Sea Green

Ephemera etc.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Day on

Yes I realise I've been rather slack in keeping y'all updated on the 'day off for working in the studio' sitch. Well, as I think I mentioned, I officially altered my weekly working hours down by a mere 3, which when I also trimmed all the unpaid overtime I was doing has meant that I can do my hours over 4 days, and not even work particularly late on those 4. I've picked Thursdays as my studio day, so that it still feels like a 'working day' rather than a day off, extra long weekend etc. Which is not to say that an extra long weekend wouldn't also be nice / worthwhile/ a good reason to cut down working hours, it's just not what I had in mind.

So this is the fourth week. Today has been the least successful in terms of getting in there (evidenced by me sitting here typing and waiting while my laminating gets done at the copy shop rather than being in the studio) but it was ever so hot today, plus I had a backlog of organic vegies which were threatening to take over the house and needed some inventive cooking (cabbage????? again???). And I'm going in now.

And how has it been? Interesting. Exciting. Scary. One challenge has been balance - when I'm in there and focused I just want to stay for the forseeable future. I have once or twice forgotten to eat or to drink enough water, or to go home early enough to get an early night; at these moments I realise that I probably need some 'good work practice' rules for myself, to temper the enthusiasm with common sense. Some parameters to make sure I don't overdo it.

The other interesting thing has been 'what will I work on?'. This hasn't really been an issue, in terms of once I start the first thing leads to the next thing and the time has finished before I know it. I try to start each session with some open drawing - unstructured time to just doodle and sketch and daydream. Easier said then done when people walk past and you're in full view doodling (I am the self-conscious type, though you might not guess from this public blathering.. but you can't see me so that makes it ok). After about half an hour of this I launch into whatever project I have ha;f done from the week before, or whatever idea seems most pressing. Broadly, I've been finishing off some printmaking that I started last year, and want to get a set of prints and t-shirt range printed; then (actually kind of concurrently) I want to do some fabric designs and print some of those, playing with colour and layering, then I want to leave all that and start painting. That might involve some classes. Also I probably need to brush up my drawing, so maybe find a lifedrawing class or do a general drawing class. To what end? Plugh, who the hell knows. But meanwhile it's keeping my hands happy, my brain fertile, and my drawing books full of ideas. It's also keeping printmaking ink out of my kitchen sink, and the extra room is meaning I loose less through smudges and oopses. Yah.

Working 4 days has been great, especially in the wake of my slightly burnt out state at the end of last year. I think being there 5 days during slow January would have been more than I could handle. It is a bit tricky getting teh hang of the feel of the week, with a little blip of not being there mid-way. It kind of feels like 2 weeks each week, and I am yet to get the hang of remembering when things happened, because everything feels like a long time ago, even if it was just a week ago. (Kind of like the work-connection gets broken, my brain covers lots of other grouond, exists in a different time zone for a day, and then has to trail back in).

I do think it's also been good for my day-job work funnily enough (not my primary objective, but a nice surprise). I'm feeling a bit more free with my ideas, a bit more confident to share my suggestions, and a bit less engaged with all the details there. To be honest (and this probably aint so great, but it's great for me) I also care less about getting every t-crossed and i-dotted. If I miss a few emails or forget to do things I figure people will remind me if it's important, and anyway, everyone else does stuff like that, so hey, I'm just joining in. Learning to perform only averagely - how liberating!

I think my 4-days has prompted a couple of other people to rethink their hours too - especially in light of the fact that my change hasn't been for one of those more widely accepted reasons such as parenting, being a carer, or studying. 'JustcozIwanna ' - a good reason too. Lucky for me that I work somewhere flexible enough to let me do this, and that I earn enough that a few hours less doesn't mean any real change to my lifestyle.

Yah.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Linkety link

The story of stuff - Interesting video on what's behind our consumption and production economy (a collleague said "a bit light on the facts, but good to watch").

And, the Australia Institute have new research on how cluttered homes are making us all anxious. Must be what prompted my lengthy spring clean on Monday. Well, actually, was probably my housemate who is on a 'less ismore' declutter jag, which is terribly catchy.

