Theorist or Practitioner

My blog bud Kel has a ripper post going on. I encourage you to head over and read it for yourself, but here is a snippet:

Recently I started a new job in arts administration at a regional gallery. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to find such similarities between the art world and the church world.

The first thing everyone asks me on the job is, "What is your background in the arts?" or, "Are you an artist?" Because people like to pigeon-hole with definitions, I like to throw a spanner in their works. The conversation goes a little like this:

But you'll have to head over there to read the rest :)

9-5 Morning Train

The man gets on the train and sits down. The girls behind the man are talking about Facebook. I keep hearing people talking on trains about Facebook. I wonder why people don't talk to each other about things out here instead of talking to each other about Facebook. The man starts talking to himself. I keep seeing people talking on trains to themselves. Last week a man said very loudly to someone who came to sit down next to him, "Don't sit here!" He then proceeded to talk to the empty seat for the rest of the ride. I wonder if the man today talks to the woman next to him if she will talk back. My guess is a reasonably large no. She has her eyes closed to escape the social inappropriateness of a man who is talking to himself.

I can't hear the man over the babble of talk in the late morning carriage. I catch fragments, words above it all. "Secondhand ... fuckin' ..." He talks all the way from Footscray to Flagstaff. The man sits with his leg crossed and his leg moving backwards and forwards. "Fuck," he says. He is wearing a beige coloured suit jacket over a pair of jeans. His brown shoes are shiny. His shiny brown foot moves backwards and forwards.

The Indian man opposite me has his arms crossed and questions coming out of his eyes. Occasionally he glares at the talking man for daring to be mentally ill. The old Asian man looks at me with this funny pushed-out fish lip look. He has questions coming out of his eyes too. Something in his expression reminds me of the way my dog looks at me when he has questions in his eyes about playing with the ball. Nobody knows what to do in the carriage. You can see it. What do we do here, we all ask silently to the carriage. I distance myself with a pen and my notepad. I try to will myself to make eye contact with the talking man but he does not look at me.

I get out at Flagstaff and the man gets out behind me. Waiting for the lift, the man in the navy Ecko United soccer shirt with the number 2 on his back looks behind himself, looks for the nutter. Turns back very quickly to face the front and wait for the lift.

In the lift the talking man is silent.

"Concourse. Doors opening," the lift voiceover man says as we arrive up at the top. "Concourse," the man says, walking out the lifts, out up to William Street.

I Feel Mean

I feel mean writing the "Take Responsibility" post in response to that irritating, yukky police suspect I was transcribing the other day.

I mean, I imagine if he could change, he probably would. Or, really to take it a step further - obviously my irritation comes from the belief that this is a person who could change but who refuses to (based on nothing, I might add, but my own insistence on creating entire histories and motivations of people I don't even know :)

But for him, I'm sure he believes that he can't change, otherwise he probably would. As a man believes, so he is. That applies to all of us. And of course, paths of change only really open up when people feel accepted and honoured for where they are right now in their lives. And maybe he is taking steps towards taking responsibility for his crap (it was pretty bad; he was bashing his girlfriend and stuff and he was just an arsehole about it) and I can't see it.

Who am I to judge another person?

Pre-Play Jitters

It's my pottery class tonight and I'm feeling like I don't want to do it. Which is really just a cover up for the fact that I'm feeling nervous and excited about it. I can't fool myself :)

I keep expecting bad things are gonna come out of the clay, deep, dark secrets that foretell doom and gloom. Nothing I have made from clay has done that. Last week at art therapy I began moulding clay with my intellect switched off. What came out was half a nut, cut in half. The middle of a nut is called a kernel. At the same time I kept seeing this shape as also being like a piece of furniture in some weird way. I kept imagining a figure reclining on it and something to do with seeds. Then it came to me later that night - a seedbed. This is a kernel and a seedbed and all these metaphors and alliterations and playful word puns come out effortlessly of the deeper, darker, excitinger, mysteriouser part of me, not the boring, stupid, pain in the arse that often controls my mind :)

