there is a word for this, but i can't find it
It is a polaroid, pinned against a fridge and encroached upon by old gass and electricity bills. It is blurred and beautiful and silences the mind. This is the feeling i get when i see good art. My mind is silenced and i suddenly become aware of background sounds. Like my pulse and my breath, and the crunch of the bones of my bad knee. And i notice that i have stopped thinking. Good art, whilst being witnessed doesn't provoke thinking, ideas and concepts. It does the opposite. It stops you, right then and there and forces you to just listen. It un-shackles you.
There is a certain recipe to stringing words together, a sort of mathematical / musical equation to abide in order to poeticise and musicalise a piece of writing. To mobilise it. Or maybe it's just synesthesic.
I always felt that i was a bad writer. That i am without that skill. Lacking. That an ability to write is something which you are born with, inherent, inprinted, a strand, DNA, genetic, divine. You either got it or you ain't.
I think you need two things - 1. motivation, i.e - something to say. Perhaps this is where the artistic being 'born vs. taught' quandrary comes in? Is art an ability to see something in a unique way, or an ability to express something in a unique way. Born, or made? There would be mountains of literature on this. The rumination is what is important - the question...
The second thing needed, is an ability to express. And this, i now think, is taught. It may be learnt through life, or it may be learnt in a university lecture, or through reading, but it is learnt.
I accept my ideas and respect them, but i have a disdain for my ability to express them. If you get what i mean...
I'm not a bad writer, I just don't know how to write.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
just keep your hand moving across the page...
my eyes opened to this world this morning, and i could tell it was early, so i fumbled around for my phone and saw it was only 7:15 and i was happy. I got in the habit of watching documentaries or movies, or sport late at night until i fell asleep - which inevitably ended up being 12, 1, 2 am. Therefore i would wake up at 9. It was fun for a while, but i decided it was time to change that rhythm. And so now i feel so much better at sliding in to bed by 10, reading untill 10:30, or 11 and still getting 8 hours sleep and also wake up at a little after 7.
Having woken up so early, but not feeling ready for breakfast i decided i would do a blog as a morning page. DISCLAIMER - any time i write 'just keep your hand moving across the page', it means i have nothing to write and i am buying myself some time, whilst not disrupting the free-flow form... The goal is eliminate the mind from the process of writing and just blurn out whatever random, or seemingly inconsquential thoughts surface without letting the brain filter and select which ones make it out in to the ether. Hence, this blog could well be about nothing in particular. But i decided to do it as a blog. Which means i am breaking the golden-rule of the morning pages - NEVER READ YOUR MORNING PAGES AGAIN AFTER IT'S WRITTEN & NEVER LET ANY ONE ELSE READ IT. However, I'm not engaging in a morning pages exercise. This is a one-off. So i can discard that little rule for this morning. It's interesting though, because having an 'observer' will change what ultimately i write. I don't think i can help that. If it was just 'for me', this would change what i write and my mind would be far less active than it is now. OK, starting from now, i will attempt to defy quantam physics and completely ignore the 'observer' - being myself and YOU.
Last night i felt as though Man's search for meaning got the the part which i was interesting. Frankl started using his experience in the concentration camp as an experience, almost as a scientific test for existentialist theory. His premise is that no man can endure without some sort of hope. Some sort of future meaning. He quotes the famous line from Spinoza (i think it's Spinoza) who says any man can endure a 'how' as long as he has a 'why'. He says in the concentration camp, men who lost hope, who lost some sort of future focus, soon after died, because without hope, man lost the fight and the will to live and their immune systems would falter and they would then be susceptible to disease (typhus) and they would then die. He quotes a story of a man in Auschwitz who told him he has such a vivid dream. In the dream, the man said he saw himself, and he asked himself - when will this war end for me', and the reply came '30th of March'. At that time, it was April. As the day drew nearer and nearer, and it became increasingly unlikely that the was was going to end, the man's behaviour became erratic. However, on the 31st of March, a day after his dream told him the war would end for him - he died, seemingly from Typhus.