I trimmed my wardrobe and weeded out a number of 'nice pieces' that I always looked at and thought 'but it has such a nice pattern/ binding/ interesting cut/ sentimental value' but never actually wore. Now they're set free and someone else can appreciate them. Some I will send to my mum to modify or cut up and use in quilts and other sewing projects. Aaah, that feels better.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

A new kind of blues

Check out this site which has an interesting focus on ecopsychology - the experience of learning about peak oil, and what kinds of reactions it prompts in people. Interesting discusison on how it might affect people depending on life stage, and actual stories of people's responses. What was yours? (Or have you known for so long about peak oil that you can't remember?) Was something else your aha moment in sustainability thinking? (Or do you now know what I'm talking about and wish I'd stop rabbiting on?). Mine was growing up in a suburb that had a plastics factory in eyesight on the horizon and watching the plumes of white smoke, learning about acid rain at school, and hearing about the greenhouse effect. First bad poem therefore written at 7 about acid rain ('dripping down my window pane' - but actually it wasn't, we have a verandah so really it couldn't reach my window, even if there was some acid rain there in down town suburban Aelaide - which there wasn't). Or maybe it was just always feeling like things were connected and that people could be unjust. That child's righteous indignation that never really went away. That sadness for little things and bright things and precious things squashed and fallen out of nests. The thought of deforestation horrified me, I wrote the start of my first bad novel at age 10 - about a cheetah whose forest was being burnt by hunters trying to flush him out. That careful pencil manuscript on lined cream paper was my treasured work, my horded and peered over slowly scrawled 41/2 page wonder. I pumped out a story about a ceterpillar in class that day to hand in, to buy me time to keep working on my cheetah story. Which I subsequently lost (probably lost interest in), but it has stayed a significant moment for me, a chrystallisation of all that care and indignation and feeling of custodianship for other creatures that welled up in my little girl heart (along with my exacting love of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' and Tears for Fears 'The Big Chair'). Aaaah, the naiivety of youth.

Anyway, I diverge, the first website I mentioned reminds me quite a bit of the premise of Joanna Macy's/John Seed's Despair and Empowerment work,but interesting to that peak oil could be the nuclear threat of the 2000's. I do like Joanna's stuff, gentle hearted but strong in conviction, worth a look also if you haven't seen before (and ever so relevant these days as more people get switched on to sustainability thinking?)

For tomorrow

Wistful is the word for today.
The flavour is nectarine, stringy and threatening to stay stuck in your teeth, the bitter hard rough experience of the seed almost as much fun for your tongue as the sweet flesh.
The pain for the day is the strange cut you got while cleaning up – made from a piece of synthetic thread you tried to break by pulling with your crooked finger, but it bit in hard and the very thin white line of shock has now opened and made a red pink swollen area of hurt.
The smell for the day is coffee, every time you go into the kitchen and your pavlovian response – coffee! Make me coffee!
The image of the day is the cleaned benches at home and at work after you got busy with the dishcloth and made expanses of surfaces, lush plate of fruit sitting in a gleaning ice floe of varnished table.
The surprise anger for the day is raging, irritable, beesting ouch of fury that comes up at the bust stop when you rethink something someone said to you yesterday. You marvel that the ‘anger’ phase of your grieving process has come so slowly, last year sadness, great big gulping tears that felt like drowning and now, this fury, this indignation, this arguing the umpire’s call. Your most recent book on the topic tells you that this is normal, that the anger at mistreatment needs to come before you realize that you deserve to be treated better. Before then there is a thousand tales of apology, of accommodation, of understanding, of forgiveness. But repressed hurt needs to come out, splinter and pus-like, before a wound can be cleaned and healed over.
The feeling of today is listless – going slower, feeling like kelp drifting slow in a dark green world where everything comes a beat later than when it started – a gel-like thickness to the water, to my movement through it. I am mermaid with ears full of ocean silence and the squeals of fishes, the electro-pulse of submerged military secrets, my arms green and distorted at the ends, my hands fan out in the far distance darker then here. I am mouthfuls of salt burn and sweet fish spawn and rubbery bite of the sea bubbles I wear strung around like pearls. Almost ironically. Almost ironically.
The achievement of today is yet to come. Surprise me blank page and pencil, write something useful. Do something. Engage in the tasks that float by. Make a stand. Make a paragraph. Make a wave, make a ripple, make a molehill out of a mountain, make something interesting. Make a difference. Make a list, make a call, make a decisive action. Make some urgency out of all the slow. Fast as I can. Fast as you can.
The look of today is ironed, matching, layers, all weather.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Current research on monothematic delusions

Capgras delusion is the belief that someone emotionally close to you - typically a spouse - has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. Cotard delusion is the belief that you are dead. Fregoli delusion is the belief that you are continually being followed by a group of people whom you cannot recognize because they are disguised. Mirrored-Self Misidentification is the belief that your own reflected image is a person who is following you around.

