The fox and the rabbit and windmill tiles

So for the last couple of weekends Lucas and I have been doing major cleaning up around the house.

This is because we have rising damp in the walls and quite a number of other major repairs need to be done as a result and the landlord has taken it into his head that he can get everything done in the 11 days that we will be on holidays a little later this year. More power to them.

Which means having to pack up close to half our books so they can move bookcases from the walls, and also emptying out both wall to wall built in closets in both bedrooms.

Not looking forward to this, but am first to admit that the built in closet in the spare bedroom has become a dumping ground, while our clothes in the bedroom could really do with a solid go through.

As a result of which, we ended up with two big garbage bins full (one general rubbish, and one double sized recycling bin) and ended up with about 8 garbage bags full of give aways (old but still good clothes, handbags, towels, etc).

On final count, we found that we had a total of the following devices in our house:

• 8 computers ( 2 PC desk tops, one of which is still in use, one of which isn’t, one Mac Pro in use, three old laptops no longer in use, one of which we have given to Adrian, one new Alienware laptop for Lucas, one new Macbook Air for me). And one tablet for Lucas (i-pad, definitely in use)
• 5 mobile phones, only 2 of which are still in use
• various other old chords, landline telephones, instruction manuals for equipment we don’t own or use anymore etc.

Anyway, the phones are going to go down to 2 (I am finally going to get around to shutting down my old private mobile phone that I don’t use anymore and Lucas threw out his old Motorola and is selling his previous iPhone) and the computers are going to go down to the four that are actually in use. 

It’s a disconcerting thing because I am not really a hoarder. To me, it feels like too many things just get in the way. Because I am cautious, I will often keep a prior version of something until I am really sure that the new thing works/does the job I want etc, with the intention of then going back and chucking the old thing out. Problem is, the spare bedroom built-in is so... messy, that I put off going back to do the follow up clear out.  

It actually feels really good to know we have caught up now and have divested ourselves of some of this junk.

I am just not an overly sentimental person. 

I don’t walk into someone’s clutter fest of a house and think ‘ah, here’s a person with a full, rich life with lots of interests and who’s done lots of things.’

I think “here’s a person who sentimentalises everything, can’t let go of the past, probably still lives there.”

I’m not talking, btw, about someone who is an action figure nut, or loves movies or books and has collected a lot, I am talking about someone who has kept everything that has ever passed through their fingers. Every letter, every card, every kitschy figurine, trinket, photograph. When they die, it’s not evidence that they have lived life, it’s a rummage sale. 

There are things that matter to me that I keep. Some old photographs. A few of the cards from my 21st and 30th birthday. A few of the early love letter type cards Lucas and I gave each other the first year. My first ‘money box’, which happens to be a ceramic pink dwarf that I got from the German Sparkasse in my first year in school when I was 6 years old. The only knick knack that my father ever bought me (not my mother, who usually does all the picking) when he went on a skiing trip with his workmates. Things that I write travel from laptop to laptop.

The family tree monograph that my cousin put together for the family tracing my father’s family back to the Transylvanian migrants who crossed the Carpathians and the Harz mountains to come west into Germany 400 odd years ago. Not who we are, but a story of where we came from.

Lucas’ sporting medals, his (pure polyester) Canadian hockey jerseys, his photos and his sketches and his Tikki mugs.

All of our books. Okay, the majority of our books. We’ve both bought some clunkers, and they go on e-bay, or to the local library as a donation, or failing all else, in the bin. 

Other than that, I like to travel light. It’s the pragmatist in me.

I am not the squirrel who needs to keep coming back to the same tree to ensure her hoard is still there, who will die with the forest when the forest is cut down around her. Some people don’t know how to move on, how to leave. Their minds won’t let them. They surround themselves with everything they have, and they need to have those things to be. As if only by staking their mark that they belong ‘here’ and are surrounded by solid evidence of it gives them the peace of mind to go to sleep at night.

Often I see those markers in those who were forced to make one big foray into the world.  I see it in the post war European generation who settled in Australia. They went through the cataclysm of WWII, then fled while the adrenalin was still high, and then every year since, they have become more of that squirrel, that magpie, surrounding themselves with evidence of who they were, what they lost, what they have accumulated again.

My mother and my sister both like to go to estate sales particularly of elderly Dutch ladies,  my sister because she has an academic fascination with the Dutch (she has a PhD in Dutch colonialism) and my mother because it’s familiar enough but not too close to home (so for eg, she would never go to the estate sale for a German). Tables and tables full of blue and white windmill tiles, figurines, vases. A collection of every reminder they could find of home, a piecing back together of all they lost once, an idea of ‘home’ reconstructed, but oddly off kilter. Because it’s not the real thing. When you live in the middle of the real thing, you don’t need to construct a temple to it.

There’s one item at the back, a bit chipped, and it’s the one original, just a cheap thing, that they brought from home. Every article since is an attempt to sooth their souls. The luxuries they can afford now, evidence that what was lost (or that they never had) has been regained on countless trips, countless visits. But of course, there is never any going back. No force on earth will ever really replace what that one chipped figurine or tile or plaque from home represents. The only genuine article.

The kids and grandkids don’t know to claim it. They’ve skimmed the items that have any monetary worth, or suit their decor, and then sell the rest without a backwards glance.

It puts me in mind of the Indiana Jones movies. The real artifact is always the simple, wooden cup that a carpenter might have owned. 

But what possible meaning could that chipped dwarf or cat ornament have to anyone else? Maybe the Vikings had the right of it and burned or buried favoured items with their dead, leaving the next generation free to do their own living, start their own stories.

So, there are things none of us like to leave behind through the course of our lives. For some of us, more, for some of us, less.

For me, the idea of burying myself up to the eyeballs in an accumulation of clutter, to prove that I am here, that I will stay now... is totally foreign to my nature.

My genetic history is full of people who left the forest as it was cut down. Sometimes I suspect they packed their bags just because they could.  Freedom has its own siren call.

