bluniver*se

Be an angel to a freezing best friend.

2006-11-19T13:40:00.000+11:00

OK- so this is more of a Northern-Hemisphere thing, but PETA (People for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) are looking for sponsors to give mercy to freezing, hungry dogs that will suffer and possibly die without your help.

WHAT PETA CAN DO IF YOU HELP THEM

For you:
They will give you a before and after certificate showing photographs of the difference you have made to that dog...
AND
You will be featured on their Angels for Animals site.

For the dogs:
PETA will provide warm, comfortable dog-houses to dogs chained up outside, from freezing, impoverished areas.

Most of all, you can change the life of a beautiful soul and the rewards are unumerable. That dog's life can be a time of happiness and love, rather than pain and hunger.

Why not check it out?

Change your LIFE!

2006-11-04T17:45:00.000+11:00

This image shows water crystals which formed after a
Buddhist blessing upon a lake.
Can you spot Buddha?

When I ran away from my retreat in the mountains, where my soul felt more confined and repremanded than healed, I found, instead, a book of Masaru Emoto's water crystal research. This was the healing I was looking for.
I first saw reference on

I watched it last night and cried with truth. Watch "What the Bleep" if you watch any film this year. Ever. (It's kinda a docodrama, really)

Shmicko water crystal site...Hado.net

Click on Dr Masaru Emoto to go to his website

That dew-jewelled rocky path...

2006-10-24T16:02:00.000+10:00

OK- so it's been a million years. For reasons of self-challenge, I have restrained myself from response to the faceless void. Words may flow in so many colours and you cannot judge the brush for its every stroke.

This blog is my intimate space within such a cluttered web. In visiting this space, you are being welcomed into a space so personal to me. I speak in parody, in extreme, in honesty, I introduce the shadow which I, as we all, have. Denial of such can be held to blame for some of the world's greatest crimes ever. Understand the dark and light flows into it. Illuminate. Grow. Express. Question. Explore.

This weekend, I was reminded of a story of the true experience of absolute immersion with the spirit.

"A salt dog wanted to know the secret of the deep ocean. As he dived, he dissolved beyond return, becoming, at once one with the truth. With what he knew now, he could no longer be that form. He had merged, at one, with everything."

I have just returned from a meditation retreat in the Blue Mountains. Seeking a cosmic bandaid, I found new 'wounds' to heal, yet in processing such, I grew.

We may expect neatly-packaged solutions to our emotional briar-patches. Be it an alcohol-fuelled outing of denial, astrological-ponderings, hours staring into a patient friend's tea-cup ripping tissues, the purchase of psychiactric architectural psychochemicalelectroemotional re-wiring, or an instinctual calling to an old stamping-ground of spiritual guidance, compassion and hopefully, even elation?..

We think we know the exact prescription of our packages of salvation, but the path is never as we can already guess. That would be life as a constant re-run of "Roseanne".

The path can be rocky, sure. And no-one chooses that, but how can we also choose the elated surprise of rounding the next corner, just as the first rays of dawn come streaming, specrtal, through the dew-adorned rocks, before a heaving valley of effulgent mist. And, without the agony and darkness of the journey up that rocky incline, could that view feel so goldenly drunk into the soul as amber beams first emblazon ones night-chilled skin...?

Without that mindless passage into the jewel-laden future, there would be no surprise.

Nauthiz (Image by Bluniverse)

Ranting rave...

2006-05-18T17:57:00.000+10:00

Aaaaaaaahhhh! The relief of the first mouthfull of icy cold beer...a constant companion beside the cathode-ray nipple which suckles me also...however, methinks that breastmilk may be radioactive... Will there one day be a generation of people walking around with fried eyes and mobile-to-temple tumours...rampant, staggering-Night-of-the-Living-Dead video gamers, computer geeks, artists, students and yuppies...or does that concept even exist anymore? We're being dictated by the fashion industry that we must dress like preppy school-marms with bug-eyes. Fashion is the cynical puppeteer who pulls our strings to don irony-upon-irony of fine and not-so-finery and removes our sense of oversight until ten years later, when we're burning photos of a day when fashion dictated that we looked just great, seduced by the numbness of newness, yet appropriating with extreme predjudice, all times past in the ever-pilvaged smorgas board of social data...oh and did you hear blue's in? Bugger that, unfaithful tourists of azure...you gotta live a lifetime of blue before you really know it, kinda like moving into a small country town and still being an outatowner after 50 years...

I am downloading a month's worth of software...Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator...I have work coming out of my ears, but it's kind of a relief to not be able to do anything while it downloads. So many times, exhausted, I have loved the bittersweet wait of rendering video. Taking a compulsory break when you haven't allowed yourself to even sleep properly for weeks...speaking of which, time for a real break...

The Great Procrastinator

2006-05-04T11:25:00.001+10:00

OK- definately procrastinating here. So much to do, such big concrete blocks piling up on my tight, sore back... My Yellow Pages ad is paying off and clients are coming out of the woodwork, yet I haven't even had time to properly set up my studio.

I'm such a perfectionistic procrastinator, my desk had been sitting on my leaky verandah (porch) for so long the wood started rotting away. So, I made it my mission to repair that desk perfectly and make it the most beautiful desk in the world, which would glow like a luminous night sky with realistic gradation, glittery constellations and nebulae decopaged between many layers of varnish for a 3-D effect...

My standards are so high the worked-on desk is now sitting, waiting, fearing the rain...two steps backwards,
one step forwards...for all mankind...

Blogging can be the perfect way to procrastinate...it clears the mind and collectively, fragments of linguistic sketches, or mere seemingly-pointless ruminations, can actually build one day towards a body of work...just when you felt productively anorexic...

I have websites, video and graphic work to do and a career to catch up with.

It's like one day I had the absurd idea of being a donkey-cart driver. I bought the donkey and cart from some dodgy dealer and sat down to fasten my sandals before getting behind the reins. Something, perhaps the sound of the screaming wheels of time, alerted the donkey, who took off at a stallion-like pace, leaving me racing desperately behind, dodging falling wares, while the dodgy-donkey dealer rubbed his hands together, smugly pocketing my cash.

Why can't I get off my ass? ha. ha. ha.

Ouroboros

2006-04-24T19:47:00.000+10:00

And, so, the world spins on...
Seeking solace from crowds, technology and this often-claustraphobic settlement, my partner and I escaped to his sandstone cottage and slept and sat and wrote in the sun. It was so good just to be- just for a moment after a month of constant technology, illness, stress, tradgedy and melted-glass-warped like only sleep-deprivation can cause... It was my choice to produce such a detailed work, but then, I really have no choice, but to create with precision and detail...it's the digital simeon on my back...or at least sinking its claws right into my cerebro-cortex...

and once again, my train of attention hurtles off minto the night...

Meanwhile, back at my lover's shack...we emerged for Chinese at the local Golf/RSL club. On approach, it was like stepping into the establishing shot in the ultimate quirky Aussie restaurant in Woop Woop. We were greeted by an shiny-black-animated- amiable-tailess cat. I planned a prwan smugglery.

We dined against a cacophony of meat-tray raffle and lottery draws, each revelation
incurring a comment like: "well, they've only been in town for fourteen months, but it looks like thy're trying to win every-bloody-thing!"

Our dinner was mis-ordered because it was so hard to hear, but I did recieve one oddity I asked for...Seafood Birdsnest. Are they flying fish or are they caught by kingfishers, or is life just stranger than it already seems...

Anyway, it was delicious and it gradually died down to a natural human twang.

I recieved the news that my friends had had a baby. The father was once a crazy punk front-man to a band who performed bouncing on clothless mattress springs and living a generally Vivienesque existance. The mother a highly spirited beading gypsy character with a deliciously light hold on normality.

They now live quietly on a worm farm and now a new generation has emerged so soon after all of this death.

Ouroboros bites its tail hard and beginnings and deaths are closer than all the prosaic middle-years of existance.

"Beginning, end...end, beginning- all the same thing!",
Ogra- the Dark Crystal.

The next day my Dad won me a new red bycicle- in fact, the first good-quality, new bike I will have ever owned...

...funny how it all goes round...
Namaskar

Conclusions

2006-04-23T17:50:00.000+10:00

Well, it's a million thoughts, tears and words away from my last post. I have handwritten posts to fill in, but for now, I'll just spill my head a little...

It has been a powerful time in my town. Death and tradgedy has prevailed for months now, sprinkled with all the irreverent mirth of the universe can display.

The funeral was so genuine, impressive and beautiful. All the creative people; even hermits like me, attended and the feeling of loss, but enchantment with a memory.

It was a windy, blue-sky-scattered-with-cotton-wool kind of day, with a determined bite in the Autumn air. As we approached, the words, "Forever Young" flowed upon the breeze from the tree-chapel where so many people were gathered.

We sat and our old school song, "Jerusalem", played. I tried to sing to it, but the words choked in my neck.

So many school assemblies had ended for my friend and I with this song. No matter how mundane, 80s and stressful boarding school was, that song always moved me. It was one of those dusty-sunbeam moments when life feels like a movie and tears intoxicate the motion.

Today, this song brought bitter tears from me and anger at a system that shook our souls like an angry wind to tender blossoms.

Confusingly, this day I was torn between the body of school-based pain that was unlocked by these all-too-familiar strains and chords, yet still, as no longer a teenager, hearing the beauty of William Blake's words still enticed me to be open to this emotional minefield of a song.

The eulogy read as a great person, like you would usually hear on a docoplayed the world over. She had performed to many, but she had so much more potential. I want to take her work out there to the public as much as I can as a video celebrating her, but that's another post...

She did so much for so many and even organised events for childrens' theatre she wouldn't be around to see. She never stopped. She gave so much and she was always there to visit lost souls wandering the outer horizons of their souls.

