Performance review

The leaves drop, the sky gets colder and warmer, the party invites die down and ramp up, the annual performance review lands in your diary when you least expect it - the signal for the office worker that the year is swinging back one full orbit later to where it started.

Performance review time is when you realise that you, despite appearances, are still in school, and that worse, your income is now tied to your report card.

Performance review even sounds funny. It sounds like some horrible mix of:
- people with clipboards watching you have sex
- a critic hiding up the back of the opening night of the play, ready to give a low down in the morning papers
- some boffin making a graph about German technology and how it handles corners

As a result I just can't shake this strange feeling like I should be reflecting on how often, when and for how long I reached orgasmic states (metaphorically speaking) throughout the year, and with which project partners; that I should be ready for criticism about how well I stayed in character, and whether my lines were convincing; and producing stats about myself and how I gripped through bad weather. Hmm.

In actual fact, I recognise that the PR (let's just call it) is in fact about PR. It is the quick, half hour ad-version retelling of your year, with shiny teeth and happy face, to keep your customers on board. To up your margins. Which is really boring.

I think I am one of those modern (postmodern? post-post modern?) types who in fact longs for the confession. Hopes that God exists just so there's someone objective to muse with at the end of life over a cup of tea about the intricacies of life and query about whether organic chick peas from Italy really were better or worse than locally grown full chem beanies. Whether you really should have phoned your grandma more often, or whether that was just gender steretypes, guilt and convention. Whether it was fear or courage that compelled you to make all your major life decisions. Whether you were a good person. And other such moral conundrums. So in the mean time, invests any opportunity for review with all the earnest reflection they can muster. What's that? Trip to the hairdresser, best confess using supermarket product! What's that? Performance review? Better tell them honestly everything I did well and didn't this past year - including all the things I didn't enjoy, all the areas I think I could improve in, and all my suggestions for changing the systems. Just in the hope of coming to an accurate picture of who I am, as much as anything. And try to see whether my perspectives mirror others.

Oh yeah, and try to get a pay rise.

Sisa: re-use, collaboration and cultural activism from Indonesia

"Sisa is the Indonesian word for 'remains' or 'leftovers.' Located somewhere between folk art, design, and public intervention, much of this work generates new forms of expression from the rejection of hyper-consumption and over-development.

This exhibition focuses on the issues associated with artistic output in the collaborative settings of Indonesian environmental activism. Many of the artworks here were not designed for display in galleries, and have been brought together specifically for an Australian audience. They are hybrid images and objects that include research, documentation and ongoing projects, bringing understandings of contemporary Indonesian politics beyond what is presented in mainstream media."

Interesting exhibition on and some talks to go with it this Friday, at UTS in downtown Sydney.

http://www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au/gallery/upcoming/

Part of the Gang 07-08 festival:

http://www.gangfestival.com/introduction.html

what is it about the smell of frying onions?

So good.

Election results in by the way, change of government. Should feel more happy about it than I do, I guess. Can't help but feel a little sad for the person leaving, though not my cup of tea policy wise, figure it must be such a strange feeling to be voted out of your job and have the voting telecast to the whole country. I wouldn't like that much. And have to stay magnanimous about it and not should 'you've all made a terrible mistake, we were the better party, you'll be sorry!!' which I imagine is what anyone leaving power is actually thinking. But, that aside, it is nice to have a whiff of change, a gust of slightly more left leaning policies. Will be interesting to see how the recently switeched voters feel about the new government and whether their aspirations for economic conservatism coupled with pro-workers rights pans out. Yah to climate change being more on the agenda, and education, and hospitals. Yah to having a woman in the deputy role (so sad that that should seem noteworthy). Still something about politics in this country that feels to me less than visionary, feels stale, feels driven by oneupmanship, feels dominated by tidy lego haired smiling older men, that makes me think 'hhm, we'll see'. This tepid response despite my head going 'no really, this will be better'. Blasphemously feeling like politics doesn't have much to contribute to the personal journey at the moment, and that the personal journey is a really important one. I realise that makes me sound like a self-serving self-absorbed ingrate, when I live in a reasonably well functioning democracy where I am given the privilllege of influencing the outcomes. Maybe it's post purchasing dissonance?

Anyone else not feeling as excited about it as much as they thought they would?

