Carol-Anne's Wellness Blog

Aloneness and serenity

2012-02-09T21:14:00.000-08:00

Can there be such a thing as contented aloneness? And am I contented thanks to three (legal sized) serves of New Zealand Sqyeling Pig Sauv Blanc? I am even contented enough to forgive the cehf his use of re-c0nstituted dried figs on grilled saganaki IN FIG SEASON! Perhaps it is the mellowness of the wine relecting the mellowness of my mood for the first time in weeks.

Is it alcohol that fules my empathy for my dear friend who under time pressure returned home to be "domestically accountable" at precisely the "expected time" to perform her "anticpated wifely duties"? Yet again I sit pondering relationships, especially marrriage and the contraints and limitations that seem to flow towards one particular gender only. Surely the columnist speak of trust but is that trust only accountable one way? Is she (whichever married, ex-married or partnered acquaintance) trusted to have space.. some private alone time without explanation or justification? Where is that freedom to "just be"... not to do anything morally or ethically suspect or downright wrong or misguided just free to have a private space uncluttered with the demands and emotional baggage of significant others?

Am I too selfish? Is there such a thing when trust and negotiated boundaries are clearly articulated? can somebody tell me how simply "stopping and gazing across a marina revelling in the gentle sea breeze ruffling one's hair and the salty air wakening the nostrils to living nature" doing anything wrong or damaging to others?

And what of friends who share a common bond with an intricate understanding of what scholarly academic pressures are like throughout the simmering pressure cooker of a PhD. Only one who has been there has any possible inkling of what is necessary to simply 'get through it in one piece', mentally, emotionally, academically and even physically... RSI anyone?

I look out over the marina cove and I see it for what it is an unphotoshopped real estate marketing glossy in the shop windows. The water is not blue or turqoise or any other aestheically sounding hue of blue-ness. It is green, an not the most attractive shade of green, a green verging on military khaki.... or to be kind perhaps olive. This very olive tinge is a life giving force. It is from this water the brighter algae adheres to the concrete pilons and foundations of the hotel deck. I watch mesmerised as quite large dark grey/black fish quickly push through the surface with a tail swish whilst nibbling on the algae.

The green surface has the very slightest ripples from the onshore breeze interupted by samm clusters of airbubbles hinting at the teaming living world below. As I gaze acroos the many empty moorings I am tempted to anthropomorphise the small motor boats reminiscent of patinet domestic pets waiting the return of owners for daily excercise. Behind the few boats and the tidy coils of rope laying in waiting next to the bollards my eyes are drawn inevitably to perhaps the most offensive building aesthetically, the corrugated iron multi-level boat under-cover storage area. The one st St Kilda shows stach upon stack of glistening white and blue craft, this one has a small roller door offering only the tiniest peak inside to a dark space reminiscent of an industrial complex or aircaft hangar, and on one middle rack a single vessell is in full view as if the last unwanted item on a supermarket shelf.

To one side of this monstrosity blocking any possible visat across the marina to the riverfrontage units on the opposing side, resides a large metal skeletal structure with angular thrusting beams and trusses. I pray this is not an extension for the ubiquitous neon-dominated 'pokies area' just visible past the bar and servery. Enough. Too many elderly players resorting to these inanimate voracious machines gulping coins, notes and point of sale e-cards.

Pokies and thrusting architecture... so Melbourne circa 1980. What is it with this 'aspirational heavenward reach'... forgive the sinners lord they know not what they do? Or forgive the finacier-predators for they truly believe in the economic 'trickle-down' effect whilst churches and welfare agencies deal with the familial collateral damage?

Neither neon-lit machines or monolithic outdated architecture suits the locale. Nothing compliments the gentle curves of a once natural watercourse, or artificial islands and curving boardwalks lined with palm trees, serviced by monopoly supermarket and fuel outlets to facilitate the needs of city-bound comuters attempting to find their small piece of seachange whilst daily battling the gridlock of the freeways.

Yet despite the somewhat incongruous waterfront villa 'stacks' each complete with mooring, jetty and balcony I still feel calm and tranquil. I guess it is because the place is so vacant of activity, no nodding passers b y happily walking Fido, carrying the environmentally sound fabric shopping bags and all the time in the world for a kind word or two as encountered at Yarra's End in Melbourne. This vacant environment is ghostly with a sense of expectation... something will happen eventually even though it isn't Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

"Little boxes, little boxes and they're all made of ticky tacky, little boxes on the hillside and they look just the same". These have no hillside. Yet they are exactly the same. Each balcony showcases the ubiquitous multiburner BBQ, weather-proofed woven outdoor settings with reinforced glass tables and the obviously compulsory 'mop top' planters. Each apartment or unit is stacked one on top of another with a minimalist dividing wall. Obviously communication between neighbours is frowned upon and despite a raked and stepped design no conversation is possible between upstairs occupants with their donstairs counterparts. Yet I can hear in my imagination the same sizzling steaks and seafood sounds, the murmurs of conversations, wine bottles being opened and corks popping. The same communal relaxation noises without the Community.

Suddenly my reverie is interrupted as I realise the community buzz is in fact real and emanating from a sectioned of part of the L-shaped deck of the hotel where a work function is taking place. You can tell the deeper rumble and throatey guffaws of the men with the lighter pitched women's voices in counterpoint as alcohol and party atmosphere lifts normal vocal pitches even higher. I look at the group and realise I do not want to be with them. I do not want to be over there listening to the same mundane workplace gossip and inanities with forced smile and party face. I am content, alone, here across the water. I am calmly observing the world going about its business.

At a table for two just down from my seat there is an animated conversation taking place between what appears to be late twenties best friends of each gender. She is defensive of him and her pecerception of how a particular female acquaitance is abusing his good nature. He nods and replies with the obligatory 'umms' to give the impression gthat this is actually a conversation when in fact it is a very bad therapy session replete with self-help cliches being hurled in his direction from his "bestie". Oh no back to relationships again... the afternoon is turning full circle as the sun lowers in the sky, the seabirds head noisily home for the evening.

I am fighting the urge to stand up and scream to everyone in earshot, the party, the couple the pokies players... "Just shut up and listen. Listen to the sounds of paradise"... the softly discernable whoosh of wind on water, the falpping of the duck wings coming in for landing, the gentle thuds of the boats bumping against the rubber floatation hammocks, and the sounds of the seagulls across the marina through the one green treed pathway between inlets.

It is then I notice them, the family. One man, one woman a young girl in blue print school dress walking their fluffy white puppy. She skips along the boardwalk opposite, the man and woman holding hands. Ah possibly the ad agency picture perfect photo... quick pass my camera for THAT real estate agency advertising shot.

2012-02-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

My little contribution to The Conversation online today

2012-01-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

In response to a question in a discussion on meditation and mental illness. Finally The Conversation becomes one for me... hope I haven't pushed to 'boat' too far and shut down the conversation with my middle class/educated claim about research in this field...oh well will know tomorrow if these people get too busy or I have simply accidentally negated their discussion space...

Okay this one specifically to James but also to the other academics discussing this topic. One could say that meditation is simply relaxation but I think the tenor of the discussion is about its efficacy in treatment for mental illness. Thus, as I mentioned before this is not my area of PhD studies (I am doing Creative Writing and writing a novel), it happens to be one of my "hobby horses". Too often people without mental illness study and speak for people with mental illness. And whilst I cannot speak for others, especially not for sufferers of extreme psychoses, I have lived with these patients for several weeks at a time on numerous occasions. Ethics does not allow me to use their experiences for my own research; however I can make general observations and relate the differences to my own experiences.

Relaxation is fantastic.. no matter how one achieves it... through physical activity, immersing oneself in a book, listening to music, or gardening and painting... however, meditation is the active decision to enter (or attempt to enter) a state of calm and relaxation. So why does this work for me as patient?

In my depressive state, my mind is active, constantly spiralling out of control with negative self-talk, reframing my past experiences in the bleakest light, and projecting that feeling forward if I can conceive of forward at all. When in mania it is as the disease name suggests the polar opposite... my self talk is grandiose, expansive and totally unrealistic in the same sense. I do not consciously want to come down from here... the colours are intense, the aromas more so, the sounds so sharp... every bird tweet is a thing of beauty and wonder, even the sound of the wind is magical... why would any rational human (even non-patient) want to say good bye to this? It is enervation at its extremes and we know that inevitably the crash will be horrendous to the hole dug by the "black dog". It is no way to live a 'normal' life... so what can we do?

Learn to establish wellness, and a form of self-awareness that means we mobilise our resources. We need to meditate first (as painting just allows the driven mania to express on the page). We need to learn to quieten our mind... to shut out external aural stimuli and internal self talk before we can enter a state 'normal' people equate with relaxation.

And from what I have been told by other patients with immediately more debilitating conditions such as schizophrenia and allied psychoses, they cannot shut out the noise and voices... they are already outside, not internal self-talk. Sometimes they are even externalised to the extent that 'real' people or personas are screaming the abuse at them... the quietness of the yoga space just allows them an amplified space to be heard.

So why tell you all this. I truly want to be a part of an NMHRC or ARC working with experts in their fields (multi-disciplinary) to research this topic. And why me? With the ethics clearance procedures at the Universities and Medical Institutes, the researchers interview 'subjects' and then present empirical data analysed into a cohesive academic narrative Consistent with disciplinary specificity... what that means in practice and please do not be offended, is that educated middle class people filter the data through a number of social, cultural and semantic lenses first. The voices of the patients become lost or translated and no longer have the immediacy and dare I say it, even emotive/evocative power of ethnographic research data.

I want in. My whole life is committed now to bringing the patients voices into the spotlight, publically and academically. I can only ever speak as me, on behalf of me... but I know my lived experience has validity as data in this space. If any of you or in best scenario... all of you put up a multi Institutional-interdisciplinary grant app in 2012 and beyond... I can be interviewed for this role... and most definitely itching to be so.

May I just ask for opinions on this?

2012-01-15T04:16:00.000-08:00

The other day I was walking along Spencer Street and saw the big screen on the Age building saying how this guy believes fat people should pay more to fly in a plane. Now I am sort of in agreement, but as a "fattie" I feel it is discriminatory. It would mean in practice that we would have to weigh in publically and pay accordingly. (It's not so much the paying bit that is my problem). If we have to pay more do we have the right to demand a larger seat so that there is no further embarassment trying not to spill into the person next to us' seat. I too hate it when that happens. I would love the option of paying extra for a wider seat... but not two whole economy fares... I am not that much over weight.

Even if I was it would make air travel available for only the 'well heeled' note not well padded. Does anyone know how embarassing it is to have to ask for a seat-belt extender. I do, I used to have to do that prior to my lap banding surgery.

I am also heartily sick and tired of the blame the victim approach to social policy. It is as if anybody not looking like the societal norm today is permitted to be publically humiliated and vilified.

There is underpinning assumptions that the overweight person is lazy and survives on a diet primarily of junk food and take-away. This is far from the truth. Metapbolic rates are influenced by so many things as well as the energy in, energy out equation.

Lack of excercise is an issue with overweight people but that also has a lot to do with discomfort when excercising or downright pain in the joints, and excess strain on the heart. So walk I here you say... well let me let you in to a little secret.

" I am scared to walk alone in public along even suburban and country roads" let alone the nearby beach. I am yet to have a leisurely walk to my local shops (1 km away) enjoying the sunshine and blissfully enjoying the fresh air and plants around me, before some low life... usually young and male sees fit to wind down his window and hurl insults and abuse in my direction.

I promise you these young men are no Hollywood stars in appearance, nor are they built like male strippers. They are often unkempt, weedy or beer-gutted! Yet society has taught them they have a right, no duty to abuse fat women.

Oh yes this helps. When a person is struggling with weight and eating disorders it is usually a sign of dis-stress and low self-esteem. Yep, calling out abuse is a certain way to get them to exercise and diet...NOT.

I am not even safe from the glares from other women or comments from the suited ones in Collins Street. This fatism has to stop. I agree being overweight is a serious public health issue, that's why I am tackling my problems on a number of fronts, holistically. It is also a reason I have private health insurance to not burden the public purse with my life-style induced illnesses.. and enough funeral cover to be a responsible parent.

Everyone I know says it is great when you become invisible as an older woman. I remember that phase... it was liberating. But now a few years later I am even more visible than every before. Shouldn't we be allowed to age gracefully. If we are relatively healthy, (no diabetes, high blood pressure, gout or other obvious symptom of serious obesity-related illness) can't we be left alone to slowly work on and with our problems without harassment.

Can some caring individuals stand up to these guys when they witness such cruelty and say "You are out of line buddy"... or is our society now cowered by these thugs? We of course can say nothing as we are praying for the ground to open and swallow us, or at least have an invisibility cloak tossed our way.

Great response from my meditation program experts

2012-01-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

Given I had such a physically and mentally tough time using my new meditation CDs this answer actually makes complete sense to me, particularly the bit about bringing the stressors to the surface, hence thought noise!

This may be instructive for others feeling they too are meditating wrongly.

Carol-Anne, Should You Have an Active Mind When Meditating?

Back from the cyberspace black hole...

2012-01-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

When I began a new job in May last year I became reticent about posting my wellness routine and illness monitoring in cyberspace. I also felt that it would impact negatively on my PhD studies as my superiors would read the "ups" and "downs" and mis-interpret them as periods proving my inability to function cognitatively at the level required professionally.

Well, I happily confess I was wrong. I did more damage than good. This decision worked so against my personal philospophy. There is no shame in having ANY type of mental illness, especially Bi-polar Mood Disorder. Many people live professionally rich and intellectually generative lives with this disorder, but despite many well-known people speaking publicly about it, there remains a resistance on the part of the broader community to acknowledge that we are "normal" and it is not just the celebrities whose wealth can shield them from needing to perform publicly when they are in the swings of illness at bothe ends of the spectrum.

If anything for performing artists, visual artists, and writers 'the public' almost expect them to show signs of 'madness' when being creative. So it seems that mania is fine on display as long as their is a willing paying audience to watch the creative process "live" so to speak.

But talk of the depressive end of the spectrum and it remians more comfortable for the community to not have to see it, not deal with it. We should all just hide away until we "snap out of it". Even those purporting to be supportive of full-integration in the workforce are not immune from over-reaction and stereotyping when either pole emerges (even slightly) in a colleague.

We know our extremes of illness and onlooker does not. So what for a "normal" person would just be perceived as a bit flat, a bit down or sad is seen as temporary glitch that will soon pass if ignored. As for the upper end of the spectrum co-workers and friends just consider a "normal" person's elevated mood as happiness and excitement, whereas for a manic-depressive it is perceived as a threatening sign that they are about to implode or explode.

I ask again of family, friends and co-workers to see these shifts in "internal weather" as indicators of deeper things at play, and not just in the personal realm! Look around you. Is the work deadlines untenable, the relationships in the office verging on toxic? Is there bullying, even not of the BMD co-worker, as we are sensitive to this in our environments even when we are not directly targetted.

Whilst pressure and work stress can be generative of high functioning productivity there is a very thin line between what is actually normal professional deadlines and expectations and unreasonable work practices and expectations. I am sick and tired of worrying just how much I show through my mood states publicly as I am still judged as the "offender" or "victim" rather than as (my favourite analogy), the proverbial canary in the coalmine... If I stop being up... and singing then the air around is perhaps polluted and toxic.

I recommend evry workplace and effective manager needs a person with BMD at work. We take the policies from the paper or cyberspace network and implement them on the ground. I am fed up with non BMD people advising me NOT to be SO OPEN about my illness as it will hurt my career prospects.

Well I'm sorry if my "managed and controlled illness" damages my work prospects so be it. I cannot function living a divided life. The 'real one' at home and the 'perceived socially acceptable one" at work or at my University. Bugger that this slpit has damn nearly hospitalised me in 2011.

I am now truly ready to tell people where to off being judgemental. My illness at least does not have a truly negative personality disorder directed at others! Most BMD people I have met tend to find fault in themseleves first and foremost, not attempt to bring others down strategically, emotionally or through malicious acts. These are workplace deviants, not us.

It is about time in 2012 that so called "normal" workers are held to account for their actions of a "behavioural nature". If everyone around these disfunctional workers were monitored and watch as closely as those of us open about our medicated illness, then workplaces would be so much more productive, inclusive, dynamic, creative and dare I say it... happier.

So rest assured dear readers you will be travelling along regularly with me, in 2012 no matter what my job or how close to submission my PhD develops. I don't give a toss about the people who really SHOULD not determine my own wellness.

I think I just might open their access to my Facebook Account and they can find their way here.

The bigger questions that hinder wellness

2011-05-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

I am a follower of a fantastic global Linked In group, NESTA based of course out of Europe. We are currently having an interesting discussion arising from an initial post about 'why companies still use pen and paper' to attempt to map innovation.

This is the URL for anyone interested.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=1868227&type=member&item=52893607&report.success=62WUlrnddR6bgwSqXhj6sMCTLzs-Mtpi3fLJWbNsWtuooxKwgTL8r5xsvgkbozKwEkXBakadko

What astonishes me so far is how few people have found the time or seen the benefit of engaging in this dialogue. I am also surprised that I appear to be the only woman and one who is not already an ongoing employee of a company or institution.

For me so much of humankind's wellness issues spring from workplace interactions and practices. I particularly take umbridge at Tony Abbott's latest words (and this is not party political... it is content driven) and I am paraphrasing "to allow those on welfare, particularly sole parents and disability recipients, access to the dignity of work.

What a patronising middle class slap in the face. Does all work provide dignity and self-esteem? How does this fit with Australia as a 'knowledge nation' in a globalised economy where work is increasingly casualised and unstable. Does that provide dignity and enhanced self-esteem or work-related stress caused by not knowing what the future holds and the inability to budget for 'aspirational'goals ... you know like keeping a roof over your head and feeding the family?

I heard on talkback the other day a salesman, whinging that because he has chosen to study, pay his education and mortgage debts, chooses to live in an Eastern Melbourne suburb, commuting distance from town, makes sacrifices to send his kids to Private Schools and is able to afford a stay at home wife/partner still whilst earning over $150,000 per annum, why should he be denied access to Federal Government Family Tax Benefits? Is this not middle-class welfare? He saw it as getting something back for his own tax dollar!

Whilst this selfish, non-community spirited middle-class attitude remains pressuring the politicians policy moves, we cannot expect to have a compassionate welfare safety net system where full employment is achievable with everybody able to truly access the dignity of work.

To Paul from Doncaster... I say. I have studied over sixteen years, and worked paid PAYE taxes in an era when there was no superannuation for casual, session or part-time workers, nor sick leave or holiday pay, and have taken on over $70,000 HECS debt as investment in my own future, been privileged enough to be granted nearly $80,00 0 in Federal student stipend, I remain trapped in a poverty cycle of DSP safety net-reliance due to the casualised labor market.

I have as a younger person pulled beers at pubs in London, have swept floors, taken in ironing and done much manual labour, but now as a 50 plus aged woman with a fine education and ability to work cognitively at the highest level, 90% of the time, with only 10% annual illness periods, where is my access to the dignity of work? Doing physical jobs I am over-qualified for, physically unable to do, mentally unchallenged?

I do not want to be on DSP, but until our Corporations and Institutions stop bemoaning a looming skilled labour crisis, and adequately structure their workplaces to accommodate the skills and abilities of the older workforce (remember retirement age is now 67)... how can we as a Country offer dignity of employment or indeed lead the world in innovation and global economic contributions no longer reliant upon the exploitation of natural resources.

Lastly, why after 37 years since the Equal Opportunity Act do women still comprise the bulk of the casualised workforce?

And why in this time of neuro-plasticity and ongoing brain research via MRI's can we still not convince powerbrokers of the usefulness of all workers, male, female, old and young alike. Women are supposedly good communicators and listeners after all.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/13/1008662107.full.pdf

Image reference:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.thirdeyehealth.com/images/human-brain-and-stress-11.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blog.thirdeyehealth.com/human-brain-limbic-system-and-the-symptoms-of-stress/&usg=__Ojlp6MVLkv4F7gMTDQKIQUQMfQo=&h=344&w=424&sz=23&hl=en&start=45&zoom=1&tbnid=A0QkwvlnKTz23M:&tbnh=169&tbnw=203&ei=Ov3NTZiCN4S6sQOvq5yzCw&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBrain%2Binnovation%2Blobes%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D1056%26bih%3D515%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch0%2C1680&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=360&vpy=159&dur=57&hovh=202&hovw=249&tx=89&ty=180&page=5&ndsp=9&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:45&biw=1056&bih=515

Fantasy...

2011-04-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

First let me acknowledge this beautiful and tranquil image from Angelwave 06 at Deviant Art:
http://angelwaveo6.deviantart.com/art/The-Runaway-Bride-129637313

Pity she's a bride... I just like the long flowing gown and saddle-less stead. After last week I have so many of those fantasy moments... you know...
How did Tony Mokbel gate a false passport?
How did ONJ's ex create a new identity?
How can I just become someone else from now on and live elsewhere?

I know I will miss my home place, this beach suburb, but really I grieve for its older self, with less development, pristine and wild coves, shellfish and wildlife everywhere the eye could see, not raped and pilaged by generations of humans, and poluted by fossil fueled play toys. I hate the houses that have left such large footprints that the water table has dropped so far that I would have to sink a new bore to get access to the groundwater. And what of the massess of cut down scraggly ti-trees and willful gum trees dropping branches as nature decides. Not now. We have indigenous gardens, not in themselves a bad thing all, but they have a sameness. The native grasses and conrolled native flowering plants. Where are the wild crazy coloured banksia species and native parrots?

No this is beach house landscape as determined by "Better Homes and Gardens" and when looking beyond the architecturally designed angles and false stonework, the houses are basically upper middle class kit homes built on spec by very canny tradie business people laughing all the way to the bank whilst living in the really expensive seaside vista homes. It is no longer my wild place yet my heart is here, indelibly.

Yet every-time I have the choice to turn north towards the City from the Beleura Hospital in Mornington, it is only ever the low level of petrol in my tank that forces me to make the u-turn south. Same when I drive away from home just on a shopping expedition, the house is shrouded when I see either of the two other residents cars. My heart skips a beat when there is no-one home except the cats. I have those brief moments of respite without which I just could not keep up the battle.

I also know that I must seek fulfilment and happiness from within and acceptance of my own illness and flaws but it is all so self-help manual and they never hint that it is a lifelong journey and battle. I could virtually write the CBT manuals myself by now, and psychologists and social workers wonder why those of us in psychiatric care absolutely dismiss their 'advice' and pseudo science.

Perhaps I should have taken to fictio writing as a younger woman and gone the fantasy genre, or the highly marketable Barbara Cartland romance fiction, but alas I am too old and scarred from failed romance to suspend belief long enough for a full novel of this genre... perhaps that's why I am more into Nanna lit... these old birds like me have been through it all and survived, usually without Prince Charming holding the reigns of the partner stead for the escaping 'bride'... also shouldn't prince Charming have long flowing golden locks and enough money for Ashley and Martin in true Warnie/Hurleystyle?

Tough Week... some of you will understand.

2011-04-29T19:00:00.001-07:00

Read on if you really wish to understand the darker side, otherwise ignore blog... look at the pretty Royal Wedding Blogs

Some readers will understand these thoughts... others will not. Such is the life of a person with BMD. I do not know how to chart the last seven days, my moods have been so labile, ranging from -4 through to possible +1 on the highest level.

Such small things to some people but huge for me. I cannot, no matter how hard I try, shut out the sort of aura generated by people around me. On one of my wellness clinic days there is one woman who is like a black cloud of maudlin self pity. I can empathise with her yet she makes me so angry that her attention seeking poor me behaviour virtually destroys the whole point of the wellness group, to actually get our feelings aired and cleansed without the need for words or tissue boxes. Why does she have to be so needy? She is 'acting out' for admission to an inpatients ward, and I know how desperate one can become for this respite. I know I SHOULD (there's that problematic word again) have a more caring and supportive attitude but bugger that, she makes me and others there feel worse. She is a black cloud! I used to think it was autism spectrum and so self isolated and gave her the benefit of kind thoughts... but now I am just angry and turning it inwards... as I always do, and feeling guilty I cannot express my anger in any positive way. I can't even have the confidence to say "It would help me to have some ambient background music... so we all struggle on victims of her deathly silence".

On another day, I attended a wellness talk fest and it just happened to be after a 'fight with my son'. I saw it as a fight. I had just gone to bed to read peacefully IN MY SAFE SPACE... my bedroom, my sancturary before embarking on my yoga session to wind down. I was having good old laughter therapy with QI, Adam Hills, Spicks and Specks ... and confessionally lusting after the actor who plays crime writer Rick Castle. My son felt he had the right to enter my bedroom, no knocking of course and berate me for being a Telstra client because HIS internet connection had dropped out. I am always being blamed that Telstra is not a good enough ISP (to his liking) yet I am of gthe opinion if Telstra owns the hardware and the whole family is gaining advantage through Tesltra via bundling and options that save over $100 per month... that's a positive despite a four month battle with the TIO and their billing system (which is also wearing me down).

