Life can take so much from us that it seems that sometimes it breathes life into us to just wind us and wound us. Then sometimes, usually when we least expect it, it steals our breath away rendering us without speech, without pain, without grief. These little moments of life happen so seldom, yet are so cherished, we seem to carry on through unimaginable pain to experience it once more.
The idea that life is a journey sits with me as well as scoffed down hot chips on my digestive system, as a journey suggests a known path, a known ending and life simply is not divided up that way. Life could end at any moment regardless at which point in the path you may be. Life is merciless in the way it delivers itself and destroys itself and in the end despite the battle scars we may collect we are simply a harsh tag in this numbers game. The idea of living your life by a plan, a mapped out path, baffles me as another example of man’s arrogance.
This is not to discount the pain, frustration, grief and sickness that plague you. This is not to discredit the black dog that rips at your tender calves or the dissatisfaction you may feel when you get up every morning and face a wife, job, bank account that displeases you. These things are as real as the nose on your face that sucks in that smell of stagnation you feel, but to allow your life to be the sum of this sourness is as spiteful as a face without that proverbial nose.
What point on this path are you meant to feel this way? Where is the marker that tells you when you have had enough? Where does the guide book give you evidence that things are meant to be different than this? And why is it that when we join the dots on our worth we erase the joy and our purpose systematically, ruthlessly, and dare I say, selfishly?
Before I turned 30 I never had enough.
Sleep, success, money, attention, satisfaction, glory, love, fun, life and this dogged me until that canine caught up with me and ripped its teeth into my misguided flesh.
Before I was 30 I believed in a path, a reason and I sort meaning as if it was real. But then with that shaggy dog, in crept that realisation that I like you and the guy on the street are without purpose, meaning, or point.
However I was still wrong, still misguided and still not charging rent to that black mutt. The truth is the point, the meaning; the purpose lies not with me or you but with others. Our purpose is scaled on the degree of what we mean to others. Our world simply does not exist without the bodies that link our world into one. Our lives only exist, materialise because of the ones that are there to see it, touch it, judge it, love it, crave it and destroy it. We truly are the lone tree in the forest that falls only if there are other ears to hear and eyes to witness it. As much as some of us crave a lone life without the “ly”, we only exist because others say so.
Like monkeys we can sit on our perch and see no, hear no, and speak no but in the end we will just fall off that perch. Our grip is the people good or bad in our universe whether they stay for a second, day or lifetime, what they are and what they do will always determine how your second, day or lifetime pans out. It appears that no man is an island which means two things. 1. You need others to exist and 2. People only stay as long as you let them.
Live or die by that. Exist or don’t, simple as that. I am as much a part of you as you are of me..accepting that seems to be the key to this joy ride. Remember that next time you assess your worth by your standards as the only way to truly assess it is to ask those who allow it to exist in the first place.
18 February 2012
26 December 2011
The New Black
“When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life
stands explained”
Mark Twain
Not being a fan of over indulgence and commercialism for the sake of filling human size holes in the universe, the idea of gift giving for the sake of it makes me a little queasy. Finding or making the perfect gift however is well perfect. This year my mother gave me a “Dysfunctions journal” to record all the and I quote “my immeasurably fascinating dysfunctions, neuroses, emotions, inner children, moments of shame and doubt, projection, self loathing, misanthropy, and completely normal insanity, because the only difference between me and the rest of the population is that I acknowledge how crazy I am and they’re all in mind-numbing denial.” This tells me a few things. 1) My mother knows me well, 2) she seems to also have an acceptance of this, and 3) insanity is the new black because all cool things are made into journal formats.
“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity”
Jean Dubuffet
Sometime in 2010, over a familiar cup of tea, a friend advised me that I was the right kinda fucked up. Sometime in 2011 the same friend also advised me that sure I was insane but at least I was worth the effort. This friend is one of my best friends for two reasons 1) she is also fucked up in the right way and 2) she seems to appreciate this level of insanity. This is also the girl that throws messed up parties with me combining several holiday events at once and makes birthday cakes in the same form of the shower scene from the film Psycho. So why do I love her and everyone within our universe of madness? Well maybe for the fact that when she bought out a birthday cake covered in fake blood with a crazed Barbie doll being knifed to death by Ken, not one person in that room thought it was anything but normal.
“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface”
Stephen Sondheim
I had a conversation many months ago with my mother over a glass of goodness where she asked me why so many of my friends seem to be insane. Without so much of a breath or even a sip of fore mentioned grapey goodness, I replied because insane people have a higher IQ and I just can’t suffer fools. Another two reasons why I love my Mum 1) she understood this and 2) she has a very high IQ and has repeatedly earned her stripes in the other department too. Mensa is simply madness written in an acceptable language as sanity is simply another way of saying safe, stodgy, and god forbid stereotypical.