Electionista

Well here we are on election night (those of us in Australia that is), and as the ballot counters take stock and let us know what tone the next few years will have for federal politics, I am making lasagne, thinking about stuff, and feeling very ovulatory (is that a word? If not, what is the word for how you feel when you ovulate?), with heightened sensations, everything feeling charged and slightly erotic. Perhaps it's the political charge of possibility, perhaps it's the full moon, maybe it's hormones, probably it's all this and more. This afternoon I trailed through my suburb, enjoying one of those kinds of weekend days where you have no agenda except to have no agenda. Where doing anything is fine, in the name of whimsy and rejuvenation. I did dishes and took great pleasure in wiping cupboards clean. I had a leisurely breakfast at home, squeezed organic oranges to make juice, drank tea. I read a new zine I bought in Melbourne. I thought about art and hope. I thought about sex. I thought about dinner.

I had this hankering for making fresh lasagne, with the newishly acquired pasta maker I bought. I thought about the silky sheets of fresh pasta that I could use to layer between vegies. Ithought about roasted roma tomatoes and basil. So I wandered to the vegie shop to pick up some semoline flour and other bits. I bought a cheese, 'pepato' which is smelly and tangy and delish. I bought watercress that is so big as a bunch that it spilled out over the top of my cloth bag, and is peppery and I might make into a pesto, or maybe float in stock and swim ravioli in it.

I wandered into a little art gallery, stumbled across three very cute animated films by college of fine arts students, mixed media, claymation type, jerky, with blunt australian voiceovers, funny small stories. I peered at shiny oils and tall jagged scultures. I wondered about striking silver pendants. I had a quick sneaky late afternoon coffee in one of my fave bookshop cafes. Served by an incredibly clear eyed curly blonde haired barista, frank, wide eyed, and in my current mood, electrically sexy. He looked a little like some renaissance cupid grown tall and lanky and cool-seeking, but not quite having grown out of the clear vista of life in the clouds. I worry that my hormones are like some prank-loving friend standing behind you in a photo aping to the camera while you try for sophisticated and reserved up front, some inate contradiction. I sip my coffee in a nice corner on a cushioned stool, with plants and graffiti and wooden bookshelves all in eyesight, I read more of my zine, almost finish it, try not to slip into morose feelings along with the narrrator in his trainspotting-esque mattress on floor existence.

I walk home and see people, people with dogs, in cars, holding children, dragging children by unwilling wrists, siting on milk crates drinking beer with two friends, people talking meanly with spit to people not there, people dressed up and out, people holding a wrappped present in a hand streaming beside them as they look for a taxi. The sun drops and the clouds are pink-blue and peep out illuminated between the jagged squares of blocky row houses, criss crossed in black telegraph wire - just like some old painting but drawn over now with angled modern scrawl. Beautiful.

the jet set

Today I flew back (flap flap go my wings) from Melbourne to Sydney after a day of work and then a day of not-work. So glad I took a day off afterwards; at first I wasn't going to, but then I realised it would be relaxing to have a day to just do nothing, but do it elsewhere. I had fairly low expectations in terms of 'activities' and figured wandering about a little, and maybe sitting in cafes would be a goood use of the time. As it panned out I hooked up with a friend who is (recent) local who was happy to guide through the sites, and ended up doing a range of my favourite things things - went to the library! (and saw high vaulted several story high domed ceiling in the ornate and serious reading room), looked at laneways and street art, went to an exhibition about the history of a particular shared artists studio space that flourished last century in the City of Melbourne (complete with completely gorgeous B&W pics of the artists in smocks and cloche hats, suits, with giant painting palattes, all painting marble nudes, and the space decorated with shawls and antique vases, just divine), went to the zine shop. All with good company to boot, yah. Flew back exhausted, not enough sleep while away, slept deeply the whole way back, with only the slightest self-consciousness as I lent towards my besuited aisle companion and worried that I might snugggle into the shoulder of a complete stranger in my sleep.

Reminds me that I don't think I did a blog-based shout out to my friend Guitarboy, who recently popped by the Emerald City on his way to Europe for a work trip, and squeezed in a night out in my local(ish) pub and indulged in some nice vego Indian and chat and partook of our sofa-bed before jet setting early the next morn. Yah to him for winning competitions in his field that result in being sent away! He works hard and it's great to see him getting some recognition and perks. Apparently it snowed in Germany while he was there, nice!

Sorry, sure there's more I could write, but a couple of red wine's, sleep deficit and end of the week result in me needing me to limit this to a brief low-down, followed by a hot shower and some shut eye. Ciao bellas!