Frankl goes on to say that this is because he lost his hope. He deep down believed in the prophecy of his dream and this completely lifted his spirits and gave him (as Spinoza) would say - a why. But as it became clear the war was not going to end, his hope diminished and died and depleted him to the point where his immune system suffered so badly, that he got Typhus and died, peversely a day after his dream prophecised he would.
Frankl says that the point is that man suffers alone. That there is no way to apply the same reason to a situation twice because there are never two situations exactly the same. He says that every experience is unique to us - and this means we are essentially 'alone'. 'Alone, together'. Therefore, we have the power to design our lives and our perceptions of it. He says the men that survived the concentration camps were the ones that realised they had a 'why'. They were the ones who saw the concentration camps as a 'challenge', an experience from which they can grow. He says men are not behavioural pawns dependant on biology or sociology. That even in Auscwitz, they still had that most basic of human freedoms - the right to choose how they will experience, percieve and endure their suffering. No one can take that away - man is master. This reminds me of that great line in Shantaram, my favourite passage in the book, where he says (something like) 'even in the flinch and the bite of the chain, as i was being restrained and whipped by the prison gards, i still had the choice. I had the choice to forgive those who were punishing me'. I loved that. Even in that situation, where you seemingly have no way control over your life, you still have that most basic of human rights, to choose your existance. And i agree wholeheartedly with Spinoza, Frankle, and Roberts.
When i say 'life is meaningless', that 'what does it matter if i die, and what does it matter if it matters to you that i die'. That isn't a stateent. It's a question. The answer, is of coarse - that IT ONLY MATTERS TO US. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter, and that is a liberating thing, which means that BECAUSE IT essentially does not matter, WE HAVE THE RIGHT to choose our existance as we want. To perceive, to feel, to choose, to be free, to exercise choice and give meaning to our lives as we see fit. There is a 'how' in life, the beauty is, we get to choose the WHY. That is ours and ours alone. And the power of that is so strong it sometimes makes me cry. That is what it is to be a human.
Just keep your hand moving across the page, just keep your hand moving across the page. I'm hungry, i sort of don't want porridge for breakfast, but is is so superior to all the other breakfast alternatives that i just keep going back to that default. I such an awesome nights sleep last night, i feel refreshed now, but my body is a little achy. And i think my cold-sores are on their way to dying, because my lips aren't 'alive' anymore, and are more just drying-out, but they are still a little prominent. I don't think i'll be seeing you tonight, and that will mean that you will be upset. And that i won't allowed to be emotionally upset, because i will have to explain and discuss why i think i can't come over, becasue at the end of the day, i am the one choosing to not come over. Just keep your hand moving across the page.
Just keep your hand moving across the page...
Having woken up so early, but not feeling ready for breakfast i decided i would do a blog as a morning page. DISCLAIMER - any time i write 'just keep your hand moving across the page', it means i have nothing to write and i am buying myself some time, whilst not disrupting the free-flow form... The goal is eliminate the mind from the process of writing and just blurn out whatever random, or seemingly inconsquential thoughts surface without letting the brain filter and select which ones make it out in to the ether. Hence, this blog could well be about nothing in particular. But i decided to do it as a blog. Which means i am breaking the golden-rule of the morning pages - NEVER READ YOUR MORNING PAGES AGAIN AFTER IT'S WRITTEN & NEVER LET ANY ONE ELSE READ IT. However, I'm not engaging in a morning pages exercise. This is a one-off. So i can discard that little rule for this morning. It's interesting though, because having an 'observer' will change what ultimately i write. I don't think i can help that. If it was just 'for me', this would change what i write and my mind would be far less active than it is now. OK, starting from now, i will attempt to defy quantam physics and completely ignore the 'observer' - being myself and YOU.