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live”
Charles Bukowski’
So the point of this piece is...Well this is none, as points are dotted by everyone but the truly dotty and sense is for those that care to seek it. I am more interested in the obscure, the challenged, the atypical and the odd.
“You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for.”
Billy Joel
Lately we have been shown many advertisements about mental illness with the familiar tag line of “I can treat my mental illness but I can’t treat how you treat me”. This campaign seems so old fashioned and last century to me as I can’t imagine a life where such things as this are not treasured traits, but I also think maybe this is because I have been blessed with people in my life that see disabilities of any kind as different types of abilities. I am not dismissing mental illness instead I am embracing it and asking why you insist on attaching the word illness to it.
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane”
Philip K. Dick
So maybe the point is to embrace the inner madman, to face reality and pick its bones until only a skerrick of sanity remains as only then we can accept that this life is not about finding happiness, wealth, or even wisdom but by allowing ourselves to be the vessel that this earth pours its prominence into. Being open, being truly open means that the occasional devil will drop in and change how we see the world and our place within it. It will be scary, it will be fraught with fear, it will be colourful but also sometimes removed of all colour but it may just make more sense which is why as a person that suffers, no experiences, mental illness I can laugh at this state of being and celebrate its clarity. I do and I’ve found others that do and they’re all awesomely insane but my door is always open for more that welcomes this state of being.
You’re nuts, but you’re welcome here.
Steve Martin
stands explained”
Mark Twain
Not being a fan of over indulgence and commercialism for the sake of filling human size holes in the universe, the idea of gift giving for the sake of it makes me a little queasy. Finding or making the perfect gift however is well perfect. This year my mother gave me a “Dysfunctions journal” to record all the and I quote “my immeasurably fascinating dysfunctions, neuroses, emotions, inner children, moments of shame and doubt, projection, self loathing, misanthropy, and completely normal insanity, because the only difference between me and the rest of the population is that I acknowledge how crazy I am and they’re all in mind-numbing denial.” This tells me a few things. 1) My mother knows me well, 2) she seems to also have an acceptance of this, and 3) insanity is the new black because all cool things are made into journal formats.
“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity”
Jean Dubuffet
Sometime in 2010, over a familiar cup of tea, a friend advised me that I was the right kinda fucked up. Sometime in 2011 the same friend also advised me that sure I was insane but at least I was worth the effort. This friend is one of my best friends for two reasons 1) she is also fucked up in the right way and 2) she seems to appreciate this level of insanity. This is also the girl that throws messed up parties with me combining several holiday events at once and makes birthday cakes in the same form of the shower scene from the film Psycho. So why do I love her and everyone within our universe of madness? Well maybe for the fact that when she bought out a birthday cake covered in fake blood with a crazed Barbie doll being knifed to death by Ken, not one person in that room thought it was anything but normal.
“I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface”
Stephen Sondheim
I had a conversation many months ago with my mother over a glass of goodness where she asked me why so many of my friends seem to be insane. Without so much of a breath or even a sip of fore mentioned grapey goodness, I replied because insane people have a higher IQ and I just can’t suffer fools. Another two reasons why I love my Mum 1) she understood this and 2) she has a very high IQ and has repeatedly earned her stripes in the other department too. Mensa is simply madness written in an acceptable language as sanity is simply another way of saying safe, stodgy, and god forbid stereotypical.
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live”
Charles Bukowski’
So the point of this piece is...Well this is none, as points are dotted by everyone but the truly dotty and sense is for those that care to seek it. I am more interested in the obscure, the challenged, the atypical and the odd.
“You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for.”
Billy Joel
Lately we have been shown many advertisements about mental illness with the familiar tag line of “I can treat my mental illness but I can’t treat how you treat me”. This campaign seems so old fashioned and last century to me as I can’t imagine a life where such things as this are not treasured traits, but I also think maybe this is because I have been blessed with people in my life that see disabilities of any kind as different types of abilities. I am not dismissing mental illness instead I am embracing it and asking why you insist on attaching the word illness to it.
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane”
Philip K. Dick
So maybe the point is to embrace the inner madman, to face reality and pick its bones until only a skerrick of sanity remains as only then we can accept that this life is not about finding happiness, wealth, or even wisdom but by allowing ourselves to be the vessel that this earth pours its prominence into. Being open, being truly open means that the occasional devil will drop in and change how we see the world and our place within it. It will be scary, it will be fraught with fear, it will be colourful but also sometimes removed of all colour but it may just make more sense which is why as a person that suffers, no experiences, mental illness I can laugh at this state of being and celebrate its clarity. I do and I’ve found others that do and they’re all awesomely insane but my door is always open for more that welcomes this state of being.
