Last weekend I managed to do some of the best people avoidery I’ve done in a long time. I’d get off the phone after deflecting potential visitors and kinda smile to myself and say arrogant things like “you still got it”. Son of a gun. And yet, I still got landed with a few visitors that wouldn’t leave. Annoying Friend is the one I felt most guilty about, on accounta she got an outright lie. And the worst thing was that by the end of the weekend I started to believe my own lies, and felt like I really had been away for the weekend and darn it, wasn’t it just exhausting to have both stayed at home working my guts out and gone away for a holiday. I oughtsta not knock myself out like that. Anyways, I had to lie. And it was worth it on accounta there was a lot of work in that piece and I’ve finished it now (finished? finished enough) and am ready to get stuck into the next one, so that I can finish that too and get back to what I’m really supposed to be doing. It’s all okay. Except now that I’ve finished it I hate it and have rolled it up and packed it away so that I don’t have to look at it. Except now that it’s gone I keep turning around to look at it and it isn’t there any more and I feel a sense of loss, on accounta it was a big presence in the house for so long. It’s like I’ve spurned a lover. Except it’s so ugly the only person who’s gonna love it is its maker and that’s me and I hate it so I guess that’s the end of it. Yes I know, I’m not making much sense. I’m so tired, is what. I haven’t slept more than an hour or so for two nights in a row on accounta that damn picture. And no I’m not manic, just wound up in the midst of it all. So in love with what I’m doing while I’m doing it. And it doesn’t even matter if I’m making crap on accounta I’m getting better at it therefore it’s betterly made crap than it used to be. And it looks good rolled up and packed away. In case you were wondering. The good news is I got good news this week. I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately because everything I do is such a gamble. You know, fruits of labour not appearing until years after said labour has been performed, if at all. Making me wonder if I should be doing something more useful. Realising I don’t have the capacity for usefulness. Dammit. BUT THEN, I got feedback on my manuscript and suddenly my uselessness seems like a great idea again. I kinda feel alive again, on accounta the words I loved throwing together have been loved by somebody else and that somebody else is articulate and intelligent and said the nicest damn things. I’m way teary about it and here’s where words fail me. It all comes down to this: I am allowed to do these things. I have permission. My writing touched somebody and their writing in turn touched me, which means verbally speaking we’ve practically had sex and goodness knows I don’t get out much these days so that’s as good as life gets. Yey life! Man, way t' go cheapening something nice with one deft flick of the wrist. I really gotta get me some sleep.
Let’s get this straight: kids are bastards. You can love ‘em all you like, but don’t ever assume that life is all fluff and innocence, on accounta it’s friggin not. Didn’t Peter Rabbit always get into trouble? Didn’t Snow White whore herself out to eight short men? Didn’t Cindarella try to shirk her responsibilities, and wasn’t Georgia Porgy a serial rapist-in-training? Yeah yeah, and Jack Horner was a show-offy little twot. Blaming the parents for truancy as a blanket rule is just plain wrong, and the punitive measure of cutting welfare for thirteen LONG, STARVING and HOMELESS weeks is just retarded. Welcome to our police state. So anyway, we’ve suspected for a while now that Kevin Rudd is just John Howard in a monkey suit, and yesterday pretty much confirmed it. (Actually he confirmed it when he didn't stand up to Japan about the whaling, but now he's double-confirmed it.) The whole truancy thing is an enormous can of worms and way too monumental to even begin approaching. In the trial locations it makes ‘some’ sense on accounta there are huge social problems generally and it’s difficult to initiate effective prompts for social change on a large scale. Education is a very realistic answer, and needs to be encouraged. But even in those places there are parents who struggle to get their kids to go to school because the kids refuse, and punishing those parents is not the answer. Punishing them will lead to homelessness on accounta tenant-parents will be evicted. Some children who do go to school will starve to death and be effectively punished on accounta their siblings wag. And derr – poor people are poor because they have no money. Take away their income and they’ll have even less money and the social problem will be exacerbated in an uncontrollable way. (Welfare groups must be terrified of the impossibility of helping people survive if this goes through.) Parents – those saintly creatures who stress long and hard about their children’s future on accounta truancy is one of he most stressful things ever – will need to slash their wrists on accounta instead of a measure that deals with the teenage problem, the government will be introducing a system of blame that suggests the parents allow their children to skip school. Do they think all penniless parents are scumbags who don’t give a fuck about their children? Do they think that children in welfare families get fed macdonalds and the rest of the money goes on parental booze while the kids run wild in the streets? Some parents do neglect schooling, granted. But there are a lot of children out there who have pretty serious problems, and the only fair way to do this would be to work on a case-by-case basis, and that’s so impracticable it’s absurd. The blanket approach is way too presumptuous in regards to circumstance. And as one parliamentarian suggested, how do you punish the parents of children who don’t receive welfare? Like, you know, to make it fair? My suggestion: PUNISH THE FUCKING CHILDREN. Those who are not in locations of widespread social disadvantage are just regular kids who enjoy a lack of recourse or the luxury of not having to answer for their behaviour. Bring the police in and make it formal. Run regular reform-school-ish day-long classes for truants that they have to attend, and give them serious consequences to face if they don’t. A kick up the teenage arse would do this country a world of good.
