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.