When she performed, she didn't act,- she became.

She didn't know her worth, yet it's so great. I wonder if she could have seen the events of the day if she would have changed her mind...

Imagine if birthdays really were a celebration of your being here and that everyone who has painted a colour in your life, could come together, as if in a dream.
Look around and life may all seem so ant-paced concrete-unchangeable,
but it's not and it will...

But, imagine if all those people could all converge at home and tell each of us our worth, how differently would we all feel?
Instead of B-days, we need BE-days...

But, my mind scuttles off the thread with junk-shop clarity...

The funeral progressed with live music and a charged feeling in the air.
As it concluded, they played "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". A sweet relief to balance the point of farewell. The crowd clapped a single repetitive beat, like at the end of a play, when you're counting down to the final applause, and when the song ended I tried to begin a round of applause. It's one of those things that you have to jump into fully, or not at all. My clap was loud enough to raise eyebrows, but not enough to command response. Disappointed, I stopped.

My friend had thought of releasing blue helium balloons into the sky, but had appropriately declined, a beautiful idea that will be done at a later time.

Upon leaving, I found myself at the place she was to be driven from. Behind me, in the crowd, someone screamed out her name and I found my will and I clapped past the point of puzzled/disapproving looks until one, then another joined my meagre sound until the whole gardens around us filled with a warm wave of applause.

An exit befitting a star.

As we drove out of the gardens, we fell into the flow behind the hearse. We were only three cars away. For thirty seconds we followed before turning out into the street. She was so close. I was so aware this would be the physically closest I would ever be to her again in my life. As we turned away, I watched through the back window to savour any last grasp of her immediate presence in my life.

As our distance increased, the hearse crept up over a rise that seemed to go on for hours as I watched her disappear surely and finally over the hill and gone.

Goodbye, my friend.

2006-04-12T11:08:00.000+10:00

This is all I can think of doing. I just got off the phone from my best friend telling me our close friend has just killed herself this morning.

How do you say that? It just sounds so strange. It reverberates in so many ways and my obsessive-compulsive brain kicks in to re-inforce any of those horrible shadow-impulses that make you afraid of thinking things that are so horrible, so diametrically-opposed to your very thoughts that it is fear that confirms those thoughts' existance.

I am as if walking in a haze. The haze is momentarily comforting in its obscuring of clarity, like cotton-wool wrapping the razor-jaws of life/death reality- the kind that smashes your head open if you don't believe it enough...

Every few moments I fall, weightfully through the same thought-processes.

1.Initial, intellectual appropriate sadness at the actual facts. The response is limited and contained. There is no emotional elaboration. It is what it is.
Simple.
Finite.

2.Next, my emotional brain kicks in and a cluttered conglomeration of elements fly at my face. The rest is digestion of this.

3.I feel guilt. So much guilt. She tried to contact me so recently to spend time with her, but I didn't find the time. Momentarily, I think of a friend to call and inform and the thought occurs that "will I be the first to tell her the news?" and the my whole self kicks in and screams at me "how dare you?!!!" and I realise that the gossip angle means nothing to me and it's just some sick obsessive compulsive impulse kicking in, but even in intellectual comprehension, another wave hits me. There's no intellectualising away emotional gut-reflexes and the more you try, the more they'll be re-inforced with a diamond-titanium head.

4. Anger. At a system which didn't understand her, like a machine which processes a constant procession of souls, like petals in an unrelenting cogworks.
At the futility of so much talent and fire-cracker-bright personality disposed of.
Ceased like the after-echo of a final exclaimation on a vast, empty, blinding stage.

5.Disbelief. When I heard the news, the words, "committed suicide" sounded apt, following other behaviour, but as soon as I heard it in my memory's infantile initial perception, it sounded real, but my mind instantly thought- "it's not final. We can resucitate her now we know." It sounds like such a mutated dream, we can undo it in the supposedly re-assuring light of day. But, after 3 minutes the brain dies -and the rest soon after that. How can regret, panic, remorse, guilt, compassion change the cold-concrete-block reality of it all?

Answer: it can't.

6.Understanding. It feels right. So many details suggest it was so well-considered by her...and so understandable. If she was ninety and in real physical pain, her death would be considered sad, but a just relief to so much pain. Why is this so different? There must be some kind of mercy in the universe. She didn't deserve what she suffered.

7.Panic. If this is the right reality, I fear all that is to come. Waves of realisation hit again and again, passing momentarily into hazy amnesia, bearing only an intense, untagged body of emotion until comprehension again forms the recognisable figure of reality and my soul reels again under the shock.

8.Sadness. Already I miss her and I think of the realisation I had that she was like a sister, at least in background.

She was so talented, so eloquent, beautiful, kind, generous. Her need for 100% perfection was hanging always over her head, yet while she was closer than most to that 100, every point less made it impossible for her to continue as a self-decided blemish upon the possibility of 100%.

Why- for fuck's sake? What did it matter how well she elocuted, whom she impressed, what scores she attained, her CV, her impressing of the right people. Now she's a corpse, who the fuck cares how perfectly she spoke?!!!

It's this fucked-up WASPY mentality of impressing all, whilst staying neatly dressed and emotionally threadless.

WHY?

I must say, my response is partly selfish, here- but how do you separate emotions, thoughts, impulses to neat, organised categories?

I am personally spooked because my friend was the person who most resembles myself in personality and background. She was the only person I know of who went to my school I was still in contact with. She was affected so similarly, but it manifested differently as far as cold, psychological labels go, but it came out much the same; desperate to please all, yet really trusting few or none, highly achieving potential, yet so constantly defeating the outcome by protecting herself from the sheer velocity of feeling with the bitterness of toxins. A beer, a pen and paper are the most immediate and undemanding allies. We hide in the dark room of being us while outside in the searing examination-light of day, those we try to please bang loudly and accusingly on the front-doors of expectations.

Why? For fuck's sake, why?

So many times in sadness, I have pondered upon the thought of "I feel so unloved and misunderstood- if this bus hit me now, what meaning would they derive from my objects I was carrying? Would everyone who had wronged me feel put in their places? Would all of my potential be recognised post-mortem? Would my name make it to lights regardless in the wake?

Wake- the backwash of a life lived and ended which has left those associated with the need to anhibriate, commiserate, whatever.

This is the first friend of mine who has died. this is the first person of my age close to me, the first suicide, the first senseless, passionate, unresolved death in my life. My cousin died last year. I saw the damage, I felt sad, but I had never felt anything in common, apart from last name, but this is new and I still don't know how it feels to me. It's all too immediate and abstract to organise into neat, understandable piles of emotion.

I just don't know.

I just don't know.

All I have left are salty tears, bitter words and guilt at any satisfaction apt expression may serve.

I wish I could just hug her.

It's such a full-stop.

Glimpse

2006-04-09T12:08:00.000+10:00

Early this morning a leathery man with many bags and an assumed Irish accent was sitting outside the Supermarket, snaring awkwardly smiling passers for a chat, when my kind-hearted partner was comandeered into giving him a lift.

A rich odour of rollie tobacco, spirits and a life-lived-hard filled the van and he spun a rich brocade of stories, limericks, songs and conversation, delivered in a mixture of Irish, Serbian, and Italian accents, and under it all, Australian.

He had asked for a lift to the river and the next minute, he had us moving him and all his belongings from a hostel to the river- a move I understand, but when he started giving directions like "turn left at the rock that turns into a rabbit", it became a little hard on the driver...

So, down at the river with his life lined up beside him, he offered me a bright blue back-pack for being kind. He insisted fervently and I had to accept. In the bag were books of writing and manuscripts, which I returned and he sprouted tales of fighting in Vietnam, Serbia and other places, finishing a story of being shot by a sniper, from a tree, by lifting his glasses to reveal a missing eye and that "They call me One-Eyed-Jack!"

These revelations were not with self-pity, or anything but matter-of-factness to illustrate a story...
...and he told so many stories...

It was the beginning of a beautiful day and he was there to live, now.
Not institutionalised, or homeless, but living by the river.
A beautiful day and so much need to express himself. I told him "if they throw rocks at you, carve them into sculptures. Write your stories down!" He asked me to write it down on the front page of his book. I wrote, gave him a pen and left..and he gave me the bright blue back-pack...
minus his manuscripts...

The Murrimbidgee River, Wagga

Steve, Bill & Snuffy...

2006-04-04T14:32:00.000+10:00

Ok- I'm blogging while my file is processed...I'm trying to take a PC video file from the net to edit on my Mac... Why-oh, why is it so bloody hard...you'd think a big company would want to make advertising material all-too-accessible...grrr-it's a PC user's world... but then, again, I'm used to trying to function in a format which is incompatible with most beast-machines...

OK- what I'm doing is working on a video for a company who will be making water from thin air...pretty nifty, hey, but ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh the technological divide between Mac and PC... to work with the two is as if to walk the waiting sands between halves of the parted Red Sea...

Actually, they're a little like Ernie and Bert... I see the halves of the brain, hell, even the limbic and prefrontal lobes, as Ernie and Bert...but, of Mac and PC, who's really Ernie and who's Bert...?
Mac could be Bert, because it's so much more neat, formal and institiutional than PC, yet Mac could be Ernie, because it's so much more creative and lateral. Mac and PC. Steve and Bill. Who's the Bert, there? Steve because he was such a stroppy-pants, or Bill because he was so straight and beige...?

And, as for Amiga- that's gotta be Snuffleuppagus- BEFORE every man and their Barkley could see him...!

Venting...

