One of those shiny days

It’s not – its overcast and very cold, but nonetheless is one of those shiny days where everyone looks beautiful. In the café typing work and listening to the waitress trying to communicate with the Japanese customer, I want to jump in, rescue him, smile and explain. I want to smile at him and wish him a lovely stay – he is vulnerable in his lack of language, so politely frustrated, slightly pained, a little self conscious. I want to bundle him up and pat him.

At the train station there is a woman, solid around the middle in a dependable, mystery of the world wrapped in her flesh kind of way, with tiny delicate hands and a peaceful beautiful gypsy face. She is patiently folding baby clothes while the baggy eyed thin lipped man she is with talks on and on. She smiles softly, beatifically, like a Madonna without child. She takes off tags and smoothly tucks the torn half into her pocket. She loves whoever she has bought these clothes for. She holds the gift wrapping paper out for him to appraise after she has folded all the clothes and carefully put them back in the plastic bag. He takes a moment to stop talking and is anyway rendered speechless by this blue bear print paper – what is he honestly meant to say? he wonders – it is written all over his face. Pause ended he resumes. They both get up for the train, her brown hair waist long and trailing at the ends, it’s all I can do to not follow her, drifting as if in a current.

Frankly dear

You have to just love frank friends (and I’m not even being sarcastic here). Thanking Aunty B for sage advice times 2 over lunch the other day – you just know its good for you even when you don’t want to hear it.
Goes a little like this:
“Do you think maybe I should shag (--)?”
“Nah (scrunches up nose), it wouldn’t be any good.”
“Well, but…maybe. You know, there’d be effort and caring”
“No, it’d be..(more screwing up of face)”
”But you know, maybe…”
“Nah, he’d be no good at it”

And later she tells me that my white shirt needs to go because it’s too tight.
“well, yeah a bit tight, but but would you call this too tight?”
“Yeah there are gaps between the buttons. I think maybe it needs to go.”

And actually, she had a good point on both counts. My conclusions are that life’s wardrobe and bedroom pitfalls are more easily navigated with some help from friends.

In train

Yesterday a curious faced tiny creature came and stared at me, angling his head at me, showing me a wound on his eyebrow, looking at my laptop, quiet, like a bird at the window moving its head around and peering with one bright eye. Then kicked me, halfheartedly and without any seeming malice, on my ankle. Twice.

Last week a small urchin angel climbed the seat behind me and stared her curly haired head at me, smiling, wide eyed. Then from behind me started playing with my necklace and my earring. As I wasn’t there.

Today a monk and I walked in step on the way to the train and I said good morning, and we talked about the weather, but meaningfully, and with loving kindness. He said are you going to work? And I said yes, in the city. And he laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and I said, beseechingly, crushed, don’t laugh, and he said well you’ll be inside, in reference to our conversation about the possible rain, and I marvel that this sense of humour is somehow of another place, like the music of bells ringing or the joke of leaves falling, or the cushion provided by a piece of wood, and we part ways at the entrance to the waiting room.

Hey sneaky famous person!

Hey, how did I miss the fact that Biz of Lowbagger World was interviewed for our town’s lovely newspaper recently, in a ‘what do you do for a crust and what’s it like?’ type interview?? I found this out just yesterday when I pulled newspaper out of the cupboard to put under my cat’s bowl and thought ‘hang on! I know that face!’. It was a good interview too, and a funny wry photo.