There are others who weren’t anxious enough as Vesuvius rumbled, or as the government stole their assets. 

Me? Well, I don’t really want to see Rome burn, but on the other hand, when life says ‘go’, I won’t scoot back into the house to wrap my arms around all the items, the clutter, the junk, that I can’t let go. I will jump into the ocean, I will run beyond the forest, I will climb the mountain and I will take Lucas’ hand and pull and say, come on, we turn down here next. 

We are all of us, no matter how strong, rich or powerful (or how little) subject to forces beyond our control. And subject to the forces, the genetics, the upbringing, that shaped us.  Having things will not inure us. The mirage of power that we think we have will not spare us.

So the bough that will not bend will break. And the seed that will not blow far afield will die of inbreeding. 

I never saw a plane I didn’t like, I’ve never looked at a new path, even if I didn’t choose it, without at least a little bit of sense of wonder and excitement. I look back into the past on occasion, true, but I know I carry the bits that matter in me, and no one will ever be able to take that, who I am, away from me, so for the most part, I like to turn and look forward again. And walk.

I don’t like to stand still. I don’t like to be weighed down. I don’t like to be pigeon holed and I don’t like to have the past, or the present, predict my future. It is endless.

One of my favourite stories when I was a child was of a fox hunting a rabbit. And the little rabbit escaped because it had been taught one vital trick by its parents. “Hacken schlagen”. 

You never run in a straight line. You cut a corner, you cut to the side, you double back, you keep moving, you don’t ever go where the fox expects you to go. And you do it so hard until the joy of running washes over you and you can’t help but laugh. Because that’s life. There are no guarantees, there are no inviolate rights, no matter who you are, that you’ll be spared, or live or thrive or escape untouched by tragedy. All of those and more can and will happen. 

That is our only birthright. 

Accepting that and loving and living anyway is how you stay alive, and that’s how you live. And nothing else, not the burrow you’ve built yourself and that you’d like to bury yourself in, will save you. 

Only the ability to maintain enough tension in your muscles to run and start ‘hacken schlagen’ will give you a chance, and only the ability to have your mind accept that ‘this is how it is!’ will let you survive it without falling into self pity and never ending misery. Until you just stay and become entombed in Pompeii.  

Am I saying that life is a fox hunt and we are rabbits?

Yes!

We’ve been top predator so long, we’ve built so much civilisation around us, that we like to forget that. At least in the west, in the first world.

But it’s a mirage. LIfe is never certain and I sometimes think that the more we assemble the accoutrements of endless continuity and certainty around us both as a civilisation, a culture, and as individuals (house full of trinkets to the eyeballs), the more ‘impacted’, the more helpless, we become when Vesuvius starts to rumble. 

We stop making a game of the running, and we freeze in the headlights.

If we are lucky, in a life time, we know family, and we know love. I come from a family who has made a game of running again and again when they have needed to, and the stories they have told, that tell us who we are, remain amongst us. 

Which tells me that the most powerful gifts that humans posses are their mind, words, and love.

Maybe I will never leave here, where I am now, or maybe the end of my life, when I get there, will involve looking back on so many curve balls that where I have ended is nowhere close to where I started. Well, I guess that’s already so. Only, I am curious where it will go to next.

You never know.

So goodness knows what I will leave behind, but I know it won’t be a rummage sale. 

Maybe just a shore lined with people that knew me, for a little while or a long time, who loved me or laughed with me, or thought I was odd, but cared a little none the same, or are just curious, shooting fiery arrows into my barge as I set sail into the next adventure.

And then they walk away, weaving another story into theirs, onto their own next adventure.

Stuff that makes me mad

Wanna know what really makes me mad?

The Australian media.

Again.

Despite the blatherings of journos like Michelle Grattan about the importance of a free media, there is self-directed censorship of a sort going on that I find abhorrent.

In short, in Australia the media is a kind of club that has 'gentleman's rules' about what it will publish.

For example, when I look at the German Stern web site, front page news is the story of a 22 year old Brisbane man who wedged an Australian flag between his naked butt cheeks when the British Queen came to visit last year and followed her car for 50 meters before he was arrested.

That happened in November last year and he was charged end of last week. He was demonstrating, obviously, against the concept of monarchy in a democratic society and that Australia has an English queen. He was only charged with being a public nuisance, not with assault against the queen.

This case is not being reported by the Australian media. Not now, and not, from memory, last year when it happened.

I think it is a fucking conspiracy and a travesty the way our media self censors and determines for the Australian public what the Australian public is or ought to be interested in.

Because it's just not very nice is it? The bare arsed cheek of it, baring his bum to the queen. No one needs to read about it. Everyone knows the Republican debate is dead, why raise that old war horse.

Arseholes. Conservative reactionaries.

The Republican debate is not dead in Australia, but gee thanks, media barons, for conspiring amongst yourselves about what we might be interested in.

The news in this country is a joke. Has been for as long as I can remember. Infomercials and infotainment passing as investigative journalism. Sound bites passing for insight. And censorship not because there is a corrupt regime in place trying to control us via the media, but simply a bunch of old entitled Anglophile foggies making decisions about what's 'polite' for public consumption.

German and Swiss news sites provide often blistering commentary on a wide array of social interest subjects ranging from feminism to racism to the economy to, wow, ethics. What Australian newspaper would write about ethics? Particularly in politics?

No, just not fucking interesting. Too pragmatic for that sort of shit. Too nice. Too polite. Too laconic. Too laissez fair.

The Sydney Mardi Gras and its link to battling discrimination against the LGBT community and the cause of marriage equality is front page news in Germany. With a photo spread from the night, all the glorious costumes, smiles, tears and pride.

In the SMH? A quick mention, but the point of the night is passed over in preference for another fluff piece about 'our Kylie'.

Fuck Kylie.

Seriously.

Oh and apparently some Christians are saying sorry. (I'm an atheist, so I take the fact that we are a secular society rather seriously). If Christianity, be it of Catholic or Protestant evangelical persuasion, wants to start apologising, download the fucking list. There's a lot to be sorry for. You'll be a while.