Last night i felt as though Man's search for meaning got the the part which i was interesting. Frankl started using his experience in the concentration camp as an experience, almost as a scientific test for existentialist theory. His premise is that no man can endure without some sort of hope. Some sort of future meaning. He quotes the famous line from Spinoza (i think it's Spinoza) who says any man can endure a 'how' as long as he has a 'why'. He says in the concentration camp, men who lost hope, who lost some sort of future focus, soon after died, because without hope, man lost the fight and the will to live and their immune systems would falter and they would then be susceptible to disease (typhus) and they would then die. He quotes a story of a man in Auschwitz who told him he has such a vivid dream. In the dream, the man said he saw himself, and he asked himself - when will this war end for me', and the reply came '30th of March'. At that time, it was April. As the day drew nearer and nearer, and it became increasingly unlikely that the was was going to end, the man's behaviour became erratic. However, on the 31st of March, a day after his dream told him the war would end for him - he died, seemingly from Typhus.
Frankl goes on to say that this is because he lost his hope. He deep down believed in the prophecy of his dream and this completely lifted his spirits and gave him (as Spinoza) would say - a why. But as it became clear the war was not going to end, his hope diminished and died and depleted him to the point where his immune system suffered so badly, that he got Typhus and died, peversely a day after his dream prophecised he would.
Frankl says that the point is that man suffers alone. That there is no way to apply the same reason to a situation twice because there are never two situations exactly the same. He says that every experience is unique to us - and this means we are essentially 'alone'. 'Alone, together'. Therefore, we have the power to design our lives and our perceptions of it. He says the men that survived the concentration camps were the ones that realised they had a 'why'. They were the ones who saw the concentration camps as a 'challenge', an experience from which they can grow. He says men are not behavioural pawns dependant on biology or sociology. That even in Auscwitz, they still had that most basic of human freedoms - the right to choose how they will experience, percieve and endure their suffering. No one can take that away - man is master. This reminds me of that great line in Shantaram, my favourite passage in the book, where he says (something like) 'even in the flinch and the bite of the chain, as i was being restrained and whipped by the prison gards, i still had the choice. I had the choice to forgive those who were punishing me'. I loved that. Even in that situation, where you seemingly have no way control over your life, you still have that most basic of human rights, to choose your existance. And i agree wholeheartedly with Spinoza, Frankle, and Roberts.
When i say 'life is meaningless', that 'what does it matter if i die, and what does it matter if it matters to you that i die'. That isn't a stateent. It's a question. The answer, is of coarse - that IT ONLY MATTERS TO US. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter, and that is a liberating thing, which means that BECAUSE IT essentially does not matter, WE HAVE THE RIGHT to choose our existance as we want. To perceive, to feel, to choose, to be free, to exercise choice and give meaning to our lives as we see fit. There is a 'how' in life, the beauty is, we get to choose the WHY. That is ours and ours alone. And the power of that is so strong it sometimes makes me cry. That is what it is to be a human.
Just keep your hand moving across the page, just keep your hand moving across the page. I'm hungry, i sort of don't want porridge for breakfast, but is is so superior to all the other breakfast alternatives that i just keep going back to that default. I such an awesome nights sleep last night, i feel refreshed now, but my body is a little achy. And i think my cold-sores are on their way to dying, because my lips aren't 'alive' anymore, and are more just drying-out, but they are still a little prominent. I don't think i'll be seeing you tonight, and that will mean that you will be upset. And that i won't allowed to be emotionally upset, because i will have to explain and discuss why i think i can't come over, becasue at the end of the day, i am the one choosing to not come over. Just keep your hand moving across the page.
Just keep your hand moving across the page...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
love-shore
this is my favourite photo.