Apparently the storming into my room was to see what I was doing either on my laptop or streaming via my T-box that could be causing his drop outs and latency whilst gaming online. I was doing neither. My laptop in my study where it stays... it does not come into my bedroom sanctuary unless I am very ill. The T-box was simply replaying already taped programs... yet he felt he could enter and abuse me for my choice of ISP and virtually demand I divide up everything again, without even offering to pay the difference... with him twice before having caused $900 and $500 excess charges without any offer of repaying! The he becomes more abusive and he tells me to "get fucked". I say I am in my bedroom "You Fuck Off... how dare you". Doors slam. I am a mess and yoga is totally useless after that.

So bright and sparky along I go to yoga next day after dredging up semblance of 'normal person' then find younger inpatients who are at that very early hopeful stage of parenting attempt to tell me that my son should grow up and own his own shit.... Really tell me something I don't know! Also walk in my shoes first. I walk on eggshells with both people I live with. the older 80 year old only sees and complains about the emotional damage being done to him by said son, whilst being unwilling/unable to cut purse strings as he knows that is his only connection AT ALL with son, then he bitches at me that the son won't/doesn't ever say thanks or ask after his health.

I cracked it and said... it's not just about you.... two parents are being hurt here but you only care about yourself. I was then told by older one to "fuck off and get a job" in other words stop being a bludger bringing in not enough income for household... this with me on DSP and paying off my own car, the family health insurance, and old ones funeral plan and not costing a cent to feed as i get my meal replacements via the health insurance.... then to have a young Mum claim how she is able to 'break cycle of domestic abuse'for her daughter by just growing up and being an adult. I saw red.... ever heard of frontal lobe development occasionally delayed in young men... I still believe generally that before age 25 damaged young men CANNOT act rationally and see consequences of their actions... hey girl know the full story before passing judgement... then I disintegrated in boxes of tissues and tears. Post script... she latter shows me phone pics of her bruising by her partner as result of domestic violence... yep definitely breaking cycle for her child! Angry again and turning it inwards.

I should have made a weekly appointment with my psychiatrist but no... I am strong, I am on leave from my studies, I am free to get well.... yeah sure.

Last week it all began with me underestimating the impact it would have on me attending my University work space and packing five years of research material (and personal memorabilia) into three very large suitcases as a form of separation. Well boy did I underestimate that sense of loss of belonging after doing this.

So together they all came out in one explosive crying session which almost began at yoga. It suddenly occurred to me that when we lay in savasna (repose) I noticed that the soft comfy blankets are square and I always have to decide to have shoulders out or arms palms up covered. Often my feet fall out, and the yogi comes around and tucks the soft blanket under my toes. I am immediately transported back to childhood, like when a Mum tucks in a child at night. These two sessions are the only times a week I feel ANY HUMAN CONTACT.... it so overwhelmingly alone'ness'.

The day of this realisation I learn that another acquaintance with child same age as mine could no longer stand the chronic pain (or that's how the normal people described it) and suicided. I know the pain he was in and it is more than physically chronic it is beyond that and once it has gripped it is unstoppable. Even his passion for the arts could not counterbalance this 'black dog'. Please dearest W I hope you have found peace at last.

http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2011/04/self-control-makes-us-angry.html

Aiode speaks again

2011-04-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

Today I will work on my artefact. After mapping her narrative structure with Glenice last week, I see I need to be less a free writer and take on the hard stuff, the actual structuring and plotting. But as usual procrastination... a re-read to remove unnecessary/inadequate adjectives and replace with more metaphorical and illustrative phrases or words... should be fun BUT OH SO TIME CONSUMING. I cannot possibly judge progress via word count.

Today I need to work both sides of my brain... the analytical with all the mind maps and narrative graphing, and the creative... just playing with words, ideas and forms of showing not telling.

I am almost ready to begin playing with the very difficult second person narration of one protagonist.. she is calling out to speak at last after all these months of authorial unwellness and turbulence.

Is the Muse possibly returning and could it possibly have anything to do with the fact I am now spending cash (I really haven't got spare in my budget) to frame my own artworks as I learn to play with different vis arts media? Are they connected?

Perhaps I have rreconnected with colour and have finally accepted that the beauty out there is real, and what normal people see and the much lamented intensive tones and shades of my mania are really only 'dreamstates'and hallucinations. These colours are perhaps not real after all, so why have I spent over twenty years mourning their loss. My other senses seem to be sharpening now and I am definitely having more common moments of synaesthesia. I never query that my dreams are in colour... they just are. I hear sounds as colours. I feel the very air around me as electric charged or pulsating. I love this new 'me'.

Could yoga be doing this or is it new meds and another form of man-made bio-chemical brain inbalance.

Hey, I'm just going to enjoy it while its lasts. I can't believe this can be mine forever... but if this is the plus 3 to plus 4 state just before hypomania... role along.

Am I allowed to position this rating as 'normal happiness' and not a clinical sign of mood lability?
When can I stop judging my moods as abnormal? When will THOSE OTHERS (you know who you are) allow me the freedom to be both sad and happy... and not always position me as 'mad' or in a dangerous space?

Just a little about the image... supposedly Hesiod ( a male poet.. why do the blokes always think they are in a story... even image... is it Hesiod's anima?) and 'a' Muse, hopefully Aiode???

Now the wikipedia entry for Plutarch's original three Muses (Boeotian):

In Greek mythology, Aoide (Ἀοιδή) (or in Latin Aoede) was one of the three original (Boeotian) Muses, though there were later nine. Her sisters were Melete and Mneme. She was the muse of song. According to Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Zeus, the King of the Gods, and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. She lends her name to the moon Jupiter XLI, also called Aoede, which orbits the planet Jupiter.

Long, long restful blogging break but only electronically.

2011-04-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

I have not forgotten my early promise to keep friends and interested parties up to date on my yearly ride on the Bi-Polar Mood Disorder Roller Coaster, but somehow pen and ink felt a safer space to allow my thoughts to wander where-ever they took me than here in Cyberspace.

I am now catching everyone up on what has been a unique and interesting period of my life. If there is one thing I can say it is that PhD studies, it is that creative writing and generally living in a twenty-first century world still seem highly incompatible.

I refer to the fact that I would consider myself as one of the most feminist women I know... yet the gender stereotype thing is so ingrained I cannot shake the usual female maladies.

You know the ones?

Getting yourself between spouse/partner/ex and child to save male on male all out war zone (which others can screen out by not a BMD person susceptible to the slightest atmospheric changes and charges).
Trying to absorb mood swings of adolescence/young adulthood, at the same time as dealing rationally with the frustrations of aging, hearing loss, hair loss, fragility and arrogance that "there is nothing wring with me, I can look after myself" after third return to kitchen from car, before driving off on short shopping/ medical trip. Hence increased anxiety (of the normal variety); my constant fear that in either mood neither males should be behind the wheel of a car, yet fearful of if they were at home, just how much worse life would be for me.
Add to this my increasing less patient/pleasant dealings with so many debt collectors at the door and on the phone, plus filing all types of fiscally related legal documents gathered throughout a prolonged period of offspring deviant behaviour, whilst offspring still remains incapable of 'owning most' of the responsibility despite the fights of TOUGH LOVE! I still walk on eggshells fearing violence and prefer (for my own safety and sanity) the apathy, and avoidance through either laziness, ignorance, or reliance upon parent to fix... or simply a lack of development in the frontal brain cortex... Anyway, Mum does her best as if she were a 1950s prototype compliant little homebody.
Did I really just confess that self-image?
OMG... I can almost see myself in starched petticoats, full skirts, neatly hair-rollered and brushed out, complete with white frilly-pinny at picket fence... after having indulged in a afternoon sherry or two, a bex (or modern equivalent) and a 'good lie down' (Nanna nap thanks Barry Humphries!)
Putting self last (especially indulging in the small pleasurable things that others see as being work-avoidance, or financially wasteful, or even malingering).
Putting everybody's else's wellness/happiness/calmness/emotional stability first.
Try getting a telephone message through when one householder is wearing noise reduction headphones and gaming solidly for the best part of forty-eight hours straight, attending class the next forty-eight, then golfing and sleeping the remainder of the week, whilst choosing cooking and house movement times between 2am and 6am!
Add to this the older one takes the messages, doesn't write them down, or ignores the phone because a horse race is on. The' state of the art' phone having had the message listened to, then gives no audible hint that there is actually a 'saved' message. Thank goodness for email and txt or I would never hear from or about anybody.
Finally add to this a tendency on the part of said BMD woman, to conflate global crises with local ones, mount political crusades against all forms of injustice and simply see significance everywhere others see none.I am tired and emotional, in the true sense of the phrase!

SOLUTION....time for a good long holiday.

But not for me the Peninsula Hot Springs and Massage, the Ella Bache full beauty regime, and the constant desire for copious good quality wines, champagne, new jewellery, shoes and clothes or the boxes upon boxes of Belgium dark chocolate... not even the wild manic rampant sexuality of full blown mania, my drugs and body image has shattered that little stress reliever.

No, it is sedate walks along Patterson Lakes with a good friend, a gallery visit or two, a Wheeler's Centre talk (free) but on DSP week to afford the train ticket, a wander through the Coolart Bird hide, and furtive out of control paperback book buying instead of paying pressing bills. (Even my meds can't seem to curtail that one). It's as if I am not alive unless I own and hold copies of women writers work from around the world. It's as if I am not truly a lover of literature and reading unless I at least accumulate a bedside stack for future indulgence.

My wellness regime... great. Let me just catch you up on that little saga. September, birthday month, Footy Grand Final and of course ageing, plus the inevitable plateau of weight loss on the lap band diet.... More exercise they cry.... more wine I crave... and a little cheese and bickies with that also... savoury of course.

Then comes Spring Racing Carnival.... no I didn't go or watch... but my dress size had gone up so even thinking of going to the Mornington Cup socially became a disaster in the clothes shops! Oh well let's just have a few more nightly 'non-nutritional fluids' and eat less real food just lots of Greek Yoghurt (good call that one... up goes weight further)....

DOWN SLIDES SELF ESTEEM.... straight to near-rock bottom depression at the very time I am supposed to be gearing up to return to study, whilst barely making ends meet on my own financial commitments (all of car, health insurance, funeral plan, home and car insurance.... you know all those little luxuries!).

Lifestyle tip for thinner people, it's cheaper to buy $2.99 bottles of Aldi wine than nutritious food! Bang there goes November and it's time for the usual Conference attendance that usually tilts my mood scales back upwards... but not this time... as there was no TAX REFUND TO SPEND GUILT FREE!

Despite the heaps of praise and encouragement and feeling accepted by coleagues from most Unis (except mine), I am drawn back to the world of the night people... in Wellington of all places! I told you about touching base with Richard O'Brien and my mind regressed to the exciting seventies in London, broke but happy and carefree (and most likely fully blown manic).
The theatre feels like home. I feel at home. I do not feel like an outsider or imposter as I do in the Uni... but unfortunately I must return home and face the accusations of money wasting, selfishness and malingering on my studies. the inner voice is screaming... just write the creative...get the novel finished, whilst the other voices are saying why bother, it's no fun anymore. I am not doing it for me anymore. I am doing it for a bloody bit of paper that for me might just prove useless in the current employment climate at my age.

Down and down I go... then wham!

Christmas in all it's dysfunctional glory. Why even try?

Because I have to stay out of a psychiatric ward as that would confirm negative professional opinion of my academic capabilities and personal lack of self determination. . Add to this tourist season, enforced hibernation and a mild case of agraphobia... well I held on with doctors propping me up despite a false accusation resounding in my ears.... "You know you always fall in a heap after Conferences"... implying that I am manic at Conferences, not simply stimulates and energetically charged with my mind in overdrive of thoughts and ideas... no I am thus abnormal, dysfunctional and downright certifiable. If this one voice only knew me when I was manic, the suggestion would not be thrown around in such a cavalier manner.

Luckily for me in February at the very end of a fraught beginning to the academic year along comes the timely onset of chronic and recurrent blood disorder, requiring medical attention, another hangover from an earlier era 'pernicious anaemia'... I assume it is similar to having a shorter bout of Chronic Fatigue Synnrome, one cannot even summon energy to do normal daily activity.

Beware the ides of March!

You see once you declare yourself publically as BP then watch out... do not be "too happy", or "too enthusiastic" as it could be concealing ideas of grandieur... yeah, sure get like Charlie Sheen don't I? Me with my Tiger Blood! Oh and don't get "too quiet or introverted"... that's not allowed either. One must not be sad for any reason (deaths, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, senseless road trauma.... you are NOT TO RESPOND TO THIS IN AN OUTWARD MANNER)

Can someone tell me how I measure the 'normal' emotions on an outside world scale?

Or can I only measure it on my own scale?

My own scale says time off, more yoga, more excercise, positive diet, alcohol cut down (severely), more art classes and more serene walks.

Bugger PhD timelines... I need to re-discover the joy of surviving to the age of 55 with BMD and enjoying who I am, warts and all. So F*** you world.

This time of year is mine, poverty or not... there's more to life than just getting by.

Always more to learn

2011-02-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

My silence over the last month continues to be explained by the write up phase of my PhD. This phase is desolation. Even my GP said the other day that 'PhD's are enough to drive sane people insane, imagine the stress you are under'. How interesting, when one lives with stress as a daily partner it becomes normalised. That doesn't mean it is any less debilitating but just a part of the mental torment to control and 'get through' in one's normal routine. Turning is desperation to people whose words can describe the things I find hard to encapsulate adequately in my creative writing, and the things that sound cliched in my academic writing, I find that every time I open their books new things jump out at me.

It's as if... I feel even more inadequate> How could I have survived with this condition this long and not seen or understood the obvious things being spoken about. For example throughout my life I have had suicidal ideations and indeed taken a perverse pleasure in them. It was as if my safety was thinking about suicide rather than acting upon it. I was not and am not alone. Apparently this is the very stuff of suicide ideation, a form of wish fulfilment that promises and imagined respite from the unbearable pain. Yet to act upon it is vengeful. It is to purposely hurt others... along the lines of Spike Milligan's "I told you I was ill"...a sort of see, you wouldn't believe how real this was, now you can feel guilty.

To have that much anger seems counter to the despair and enervation that is upon one when suicide ideations occur. Why have I not been able to see it before reading famed entertainment industry attorney Terri Cheney's book, Manic: A memoir. Or another, Darkness Visible by the late author William Styron.

I have felt comfortable re-reading Kay Redfield Jamieson's 1993 Touched with Fire as an academic search for knowledge, and previously her memoir, An Unquiet Mind. It is as if these people are publically successful and safe to speak about their depressions and manias that make me stop and reflect on what I am actually doing in my own PhD. Is my lack of public profile good or bad? Does it mean that what I have to say will be less valued? Can there ever be an 'everyone' voice of the disease BMD, when it is so idiosyncratic in its shifts, phases, cycles and even within the polarities themselves, let alone the individual differences in reactions to and success with medications and pharmacological interventions.

So in the academic sense what can be my contribution to new knowledge as demanded of a PhD? What can I say that these highly skilled and intelligent wordsmiths and successful professional people have not said?

Maybe it is simply to let people share a glimpse inside the world of madness, and that it is not unrelenting and there are times of absolute psychological normality. We are not all the same. I am not my illness.

It has been a revelation to me that the sexual promiscuity that can accompany mania is less about feeling desirable and sexually powerful and is more about a desperate need for human connection... the need to feel connected with someone. Communication being the goal however when the libido is freed from normal rational constraint, it becomes the equivalent of 'beer goggles'.... sex becomes confused with connection.

is that what my PhD is about and also this blog... my need to connect as I am alone in life and have no partner to be strong for me throughout the ups and downs?

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." Howards End 1910 by E.M Forster.

Like Rita in educating Rita, it finally makes sense to me too.

Part two: Letter to a troubled soul

2011-01-31T13:59:00.000-08:00

I had to leave the first blog today as it could not logically be followed by the second part of my veg out moment yesterday. After, my son left to go to his mate's for a private wake, I sat and watched a doco I had taped. I did it because to be honest I wanted to feel good about myself by watching another person's very public downfall... as if to prove to myself that no amount of money in the world can buy happiness.

In another life, I knew this person. We both turn 55 this year and we met when we were both turning 21. There was a magnetism that drew people to this man and I was likewise attracted by it/him. I was often out and about in what I now see was my manic phase and his craziness, unpredictabilty and downright dangerous side was highly alluring. I saw something that I couldn't recognise or name at the time, but there was some sort of connection, at least on my end. A close friend years later said that 'no such connection existed and that I made it up'... but I knew and still do that there were inner demons driving us both.

At the time I realised that despite being charismatic he was actually quite despicable in his entrenched attitudes verging on the anti-social. But it was all hidden beneath a carefully constructed veneer of Mr Nice Guy, Mr Talented. The gay guys wanted to sleep with him and some (including my friend) was quite bitter about his heterosexuality, proclaiming that he wasn't promiscuous (to the point of mysogny) and that all us actresses were just fantasising about him.
Yet as they say 'in vino veritas'. When alcohol was allowed full reign (this other ignorant gay friend also proclaimed publically that this person was tea-totaller!! Rubbish!!!! I know different), some of his opinions and attitudes were positively frightening to me now as a mature-aged woman. In the seventies these attitudes were so anachronistic I chose to think he was just baiting everyone for a response and a little bit of 'drama'. How sad that I now see his beliefs expressed under the influence of grog and times of pillow talk, or when he felt at ease in his own bedroom/lounge space, he was actually letting everybody in. We did not realise that this young man was so deeply troubled.

Thus I moved on in my life and was quite happy to say to those willing to listen, "I knew him before...". I watched his meteoric rise with fascination and a sense of rejection. I was one of those women he deemed beneath contempt and not suited for marrying or breeding with (not that I wanted either at that stage). His rise to me was just party talk cred and cache. I now sit and cry over my ignorance and what has happened.

He literally deserves all the flack he is copping now. After all his money made him immune from criticism. No-one would stand up and say "NO"to this man. No-one said this was unacceptable, and his dysfunctional family (particularly father) allowed him a sense of the world is wrong and we the family know the truth... so trust no-one. Sounds so similar to a religious cult and indoctrination. Yet the demons were no assuaged. Money and privilege allowed him to self medicate with alcohol (perhaps drugs.... I have no idea as I have not met him in over 24 years) and nicotine.

He hid behind a mask of stability and family. Only when his one anchor said "enough is enough" and "I am leaving" did his world begin to disintegrate. This one woman who had sacrificed so much of her life to keeping this man in balance had finally walked away for the sake of their children.

Suddenly the demons have broken free and now I feel saddened and indeed pity. Somehow I also feel a traitor to my own beliefs. I do not condone mysogny, homophobia, rascism, anti-semitism, radical religions or right-wing political blind-spots... yet I still feel that connection with this man from all those years ago.

I sat transfixed and dispassionate as the cameras revealed the downfall of a flawed man... until the experts began speaking. I did not feel sorry for him when they spoke of his need for alcohol detox and rehab, nor admiration when learning of him reaching out to actors and singers at their times of crisis. I felt that this was simply enabling behaviour, such as the Yes-people around him permitted for over 30 years.

Then one psychiatrist came on and made the comment that she believed his behaviour was consistent with Bi-Polar Mood Disorder!

KERRR CHINGGGG!

My heart is bleeding for him now. When we were both 20 we could not have known that the manic craziness was part of mental illness. We were both undiagnosed. I lived for over twenty years unaware that I was ill, until after a number of failed attempts at suicide (all designed presumably as calls for help) I was finally and correctly diagnosed and medicated.

My life had to virtually fall apart and be at rock bottom before I could accept that I was in fact ill, and would have to decide on living medicated (and muted) for life or living the risk. I still grieve for the manias and do not miss the 'black dog' yet I know it is the price to pay for the highs. Inow understand how such a man could have kept this crisis moment at bay, by being 'protected by wealth' and his destructive behaviour 'enabled' by people in whose financial interest it was to keep the commodity rolling along.

"You poor lost soul. I feel empathy now. At 55 you have to face losing almost everything before you are given the opportunity to be 'set free' by medical intervention."

"I can now see the connection I felt all those years ago, when no-body else could or would, not even you."

"See this as an opportunity. Not simply for the pseudo trendy detox and rehab stints, but the hard yards of psychotherapy and quest for wellness. I hope that you can have around you a few very trusted spirits who will accept no B/S and call it for what it is. It might mean challenging long held belief systems and your own contradictory behaviours. However, this might just free you of a damaged childhood and past, not of your making. No excuses. Your behaviour and rants cannot be undone by the words, "Sorry". They must be faced head on, with courage and strength and the willingness to pull apart all the previously accepted givens. Sometimes our families are not the safe spaces in which to do this."

"I wish you luck and one trusted friend at this time of crisis, and wish I could extend the hand of empathy and understanding across the globe... but I cannot as you are so isolated."

Synchronicity

2011-01-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

Hi all, I know I have been (electronically) quiet for a month or more, but I am actually okay. I have been working towards my final draft of the academic component of my PhD and as it requires me to re-read and reflect on my 'writer's journal' and occasionally my Wellness Blog entries it has beena bit of a roller coaster emotionally often dipping well into my minus scales of 'unwellness' and uni-polar depression cycles. I have had to work extremely hard at centering myself, fighting the urge to self-sabbotage (especially with food and alcohol) hence weight gain through being super-critical and losing all self-confidence. It has been a battle to regain balance and control and to work as hard and effectively as I could at my highest cognitive level to produce my best written work.

I cannot stress how critical this is as some very influential people in my career have expressed doubts about my capacity to control my illness, and one in particular hinting that I actually mobilise my illness when it suits me to ensure I do not have to place my work out for public scrutiny, thus I am wasting hers and my time (and University resources). The pressure has been on for the last few weeks as this person has taken annual leave and I am availing myslef of her absence to 'prove her wrong'.

However, this added self-imposed pressure comes at a time when (as we all know) dysfunctional families become even more dysfunctional and lash out at each other. My environment has not been, how shall I say it... conducive of optimum cognitive functioning! Yet, I am slowly getting there, slower than I had hoped but I am alive and re-instilling my sense of self-belief that the PhD is not beyond me and does not belong to a 'crazy person'. I keep feeling that I am being punished for reaching too high, beyond my social level, beyond my personal life role. This is the critic inside my head, speaking at the times when I am most vulnerable.

So it is interesting to see that when I actually went into total procrastination (thus unproductive mode), three things happened to force me to rethink, today. As usual it is the coming together of random and completely separate events that for me provide clarity and a way ahead.

Over the summer I have been playing with some of the new boys' toys in our house. I have been commandeering the T-box and Foxtel IQ when they are out and programing all the crap sitcoms ( Boston Legal etc), docos, and movies I missed at the cinema. It is my guilty pleasure to sit down on my day off (Yes I know the last thing I should be doing is sitting... like a couch potato) and having a viewing feast.

Yesterday my son had a funeral to attend in the morning and I had an appointment with my psychiatrist. Arriving home to find the house empty and mercury predicted to soar to 39, I decided that this was the perfect time to avoid working completely and do a spot of hard-disk clean up on the devices. I loved Denton's interview with Mem Fox and have at least six Book Show eps to catch up on.

then my son arrived home and recounted his experience at the funeral for the father of a golfing mate ( another older father-aged figure). My son had dismissed this man as rich, lazy and miserly without friends. And this sadly appears to be the case. So it was a shock to realise that the wealthy father's funeral was such a big event with VIPs from throughout the State and Country in attendance. My son noted that he and his ex-boss appeared to be the only ones there to support their mate, and how that made him glad he went.

I explained that this was why I had encouraged him to attend, to be there for his friend as funerals are for the grieving not the deceased. What was interesting to was hear his take on a completely traditional Church funeral service with readings, prayers, hymns and the Eucharist.
having been Christened Catholic I asked my son if he took the Eucharist and he said he felt that he couldn't. Such is his disconnect between his own spiritual upbringing and his life-experiences.
However, we were able to reflect on how having money does not in and of itself constitute gaining respect and friendship from peers and colleagues. I also noted that the funeral appeared to be very religious as the man in question was retired from one of the professions and had obviously been a Mason. My son asked how I could tell, and I said the give away was the photograph of him suited and seated in a masonic-style chair. It would of course also explain the number of attendees and the actual content of the service.