Or, you know, here's a thought, download a fucking brain and start thinking for yourself. Rather than letting an anthropological artefact containing contradictory tracts of 2000 year old cultural practice gussied up as 'wisdom' do your thinking for you.

Or try listening to Tim Minchin if you find the hard science, archaeology and anthropology too much to digest all at once.

Oh Oz. This is all we've got? This is all we get?

All I can say is: thank goodness I'm bilingual.

There's a creature feature coming from the moon

Just for the heck of it, decided to post my Prologue to my latest 'thang' here - in the 'speculative genre'. Giving it a whirl, seeing how it goes.

Thoughts, questions, comments, feedback welcome. :)

PROLOGUE

Ben sat at the windowsill, eyes firmly fixed on the globulous full moon.

His mum came in carrying a book. She read to him a little each night before bedtime. He didn’t mind. He liked it.

But this evening, and it was still really only twilight, not full dark yet, the full moon, heavy set and yellow, held him transfixed. 

“Come on! Into bed!”

Reluctantly he peeled himself away and scampered into bed.

Carlie opened the book and began to read.

“Mum,” Ben interrupted after a few words.

Carlie raised an eyebrow, and stopped.

“Mum, there’s something on the moon.”

Carlie blinked. And thought.

“Well, yes. There’s craters, and mountains. That makes it look a bit like a lumpy cheese from far away.”

Ben shook his head.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean there’s...” he shrugged, glanced uncertainly at his mother. His voice lowered to a whisper. “I think there’s a man on the moon.”

“Oh!” Carlie smiled, thinking back to her own childhood and the stories she’d been told.

Or perhaps she had that all mixed up with The Little Prince?

She made a decision, and clapped the book shut.

“Well, there is a little boy on the moon. And he’s tired and sleepy, and his got his PJ’s on, and his little sleeping cap and...”

“No! That’s not what it is!” Ben interrupted, shaking his head vehemently. “There’s a man on the moon. And he comes...” he spoke haltingly. “He comes for little children. When the moon is really full.”

Carlie snapped her mouth shut. And stared. Where on earth had Ben heard a silly tale like that? Her mouth settled into a small grimace. 

Then her head began to turn, almost of its own volition, in the direction of the open window.

“No-o-oh,” she said. “Oh Ben, that’s not true.” She leaned over and gently smoothed his hair out of his brow.

“Yes mum,” Ben insisted. “Go look.”

Carlie frowned. 

But after a moment, almost in spite of herself, she got up and went to the window. And looked up at the moon.

It hung there. Full and yellow and lumpy. Ugly old thing, she thought to herself. And how strange, a second thought quickly followed. How strange that some nights, some full moon cycles, it only looked silvery and pure and flat as a disc.

But tonight, it was bulbous like an overripe cheese about to explode. That thought almost made her laugh out loud. She shot another uneasy glance at that moon. No, she didn’t like it one bit either. Quietly but resolutely she shut the window, and then locked it for good measure.

She glanced back at the bed and saw that Ben was watching her. He did not look reassured.

Carlie came back to the bed. “Ben? What does the man from the moon do with the little children? Does he take them back to the moon with him?” She tried to laugh, but it came out like a nervous cough.

“No,” Ben shook his head, eyes troubled and brow furrowed. “No mum. He kills them! He has to, because it keeps him strong, it keeps him alive, until the next time...” the words came tumbling and Carlie rushed to intercept them.

“Ben. Ben! Where do you get these ideas from?! There is no man on the moon!”

“But...”

“Is this what the other kids at school are telling you?” Ben had only started school a few months ago, and Carlie was still a slightly over-anxious first-time mum.

He shook his head

“Then where...”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know.”

Silence. Carlie pondered, staring at her son, his troubled little face. She bent forward and kissed his forehead.

“Ben, there is no man on the moon. There is nothing coming for little children. Do you understand? You’re safe here. You’re safe with your dad and me. We’re both always here. Just down the hall.”

Ben swallowed. And nodded. He did not look convinced.

Uneasily, Carlie opened up the book and began reading from it again.

“Well, I give up on romance!” Carlie exclaimed, and threw up her hands in mock consternation as she entered the kitchen.

Her husband, Todd, who was spooning himself a bowl of ice cream, threw her a startled, wary glance. His brow crinkled. “What?”

Carlie grinned. “All little boys seem to be interested in is horror stories! How are they ever supposed to grow up into lovely men like you on a diet of that!” She put her arms around her husband’s waist. 

“Oh,” he said. But rather than laughing, or teasing her back, he stiffened slightly in her hold.

And as Carlie looked up, a series of odd expressions flickered over his face. Discomfort. Wariness again. Troubled. Undecided. Then... resolve.

And so that was the night Todd told Carlie that he’d met someone else.

I had a dream once too

It has come to my attention, via some of the work I have been doing with my psychologist, that I have trouble with my feelings and emotions.

By that I mean, I grew up in a family where some feelings or emotions were not ‘permissible’ and I therefore learned to repress those feelings and emotions rather than learning how to deal with them constructively.

The consequence of that is anxiety because what is permissible on the surface and what is going on underneath is like continent plates rubbing against each other. Causing earth quakes and tsunamis.

So a situation comes up that I seek to control because I fear my underlying incapacity to handle my own emotions, so rather than listening or watching the situation develop, then assessing and responding, I become captive to the anxiety that my feelings trigger. Which eventually triggers an adrenalin spike and fight or flight response, and when I choose fight (which is often), that results in ‘fighting with’, rather than ‘problem solving with’. 

The feelings are subconscious so don’t translate into specific thoughts like “I am worried I will fail at this” or “I am worried that we won’t have enough money and will get kicked out”. They are just nebulous fields of anxiety and “boom”: trigger. 