Total football

Yes, I am watching a football – soccer - show. Why? Because the interviewees are somehow less grating than rugby or Aussie rules types, and frankly, more handsome. And nicely accented. It’s kind of droning, good background, suitably boring, suitably eye candy, their voices blend together as some kind of blanket for me to sip tea to, as I slump down the couch, hearing complex discussions about Beckham’s football career. Kind of strangely peaceful. Or is it just that I’m so tired from a long day interstate for work, washed out from the early start and intense prep, and phone link ups and cramming, exam-like, for presentation on topics that I know – don’t I – but had forgotton, or detail that seemed overwhelming, but now it’s over, seems manageable, simple, know-able. Easy! And I think it went well, because they all smiled and asked good questions and said nice things about our capabilities and reputation (erm, not mine, the organisations). But now I just need droning soccer, spicy tea and maybe spicy snacks – replacing vital fluids and salts after a little brain triathalon.

In fits and starts

So.. it's Saturday night and I go to the studio. It's been a fortnight, and despite my best dreamt up plans the week before I completely fail to morph some amazing pre-work, just as the sun rises along with the bakers and joggers, regular weekday stint that results in my breezing into the office freshly showered and deinked, with swinging hair and demure office clothes, like some kind of superhero who has mastered the art of the quick change, the being in two places at once, the slide back into daily life and no-one will even notice. Yes, that is exactly what I didn't manage to acheive. So Saturday night I go, a nice blank Saturday night free of plans - and I do monster stencils. Now, just quickly, before I launch into my story (such that it is), let me reasure you that I do not intend to write every time I go to the studio, and share, in minute detail my every pencil sharpening, desk moving, self-conscious, paper shuffling, chair carrying detail. I promise. And soon, I hope, it wont even feel strange and slightly scary, it will feel like a home away from home, and I wont talk about it any more than I talk about, erm, like, work, or the corner cafe, or sweeping leaves in my garden, or whatev. But bear with me for now while it is strange and new, I need extra processing help, and this is where I get that (oh so much cheaper than therapy :). So. Yes, stenciling. But maybe 4 stencil prints in, I get bored. Not of being there, not an 'oh where is the action, take me to a party with fireworks and dancing ponies' kind of bored, but an 'oh but I just printed that and I don't want to do it anymore' kind of bored. So I did some hand painting onto fabric instead, little bird women and sad business men, and accusing hip cats and little machine heads. I figured I could cut them out and hem them, maybe zig zig, and stitch them onto t-shirts instead. It's a lot less wasteful, because you can unpick and reattach a patch when the t-shirt gets old and tatty, and when I print, I'm less likely to f-up a whole garment with an ink blob and have to artfully cover it up, or not use it. Also I was using some very funky old printed sheet fabric, so was recycled. So once I start painting and playing with washes and bleeding (paint not me), and a glass or two of red wine (welll it was Saturday - I know it's not very OH&S but I wasn't using any sharp objects), I happily whiled away 4 or 5 hours. I hoped that by going when it was all quiet and empty I could make a mess and settle in, relax and do what I would have previously done in my kitchen, and then next time it would be that little bit more settled feeling.

I must sound like a giant wimp. I guess I am. I do find the experience of creeping out on a limb and doing something new especially hard when I feel like there is an audience. And having an open space (only 2 walls), being surrounded by other people with stronger conviction, history and idenitification with what they're doing there ("I'm Berryl, I do glass." "I'm Jamie, I paint. My gallery is in melbourne"), is terrifying. Maybe I am more scared of things than most people? Some people?

I have to remind myself that the job I'm in now, when I first started (almost 2 years ago) was terrifying. The people were so nice, and competent, and the work covered such wide ranging areas, some of which I knew nothing much about at all, I felt all at sea for literally months. I felt like I had no reference points, like I had no idea whether I was doing ok or badly, whether I'd managed to get my head around a brand new topic and was asking insightful, useful questions, or whether I was missing the fundamentals. The first time I went OS with work this year, I felt like I had so much new to concentrate on in such a short period of time that I couldn't get my bearings - there were new people with politics and motivations and dynamics to figure out, cultural codes and mores that I was having to guess, heat and noise that made me tired, money that came in denominations so bafflingly large I felt like I was doing complex calculations just to work out how much tiny things cost - etc. ie I was overwhelmed, anxious and self-conscious. Then of course baffled that my colleague wanted me to accompany him again, more than once, and told me how good I was to work with. But it is often like that - I do something new, feeling like I have probably fucked it up or missed something important, worried that maybe I am terribly out of my depth, but battle along anyway, and then later, a lot later, realise I did OK, and eventually, maybe, realise that I did better than OK, and that other people all along thought I was doing really well (and that they thought I was terribly confident because I am oustpoken). So, the actual point to all that was - in a way this history is a good thing, because it gives me hope that this will be the case again. I can say to myself "It's OK, you're just scared because it's new. Eventually it will feel familiar and you'll feel good about the fact that you stuck with it and have progressed. This has happened before, remember?" Judging by my experience in my day/office job, I figure I'm usually about 6-12 months ahead of my self-confidence, so maybe after half a year of turning up and doing it I'll sigh in relief and realise that it's all fine. Or maybe a few more Saturday nights will fast track it for me.

