Sea Green

Ephemera etc.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

wall flowers




I'm not sure if I've mentioned but I have been using the camera I bought earlier in the year to take photos of lots of random things I like. I take the camera with me most days and then, whenever I see a great example of one of the types of things I'm interested in at the moment, I take a shot. Gradually I am making a few photo essays of things I like in the City. So far these are:
- doorways & windows
- street art
- walls, lit differently, different types and colours of peeling paint
- signs

It is funny how once you pick one thing, any thing, to notice, you find the whole world littered with that thing, and you start to appreciate the wonderful variation and beauty in that thing. Granted, maybe having a wall fetish is a little more easily indulged than many others - they really are one thing you can bet on every single street you walk down in the city having!

Coming soon to a coffee table book/ wall/ blog near you. Or maybe not. But hey, it keeps me happy. Some doors below as a taster. I think walls are currently my fave though - so many dingey alley ways lit with settling arvo sun cutting across at angles, graffitti, shadows, sign posts and then up close there is layered paint worn smooth, like thick icing over an irregular cake, or crunchy and flaking, colours peeking through. Such great texture in decay.


Saturday, August 25, 2007

taxi!

Living in the city, and not driving, I have many occasions when I find myself in the company of taxi drivers. Especially when it's raining, I'm heading across town in some wacky way that trains and buses don't feel like going, or I'm running terribly late and am too lazy to walk. Anyway, not only do I catch taxi's from time to time, but I also enjoy many varied conversations with cab drivers.
(Inner West to Inner City suit bar, early Friday evening) taxi driver from Pakistan, tells me about his house hunting, the suburbs, the dillemas, the trade-offs.
(Late late one weekday night, heading home from work) taxi driver is very happy, has just won $1800 on the pokies, tells me his strategies, tells me how he shared the winnings with his mates, beams and actually gets the folded cheque out to show me.
(Home to city, early weekday morning, running late for a train to get to a workshop) driver asks me about my work, in detail, including my pay, my level of satisfaction, my qualifications, and whether I think this is a good field to get into. I omit key details so as not to disillusion him. I support his suggestion of part time distance mode study but don't tell him that I haven't managed to pull it off.
(Home to Inner City non-suit bar, Friday night) taxi driver asks me about computers, Macs, and quizzes me on their software applications, what works well what doesn't and what type of lap top he should buy. He laughs at other drivers' impatience and the whole idea of road rage.
In the past I have had taxi drivers tell me to drink hot water with lemon to help me lose weight, ask me about poetry, complain about the government payment system for drivers who pick up and drop off children with disabilities, invite me out for coffee, tell me about their other jobs in IT, their study, their philosophies of life, play favourite songs, call their partners on speaker phone to discuss dinner and arrangements with children without telling them they have a passenger, tell me stories about business women who work 14 hour days and sleep in the backseat on the way home snoring, tragic, such a waste of youth, and many other interesting tales.

I enjoy many random snippets of lore and logic, many 'slices of life' and many safe trips home thanks to the cab drivers of Sydney. Thank you all.

Statuesque


This is a statue in someone's bedroom, a statue by Howard Finster, American, 'Naiive'/ art brut type artiste. I was thrilled to see an actual piece in someone's house after having read about his work just a few weeks back (thanks to the copious number of library books I borrowed fron the art school library when doing the drawing course).

Angelene liked high places


Here is the view from my window, told you it was a good'un.

Studio scmoodio








Some 'before' pics showing the very empty and not yet inhabited space. Will show you when it's decorated too. Soon!

Friday, August 24, 2007

Saturday night and the music's bright and you're (downtown)

Oh weekends. Aren't they just full of the most lovely sense of promise? Friday snuck up on me this week. A one hour meeting turned into a 7 hour lock-in/workshop and before I knew it people were downing pens to farewell a colleague and the remaining list of things to do had only a scant few minutes to be attended to, woosh, without warning, Friday was over, and woosh, without warning the weekend was here.