Confessions of a day dreamer

Oh my friends, my fellow participants in the workaday world. How hard it is to wrench myself from day dreaming and get right down to the tasks at hand. I love my train trip to the city in the mornings because it is perfect for day dreaming. Sun (now that spring is on its way), acacia in bloom with lit up golden green leaves positively shining from their interaction with the sun. Uneven, soft bushy shapes running past my window and stroking my eyes with their colour. As the train meanders shafts of sun move through the carriage, sometimes crossing my chest, sometimes my cheek, sometimes a bit of my leg – warm, generous sun kiss in the otherwise shaded carriage. The noise and motion is also lovely – a jolt and clunk which is so reassuring, so old fashioned in its mechanism, like something from an Agatha Christie novel about crossing Europe in a sleeper (but less crime), but still, somehow elegant, old fashioned, gentle, not getting anywhere in a hurry, enough time to enjoy the scenary and muse on things that need musing on. I love day dreaming. Day dreaming to me can be just following the long and windy string of a strange thought and finding all the strange thought friends in your mind – the little ideas that join hands and beckon you forward till you stop minutes later and can’t remember where you started or what your original question was, but you have been completely engrossed by the meandering enquiry and delightful wander. Day dreaming can be no thinking at all, just gazing out of the window, with the sun and your skin having their own conversation. It can be the just listen to the conversation between a small child and someone they love, smiling, warm feeling. I love the roll a feeling around in your mind day dream, where a little event, like a kiss, or happy realization, like some good news, steeps in the hot water of idle time, to make a lovely cup of day dreamy tea. I love the idly pick balls of fluff off your top or inspect your nails day dream. Of course there is the structured future looking day dream of possibilities, sometimes I do this (though to be honest, rarely), or the replay a memory backward looking day dream – both nice, in moderation. I love the half asleep, just about to drop off, thoughts all get unhooked from their ropes and start to waft upwards on updrafts and play in the clouds, without any direction from you at all, daydream – when you become awake again you realise that you had almost slept, but the details of the thoughts and their dances are nebulous and hard to catch, they are just a sensation of a shape or feeling. I love these ones because they are mysterious day dreams, that seem to have their own special secrets, and they feel nourishing, you return feeling rested and content. An actual day dream I suppose is the dream you have in a nap, which I also love, although don’t always dream / remember dreams in naps. I do like a nap though.

This is why I can only sometimes do office work on the train – my work has to compete for time with day dreaming, and often day dreaming wins. This is why super efficient plans for my life often derail (such as the ill-fated ‘use all 4 hours of train commute time as part of my daily work hours by using them efficiently to edit and write sensible things’) they don’t factor in the day dream factor, without which I am unhappy and not very useful. Sometimes in the office at my desk I will take a little moment late in the day to look out the window and watch the colours changing on the sea-shell coloured harbour city buildings. Sad really how often a full minute of looking out the window and musing will attract attention ‘ho! Just looking out the window are you?’ (yeah – you should try it sometime). Blogging is nice because it is kind of like a day dream shared, and also a day dream with an excuse, a functional daydream, a day dream varnished and presented as a shy gift. So thank you blog visitors for giving me a vehicle for daydreaming publicly. Feel free to send your daydreams my way, I can even post things if you want more space than the boring old comments box allows.

What are ya?

I have a friend who is quite into star signs. Given that he lives up here in the mountains, that shouldn’t surprise me – it’s basically a prerequisite for living West of Blaxland and East of Lithgow. No, what does surprise me is that he’s into them more than I am, and knows more, and refers to them often. So, as I am a pair of fish in the zodiac, he is often telling me things about me which line up with that persona. I say ‘well, you know, it is very cold when you leave home at 5.30 or 6.30 in the morning!’ and he looks horrified and says ‘you leave home at 5.30??’ and I say ‘weeeeell. Sometimes I have to wake up at 5.30’. And he laughs and says ‘of course, I should have known, you are a story teller. 5.30 makes a much better story than ‘sometimes I have to leave home at 8’!!’ Later as I take my shoes off I say ‘oh, I have odd socks, but I really like this sock and I can’t find it’s pair’ and he laughs again and says ‘(my name), you always wear odd socks. The last time you were here you had odd socks on’, smiling, looking warmly at me like it is my divine destiny to wear odd socks, that the world is better place through my wearing of odd socks, and that this is all a delightful turn of events - and I feel somehow pigeon holed and defensive. I want to be a prickly astro-pedant and defend both my right and ability to wear matching socks, lecture him about my flexibility on the issue of socks, point out that my sock draw is roughly half half pairs versus not-quite-pairs. I don’t, I hold back, realizing that this defensiveness is a little silly.

