Melisinka

Some days I feel like a queen, other days a bare-foot runaway child lost in a city of grey squares and blank faces. When I feel like a queen my heart is strong and i remember who i am, I can run fast and face anything, anyone. My fingers are charged with gold light and I can create magic with my touch. The Queen of Hearts – or Queen of Cups in the Tarot – is powerful in her creative response to life, trusting her instinct to follow where love leads. She trusts that all is possible, enabling her to transcend the common limitations we so often impose upon ourselves. She is the divine feminine in all of us, she nurtures the heart back to health and creates beauty to share with the world. She comes and takes the hand of the lost child who is confused by the madness of the world and other people, and shows you there is more to life than you can ever imagine. This time she took me to Bali, where black kites fly high in the sky and winged goddesses and mermaid adorn temples along with monkey gods and huge phallic lingams…

When you are away from home, it is easy to open to new ways, new ideas. But when you get back, the challenge is to keep the fire burning. Being on an Artist’s Retreat with a group of the most gorgeous people, artists, dancers, photographers, healers, even a tantric master – all of whom were wise, kind-hearted, funny and generous -was kind of as close to living the dream as I could get. Every morning at eight, I’d find myself  doing tai-chi, losing myself in tantric chanting, and studying the Kabbala with Gav the guru – bit different to my normal tram ride cradling a coffee… ha! Then there was Tania, burlesque lover of hearts, my ‘twin’ black and red sister of  vision, a witch waiting to come out of the closet (or not!) Lovely Angie Tapperazi, who led me to the roots of my soul and waited with me until my golden boat arrived at last. All this whilst staying in the most lush postcard-perfect rice-paddy heaven, in a place where daily offerings of flowers and incense is normal for everyone, and art abounds everywhere you look, and there just aren’t enough superlatives to cover it! All I can say is it was so easy to live in a state of love. My heart was healed in a million different ways without even trying, and like a lotus bud, with each day, more and more petals opened up to drink in life as I only dreamed it could be.

We had a daily schedule which involved visiting luscious restaurants laden with locally grown organic produce, exploring art galleries and natural wonders – all food for the soul and inspiration for our art. So I began painting again, with an easel on my balcony overlooking curvaceous cuts of green rice fields bordered by palm trees, under a canopy of heavenly blue sky. Interestingly enough, my chosen piece was a black and white nude Bettie Page, exactly the same topic which excites me here at home. I may throw a frangipani in Bettie’s hair as an ode to Bali, but that’s as far as it goes. Essentially, it’s kind of cool to know that I love what I love, no matter where I am. That even if I’m surrounded by flowers, butterflies and sunshiny days, I’m not going to start painting them. I’m not going to start wearing tie-dye and those baggy pants that have no bum. Puts the fear of god into me just thinking about it. As a confirmation that I’m all loved-up in just the right way, the first thing I saw when I came home was my book on Bettie, “Queen of Hearts”. Sweet.

Just to make sure I’m back on track, I’ve signed up for burlesque classes. I’m convinced thongs are damaging to one’s self-esteem in the most insidious manner. It’s like, no-one cares, it’s hot, chuck on the thongs and flip flop your way into unsexy land. I wore them once, got blisters, and went back to my doc’s. Now it’s time for heels again. What kind of Queen wears thongs? I’d rather be a barefoot queen than a flip flop queen. Ubud was actually packed with French tourists, hardly an Aussie in sight (they were all in Kuta, which is like the worst kind of outer-suburban orgy of bogan tackiness you can imagine ), so there weren’t as many thongs as you might imagine. Still, best to err on the side of shiny stilettos as a remedy, don’t you think…

I found it fascinating that in Bali, the people there make their offerings not only to their gods (Bali is 80% Hindu, unlike the rest of Indonesia which is predominantly Muslim) but also to the demons. They believe that if the demons are not appeased, there will be trouble. Makes sense to me. In terms of my own spirituality, the darkness is always acknowledged as the opposite half of the light, neither better or worse, just half of the whole. Indeed, my tendency seems to naturally incline more to the dark (in case you haven’t noticed…) and if anything needs balancing out with a dose of lightness every now and then. I guess that’s why  I love Aphrodite, she epitomizes the lightness of love to me. Bali offered me lightness in contrast to the darkness my heart has once more been forced to go through. To be honest, I was sick from struggling with and trying to understand love – or why love went wrong. Sick of being in the dark and swampy shadowlands, sick of emotionally processing someone else’s crap, of repressing my emotions  and feeling myself drained of confidence and love in return. When you get a good, healthy dose of REAL love, it’s illuminating and uplifting. You find your balance, the angels and demons are appeased.

It’s no surprise that my Aphrodite’s Temple workshop last week was focussed on the shadow side of love. It was intense and powerful. There is nothing like ritual work with other women in sacred space to transform oneself and each other, invoking the elements and the Goddess of Love and Beauty to burn away our pain and fears, so that we may be able to clear the way for true power, happiness and fulfilment. It is one thing to know things in theory, another altogether to experience them and be transformed – to take the negative, or shadow, and create something positive from it. I love being in circle with other women, for the support and incredible love that is shared. It’s impossible to underestimate the power of connecting in this way. Just as it is impossible to underestimate the power of suspenders, stockings, stilettos combined with a little bit of bump and grind. Long live the Queen of Hearts!!!