And the weekend thus far has been stumbled upon half made random workmate plans (including giant games of 'Connect Four' in seedy bars, arcade games and nice rambling chats over tapas), plus nebulous sketched in possibilities for the days to come: a plan made last weekend, to buy a pasta machine and make ravioli for hours on end, a lingering need to buy furniture for my newly organised and very newly key owning studio space (yah!), an offer of Sat evening gals and craft and chat, a penciled in "rollerblading" to the diary on Sunday, with no actual plans made, calls made, emails sent to target people, to organise it.

I also have journal articles and a report to finish, that would benefit from a few hours, family to call, a squillion books to read, people to email, groceries to be bought, diaries to be frownned at, lists to be pondered over, life plans to be sketched in - but not urgently. With the lingering rain I may have clothes that need rescuing from the line and taking to the laundromat. I have day dreaming to do, a cat to pat, dishes to wash, bed to remake, cards to be written in and sent. Friday night is almost the best because I can hold these vague and sometimes incompatible possibilities in my hand as shifting 'maybe's', imagine for a second that I can do all of this, all punctuated with sleep-ins, with a relaxed feeling and no rushing. Aaaah.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Further reading

If you are looking for some online browsing of a Monday to entertain and amuse your brain I sugggest looking no further than 'Booklub' (www.booklub.blogspot.com - ahem, noting that I may need to confess to having a vested interest in the site and not being completely unbiased) as well as Tim Sinclair's online serial (listed under 'Buddies', left - just like a radio play only quieter), and some funky new links I've added to the sidebar - Alexone street art and design is very fun but make sure you turn the sound down on your pooter first if you are sitting in a public space and meant to be studying or woorking. I think the cheesey music is fun, but your colleagues may not agree. For the crafty types there are ever more funky things on Machen machen (http://machenmachen.wordpress.com/) to browse and wish you'd made on your weekend.

Whoops - looks like your tea break is over. Back to it.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Virtual drought breaks and I worry about dirty laundry (and Actual drought breaks all over clean washing)

I’ve gone a bit cold on blogging at the moment. It’s a combination of factors contributing, including lots of work on, which translates as many in-front-of-screen hours, a sense of unease about my motives for blogging (like me, look at me, approve of me), slightly aware that maybe it’s not a great idea to blog to all and sundry what you wouldn’t talk about to all and sundry, and feeling a bit self protective of the details of my life but not quite sure what else to write about if not that (’so, a man walks into a bar). Und so weiter..
So, a man walks into a bar.

I finished knitting my scarf last night – double rib, autumn colours, nice and soft, with good stretch and bounce. I’m thinking about adding tassles.

(I worked long hours last week, and struggled with feeling ‘poor me’ and on the other hand remembering ‘hey, you chose this, and in some ways, you made these hours by biting off too much, not being willing to scale back outputs, not delegating more’ and at the same time feeling ever so slightly terribly self-important and excited to be just caught up in the fabulous flow of events and thinking and deadline meeting. I really did work too much, and one night got a scant few hours sleep as a late night butted into a pre-out of the city workshop early start, and while my body came through with the goods needed to smile and think and facilitate for 3 hours, I felt like I’d been wrung out of zest and awakeness for a few days afterwards. Am finding I just don’t bounce back from nights with only a few hours sleep like I once did (who knew that at 31 you’d start to feel older?)
Don’t seem as good at this work-life balance thing as I might like, made harder by finding my work fascinating at times, and by feeling compelled to be good enough at everything I get handed, even when it’s new, out of my comfort zone or I do it with little support. My model is to immerse myself in it, try to do it to the level that I am happy with it, rather than what is actually required or what would be just good enough. I like to learn the nuances and how everything fits together and I find it almost painful to have to engage with a new set of ideas or field without getting to explore all the gaps and contradictions, the flows, the relationships between ideas. I hate the thought of skimming over or misinterpreting bodies of thought, I like to feel like I know them all the way through. This means I often feel anxious about new work until I’ve got to that level of understanding, means I work longer than I might, strictly speaking need to, and probably drives other people slightly batty at times. On the other hand I sometimes wonder how people can live with such patchy approximations and poorly thought out logic that they seem quite happy with.)

