The Treehouse by Naomi Wolf

When I was at university I worked at a large call centre for a direct marketing company who sold wine. Populated mainly by actors, film people, musicians and students the place was constantly abuzz with conversations about what people 'really' did. I worked there for 4 years, the entire duration of my course and as I watched streams of actors come and go between auditions and small roles, it seemed to me that many of them (especially older the ones), were pining constantly for a lover who didn't love them. I always wondered when they would draw the line and decide that perhaps they were just not going to 'make' it.

Ah the innocence of babes! When I finished my own dubious degree in the 'arts', I came crashing down to earth with the realisation that someone who had studied ancient Mongolian languages actually had a better chance of getting a job than I did. With no job or kudos to validate my work, I quietly packed it up and drew the line. But passions un-fueled leave your soul cold, and I found myself vainly trying to reestablish an artistic practise. It seemed however that making a commitment to your craft regardless of the result, is a frightening leap worthy of any base jumper.

This leap is the unlikely subject of Naomi Wolf's book 'The Treehouse', a simple and personal memoir about her father, a poet and a teacher, who in 12 essential lessons, categories the practise of committing to your craft, and should you not have one, seeking out what is unique and purposeful about your soul. Wolf weaves a narrative about the building of her daughter's tree house with her father's life story and his lessons. The treehouse becomes a symbolic shelter where the you can grow into who you are, high above the world ignorant to it's trials and demands.

For anyone looking to move their life agenda beyond the commercial considerations we all seem to live and die by this book is a beacon. It provides a guiding light to gently uncover and refine who we really are, and to respect what we create whether it be a painting, music, a cake or a lovely afternoon with a child. Wolf's dad Leonard is a charming role model, who refuses to believe that life must or should be limited in anyway. From his eccentric dress choices, which vary from a yellow rain slicker to a Greek shepherd's shirt, to full English riding outfit. To his unshakable belief that every human being has a creative message within their soul, a message from a higher place, and that our only purpose here on earth is to unearth that message.

This book is a profound discussion with a creative elder, someone who has devoted their entire lives to a creative pursuit and thus know it's real pitfalls and pay offs. However in reviewing Leonard's lessons we open our eyes to the many subtle and wonderful creative acts going on around us everyday. Our lives after all are our greatest creative masterpiece. That every person has a unique purpose is something I have always believed in, but somehow I thought that discovering your purpose would then take you into the world to find fame, fortune or success.

I am discovering however that it is in the doing, the creating and the living that life's rewards are reaped.

Eco Warriors

Hodka Eco Village Gujarat, India

After September 11th, I remember sadly thinking that this event would be the hallmark of my era, that I would think of this horrifying day as the mark of how the world had changed when I was a young adult. Last night I felt joyous to report, that this outlook has changed...

All around me of late I am noticing the extraordinary prominence of the Environment as not only a subject of dreaded apprehension as it has been in the past, but rather as a subject of activism and action. People are actively and happily engaging with reducing their carbon foot print and putting the needs of Earth above their own. It's becoming something of a fashion to be green, although this has it's problem ie. the 'greenwashing' of many products that are anything but green. It is however, great to see humans seriously contemplating for the first time that we could live more simple lives and still be very happy, if not more so. I am coming to hope that this is what my era will be noted for, the age of the peaceful Eco warrior.

Last night Sixty Minutes featured several Eco Villages around the world, housing developments that are completely self-sustaining. Since Greg and I moved to Chippendale and have been awed by the work of Michael Mobbs, who has manged to convert a city terrace into a water, waste and energy efficient home. It has always been our dream to design and build a home of our own where we can be completely off the grid and live without impacting on the environment.

The program featured Earthships eccentric homes designed and built by architect Mike Reynolds, these had me positively vibrating with excitement as not only were his homes made entirely from recycled materials and able to generate their own electricity through solar power. They collect rainwater, only 8 inches a year in the deserts of New Mexico and recycle that for use all year around, even sustaining a vegetable garden inside the house. I was enchanted by the design and aesthetics of the houses, which are fashioned like the old Mexican mud buildings, made with smooth mud walls and painted in bright colours. It reminded me of the Eco Village we visited in India recently. (I have posted a picture above).

It is not often that your exact dreams are crystallized as images before you, and even though this particular dream is still far away, I am still feeling the buzz of having seen it can be a reality.

The Power of Now by Eckhardt Tolle

Take a deep breath and look around you at this moment, suspend yourself in it now, block out both the past and the future and take stock with all your senses of this present moment. My moment is pure bliss, my neck is encased in a soft Indian cotton scarf which is holding and radiating the warmth of my neck. I am snuggled into my favourite red chair in my lounge room, listening to the whir of cars as they rush by, and the lulling sound of someone practising their violin next door. I can smell the red onion I had for lunch and feel it's burn on the back of my throat. Although a knot of tension hangs in my stomach, I give it no words, I instead feel its pulsing and acknowledge it's presence. Right now, I have nothing to regret and nothing to fear.

If I were to leave this moment however for the usual destinations I choose to be in, that knot in my stomach would start filling with words. Expressing doubts and fears, about my future, what I was going to do and what it was going to bring. My throat would be scraping with the memories of the past, times that I regretted, people who hurt me ranging from longing to anger. The whir of the cars and the sweetness of the violin would be replaced with the conversations I have had or will have, reeling through my mind like a movie. Then I remember movies aren't real.

This is basically what The Power of Now is all about, realising that the past and the future are creations of the mind no more important than daydreams or fantasising. They are creations that have very little true meaning in our lives, but carry a large impact. Never before had I realised how much of life I was missing to be in these phantom places. Time rehashing a past I can not alter and time spent waiting, for a better job, to lose some weight, until I had money, to move, to have a baby. To think of the frustration of waiting for a bus that is a few minutes late in comparison to the years I have spent waiting for the future to appear without realising that it was here now.

On this Friday afternoon, not even the most elaborate of plans or details I had imagined in the past could have brought me here to this moment, the future happens with or without thinking, worrying and trying to control it. When I picked up this book I thought that using the word 'power' was a marketing term used to give dimension to a fairly simple concept. However at the end of this book, I can see that there is unimaginable power in the now.

In fact all other times leave us powerless, the past is gone and there is nothing we can do, say or think that can possibly change it, and the future is unknown, we can only fill it with expectations and fears. The now however, should we give attention to it, is the only time we can embody and embrace, a time that our senses can engage in. Somehow fully engaging in this moment, means the future is taken care of.

The basics of the book are, follow your breath it is always in a state of now, give absolute focus to what you are doing now and let all the other noise fall away. Track your body, feel the energy currents, sensations and pains within in, the body is always present. Most importantly however is to surrender, to let go of all resistance, wanting, craving and wishing that your life situation was different to what it is. Where you are is exactly where you are meant to be.

This is a life changing book, and should its practise be adopted on a global scale it could be a world changing book. It is not easy to read, but it is worth it, so persist. I highlighted so much of this book, only a few lines remain white, below are just a few key quotes;

"Accept - then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life."

"If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence"

"So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation"

"A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivated by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out touch with the Now."

"See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it"

"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die" and find that there is no death."

"True change happens within, not without"

"The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what is knows and is familiar with. Even it is painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. That's why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment. Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum."

Days Of Our Lives

As hard as I have been trying to remain positive and move forward, last night I just broke down and cried for a couple of hours. It was 'Days of Our Lives' meets a country and western song as I had to admit to myself just how afraid and lost I felt - about my life and it's purpose.

For as long as I can remember I have believed that every human being is here to fulfill a 'purpose', a higher good both for themselves and the universe at large. Although I wanted and craved success in some measure for my whole life, this belief was beyond that. I had a certainty that carrying out my 'purpose' regardless of its result would feel meaningful and bring a peace and contentment to my soul. Somehow this idea of purpose got fused into the idea of work, with what I wanted to do with my life needing to carry meaning for the world. As it turned out it does not really work that way.

A few years ago, in an attempt to fulfill my 'purpose' I went to Wilcannia to teach at the central school there, Wilcannia is 14 hours away from Sydney, a dust bowl in the middle of no where with a shop, a pub and a service station. The school has a 99% Aboriginal population with a mixture, of neglected, abused, violent and sad children. It was one of the most devastating experiences of my life to see these kids, with no food, sexually abused, not aware of their birthdays and sometimes parents, and with absolutely no wish to live differently. I thought since art saved my life and gave me the aspiration to be better and live better, that it could do the same for these children. I was so wrong, and the whole experience was so painful. And so went my various attempts to find this 'purpose'.

