Month: April 2009

A date with an artist…

April 30 2009

FINALLY, SOME RESPITE! I had yet another interview at Social Security today for a job capacity assessment. This time, I got someone who knew what she was doing, and who has decided they will leave me alone for a further nine months to recover. I nearly cried with relief. I still have to put in reporting forms and medical certificates but only every 3 months instead of fortnightly. Why this hasn’t happened before now I cannot comprehend, but it doesn’t matter … that there is one huge stress lifted from my life. I felt so much lighter today.

Still haven’t heard from my surgeon about the results of the tests. I’m deciding to think along the lines of no news is good news.

Yes, a date with an artist … ME. An artists date with myself (and Annie tagging along). Op-shopping for old bags to make into usable textile works of art, and a related book and lots of funky yarns. A total creative buzz happening. Ideas pinging in my head. I’m buggered, totally buggered, still, but oh I can sleep in tomorrow.

I can’t believe I am using this place for just daily reportings of what I am doing. How incredibly self absorbed and boring. I would that I could get back to the previous place of sharing wonders and talk of important matters … maybe that will be revived along the way.

Yesterday, I had “The Sound of Silence” running through my head. Simon & Garfunkel are in Sydney in June. I need to win lotto so I can go 🙁

Just scrumbling along…

30 April 2009.

What a day it was. It started out exhausting before I even got myself out of bed. I woke up early and turned on the laptop because I couldn’t go back to sleep. Big mistake 🙁

I spent the morning, mourning, at a creative group Annie invited me along to, as she was giving a workshop on scrumbling, which is freeform crotcheting (and/or knitting). Very textile-arty. Examples nicked from the web:

Cape
Cape

 

bag made from scrumbling
bag made from scrumbling

 

cushion cover
cushion cover

No patterns, no rules, just totally freeform. LOVE it.

I met some absolutely incredible women. A lot of them spin and weave their own wool. Some start from scratch with their own alpacas. Outrageously creative women, some of them. Women who travel the world and one who spends our summer here, then heads of to France for six months to live in THEIR summer. I am green with envy. I learned other things to do, like felting on muslin or other light fabrics, and I have all sorts of ideas popping in my head now.

That was followed by lunch at the pub with the lot of them. Just the local pub, but a very nice meal of Thai chicken salad, washed down with a lemon ruski (which I learned in the US after much difficult explaining, is a lemon beer over there). The drink cost $8. EIGHT BUCKS!!! I can get a four-pack for nearly that much.

Then rushing here and there, pick Liam up from school, take him back to Anne’s to be ‘babysat’, while I take off for a counselling appointment in the next town. I finally made it back to Anne’s at dinner time, and God BLESS her she had cooked us all something for dinner.

A busy busy day and followed up by an exhausting session with my counsellor. Shit, she’s good. She knows how to dig down to the deepest stuff and drag it out. Hence the exhaustion. Emotional and physical, yet again. But even with all the tears and grief in the session, there was a lot of laughter too. And exhortations to keep practising Loving Kindness meditations. She went on a buddhist retreat on the weekend. And is going on an actual 10 day Zen Buddhist retreat some time soon. WOW. And with that group of women today I laughed hard, laughed as I haven’t laughed in a long time. I think I might go there again next week 🙂

More new plans in the wind … when Annie and I move in together I will be creating her a website, an e-store for her textile art. And I will set her up an ebay store as well. I’m looking forward to having her creative impulse around full time, which in turn helps me to re-gain some of my creativity. She says she is looking forward to having “live music” in the house and she expects me to sing and play guitar around the house.

Exhausted. Grief, misery, creative aMUSEment, belly-laughing, merriment, love, melancholy, tears, meeting new people, calm and still quiet sadness. It’s been a full day. I might have lost my magic along the way this past year, but by fucking GOD I’m getting it back, getting back to being an independent wild woman. Oh and the stirrings of wanting to get out there and photograph is starting again. AND … though my writing has been very much belitted by one individual this past year, I’m feeling free enough to try again … short stories even. Life, sanity and creativity is on the return.

