symphonic understanding

I’ve been watching some of the WASO concerts online (West Australian Symphony Orchestra) and it’s taking me back to my days playing in the school concert band and singing in the choir during my music scholarship years - the shivers up the spine when the whole orchestra reaches the same level of passion for a massive crescendo, the joy of a perfectly harmonised moment in a favourite piece. Ah, good times.

 

I always preferred to sing and play the harmonies rather than the leads.  I preferred to be the flavouring rather than the main ingredient; be the counterpoint. I hated it when I was thrust into the first clarinet position (probably by default) and had to plod along in the main melodies.

 

I never wanted to stand out, never wanted to be the soprano in the limelight, or the acclaimed soloist getting the glory. I always thought the harmonies had the more interesting parts. Even now, humming along to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and yes that old chestnut, Handel’s Messiah, I’m singing the harmony instead of the tune.

 

I’ve only now realised the correlation between that and the rest of my life: I always thought I just didn’t like to lead, I liked to follow, but that’s not it at all. I just prefer the second fiddle because it’s so much more interesting.

 

The main melody on it’s own is ok, but with harmony behind it, it pops.

 

Lately I’ve been thinking I had a character flaw by not having the drive or urge to sit at the top of the tree, and now I realise it’s because I prefer the much more interesting life in the middle branches.

 

Missing out on a job for a higher position last week has made me question my whole character, and I’m so over it. There’s nothing at all wrong with me not wanting to take the lead. So there.

 

Alto for life.

i am

a shell, hollowed, spray painted grey

left with only breath. inert. glassy-eyed.

 

an ember, dulled by a layer of ash

buried under sand. fading. unnoticed.

 

tired, and empty, a powered-down machine

essential functions only. dim. blinking light.

 

removed, disconnected, sight without feel

everything is dull. boring. bland.

 

numbness, thorns, a hidden shadow corner

the apathy of daggers. aches. muffled.

 

i am disinterest. misery.

a walking dichotomy.

i am my own before and after:

 

i am my own before and after: my time laid bare delineated. photos of a me suspended there for all to look upon; my happiness of sometimes joy, my smiles of often painful hiding, blush of health and pallid grey - it sucks to be so on display.

the study of nothing happening

I need a good cry. You know the kind of cry you need to have not because something’s happened, but because nothing’s happened? I need one of those cries.

 

I didn’t get a job I applied for last week, and in a way I’m relieved, because the next step would have been to go through months of suffering and hard struggle – it would have been one tough slog I’m not sure I’m up for right now.

 

It would have also meant cancelling my long overdue holidays, working much longer hours, and taking a pay cut of at least $5K but most likely more. It would have meant leaving an office full of people I love, and a view to die for.

 

Among a shitload of other things.

 

So why with the crying?

 

I went for the job almost because I had to; I felt obliged. I looked at it as a possible fix for my malaise, and went for it almost as a way to let the universe fix everything for me.

 

I think a lot of people thought I was a definite for it. Except me. Heart wasn’t in it. Heart told brain. Brain turned off at crucial moment.

 

Now, I haven’t moved anywhere. Nothing’s fixed. Nothing happened.

 

The universe has given me a big “oh no you don’t”. I can’t take the easy way out of my general dissatisfaction with life. I still have to strip myself bare and study everything to find out what the hell is wrong with me. I have to fix it the long and hard way instead of trying the geographical approach.

 

I just wish it could have given me that message in a less humiliating way.

life is not a disclaimer

 

life is not a

                 disclaimer

,an asterisk like a

    beautyspot of promise -

a thing to come

                          :addendum

 

life should be a

                       simile

  without

  the box

              ing-up of it;

a free-ly roaming thing

 

a horse

          gallo-

                   ping.

unexplained

unjustified and

                    unapologetic

lost in translation

There are frequent moments when I question this online life; where I wonder what point there is in sharing my thoughts and ideas with people I can’t see, don’t know, and who don’t know me from Mother Mary.

 

Write anything in an online arena, like a news blog, or social networking site, and guaranteed there will be people who totally take it the wrong way, no matter what it is I’m trying to say.

 

In a face-to-face situation, I have backup – subtle body language, intonation, eye contact – all able to help translate the words coming out of my mouth and sit them in the right context and setting.

 

Friends, with the added benefit of their intimate knowledge of me and the colours that make up me, are even more able to easily pinpoint the context of my words.

 

Lately I’m acutely aware that being misunderstood brings me major pain and discomfort. I don’t like it when things I say online are taken the wrong way; when I try to convey one thing, and someone sees something altogether unholy and foreign instead.

 

To be misunderstood – one of the greatest causes of human frustration, no?

 

I’m not talking about writing I put any kind of thought into – I’m talking about random rants, quick snatches from my brainstem, thoughts on the fly.