Only as I’m becoming aware of these subconscious feelings I am now also becoming  aware that I have been triggered. At that point, I can say to myself ‘hold on, you just got triggered, just hold for a moment, listen and watch, you don’t need to prepare a response now, which will be based on anticipating a worst case scenario that will probably never happen’. And so, adrenalin does not spike, fight or flight is not triggered, I concentrate on breathing and that whatever will happen I can trust myself to respond to appropriately. So that when the moment for interaction comes, I can problem solve and work with people, rather than fighting with them because I got triggered. 

There were a lot of emotions in my family that I/we were not allowed ‘to have’, much less express when I was growing up. To list them all could take an essay in and of itself. A key one however relates to existential type anxiety ie money/safety worries. My parents argued and stressed over money, but we children were not allowed to have input, feel or express our concerns, for example, if dad decided to switch jobs again. We weren’t allowed to express anything that might have sounded like criticism of our father - which could include anger, sadness or worry at him or about him. This ‘rule’ came from mum as much as dad, even though mum was also the constant underminer of that rule, which probably only made the anxiety worse.

My parents constantly worried about money, bills, ‘badness’ of having debts (anything other than a house mortgage was irresponsible), credit ratings and pride associated with being able to manage all of the above (for example, in my family we went without something if it meant a bill had to get paid on time, a reminder notice was considered a sin). Alternative views or emotions were ‘forbidden’.

We were also a sexually conservative household, and television, books and music were censored accordingly, and feelings and emotions in relation to this topic were strictly controlled, censored, monitored and ‘punished’. For example, my father would rant about degeneracy if we happened to catch a free to air movie with a sex scene or language that he felt went beyond his views of appropriate conduct. This could include a passionate kiss. We were often lectured about the moral degeneracy of pornography and my father would refer to men who viewed such material as weak or ‘less’ or not ‘proper’ men somehow. The concept that women might view such material never came up.

To this day I can’t watch an even sedate love scene in a movie with someone else in the room without squirming or behaving like a child (covering my eyes, making silly noises), all of which is aimed at covering up my embarrassment not about what is happening on screen but my worry that someone in the room with me might be monitoring my response, and therefore I cover up any genuine reaction ranging from fascination to arousal to indifference. 

I know this is specifically a conditioning problem because I don’t have those problems when I’m alone. ‘Unmonitored’, I’m shocked and embarrassed by surprisingly little.

Masturbation was never discussed and I didn’t believe that people actually did it until I was 15 (I thought mags like Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly that were aimed at teenage girls were making things up or exaggerating). 

On the other hand, once I got older and became sexually active, my mother undermined my father’s strict regime and asked me for inappropriately explicit information, citing curiosity arising from having married her first boyfriend and never having had any other experience herself. However, this digging for explicit facts was soon coupled with a shame/guilt response that got acted out on me. I was both the opportunity for my mother to live vicariously through me, and the scapegoat or ‘whipping girl’ for ‘the family, with my behaviour and emotions judged and pilloried. I became the ‘slut’ in the family who had traded free sexual expression for a more appropriate capacity to ‘attract and keep the right kind of man’. It became okay for my mum, dad and sister to say just about anything to me in their attempts to shame me and get me back under control. 

Dad told me he didn’t want to meet or hear about any man I was involved with until I’d met the one I was going to marry. Which also meant I was never able to seek his advice or counsel about relationships because any that I might be having that I could not guarantee would lead to marriage were not valid. 

Mum would pump me for information and then would chide me, saying things like “you don’t always have to sleep with them you know.”

My sister, who is 6 years younger than me, told me that she was deliberately keeping her boyfriends away from me. She was 16 when she had her first boyfriend, and he was also 16, and I was 22. At that age, I was not interested in any male under the age of 25, much less under 20.

The idea of ever having tried for an honest discussion with either of my parents about my feelings, worries or concerns about sexuality and relationships in order to receive advice or guidance seems ridiculous to me. It was just something I was supposed to figure out how to do, based on them as role models, even though I think the above explains that they weren’t good ones.

So I floundered with trial and error. 

Homesickness and family relationships were other taboo emotional subjects. There were specific do’s and don’ts, and contradictions weren’t reconciled. For example, my parents desired and enforced a family love, loyalty and obedience system within their nuclear family that was at distinct odds with the behaviours they themselves exhibited towards their own families. 

I realise that the upshot is that I have a whole bunch of forbidden emotions inside of me that I have trouble expressing, that I repress and even worse, that shape an unwritten and often illogical behaviour ‘code’ (subconscious beliefs and values) that I then impose on myself and on others. Everyone from my husband to my sister to my boss to my ‘clients’. However, when issues arise that create emotional ‘arousal’, my first instinctive reaction is to fear this, because I’ve been taught that those emotions are ‘bad’ and forbidden, and therefore I never got taught to bring them up and handle them appropriately. This causes adrenalin to spike, fight or flight response, and because I am a) afraid but b) also angry (that this is happening to me), I will stand and fight to win to deflect from what is really going on in me so that I can maintain my facade of competency and being in control. Including in situations where anyone with half a brain would flee.

But after I ‘fight’ and ‘win’, I feel guilty, so that is then followed by appeasing and self-sacrificing behaviour. I actually really just want people to like me, I didn’t mean to set up a ‘win/lose’ situation, so now I need to make amends so that they’ll like me again and won’t hold my winning against me. 

But if I ‘fight’ and ‘lose’, meaning I wasn’t right and I was less than perfect, then I feel shame. Because I always have to be perfect. Perfectly in control, perfectly pleasing, and my role, my place in the world, if I can’t maintain that, is in question.

So. There are no easy answers and I have a feeling that there is still a long journey ahead for me to re-rear myself. But here are some things that I feel. Some emotions I have. And only by acknowledging them, bringing them into the light of day, will I ever be able to deal with them like a reasonable adult. 

I’m not going to explain to what situations those emotions pertain, that is my own business. But... I do feel these.

I am scared.

I actually am quite jealous. I hate that I am, but I am.

I am regretful. I hate that too, because a more useless emotion I can’t imagine, but I feel regret none the less.

I am sad. And I mourn and grieve.

I am really, really angry.