Tomorrow (actually today because it’s the wee hours already) will be similarly busy. Another bloody appointment with Centrestink. But then an ‘artists date’ at Spotlight to gather up more yarn supplies and different sized crochet hooks and just THINGS. Opshopping for old bags that we can use for either just the handles, or covering with scrumbling. I’m looking forward to that. Then, Liam goes to his father’s for the night and I can sleep in Friday morning. Bliss, as it’s getting to be the kind of cold that makes you wish you could stay in bed all morning.

On andon a random side trip. I think I love Carson McCullers. At such a young age, she knows what is is to be a misfit, and she certainly knows all about solitude and loneliness. What a book this is. It’s taken me a couple of years Rena, but it was so worth the wait. Thanks for the recommendation!

The elastic band has snapped – I’m all in.

Yep. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t work this hard on what is obviously a one-sided friendship. It has worn me out, it has worn me down, it has worn my heart out, and according to the psychic I saw the other day dissolved my heart chakra, but there’s a point I just have to say fuck it. I’ve been trying. I loved the guy. He told me he loved me, until September last year when that abruptly stopped … “my” fault. Everything, everything, is my fault, apparently and according to him . The fact that he shares nothing with me anymore, not a damn thing, and shows only a very cursory interest in what is happening with me, while I work on album covers for him in which case I am “honey”, shows just what my value is to him. All this talk from Mr Music of our being  soul mates, of being a kindred spirit, of him cherishing our manifold connections, that our closeness has not waned, is all utter bullshit. It couldn’t be any clearer, and I am not a naive, controllable 19 year old. Chemo might have left me with some cognitive deficits, but I am still way more intelligent than your average bimbo. As I said to him, the proof is in the pudding. His excuse of not allowing himself on-line time to write personal correspondence — with me — doesn’t wash. How long does it take to answer a question or two and how stupid does he think I am? He should know better than that. That is an insult.

So, as of today, I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep on pouring energy into supporting him, caring about him, letting it be all about him, while he puts nothing into this. It hurts my heart dreadfully, and I am so bloody exhausted from it. Mr Music is all take, and no give. Absolutely no give whatsoever. And I am seriously starting to wonder, seriously, if I am just being used by him now and he has absolutely no intention of  being friends at all, because he sure as fuck doesn’t talk like one or act like one. Have I been duped? I’m done in. And I’m so, so fucking sad and worn out. If I matter at all to him then he is going to have to put something into this “friendship”. I am no longer going to be taken for granted and treated with such pompous contempt and casual disregard. God damned musicians and their narcissistic self-absorption.

The elastic band has snapped and I am feeling the loss of a friendship, if there was one, or is it all an illusion/delusion? He meant so much to me. And there is going to be a lot of mourning with the letting go. I’m done. The door of friendship is still open to him, if he is willing to be a friend, and if he is willing then he is going to have to act like one, treat ME like one, put something into this. He has distanced himself about as far as he can from me without actually having pissed off. No more of that. He has to treat our friendship with the respect it deserves, if he is as honest as he says he is, if he acts with the integrity he espouses.

For my part, I am concentrating on meditating on loving kindness. For myself. For Mr Music.

My therapist will be happy. She has wanted me to ‘say goodbye’ a loooong time ago. The psychic I saw a few days ago also ‘saw’ him. Said there was someone with whom I connect with on every single level, a soulmate, but there is so much sad communication around it. That he has an extremely sweet side to him, but he is also extremely controlling (no kidding! I sussed that out myself thanks), and we would only have had trouble because I would stand up to him (having been there and done that with my first ex-fiance and never going there again).  She said there was nothing there anymore, he has finished with me, and I should “wean myself off him”. I am not one to believe everything a psychic tells me and to act on what they say, so this act of letting go is MY choice and what she said has no bearing on it. But she did get a lot of interesting stuff right. Actually, after the last three readings I have had done, from 3 different people, I think that what psychics get is not something outside of us, but somehow they pick up on our inside stuff. Our dreams, our wishes, our fears etc.

I digress. I’m also very emotionally worn out because I finally had my mammograms and ultrasounds done today. I got a little teary while having the mammograms. It was awful being back there having that done again. And they wanted a second one on my right breast so naturally I thought “oh no”. However, the guy who did the ultrasounds on my breasts was a DARLING. He told me that everything looked healthy as far as he could see. They are SO not allowed to say anything but I am glad he did, as my surgeon won’t get the results until later this week and God knows when I will get the results.

