Dreamscape

This dream i was having this morning
started in a corner deli from my childhood where I meet
slightly-in-awe-of class mate from my school days
who runs the deli (she is a lawyer in real life)
while walking home around the block i grew up on
I stop because there is roadworks
and lots of bulldozing equipment breaking up the footpath
driven by a male friend that I haven't seen since autumn
but have been thinking about ringing to catch up for a coffee and chat
I have sex with this male friend on the corner to my street
(I have never had sex with him in real life)
sex overshadowed by fear of being caught by parents
who live about halfway up the street corner we are on
therefore attempt abandoned
wake up suddenly
feeling somewhat nauseated
and bleary

Bloody Men!

by Wendy Cope

Bloody men are like bloody buses -
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you a ride.
You're trying to read the destinations,
You haven't much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.

Fighting It

boiling over

someone left the pot on boil
and walked away

stopped looking
stopped caring
and now it's all boiled over
burnt
nothing

a hellava lot of scrubbing is going to have to happen now
when all it took was a moment of concentration
a moment to be mindful
of that pot cooking on the stove

Fly fly away

A caterpillar cannot know
that it will someday be a butterfly.
It can only hope
and wait.

Life on the ground is passing me by
because my sight is fixed on the sky
Time to be a caterpillar
and someday maybe I will fly.

Murky Water

Yesterday has bled into today

I am struggling through this life.

Why does it always become such a struggle?

I feel alone, isolated

uselessly emotional
and now I want to be alone because I feel so destructive
unproductive

I don't feel loving

I don't feel patient

I don't feel kind

I feel angry

upset
abused
lonely
unhappy
miserable
fucking miserable .

I feel depleted.

I approach every encounter with another
like they are going to take something from me
that I really don't want to give.

I recognise this inner turmoil.

It's called mental exhaustion
fuelled by overblown expectations
nurtured by disappointment
and leaves the bitter taste of failure
in my mouth.

I feel like a failure

a loser

worth nothing

worth-less than nothing

I hate feeling like this

I want it to go away

pleeeeeease go away

icky feeling.

Swadhistana

melting into the arms of another energy blending merging like water filling overflowing fluid undulating around the earth pulled by the moon forward and back to the bottom of the deepest recess of the earth emotions pooling wrapping around swirling twirling energy rises to the heart which explodes with liquid warmth spraying upward to the heavens rising energy ascending as clouds up into the highest reaches of consciousness until it falls into the sea swirling water again as rain a single drop becomes a vast ocean that washes up against the shore.

Biodiversity

Just a moment

an insignificant moment

a tiny fragile insignificant moment

a single breath of life

the flutter of delicate wings, opening closing

A naked figure sits on the lotus leaf of perfection, gazing at the beauty of the night sky. She knows that 'home' is not a physical place in the outside world, but an inner quality of relaxation and acceptance. The stars, the rocks, the trees, the flowers, fish and birds - are all our brothers and sisters in this dance of life. We human beings tend to forget this, as we pursue our own private agendas and believe we must fight to get what we need. But ultimately, our sense of separateness is just an illusion, manufactured by the narrow preoccupations of the mind. Now is the time to look at whether you are allowing yourself to receive the extraordinary gift of feeling 'at home' wherever you are. If you are, be sure to take time to savour it so it can deepen and remain with you. If on the other hand you've been feeling like the world is out to get you it is time to take a break. Go outside tonight and look at the stars.

You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. That's what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant withich cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all directions.

Madonna Whore

Postmodern Gal

In the 17th Century nostalgia was first diagnosed as a disease and carried the title of, maladie du pays (country-sickness), heimweh (home-pain), el mal de corazon (heart-pain). Nostalgia produced symptoms, these included tightening of chest and/or throat, pain in the pit of the stomach, and despair that sometimes lead to cases of death. The cure was often to send soldiers (who where the majority of sufferers) home to the place they longed for. Unfortunately, as discovered later, nostalgia is a dis-ease of the psyche, a yearning to return to a time rather than a place.