2006-04-03T16:43:00.002+10:00

All right- just to let you know I'm still out here in the Bluniverse... Work is piling up around my head, I'm moving into the future and it's all starting to look possible...OSX aint in Kansas anymore, Toto!... I've finally been able to download Firefox and I don't even have to hand-code posts anymore... but I bet i still will... like with the advent of digital cameras, I stopped using the viewfinder and became lazy, thinking:"it has such great resolution I can just crop it later for detail", but I was forgetting to really look inside the photo, to value each shot like a moment, to strive further to create each image thoughtfully and to really be aware of just what I was capturing... and there goes another analogy for this Mc-fficient digital $2 for a pack-of-50 throw-away, comfortable, souless society, not valuing each moment when they come in convenient packs of 50 and, hey, you can always get plastic-surgery when too many moments and feelings have passed through you...

I noticed before the word, advent...
wind, in French, is vent, so what about adventure... I must consult my dictionary... and, it turns out to be referring to venir, to come... I wonder if the French word for wind is based on the word for coming, as if the wind were something coming and going, not material, yet existing within movement itself...like a journey, which is inexistant when we stagnate...

Truth in a simple raisin

2006-03-23T14:34:00.000+11:00

"Researchers investigated whether mindfulness meditation, i.e. buddhist-style meditation, could be combined with cognitive therapy to help prevent depression in people with a history of depression.

for many people, that when they focus on moment-by-moment way of being, it’s almost a way of being instead of doing all the time, instead of being driven all the time, that they discover in that moment that they can feel their thoughts coming out, their negative thoughts, even positive thoughts, or body sensations they haven’t wanted like pain, and they can watch them come and go, instead of having to strive, to struggle, to worry, and so on. They begin to be able to see their thoughts like clouds going across the sky, and it’s an amazing revelation that if they wait patiently, just being gently curious about how they are in that ...
eventually the sun comes out...

simple practice meditation starting with eating meditation, where they get to eat just one raisin. But do it mindfully, do it slowly, just focus on that one thing...
...You start by actually looking at it, perhaps turning it over in your hand, and you take time to turn it over in your hand. Then maybe you smell it, maybe you even turn it over near your ear, see if it’s got a sound, but you pay all your attention to the raisin. If you find your mind wandering, you just gently bring your mind back to the raisin. Then eventually you take it to your lips, you put it in your mouth, noticing your hand knows pretty well how to reach your mouth without you telling it to do.

Your whole world is focused on the raisin. You take it into your mouth, you don’t chew, you just leave it there and see what your tongue feels like on the raisin, and then very mindfully, with great awareness, you just chew. And then you feel the intention to swallow coming up, and then you give in to it and swallow, and then you’re one raisin heavier.

...It’s a mind-focusing technique; it gives people a gateway into mindfulness meditation, which shows them that meditation isn’t just about breathing, or just about the full lotus posture, or about anything particularly weird, it’s about doing things and noticing that you’re doing them, doing things perhaps one at a time. And then having the choice about whether to continue to do it like that, or where else to put your mind."

-ABC online

The riddle of life...

2006-03-23T11:20:00.000+11:00

...the sun rises in all its glory and colour and how do we perceive it, but as a time-based container of (mainly) physical change...we begrudgingly perform all manner of often mundane, prosaic tasks we hate...why? To answer obtrusive relatives' questions, to wear badges, to go way past satisfaction of simple respirational needs, until these needs cease to exist...
because we don't...

Somewhere along the line, the respirational need of procreation may occur,- maybe repeatedly, and thus we increase the intensity of our hateful occupations until those offspring are similarly processed.

Mix and repeat process...

Blog in flux

2006-03-18T19:00:00.000+11:00

OK- so this blog is in renovation... I have decided to go to the dark-neon side and get some advertising, but my template is in distress...please just wade through the mess...speaking of wading, I was just on a walk and I had left my house by blocks when I noticed three turtles lined up on a log emerging from the lagoon I was about to pass...

I needed to have that shot...

So, I walked home and returned, camera in hand. I approached the bridge and to my delight, the turtles were still there lined up, basking trustingly in the sun, water rippling oh-so-photogenically, around them.

It was my shot awaiting me...

possibilities abounding...

I approached and noticed a boy on a bike passing and a noisy car and thought "surely the turtles will be frightened by these sounds"- so I ran to get my winning shot before they were frightened away and in doing so-

I frightened them away.

Now, little grasshoppers, there must be a moral here to be derived...could it be:

have patience

do not pre-judge catastrophe or you will cause what you fear

or

take it easy- don't push the turtle...

right, Homer...?

Blogging in Tongues

2006-03-12T13:28:00.000+11:00

Maybe it's just my brain or the Pink Floyd playing, but when I saw the key-words that have referred people to my site, the list seemed to spell out a train-of-thought prose...am I blogging in tongues?!!!

kitty hello cthulu the elmo tigger inna gadda polynesia bluniverse tickle vida green nimbin mikmaq black albino video webcam absynthe and maq simpsons rabbit bunny being sheep easy background mik microinjection isnt pigs look light cant cyclone kittys micmaq kermit 2005 boning frog art star glow under alba linda...

By the way, did you know that langue is French for tongue, so we speak in tonguage....

Solbeaming!

2006-03-08T13:43:00.000+11:00

I've been linked to a blog named Solbeam for a year now. When I was last connected to the net, I used to love reading this blog. I found the author intelligent and loved her witty wordplay.

Now, after my '40' days and nights in the desert without the net, upon revisiting her site, it seems much has progressed...

She is travelling in Tibet and meeting her adventures with humility and humour.

Update: Sadly, this blog seems to have deleted. Why? Sorry if you were offended, wherever you are...

Further update: It's back! I don't get it, but I'm glad- and relieved...I was spooked to see the whole wonderful thing missing all but its title and background only hours after I first published this post...

Curiouser and curiouser...

Conclusion: OK- now I get it- her blog is no longer a blog;- it's a web site that uses her old blog links and it's her blog that is now abandoned...

One click away from you...

2006-03-05T18:46:00.000+11:00

Just one click away from 6666 visitors to my Bluniverse. Does this number actually mean anything, or is it like an extra chromasome of evil that just comes out of dodgy character- not well meaning, but not quite cluey enough to be cunning...sort of like the calliber of class snitch...or narc...or host of a patronising make0ver show...

hmmmmmmmmmm...

Online again...

2006-03-03T16:10:00.001+11:00

Finally I'm back online. Broadband, PO box, Yellow Pages advertising, business course, new G5 Mac, digital video camera, lights, a plethora of 'Idiot's Guides', a business name and number and I'm a soul -er, sole trader. Finally, I'm selling my art...sleeping with the art Devil, vaccuuming the dust from the dark corners... I'm becoming some kind of Prozac Poster-Girl...minus the evil SSRI...but, hey, what's a little tryptophan between neurotransmitters...

I've just spent the last 5 days facing this screen with its ever-freezing grimace.

Restart...restart...

Happy Mac- thank God...

After so many hours face-to-face with my aging electronic friend, it was a little bitter-sweet to complete the last real project on this blue baby...albeit the feeling of battening hatches in the fiercest of storms, my craft falling apart beneath my feet, just praying to complete the journey to success...exhausted and gritting sand...

So, why am I on here again today? Guess it's like battery hens who return to their cage upon being freed because that hell is all they know...but not to jest about these creatures' suffering...it's a terrible thing and very good reason to BUY FREE-RANGE EGGS OR BETTER, NONE AT ALL...but I digress...

I've just been watching a doco on the Life of Sylvia Plath. What a beautiful painter of so many shades of pain- words the bloody paint of her ever-fraying canvas...

I must read her work...

Sylvia Plath, Brett Whitely, Frances Farmer, Vincent Van Gogh what do you think of when you read these names?

Think it's time to go see the brilliant light of day...

I can seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee you!

2006-01-25T14:57:00.000+11:00

I've just been scanning the origins of the viewers of this blog and I noticed one in Bomen & one in Oura. Click the little square at the bottom of my blog- it's a tracker. You can see all the info I have access to.

Don't be afraid- I don't know any more than that, but out of interest, guys, I'm pretty much in the middle of the two of you, so howdy, neighbours. The world aint so small, after all!!!

"I thought I was the Bally Table King"*

2006-01-25T14:16:00.000+11:00

*Tommy, The Who

Be an old-school Pinball Wizard!
Click on the image for a site with games that reach back half a century or so...

Madge goes blogging...like a normal person!

2006-01-24T21:08:00.000+11:00

OK- I know, big deal, but have I just wandered upon Madonna's blog? Do people that ravenous for exposure still continue the publicity excercise when they go home at night? If so, for God's sake, Madge take up an evening 'past-time' that will make you melt into an unproductive protozoa...no, wait- that could actually make you blog more...but your songs could actually get a little interesting...

Still, love 'em or hate 'em, it's the adaptable creatures of the world who are the true survivors...like axolotls...

Blogasites!

2006-01-24T12:18:00.000+11:00

What is with this new brand of attention-grabbing blogger who simply leaves a comment in order to link to their own page?!

Receiving comments can be encouraging- even not-so-positive ones. At least it shows someone is going there. However, what's with people who give some broad, generic comment like "I read your blog and I found it inquisitive. Why don't you read mine?."!!! Inquisitive?! Is that the best they could imagine?

I found two such virtually identical comments on the same post from two separate blogggers. I would link to the blog I found them on, but I don't want to further their parasitical pursuits.Physical theft hurts the wallet; intellectual property theft in many forms, hurts the soul.

Isn't this about communication in a world when increasingly all we have left is electronic connections.? Why waste someone's place of ideas just to suit oneself...then again, why am I so surprised...it's just the sadly-predictable movements of the rats scurrying around the the human race!

Blue Butterfly

2006-01-23T12:41:00.000+11:00

Here's to a certain 'Blue Butterfly',a jammed CD in a game of musical chairs at a kids' birthday party and the merriment Nick Cave inevitably brings!
If he could just team up with Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Keith Richards what a perky new Wiggles line-up they could achieve...!