 

It has seriously got me thinking about my other writing though. Fuck, I aint nowhere near what anyone could class as ‘a writer’, but I’m definitely going to need to work on perfecting the art of threading context, tone, and subconscious meaning through the weave of my written words in the future, if I want to avoid the nasty business of feeling like I’m writing in Mandarin to an audience only fluent in Spanish.

why can’t i play?

why can’t i play with words today?   i’m stomping feet and pouting lips. i have things to say. why can’t i play? is this the way the deaf-mute feel? the stutterers, the foreign-tongued? the words don’t want to fit together and it shits me more than ever when i really want to build things with my lego words and can’t.   i want to play.

marcus was a little lamb…

There’s an interesting story today about a school in London where the children helped rear a lamb from birth, then voted 13-1 to send him to the slaughterhouse.

 

He was part of a farm set up for the kids to help them learn the very important and very overlooked question of where our food comes from.

 

I think this is the most fantastically awesome thing I have read this week.

Marcus the lamb, in happier days…

 

Don’t get me wrong – I’d prefer it if little Marcus the lamb at least got to see out his first full year of life, and at most got to live a full and pampered life, but this is an important lesson I think everyone should be made to go through. If you want to eat meat, you really should understand where it comes from.

 

Growing up I was reared on the ‘meat and three veg’ diet. I never questioned how the food got to me; as far as I was concerned, chops came from the shop, on styrofoam trays, wrapped in plastic. I made no connection between the meat I ate, and the little baby cows and lambs I saw frolicking in the fields.

 

This is probably going to sound naff, but around the age of 16 or 17 (late in life, I admit), I had an epiphany while eating my obligatory chop for dinner – I suddenly tasted blood and nothing else, and in front of my eyes as clear as the 80’s wallpaper in the dining room, saw a cow with a chop-sized chunk out of its side.

 

Then it was just a matter of connect-the-dots.

 

My last meal of meat was silverside (my most hated of all the meat creations). I finished it, and turned to my mum to proclaim I was becoming vegetarian. I had had enough. I realised I only ever liked the taste of meat when it was masked by something else – a nice full bolognaise, or mushroom sauce, or a mound of mashed potato. Meat, by itself, was disgusting.

 

In my university years, I read more into the production of meat, joining animal rights newsgroups online, speaking to like-minded people, discovering the whole dirty secrets within the meat industry. My stance became ethical – I wanted to pull myself out of the meat production-line, reduce demand by one. Whatever impact it had, it was a kinder soul I found myself imbibed with.

 

Any argument on this goes round and round – yes, I still wear leather; yes, as of recently I’ve started eating the occasional fish due to health reasons (and now call myself a vegequarian); yes, I’m aware that even the shampoos I use may have animal products in them, but I’ve reduced demand for eating meat by one. My god, the stories I could tell. Cement, chemicals, hormones, cruelty – I won’t get into it. I don’t deny anyone the choice to eat meat if they so desire.

 

I’m not vegan, but by not consuming red or white meat I’ve at least reduced demand by one, and I’m happy with that. I can only make decisions for myself. Everyone else needs to sort themselves out personally.

 

I won’t get into the argument on fish but to say that my decision to eat fish is partly eastern religion-based: fish have less of a developed nervous system, and therefore slightly less of a karmic imprint (but one, nonetheless).

 

So this story really makes me smile. Parents are spitting and demanding the principal be lynched in front of a leering spitting vitriol-spewing crowd, but how many of them sit down to eat their pork, and lamb, and beef every night?

 

The hypocrisy is rife. “How dare you expose our children… to the… truth… about where the food they put in their mouths and therefore nourish their spirit, comes from…”

 

Give me a break. Let the kiddies know and understand, and make their own decision based on the full facts. Let them not become hypocrites like the rest of us.

rant alert

Now this is probably going to be a rant and slightly ‘diary entry’ ish so feel free to skip it. I say probably because I don’t know what I’m going to write yet. I’m just going to start writing and see what hideous creature I give birth to. I doubt there’s going to be a point to it; I just really really need to rant.

 

It’s only Tuesday night and yet this week already feels like the longest, hardest, most depressing, constricting, claustrophobic week ever. I mean what the fuck, really. Can it get any more annoying? And the stupid thing is I can’t even pin down what, exactly, is making it this way.

 

I say, this week is shit, and then I say, why? and I have no answer. It just is. The little things. Every single little thing. Everything is hard. Everything takes effort. Everything seems so very very not worth it. I look around and it all just looks like maggots flailing around in primordial ooze. Pointless. Not worth my time. Sans nourishment.

 

I’m aware of this mood, conscious that obviously something in me is currently askew and I should just try and ride it out, shut the fuck up and get through it, see things as perfectly fine and not one great difficulty after another. But I can’t.