It’s a funny thing though this notion of personality don’t you think? These bounds of what it is to be us – sometimes a random assortment of preference statements that people seem very wedded to: “I only eat vegetables starting with a P”, “I like thai food but I wont eat Japanese”: do/don’t, like/don’t like. I much prefer to think about who were are as a shifting spectrum of possibilities – it is contextual, subtly affected by circumstance. What kind of person am I? Outspoken? Sure – everytime in a group I think something needs saying and it looks like no-one else is going to pipe up I end up being the mouthy, finicky, persistent and outspoken one. Shy and quiet? Absolutely. Give me a situation where I’m not sure what is really going on or what is making people tick and I will not say a peep, watching, trying to figure out the dynamics, wondering if my suggestions would be useful, waiting to see if I might fit into the mix.

In a peverse way, I have found much satisfaction in examining all the things I think make up ‘me’ and occasionally seeing if I can do without some of those preferences – love personal space and independence? Watch me live in another country in a tiny shoebox with a family of 4 who I also ate with, socialized with and worked with 24 7 for 6 months. Love art? Watch me do a science degree and try my darndest to make a living through rational sensible thinking. Love intimacy? Watch me go solo. An excersise in testing the boundaries in who I am, what I can do without, what is core and what is peripheral. Sensualist/ascete, scientist/artist, celibate/sexual, communal living/hermetic withdrawal, city/country, materialist/spiritualist; or as the Australian band TISM once so beautifully offered up the conundrum of identity: ‘whatareya.. wanker/yobbo?’. And my answer, as always, is ‘errm, a bit of both?’

Revenge of the nerds (not literally, nerds are a very peaceful bunch on the whole)

Now, I make no secret of the fact that I am a big fan of nerd boys and girls. Nerds, geeks, mathmo’s – whatever words take your fancy, they take mine. I love science nerds, people who are into bonsai, people who do little experiments or research things just for fun, people who goggle/dictionary any unknown word. Love it. I had a realization a few years back that almost everyone I’ve ever dated either did debating in high school, played chess, played some kind of role playing game, or had their nose stuck in a book for large chunks of their life. Or all of the above. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not some kind of a brain on a stick, ethereal, divorced from my beating heart and pumping veins, no, on the contrary. I like physical activity, I like the sun on my skin, I like pop culture, I can dig the blonde and bouncy and low carb conversations. I dig cheeky smiles and the dramatic, theatric, arty too. I dig lots of things. In moderation. But mostly I like the nerdier side of life.

So, how delighted do you think I am that I am now working at what I fondly (but privately) label the sheltered workshop for nerdy sustainability types?? By sheltered workshop, I mean sheltered from the elements, from the shriveling gaze and contempt of non-nerds, and the slow slow slow as a wet week starting from square one thinking of non-sustainability switched on types (not that people sit in boxes).

Friday was case in point. Meeting, Director making jokes about alternative universes, later someone using a humerous chaos theory analogy to explain a situation. Puns and literary references mid-meeting. Getting up to draw a graph to explain a concept – complaining that you need a third axis to really explain it. Now it’s not like people are spouting Shakespeare at the coffee machine, doing jousting in character as the Earl of Monternarry or quickly solving math problems mid sentence, or anything that obvious - but if you are on the look out for the nerdy signs, they are there. (Probably scattered in some way that we could model, probably something we could write up as a paper..). Aaah, bless.

And why does this make me happy? Well; it takes one to know one. As Jung said:

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate to others the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible . . . If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely."

Working in local government with an abundance of 1960's edition engineers with a penchant for sexist jokes and concrete, who never question authority figures and have side parts - was sometimes a lonely affair.

oooh clowns

hey hey check out this creeeepy pic, thanks to Mr Mountainspice.

reminder to myself

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can'tfind them, make them." George Bernard Shaw

hanging with m' homies

Nice over this last week to have had some 'quality time' with a few folks. Amazing what a few judisciously planned flex days can do for your peace of mind! Lovely picnicking and sunny day walks with Meri Risa and E-chan, good mid week catch ups with Angel and DrJ over noodles and beer, nice emergency beachy sleepover with Aunty B, some low-key mountain hanging out also with Aunty B, some moving house help with Mountain Spice and her crew and then this week some domestic companionship, cups of tea and stove cleaning with Mountain Spice as we cleaned house at their old place ready to finalise the move. Nice cruisy chat and do kind of days.

