What I Did On My Summer Holidays - by Caine, Aged Nine

Could be a bit of a bummer, maybe, having to go with your dad to his auto parts business when you're on school holidays.  You might wanna go to the pool, or whatever else you do when you're nine and you're Caine.  But then, when you're nine and you're Caine, you just make up your fun on the spot.

'Cause what there is in Dad's auto parts shop are STACKS of cardboard boxes.  Stacks of 'em.  What better thing to do with them but make your very own cardboard arcade game?

And so you create one, and then you create another, and then suddenly you don't have an arcade game, you've got a whole bloody arcade!  You come up with an good entrance fee system - $1 for a couple of goes, or you can buy the Fun Pass for $2, and it's valid for a whole month and you get 500 - that's FIVE HUNDRED - rides.

That Fun Pass is awesome value.

And so you wait for visitors.  But it's not like your arcade's positioned in a highway or nothin'.  Customers are a bit thin on the ground, especially when so much of your dad's business is now done on eBay.

And so you get one customer.  But it's a pretty cool customer to have ...

Do you remember doing stuff like this when you were a kid?  I didn't make my own arcade out of cardboard, but I did make up my own advertising jingles and record them with my friend, on a cassette recorder (More than just the price is right at Warehouse Sales!)  My cousin and I invented an entire elaborate family who were all rich, gorgeous, and talented.  We sat at the dining table in Wantirna and drew girls, and made booklets.

I made a board game.  Its details are lost to time now, but I remember it had cards, like Chance and Community Chest in Monopoly.  I still have a hankering to make a board game.   Do people play board games anymore?

Creativity opens up the world.  Play is not sideline stuff.  Play keeps you grounded in your own body.  Playing makes you free and happy.

I really need to think about that board game ... 

Riding the Wave

It's a funny feeling when you discover that you are sort of excited and passionate about something that you never thought you'd ever feel excited and passionate about.  Those things that you come upon occasionally that open up the child in you.  Little Susie loves messing about with paint.  Who woulda thunk it?  I certainly never knew I wanted to play with paint, although why it's such a mystery to me that I should feel this way is another mystery in itself. 

I know hardly anything about painting.  I love doing it.  However, I'm not very good at it, and I have no technique to speak of.  Here, I'll show you what I mean ~ here's one I prepared earlier :)

There's a lot of things to trip us up from creating.  A scan at the interwebs and all those professionals who seem to know what they're doing, producing beautiful things with their eyes closed (apparently), while you're bumbling about in the dark.  The starkness of the blank page or the blank screen.  But there are various innovative and creative ways to dirty up the situation and take the pressure off yourself so that you can just get onto it and make a start, dammit!

Of course, the picture in your head is never, ever what ends up being the picture on the page, or the sentence.  As if there isn't enough to trip you up and stop you painting or writing, even that one simple element, the difference between what you have in your head and what comes out of your fingers, can stall you if you let it.

But the thing is, nothing is as you imagine it is from your head.  And sometimes you can get so caught up on what's in your head and how it hasn't transferred that you can't actually see what's in front of you.  And then you're done for ~ away from the is, trolling round and round in your tedious mindruts till you remember, again, to climb out. 

I'm really quite happy with this thing I've painted.  Even though it's nothing like what I wanted to represent (ghost gums at dusk).  Even though I've never seen ghost gums like that and those leaves are really sorta crappy.  Even though 17 other things I might pick out to not like about it, despite all of those flaws, I still really like this painting.  Because I painted it.

I like this painting more than anybody else will like it because of its very flaws.  Because it hasn't reached any heights.  Because it's not all that good, but I am still impressed with the endeavour I made.  Something came from my imagination, out of my fingers and onto the page.

This way of seeing things is a shelf that I climb up onto.  I can't always find it, though;  sometimes the ledge is hidden from my view.  But it sits just above my perfectionism, and from here the world expands outwards and once again, you're riding the wave.

Working From Home

I may possibly have the opportunity to work from home doing my current rather dull job. The upside of it would be that I would be almost solely doing Family Court stuff, which is the much juicier human element cases involving custodial hearings instead of Federal Court and Australian Securities and Investments Commission stuff about companies that have gone bankrupt and other such dullnesses.

The upside of working from home is that I would save on commute time, and I could do things like walk the dog on my lunch breaks, etc. I am trying to be honest with myself about how disciplined I would be; working from home, you really need to ensure that you get out and socialise or else it's all like four day old bread really quickly. And that whole deal of working in your PJs is charming for, like, a day and then it really wears off. I am finding it difficult to really be able to gauge how well I would go because the last time I did it I was (a) living with another person and (b) I was sick with CFS, so it's all totally different now than then. Socialising is a much easier option now than it was then.

Even though it's not like I get to socialise a whole heap at work, I still see people on the train, and in the cafe and in the lunchroom and stuff, you know? I can imagine there would be days where I was unmotivated to go out and would therefore spend an entire day at home without seeing anyone. How would I go with that? Would I go loopy loopy?

And yet I go entire days without seeing anyone regularly. I ROCK at solitude. I enjoy being alone for a couple of days in a row without seeing anyone and yet I am one of those strange people who are also extroverted and if I do not see anyone for two days running I will begin to wilt and start wondering if I am hallucinating my own existence. Too much time alone can be really crappy if you're on a muddledness and self-preoccupation binge, or it can just be great if you're in the Zenzone.

When I am in particularly earthed periods where I feel both grounded and connected to God, a day spent doing the most routine of things can be a long prayer. And always when I am in those sorts of spaces, my creativity is revved up also. I don't imagine working from home would really in the end be a whole stack different than what I am doing now, except that I would get to spend more time with my dog. It would be easier in terms of stopping for ten minutes or so to jot down a particular writing idea that has occurred to me while I've been focussed on typing. I guess that is one good thing about my dull job - and yet it's still not washing dishes. There is too much concentration occurring to be dozing off awake and upright the way I do when the dishes are being done, and the gloves are coming off once or twice in a washing session because a good phrase occurs to me :)

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.