It made me stop and reflect on my own father's life and that of my brother and sole surviving male cousin, also Masons, and the underlying community involvement and need to 'give back'to society as an accepted way of life. How much of this has actually been subconsciously adopted by me? It amazed me that I hadn't realised my own compulsion to 'do good' and 'fight for just causes'.

And whilst it seems that it is of comfort, in the sense of shadenfreud, that those of us without money like to bleat the refrain, "see money can't buy happiness", it is so hollow and mean spirited. We need to be honest with ourselves. Is it that we daren't think that should our lotto ticket be drawn, none of our problems would be solved?

So what does this mean for me today... still broke and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Fearful that if I do not succeed at the PhD I cannot be employed in a University and will be forced to work in jobs that do not use my intellectual capabilities... all because I have a mental illness or am perceived deviant in some way?

Why can I not harness this fear and have it drive me on, instead of it becoming a humungous oppressive weight bearing down on me, pushing me to the ground when I want to soar above the clouds?

Do you know what it is like to be driven out of your home annually?

2011-01-02T02:12:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that marvellous time of year again on the Mornington Peninsula when our population quadruples. I would estimate over 50% of the newcomers are transient, gathering together to afford the exhorbitant rents required for less than average homes.

Already before being forced to seek solitude for work (writing purposes) elsewhere, I have endured the usual yobbo NY Eve sirens, drunks in the streets despite public place alcohol bans, noisy car engines, sound systems, cans that seemed to find their way into my garden bed. And then one would think a family with small children moving in opposite would have been OK.... wrong. Do you realise just how noisy kids on scooters, bikes, and fathers with oversized off road vehicles (presumably in reverse proportion to existing masculine genitalia) can be? Then add to equation a boat with trailer in a street where a single car meeting another becomes a traffic jam!

Street cricket, that seemingly sedate game from days gone by, is no longer sedate, with a semblance of a twenty twenty match outside MY study door! Many balls hit into garden (no damage), lots of ruckus as ball or bat connects with large upright garbage bins and cheers of that horrid OiOiOi. Meanwhile respectable fathers, not playing, watching from sidelines with bottles of beer in hand on the public street. One can only assume the very large illuminated sign just up on the corner of our main road warning of huge fines for drinking in public spaces does not apply to THESE PARTICULAR holidaying Victorians!

So after requesting that balls not be hit onto the newest car in the household I was advised, less than politely that they had hired the house for the next two weeks and I should P... off. When I pointed out that I was merely trying to work IN MY STUDY and that I LIVED HERE... I was reminded to P.... OFF if I do not like it.

I do NOT LIKE NOISE and nor should I have to vacate annually when selfish tourists arrive for tranquility away from the City and shatter the very tranquility they are seeking to escape. Also couldn't there be some sort of rule that in a three bedroom house, Real Estate agents do not rent it to (at last count possible ten people, two males and presumably partners, two pre-teen smirking daughters, four juveniles under ten... aformentioned cricketers).

The thing that amuses me least is how people assume everyone who does work, does so from a City Office, or during the hours of 9 - 5, and have absolutely no idea how writers battle with the entire task. How on earth does Peter Carey manage it in the Big Apple? I can understand J K Rowling in a lovely heritage estate in rural Britain... but where do I go to before I have made my first royalties or pre-sales?

Heading bush seems to provide only a temporary respite as guess what... beauty, tranquility but no bloody internet or mobile connection. So I am still praying for a Melbourne/outer Eastern suburbs based house sit.

There has to be a perfect work space somewhere. Now Jackie how much are those studios in Abbotsford to rent... oh no good, can't sleep in the studio!

I am really starting of 2011 in a Maxine type mood.

Vale Geraldine Hoff Doyle

2010-12-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

TO EXPLAIN NEW TEMP PROFILE SHOT:

("Rosie the Rivetter" died December 30th, 2010.)

Geraldine Hoff Doyle was 17 years old when she was spotted in a Michigan metal factory wearing the now infamous red polka-dot bandanna. After being photographed by Union Press International that day, the photo was later used by the U.S. War Production Coordinating Committee to create the image we know today.

Not only has she become a pop cultural icon, she also symbolises the struggle that still goes on for equal rights for women both at home and in the paid workforce. We, all owe her and our mothers and grandmother who fought for our rights, homage, respect and the communal generosity to continue the fight as 'we have not achieved it all' and 'we cannot expect to sit back and have it all, whilst whinging that the Feminists mislead us!' Wrong! Selfishness from the eighties onwards for both men and women drove the wishlist 'to have it all', and still does in 2011.

My wish for the coming year is no wars begun and fought in the name of democracy (please treat the community with respect and call it for what it is... bloodshed for strategic alliances or commodities) and LISTEN when we take to the streets to say we disagree!

Whilst on a Maxine-style whingefest in this first blog ( I call it therapy), I am also heartily sick of whining middle classes procaliming how tough they are doing it financially... the term asset rich, income poor to me means a desire to 'have it all' without compromise. To the newly establishing families... forget the two cars and Mcmansions with Plasmas... aim more modestly and you just might find your relationships last longer and are happier.

More wisdom for the old bitch.... if you do not look after yourself then no-one else will. Without self-respect others will not give it freely either. So be warned 'the takers' of this world. Whilst I have happily and proudly worn the mantle of mad woman for decades, I will not have that label equated with fool or stupidity. I do know what you are doing. I see the hidden agendas and I respect you all less for it.

2011 is time to stop hiding behind the dredged up 'mask of the clown'. It is Act 5 and Shakespeare's clown is now calling it like it is and others will see how they underestimated the character of the fool. Even the Tarot card may just be wrong... s/he may not need the small dog to stop stepping off the cliff whilst gazing at the skies. It might actually be a choice. the choice to search for beauty instead of earthly degradation and opportunism.

I am no longer The Fool... call me The Priestess in balance between the black and white pillars of society. My mood states may fluctuate but I will always find equilibrium! It will be when it suits me and as I work my way there, not on anyone else's timelines of expectations.

I wish everybody clarity of thought and understanding (with compassion) in 2011.

“My Grown Up Christmas List”:

2010-12-25T21:30:00.000-08:00

Refuse to call this one a BUCKET LIST as they are goals and WILL happen.

1. To spend Christmas 2011 somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere with people needing TLC.
2. To fly over Antarctica on a NY’s Eve… or boat around the summer glaciers.
3. To see the Northern lights
4. To spend a 24 hour day in daylight (possibly Finland or Iceland)
5. To visit Machu Picchu before I am too old to climb.
6. See the Great Wall
7. Visit Valley of the Kings and Abu Symbel
8. Visit the Taj Mahal (even alone)
9. Spend some ‘me’ time on Santorini
10. Do the Yarra Valley or Melbourne hot air balloon ride
11. Do the whole Tandem parachute jump
12. Also do the V8 circuit at Sandown
13. See the shows on Broadway without a night off (or matinee off)
14. One last visit to the West End!
15. Eat at Tour D’Argent and Maxim’s de Paris (even alone)
16. See polar bears and orcas in Newfoundland ( I’ll never afford the Rocky Mountaineer trip).
17. See the golden Buddha Inside Jogyesa Temple in Seoul, South Korea
18. Visit Angkor Watt in Cambodia.
19. See the bloody South Island of NZ!
20. Lastly see Uluru, Kings Canyon, the Olgas, wave Rock, Pilbarra, cable beach and Kakadu before I shuffle off.

A Day of Peace, hopefully.

2010-12-24T19:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYHCeUfoAnw&feature=player_embedded

I know this is from earlier this year on THAT anniversary but I feel it i perfect for today. You may have noticed I have been UNUSUALLY quiet lately. WEll, rest assured friend I have been dealing with the uppermost issue which affects many people at this particular time of the year... Too much to do in too little time, and despite all my 'welllness lessons' in 2010 I still put my own needs to the bottom of the list.

How is it that when you are REALLY busy, people always ask fro extra help.. (you know that old cliche that when you need something done ask a busy person)? Well if we are that good at time manegment we wouldn't look so bloody obviously busy!

So what had been going on... two important Conference Papers, numerous job applications which everybody knows takes so much time just tweaking the small bits to match the criteria to the 'T'... or is that tee?

Add to this a fresh new start on my PhD first chapter of the exegesis. YEP youe've read that right ANOTHER FRESH START... that make's Take 6 at Draft one!"

It appears that I am one of those candidates who seems destined not to be able to draft my rough work up to standard and that it is expected to virtually hit the mark in the first go!

So do I get to the subsequent chapters? Only in flow charts, mind maps (can you imagine those!), dot points, coded and marked references, research notes compiled and located in relevant colour-coded folders, but the actual first drafting of these chapters... ya gotta be kidding! And this despite every chapter having a corrseponding Conference paper or presentation!

Would you believe it has taken me over three years to begin to trust my own writing techiques... you know the ones that actually get me published.

Write it out free flowing, just to see for stuctural cohesion.
Redraft for voice.style consistency, then
back through to add supporting evidence without repeating (or padding) what the previously published experts say, then
sending to a reviewer/referee/ outisde editor for CONSTRUCTIVE commentary and objective critiscism of the writing's weakness NOT MY OWN!

Well, that's the way I am going now and believe me it appears to be bringing the wrath of the academic gods, onto my head.

So what I say.

It work for me. I am now only just able to say I KNOW this is right and will hang together and no longer feel the need to defend and justify myself all the way through the writing which invariably weakens the strength of the piece.

All so logical when looked at calmly and rationally!

Pity is that very few PhDers are able to do just that, due to the pressure and stress of both external expectations and inner self-doubt.

Now I am just dying (metaphorically) for the time when I can actually swing back into my creative work and just let the characters have free reign, even should their stories appear (as has been commented) implausible or cliched. Cliche is when something is so common it is boxed and categorized... so believe me when I say in my novel most of these women's experiences are 'easily' boxed and labelled cliched and self-indulgent.

I just want to write with authenticity and artistic freedom at last. I am NOT, repeat NOT writing capitla "l" Literature!

This time is coming and very shortly, so my deepest blackes( -4 periods) are drawing to a close, even though to many outside observers I have been functioing at +4 in the professional/public domian. We all know what that means, and the inner determination and cognitive resources required to pull that off successfully.

May I proudly announce I am making it without recourse to any form of respite hospitalisation, medication re-qdjustments at all. (Despite contstantly articulated predictions)

This is HUGE.

As many readers of this blog understand, it is not called the silly season for nothing... even the 'normal' amongst us feel compelled to 'play act happy families and western cultural myths'. For many despite being surrounded by so-called loving and supportive family, IT IS THE LONELIEST TIME OF THE YEAR.

At leas,t I just did the role this year and ignored the expectations.

I am alone but reasonably happy as loneness in itself allows me time to reflect on the important people in my life who are no longer with me; my dear mother, Ivy (who would adore the fact I do the whole baking thing from her generation), my Dad, Ted (who would be a tad disappointed that I didn't say stuff you to adult son and climb the bloody roof and bedeck the house with all the glowing lights... but he would be proud that I finally took a stand of independence), my brother Kevin (who has been so uppermost in my mind these last years when I think of him dying within the darkness of the mine's confined space... now that its the ultimate alone-ness... I have no right to self-pity), to my brother Ron (who has taught me that we do in fact reap what we sow, but nevertheless no person should die alone without at least one person by their side), and to the georgeous Michelle who never took life too seriously, and the beautiful Dizzy who unfortunately did. And to Terence and my darling Billy, and the many others taken by one of the globe's unnecessary and curable diseases. Today I dedicate to you all and promise to give thanks for just being here and giving it my best shot no matter what.

Shakespeare's Fool

2010-11-13T15:23:00.000-08:00

As usual I will leave it to my old pal at Crabby Road to tell the story in a picture worth the proverbial... but you know me, I am not short of a word or two on the topic either.

Ah the joys of technology.
Two hard drive crashes.... who'da believed it?

Well really it was only one and the second as a consequence of the first. But let me just demonsrate what it means to have BMD and be atempting to function in the 'real world'.

The actual workload I have whilst officially on three monthe leave of absence includes:

Writing 50-60,000 words draft of my novel
Creating a major web site of International Conference Proceedings (with a second Conference occurring simultaneously... the reason the inaugural isn't live... the academic responsible threw it to me with a two week lead time!)
Creating a second website for a friend... again with two weeks lead time - the same two weeks, before her story aired on the ABC TV, so that there was a public call point for contact and info.
Creating my own updated website to accompany job applications
Doing the actual job applications including updating a seriously non-functioning CV
Writing three refereed journal articles (not begun yet)
Refereeing two academic journal articles (done, at least)
Writing two refereed Conference papers (one national and one international... half done)
Finalising the pre-publication draft of a jointly authored academic journal (online and published... yeah)
Keeping content live on the Swinburne Post Graduate Writers network FB page so new members from other states can gain something of benefit also.
Keeping my own FB page live and of use to colleagues and scholars living and studying o/s.
Keeping on top of my RSS feeds and emails filtering out research data, calls for papers, conference notifications, new journal calls for submissions (ongoing) and the ever infuriating spam.
Keeping track of useful research material from O/S conference proceedings and attending one run by QUT's CCi in Melbourne last week (now chasing those feeds and recordings).
And lastly supposedly applying for a writing fellowship for this summer.

Yep ,and that's just whilst I am ON LEAVE!

Being back doing the PhD in Decmeber adds....

researching and writing final draft of exegesis
writing and redrafting novel draft
attending symposia

So this is a great snapshot of current life as an trainee/junior academic.

The first list is the 'own time' list of duties which are conveniently looked at as key selection criteria for employment, under the guise of collegiality, contribution to discipline knowledge, cross-institutional and industry linkages, and community involvement and contribution.

The actual workplace tasks really fall simply...

Teaching, lecture preparation
Student advice and academic guidance
Marking
Quality audit administrative tracking via paperwork or online survey data
Teaching quality audit tracking via student feedback data and 360 degree surveys
Attending discipline, department, faculty and campus admin meetings (and social events... for collegiality and demonstration of collegial commitment)
Presenting at Conferences, running symposia, mentoring junior academic staff (or students)
Doing your own research and publication (for productivity audits and research active status)

To think as a PhD candidate when I was on stipend all this is worth (according to the Government $11.84 net per hour)!

As a sessional, it is valued by the University as worth $90 gross per hour, but no more than ten hours a week or I will compromise my PhD candidature. (In my current situation because I am a 'bad' (read slack and troublesome) PhD candidate ZERO sessional work!

Then if I am lucky enough to gain a lectureship after the PhD I might beworth a whopping $80k gross... for a ninety hour + per week workload.

Is it any wonder people in the 'real world' often query my sanity?

I know I do.

Often.

Hence leave of absence... an existential crisis if you will, and one all normal people can have!

Yet, because I am openly diagnosed as BMD, the nameless they assume I just can't cope and am breaking down!

No.
I am having a bloody break believe it or not
And NOT A HOLIDAY either.

Then let's just throw in a little guilt....

Non-timely completion of PhD after being awarded a PhD stipend...HOW DARE I?

Even with some months left in the STANDARD FOUR YEAR PERIOD OF CANDIDATURE! Not pulling it in in three and a half... HOW SHAMEFUL AND DISRESPECTFUL....AND UNGRATEFUL!

SHE MUST BE CRAZY. Told you 'we' shouldn't have accepted a crazy candidate.

Then lets add in....

crippling financial distress... surviving on Disability Pension of $580 per fortnight. Yep you read that right. Paying off car, intenet access, funeral plans, car insurance, a silly thing called food, medications and supposedly private health insurance and a student loan. Yep, easy as... just need to do some cash in-hand house cleaning, ironing or freelance writing in my spare time... oh yeah, that's called sleeping time.

Next the clincher (and how I began this blog)

The wonderful USB external hard disc drive that has been my life saver for just over a year... and yep... here comes the brand name... WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT pocket hdd crashed with everything on it.

Not a problem you say... still got backup on laptop HDD.... you'da though wouldn't you, especially with two partitions on the HDD, one simply for data, away from applications.?

But alas, no; the problem with the WD is that it crashes the RAM on your HDD... and you cannot restore or reboot even in safe mode... need replacement RAM.

Great the data is still there but you try justifying spending nearly $100 on ram and data recovery on a 2003 laptop to a tech savvy son of 21 and an ageing luddite aged 78.

"What? When you can't even pay the family health insurance on time?"
"Buy a new laptop for Chrissake...."
"Don't go into more debt... don't take a Cash Converters loan at 24 per cent either"...
"Just use the old desktop Mac you were given"

But don't expect to buy any software of that age, or even get it wifi'd to the household LAN that you pay for... and don't expect to be allowed to have an ethernet cable running from your study to the modem (across a hallway and into son's room... hmmm now why was it located there in the first place... oh I remember I wasn't home).

Then, when I try to tell the IT guy at work that my research (on my son's laptop loaned under duress and borrowed under cintant threat of revocation should I even alter an icon place...) has found in the techie forums that this is a COMMON PROBLEM with WD usb ext HDDs and even the company software won't/can't recover the data.

Yep, built in obselescence!

But try telling that to the IT guy, because the Dean at work has just ordered a department full of them for her academic staff.

You'd think forewarning would be acceptable.... but guess what?

"Don't listen to her... she's just a crazy,crabby old bitch. She must have done it herself, not the hardware."

And so Shakespeare's fool exits stage left.

Friends are gold and LRB rules.

2010-10-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I knew that my mood was not stable as it had been the day before. I would say I was hovering around the minus 4 ( remembering that hospital beckons at that level). I felt that I could not face even getting out of bed. Even the shower seemed like too much effort, and I am one of those people who needs to shower whenever I feel stressed or just plain tired. My skin itches and feels like I want to scratch it off... and only hot streaming water, or a seaside dip can make me feel clean and alive. BUt this seemed pointless yesteday.

I knew I had arranged to be at a friend's house to help her with some writing for her PhD, and to work on something of mine. But I had nothing I could work on with a partner, and really felt just plain lethargic. I also had NO money for petrol. Well I had $10 but this wouldn't do the trip (110 ks return) an always ashamed to tell people how broke I am.

The words of my son and another girlfriend always resonate in my ears when I am broke. You SHOULD put money aside when you have it and not be in this position. Budget better!

There is that word again.. the bloody SHOULD!

Tell me oh wise ones.... how do you prioritise the budget to meet the shoulds of saving? And here I will publically lay it out. I receive (note not earn!) $600 per fortnight from Centrelink for a Disability Payment. My medication alone is $10.40 per week, without vitamins or mineral supplements that also help my mood states (fish oil, multis, B complex, and flaxseed oil). Then there are the few meals... say $80 pw (which includes personal care items also).

Next priority is keeping the car paid... as without it I am marooned and cannot escape AT ALL. That's $215 per fortnight. Add fuel $60 per week.

Now what's left? Well there is that little extravagance called an Internet. $45 per fortnight, plus a mobile phone pre-paid $20 per week.

Then let's add that ridiculous move I made to borrow money from Cash Converters to get to and from Uni (and attend the PhD colloquium) just so I could feel self-esteem and a sense of belonging with my co-students and ex-colleagues. So at 24% interest for the whole huge $500 my payments are $50 per fortnight. What a waste... how could I be so outrageous and ridiculous! Yep, I SHOULD HAVE stayed at home, felt disconnected, unempowered, isolated and totally worthless.... of course.

That leaves the princely sum of $10.

Now would anyone like to work out how I pay the thing called a Funeral Plan... at $37 per fortnight, car insurance $26 per fortnight, family health insurance at $115 per fortnight, and that other ludicrous extravagance Chrisco at $40 per fortnight... just so the household can feel normal at Christmas with festive fare and no huge debts afterwards. Let's add to this a waste of money through my last mental meltdown... an $80 library fine, and an outstanding student loan of around $600.

I am going backwards without work. Yet with work, my study time is eroded and I do not finish. Without finishing the PhD there will be no work. Catch -22.

Is it any wonder my self-esteem and my mood swing lower when I am financially pressured? How can you attend to the SHOULDS and save when at these moments YOU ARE NEVER SURE THAT THERE WILL BE A TOMORROW, OR NEXT WEEK???

That is not an overstatement. I have promised myself that I will not give up and just call it quits but deep in my psyche I still doubt that I can in fact 'pull it off', face down the demons and actually live or simply survive.

Living to me entails all the joyous wonder of the emotions, the social life, the glamour of the theatre, music, art galleries and restaurants. My life on DSS is simply survival. It brings a paucity to the spirit. My soul is in pain without affording me the beauty of 'living' at present.

So my SHOULDS go out the window. My common sense just can't win out.

So I guess for those reading this without BMD, I am (like my son and some friends seem to think) a selfish, immature little wastrell full of self-inflicted drama.

Oh, how I wish my words could allow you to empathise... if not agree with my thoughts and actions.

Luckily for me yesterday there is one friend who can and does empathise.

I am so pleased she convinced me to humble myself and borrow $20 just to get to her. To shower, dress, drive the 50 ks and walk along the beach, feel the sun on my face and the sand between my toes. How can I capture in words the pleasure of stroking the heads of two magnificent dogs across a fence; animals that accept a stranger's touch... and thus reassure me that I am an inherently 'okay' person?

I was able to drive home with 1970s and 80s pop music returning me to a time when I felt valued and with the future stretching ahead with all its promise.

Although not jumping up the mood scale, I think today I am stable again. I know the hospital is there in the background... but only when I catch up on the bloody health insurance payments... so maybe December??

What are those lyrics again... LRB? Hang on Help Is On The Way?

40 years of Python... wow

2010-10-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

To think another pop culture icon is turning 40!! Geesh was the 70s that great or is it just that we are a population bump? I hope the former as my son, like young people before him, rediscovered the hit and miss magic that is the Python oeuvre. Just the one therapy I have ignored over the past few days to attack my downward mood swings... that's right gerotology!

Doncha just luv it when you discover a new word and just hafta use it!

Good old laugther therapy. Maybe a good dose of Python today is just what Dr Adams ordered. Given that I am too far away from the Big Dipper or has that been dismantled at Luna Park, St Kilda? the Scenic Railway just doesn't cut it... and Space Mountain requires an LA airfare! Dear old Andrew I can never forget how you introduced me tothe power of adrenaline, but why oh why did we need the depressive Gin first? Was that just an excuse to drink dry martinis. As someone with BMD I never needed the push downwards with 'mother's ruin'.

So when chocolate's phenylethylamine is not enough, sunshine's seratonin boost, maybe good old belly laughs will do the trick.

Relax this isn't just another delaying tactic on my part, or at least that's what I am telling myself to justify screening a ridiculous DVD... possibly not Python after all I no longer guffaw when the punch lines are delivered. So which will have the desired effect and still leave me daylight hours to complete a minimal level of productive writing?

Must go... the DVD search is on in earnest now!

Also a confession... I had to look up the brain pleasing chemical in chocolate... I thought it was tryptophan now where does that come from?

Phenylethylamine

Status Quo... no not the band - despite my age.

2010-10-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

Well there is good news. I haven't slipped further down my 'wellness scale'. The bad news is that I haven't swung upwards either.

But at least I am grateful for a respite in mood swings. Being a Sunday I find it so hard to motivate myslef to actually do any work. My procrastination gene kicks in and I look for housework to do... yep you read that correctly... housework. That just shows how desperate I am to avoid anything that engages my mind. And what housework was so desperately pressing (pardon the pun).... folding the two adult blokes laundry and getting 'shitty' about doing it.

It's not that I am expected to fold clean laundry, or hang wet washing from the machine to the line, or remove cleaned dishes from dishwashers... it's just that it annoys me that things are left half finished... even when they are not MY THINGS!

I can draw the line at cleaning the blokes bathrooms and toilets. That is my demarkation line but the clothes and dishes do impact on me. I can't use the washing machine until it is de-linted and empty and the dishwasher is needed daily also. I guess it is just that I can be messy in my own spaces but try to keep the common areas at least tidy, if not spick and span.

Oh these little domestic niggles that can be the focus of so much angst, when really there are deeper issues simmering under the surface. It is so therapeutic to feel a martyr and have a good sulk. Then I feel rewards are due, so I can waste a day in front of the TV screen... yep a complete day and without guilt. Me the TV addict for one day... how about that? Whereas once my addiction was The West Wing, even I can't replay all those DVDs ... it would take days and I do enjoy company for this TV show. So my default program of choice is Boston Legal. Five eps in a row thank's to pay TV. Imagine the damage I could do to my health and wellbeing if I had Tivo or a DVD recorder?

My one justification for my sloth, apart from martyrdom and reward, is that I am also reading the Sunday broadsheets and a novel during the ad breaks. Why, oh why did Pay TV have to start having advertising. And the next greatest unfathomable... why are there so few movies I actually want to watch even when I am prepared to pay for them. Does it say more about me or more about C21st film-making?