To top that off Liam decided to pull one on me this afternoon, and went missing at my parents. We’re talking paddocks, cows with big horns, a creek swollen from rain. After calling and calling, and knocking on neighbours doors, I was just starting to officially panic when Mum heard him inside the house. He had been hiding there the entire time. Needless to say he was in trouble.

Follow that up with schlepping around the supermarket for the weekly hunting and gathering, and I’m all done in. A glass of wine and a valium tonight I think.

Good things:

  • School goes back tomorrow. Hallelujah. I love my little boy, but 6 year olds have boundless energy and chatty mouths.
  • I am now “juicing”. My mother gave me her old juicer and so I join the messy throng of cancer survivors who juice.
  • The psychic said “you have a very strong imagination, and you have a writers fork, do you write? You love to express yourself through the written word and you do it very well. You should be writing to harness that imagination that needs some boundaries.” She mentioned children’s books. 20 years ago, another psychic said I could end up writing childrens books. Something to think about.
  • …

On yet more reflection …

Things I’m loving right now:

  • My green all natural, vegetable dyed Nimbin candle and the old-fashioned wee willy winky-like candle holder I’ve put it in.
  • Chilly autumn nights.
  • My new stretch-velvety pants from Nepal.
  • The other green (hemp?) pants I nearly bought today, and might possibly buy tomorrow. After all, they are only $30!
  • The Gilmore Girls … it’s a comfort thing, like ice-cream, and getting into pj’s when you’re home alone and daggy bed socks.
  • Lewis Caroll. The complete works of. Because he makes me laugh without fail.
  • This:  http://thebeatlescompleteonukulele.blogspot.com/. Go on … you know you want to.
  • Strong cups of tea.
  • Candles and incense and incense and candles.
  • The Pretty Things.

Things I’m hating right now:

  • Men, aka Walking Egos with Phalluses. (stroke me stroke me let me use you for my own devices)

I’m going for a psychic ‘reading’ tomorrow. I wonder what bullshit I will be told this time lol! Call it an experiment ;-P

Velvet pants and orange lace

“And the rain it raineth every day”.

Man. Shakespeare was right. It doesn’t stop. I’m ‘sat’ here, as my friend from Portugal, ex-Yorkshire, says, at 3.30 in the afternoon, in bed with a cup of coffee and a wheat-heat pack behind my back, a left-over comfort ritual from the broken back episode. Liam is staying the night at Nanna Kay’s, and stay there tomorrow as I have two appointments to attend.

Busy couple of weeks. Today started out CRAPPY but ended up quite lovely. I bought a beautiful pair of velvety pants from Nepal and a recycled green velvety top with some fringing and orange lace and autumn leaves, at a hippy shop (you know, where the clothes you buy smell of incense), and some nag champa because I was almost out. She let me pick out a candle for free as well. A ‘special’ one from Nimbin ha ha!

I had an appointment at Centrelink (our social security office) because someone who had previously done a job capacity assessment on me said “NO MORE MEDICAL CERTIFICATES after 4/4”.  Apparently I was meant to be out looking for work. However, the woman I saw today also referred me to the woman who looks after the medical cases, and they were WONDERFUL. Said “we’ll look after you”. I have to see ANOTHER job capacity assessor next week, but they are sending me to a different one, a female one who hopefully has a better of idea that you just don’t get up from cancer treatment and say “ready for full time work now!”.

There is no possible way I can work. I can’t study–I’ve already proven that to myself. Because I’m still needing to sleep, and sleep and sleep. Because I have some serious cognitive deficits happening thanks to chemo (I can’t even READ, barely, anymore. One, it takes energy, two, I just don’t seem able to sustain the effort much.) And also because the depression and anxiety is far from resolved. I’m starting to look at the edges of something I haven’t gone too close to yet. The fact that there is a 1 in 3 chance I will be dead in 5 years. I guess that’s bought on by the looming mammogram and ultrasound I’m having next Monday. Wondering if they’ll find anything. 1 in 3. 1 in 3. Shit that sounds nasty, and heavy, and the thing is, I want RID of this mental, emotional and physical exhaustion so I can LIVE my life, whatever of it I have left.

