beautiful day

I had a loverly day today.  

And this evening I watched this:

This is one of the best films I've seen in a long time.  I saw the soundtrack in a record shop on one of my vinyl searching missions a while back, I didn't buy it at the time, but tomorrow I will.

And, in other news, I'm going back to Africa.  Today, has been a good day.  They've been a bit thin on the ground of late.

I would have chosen better

Hmmmm, I saw a comment on my picture speculating on whether or not it was in fact me.  Um, yeah, if i was trawling around looking for a photographic avatar I think I might have been a little more discerning.

Check out the wog nose and forehead lines.  It's all meeeeeeeeeeeeeee I'm afraid. 

Sydney circa 1984

Sometimes I wish I was as gutsy today as I was at five. 

 At said age, my grandfather took me to a shopping centre for one reason or another.  It was around this time of year, and on the centre stage they were showcasing pianos, hoping that some poor bastard would cough up the cash so that their little angels would become the virtuosos they knew them to me. 

They were going for the hard sell and had just concluded the demonstration concert.  The spruiker then steps to the microphone and asks if anyone in the audience can play.  I let go of my grandfather's hand, walked up to the stage, adjusted my skirt as a lady would before sitting and proceeded to play a very enthusiastic and embellished version of "Chopsticks".  

Except I couldn't really play chopsticks and when endeavoring a particularly dramatic banging of the keys...I fell straight back off of the piano stool.  

Did I care? Hell to the no.  I readjusted my skirt, sat back down and kept right on playing.  

PS - Surprisingly, although very amused, Granddad didn't buy me the piano and my journey in to the music world was limited to a bad relationship with a keyboard player in later life.  

imperfect

Life's a funny old thing isn't it.  Full of weird and wonderful characters.

For some reason, the last few days I've had my old boss on my mind.  I travelled throughout Africa with her on a number of works trips.  She was a barrister, a former professional singer, a fantastic chef and could host the perfect dinner party with the requisite ragamuffin pseudo intellectuals, dirt poor artists and some of the best legal minds in the country, with ease. 

Darling.  

Anyway, this woman was stunningly beautiful and wickedly bright.  She was also a full blown, but functioning alcoholic.  Her house was mortgaged to the hilt so that she was able to give her only son the oxford education and international wanderings he desired.  He, like his mother, was drop dead gorgeous and academically gifted.  But, he was spoilt, drug adled and their relationship would often deteriorate in to violent episodes.

Her first husband, when they met, was successful, and also married with four young sons.  After a number of years together and the dissolution of his marriage, they married and within 6 months he was tying her in the garage and beating her to an unrecognizable state.  She stayed, and his behavior became more depraved, for the next five years. 

When I met her, many years later.  She was having an affair with a married man.  Actually, I think that every relationships she'd had since was with a man who had been unavailable.  I remember thinking how horrible she was for her behavior.  And I mean I was vehemently opposed to her actions.  I look back now, and realise...she was broken.  It is not an excuse, it does not justify it, but it helps me understand why she is the way she is.  I haven't heard from her for a few years, but I hope she has managed to find some happiness.

As of today, my partner is married, and not to me.  Although, he is separated, the ex-spouse lives on another continent and is also with someone else.  However, the very fact that he had been married caused me unbelievable angst.  I never imagined that my life would turn out in such a way that my partner had had a life partner before me.   It is very funny that given the chaotic upbringing I had, that I set such rigid and absolute ideas of what my life would be, when the past has taught me that there really isn't room for such things.  

Being a good person, trying to help others, not deliberately or knowingly hurting anyone  - those are things I can try to do. Everything else is beyond my control.  

In order to prevent any misapprehension that I am chanelling "the power of now", whilst energising my crystals and listening to relaxation music, please imagine I'm listening to Drop It Like it Hot by Snoop Dog.

I'm not, but you know, just imagine.  

dear reality fighters

I have an appreciation for crazy as much as the next person.  Hell, I've had my mother on all fours, meowing like a cat at me before.  Seriously.

For that reason, and with the greatest respect, I prefer to confine the crazy to my physical reality.  

I don't believe in conspiracies, I don't think that that the human race is evolving towards some superhuman collective conscience, I don't care for any drama other than the sort that chooses to land on my doorstep.  The one with the bell.  That I can hear when it rings.

So, roll on how you wish peeps, but I prefer to stay firmly ensconced in my own comfortable online world of navel gazing.  

what not to do if depressed...

I have stated in a previous post, that I still believe in fairytales.  Well, of late, I've been thinking about that a wee bit.  

I suppose that a fairytale, when viewed in the cold harsh light of day, is probably nothing but the unhinged ramblings of someone whose real life is in all likelihood marred by a chronic drug addiction, bizarre sexual fetishes or crippling agoraphobia.   Or not.

