. And i realized he'd never done that with me.
I blocked the thought and found a long moment of peace, midway. I sat on the edge of the high rocks watching the surfers; meditating on the way they're lying and paddling one moment, and standing up the next. Admiring the experienced riders who made their trips last for many seconds longer than the others. All that waiting for just one or two seconds on a wave.
But then i was walking again, heading back home, and the thought returned. Walked myself up into a crankiness; a tense indignation. Even after all this time they're still in my face, living in my suburb, coming in to my place of work, ruining my fun. And as these stupid, pointless, SENSELESS thoughts looped over and over, i noticed my old hip pain returning, my knee felt funny. My body was trying to tell me something.

But it wasn't until i came home and stepped in a puddle of cat pee that i really lost it.

On Monday i finally started that meditation course that i've been meaning to do for about a year.

eksaseyes 13

You just can't reason with drunk people.

2.40am. I've just returned home and the neighbours are outside in their backyard partying noisily.

So i go downstairs, smile over the fence and request they turn off their stereo. It's a fair enough ask. Midnight is the usual (legal?) cut-off time for suburban noise disturbance. They've had nearly 3 hours extra.

I am calm and reasonable and naively i expected them to be the happy, "yeah whatever," peace-and-goodwill-to-everyone type of drunks who, with a slurry apology, would shut off their music.

Silly me. The host fails to understand what i'm asking.
"We never have parties. It's my girlfriend's farewell." (as if this, and their previously clean party record, is some kind of waiver).
"It's saturday night. Why do you need to go to sleep? It's SATURDAY night. You don't have to do anything tomorrow."
Meaning HE doesn't have to get up and do anything tomorrow. He has no concept of anything outside his own tiny little world. He wants to stay up and party on Saturday night (as do his dozen or so friends) Ergo, everyone in the world wants to party all saturday night. (Except boring old me who only wants to party til 2.30 am.)

He tells me i should be satisfied that they've turned the music down. He points in the direction of the music source as if to prove it.
It doesn't sound any different. I don't believe him. Perhaps i should have accepted his compromise and left it there. But i feel there's already been enuf compromise: it's 2.45 am.

And i try to explain again that any volume of music will keep me and the other neighbours awake. Plus he can't complain - they've had over 2 hours extra music time since midnight. I am not asking them to stop partying. I am still being reasonable. But i can feel my face starting to set and i am no longer smiling. Dammit. I am tired and failing to see the humour any more.

Suddenly he's switched to anger. That's excessive alcohol for you.
"OK. Go. Call the police then!"

Police? Who said anything about police?
Not me. We can work this out between us like civilised fellow human beings.
(Can't we??)

We can't because one of us is off his face (hint - it's not me). So are his friends. One of them, a short blond girl, is taking it very badly and trying to verbally abuse me, but one of her less unreasonable friends has his hand clamped across her mouth. I'm sort of disappointed. The curious me wanted to hear what sort of crap she'd come out with. But i guess i know, because the host has some abuse of his own waiting, and several guests are now leaving, talking loudly about how i've killed all the fun and ruined the evening. Apparently you can't have a party without music. I don't even try suggesting they all head down the the crowded, pumping local pub where clearly they'll be able to make as much noise as they like and go crazy til dawn. Because they can't be reasoned with. It's as if they all have tunnel vision and literal or lateral options are inconceivable.

At the same time, a tiny part of me is also sinking - am i a miserable kill-joy?

When i realise we've reached an impasse, i skeptically agree to go upstairs and see if the reduced volume is tolerable. I am still calm as i slowly turn and walk away , but my heart is beating a little fast, from his unexpected unreasonableness and outright aggression.
To my back he yells something like "yeah-fuck-off-you-stupid-bitch".

Should i have kept walking? The old me probably would have. (The old me probably wouldn't have even started this.) But no more doormat. This me turns and asks pardon what did you say?!
A response of more blather that i can't recall. He never has the guts to abuse me to my face. Just more macho posturing as he again he dares me to go away and call the police.

