Keeping Faith in the Cookie Jar.

My one, silent rebellion was prayer.

In Oz it’s rude to talk about spirituality/religion much, certainly not the private kind so I really have no way of reading how ok you’d all be about the mention of it…

but I was thinking. about the resources I have to hold onto. then and now.

Back then the question seemed about externals. I mean, technically God is an external, too except it’s hardly the same. (God is not a Disney film.) But it’s notions like that that kept me even vaguely this side of sane, even with militant atheists for parents or perhaps because of them.

Sounds funny because we normally associate prayer with conformity and with a brand of conservatism that is so mainstream as to go largely unacknowledged and yet remains a central feature of many peoples’ daily lives.

My prayers were always tinged with guilt. Surreptitious and vehement as the stars I’d look to. I heard them swallowed by the silence, the depth and magnitude of nature rang out in response and I was sure they were still there.

My parents were strangely devout in their atheism… and I mean these were people who would disown friends/family for ‘turning religious on them.’ There was a deep-seeded fear of it, for good reasons but at the time all I knew was that you keep it underground.

So day by day it grows a little stronger in response.
Because it’s always there when nobody else is, and precisely because it’s meant to stay out of sight. It’s like telling a prisoner not to mind the bright red escape hatch on the wall… these are not the ways to keep the curious from killing the cat.
I’ll go there because you tell me not to. I’m obsessive like that, or is it stubborn? Either way, it was there.

I went to an Anglican school with enforced prayer but it was the music and the wholeness of each note that did it — a thousand voices soaring, the organ piercing sunlight that had only just before seemed so absolutely void. Scriptures I could take or leave, for the most part. Parables you hear regardless — the lessons had already been marked on my skin, one way or another.

And so they told me, you can sing but do not dare to feel. Leave it at the gates and go… nowhere. offer… nothing. tell… no one.

Sometimes I’d write to God because it turned out Santa was just another fat, middle-aged guy pretending to be something he was not.

See, there was no replacement for the wonder and belief that had long before been poured into my heart. How do you tell a child they can’t believe in the Moon? It’s right there.

But I learned to ignore those things, somewhere along the way, deliberately forgot the rest, most likely. It is an emptiness, an invitation to deny yourself and in the process lose a little hope with every breath. Not that I hoped for so many things, certainly not that some mystical power would save me from what had by then become my life.

I doubt I wanted to be saved. Kindness hadn’t proved much of a boon up to that point so I thought to myself, just don’t hand me another fairytale. I’m not a princess and there is no pea. There’s just you, me and… ?

What I did want to know was that I could be understood. And if there might, just might be a light switch to find, if I kept to the path I couldn’t help but know lay deep within, then that would be gravy.

These were my messages in a bottle, stored on the very top shelf. I stuffed them in the cookie jar, perched right below the bright red sign that tells you not to dare.

learned helplessness: of wishes and nightmares.

had an awful nightmare because the new house my mother and step-father have moved into is far too much like the house i grew up in, in appearance, design and no few details. i thought i’d be ‘ok’ with that but it’s going to take some working on and i’m not going to be able to stay with them right before i move, that’s for sure. so my apologies if this post rambles somewhat. i’m bleary eyed and my heart throbs with such intensity that i think it will burst. it doesn’t, of course but it might be better if i did, once in a while…

“someday i’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…”

Tori Amos sang that at what was a truly blissful concert the other night. seeing her live is like nothing else. her voice does things to you. deep and marvellous things.

it makes me want my feelings back… all of them. including the ones i was forced to give up or forgot, denied, never got the chance to have or just plain suppressed along the way to wherever it is i am now.

i want them back. technically i don’t need them. but i want them. and i don’t think that’s such a crime.

it is to some people in my life, though. it scares them. makes my family think of me as an alien that has appeared in their lives. my mother keeps calling me that. she doesn’t understand… never has, she said.

doesn’t see that i’m not who i was because i’ve worked hard to get here. where maybe i can have a life and really live it… someday.