It’s bad enough not being able to find music to like, but not being able to find music you like when the weather is dismal is the pits. So that was a bitch of a week, wasn’t it, on accounta every time I picked up a paint brush I felt so freaken guilty, and I’m way tired of feeling guilty, especially when it’s raining and I can’t even force myself to like music. Who doesn’t like music? Only a dickhead doesn’t like music. So I friggin hate my life, what with it having no soundtrack at present. Even silent movies have soundtracks. Hence, this is the stupidest life I’ve ever had. But that’s okay, on accounta it’s not raining anymore and who needs music anyway? I’ve gone through all of my old cd’s and hated every single one of them. And my head’s in that numb state between starting something and finishing and if anybody tries to get sense out of me they aint gonna. The good news is, I’ve rediscovered Catch 22. It’s one of my favourite things to listen to on audio. I used to listen to a version read by (the amazing) Joseph Heller himself, but it was abridged so now I listen to a full version and get way more mileage out of it and buggered if I can remember the ending. How many times have I listened to it while I work, and yet I can never remember how it ends. There are advantages to being this retarded, like as in I’ll get a big surprise. Again. (Goldfish, meet Rock, Rock, meet Goldfish.) So I tried listening to it while I walked this morning, and it was hard. What I love about audio books is that they reveal how brilliant the human brain is. When you’re painting, you can give your work full attention AND give full attention to the book you’re listening to. It’s like being two people. (Two brilliant people.) Living two lifetimes at once. (Two brilliant lifetimes.) But when I walk I can’t listen to audio, on accounta my thoughts wander. I concentrate really hard, but one small tangent and I’m off. When I walk I have only one mind, and it’s not even nearly brilliant. I don’t even like it. (i.e. my mind is as stupid as my life.) So I had to force myself to listen properly, and buggered if I didn't somehow manage! I walked smiling. I laughed out loud. If I had drooled somebody woulda thought I was loopy, I was so dumbly happy. So anyway, brain science. A bit fascinating. And I love Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller for eva. I still have about seven hours of it left to go, so today’s work is gonna be pure pleasure. And if I can learn to dance to his book I won’t ever need music again.
Nah, it’s okay, I don’t have to be a bastard male after all. Although it’d be great to be a cross-dresser, on accounta men’s clothes make more sense than women’s. Daughter gave the money back (she only took it because she missed out on tutoring and that’s what it costs, and she thought I wasn’t going to pay for it, on accounta I said if you don’t go to school I don’t give you extra tuition money, on accounta I’m so tough). And she said “I’m not a bad person, you keep thinking I’m a bad person”, but of course I think no such thing. She’s just a little shit and if she’s not careful she’ll become a big shit and that’s where my way tough rules come in. So anyway, instead of being an arsehole I think I’ll be a gym bunny. Like, in tight little bike shorts n’ bobby socks. Because I need to stretch and swimming’s not enough, so it’s half-hippy yoga and lots of choreographed movement with strangers, and for whole hours at a time I can be somewhere where I don’t have to think about anything other than my body. Imagine the calm I can get out of that. Imagine how alive. I love this plan, on accounta I really need to wake up and get out, and I can drag Daughter to a few things with me (she’s already a member) and that counts as being together. We can like, bond n’ stuff. And it’s the same as dancing, isn’t it? Okay, so we’re halfway through August. I have a month and a half to meet my deadlines – sooo many deadlines – and I have to be a machine. No more feelings. Feelings turn me into a pansy little fuckwit girl, so life has to be smooth. Every time I catch myself thinking too much, I get down to the gym to pump the endorphins up, then come back home to work. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. Orright.