I have reached the point now where my belief in this 'purpose' is shaken to its core and I have to surrender and accept, work, life, my artistic practise, writing and living for exactly what it is. I am beginning to realise that perhaps, we don't decide or even direct this 'purpose'. That all we can do is accept our lives and prepare our souls for when this 'purpose' comes to us. With this realisation I was reading the 'The Power of Now' and felt like I was directly spoken to.

"Surrender does not transform what is, at least not directly. Surrender transforms you. When you are transformed, your whole world is transformed, because the world is only a reflection".

It reminded me of the story of 'The Fisher King', who sort the Holy Grail to heal his wounded legs and aching body, he sent out his best knights and none were able to return with the grail. Then one day he is sitting in his court yard, when a beggar passes him, the king asks the beggar for a glass of water. When he drinks from the cup the beggar gives him, he is immediately healed and realises he is holding the holy grail. He asks the beggar how did you secure what my best and brightest could not. The beggar replies that he doesn't know, all he knows that the King was thirsty and he brought him water.

Life is indeed in the details, perhaps I have been missing the small offerings I could make today, in search of a grail that is already mine.

Feast On Your Life

Job hunting and all it's paraphernalia, resumes, interviews, and generally hanging on the phone has been the order of the day this week.

Staying in the NOW and out of your head while job hunting is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, although I remind myself daily that 'this is not Days of Lives' thus hold the drama. There are still some strange internal conversations happening in my head right now. Am I good enough, will I be good at this, will it all work out, will the other kids play nice, what if I turn up to school naked....ahhhhhh!!! and the crazy goes on...and on.

Meditation has of course been my saving grace, last night I met with my bi-weekly power group 'The Circle' to discuss goals, dreams and the divine, the meditation at the end was the first one that set me right this week. After clearing our internal space we imagined streams of beautiful white light pouring through us and filling us with the grace of the heavens. Finally the tweedle dee and tweedle dum of my thoughts found themselves too occupied with bliss to be nattering about my short comings.

I am challenging myself at present to be present, that means embracing everything in the present, now, and accepting that everything that is, is exactly as it is meant to be. I am tired of trying to reach that 'dream' life chasing that elusive rainbow with the pot of gold underneath it. I have a dream life now, I want for nothing, I have a great house, a beautiful husband, great friends, a loving family, and the ability to pick and choose what I want to do next.

Essentially I am blessed and I want to start feeling the bliss of that blessing in every part of my life, not just when I meditate. I read a great poem this week which sums it up below.

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Enjoying the Now

Greg and I have had the most amazing weekend, kicked of on Friday with dinner and a good chin wag with my friend Adrian. Adrian is working on Baz Lurman's new film 'Australia' and gave us a little bit of goss on the stars, it all felt so LA. Adrian however is anything but, instead he is a lovely validation that you can be following your dreams and work in a really cool industry without being pulled into all the bullshit of it.

Then it was off to my parents house for my little sister's 9th birthday party, which was a surreal blur of screaming 9 year old's, hocked up on sugar and generally going a bit nuts. Fueled up on lollies, party pies and stolen chocolates we took the scenic drive to Greg's brothers for a weekend of food, sleep and long walks along the beach. The food was mouth watering, Greg's brother Paul made gnocchi from scratch topped with wild mushrooms, followed by a leg of lamb stuffed with anchovies and rubbed with Olive tepenade. It was delicious and sedated me into a calm sleep, basking in the quiet and starring out at the stars.

We awoke to a clear blue sky, buttery yellow sunshine, and a winter bare tree crowned with about 10 cockatoo's, it was magic. Paul, his wife Teena, Greg and I then spent a couple of hours on the deck soaking up the sunshine and enjoying a lazy breakfast. As I looked out over the landscape of a still ocean and crystal blue skies I started to do what I always do, wishing, wanting and craving that I could have this all the time. Completely overlooking the fact that I had it now. The negativity and sadness started to swell up even though I was in the midst of this almost perfect moment. Luckily I caught myself and remembered that everything was mine to enjoy if I was prepared to stay here and now to savour it.

Welcome

Well I felt it was finally time to reveal myself and make a damn commitment. I have been keeping this blog since April of this year, but I wasn't really sure where it was going and what story I was going to be telling on it. To be honest I still don't really know, I think it will evolve in it's own time and pace into what it is meant to be.

Overall, this is a personal journey, a book review site, a place to reflect on my life and get into the practise of writing, until hopefully I have something meaningful to put into a book.

So welcome, bookmark me, read me often and tell everyone you know. I will be posting at least twice a week, now that I hopefully have an audience of more than one.

To Xanthe my first and most faithful reader - THANK YOU!

One Day My Soul Opened Up by Iyanla Vanzant

At another chaotic junction in my young life approximately 10 years ago I bought a book called "One Day my Soul Just Opened Up" by Iyanla Vanzant. At the time I was convinced that spiritual study for 40 days and nights was what my soul needed. The thought has re-occurred to me many times in the last 10 years that I have owned this book. However in it's 10th year of possession I have finally completed the 40 day course and I can honestly say that it has transformed me.

Iyanla Vanzant is a spiritual teacher and Yoruba priestess who transformed her own chaotic life consisting of teen pregnancy, abusive relationships and a dizzying search for meaning. She offers in this book every lesson she learned on her journey. It is split into 40 lessons, one daily that honour spirit, life, yourself, and others.

Taking the time to do this course has been incredibly enlightening and healing, when I arrived at every day's lessons I found the answers to questions, I didn't even know I was asking. The overall theme that stood out for me was one of surrender. A time to let go of all the hurts from the past and the expectations for the future and focus on the stuff of my life right now.

I suspect depending on where you are in your own life, a different theme will arise.

If your life feels chaotic and your struggling to find meaning in it, I would highly recommend this book, and don't worry if you can't stick with it for 40 days, hang on it and when you need to - you will.

For those who can't commit I still feel that what she offers is a treasure so I sum up her lessons below;

1. Tell the Truth
Even if it feels like there will be a free fall if you do, there will be a net to catch you. Suppressing the truth will poison your soul.
2. Do What You Know You Have To
You owe yourself to keep the promises you make to yourself. If your in doubt about what to do ask yourself; 1. Will it bring joy to my life without harming anyone? 2. Will it be good for me and others ? 3. Will this thing move me beyond some fear I am holding onto?
3. Discipline Your Mind, Your Body, and Your being
4. Put Your Life In Order
Start with your house and work your way up to your heart and mind
5. Make Another Choice
That may simply mean choosing to think about something differently
6. When something is done, LET IT GO
7. Trust yourself and god
8. Fear Not
No matter what you do, or what happens - YOU CAN NOT LOSE. Everything that happens is a gift.

Sugarbabe by Holly Hill

I’m not sure what compelled me to pick up Holly Hill’s book Sugarbabe, like the sugary treat it evokes, I felt it may be a little hollow on literary calories. However when I gleefully succumbed, I ended up gorging and read it all in one day. Sugarbabe is the true story of one women’s search for a Sugar Daddy, it details the many delights and pitfalls of both finding and having one. Author Holly Hill lives the very picture of the Sex and the City lifestyle, in the city of Sydney. She has a beautiful apartment in Darlinghurst, a gaggle of gay friends, a party lifestyle and a professional job. When a married prince charming sweeps her off her feet and puts her on the ‘mistress’ plan (a generous allowance is return for 24/7 access), life seems even sweeter. But like all sugar high’s she comes crashing down when her lover leaves her with little notice and even less cash. Disillusioned with both love and work, she decides to maintain her champagne lifestyle by engaging a Sugar Daddy.

The book begins as a voyeuristic and slightly trashy description of her interviews and the trials of her Sugar Daddy’s. However it eventually gathers momentum and delves into some interesting and arresting themes. As most of her Daddy’s are married, the subject of marriage and male infidelity frames the book. What she offers is a perspective on relationships and cheating as seen from the other side. We become privy to the crushing physical and emotional isolation, that often sends men running into an affair. However, Hill does move beyond the cliché to successfully showcases a wide variety of the male species from an open stance. We see the serial good time cheater, the rebuffed cheater, the dominant controlling cheater, and the pathetic cheaters. By being prepared to expose herself, Hill brings to the surface a side of relationships and men not easily discussed.