 

I can feel the unease, simmering just under the surface. I’ve felt it before. Soon I’ll have the irrational thoughts like wanting to quit my job, sell the house and piss off to some foreign country just to see what happens. Or daydreams of standing up in the middle of the office to yell obscenities, tell every idiotic pissant they’re an idiotic pissant, and storming out.

 

Of course, if I can hold out until the rational mind decides to return from hiatus, I won’t do these things. All the more pity. I should. My world is too constricted with the rules and regs. I can’t breathe.

 

The other thing that bubbles away at times like this, is my old friend ‘why?’ Why why why why. Why am I here? Why do I put up with this? Why am I letting myself get the shit kicked out of me? Why do I continually do things I don’t want to do? Why am I doing things that don’t inspire me? Why am I persisting with the unhappy? Why can’t I get my shit together and just sort this crap out? Why why why.

 

What am I waiting for? The second coming? Is that when I’ll finally renovate my house (so I can get the fuck out and away from the neighbours with their seriously fucked up granny taste in music which they like playing louder as the night gets later and they get drunker and what the fuck is with her droopy tits and her bad peroxide job anyway)? Is that when I will finally go after a job that inspires me? Is that when I’ll finally grow some balls and take some risks?

 

I mean I could get proper sideswiped tomorrow and go all bug-on-windscreen and lights out, and this would be all I have made of my life? How depressing is that? It’s a fucking travesty.

 

---

“Here is a life. Do with it what you will.”

 

oh ok, just let me think about it for, say 3 or 4 DECADES before I decide what I want to do with it.

 

“Ok well don’t take too long; you don’t know how long you’ve got it for, you know.”

 

yeah well i’m really trying but this shit is hard you know.

 

“No it’s not, you’re just being a pussy. You’re just taking life too seriously. You’re just letting the rules get in the way of a great comedy.”

---

 

I need wine. Lots of wine. And for this week to be over. And for either my sanity to return, or my insanity to start making some very convincing arguments for a permanent move to lala-land.

being erica… or is it being me?

I love ABC iView. Doubly so since my ISP gives it to me quota free.

 

I hardly turn the TV on these days. Too depressing, too mind-numbing. Many more interesting things happening online, on demand.

 

So on a free and lazy Saturday I had a swim in the iView pool and discovered Being Erica, a show I swear is based on me: a 30-something, relatively attractive single childless female in an unfulfilling job, regretting the decisions made along her life path that have lead her to this point.

 

Erica meets Dr Tom, a therapist who is able to send her back in time to relive her regrets so she can do them differently.

 

I’m hoping the message that comes from this is that even if you could live your life again and change your regrettable moments, it will make no difference – things happened how they were meant to happen for a reason. That’s what I live by anyway, to keep myself sane; believing anything else will make me lose the plot.

 

I’m where I am, because I’m meant to be.

 

As Dr Tom says in episode one:

“You are where you need to be right now. And when you’re finished doing whatever it is that you’re meant to be doing, then you move on.”

 

 

At a couple of points in the first two episodes, I found myself getting teary – a sure sign it hits close to home.

 

It made me think: If I could go back and change things about my life, would I?

 

Knowing what I know now, would I waste 11 years in a relationship that goes nowhere? Or would I put the love aside and start years earlier on working on a relationship that gave me children, and a husband, and a pretty house in the ‘burbs?

 

Would I stick with my first love – film, and try harder to make a career out of it?

 

Would I have travelled more when I was younger – independently, experiencing more of life by experiencing me, alone, amongst it?

 

They are my major regrets. And the choices and decisions I’ve made regarding them have lead me to be here, at this point in time, thinking the way I do, living like this, doing this.

 

It’s a tough call. I don’t know how productive it is to live in ‘what if’ land, though thousands, including me, travel there often.

 

It’s a great show if you happen to catch it. Dr Tom’s character is fond of quotes to explain things; here’s a few of the gems that resonated with me from the first episode:

 

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”

-- Albert Einstein       

 

 

“Pressure makes diamonds”

-- General Patton       

 

 

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living”

-- Plato   

sigh.

sigh.
my brain is fried.
it tries to find
some kind
of sense,
but it relents
to foggy-
mindedness,
the boggy
pond of wot-the-fuck.
- i'm out of luck.
my mind won't play
today. i may
as well shut down,
release a frown,
embrace the crazy
(hazy as it be)
and free the freak
inside.
my brain is fried.

1 september

first day of spring.

today.

with the rain and the wind

and the grey, angry, pock-marked sea.

 

stand on a podium

raise a fist in the air,

declare:

“today is spring”.

 

(man and his boxes)

“this chaos, i box.

i label. i have dominion.”

bullshit.

 

nature can’t read a calendar

and doesn’t care to.

 

i’ll wait for my own spring.

when the warmth hits my chest.

shows me flowers.

makes me grow.

 

until then,

the next person to proclaim

“first day of spring!”

gets a kick up the clacker.