You’re nuts, but you’re welcome here.
Steve Martin
08 December 2011
Tokyo
2011 is slowly ticking away and leaving the usual feeling of presumption that plagues all annual important points in time. Christmas, New Year, birthdays always insist on absorption, accountability and advancement. As children this time of year is about counting the days till Saint Nic, but as adults we seem to spend this time looking back counting scars and successes as if deadlines were due, payment arrangements were expiring and life was suddenly meant to make more sense. December weighs heavily on our chests and bank accounts as we dress it up in preparation of ending another year. But endings are simply segways into new cycles with a whole new set of possibilities and opportunities, right? Yet endings still sit like stones in our bellies. Endings still fill our hearts with air that presses painfully on all the possibility popping within the year that we just lived, or survived, or just barely pulled through. Another year almost over, another year older, yet we are seemingly not wiser as we still have to carry ourselves into 2012.
New Year and the internal fireworks of resolutions are quickly approaching, but this time they can wait. They can sit like heartburn for all I care and singe my insides as this year I will not count the days that I didn’t do enough, be enough, lived enough.
Finally at 34 I no longer give a fuck.
Wrinkles come with the promise of wisdom and in this year where so much went wrong, I can tell you that some things felt beautifully right. These moments were not elegant, or epiphanies, or certainly not earth shattering or even exemplary moments as life dragged its feet like any other year. However this year, I finally understood how very small I was, yet how very big a place in some people’s lives I have.
When I was in Tokyo many moons ago and I climbed to the dizzy heights of the observatory building and looked over the big city smog and looked for the edge of a city that was bigger than a map could ever contain, I was left in that moment, with more loneliness that I had thankfully ever experienced before and since. I wondered with the exhaustion that only a traveler can feel how people could ever find each other in a city with no sides. How a connection could be made in a city that spread beyond even the eyes of a coin operated binocular was beyond me. It has taken me years to understand how people live within a life that is too big and busy to care. Yet billions do by creating worlds within worlds and 2011 represents to me the worlds I created, was invited into, and found a home in. When I think about 2011 I don’t feel the job dissatisfaction, the empty bank account, the extra pounds that never shift, the car crash, the confusion, the floods, instead I think of you, the endless cups of tea and beer, the wines and the therapeutic whining, the planning and the doing, the dinners and the discussions, the time spent with people I admire, adore and appreciate. My world within the big bad world without sides, without heart, without meaning was made because of you.
So for the first time in a very long time the new year does not carry the weight of dread, fear or even care as this year will not be faced alone. This year will not be another Tokyo for I have found the sides, the edges that hold me up and in.
New Year and the internal fireworks of resolutions are quickly approaching, but this time they can wait. They can sit like heartburn for all I care and singe my insides as this year I will not count the days that I didn’t do enough, be enough, lived enough.
Finally at 34 I no longer give a fuck.
Wrinkles come with the promise of wisdom and in this year where so much went wrong, I can tell you that some things felt beautifully right. These moments were not elegant, or epiphanies, or certainly not earth shattering or even exemplary moments as life dragged its feet like any other year. However this year, I finally understood how very small I was, yet how very big a place in some people’s lives I have.
When I was in Tokyo many moons ago and I climbed to the dizzy heights of the observatory building and looked over the big city smog and looked for the edge of a city that was bigger than a map could ever contain, I was left in that moment, with more loneliness that I had thankfully ever experienced before and since. I wondered with the exhaustion that only a traveler can feel how people could ever find each other in a city with no sides. How a connection could be made in a city that spread beyond even the eyes of a coin operated binocular was beyond me. It has taken me years to understand how people live within a life that is too big and busy to care. Yet billions do by creating worlds within worlds and 2011 represents to me the worlds I created, was invited into, and found a home in. When I think about 2011 I don’t feel the job dissatisfaction, the empty bank account, the extra pounds that never shift, the car crash, the confusion, the floods, instead I think of you, the endless cups of tea and beer, the wines and the therapeutic whining, the planning and the doing, the dinners and the discussions, the time spent with people I admire, adore and appreciate. My world within the big bad world without sides, without heart, without meaning was made because of you.
So for the first time in a very long time the new year does not carry the weight of dread, fear or even care as this year will not be faced alone. This year will not be another Tokyo for I have found the sides, the edges that hold me up and in.