Had a very strong craving, which I followed up on, for tomato soup out of a can (well, heated on the stove as per the instructions, but originally out of the can) with grilled cheese on toast for dinner tonight.

(Family issues are rolling along as a constant companion these past weeks. It’s not anything urgent or right now, for the most part, just unpacking and understanding relationships and impacts, taking a good hard look at myself, and sometimes a less hard look at myself. Have read a range of family therapy texts, both those written for patients and those written for therapists, just to get a nice balance of perspectives. Sometimes thinking about this stuff brings things close to the surface and I feel quite tender and also despair at how much work I feel like I need to do to be the kind of person I’d like to be. Other times it feels relieving because I have words to describe the situations/s and feel less like I am just a fruit loop and instead am able to understand possible relationships between past factors and current ones, and also to know that other people have been in similar situations and made progress. Sometimes I cry and feel like I am just broken and will never be fixed, and on those days it’s hard to keep up appearances and go and be social and chatty at work, to keep things rolling along. Lots of work on boundaries and assertiveness amongst other fun stuff. And the more I do it the more I can see how poorly developed those skills are in me, and that can be really hard to deal with at times. On the up side, at least I’ve stopped worrying about whether my therapist likes me, whether he’s having an awful time having to listen to me, whether I’m telling him too much and whether it’s emotional baggage that will impact on his life, whether there’s a ‘proper’ way to do sessions and maybe I’m not doing it, whether I’m being selfish and self-serving by being there, and whether I’m just being attention seeking and melodramatic. At least now I do think, almost all the time, that it’s a hard but healthy thing to be doing.)

A man on the street facing a woman with a cockaspanial and another women patting the dog. The dog is ecstatic and both head and tail are wagging at the attention. Man says just as I walk past ‘I’m beautiful. I get washed twice a week’ and for a full beat I think ‘crazy man talking to these women’ then recalculate as the women laugh and he keeps on talking, realizing that he is the co-owner of the dog, and is speaking on behalf of the dog, in his sing song ‘girl’ and ‘dog’ voice.


[Act 1, Scene 1 – washing line, in the dark, while cat goes to the toilet in freshly raked compost]
Housemate: Well I don’t know about this rain they talked about.
Me: Nah, it hasn’t happened yet.
Housemate: It’s very still, there’s no wind to.. you know
Me: Yeah
Housemate:.. you know woosh it in, like ‘it’s coming’
Me: nah. Although there are clouds, quite high up. White.
Housemate: yeah.
Me: I hope it doesn’t though, this isn’t quite dry, I don’t want to bring it in yet.
Housemate: Nah.
[Scene 2 – five minutes later, inside, escalating sound reveals itself as steady rain beginning.]
Me: “…”

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Such a nice view, and other random observations

I really do have a very good view out of my window (out of my room which I call the treehouse, because from in it I can see tops of trees dotted around the neighbourhood). I can also see the city, surprisingly close, and water between us. The city is just a city as cities go, you know, the requisitive number of sky rises, the green tinted mirror front buildings that face the sun and ripen autumn colours as it goes down. Right now they are in that 'post-colour' moment, when the sky is a deep loaded grey blue, and the buildings have gone pale and golden. On one side, of this narrow strip of harbourside buildings, where the sun's rays still land on them, they are mirrored. Over there, the other end, it is already night, and there internal lights illuminate them.

I like the way that the city looks two-dimensional, a long row, a jagged skyline, and no evidence whatsoever that there is anything at all behind them. Like it's projected on a velvet drop. Like the fake towns constructed in every second Western Movie to outwit the baddies, and also, confusingly, in every single movie about making a Western Movie, but this time as prop that both the audience and the baddies are meant to think of as real buildings. Whataver, but you know the kind with their slanted wooden legs jutting out behind them, they are very iconic, non? If this city was fake it wouldn't be like that though, it would be holographic or printed on a giant fast turnaround printing press on some kid of light waterproof polyvinyl and hanging from lightweight scaff that a perfect nailed, coiffed events manager had sent up there with a bark and the wave of her hand.