The main premise of her book is that sex is a physical need, like breathing or eating. She argues that expecting a man to deny his biological instincts, is on par with refusing his basic needs. Where men see sex as physical, women attach sex with love. Thus for men cheating is a physical act and for women an emotional one. The problem she claims is not so much in the cheating itself but the lying and deceit that surrounds the act. What Hill suggests is that relationships could break out of their conventional bounds and operate under much more negotiated terms. Although we have seen this happen in other areas of marriage such as money, work and children. The issues surrounding sex seemed to have remained at a firm stance.

Having been on the receiving end of a cheating lover and having cheated myself. I have to honestly say that I think issue is much more complicated than the physical act or biological needs. I disagree that men cheat purely out of physical yearning. In my naïve youth I dated a serial cheater, who used his conquests to build his fragile self worth. I have also known women who cheat in order to fulfill the physical needs their partners can’t. For me what made Hill’s book interesting was her risk in itself, the willingness and bravery to pursue a profession often harshly judged. I admired her openness in penning a story that does not always flatter her character, and her willingness to refuse to judge others or herself. Her story illustrates the limiting bonds that society can impose, and encourages a pioneering spirit in questioning those boundaries. Although I wouldn’t classify this book as a must read. I have to admit that the questions and issues it raised stayed with me for sometime and made me re-examine some of my own ideas and beliefs about relationships and sex.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Unlike many households where the elongated call of a child’s name denotes dinner as in Taaaaannnyyyyaaaa. In the Bryson household it would seem, the explosion of forgotten potatoes was a call to the table. From the beginning of Bill Bryson’s childhood memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, I am instantly taken with his mother. Mrs. Bryson is a total contradiction in terms for a women of her time, an age that created the very picture of a domestic goddess. Although she is the home editor for the ‘Register’ Iowa’s local paper, she could neither cook, clean nor remember her children’s birthdays - or things in the oven for that matter. She instead runs between home and work, in a blaze of disorganization. Burning food black and serving it up to a husband, who will only eat food burned beyond recognition and taste. It was, as Bryson describes a match made in heaven and so begins Bryson’s wonderful romp through his all American childhood, a very sweet and lovingly tribute to his family and to the fifties. To his credit he honestly admits that there is not a lot of substance or story to his upbringing. Little illness, adversity, or drama pitches the story; it is still however one of the most entertaining books I have ever read.

Bryson’s hold on the reader is of course his fabulous sense of humour, which spins stories of his mothers cooking, strange family relatives and visits to the local drug free dentist into a fever pitch of hilarity. I recommended this book to my friend Megan, who had to call me while reading it on the bus, so that her sudden and intense bursts of laughter would not be mistaken for madness. What also makes this book remarkable is that the devil is truly in the details of our lives. By carefully collecting the details, he builds a picture of his family and their many quirks, his little town of Des Moines, and of the 1950’s. The birth of our society as we know it. He talks, among many things about the consumer rituals of his time, when visitors would come as much to see their new fridge as to see the family. I thought about the consumer rituals of today, when someone who doesn’t have a fridge would actually rate as more of curiosity. My friends Kath and James are still the subject of admiring conversations about how they live without a TV or microwave, as if they were surviving without limbs. How the world has changed.

Although the 1950’s was a precursor to our manic consumer age, (Bryson quotes that in 1951 Americans owned 80% of the worlds electrical goods), there is still a lovely sense of innocence about the time. Or perhaps it was more ignorance. As Bryson comments “the people responsible for the 1950s made a world in which pretty much everything was good for you”. The book is peppered with now famous advertisements of doctors endorsing cigarettes, svelte families exclaiming their happy because they eat lard, and diets based on eating hygienically treated tapeworms. “Never” as Bryson puts it, “have people looked so ridiculous and so happy at the same time.” What really struck me about the book was people’s blind trust of not only consumer goods but technology, particularly nuclear technology. In the fifties, it seems atomic bomb blasts were the hippest of tourist attractions. During which people clamored to have their radioactivity read as they sucked down ‘atomic’ cocktails. Containing more I am sure than they expected.

Despite having marveled at naivety of the age, I had to wonder. What will be revealed about the products and weapons of my time, that will make me realize just how stupid and innocent my own era was. Reading about Bryson’s fifties is a bit like going to an alternative universe, where life is both completely different but startlingly parallel. It gives a personal dimension into the history, politics and culture of the 1950’s, bringing it into colourful life. However, I warn you, read only in close confines or within earshot of those who love you. I hysterically laughed my way through most of the book, had I been in public the men in white coats might have carted me away.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

I recently lost my job. I say lost even though I resigned because it seems to have disappeared from my life with such light speed. I literally feel like I put it down somewhere and just can’t find the damn thing. But having just lost my job I am trying to settle into what Elizabeth Gilbert describes as bel far niente “the beauty of doing nothing”, rather than the supreme ease and bliss that those words resonate, I find myself trying rather than succeeding. I am rather uncomfortable in my unemployed state, and am discovering that doing nothing in our frantic age, in on par with being nothing.

I am a firm believer that books have a way of just coming into your life when you need them or in my case stalk you until you read them. Gilbert’s book has been nudging me steadily since I traveled to India last year, I read it once with the certainty that everything she was saying had some deep meaning and promptly did nothing about it. Then I lost my job, life generally fell apart around me and there like a signpost from the Universe was Eat, Pray, Love. This book opened up for me a long needed spiritual conversation that had me deeply questioning; whether there might really be something more.

Eat, Pray Love is a story of spiritual exploration set against the backdrop of a travelogue through Italy, India and Indonesia. A journey not so much across the globe but rather as Gilbert calls it a traverse from the “worldly to the eternal”, in search of pleasure, devotion and balance. Gilbert’s story begins with a desperate, late night prayer to God. When an unexpected calm voice answers her prayers, it sets her on a quest of spiritual transformation. Living in a world that has been divided by a war where Islam and Christianity have taken sides, her book presents us with an inspiring alternative. A means by which we can open up our own conversation with God and seek out the golden nugget of divine within.

What Gilbert offers is a yogic journey for our modern times, she calls herself an ‘antevasin’ a Sanskrit word meaning a border dweller between the village and the deep, dark forest of faith. Like her, many of us cannot take up the traditions of monks or Sadhu’s people who turn away from material life to embrace the spirit and seek god. However, like many of us she lives a chaotic and exhausting life, sorely in need of meaning. What she brings to this tradition of spiritual journeying is a rich self depreciating, laugh out loud humour coupled with stunning and candid honestly. Far from heavy spiritual reading, the book is instead filled with mouth watering Italian food, spunky Italian twins, wise-arse joke cracking characters, and a love story ending. She draws the reader in by being both achingly human and a gentle ambassador to the heavens.

I must admit that I read Eat, Pray, Love like something of a guide book, it seemed like Gilbert had crossed the great divide and not only discovered God but herself. Her book although a personal memoir offers many gateways for the reader to enter and live the story. For example in the early chapters, Gilbert writes a heartfelt petition to God to help end her seared and broken marriage. Moved to action I wrote my own petition, a humble dialogue with the universe. I wrote that I was depressed, that I had quit my job, suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage and that life was not really making any sense nor had it been for some time. I asked for help and comfort. That night as I went to bed I saw a single bright star from my window. Offering me a jeweled hope that there was in fact a beautiful order to the world. Even if I didn’t know it. It doesn’t seem like much but I have lived in the inner city, in the same house for last 6 years, and this was the first time I had ever noticed that star.

Gilbert exclaims that of the whole beautiful and poetic Italian language her favourite word is ‘attraversiamo’ meaning crossing over. Her story is an expressive tale of crossing over, in her self-made vessel of faith. Over the divide of the unknown and directly to the divine. What makes her unique is as she calls it, her “cherry picking” of various faiths and practices mixed and matched to find her personal portal to God, which as it were is also a portal within. Great books allow us to imagine different possibilities. With hilarity, mishaps and misadventures Gilbert calls us to pen our own rituals, construct our own vessels, and reengage with a spiritual conversation.

Resume Writing 101

The world outside is like a sleepy child, it's pink lids fluttering with tiredness but not yet ready for bed. The orange and pinks of the sun are sinking down, the drawn lilac of evening is pulling up the covers for the darkness to approach.