08 October 2011
Post-it
I have this overwhelming urge to leave Post-it notes inside women’s magazines. Little notes of love, admiration and support.
‘’ You’re perfect as you are!’’
‘’Those lines means you lived loved and laughed!’’
‘’You don’t need to sleep with him to earn his love!’’
‘’Everyone but stick insects looks ridiculous in these!’’
‘’You could have spent this money on something more worthwhile, like wine!’’
These magazines have always represented all the reasons why women cannot be all that they can and deserve to be. If I donated my life, like noble people do, to one cause then abolishing women mags would be on top of my list. Does anyone else think it is a cruel and unusual punishment to actually pay for something that makes you feel worse?
I’ve spent my entire childhood shaped by a spiny tail multimedia source that told me everything I should be instead of anything I could actually be. This may seem surreal to some men but I know every woman of a certain age will be nodding their head at this statement. Yet here I stand as an intelligent, accomplished woman in my 30’s and instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what I am, I see lines, failure, ticking clocks and disposable attributes. Someone, something has programmed us to think and feel this way. When I was younger I used to believe that this social grooming was a way to stop women taking over the world as seriously we all know we can. It was a way of keeping us in cages, imprisoning us within our own insecurities. Now that I am wiser I realise that the reason is a hell of a lot more boring than that. Money, all this soul destroying ideology comes down to a couple of grubby notes. These magazines, these models, this beauty industry is not there to hold us back from world domination it is simply there to make billions of dollars by destroying everything worthwhile about being a woman. Part of me feels slight admiration for the advertising genius that destroyed an entire sex but the other part of me, the part that struggles with sexuality, social normality, and esteem, hates the fucking bastard.
Why don’t you just, like not read it, look at it, and listen to it?
Geez I don’t know as I don’t actually buy the stupid magazines, watched the degrading representations of women on TV and film, buy the so called miracle products that erase the personality of your face. I don’t wear pretty smelly stuff, revealing clothing, sexy anything and I don’t flirt, stick out my boobs, or pleasure men for acceptance but I know confused 12 year olds that do. I see women filled with goodness, overcome with the black murky clouds of insecurity, line up in newsagents to buy a glossy magazine to tell them why they will never be a woman.
A woman! Like it is a concept that has been copyrighted by beauty corporations, not an entire gender but a myth that has been concocted within an advertising boardroom by penises that want to leach them for every dollar they earn.
Feeling foolish? Degraded? Outraged? Don’t worry it will pass as soon as your anti-wrinkle cream runs out and you have to fork out $50 to replace it. I’m not sure who I am pissed off at more. The industry for destroying women or the women that allow it happen.
Either way on Friday the 14th October it is the “Blossom for one day” event where everyday people are asked to leave little notes around their city to spread goodwill, encouragement and a little splash of humanity. I think it is time that I left those little post-it notes of love within the pages of those glossy magazines.....
‘’ You’re perfect as you are!’’
‘’Those lines means you lived loved and laughed!’’
‘’You don’t need to sleep with him to earn his love!’’
‘’Everyone but stick insects looks ridiculous in these!’’
‘’You could have spent this money on something more worthwhile, like wine!’’
These magazines have always represented all the reasons why women cannot be all that they can and deserve to be. If I donated my life, like noble people do, to one cause then abolishing women mags would be on top of my list. Does anyone else think it is a cruel and unusual punishment to actually pay for something that makes you feel worse?
I’ve spent my entire childhood shaped by a spiny tail multimedia source that told me everything I should be instead of anything I could actually be. This may seem surreal to some men but I know every woman of a certain age will be nodding their head at this statement. Yet here I stand as an intelligent, accomplished woman in my 30’s and instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what I am, I see lines, failure, ticking clocks and disposable attributes. Someone, something has programmed us to think and feel this way. When I was younger I used to believe that this social grooming was a way to stop women taking over the world as seriously we all know we can. It was a way of keeping us in cages, imprisoning us within our own insecurities. Now that I am wiser I realise that the reason is a hell of a lot more boring than that. Money, all this soul destroying ideology comes down to a couple of grubby notes. These magazines, these models, this beauty industry is not there to hold us back from world domination it is simply there to make billions of dollars by destroying everything worthwhile about being a woman. Part of me feels slight admiration for the advertising genius that destroyed an entire sex but the other part of me, the part that struggles with sexuality, social normality, and esteem, hates the fucking bastard.
Why don’t you just, like not read it, look at it, and listen to it?