So again, i turn and slowly, calmly walk away, up the stairs.
And he starts singing. Louder and louder, some sad classic ballad that they are now clapping along with. He sings quite well; i enjoy being serenaded up my stairs and am smiling, humming and stepping in rhythm. I'm almost tempted to run back down and start singing along with them.

But i know when enough's enough. I hear his message. We will turn off our stereo, but we can still make enough noise to piss you off.

When i'm home inside i hear bottles breaking and hope that they don't realise my car is parked right on the other side of the fence. But they've already forgotten me now and and are back in their little party land.
...........

Today i watched them bounce down the street, a happy party, out for more fun somewhere. They're clearly unharmed by my interruption last night, so it seems i didn't kill their fun and ruin their night at all.

exerci5e i2

When i was a student, wandering around London in my gap year, i discovered the secret of invisibility.

I found i could sit at the top of a double-decker bus, and when the Ticket Inspector came round to collect fares, he or she would pass me by. Now these ticket collectors were trained to watch people, see who climbed on and off the bus, then seek out new passengers between stops and sell them tickets. Somehow i slipped by unnoticed, and sat there unnoticed as they took fares from the people around me. I was a penniless student then, so it was a nice break.

I found i could walk the streets of London, from Leicester Square to Shepherd's Bush, at 2am completely unmolested and unaccosted. The power of invisibility. I was very thin then too, when i was young. A friend joked that if i turned sideways i'd disappear. Maybe it was true.

I thought i'd rediscovered my old trick at a networking event on Monday night. A room full of people, and i sat in it alone, ignored, for most of the night. A woman i met months ago, thru a mutual friend, and who at the time had hooked me up with some contacts, walked right past me when she entered. She was treated rather like royalty. You know, one of those people that everyone in the room wants to say hi and chat to as she passes them. She skipped over me, then stood to my left having a noisy conversation with someone, so it was difficult for me to hear the quite interesting speaker. And she kept hitting me on the side of my head with her handbag every time she adjusted her stance during her animated conversation. As she left, again, several people trying to grab her attention and have a few words, she skipped over me again. I also caught the eye of another fellow i'd met at a previous networking event. He looked blank, ever so slightly puzzled, and moved on. His look said "Who on earth is this woman and why is she smiling at me?"
Yep. I am invisible.

But truth be told, the girl on my right struck up a conversation with me in the break. A fellow i'd discussed a job with several months ago, recognised me and nodded. And as it turns out, the woman who blanked me is "blind" - or at least has terrible eyesight (she wears contact lenses apparently) and is terribly vague and scatterbrained.
So. It's not me then.

But sometimes - usually - the energy you send out is the energy you get back. You feel like a wallflower and people will treat you like one.




Some Invisible Links:

More Invisible LOLcats

Kate Bush - How to be Invisible

How to be Invisible

How to Become Invisible

HowToBeInvisible.com

The Invisible Man

Girl Disappearing

exerci5e II

To use a tired idiom, i spoke too soon.
(i googled the phrase and had 2,250,000 hits)
Just when i thought it was safe to go back in the in-tray (to use another one) i received that email i'd stopped expecting.

An abstruse poem, and a hopeful little statement that he writes with no agenda (to use yet another overused idiom).

Who's he kidding.
There's always an agenda; hidden or otherwise. You don't spend quality time composing poetry about the confused state of your mind, and then send it to someone you've promised not to contact again, without an agenda.

Life's just one BIG agenda.

(I just googled that:
Your search - "Life's just one big agenda" - did not match any documents.)

Huzzah. Originality at last.

Exerci5e io

The latest SMS:

Is your private email still xxx@xxxx.com?

Innocent enough you might think.
But when you've made it clear you really don't want to talk to someone, and that someone just recently agreed to stop "pestering you", a message like this can spin the imagination.