If I was a nicer person I wouldn’t be having a shit day. Like, if I didn’t care about my childhood friend’s plasticky breath and hippy tendencies, or if I was more kind about the work of usually-good authors who accidentally write the occasional crap novel (sorry). If I was a nicer person, Daughter wouldn’t be the way she is, she wouldn’t have caused a scene last night on accounta i wouldn’t have had to stand my ground, I wouldn’t have ended up spaced out on the couch in a funk, and she wouldn’t have stolen twenty dollars from my purse before she stormed out to her ex-boyfriend’s house. If I was nicer I wouldn’t have decided suddenly this week that I hate teaching after all, and have nothing left to give my students. I’d have nice things to look ahead to. Nice is good, I like nice. I don’t need spectacular, just nice would do. It’s not like I’m asking much. Anyways, the stealing was crossing a line. I’ve kept tabs on how much money I have on me for a long time, and have had the luxury of being able to believe Daughter when she says she’d never do that. Another ante has been upped. I don’t want to look at her anymore. Or have to fix problems. I’m tired. Today I can’t even paint, so I’ve been forcing myself to do housework in the belief that it’ll make me feel better. Because you know, how vaccuming makes the endorphins kick in. If I do it vigorously enough. Ah fuck it, I wish I was a man. (eww.) Not just any man, but a complete motherfucking arsehole. Emotions, more than anything, get in the way of my work, on accounta I’m such a wuss. If I was an arsehole I’d be unstoppable. And I’d have some desperately under-loved bitch to do the vaccuming for me. I‘d pay her with sex. Bad sex – like, take my orgasm and run. Yeah, forget being nicer, it’s the arseholes who have better lives. This way towards happiness, get out of my fuckin’ way.
Okay here’s an update, on accounta I finished reading that book, and I’m holding…back…meanness – no I can’t, it was TERRIBLE!! I like bits of her other work, but this one’s the pits. It’s like an adult concept in a baby story and doesn’t sit well with me at all. AT ALL. Today’s imagination is so much more sophisticated than that, and there are some back-in-times that just shouldn’t happen. I can feel myself morphing into a mega bitch here, and it’s all her fault. Ohmigawd – how did she write it, and how did it get published, and how even more did it get shortlisted for the CBC young adult fiction award? Fuck and fucken fuck. It’s the most luke-warm, shallow rendering of complex thought I’ve ever read. See what she's done? She's made me comment in absolutes. It’s just that it's so abstracted it’s stripped of character growth, lacks emotional depth, has no extremes to latch onto, and in fact has to be read like a blah list of things that happened. And the imaginative nature of it is, I’m sad to say, boring, and gets stupider as it goes on because she gives us less and less real world context. If thinking about lives that could have been is her way of going through a mid-life crisis, I hope it passes so that she can write a real book again. Ohmigawd, sorry. Sorry sorry. I can’t even pretend to be generous with it. Gosh, am I that hard-nosed? I don’t know, but now I‘m desperate to read something with real meat to it. Something with brute strength. Whimsy may be invented with good intentions, but it makes me wanna puke.
p.s. newsflash. If my sources are correct, she’s actually won the damn award, and it’ll be announced this Friday. Why in the YA category I have no idea. Faaaark.
It’s clear that I’m not going to succeed in not being mean tonight. Really, I do care about Friend with Rich Parents. I’d just prefer to care in small doses. And not late at night. And from far, far away. When she called I thought great, here’s the rest of the story, but then I realised I don’t find the story interesting enough. Especially the stuff about the hippies. Does she not remember who she’s speaking to? Obviously not, on accounta she was telling me about going to a witch wedding. And confest. And she said “you should come with me next time!”. Ahem. All of my other confest-y type friends know not to say that to me. They just know. They also know that if they’ve had an experience sleeping under a full moon with crystals lined up on the roof of their car, I’m not the person to tell about it. Unless they want to be LAUGHED AT. And they know that comments like “I felt so much moon energy pulsing through me” are going to be met with derision. Nay, blatant unkindness. Fuck fuck fuck – do you see what I’m up against? How can I not be mean when there’s so much to be mean to? I used to be such a nice person. Thank goodness I grew out of that.