You know, I was thinking about that notion of audiences for the things we make and do, I think it's such an interesting one.
I forgot to mention in my earlier post that for me the 'scribbling in notebooks phase' didn't end when the 'typing in blogland' began. The notebook reflections are much more private, and include questioning, list making, drawing, but if there was ever a clear sense that I have around what goes in where, the boundaries have blurred at times. It used to be clearer what was private private thoughts, and what was semi public private thoughts. I think maybe the incremental expression of self online can build up trust with the medium/audience, and you find yourself opening up a bit more, but despite that there is a degree of honesty, a shortcut of expression that I find easier in the notebook. Certainly I notebook in greater volumes than I blog. Of course, to what *end* we write for no-one but ourselves, and whether it is completely selfish wank or useful theraputic and processing tool I guess is a moot point.

I've heard people say 'they weren't really playing to the audience' about musicians, and I understand that some things are by their nature social, require a performer and an audience, and that both roles should be valued. I also tend to think 'yah, good on them' in the case of the musician above rather than 'selfish pratt'. I think sometimes the things we do just for ourselves, with no thought to what other people might want or like or prefer, just out of joy and reflection, can be lovely. Fashion is so fickle, but then popular art and street driven pursuits can be raw and beautiful. Oh phht, who knows. Maybe it's the thing of doing, without doing it initially for the audience or pandering to its possible preferences, and also being willing to share and enjoying sharing with the audience, that is the perfect mix. Anyway, all abstract notions that don't really affect my evening. Which is going to involve finishing a report, drinking wine and making pizzas. The concrete, useful things around which abstract thought floats.

A friend at work was describing what we do for a crust, trying to characterise it, and said that she thought reallly it was everyone else who makes the world go around - the person who bakes the bread, who delivers milk to the deli, who prints things and rents out DVD's, who fix things, and make things. Our work is all head stuff and at times can feel abstract and not all that useful (although it is, it is, really). Just a few steps away from day to day survival (although of course the reason we do it is because we think that sustainability is ultimately linked to survival and that some people are so busy with all the bread delivering they forget to think about how things connect and the collective implications of what we do). And sometimes I think 'is this job perfect for me because I think, think, think all the time.. or is it encouraging me to be more thinky when I would rather be a bit more feely?'. See - I even think too much about whether I think too much. Oh the irony!

And this leads me to go back to the messy desk thing. Merri Risa rightly pointed out that likely noone gives too hoots about whether or what or how I have decorated my desk at work, and yes, when I think about it, I know that everyone there is different and diverse in their own right, not buttoned up too tight, each with their own set of mess and clutter, and no-one has ever said anything to make me think that I am *too* messy or weird. But I feel weird. So that makes me think it only logical that others will think this of me too. I was talking to 'Bob'* mypsychotherapistcounsellordude and he told me about a workshop he went to where one person said 'look, I just have to say, I really think I'm the odd one out here' and the facilitator said 'ok, that's interesting, let's explore that. Is that how everyone else is seeing this?' and out it came that almost half the people in the room had been convinced that they solely were the odd one out - too different in their perspective, too ideologicallly outlying, too uncomfortable, not aligned strongly enough with the group, whatever. Himself included. He did then say as an aside 'well, it was a workshop of psychotherapists' with a smile and rising eyebrow and we both laughed. But I get the point. Just because I feel too messy, too thinky, too loud, too quiet, too colourful, too whatever, does not neccessarily mean that those things are real or a burning issue for me, or that they are strong characteristics that I should 'work on' - it could just be that the judgement I place on myself about those things, the worry about standing out, the worry about making other people uncomfortable, or of not being good enough, is the thing I need to change. LIke, instead of going to counselling and finding out what a fruitcake I am, I go to counselling and find out that if only I would stop worrying about being a fruitcake then i would be halfway to normal (or 'normal', your choice).

So what if my desk is decorated with pictures, and so what even if I worked somewhere ridiculous enough to think that was a problem (I don't), and so what even if people did think I was any of those things. What then? Why would that neccessarily be a reason to change? Obviously the answer is 'not neccessarily' and I guess that is the thing I am musing on at the moment.