The possible scenarios and explanations that my brain has managed to create are quite impressive; Some of them ridiculous bordering on the embarrassing and at times macabre.
I might struggle to invent storywriting material, but a simple sms can put my "crazy postulation" cortex into overdrive. (i might be onto something here)

I really wonder about the independent power of the mind, as it seems to be quite enjoying itself.
But I work hard to keep it in check; to NOT think about it, or lose sleep, or start to worry, and fight that suspense-might-kill-me sensation.

But after all that, I never receive any email.
No follow up sms. That was it. An idle question.
Someone was probably just bored one sunday afternoon and decided to update his address book.
The truth, if I ever learn it, is bound to be crashingly dull; more banal than even the banalest scenario i can imagine.

That's why we have books. And TV. And films. And... and... and....

Exercise 9

I've invented a game. Probably a drinking game.
Well, i'd "been drinking"* when i invented it.
(*Does one drink count?)

The acronym game.
Pick a random word and make it into a relevant acronym.
Points are awarded for both speed and quality.
So something dumb but produced in less than 30 seconds will score as well as or higher than a brilliant literary effort that took hours.
eg Chickens : Clucking Hens In Coops Keeping Eggs Nesting Snugly
Twee. No literary genius here, but i did come up with it in less than 1 minute (as you can probably tell).

Acronym is my everest.

    A Collected Run Of Nomenclaturic Y.......... Meaning

The y is a stumper, as is the inconveniently placed o.

    A Collection .... Reasonably Obvious NotionallY Meaning

Clearly this is going to take more than 10 minutes. sigh.
Acronym is a thus a pretty crap word for what it means.
All submissions welcome.

Exercise 8

So. The chinese government will not take steps to stop the repression, violence and killing in Burma.
“Even worse, the Chinese government has blocked most of the international efforts to effectively address the crisis.” (HRW)

And on the other hand: when the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper welcomed the Dalai Lama into his office, China not only condemned Canada's "disgusting behaviour" but actually "demanded that Ottawa stop supporting anti-Chinese activities by exiled Tibetans." (SMH Oct 31st)
Demanded?

So. It's ok for a government to exercise its power in another country to effect change, only when it's in China's favour?
China's getting a lot of bad press lately. The pressure to improve their human rights policies in the lead up to the 2008 olympics will be interesting to watch.

Exercise 7

So. I went to Burning Man.
I – who am never shy to admit that I hate camping – went out into the desert to eat, drink, breath, sleep in and absorb-thru-every-pore-and-follicle, that supersoft Playa dust.

It's probably impossible to describe the experience. You really do have to just go there yourself. And no doubt, your experience will be subtly or grossly different from mine.
So instead I will tell you what Burning Man isn't.

A couple of weeks after the event I attended a Renaissance Faire - yet another USian curiosity. At one of the lively stage shows the washer women were flinging wet laundry. Like you do, if you're a medieval washerwoman trying to rouse your audience.
Trouble was, one guy just wouldn't enter into the spirit. It was a hot day; a little sprinkle of water should have been welcomed. But no, he leapt from one seat to another, terrified of getting wet. He was also eating a chocolate ice cream.

After the show, while the happy audience were chuckling off to the next event, I saw him poking at a couple of little chocolate ice cream spillages on the front of his t-shirt as he grumbled to his girlfriend:
"I should make them pay for a new shirt."

Which sums up everything that's wrong with America today, and why Burning Man needs to exist.

No one talks or thinks like that in Black Rock City.
For starters it's too hot for ice cream, so you'd never have this exact problem.
But if you did you'd just laugh about it because, well, shit happens. Get over it. It's no-one's fault.
And then someone would ride past on a customised bike and hand you a new t-shirt, hug you and ride away.
In BRC everyone takes responsibility for themselves, and thus they take responsibility for everyone else too.
There's enough of everything to go around.
There's more than enough of everything in fact.
And there's no 'us', or 'them'.
We're all just us.

Summer Time

Not enuf rants on my blog - so it's time:

When did 'Daylight Saving Time' become 'Daylight Savings TIme'?
The present participle 'saving' is used as an adjective, not a noun.
You wouldn't say 'labor savings device', or 'Money Savings Ideas'!