Geez I don’t know as I don’t actually buy the stupid magazines, watched the degrading representations of women on TV and film, buy the so called miracle products that erase the personality of your face. I don’t wear pretty smelly stuff, revealing clothing, sexy anything and I don’t flirt, stick out my boobs, or pleasure men for acceptance but I know confused 12 year olds that do. I see women filled with goodness, overcome with the black murky clouds of insecurity, line up in newsagents to buy a glossy magazine to tell them why they will never be a woman.
A woman! Like it is a concept that has been copyrighted by beauty corporations, not an entire gender but a myth that has been concocted within an advertising boardroom by penises that want to leach them for every dollar they earn.
Feeling foolish? Degraded? Outraged? Don’t worry it will pass as soon as your anti-wrinkle cream runs out and you have to fork out $50 to replace it. I’m not sure who I am pissed off at more. The industry for destroying women or the women that allow it happen.
Either way on Friday the 14th October it is the “Blossom for one day” event where everyday people are asked to leave little notes around their city to spread goodwill, encouragement and a little splash of humanity. I think it is time that I left those little post-it notes of love within the pages of those glossy magazines.....
23 September 2011
Things of Stone
It seems that hate will always be with us, will always move within us. The difference between us continues to divide us instead of being the making of us.
I have just seen an American movie that moves in a very American way with high, lows, tears and triumphs called “The Help”. It tells the story of black slaves turned into hired help who raised a white generation but were not allowed to even shit in the same place, eat at the same table and walk on the same side of the street. I left the cinema wondering if I was meant to feel inspired by this story or repulsed or whether I was meant to digest it along with all the other crap ways we insist on treating each other. I wonder how Australia’s history would be portrayed and if the fact that people are still alive today who would remember when we considered our Indigenous people as flora and fauna. Makes me wonder if this atrocity would also be framed within a Hollywood storyboard sometime in our near future.
But it isn’t just our aversion to race but our total indifference to difference that moves our prejudices along. It is no longer “cool” to hate someone for the colour of their skin so we simply channel that into other forms...our sex, our religion, our wealth, our size, our appearance....either way it is disgustingly human and disgustingly ugly.
But there are still people that insist on putting prejudice into perceptive. Framing it within a time long gone but time is as continuous as our inability to embrace things we fear, things we can’t indentify within ourselves, things that separate us from the pack.
I wonder what outrageous behaviour of today will be immortalised in a film 50 years from now where we can watch from our comfy seats and hide behind the ignorance of the day. A few things instantly jump to mind and to all our minds as deep down they burn us like acid reflux every time we eat at our tables of intolerance and abhorrence.
There are things happening everyday that should not sit well with you.
We follow fashions of unfairness and pick on people like bullies in the school yard...we never seem to leave that yard do we? We never seem to learn, to grow, to become human. We scavenge for reasons to hate, to divide, to destroy instead of standing in awe of the differences that piece us all together, the marvellous shards that shine making up the mosaic of our lives. Ironically we all try to be original and stand out but only within the safety that we are all the same.
And then boredom was created as I’m pretty damn sure it is a modern day phenomenon. Our insistence of making everyone carbon copies of each other is boring the shit out of me and don’t get me started on genetic engineering. I don’t want to live in a world where baby’s features, sex and minds can be created in a laboratory to ensure they come out perfectly acceptable...Hitler anyone?? The super race will be super boring as there is a massive difference between attractive and appealing. If we create a generation without wonky noses, wing nut ears, and weirdness we will remove all the reasons why someone is worth loving. Instead we will be forced to look at people without fault, without character, without quirk but with perfect shapes, sizes, and dimensions...people of stone.
But who can hate stone right....but the question actually needs to be whether we can love it either. Now there’s a weird word...love....the only thing that can beat the shit out of fear and in a really corny hippy way. It’s the only thing that can stop us being so damn human and make us ....human.
I have just seen an American movie that moves in a very American way with high, lows, tears and triumphs called “The Help”. It tells the story of black slaves turned into hired help who raised a white generation but were not allowed to even shit in the same place, eat at the same table and walk on the same side of the street. I left the cinema wondering if I was meant to feel inspired by this story or repulsed or whether I was meant to digest it along with all the other crap ways we insist on treating each other. I wonder how Australia’s history would be portrayed and if the fact that people are still alive today who would remember when we considered our Indigenous people as flora and fauna. Makes me wonder if this atrocity would also be framed within a Hollywood storyboard sometime in our near future.
But it isn’t just our aversion to race but our total indifference to difference that moves our prejudices along. It is no longer “cool” to hate someone for the colour of their skin so we simply channel that into other forms...our sex, our religion, our wealth, our size, our appearance....either way it is disgustingly human and disgustingly ugly.