And they’re just feelings.

And feelings in the bright light of day are not the same as facts. 

I can learn to handle them.

Yes when she glows in the dark and I'm struck by the sight

I feel restless
I am obsessed with
The voice that I hear to be gone

That comes from a poem I wrote, I don't know, some 10 to 20 years ago.

It can still hold true.

It can still feel like that to me.

How can I be so different and still so much the same?

How can the same thoughts colour me, come back to haunt me?

I was reminiscing this morning, just letting my mind drift as I was waking up, enjoying that it was a weekend day with no alarm clock and no schedule, about an A-ha song that I'd identified with so strongly as a teenager.

It's called "The Swing of Things" and it came from their second album released late 1986 or early 1987.

The lines that haunted me, that I identified with so much go:
Oh there's a world full out there
Of people I fear
But given time I'll get into
The swing of things

This was written and being performed by guys in their twenties and I was in my teens and I'd only gotten as far as "There's a world full out there of people I fear", but it gave me hope that this bunch of insightful guys from Norway could, in their twenties, foresee a time or an ability to get into 'the swing of things'. So maybe I could, I would, too someday.

It happened a little the same way for me. I got out into the world in my twenties and probably started getting 'into the swing of things' in my very late 20's and early 30's.

It's no longer a world full of people I fear, rather the world full of stuff that is in me is what always feels like it's holding me back.

I started reflecting a little bit about that fact that I am still, despite increased levels of comfort with a world full of people out there, a fairly reserved person. And how much I have railed against that and hated that for much of my life, rather than accepting that this is who I am. It's not like I don't admire, value or like people for being other than me. Hey, I am the epitome of 'opposites attract' in so many ways, particularly in this way. But one of the ways I do digest 'difference' is to judge 'you - better', 'me - worse'. Even if it doesn't look like it, even if I come off aggressive, superior, condescending, untouchable, dismissive etc, that is what is going on inside of my head. Stuff about how I am wrong and ought to be able to force myself to change.

I was thinking back through some blog posts that I'd written, particularly over the past 18 months or so where I've chronicled my belated discovery of and growing fandom of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There was one blog where I think I mentioned how much I envied Anthony Kiedis' ability to throw himself into life physically and emotionally.

And I know I've written about where I was in my late teens and early twenties when RHCP first came to mainstream attention, and how I was not set up in any way, shape or form to appreciate them then. In fact, they straight out intimidated me at that age, not that I would have admitted that. I would have hidden behind condescendingly writing them off.

And so I was reflecting that a lot of the actual grunge hard core stuff of the Gen X glory days of the early 90's left me untouched and behind because I don't enjoy being in mosh pits, being ground up against others, being hot and sweaty and stinky and dirty, being uncomfortable, being off my face and acting up and out.

I was much more of a club/dance queen in the early to mid 90's, preferring nightclubs and dance music to open air festivals and mosh pits. Air conditioned venues, coat check rooms, bars with well dressed men and expensive drinks.

And I was always an average dancer, too reserved to cut lose, too uncoordinated and maybe also a little too self conscious to really find rhythm.

I got by because I was a young, tall, striking looking girl with short cropped bleached hair and a sassy attitude (way more front than substance) and I could do just enough stuff, pick up my feet and wiggle my butt, to get by, plus, I could handle my booze.

Boozing is all I ever did. Drugs were way too scary for me. The concept of letting go and losing control is never one that has appealed to me. The idea of taking a little boost to feel good also never appealed because for me it was always about hiding in plain sight, not about cutting extatically loose. I saw too many people high on drugs acting like douche bags and everyone could see it except them (only some others didn't care because they were equally off their faces) for that to be appealing to me. I was working too hard to control my image and my self to ever risk cutting lose or making a fool of myself.

When I reflected a little more, I worked out that in fact I had done most of my night clubbing in my twenties in the winter months. Summer here usually just gets too damn hot and I hate feeling all sweaty and yucky and being pressed close to people when it's like that. Of course that's why I always sick in my twenties, because I went clubbing all winter long and either didn't take jackets or took jackets that were too thin and as soon as you left the club it was rainy or windy or cold....

Summers in my twenties were for the most part about nursing broken hearts. I'd meet some guy in the autumn and winter months, we'd flirt, we'd date for a while and by the time that summer came, it was over again and I'd nurse my broken heart going to the movies alone (at least the theatre was air conditioned).

I remember meeting one guy in January and agreeing to go on a beach date with him. He was a navy deep sea diver and we went to Bronte beach for our second date where I proceeded to nearly drown trying to keep up with him and got hideously sun burned to add insult to injury. There was no third date.

I did better in winter, where I could cultivate my starved, nordic pallor (yes, I was one of those dumb girls who didn't eat - I was too logical but also too poor to do bulimia, if I was actually going to fork out money for food I sure as hell wasn't going to throw it all up again), and you know, if you're thin and tall enough and knock back a few bourbons you end up swaying, and since everyone else in that scene was all about being cool (and were off their faces) that probably passed as dancing.

Shoot to the future (where I am no longer starved or pallid) and I remember when Green Day toured in 2009, I was all excited that we had tickets. And then one day at the gym I saw some footage from one of those festivals from 1994 or 1995 where they got into a mud throwing contest with their fans and I nearly had a heart attack and asked Lucas if I would be up to this?

I imagined having to hide at the back of the audience while the front mosh pit rocked out and people crowd surfed etc. In the end, it was 2009 after all, not 1994, and their fans had aged every bit as much as Green Day had, and even though there was a little bit of carefully supervised crowd surfing by those who volunteered, I was perfectly okay being 10m from the stage (I got splashed by Billy Joe's sweat at one point) without feeling at all early 1990's 'grunged'. I did feel rather 'gah!' though. (Billy Joe Armstrong is just 'that' cool.)

And I thought about what it might be like going to a RHCP concert, and it occurred to me that it would probably be a bit like the Green Day concert. It is 2012 after all, not 1991 or 1994, and the fans have gotten older too, as has the band. And it is always open to me to stand or sit at the back, and let the wild antics go on in the front.