I have spent the afternoon writing my resume, which is really up there with having your bikini line waxed, doing your tax returns or swallowing a spoon of fish oil. But surprisingly I am revived and excited. I took a different approach this time. I stayed in the moment concentrated on what I was doing, rather than allowing my mind to go into that swamp of negativity that I usually dive into every time I am job hunting.

I am determined that this job hunt is going to be totally different, I am sick of the up and down drama I normally indulge in, as I swell with negativity and imagine all the impending disasters. This time I plan to relax, not take it personally, focus on the work and the NOW and just surrender and I'm sure the job will find me.

I am feeling remarkably stable and happy, I say remarkably because normally when I don't have a job I am the loosest of all loose ends. But I am liking this new me, I am taking time to heal, reviewing where I am and what I want to be doing and am prepared to wait for the job that is right me. I am so grateful to be able to wait.

BE HERE NOW

The TV antenna guy is here, having just scaled the roof as casually as he would take an elevator, he is now in the lounge room playing with dials and testing the TV. For the last couple of months our TV has looked like there was a metallic grey blizzard in every location. Although I don't watch a lot of TV, getting it fixed is part of a general cleaning up of my life, a symbolic preparation, of tossing out the old to let in the new and sharpening the reception to listen to the signs that I need to hear.

This has been an incredibly healing time in my life, like the seeds that sprouts from the remains of a searing fire, I feel like I am ready to grow out into the sunshine again after the raging chaos of the last couple of years. What I am coming to realise by reading The Power of Now by Eckhardt Tolle is that most of the this chaos has been staged and played out in my mind.

The journey started for me 3 years ago when I first went travelling, a journey not so much to see the world but an attempt to find this missing piece of myself which I was convinced would be in India. I was certain that going to India would give me the sense of completeness and belonging that I had longed for all my life. For those that followed my Bollywood Dreaming blog you would know that this was not what happened, if anything I left feeling more confused than ever.

When I came back to Australia I was convinced that my completeness lay in finding a job in the arts and pursuing my calling. When that didn't work out as I planned I fell into a tail spin of depression. Wanting and needing anything to anchor myself to, I took the first job I could find and that recently ended like a bad horror movie. Then the miscarriage brought all of this longing and sadness to a head, as I again tried to anchor my lost soul onto something else. It was at this point that I realised that nothing was going to fill this gaping hole. That no matter what I did, what success I achieved, fame or fortune that it would still be there.

From my reading of late, largely spiritual books, I am coming to understand that this sense of incompleteness is part of the human condition. An aching need in all of us drives us to be better and to create, but also to consume and destroy. Our appetite gets bigger and bigger from the furstration of not be satiated. The sad part it seems is that we already have what it is that we so desperately seek, we have only to truly look within ourselves to see our own magnificent sense of perfection and wholeness.

Sounds easy right? Tolle claims that to see the perfection of ourselves and life we need to be here now. My first thought is; I am bloody well here now. But as I listened to myself I discovered that I have been checked out of the present for as long as I can remember, either digging through the past and trying to force it to make sense or reliving it's drama. Or by living far out into the future full of promising better-ness, shimmering like a desert mirage, or blazing red in an inferno of impending disaster.

So I am off to meditate and to BE HERE NOW.

Coming Back To Now

It's been a long time between visits but I am back. Let me tell you where I have been for the last 7 weeks.

1. I quit my job - it was incredible to finally stand up to an oppressive, abusive and aggressive person who was making my life sad and crushing my soul. However, I feel truly blessed to have been in this experience it has taught me so much. I believe in years to come it will be noted as one of my greatest teachers.

2. I had a miscarriage - my heart was broken in a way that I could never have imagined. But again I am amazed at how much I have learned from this experience, sometimes I feel like I have been asleep and the is what it took to wake me up.

3. I pitched an idea to a contact at NINE MSN - about a book review blog, I got some amazing ideas and have sent some work in for them to have a look at. I will keep you posted.

4. I have been doing a collage and multimedia class - I have returned to my first passion - art. I am rediscovering what led me to art school. The loving ritual of keeping a journal and creating artworks within it. I am currently creating a beautiful watercolour book about the last 7 weeks.

5. I have been doing a 40 day soul cleanse, following a wonderful program by IylanaVanzant called "One Day My Soul Just Opened Up". Today's lesson is about Authenticity her gem of wisdom "Wherever you find yourself is exactly where you need to be."

6. I have been meditating almost daily and have discovered the Siddha Yoga Ashram in Sydney, in between the chaos and sadness of my thoughts, I am actually experiencing blissful quiet.

7. I am learning to live in the here and now.

With that I will leave you with the eternal words of Maxi Jazz (Faithless)

I want more oneness less categories
Open hearts no strategies
I want decisions based upon faith and not fear
I want people who live right now and right here
I want the wisdom that wise men revere

Where You Are Is Who You Are

By the time I was 18 I had moved 18 times, at 29 I have totalled 27 moves, I have only a few more to meet my age again. Today I find myself longing for a home, not a place to live but a home, resonating in warmth and safety a place to set myself out and gather myself up.

Frances Mayes writes "Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is intertwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave." Perhaps the transience of the places that I have chosen in my life are a reflection of a need for freedom or more correctly my need to continually be starting over and renewing. Unfortunately the choice has had the opposite effect and I find myself peeled away and left behind in so many makeshift homes that I barely exist as I want to anymore.

These thoughts have me piecing together fragments of an ideal home although a shaky image they have strong feeling. Streaming sunlight through sparkling windows, clean whites tones with earthy reds and oranges. Mint tea brewing a conversation with the succulents on the window sill. Brazilian music winding it's way around the house, fresh carrots and greens humming along in the garden. Day's spent in galoshes, a desk looking on a wall of images, lovingly collected and haphazardly pinned. Provocatively red tomatoes topped with mozzarella and basil, spelt banana bread baking a sweet pungent smell and me playing in the yard.

The Power Of Words

Fragrant wisps of chicken soup are penetrating my deeply clogged nasal passages as I write this tucked up in bed and generally dying with what appears to be a severe cold. As fast as the day snapped into a rigid 17 degrees a cold has descended over me and taken firm hold.

I am a bit lost, the last few weeks have seemed formless, this or that has prevented me from getting into any sort of routine and my sense of continuity has been broken, this packaged with endless days of waiting has me in something of a muddle. If nothing else it is usually books that give my days structure, I look forward to the onward motion of their stories and the continuity of their essence. In that regard I have also fallen in limbo finding myself unable to get into anything with real commitment.

I went back to an old favourite this evening, Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, I first read this book when I was 18 and still list it as one of my most loved , the tale that started my dreams of walking the Tuscan hills and of growing a feast in my garden, cooking pasta from scratch and sharing a table with friends under dappled vine leaves. Although I can't remember much of the story the mood and feeling it created are still deep within me. Frances Mayes gave me my first young glimpse of the ideal life I would like to live.

Even tonight at it's beginning pages I felt the need to leap out of bed and investigate the alchemy of the soup that is lingeringly teasing me, to take in the tantalizing smells and sights of my humble existence as she has hers. I am constantly amazed at the gifts that writers bring to our lives that I can have drawn a map for my soul or been inspired to reframe my day just by reading tells me the true power of words in our world.

Waiting To Take Off

Over the last couple of weeks I have begun to realise more and more that I must write what I think rather than forcing myself to think about something to write. At the moment I feel like I am stranded in a small airport. I have been planning my future destination, the completion of renovations, finding our own little abode and having a baby - they are the exotic locations I hope to be at. Although my bags are packed and I have my ticket in hand, the plane keeps getting delayed, grouded or I am caught mid pee while the last boarding call is being announced. At any rate I am waiting not at all patiently for my life to take of.

The brief respite from all this waiting has been my daily walks, among bustling commuters, halting traffic and a general atmosphere of things drawing to a close, I feel like things are just opening up. I maze through my suburb and then amble to the park, I walk one side on the path and other through the grass, softly greeting a patch of trees I adopted a few years ago. A slight wind stirs the dense wet autumn air, the ground is sodden with the masses of rain that have been failing daily. My world which has compacted during the day begins to unfurl with each step and by the end I am expanisve again connected the wider world and the even wider universe.

The theme of the last few days has been waiting, about patience and about staying calm in the face of a life whirling uncomfortably around me. Since waiting and the uncertainity that the wait brings are things I have never really been good at, it has been a challenging time and not one I feel like I am getting on top of. I find myself taking small sips of idle dreams rather than the large gulps of life I would like to be drinking down.