Obviously I’m not talking about myself. Needing a good read tonight, I picked up Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child, and ohmigawd, I’m trying so hard to like it. I’m reading it with my best manners on n’ everything. But. But but. You know? Well I just don’t know what’s gotten into her. I flinched at the first page on accounta it’s a bit condescending. Then there’s the nature of the story, which is a bit fairytale-ish, but in the worst possible way. Apart from anything else, there’s the concept of naïve love without sex – a little bit of fluttering in the stomach doesn’t cover it. Wild man on beach plus unconventional female on beach plus no supervision plus both over eighteen years of age equals there’d be fucking. Before even that (you see how I skipped everything else to get to the fucking, even though there is none?) there’s such a big problem with the storyline of rich girl as main protagonist going on round-world trip with rich father (as you do) and recounting the experience like she’s pushing a traveller’s shopping trolley. A few beautiful descriptions (atta girl, that’s what we want from Sonya), but so little contextual depth. Bugger. You see how hard I’m trying not to be mean? The writing’s good, in that it’s well crafted. But the story has me so puzzled. Like, she’s my age, but she’s telling a fanciful story that reads like it belongs to two century’s ago (era setting notwithstanding, it still doesn’t fit modern readership). I think it might work for very sheltered private school girls who’re of old-fashioned mentality. Maybe. Anne of green gables-esque. So now I’m worried about Sonya Hartnett’s imagination, on accounta it’s sporned this flight of fancy and it’s so repressed or old fashioned (I think my mum would love it) that she’s either very young and fanciful in her head, or she’s trying to subdue the reaction to her lusty nom de plume novel wot I haven’t read. Hopefully I can finish the second half without drifting off. I’m writing all of his whilst undergoing a telephone conversation with Friend with Rich Parents and the process of typing silently is preventing me from dying from boredom. Going going…gone oh thank fuck for that.
I’m having a fantasy where I get up at 5am, do some work, and then make my kids a family breakfast of eggs and freshly squeezed orange juice. It’s like that’s my sole purpose in life right now. I think I can I think I can. Anyways, small purposes are good and manageable. I keep being interrupted from the depth of painting (big purpose in life) by stupid phone calls. I didn’t mind having to pick Son up from school because he was unwell, but I kinda minded Friend with Rich Parents calling out of the blue because she needed a hug. Well and truly out of the blue, on accounta I haven’t seen her for about two years, possibly on purpose, on accounta back then she was about to go to court to deny her kids access to their father and I’m way opinionated about that on accounta he hadn’t done anything wrong and she was kinda being a daddy’s little princess (except she can’t be that on accounta she even shits her dad up the wall, but that’s another story), i.e. she’s dead selfish. One of those nightmare parent jobs. So yeah, carefully avoided, up until now, because she took me by surprise and it was too late to pretend I wasn’t home. Anyway, who am I to begrudge somebody a hug? And I don’t hate her or anything, she just bores me shitless. So I warned her that I’m painting (i.e. and will stop for nobody) and she turned up, I stripped as many painting clothes off as I had to, hugged her long and sincerely, put said clothes back on, and continued painting. Which is amazing and I’m so proud of myself on accounta I didn’t know I had the capacity to be so damn rude. Like, she had her small son with her and I didn’t even bother entertaining him. I ignored a child!! So cool. I don’t mind people watching me paint, but she shook my equilibrium a little. I don’t know why. Possibly because I couldn’t get all of the sordid details of her mummy-gave-me-her-shiny-nissan-x-trail life from her in one quick sitting, so I was left with half a story and now need to get involved slightly to hear the rest. (This breaks my avoid-her-at-all-costs rule.) Possibly also because I can’t stand her breath. It’s not bad or halitosisish, there’s just something about her insides that’s thick and suffocating and smells like plastic. I almost can’t stand being physically close to her. Picky picky picky. Ohmigawd, I’m a good friend to have. Anyways, when she left she took my calm with her, and I had to play you fill up my senses (annie’s song, but who calls it that?) five times in a row trying to get it back, and even that didn’t work, even though I sang louder each time. My neighbours must want to shoot me by now. Doesn’t matter, I got a lot done. I’m about to enter the essential i-hate-my-painting phase, where it looks like shit and I have to fight desperately to bring it back from the brink of disaster. I go forth with courage. And whilst I do this, I have to miraculously do a million other things, because if I don’t my life is worthless. No pressure, yo. It’s not too late. I can do it, I can. Five o’clock u-getting or bust.