This got me thinking about other similar monothematic delusions, possibly as yet uncategorized. I started to think about the belief that every time you drop the toast it lands butter side down, or that you would have gotten a promotion but your boss hates you, cultural delusions relating to bottom size, or attractiveness of famous people, the delusion that Paris Hilton is special and interesting. That Eurovision is a showcase of great pop music. I thought about the delusion that cricket is interesting to watch, or that using birth control is evil and will cause an omnipotent being to become angry and want to roast you on High for the eternity version of an hour. The delusion that burning the very substrate that we stand on and living in the fumes of the smoke wouldn’t have any effect on us or our surroundings, the delusion that owning a shiny car makes you a more interesting and attractive person. The delusion that we will never die or get old. The delusion that if you keep buying the lotto ticket one day you will win and be swept away on a tropical holiday that will last the rest of your life. The delusion that cow fetus rubbed into your eye skin will make you pretty like a movie star and never feel lonely. The delusion that superannuation and income insurance and a savings plan means that nothing bad will ever happen to your family, and you wont have to feel grief.

Sufferers from these kinds of monothematic delusions are not delusional about anything else, and readily acknowledge the extreme implausibility of the belief they hold; but they nevertheless do not relinquish the belief. Bizarre though these conditions seem, they are not uncommon: for example, the most recent review of research on the Capgras delusion reviewed 570 cases.

From here http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/research/programme/belief.htm

Monday, January 21, 2008

And on some days there are jackhammers outside your window trying to demolish a building gently, and your eyes are a little light sensitive, and your computer has been swapped at work and the new one wont do anything quite right and you suspect you are getting ready to run through the end of that magical thing called a menstrual cycle, and quite frankly, it’s enough to make you cry.

Instead you amuse yourself by thinking about the following:

5 things you probably shouldn’t do even if you think it’s a good idea at the time:
Fluff at the traffic lights hoping the traffic noise will cover the sound – it may not and people will know that it was you.
Rub your eyes wearing organic easy to remove mascara – water paint black wash down your cheek is not nice
Literally cry with frustration at computer problems at work, and maybe footstamp (for many reasons – see also mascara, above)
Skip mid week yoga because life felt too busy to fit it in
Stay up too late printing inky black pictures on a school night

5 important things they didn’t teach at school
Lacy bras are itchy. Itchy boobs are not happy boobs.
What you need to eat to get omega 3 if you don’t eat fish.
How to know when relationships start to drift into new territory.
That come 30-ish (35/ 40 whatever), many women will find themselves asking, suddenly, urgently ‘is he the one?’, ‘will this do?’, ‘do I want to have babies?’, ‘if I want to have babies, how will I maximize my reemployment and later career prospects whilst also being young and healthy when I breed, whilst also balancing my career/life/self development needs and my partner’s?’, ‘where do I want to settle down? What city? State? Country?’, etc.
How to motivate yourself in a job, so that both you and your employer stay happy with you being there

Friday, January 18, 2008

Don't forget to eat your greens

Food shortages loom, and meat eating aint helping.

Read here and here:

"GLOBAL food shortages could become a reality within years because of
climate change and the world's growing appetite for meat.
The answer to the looming crisis? Eat more vegetables, according to
leading expert."

I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up.

Or not. I've always thought it was a bit 'Mum, mum, can I huh? Can I go in a very fast rocket up the sky an wear a space suit and eat space food and be an astronut, can I, huh huh??' 'yeah sure dear, just try not to blow up, OK, and be home by dinner' but maybe I just lack imagination.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Signing off cheerily

I don’t know if you have had the pleasure of the zany sign off at the bottom of emails. Not wanting to go all Jerry Seinfield on you – getting upset about the nano things while wearing white sandshoes and jeans – I came across an absolute doozy just before Christmas. I am a bit frightened that somehow the person will stumble across this page and be mortified, but maybe if we all promise to keep it a secret they won’t realize they’ve been paid out. This person’s sign off – bearing in mind they work in a sustainability related discipline was… wait for it.. this is truly dreadful:


‘Green Cheers’


Yes, just in case you didn't catch it, that was:

Green.

Cheers.

Greencheers.

Green Cheers!!!


Now I’ve had ‘Yours in peace’, ‘please think twice before printing’, inspiring quotes from dead guys and musicians, and all other kind of individualized sign offs, which I think are rather lovely. But really. Green cheers? What next? Sustainy bye byes? Fair trade cheerios? Kind and playful and a little bit cheeky regards? Pro refugee rights regards? This sign-off sponsored by your local bird watching group?

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Weblinky - waste

This website is interesting for those interested in more than just recycling products - the repair, reuse side of things for example.

Events - Katoomba

Someone passed this on to me - might be of interest to mountainy eco/food types. Anyone know anything about this topic? Is this yet anothetr food production thing I should be worried about??