To mobilise myself just a smidgeon, when there appeared to be life gathering in the lounge area, I turned on my laptop... at least for some housekeeping there also. Emails to file, spam to trash, chain jokes to smile at, Facebook to check on... and get depressed that there are no new messages or comments, then a complete waste of time trying to drive a new Web Creator program that is supposed to be simple.

Simple I can't even instal the bloody thing! Back to Dreamweaver and frustrations with tables layers and design elements. I know I can do this stuff but there are days when everything I think will work or look good just doesn't or isn't!

The time is ticking, as I have only two weeks to get a simple site online for a work colleague and another with working links and source code for another colleague. I haven't done these things for so long that the program updates have left me behind a tad and I am rusty so everything takes three times as long and I end up despairing that I will have to do hours of tutorials just to get up to speed. ..

But just when I think I am going to sit down and have a solid, self-pitying cry, up blinks the You've Got Mail icon and a fairy Godfather emerges from cyberspace with offers of assistance.

Perhaps this is how I staved off the fall to minus four... thanks P... I sure owe you one!

Oh dear, navel gazing

2010-10-15T16:10:00.000-07:00

This is the man, the guru, Aaron Beck MD from the Beck Brain Institute. He is reputed to have developed Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for use in clinical depression and other manjor mental illnesses. Like any therapy it takes years of practice, and typical me... when I know I am heading downwards on the Bi-polar express, it is so difficult to dredge up the will to do the thought auditing required, let alone connect the analytical with the emotional and mobilise action. I am very good at staying above intellectualle and knowing the effect of my thinking, but I am very very bad at translating the 'common sense' across to what always feels like an overwhelming swarm of self-hatred.

It is so hard to put these things into words, for fear of being judged. To be seen as self-indulgent. If one has suffered from situational depression then you have an idea of just how debilitating the condition is... but when you add the constant pull towards clinical depression wrought by my illness, it is almost unbearable. Of all the people who should (oh dear just used the no, no word),
be able to call up an inner strength and harness my intellectual capacities it should be me. But at the start of this blog, I promised to be honest and take any readers through the Bi-polar express from a safe distance.

Well, as you can see from the many gaps and lack of daily posts, whenever I felt in the 'grey zone' or what people call 'normal', I forget to blog. I just get on with life in all its 'grey mundaneness'
.
But when the colours are brighter, the sounds orchestral, the aromas gastronomic then there is a pull to the keyboard. To capture this moment. A fear that if I do not capture these emotions and ward off the inevitable fall down to grey again. And similarly, when the mood swings towards the black pit, with the 'dog' nipping at my heels again I refuse to sit and type for fear that I empower the blackness and am drawn irrevocably into the abyss.

Yep, for the priliveleged well people this sounds so overly dramatic, but simple words are so powerless in describing the intensity of the swings. So for well over 30 years now I have happily worn the description of drama-queen, what other choice do I have but self-acceptance? I have made the ultimate promise to myself that I will never act on any suicidal ideations so I ust have to wear the negative labels. This is a small price to pay for the sacred life I have been given, that my parents strugdled to nurture, and the life that pushed so many loving people away when they felt so powerless to stop my spirals.

I guess this is the reason I am so sad when new friends run a mile in fear when they learn of my illness. They fear this sense of responsibility or the confrontation of raw emotion on this scale. I wish they could trust me that the 54 year old woman is no longer the self-centred, hurt the world type who woud act on her anger and pain.

At the core of my downward spiral would have to be the saddness of being alone. And I do not just mean partnerless. I mean alone... intrinsically devoid of any kindred spirits to walk my journey with me. Who could expect anyone to voluntarily choose this path? I wouldn't. I fell alone because you can never expect even the best friends to be there all the time. It is so draining for me, let alone someone else. Above all I feel very sad that my illness also conjures memories of pain for other friends who have lived and loved someone with Bi-polar and have never recovered from that pain and dissppointment that the relationships were inherently doomed from the start.

It is for this reason that I run away from relationships and put on so much excess weight to fend off any intimate relationships. I did it when I left the workforce to stay home with my son and now that I am at home again, on my supposed three month leave of absence (to attend to my mental health swings), the weight demon is calling my name.

When working as a salaried employee I feel intrinsically valuable and my self-esteem rockets. The more people expect the more I strive to produce and live up to their (and my own expectations), I feel good, I begin to look good and I am happy, for that wonderous prolongedperiod of time. But of how tenuous it is to attach self-esteem to employment status. I know this thanks to CBT and Dr Beck and Co... but I seem unable to ward off the feelings of worthlessness when I am not employed and am in receipt of welfare sickness or diability benefits. Yet I am disabled... so totally disabled that I am under seige. The pull of self-destruction is so intense. Ido not sleep. I cannot concentrate.

The smallest professional task takes Herculean effort, as does the dredging up of the 'party-face' to keep small linkages with my colleagues and possible future employers.

Party-Face.... so tiring. I am so over it. If only I could strive for acceptance, warts and all. But the 'outisde world' is not ready for this. So... the self-esteem plummets, the call of alcohol to ease the pain is assuaged with chocolate... for those supposed endorphins of whatever. After all fat is a battle I am prepared to wage over again, but alcoholism is my one of my gravest fears... to lose even more self-control and willpower, I doubt I could survive it.

Well dear reader/s, this is the thinking at minus three on the mood scale. The tilt to minus four is even scarier. It is coming and I will write about it. Yet I also ask for forgiveness and acceptance when this cess pit of loathing curdles on the screen.

How amazing and touching...

2010-10-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

I was gripped by the TV footage of the first Chilean miner hugging his son. His son's tears during the seemingly endless wait would move anyone. Then the excitement of the second miner to emerge bringing a bag of rocks... wow. I do indeed feel uplifted.

But back to loding my pictures to the web... and I haven't scanned mine of the memorial at the Sunshine mine... but luckily the web comes to tha party again. For anyone interested there is a good blog record of the significance of this mining tragedy in the US. http://sfcompanion.blogspot.com/2010/05/may-2-sunshine-mine-disaster.html

It is with hope that the world learns that human life cannot be priced in the same way that productivity and down time is accounted for on fiscal bottom lines.

Miners not minors....

2010-10-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

That's a Galaxy Quest joke for other nerds reading this... no further elaboration needed, except that it is probably wise for me to begin this post with a joke. That way it will ensure I keep things upbeat.

Today I have taken the proverbial well-earned lunch break, after two fraught days reformatting ansd reinstalling all my programs and data on my main computer. Thank the goddess for external hard drives!

Was unable to go online via my 'new' Mac as I need an ethernet cable some 10 metres long and permission from a surely young adult son to enter his room to access the household wifi modem!!! Why oh why did I get it installed there? Stupid moment methinks.

Anyway, sat down with my one whole grain sandwich (that's an important milestone for a post lap bander!!), to watch the news station, only to find Channel 9 live to the Chilean miners rescue.

My breath caught, I am in two minds. One total rapture that these 33 men can be rescued and returned to their families albeit with probable mental health issues impacting their lives for the forseeable future. The other emotion is overwhelming saddness. An irrational saddness really, given the time it has taken to drill the rescue shaft.

My dear brother could not have survived this long to wait for such a rescue effort, if they had had the tecnology back in 72. The men with him (82 others) on the 3,000 foot level survived for some unknown period of time after the silver mine fire in Kellogg Idaho, before succumbing to carbon monoxide poisoning, but not months! Kevin would not have benefitted from this technology and skill yet I feel sad that he and his co-workers had no such option.

The fire had to be extinguished and taking the oxygen was the only way. I remain sad that Kevin's life was taken so young. Every time a mining incident or accidentcomes up on the news, the old emotional wounds re-open and the grieving begins anew. I thought the Beaconsfield disaster had solved that problem for me... with the April dates, the two week entrapment and other eerily co-incidental material.

This is different, so why the grief? I guess it is the whole media circus thing. I, like everyone around the world want to watch and feel vicariously part of the rescue, yet it is this same media coverage that so impacted my family when Kevin was trapped.

We the family became trapped and hunted. So much so that I was sent away to drama camp... yep... good call that... focus on The Beggars Opera while my brother's life or death was unknown!
The denial of family support and shared grief satys with me today. There is no blame... just saddness and the knowledge today that this will ALWAYS surface as one cannot 'get over' such traumatic events in one's life.

But hey, let's end on an upnote.. let's pray (to which-ever divine being) that no communities are decimated like Kellogg, USA again by such a tragedy and that human ingenuity can save lifes.

I should post the pic of the Kellogg memorial as an image but I haven't loaded those data files yet. I will though. This I promise the men and families affected.

Sometimes even YES must mean NO!

2010-10-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

After the Malthouse outburst towards Steven Milne, it is now time for Collingwood to stand up for supposed 'Club values'. Even if the two players are found to be 'not guilty' or the allegation 'unable to be substantiated' then they will remain targets for onfield slurs and crowd accusations.

The old addage... treat others as..., springs to mind.

If all FC Clubs pay off women who allege sexual assault, how can a supporter assume Collingwood will be any different?

The Club tried everything last Saturday short of hiring the entire Crowne Promenade hotel. Soccer Clubs O/S do this. Why not our code, after all Gosche's paddock was scheduled at lunchtime? Staying after the dinner at a purposely booked NightClub till the wee hours of Sunday morning should have been enough... no need to party one at another venue.

It is also the players responsibility to act in a manner that does not damage the Club (or their own reputations). Alcohol is no excuse nor is the old 'men can't be held responsible if women fling themselves at them'.

Of course they can... and should!

These young men must control their egos and sense that the world is theirs for the taking... especially after a premiership.

If we do not draw a line in the sand Collingwood cannot win the next Flag. Team, Club and Collingwood family come first before individuals and just because we kept Didak after his ridiculous behaviour recently and Heath Shaw's drunk driving... does not mean all transgressions should be forgiven or swept under the carpet.

We do not need egomaniacs whose appalling behaviour is condoned (like Fevola) simply because the Club can't risk them playing for an opposition team

Obviously some these boys (yep boys... 90% under 30) are immature enough to think that now they have won a premiership they have carte blanche.

They must take their wages and responsibilities seriously. They are privileged by through their talent and career opportunities. They must be role models at ALL times. 24/7 for the few playing years they have in front of them.

Play up later boys when the spotlight has dimmed.

Life doesn't end at 35 or 50!

Loyalty, Tribalism and Family

2010-10-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

A Flag at last!

And yes I do feel different today... it is strange but somehow that 'mantle of uncertainty' that accompanies every winter and spring in Melbourne has lifted. We (the Mighty Magpies) can win a premiership when I am actively supporting. But I just can't attend the game!

Or at least that's how I feel given that the only other Flag came when I stayed away in 1990 to look after my new son.

Watch out this blog is even more self focused than usual... as as Bette Midler famously said in Beaches... "That's enough about me... now what do you think about me?"

I was there for the draws throughout the finals, the last minutes defeats and the failure in the Grand Final Replay of 1977.

I was there when the Essendon Cheer Squad set fire to the floggers, when Jim O'Dea ruined the life and playing career of Johnny Greening.

I have cried with Bobby Rose and the boys, watched as Peter Hudson overtook Peter McKenna for the league top goal scorer despite Macca bagging over 100.

I ran onto the ground to jointhe momentous moment of 100 goal hauls and after finals wins

I have held the run through at the G when the high winds broke it and we were helped by the GeelongCheersqau I think it was (Anybody remember?) And Thanks Guys you were great..

I have been trapped in the Waverly car park (in the old days) and not able to exit until well after 8pm one Saturday day match.

I had my first real kiss on the bussafter Collingwood losing a first semi, and after a cheersquad day at the snow. ( I was horrified as the guy I had a crush on was watching and it seemed so gross!)

I met my first gay friends in the Collingwood Cheer Squad and found a place where everyone was accepted just because we lived and breathed black and white.

I have arrived at the 'G', Kardinia Park, and Waverley very early on Saturday mornings to tie the banners around the fences.

I have spent countless weeknights helping construct the run through in the old Vic Park visitor change rooms.

Not to mention sharing sleeping bags with georgeous young men under the stands at Vic Park camping out for Finals Tickets.

The tears of angst, frustration and sheer joy cannot be explianed to people who have not felt this 'belonging' and tribalism that a Victorian Football Club 'family' can bring.

One of the major reasons we are so tight is a shared history of near misses and total devastation. We back up and continue our loyally... no matter what. I

n the old days we were part of the colour and spectacle but only now under the stewardship of Eddie does the Club actually acknowledge the role played by The Magpie Army in getting the players up and across the line. It was fantastic that President, Captain and Coach gave thanks for this supporter support... yet I wasn't there.

It now seems that if one is not earning a quite reasonable wage... it is no longer possible to be there. Even a standing room ticket is $145, the petrol would be $20 so a train ticket return is better at $11, and $22 station parking. The Record is $15. I just cannot justify this when it represents more than 50% of my current weekly income. More if I wanted a reserve seat and Club membership.

Am I still a member of the Magpie Army?

Collingwood now has special categories of members... the over ten year group... etc. Well I was bothe Club member and Cheersquad member for the entire turbulent seventies... but I have no official status and must aply to join all over again and work my way back up. Can I afford this commitment whilst at the same time investing heavily in my (hopefully) future career by paying for Conferences, Seminars, Colloquia and Training Workshops?

Let alone my occasional extravagent splurge to my 'other family'... the theatre Industry?

So am I the same person today as yesterday?

No. I am overjoyed and relieved yet saddened as I feel a chapter of my life has come to a close.

I will always stand SIDE BY SIDE withy both my families even when I am not able to be there in person.

Goodbye 'Josephine'

2010-10-01T03:23:00.000-07:00


Vale Tony




Thu, September 30, 2010 -- 6:31 AM ET -----   

Tony Curtis, Hollywood Icon, Dies at 85, 
The A.P. Reports

Tony Curtis, a classically handsome movie star who earned an Oscar nomination as an
escaped convict in Stanley Kramer's 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones," but whose public
preferred him in comic roles in films like "Some Like It Hot" (1959) and "The Great

Race" (1965), died Wednesday of a cardiac arrest in his Las Vegas area home.
He was 85. His death was confirmed by the Clark County coroner, The Associated Press reported. As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

A little taste of sugar

2010-09-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

Ah September that wonderful time of year when the sun begins to shine and my endorphins are at a good level. My favourite things about Setember (my birth month) are the sounds of Spring. For me, it is reassuring to hear the "King tides" of an evening accompanying the Spring equinox. The crash of the waves at night is the best possible soundtrack for a great nights sleep, and despite the Ocean-shore being over 500 metres away, they sound so close.

This transports me back to childhood memories of being suggled in bed in our beach house nestled on the sand dunes of the 'back' beach. Our fence-line was our entry to the National Park and our beach access. The house was designed by an aviation engineer and structurally swayed during high winds. For guests it was very disconcerting, especially when the movement was coupled with the crashing wave soundscape!

But for me it was (and is) my spiritual home.

So now these equinoxial gales bring memories of relaxation away from the stresses of the city.

And speaking of the stresses of the city and September soundscapes, nothing can compare with the hush over the MCG for the National Anthem on Grand Final day and the gargantuan wave of 100,000 voices' unified cheer to drown out the last stanzas before the ball is bounced.

They seem such simple pleasures from 'the olden days'... yet there is always more beneath the surface with fond memories.

I can't say I was ever from a wealthy family, we were most probably 'comfortably well off' and able to experience these two soundscapes annually. This Septemeber, however, I have had it reinforced that I am no longer 'comfortably well off'. Despite the best efforts of my son and his father, plus the generosity of the federal tax commissioner even $2,000 could not assure me of both locales. A drawn Grand Final for my beloved Pies definitely put paid to the hope of hearing the cheers of the black and white faithful at 'The G' this coming Saturday.

I have a friend who's son is an MCC member, yet he is definitely not approachable to queue for MCC reserve seats, nor would he be open for an acquaintance offering to queue for him, to obtain one ticket to the much prized event! And they wonder why the crowd in the Southern Stand ritualisticaly boo the Members stand during the Mexican Wave!

It is with gratitude however, that an AFL silver member offered to purchase a ticket for me... but guess what, all Collingwood, St Kilda and AFL reserve seating has sold out their allocations within several hours. By my best calculation that still only accounts for around 60% of the seating capacity... so where are the remaining seats, at what price and who can afford them, let alone how does one get them?

My answer to this musing was found last night, and in the what I had mistakenly thought of as the least likely place.

I attended the opening night of the Production Company's last in their season of musicals, Sugar at the State Theatre.

That' s who have all the tickets, the glitteratti and corporates! Everyone I spoke to was going and very few were actual supporters of the teams playing off. So much for Collingwood President, Eddie Maguire saying that this would be 'the people's Grand Final'.

Only certain people Ed! And you know who they all are.

This evening brought back many memories of feeling like an outsider. I used to attend the opening nights in my professional capacity as theatre reviewer in years gone by (20 plus)and could watch the glitteratti air kissing with amusement.

When one is not 'of the in crowd' it becomes quite an ethnographic study!

What came flooding back to me was the sheer number of 'opening night groupies and hangers on' that are invited to these events, and their behaviour is decidedly questionable. One man who shall remain nameless spoke loudly throughout the entire welcome by the Dircetor of the Board and the General Manager as they thinked sponsors and introduced the Company. How rude. He always was... so I had to move just to hear.
hese are the freeloaders of the worst kind, bitching about the dress and cosmetic surgery needs of the upper classes. Many are there simply to be seen. Seen by whom I ask? No-one outside this small clique know or care who you are (and I doubt they even care... your connections or dollars have bought your entry!)

These people are always condescending about the performers on stage whilst flirting with the pretty young members of the ensemble. Everywhere there are eyes scanning the room instead of focusing on their conversation partner. It is horrid. It always has been and still is for those of us outside this coterie. I'm sort of glad I'm on the outside in a way. Yet by going am I tarred with the same brush?

But opening nights perforamances (and closing nights) can be very special. There is a nervous energy and adrenaline that often clicks and these nights become memorable for the experience of being in that audience. This feeling cannot be replicated even on the best nights during the run. That frissom of excitement is not there, that tightrope walking across the emotional space beyond the fourth wall.

How wonderful to see productions featuring Australia's brightest and most talented performers alongside the old troupers and up and comers... but why are these nights SO DEADLY! Here I have to thank an old friend who enabled me to attend the after party as it would have been wonderful to catch up with the magnificent Dennis Olsen.

I worked at the State Theatre Company of South Australia in the late seventies when Deniis was one of the core ensemble cast for numerous seasons. His acting ability and superb musical training ensured the role of Osgood lll, was given the full throttle. So big, bold and over the top... absolutely magical performance. Thank you Dennis.

For those who are in the dark, Sugar is the Broadway musical based upon the film Some Like it Hot. Apparently the decision to stage this production came after Jean Pratt had a conversation with Tony Curtis who expressed his interest in playing the role of Osgood in and Australian production. How wonderul that the Production Company has stayed true to its mission to showcase the best Australian talent. To cast such a 'bankable' star would have been sooooo tempting.

This casting imperative has seen some of the best stage and screen performers gracing the boards at the State Theatre annually since 2000. It was with much pleasure last night seeing Mitchell Butel cast as 'Jerry/Daphne' in Sugar.

It was his name alone that made me purchase my ticket.

I became enamoured with Mitchell in the MTC's Tomfoolery. He is a star, there is no question about that, as can be attested by the audiences for Avenue Q, Urinetown, and other Production Company pieces, Little Me, Oklahoma and Hair.

It is always difficult for a stunning young 'leading lady', Christie Whelan to receive the applause duly deserved when her curtain call follows the ovation for a crowd pleaser such as Mitchell. As Sugar Kane, she was delightful. What is to be admired is that she played the role of dumb blonde avoiding too broad brush strokes and a reliance on a Marilyn impersonation. She was reminiscent of Marilyn with the jaunty beauty spot, but her performance was definitely Christie. Well done young woman.

In a similar position was Matt Hetherington, whose role 'Joe/Josephine' , the straight man to Butel's character. Also the leading man role in many older-style musicals is so two dimensional. He must sing well, look good and generally play second banana for the jokes and showcase the 'star' (Sugar). We could not have had a better performance, but again the curtain call has him 'shadowed' by Mitchell.

I had one small disappointment. I am a huge Melissa Langton fan yet her Miss Sue was a fraction over-sung last night. She has the BIG voice needed but I would have appreciated a little more shade so that when she let the audience HAVE IT... it would have been phenomenal. That's not Melissa fault however.... I would assume the director or MD is responsible.

With the highly balanced audio systems now we no longer need to belt, Merman-style for the 'Gods'.

Could this be because the director hails from the straight theatre (despite impecable credentials)? One Opera does not a music theatre director make! Nor (do I suggest) does NIDA ensure the best suitability for the job despite the Industry still being Sydney-centric in this country. After all some of our best and brightest young musical stars are being nurtured by WAAPA.

Could it also be that the MD is similarly steeped in the classical tradition and concert stages that when relying on amplification for productions the subtleties are lost. Funny, he also hails from the Emerald City. Don't we have local MDs in Melbourne? Peter Casey's arrangements of the Jule Styne score are fantastic.

The ensemble is yet again fabulous. What we lack in numbers is compensated by versatility and energy. Well done to the entire ensemble (particularly our 'violinist' from the Syncopaters... yes we could tell you were playing. Ken MF didn't have to tell the observant amongst us). The tap routines were great but often the applause was cut short by the pace of the show cutting too abruptly into 'the book' again. I felt so sorry for Alan Brough. His role is so minor one can't even describe it correctly as a cameo... but hey I want to see him again on stage so my curiosity is piqued.

This brings me to the style of musical. I used to adore ALL musicals, now age and cynicism has brought a jaundiced eye (and ear). I now want more from the book, thanks to the transition from musical comedy to music theatre over the last decades of the C20th. Luckily, for me Sugar stands up to the test. Not because the book is good... indeed the plot is ludicrous and requiring just so much suspension of disbelief... what makes it work is the old ( and yes crass sexist) jokes well placed within the narrative and paced perfectly for the desired comedic effect.

This is often not the case in many musical comedies of days gone by. I would have to say that Pajama Game, Music Man and the Boyfriend, look dated rather than period.

They do not seem to work for a modern audience, brought up on fast repartee on stage, television and cinema screen. It is not that we need the whizz bang technical wizardry of the Lloyd Webbers and Macintosh extravanganzas... but we do need tighter and more nuanced productions when re-staging the oldies.

I have been thinking about this a lot over the last weeks, trying to see why my prediction of an early sell out for the return season of Boy from Oz is yet to come to fruition. After seeing the production, it is spectacular and crowd pleasing with a tour de force performance by Todd McKenny. So why are there still tickets for a two week January run? I had assumed it would sell out, be extended and demand a national tour. How am I so out of sync with the audiences after all these years?

Yes, I adored Mary Poppins, had a nice plasing night at Mamma Mia, and unexpectedly loved Jersey Boys. I had felt that I shared a common appreciation and theatrical taste with the Melbourne audiences.

It can't be the venue. I know the State theatre can appear intimidating in size... but hold on... what about The Regent. The houses for Wicked proved that large shows can sell well.

Is it that we need good old 'family musicals'? If so how to explain the Les Mis/Phantom phenomena.

My concern is that the Production Company just aren't tapping into the audience that used to attend the Victoria State Opera/Arts Centre Trust summer musicals. It can't be simply a matter of ticket prices. Boy from Oz top price is $109 yet Mary Poppins Premium ticket is $155.

Would I be wrong to suggest that when a Company has a loyal group of corprate supporters and sponsors there exists a feeling that 'give them the product' and the masses will come, as long as we wine and dine our VIPs. Well looking around at the VIPs last night, there is a decided skewing in age demographics. I have not seen as many grey heads apart from at the Opera and the MSO!

There were very few of the fashionable glitzy pretty young things and soapie stars, and they would all be in town for the 'footy' and 'races'. We needed arc lights in St Kilda road, lots of photographers snapping paparazzi style, a red carpet and watchers... not the sedate photographers gently accompanying Lillian amongst the guests inside the foyer space. By the time the who's who shots make the weekend magazine editions the show will be virtually over!

That is one thing the Williamson and Edgely's knew; how to make glitz and glamour.

I would say the Mariner organisation and Mike Walsh still get it SOOOO right.

How strange my focus is now so solidly on the marketing and business side of 'show business'. Me... the critic and reviewer is still there but it's no good having a great product if very few people put their money on the line to see it.

I guess my biggest feeling after coming away from this show is that maybe the true musical lovers just can't dredge up enough money for all that is on in September. We also had the school holidays and the Royal Melbourne Show (let alone the footy finals). Even with the best budgeting I doubt if I could have stretched my wages this far.