Oooh - look there, the lights have gone down now, the city is glowering out of dark blue.

I was going to tell you about parties and katate kids and librarians refusing to choose, but that will have to wait till next time.


*Not his real name.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

You walk into a room with a pencil in your hand

Do you want to know when I first started writing? Not the essays of high school or the picture books before that but for myself, in spiral bound black covered note books. About 7 years ago. My mum gave me a blank sketch book to draw in and I wrote in it instead. It was perfect timing really, just before or just after my first significant, gut wrenching, life questioning breakup. At first I was actually self conscious about writing in it, about the ostentatious process of writing one’s thoughts, of the sheer white cliff of page without even a faint blue path for my pen. I soon got over that though, and the next hurdle was writing in public. As in me, on an aeroplane, scribbling from here to Melbourne, business man next to me says ‘you must really like writing’ and I look at him blankly and think what a stupid comment it is, on so many levels, and notice how uncomfortable I seem to have made him by the act of having something to write, continuously, for an hour. Then it was writing on trains (in my book on a train, I’m not talking black felt tip on vinyl seat backs) that made me feel outrageously exposed – just think, all those people walking down the aisle – anyone could read it! After living in the blue mountains and commuting for 9 months I am happy to say that writing in blank books became as comfortable as daydreaming out the window, as eavesdropping, as sleeping in public, as eating a late breakfast between Penrith and Central. Of course somewhere in there, around 2003 if memory and the archives here serve me, I also started blogging. At first I thought it was a ridiculous proposition, ‘like lazy email’ if memory serves me (but then I resisted text messaging for so long because I thought it spoke of a desperate need to not be alone in public spaces and was therefore contemptible, until I tried it myself, then realised it was fun and convenient. I am an obstinate luddite with a penchant for becoming the poster girl of the spurned technology, just a little later than most). Miss B actually set this blog up for me, as a going away present on my travels to Mexico. Which I didn’t use. Until a few months later when I found myself heading to Malaysia for work, and wanted to process my feelings about the move. I think that’s when it was. So blame Miss B for all this blabbing. Anyway, the rest, as they say…

So yes, then a blog became another place to write stuff. A far cry from the covert notebook scribblings of a shy commuter, these were out on display, knickers on European clothesline style, for all to see. The funny thing about blogging, as I have chosen to play it, is the indulgence of almost universally subjective, personal and whim driven reflection. Where are my well thought out political articles? Not here. Where is my witty reparte? Maybe down the back of the couch – have you looked? Where is my beautiful well-crafted romantic poetry? Oh somewhere back in the late 1700’s, seriously, who has time now for any kind of pentameter? According to my recent reading of Virginia Woolf in ‘A Room of One’s Own’, I take it that the self indulgent writer explores the frustrations of their own life in print only at the expense of making burning, glorious timeless prose. That many women poets and novelists would have been far better if only they’d put aside their own angst at the status quo, their own misery, and instead focused on the universal human experience, like, for example, Shakespeare. Shakespeare didn’t whinge and moan about the pain of being a writer or the issues he had with his in-laws or the way his itchy breeches held him back from worldly exploits. Oh no, he put all his boring mundane life shit to one side and got down to the business of crafting cracking good stories, inventing squillons of new turns of phrase (was that one of his?) and making poignant, funny, high jinxing characters. With pathos. And kings and blood and wars and doublecross thrown in for good measure. So she reminds us. But then I think, Ginny, you my dear are the one who died with pebbles in your pockets – a fat lot of good your glittering prose did you. Perhaps you should have considered a little self indulgent whingeing now and then? But that is unkind. Meanwhile I feel pangs of guilt over the idea that while I do have a Room of My Own(ish) and make an independent living(ish, if you call working for the Man, even with a coffee machine and flex time, independent) nonetheless I am not picking up where Jane Austin left off, or even emulating Virginia – not crafting some beautiful gift for future generations, no, I am just thinking out loud into some kind of strange electronic medium which only exists down wires and on panes of glass backlit by tiny particles hurtling down other wires. Spooky. And I do this with the hope that ‘better out than in’ applies to all sorts of bodily functions, and that also somehow, just the act of honesty (as best we can do it, biased and self interested as we are – that is, I am) is a gift, and that somewhere someone might read just one passage and feel less alone, feel less strange, feel somehow reconnected to the documented range of human experience, and therefore not so alone.