I sadly realised this morning that since my destination seems so far away and my airport is small I am feeling rather uninspired and passive about life. Nothing is turning me out of bed in the morning, I am just killing time and it is too precious for homicide. I am not really sure what to do from here, get a new job, take a course, start writing more seriously? Nothing is quite fitting the bill at the moment....what I wonder am I meant do with this time and these emotions.

Please Explain!

A little while ago while doing an exercise from The Right to Write by Julia Cameron, Cameron asked me to imagine that I was sitting under a tree next to my story teller and I could ask him to tell me any story my heart desired to hear. Almost unconsciously my fingers started moving across the keyboard and I found myself typing, 'I want to hear a story that makes me love art again', as soon as I had written them the words brought up a well of emotion and I started to cry I realised that I did indeed want to hear such a story.

Before I started art school, looking at art for me was like reading the traffic signs of my life, it gave me the directions to my soul. It was a heartfelt communication that led me to believe that perhaps being apart of and around art was what I was meant to be doing with my life. After the ups of art school and the downs of looking for a job in the arts, I was left mostly disillusioned. Art had become a casual acquaintance rather than a loving friend. When I really thought about it I had started to feel about art the way that I had heard many people around me relate to it, I just didn't get it anymore and I felt locked out.

It was after this that I decided to write a book about art, about engaging with art as a means to not only show people how to just hang and have a good old chin wag with art, but also as means to reintroduce myself to art and start looking at it the way I used to, with wonder and openness. After one chapter about my own experience with art and the art world, I moved onto the next titled 'That's Not Art, What is Art?' and was completely stuck. It was then that I decided to write about it on my blog to get the juices flowing.

Hope this clears up the sudden detour the blog has taken. Not sure if I will continue with the essay would love some feedback and then I will keep going.

Art Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

To get to the ball rolling for this essay I decided to look up art in my trusty Collins Australian School Dictionary which I have in fact had since high school. I have kept it all these years because I find a calming simplicity to its definitions, and it doesn't fail me with art. Collins believes art to be "....the creation of objects such as paintings and sculptures, which are thought to be beautiful or which express a particular idea". To my surprise I find that I couldn't agree more. Except that the examples of art forms may need a large extension to include, photography, performance, happenings, installations, and even lives. Art definitely has something to do with beauty and expressing ideas. What I like about this definition is it's broadness, since beauty and ideas are individual to each person so it allows art to be.

If you were hoping for something a little tighter I hate to disappoint you, but I wish to point out some of the reasons why it is not only impossible but ill advised to have a limited definition of art. The biggest problem with having a set and printed definition of art to follow when I walk into a gallery is that it immediately disempowers me. It gives me a frame which I must look through instead of allowing my own context and views to form that frame. The issue is someone else would be making the decisions for me, and who exactly should that be? Should artists, galleries or universities decide and would they not have a bias and agenda in coming to a definition as would, men, women or any particular race and nationality. To gain any kind of consensus would be impossible, and to trust others to control our view of the world ill advised.

The other big problem with defining art is that any definition would be limited to its time and technology, if cave men had set the definition of art as "paintings on cave walls representing human and animal figures made with natural pigments", thousands of years later we would not have the juicy and exciting digital art forms and narratives that we enjoy today. Not to mention merely the varying physical perspectives, tall buildings, aeroplanes, speeding cars and trains have given us.

When you really think about it, giving art any sort of definition in terms of forms or types of expression would make it very boring, a limited definition would result in a limited output. If art gives us anything it is a constantly evolving way to understand the world around us and a solid reflection of the cultural nuances of our past.

Stay tuned tomorrow for "What does 'that's not art' really mean

Art: Definition Please!

The question of what is art could not be further from my mind, life has been busy, incredibly busy, time like never before seems to be racing away from me and my head is a bulging sock and undie draw at the moment, all useful stuff but no real order. Reviewing just how busy life has been reminds me that 'what is art' is perhaps a more important question than I imagined, at a time when my thoughts are as functional as cotton underwear, perhaps bringing art into my life might make it feel a little less utilitarian. I liked Warhol's analogy of the department store and the gallery, it means that art can be and is everywhere and it is the observer who is artful rather than the work.

But seriously I wonder is it possible to go through life like you would a gallery in hallowed silence and challenged wonderment, would you even want to? And if art becomes everything in our lives what happens to the gallery does it serve any purpose? I can see here that I am asking more questions than I am answering. To be honest I starting writing this book about art out of questions that people constantly asked me, and to be honest again no one has actually ever asked me what art is, what they have told me often and vehemently is 'that this not art'. I could only presume for people to have such a strong understanding of what is not art, there must be a solid understanding of what is art. After four years of art school and further mulling over the question, I can really only tell you what 'I' think art is, and I believe if we really took the time to think about it, every one's answer would be completely different.

I have been stuck in writing this essay for a long time, after I finally committed myself to writing about it on my blog, I discovered why, underneath my reasonably calm willingness to discuss art, was a nasty voice telling me that quite frankly I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and questioning who the hell I was to be defining art. I have only broken through to write this, because I truly believe that everybody has a right to define art and that it is only through the consensus of artists, galleries, critics and the public that art can be defined, and that this definition should be and is different for everyone and that everyone within their context is completely right. Were to follow this method of creating a definition art would organic growing and changing as our environment, society and culture does, our definition of art would be held within our own context taking into account our very personal journeys and histories.

The only sticky point in this business is this 'that's not art statement' which quickly cuts down what other's believe to be art and demands that the boundaries of art be somehow drawn closed to disallow this or that work. I guess in the larger scheme of things human beings are classifying animals our whole science is based on classification and ordering, naming and defining things, it makes a chaotic life seem somehow under control. To have this aberration called art that is constantly breaking out of its own boundaries, questioning itself and us can feel something like torture, as soon as we think we have got it down it goes and starts changing. If only we had a definition we could better control and classify it, it could not be challenged and we could understand it implicitly.

Unfortunately despite being a keen area of study within the creative arts for hundreds of years, the wheat and the chaff are yet to be separated and a set definition of art remains rather elusive. Art not having a standard definition is both it’s biggest problem and its greatest possibility, if artists were not to challenge our conventional views on art, then things would always stay the same and we would still be looking at staid portraits of the royal families and dramatic religious scenes for all time. In order for art to progress it needs to be limitless and since art is a human response to the world and humans have such varying and different views, giving art a solid definition would prelude it’s creative and exciting nature.

Stay tuned tomorrow "The Problems with Defining Art"

What is Art?

My writing has wound down lately, beside a few entries in this blog and my journal it has ground almost to a halt. I have hidden it in the folds of life like you would an article in a notebook, something important to keep but not urgent enough to be dealt with now. Largely its been a matter of not knowing what to write. I want to listen to Julia Cameron and write what I think about, but would the same register of 30 or so thoughts really make for entertaining reading. Deciding that I needed to fertilize my mind, Greg and I went to the Andy Warhol exhibition at GOMA Brisbane on the weekend.

The show was absolutely exhilarating, it was like being in an amusement park, grocery store, celebrity party and gallery all at the same time. I had intended to use Warhol to illustrate my essay titled 'That's not art, What is art?'. I was inspired by a Christmas camping trip conversation about art that centred on Andy Warhol's soup cans and how they could not possibly be considered art. Warhol certainly was the father of pushing the limits of art, he once said that art galleries are like department stores. There are several connections you could draw, art as commodity, the mass marketing and consumption of art, I like to think that he meant that everything can be art depending on your context and by context I don't mean a gallery I mean your mind. It liberates art from something that needs to be housed in a gallery shrouded in the complexity of art history and transforms our everyday into art.

I want to the write the essay from a really personal perspective, like a conversation you would have with a friend as you walked around the gallery, but the conversation is stuck and I can't seem to get further in my mind that the paragraph I have above. I have so many things to say but no fluid way in which to say them. Cameron says writing is so much more the act than the words and I know that I have to just sit down and write. Thus I am making the declaration here and now that I will write a little each day next week and post it as as I go.

HAVE A BABY NOW!!!!

The weather today has been like an emotional women, strong gusts of wind have given to sudden bouts of pelting rain only to relief into patches of blue and golden orange skies, which then cloud over into sullen grey masses heavy with emotion. I know how she feels I have been going through the four seasons myself of late. I haven't written in a week because I have been thinking about what to write rather than writing what I have been thinking about.