Whilst I'm sitting in dad's study amongst a mountain of papers and articles, heater roaring, my scarff tightly snaked around my neck to accompany my sniffly nose, this photo instantly casts me into 'summer'. The laconic haze of the beach where things melt, including our hearts. In this picture I remember feeling the freedom of the future and it's possibilities. This photo captures the precise moment in which I felt the titilation of the unknown - where would our immature love lead us? And my skin, now in it's winter hybernation grumbles restlessly as it remembers the sun. I remember the soft, powdery sand forming constellations on our brown, salty skin. I also remember what loving you felt like at this moment. How much things have changed since then... This is what happens as things last. As they persist through time. Our love has since skewed and gone off-track, in fenced-off private-properties and back into more pretty, healthy pastures.
Any way, this is one of my favourite photos of us. Perhaps my favourite. Do you remember this day at the beach? You came down and met me there.
Let's drive to Sydney at the end of the year. We have worked so hard (so far) this year. We derserve it. Lets tent our way back down the coast and watch the white-sun rise, whilst we eat watered, soggy cereal and listen to the waves stretch-out and kiss the sea-shore.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
4-corners
in the USA, there is a point where if you had four legs you could be in 4 different states, at the one time. It's where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet and it's called the 'four-corners'. I remember standing there and thinking to myself that its a little metaphoric. That because the 4 states meet at the one point, I'm not really anywhere, who's to say which state I actually am in, and therefore i can make up where i am. I can choose to be in any one of those states, and i can't really be right, but i wouldn't be wrong either. Yesterday was a little like that. It wasn't about any one being 'right' or 'wrong' it was a problem of perception. About how you view your actions or how you view yourself and your place in the world. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide and no one can argue with you - because your experience isn't right, or wrong, it simply is.
What you told me didn't effect me so much. It did a little, but it wasn't the source of my provocation. What happened, a little innocent kiss wasn't right or wrong, depending on where you stand or where you're looking from. We clearly have some different boundaries, some different borders. What i think upset me a little was that you knew i could be funny about it, but it didn't change 1 - the fact it still happened, and 2 - the delay in telling me and the manner in which you told me. Which gets me thinking...
If you think kissing someone in a spa, drunk, half-naked, champagned and cocained with people watching isn't a big deal, then Fausty, you are standing on your 4-corners spot looking down in amazement at your own feet. I'm not asking you to change where you stand - I'm just asking you to perhaps lift your head a little to the horizon and contemplate the other perspectives. Your actions cast a shadow and not necessarily where you expect it to land. That's just how i see it anyway...
What you told me didn't effect me so much. It did a little, but it wasn't the source of my provocation. What happened, a little innocent kiss wasn't right or wrong, depending on where you stand or where you're looking from. We clearly have some different boundaries, some different borders. What i think upset me a little was that you knew i could be funny about it, but it didn't change 1 - the fact it still happened, and 2 - the delay in telling me and the manner in which you told me. Which gets me thinking...
If you think kissing someone in a spa, drunk, half-naked, champagned and cocained with people watching isn't a big deal, then Fausty, you are standing on your 4-corners spot looking down in amazement at your own feet. I'm not asking you to change where you stand - I'm just asking you to perhaps lift your head a little to the horizon and contemplate the other perspectives. Your actions cast a shadow and not necessarily where you expect it to land. That's just how i see it anyway...
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
blue-collar love
i haven't felt like this in so long.
These leaves in my guts have been disturbed and reconfiguring themselves as they fall back down.
Dis regulated.
I like it, what is it? Is it melancholia? Why does it feel so good? I could never put words to it. It is this desire of intense action but an inability to act and therefore some sort of limp sadness. It's very inspiring. I just wish i had something to write about. It is definitely self-indulgence. I ate two kit-kats yesterday and my god it was good. The taste was amazing and what was more amazing was not feeling the overwhelming, cat-clawing guilt which I drown in when I am exercising. How liberating. An airborne kite.