But I am not, at this stage of the game,  going to find my rhythm, climb on some guy's shoulders and take my top off, dance like it's 1984, get high, get outgoing, start digging something that I have never once dug in my life. I am not a party animal. I am not a great dancer. I don't 'got the moves'. Not on the dance floor anyway. And I am too self conscious and reserved to cut loose in public.

Private is another matter. For me, always is. :)

But that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy bands or live music, and I've managed to get through several Cat Empire gigs and a Green Day gig without coming unhinged, did manage to enjoy myself even though I didn't 'change my stripes'. About the most I'm going to do is sway my hips a little and sing along and grin, and I might drink a beer, but that's about all.

I'm so envious of people who can dance well, who can express themselves that way, or even people who can't dance all that well but just enjoy doing it anyway and aren't afraid to. Who are publicly, physical, gregarious.

Envious, but not jealous. I love to watch them having a good time.

I just work differently so maybe it doesn't look the same, but that doesn't mean I'm not having a good time. And it's interesting. In my life long fascination with and capacity to be struck by others who are different from me, it's never once occurred to me that those others might also be struck by how I am, even if I am different. I have not trusted others to do that or get that. I've always assumed that they needed me to be as they are, otherwise I just won't be accepted or considered good enough.

So on that note, the full verse goes:

"Oh there's a world full out there
Of people I fear
But given time I'll get into the
Swing of Things

Yes when she glows in the dark
And I'm struck by the sight
I know that I'll need this
For the rest of my life."

I'm blonde, and I'm always going to be relatively pale. So I definitely glow in the dark. :)

PS Lucas does not agree that I am pale. Pfft!

Nocturnal magical mystery tour

When I went to bed last night I resolutely told myself “no more dreams about babies!”

Compliant little subconscious mind that I have – it complied.

Instead, I dreamed one of my long standing reoccurring old favourites; going for a visit back to Germany.

Those dreams are old hat, I’ve been having them a few times a year ever since we arrived here when I was 7 and since Lucas has been around, they often involve me taking him back with me.

This particular dream was a variation on a theme, as we specifically went to visit my aunt Marianne (obviously brought on by my blogging about her yesterday) in her lovely, orderly, sleepy little middle class village about 15 minutes from Schwaebisch Hall (not too far from Stuttgart for those who are not so good with German geography).

We arrived at night in a rental car and it was summer because it was lovely and warm. At first there was no one about, and then suddenly there was Marianne, as she must have been about 10 or 15 years ago and the house looked familiar, as it really is in real life. And then suddenly it didn’t. Rather than having just one set of stairs down to a basement it seemed to have multiple floors and rickety stairways and the hallways along the stairs were covered with her cross stitch tapestries (which she does do).

But in this dream house it was like her cross stitch pieces were records of both local and family/personal history – bit like the Bayeux tapestry, only hokier. 

I was traipsing down the stairs and heard some people noise, there were people around all of a sudden in this familiar and yet strange house, and I noted that a few of the cross stitch tapestries were of a cat my aunt used to have in the 1980’s, a very fat, over-fed cat called Muschi who probably died from over nurtured obesity related illnesses (my aunt actually fed her 5 times a day!!). And I thought “awwwhhhh” and called to Lucas to come look, and all of a sudden the figures in the pictures started moving, and it wasn’t fat cat anymore, it was sleek, svelte killer cat who was going after rabbits and other smaller cats with extended killer claws that made her look like Wolverine from X-men. *Snick* indeed!

I was pretty taken aback and as Lucas came bounding along I put my back to the feral moving picture tapestries and muttered ‘never mind’ as I guided him on and down the stairs, past the display of killer cat and her claws of vengeance.

Disturbing, much?!

The house was full of young folks, couples, ageing hippies, some making out, some needing a bath (bit pongy), some with dreads, some smoking, some drinking. What the?! My aunt was always a sociable person but there were a few ‘types’ about that would have met my aunt’s vernacular ‘dregs of society’ concept. 

But hey, whatever.

As we were leaving, because apparently we weren’t staying with her but at a hotel, the sleepy, sedate, middle class little village had been turned into social town! Theatres and bars everywhere, and as we were leaving I realised it was just pre-dawn, apparently we’d been having a very good time in the little house of kitty horrors, and drove past this beautiful theatre building with brightly coloured panels in red and yellow and purple between the thick dark wooden beams, and every window was open and out of every window a sleekly handsome, pale, dark male was scanning the street with oddly sinuous movements.

OMG vampires flashed into my head. The theatre has vampires. And it’s the end of night. What have those fellows been doing in there all night?! Each vamp, each one of them more beautiful than the next, did one final safety scan of the street and then, as the first rays of the sun came up, they were all mysteriously and immediately sucked down into the house, windows slamming solidly shut behind them, like a plume of pure black smoke down a vacuum cleaner shoot. 

And I thought about going in there to check for survivors and maybe stake a few of the vamps, but then I thought about what kind of powers creatures who could do what I’d just seen had, and it all seemed so maddeningly *fun*! Clearly the windows of the theatre had been flung wide all night, there had been comings and goings, obviously willingly, and they were so beautiful, *SO* beautiful like nothing real I’d seen since forever, that Lucas and I just looked at each other and shrugged and laughed, like 2 kids in a movie driving a convertible car do when the sun comes up and everything is bright and chases the shadows of the night away, and said to each other “wow, cool kind of town!”

And then I woke up. 

And feel a little sad and disappointed that my dream was just a dream and none of that would actually be there if we went to see. No magic tapestries, no house full of hung over hippies, no strangely quasi medieval slash pop art theatres with louche sinuous vampires lounging about. 

All things being equal; that is a huge improvement on baby dreams!

Stepping back, not fading, into the forest

Rightiho.

Webernet being douche baggy, so here I go typing in doc first and then a bit of cut & paste.

Always fun.