But there are still people that insist on putting prejudice into perceptive. Framing it within a time long gone but time is as continuous as our inability to embrace things we fear, things we can’t indentify within ourselves, things that separate us from the pack.
I wonder what outrageous behaviour of today will be immortalised in a film 50 years from now where we can watch from our comfy seats and hide behind the ignorance of the day. A few things instantly jump to mind and to all our minds as deep down they burn us like acid reflux every time we eat at our tables of intolerance and abhorrence.
There are things happening everyday that should not sit well with you.
We follow fashions of unfairness and pick on people like bullies in the school yard...we never seem to leave that yard do we? We never seem to learn, to grow, to become human. We scavenge for reasons to hate, to divide, to destroy instead of standing in awe of the differences that piece us all together, the marvellous shards that shine making up the mosaic of our lives. Ironically we all try to be original and stand out but only within the safety that we are all the same.
And then boredom was created as I’m pretty damn sure it is a modern day phenomenon. Our insistence of making everyone carbon copies of each other is boring the shit out of me and don’t get me started on genetic engineering. I don’t want to live in a world where baby’s features, sex and minds can be created in a laboratory to ensure they come out perfectly acceptable...Hitler anyone?? The super race will be super boring as there is a massive difference between attractive and appealing. If we create a generation without wonky noses, wing nut ears, and weirdness we will remove all the reasons why someone is worth loving. Instead we will be forced to look at people without fault, without character, without quirk but with perfect shapes, sizes, and dimensions...people of stone.
But who can hate stone right....but the question actually needs to be whether we can love it either. Now there’s a weird word...love....the only thing that can beat the shit out of fear and in a really corny hippy way. It’s the only thing that can stop us being so damn human and make us ....human.
28 August 2011
Unticked
We are all so eager to fill the holes we see, we forget to find out what the space was reserved for in the first place. Our obsession with defining each and everything and everyone has led to a world where space and silence is simply a canvas to graffiti, instead of an opportunity to think beyond the possibility of so called normality. Labels and check boxes have moved from the paper surveys and wormed their ways in our lives by defining who we are and what we are capable of. Despite the fact that many of us hover with the pencil between many boxes we still feel compelled to tick one box to describe ourselves and in turn our obligations to our community.
We already move within the congested systems of age, gender, race, wealth and sexuality, do we really need to restrict our impact even more?
We make decisions, life altering decisions, on who we are and what we are allowed to be based on checklists derived by whom? Me? You? Who knows, as no one seems to own up to this ridiculous practice of defining human beings, yet we all seem to file into order in a generally orderly fashion while all the time feeling ignored, misunderstood and increasingly claustrophobic. Which begs the question...why the hell do we do it? Why do we need to label everything? Why can’t we be a bit of everything and still be taken seriously?
Somewhere along the line we need to be at peace with the notion that when we relate to a particular idea it does not define who we are. We are free to move from one movement to another without losing the integrity we all seem to crave. We need to be free within the foundations that describe the feelings that make up the fundamentals of our lives without be shackled to them. Basically we need to be everything that we can in order to be the best we can be. If we live our lives like an actor with many roles then the differences that divide us will no longer exist. You will no longer see a person as a “type” but will rather see a person as a whole being. You will see contradictions and instead of trying to compress them you will celebrate them, as you will see that a person is far more complicated than we ever credited them to be. We would then celebrate the people that shade between the checkboxes instead the ones that firmly believe and pray that they belong to only one ideal.
I know people who are unsure of their gender, their political persuasions, and their sexuality. I know people who are unsure of their spirituality, their purpose, and their responsibility. Are you lucky enough to know people such as this?
Today I am this, tomorrow I may not be, but I will always be
Try putting that in a box
Thankfully you can’t. There are very few things in my life that belong within the box that waits patiently yet insistently to be ticked. I, like all others, have been pigeon holed by strangers and familiars to the point that I too looked for that box which may have defined me to only find one that kinda, not really, sorta went towards a small understanding of who I am.
I’m unticking it now because as I try to move forward it’s weighing me down and making me into something that I never was.
So I declare this day unticking day so I hope you will all join me in rubbing out the little checkbox that has dragged you down to someone that you never really were.
Nerd, slut, geek, dork, drongo, unpredictable, insensitive, conservative, right winged, communist, prude, perfectionist, boring, competitive, married, single, male, female, gay, bi, straight, unsure, asexual, human.
So go ahead and join me in rubbing the little fucker out and let’s see if we can simply be everything instead of something we never wanted to be.
We already move within the congested systems of age, gender, race, wealth and sexuality, do we really need to restrict our impact even more?