I wish i could write music, i wish i could play the harp, i wish i could sing again, i wish i could be in kindergarten again running to the sand-pit with Matt and Stephanie, I wish I could say goodnight to my grandma the night she went to sleep and never woke up again, i wish i could not have been so competitive with my sister when competitiveness is exactly what crushed her , i wish i could wake up in Glenroy and eat one of my grandfather's omelette's again, i wish i could have met my mum's dad, i wish i could have not cared so much about what other people thought when i didn't need to, I wish i could watch 'Mulligrubs' in my grandparents house, i wish i could play in their garage, i wish i could erase the memory of my sister flinching and the fear in her eyes in the Datsun, when I innocently lifted my hand and she thought i was going to punch her , i wish i could have encouraged her more, i wish i didn't call her '4 eyes' when she came home wearing glasses for the first time, and i wish my dad explained to me why it was bad to call her that, instead of just sending me to my room. I wish I could go back and correct my sister. I wish i didn't feel so guilty about how she has grown. I wish i could go back and tell her that she was perfect and i wish my parents weren't always so glowing about my 'successes' when she was around. I wish i never cheated on any one of the girls i have been with and i wish i never broke any of their hearts. I wish when Mr. Hewison asked me if i was OK with 'just being school vice-captain' i'd said 'no', I wish i stayed in New York longer than i did, i wish i never lost my silver chain in the gap between the corness and the wall of my room, i wish i went straight to the doctor the day after my knee buckled, i wish i floored Ed Buckingham when we wrestled by the creek on camp in the center of the circle made up of our class mates, i wish i went to Kozi to the coast, i wish instead of dreaming so much as a young kid i actually DID what i dreamed i wanted to do. I wish i had told Jess to stop smashing her steering-wheel, i wish I had danced at Sia's concert, i wish i never broke up with Faustina, i wish i could go back to Sydney the first time we went and and go through it all again, exactly how it happened, i wish i didn't feel like i disappoint her a lot of the time, i wish i didn't feel like she doesn't think i'm the man she thought i was the first time she met me, i wish i had moved out when i was 22, i wish i didn't bore myself when i wrote, i wish i was a better friend to Marshal, i wish i made my solo piece on narcissus, i wish i never started exercising (and got addicted to vanity), i wish the first day Brent Whiteway came to school and asked me to be his friend i'd said 'sure, but just for today', i wish i never told Christopher he didn't have a dad anymore after his parents divorced, and i wish he didn't punch me after i'd said it, i wish i had punched Tim in Yarrawonga,
The first time I loved, i was so insecure. I was 14 and i needed everything from this person. All of her, all the time, all of her attention and energy. She was just as bad. The second time i loved, I was worse. Not sleeping, sometimes not eating. Everything was life and death, heightened. I always needed everything to be spoken so things could be evidenced and measured. Just needing. I hadn't loved since for a long time. Not like that. I have loved since then, but it has been a blue-collar love. A love i have been driving, steering, working at, tired of, a lot of work for not enough gain. A love I could graph, that i was in charge of. The love I search for is where the love you feel, is like you've given birth to something because it exists without you, of itself. It is a living entity without you and has tapped you gently on the shoulder and has chosen you to carry it, to care for it. For a while. It is a blessing.
I miss Greece. I miss Athens. The place where i learned, at the age of 18, that i look different to the rest of the people back home in Melbourne and subsequently made me a foreigner. The place that mercilessly tore me apart from what i felt was home. That reflected back to me what i couldn't know without ever visiting it - that I was me and i was different.
I have a black and white photo of Ioanna, Mimi and myself in theia Ioanna's apartment. Arm in arm. I will make a little Emi-style video for Ioanna, show her my room and my desk and send it to her on facebook. But not publicly. I want my love to be for Ioanna, not for any one else to see. Publicly displaying it changes it. It is like the theory on quantum physics - having an observer changes the very thing which is being observed. However, i applaud the her courage in being able to send things like that across the web. But she's only showing us what she wants us to see. This is why it is courageous - because she is being overt about the mask she is using to hide herself. And this is why it is not true.
I have had a day to myself. To rest. To refill. To watch the rain. To watch myself. To watch myself watching the rain. I have eaten. I have lived today and i have done nothing "productive", which is what any one only ever does.