This morning Son looked out through the windows and said. “Uh, Mum – what’s wrong with rain?” and when I followed his pointing finger I could see SNOW!! It’s never snowed here before, on accounta it just doesn’t, and it was so exciting I had to sit down and watch it like it was television. Didn’t last long but that’s okay – it was pretty, and for a whole half hour or so life was like a picture postcard. And I forgot that snow is silent. Nice. Then the day got even better, on accounta another day alone meant another day of heavy concentration, and I love grey on accounta it’s so full of other colours, so there I was with my paint brushes and my paint and if you promise not to tell the fashion police I’ll admit that I dug out my old John Denver CD on accounta I didn’t know what music to listen to and buggered if it didn’t make me happy singing along at the top of my voice. Did I mention also promise not to tell the fashion police that I know the words? Oh lordy, there goes my rep. Gosh, there’s a bit of a moral dilemma in that, isn’t there, seeing as when he snuffed it the gossip was that he was a prick and that made me not listen to him anymore, not that I ever did because you know how I was never that not-cool but anyway, I couldn’t listen in case it was true and there he was singing about love n’ stuff and if he was a wife-bashing prick then maybe he had no integrity in which case the words mean shit. BUT – what if he wasn’t a wife-bashing prick? What if it was a vicious rumour spread by a long line of carly simonses and it stuck because he was famous the same way that the rumour about Michael Jackson being a bit weird has stuck? (waitaminute…) Anyways, happy happy. Now that I’m past planning and past guilt and well and truly into the paint I LOVE being alone and want more of it. Especially for working on this one, which is a bit of a religious experience I don’t know why, or at least I’m not telling, and that’s why Daughter sniffed me out when she got home and kept coming into my workroom all suddenly interested and somehow sensing that I was positioning my body between her line of vision and the canvas and my voice may not have been saying jigger off but my body was so now I have to finish it way quickly or she’ll spoil it by saying something and ruining this whole zen thing I’ve got going. I did it again, didn’t I – I forgot how good this feels, and how it makes everything worth it. So this time I won’t forget, and won’t spend so long in planning between pieces. Duh. What an idiot. I forget more things than a goldfish.
Whoa – here’s something I can’t talk about without getting way angry. This is a quote from an article about the Family Fortunes documentary on John Olsen:
Nobody in their right mind would pass judgment on a living legend and obviously charismatic genius such as John Olsen but he'd be a mixed blessing as a father. (Home is where the art is, Ruth Ritchie, Sydney Morning Herald, 2nd Aug, 2008) (obviously I only just read it)
Is she kidding? The man’s an outright cunt. As in, motherfucking n’ everything. Not pass judgement my arse – I don’t know a single person who was able to watch the part where he described leaving for Europe without wanting to slap him about. The look on his face, the tone of his voice, the way he callously described saying “bye bye” without the slightest bit of retrospective remorse. And then the footage of his eldest daughter with friggin tears in her eyes. And this journalist gets all adulation-y about him? Fuck off already – he’s everything revolting about men wrapped up in one egocentric ugly motherfucking parcel. And he used the word “justifiable”, as though his “art” is so brilliant it excuses his lack of responsibility. These are human beings, arsehole. Like, grow up. It was an amazing bit of television, and I don’t know how people can be so arse-kissy over a man like that. Ugh.
Where’s a phone booth when you need one? Here’s where I wish my car (ex-h’s car) had more heavily tinted windows, on accounta you know how sometimes for some strange reason you start to feel really restricted and it used to happen to you a lot but hasn’t happened to you for ages and ages but when it did you actually got so nauseous you thought you’d die so you had to rip your bra off ASAP and bugger the consequences? Well, today I’m inexplicably tired and I got into the car and there was that feeling so I ripped off my coat and tied my hair up into a pony tail and undid my bra so my neck was bare and my arms were sleeveless and apart from all straps falling gradually down towards my elbows I was well and truly free to breathe. No big deal, really, on accounta I was sure that when I pulled into the car park at work it’d be so dark nobody would see me in my naturally slovenly-scrag state, and I’d be able to pull myself together discreetly, just like superman in his phone booth. Exactly like superman in his phone booth. But thanks to friggin eastlink I got there too early and student-who-knows-my-car pulled up beside me and there I was with boobs akimbo and I had to perform the fastest bra do-upping ever. Poor superman. Doing up a bra is one thing, but those tights must have been a complete bastard to pull on and off. I don’t think student-guy caught me. He didn’t raise his eyebrows or look at me like I was some half-naked freak, but it was pretty close. Which is lucky = I was so not in the mood for people, and definitely not in the mood to have to explain myself, especially without a better reason for being alone and less than dressed. Although, he did stare at me a lot during class, when he thought I wasn’t looking. I know this because I see all. Anyway that’s dumb on accounta he didn’t need to stare so much, seeing as I may have saved him the trouble of undressing me with his eyes. Oh well, i guess that's lesson three million and one against wanton stripping. At least my windows weren’t fogged up – that woulda been really sus.