State of Me

2006-01-22T12:05:00.000+11:00

Heart pumps,
Angry machinery in a deteriorating factory.
Dusty sump-oil further mocks facades of shiny-newness.

Voices cut.
Jutting, sharp.
Soundwaves, as if frozen hard, lascerate my psyche.

Mind whirls.
Brain examines itself in psychostudy,
Curious child in mirror, transfixed.

Puzzle pieces close as much as they open.

...so I went AWOL.....

2005-07-16T17:20:00.000+10:00

OK- so I guess I got a little bloggsessed for a while there...and then I lost the net...and all the jellyfish swam away...

My image host has also gone AWOL, hence all those ugly little red crosses on my links...first the bastards offer my work to the world to use when it seemed it was privately stored and now they go cut the bloody umbilical cord...
umbilical chord: aaaaaaaaa(rgh!)...

But, it's nice to know that even in blog-comatose, faeries still abound. Thank you, DB, for keeping up the content... in fact this groovy critter needs a blog all of his own!...

These are his comments...

'Iiiiiiiiiiii'mmm baaack!'
06.08.05 - 4:45 am
I want the hard-hitting facts...the gossip about Ernie seen about town with Miss Piggy...the stuff about Kermit's sordid past whilst living as a struggling frog-actor in New York.

06.29.05 - 3:03 am
No updates on Kermit's celebrity behaviour...other than I heard he was now dating Angeline Jolie and Ms. Piggy is going out with Kenny G!!!!

'Tigger-what were you thinking?'
04.11.05 - 7:29 pm
This is seriously worrying, man! I know that the good people at the CTW are holding their heads in their hands down at Sesame St. I understand that Elmo is not commenting to the press and he's holed up in some Manhattan hotel room thinking about possible career moves. With the Wiggles making inroads in America I really feel for the Sesame St. crew. I mean, first the whole Mr. Snuffleufaglus is 'actually real and not just seen by Big Bird' fiasco and now this! Oscar called me yesterday from his trashcan and we talked about it...he basically said, 'Am I the only character on this show left with any decency! I told that Elmo not to let the fame get to his head...and never hang out with characters from other francises!' I think the Grouch has seriously been underestimated in his show business smarts.

But seriously....they have credits at the end of Sesame St. now....CREDITS...

Wheeeeeeee!
04.11.05 - 7:33 pm
This is pretty damn cool! I think it's great to see two members of opposing differences settle their differences with some trampoline theatrics! Ofcourse it could all be a case of bird on the end of the crocodiles nose...once the gig is up it's SNAP! and the bird is eaten. Hmmm, I do notice that the cat's eyes have that sort of, 'Yeah, have your fun, Mousey, but check out these claws...check out my feline patience....' Yep...that's it, I guess. I do notice the claws at the ready.

Let them Call you Sweetheart
04.11.05 - 7:43 pm
And then all time froze for Wally and Albert Dapperton, the famous bow tie wearing singing brothers were finally immortalised...'Oh Rose Marie I- (TIME FREEZE).' Twenty eight years later they were animate again...and they finished their song with '-LOVE YOU!' But it was too late. Their beloved Rose Marie had married a baker. The good thing though was that Wally and Albert's battle for Rose Marie's affection had come to an end. Their feuding over one woman was over. They now live on a ranch in Texas and sip ice tea.

Absynthe, Anyone?
(See the picture)
'Oh, this is terrible! They've left the barcode on this glass from the store! I always tell them that the people from the History Museum notice these things!'

04.11.05 - 7:39 pm
'It isn't easy being green'
- Kermit the Frog

'It isn't easy being zygote Green'
- Alba the Rabbit

'It isn't easy being green - blah!!!!'

- Airsick passenger over the Coast of Mexico during turbulence

Thanks, Davey!

and, by the way, if you haven't been there go do the Kitty-Cat Dance... Just go there...!

Iiiiiiiiiiii'mmm baaack!

2005-05-22T17:27:00.000+10:00

Thank you, faithful readers, who have questioned my absence in blogdom. I was starting to feel like I was throwing petals into the night, not knowing if my effort was reaching anyone.

I didn't want to threaten to hurt anything fluffy ('sif I could!), but I did wanna know...

But mark my words, my pretties-

I'll be back !

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

cough!

Haiku 4

2005-03-28T11:10:00.000+10:00

April's air stirs in
willow leaves...
a butterfly
floats and balances.

Tigger-what were you thinking?

2005-03-27T18:47:00.000+10:00

"Tigger boning Tickle Me Elmo: Smart toys acting dumb
Stick a Tickle Me Elmo and an electronic Tigger together and they will simulate a really dirty sex scene, as captured on this video. Smart toys from different vendors are really overdue for combinatorial unintended consequences."
-Boing Boing!

Wheeeeeeee!

2005-03-25T19:56:00.000+11:00

great glowing green bunnies!

2005-03-25T19:00:00.000+11:00

"French genetic researchers created Alba for artist Eduardo Kac. Thanks to genes borrowed from a jellyfish, the albino rabbit glows green when placed under special lighting. In regular light, Alba appears like any other furry white rabbit. But place her under a black light, and her eyes, whiskers and fur glow a otherworldly green. "GFP Bunny" (green fluorescent protein bunny).

The French scientists created Alba using a process called zygote microinjection. In this process, the scientists plucked a fluorescent protein from a species of fluorescent jellyfish called Aequorea victoria. Then they modified the gene to make its glowing properties twice as powerful. This gene, called EGFG (for enhanced genetic fluorescent gene) was then inserted into a fertilized rabbit egg cell that eventually grew into Alba. As the cell divided, the "green gene also replicated and made its way into every cell of Alba's body.

"Glow in the dark" fish. these genetically modified fish were developed by a Taiwanese aquatic firm, Taikong Group. They are planning to reproduce these fish in numbers and sell them for pets."

-Green Apple.com

I hate to make light of genetic engineering, but wouldn't a glow-in-the-dark Easter Bunny be more efficient at getting around in the dark...hmmm

Let him call you sweetheart

2005-03-25T14:43:00.000+11:00

Actual chronograph of posessed man morphing into vapour demon

Absynthe, anyone?

2005-03-23T18:54:00.000+11:00

Visit the Virtual Absynthe Museum

Eye Candy!

2005-03-23T10:10:00.000+11:00

click me!

No contender for Teddy Kennedy!

2005-03-17T09:43:00.001+11:00

"Prime Minister, John Howard has dressed his bear “Winston” in a red running suit, ready for a busy day in Federal Parliament in Canberra.
Winston was named after Mr Howard’s own middle name.
Mr Howard has been Prime Minister in Australia since March 1996,"... and is best-known for his life-long impersonation of a blow-fly and for his assistance to President George Bush's marionetting skills...

See Bert Newton's bear, Belvedere

'Ghostly' chatter - fact or fiction?

2005-03-16T19:37:00.002+11:00

"Electronic Voice Phenomena" (EVP)

"It's claimed the dead have found a new way of contacting the living.

Not by rapping on tables or spewing ectoplasm over a twitching medium, but via electronic signals.

Linda Williamson believes she has heard from beyond the grave

So-called "Electronic Voice Phenomena" (EVP) are supposed to be the voices of ghosts, made audible through static on the radio, or on tape recordings.

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie - Ghost crossed with The Cable Guy perhaps. And in fact it is."

-BBC News

Tragedy- Whaling Ban lifted

2005-03-15T22:37:00.001+11:00

Kiribati has joined the International Whaling Commission, which has been wresting with the highly contentious issue of turning over the global ban on commercial whaling.

You can help stop commercial whaling with our action kit. Send a letter in Japanese (Japanese PDF provided) to the Foreign Minister of Japan, put up posters in your community to recruit more cyberactivists or write a letter to your local newspaper.

Join the global whales action team

Rats in the net

2005-03-14T20:50:00.002+11:00

As the Tibetan people wait for His Holiness the Dalai Lama's national address of 10 March, hackers in Beijing are working overtime to sabotage the cyber world of Tibet movement. Offices of the Tibetan exile administration have recently started receiving emails disguised as originating from Sonam N. Dagpo, "Additional Secretary" (sic) of the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) in Dharamsala, and purportedly carrying the text of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 10 March statement as an attached file.
-Boing Boing

haiku 4

2005-03-14T10:53:00.000+11:00

now my loneliness
following the fireworks...
look! a falling star!

-Shiki

Get Googled, doubters!

2005-03-13T20:27:00.002+11:00

OK- so a few weeks ago I was 'hassled' for saying Google is an Aussie thing. Maybe it might have begun as an American seed, but it's now proudly emblazoned with its Australianess.

Buuuuut if we stole google, it's only fair after they stole vegemite, photocopiers, electronic clothing tags and ugh boots...actually, you can keep the tags and the ugh boots...!

Too Blue

2005-03-13T20:06:00.000+11:00

I have just found the website of my old radio station, 2Blu FM in Katoomba, Blue Mountains, where I had a show for about a year and a half. Now it seems to be just Blu FM. Is it any wonder I'd work at a station with a name like that...?

Click on the groovy dj (you can tell by the coke lined up on the console...) to see a virtual tour of the studio. It's trippy to see the space I spent many hours in, but in a spookily-realistic format...

Try the virtual room-spin and you'll see it from the point of view of a record...or the typical 2Blu punter...

haiku 3

2005-03-12T16:33:00.000+11:00

"friend, that open mouth
reveals your whole interior...
silly hollow frog!"

-anon

Ingrid whips up a fury

2005-03-10T14:37:00.000+11:00

At Christmas, there were global tidal waves and and the sky turned black with locusts just minutes from where I live. All that was missing was the seven horsemen of the Apocalypse! At any given time, it's easy to forsee the end, but now, with this new threat, Cyclone Ingrid, all superstitions may be renewed (yay, OCD...!)