She's doing it this morning. She's thinking that it's all her. I want to go on a word fast sometime soon where for 24 hours the only words allowed out of my mouth or my keyboard are poetry or metaphor or song :) I'm so tired of hearing myself think! But then the deeper, more mysteriouser part speaks and I am left gobsmacked again at how far I extend beyond consumer lines and familial lines and social networking lines and beyond my own conscious lines. And this is why making art is so important for me and look, here I go, swimming up into my own head, theorising about the importance of making art, and how boring it is and no wonder there are so many critics in the world 'cos it's always easier talking about it than doing it :)

And my inner eight year old starving artist girl is just waiting patiently for 6 o'clock. She switches off from all this intellectual theorising about everything. She's excited, thrilled, and can't wait to meet new people. Even while my inner cultural attache is nervous about meeting new people because people are sometimes yukky and because she's more concerned about getting around with a collapsed decolletage and horrid lines snaking across her delicate under eye area because it's not good for the brand. The inner artist sighs. It's tiring living with all these annoying people but it's just how it is, you know? And it's not all bad. There's some pretty interesting sorts living in here too. Quite partial to the Man with the child in his eyes. He gets about and talks to everyone. Keeps us all in line :)

The inner artist is sitting quiet. She's just waiting for 6 o'clock.

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PS: You may be pondering "mental illness" reading this post. Multiple personality disorder, maybe. Well, who's to say I don't veer over into mental illness from time to time? More's the point - who's to say that we all don't? Funnily enough, I have never felt more "together" than I do now even while I often feel like I could bust apart. It's all about becoming real, I think. And so while I may have some definite elements of mental disorder, multiple personalities aren't one of them. Those are simply creative devices :) Just sayin', just in case you're wonderin' :)

Take Responsibility FFS!!!

Back at work. Listening to a particularly adept professional victim blame everyone else for his pathetic life and his horrible relationship and his shithouse attitude. It's so amazing how NO ONE is responsible for their actions. It's ALWAYS someone else's fault. She made me do it. He made me do it. It's her fault, it's his fault.

Take responsibility for being a tossbag like everyone else is a tossbag! What makes you any different from anyone else?

Thank you God I'm not like that tax collector/sinner/woman/Muslim/loser/drug addict. We all say it. We want to outsource everything. We want counsellors to counsel everyone else 'cos we don't want to get involved and we're not "professionals". We want police forces to maintain law and order because we're shit at relating with each other. We want schools to teach our kids to live out in the world but how can you do that when the world is not theory, not a goddamned book? We want other people to take the blame for the shit we do because other people have done shit to us. Where does it end?

My friend got annoyed at me the other night because I got annoyed at him because he was making a face in response to what I was saying. Okay, so I was talking about wanting to live in an intentional community in Eltham. He was screwing up his face like all people do at hippies. I couldn't help but respond to such an aggressive sort of response to what I was saying, and then HE got mad at ME for getting annoyed in the first place! But I couldn't see how I was responding to HIM, so I was probably just as aggressive as he was. And so when he retaliated to me retaliating to him, we both felt justified in doing it, and we both had a case. Every single police statement is different, every suspect sees things through their own filters. Everyone rewrites their memories and recasts themselves in candlelight when maybe they were standing in energy saving light instead. How does anybody get along ever, at all? How does anyone ever get along with each other when we are such stupid, stupid beings? :) When we all feel vulnerable and exposed, and we all behave badly? And yet we do.

This incessant ongoing blaming is so what the cross speaks to me about these days. There is a way that has been made for us to be able to be honest with God and ourselves and each other. Open hearted honesty from other flawed beings is so healing to watch.

Why is it so hard to admit our faults? Especially Christians. If a life lived in God is so good and wonderful, how come so many of us are unable to hold our shit, to hold the good with the bad, to admit our faults and our flaws? Because the stupid thing is, other people can see our stuff. We're not hiding from anyone.

Fig leaved people, just now we're wearing clothes, that's all.

Where is the freedom? It begins surely in understanding that even if bad people hadn't done bad stuff to us, we would most likely still be tossbags. And just because the bad people have done bad things, this does not mean that we get to abdicate responsibility for our own behaviour. Because unfortunately it seems to be so that being a tossbag comes with the territory. Why can't we just live in the reality of what is instead of trying to force it to be what it isn't?

That same friend and I had an interesting conversation driving over the Westgate Bridge later that same night. There's some sort of railings being constructed along the sides. We wondered if it was in reaction to that man who lost the plot and threw his child over the bridge to her death. Which was awful of course. And he said that he finally realised what the line in American Idiot by Green Day means when it says, "Where everything isn't meant to be okay."