Wow, that was easier than I thought. All you have to do to feel happy, I’ve discovered, is to shuck off a few responsibilities. It’s the guilt that gets me – if I get rid of the guilt about what I should be doing, everything’s easy. Like, no decision-making necessary if you just don’t care. Fuck the world, yah. Then all of the loneliness crap just flies out the window on accounta you’re busy again. Not just any busy, but the best kind of busy. So. I discovered cat scratches on one of my paintings a few weeks ago – just light ones, but visible to me, and that made me get off my arse (okay, so it still took me a few weeks) and hang my newer paintings on the walls, on accounta it’s the only safe place. One of those paintings is Son’s portrait, my second large oil ever. It’s one thing to show your paintings to people and have them appreciated, and to have them leaning up against a bookcase in your workroom where you can still see them until they get covered by large sheets of paper etc, but it’s another thing entirely to hang them on your wall. It’s not just a painting anymore – it’s a presence in the room, so for half a week these large eyes have followed me whenever I pass by, and I stop and look, and buggered if I haven’t realised how much the damn thing just works. It’s got me kinda emotional, actually. Partly because of the subject and the expression on his face, focalised at the eyes, which are half glaring in a stop-painting-me kinda way. Also in an I’m-growing-older way (hence the emotions, all maternal, quite schmaltzy). But also because of the technique. It’s steeling my resolve to do what I damn well want (i.e. paint). Because I can. This is as close as I’ll get to confident, and it’s an outrageously good way to feel. It’s funny, not as in ha-ha, that when you’re painting it’s all about the act of seeing and constructing in a way, and for a long time afterwards that’s what I see when I look at the work. This time, though, I’m on the other side of the process and it’s the strangest thing to be the audience of your own work. Without cringing, even. Like, I don’t even have to screw up my nose anymore. Except when I look at my old stuff, which I’ve been steadily painting over. I only have a couple more large old canvases to go. I’m not even going to call them paintings, I hate them so much. I can’t wait to have them gone, but the kids have said they don’t want me to so now I’m stuck, on accounta it’s my practicality versus their sentiment, which is kinda nice when you think about it, but still. Also a photographer who came out to the house at the beginning of the year to document some other pieces for me said “don’t!”, and called one of them “pretty” and said “what a shame”, on accounta I told him about their impending doom. But fuck it – I have photos of them, that’s bad enough, and I save hundreds of dollars and a good few hours if they get recycled. Plus I’ve run out of walls to hang things on, and it’s very easy to kill something that’s going to otherwise spend it’s life shoved in a corner gathering dust. Anyway, not a problem yet, I have fresh canvas to work on for now. And no more guilt to keep me from it. It’ll all work out well in the end.
Okay, Plan One: sit down between gesso coats to make a plan. In which case, the real Plan One is to dig my way out of here with a spoon. In which case, I must be feeling very trapped. The problem is that despite being fucking wonderful (!!), I can’t stand my own company. I really do have nothing to look forward to. I discover this every weekend. There they are, kinda full of people, yet also not. And then the week starts and I have my work, but no reward at the end of it. Sense of satisfaction? Get fucked. Getting shit loads done each week? Well of course, I’ve moved mountains lately, but who cares. It’s all just a lot of nothing in the end. I could practically feel sorry for myself, and in fact might. Except that this is just one of those transitional things you have to go through when you change your life around a bit. You have your people, you love your people, but your circumstances change and you can’t keep them with you the way you’d like to so you also need new people, and you’ll keep needing new people until you have your own tribe to belong to. The good thing is that on Sunday morning, in the middle of struggling through the weekend feeling plain old not-happy, I unrolled a small bit of canvas and started playing with an idea I had, and the euphoria snapped right back into my head. Not happiness, just that utterly absorbing contentment you get when you’re working. So I have to make sure I don’t let too much time lapse between projects. Hence the gesso – prepping a larger canvas so I can get this one going. And if I just never stop I’ll never feel lonely. Anyway there’s this woman I think I might ask to sit for a portrait soon-ish. Or later-ish. Apart from having an interesting face, she’s a loner of sorts and I’m kinda fascinated. Loner because the kind of work she does needs to be done in isolation (she says). So I want her to sit for me so that I can ask her “what’s it like to be you?”. I really, really wanna know. I spend my life fending off the isolation. I hate it. I love being alone to work, but when I look up I want there to be people there. I want to know how she embraces it like that. In the meantime I have to embrace it myself. I have an enormous amount of work to neglect while I do my real stuff. In which case my plan isn’t really a plan, it’s just a reminder to keep going, on accounta it‘s as close as I’ll get to happy, and if I don’t have my work behind me I won’t find new people on accounta I’ll be all empty and not worth spit.