Today, I am posting from a town with a population of less-than 1000 called Lockhart, New South Wales. By coincidence, this is also the name of one of the main sitting-duck localities when Ingrid rips through...

"Cyclone Ingrid hits Qld coast
A cyclone as powerful as Cyclone Tracy, which flattened Darwin just more than 30 years ago, is crossing Cape York Peninsula near Lockhart River.

The category four cyclone has winds of up to 240 kilometres an hour and is continuing to intensify, but there have been no reports of damage.

A cyclone warning is in place for communities from Cape Melville to Cape Grenville, and from Cape Keerweer to Mapoon on the eastern Gulf of Carpentaria.

At 6:00am AEST, Ingrid's destructive core was over coastal parts of Lockhart River near Mission Hill.

The bureau is warning of a tidal surge in the area as the cyclone crosses the coast.

About 20 people were moved to higher ground in the Lockhart River community overnight as Ingrid approached the coast.

But Superintendent Michael Keating says Lockhart River police are not reporting any problems.

"There are strong winds in the area at the moment - 80 to 100 kilometres but there's been no damage to any structures, no damage to any trees, so the majority of people are sheltering in private residences," he said."

-ABC News Online (for more, click on the map)

Love that Lorem

2005-03-05T21:18:00.000+11:00

Sprung badly, Wagga Art Gallery- I was just linking to this site in the last post when I noticed a spiel that was completely comprised of Lorem Ipsum text- the gobblygook-producing site that is used as dummy text.

It's a shame this site is not more illustrated, especially when the National Art Collection is constantly on display, let alone quite a plethora of national standard art...

Have a good look at Lorem Text- it's funny how often randomly-lettered words look familiar...

Spectral sands

2005-03-05T10:09:00.000+11:00

This week, Tibetan monks have been creating a sand mandala at the Wagga Art Gallery. Starting on Tuesday, they have been working all week from 10am-5pm and tomorrow is the dissolution ceremony.

These pics were taken yesterday morning after an an hour of chanting, which I attended...well, my body and whatever amount of my subconscious I could arouse, thanks to sleeplessness, toxin/morning fatigue and the distracting cries of a kid beside me.

But, once I concentrated beyond the surface static, I percieved patterns in the richly textures of interlacing ribbons of voice.
Powerful and delicate, deep and textured;- almost fugish in its manner of one deep voice setting the next phrase and sonic motif simultaneously with the echoing chants of the group of monks, like the bones upon which all intricacy was woven.

Bold phrasing like a vein from which flowed intricate capilliation, a mighty, land-forming river feeding to smaller, geography-obediant streams which sustained the final fabric of each sound.

The entire universe, or so we believe, is comprised of ever-vibrating molecules. Sound is the further vibration of molecules in eminating waves. When we experience sounds they change our very molecular structure.

Mantras embed subcosciously communicative information. Words are chosen through careful meditation so that the very sound the word is meant to equal that which it names. "Om" is the key example, as the tambre of the word is said to be the very sound of the universe as a whole...

...and speaking of the universe as a whole, I have read that the smallest form in the universe and the universe itself, are of identical shape; the Double-Helix. I read this a while ago.
(Please comment if you can help me clarify this...)

Hum mane padme hum.
(You are the jewel of the lotus)

A gay ol' time with Spongebob

2005-03-03T10:50:00.000+11:00

"A hip square as a sponge is a good or a bad thing? On the one hand, a sponge might soak up information; so maybe it's intelligent. On the other hand, it can soak up other people's energy and money; so maybe a sponge is lazy and a user."
Slate

"LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Conservative Christian groups accuse the makers of a video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon characters of promoting homosexuality to children.

The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers -- the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation -- say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.
But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.
The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song "We Are Family" using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and other TV cartoon characters. It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in an effort to promote healing."

Want more?
The Corroboree

"If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

Nimbin Webcam

2005-03-02T21:09:00.000+11:00

Visit the Nimbin Hemp Embassy Web cam...

If pigs could fly...

2005-02-28T13:53:00.000+11:00

Ever heard the one about the lotus flower? This flower is such a spiritual symbol because while it has its roots in the mud, it is looking up at the sky.

This morning I read under a bottle-cap that "pigs can't look up at the sky",
(yet their roots are in the mud). Is this why they want to fly...or why there is such human fascination with them being able to do so?

Pigs are genetically the closest organisms to humans...

Chakrically, we are a totem of the earthbound beast below and the wise, beyond-physical-sight lotus above. In our minds we can fly if we really choose to. Most of the time, we just choose the bodily ease of the mud.

Kitty's Art Class

2005-02-26T21:18:00.000+11:00

Who is Kitty? This kinda trippiness could only come from a child's mind...

Full-lunarcy

2005-02-26T17:37:00.000+11:00

Have a loony full-moon!

Moon

2005-02-26T17:23:00.000+11:00

Take the round flat moon
Snap this twig for handle...
What a pretty fan!

-Sokan

Moon on a stick...

Snorks!

2005-02-26T11:49:00.000+11:00

Snorks water pistols!!! I want one!

Glassy bunnies...

2005-02-26T11:46:00.000+11:00

don't ask me why...

Water

2005-02-26T11:37:00.000+11:00

Alaska

2005-02-26T09:19:00.000+11:00

one day...

Tropfest

2005-02-25T09:52:00.000+11:00

If you're in Sydney, Oz, on the 27th of March, you really should check out the screening of the Tropfest festival. Once an obscure excercise, as you can see, it's now huge!

voulez vous babel?

2005-02-21T21:22:00.001+11:00

How cute! I've just found the Babelfish website, which translates text. To test it, I went for the ultimate cliché of "Voulez vous coucher avec moi se soir?"
the translation being: "Please lie down with me evening?"

take a trip down memory lane...

2005-02-21T16:10:00.001+11:00

The Bush that dug weed...

2005-02-21T13:23:00.000+11:00

Doug Wead, an author and former aide to President Bush's father

Ever doubt the existance of a conscious entity who designed the universe? Sometimes life's just too apt to be random... When a President Bush can be old smoking buddies with aDoug Wead (Dug Weed)...

the following is a quote from Hemp Evoluion...

New York, NY Feb 19, 2005 -- Private conversations with George Bush secretly taped by an old friend before he was elected president foreshadow some of his political strategies and appear to reveal that he acknowledged using marijuana, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The conversations were recorded by Doug Wead, a former aide to George W. Bush's father, beginning in 1998, when Bush was weighing a presidential bid, until just before the Republican National Convention in 2000, the Times said in a story posted on its Web site.

The tapes show Bush crafting a strategy for navigating the tricky political waters between Christian conservative and secular voters, repeatedly worrying that evangelicals would be angered by a refusal to bash gays and that secular Americans would be turned off by meetings with evangelical leaders.

On one tape, Bush explains that he told one prominent evangelical that he would not "kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

In early tapes, Bush dismisses the strength of John McCain for the nomination and expresses concern about rival Steve Forbes. He also praises John Ashcroft as a promising candidate for Supreme Court justice, attorney general or vice president.

Bush also criticizes then-Vice President Al Gore for admitting marijuana use and explains why he would not do the same.

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions," he said, according to the Times. "You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

According to the article, Wead played 12 of the tapes to a Times reporter. He said he recorded them because he viewed Bush as a historic figure. He is the author of a new book on presidential childhoods.

The White House did not deny the authenticity of the tapes.

"The governor was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said, referring to Bush."

Associated Press
-Hemp Evolution

now

2005-02-21T09:09:00.000+11:00

before,
my heart gaped open to the universe,
like a bloody wound-
spewing forth my essense
until emptiness.

now,
your existence negates the void-
even when all else is not
you
are.

More on M.Night Shyamalan ...

2005-02-18T15:21:00.000+11:00

This is in belated response to Ilapirata's comment on my post on M.Night Shyamalan on the 4th of February, in which I said:

"Nuances, subtleties, strange, almost obscured details, whose amorphous revellations are far more shocking than billion-dollar 3-D perfectly rendered monsters can be.

Life is stranger than fiction and a true artist will know how to collate subtle details, rather than punchy, dynamic shock tactics. A poor man's example of using randomly prosaic, seemingly candid details to hit you where you live, is in the works of Stephen King. MNS is so much more profound, despite the generally commercial format of his works..."

and he said:

"Pretty nifty work in that movie..tho think its the creepy silence that works for his movies.. Example see the "unbreakable" and the comic book comparisions..."

...not quite a direct response to Ilapirata' comment, but I have found a Freudian(!) quote which, I think, helps illustrate the personally-effective, yet non-solipsistic nature of Shyamalan's work. As a Jungian student, I cringe at using the thoughts of Freud, but you can't always throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater...

"The twilight-realm of phantasy is upheld by the sanction of humanity and every hungry soul looks here for help and sympathy. But for those who are not artists, the ability to obtain satisfaction from imaginitive sources is very restricted.

If one is a real artist he has more at his disposal. In the first place, he understands how to elaborate his day-dreams so that they lose their essentially personal element, which would repel strangers, and yeild satisfaction to others as well. He also knows how to disguise them so that they do not easily disclose their origin in their disclosed sources.

He further possesses the puzzling ability of molding a specific material into a faithful image of the creatures of his imagination, and then he is able to accomplish all this, he makes possible for others, in their return, to obtain solace and consolation from their own unconscious sources of gratification which had become inaccessible."

-Sigmund Freud (whose name lies somewhere between Fraud and Feud)-please forgive my choice of source!

The Blackbirds are rough today

2005-02-18T13:04:00.000+11:00

lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.