Aah, yes, so in that vein, I began this post wanting to tell the whole sorry tale of my family woe. I got off the phone to a loved one with wrenching sobs and felt like it would be cathartic to list off all the strange features of my family, explain to you exactly how exhausting it has been these last few years supporting my parent in a difficult situation, how unemotionally supported I felt as a child and young person. I wanted to take one winter dry finger and trace it back down the generations that I can see, and show you some of the limps that begat limps, show you the context that make me understand why these people have their particular sensitivities and wounded gaits. I wanted to roll up my pant leg and show you mine. I want to say ‘and what about.? That wasn’t normal was it?’. I want to say ‘and then I had to teach myself how to...Now can you see why things are hard for me?’ and have you nod in sympathy, maybe strain my ears for a few oohs and aahs and clucks. But now, after writing, I feel somewhat better, I am no longer sobbing, I have told myself a story and distracted myself, I have bought some time of calm concentration to let the rest settle, I have stemmed this desire to peg each incident on taut wire between these two crumbly buildings that are you and I.

So thankyou, for coming with me. For sometimes seeing the washing and not being scandalized by it, for going ‘yep, that be a pair of knickers fairly waving in the breeze’ and at other times seeing the empty line and me staring at the window for clouds.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing

Sometimes at work I wonder about this thing of image and what we present to the world of our professional selves. Being professional, the whole notion of professionalism as I see it promoted and acted out in the world of office work (assuming for a minute that all ‘office work’ has this notion of professionalism running through it like a thread, and that this is in common regardless of the content or exact nature of the work / budget / culture of all these workplaces), is about restraint, consistency and of selective showing of self. Many parts of our lives and inner lives are not ok for expression in offices, or while we do the work we do in offices. There is a particular sanitized, pastel, predictable pantomime about it all. A clean and nice fiction that we co-create.

Asexual, abiotic, we in meetings are not people who shit and burp and crave and cry and have wild dreams in the night. We are not the same people who were born through blood and pale clotted lard cream, purple, wailing, wondrous into the world by some kind of magical Russian dolly conjuring, part of eternity. No. We are groomed and smiling and polite and rational. We are timed, and measured and wrapped in neat wool and polycotton, buttoned up. We stay here, 7, 8, 9, 10 hours through the most of our days and don’t disappear without explanation. Or scream and groan. Or bite each other or pat each other or cradle sadness in our arms. We stay here, being busy, saying very little of what we might think about where else we might rather be or who else with. We say very little about extreme feelings of joy or fear or uncertainty. We rarely speak honestly, if honest means telling the all of what we are. Expect in those rare moments where all this rest disappears and we are consumed with the excitement of thinking, are preoccupied with the doing of tasks, in those rare moments we are honest in our expression – honestly being rational, committed, neat professionals. Is this what we aspire to? Do we act out so tidy because we wish we were? As if all this professionalism is in training for the day when we might wake up and be happy to be these people living the lives our heads have made up for us.

And why have I been wondering this in particular this week? Today I looked at the images I have stuck to my pinboard at work and thought maybe they were too diverse, too messy, too personal. Scribbled drawings by children and monster drawings by me, and art postcards and landscapes, and close ups of animals and hand printed postcard from Vietnam – it looked somehow too messy, too eclectic. I was wondering whether I should trim down my expression at work, to those things on topic. Tidy, streamlined, professional. You see my problem is I know what it looks like, this thing of being a sensible professional tidy grown up, I can see where and how I’m not it. That gap isn’t yet something I’ve entirely accepted, nor do I mind enough to try and close it.

Friday, August 03, 2007

what can you say?