[BTW - am loving the first long sunny evening of DST so far.]

ZEN and the art of SMS

An SMS from the bad man who dumped me and made me cry. Many months after the paperwork and separation are finally over and done and I think i've removed all traces of him.

"Do you want to have a drink sometime?"

Oh god.

Stop and think.
Whatever you do, don't write anything stupid, something that he could twist to suit his own version of reality.
And try to remain diginfied.

Possible responses?

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."
Too rude. Could also imply that i'm insane.

"Why?"
Then he'll reply and before I know it i'll be stuck in a whole stupid conversation that can't end well.

"No"
Too short. Might look like a typo.

"Fuck Off!"
Too emotional. Like he can stir any kind of feeling in me.

"Fuck Off, Loser!"
Ditto. Also unnecessarily rude. And adolescent.

"Bugger off you bastard, how dare you."
Posh adolescent.

"Not yet"
"I'm not ready for casual socialising."
"Thanks, but i don't think that's a good idea."
Leaves too much to the imagination.
Like: I'm still hurting, therefore I still love you...
The horror.

Ignore it completely.
Too ambiguous.

Try polite but dismissive - the worst response a man can get, i'm told:

"I'm sorry 'x' but I'm just not interested"
Too snooty

"I'm sorry 'x', Maybe next year"
Don't want to keep him dangling.

"Sure, See you tomorrow at the pub at 8"
Then fail to show up, turn my phone off, and leave him waiting forever.
[insert evil chuckle]

What would the Dalai Lama do?
Not intentionally stand someone up, for starters.

"Thank you that sounds lovely, but no thanks"
A lie. Wouldn't be lovely at all.

"Thank you, but no :-)"
Perfect!
It's polite, dismissive with a whiff of zen grace and gratitude.
And there's no reply to a message like that.
I decide it's pretty much as good as it can get and hit send.

8 weeks later:
"Hi...." (I get a HI this time.)
"Hi, I was wondering if you would like to have a drink sometime."
He even signed it with his initial. How sweet.
I read it several times - the way you keep looking at the empty parking space before you can really believe your car's been stolen.

Possible responses.
"WTF. Are you kidding me with this?"
"Did you GET my last reply?"
"You think anything has changed in just 8 weeks?"
"Why oh why?"
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"

But he's asked twice now; maybe there's some important business he needs to discuss - a problem with some paperwork?
Reluctantly I reply.

"A social drink? Or do you have something on your mind?"

"No Agenda. I'd like to see you."

Ri-i-i-ght.
SO many ways to respond...
"You can see me any time. That's why i gave you my photo."
"I rather think you gave up that privilege when you decided to fuck me over for someone else."
"Why? You having second thoughts?"......

As if!

I hit DELETE.

If this is where we get to, for all my agonizing over what to reply last time, then why bother. Silence speaks volumes.

And he figures it out.

"I guess you still don't what to see me. I know I deserve this. If ever you change your mind, just let me know. I'll stop pestering you."

Oh, can you hear the tiny violin?

As if HE'S the victim and i'm the bad guy in all this.
Bugger. If i Ignore this message then I'm the callous one.
But i'm a good person.
I'm a kind person.

What would the Dalai Lama do?
Who knows. He'll never be in this situation.
And i'm pretty sure he doesn't have a mobile phone.
Lucky bastard.

Exercise 6

I write my best material on the bike. Or in the pool.

Sentences like poetry flow from me as i think and pedal streets, or splash up and down the lanes. The repetitive rhythm of the physical act turning the mind's creative engine. It sounds good in my head and i picture myself writing it all down as soon as I'm home.

But the words fall away into the gutters i ride past; left behind in the puddles pool-side. When i come home the necessities take priority - those too-dull-to describe things - and there's not time, energy or impetus left to write by the end of the night. I sit at a desk at work all day. I can't do it again when i get home.

It's as if when I do the inactive sitting, my creative brain goes inactive too. It's active when my body is. As is the inspiration and motivation.