-Charles Bukowski

Haiku 1

2005-02-15T20:05:00.000+11:00

Camellia-petal
fell in silent dawn...
spilling a water jewel-

Basho

Free-falling

2005-02-15T12:40:00.000+11:00

After having just seen my chilhood piano teacher in the supermarket, my hands are still shaking.
From the ages of about 5 to 11, I was under the reign of this man, whose dissatisfaction with anything less than perfection, from the beginning of training onwards, was enough to solidify any obsessive compulsive potential in me into a concrete reality slab.

After a month, he had me playing 4th grade pieces. If I paused to find the notes (often forgotten as a result of nerves), he would punch me. This alone may have made me the underlying wreck I am today.

Initially, by description I may seem lucky;- even hateful; I am an only (lonely) child cultivated to impress. I endured a barrage of elocution, piano, tennis and ballet lessons. I was always shown to adults and expected to impress. Yeah- sure I had all the fucking attention in the world, but who needs it?! Who needs to live in a petrie dish shivering under the intense eye of constant assessment?!
And boarding school- jail for innocent kids who've done nothing but knock themselves out to impress. On the outside, dear reader, you may be thinking "poor diddums"- but believe me- you wouldn't want it if you had it!

Decades later I can't sleep at night and it's only my illegal pleasures which may dull the arrow's point, despite the feelings of inherent guilt in doing so. Surely the few inches of flesh surrounding ones bones should be the one thing in life you really can own- especially the lump of grey flesh residing behind ones own eyes, between ones ears and mouth...!

As my piano teacher and I passed alone in the supermarket aisle I turned and looked daggers and turned away. He must have felt it because when I turned again, he was turning away from me.

How do you justify the hatred felt for someone who has made your every waking moment feel like a highly-pointed tattoo needle striking again and again into your soul? And at the end of the day, did that once fierce Beethovenesque head really deserve the torrent of poisonous energy I sent out today?

The other day I went to Canberra with my friends. It was the setting of my boarding school years and even coming within the school limits sets my heart into a nervous frenzy.

Imagine dropping from a horizontal pipe about six metres down... This is way scarier than it looks...!

I wanted to return to my past, with my present to protect me.
I wanted to park in front of that boarding house and to laugh and blow raspberries and even egg the place. We went to Canberra to visit Questacon (science museum) and in the exhibition was a free-fall slide- it was terryfying and my heart (already in a nervous state by sheer geography) felt like it could explode after that leap.

When we went to leave, it was bucketing with rain and my friends didn't want to drive much aroundthe city so I said not to worry. We found a new Irish pub (-an anomally in that public servant anthill), and had a lovely time and at the end of the day, it was so much better to invest in positivity and newness than to dwell on old wounds.

My piano teacher had been my theatre critic in recent years- never an easy feeling, but somehow that now white-haired little man looked a lot less the fearsome than the diabolical beast I knew and more like a petty little man who I believe was, at the time, just lonely and sad.

Find a little understanding for your magnificent demons and they wither to helpless, pitiful rats scurrying out of the now blinding light of your mind, while you grow to be ten-thousand stories tall.

Shluuuuuuurp!

2005-02-15T12:24:00.000+11:00

click me! Lick me!

Valentine's Day making you wanna hurl?

2005-02-15T11:07:00.000+11:00

Happy Tree Friends
Cuppycake

Google History

2005-02-15T09:49:00.000+11:00

Google is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. It refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.

For your love...

2005-02-14T12:51:00.000+11:00

My love,- sweet drops of relief upon eternally charred terre,
How you take my hand and lead me barefoot onto your blue satin carpet of forever-
Demain our domain-
Demons prowl and scream as we leave familiar shores,
How sweet to take our leave-
Your dream entwining mine as two elixirs which unite as ambrosia
As my heart dances, with energy anew, to the future-
No more the thrashing of an asphyxiating fish.
Thank you, unique visitor to my soul-
May it be a nest for you always-
You- my golden egg now residing within me...

Thank you.

Happy Valentine's Day, my love.

Lisa- it's your birthday!

2005-02-14T12:32:00.000+11:00

Sleepy-eyed, I sit here, umbilical cord slowly unstretching after 4 days away on a birthday trip to the sea (Bateman's Bay, Aust). Blogging started as a TAFE assignment which I didn`t get into at the time...largely because when we did blogging/HTML, I was under the fist of a diabolical, sleep-stealing, heart-mincing demon (as initially, a certain amount of concentration is required for left-brained learning)...however, since, I have taken to it obsessively and being away for the past few days has been hard...

And now I am back, I gaze around at the snapshot of life from before I left. Any time you leave for a period of time, upon returning you may find yourself looking at a person you now feel removed from...(ie- you). A holiday can be like a step outside the usual unquestioned flow of things...
Just for a moment before returning to your familiar domain, you will be taken up above your forest of you, beyond the prosaic details of the trees...

I have been away from my parents for most of the time since I was 11. Every time I have returned any objects I have left in my room have acted as a time capsule of who I was and what I was on about the last time I was home...

This trip was for my birthday. For as long as I can remember this day has been such a black-hole for me...it's not a vain-one-year-older-thing, but just a profoundly lonely day that brings me face-to-face with myself (bit of an lonely-only-child- thing). Usually I would tell nobody and disappear by myself with a journal, pen and bottle of something strong. Not this year- this year since I have found love, so much has changed. I know how it sounds and feels to hear someone else's exclamations of love...somewhere between boredom, discomfort and tantalisation...actually it's always been a heart-breaking tease for me, being immersed in others' luke-warm-used-bathwater tales and public shows of love- (or whatever)...

I searched for 18 years for the ever-elusive chalais of love, and now I have found it with my beautiful Québecker. If anyone has paid their dues to the puppeteer/s of love, it's me and I deserve to speak of it. All takes on such a different face and seeing pictures of myself now, there is a look that fills my face that I don't recognise and suddenly all feels so possible.

My birthday trip was also a chance to celebrate with my best friend, who was born only two days and less than a kilometer away from me. Four years ago, I flew back from Greece to share our 30th birthdays (and with her twin brother). She's one of those people whose colour and life always create a comforting and fun place to be. I am about to start a blog for her, which I will link to on doing so. Since our initial years we hung out, we have moved into parallel universes to each other, but the language is still the same. It's a true test of friendship when all can superficially change, but the meaning's still there...

Here are some image of my friend, her babies and my love making sand-castles just down from where we stayed. One day, these images will help form the boys' memories. When we see a child, we see a child as they are at that time and we don't even notice the look of the world as it is...however one day, that child will look back at those images and be taken by every detail of what is different and what is the same in themselves and their world;- wallpaper, hair, toy, cars, people...

This generation's memories won't be as flavoured by format as mine or those before...in that digital technology has reached a basic floor of images of realsitic appearance whose information will not degrade (unless the actual file is lost or damaged). For me, as a '71 baby, technology very much fits into my assessment of history...at the beginning of my grandparents' lives (the earliest generation I can really be aware of), came the first real beginnings of 4-D media (in film and believe-it-or-not- video). They were sepia and black-and white. Blue eyes looked white and reds looked black. Noone could move thanks to excrutiatingly-long shutter speeds. This and movement-preventing braces made for very stern faces on adults and often ghostly-looking babies (who could not sit still (increasing the appearance of hard-living adults and short-living infants).

With the advent of colourised film

to be continued...
the other birthday song...

Back to school, kiddies!!!

2005-02-08T06:34:00.000+11:00

Sorry, kids! It`s time for back to school!!! I`m so glad to leave the institution. All is heading me out onto the wide blue ocean with my love, my eyes, heart, mind and all necessary implements which must go between me and what I see...to capture, to experience, to boldly go where I have not gone before...or at least to rip myself away from this machine before sunrise...!

Bert Does Amsterdam

2005-02-06T19:31:00.000+11:00

Check out Bert's trip to Amsterdam...

Wanna take Bert for a trip?

My favourite alien

2005-02-06T17:51:00.000+11:00

Go go google!!!

2005-02-04T17:44:00.000+11:00

The following is quoted from a Swedish blog.

Retroglobe versificator
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Google - Our Hero

Iraqi kidnappers use Google! An Australian journalist was kidnapped last weekend because they thought he worked for the CIA. He convinced the kidnappers to Google him and they found his web site showing he was a journalist. This was evidence enough for him to be released! Read more at BBC. Go Google!

(...thanks, anonymous!)

Enigma- M.Night Shyamalan

2005-02-04T15:09:00.000+11:00

Bibliography of M.Night Shyamalan

Wow. I have discovered a fascinating private personality with a real knack for grasping the kind of details that make a real-life experience so much more impacting than a Hollywood major-block-buster. Nuances, subtleties, strange, almost obscured details, whose amorphous revellations are far more shocking than billion-dollar 3-D perfectly rendered monsters can be.

(eg- the blurred alien news-footage in Signs)

Life is stranger than fiction and a true artist will know how to collate subtle details, rather than punchy, dynamic shock tactics. A poor man's example of using randomly prosaic, seemingly candid details to hit you where you live, is in the works of Stephen King. MNS is so much more profound, despite the generally commercial format of his works.

The man, himself is fascinating and I believe, very powerful. If you want to see the director doing his Hitchcockesque cameo, see Signs- he's the Indian man who killed Mel Gibson's screen wife.

Sci-fi?

2005-02-03T20:56:00.000+11:00

Who needs sci-fi when...

‘SEXY’ ROBOTS COULD REPRODUCE
3.2.2005. 11:04:19
The pursuit to develop robots that can mimic human actions and behaviour has gone a step further, with one scientist creating artificial chromosomes and the potential for robots to ‘sexually reproduce’.

Professor Kim Jong-Hwan, from the Robot Intelligence Technology Lab in South Korea, has announced the breakthrough that he says could be installed in a robot within three months, according to a report by the Guardian.