And 'if money was no object' (as per our 'if I won lotto' chat with MMG, as a useful tool to help clarify your priorities)? Would this juggling act stilll be a problem for me? Would I quit my day job and do something else? Likely not I reckon. I would still wonder about the best way to use my hours, for the maximum 'good', whilst being most satisfying also for me, letting me be my most happy and relaxed. I would wonder about 'head' versus 'heart' versus 'hand' and think that maybe I think too much and should do something more passionate instead - and proceed to go ahead and think a lot about thinking too much. I would worry about whether social justice causes are a better use of my time than environmental ones. I'd oscillate from thinking I should just devote my time to spiritual practice to become an amazingly well rounded peaceful, loving, kind person, to thinking I should get involved with a squillion exciting and community projects like doing art classes for women prisoners, or low maintenence native garden rennovations for seniors who want to stay living at home, or tutoring disadvantaged kids out west who are in distance learning, or helping stressed office folk to relax and make things. Or maybe go work on orangutan habitat presevation in Indonesia. Or maybe the workers' and indigenous rights capmaigns in Chiapas. Or maybe being a bepaintsmattered artist, trying to draw out the living pulsing bloody red core of our beings on canvas, Truth and Passion. Or maybe licking the tip of my slender HB and pencilling an elegant, artful, beautiful shadow play of a paper about some whimsical theory or unexpected juxtaposition of ideas as I sit surrrounded by the white and pale of sheaths of manuscripts, and books reclining and surrendering their milky tea pages to me. Or forgetting any concern about big picture helping, and instead figuring out how to help my family, how to help mend broken relationships, make up for lost time, help people feel loved and nurtured who haven't had that. Or pick one of the above to do part time and also be able to play in the sun with my little brother and have my heart feel all happy and wonderfully sad as he says something so earnest and honest and raw as only 3 1/2 year olds can. And maybe grow a lemon tree and feed chickens, and have a house with walls I could paint deep red, or funny light green. I don't think winning lotto would solve any of my big questions, it just means I could muse over them while looking fetching in a Prada jacket if I so desired.

Bower

I take the longest walk home ever, via the bookshop, via the Indian takeaway, via the window of another bookshop, via a stop and stare at the screaming fight taking place between two thin young women hunched and teeth bared in school uniforms across the road from each other, via the pub, for a lemon lime and soda sipped demurely from the couch, while old men with sad eyes talk across tables about gravy and mash, about $2 schooner pubs, via the fruit shop for avocado, via a browse at the flower shop, to home. With the heat of summer against my black pant legs making me think of sunglasses and hats and wondering what happened to my sun hat and whether I will make a stand against crows feet with an investment in giant sunglasses, or whether I will continue to look up sideways through squint eyes at the glare of summer. The lime I chewed on at the end of my drink gives me a bitter fresh taste in my mouth, and provides the background to my other sensations – like sweat and glasses slipping slowly down my bridge; like the dry ends of my hair catching my eyes and making me feel dried out and messy; like the heavy rub of my bag full of books and mangos weighing against my fingers.
I walk and feel things, I bring them back like a bower, and I line the nest of my thinking with them.

tell-a-vision

It's not a very nice vision really is it?

Do you think in a few years time the only shows on tv will be endless crime shows - of all the different genres, plodding pint drinking English and Scottish types that sit along the spectrum of quaint to hard boiled, and the American ones with fast talking people in blow dried hair, snazzy suits or lab coats, light hearted office banter in between autopsies and mass shootings. It's so obvious it barely warrants saying, but maybe for that reason is worth saying - tv is so violent these days. Do you think it's disturbing just how many serialkillers-aggreivedexes-abusedchildren-drivebyshootings-detailedforensics we watch? And not so much that we watch, but that we don't feel anything, as all this brutal violence runs past our eyes, we eat our dinners and iron our work shirts, as more violently ended lives are uncoverted in alleys and pools of blood. I mean, I feel conflicted myself, I like to read a good detective novel every now and then, and have sampled and at times enjoyed, the full array of crime-porn on teve myself. But really.