The “Positive” book I mentioned in the last entry … the people who have truly come through this gracefully and with a sense of life intact seem to be the ones who have FULLY faced the ‘death’ thing, head on. I haven’t done that yet. I look at it, and my glance skitters away. I think it might be time to fully broach this with my therapist. Time to face the monster. This is no way to live life, exhausted, half asleep, groggy and unable to do anything much of the time. I haven’t been nurturing myself at ALL truthfully. I need to start doing that. I don’t even have energy for meditation. WTF is that? I’ve lost all of my ability for awe, wonder, whimsy, magic. I’m just a tired, middle-aged, has-been who wasn’t in the first place 🙂

Ramble ramble blah blah typing things in the ether that really nobody wants to read. Suffice for me to get it out, for posterity’s sake I suppose. Now, I’m going to lay down, watch a dvd on my laptop and probably fall asleep in the middle of it. Bugger dinner, I need sleep.

I’ve been dreaming a lot about foxes lately … another WTF???!!!

Edgar Allan Poe as Anodyne

The cure for melancholy, sadness, and nearly all ills …

… a leather-bound, gilt-edged, ribbon-marker copy. While not as beautiful or precious as the turn of the century Chandos Classics Poe book I gave to Mr Music as a wonderful gift, it still gives me delight to look at it, read it, and smell the leather. For those who think Poe is all about the macabre, oh how wrong you are. Poe can also be very romantic, and very funny. He has written some wonderful essays as well, which were included in the Chandos classics book (oh I wish I had that one), but sadly isn’t included in this one.

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow–
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

And that is by Edgar Allan Poe himself.

Brief Encounter is on Fox Classics tomorrow night. Oh dear, the Mr Music friend-shaped hole will be felt then. It was just another one of those shared ‘things’.

Snap or flick?

The elastic band is losing its life. So much continuous stretching out and springing back in again. It’s been weakening of late with each successive pull and if it didn’t finally snap today, it’s not long off breaking. Maybe that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t stop it being a painful thing. It would be preferrable if it were repairable, but the law of physics says there is only so much stress an object can take before it breaks.

I guess that’s what happens when you start putting up boundaries. I’m getting very tired of trying to sharing my life, thoughts, dreams, fears with someone who no longer even shows a basic interest in even the most basic stuff of my life.  So instead of talking to deaf ears and blind eyes, I’ll share here.

Now is the time to focus on my spirituality, more than ever. A time of new beginnings, a time of fresh starts and even a new living environment. Forget about the crap and move on. Meditation … lots of it … twice a day at least. Communing with nature … lots of it. Reading spiritual tomes and practicing lots of exercises in mindfulness, right thinking, equanimity. I am moving to a place with privacy,  beautiful gardened yards, a little grotto-like place with a trickling pond, an art studio down the back and a paddock behind . Peace and serenity. A place in which to breathe.

(It’s a beautiful day here today, an ‘Indian Summer’ day, and we have been putting tea-tree mulch on the garden.)

In May I am going north for a while to an Anthroposophical conference, on Transformational Healing. That sounds all new-agey, crystals and the like but it’s nothing of the sort. I get to play with watercolours in the art therapy workshop. Just me and my father… it will be so nice to spend a few days alone together.

Today, Mr Music accused me of being “self-absorbed in a morass of self-pity where (I) constantly find reasons why no-one gives me the attention (I) think (I) deserve”. I am the first to admit there is an element of truth in this, in moments where I am allowing myself to wallow, and ruminate on relationships with people. But as for the constantly finding reasons part of it … for the part of it where he implies I am so self-absorbed that I think everyone should be paying me attention … that was a rather cruel arrow to shoot at me in an argument, untrue, and very subjective from his pov too. The issue of friendship with Mr Music has become a very large issue … just what does each define  friendship as being? How do friends treat each other? One thing I DO know, I don’t have this issue with any other of my friends. Or anyone else I know, for that matter.

