There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,
there is only the meaning we each give to our life,
an individual meaning, an individual plot,
like an individual novel, a book for each person. - Anais Nin
It's interesting that in young adulthood we adopt our own - individual - role models. If we are lucky, those luminarie's keep guiding us and reassuring, long after their deaths and long after the initial infatuation. Nin keeps speaking sense to me, 30 years later.
I'm never coming out of my bedroom again. Tell the children! No wait - I can send them a message from my
new laptop.
I can feel an obsession coming on...Perhaps a small fridge and a dumb waiter for the dirty dishes. I have an ensuite, so hygiene is covered.
I really have nothing to post, I just wanted to show off. But this video does follow up my last post quite well: TISM (This Is Serious Mum), late of Melbourne, being irreverent again. The jolly thing about TISM is that in the 20 odd years they've been playing, no public audience has ever seen their faces. Clever...
Language warning.
There has been a lot of media attention here recently around issues of child images, "corporate paedophilia" and art. Bill Henson's exhibition was shut down in May before it opened due to including images of a naked 13 year old girl.
Art Monthly Australia (July Issue) has just released it's July issue. The cover is shown. It's a current subject of controversy.
The girl's father has defended the whole thing by saying that we are inadvertently encouraging a "higher level of repression" by not embracing this as art. "We have art to liberate the mind.."
I agree repression is problematic and that art (can, though no guarantee's) liberate the mind.
The girl's father goes on to say that he has a fear: "That artists will desert the field of childhood...and I think that is going to be a really sad cultural development for this country".
The girl's father is a wanker. The only sad cultural development we have to fear is that this dickhead gets any more media attention. Please someone lock him in a cafe in Darlinghurst for the next 50 years.
This whole defense is really about how "interesting" and "artistic" the girl's father is when he gets in front of a camera, certainly not about the beauty of childhood. The girl herself gets little to no airspace. I hope this link shows you what I mean. Press Conference.
Shortly after my father died, I'm told that while entertaining a couple of friends I crawled into the kitchen on my hands and knees. When I asked if I'd been trying to be funny, my friend replied, 'No. You just wanted another bottle of wine, and that was they only way you were going to make it.
My attitude to drinking has been entirely formed by my parents. If your mother was essentially a humourless teetotaller and your father was a hilarious, some might say, alcoholic, who would you want to take after?" - Judith Lucy.
I'm reading The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy: She is an Australian comedian.I've always loved her and she has the same hair as I do.
My favourite female author, Isabelle Allende, interviewed by my favourite Australian TV person, Andrew Denton.
I think that when I was around 5 I realised that my mother was a victim and I didn't want to be like her. My mother was a beautiful woman who was victimised by the society. My mother had no rights, no money, no power of any kind and the only way she could get attention was by being very sick. So she was sick all the time. And I wanted to be like my grandfather, I wanted to be in control. I think I was a feminist before the word was invented. By the time I came across feminist books by eh by American or European writers, I realised that there was [noise in background] an articulate way or a language to express all these feelings that I had had for years and years and so I became a raging feminist as a young woman". - Isabelle Allende.
Interesting how those we admire turn out to be, after all this time, quite like ourselves.
Sheesh it all happens at once, don't it? Eh?
The latest "You Will Not Blog" event occured when my service provider whined at me, " Ewww you have exceeded your allowance" (Again). So those bastards have slowed my internet-everything speed down to an astonishing degree.
IT'S OPTUS BY THE WAY. OPTUS NET DOT COM DOT FREAKING AU.
So to post what I want to post (gee this in itself is taking a long time) would take around 2 hours minimum.
GOD I HATE PHONE COMPANIES.
I have paid my penance (literally) and have credit carded myself to an upgraded plan that will take effect in about 3 freaking days.
Grrrr.
"When I went out, I often had patients talk about – most of the indigenous patients – talk about calling on the spirits of their forefathers to help. Once in the past, a patient I was treating, a young man, hung himself, and what I saw was the family and the extended family talking to the spirit of their forefathers to help them bear this". - Russell d'Souza, psychiatrist.