and of course and very naturally does not realise that part of it is a reaction to the deeply rooted, damaging helplessness my parents respond to things with. i don’t believe either maliciously ever did anything. but that’s just the thing. they didn’t ever do much of anything for anybody, on an emotional level, let alone for their own true selves…

and just because none of it was meant to harm doesn’t mean it didn’t. or that it was ok.

everything has always been done to them, for them or against them. in their minds, at least. even Love.

and what kind of a way to live is that?

i can’t do it. i don’t want to. so even if it means i’ve got to carry a sword on my back i won’t play it that way.

there are so many days that i just don’t feel like i have any armour left but i have more options. i intend to use them.

it isn’t quite the same as having decent self-esteem but maybe self-protection isn’t such a bad start.

Those SINsational dreams…

Woke up this morning feeling like I’d spent the past several days drinking absinthe with Aleister Crowley and followed it up with enough Acid to trip-out a troop of hardy circus clowns.

Am having issues with the world. Would boycott but seems unlikely to actually affect anything, yes? I like my batcave, though.
(Note to self: Invest in hella sexy batgirl costume.)

As I was saying…

The world was too bright and too cold simultaneously, too brash and bold, too dense, humid and sticky with the sense that memory is seeping out of my very pores and contaminating the air I breathe.

It’s the sensuality of spirit. How dare they strip that from my faith? How dare they even try! The necessity of fire, of new passions and the faulty logic that assails me. Long lost, unwilling, insensible things that blossom in the waters of the mind.

The recurring visions cease to be merely recollections and instead invent themselves again in living colour. They drink me — all broth and no substance. Stirred and stirring in the pools of the unconscious.

Do your dreams have a soundtrack?
It always amuses me to wake up and realise that I’ve had the likes of Master of the House running through my head all night long…

“Everything has got a little price,” hey… though lord knows I’m with his wife. Meanwhile, I can think of a great many other things I’d rather be doing all night long.

I stumbled blindly to the bathroom, knees weak and hands shaking. They always shake. Nothing new. Nothing to get worked up about. Just your average day in a possibly not so very average life.
Or maybe we all wake up just exactly where we don’t want to be and trudge back to higher ground? Maybe it’s all just circles within circles. You, me, the Eucalyptus tree… all age old elements of part-time wisdom.

*Assembly required.

+Batteries not included

Off on a tea-break then aren’t we? Waiting to *live* but what is living except feverish deceptions and yearning touch? I force my hand into the morning light and feel every forgotten phrase, each electric, light bulb moment lost. There. Waiting.

Maybe just a little time off for good behaviour? Time served, your Honour.
Call off the night watchman.

I’m not going anywhere.

p.s. the title is also a nod to the fact i’m off to see Tori Amos live on Monday night!!!!!

Rapidfire Update & Taoist Trauma (opinions welcome)

i’d really like your thoughts on something but first, a wee update. life got annoyingly life-like recently, hence lack of bloggy goodness…between the ongoing tension headache stuff and the coordinating transcontinental property transfers and the generally being insane, running my own business thing and my mother being in hospital this week it’s all a bit exciting around here. i am le tired.

thank you (!) to those who sent kind wishes re: my neurospastic brain. it seems to have stabilised, for the moment though tension headaches abound so very likely gonna need to see an actual doctor about that at some point. acupuncture maybe? hrm.

also, came to mind, funny how many of us over the rainbow types seem to get weird neuro events like migraines. not my point today…

But have been pondering Psych-flavoured things, never fear.

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. “I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.”

any thoughts?

because for me, the first thing that sprang to mind was PTSD. but of course.

somehow i couldn’t help feeling that this particular metaphor felt so right for us, for the survival instincts we use, somehow, some unfathomable distance from the selves we thought we knew so well…

not a cell untouched.

perhaps the before and after images we have around our identities because of the trauma aren’t quite as distinct as they might first appear to be?

perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. it felt like the image reached that well beyond words. you know the one. that well that those of us who have gotten through it can only describe in halting steps and intense dilemmas, paused and paused again. but which we know so intimately as to travel with it, constant companions, beyond all present notion or past belief. it filters through us… like daylight through the curtains, even though they’re closed.