We can't change the world to be different so that people don't throw their kids off bridges. This is what we are, folks, in all our mess and glory. You can't legislate human nature into something prettier than it is. That same legislation, trying to keep us from ourselves, is also what keeps us from the good parts of ourselves as well. Since when did the nanny culture get to prevent us from learning from our own mistakes? We're already good enough at blaming the woman, the man, the serpent. Seems the culture is trying to get us to take the searchlight off of ourselves too.

Anyway, that's enough ranting. I've given myself a headache typing this :) But I've also made myself laugh so yeah :) 'Cos of course the answer to all of this is love. Loving each other even though we're tossbags. Loving each other because we're tossbags and we all need it. Loving eaach other because we are way bigger than all the tossbaggery and we are even sometimes - often - beautiful.

And now, as punishment for writing that, Radio Susie has just begun singing Burt Bacharach numbers. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love" Blergh :0)

This post was in part inspired by the God Journey podcast I listened to last night where they were talking about this new book that sounds like a good read: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). I would link to it if I could, but I can't, because WebMarshall at work will not let me access it, being a time-wasting website I am not meant to be accessing during working hours.

But luckily, it's not like I need to read anything like that anyway. You, however, with your beams and motes, could probably give it a whirl :P

Morning Star Poles

According to the creation story of the Yolgnu clans of Arnhem Land, when people die, their spirits return back to where it all began, to Burralku. It was from here that the Djang'kawu Sisters began their ancestral journey, near the morning star, or Venus. The Djang'kawu sang about the morning star on their way to Yalangbara (eastern Arnhem Land), where they birthed the first clans. When Venus rises in the east in the dawn, the stories say that a rope hangs below her, connecting her to Burralku.

The year after a Yolgnu relative dies, the Banumbirr (morning star) ceremony is performed. It ensures the relative finds their way through the countries of their clans back to Barralku. Gali Yalkarriwuy Gurruwiwi is a senior man of his clan on Elcho Island in Arnhem Land. He is the custodian of the morning star pole that is used in the Banumbirr ceremony. The knowledge of them was passed down from his father's father to his father, and from his father to him. He is passionate about keeping the knowledge alive.

The poles are rich with symbolism. The feather at the top represents the morning star itself. The string attached to the pole is used by the spirit to climb upwards to Burralku from the earth. The feathers which hang from the pole represent rays of light and also represent the changing of the seasons. Some of them also represent different clans. The seed pods are food for the spirits. The paintings on the pole represent the land, while also indicating the pole owner's place within that land. Often the plants or animals of the area are painted.

I saw Gali on Sunday Arts back in February. He says he feels connected to his father, his ancestors, and his land when he paints these poles. There was something about them which spoke to me so strongly. He remembered, speaking via an interpreter, when the whitefella preacher came to town and talked about Jesus. How moved Gali was when he heard this Jesus referred to as the morning star. He went forward to receive him. "It was a change in my life," he said.

"I need to show the world to get together, to sit on one foundation, to share things, black and white. We have to go, like, colourblind, because we are one."

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You can read the episode outline here (scroll down to number 2) or download the Sunday Arts episode featuring Gali Yalkarriwuy Gurruwiwi here (from memory I think it's the third or fourth story - scroll through)

River Rest

I was going on about resting in God the other day at Communitas. I'm thinking about it again this morning. I come from a family of high strung people. I am a creative on top and thirdly I have built up my intellect as some sort of a safe tower in some respects. Because of that I find it really difficult to switch my brain off and just be.

I did two lots of meditation this morning. Two twenty minute cycles of just sitting. Sitting while the thoughts flit in and out. Sitting even though I feel like I've got 40 squillion things to do. Sitting with the million racing thoughts that I think really are probably the main reason why I spent my twenties with my mouth stuck in a bong instead of my hands smoothing clay. But you know, people are stupid and I'm stupid along with them and it takes years to learn the simplest things that children can see until they are silenced in one way or another.