We make decisions, life altering decisions, on who we are and what we are allowed to be based on checklists derived by whom? Me? You? Who knows, as no one seems to own up to this ridiculous practice of defining human beings, yet we all seem to file into order in a generally orderly fashion while all the time feeling ignored, misunderstood and increasingly claustrophobic. Which begs the question...why the hell do we do it? Why do we need to label everything? Why can’t we be a bit of everything and still be taken seriously?
Somewhere along the line we need to be at peace with the notion that when we relate to a particular idea it does not define who we are. We are free to move from one movement to another without losing the integrity we all seem to crave. We need to be free within the foundations that describe the feelings that make up the fundamentals of our lives without be shackled to them. Basically we need to be everything that we can in order to be the best we can be. If we live our lives like an actor with many roles then the differences that divide us will no longer exist. You will no longer see a person as a “type” but will rather see a person as a whole being. You will see contradictions and instead of trying to compress them you will celebrate them, as you will see that a person is far more complicated than we ever credited them to be. We would then celebrate the people that shade between the checkboxes instead the ones that firmly believe and pray that they belong to only one ideal.
I know people who are unsure of their gender, their political persuasions, and their sexuality. I know people who are unsure of their spirituality, their purpose, and their responsibility. Are you lucky enough to know people such as this?
Today I am this, tomorrow I may not be, but I will always be
Try putting that in a box
Thankfully you can’t. There are very few things in my life that belong within the box that waits patiently yet insistently to be ticked. I, like all others, have been pigeon holed by strangers and familiars to the point that I too looked for that box which may have defined me to only find one that kinda, not really, sorta went towards a small understanding of who I am.
I’m unticking it now because as I try to move forward it’s weighing me down and making me into something that I never was.
So I declare this day unticking day so I hope you will all join me in rubbing out the little checkbox that has dragged you down to someone that you never really were.
Nerd, slut, geek, dork, drongo, unpredictable, insensitive, conservative, right winged, communist, prude, perfectionist, boring, competitive, married, single, male, female, gay, bi, straight, unsure, asexual, human.
So go ahead and join me in rubbing the little fucker out and let’s see if we can simply be everything instead of something we never wanted to be.
07 August 2011
Invisible
Self obsession does not always come from a place of vanity. It draws from a deeper, darker place than the dainty mirror. One could live their entire life looking back at what they once had, but never knew, and still be convinced that it was the best of times. It seems that this trickery in our mind cripples us more than any other. It’s hard to miss what we never knew we had which forces us to settle on that hardest sentiment to swallow...regret. But is it harder to comprehend regret we witnessed or one we didn’t even realise we missed? In the end regret is regret and it tastes just as spiky on the way down. Do you ever get the feeling that one day you will look at back and realise that those rusted ideas that feel to an army of fears (thanks Tina Dico you rock my world) were truer than the future that screams in your face? Age is a funny thing...you earn it, yet it seems to take pieces of you every year. How can something that has such a wonderful trail to wisdom take so many damn prisoners on the way? How can something so grand look so grotesque? Perhaps it is true that youth is wasted on the young but then again knowing me, knowing you, we would waste that opportunity just as readily.
Technology these days moves so fast that people are starting to not even bother talking about it to avoid looking ignorant. This will and has changed the way we view everything. We seem to have an endless thirst for something better, younger, smarter, faster. Recently I had a disjointed conversation with another about issues that soon will be presented on our breakfast table...bigamy and polygamy to name a few. Part of me understands the link between the high divorce rate and the need to expand the fine print of our union but part of me is saddened by our constant need for change. If we give a little give on this one then we will open the door to move the goal posts on everything else...then again maybe this is why a 10 year draped in animal print posed on the French cover of Vogue this week.
Invisibility has a deafening silence about it. As a small child, no rephrase that, as a small female child I was always told that by the time you are 45 you will disappear and cease to count. You will no longer be seen as sexually desirable, or intelligently viable. You will simply be stuck between young and old, worthwhile and worthless, willing to impregnate and past you’re used by date. These days where time moves faster than your iphone can keep up it seems that cloak of invisibility hits at 30. So if you are like me, as I honestly believe many are, that fact that you are hitting your high notes in your 30 no longer counts as the last bus left 5 years ago.
On the flip side Helen Mirren’s body just won the title of best bod for 2011....which doesn’t help my argument....then again ripping up the stupid magazines that voted for her and helped create such unrealistic ideals does! So what does it leave but more confusion....