Cogito ergo sum

Never quite found time to learn Latin? No worries, just pinch translated phrases off someone else's wacky website! Some nice ones:

Celerem habet ingressum amor, regressum tardum.
Love makes a swift entrance, a slow exit

Non gladio, sed gratia.
Not with the sword, but with kindness

Alia dicenda, alia reticenda.
Some things are to be said, others are to be kept quiet.

And how about this one?
Ventus est vita mea.
My life is wind. (Phhht, pardon me).

Especially exciting is reading long explanations of where they came from and how the verb conjugation is especially clever. I so love sharing other people's nerdy fascinations - passive hobbying and just marvelling at the glow of someone's passion. As follows:

Celerem habet ingressum amor, regressum tardum.
Love makes a swift entrance, a slow exit.
'What a great saying! It relies on a parallel construction with the second instance of the verb omitted and no explicit coordination, relying on the pairing of ingressum/regressum and celerem/tardum to convey the adversative meaning. This phrase shows up in the emblem tradition, as in the Amorum emblemata.'

Lucernam adhibes in meridie.
You are holding up the lantern in broad daylight.
'In other words: you are doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, or you are laboring to demonstrate something that is already perfectly clear. This is found in Erasmus, Adagia 2.5.6. The most famous example of this saying is an ironic inversion, of course - where the cynic philosopher Diogenes, hardly a fool, takes his lantern about in midday, looking for an (honest) man! This story also shows up as an Aesop's fable, with Aesop in the wise man's role. Most people don't exactly understand why there is a lamp in that story about Diogenes because we have lost the humorous sense of holding up the lamp in midday, but Diogenes is using the proverb to good effect: he looks like a fool, but he is actually there to point out everybody else's foolishness.'


Read more here.

(Cogito ergo sum? A statement by the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. “I think; therefore I am” was the end of the search Descartes conducted for a statement that could not be doubted. He found that he could not doubt that he himself existed, as he was the one doing the doubting in the first place. In Latin (the language in which Descartes wrote), the phrase is “Cogito, ergo sum.”)

Website of the Week

Hmm, I always thought that committing to a 'website of the week' was a dubious idea when I a) often can't remember what week it is, b) can barely commit to just one website when I do remember. Whatever. My blog, my rules to break! :)

So, bearing with my loose use of the terminology, here is my 'website of the week!

Firstly, this one thanks to Derek. I also read about this artist in the paper recently. She took her own life, which seems awfully sad, when she seems to have been blessed with such a fascination and love of life, as embodied in her very carefully constructed organic shapes - which look like a homage to sea creatures and seeds and growing things.

Sticking with the arty theme, this one thanks to Angel. Newly launched by the Powerhouse Museum, it has lots of interesting events and articles about design, including fashion, craft, architecture, graphic design and product design.

Performance Art

Well it’s fair to say that I don’t see all that much live theatre these days of the formal, on a stage kind, but I do experience a hell of a lot of the theatre of life. On the train, daily. Here is a snapshot of recent performances that made me giggle, gasp, cringe, despair and smile:
- Right now, a long haired couple – him dark haired, straight locks neatly cascading down past his angular profile, she blonde with giant hoop earrings – sitting at the front of the carriage, perched up on their seats, kissing so we can see it in profile, sitting so that we can not help but see them, as they are, right at the end of our line of sight. Smooching noises.
- Earlier in the week, teenager, pregnant, older boyfriend in jail – but hoping to get out early on drug rehab – she only 14, not able to put his name on the birth certificate or he’d be arrested. The fight he got put away for involved bashing a guy at the station – he lost his eyeball, but they could pop it back in you know? Because they didn’t damage the socket. Anyway he didn’t pop the eyeball out but he did bash the other guy, and there was a camera at the station… She wanted to bash Tanya with a chair leg, because she is such a slag, and she’s wanted to bash her for a while, but you know, she’s pregnant, so couldn’t.
- Boys, school. Do you know how often I have to put wax in just so these dredlocks stay in? Every few weeks. No it’s not dandruff, it’s wax! It’s wax. Yeah I think I’ll just grow them down to my shoulders.
- Woman, sitting at the very front of our carriage, up the few steps, near the doors. Saying forcefully into her mobile: ‘No, this isn’t histrionics, you are just a callous, cold bastard.’ And ‘would you let your sister, your mother walk home from the station? All the years I ferried you around. Eight years you bastard.’
- This morning: ‘This is the most fucked book that I have ever read! 15 pages from the end and it turns out the lawyer did it. The laywer couldn’t have done it! There was all these things he said – it couldn’t have been him. Aaw seriously this is fucked – 7 hours I spent reading this book. I mean if it was good you should know, there would be clues… I might need to read this again. This is fucked.’