Friends of the Earth Nanotechnology Project
Nano-food vs Real food
PUBLIC TALK

"Get ready for the next high technology assault on real food. After genetic engineering comes nanotechnology: ... Nanotechnology, the “science of the small”, involves manipulating materials, systems and even living organisms at the scale of atoms and molecules. Nano introduces serious new risks for human health and the environment and threatens to further concentrate corporate control of agriculture and food production. Without new laws to protect our health and the environment, without labelling and without public debate, nanotechnology is now leaving the laboratory and entering the food chain."


Thursday 17th January 2008, 7-9pm
Carrington Hotel, Katoomba Street, Katoomba

Speakers include:

Georgia Miller, Nanotechnology campaigner, Friends of the Earth Australia
Joel Catchlove, Food Sovereignty campaigner, Friends of the Earth Adelaide
Craig Lyn, Blue Mountains Food Coop
Members from Cittaslow Blue Mountains
(more details below)

ENTRY IS FREE

RSVP and enquiries contact Natalie Lowrey
4782 1181 / 0421 226 200
natalie.lowrey@foe.org.au

Tips for living # 1 - in the office

5 things you probably shouldn’t say at work even if you think them:

- sorry, I need to keep walking as I only came past your desk on the way to the toilet and I really need to do a poo, so this long conversation is not really what I had in mind

- that project was a nightmare and I can barely bear to look at the report again yet. Really I hate it. It makes me squirm just to think of it.

- are we done? I’ve said everything I want to say to you and heard everything from you and now I want to go to lunch

- shhhh. Don’t introduce yourself like that. Can’t you see she’s annoyed because you’re doing all the talking, and lecturing her, and telling far too much detail and not asking what she does. Can’t you see? Oh no! Now you’ve asked her about her background and then talked over her before she’s had a chance to answer properly – mate, you’re fucked, she’s never going to hire you now.

- can I go now? I haven’t really done any work today anyway because I feel all weekendy and excited about my day in the studio yesterday, and my to do list, and I want to go to the pub

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Dear Diary

So, an update on some of the actual details of my life, for those lingering readers who have withstood crap erratic entries these last few months... (or to the echoes as I talk to myself, either way).

This in no particular order.

Nighties. I am wearing the really quite ridiculous satin candy-coloured shortie nighties that my Grandma gave me for Christmas last year. I kind of like them. Yah to Summer. Yah to my mum for mending the one that fell apart in the wash and got all straggly.

Cat. My elderly black cat is becoming more skinny and old looking by the day. I debate interanally about taking him to the vet, but he hates going so much (yowls, gets wigged out) and tho' old and skinny lookinga nd kind of blind-ish, doesn't seem to be in any pain, still eats two meals a day. I figure I'd like to die a natural death in peace so I should let him do the same. Am I just being a wimp - should I take him to the vet and see if he has something wrong with him (other than old age?). He really is very old - edging up around the 16 year mark (I don't know when he was born, inherited him as a grown up).

Family. Friends. My little brother is just about my favourite person in the whole world. I think he's cheeky and fun and silly and serious and naughty and lovely and everything. I wish he was closer by and not in another City in another state, so I could drop by for a cuppa after work and play trains. Ditto for mum, mermaidgrrrl and little mister who I visited in Brisvegas. Ditto for friends and family in Hometown, and those flung far these days in Your-ip and Aja.

Socialising and Summer. Festival time! Friends here from other places! I want to be everywhere all at once: watching shows, at the pub telling yarns, at exhibitions, at home with a good cup of tea.

Work. Oh my goodness gracious me - 5 days a week? 7 whole hours a day? Who on earth thought this was a good idea? How on earth did I do this last year and not fall asleep every afternoon between one list ticking meeting and another? [erm, did someone finish her holidays too soon?] How on earth do I cope working with all these dew faced Star Ship Trooper looking keen beans with CV's that parents dream of and cute ironic interests and earnest busy quirky social lives. Sometimes I feel so old, jaded, hermetic (hmm, is that the word - sounds like vacuum sealed), cranky and badly dressed in comparison. Am I the only one there who doesn't regularly go camping on weekends, dress in crisp white shirts or funky handmade only, have a boyfriend who is in a band and is an artist/scientist/clean energy guru and volunteer lifesaver to boot? The only one neither renovating, expecting their first child or in the throes of exciting first love? I feel like the less popular bits of the Venn Diagram - "no really that's fine, you can take 'antisocial, single, book worm, overweight, family angst, into zines' that spot's not taken". "And what's that, you want 'unconventional, divergent thinking without regard for authority but both impatient and kind of lacking confidence to express it in work situations'. ooh yeah, that one is strangely available as well - you're in luck!"