How nice it would be to be 'comfortably well off' again and it not to be such a big outing to drive up to town from my beachside haven on more occasions.

Oh yeah... I must aspire to more gold bling for these opening nights! You should have heard the clinking in the stalls!

Why we MUST beat St Kilda.

2010-09-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

GO PIES!!!

Like most Collingwood supporters of a certain age, I cannot forget the hush that came over the Outer during Round 14 1972. As a 16 year old proudly sporting the Number 22 on my duffle coat I can never forget the brutality of one St Kilda player, (policeman by profession!!) Jim O'Dea. He king hit my favourite star behind play.

Why wasn't he charged with assault and causing grievous bodily harm ( as Leigh Matthews was on another occasion). Some acts are cowardly and beyond the pale. This was one of them.

For anyone who does not know the story... her is a wonderful blog from Nick

It is why I too HATE St Kilda.

http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/viewtopic.php?t=43466&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 4:35 pm
Post subject: Round 14 1972 Collingwood v St. Kilda - The Coward's Act

As promised, my old article on the day the Pies went to Morrabbin in 1972. I will always hate St. Kilda. I also got an email from Martin Flanigan of The Age last year on this article (and another article) where he said:- dear magpie greg, Thanks a lot for your articles. Johnny mentioned that geelong game from 1972 to me just the other day. Your account of the match when he was struck down is the only account of it I have read, i found it very moving. all the best martin flanagan Round 14 July 8 1972 St. Kilda v Collingwood A Day that Will Live in Infamy On the Friday evening of 7 July 1972, I was watching the Kevin Dennis Football Show hosted by Mike Williamson on Channel 7 where they previewed the games for the following day. It always used to go to air at 7 o’clock but this year (in its last year) it had been moved to the 10.30 pm timeslot). As the Collingwood game against St. Kilda at Moorabbin came up for discussion, I remember looking at the St. Kilda line up and thinking, “We can beat this mob”. I was concerned as the Saints had had the wood over us in the last three games and were vying with the Magpies for a spot in the Five. It was a big game. The preview by Bluey Adams then turned to the Collingwood side which was strengthened by the recent inclusions of Len Thompson and Peter McKenna from state duties. Adams said the Magpie defence would be crucial to the outcome of the game as would the Magpie centre line and on ball players. He also mentioned Collingwood’s big star in the centre for 1972, John Greening who was leading all the awards, would also be crucial to the outcome. That was like saying Nathan Buckley will have an influence on the game. John Greening had been having a stellar season and at that stage of the year (after 13 rounds) John had 14 Brownlow votes and was surely going to be the Magpies’ next Brownlow Medallist. Our family had this year moved to the south eastern suburbs just 5 minutes from Moorabbin, a ground I had never been to before. But the three of us (Dad, older brother and I) were ready to go to the big game. We positioned ourselves under the main scoreboard on the outer wing and waited for the game to commence. From the opening bounce, John Greening got a free kick and booted the ball deep into the forward line at the Nepean Highway end. As the players fought for the ball, I heard someone yell, who is that on the ground? We turned and saw the crumpled figure of a Magpie lying face down on the turf in front of the player’s race. Jostling started between the players as trainers rushed frantically to the fallen figure. Someone yelled, “It might be John Greening” and my stomach turned. It was John Greening. One St.Kilda player came over for a look gave him a prod with his foot as if Greening was a dead dog. After some minutes during which time Greening had not moved a muscle, he was taken off on a stretcher and up the race. Everyone was upset and the Collingwood fans in the outer were momentarily hushed. Our thoughts were that John would have concussion and miss the next week and be back the week after. No one had seen who had felled John behind the play or the circumstances behind it. But the hush turned to loud and angry screams as the Collingwood crowd turned on any St. Kilda player within earshot. As soon as John was taken off the game recommenced with some of the most vicious football I have ever had the misfortune to view. There was sniping, elbows fighting and scuffles that littered the next three quarters. As a result it was a very low scoring game not helped by the fact that it was a windy day. Player were constantly looking over their shoulders and who could blame them It was a battle of defences with McKenna being held quite comfortably by Cowboy Neale up to three quarter time. Collingwood’s backline was superb. They were ably led by Ted Potter at centre half back on Barry Breen, Ross Dunne in the back pocket on the resting ruckman, and Con Britt in the other back pocket on the resting rover. Britt was starring in the back pocket in 1972 after earlier in the year asking for a clearance to the VFA as he thought his race was run. At three quarter time it was 4.11.35 to 3.12.30 with the Pies holding a slender lead going toward the South road end in the last quarter. In this quarter the Magpies took control of the game kicking 5 goals (all McKenna) to St. Kilda one goal and running out winners by 30 points. Len Thompson dominated Carl Ditterich in the ruck, with 21 kicks, 15 marks, 12 hit outs and 4 handballs. The other inspiration was from Wayne Richardson the Collingwood captain. We left happy knowing the Pies were in the five again and also hoping Greening would only miss one week. When we got home my Dad told me to ring Collingwood and I asked why. He said he was concerned with the fact the John Greening had not moved at all from the time he was felled to the time he went up the player’s race. I did ring the club and to my astonishment someone answered. I asked if John Greening was OK and they said yes he was fine and only in hospital under observation. My Dad felt relieved. Seeing my Dad was concerned though made me worried. The next day on World of Sport we heard that Greening was still in hospital. OK we thought, must be a heavier concussion and he wont play next week. Neil Mann the Collingwood coach came on club corner and when asked whether Greening would play next week, answered, “not only don’t we know if he will play again this season but he may not play again at all”. Mann revealed that the Collingwood doctors had actually feared for John’s life. One of the Collingwood club doctors stayed in hospital the entire Saturday night to be by John’s bedside. Allan Jeans fidgeted nervously in the chair next to Mann. Mann also said though he didn’t see what happened he knew who was Greening’s opponent at the time, though eh didn’t mention his name. We all know now it was Jim O’Dea. Neil Mann went on to say John Greening was a true sportsman and did not deserve that type of treatment. “He is a complete ball player. There is serious doubt that John will ever be able to play football again.” I couldn’t speak after hearing this and we all got very upset. We couldn’t believe it. During the course of the day news report came through on the radio that there may be a police investigation into what happened and that the AFL may launch their own inquiry seeing as no on was reported on the day. On the Monday morning in The Age, Peter McKenna who was a guest columnist for the game for the day wrote:- “What a rotten, dirty, filthy bit of business that was at Moorabbin on Saturday. Poor John Greening just didn’t know who, or what, hit him. There he was passing the ball into the forward line one moment, the next he was lying on the ground motionless. “King hit. Unconscious. Awfully still. “I doubt if anybody actually saw the incident. But everybody knows who did it. We know who did it. “There were some pretty jumpy players on that field after poor John was taken off on the stretcher, and it reflected in the standard of play, and the standard of the fighting. The big message cam from Neil Mann at quarter time. We were all still hopping mad. He said there will be no retaliation. We will get back at them where it hurts the most, on the scoreboard.”. McKenna concluded his article by stating, “I’m sure most people will understand if in the circumstances, I don’t say too much about the opposition.”. No Peter , we didn’t. The reports on Monday morning said John Greening was semi-conscious in the Alfred Hospital after being flattened in the first minute of the game at Moorabbin. A hospital spokesman said Greening was pretty much in the same condition he was when admitted on Saturday. John’s then wife Ruth (John was 21 Ruth was 20) who was in Tasmania at the time rushed to be by John’s bedside. Tom Sherrin the Collingwood president said the club was more concerned about Greening’s health rather than seeking to punish anyone. Collingwood officials said Greening was struck from behind just below the ear and the blow occurred well behind the ball. Greening slumped to the ground face first, his fall unbroken as he was unconscious before he hit the ground. He lay motionless. By the Tuesday following the game, Collingwood officials were saying justice must be done. On that Tuesday, John was finally taken off the seriously ill list. Collingwood were calling for witnesses. General Manger of Collingwood Peter Lucas said the Premier should instigate a police investigation into the incident. John drifted into and out of a coma for a fortnight after the incident. When eventually released he had to undergo extensive physical rehabilitation to learn how to walk and talk again as well as all the other things we all take for granted. It was not until the start of 1974 that he was well enough to start football training again with his sole aim to prove that he was alright. He was affected by people saying he had brain damage (which he did suffer) and wanted to prove them wrong. He played in a Reserves game at Victoria Park early in May 1974 against Geelong where he starred and where the crowd gave him a standing ovation as he left the ground. The following week, with Neil Mann coaching Victoria, and the Magpie side due to play the reigning premiers Richmond at the MCG, Greening was selected for his comeback game. What a game it was. He took a speccy mark, kicked two goals, gathered twenty odd kicks and was at the foot of the pack when Billy Picken took the winning mark of the year. Arguably, Greening was arguably the best player on the ground. Years later he said after that game where he had achieved what he wanted to (showing everyone one he was OK), he lost interest. He suffered soft tissue injuries, had problems with eye sight and his coordination and speed were never the same again. He had played 98 games straight after his debut for the Pies in Round 5 1968 to that fateful Saturday in 1972. He then played only 8 further games to 1976 the yea in which he played in the Reserves Grand Final. In 1977 he left the VFL and played in a premiership with Port Melbourne. He then went on to play for Chelsea on the Peninsula, then back to Tasmania. He is now a bookmaker on the Gold Coast. The perpetrator of the despicable act Jim O’Dea, was hauled before the tribunal and suspended for 10 games. But he came back and played until 1980, became Reserves coach for St. Kilda, a board member and was a nominee for the St. Kilda Hall of Fame in 2003. In other words he was honoured by St. Kilda. It tells us a lot about that so called club. If anyone ever feels any sympathy for St. Kilda then you don’t barrack for Collingwood. For the record St. Kilda v Collingwood 2 5 17 2 5 17 3 8 26 3 8 26 3 12 30 4 11 35 4 13 37 9 13 67 Goalkickers: McKenna 7, Atkinson, Thompson. Best players: Thompson, Britt, Potter, Dunne, Clifton, Wayne Richardson, Max Richardson, Atkinson, McKenna

It's that time of year again...

2010-09-17T21:32:00.001-07:00

There is just no way I can avoid a 'hyper' mod this coming week.

The sun is beginning to shine and it has been ten years since my football team had as much chance of snaring a flag.

It was not a good game but an interesting one to look at how the young players stood up under pressure and when it matters most. Now can those young fitter bodies and eagerness get 'us' across the line?

Add to this that this September we held our University PhD Colloquium. I always find the sheer concentration required by two full days of presentations simply needs an adrenaline hit. My head fills with fragments of ideas, theories, things to try, possible answers to my own writing problems. I come away just so inspired. This year's colloquium would have to have been one of our strongest academically. Better than some Conferences with staff presentations I have attended over the years.

The sheer collegiality and good spirit cannot be matched in any other forum. It seems amazing that over the last seven years the Practice-led research PhD program at the Institution That Must Not Be Named (ITMNBN), has been offered. In this time the enrolments have gone from three to over 25 (or more ???). Where once the discipline was constantly fighting pedagogical territory wars in an attempt to define a fixed notion of what PLR constitutes and whether or not it could demand enough academic rigour.

Even at peak national and international Conferences there seemed to be a prevailing attitude of disciplinary cultural cringe operating with the hierarchy skewing towards the longer privileged Science-based paradigm for PhD programs.

Luckily now the debate has advanced beyond this ridiculous and simplistic binary where we began to 'eat our own' between the academics and the Industry-based practitioners. Words such as those spoken by a Senior Writing academic from SA were almost vitriolic. 'Claytons literary grants' was the rhetoric when discussing a practitioners job within the academy, under the assumption that one cannot be both, or that a practitioner by virtue of their practice cannot research and teach.... at the same time when we were putting forward the case that Practice IS Research!

Now we can forget about that cringe mentality and expend our energy educating our colleagues across the disciplinary divisions. Our methodology is being pushed to be more expansive and exiting (PLR, PBR, ABR etc.) Other discipline scholars are embracing our qualitative research praxis as ana answer for their publication imperatives wrought by the new ERA and the dominance of HERDSA stats.

Thus when sitting at the PhD colloquiums, it is easy to feel inadequate when we reflect on our own presentations across the preceding years. We were at the start, forging a path through the jungle, slashing at vines to attempt to create a clear pathway. It is inevitable that those who follow us choose the well-worn path and add a degree of sophistication to it's construction.

In turn this fuels our own reflexivity as we take from their presentations ideas, concepts and lessons and integrate them back into our own practice. Is it any wonder I am always so invigourated intellectually and emotionally. And many BMD scholars and creatives inevitably use this upward surge to be optimally creative. This always co-incides with periods of mania followed by the inevitable crash.

I am writing this whilst I still have some outside perspective on my behaviour and moods. This will soon disappear as I become too far inside the hyper-state.

I hear you saying... well if you know it's coming why not adjust the medication and avoid the crash?

The simple answer/s:

I need this high.
I need this crazy phase of beauty.
I cannot live without it and although the price will be high I am prepared to pay it.
I cannot live without this aspect of my personality, in the same way that one cannot change any other genetically linked human attribute.

It is who I am.

But there is a safety net this time. I have taken time off my study, have scheduled psychiatric sessions regularly, will watch my diet, keep a trusted friend close (who can reflect to me my over-the-topness's appropriateness), and I will continue my hypnotherapy and yoga. I will thus not reach the depths and am prepared to go to hospital for intervention and re-balancing before my Conference deadlines and PhD deadlines. These I must meet.

By using 'must' I know that the swing up, down will also result in a further down after achieving these goals... but I will worry about that as the year draws to a close. I have changed in these last twelve months of journalling. I know I will survive and continue to succeed and grow.

The only concern is that I still need to convince the 'normal world of work' that us, 'crazies' offer so much that more than compensates for the small periods of non-productivity.

We are a workplace asset!

Pleasure to write again

2010-09-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

I feel so happy to have spent the day working on my novel. It's sure as hell not Steinbeck or Astley but it is mine. I am so releived to finally give it the attention needed at last. I now understand why so many PhD students begin their three year journey writing the novel. It is a safety blanket, a space where they feel in control. In a way I see that process as an avoidance tactic. A tactic to stave off the insecurity and tumult of the exgetical writing.

We all adore the research process whether it is for the exegesis or the novel, but trying to pull something together when we are painfully aware of our own inadequacies, discovered through the research process. The more we read the less we know so is it any wonder we hide away and feel insecure writing the academic component. Why does the process of creation have to be so damn debilitating at times?

So how can I sum up the last three and a half years? A joy to have time to research and read. A total nightmare to navigate my way through the literary theories, epistemologies and methodologies and a total hatred of academic jargon!

As an aside, in true Shakespearean tradition.... did anyone read today's Higher Ed supplement about the corsetting of undergfrad students... geees I wish there was just such a join the dots template for the exegesis, complete with tutor created notes and clarifiactions. I'm sure even I could pass then. (Drowned by Dr Verbiage column)

What I want to say is what I think and feel about the process, not what others have deemed valuable and acceptable. I am having difficulty putting into plain English what I have learned and am learning about the craft of writing this bloody novel, and I am having great difficulty locating 'proper' sources who actually say the same thing I am trying to. I need the quotes and citations to give weight to my academic writing. Yet I thought all along that my writers journal was the data for the exegesis... apparently not as much as I had hoped.

These two were supposed to speak to each other... the journal and the research. Well in the case of my genre, they have. In the case of how I want to write and what I want to write they have. But in the case of how to write and craft the work, written in academeese... then no way. They appear totally disconnected. I can see linking threads but am unable to get these summarised on paper.

Structure and bones... the one problem assailing me in both written components. At least now for a couple of months I can lose myslef in the joy of writing. I can revel in silencing the critic on my shoulder and forget that I have some very critical friends awaiting, as executioners just down the track.

It is the freedom from stress I have craved for many months now and should go a long way to ensuring mental stability and wellness. Hopefully, I can produce this novel in that time also, and return to the Academy charging in on my white stallion ready to defeat and vanquish the exegetical dragon in the tower.

Its raining again...

2010-09-06T19:50:00.001-07:00

Imagine just where this blog would be without song titles and lyrics... it would be title-less. (I have used so many over the months).

What does this tell you about the brain's ability to store useless information for years?
Or is that just my brain?

Winter weather, cold nights snuggled beneath doonas with hot water blankets, warming glasses of evening sherry and slow cooked meals... I do love this season. To me it is also the season when I can become affected by SADS (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder) and sink slowly into a mild form of depression, requiring a trip to the sunshine. Usually this can be as simple as crossing the Great Dividing Range but not this year. The whole north of the state is under water and deluged by floodwater and rain.
So I guess my usual ruminations, navel gazing and melancholy will have to happen down here seaside with the magnifcent crashing wave soundscape each night. What is missing this year is the foggy nights with the sound of the pilot boat's horn responding to the freighters requesting guidance through the heads.

We have not had that many foggy nights despite the recent storms. On many nights the sky remains black with the most mesmerising display of stars, planets and even the occaional meteor. I love the September sky with 'my ' planet, Virgo basking in the reflected glow of the sun, illuminated next to the moon.

I guess at this stage of the year I am disappointed with myself as I did promise to write a mood diary for everyday to chart my illness and wellness. Well the best laid plans have come to nought, as a dear trusted friend suggested that perhaps it was not the most sensible plan of action posting my swings on this very public website. It seems she is concerned that certain people with varying degrees of power over my earning capacity and reputation could misuse my honesty against me.

I detest the fact that one needs to be circumspect, when trying to advocate publically for those of us suffering BMD. We need the world to understand the highs and lows and how we manoevre from illness to wellness and recognise the effort and sense of empowerment we achieve by succeding. Why does a person attempting to be viewed as prfessionally competant still feel compelled to hide a mental illness to ensure against silent discrimination? If I were physically disabled I could not chose to hide it, why should mentally ill be judged differently?

Yet, I know I am judged and found 'wanting' in the professional world, an educated world that should know better. The sooner I can focus on getting my bloody novel out there, and defeat the hurdle of the academic exegesis that is the bug bear of all Creative Writing PhDers, the better.

I have so much to share, but I now live in fear of this disclosure.

So forgive me dear readers for not having posted as regularly as I would have liked. I really do want to have a record of every day living with my condition, a log that shows the painful slow days of rehabiltation through yogs, art therapy, hypnotherapy, excercise and sitting in the sunshine for vitamin D.... yet I cannot write the details for fear that they will ensure I remain trapped on Disability Pension and unemployable.

The pressure on me to succeed this year has been intolerable at times. I feel I owe it to all who are mentally ill, the Government who recognised my academic potential with a stipend, and all my mentors over the years who encouraged me down this path, but above all I owe it to myself.

Yet, I am not one of those A-personality types who can turn all this negative pressure into creative impetus. For me it is disabling. I become ill. I lose trach of intrinisc motivations as all the external judges line up to give their verdicts. No matter how I admire these people's competence and acuity, they can NEVER understand what I live with daily and how just getting out of bed can be an achievement on its own.

This is me... sliding down the scale towards SADS but I don't want the sunshine. I want all our dams and reservoirs at 75+%, not the Thompson below 30%. This might be climae change or it might just be a cycle that is familiar.

I was reminded by the photos of the farmland under water of old 16mm films my Dad took when I was a young child. The images looked the same.

There was also a time when a small timber house literally slid down the hill in MacCrae and sat complete at the foot of the hill with a new Point Nepean Road address! That house is still there all these years later. I have also watched the larger (then) blue coloured house remain pirched up high on the rock face of the cliff and not sucumb. This house has been getting larger and larger in every decade and the most recent extensions seem to have very strong metal anchor 'ropes' into the actual cliff face, to ensure no slippage down towards the main road. I must take a drive and look to see if the newer homes have survived atop the cliff, as even Mt Martha had a mudslide last week and cut the Esplanade for traffic.

I also remember in the early eighties (1984?) when I was working for the State Training Board I remember being diverted off the main highway at Sale and getting quite stressed as the detour seemed to take me closer and closer to flooded roads and paddocks until the Police vehicles indicated I was back on a safe route to Lakes Entrance.

The difference this time around seems to be the ferocity of the winds (not the protracted power black outs which is commo down here) and Portsea front beach's disappearance. I have never seen the need in over fifty years to build a rack wall to stop the erosion before.

Then we have the Christchurch earthquake... not it's first but many decades apart. And after all NZ and Australia are on the Pacific ring of fire, so to be expected that the tectonic plates shift reasonably often.

Mother Nature in all her awesome power does make one's daily tribulations seem minor in comparison. So I must keep my 'chin up' and get contro, again. Life is here for living and enjoying no matter what others people think of you.

Charity week

2010-09-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

That's how this week seems to be panning out and that is good. My mood state is highly labile and I need external cues to keep my head from disappearing into my personal black morass. It is so easy to rely on 'party face' to get through the nights (or occasionally days). It is harder, however to get up of a morning and switch to performance mode, the face so expected in the 'real world'.

To quote the lyrics by Peter Allen... "Don't cry out loud, keep it inside, learn how to hide your feelings". You'd think after living with this bloody diagnosis for over 25 years now I would have learned the tricks better. Unfortunately by promising myself a 'wellness year' and mental stability, I can no onger just 'go with the emotional flow' and be swept up into the raptuous luminosity, as I know the crash inevitably follows and it is so hard to fend off the fall. That's the roller coaster I am riding this week.

I want the high... the ecstasy. The theatre and nightime offers me this at present... but these grey days of normalcy... gee they are tough. I catch myslef asking 'is normal worth the effort?' then I reach for a sherry, sauv blanc or champagne. Followed by chocolate or French cheese.

The next day is a day of punishment over the slight movement of the scales... and then add to this the loss of self-esteem that accompanies not working or getting short-listed for interviews, a sense of looming guillotine with the PhD.

Eventually, I just want to escape to the fantasy world of mania.

So... I have been trying to think of others. A donation to the Educate Girls in Africa campaign one day, a small donation to the Swinburne social club's Prostate Cancer luncheon, then a Watle Sprig for Wattle Day (after the earlier Daffodil Day cancer research donation). Is there a beneficiary for Wattle Day funds or just a recognition of our wonderful Spring indigenous blossom?

Next followed a Legacy badge... it's Legacy week also, and lastly today I bouth a fundraising book for a friend's local Children's Day Care centre.

I am also hoping to organise a Books for Kids drive at Lilydale in the next fortnight to support the Fred Hollows Foundation for Indigenous education (to follow on from the momentum of book week). I must remember to corner all the writers at the Trades Hall this Sunday for the Free Ang Sun Su Kyi readings for Burma.

Do you think I have earned enough Brownie points to escape falling into the abyss?

A dear friend had to confront her own demons unexpectedly this week and the pain of old wounds came flooding back. She is still feeling confused and assaulted emotionally, and on returning 'home' from seeing her I stepped right back into the horror pit of emotional and economic abuse that was my life prior to weight gain. It was horrific and resulted in an imediate appointment with my psychiatrist.

At what point do we grow up enough to say 'Stop, I don't deserve this any more'?
At what point can the woman say "to hell with you all, I want what's best for me... you deal with your own masculine shit... it's not mine to own or be blamed for!"

More showbiz fun....

2010-08-31T05:07:00.002-07:00

Congratulations to Oz Equity Cares
on the great job last Sunday night at the National Theatre (and of course in Brisbane and Sydney also).

Thanks also to the wonderful performers who gave their time and talent to the show on their only night off. Pity the Act 1 people decided not to stay for the finale... that sould have been special.

I cannot believe the effort put in by the magnificent cast of West Side Story. Your production number, Roxanne was worth the standing ovation. I wasn't going to see the production at the Regent (given I have seen several over the years) but the sheer brilliance of the dancers was enough to warrant another look at this very special ensemble.

Applause also to Rolling Entertainment.... are you graduates from NICA? You are great. Pity my 60th won't be able to budget for you... but then again you will all be too old yourselves by then.

Similar, thanks go to the Mary Poppins singers who put together a rendition of Circle of Life. Well chosen, and sung. Very affirming way to end procedings. Phil Quast 'you old crooner'... you made an Aznavour song sound like a Sondheim classic bitter sweet show tune... or was it?

Speaking of another show due to open that I had not intended to see, Hairspray... OMG... what a performance from Trevor AShley as.... Edna Turnblad doing Liza... or was that Trevor doing Liza or Liza doing Boy from Oz's Liza... You also deserved the hearty standing ovation. What a show stopper!

I also want to thank the Young Gay and Lesbian Chorus. Often simple says it all, and standing still dressed simply in black with the red ties, backed by the AIDS quilts had me in tears as you sang 'In the Arms of an Angel'. I tried to stay unemotional but just couldn't and one very particular quilt piece ripped my heart out.