And I thought my family was disfunctional - holy shit. Do you ever read stories like this and think 'has the world entirely, one hundred percent gone mad?'? I can't help but wonder, in no particular order:
- what 44 year old lives in an apartment in his parents back yard?
- why would you laugh when someone's cat dies?
- how on earth could you feel enough rage to bang not one, but two people, over the head in succession enough times to kill them?
- imagine being a someone who's recently started seeing smoeone for family conflict counselling, sitting down to a cup of tea Monday morning, opening the newspaper and reading:

Man kills parents over dead cat remarks
Friday Aug 3 15:32 AEST
A man who specialised in family conflict killed his parents with an axe when they laughed at him over the death of his cat.
Stephen Alexander Harper, 44, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court in Launceston on Friday to the murders of Roderick Alexander Harper, 88, and Helene May Harper, 77.
Prosecutor John Ransom told the court that Stephen Alexander Harper, 44, of east Launceston, had been living in a flat behind his parents' home when he committed the crimes on August 30 last year.
Mr Ransom said Harper, a counsellor who specialised in family conflict, had snapped when his parents laughed at him over the death of his cat, and had repeatedly hit them both over the head with an axe.
The case has been adjourned until the end of August for sentencing.
AAP

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Fast then slow then fast again

I am exploring the edges of busy and not busy enough at the moment. I have returned from work to have a flurry of new projects, with lots of tight deadlines in parallel, new things to learn, and lots of new relationships to manage. I kind of like it. I’ve barely had time for existential angst at all, and for a few days there I felt incredibly on my game (is that the phrase?) – you know, ‘in flow’, where things just move from one to the other, fast, instinctively, with lots of making it up as you go along, lots of sensing and doing rather than stewing, second guessing, prevaricating. I like that. But then this busy thing can go to far – too far where the number of balls in the air suddenly doubles and you start to feel stressed because you know it can’t all get done. Or when one little thing goes wrong (hello email glitch) and then ones finely woven delicate web of linked tasks all happening beautifully becomes just a sticky tangle with dead flies in it. Or something. I also notice that the more I juggle in one realm, the less overall balance I seem to be able to maintain – like working long hours happily to get things done, but then forgetting to buy cat food late on the way home and being greeted in the morning with a distraught little black cat who thinks that dry biscuits for breakfast is the same as being abandoned, and proceeds to wail to the heavens, singing librettos of pain about it (a hangover from when he was a stray or not loved much, I think, in his early years before we met). (Oh, and he also sent a stream of vomit down the spiral staircase, through the air and onto the floor below – that was a fairly stout registration of dissatisfaction. I think he ate too quickly when I came back from the shops with a can of something flaked in something gravy this morning, relief and desperation acted out in the wolfing down of breakfast.) So I can tend lovingly to a few handfuls of deadlines or tasks, but I then tend less lovingly to the living things in my life. But this is not entirely black and white: on the up side, when busy I feel energized and want to make plans, quickly, decisively, and feel happier about seeing people. Happiness begets more happiness. Also, like my friends with kids have said – it’s amazing what you can get done in short amounts of time if you only get short amounts of time to do things – you become very efficient.

But then, as well as fast, I have started doing yoga again, and have really enjoyed deep moments of lingering slowness. I love an activity that involves little periods of lying on a mat in public, having a little rest on the floor. Just like nap-time in kindergarten, which I think I’ve always missed. I love all the movement too, all the stretch and balance and the delicious kind of achey muscles that come afterwards, the kind where you are constantly reminded that you are in a body as you move around. And, for me, a great sense of togetherness with other people but with clear boundaries, quiet, peaceful, respectful, calm – no intrusions into my space, and a shared sense of trust as we give up doubt and control and choose to defer to someone more experienced who cares about our wellbeing to lead us temporarily. I find quiet time so much more delightful for sharing it with others. I love the kind of silence that comes from people being together and choosing a thoughtful silence, it has a different timbre altogether to the pristine empty of people kind, with just your own thoughts echoing around an empty landscape. Shared silence feels very warm I think.

