The End of this Blog.

The End: December 1st 2013.

It’s time to bring Creative Meowser Land to it’s conclusion.

It’s time for something else. Maybe there will be a new blog, but with a different focus. It might be called ‘I like woolly jumpers’ or ‘my life in op shops’.

Privacy is a funny old bird isn’t it? I have still been somewhat private despite how open my blog might seem. Oh, the things I’ve left out, you’d be proud of my self control! I may go back and remove some entries, or edit out things that I feel have the potential to do more harm than good. There might be whole entries that no longer need to be floating in the ether.

I got a book of Michael Leunig’s cartoony wisdom from the library and it’s just adorable. This collection is called ‘The Stick’, and I have found it most inspiring.

I’m also considering having a blog called “Less and Small”, where I do my best to have less and less and take joy in smaller and smaller things. This would be pretty challenging for me as I do love gathering little objects and buying clothes from op shops. What if I halved my wardrobe? These are the kind of things I’m pondering.

 Riding my bike and getting back into painting, cartooning and creative writing would count as ‘small things’. I do want a kayak which isn’t very ‘small’, and it then requires having a roof rack, then actually lifting it and going somewhere to use it. 

Do you think that in order to have a small goal you sometimes have to have a bigger initial goal in order to implement it?  What about people who have so much and yet are trapped in the treadmill of debt and anxiety? I suppose having a kayak isn't that outrageous. It’s just sort of big and cumbersome. On the ocean it would be small, and I could kayak for hours and be very content.

I saw Corn on Friday and he quoted Steven Wright “you can’t have everything, where would you put it?”.

This isn’t the way most people think though is it? I spoke to a man and I repeated the Wright quote to him. He looked at me and said ‘I’d find somewhere to put it”. Yeah, up his giant asshole probably.

So yesterday I threw myself into a metaphorical fire. I’m shaken and sore, but in a stable condition. I went somewhere and did some things and thought I might get some answers. 

Conclusions have been reached. No more voluntary walking through fire for me in the near future. Thanks for reading.

Fire Walking

By Candice.

The view of the lake is beautiful

clouds are moving fast in the sky

 blue

             dark fixed eyes

                      Steady intent

I put my hand on his chest

I don’t know what I thought would come of this

Come of this

           come of this

                    come of this

It’s a burning that will never been quenched

not by all of Rotoiti’s heavy water

                   the stench of it

clings to me

sulphur

and fire

excess desire

cows dance in the wet grass

my eyes hurt and my body is remade

no regrets then?

   Drink more water

Feel less sorry for self

Notice the small things

Wear a fire proof jacket.

 xxx

Best Things Lately! Music, water, friendship!

November 27th 2013.  Wow, what  great weekend!

Summer's here!

When picked up (gently) on a shell, this Nudibranch rolls into a little ball and hides!

Went up North (Whangarei) and visited my oldest friend. She lives in a postal code requiring 'rural delivery', so it's quiet and tree huddled, perfect for refreshing the soul and mind. Her three chooks laid an egg each day, the dogs played together like slightly agressive children. During one of our beach excursions I found two amazing sea slugs that I'd never seen before. Behold, they were Nudibranchia! 

The previous weekend (of my birthday) I'd also gone out with Portia and Mum to Bethel's Beach had dinner with other friends, saw Lawerence Arabia playing at the King's Arm's with Otis, and have had encouragement and input from Liz regarding the book I've been trying to write for more than ten years! I'm also finally finishing my hypnotherapy studies, wah hoo!

Dance, dance, it's a Nudibranch!

So it's that feel good thing, where you pick yourself up into the sun and do a little Nudibranch dance because you can! Oh love! Oh life! 

Another busy week planned, catching up with Peter the Tanned tonight, seeing a play with Portia tomorrow, and on Friday I think I'll go to Osho Kundalini Meditation. So this was really just to share a little bit of postive shit with y'all, especically since I'd gone on a bit about depression and anxiety of late. Still, a lotta people get anxious and depressed in a society that's too bogged down in technology, overwork, high expectations and fear of the future (and the past, eek!). 

I feel so transformed after leaving the city and some of the crappy trappings (like spending way too long on facebook). Oh, and I have to say that seeing Lawrence Arabia for the first time live was an absolute treat. They even played 'Apple Pie Bed' and the teacher song! Gorgeous great fun.

Lawrence Arabia plays the King's Arms November 2013. How lovely it was too.