Well done Johnno and Annie and crew. It is great that the fund has raised over $700,000 but hey we should be at SOLD OUT capacity in this venue and aiming for the Palais. Let's really push for 2011... and I know just how difficult it is to organise a variety show to hold momentum and energy from top to curtain. Keep at it people your commitment is so valuable.

Orange and Green but with diamantes...

2010-08-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

"oh my father he was orange and my mother she was green..." The lyrics that sum up my Saturday the 21st.

I cannot remember such an enjoyable day with me wearing my two most opposing 'hats'. The day began at the Polling Booth which I had 'adopted' on behalf of GetUp. Wearing my bright orange (yep... flattering colour!... well not so bad on me actually), handing out scorecards on the actual policies announced by the three major parties. I handed out over 1500 in around four hours... that was indicative of just how tight the Federal Election was, with so many still "undecided" and accepting our cards. Some of course were just being polite and taking everything so as not offend any volunteers but many were actually interested and reading the check lists.

Needless to say I was challenged very early by a man pushing to see if we (GetUp) were actually spruiking The Greens. We had been warned about this and that these people would most likely be workers for the two major parties attempting to have us breach our legal duties of endorsing NO POLITICAL PARTY and definitely NOT advising anyone how to vote. I was very careful to point out that we were scoring announced policies only and that the voters should use the card to find the party whose policies were important to them!

It is not my fault, not GetUp's 750,000 members fault that Bob Brown's Party had the more popular policies across a range of environmental and social justice issues. Thus not surprisingly the Green's votes reflected this in the returns across the Nation.

As proof that GetUp was unaligned one need only read today's Age coverage to see that in Malcolm Turnball's electorate in NSW, GetUp scorecards actually pointed out that BOTH major party candidates held views different from their own parties on many of these important issues (Refugee processing and Climate Change etc). Hence Turnball had an increased swing and I do not believe it was simply that his was a safe Lib seat.

Also it is indicative of a broad backlash against the negative and lowest common denominator slur campaigns waged by the ALP and LIbs that there was an increased INFORMAL vote... yep. I predicted it yesterday and called it the "Latham Factor". In two Sydney electorates there were over 13% of the recently counted votes considered informal. This is no accident as in both electorates, Blaxland and Watson have had an almost 6% increase in informal votes since the last election. Even in my safe Lib seat there was a small swing against Greg Hunt the sitting member and Shadow Environment minister. We also doubled our informal vote from around 2% last time to over 4% in this election.

With Eden-Monaro holding just a ALP it looks like Gillard will be in the better position to negotiate a Government with the cross benchers, as they have the greater two-party preferred despite an abysmal primary vote in the mid thirties. So the winners by a mile... a Governement held responsible for every vote in the House and no mandate for either side... great to marginalise the Party Power Brokers at last.

So I see it as a win for The Greens and a win for GetUp in taking up the old Democrat mantle to"keep the bastards honest".... so yep Orange and Green... my parents would be so proud.

Then just to round off the day the best poll of the day. McKenney for Peter Allen or Hugh Jackman. Let me tell you it is McKenney by a mile. I was lucky enough to see Todd play Peter Allen in the original production and have seen clips (Tony Awards etc) of Hugh doing Boy from Oz and the performances were both strong. As all my friends know I avoid Arena Productions like the plague so it will come as no surprise that the cast was a revelation for me, having not seen Fem Belling's Liza or Christen O'Leary's Judy. Whilst I stand by my original claim that Angela Toohey 'was' Liza and Chrissie Amphlett was scary in that she virtually 'channelled' Graland in the original, these two newer cast members are very strong and amazing also. It was always goin to be hard to fill the high heels of the original two stars, and Fem and Christen do the Company proud.

As for my dearest friend Todd, (yes I am biased... but I can be very objective when reviewing.. just ask another friend, Jodie), he is "to die for". I can now say he has grown into the role even more. His vocal production and resonance is so much better than the nineties performance and his dancing is as good as ever (it was Award winning then!). He is fitter than I have seen him in years and keeps the young hoofers on their toes also. His Rockettes-line is precision, and whilst I have seen Jackman kick higher, McKenny knows that the secret to 'the line' is not height but the evenness with the girls and the differing heights of the dancers. It has to be mirror across the row. This one is... a true Rockette's moment.

Nancye Hayes direction is also masterful. She knows dance and how to sell a show. When I caught up after the performance I congratulated her and told her Pounder would be watching from above with pride. Nancye then showed me a special locket that she always wears commemorating Betty... how amazing and so touching. There are times when I cannot escape the profound legacy the Williamson people have given the Industry in this Country. This was another such moment, as was seeing Jack Webster onstagein Poppins, John Scandrett's System Sound ' The choice' the new promoters, Peter Casey and Michael Tyack waving batons in the Pit, and of course Robbo guiding Cam Mac Australia. ( Nor do I want to leave out Sue Nattrass for all her years at the helm of the VAC). WOW! (To think I had a small insignificant part in this hisotry also.).

Away from reverie and back to the now!

Robyn Arthur's Marion is magnificent. Whereas originally one felt Perryman was wasted in this role, by the sensible and clever re-writing and re-working of the book, Marion is given the powerful position narratively the script needed. And when she gets "Robbie's Turn" it is worth the wait, literally bringing the house down. Well done girl.... you are spectacular!

David Harris is also better placed by the re-working, as Greg becomes more foregrounded. By he removing the pretense of Boy from Oz being a traditional 'book musical' and moving towards a more modern 'sung-through libretto' with the only linear breaks occuring as Todd's Peter works the audience, cabaret-style, the production itself shines and glitters in a way the original did not.

The I still call Australia Home and Rio routines last time felt forced and 'un'-integrated, this time they flow from the patter and narrative more cohesively... they belong and fit at last. That was my biggest complaint in the original. This allows Todd McKenney to 'become' Peter and to work the audience as he used to do (remember Up in One at the Maj anybody?) And whilst Peter's American twang grated on me, and his Vegas gyrations seemed so over-wrought at the time, both play well now in the new century when replicated by McKenney.

This is an all-star vehicle and whilst the Production Company and Jeanne Pratt would like to sell all the shows as such, this time it is true. The power of the production comes from its commitment to the production. The set is functional and minimal, yet the sparkling backdrop... perfect, allowing the focus to be on the p;erformers at all times. We do not come away singing the sets and costumes this time... and even Rio is a tad toned down in colour palate and much to the better. the period costumes from Bandstand, to seventies NY Village to the unbiquitous legwarmers for the cattle call, everything is perfect.

I cannot go past the wonderful Fosse-esq choreo for Liza... ah the white gloves and bowler hat. Belling is great and we recognised instantly the red fringed-dress and vest with cuffs. This is a Minelli-esq moment also.

Being small in stature herself O'Leary nails the fragility of Garland and this time the 'ghost character' whites are so effective. There was not a dry eye in the house for "Quiet Please, There's a Lady on Stage" and "Don't Cry Out Loud".

The songs themselves take on a more powerful place in the popular music canon when combined with the magnificence of the renditions coming from the State Theatre stage. And John Foreman's small stage orchestra brings all the power of a full traditional pit orchestra to the score.

I can't ever remember having raved so much about a production. Perhaps only the original Les Mis in Sydney. I cannot wait to go back in January if it isn't already sold out. But reading between the lines on a couple of conversations last night (there may be more performances in Melbourne and touring is not 100% out of the realm of possibility). I hope so. This show deserves to run and run and take on the McIntosh staples... we Aussies can match it with the best.

As for the vote... Jackman versus McKenney... for me it is McKenney all the way.

Not a Recipe Exchange blog...

2010-08-13T23:44:00.000-07:00

Why the macaroons I hear you ask? Well it is just a reminder of how I put on the extra 70 kgs in the first place. I didn't often cook macaroons (indeed can't ever remember having cooked them) but when I was/am stressed and feeling out of control I crave sweet calorie laden cakes and desserts. Well that's today. It is a cold wintry day reminiscent of my childhood. My mother would always spend Saturday baking the weekly cakes, cookies, slices and desserts. The kitchen always had a sweet aroma and trays of goodies cooling. My Dad didn't think there ocould be a night-time meal without a dessert, and there was always weekend afternoon teas, mid-morning snacks and even suppers during card and board games. It was a fun way to live but not good for a person with a tendency to stack on the kilos if not doing rigorous excercise. Needless to say my whole family was sporty and I had my moments but when I stopped acting (and dancing classes) I began to pack on the weight.

I can say that I am pleased half of the excess is now gone but my emotions are playing havoc with my will-power, despite hypnotherapy! It is holding in as far as fast food and fried food, both really repulse me but it just cannot defeat sugar and chocolate. It is that whole need to reward oneself at times of stress... a reward for surviving it? No sense at all but hey we are talking the sub-conscious here.

Also my alcohol consumtion is vastly reduced (due to it also being calorific and EXPENSIVE... at least anything I like drinking).... so the cakes seem really obtainable instead. GRRR. will need even stronger mind-control and respect for my new body.

Can someone, probably a woman tell me how to respect my new body when attempting to deny a broken heart? It doesn't get easier with age, I can assure you no matter how many times you rationalise and tell yourself that you won't succumb. My dear old battered ego needed a good dose of flattery and I fell for it all.

Am trying to get out and about but when feeling emotionally isolated one's eyes are always drawn towards the apparently happy couples everywhere... well not everywhere just where the middle-classes come out to play. I have been seated amongst roughly 3 - 4,000 people in theatre audiences and galleries lately and what is disturbing is my shallowness. I am judging everybody on their appearance... clothes, what they drink, how they speak and treat one another... particularly the blokes. It is scary that only 3... yep, 3 blokes have passed my supercritical gaze... Is it any wonder I am alone and eating cakes on a Saturday evening?

Well as you can see my dear friends I have loads more work to do before I can claim any semblance of emotional wellness or mood stability... but I am working on it.

Slack on the electronic front.

2010-08-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

My head has been taken up with politics lately. To quote The Bard... A Pox on Both your Houses. I have been twittering again and of course posting political and human rights links on FB. I am also leading an "adopt a polling booth campaign" at my local through GET UP. You have to go to vote anyway so why not assist GetUp in this campaign so that voters can vote on the issues and not along Party lines or confuse State and Federal responsibilities... even Abbott's promise today on teacher salaries is ludicrous as it is a STATE responsibility and the Feds cannot mandate it!

As for the promises for Rail in Victoria, Rail infrastructure in NSW... well how do we guarantee it will happen this time with both levels of Government responsible AND accountable for any stuff ups or delays?

I am also sick to death of the NBN being described as "welfare for tech heads"... I am so reliant on broadband speeds and reliability otherwise i would be driving to bloody Lilydale every day clogging up the roads, using fossil fuels, paying tolls, and making my greenhouse footprint even worse than usual. How can this all be ignored and not factored into the arguments? I am not a tech-head just literate and functioning as a worker.

GRRRR I am angry as usual... Could the ALP "do a jump to the left... rather than steps to the right"?

I am also working on my Exegesis as we speak so I guess the anger is keeping me from Depression so this is a good thing.

If only I could be stable for a few more weeks as the deadlines are looming.

From the gloved one... no not that one!

2010-08-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

Would you believe I am sitting at home wearing my purple woollen gloves? I have paid the heating bills and no it is not freezing. This is a new one even for me... I am wearing gloves so as to not scratch my face, arms and generally visible skin!

Given that this is a mood and wellness diary, this needs to be recorded. I have been battling off depressive swing for around five days now and have been doing everything I can think of to keep the endorphins flowing... but 'everything' is not working as expected.

I am meditating to the CD from my wonderful hypnotherapist Carolyn, and I am able to fight off the teary moments and panic attacks tightening my heart muscles. They are truly scarey and one has to have had one to understand that if a heart attack is worse pain than this.... please God spare me. I do the breathing into a paper bag when hyperventillating but have been unable to get to yoga (which I so obviously desperately need right now). And as for Art therapy... well let's just say that a trusted person equated it with "basket weaving" the other day. Wham another kick in the guts to devalue my wellness routine... so instead of going I sit at home feeling guilty and crying instead! What I wouldn't give to splash black paint all over a canvas and free up my anger right now! And somewhere where I can forget about making a mess on the carpet... Basket weaving indeed... lead by a trained therapist arts practitioner... how dare this person!

This is not the first (nor will it be the last) time that this person in authority undermines my wellness regimes. She already openly expresses disdain for the work of my psychiatrist... the wonderful Dr John who has kept me alive for over twenty years now (and that of the wonderful Gerald for ten years before him). Again this is gross misconduct to infringe on private medical treatment in this manner. But what to do... I can only attempt to resolve the conflict in the only effective way I know... by writing.

People dismiss Stephen Fry's daily Twitters but I suspect they perform a more important function than self-promotion. To my way of thinking, by twittering or blogging in a public forum we BMDs are able to gather strength from the fact that there is a positive and supportive readership somewhere 'out there' on our side. We must 'make it' to repay their faith that we can. many of these perceived readers may be 'like us' just longing for someone to understand the illness and to prove that we can win... no matter what is thrown our way.

I would also like to explore the idea that the much criticised chaotic and random thoughts illuminated by my writing are in fact valuable insights into how the mind of a BMD person functions. What I am always trying to do is to discover patterns and linkages across all apparently random and disparate threads of experience.

It is my belief that by finding these connections I can make sense of the world and see a better and clearer way ahead. This in turn reassures me that the bad times are only temporary and that they will be over once I discover the greater meaning or clearer path through.

I am currently supposed to be writing about madness and creativity IN AN ACADEMIC WAY... yet what I want to write is this material and in this style and voice. This is my working through ideas surrounding madness and creativity, and indeed generativity.

So why the gloves... I hear you say.

Wel,l the tension and aggression being forced beneath the surface is emerging at night through insomnia and just so that there is no respite from the anxiety in daylight hours, I have developed a (and I can't believe I am typing this word) psychsomatic itch and allergic reaction!

I am sitting gloved to not scratch as I have red whelts all over my arms, neck and scalp. I am smothered head to toe in aloe vera cream, as phenergan merely sedates me temporarily and of course I get zero written for my PhD! Again.

So the current course of action... aloe vera cream, soft old trackies and gloves... no man-made fibres at all!

Now I am testing to see if I can concentrate and write. If I can do this blog I can attempt to find rational thought structures in my writing for my academic work...

Well at least that is what I am praying for today! Here goes.

Only connect

2010-08-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

I heard on ABC radio last week that anyone who spoke about class in Australia today is seen as an intellectual lepper.. an out of touch old Marxist with too simplistic an understanding of 'modern society'. Well I am sorry I do not agree. There is nothing simplistic about understanding the ramifications of an economic system based on profits and pure capitalism, when even Governments watch fiscal bottom lines rather than social responsibilities. It may have been naive to position Communism as the desirable social model but hey let's not throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater!

This occurred in a week when at University my supervisor told me my writing was basically "all over the shop", disjointed and even random... or more precisely confused and disorganised.

Perhaps it is/was. But I cannot accept that speaking about class and social capital in the C21st century is outmoded. maybe if one lives a cossetted middle-class existence in a comfy gentrifying inner suburb with sufficient income to make ends meet, say six figures... it may appear that way.

But I live in a different milieu one that uncomfortably straddles two classes... the comfortable middle class bourgeoisie and the working poor and unemployed underclass. And whilst it is simplistic to claim that social problems are exclusively found in a particular class, there can be no denying that by having access to education and income life choices offer a greater choice of escape routes, chosen or not. It is having options that allow freedom, power and self-determination.

Many women, by virtue of holding the lesser financially stable (or even viable) position are constrained in their choices but by far the most severe cases where gender intersects with economics is in the area of class. I will never turn my back on this class war as a 70s style feminist. And whislt disagreeing with many women's choices I can at least understand them and empathise with their situations.

Does that make my novel's themes irrelevant today... or are they deemed passe, unacceptable or just plain unfashionable? So now we have 'acceptable victims of society' and 'unacceptable victims of society'.

It seems to play out like this in my mind; there are those who have 'had things done to them by society (usually in the name of good intentions), like the stolen generations and the forgotten children. These are the 'deserving victims of Australia'. In this camp are the 'good refugees', those fleeing war and persecution but arriving via the controlled screening methods. Then there are the 'undeserving victims'... the slackers, dole bludgers, dollar-driven welfare mothers and the queue jumpers.

How powerful is the rhetoric? But wait deconstruct it a bit further... especially the welfare recipients classification. Could not the term underlass be substituted? If this term is mobilised then society indeed has had an active role in constructing their position and power (or lack thereof). They too have been 'done unto' and not always in the guise of good intentions.

What happens when progressive Governments send manufacturing offshore where labor costs are significantly cheaper for Industry? We have a generation or two of workers who were content to work on the production lines... many even took pride in their labour, going home each day knowing that there was something solid to show for their exertion. Many even prided themselves on their dexterity and skill sets, along with a sense of purpose in financially providing for their families.

Now I am not speaking gender here... just what appears to me a middle-class devaluing of unskilled trades which drove our economic policies (and most other Western nations in the eighties, nineties and now).

Many female workers were exploited on factory floors and in machine shops but the Unions gave them a voice. We obtained (in theory) equal pay and maternity leave provisions, sick leave, hilday leave and the 38 hour week through the collective actions of bothe women and men unionists standing side by side to obtain a better work-life balance.

At the beginning of the C21st we have an emasculated Union movement and an exploited and fearful labourforce, with unskilled laborers confined to casualised and lowly paid service sector jobs. No-one works 38 hours as full-time employment these days... not even the boureoisie, many of whom are at their desks until well after 6pm at night, just to ensure they are perceived as taking their employment responsibilities seriously.

And what of those in our community whose parents cannot sustain employment for whatever reason.... housing instability due to suburban gentrification, negative gearing and escalating rental prices, reliance on poor public transport infrastructure or choices between affording and running a car and housing costs close to work opportunities?

When do the YUPPIES and DINKS recognise that not everybody has the same choices?

Just this week I attended a Magistrates Court and yet again the unequality is there in full view. The disenfranchised appear with monotonous regularity, their lives seemingly 'medicated' by booze and drugs. Next the downward spiral of legal costs, court hearings, records, bail, probation, criminal records, decreased employment opportunities whilst participating in Court Mandated 'mutual obligations' or ' community services' which in turn imapct negatively on Centrelink work diaries and 'preparedness for work'. Catch 22. Lack of employment due to track record.

Add in poor or little education, severe learning disabilities, mental illness, drug addiction and domestic violence and sexual abuse and then tell me that these people are 'underserving victims' of our society.

Today I have had a phone conversation with an acquaintance who is a single mother of two beautiful little girls. She is trying to study part-time to gain better employment opportunities whilst using the amount of child care she can afford on her Centrelink payment whilst paying private rental and trying to keep her car on the road. She is a single mother as a result of living in an abusive relationship (where the girls' father abused alcohol and drugs). He also threatened her many times with a registered fire arm kept in the house... as the gun must be kept at the house of the license holder (suburbia) even when it is deemed necessary for shooting feral animals and vermin on his family's farm some two hours drive away.

Yep, that's a safe home in this circumstance isn't it?

This man had his gun license suspended whilst having an alcohol interlock device fitted to his car... but now that his family have left him through fear, the Courts have deemed it safe to return his gun license! He has threatened his ex-wife's life with the bloody thing. She has an intervention order which he willfully ignores and the local police (who are frantically busy) ignore repeated calls to address his intervention breaches... as he is usually gone by the time they get there and there is no evidence! So no police action, no paperwork trail, no evidence for Court... only a woman in fear of her life and waiting for him to murder both herself and their daughters.

Is this a class issue? He also has no employment because if he holds a job he would have to pay maintenance. On welfare he doesn't have to... and he can keep paying his mortgage by living with another working single mother and her children, whilst he receives Centrelink benefits. No proof as they keep a separate bedroon for his new 'housemate' who as a sole parent couldn't afford to live in a house near her employment otherwise. It also allows her children stability of schooling to stay in the area.

Choices?

Options?

As if!

Then let's look at another acquaintances twenty-one year old daughter. Left school at Year 9 because she is functionally illiterate and very disruptive. Like many young women her focus is on gaining a boyfriend, who just might be Prince Charming and bring with him the possibility of a home and family. She studies at TAFE, gets a low level qualifiaction in a service Industry and works very long hours for very little pay. From her perspective her friends (unemployed and students) are having a much better time socialising each weekend whilst she is salving away in a kitchen.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realise that she will be tempted away from her employment which is not stable anyway to go back on welfare and party with her friends... after all that's where a Prince Charming might emerge. Sometimes it happens. She has friends who have met and coupled with young male apprentice tradespeople who have a solid future ahead. That's what she longs for... but again alcohol and binge drinking are part of the environs. Very soon she fails her 'job readiness' test through breaches due to hang overs and day-time sleeping in. Then the job offers are worse. More casual, reliant on non-standard working hours (meaning need for own transport). She can only afford an unreliable car which does not allow for a solid work attendance and major financial burdons to keep the thing going.

Inevitably, this young woman perceives pregnancy as a 'career option'. She wants a family and sees that being home with children might be the answer. The government pension looks good through her eyes, as she has never tried to provide a home for her family on such a sum, and the baby bonus does appear generous. Ah but where does she and her baby live? Her mother has re-partnered and lives in her step-father's home with his family. Her boyfriend is drinking, gambling and totally unreliable. She begins to fear his outbursts and rage. There is a ten year waiting list at the Ministry for Housing in this area and even longer further away from Melbourne.

Are we as a society not culpable in this situation also? How can we have an education system that allows 14 and 15 year olds to finish and enter a competitive labourmarket with no skills and no functional literacy? Would this have happened if her parents had paid for a Private Education? I think not... or if she was functionally illiterate, her family could have at least supported her through levels of TAFE studies until she was employable and skilled... by paying the fees.

I despair, when I am constantly told that my outlook on life is 'outmoded'. Is this not examples of class in all these scenarios? Working-poor, Howard's battlers... call them what you will, but I say they are the new Australian underclass. Whilst our society is so unequal in opportunity the issue of class will continue to underpin my writing... and to deny the importance of class demonstrates to me the degree of disconnect between the lived experiences of the educated boureoisie and the rest of us.

Only connect, that's all I ask of my peers.

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

2010-07-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

What Can I Say?
The Press has said it all. It was so great to run into an-ex theatrical mentor the other night outside The Maj. I should have known it being a Cam Mac production you would be in town Robbo, but since being away from the ABC mic I am out of touch. You were correct dear man, I did adore the production despite the cycnic in me thinking it would be just for families with kids.

The cycnic arrived looking at the House Full signs and seeing the usually under-dressed theatre goers and I caught myself wishing for the days when the glitter and glamour crossed the footlights into the stalls also. By house lights down I was ready to kill 50% of audience. If there was one more flash bulb go off or mobile phone camera snapping the scrim with logo... I would have screamed! Why do these people NOT READ the large signs above the door... and who the bloody hell are they to think that it applies to EVERYONE OTHER THAN THEM!!

I'll bet they don't sit at home staking digital pics of the movie title screens on Foxtel (but I'll bet they are downloading illegal copies on their pcs). So much for the recognition that the live arts are special and performers, producers and technical crews should have their IP honoured!

Don't even get me started on that one....

Thank you anyway dearest Michael Tyack for finally raising the Baton after the interminable wait for the Grand Circle. When the show began I felt that it really was all a bit 1960s in staging but I soon got over those reservations and realised that with so many scenes the good old revolving house and trucks would be the easiest techniques to use. So whereas the design was practical and functional at first, the cast was STELLAR.

How easy it is to have horrid little stage darlings when children play leads but these kids were great. Well directed, sang and danced proficiently and were right into character (no sugray sweetness there, nore over-the-top Von Trapp nastiness!).

Verity Hunt-Ballard proves again that WAAPA is this Country'e Julliard for the Music Theatre. Her voice pure and pitch perfect. She is also beautiful on stage but to my surprise I was blown away by (and still am) Matt Lee.

All I know is that he is a judge on Australia's Got Talent. Do not watch it, do not read about it or him... so I missed his credentials until I got home and read the program. Dein Perry's Tap Dogs, worked with David Atkins, was in Bootmen etc etc. This guy is the goods as a dancer but WAIT THERE'S MORE. HE HAS THE WHOLE SET OF STEAK KNIVES!

The Dick Van Dyck performance as Bert is embarassingly bad in comparison. This boy can sign and act... and his dancing. Well for those of us who adored Wayne Scott Kermond in Singing in the Rain and a young bloke called Todd McKenny in Song and Dance... well this guy is just soooo strong... tapping upside down on the proscenium arch... you gotta be kidding!