And so I sat in the midst of the being still and trying to see God. Not that I ever see God, duh. I've had some periods where I have sensed his presence close. When Mark and I first broke up, that first year I think was pretty amazing in some ways because I could feel him close. These days, not so much. I do not know why these things happen. I do not think for very long anymore that it is because he is displeased with me. I think it is far more mysterious than that, something along the lines of what Browning talks of when he says:

... God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
As it were a handbreadth off, to give
Room for the newly-made to live,
And look at him from a place apart,
And use his gifts of brain and heart,
Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.

I cannot think in the flat-packed face-slapping way of church billboards that say, "If God seems far away, who has moved?" It is too close to my own experience of God often feeling far away to even be able to stand in that self-righteous, self-indulgent pose and say, "Well, here is a fine opportunity for me to vaunt myself above you. Because everybody who attends this building here has a 24/7 hotline to God. Don't you wish your spirituality was hot like ours?"

Life seems such a strange sort of thing to me that, on the days when I feel pressed in by the things I have to do, that these are the days when I need even more and even longer to sit and be still and know that he is God, and watch them fall away afterwards, like tender cooked meat off a bone. Until all that is left is now, and the river running under it, and the doing of what I see to put my hand to, and the still(er) mind, and the golden thread that leads into the playroom :) And me, the real me, has the room to move in which I was created for, where I live and move and have my being.

Secretly we spoke,
that wise one and me.
I said, Tell me the secrets of the world.
He said, Sh... Let silence
Tell you the secrets of the world.

~ Rumi

Crappy Jobs and Combat Tactics

I'm feeling pretty hamstrung by my job, I gotta say. Some weeks I'm fine and it's all in perspective. It remains the dull, dreary job it was last week but it just stays flat in my mind, you know? I keep it interesting by chatting for reasonable stretches of the day to my workmates and by doing arty-type things and peopleish-type things when I'm not there. Then it all stays in perspective.

But there are other weeks where it just feels like the hamstrings ping every time I use my legs and the claustrophobia sits on my chest like asthma. Some weeks I want to pack a bag and run off screaming down the road like my hair is on fire, never to return. Some weeks it is obvious in every part of my square peggedness how bad a fit this job is for an extroverted, people-lovin', life-lover. And then I dwell on it and it depresses me, and starts pulsating, like the walls when Neo began to understand his onenness and stopped all those bullets from Agent Smith's gun. (That movie revisit was so enjoyable this evening, it didn't even feel ruined that I couldn't watch the part where Neo visits the Oracle because the CD was scratched and wouldn't budge through it. Still my favourite line: "I know kung fu." Heh :) And all that black leather's not such a bad deal either. And hey, yeah, alright, so Keanu could play Pinocchio and he would NEVER turn into a real live boy but stay wooden for the whole ride but he has a certain charm notwithstanding all of that, and it's not simply physically related either 'cos when I want that I watch Point Break ;)

Anyway, where was I?

I think part of the problem with having something you're forced to do regularly that you dislike is not the thing itself so much as the way it looms and rears itself up at you like an ogre. Sits itself in the corners of your mind (alongside the misty water-coloured memories of the way we were). Even with a four-day week, I find myself struggling in the middle part; then I come home and feel depressed and don't do the things that would help me maintain perspective.

What is the deal with that? It patently pisses me off, dear blogger, that all it takes for me to keep my job in its proper perspective is art-making and meditation, and that very often I avoid doing the very things that will make it all feel bearable. Oh, who shall rescue me from this body of death?

Well, for the next six weeks at least it's Northcote Pottery who, for a reasonable sort of a fee, shall give me lessons while I immerse myself into clay in the presence of other living, breathing human beings and maintain my equilibrium at the very same time. I shall be making a human head and a standing figure and some sort of a bottle or vase or container, and learn some glazing and surface treatement techniques, and finish with a sculptural piece of my own choosing. And just typing this I can feel the bubbles flipping in mah belleh.

It's enough to make me dribble out the sides of my mouth. Hopefully I shall resist doing it onto my lovely new blue flanelette sheets I am about to go lie on. Gee, I hate shopping, but now I have shopped I have nice new sheets. The formaldehye fumes time have had time to clear (evil stuff, hence the "wash before use" directive that I have obviously ignored) so now I'm off to read in cosiness. See you on the flipside.

My First Dictionary: Today's Word is 'Dot'

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

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Seen at White Flint Farm