Sometimes these vignettes are short pieces said out loud, monologues, soliloquies, other times they are unfolding dramas between people. Sometimes I can’t help but eavesdrop for nigh on an hour, try not to giggle in the funny bits. Engaging characters, dodgy characters, people you like and are like and people you don’t.

Where's wally?

Well I find myself currently in the southern climes of our fair city this sunny lunchtime. Where exactly? Let's call it Southrockogville for the sake of my story. It is on the way to the Gong anyway, if that narrows it down for Sydneysiders. Anyway. I arrived here this morning, not just on time but EARLY! Yes, actually rather unbeleivably, I made the trip from the Blue Mountains to the City and then here by 9am, so I could have a coffee before commencing my workshop at 9.40.

I wandered out from the train station and marveled at all the cool dumpling shops and then stopped marvelling and starting cursing as I realised that there was narry a coffee shop in sight. F it. Not to worry, kept walking, following my map (in the wrong direction as it turned out but hey, whavetever, good for my step count) and finally found a little cafe serving lavazza coffee and full of lots of grumpy male barristas and long suffering sandwhich making wives and sisters. Drank coffee. Finished writing notes. Set off in eth right direction. Got to workshop. Delivered workshop.

Now, it has been a long while since I delivered a workshop that wasn't somehow related to art stuff - printmaking workshop, felt making workshop all good, but an actual 'what do we all think about this? Let's tease it out together' kind... ugh, I was rusty. It used to be something I did fairly often for work.. 'community workshops'. Recently I have given 'talks' at work, complete with the darkened room, some participation and lots of slides projected onto wall of said darkened room, for like an hour. But it's a bloody long time since I ran a 3 hour workshop, on a tricky topic, with a rag tag bunch of people from 9 different organisations. By myself. In ridiculously high heels.

There were the usual mix of folk present. The 'talker' who jumps in all the time and speaks over people and you have to sush. The moody 'seen it all' before who you just KNOW is thinking 'oh this is crap, as if you'd use that group excersise technique, that is so 1999', and is just one body language step away from sitting with their arms folded over their chest or actually leaving. The 'whoops, what was the topic again?' (self explanatory). And me, trying to lead them through long minutes of chat, go deep, go broad and rescusitate them when they seem on verge of collapse (stat! nurse, some adrenaline please).

Feel tired now, and a bit flat. It wasn't the best workshop ever, and I always hope these things will get in the groove and become one of those things that just flows, an incandescent experience, an exciting coming together of minds, a revelation. Sometimes they do you see - I've had ones like that. But no - there were no revelations. It was more a half arsed flickering candle than incandescent. It was a bit of a chore to keep it going. Good content out of it (lucky because there's a report to write), but don't think I'll be winning facilitator of the year based on today's performance. I especially liked the feedback from the client. Me: 'so, (their name), how did you think that went? Did that cover the ground you wanted? How does that sit with your objectives for the program?' Client: 'Well they seemed to like it'. Oh. Uhuh. Like that is it?

But here, exploring south'ville - bloody lovely. Warm gorgeous 'oh that's right that's what summer feels like' day. Noodles for lunch. Eying off half price shoes. Wanting to have an afternoon nap. Quick blog entry in my lunch break then back to the office. Must remember to come this way again for shoe sales, live fish restaurants, incense and snow domes featuring feng shui goldfish - for the particularly bad at keeping fish alive? Oh right, that would be me! (remember my feng shui goldfish experience way back when? There's a post on it somewhere in here).

Websites of the week

Thanks to Derek for passing this on; you can browse MoMA's collection online here
Interesting to note that the picture selected looks a lot like this mountain town in winter.

Thanks to Aunty B for this interesting blog that she thought I'd like...
The most recent post is about the colour pink and the joys of indirection - love both of these things. Now of course I want to dust off my high school German & go live in Berlin.

single commuter seeks domestic companion, gsoh, previous applicants need not apply.