And as for the appaling flying in Witches of Eastwick... forget it. The freed Lark is a very special moment as is the kite flying. I will not even compare the chandelier from Phantom to Poppin's exit... OMG technology has come so far in so few years. As expected the audience began screaming in delight... and rightly so.

Directorially the production ticked all the boxes. Every nuance was received by the audience as it was designed, illiciting the applause, ovations and general excitement only a live audience can add.

Choreographically, how could I have expected any less than perfection when someone like Mathew Bourne has his head... Supacalifragilisticexpialicious.... particularly in that ensemble work, and the very special Step in Time.

The traditional ballet form used for the staues in the Park was at once a throw back to earlier music theatre and very apt for a modern staging also.

I loved seeing the magnificent Phillip Quast on a Melbourne stage and am grateful that both he and Marina Prior have been given new songs... but they are a tad less than spectacular... and in each instance function to add to the book. Oh well, not everybody can have show stoppers can they Judi Connelli?

My fondest memories of many of these leads are not in the big name productions that the Publicists and Marketing people are highlighting in the program bios. Whilst Phil's Javert is one of the greatest stage performances of all times, my particular favourite is on the Comedy stage as Candide... and Judi Connelli... not the Opera stages of the State Theatre as Katisha but in her cabaret shows, particularly Pack of Women.

As for Marina... her Cosette is perhaps her best (original Sydney season)... and what a production that was. (She was also magnificent and definitive as Christine opposite Anthony Warlow in Phantom). I am still thrilled that I was privileged enough to see the Sydney opening night of Les Mis.... I can never thank you enough Mark Gogol!

Debra Byrne... how to describe her Fantine alongside Normie Rowe's Valjean... amazing. And her performance as Grizabella was worth sitting through the whole production of Cats to witness... as you can guess I am not a huge fan.

This brings me to the point of this blog. There are very special moments of magic for creative artists. Debra Byrne wove such a moment last Friday night. Her Feed the Birds was just perfect... and that is something I have never said as a professional reviewer ... not ever. My dear friend, and many regular theatre-goers always have a go at performers who they perceive to be tall poppies. One such comment on Friday was "at least I hope she does all the shows this time".... well I am sorry I do not think that matters... what makes Debbie the magnificent performer is her fragility. Whilst we can all stand and admire the technicians and leading ladies such as Marina... it is the destructive divas that make the theatre what it is.

We thrill to watch the Debra Byrnes of this world perform. It is like holding our breath as a titerope walker traverses the wire. We know they are trained and have the skill to do it... but it is the fear they might just fall that brings the frisom of excitement and expectation.

That is my response to the performances of Debra Bryne. She commands the stage and holds the audience spellbound, breathing only as she does, and listening so intently. We live the moment with her. This she did again on Friday night... held the Maj audience silent whilst she communicated the pathos. What a star turn. I am privileged to have seen her... again.

These are the things that made Poppins special. Yes there is all the Cam Mac glitz and extravagance but it is the special ensemble moments and great performances that lift a musical to its highest art form. This is what this Aussie Poppins offers Melbournians. Maybe this was not there in the Broadway production... a respected friend of mine told me he was a tad underwhelmed... I doubt he would say the same of this one. (Do you JMH?)

Lastly, in case anyone reads this who knows him... give my love to Jack Webster. Still treading the boards... and tapping!! How long now Jack... over 30 years I would have thought between gigs at the Maj?You too are inspirational... and to think... dear old Peter Casey is with the Production Company too.... where are the other ex-Ireners? Many would be working I'll bet.

Thank you Betty Pounder for this training and legacy... and thank you Robbo. Long may you reign at CAM MAC Australia!

Spring Awakening

2010-07-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

It is so great to drive across the Mornington Peninsula countryside. Everywhere one looks the grassland is emerald green and glistening with dew. It is so tranquil and pleasant. The air is clean and crisp on my face. I adore looking through the morning fog to the rising sun casting a pink hue behind the low level moisture. Behind me over the Southern tip of the land the full moon is setting and stars are slowly fading from view. It is only 6.30am but the day is beginning down here. There are cars on the road headlights switched on, beginning the commute to work. Those City dwellers are not as privileged as I am living down here. Everywhere I look I see beauty. The sea is a greyed hue as the sky begins to show hints of the blue to come later in the morning. The car radio blares the Melbourne morning train cancellations and the car crashes on the freeways and main arterial roads to the City. I listen waiting to hear of the occasionally necessary diversion to my usual route to Lilydale. Eastlink is rarely a disappointment, "25 minutes in each direction" is the report. Pity that Frankston is 45 minutes away from the Toll Road but I really wouldn't swap this beauty for the traffic hell that is the 40 minute trip from Ringwood to Lilydale out the annoying Maroondah Highway. What about this Road is a highway.... complete with traffic lights , suburban street turn offs and pedestrian crossings every 200 metres?

It is horrid. Who are all these people living out here? Where are they going to? Where do they work? They can't all work in schools and shops in the outer East surely? And why don't kids ride bikes or catch buses to school these days? I really hate all the four-wheel drives ferrying dear little ones to and from schools. I always become distressed as I reflect on the seeming shallowness of suburban life... I want to sing "Is that all there is?".

Do these people know passion?

I get to work and the same theme repeats in my head all day long. The women and men talking about and living through their children's lives.The sheer repetition of working then heading 'home' to the domestic drudge. A night out is often at the 'local pub'... OMG... how can they consider this overpriced badly cooked counter meals and mass-produced mediocre wines, a night out?

Passion... where is it? Not for the food (on either side... patron or cooks), not for the wines... it is alcohol pure and simple... not a product of a skilled craftsperson or artisan. The Pub itself, reaking of stale beer, decorated with thread-bare carpet, poor colour schemes and horrid garish Poker Machines commanding the robots at their stools pouring coins and notes in as impelled by the jangly tinny muzac and flashing lights. Think Roy Orbison... "Step Up and Play the Machines Seem to Say"... but this has no romance of the old Penny Arcades. This is commerce and revenue generation at its purest and stripped back. How is this an enjoyable or pleasant experience?

Turn off your cynicism, turn off your brain, become a zombie... react to the lights... swig on the bad wine and then drive home spouting what a great night out was had. Please if this is my future, let me die now. Where is the beauty? Not here. Not for me.

Get me back to my bay and mountains, the wattle and daffodils, the fog and mists, foghorns of the pilot boats and the waking birdsong.

Why am I doing this to myself? What do I actually want from life? Is the PhD it? Is the outer suburban University a place I want to be? Are these staff members the people I want in my life in five or ten years time? My fear is that the answer to all these questions is a big fat "NO"...

So what now CAC?

Would changing or pulling out be self-sabotage?

Or would it be salvation?

Does MY LIFE have to be so hard?

2010-07-24T16:16:00.000-07:00

What is it about me?

I know I suffer BMD but that can't be the ONLY reason my daily existence is such an emotional roller coaster. I seem to care TOO MUCH about everything ALL THE TIME.

Just let's examine my movement on the moo- scales over the past 48 hours. It would look visually, like a heart monitor screen whilst the heart is undergoing shocks from defibrillation! Up, down, massive ups, massive plummets and then dead straight.... before beginning the patterns again.

Why?

I was very happy with getting down to the business of writing my Exegesis finally. I have stopped procrastinating and am no longer going back to the safety net of 're-reading articles or book chapters'. I have closed the books and am getting out of my head everything that has stuck in the deep recesses of my brain over the last forty months. The Dr Rowena Wallace method of focused writing seems to be just what I need at this moment.

It seems productive and a step in the right direction; forward for a change. I feel that I have actually worked (intellectually) over this period and despite the obvious structural and stylistic omissions at this stage in the draft it is a reasonably strong base to work on in the coming days.

I have also been jotting journal notes on plot additions and deletions for my artefact and am really looking forward to giving this 100% of my attention in the next few weeks.

BUT.... (here comes the but...)

Everytime I begin to feel under control and even healthy... some voice from somewhere (outside my head) comes along to destabilise me.

My supervisor implied last Thursday that when I sat a seat apart from her on the couch I was trying to avoid her. Wrong!

I'm the bloody one who flew home from my holiday in Sydney just to catch up for a meeting about how stuck I actually was. She was the one too busy to fit me into her busy schedule... after all she needed to leave at a certain hour to ensure she could meet her family/mothering responsibilities. What about mine? Let alone the issue of how much I spent to fly down and return back again to Sydney! My money of course, never University funds.

She also had a go at me for wanting to attend an annual Conference where most of my networking occurs and where I just might have a hope of getting some respect from a future employer. This University Which Shall Not be Named...(my alma mater) will not touch me with a proverbial barge pole now that I have seen the insecurities and hidden agendas at play, keeping it disfunctional (at least at my home Campus).

My future at age 54 hangs on this stuff.

I am not privileged enough to have had a husband and supportive family to ensure that I did not need twenty years out of my academic career and subsistence on Welfare.

These were not bad choices or things I regret... just how the cards fell.

I am only pissed off NOW when people refuse to understand or empathise and put their own emotional and career needs first AT MY EXPENSE.

Hence I am angry and this takes so much energy.

I pay a heavy price for this anger. I turn the emotion inside as I cannot vent (apart from here days later), and I end up crying and self-sabotaging my academic (and health) progress.

Need to regain balance and stability... again.

To take my mind off things, I decide that I need to think of someone other than myself to gain some perspective.

So in a very positive frame of mind I take myself off to important academic "Show Cause" (for continuning to be enrolled in a Course of study) Hearings as the Student Consultative Network representative at a different Campus in a different Discipline... see how protective of myself I can actually be?

This was a great learning experience and opportunity to read character... that of the fellow academic panel members and the students presenting.

Without breaching any confidences or professional ethics let's just say that when faced with cultural pressures unknown to us Aussie-born students: wars, political instability in homelands, extreme poverty, employment victimisation, workplace inflexibility, illness and homeless insecurity... my little issues seem like proverbial mole hills.

It was a humbling experience. And a timely one wit a reminder that I need to re-focus and regroup emotionally.

Next, I have to reach out for some beauty somewhere; this time around the leafy Acland Street and bright shiny wet streets of St Kilda and her wintry sea.

Then, up again to normal scale... move on and write again. Good stuff....

Only to be brought crashing down again by a 'friend'/co-scholar. A return of a missed phone call sees me being asked to 'fix' some computer program issues THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE ARISEN if this bloody person had listened in the training classes or re-read the notes. Nor would it be my problem if he had run the expert trainer herself PRIOR TO NOW....

...Why would anyone at this stage of a PhD completion have moved the main document several times, onto several machines and hard drives... I can understand having backups ... but changing the machine that holds the ACTUAL document and attached library files... geee how dumb?

The complete lack of understanding of I.T. by MOST academics is staggering. Why do they assume any computer or program can fix EBEKAC? (error between keyboard and chair!)

Jesus... how is this a problem needing MY TIME or energy?

Our scheduled meeting had been about agreeing on a final draft of a journal article (co-written, then re-written by me to meet referees concerns... which academically were quite startling in their response.... a complete lack of research rigour on the part of my co-author stating blatant factual errors)... not a joint let's problem solve YOUR PhD issues session. This self-centeredness is staggering... and INSULTING to me! This from the PhD candidate of the Year!!!

Now this colleague needs to be sure his second journal article flows and doesn't regurgitate this joint paper. (I too have a paper for final submission also).... yet the next scheduled meeting is to FIX COMPUTER PROGRAM ISSUES.... I think not!

And to fix his citation issues when these could be researched on our own library website or in the Australian Government Publication Stytle Guide 2010.... why me? I guess I am easier to blame when things go wrong than to actually do the blooody work oneself. NO WAY JOSE. Been there had that just last September/October with same individual, and hospitalised again in February by same issues with a trusted superior/employer and male PhD scholar...

Patterns repeating. Can I be strong and do/say what I must?

I am feeling used and abused again... Remember friendly fire?

So again what was to be a really productive writing day has dissintegrated over night with me getting angry, then keeping it inside, then lashing out on the keyboard again. So much for actual academic writing progress... I need to vent again.

This 'dear' scholar also inferred that I am responsible for my supervisors extreme stress and anger at 'my' lack of progress!!! How dare he. And if that is actually what she thinks... how dare she? Her stress is not my issue, nor should it be... that's what her job is and why she is paid at that level... deal with it. I am trying to deal with my stress at $11.80 or whatever an hour... and I am managing to inch forward and stay well.

GRRRRR angry again....or rather, still.

Just when my world seems about to totter right down towards hospitalisation yesterday, my 21 year old son decides to watch a bad movie on the TV with me last night. I can't say "No, too busy", as this request doesn't happen often and has actually been years in coming.

I am so glad I put the bloody PhD on hold for this. We have had an amazingly tough last ten years. He has had to deal with so much trauma, stress and crises for someone his age that I am proud of him actually having survived it.

He decided last night to finally reconnect with me, as a parent and trusted friend.

We were able to re-trace all our emotional injuries to each other and share the innermost fears and insecurities (both of us). The years of fights, assaults, deaths, illnesses, drug use, car crashes, legal problems, financial crises, gangs and guns are finally all out in the metaphorical cold hard light of day.

The pain is not gone but it can be dealt with at last.

My son confessed to not a day going by without some 'nightmare' haunting him for a moment or two or preventing him from sleeping. He understandably has emotionally disconnected (superfically) just to get through at present.

Who can blame him? I now understand where he is at... finally.

I would be in the same place myself.. and probably a worse place were I his age. I am so proud of this young man. He has had to grow up so hard and so fast.

For the first time in years I KNOW he will survive and I can begin to relax. I am so overcome with relief that this also needs capturing on paper/screen.

Now I can move on and roll the dice again for myself. This has been a major movement in my stability.

When people read this, perhaps they can see how my PhD may be the most visibly important thing in my life but really there has always been more important domestic issues that have sapped so much energy, emotional strength and will to succeed on my part.

I am proud of where I am now... for the first time in years.

And F.... anybody else's expectations.

I am going to stay well, keep a strong relationship with my son and finish what I have started in my own time... so everyone else can just deal with that.

Sorry guys... my turn.

The tears are flowing now.. but they are tears of release.

The Elephant in the Room

2010-07-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

Had a wonderful evening at Theatreworks in St Kilda last night. I needed a social night! A colleague's husband, Bill starred in the play An Elephant in the Room. It is a good small piece, but surprisingly not a two hander as I had expected from the reviews. The two leads needed the support of the multi-role players to convey the plot and interpersonal relations which become the focus of the plot. I enjoyed seeing younger unrecognised (by me) actors on the stage. It is always heartening to see how many very talented professionals the Melbourne scene nurtures. What does dismay me, however, is that the big commercial companies seem to have a blind spot for using only a 'select' group of mature actors, therby excluding talent such as US trained Bill.

This is perhaps the actual metaphorical 'elephant' that is in my life at present, the inability of sheer, talent, guts and determination is not enough for mature workers. Despite continued rhetoric of skills shortages, elongated working lives, need for recognition of mature workers knowledges and experiences... and in the Academy a hysteria with respect to under-supply of qulaified staff, it remains networking and nepotism that ensures a painless transition into the workplace at an older age. I would hasten to add that the very nature of our workplace experience is a factor actually mobilised systemically to disciminate against our employment. Despite the EO legislation there is no way to ensure that systemic and attitudinal discrimination is not the determining factor of employability.

Why are there so many overseas-born, Australian trained newly qualified Doctors (PhDs) employed at our Universities? Is it that with youth comes an ignorance of reasonable workplace demands? Is it the awareness that passion, coupled with the fear (of the newly settled employee) that any requirement and expectation from the employer is unquestioningly complied with?

Is it the very work-life balance that mature workers seek which is the 'elephant' standing in the way of employment? Can knowledge and experience ever be valued equally with willingness to be exploited?

What is going on here. On the one hand we have a Federal governent investing heavily in local- based PhD candidates, then not ensuring the employers are 'encouraged' to utilise the human capital and investment of the previous three-four years? This is a call for positive discrimination in the direction of

a) older workers, to ease the social security burdon on the State in years to come as the boomer generation is disproportionatley represented in the 'retired' workforce.

b) Australian-trained PhDers into tagged early career positions tied to the University who received the benefits of the federal funds to train these post-graduates.

c) recognition that older women's academic careers have often been delayed/interrupted by child-rearing, or family carer duties more often than their male colleagues. Queensland Unis seem to be the only Instiututions that recognise this form of systemic discrimination by tagging Post DOC fellowships and Academic positions... what's wrong with Victorian Institutions?

d) Finally, an overseas-based fellowship targetted to these Aussie PhDers so we can take advantage of the of the globalised higher education industry.

So, the 'elephant in my room'... why beat myself up to finish the doctorate in a timely completion schedule when there is ZERO encouragement to pursue and academic career, after so many years of study, personal commitment and private debt? How can younger women and men (academics) from two-income families with extended family support networks ever be able to empathise with those of us from the lower socio-economic groups (usually due to carer responsibilities and isolation) ? How can the establishment ever recognise how the accepted practices are actually gatekeping mechanisms to maintain privilege and power.

Winter Solstice

2010-07-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

I found this fabulous graphic on Witchy Wisdom webpage. I wish I could 'not speak' through winter, and just think, reflect and regenerate. However, for those of you who know me if my verbal torrents ever do cease, then is the time to worry. My mind is never still and it is as if all those thoughts just have to burst forth into the cosmos. Not that they are earth shattering or anything, it is just that there are too many ideas to contain in my head.

After my dear friend's performance last Sunday, I allowed myself to actually stop.. but as is always the case after being on the move so much, I succumbed to a niggling head cold, I am assuming I collected courtesy of delightful fellow Virgin Blue travellers and the recycled airsystems on planes. It happens nearly every time I fly (well at least in Winter).

Stay home I hear you say. Hibernate, rug up and enjoy the peace of winter. I would if I could guarantee avoidance of SADS (seasonal adjustment disorder). Yep, you got it, I am one of those lucky few who were in the same mental health line when the divine being gave out this disorder also.

Not bad, huh... I am becoming and ACRONYM... I hear you laughing K & S.... "typical".

So I am BMDSADS afflicted or is that blessed? I guess it all depends on how my brain chemistry is settling.

At my wonderful unnamed University yesterday I catered for Xmas in July as a social event for the other Postgrads. It was a fun night with a sit down dinner for 14. Really, I am glad there were no more as I was literally run off my feet. Ever tried to cook vegetables on the third floor of one building (whilst bread rolls crisping in separate compartment), steamed vegetables and gravies on the second floor in a microwave, roast lamb in one oven keeping warm (opposite end of thrird floor) and in a completely separate building (ground floor), a roast turkey and roast pork keeping warm. Add to this plum pudding ice-cream in the third floor freezer (same end as roast lamb), then arrange and serve hot soups (one from that same third floor stove top) the other for the vegetarians in the microwave (second floor).

Add to this dips, chips and bickies, wheat-based and gluten free, cakes and mince tarts (wheat and gluten free) and vegetarian option for dessert. Add to this the ususla predilections for alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages.

I am still exhausted today. One friend, S said just think of all the excercise I was getting... but I defy even the fittest normal sized person to do all those stairs (plus getting the stuff there, claened up and packed away, room decorated etc) whilst still carrying an extra 35 - 40 kilos in body weight. (Well that's according to my idea of goal weight). It is exhausting. Like an Olympic marathon.

No-one can know what it is like without ever having been obese... not that pesky little 10ks you need to shift before summer but those pesky 90kg to shift before death!

Add to this that at every social event of this nature there is an accidental smuggness on the part of the marrieds. They know they have someone to go home to and have these occasions regularly with extended family.

I usually spend Christmas Day alone (a hospitality Industry widow). It is nice to have a lie in and watch crap DVDs over one or more bottles of sparkling... but just occasionally I get the twitch for the seemingly 'greener' grass on the other side of the fence.

It is also interesting when a person queries your morality... and you need to step back and look at things from another angle. I pride myslef on being a feminist, yet when questioned about whether or not one should sustain/partake in an affair with a married man, I am decidedly hypocritical. the received wisdom went something like this... what about the sisterhood? What about his wife?

I would like to know just when the sisterhood ever put the needs of another woman over the needs of an individual member? Some of my worst colleagues in the workplace have been self-proclaimed feminists.

I also argue that the nuclear family is a convenient patriarchal model of control exerted over women, much to the benefit of men and detriment of women. despite the fairytale happy-ever after imagery, it is simply a structure which allows men to feel confident of the DNA of their offspring by having a 'captive wife/breeder'. She of course has no such reassurance that hubby is not randomly 'sowing his seed' elsewhere, as primitive mankind is designed to do... after all why so many sperm if that is not the case?

As the mother of a son who I would not have, had it not been for an affair I cannot regret my decisions. Nor should I feel I need to justify them, yet here I am attempting to do so.

The old joke (of mine) goes something like this. At my age, the only single men are gay or living at home with Mother issues. If they are divorced (one or more times) I can guarantee the problem was on the side of the bloke. If they are married they are probably the genetically superior of the species. And if they are out to play... then seriously if the wife is that unaware the marriage is not on the strongest ground in the first place. Also who's to say that there isn't an open relationship at work? Without the freaky couples' sex play, how can anyone know what happens behind suburban fences.

Just how many marriages are marriages in name only. Convenience economically, easier on the kids, easier than starting again, easier than braving the world alone. What ever gets you through the night is what I say, and I'll be damned if I will buy into that all older single women are cougars, predators or whores. Nor are we Nuns either!

All of this is so uppermost in my mind. After recently spending time with a friend in Sydney, we passed the time doing the 'writer-thing' and spent the day couple-watching. It was a revelation, just how much one could tell about the two concerned. She, possessive and insecure constantly playing out ownership marking rituals, the tidying of fluff from the jacket, for him the hand lightly placed on the small of her back when another male approached. I could go on for hours. My journal is bulging with such observances.

Then let's add today... I actually had breakfast at a hotel restaurant. I wanted some good nourishment (all 250mls of it). Every table bar one (and mine) was a couple.

NONE spoke to each other. The men read the papers, the women ate in silence. Perhaps the silences were comfortable... but there were no shared smiles or eyes connecting furtively, and after all this is a tourist resort and 'holiday' destination.

Of my God... spare me this slow death by apathy... but spare me my last years flying totally solo also.

Sydney biennale and laying to rest the past.

2010-07-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

Today has been a wonderful day, filled with sadness and extreme happiness. The day began with a sweet/sour goodbye to my dear friend N in Sydney as i boarded a plane to make it back to another dear friend's big day. My friend Kerry was to perform her one -woman show at a local theatre in front of selected guests and a camera crew from the ABC's Australian story. For Kerry, a great stand-up but no trained actor this was a major event, despite it being somefour months prior to her scheduled opening at a Melbourne Fringe venue. To have a film crew in the audience was something a seasoned pro would find daunting, especially given the script was still in workshop stage.

I am proud to say she nailed it. The material is so strong. Everyone is caught up in the moment; a friend doing the extraordinary. I am proud of her, just conquering the nerves and having the strength to face her demons publicly, especially considering her nearest and dearest were hearing events from her perspective for the very first time. Emotionally this was a momentous occasion for Kerry, her daughters and her ex-husband. There were tears shed in the auditorium as complete strangers were given a privileged insight into the Victorian justice system.

Even Kerry and her director, underestimate the potential power of this piece. As my friends know only too well, the acting teacher/director/performer and professional theatre reviewer still cannot sit inside a theatre auditorium and shut down the critics voice. Yet, today I became the dramaturg... another role I am comfortable in. However, this was not the role expected of me. I was to be the friend, caterer and general support crew.

I just find this impossible to do. I cannot switch off the producer/marketing head space. I know Kerry is sitting on a hit. Big time! It could do a national run easily.
But how do you speak to people so invested in a project? My dear friend asked my opinion as everyone (and that is literally everyone... oh yes except one regular theatre goer) gave Kerry such glowing feed back. We were all caught up in the emotion and success of the achievement.

Stupid me. I managed to avoid giving feedback at the venue when I discovered her director had very set opinions about the style the piece should take. In one sense she is correct, especially if Kerry is the 'talent'. However, I know this is bigger than that and needs a professional hand guiding the tiller. How can you discuss a project objectively when everybody ibvolved is too invested (and amateur).

Later when all the 'normal' people, the non-theatre people had returned home to their comfy suburban existence, Kerry and I sat together toasting a successful event.

I state again here that I am so proud of her accomplishement.

But then I made the mistake of being honest when she asked for my input. I was very cautious, trying to explain my point of view, but the moment I even hinted that the piece needed a dramaturg and professional actor.... well I lost my friend. The whole ownership issue and creative products is a fraught issue. Only the most successful palywrights (like Joanne Murray-Smith) know that for the piece to 'fly' the mother has to let go.