Oh, that and 'make me famous please' reality tv shows with or without winning recorddeals-farmerhusbands-suitcases of money. I swear, if things keep going the way they are, all you'll be able to watch are 17 year old emo popstar wannabes singing intight jeans, or 6 year olds being brutally murdered and blow dried barbie women drinking takeaway coffee and flirting with their dark eyed brooding gun toting FBI partner as they hunt down the killer.

Interspersed every few minutes with manically happy cereal eating, car driving, clothes washing, mobile phone using, striped shirt wearing families who are neither aspiring to be popstars nor in danger of becoming brutalised corpses. Strange world.

Bend and stretch

Went to yoga today, it's a more dynamic form of the one I usually do, with a different teacher. You know, one thing I really like about yoga, apart from the obvious stretchiness, relaxation, quietening that inner monolgue, feeling balance and enjoying a muscle workout, is being like a kid in a class again. What I mean is that you sit, eyes to front, often cross legged, having no idea of what is about to come, but feeling happy and excited about having a new task to do which will be challenging, but fun, like a game, and you absolutely trust the teacher to lead you through. It's a lovely feeling.

cabbage pot, kids

Betty Sue, you are like Margaret Fullton with your, err, sage, domestic advice, but verily funkier in a hand printed funky skirt and leafing through a well thumbed copy of a little known Polish playwright. I should have checked again before I went ahead and ad-libbed. But never fear, I will be trying out the spicy cabbage next vegie box (are cabbage and potatoes like the only vegies that are around every season, or does it just feel like that? :). Meanwhile I put a few large outer leaves to one side, chopped the rest and added it pumpkin, sweet potato, potato to make soup. The large leaves I steamed in the soup broth, then wrapped them around a mix of cooked basmarti rice with steamed spinach, sultanas, minced textured vegetable protein, garlic, hot paprika, cinnamin and olive oil to make cabbage rolls. Then baked them. Amazingly they worked a treat. Served them with a hot tomato and basil sauce. Pine nuts would have been good, but my pantry clean out didn't uncover any, and I was too lazy to walk down the road to get some, and hey, it was good anyway.

MeriRisa, I've used silken tofu in a potato bake recently, mixed with garlic and a bit of sea salt, worked quite well as a non dairy sauce/binder thing, just spooned on in between tatie layers. I think you can also use it to make dips and sauces and things, and in deserts. Amberguity has a bevvy of vegan cookbooks if you want to have a flick through next time you're around. Very few seem to involve carropt, sprouts or tempeh, so it's not too scarily reminiscent of a 1970's healthfood shop.

The temple of earthly delights

Just hanging out here on a saturday night at home, contemplating some of the small mysteries. Why is it that just tomato and garlic together in a pan roasting can smell so good? How exactly do weavils get into everything - and if they chew through plastic to get into bags of polenta (just for example) do they spit or swallow the plastic on the way through? How do you know when your spice collection is stale? Will I really reuse that empty glass maple syrup bottle that I've just washed out and take it to a food co-op for refilling with something else?

As you may or may not have pieced together, I am in fact cooking, and celaning out my shelf in the pantry. Which, with music and flowers, and nice smells, colourful clutter, a cold beer, and thoughts of the day, is rather lovely.

Have been thinking about food choices, as I grabbed my housemates 'vegan cookbook', looking for something exciting to do with cabbage, and then had a moment of thinking 'ooh, lookee here - my vegan housemate is away and nonetheless I'm cooking vegan by choice' - which was interesting. That moment when something you had been doing for one reason you now wonder if you do for another reason. which is not to say that I think vegan is the answer to all the ethical food woes a modern diet faces, as per a converstaion with a friend last week about his concerns about monocultures of soy being a horror habitat-wise, but I personally am happy to eat less dairy, and to cut down on eggs to the few-times-a-year 6-pack. And what I mean by happy, is 'happier'. As in, feeling more satisfied that my life reflects what I think and my values, and is not driven just by habit and convention. (Not to go into an anti-dairy rave here, I love marinated fetta and blue cheese as much as the next gal, and continue to eat them, but in a nutshell also do kind of think that drinking something made for baby animals all your life through adulthood is kind of weird. And I don't like knowing that I contribute to large scale factory farming).