 He's got this moustache that reminds me of mums' boyfriend from 1977; Steve Marshall. Steve was the manager of Mckenzie's in Ashburton, so we moved there for a year (which is how long the relationship lasted between mum and Steve Marshall). 

I loved Ashburton. I went to this old school covered in ivy and bird's nests. I made really lovely friends and had a school teacher who didn't mind that I couldn't spell, she just let me get on with being creative. One of my best friends was Richard Jones. He had pale skin and floppy dark brown hair. He would come over to my house, and even though I didn't really like the programme 'Animals, Animals, Animals' that much, I'd watch it with him to please him. We used to make little books together and he insisted on making them go from back to the front. I would try to explain that a book had to go from the front to the back, but he just couldn't do it, so I agreed that we could do it the way he found it easier. I would write the stories and he would do the pictures. It was a match made in heaven. We also wished we could make our own 'Narnia' wardrobe. I loved him so much, then he moved away. I have kept a love letter he wrote me that was designed to hang on the wall. He kissed me just once after school; a quick peck on the lips. I was thrilled and scared because I thought he'd then want sex (of course, being seven years old, I doubt he'd come to that conclusion just yet, but how was I to know?).

 I will never know what became of him, Richard Jones of Ashburton in 1977/78. That was the year a song called 'Substitute' came out, and I really wanted to understand what the woman was talking about. The lyrics went something like "I'll be your substitute, whenever you want me, oh oh, don't you know I'll be your substitute, whenever you need me, oh oh. Every night, you sit inside, hoping to see her face, you might as well forget about her and find someone to take her place". I tried to discuss it with mum, and she said "it's a stupid song". I liked singing along to it, and I think 'high heeled sneakers' was also on the radio. Being seven years old, the excitement of punk's uprising was lost on me and only snuck into my consciousness when I was eight and songs like Ian Dury's 'Rhythm stick', DEVO's 'Whip it' and 'Turning Japanese' managed to get onto mainstream radio.

And that is the sort of thing that crosses my mind, however fleetingly, when I look at a young man with a moustache. Happy days! Nudibranch dance.

Church Bay, Whangarei. Site of Nudibranchia!

Depression, Assholes and Good Things!

November 14th 2013

Portia and I went to Art In The Dark!

When I last wrote, I was struggling through a 'depression attack'. Like a dark front of clouds moving across the water it came, my tears falling steadily through the night. 
Over the years I've learned to read these clouds, to predict when it's a light downpour and when I might need to get a lifeboat ready. I am not in danger of killing myself, I committed to Living a long time ago! Just thought I'd better be clear on that. 

As I write this I'm aware that while many of us struggle with periods of depression and anxiety, there are so many huge things happening in the world that are truly tragic (the Phillipines typhoon for example). Considering such things doesn't make me suddenly snap out of a 'bad patch'. It leads to further over thinking and then I get more anxious and depressed. I have to be especially careful of what I watch and listen to if I see the signs that a depressive front is moving in. A massive trigger is any situation where I feel abandoned or left behind, so I guess one of the things I'm learning during my time on earth is how to make sure I don't abandon my own needs. 

Portia, pale and interesting, gazes out to sea on a cold windy beach visit.

Meditating does help (hugely) as long as I don't get caught in a spiral of negative thought during the meditation! This morning I had to keep everything on track 'observe, observe ... '.
Yesterday I was listening to the news on the car radio and it ended in tears, but I'm like that even when I'm completely 'un-depressed'. A father held a heater to the right side of his five year old boy's face; the attending physician said it is one of the worst burns he'd ever seen. This man held it there, disfiguring his child for life. I may be out of my 'bad patch' but even writing that down brings tears back up into my eyes. I turned off the radio and spoke out loud, as if addressing that child: "I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me." 

creeping around in the park in the dark like a snark

I often feel a massive sense of responsibility for suffering, and when I was young I used to think that if I suffered enough then others wouldn't. That may well have been a huge "Christian Hangover!"

Fortunately, as I saw that dark cloud moving over me, I did all the 'good things' I could think of to help to prevent it from overtaking. Get outside. Eat properly. Call people. Go out. Cry. Move!

