One of these things is not like the others ...

... one of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

It was chilly at the Olinda Arboretum today. I'm talking spencer and long johns (sexy), long-sleeved top, windcheater, thick jacket, hat and gloves. After taking the little path wending its way off into the trees, I sure warmed up quick though. Heart attack walking. I need more of it.

I want to live in Olinda. I'm going to see if the mountain is there after this next firebomb summer. If it is, I seriously want to think about it.

It smelled so fine amongst all those trees. We saw nobody else on our walk. Heard nothing except the birds. It was rejuvenating.

Goodness me, look at those wrinkles :\

This below is Blob. He is my inner critic. As you can see, he is a surly bastard. It's funny, but externalising this part of myself has allowed me to have more compassion towards it somehow. Blob is scared. I can see it underneath his horrid ugly surliness :) I am hesitating about whether to smash him to pieces with a hammer. If I do, I am going to do it at Spring equinox. My inner perfectionist, which Blob fuels, however, feels much more inclined to smash him now that I have ruined him. This morning, while hollowing out his base, I inadvertently gouged a hole in Blob's throat. Which is ironic, really, considering that he's the bastard that gives me such struggle with speaking my own truth. Ha. See how you like it.

I could yell it at him but it wouldn't make any difference because while I was hollowing him out both his ears also fell off. I tell ya, my inner perfectionist screams seeing this thing with a hole in its neck and no ears. It maketh me to laugh.

I went to the Counihan Gallery yesterday afternoon specifically to see this. There were two of them, stuck up on the wall like deer heads. Amazing. And very confronting (as is much of the work by amazing artist Sam Jinks). Amazing, so unbelievably lifelike. A most disconcerting experience too because the heads are about half the size bigger again than a human head. So you're standing in front of this bloke looking at his nose hairs, literally, and feeling almost like he's going to open his eyes, this larger than life tattooed human with no body. Made me ponder and think lots about different sorts of things which I wont go in here because I don't want to sound like a wanker :)


Pic: Most likely copyright violations going on all over the place here, but you can see them at their rightful place at www.samjinks.com.

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.