Which has mostly consisted of what I can only describe as a deranged obsession with becoming pregnant, so focused have I been on seeing two blue lines on that ridiculous pee test, that the span of my thinking has been held in the tiny space between those lines. During what can only be described a mini meltdown yesterday my friend Xanthe called and eloquently assured me that a flood of hormones are rushing through my body screaming "HAVE A BABY NOW" at the top of their lungs. Given that I have not had the decency to comply they have become ever more insistent.

Going from being a women who could pretty much take it or leave it to the beast I am now who would virtually run over someone in my car to have a baby, has left me reeling and kind of ashamed. I have become so focused on the actual pregnancy that I have given little thought to the baby or more importantly what the hell I plan to do with a baby, and how my life would change. I went for a long walk today and thought beyond the blue line, I imagined what my day would have been like today if I had a baby now. I predicted that a) I would be exhausted from not enough sleep and constantly having my breasts pumped for food b) I would not have had time to chat to my friends, do a leisurely shop at Fratelli or go for a walk to take in the fresh cool air c) I would most likely smell like spew and be wearing some foreign outfit concocted from random items that still fit. Obviously I would also have a lovely little creature snuggling into my neck and cooing for milk. But I realised I need to enjoy this time in my life, where I have relative freedom, privacy, completely spew free days, and my breasts are still objects of desire and rather than bowsers for milk.

We live such constructed and ordered lives, things are planned and we strive towards meeting those plans, rarely is it an option to let things take their course when we are so ingrained that we must control the path our lives take. Having a baby is one of our few connections with the natural order of life, it is a mysterious process which happens deep within us and must follow its own timing and course, it can't be contrived or controlled and trying to do so has left me feeling anxious and crazy.

I have spent the last couple of days punishing myself for these constant streams of thoughts and worries, now I think of each of these thoughts as prayers to those spirit beings that become our perfect children, each thought is an affirmation of love and longing assuring these spirits yet to be that although life can be a little rough, there is someone committed to theirs.

An Ode To My House

Summer is fighting out its departure, it wakes up cold and weary, warms up fiercely raring for fight and fizzles out in defeat at the end of the day. Autumn is winning, the air is crisp, the wind is rearranging the leaves from the trees to the streets and the gutters. I have been trying to watch the seasons more closely, living in a sea of concrete the temperature informs me of the season rather than the tones and colours of nature.

I have lived in the inner city on a main arterial road now for 5 years, although I have painted my house all the colours of the world, I am currently writing in my watermelon pink bedroom, the grey of the city, and confines of living like an adult in an childs bedroom are starting to take their toll. Greg and I bought an investment rather than a house, we live with 4 other strangers to pay it off. It's a life on layby and I am desparate to finally realise the installments. After early days of losing treasured items and watching a newly renovated house gets its first nicks and bruises, I began to detach myself from my surroundings, our house is stranger proofed in the a way that new parents baby proof theirs. It is a communal space rather than a personal one.

For years I struggled with the transcient engeries that rushed in and out of the front door only to be displaced with the rush of cars. I wanted to create a home for Greg and I, a place where we could live our dreams rather than mark time. It resulted in a frustrated attempt to manufacture a community to tie down vagrant energies and in my frazzled disappointment that people didn't care about my house as much as I did. People often comment that they could not live with strangers and definitely not for the length of time that we have. The truth is that is has been hard and I have had to growth enormously to be the person that I am now with it.

There were years when I saw the worst and best of people and 1 year I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown, that year ended with me and all my housemate sitting at the kitchen table crying. I have found that living in this house is such a contradiction, there are 6 of us here, but I have never witnessed all 6 at the same time, in fact witnessing 4 in the same space is a miracle.

We breathe the same air, eat of the same plates, sleep in the same stillness, wash our clothes in the same machine, our lives cross paths in so many ways and yet we are essentially strangers to each other. The distance and yet proxsimity of these relationships is conflicting its like that endless elevator ride with someone you know but don't speak to. In the last year I have come to accept these relationships for what the are, embracing their intimacy and enjoying the distance. I can’t deny that I long for a home of my own, for plates that only I and those I love eat off, to know the clothes line is always free, and to be able to invest safety in my environment and objects. It’s amazing to me though the lives that we get used to and even comfortable in.

I once felt like this house shut down who I was that I had stopped trusting people because I had so many strangers in a circle that is normally reserved for lovers, husbands and families. I see now though that I trust more than ever that having people racing in and our of your closest boundaries creates a new flexibility and challenges the need for control.

A Good Book

I haven’t written for days, life seems to be getting in the way. The house, my job, friends, the endless circus in my head and more recently a haunting flu have suspended me unable to write, or really unwilling. I want writing to be like rich dark chocolate even when you don’t really feel like it you can squeeze in a block or two. I feel the rambling disconnected days I have been having, hazy with paint fumes, sniffly with a head cold, noisy with road works and boiling with pure anger would not really make for good reading. But having spent a sick day sleeping and reading Elliot Pearlman’s ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’ it seems general misery makes for bloody good reading. Although over the mid book hump and steadily looking toward the end I am starting to hate the writer who has taken me into such a dark and dirty world, I am finding its grime difficult to wash away. Annie Dillard comments that reading a book is a stretch in comparison to living a tactile life, but I disagree a good book stops being read and becomes like a narrative from your brain, you can smell the story, you can hear the characters voices, you can feel the way they move, and soon you are squirming at the morality of their actions and pitying their lives as if they were real.

A good book is tranporting like nothing else.

Catching the Big Fish

I am settled at my computer after a whirlwind of activity and I feel like the washing machine stilled after the spin cycle. After a 4am start, flight to Melbourne, back to back meetings, a 5pm flight back and a 6.30 landing, I got home at 7 to clean my room, get dinner on the stove and now I’m writing for my blog which I have missed for 2 days. In between all of this I have managed to sandwich in David Lynch's little book titled “Catching the Big Fish”, after a beautiful beginning analogy about catching ideas like fish and going deeper to get the bigger ideas, deeper where the bigger fish reside, the rest of the book is a collection of random thoughts. However Lynch kept returning to his practice of transcendental meditation as his means of going deeper and touching the ‘unified field’ or that place of ultimate connection where, as the Beatles say, “I am you, you are me and we are we”.

After the bleak disconnection that I have been feeling this week, I wanted to transcend the amusement park which has become my head, its basically become all roller coasters, clowns oscillating, BB guns going off, and huge stuffed animals. All this action in my head is making my body feel like its on a constant sugar rush. The minutes have been melting away and life is feeling small and compacted. I like Lynch’s idea of using meditation to expand my consciousness and perhaps have that filter through into the rest my life.

Quantity over Quality

It’s the last day of the 21 days of writing and after an exhausting weekend of painting and socializing I am sitting down to complete the last 8 minutes of my commitment. Have things changed I wonder? Has this self imposed sentence had any gains, have my self cencoring and sabotaging habits been reformed, has my 21 day program seen a change for the better? In the last 21 days, I have not necessarily discovered more faith in my writing ability or miraculously come to the conclusion that I am a fabulous writer. What has happened is that I have written, I have committed to showing up to the page every day and producing something, pushing aside the need for it to be valid or good and focusing purely on the quantity. I remember once hearing about a class of sculpture students who were divided in two, half the group were instructed to produce one piece of excellent quality and the other half of the group to produce 200 pieces with no regard to quality. Invariably the group that produced 200 pieces discovered new techniques and ways of working and concentrated on their process rather than the product. The other group with only one piece to produce agonized over their choices and curbed risk in their work focusing solely on the product rather than the process. This is mostly what I have learnt over these 21 days, that quantity leads to quality and if your focus remains on your process and not your product invariably the product will be better.

Monsters in the Closet

Paint fumes are hovering in the inner cavities of my head and are playing tricks with my stomach and parching my throat as they struggle for an exit. Greg and I spent all day painting, it was steady process, room by room, inch by inch, nervous endlessness when starting and excited anticipation when ending. Between brush strokes, rollers and fumes, I had a lot of time to think today, about this house, this second installment in the Greg and Tanya future show. Was it going to work out, were we crazy, would the 10 years it would take to realize our investment be long difficult ones for the sake of a house, that I will never live in.