D'Souza is based in Melbourne and is one of two pioneers in the field of psychology and its relationship to spirituality. He's done lashings of research to show that a person's spiritual life may in fact be an extremely useful resource to draw on when supporting them to heal. And here's his colleague, another psychiatrist, George Halasz:
"That is in the setting that I really understood that there is a soul – much like there is a ventricle in the heart, there’s a liver in the abdominal cavity or there’s a brain in the cranium, somewhere there’s a reality to the soul. And I thought “ah ha, that’s what has been neglected”.
Personally, I'm relieved to be given the go-ahead to explore this with clients. I have done so only in the past where the client has made explicit reference to it. I shall be more confident in bringing up the subject now, having previously been scared of perhaps imposing my own beliefs (and therefore being unprofessional).
The same ethical principle still applies of course, the green light of which I speak allows the therapist to encourage the client's own opening of pathways to spirit, not necessarily their own.
Cripes! This virus hangs on like a leech.
Here's a song.
By my favourite feral beauty, John Lydon.
Hi peoples,
Kids have got tonsillitus ( diagnosed after some days of it) and mother has the flu. Will be back when things settle down.
alison
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Do you realize that you now have a great
potential to instigate ringing surprises? Your knack for healing the
seemingly unhealable is at a peak, as is your ability to accomplish the
impossible, get insight into the incomprehensible, and feel equanimity
amidst the uncontrollable. What do you plan to do with all that mojo,
Gemini? I suggest that you act like a character in a fairy tale who has
been given three wishes. Not two or four, but three.
- Horoscopes from Rob Brezsny : Free Will Astrology
I have Rob's astrology sent to me every month via email. Some months my response is "Huh?" with an amount interest all the same. But other times, it's just what I need to read. I've just had a relationship break-up and the above is perfect for me. Rob's slant is always positive.
Photo of the goddess Theresa Lee who put me onto the site in the first place.
ANDREW DENTON: You are a Kokoberra woman.
TANIA MAJOR: Yes.
ANDREW DENTON: Grew up in Kowanyama. What does being a Kokoberra woman mean?
TANIA MAJOR: A Kokoberra woman means I’m from Kowanyama in a right Aboriginal community, in Cape York.
ANDREW DENTON: Aha.
TANIA MAJOR: I’m from a particular tribal group. It means I’m six foot two, I’m intellectual, I’m bullet proof.
ANDREW DENTON: Mhm.
TANIA MAJOR: And it means, don’t mess with me Andrew Denton.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
TANIA MAJOR: Cos I can see on your head.
ANDREW DENTON: I’m not messing with you Tania.
LAUGHTER
- From Enough Rope 26 May 2008
This 26 year-old Young Australian of the Year 2007 is a complete inspiration. In respect to discussions of indigenous people in this country, I can (with relief) say I have never heard so much commonsense, honesty and intelligence come from anyone's mouth as it does from Tania's.
And shit she's funny. Watch the video, it's grand.
A Leonard Cohen song that endures the decades. Performed here by my beloved John Cale.
"Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
G. K. Chesterton
Thanks Simon. (We're still big fans)!
I found this on my new favourite blog Hoyden About Town. It needs to be seen by every living person. What a guy!
(Note to self: Get red cape, 20 litres detergent and two long sticks).
An interesting 'by the way' occurred when Rob McAlpine was giving his presentation last week at the pilot training program for treatment of anxiety disorders in children and young people.
In stressing the need for a "multi-modal" approach to treating this condition, he referred to the large body of work that was conducted by Anna Freud and her colleagues concerning anxiety in kiddies. Anna is known as the founder of child psychoanalysis.
It seems the recent research has given credence to the psychodynamic model, originated by Anna's papa Sigmund. Much of the kudos and consequent ideas comes from her meticulous note keeping. (Interestingly, Sigmund wasn't big on notes). There are numerous documented successes - kids just stopped being anxious after her interventions.