Schrödinger’s Migraine? skeptics, stress & serotonin.

this is a decidedly curious ‘migraine’.

it has been about 72 hours now, give or take. i could call something at the start of the week a prodrome. or not. i could just as easily have been having one of those days.

at this point it could be any number of things gone awry in these here stormy neurological seas. you see, whilst migraines are primarily mediated by the serotonin levels in the brain — those ‘happy’ chemicals strike again — they really aren’t all that consistent in the ways they can present… even in those whose baseline neuro functioning is far more stable than mine ever has been.

first, we have nausea which is unusual enough for me. and to add to the strange it improves when i eat. … huh? that’s a new one on me. it’s possible i’m not eating as much as i think i am over time because my memory is pretty stuffed right now, so maybe that’s hunger? but it still seems odd. if this is caused by something viral it might make some sense, perhaps but then i should have a fever, which i don’t seem to.

then the pounding headache and fatigue which seem to be bouncing off the “huge spasms” in my neck, to quote my masseuse (bless her heart since i am a pain as a client. have to leave my undershirt, and a pair of pants on… she has even taken to mentioning she’s leaving the door open a little, which is really sweet since i haven’t even said anything).

anyway, all that jazz is fine and par for the course except that it responds better to reading than to medication. yeah.
odd treatment, that. isn’t it? if i concentrate on a book, the pain/nausea etc. goes away.

am writing this week off as a lost cause. it’s going in the cold case files because i just don’t get it. now, it’s possible it’s what they call a ’stress response’. helpfully ambiguous, as ever, oh mighty morphing medical establishment.

somewhere between Monday and Tuesday things did feel a little off… like someone was playing a vigorous match of footy with my brains for balls. so it’s plausible, perhaps even likely that this isn’t ‘just’ a migraine.

what on earth that means it actually is, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. and one to which i’d really prefer not to pay that much attention so much as have it magically fix itself in the way that i am hoping it will if i leave off stress-inducing activities for a sufficient period of time.

beyond self-imposed isolation i’m really not sure what to do. i have me a stack of books i’ve been meaning to read, and i’m working through those… also a packet of oreos.

and if all else fails i’ll turn off the lights and watch DVDs I won’t remember about things I’m not all that interested in until the world goes away or something, anything, shifts.

Real Regrettable Retro Ads (Satire Sunday)

some ‘worst slogan ever’ contenders in this lot:

*shudder* and is it just me or does this look an awful lot like Demi Moore Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver?

Srsly?!

OK, so that last one’s a ringer but the rest are all the real McCoy, unfortunate as that may be…

and today’s lesson is, yes, we needed feminism. egads.

i should have… (Practical PTSD VI)

once the trauma’s over, we tend to look back and wonder. and part of that looks like “why didn’t i just… [fill in the blank]” or “i should have, could have, would have….” there are lots of stories you can put in there. i have boatloads on file, whatever the occasion.

and yes, other people think that way too. if you’re the partner/loved one of someone who has been severely traumatised then most likely you’ve thought about it, at some point. maybe it read more like, “but you’re an expert judo artist,” or plain old shock, “how did this happen?” but it’s probably there nonetheless.

it’s pretty normal. far as i can tell it takes years of training not to think that way and even then, some of it usually sneaks back in.

we think like that for a reason, though, and it’s because you, me, the postman all want to feel like we have some effect on the world around us.* that we’re not helpless even when we are.

so we have to bring ourselves back slowly by changing the way we measure success when it comes to the kinds of extreme trauma that can cause PTSD. success just isn’t what it used to be –

normally, we all have quite a few tools available that help us deal with life, as we know it but that’s the point: trauma isn’t life as we know it.

when the adrenaline kicks in, you don’t necessarily have access to those tools. your options can be very limited. you’re in ‘fight, flight or freeze’ mode and that’s all you can remember of the world. it’s a deliberate survival tactic on the part of the mind. clever, no?