And, seeing as this might be the only post I get to this week, a quick update on other life details:
- Studio space is confirmed! Yep, you heard right, I finally made a decision and actually said yes, paid the bond etc. The lease is lengthy and involves getting guarantors, which feels very official and scary (I am such a baby) but I am doing it anyway. Every time I think about 4x2 metres of my own to set up with jars of brushes, inspiring images, to decorate, to use and be messy in, I smile. The space has amazingly high ceilings, white walls and good sinks, is in an industrial area with a pub nearby – everything you’d want from a converted warehouse collective studio space. I feel like I’m dreaming.

- I’m still seeing Bob the counselor. This being in therapy business is a time consuming and expensive endeavour, I am finding, and also exhausting at times. I suddenly need to consider my own actions far more objectively, and take responsibility for not only staying in touch with my family (when a lot of my coping mechanisms so far have been to not be in contact), and trying to behave differently around them, but at the same time not expecting them to do anything differently necessarily. To hold accountability and love and forgiveness and hope all in one hand can be a big job, sometimes I drop one or two, and find myself wanting to sermonize or judge, want to explain historic ills and get them to see the error of their ways and most of all just to be different to what they are.

The books I’ve been reading are interesting though, because they focus on families as living systems, and look at the connections between behaviours: this is quite useful in having a model that moves away from blame – it suggests that people don’t do things just to shit you or because they woke up wanting to be mean or thoughtless, they are behaving in certain ways because they are trying to reduce their own anxiety, even if the habitual ways of behaving no longer serve their interests well, or are vestiges from previous stressful situations they are no longer in. This approach suggests that we all get into patterns together but even one person changing their responses can change those patterns. Anyways, without wanting to regurgitate family psychology popular press at you, I think a key thing I’m realizing is that for me, I’m not ‘angry about my childhood’, but am trying to become aware of some of the no-longer useful behaviours I picked up as a result of my childhood and se if I can change those. Being able to say no to things is really difficult for me, for example, because I felt so strongly that other people’s happiness depended on me supporting them, which at the time it kind of did. It makes sense for a small child to adapt to their situation in whatever way helps them fit in to the family around them, it makes less sense to automatically continue those adaptations into adulthood. So my task is to change those habits in me.

Was that all a bit ‘Dr Phil’? Sorry.

What else?
- On saturday co-bought a basketball with a friend from work (half each, to ensure we don't forget it under our beds, because we have the added incentive to share it) and went to shoot hoops in the open courts in a busy area off the main street in our neighbourhood. Felt a bit dorky next to all the behooded and besneakered young men up the other end, but they were cool, benignly ignored us, and I like to think were secretly amazed at our uncanny ability to get the ball in the hoop, despite our casual happy go lucky beginners approach. It was so much fun, we laughed heaps and both commented later that the suspension of thought beyond 'catch', 'throw','mmm, nice sun on skin', 'catch' was refreshing. Colleague commented that physical activities are probably especiallly important for us because our work is so head based - basically we just get paid to think stuff up and then write about it - the thinking never stops, even when you're in the kitchen making tea you are trying to nut out the best way to...phrase, capture, compare, communicate, explore, isolate, benchmark... etc. and the topics are always chaging, there's always a brand new area to plunge into, new people to work with, contexts to understand...sometimes you go backwards and forward on the same idea or minutae for hours. churn churn churn go the cogs. Badly played basketball seems like the perfect counterweight, or at least one of many. Love the idea of regular Saturday morning hoop shooting before brekky in a cosy café.

Tho am a little worried that I am slowly morphing into an early twenties hip hop wanna be – note the strong love of hanging in the hood with my homies, blogging, strange obsession with street art, including the very humble and child drawn which I am photographing here and in vietnam, stenciling tshirts with funny little monsters on them, shooting hoops, playing soccer, making little art projects with my friends, starting work on a zine – seriously I think I’ve gone back to being a teenager, only a happier teenager, with less love of alternative metal or gothica and more room for folk, and better skin …

That was slow - aaah - written with cofffee and cat. Must go be fast again.