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 🙁
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
bag made from scrumbling
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!
Sharing something a little whimsical I worked on while I was having chemotherapy, which actually came out quite lovely when I had it framed. Fabric my aunty hand-dyed, I did the outline of the sprites in stem stitch (the wrting in backstitch) and added the beads.
Mirrored candlelight licks
at the shore of luminescent abdomen,
jewels slip from my fingertips
drip – drip – drip
sending ripples of Undine-song
to caress my glistening body
While in the distance Grandfather time chimes an octameter …
Blake can look at a knot in the ceiling
until he screams.
I know what he means …
Will it extinguish me, this invader
that sits
and waits
it’s chance?
Shhh
Let the Undines soothe it.
Let the Salamanders enchant you
with their dance.
Shhh …
I rise upward
Mist rises from my nakedness
My body encrusted with the jewels
glitters
a dragonfly perched on my shoulder
The Undines kiss me farewell
as they trickle away
and he says:
“Let me whisper a secret to you
(in my sleepy haze, your sleepy haze):
Wonder not who, wonder not why
wonder not about the future,
or about dreams,
or about him.
Wonder not.”
and the Salamanders flicker
and die.
copyright 2008, me. And all of that.
Written this weekend, while on a necessary and peaceful ‘retreat’. It still needs a lot of work, to my mind.
The second last stanza was from a poem written for me by a close friend, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart, once again.
Simply … I took a bath 🙂 And composed this while in there. Figure it out lol.
Here’s something a little different … I’m usually so freeform, stream-of-consciousness, way to angsty when I bang out a ‘poem’. Here I’m actually using rhyme and meter, and I think I like what I’ve produced. So I’m posting it in all three places (myspace, here, LJ) for critical comment from people who know what they’re on about 🙂 Otherwise how am I to learn? And … just to share in case anyone should like it….
Whither will I wander
Now I’m aimless and alone?
anchor free and rudderless,
no harbour, haven, home.
Set afloat to drift along
a current or a breeze
in which direction should I go?
whatever way the wind shall blow?
Oh whither will I wander
now I’m aimless and alone?
Rivers, lakes and oceans green
may well my soul console
With Oceanids and Naiads
by my side to wayward stroll
My eyes are drawn to watery depths
so cool and so serene
Poseiden’s gemstones sparkle deep
wrap me up in seaweed sleep
Oh whither will I wander
now I’m aimless and alone?
Will I roam a winding path,
through Poe-like landscapes sigh?
See Saracenic castles hang
etherically up high?
Or country gardens secret
overgrown with plants of yore?
dragonfly on Buddha stone
ephemeral thought has come and flown
oh whither will I wander
now I’m aimless and alone?
Are astral realms the fair domain
that I shall travel to?
On gleaming moonbeams to the stars
and planes that I once knew?
Exist in nought but dreams and thought
in wisps of sound and vision
Cherubim and Seraphim
sonorous, silvery, softly sing
Oh whither will I wander
now I’m aimless and alone?
Will I find that I am lost
within a forest stark?
Wreathed in mist and frightened of
the creatures in the dark?
Cloaked in snow and cold of heart
my spirit shrinks and withers
dread and doom and dark despair
nearing close to Death’s dank lair
Oh whither will I wander
now I’m aimless and alone?
If you should see me wandering
along the ocean shore
I warn you to avert your eyes
and look on me no more
Passion and despair without a home
are howling beasts
Wistful, lost and yearning heart
will tear your happy life apart
I do not see as others see
I seek myself, myself to free
as I was formed to wander
in my solitude alone.
I sent a copy of the first of Anais Nin’s diaries to Rena, because I thought she could really relate to a lot of what is in there, as do I. And joyfully, for me because I love giving gifts that really give, she is really chowing down on it. Quoting bits of it in her own journal. She told me she was surprised that I hadn’t quoted a lot more in more in my own blog about it, and I replied that I really had to restrain myself. BUT … that there were still some dog ears left over in the book, even though I finished it a while back, that I had meant to share. So here are some to whittle down the dog ears.
Yes … today I had an ‘artists date’ with myself (a la Julia Cameron’s “The Artists Way”). It came over deliciously cloudy this afternoon and start to rain a little, so I took myself off to that cemetary the funeral was at on Friday, and as promised took some photos. I’m rather pleased with the results. I’ll post some on here, but there are more (all the ones I’m keeping) at my Flickr account if you want to see more.
I definitely have to do more of this. I had such a blast!
Yesterday I had to attend the funeral of Liam’s great grandmother on his paternal side. It was only a graveside service as the family is not religious (or spiritual) in the slightest, nothing like the long full-service Catholic masses we have on our side of the family. So I decided, after discussing it with my father, to take Liam to the funeral. A 4 year old of course doesn’t understand and can’t comprehend death and funerals. Very simply I told him that we were going to say goodbye to her, and she would be in a box, which is a special room that takes her to heaven. He accepted that fully and comfortably. I am sure some people would be shocked at my decision to take a little boy to a funeral, but honestly I think we shield our children from too much in today’s society. Death is as natural a part of life as is birth. It is only in recent (relatively) years that in Western society we have sanitised it to a point where it is seen as dreadful and taboo. Also, I believe it helps to give children closure even though they might not fully understand what is going on, in that at least they are seeing people saying goodbye, and the person hasn’t just “disappeared”.
Yesterday I lost my Rackham Fairy locks and left the hairdresser feeling more like Sensuous Goddess Rock Chick with a return to my deep chocolate red wispiness and even some bangs. Today, I’m writing poetry. Ah me. Such are the vagaries of my existence on the earthly plane.
Moonbeams – Peter Mardon
Never To Be
Ah Muse, elusive drug of my desire intoxicate frustrate cast your sensuous spell Tease me, let me taste but then coldly withdraw just out of fingertips reach And I … finally … come to know this … “Never to be”.
Once I was a Hope but now a mere side trip on ramp/off ramp you smile blithely “nice to meet you but I now have newer faces better places to be can we remain friends?” But your lips aren’t moving. Visitor to my soul You left your rare illumined touch embossed in the depths of my being as none have done before. And oh how I grieve. Never to be
My gates are closed to other fickle tourists They will rust and gather dust and yet I will drift forevermore catch glimpses of me within moonbeams wisps of dreams and whispers of sound if you but care to seek I am there to be found in the infinite astral forever solitary eternal melancholy. In this life … mere wraith to you transient ephemeral de peu d’régard and yet I dare to Muse with wistful wish Will you seek me in another existence? Or will I remain in your disdain unworthy? Never to be.
A chapter from one of my favourite books that helps in times of turmoil. (“Original Self. Living with Paradox and Authenticity” – Thomas Moore.)
The soul is not nearly as rational as the ego
The soul is filled throughout with discord and dissonance,
and so its first need is poetic madness. That way through
musical sounds we can waken what is dormant, through
harmonies calm what is turbulent, and through the blending
of various elements quell the discord and temper the different
parts of the soul. – Marsilio Ficino
“It is essential in modern life to adore the ego, to think that our social problems and our personal struggles will be resolved once we understand the situation and gain control of it. The current idea of a well-adjusted person is one who is unusually conscious and in charge. It is assumed that the purpose of life is to be more of an ego, successful in the eyes of the world and sanctioned by a swelling egotistic bank account.