I think most of our choices have a 50/50 chance, I know the process of making decisions is to weigh it all up opting for choices in your favour, but the riskiest and juiciest choices are generally stacked against you, and you have to run the race to know the outcome. Buying this second house and positioning us in huge debt once loomed large in my mind as I tried to add up all the disasters and come up with exit plans and rescue measures. But rarely in any given moment do I not know exactly what to do, and every moment seems to come to its own fanciful conclusion, if it’s bad I learn a lot, if it’s good I learn a lot, at the end of the day all my experiences seem to take me to the same place. I don’t know if we have made a good decision I don’t know if we have made a bad decision, all I know is that everything is ok day, and any little hitches the spilt paint, the exhaustion were dealt with as they came, the only thing I can’t seem to deal with is the disasters of the mind.

It’s a bit like being scared of the monsters in the closet without really ever knowing if there are monsters in the closet.

Endings and Beginnings

It’s nearly a full moon tonight and the air is expectant, the heat of the day is now swirling into a cool wind and inviting a storm, teasing it out slowly. It’s Easter weekend and the city has spent hours emptying out, in preparation for the pared down quiet of Good Friday. It’s been so long since I have been to church or read the bible that I barely remember what Easter is about, Jesus dying and rising again. A time for endings and new beginnings in a way. Things are definitely beginning for Greg and I, our second house is in its last stressful stages of completion and we will be painting all weekend. This house was a long time realization for Greg who has wanted to build an empire and have his own plan rather than depending on someone else’s. For me I feel like a new era of both work and creativity are beginning and for the first time in a long time I feel like they can really work well together. I got a very significant pay rise today, which was amazing, my boss gave it to me without me having to ask, and said that I absolutely deserved it, it was very heartening and like a blessing from the universe that said yes, this working and writing thing can work had in hand. This afternoon I started making some plans for my writing also, I have picked out a few key shows that will help shape the book and I know if I work on it slowly that it will come together. As we drove home tonight, through the dewy darkness, I said to Greg, ‘life is good’ and I meant it.

Time to Gut It

I have started renovations on my writing desk, I have a writing nook that I used for four years while I was studying, it was here that I turned up the radio, sang along loudly and composed the essay’s that set me on fire with their ideas and the expression of those ideas onto the page. I am surrounded by images that I used to collect from galleries, book stores and from the university. They are tacked to my wall like post it notes reminding me of what is, was important to me in my life. Unfortunately they have been stuck in a time warp for the last 2 years and the reminders are stale. My used PC sits on the corner vying for my attention, which I am no longer willing to give. I realize that it all needs an overhaul, I need to gut it and start again. I need new reminders, I need space, and I need fresh energy. Today is the first day in 2 years that I have come here and written something, the fire and passion that used to course through my head and into my fingers has disappeared, as soon as I sat down, I felt tired. I thought it just needed a tidy up but my body tells me it time for everything to go.

Maybe Baby

I finished Joan Didon’s wonderful memoir last night, tears rolled down my cheeks and dammed in the crook beneath my chin for the entire last chapter. Her writing is so lyrical, yet her disorientation is spoken so clearly. Her sadness leaden but she does not cave to pure sentimental recall of her 40 year marriage, not that I would have minded that. I thought about my own short marriage in comparison, but a decade is a decade and living even a year without Greg seems unimaginable. She speaks particularly about the rituals built up in a marriage that don’t die with the partner, that same urge to deliver news about the most mundane things, consult about dinner plans, that first embrace when you get into bed. I once heard that marriage provides the only true witness to your life and the importance of it, with the loss of one partner does the other’s life diminish also. Didon speaks of feeling invisible after her husband died, perhaps because her witness was no longer there.

I have to admit I was glad to finish it, her writing transported me into her ‘mudgy’ as she calls it head, and I was too often confronted with questions of what I would do with the same loss. The true nature of grief seems a process of accepting the death of someone you love and then noticing moment by moment their absence within them.

My mind has not only been occupied with death but birth, Greg and I have decided to start a family and have been ‘trying’ to have a baby. After years of ‘trying’ not to have a baby, this reversal is strange and largely out of my control. The waiting game between periods is excruciating, the information on ovulation and conception conflicting, the guessing and gauging obsessive (as in, am I feeling a little nauseous or did I just eat too much). We have just started so I am sure after a few months of ‘trying’ I will find a rhythm with it, and hopefully not lose my mind in the process, when did I become such a control freak! It’s a huge transition that we take so for granted. One day your you and your husband and the next your you, a little creature inside of you and your husband (keep in mind having a little creature inside of you is the subject of quite scary sci fi films). Then your you, your husband and a new little person who is half you and half him (again quite a scary subject of sci fi films). Mary Kelly is a artist who has constructed a work about the over night (literally) transition of being a women, wife and daughter to being a mother and being expected to respond to that naturally. I find it funny that we make such a big deal out of home loans, new jobs, moving states and yet are expected to take so lightly the conception of a child.

It’s the uncertainty which has me off balance, having to live life ‘normally’ even though at any given moment, my whole way of life will change. As I run my fingers over the gold embossed quote on the back of Didon’s book, I notice it is unsettlingly true even though it refers to death and not life, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it end.” (Joan Didon), I guess at the end of the day it’s a fine line.

It's Just A Moment

I am day at 14 of my 21 days of writing, two thirds over the hump and for the first time, I feel reluctant to write, honestly reluctant to do anything. I am like a electrical plug sitting only half way into the socket, some of the power is going through but there is a general sense of uncertainty about everything I do. I woke this morning to a horrible anxiety dream, of rushing to get to an appointment while looking for part of my outfit and putting it on to find it is too tight and uncomfortable. The rest of the day has been spent climbing out of this dream, but being wound back into it against my will. I feel drenched in tiredness, heavy and leaden as if my limbs have been soaking in water. My throat is stuck and still like before you drop off to sleep in the car, and my actions have been like that jerking awake when the car trips over a pot hole.

My eight minutes are up, and I am ready to pack up and have a snooze, I am going to Yoga tonight and know I will have to drag myself there but will feel amazing when I am done. This is a special class, developed by a teacher who has a dancing background, it has a grace and sense of fluidity which is wonderful. The classes are held in a warehouse high above Chippendale with polished floors boards and long windows that look onto the city.

I am listening to U2 and in their eternal words ‘it’s just a moment, its time will pass’, I plan to restore the power tomorrow and write with more energy and intent

Showering in Nature

Greg is chatting on the phone and I am finding it hard to concentrate, my stomach is very full and the taste of Chinese is lingering in my throat. We are unpacked and about to jump into showers and complete the rituals of a weekend away. I feel totally relaxed, we have basked in the last rays of summer, perfect blue sky days and nippy nights which make the bed inviting.

My favourite moment today was a long mid morning shower in the open air bathroom, the gushing of water blending with the chatting of birds, particularly one Rosella who watched us all morning. Playful rainbows jumped around me as the sun cut through the drops, enfolded in the warm water and the fresh smell of soap as I looked up into the paper bark gums and clear blue sky. I felt grounded and totally in the moment, alive yet calm. It really captured for me a grace that I want to invite into my life everyday, a harmony I want to breathe in during chaotic moments, and an energy that I want to draw up from the earth.

Riding My Own Bike

My limbs are sleepy and my eyes softly gritty after an hour-long massage. I have snoozed and slowly had the stress pulped out of me like squeezing the final bit of toothpaste out of the tube. I have crawled languidly up to the Gunyah, the cavernous restaurant attached to the Paperbark Camp. Two of the three sides of the deep room open onto a verandah, where I can see the upper-mid section of the trees, if I were starring at a women I would be looking as her breasts and starring down at her toes but completely missing her face. There is a light breeze and the slapping of the leaves sounds like soft rain. Delicious stray wisps lick my arms and the back of my neck. The sun is strongly dappling through the trees and an empty room seems full because of their presence.

We arrived late last night impressed by what was lit up before we stumbled to our tent in total darkness, we slept a lovely sleep blanketed by fresh air, and surrounding by the low key sipping and buzzing of night creatures, cut by the occasional hoot of an owl. Unfortunately, we woke to the buzzing of our alarm that I had absent-mindedly packed still set for 6.30am. Confused I was convinced the tent had some sort of in built alarm system, which I drunkenly grabbed for, before realizing the buzzing was of my own doing. After a dose, we enjoyed a long breakfast and lingered over the paper.