Disclaimer -
1 - the love i 'search for' is love i find in you. Perhaps i should have said is 'strive' for - as even when this real, exciting love is felt, it is something I still strive for.
2 - i really like Emi - a lot and do not hold silly things like video facebook messages against her!!!
Friday, April 8, 2011
sedxdrive
That comes from not having seen you and from being diligent and disciplined with time and the heart. Restriction feeds that fire, it does not pacify it.
Your sex drive comes from that which is observable - passion. Mine comes from restriction and not having that which I want. I like the dirt beneath the flower bed, not the pretty petals above it.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
It's time
"As our awareness of timing develops,
we discover that each present moment
holds everything we need to meet the next.
In the flow of changing phenomena,
we see that all the old moments
have aided our delivery to this one,
one moment falling out of another.
There's no longer any thing as a false move."
Ruth Zaporah
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Ruth
i walked in to Ruth Zaporah's office last night after class - you left the room and waited for me outside. For some reason, i was drenched and dripping wet and naked - i knew i was naked and wet and exposed, but i didn't care.
I approached her and she gave me an envelope which had hand-writing on it - 'christian'. It was a nab envelope, the same one which Tim hands me my pay in.
I told Ruth that i love dancing and performing and creating, and that i think i could have made a life from performing, creating, being an artist. Or even been an 'action theatre' teacher, but that it's not my career anymore. And i told her i'm happy with my career choice, it was not a slander on being a psychologist, but a mourning of the death of a life i had imagined for myself. Being an artist, performing. I was telling Ruth, because she is the greatest source of feedback i have ever got from the universe which has encouraged me to keep going. I don't think anyone with such credibility has ever been so enthused and by what i have to creatively offer.
'A, What age are you?'
'26'
'that's a good age to be starting this...'
I was sad in my dream that someone who i admired and had admired me so much had grown disinterested me. When i was young i always imagined myself living as an artist, a performer, overseas in some wonderful part of the world, doing wonderful things.
The skin on Ruth's face fell limp, my heart did the same and sank to the bottom of the ocean in my chest and hit the ocean floor with a resounding thud which revberberated through my consciousness and woke me up.
'Anthony,
Jump off.
Learn to fly on the way down.
Love Ruth.'
Saturday, February 12, 2011
target practice
i am wanting to be near you again.
To sing with you in your shadow as you walk along the tracks,
feeling the space between our skin.
How far does love make you fall?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
a feeble attempt at writing things that rhyme
The gardener rakes leaves and his thoughts don't rest,
His hands weed Watsonias but his mind is obsessed
he swipes at flies that dance merry on his head
and combats his thoughts by reframing what was said.
The sun pinches the skin on the back of his neck
and he shapes the Petosperum reaching over a deck
His jaws tense as the shears slide
as he cuts back the tree and prunes his pride
The sun and the rain has spurned early birth
of unseasanoble growth, unseasonable work.
But the gardener has a question which follows him today
that when seeds are planted and soils are tilled,
the sprout that grows, will it ever be his?
The sun that shines and water which falls,
to feed the stem from which nature's womb grows,
will the gardener ever be able to sit back and say,
'i grew this and wanted my garden this way'.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Mobile thoughts
'Don't make the promise in the first place, or don't break it' - I wish i was able to take heed of the advice i dispense so freely.
It's a balancing act, isn't it? How much to say to someone stuck in a pickle. I can never find that line. I always either say too much, or no where near enough. All or nothing.
I don't feel like in these blogs I'm writing to you. I feel more like I've just given u a day-pass to my thoughts or diary entries. Should these be entries or letters? P.s. Done on mobile.
It's a balancing act, isn't it? How much to say to someone stuck in a pickle. I can never find that line. I always either say too much, or no where near enough. All or nothing.
I don't feel like in these blogs I'm writing to you. I feel more like I've just given u a day-pass to my thoughts or diary entries. Should these be entries or letters? P.s. Done on mobile.
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