Perhaps I need to build in a dictaphone into the handlebars somehow.

Exercise 5

I recently became a cat owner. (in case the photo is no clue).
I don't want to be boring about it, but as any pet owner will agree it does have a fairly significant effect on your life. (Budgies and goldfish, obviously less so than cats and dogs.)

So, my cat seems to have taken on some kind of symbolic significance in my subconscious. She has starred in three dreams.

In the first she'd been in the "care" of friends, who'd left open glasses and bottles of alcohol around. She sampled all of them and was seriously drunk. Dangerously. As in Alcoholic poisoning. As she staggered around i screamed at those people who'd been so irresponsible. Yelled and screamed like i've never screamed at anyone in real life ever before.
Or ever will, knowing me.
It was kind of cathartic.

In the next dream she went completely limp in my arms and I was running around in a panic. Afraid she'd die. Trying to find help and not succeeding.
This was the opposite of cathartic.

In the third, my friend (who is soon to be actually cat sitting for me), was explaining that she'd not be able to look after the cat like i do; would not be able to copy all my patterns and follow all my rules. She seemed unworried by this. As if my "rules" for cat tending and raising were impossible and silly. Or too personal. She was going to do it her own way.
At least this last one wasn't a nightmare.

Exercise 4

I know that one breath of air will not keep me alive and oxygenated for the rest of my life. I need to keep breathing in and out.
I know that the next meal i eat will only sustain me until i'm hungry again.
When i'm thirsty and take a drink, i don't expect it to cure my thirst for eternity.

So why, when i'm feeling happy, do i think that this is how i will stay, and that i no longer need to feed myself happy making things?

I felt great.
So - unconsciously i might add - I stopped the gratitude exercises, the herbal supplements, the walks along the beach, walking my neighbour's dog.....

And i wonder why i feel blah?

Rule 1: Always keep your tail clean

Exercise 3

Keep conditioning your mind or it will run rampant

i was at a workshop and each participant in the room had to stand up and tell the group about themselves and why they were there. The facilitator acknowledged that this was usually an uncomfortable process and several people admitted how nervous it made them. Thus primed and forewarned, and put somewhat at ease, I spent a good deal of time, while waiting for my turn to come around, remaining calm and reminding myself there was nothing to fear from this simple, harmless thing.

But it failed me when my turn came. Unnerved, As usual I spoke too quickly as if the faster i spoke the more i could correct the blather that was spilling out and i ran quickly off my track and lost focus and memory, only recovering enough to make my main point, but rather badly.

In a conversation you pause after each point for your partner to respond. You can then clarify, say things differently, better. And so the back and forth continues until you have adequately expressed yourself. You have a chance to right wrongs.

But in the stage fright pressure of a monologue, the words come out before i have time to compose, think of what they really mean, their real impact.
I cannot edit myself.

until much later.
until it's way too late and i'm walking back to my car, alone, because everyone has scattered, even the couple of attendees who I could call friends.
so the paranoia begins,
the mind runs rampant.

I think over and over what i said. What a jerk i must have seemed. I drive myself crazy with regret and wishful do-overs as i drive home.

I replay the scene in my mind, the way it *should* have gone. in this version I don't panic. I say exactly what i mean to say, in just the right words. And if i don't get them quite right at first, i have the presence of mind to pause, rewind, then calmly say what i really meant to say. in this version I don't blather mindlessly and keep making it worse.

And I play it over and over in my mind the way i think it really went, but with no-doubt memory-based distortions, and analyse and question every word for its possible impact and interpretation. Searching simultaneously for hope that it wasn't that bad, and for the true awfulness of what i said and what it says about me. Just looking for the flaw and holding it under that magnifying glass, staring at it, torturingly.

I grow frustrated and cranky at how easily i made a bad impression on a group of people with whom i am to be spending the next 2 days (for i seem to have decided that's the most likely result of my speech). i can feel my pulse quickening, and all the other physical affects of raised adrenalin, i can sense myself working towards tears and a kind of madness if i let this run on.