I’m not sure about this idea of art galleries being just about the art. I went to St Kilda Road today to worship at the temple, and I have to say ye gods are fucked in the head. Aren’t renovations supposed to make things bigger and better? Well we waited, ya know. My friends and I waited for ages for the NGV bistro renovations to be over, so that we could get our grubby paws on their roast vegetable ciabattas. We had to go through withdrawal after the place had closed, but were sustained by the knowledge that it would one day re-open and ciabatta supplies would resume. So I looked at some pretty pictures, then I headed to the new and improved bistro, only to find a pissy little coffee/cake scenario in its place. NO MORE ROAST VEGETABLE CIABATTAS. What were they thinking? How could they do this to me? Don’t they know that some of us have so little to look forward to? It doesn’t make sense. And I don’t like the downstairs job they’ve got going – it’s too noisy and cramped. This is the end of a fine institution. Whole civilisations crumble over something like a good ciabatta, ya know. Jeepers. First I lose an arrow at the archery range on Saturday, then I lose an hour and a half of my life because Son made me watch Tremors (pitiful movie), and now I’ve lost my culinary joy. Way t’ go ruining everything good about art, gallery people. Next time I’m bringing a cut lunch.
I don’t know why somebody would go to the trouble of re-writing a perfectly good past, especially when that past involves me being a kick-arse mother. As in, ‘maternal’, not mofo. But every now and then Daughter comes out with some pretty high-calibre revisionism. Tonight it started with the oranges. Until recently I forgot how much juice you can get out of an orange, but having rediscovered it I’ve been squeezing jugs full of fresh orange juice (or delegating the task to Son) and the joy it provides pretty much makes up for my shit cooking. Tonight Daughter made a way bitter comment about how she’s been asking me where the squeezy thingy is for years and suggested that I’m such a cruel/bad/evil mother because I’ve kept said information from her. I think if I wanted to be mean to a child I could come up with something more impressive than hiding the squeezy thing. Which incidentally is in the cupboard above the bench, next to the glasses, where anybody with eyes can see it. Le sigh. Then that stupid ad for some stupid indoor cubby house for kids without any imagination at all came on the tele, and it reminded me of my kids being young and I said “do you remember you used to build enormous tents in the loungeroom with sheets and blankets and cushions n’ stuff?”, and she said (bitterly) “yeah – until you told us we couldn’t do it anymore”. Crap – I said no such thing, on accounta I loved those tents. They took over the whole house and I let them sleep in them for nights on end. So I pointed out to her that she was kind of changing the past to make me look evil and she should maybe be careful about all of the good memories she’s throwing away. Then she tried to backpedal on her comment and I could see the real memory poking through. Sad, huh. Oh well. She’s at her ex(?) boyfriend’s house, probably doing alcohol and teenage sex, but with any luck she’ll dream about innocent things like tents and remember a time when there was peace on earth and her lovely mother didn’t have horns, tail and pitchfork. I, for one, am going to build a tent in the loungeroom this weekend. I’ll wait until she brings grandkitten home with her, though. Grandkitten’ll go nuts – it’ll be like having young kids again. I wonder if when Daughter grows up she’ll re-write the past back to its original state. Or if it’s gone forever. Double le sigh. Double triple quadruple.
I hate poetry. Poetry can go shove a fire-prod up its arsehole. It makes you love it and you get swept away (by wankerism) and it’s such a rush and then you start writing the stuff and I’m never going to write it again. I SWEAR. (like this: fuck.) Weeks, these things have been kicking around in my head. And I’m reading and reading and reading and I keep finding more good poets but then even the good ones write bad stuff and the bad stuff makes me chuck, and then I keep writing because it’s all just in there and spilling out and I start to wonder if I’m turning into one of them. ‘Them’ can’t tell the difference between good and bad, see. So I’ve decided that all of mine is bad and have screamed at it (something like SHUT THE FUCK UP) and deliberately not sent it off where I was meant to. Send it. Even though it was ready. What I really wanted to do was commit violence upon it. Like, take that, poetry. You wanna see me have a tantrum? I’ll have a fucking tantrum. STAMPING FEET NOW. For the record, I also this week hate teaching. And old people. I was asked to give a one off intro-to-writing class to an elderly social group, and VERY CAREFULLY chose a piece for them to read (no sex, no violence etc), and buggered if one old BAT didn’t keep interrupting as they were reading aloud one of the most beautiful, sensitive stories you can imagine with “this is revolting, oh, oh – oh no, I’m going to have to leave the room” (fucking vegetarian), but then didn’t leave the room at all, which is a pity on accounta I really wanted to say “good riddance” on accounta poetry has put me in a very, very bad mood. Then she turned her nose up while the rest of us tried to reassure her of its value and I was dumbfounded that she’d completely overlooked the amazing content of that piece. What a dick. Everybody else loved it, but she made me think what a waste of time and I would much rather have been at home that day, reading a (not-poetry) book. Anyways this not sending things off is bad of me. I’ve done it about five times this year now, and it aint gonna get me anywhere. But it’s good to hate things. Hating things lets you eliminate them from your list, so say goodbye to hanging out with cerebral pansies on accounta my time from now on is going back to painting, drawing and fugly big project upon which I’m supposed to be well and truly focused and yet, am not. I’m spending far too much time alone. But I have to, is the problem, or I won’t get these very important things done. And that’s why poetry sucks.