I find myself thinking things to tweet all day that will be too long for a tweet. Too short for a blog (well, not for normal people it wouldn’t be, perhaps), but too long for a tweet.

One thing I found myself thinking today went like this:

“I get why some people don’t like the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I really really do.

Because I used to be one of them.

Of course, then I realised I was wrong.

So. When will you?  :)”

Yeah I know. Purile. Infantile stuff.

On another topic, my sister had her baby last Wednesday. Henry Rupert, in case anyone missed my twitter bombardment. 

I’ve been speaking to her most every day since, just to see how she’s going, give her the chance to vent, share joy, feel normal etc.

I finally figured out that it really, truly is different when it’s family. I love this little guy already.

It’s a little narcissistic really, in’it? :)

Lucas pointed out some cute babies over the weekend and I rained on his parade by pointing out that other peoples’ kids are still only other peoples’ kids. I am by no definition a clucky person. I don’t melt in a puddle on the floor over kids in general. Babies.

Just don’t.

But it’s all bringing to a head for me hat I can’t seem to have kids. As each year goes by that door clangs shut a little more resoundingly.

And I’m not in the mood for a self-pity fest so I’ll just stick with ‘it su-u-u-cks!!!’

I’m doing stupid things like feeling defensive again. I’m all “don’t you dare pity me!”

But then, when people don’t ask about me at all, then I’m all “I’m always last, no one ever checks to see how I’m feeling.”

That’s right good people of this planet, you can’t win!

My parents drove down to Melbourne today to spend some time with their first grandkid.

I thought about maybe calling them yesterday, but then I left it and then the phone rang after 8pm, and I figured it’d be them, and then I didn’t feel like talking anymore. 

It was dad (he left a message), which was kind of a bummer, because I know he never keeps me on the phone long. So I could have taken the call and been over and done with in 5 minutes.

But then I got all bristly and didn’t call back (doing the whole ‘pretending we were out and came back too late to call back’ thing). Because I didn’t want to be asked if I had any messages to pass on, because fuck, I’ve been speaking to Susie myself. And I didn’t want to hear him crow about his happiness about being a granddad because yeah yeah I fucking get it, so you’re happy already, and my kid sister could do something that I couldn’t. Something perfectly normal like fall pregnant and have a baby that I, stupid, futile human being that I am, can’t. I couldn’t, wouldn’t and now seems can’t give you a grandchild.

Yeah yeah tell someone who wants to hear it.

Or maybe he’ll complain and bore me with minutiae about the car trip. Don’t care man, fly down like every other sensible human being does. 

Or maybe I’m just mind reading because I’m damn uncomfortable about the whole thing and I don’t want to deal with it. 

I can talk to my sister because she’s so caught up in the moment of what she’s experiencing that she’s not even thinking about me. And that’s best. Because I hate that pause in the conversation when I can tell that second and third thoughts are happening and then people are adjusting and they are managing me. Trying to be gentle or considerate or clever or manipulative and I hate it hate it hate all of it.

Goddamnit!

I hate being managed. 

Managing is something I do to other people. 

And ain’t that just the truth and a half of it. 

You have no idea how damn unfeminine it feels not to be able to have children. Not choosing to for the first 35 years of my life was one thing.

But not being able to?

Feels like one almighty kick in the guts.

So what for do I have all this feminine misery for? The irregular periods, the debilitating cramping, the aches and pulling pains in my thighs and breasts every month. 

In the end, it feels like I’m neither a woman nor a man.

I’m just something that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.

I don’t know. I’m not even reaching what I mean to say. I don’t mean that I’m worthless or....

I just feel like I'm not quite feminine.

My aunt Marianne tried to call last night. Not even 5 minutes after dad called so again I didn’t answer the phone because I thought it was just dad calling back.

Anyway, that was dumb but by that time I was just over it. I suppose she wanted to talk to me about Susie’s little boy too.

And that made me feel defensive too.

And then I realised that was stupid, because out of anyone, Marianne is the last person on this planet who would ever fish for news about my personal situation.

That’s because Marianne never had children either.

She’s my dad’s older sister.

There was a lot of gossip when I was young. Apparently she was pregnant once, but then suddenly lost the baby. Ostensibly she was in a minor car accident and subsequently miscarried. Only my mother also told me that she often doubted that this was true and thought that Marianne might have gone to Hungary to have an abortion. Her explanation for this was that my uncle was an unreliable sort of man and my aunt at the last minute decided that having children with him was not a good idea. That her husband was half a child himself and needed her constant supervision.

I think that is tosh. No one actually thinks like that. Or makes decisions like that.

Maybe she thought about it afterwards, after the accident, and decided that maybe it was best not to have children, or maybe she found out she couldn’t and didn’t see the need to justify or explain that to my mother (and boy I can see why!) or any myriad of reasons why that were her own personal reasons.

But she must have known that she was a subject of gossip because of it. Because married women of her generation just didn’t remain childless. 

And in thinking about the way my parents talked about her, I realise that is how I came to form the view that a childless woman is somehow unfeminine.

Because she was ‘the man’ in the relationship with my uncle, because she wore ‘the pants’. She was the butt of masculine jokes in the family, too blunt, tactless, unfeminine, not ‘soft’ enough to have children. She was tall, and chatty, and decisive, and liked to drive, and could hold her drink and liked to eat properly (refusing to pick at salads for example), and could dominate a conversation about just about anything....

She also happens to be my godmother, and because she’s dad’s sister and I take after dad’s side of the family, there was always a physical resemblance between us.

Maybe of all people she’s the one I should be talking with, but it takes me 15 minutes just to warm up my German enough, and even then. Even then... how do you say after all those years “I don’t know how you put up with all of that smug bullshit - all the innuendo and superiority crap from people like my mother.”

I remember how incensed my mother used to get when she told this story about being pregnant with me and how Marianne had said to her once that ‘any cow can push out off spring’. 

Yes, that is like Marianne. She can be blunt and tactless.

But I never asked mum what she said or did to make Marianne say that. Because that’s generally not the sort of remark you make to a pregnant woman without some provocation.  Not even Marianne.