Oh my lovely blogpals and real world pals. Thankyou for your kindliness and suggestions for cheer. I am feeling more chipper now after a good night's sleep and an arvo of rest, but realise that the commute thing is really a very silly idea long term. And just because I have an amazing capacity to forget how crap it felt last week and want to think I will always feel like I do right now does not mean now that it is all better or wont feel crap again!

Just had one of those 'oh darl I know' chats with a woman who owns the design shop in Katoomba. She is single, has a dog, lives by herself and used to commute daily to North Sydney. She commiserated about the 'nothing gets done during the week' factor and said that she was a weekend hermit, where she would only leave the house to walk the dog up the street to go buy the paper then scuttle back home to do housework, chill, regroup - whatevs. She suggested I stay in town Monday nights and Thursday nights - leaving only 2 full day commuting days. 'I'm sure you have a neighbour who wouldn't mind feeding your cat!' she said, and she's probably right. She said that commuting even made her think that having a husband would be helpful sometimes. 'Husbands are good for 3 things' she said: 'looking after you when you get sick, buying you flowers, and financially'. 'Oh and occasionally physically'. she said, wavering an unconvinced looking fourth finger. I laughed and thought that maybe arriving home to a cooked dinner after a 12 hour day, cuddles on a cold morning, and remembering to pay the phone bill would do it for me.

Method act your way to happiness – or self-medicating out of the winter blues

I was just reflecting on the fact that winter is really lingering and starting to get the dreggy end, where the novelty has worn off and people start to get glum. I was also reflecting that a few people I know have been having a rough trot of it lately. Little Mr and Mermaidgrrl grappling with fertility drugs and cycles of insemination with no luck yet (not to mention awful mum visit scenario slap bang in the middle of it), Aunty B finding herself living solo again as significant other has departed O/S for work for the next few months, Betty Sue losing someone dear, Merri Risa grappling with all sorts of physical and emotional challenges associated with her first baby, etc. And me getting to critical commute point last week with a big cry on the way to work (thank you strategically placed park and park bench) but not being able to choose between the two worlds of city-work, mountains-creative space that I go between yet not loving the no-sleep, no-groceries, no clean clothes, late for work, late home, limited catching up with friends, no time to do anything, always on the train life that trying to have both of these things simultaneously results in. (Oh and waking up to cat vomit, having my phone cut off due to burying the bills on my dining table pile and forgetting to pay them, having dating angst, getting nervous as I wait to hear back from writing thing, and breaking the zip on my winter boots.) Anyway.

So, was reflecting on cheer up remedies, and have in fact trialed a few winners. Here then is my DIY medicine chest of winter cheer up remedies. A kind of community service announcement (posted very charitably in non-prime time between the telebonking ads and danos direct ads). You can also think of it as method acting your way to happiness – get your body doing it and the rest of you might catch up.*