I am convinced that when we ask the universe for something it does nothing else but bend to our will. I had half heartedly promised to look over the book and come up with a new direction and the paper this morning seemed have endless stories about art, and art shows. I suppose this happens every weekend but still, it felt like a hand written and delivered message. And just like that, I have come to a decision about what I am going to do. I want to write the book from live experience from going to galleries and talking to people, rather than from research. I want the book to have a moving energy that brings my romance with art alive and hopefully makes everyone who reads it swoon too. Having said that I have decided to see Andy Warhol in Brisbane in a few weeks to get the ball rolling along.

With a few hours to kill we set of on bikes to Huskiisson, I haven’t ridden a bike for at least 10 years, but hey it was just like riding a bike. I felt like I was living the simple country life riding to lunch, parking my bike and then riding off afterward. My riding style is quite alarming and once I started to really notice it, I understood some things about my life. For example when I get a downhill stretch, I put the breaks on. So when life is giving me some momentum and help in reaching my destination, I activate the break pads. When I have to share the road with a car, I freeze up and stop pedaling pasting myself to the side of the road. When bigger more threatening forces approach the road I am happily pedaling down, suddenly I just stop having taken away my own right to be on the road. I do not take risks, I do not ride with one hand and I rarely look around to take it all in.

Knowing that this is not what I want anymore, my ride back was very different to the ride there. I sped down little hills, I let go of the handlebars occasionally, I kept madly pedaling whenever a car approached and asserted my place on the road. I even raced Greg to the finish line. This is how I want to live, I am not going to be jumping ramps or riding standing on my handlebars, but I am not eighty I need to be in the race to win and on the road to ride.

De-Numbing

I am downloading the Weeds album from i-Tunes, it is part of the birthday extravaganza that I have planned for Greg, which includes a weekend away at a luxury eco-tourism resort, a beautiful Abelard business shirt, a pair of black cuff links and the afore mentioned album. I always like to pile it on for birthdays, due to Greg’s inability to take unless he is offered exactly what he wants, I expect most of it will be returned, except the weekend and the album. I have learnt by now to always pick a few things he can’t take back just to teach him humility. As a result of the Internet connection I am sitting at the door way, like a little guard. How I have changed, no more rain dances or having to clean my room or do the chores or waiting for the right moment, writing has become like everything else, just doing and no drama. I had a mental health day today, work has been numbing lately and I needed a day to wander. I went into the city to do chores but I decided on the bus ride in that I was just going to be OK and relax into everything today, it’s amazing what just making that decision can do for you. I went to my usual haunt the book store where I poked around for a couple of hours, building up stacks of books next to me as I decided what to buy.

As I have started writing a book about engaging with modern art, I had a look at the art history section. After a pile of about six books, I decided on Mathew Collings ‘This is Modern Art’. He seemed to be writing in something of a no bullshit and confront the questions style about art, since I am going to be doing the same, I thought I better check it out. The first chapter enticingly called, ‘Kicking Arse’ has me lost and I realize I am reading the writing of someone who is cool and knows all the cool hang outs and terms, I see a ray of hope for my book, which is Mathew Collings meets Elizabeth Gilbert, not that I am keen to have my writing held up against either. The first chapter that I wrote of my book was brilliant it related to a real human being finding her way through the art world but she seems to have disappeared in the most recent chapter, afraid that her voice was not good enough, a strange objective and distant voice has taken over, I am going to think about it all on the weekend and rewrite it. I keep randomly fighting off the thought of whether I actually have any talent, and have to keep telling myself that is not my problem right now, the only pressing concern I have is to write, and write I must.

Off now to tie up all the lose ends before escaping, I hope the weekend can get the circulation of my life running again. I feel like I have been on a train this week expecting that every time it stopped was my stop and realizing it's not, strange week. Met up with my friend Berti who I haven’t seen for nearly 3 years she has been working on the cruise ships as a shopping guide, which sounded like a completely parallel universe, where the average age as Berti says it is deceased and the main focus is to get the oldies to spend as much money as possible. It was funny to hear Berti using terms like seafarers and going out to sea and coming into land. It was great to see her, Berti is like a favourite black dress that always look elegant yet sexy and makes you feel fantastic, she going off to Italy soon, to be - believe it not with a man called Fabio.

Erotica For Writers

I have been reading erotica for writers, Julia Cameron’s Right to Write. I find at the end of every chapter and sometimes even before, I am dying to get to the page to lay out my life and heart like she has, to invite people into my room like I have just been transported into hers. Interestingly today’s topic is about mood, most pointedly about not being in the mood to write. My mood had waxed and waned through the hours of the day and had settled into a most disagreeable slump. I was at a sales course by an American who dressed like a mid western preacher and spoke with the same fever. Normally I would be embracing this kind of action, building myself up to go forth recreate, sell and be better. But my heart was heavy today I felt like I was looking at someone exercising, knowing that's what I should be doing but still not wanting to. I came home swelling with a dark mood, my head felt like it had a snowy TV channel in it, and life felt like I wearing something tight and itchy. Raging I dared the world to annoy me more just so I could give it a what for.

Luckily my friend Suzannah called, I answered the phone ‘hello beautiful’ and my mood melted, just like that. Her tired voice reflected my own dilapidated state and she told me she was just too tired to do a coaching call about my writing. I had asked her about a week ago whether she would coach me through the up’s and down’s I was sure to face and just tell me to keep going. She reluctantly agreed. Her call tonight was to postpone, then she just told me the truth that she was tired, too tired to be profound and almighty and lead me to the path of enlightenment when she barely felt she was on track. We talked it out and agreed to light each other’s way and relaxed. She checked in on my 21 days of writing, on our last call she had set me the task of writing for the next 21 days consecutively for at least 8 minutes. I told her it was going well. It’s actually been going incredibly well, for whatever reason just having the clarity of instruction to write for 8 minutes and with no censor has been very freeing, I am at day 10 and writing everyday is becoming like a comfortable soft T-shirt that I slip on when I get home.

I am sitting curved into the pillows on my bed, the sky outside is a smoky blue as the sun packs up for the day, the breeze of the fan brushes the soles of my feet every few seconds as it turns, David Gray is lilting softly in the back ground, beseeching me to sail away with him. The swelling has gone down and I feel soft, my head is supple and clear, and my mood is quietly sedated.

Bollywood Dreaming

Although it's only been four weeks since I have been back, my recent trip to India seems like a life time ago. The last time I went to India I kept a blog of mostly my shock and misery with some lovely photo's peppered in between. When I told people I was going back for another month long holiday; Why? was the most common question.

Sadly I never finished my Bollywood Dreaming blog and people may not have understood what a profound effect travelling for the first time and returning to the place of my birth had on me. I hated India with a passion it was like being permanently stuck in the twilight zone, contradiction abounded and Indians I discovered only know black and white. I also discovered that I was very Indian in this sense, over the last four years of studying and working I had become brittle and hard, the slightest wind threatened to snap me. All I know is I left the first time swearing never to return and almost as soon as the plane landed I suddenly just wanted to go back.

On this recent trip despite a lot of advances I found this strict adherence to black and white was still ever present, having lunch at a 5 star hotel in Varanasi we saw that they had both a chicken and cheese sandwich on the menu, when we naively asked if we could have both the cheese and the chicken in one sandwich we were swiftly told it was not possible, when we questioned why the waiter just repeated no. I don't know how a country that can't mix cheese and chicken is going to be a super power, but go figures.

What had changed was me, almost gone was brittle Tanya that folded in the face of trouble and instead I was more a supple read flowing with the wind and not against it.

The Taj Mahal really is as beautiful as people say it is..

Just The Three Of Us

This blog is generally coming in three's, there are three under the tree and there are three main reasons why I have started a blog

It is one the chronicle of the writing life that I am making day to day, my climb higher up through the creative branches with its grand views and also it's a record of the sudden slips and the scraping falls that is pursuing what you love in the midst of terrible fear...

It is two the chronicle of my real life, of corralling the strength to move house, to grow a veggie garden, of becoming and being a wife and preparing myself for a baby that is floating somewhere in the air waiting for the right time to come...

It is three a chronicle of my inner life, of whirling as Saturn returns and leads up to my 30th birthday, a sorting out of priorities, a drawing of boundaries and generally being a bit kick ass about the life that I want, the way I want to live and how I want to be treated....