it isn’t about skill or empathy or strength in that kind of situation. it’s a roll of the die and you and your whole human physiology are very much aware of that, and only that.

one of the ‘nice’ examples i have, the funny one i tell people is how i am sitting in the lounge room of my new apartment when two young lads, high as kites, jump over my fence.

they can’t see me. i glimpse them. enough to know, in the cold of my bones, that they weren’t planning on asking for a spare cup of sugar.

there is no thought, then. no time for it. only act or not, lock it down if you can. protect. so as they’re prying open the window i scare them with a booming impression of my father at his good old Aussie worst but i was lucky. one word, Oi!

you take your chances based on the information you have at the time and there’s no such thing as ’should’.

this isn’t a game. the importance of your life will always trump the fact that you’re a professional or a kick-boxer or had a phone that you might have had time to dial, if only you weren’t quite so busy dealing with the nightmare that has suddenly emerged from its container and which stubbornly refuses to issue you with a map and compass.

if you get out in even vaguely one piece, you did it right.

if you managed to get out and you still had the strength to get up the next day, you did it right.

if you’re here, today, you did it right.

it isn’t even a question. you did it right.

now repeat that a few million times because it’s the only way it’s ever going to sink in…

then repeat it some more because it’s the only kind of truth that’ll give you the courage to heal. and if you’re looking to be there for a survivor then you probably want to remind them of these things, from time to time.

* for those who like a little psychobabble with their tea — this is clinically referred to as one’s perceived ‘locus of control’. it’s part of that pesky human need to discriminate one thing from the next. trauma can, unfortunately, skew your bell curve… just a touch.

speechless second chances.

words wander, in tight-knit circles, nearer bound and boundless dread.

each moment cast with an iron sinker but all the same, round about — an approximate language i’m certain we once spoke. it is the language the moon dreamt, when time was no man’s and we waited for no day but today.

there are exceptional moments and those in-between. it seems i have known too much, in-between. i was an angel until he sent me back in time.

did you find grace? look still and dance with her two left feet, forget there ever was a beat as arm in arm we all fall down.

who picks and packs? who saw the puzzle, pieced?

there are stories to craft but first, a voice to muster. they stuffed the riddles in my ear. never mastered a clue, Sir, ever the black and blue, Sir, buttons weighing down my back.

there is no string to tie-up all that’s come undone. how cast aside, the breath i cannot take, the choices ready made. have i drawn a better suitor for this second winter’s gift?

striking with destiny’s left hook, i wrote the idiot’s guide to silence, swept the well-paved road we know.

there is no other journey but the coming back to life.

we do not come lightly into this world
but squalling, wailing, dying we enter
and Begin.

my first breath is my last, conjoined by opposition, drawn in and up and over by unseen hands and uncompromising Nature.

Heaven is a place I’ve stood, a barrier, an edge –

the base prophecy of my nature, when all but the split atom has been stripped away.

there is a poverty undreamt by my flesh, that takes place in the mind.

a river ceased, removed slowly, by degree. the level of the waters thicker than the pace the rhythm keeps.

you tread no sunlight, bear no wind nor echo falling rain. the spell of twilight, the long, long day that happens only, by the way. volitional retreat and this, it’s all in passing…

so i ask you: drag me to unity, though i kick and scream. draw me into you until i burst my bonds. most merciful Delilah, cut my hair? these featherweights are murder, don’t you know?

how about a prayer for my salvation offered by a blind man with no wish to be king, no desire except desire, no wanting left to ring the bell of time’s precocious heart?

let no soft path cushion this blow but prop me on my own two feet and force the ground into my soul.

there is no other journey but the coming back to life. un-ghost me, just Delight. unhook the terror of an all too quiet night, which ripped my dress while i was crawling across your splintered floor.

clasped in the jaws of great indignity, i laugh because i cannot find anything else worthy of a verb. the pause, unstoppered now. the clause surrendered to the sentence and the form of form exhausted.
i relent.

irony, much? (Satire Sunday)