“Until now, most researchers have focused only on the functionality of the machines, but we think in terms of the essence of the creatures,” Mr Kim said.

“Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species,” he added.

The professor, who is a leading authority on the technology and ethics of robotics, has led the development of a software system which contains a computer code that gives a robot the ability to ‘feel’ happy, sad, sleepy, hungry or afraid.

This so-called ‘essence’ has been modelled on human DNA, but is equivalent to only a single strand of genetic code rather than the more complex double helix of a real chromosome.

"The artificial chromosome is a software system. It means that the information - their 'genes' - can be easily sent to other robots," he explained.

"So if I send the chromosomes to another robot, that robot can then reproduce by itself. In that sense the robots will be created by the 'genes'. The personality of robots will be created by artificial genes."

“Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and, as films like ‘I, Robot’ warn, that could be very dangerous for humanity,” Mr Kim surmised.

‘I, Robot’, a popular Hollywood blockbuster film featuring Will Smith, portrayed a futuristic scenario of robots installed with human characteristics running amok.

“If we can provide a robot with good, soft chromosomes, they may not be such a threat.”

Mr Kim believes there is no danger that such self-reproducing robots will take over the world, "If we design the chromosomes quite safely, then we can avoid such a bad situation."

The professor has predicted that within 20 years robots could become commonplace, keeping loneliness at bay for people who live alone and replacing cats and dogs as man’s best friend, according to a report by the New Zealand Herald.

Already, robots costing less than $US 200 ($AUD 257) are available to vacuum your home, and the US military is using robots to conduct building searches for insurgents in Iraq.

“In the very near future, personal robots will be in our houses like personal computers,” Mr Kim said.

SBS Australia

"You idiots- you've ruined it all! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!!!"
-Planet of the Apes

Wagga- It's a brothel! Worst ever newscast

2005-02-03T13:42:00.000+11:00

Watch local Aussie Wagga news anchor attempt probably the worst ever news broadcast...

Screw-up #1...
Screw-up #2...
Screw-up #3...
Screw-up #4...
Screw-up #5...

...how wonderful to think as sound and electronic waveforms permeate out into space; reverberating history infinitely, that humans such as that will be representing us to all who may one day listen...

Blogged in spaaaaace...

2005-01-30T13:37:00.000+11:00

Blog blog blog...
my brain, as once an ocean, creeps, stagnant, viscose, unelectrifyingly electrified in my neurotransmitter-nursery of blogging, pay TV and toxins which keep the mighty beasts shackled...
but at least my blog world is cultivating beyond a failed TAFE assignment...

It's so much like radio- no matter how much you try, you may never be able to reach into the dark and pull out any valid lifeform voluntarily scoping your work.

Kinda like chucking rose-petals into the night...

New day in isolation...

2005-01-16T13:45:00.000+11:00

This morning I awoke, walked onto the verandah just as the first drop fell- rain- sweet relief after cooking for days isolated to one less-hot room. It felt kinda fateful to find such timing. I felt happy, sweet relief after a 100-calibre nightmare night alone in the arena of my demons (which assume full power on Saturdays, Christmas completely alone and in the black of night in those infinite unsleepable hours. Sometimes trying to go to sleep is like lying my brain down in a nest of barbed wire and the heavier the thoughts in that brain, the harder the barbs cut in.

So- having achieved happiness from the feelig of the rain within the few minutes of the day was so serendipitous that I was left wide open to...a rich, coagulating howl of my cat calling to me. Like lovers lost in the dark until he appeared at the door. Thinking he was coming to me because of the rain, I looked eagerly, but stopped short. He had in his mouth a headless baby rabbit.

OK- I know in Oz and especially on a farm, rabbits are a pest- but that doesn't stop each one from deserving humane (!) treatment. After all it was because of spoil, cruel English shmucks who brought them over for hunting practise and even to cure those homesick blues!!!!! What a shame we can't reverse time and give these people the punishment. Who knows- maybe they reincarnated appropriately and found themselves looking at terror from the other end of the stick!

I used to have 2 pet rabbits before I knew better. There's a certain vulnerability in making pets of rabbits- heartless people who joke about killing and eating your pets and worse- the danger of predators who may attack in the night. When I was a rabbit person, I was not a cat person. My instincts became so attuned that I would awake to the sense of a cat in my yard. Cats were the enemy. I was a vegan so I felt universes away; despite a life-long love of animals, including cats in a big way.

Half a year after my rabbits died of myxo, I was given my cat as a suprise. I became a cat person and fell for my cat in a huge way...but it was in Leura, The Blue Mountains, that Jimi, my cat, developed a taste for possums. I carried him, empty-handed on the 3-hr public transport trip to Sydney Airport, handed my armfull to the man, turned and walked away, my last sight being those two sad, scared eyes looking up at me from the scales. My best friend had just become luggage. He was sent home to my parents, where he now lives like a king, but we have never been as close.

It's maybe hard to picture this 'love-affair' with a cat, but if you knew him, you'd know. He's one hell of a charismatic cat...just as long as he keeps the gifts to a minimum. The last time he really dumped one on me like that was when my aunt died, I stayed up, upset. When I finally fell asleep, I awoke to a dead rat beside my head. I guess it was his way of giving me something because I was sad...guess that's why cats don't work for Hallmark...!

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby!

2005-01-15T18:09:00.000+11:00

One of my favourite moments just happened on the Simpsons...when they're in church and Bart substitutes the hymn papers with 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' by Iron Butterfly. Most viewers don't get the whole relevance of the song.
Homer- "We used to make out to that hymn, remember, Marge?"
Rev. Lovejoy- "This looks like rock and/or roll."

The real relevance here is that even though Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida was a great piece of prog-rock and most probably served as background smoking music for many, its origins were actually in Church. A member of the band was tripping out of his head and wandered into one of his father's sermons, which was on the Garden of Eden (slur to Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida).

The title is linked to IB's web site, but to try to get any indication of why they rocked so hard, you would be disappointed, or at least, mislead. The site is very 2005 and they are obviously still cranking them out.

I have every reason to believe their music that once captured something almost magical, would now be as lost a cause as listening to the new generation of Pink Floyd, Astro-boy, Sesame Street, David Bowie, Yes, Jefferson Airplane(Starship), etc etc etc...

Hot, bored, straight

2005-01-15T14:00:00.000+11:00

I am so damned sick of this! I am houseminding in the heat with nothing to watch but stupid free-to-air non-ratings-season crap. Yes- Australia. I know you dream of coming here, folks...even to escape the snow, but let me tell you- in the cold, you can add layers, but in the heat I can't really strip my skin away. I am simply existing. Illegal toxins dislodge from my body while I replace them with legal ones...actually just one...good'ol alcohol, my 'ol buddy and pal...
I should be learning, seeking contacts, starting my career in this vaccuum of sober isolation...but fuck it- I'm just too damned bored and hot and straight...
now I'm blogging mundanely about my day...can't stand those prosaic blog entries going on about the annoying events of the day. Days pass and are mainly forgotten for good reason, kiddies!!! If we remembered everything, our brains would be like junk-mail-cluttered mail-boxes...with no hope of getting to the real stuff

hhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm- beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!...

Thesaurus word for the day...'ridiculous'...

2005-01-15T13:39:00.000+11:00

Entry: ridiculous Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: absurd
Synonyms: antic, bizarre, comic, comical, contemptible, daffy, derisory, droll, fantastic, farcical, fool-headed, foolish, funny, gelastic, goofy, grotesque, harebrained, hilarious, impossible, incredible, jerky, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, nutty, outrageous, preposterous, risible, sappy, silly, slaphappy, stupid, unbelievable, wacky

Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)

Is there anybody out there?

2005-01-14T16:13:00.000+11:00

OK- this is more a test to see if the Bloggites actually posts recent posts. I have reached a level of deep blogsession and I have discovered the 'recently blogged' bit. I posted a test blog, but I couldn't see it under the most recently blogged list. So I wanna know: is it all a facade, bloggeees? Am I one blogger sitting alone in a room tapping away like a hungry crow at seed?...If you can see my blog in the recently blogged list, please let me know. It's no popularity excercise- I just want to know this aint one great Trumanesque joke on ol muggins ere! Cheers*

Thesaurus entry for the day...imagination...

2005-01-14T15:30:00.000+11:00

Entry:imaginary

Part of Speech: adjective

Definition: fictitious

Synonyms: abstract, apocryphal, apparitional, assumed, chimerical, deceptive, delusive, dreamed up, dreamlike, dreamy, fabulous, fancied, fanciful, fantastic, fictional, figmental, fool's paradise, hallucinatory, hypothetical, ideal, illusive, illusory, imaginative, imagined, invented, legendary, made-up, mythological, nonexistent, notional, phantasmal, phantasmic, pipe dream, quixotic, shadowy, spectral, supposed, supposititious, theoretical, trumped up, unreal, unsubstantial, visionary, whimsical

Source: Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.1.1)

Sunset

2005-01-13T20:54:00.000+11:00

Sunset. My furry grey and white friend pays me his company and slinks away when I pay him mine...
Sky- as if to lie beneath a celestial shearing grate above which giant pink sheep shiver in the golgen light of powerful furnaces which smelt the cloud-laid golgen eggs of lore...
And violet oceans boil, playfully throwing fuchsias across their licking mists.

Who am I...

2005-01-13T16:15:00.000+11:00

OK- so the Wild Blue Awaits as I tread tar. Who, what am I? Well, I'm a multi-disciplined mainly digital artist- for want of a better word...I just don't think anyone can call themselves an artist- it's a title earned through the effective and sublime experiencial perception of others.

In other words, if the grain of inspiration or primordially-formed feeling or concept can successfully transcend the expressor, travel to the experiencer and re-form as unique and moving and ideally inducing some kind of physiological change, that expressor has achieved the level of artist.