- Pop on that oil burner you got for Christmas and get some happy smells going. Rose geranium is a winner, and I especially like lemongrass, tangerine or orange as cheery daytime mood lifters. If there’s an essential oil you especially love, try putting a drop or two in a very small pool of almond or jojoba oil in the palm of your hand and then rub your palms together and rub hands through hair (I did say very small pool..), or just the ends of your hair, if it is long. Et voila! You smell cheery and your hair gets intensive conditioning at the same time.
- Oh while you’re there, feel free to light candles, maybe tea lights in a cheery little row. Don’t have any funky candle holders? Get all DIY and wrap some clear drinking glasses in a sheet of tracing paper (at worst try baking paper) and sticky tape. Ha ha, tres glamorous candle holders which will glow and cast nice shadows.
- Crank up some cheery sounds for putting the washing away or cooking dinner. I find Billy Holiday has such warmth she can even warm up a dreary Sunday afternoon. Also anything upbeat and sexy that you can sing along to. For example I find it very hard to feel glum when pretending to be Jarvis Cocker and singing sleazy sneery lyrics in a poorly approximated accent. Tricky is good. Anything Latin. Maybe the kind of cheesy pop you pretend you bought as a joke if anyone serious scrutinizes your cd collection. Ah yes, Duran Duran, Ricky Martin – ironic, yes ironic.
- Bake something. I know this is verging on 1950’s housewifery dross here, but truly, a warm oven and bakey smells are good. If the thought of baking sets your teeth on edge, get someone else over to bake, while you watch and say encouraging things over a glass of gutsy red. If said someone is spunky, suggest they remove their outer layers of clothes to protect them from flour messiness. Scones. Ridiculous cupcakes. Polenta cake to have with syrup. Any kind of baked pudding. Vegetarian moussaka. All good.
- Cook things with fresh ginger, lemongrass and garlic in them (if you like them). All Asian noodle soups are cheery. Curry is cheery. Anything Moroccan. Anything zingy. Anything with lemon rind and raisins.
- Knit something with irregular, bold, rainbow stripes. I am still plugging away at my training jumper (ie the first jumper project I have ever embarked on) and it is in greens, oranges and purples and possibly the cutest dam thing I’ve ever knitted. Make something weeny for a child in silly colours. I am doing some canvases for a little lad in my life and they are making me smile.
- Indoor plants are good for cheering up dead corners. Possibly also good for extra oxygen if you happen to be using a gas heater. Get an exciting houseplant and a spunky coloured pot. Boy at work has just about fallen in love with his new ‘indoor tree’ which by all accounts is about 6 foot. Not that it’s size that counts. Neccessarily.
- And finally, cheer up your nether regions. The benefits of silly knickers can really not be over stated. In this category I put all underpants with words on them, ruffles, animal print, lace, giant white y fronts, red ones that go faster – whatever makes you feel like you are superman/ wonderwoman/ a sexy firefighter/ betty page/ a rockstar / a cheeky sex god/des. Anything that makes you smile when you remember you’re wearing them is good (or even those that make you laugh when you realise that the ruffles are visible through your tailored work pants and making you look a little chicken-bottomed (Aunty B with new burlesque knix recently); or smile and shake your head when you remember that you couldn’t contain your excitement and told everyone at work about them (yours truly with pirate pants)).

So there you go. I expect to see candlelit, aromatic, lounge room dancing, stripe knitting, scone eating, cheeky cheeked cheery sea green visitors peeking around their indoor forests sometime soon.

*Which is not to say that feeling happy is necessarily an appropriate response to a crap situation, but a burst of cheer can at least be a decent counterweight to a period of sad non?

Is it just me or….

Is Thom Yorke incredibly sexy? Is anyone else completely smitten by shoegazing eco electro folk grunge angst as embodied by pint-sized musos who demonstrate remarkable adaptability of style? I know that Radiohead have been around for a squillion years (13?), but, nonetheless, as I sit with earphones on listening to back catalogue I’m digging it.

I don’t have his new album but from what I’ve heard it sounds good. His interview in the Big Issue was brief but cool. Love a guy who says “ No one is actually grappling with the wider questions – we can’t endlessly consume as human beings. We have to start thinking in amore fundamental way about how we live on the planet.”

So, sorry Jack White, this may bode badly for our love puppies – I think you may have been surpassed as my completely pointless rock star love interest*. I always like the moody, slightly melancholic ones it seems**. I maintain that Morrissey is a maker of fine upbeat and cheery tunes to do housework to and not slit-your-wrists material as maintained by so many detractors.

*Not implying that Thom or Jack are completely pointless – that would be rude. No, just that my interest is pointless.
** Although I do have a strange aversion to Beth Orton, who listening to I think is a bit like walking through a thick fog when all your clothes get slightly damp and cold and stay that way even when you get back inside somewhere warm. She seems a bit limp and dish-raggy to me and I worry about whether she’s getting enough to eat.

website of the week

Met this gal at a party a few weeks back. Have never seen such impressive dancing with a mirror ball. Seriously, she rocks. And I must say it is a bit unfair to compete with an acrobat when it comes to spontaneous limbo dancing!

http://www.ballshoopsandfruitloops.com.au/index.htm

All hail the red nail

Red fingernails - as good as red shoes?