Often the memory of the past is hidden by the subjective shadow or selective memory or idealisation. Proust is the ultimate nostalgic.

The antidote to nostalgia?

Irony.

Irony expresses an implicit meaning that is concealed or hidden by a contradictory explicit meaning. In other words things are not always what they seem.

For example, words expressed explicitly as empathy may hide an implicit mockery.

The queen of irony is the understatement and often the ironic will feign ignorance as an expression of philosophical skepticismm. Socrates is the iconic ironic.

Does the Postmodernist embrace both these forms of expression in an effort to create a form of self-negating Truth? Does a perpetual cycle of nostalgia refuted by irony and cosseted by counter-nostalgia enable the ball to keep rolling indefinitely?

Long live Postmodernism!

by the Ironic Nostalgic

The Gift

Perhaps God gives us children not so much to perpetuate the human race; God gives us children to give us companions who will make every possible effort to help us remember to be fully present and to live in the present. Children are the ultimate reminders that life is nothing more than a process, and that as we participate in it, it changes. Children are willing to take on people who have started to become static, to busy themselves with unimportant things, and to lose contact with the world around them. We are given children to help us to remember to live our lives, not just rush through them. - Anne Wilson Schaef

I awoke as usual to a kiss from my three year old. 'Mum are you awake?' 'Come and play with me'. We played with a ball in my bed for about 10 minutes and then James came and joined me in the shower and we carefully washed his hair as he finds it a torturous experience and any drop of water that gets on his face makes him cry. My baby girl was still fast asleep, arms spread wide with a sliver of light coming through the crack in the curtains, illuminating the face of an angel. I stood unable to tear myself away from looking at her. Mr three tiptoed noisily into the bedroom, white towel wrapped awkwardly around his little body, saw Faith asleep and whispered loudly 'SSSSH MUM, DON'T WAKE UP FAITH'. I looked at these two beautiful kids and my heart was full of love and happiness. I thought if I died today, I would die a happy woman...

We all made it through breakfast and a bit of play before heading off to spend the day with a friend and her young children. This woman is the bravest, strongest, most courageous, giving and generous woman I have ever met in my life :)

We had a mutually supportive day of playing with our children, attending to their needs and chatting through all the trials and tribulations, elations and proud moments of motherhood while eating lunch and then sitting out the back in the sun and doing a quick pedicure and painting our toenails while the kids played with cars in the dirt. Then it was getting late and I needed to get packed up and head home. As I walked back and forth down stairs, across the suburban street piling the stuff in the car I noticed on the last trip before collecting the kids, a car coming up the street slowly, quietly. It was one of those days that it feels like sound is sucked into a hole and everything feels quiet and still. Watching this car, I was thinking, 'That car is so quiet, if I hadn't been concentrating I could have just walked in front of it.' I watched it pass and then stepped off the curb and at that moment another car hit me. It skidded to a halt about one hundred meters up the road and I stood there in disbelief for what felt like a lifetime before my legs folded from under me.

As my son put it later, recounting the experience to his father, 'Mum got hit by a car, it hit her basket and broke the cups, then she fell over and died because it hit her foot and her leg and hurt her...' He must have been watching from the upstairs window... I've told him so many times when crossing the road to be careful because he might get hit by a car and it would hurt a lot, and he might die. Kids take everything in. He showed Harry my leg which is pretty bruised and swollen and grazed and said, 'Don't worry Dad, I gave her a squeezy hug and she is going to be ok now.'

I feel a bit choked up typing this as my mind wanders into dangerous territory thinking, I could be dead, or critically injured lying in a hospital. That basket I was carrying that took the impact, could have been Faith...

For me this has been a reminder to never take anything for granted.

In this busy time of the year, as we rush about and prepare to celebrate with family and friends, all the good things that this life has given us, I will be remembering to be present and to be thankful for everything in my life as it is given to me, moment by moment.