Only then in workshop can the writer see just what a gem she has created. How many great works falter at this first hurdle because writers/performers think that they alone can make the work 'fly'. I would say this is true at every level of the Industry, from Melbourne fringe to Hollywood blockbusters.

I guess this is why I no longer work as a theatre critic. I have made too many enemies by trying to be faithful to the potential of the work rather than the individuals involved.

I learned many years ago that no matter how good I thought I was, there was always someone better than me.... even with my own stories. I have learned the skill of letting go. It is painful but a necessary severing for the art to happen.

I want this piece to make its presence felt nationally, but I do not want my friend hurt or feeling inadequate. I am so conflicted. It really is none of my business... but basically I am still the woman prepared to mortgage her house to option a script, as I did in the eighties. I was defeated then... (Neil Armfield did the film, and unsuccessfully in box-office terms) but am too timid to take on the heartache again.

I guess I value my friendship with Kerry more... does that mean I am finally growing up?

Sydney great for diets...

2010-07-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

And I thought that Melbourne was unique with its Chocalholic walking tours! Sydney sets up quite a challenge by promoting it's 'chocolate bars'... that is cafes specialising in chocolates and chocolate beverages. Of course there is Max Brenner (one of my Melb faves), but they also offer a Guylian 'bar' in the Rocks and a Lindt 'bar' at Darling Harbour. What a pity that lap banding suits gooey melted hot chocolate drinks!

I would also like to visit that shop that was on Masterchef last week with the Belgian chocolates and expert chocolatier but my dear son didn't catch the guys name and I haven't googled Masterchef... I know I can and I probably will before I fly home for Tuesday!

(No nasty comments Melburnians but I am seriously toying with the idea of flying back on Thursday after supervision through until Saturday. My justification. The ASAL AGM is on Friday! Well that's the best I can do, if the cheap $48 virgin fares aren't enough justifucation, and I have a place to stay so no accommodation costs... There I've put it in writing... I think it is now confirmed.)

The only comfort is that Sydney needs lots of pavement pounding to get anywhere, if you are trying to see the sights, feel the vibe and avoid the ubiquitous underground stations, which I definitely am keen to miss. What's the point of sitting down all day in Uni rooms if I can't muster up enough energy to get out and about in the down times? As I have learned over the years I cannot absorb six or more papers a day. This is particularly true now when my entire waking consciousness is concerned with opening up my laptop and pounding out 30,000 words for my supervisor this week.

Yet, I am also aware of how perilously close I came to hospitalisation again days ago. I refuse to let stress drie me into feelings of worthlessness and clinical depression. I am here to enjoy living, even if that means the bloody PhD is delayed further. I want to be alive to rea the rewards, and they will come along... but just more slowly than the 'outsiders' want.

It is here I should thank my Sydney partner in crime, dearest N. Without you I would have forgotten that I am a person, a grown woman who can determine her own future no matter what happens at my Uni. I have a life to look forward to, an 'old' body being rediscovered and a sense that I do actually have intrinisc value as a human being.

Thus I can happily tuck in to the hot chocolate and champagne without guilt trips. How nice to be accepted by friends for what you are instead of judged by how you look. Why did I have to travel 800 ks to discover this? And why so late into the PhD journey?

So what does my Sunday's rebellion offer? The 17th Sydney biennale, of course. I have never been to Cockatoo Island, and have only glimpses sight of it from a ferry. So today with the sun peaking through for a warm day (17C... remember I am from Melbourne so this is mild winter weather), N and I have selected to brave the crowds and hope that the free entry doesn't bring Sydneysiders out in their thousands for the modern art installations. Of special interest to me is probably one that I am going to find discomforting, an Italian artist has literally hung a stuffed horse from the roof of one gallery. I am unsure what he is on about but will tell you after seeing Novacentro 'in the flesh', so to speak.

Speaking of artists penchant for hanging things from roofs, there is another artist who has dangling Ford motor vehicles from the roof, each pierced with some representations of light beams. And of course I want to see that warplane suspended as a crucifix... no explanation needed here.

Bring it on... and if the Island is too busy, the fall back plan is to go to the State Library to check out the winners from the world press photos for 2010, and then hopefully an evening performance of either Long Days Journey into Night, with William Hurt and Robyn Nevin, or god old Tony Warlow and Siggy Thornton in A Little Night Music. However, if these are sold out a trip to the fun Belvoir Street is on the table also.

Oh yeah, and I also have to do some writing today.

Modern lives

2010-07-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

It seems so easy to keep in touch these days with Facebook and email giving us the pretence of deep relationships and friendships. We know such minituae about our daily lives but this is no substitute for a good old face to face talk.

Why is it that our lives have become so busy, or so filled with appointments and commitments we find it near impossible to schedule quality time with friends? I am in Sydney and know it would be a great opportunity to catch up with absent friends over a nice meal at the Rocks or glass of bubbly in the Cross late at night, but it just seems that such a simple little social event cannot happen if it hasn't been entered into filofaxes, ipad or iphone calendars, or on the physical kitchen calender weeks in advance.

We are all now of a 'certain age' when our children should be independent but here we remain at their beck and call well into adulthood. And that's not counting the ones who are expecting the hands-on grandparenting and free child care!

Many of my women friends are struggling to work hard now that they are back on career track and that means not finishing work before 6pm at the earliest. Then for those with new or second partners, the push to ensure full emotional support seems to me a throw back to the 50s, when women would shower, change clothes and have dinner and slippers waiting for the 'husband' on his arrival home from work. Why do my professional female Sydneysider friends feel they have to do that as well as put in a 8+ hour day themselves? These second 'blokes' also seem to get quite possessive when confronted with a single female friend who knew their partner 'in the old days'.

What am I... the devil incarnate? Here to lure these (normally respectable and dutiful) females into sin and debauchery in 'sin city'? As if I would even know how, anymore. None of my theatrical friends are currently treading the boards so there can be none of those after show parties.

Also it isn't the 70s anymore... we have all slowed down!

It seems if I can subsitute a night on the town for a dinner during daylight/work hours my female friends feel more comfortable catching up.

Do I carry the 'singleton' disease or something?
Is this the related to the defect 'being welcome in a couple's home as long as I have a heterosexual male accompany me'?

Where at my age does the cultural script dictate husband predator? Too many jokes about beinga cougar one day... as if!
Sure I miss being in a committed realtionship, but hey if it is that constricting who would want it?

And I'm sorry to tell you my dearest girlfriends but it is also possible I don't find the love of your life to be Adonis in the flesh... Sorry they are never THAT Perfect Italiano cheese guy from the TV! Only then would you have to worry.

The other thing that seems to stick out in my mind, is that this was less of an issue 18 months (and 50kg) ago.

So dearest JG, I will catch up when you are performing somewhere (preferably in Melb) and DM we can arrange a proper scheduled luncheon. MK we can spend a nice weekend away when you decide this one wasn't quite Mr OK for now... I give you another six months... and a bottle of Cliquot on that one. I will be happy to pay up if I'm wrong (for a change).

Meanwhile keep the tacky email jokes flying and talk on FB real soon ya'll.

Happiness in Emerald City

2010-07-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

I could never live here but each time I set foot on Sydney soil I feel liberated and transported into a fantasy world. One should never blog drunk, but tonight I am breaking this rule. I am "merry" and high on the whole sensuality of this City. It may be grey and winter, and already I am sick of the smart arse comments about 'Melbourne weather' but Sydney has a special place in my heart. It is gauche, her people parochial to the extreme, but the City has a charm that delights both Aussies and overseas visitors alike.

Sydney is more than the picture postcard vistas, despite me using a shot from the harbour looking back over Bennelong Point. For me it is the MOMA shop, the Opera House playhouse theatre, The Warf and the STC, Belvoir Street and Company B, the Cross and her seedy in your face night life, and the quiet of the Tea Rooms in Darling Harbour. Add to this the intensity of the hawkers in Chinatown, the tackiness of Paddy's Market (pticularly its one tram), and the stately buildings fronting the Domain. Above all I love that the Unis are all so central (UTS, Sydney University and Uni of NSW). It feels like an intellectual capital city.

The hotel rooms is exactly the same as elsewhere, clean, neat unoffensive ultra-modrn lines, ubiquitous abstract art and 'tasteful' bathroom cosmetics and fluffy white towels. I think I was born for at least four star environments and room service.... this is my version of doing it on a budget. As one ages, a certain amount of comfort is necessary (heated pools, fitness and business centres and 24 hour room service). But I really hate the fact that now the bar fridge is computerised so there is no chance of guiltily devouring a chocolate bar as the munchies hit and replacing it with a Safeway special. How much do I crave that chocolate? I admit I would prefer Belgium to Cadbury's with palm oil, but there is something about that fridge with its temptation and feeling of transgression.

Ah transgression, that is the magic of being away from home. I am suddenly free. Free to do what I like, when I like and no explanations to anyone and NO GUILT. I am 'me' unencumbered and living for the moment.

The sensible me says I should attend all Conference sessions and take copious notes yet the practical me says that I am only here for the networking. It's not cheap but I think it is a good investment. Also Conferences bring out the liberated youth in all participants, away from all 'normal' constraints and responsibilities. You get to meet people at their most honest, raw and open. I adore these moments. I guess I live for these moments of liberation. How many Conferences can I justify each year? And how do I justify to myself my need to get in early and just experience being here, in the moment, before the actual dates of the talk-fest? Why do I have to? Why do I feel guilty?

This is exactly what I need to feel re-charged and motivated after a period of self-doubt and uncertaincy. Here I can be manic without people judging me and fearing for my well being. I can live my life in colour at last. I need this. I will return home ready to tackle the hard stuff. I will have been 'me' for a few days without fearing people's judgement or treading carefully because they fear that I am 'mad'. I can just be. I love being away from home.

The Yarra Valley in all her splendour

2010-06-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

The Yarra Valley in all her splendour. This is the Mercure resort and day spa at Balgownie Estate. I was lucky enough to spend two wonderful wellness days there a fortnight ago.

As you can see from my e-blog there has been a noticeable break in electronic posts since my last post 25th June. It is not that I haven't written anything. It is the exact opposite, I have written so much and all of it has been crap! I have focused on getting into the Exegesis (post last supervision) and it has been disasterous. I am still angry and unable to gather up my positive creative juices. I have written huge tracts of tirade in my book journal (the real hard copy one beside my bed). That at least has allowed me to offload my stress and manage some few half hours of restless tossing and turning which passes as sleep these days.

To fend off depression there is only one sure way...force myself into the sunshine and force myself to exercise. The exercise had to be aerobic and weight bearing, not just stretching and breathing (yoga) and not for relaxation (meditation and hypnotherapy). The exercise drives the body to produce adrenaline, which in turn boosts metabolic rate, and the result is general feeling of wellbeing. Couple this with the (literally) healing power of the suns rays, which contributes endorphins and balances seratonin and melatonin levels, and I am on the way to wellness. Given my mood states have been verging on -2 and paralyisis this last fortnight, it has demanded crucial wellness intervention.

Lucky for me my frequent flyer points (which I take as hotel stays) is offering an end of financial year bonus of 50% off and double points at Mercure hotels, hence the wonderful venue pictured.

Whilst I am having a whinge, though... I hate how more often than not I rearrange my life to fit in with social arrangements only to find that the others involves cancel. I know it is not a fault situation, things do come up, but when one is totally broke and budgets tightly for special occasions, it does feel like a smack in the face. With hotel bookings there are cancellation fees so it always hurts my pocket if I cancel my planned social activity. This one weekend it was not going to happen... my mental health demanded more inner strength from me.

Over a month ago a group of us had decided to attend the Yarra Valley's Shortest Lunch celebration of the winter solstice weekend. Progressively, over the lead up weeks one by one they cancelled. One due to finances (boy I hear you girl), another because husband was unwell, another a wedding, another more family commitments and one had a scheduled interstate trip that had not even been discussed in the rush of optimism whilst promising to attend. It was the wave of positive energy that convinced me to save for this little adventure in the first place. I remain glad I followed through with my plans.

This time I would do what I used to do.

Go on my own.

What propelled this decision was the fact that the wineries that were opening their doors for this event were many of the small family wineries who had been sponsors of my last Uni social evening. I felt obliged to attend in recognition of the difficult times they had survived after the bushfires of black saturday, and the general business and tourism decline which beset the valley over the past year or more. A successful event like this would be a morale booster for the whole region; vignerons, providores, musicians, hospitality staff, tour bus companies, basically everybody in the Valley would reap rewards. Even the CFA were set to benefit from $2 per tasting glass.

Saying that the Valley needed a huge success is a perfect summation. It definitely was and an event I am marking down on my calendar in RED INK annually. It was so much nicer than the Mornington Peninsula Pinot weekend. I'm unsure if that is because of the pretentioousness of some MP vignerons, or the often lacklustre blends produced yet still marketted at top commercial prices.

This event had the feeling of community that the MP winter weekend just can't get a handle on. I loved the shuttle buses to ensure non-drink driving, as did TAC breath analysers. (Well organised G... you are my designated driver next year, agreed?)

How to describe the day(s). I intended to ndo just one day, the Saturday. This was the day when the sun shone brightest and fought off every onslaught of ponderous grey clouds. I adored many of the musicians (this is when I felt lacking in companionship, where I could sit over a bottle, alongside the fires, just relaxing and listening). But then again if I had been with people I would have missed the opportunity to meet one guitarist who actually lives on the MP and plays Saturday nights at La Baracca Trattoria at T'Gallant winery in Red Hill, or the wonderful Barbara Jeffreys on her Celtic/Patagonian harp.

Yep, that's correct, both Patagonian and Celtic and much more easily transported than a traditional Baroque harp ( which she also owns and plays). This marvellous instrument sits only five feet high, and is single stringed, yet the melodious tone transported me back to the 'old country'. Her voice is a clear mezzo so well suited to the traditional Irish folk melodies. I met Barbara over lunch in the cellar at Graeme Millers Winery, and what an accoustic space. An old man requested Danny Boy and I can honestly say the moment she performed this 'tear-jerker' I was mesmerized. So much so, I bought her CD. That's the least creatives can do is support one another.

Barbara is a teacher on extended leave hoping that music can generate enough income to not return to the classroom. In between gigs in the Valley she is touring with the Ten Sopranos... (OMG... can you imagine ten divas and their egos, although she assures me the egotists have been weeded out). She is also a colleague of my co-PhDer Mark Carthew, and they both share a mentor in the ex-Swinburne University lecturer Barbara Van Ernst.

How wonderful to be a 'colony' of artists all living in such a picturesque place and able to know each other. That is exactly what I like about living in a smaller community, only where I live is small but has not 'arts-based' centre. There are artists, predominantly visual artists but unless one is in a couple and associated directly with the other artists, the society is not open to 'solos'. Like most small communities a single woman is often 'locked out', so I can only fantasize about being a part of such a cohort of creatives.

This sense of being 'partnerless' in a world of couples is what drives the popularity of chick lit novels, with the single career women socialising after work with a group of single companions. These city groups spend their recreation time together doing things just like the 'shortest lunch'.

What does this mean for my future choices? City-based where income is the determinant of social inclusivity? Or rural and isolated but where the beauty fills every sense and keeps me well? Is there no happy medium?

Much to ponder when I finally get back into writing my novel. What do women do in this situation? Is it any wonder so many remain married trapped within unhappy relationships, as the alternatives remain less attractive. How sad that our society tries to make the nuclear family the site of normalcy. So much grief, saddness, and loneliness hidden within a veneer of happy-family and secure-partnership?

The horror of the exegesis in the PhD

2010-06-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering why I have been silent for over a fortnight. (I have been jotting things in my physical journal but not onto the blog site).

It is that time of the PhD candidature. The last roll of the dice. The final write up before returning to the novel.

My latest supervision session was another twist in the plot of the scholarship narrative. All throgh my candidature I have assumed that I actually had a defined path, a clear way ahead.

There were of course moments when I have felt completely lost within the maze of pathways and data trails tand at other times I have found myself lost in the academic language of the 'big theorists' of the C20th. At times I have felt that writing the novel is problematic, both in practice and actual performance, for a novice fiction writer particularly in the realms ethics of storytelling and story ownership.

Then of course I have been lost in the structure. How do I use and control the data I have gathered? The reading notes, journal entries, personal reflections on the frustrations wrought by writing within an academy, the Conference presentations, mind maps and diagrams. How to pull it into a co-hesive whole? And how to merge the disparate voices and styles? Indeed do they have to merged into one, or can they all exist within the one piece of text? If so, how will this work? Add to this the tension, for one about to be tested, examined, put on display and found wanting.

A sense of stability and equilibrium is not often the dominant emotion within the three years or more.

These last two weeks have perfectly illustrated the worst swings between confidence and despair. Having pulled out all my academic and exgestical writing from the previous three and a half years I began to feel confident that the research data was virtually at my fingertips on my HDD. It seemed to me that from this 75,000 was the very kernel of the exgesis and I needed only to re-frame and construct the 30,000 word piece. With great care I referred back my 'safety net'. My supervisor had provided all candidates with her model for the construction of the exegesis. I have used this document since 2007 and all the key questions have been driving my reading. All my notes from the articles and texts have been chosen with a subconscious eye on these key questions.

Thus by laying these questions out as the 'bones' for the final draft, I began feeling at once relieved and energised; confident that I have the academic capacity to bring it all together.

Well that was great up until my last fateful PhD supervision meeting.... 10th June.

This date is now etched in blood red ink on my calendar. With one simple phone conversation suddenly everything was now chaos. My supervisor queried my central 'question', my thesis statement if you prefer the academic term. Logically all hypotheses and points drawn to answer my original question now seemed so far off track as to be totally useless.

There is also an issue of cross-cultural communication. My supervisor, although brilliant, writes with English as a second language. Forma academic writing presents no problems but informal colloquial speech becomes problematic with degrees of misunderstanding arising from subtleties of nuance. What she often intends as positive feedback is inevitably received as destructive. Even after ensuring that I write down her words verbatim, feed back the core concept as I am hearing it, and gaining what appears to be agreeance on shared meanings. As a validity test, I show my written notes to a trusted colleague and friend and am reassured that my interpretation of the actual words is correct.

This meant that I was way off track, and seemingly have been for a number of years. Two key academic terms were foregrounded in our discussion. Notions of mediation and mediatization of text. I suddenly felt 'at sea'. I needed to be sure that I understood these concepts and theories as obviously what I had believed I had been writing did not answer these challenges and concepts.

Next I felt that i was being pushed right back into my supervisor's core area of expertise, psychoanalyisis and postmodern literary theory.

How can I be needing to read again at this late stage?

How can it be a productive use of my time?

But above all, how can I have missed any central theorizing?

Just to compound my despair, I realised that she had in mind a core concern for the reader's 'safe space' for interacting with what she described as 'confronting' material in my novel!

Confronting? For the reader? Come on.... these are the same readers who watch real crime and Underbelly on free-to-air-TV and buy every Twilight instalment from KMart.

I was also under the impression (now misconception) that my research and practice was to investigate the development of a 'safe writing space', a place where the real life events and tragedies can be harnessed and reconceptualised as fictional plot decisions.

As an author writing about women with degrees of mental instability, who herself is similarly afflicted on a daily basis, I am using the writing practice as both therapy and research. I am in need of the 'safe space' not the reader.

Obviously the result of this supervision session was a toppling down the mood scale towards severe depression. I managed to stay afloat by becoming very angry.

Adrenaline was my saviour this time.

I was/am angry that my work is supposed to meet my supervisors perception of what is important in my research and practice and not what is important to me, the scholar and writer; the very energy that has driven me through the ups and downs of the candidature. It is my work. I want to own it... and that looks like I will need to defend this position in my formal submission. It is as if I am now faced with countering the dominant theorizing of the late C20th.

My instinct tells me that, a colleague and playwright from the UK, Mike Harris is correct when he states that in Europe, the theory debates have moved on from the "French Theorists". I am now seeking to find what exactly is this new thinking. I hate the term post-post-modernism (or even post-post-post) yet this is currently the discourse that suits my work. I want a to find a sort of neo-humanism, one that acknowledges that in storytelling at least, there are indeed 'meta-narratives' and 'universal truths' and that these are based upon a 'universal aesthetic' and 'core humanity with moral and ethical clarity', rather than post-modern uncertainties and truth claims.

How can I possibly argue this point sucessfully? Especially at this stage of the candidature with only two weeks to go?

I am still angry. At least this anger, has stopped my fall into the paws of the black dog. It will drive me on, even if I am throwing up, gnawing on finger nails, not sleeping and feeling strung out and despairing. I will conquer this task... and I will attempt to avoid the inevitable crisis point and hospitalisation.

I will not go there because of this one conversation. Read my cyncicism.... I am so pleased she has had a pleasant an generative holiday in Paris over these last days. I definitely have not.

A light shining on mental illness - mine

2010-06-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

I guess after the blog about the man and dog, many of you are saying "yep, she is crazy". Too emotional a reaction to such everyday experiences.

Others will be saying, "Oh no the whole yoga thing and suddenly she's turning to Buddhism!"

It is neither. It is part of MY Bipolarity. I react strongly to everything both light and dark, but the dark is the one I must be careful of. I feel intensely connected to the entire world. I cry easily over disasters. I empathise and despair in equal quantities when reading about or seeing the human condition in all its misery. I feel it personally. It is as if I am caught in an emotional tractor-beam between 'out there' and 'inside me'.

So perhaps this is the very definition of crazy! If that's true then I am happily crazy, as this same intensity gives me the intense colours of the autumn leaves, winter sky blue, multi-hued stormy seas, vivid green grasses and highlytextured surfaces everywhere (tree bark, Fed Squre, the wrought iron, bluestone bridge foundations... all images I associate with my home town, Melbourne. Add to this the tram squeels on tracks, the occasional electrical spark from the old W classes, the thunderous echo of the trains on the Spencer Street overpasses along with the smells of the nut factory in Windsor (the once, sweet and potent smell of the brewery that was in ictoria Street).

These are the things that remind me I am alive. They are at times joyous and uplifting and at other times, dark, brooding and oppressive.

Well, hey that's just me.

How can I describe the intensity, the vivacity, the luminosity of my world. It is different to how most people perceive things and it is this 'over-the-top' reactivity that make me, who I am. It is why the tears flow so easily, both for grief and elation.

And these responses are when I am adequately medicated and in my NORMAL range (-3 to +3).
Imagine the despair and ecstasy when outside this 'safe' band?

It is why I am on Facebook, and Eblogger. It is how I share what it is to be me, and to allow you to know why I care so deeply about so many things.

This self-revelation is how I am beginning to understand myself, and to accept myself.

It is how I am able to claim with confidence that I will not act out any futures suicide ideations, as I now know that I must maintain the external perspective on my own thinking.
To recognise the danger signs and ensure that I have the confidence that it is temporary and worth struggling through to come out the other side and into the light again.

It is also why today I feel drawn to make links with the people on the "voices for Death Row inmates" and try to find how I can set this pc to fax mode , to add my voice to the group petitioning the Governor of Texas for clemancy for David Lee Powell.

It is also which drew me to decide to post the image which leads this blog (the old journalistic truism... "if it bleeds, it leads"). And unlike many people who use the Internet for propaganda I do let the truth get in the way of a good story, as this image of Alan Lee Davis was not from December 2009 (as one 'voice' posted) but is from July 1988.

It shows an act of pure barbarism by the State of Florida. One can only say that this man's torture did effect change. His death means that the electric chair is seldom used for execution in the US today, but the preference for lethal injection is also fraught. Many executees have suffered under this practice also, more often due to the fact that veins collapse and the lethal medication cannot be injected after many, many, abortive attempts, and prolonged delays (even days).
This is still horrendous barbarism.

The story of Alan Lee Davis

July 8, 1999. Florida. Allen Lee Davis. Electrocution. "Before he was pronounced dead ... the blood from his mouth had poured onto the collar of his white shirt, and the blood on his chest had spread to about the size of a dinner plate, even oozing through the buckle holes on the leather chest strap holding him to the chair."[45] His execution was the first in Florida's new electric chair, built especially so it could accommodate a man Davis's size (approximately 350 pounds). Later, when another Florida death row inmate challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw commented that "the color photos of Davis depict a man who -- for all appearances -- was brutally tortured to death by the citizens of Florida."[46] Justice Shaw also described the botched executions of Jesse Tafero and Pedro Medina (q.v.), calling the three executions "barbaric spectacles" and "acts more befitting a violent murderer than a civilized state."[47] Justice Shaw included pictures of Davis's dead body in his opinion.[48] The execution was witnessed by a Florida State Senator, Ginny Brown-Waite, who at first was "shocked" to see the blood, until she realized that the blood was forming the shape of a cross and that it was a message from God saying he supported the execution.

Oh really? Who's God? Not one I am familiar with.