Gardens. Hey hey hey - ours is thriving! Say hello to our crop of Summer mangoes, growing on the tree in our backyard. Welcome newcomer Mr Potato, fresh from the compost and now living in a single bedroom black plastic pot in a good location. Ms Sweet Potato is shooting tendrils everywhere, and the native-violet blended family are rennovating out sideways, taking over the block. It's green and constantly changing out there, and I love it. And have become rather fond of sweeping all the bark and putting it into the compost. Those giant outdoor brooms are very satisfying in a paved courtyard garden, take it from me.

Food. Ferrero Rocher is not a food group. Just so you know. Even if you do leave your family Christmas with enough hazelnuts and chocolate in a delightful gift size plastic container to last for months. They especially are not breakfast. Do not eat them for breakfast. Ooh, too late. Also: dips are not a food group. Freezer food is not a food group. Tonic water is not a food group. I share this with you in the interests of building our collective wisdom. Take notes if you have to. Please oh please can my organic vegie delivery company come back from holidays and begin droping corn cobs and friends on my doorstep before I pass out from iron deficiency and/or fall into a hypoglycemic coma. (Yes it really is like raw 'meals on wheels' for the affuent time-poor greenie).

Schedule. Repeat after me "Oh, I'm sorry, I can't help with that - I don't work Thursdays." Smile big like I am. Repeat again. Not 100% official yet (actually, not really even 1% official yet) but I will be taking a rostered day off this week and net until the form comes back signed as stamped and it becomes official.

Books. Holiday schlock reading a go go. Check out Booklub these next few weeks, as I plan to review a book a week. Sure they might all be fairly trashy crime fiction in the next few weeks, as befits holiday reading, but oh well.

Sleeping. Love it! Off to do that now.

Face Look

Tonight I went to see this exhibition. Actually, I went to see the Sidney Nolan exhibition, but decided to start with the photos, and after staring intently into quazillion serious faces in stern black and white I couldn't stand another exhibition so we went to drink wine, sit and chat and listen to zany solo caberet cover loop de loop live music instead. Aah, the consolations of the epicurian.

Anyway, it was a great exhibition, really interesting and made me think the following thinks:
- dignity. The tour guide I eavesdropped on talked about the dignity of the subjects, and until he'd said it I hadn't picked that word, but in retrosect I agreed. There was a certain 'presentness' - a 'yes, here I am' without shame or ego or apology, regardless of their 'station', that was striking.
- unsmiling faces. 'Say cheese' obviously hadn't become a feature of happy snaps until the happy snapping became faster - posing for several minutes is a serious business. I liked the seriousness, or at best the growing edges of a smirk or smile about to bloom.
- reading faces. My companion and I couldn't always agree on who looked angry and who looked like they'd be fun at the pub. My 'larrakin with a smile on the edges' was his 'angry'. My 'tightlipped and joyless' was his 'dry sense of humour and looks like he's about to laugh'. Interesting. I thought everyone into faces read them the same, but no, apparently not.
- no one looked furtive and mean, even the beggars looked kind of honorable. Or am I just projecting because everyone had nicely tailored coats and spritely hats and curled hair? No-one looked red and hot and harried with multiple children trying to get on a bus, or with bleached trailing hair, or with a scowl, or a mean shifty look, or skinny on crack, or with hate in their faces. I guess most people in repose look peaceful. Perhaps it was less a reflection of the times than a reflection on faces that have been given the honour of being captured for art, for history. People taken seriously, and invited to present themselves to the world as they would like to be presented. Nice.

Friday, January 04, 2008

A bit of a blur


December whizzed by in a flurry of finishing up at work, Christmas drinks at our place, card making and sending, Christmas shopping (after grappling with my 'to buy or not to buy' ethical dilemas!), flying, interstate friend visiting, interstate family visiting, last minute Christmas day prep, Chistmas day, swims in pools, reading trashy holiday books, playing with kids and their new toys, taking photos, back to Sydney, early starts and naps, catching up with a friend from Adelaide come on a worlwind gig-going tour of Sydney, dinners in, spending time with old friends from O/S returned temporarily, going to markets, reorganising my bookshelf, cleaning out my underwear drawer (seriously), and generally making cursory attempts to spring clean on the last day of the year, and ended after hours of insightful chat and great company in a flurry of silly marracca playing New Years Eve. Suitable somehow! Thanks everyone for sharing the festive season, and for all the fun still to be had this summer.