I said his statement was a cruel arrow because I think he is also referring to my relationship with my parents, because of something I recently confided to him, which was that my parents are no longer feeling they need to emotionally support me now because treatment is over. My parents and I had a good, long, honest and open talk about that, and all is fine with us. I still have the same warm and loving relationship I did beforehand. Apart from that … I don’t know who else the ‘no-one’ could possibly be about.  Again … here at least I admit that I have been guilty to a small extent of what he accused me of, but no-one can say I’m self-absorbed and can’t see, and don’t take interest in, what is happening with my friends’ lives.

Friendship is about not only taking, but giving. Stretch that elastic band too far in one direction and it will eventually snap.

Edit: And some elastic bands NEVER break! Today I found my best friend from highschool 😀

Here I am …

and here I’m STAYING! The umpteenth incarnation and a url I can live with, but hopefully this time totally anon to all who aren’t my friends.

Expect plenty of ‘blog frock’ changes. After all, a girl must wear frocks that reflect her mood, n’est-ce pas? And I have so  many pretty frocks it would be a pity not to air them occasionally …

Last week was a BAD week. I rocked up at the medical imaging place for my mammogram and ultrasound only to find that I should have been there the day before. Promptly dissolved into tears, but thankfully Anne was there to ‘lean on’. I was so nervous beforehand I took a valium and was half off my face. What a mess. So now, I have to wait until April27 to go back and have them done … for real this time.

But, Easter has come and gone, and with it the feeling of a brand new week … ‘renewal and replenishment’ and all of that cliched happy stuff. Yesterday I spent making big scrapbook-sized ‘signs’ for my bedroom walls … inspirational, affirmation and orders like DON’T DO IT! I lie. One ‘affirmation’ and the rest are orders/reminders. Where’s my hair shirt? haha! It helps that the sun is finally shining again, as much as I adore the rain and the cool and the froggies creaking outside my bedroom window.  I’ve kind of strayed off the mindfulness/meditation path, but am placing myself back on track.

Here’s one of the things I’ve been working on lately:

It’s a petit point of John William Waterhouse’s “The Soul of a Rose”. I know, it seems awfully tacky doing this from a beautiful painting, but I saw it, had to do it, and I really do believe it will be absolutely beautiful when it’s finished. I started doing it while I was away having radiotherapy. It’s going to take a LONG time to finish. The stitches are tiny, and nearly the entire canvas is to be covered (I have to wear magnifying glasses to work on it … oh my GOD I’m turning into an old lady). A close up of detail:

(This is about the same size as the original I am working on, but I have sharpened it,
and in close-up it looks a lot courser than it really is).

The original painting:

John William Waterhouse – “The Soul of a Rose” 1908

The big highlight of today is taking Liam and myself off to get a haircut. This will be my second haircut since chemo. You would not BELIEVE the curls I am sporting. They’re impossible to work with! School hols … two weeks of trying to entertain Liam … oi.

Or … better … my leather-bound Poe might be delivered today!

Woman Interrupted

A paradox. Changes happening all around me, in my life, in me, yet I feel like I am in suspended animation.

Cancer and all it’s associated physical/treatment and psychological horrors have left me ‘congitively impaired’. The jokes I make about chemobrain are wearing thin to those around me (“when is she going to stop using that excuse? Treatment is over”.  And yes, there IS such a phenomenon as chemobrain.) I feel like the synapses aren’t firing or something. My frontal lobes feel like they can’t grasp hold of anything. My memory is shot, I lose track of myself in track of thought mid sentence, I lose entire words … I just go entirely blank. My head still feels ‘foggy’ and spacey. I have 10 books on the go (or more) because I just can’t concentrate. Although I’m enjoying re-reading Lewis Carroll’s’ works. Nonsense is easy going and makes me laugh 🙂

Books, while I’m on the subject 😀 I came across one today I want … “Modern Esoteric Spirituality” by by Antoine Faivre, Jacob Needleman, Karen Voss. And hot on the heels of that one … “Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times“ by R. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Both fascinating sounding books dealing with, well, the history of the various streams of esoteric spirituality … gnosis and hermesticism (alchemy, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Gurdijeff and Jung etc). I might splurge. I am BAD. I spend money on books like most women spend money on shoes, or handbags (at least I curb the handbag spending now). This week I have already bought a Barnes & Noble  special leather bound edition of the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, and a lovely edition of Grimms Fairy Tales.

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