Other food musings relates to the vegie box I've been getting delivered. Is not quite the same as walking, basket in hand, to the local farmers market a few times a week for freshly picked, dew-studded produce, or cycling to the food co-op to to have social contact and be part of the locall community (as my fantasy life would have it) but is miles better than the real life zombie excursions to supermarkets I'd do randomly through the week after long days at work, only to lug it all home on the bus or on foot. Better food miles-wise, as is all Sydney grown, is in season so mega fresh and tasty, is organic so better for soil and human health (I reckon), and tres convenient as arrives on my doorstep. I think its encouraging me to cook more regularly, as I feel a sense of responsibility to each ear of corn and bunch of spinach to appreciate it and not have it end up as fridge sludge and compost-fodder. So hence the 'what will I make with cabbage?' musings. (Any recipe ideas greatfully accepted!!) It costs me $35 week, which I don't think is too bad? Thats just for fruit and vegies.

Oh, one other strange thing to share, on the topic of foood - how lovely does silken tofu feel? I have only just started to buy it (good as general mystery 'creamy' ingredient in all manner of savoury foods, most recently in a large zucchinni stuffed with silken tofu, rice, basil and peas and served with a fresh toato sauce. Was great, maybe add lemon zest too to the filling next time). Anyway, it feels like creme caramel, and I reckon deserves a little stroke before you chop it and stir it through your dinner (not to get all Tampoppo on you there).

Oop, think the tomatoes are done.

That'd be your cup of tea chakra playing up again mavis

Interesting week/end this last. Last week a combo of ever so busy and not much get up and go to tackle it, work-wise. Big tasks, big thinking, but me just tired and over it. I think it's post October burnout. Am thinking of taking some of that accumulated time in lieu to mean that I have less than a 5-day working week in November, good studio time, good prevent me from quitting in a lethargic outburst of ennui. I mean don't get me wrong. I love my job. But doesn't that just sound ever so much like one of those 'don't get me wrong, I love my wife' cliches. Or maybe 'some of my best friends are day jobs - really I have nothing against them.' Possibly more honest to say I love it but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I need a little room for other things to keep the relationship dynamic.

Had hip pain last week, like just out of nowhere my pelvis and hips (even the leg joint in the hip) ached like crazy. I'm not generally accustomed to bouts of unidentified aches and pains so I thought it a little odd. It actually kicked in almost straight after a really disturing dream I had last Monday night which I took to be about the therapuetic journey, some of the trust and fear issues involved in that process. But as is often the way with dreams, can be interpreted in several ways, and leave me wondering about the choice of particular metaphor. ANYhoo, the hip pain. Pain in the arse that pain in the hip was.

So come Saturday, I nestled into a blanket on top of my bed in the thin sun that came through torrential downpours that afternoon, and read my 'Chakra Handbook' to see whether there was some useful symbolic interpretation I could draw on.

[As an aside: Sometimes I really am astounded that I slip effortlessly into almost every new age cliche, without even the decency to feel more than mildly embrassed about it. I am someone who says things like 'I don't take pain killers, on principal' and then can bore you silly with several strands of positioned opinion on the matter and then goes home to read a chakra handbook about the potential metaphoric position of hips and the emotional issues that might be making my legs ache. Really. And I cook with tofu. And don't brush my hair (often), and buy second hand, and have mung beans in the cupboard (tho they are almost vintage and I wouldn't ever probably be inspired to cook them). We buy Greenpower and compost and I read Jung and just recently at work have been in teams of people who say things like "well I don't agree with that, as a postmodernist" and they're not even taking the piss. I do sometime marvel at all these things and wonder if I read about a charaectr in a book who was just like me would I think it was such a cliche that it couldn't be true? Am I predictable?? Am I playing the part of a bookish eco-feminist with family *issues* a penchant for monster drawings and a yowly cay? Apparently i am].

So, acording to my chakra handbook, it's probably all to do with blockages to my free expression of creativity and sexual energy, which I possibly acquired betwen ages 7-13. So, if I begin to wear orange, don't think I've just had a further fashion melt down, but know that I'm ramping up my thingamawhatsy chakra energy and zinging away the blockage to get that energy flowing properly, shazzam, out of my crown chakra. Yes, wearing orange, and moonstone (really? together? I wouldn't have thought so...) and enjoying bodies of water and the full moon. I'll let you know whether it works on the hip ache.

Meanwhile, reading the book lead me to fall asleep for one of the longest naps in history, and when I woke up I felt decidedly better, so that's got be a good thing.