The art of doing this is in the perfection of the source. The reciever is the 2nd part of the reception; just as the quality of a TV and its antenna affect the quality of the programme being recieved.

In entering the viewer's being the data hits the viewer's conscious mind and may not register- like an arrow to a lifeless dartboard- but in the physiological and subconscious aspects, we are unwilling participants in the dance of every colour, sound, texture, tone and beat.

I want to find the keys to expression itself and I've spent more years at school than not...but the true inspiration is the ambrosia of the living, sunshine-charged realness which floats mellifluously past classroom windows and shuns the dusty bowels of the concrete grey institution.

It is out upon the wild blue yonder that we are to set sail for the big adventure. As elusive and ephemeral as bubbles of jewelled walls fleeting and unseen, I wish to capture so many unimaginable images; my camera and mind as net-less butterfly catchers. Right there right then in so many a land whose name I have not yet heard...

Obscure...

2005-01-13T11:14:00.000+11:00

Submitting the word, obscure, into Google Images, this Hannibal Lecter-view of Barbie appeared. It was sourced from an Italian guy's blog, whose name is Giavasan.
I dunno what was spookier; this image of what's apparently Paris Hilton Barbie...or that just last night I pondered..."I wonder when they'll come up with a Paris Hilton barbie...or maybe it was actually a shot of the real thing.....

Don't it look worth scattering yer brains over...

2005-01-11T17:33:00.000+11:00

Attack of the awfully cute kitten!!!

2005-01-08T15:08:00.000+11:00

He's cute!

He's fluffy!

He has charm with a bite...

and ge's got a taste...

FOR MILK!!!

Don't we all need it...

2005-01-07T14:04:00.000+11:00

New Life

2005-01-07T13:37:00.000+11:00

Renewed, we begin again, we begin a gain.

"Tomorrow is another day."said Scarlet.

Present presents presents.

Time passage passes age

Wisdom is wizz dome?

Without humour we are clay.

When we laugh, life trickles through us.

Here's to the holy "HA HA!"

Velvet black

2005-01-06T01:31:00.001+11:00

"In the velvet darkness of the blackest night, burning bright there's a guiding star- no matter what or who you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaare..." Rocky Horror

"the long dark tea-time of the Soul"...Douglas Adams...

How can I describe the long laboured hours of sleep, stolen- replaced by the most voracious of demons...when the act of merely describing such horrors feels as futile and dangerous as trying to catch a lion bare-handed...after a good fight I face the dawn, bloody-souled and limping- only to find a kitten sitting there licking my blood from its paws.

In the next room my love slumbers. I was left today. Yes- it was one of those wretched days when someone dumps you and you're left flailing suddenly in the wind- but that wind disappears to the point of vaccuum and the thought of living without that personification of solidity leaves you gasping, umbilical-like oxygen cable waving as your essense spews out into the undeserving void. When the severing blow hits you, you are simply existing from one moment to the next, suspended, asphyxiating. At this time, simply existing from one moment to the next alone seems a million times worse than the thought of enduring the entire rest of one's existance alone.

I seem not to have been completely disposed of, I suppose, as my lover sleeps, self-expressed and blissfully unbothered. But, I am a woman whose worth has been thrown at the wind. My pride has been injured, but I will not remain complacent. That moment of true alonenes today was enough to shock me back into independance... As the phoenix, again and again crucified upon the shores of love, I will re-build. I will prepare for the storm. I must be prepared for when again the banshee winds of aloneness scream. howling through my soul and the great flapping holes in my proverbial ticker. "Do you think that the wizard could give me a heart?"..............

Heart- fleshy organ of vulnerability and strength- the metronome which counts out my existance in measured hits- every moment more another taste of the Cat-o-nine's tail. I take my leave of thee. You are a mongrel who poisons my voyage and obscures my path. I must regain myself; batten down those hatches before the tsunami of the soul finally rips me away from this painful attachment I have with reality. The continuation of this pain is as sure as the flashing of this cursor as I navigate into the velvet black...

Groovy!

2005-01-04T21:59:00.000+11:00

Hey, groovernauts!
Why don't you boogey on down to the most happening place in town with Nevill.

watch him crank out the hula-hoop of chiropractic doom as he spins some of his most up-to-the-moment-on the hit-parade-hits!

BYO sherry and poppers!

Bachelor #3

2005-01-04T21:24:00.002+11:00

Hello.

My name is Donald Feldman. To view our compatability, please send the details of your biorythms. If we are computed to be of compatable breeding stocks, Mother will be expecting you over for a roast on Sunday. Dreaming of you as I go to sleep...Donald.

Bachelor #2

2005-01-04T20:30:00.000+11:00

Hey, ladies- here's Dr. Herman and his funky off-sider, Spongy. They're awaiting you to join in their great petrie dish of lerv!

Martin the Magnanimous!

2005-01-04T18:45:00.000+11:00

Here's to Martin.

He's a happening kind of man-about-town.

So- ladies just send in your underwear via carrier pigeon;- they tend to get lost in cyberspace...

Say Cheese...

2005-01-04T15:03:00.000+11:00

The one thing you cannot do is be intimidated by others' insecurities. Why kindly diminish oneself to pander to the insecurities of others. Shine if you can. It's the one thing you can truly do independantly and don't you let another dare to poison one ounce of who and what you are.

me. 2005

2005-01-04T11:10:00.000+11:00

ok- so here am I. Again unshackled by institutions I skate freeform. New goals entice. Jewish theories...emotion and colour...
2005 is a fresh leaf and the wild blue yonder awaits...

End-beginning, beginning-end

2004-12-30T17:19:00.000+11:00

"End-beginning, beginning-end; all the same..."

As shown on TV...Ogra was a philosopher...

It's the second last day of the year and life is one tough piece of jerky. Last night I dreamt of dropping a bottle of tabasco into an aquarium- in to the uterine-like opening of coral, before panicking about the goldfish and its survival in the chilli-charged waters of death due to neglect. get a load of that one, Freud...

Under Pressure

2004-11-19T11:49:00.000+11:00

OK- it's officially 2 weeks until everything is due. Yay- the end. Bugger the work yet to do.

This year has stripped me bare. It has made me doubt the very thing I have ever really believed in in myself- my art. To learn, I have felt humiliated, stupid, scared, angry, etc. I came incredibly close to leaving before this last term. It's funny how if you're avoiding a place of work (because you are behind or don't understand what's going on), that place becomes a great, diabolical lair you would complete great missions to avoid even walking in the front door of.

The longer you leave it, the more that lair grows like a tumour.

Spiritually, being humble is a highly-praised attribute. The word, humility, may seem a meaning away from humble, but in seeing the similarities comes the lesson.

To be truly humble can mean facing humiliation- voiding the importance of what you may value in yourself- or have pride and even ego in. For eg.I have relied so much on the extent of my artistic abilities. In one way, to me, it excused so much...it has explained, to the condescendingly puzzle-eyed public, my validity. It gives my apparent madness reason and shafts me into a more recognisable category for easy reference- for it is often with great annoyance and frustration that the average flat-liner will frown as they attempt to glean logically computable information from all that I say.

It may sound like the very thing I am missing IS humility. We can not totally ignore and become unaware of our strengths and talents. That would be epecting brain damage or self-imposed ignorance. What must be done is moving out of ones safe little self-imposed throne to really be stripped bare- beyond the skin to the flesh, the veiny network, to stand in the harshest operating light, break it all down and start again.

For me, this has taken the discouragement of a teacher I really looked up to and believed in. He made me really question my whole approach in a way that few teachers really could. He inspired me and helped me begin conquer my old pefrectionistic demons- but in the end his acid stopped eating away the barnacles and it all just started eating me.

I accepted his help and, like de-fragging your computer; removing the precious identifying data enough to allow a total re-initialisation...albeit at the risk of losing all you were to begin with.

He did become my destructive negative drill-sergeant when my ex made my nights unsleepable and I was simply exhausted and broken. I still tried so hard, but nothing was ever good enough to warrant a positive comment and in the end it just felt like there was no use in trying. He left teaching and I returned, despite all self-compassion telling me that I well-deserved some recovery-time...,br.
But I did return and the end is nigh for my course. I am so glad I had the strength and humility to return. I now have the knowledge and skills, despite the memories of birth and i can actually begin to make my world mine.

Escape from Terror

2004-11-15T09:57:00.000+11:00

I can not begin to describe what an ordeal this year has been. Once again I have fresh and profound injuries that are yet to break down from the rubied crust of recent pain...to crystallize and turn from an obscuring scab to an illuminating lens. I value my ordeal. I value the fear I feel of him and the pity I have evolved to experience.

Yes- to me he was real and terrifying and 1000 storeys tall...as attackers all seem to the individual and to no one else.

Some time has now passed and, yes, I am stronger- but the public is a barbed arena and his presence toxically fills the room. To exist within the same room is as to breathe excrement. But ultimately, I pull back the curtains on the phantasm. And to find there is no great and terrible Oz...only a failed shrunken soul hiding behind a terrifying veneer. No troops may attack the fort, but then no friends will come to feast.

I have taken my leave and in the arms of a golden-heart, I am finally warm.

In the cold, dead-skin greyness of his heavily-gargoyled fortress; he is a meagre frail old prisoner. Chains of the years have embedded within his thin, wrinkled membrane and his looking slits are milky and dull from so many years without light.

I walk now, stronger, clearer, wiser, away from the terror as I walk into the dawn's light as it falls upon the land and the deep, concrete night is at an end.

2004-10-26T15:18:00.000+10:00

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I think I like school again! DEADline deceased. We are doing art again! I can finally feel of value again! I did not sleep last night trying to live up to my expectations and now it's 3.30, my love awaits downstairs and for now I AM FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

*b*l*u*n*i*v*e*r*s*e*