I catch myself in the supermarket walking the aisles without aim, unable to really function in the most basic way. All I am supposed to be doing is choosing some dinner supplies, but I can't. i am unable to think because my head is too full of this mental horror film on endless playback loop.

I only have one choice.
Embrace it.
Learn from it.
Accept that i did not speak well and that they will form a distorted view of me – if they are biased and overly quick to judge on a first impression.
Practice: Make sure i put myself in this situation often, so eventually i will improve. I avoid these types of things, so i've no practice.
Use it: go deep into this neurosis and let it inspire my creative work.
(this blog excluded - just catharsis here now, no art)
And remind myself (this is part of the anti-rampancy training) that on the scale of stuff-ups this one was so far from monumental it's not even worth mentioning, let alone writing about.

We do not have scriptwriters planning what we say, stage managing our lives.
We do not have edit suites.
If only.

If i had someone at home to discuss this with, rationalise and diffuse this, i wouldn't need to be writing it...
Maybe.
When a friend of mine had a similar experience, she could have talked out her own paranoidly perceived stuff-up with her husband. But she didn't. She had to tell someone and emailed me - perhaps because i'd been there, at the scene of what she thought was a social faux pas. And as a sane and unbiased bystander i was able to restore her peace.

Perhaps the final lesson is choosing who you confess your paranoia to.

And a nice chamomile tea before bedtime.

Thanks for listening.

Rags & Vic

aufgabe zwei

July 16 2007

i woke wearing ski socks and a hat of live kitten.

that i hadn't kicked the socks off during the night is proof that it's really cold here.
really, unusually, record-setting, even-the-Canadians-are-complaining cold.
it's not just our imagination or that typical memory lapse that has us all saying we can never remember being 'this hot before' or 'this cold before' whenever the seasons change suddenly.
it's finger achingly cold to the point of something hinting at nausea as i cycle up the hill.
it's muscle freezing cold as the almost useless bricks in my legs push me somehow up that hill which i'm sure is longer today than last week.
it's so cold i have to put the heater on in my bedroom at night and will have to wear full-fingered gloves on tomorrow's ride.

i cycle for the good of the environment.
it's nice to know i've done my part to reduce global warming.

exercise 1

2 car doors,
2 pedestrians-on-the-road and
1 car-from-side-street incidents on my ride home tonight.
If i thought anyone was reading this blog, i might feel inclined to make it a voice for an endangered species who seems (in my city at least) to suffer from a rare form of invisibility: the cyclist
but this isn't the place

.......

i've found a new isport: blog naming
(no catchy title for the sport as yet. naming it can be another new sport)
i found i could not give my blog a URL to even vaguely match my blog id because, as you'd expect in the webspace in 2007, others had already taken all the options;
unfashionably i thought it would make sense to give it a URL that corresponded to my online name: fred's blog, logically, would be found under fred.blogspot.com. for example.
but apparently this is un-cool.

that it's 2007 and i've started my first blog is testament enough to my lack of trend setting on the interweb

wondering who had "my URL" and why, led me on a little voyage from one blog to the next. the blogger of the URL i wanted had a name very similar to mine but not quite. so why take a such a close but not exact match? because someone else had already taken the URL that exactly matched his/her name. and so on. my journey continued, like connecting random dots, until soon the sport just became "type any-random-word.blogspot.com and see what you find".

two things i found
three things
1. ideally there is little or no correspondence between the URL, the blog's title or the name of the blogger. random is IN.
2. a LOT of people build a blog just for the hell of it, add very obvious test-only entries and never touch it again. from just my short sampling i can tell there must be so very many dead blogs out there with a half life of eternity given google's apparent user-friendly 'freedom-to-start-a-blog-and-only-you-can-delete-it' policy
3. those who progress beyond the test entry have an attention span of less than a year, before the posts cease. wonder how long i'll last.

bastille day, 2007

for my very first blog entry i am not going to write random stuff just to see if it's working