There was an article in the paper today talking about how children as young as 4 are battling with poor body image. I distinctly remember being that age and feeling the same way...which tells me at least two things...1. Nothing has changed and 2. Everything needs to. But then the devil and his advocate pops in my head and whispers with his fork tongue and taunts me with the thought that maybe it’s me and not you. Maybe the fact that I sit here at 34 and feel so undesirable is 100% my making. Maybe all the crap that you hear on TV, read in magazines and see on films is exactly that..crap. Maybe the French in all their bagetted and delicious goose liver wisdom chose that 10 year old girl plastered in makeup and high heels so we would talk about it, not desire it, but just talk about it and maybe even thinking about buying their magazine of glossy paper and unrealistic dreams. Have we become a product of our own misguidance? Do we actually believe that bullshit we have spun? If we have, we seriously need to stop telling these lies because we are all starting to believe it!
I believe in the power of being a legend in your own lunchbox and living a fabulous life excused of all boundaries and I still vividly remember as a child watching my overweight neighbour walking around in a see-through white bikini. I remember watching her half appalled and three quarters jealous at her ability to scoff at social expectations and look in the mirror and feel fabulous anyway. I have no idea where she is now but I know regardless of how she looks now she will still stand in front of that magic mirror and smile as she is anything but invisible in her world. Which leans towards an idea that has been nagging me for many years....... I have a sneaky suspicion that life is 90% fear and 10% real which means that your worst fears is really only 10% true. Life is as complicated or as simple as you choose to make it and you choose whether you are the leading lady or some unpaid extra in the background.
You decide if you are seen or if you are invisible. I also have a sneaky suspicion that it is only yourself that believes you are and everyone else has been seeing you for years.
Technology these days moves so fast that people are starting to not even bother talking about it to avoid looking ignorant. This will and has changed the way we view everything. We seem to have an endless thirst for something better, younger, smarter, faster. Recently I had a disjointed conversation with another about issues that soon will be presented on our breakfast table...bigamy and polygamy to name a few. Part of me understands the link between the high divorce rate and the need to expand the fine print of our union but part of me is saddened by our constant need for change. If we give a little give on this one then we will open the door to move the goal posts on everything else...then again maybe this is why a 10 year draped in animal print posed on the French cover of Vogue this week.
Invisibility has a deafening silence about it. As a small child, no rephrase that, as a small female child I was always told that by the time you are 45 you will disappear and cease to count. You will no longer be seen as sexually desirable, or intelligently viable. You will simply be stuck between young and old, worthwhile and worthless, willing to impregnate and past you’re used by date. These days where time moves faster than your iphone can keep up it seems that cloak of invisibility hits at 30. So if you are like me, as I honestly believe many are, that fact that you are hitting your high notes in your 30 no longer counts as the last bus left 5 years ago.
On the flip side Helen Mirren’s body just won the title of best bod for 2011....which doesn’t help my argument....then again ripping up the stupid magazines that voted for her and helped create such unrealistic ideals does! So what does it leave but more confusion....
There was an article in the paper today talking about how children as young as 4 are battling with poor body image. I distinctly remember being that age and feeling the same way...which tells me at least two things...1. Nothing has changed and 2. Everything needs to. But then the devil and his advocate pops in my head and whispers with his fork tongue and taunts me with the thought that maybe it’s me and not you. Maybe the fact that I sit here at 34 and feel so undesirable is 100% my making. Maybe all the crap that you hear on TV, read in magazines and see on films is exactly that..crap. Maybe the French in all their bagetted and delicious goose liver wisdom chose that 10 year old girl plastered in makeup and high heels so we would talk about it, not desire it, but just talk about it and maybe even thinking about buying their magazine of glossy paper and unrealistic dreams. Have we become a product of our own misguidance? Do we actually believe that bullshit we have spun? If we have, we seriously need to stop telling these lies because we are all starting to believe it!
I believe in the power of being a legend in your own lunchbox and living a fabulous life excused of all boundaries and I still vividly remember as a child watching my overweight neighbour walking around in a see-through white bikini. I remember watching her half appalled and three quarters jealous at her ability to scoff at social expectations and look in the mirror and feel fabulous anyway. I have no idea where she is now but I know regardless of how she looks now she will still stand in front of that magic mirror and smile as she is anything but invisible in her world. Which leans towards an idea that has been nagging me for many years....... I have a sneaky suspicion that life is 90% fear and 10% real which means that your worst fears is really only 10% true. Life is as complicated or as simple as you choose to make it and you choose whether you are the leading lady or some unpaid extra in the background.
You decide if you are seen or if you are invisible. I also have a sneaky suspicion that it is only yourself that believes you are and everyone else has been seeing you for years.
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