A while ago, Betty Sue pointed out the swinging step that red shoes give a girl – a feistier, pluckier, cheery edge that they lend you for the day. Which is so true. But just this week I have discovered that ridiculously red nails are also fun. I bought cheap as shit sheer red polish from a late night nail polish and jangly bangles shop on George St on Saturday night on my way to a party to cover up the woeful state of chipped metallic purple left over from the weekend before. Anyway, just today I removed all layers of cruddy polish and started again (huh I bet you didn’t think you’d be getting a nail polish removal chronology here) with a nice single coat of my sheer red. It is the bees knees! It is a funny thing because despite all the ‘red=sex’ hype, it is by no means a sleezy, insinuating, sly and alluring kind of experience this red nail polish – on the contrary it is all sheer and shiny and hence like wearing red cordial, it makes you slightly hyperactive, jubilant, bouncy. Now I know this sounds positively deranged, but I reckon typing is actually more fun with coloured nails – it’s like 10 little pet beetles are scuttling around at the end of your fingertips. Funny little shiny beetles.

I think I am especially appreciating it because I kind of gave up nail polish about a year ago when I decided not to use any petrochemical based cosmetics. How has that gone? Well, various levels of success. I only buy non-petrochemical skin cleanser, toner and moisturizer these days (lets face it, I don’t actually use these things, but I try to have some in the cupboard for spot checks from the wrinkle avoidance guilt police, or for visitors who are feeling especially dry and scaly as they adjust to the uncannily dry mountain weather). Actually I find water best for face washing, and if I’m every very dry in the face I use sesame or almond oil at night and make a mental note to drink more water and eat more nuts (mmm moist on the inside). Lippy I still wear but haven’t bought any new. Lip balms made from beeswax and vegetable oils abound, so that it cool. Anyway, I sometimes get supermarket shampoos and bubblebath, which are all synthetic, and am stuck on regular toothpaste and deoderant (I will just have to get parkinsons and aluminium poisoning along with everyone else) so it’s a fairly erratic policy. Like most of my personal policies! Anyway – nail polish was definitely on the banned list, because I decided that all that crap that smells toxic and just ends up swiped off with other smelly crap and going into landfill, or worse coming off and going down the drain just wasn’t worth it. Ditto hair dye, which I seem to have happily given up and have no interest in taking up again, 2 years and abundant emerging white streaks later.

This sounds like a recovering addict huh? A recovering hair dye addict. Well I think that similarity is not coincidental. I have a friend who refers to it as being ‘in recovery from consumer capitalism’. I like to think I’m in recovery from the incessant marketing of the ‘make women feel like crap’ industry. Oh sorry beauty, beauty industry. So I love not using hair dye, or wearing foundation, love not using wrinkle cream, and feeling no the worse for it.

So what happened on Saturday night to my care about persistant organic pollutants and supposed beauty products that make waterways ugly? Well, that concern disappeared and all I wanted was something colourful and shiny. And I’m loving it, especially today when I was tired and teary and I felt like my life was a mess, at least my fingernails were funky and spritely. Colour therapy. And to be honest I still like make up which is about dress ups – liquid eyeliner on the odd occasion that you want to be a saucy librarian or 50’s diva, lippy to match a top, smoky brown kohl when you’re feeling all gypsy.

A little blocked up

A quick thought on writer’s block. Mystic Medusa described it well as having sudden endless energy for organizing dinner parties (amongst other things). Now I am not writing a novel here, just a few thousand words for a conference paper. ON something I want to write about. Nonetheless, watch me suddenly want nothing else but to knit – it’s as if all my long dormant knitting projects like buds on a winter tree have sprung into bloom and demand attention. All I can think about is stripes – stripy 8-ply on size 4 needles. Maybe ribbed scarves with tassels on a size 41/2, maybe mohair shawls, maybe learning how to knit a cardigan with a high waist in 50’s scarlet. Definitely finishing this teensy little kids jumper in orange, green and purples. I think I could knit happily for the next 6 hours. Watch me also suddenly need to sort out my diary. I am itching to paint on fabric. I want to loungerooom dance. I feel a strong desire to cook lentil soup and tidy my study. I almost made an urgent dash to buy terracotta pots for some potplant transplanting today – a few things became critically root bound and clearly just couldn’t wait even another day to stretch their toes into loose dirt. No of course not. It’s as if I can’t do this one thing until everything – and I mean everything! – else is happily actioned. I am like a cat trying to herd itself. A cat with an unnatural love of knitting.