I’m supposed to be going to sleep early, but I have so many euphorias bouncing around in my head I can hardly contain myself. Some of them are the euphorias that result from hard and productive work. Some of them are from Dark Knight (the new batman movie), which is so good I can’t help feeling amazed by the cleverness of people. Waitaminute – is it cool to be that excited by a batman movie? Possibly not. Forget I mentioned it. Then there’s the euphoria of having been sent nudie shots by Friend Girl A, who’s kind enough to trust me with her body, and I didn’t realise until then just how nice a gesture that is. Aren’t naked bodies wonderful? And it’s not even a perverted euphoria. Well, maybe a bit perverted, but mostly I’ve had a painting in my head that requires her body, only I have such good manners I hadn’t asked her yet. So she’s said yes, and she’s said duh, on accounta she’s apparently hinted before that she wants me to paint her naked but I’m so thick (more of a sledge hammer girl) I didn’t pick it up. Not to worry, I now have a future of imminent boobage and naked skin, and that’s gotta be a good thing. See? Euphoria. Don’t worry bout me, I don’t get out much. Also, this evening I went with my sisters and My Lovely Mother to see Mamma Mia, and I have to say it’s one of the funnest movies I’ve ever seen. You don’t even know what fun is until you’ve seen that movie. Ohmigawd. It’s ABBA – can you imagine the world without them? ABBA and Meryl Streep – what a wonderful era this is to live in. How can I sleep? I clearly need more nudity in my life, and I obviously need to go dancing. It’s a good thing I’ve got so much work to do to distract from real living, hey. (??) Doesn’t matter – the world is full of goodness and my mind is working overtime. Fa la la la la. Sometimes life just makes you need to sing.
I am, as we speak, in hiding. I’m going to have to start wearing a balaclava and develop a shifty look in my eye. Any minute now the newspapers are going to label me “The Hot Chocolate Bandit”, because this afternoon I walked out of my favourite café without paying. But I swear, officer, it was an accident. It’s not my fault I can’t keep up with the world. I go there, as per usual, only to find that instead of paying when I make my order, I’m supposed to take a seat and be served. They’ve changed the way they do things. (I.e. They’re now doing it the WRONG way.) Don’t they know some of us don’t like change? Holy crap. And the waitress told me that they’re also about to install automated ordering, whatever that means. Anyways, I had the Saturday paper and was reading about books, the hot chocolate was top notch, and the cafe was as nice to be in as ever, once I got used to it. I stayed for a long time, and then when I’d had my fill of both newspaper and beverage, I got up, and I left, because that’s what I always do. Except, this time without paying. And now I’m a common criminal – I didn’t realise until hours later that I’d even done it. If I go back and turn myself in, are they gonna take me out to the kitchen and make me do dishes? Oh the shame, the shame. After I’ve made my confession and paid, they’re probably going to keep my mug shot on the wall behind the counter and start counting the cutlery every time I try to leave. The moral is, good service sucks. Also, if you want to steal a hot drink, the best place to hide it is in your belly.
I’m converting to JamieOliver-ism. Did you see him on TV last night? Did you see what he did? I love that man. And chickens the world over are erecting monuments to him as we speak. Chicken saviour of the world! And isn’t that just proof of what I keep trying to tell my friends (they’ll rue the day they laughed at me), that you CAN make active changes to the world, even when it’s as big, bad and ugly as it is today. All you have to do is find the right way to educate people. And change their minds. And make them less selfish. Possibly it would also help if you were as shit-hot famous as Jamie Oliver. Anyway, it’s a wonderful step in human evolution, and everybody should be filled with hope. Especially if you're a chicken.