And my mother is quite good at subtly - and not so subtly - provoking people.

And she did a good enough job of it - with the innuendo and the slurs - that I’ve internalised that a woman who doesn’t or can’t have kids is by definition an ‘unwoman’.

Even though, intellectually, you know, I do know that any brood mare can squeeze out off spring. :) 

Ah, you see how easily that can happen?! 

Anyway, all that aside, I’ve been dreaming several nights in a row that Susie has left me babysitting Henry and that somehow I stuff it all up. Bring bottles of formula for him, but not the bottle sterilizer. Or I leave him in the car seat in the car (the car that I don’t have). 

Sigh.

On another note, a completely different one, Anthony Kiedis is apparently dating current Brit Indie scene It girl Beth Jeans Houghton. Which is oddly not surprising and sort of fits him, and probably her too a bit.

He’s 49 and she’s 21, but who can blame her. Who can blame him. 

She seems like a pretty cool together sort of person for a girl that young and that alone tells me that he’s a way marker for her and not the way. Because with a girl that young, with talent and her head screwed on right, a guy that age, no matter how hot and no matter all that he’s been, it is never going to be more. Because eventually there will be a guy like her, young and with talent and his head screwed on right who is hot and has all that he will be still in front of him like she does. And they’ll be able to take the journey together. 

And I kind of feel a bit sad for him because while I don’t think for a moment that he could have avoided this or looked the other way or walked away, he’s still not looking in the right places. 

There. I didn’t want to write about that, even though I kind of did because it was playing around my head and setting it down is the best way to get it out, but I didn’t want to come off as some sort of deranged.... fangirl, wannabe groupie, something. Of course, I don’t wanna be a groupie. Or an option or an alternative, because I’m not, can’t be, wouldn’t be.

It’s just my nasty little habit of obsessing and meddling and always wanting to be right, and psycho-analysing other people too much. 

For example, the other day, I was reading a book about the Titanic and the author referred to a mid 30’s bachelor and his Ganymede, and while I had a suspicion, I wasn’t quite sure what a Ganymede was, so I got onto Safari on my i-phone and looked it up on Wikipedia, and then I got very interested, so I scrolled through all the Wiki stubs, until I realised I was reading up about Greek boy love and erastes and eromenos on my work phone, at which point I had a little heart attack and quickly shut it down. (And I’m in HR - natch.)

And then I spent a day or two ruminating in my head about the differences between the sexes, in particular how older men relate to younger men (taking the sexual element out of it for a moment) in comparison to how older women relate to younger women, and how there are probably biological imperatives behind that behaviour far more, or at least as much as, socialised ones. And I was thinking of using the Snow White fairytale, in particular the character of the wicked step-mother Queen who can’t bear to be overtaken in beauty by her teenaged step daughter, to illustrate my point.

Had a whole blog post in my head, but then I lost interest.

Only, I get on very well with older women and have quite a few friends who are older than me, and I also think I’ve avoided becoming a bitter jealous old hag towards younger women.

Which is nice.

But it’s not culturally the norm. Or at least, it’s a ‘norm’ that we don’t challenge enough. Women are not renowned for older women mentoring younger ones.

Anyway, that blog in my head has been and gone, but I keep being fascinated by the dynamics of and between the sexes, the interplay of age and gender, and somehow that gets tied up with archetypes, and modern representations of ancient ones. And I think I’ve written before how Anthony Kiedis is a bit of a mythical archetype for me, a Dionysus figure, so I guess it sort of makes sense for my mind to turn the way it does and settle not on the green eyes monster aspect, but ponders from the angle of... wishing that even a modern archetype might step out of the mould and get to live life for real, finally, away from the scene and the screen.

And my final thought, as we were watching a Cure video at Kelly’s on Saturday night (yes, how tragic is that, for oh so many reasons), as I wondered what had happened to the members of the Cure, a strange and illuminating thought struck me. I loved the idea of a band like the Cure having made a bomb of money, having bought a grand country estate and maybe a Caribbean island and... having retired. I don’t want to pick up a magazine and see that they’ve gotten together for yet another reunion tour. Or are cutting album number 15 because they think they’re ‘still relevant’. It’s not that music is a young man’s, or woman’s, game. Johnny Cash alone proved that this is not necessarily true.

But to me, that is the genuine mark of success. Was famous, was successful, got slavered over by every pop magazine and teenage groupie world wide, inspired a fashion craze or two, took some drugs, bonked some models, groupies and random slatterns, made a bomb of money and then sailed away into the sunset at the age of 40 never to be heard of again, except for some vague notion that I am having a very good time and have found some depths in life.

I am not a fan of bands touring and touring and touring. Into and beyond their sunset years. Rolling Stones. Lay down that guitar and snare, Jagger, lock your hips away. Duran Duran, go yachting and live disgracefully in southern France, Red Hot Chili Peppers... stop. Just stop. Flea, teach the children at your school, Anthony, do something surprising, turn up in another modeling campaign for Gap or start directing surf movies with a Richard Attenborough-esque element to them... but, stop. Not because you’re not still good, not because you can’t but because.... success used to mean you could stop while you were still young enough to enjoy the rest of your life and not care what anyone else thinks, or about any external measure of success. Meet a good woman or a good man. Dig your fingers in the earth and grow your own grapes or your own herbs. Sail the word or surf it or ski it, learn to cook and entertain people in a way that means inviting them into your home and listening to their stories rather than telling and retelling your own. Enjoy the view. Of the sea and of the mountains, all you’ve sailed and all you’ve climbed and know you came down the other side of the mountain by choice and you’re not looking to chase another now.

Would I be able to do it?

I don’t know.

But I realise in this age of information, of Wikipedia and twitter and bands touring for 50 years and having careers that span eras that were once unimaginable, their lives accessible and followable and digestible and available, a little mystery, a little bit of disappearing again into the unknown where I am not, will never be, invited to follow, the potential of that, makes me feel far far more satisfied than any other alternative.