ASSHOLES:
Behaving like an asshole and actually BEING one are two different things. I know this because I'm reading "Assholes, A Theory" by Aaron James. All of us are bound to behave like an asshole from time to time, but to be truly defined as one requires consistent behaviours or attitudes in which one
 "systematically allows himself special advantages in interpersonal relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people" (page 4 of Assholes). Assholes are rife (try driving in Auckland), and I'm hoping to better understand how to cope with them upon reading this hilarious and insightful book. I especially like how it shows that an asshole can be charming and even "morally motivated". You can have rather scrappy or boring assholes, but then there are also "dignified assholes".
"Given his sense of his special standing, he claims advantages that he thinks that noone can reasonably deny him. He is resentful or indignant when he feels his rights are not respected, in much the same way a fully sociable, cooperative person is." (page 13).
I'm finding this really useful as I have often dismissed certain behaviours as 'quirky', or I've thought that someone who makes snide and bitchy comments is really just joking. Perhaps not. Perhaps it's a clue that they're an asshole: 

"He is often rude or more often borderline nasty. One feels he has just been intrusive or inconsiderate, though one can't always pinpoint the norm of courtesy he has tread upon. Most important, the asshole gains special advantages from interpersonal relations, not by stroke of continuous luck, but because he regards himself as special. His circumstances are special in each case, in his view, because he is in them. If one is special on one's birthday, the asshole's birthday comes every day." (pg 16). The important thing to remember is that we are all special, but an Asshole tends to think they really are a bit more special than you are (like a star bellied Sneetch or our current foul government).

Good Things
Thanks be to Portia! This little English Rose is restoring my faith in the English Traveller. Most English Travellers (in my experience) have often made Assholing into an art form. They will gladly eat your food, use your things, accept rides everywhere, ask you to drive them to the airport (for far less than the petrol costs) and then bully you if you try to stand up for yourself. They are also often charming and fun to be around. I guess a country that has bullied so many other countries has to produce a good ratio of self entitled snotty beaks. Fortunately Portia doesn't count as one of these! She came to stay for almost a week and it was so much fun! She also has helped me do a massive amount of sorting out in my lovely living space which has cleared my head enormously.

 We did heaps of things together which made me feel like a tourist in my own city. She hugged me when I realised I hadn't been invited to a good friend's birthday event and advised that I 'leave it'. Last night that same person defriended me on facepooh. Very sad and mystifying, but I've decided to do as advised. I shall leave it.

I wish I could be colder sometimes. Only problem is, if I get cold, I get a different kind of depression. The non-feeling one, like you're numb and things just don't seem to touch you. Ugh, hate that one. Haven't had it in years thanks be to the gods. Anyway, the thing is, Have A Depression Plan!

A Depression Kit, or Plan! Most people have a first aid kit, a lot of people pay for insurance for material goods and also for their health. Ten years ago, as I recovered from a breakdown, I knew I needed to do everything I could think of to be healthy and mentally flexible. Not strong, as strong implies a lack of movement, or it gives off that old 'harden up' kind of vibe.
Amazing how a culture that has told people to 'get over it', 'move on' and to 'harden the fuck up' also produces one of the highest suicide rates in the world isn't it? 
 I've attracted a lot of depression or anxiety prone people in my life. I have always been okay with that (like attracts like), yet the problem is, such people find it very hard to cope if I'm the one going through a bad patch. Fortunately, there are people like Handsome Rob, Tieneke, Portia, Tam, The Painter and His Muse, Peter The Tanned, my mum, Jacqui of the old days, Corn Stone, Griz, Daniel H and others who are willing to have friendships that allow for our humanity.

You will also be proud of me: I've finally put the Sexy Ex and Wylie in their place. This means no contact at all. Upon reading "Assholes" I have discovered that they really are assholes, and not even particularly charming ones at that. I know. I had to read a book called Assholes to figure that out? As for The Rooster, he sent a very nice early birthday greeting which I appreciated. 

In addition to the gorgeous time with Portia, I also have caught up with other wonderful people over the last month or two. That includes Raewyn, Griz, Corn, Rob and Tam. Tam's baby is a year old now and he is so funny and adorable. Rob and I did go for that walk over to White Beach and it was really revitalising and uplifting! As for my birthday, it will be fine. I guess there is a gift in absence, and if I keep taking notice, it's the gift of peace. I would also like to thank those who read my blog as I have now had well over 10,000 views. I can't imagine who you are really, that person in Latvia or Russia, or perhaps the USA, and if there's anything in these ramblings that's of use, but thanks for being there. Lots of Love to All! And remember, we are all equally special! xxxx