Moving right along.

Tonight, I watched the Sean Penn film Into the Wild.  Absolutely. Harrowing.

I won't spoil the whole plot, but it is the story of a college graduate who, upon successfully graduating university, donates the remainder of his college fund ($24,000) to Oxfam International and sets out across the United States in an effort to escape the dysfunctional family unit and *find himself*.  

Along the way, he meets an old man whose wife and son had been killed by a drunk driver some 50 years prior and who had lived his life in solitude ever since.    The boy, who has assumed the name Alexander Supertramp, and the old man spend some weeks together and become close, before the boy continues on for his final destination, Alaska.

In the scene where Alexander and the man part, the old man explains to Alex that his father and mother were only children, as was he.  He explains that when he is gone, that it will be the end of the family line.  He earnestly asks Alex, with tears rolling down his cheeks, if he could adopt him and be like his grandfather.  Alex responds "can we talk about it when I get back".   End scene.    I find myself in tears thinking about this now, even hours later.

There is nothing that pains me more than if I see an elderly person, who has lived a life as full and storied as anyone, that through the turn of fate has been left without a soul in the world to connect to.   

That being the case, and if fate and coincidence can serve up such a bastard deck of cards to leave someone alone and lonely, then surely I have to believe that the same fickle hand of fate may just come through with a happy ending.

truly brilliant people (not referenced in this post)

This person has left me absolutely lost for words.

Prepare to be amazed.

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

What. A. Fucking. Week.

Dear god, I am amazed I made it through it.  Work was insanely stressful and busy and to top it all off come Friday morning, I had the beginnings of a cold sore.  I am a fairly non-fuss sort of a girl, but nothing brings out my inner self obsessed princess like a bout of herpes.  Revolting.  Anyway, I have discovered the joys of Lysine - and the little bastard has all but disappeared.  Huzzah!

I am now just 4 weeks shy of 30, and am wondering how to appropriately mark the occasion.  I really am not a big party sort of a girl, so I think that I will just catch up with friends for a celebratory lunch.  It is quite odd, I have a number of different groups of friends, that are completely different from each other, that I don't think would really click if they were all together at the same time.  And I think that I would find an event that brought both groups together quite stressful.  One group are law talkers and the other group are hippies.  I wonder if I were a more well adjusted person, whether I would worry about such things?

My 30th birthday also marks my 16th year out of home.  By golly gosh how time flies.  I have gone from homeless, to teeny bopper dolly magazine model, to receptionist, to uni student, to law talker to traveler to civil and environmental rights crusader.  Whilst I still have a penchant for valium and unhealthy relationships, I can say with certainty...You've come a long way baby.

I was thinking the other day, that because of my family history andf general demeanor, I will never ever feel comfortable to have a big family wedding.  I actually grieved this fact for quite some time, but now, I like the idea that one day my beloved and I will exchange vows, at sundown, with no-one else but us.  All my life I truly believed I wanted the meat and 3 veg, traditional nuclear family...but now...I actually feel happy that my life has a bit of texture.  

La Femme sans cold sore



My latest acquisition which arrived Friday.

dear america (and anybody else)

I have spent the last 18 months of my life following the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.  I am Australian, and a political nerd.

Notwithstanding. Please let this be the day when history is made and where I won't have to worry that some renegade is going to bomb the fuck out of Iran in the short to medium future.  

I believe I am privileged to have seen this race being run.  That this period will be a defining moment in history, for better or worse. 

Barack Obama for President.  Please, please, please, please, please.

If the McCain/Palin ticket succeeds, I will be going in to a period of mourning for an indeterminate period of time.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my

I am feeling much better now, having fully recovered from my vile flu like illness.

The weekend, however, was a different story entirely.  I was bed ridden, grumpy and generally ill tempered.  And, I tell you what didn't help me, was trolling around the internet and spending far too much time familiarising myself with  my fellow man.  

Now a lot of the blogs I read, I love.  Some that I discover, I just tut tut, sigh, yawn and click onwards.  But, this weekend, I learned me a somethin'... there are blog WARS!  Forget the Congo, forget Iraq, forget Afghanistan...you can have your fill of grief and horror right here on the interweb of doom.  

I think that I prefer my fairy floss view of blogging.  Live and let live, man.  If you have differing views, cool.  Debate, engage, watch fascinated from a distance the way people slow down after a car accident, but to seemingly dedicate your life to the destruction of an electronic entity...holy bejesus that is scarier than Sarah Palin.  Well not quite, but I dig dramatic effect.

I feel stripped of my innocence.  

But I ain't gonna let it get me down.  I can't, the revolution is coming.