I want to die like Johnny Depp in “Dead Man”. (Not yet, but when the time comes..) Lying in a little hand-made boat all tucked in cosy with specially stitched clothing, gazing up at the big sky, my spirit preparing to fly. Having made acquaintance with myself and all the life around me, totally at peace. It’d be even better if Johnny was still in the little boat, too, i could just squeeze in there beside him and snuggle up… as the last vestiges of life slowly ebbed away, preparing for the great beyond….

Hmmm. I have no idea what to write about tonight. In the last month I have had the great privilege of some peaceful moments, spaces that seem to exist outside of time. In a life full and busy of a million thoughts and things to do, it can be a struggle to turn off the mind, to just slow down and be at peace. We are encouraged to amp it up, but have little or no knowledge of how to quiet our minds and be still.  Even when the body stops, the mind keeps going. It’s a dilemma that is so common amongst us it is seen as normal. Stress and sleeping difficulties, anxiety, the feeling that there is always something that needs to be done, issues that need to be resolved, on and on it goes. Buddhists call it the monkey mind.

When you’re in the monkey cage of your own skull it’s easy to go mad. Madness everywhere. As the wise Indian, “Nobody”,  says at one point in the film : “Stupid white man.”

Simple, really. Not only are we stupid, but we revel in our stupidity and celebrate it. We rush around doing all this stuff with no reflection, no time to be in touch with the earth, with the natural world of which we are a part, with each other. All we want to do is dominate, control and extract whatever we can for ourselves from it – and this we call ‘success’.  We believe in it, defend it, promote it and glorify it. We are totally oblivious or uncaring as to the fact that we are mindless killers, not only of the earth, it’s creatures and each other, but also of our own spirit.

In this sense I’m not really into reading cards to tell people what their future is destined to hold. People stress about enough already without having the added concern of future events. I read to give hope for the future, and that inevitably means focussing on achieving peace and power in the present.  Personally, I much prefer to see my own future as something mysterious in which I am actively creating as I go, day by day,  with every choice I make and every tiny awakening that occurs. I don’t see events as “good” or “bad”, I just see them as the backdrop to one’s own personal story. It’s a total cliche but it is ALWAYS what we make of the circumstances, the meaning with which we imbue each event, that makes it either “good” or “bad”. When William Blake (a.k.a. Johnny Depp) meets with rather unfortunate circumstances at the beginning of  “Dead Man”, it turns out to be the best possible thing that could have ever happened to him – from a deeper spiritual perspective, that is. Now, if he’d come for a tarot reading beforehand just wanting to know what was going to happen when he got off that train in the hick backwater town of Machine, well, I daresay he would never have got on board in the first place. Imagine telling someone, well, yes you are going to be shot in the chest but it will give you a really fantastic opportunity to explore yourself in a way you can hardly imagine, and you’ll have a much deeper insight into the Truth to boot. Better jump on that train and get going then, hey! Good luck with that!

To begin to know anything at all, it is sometimes necessary to go through a process of releasing all the stuff we have formerly been taught or believed in – clearing the mind,

and most often coming to the realization that we know very little at all. Everything which we have accrued over our lifetime to build up our ego-self, our identity, must go. It is without doubt a death of kinds. But that’s okay, because most of us are the walking dead anyway. Zombies, operating on a program which we rarely question, going about life thinking that this fragile ego construction that we defend so rigorously is the real thing. We create complex layers which are often so confusing that we have no idea how to extract any real meaning from them, when in fact truth is often very simple.

For me, as i begin the process of being honest with myself about who I actually am, one of the greatest shocks has been that the area I thought I knew so much about and rave on about incessantly, is actually something that I have much to learn about. Love. My diaries (and more recently, blogs) are full of it. I have read a million poems and books about it, have listened to music since forever about it, and had more conversations about it than i care to admit. It has dominated my life magnificently and tragically for better or for worse. Of course, I thought that my obsession with it made me an expert. Seems not. Like a reversed Cup, no matter how much I got I always needed more, never felt satisfied. I told myself that I was giving so much, but as I strip back the layers, underneath it all I wasn’t giving freely, I was giving in order to get back, to try to fill my own need. I could  not see that no-one could ever do that, fulfill me on the level I craved. Instead, I blamed them. They weren’t able to love deeply or well enough, they fell short in this way or that. There would always be something more that I wasn’t getting, and I was so angry and frustrated about it! I would try and explain what loving was, what I needed, make up scenarios about how to do it right – as though somehow this would transform them into the perfect lover.

My motivations were good. I wanted ‘true love’ and would do anything to get it. I cherished an ideal concept of perfect love, even though rationally I would not even begin to try and justify such a notion. I convinced myself that by continuing to work on myself that I would be able to get there in the end. Someone would eventually appreciate my amazing inner Love Goddess! But all this effort, all my hard work and desire and need and whatever, covered over one alarming truth: underneath it all, I did not really love myself. I was terrified that I was unlovable, not beautiful enough for someone to truly want to be with – and my greatest fear was that my lover would leave me for someone else. In other words, my entire foundation for love was actually based on fear. I felt deeply insecure, which led to being gripped by jealousy – one of the most ugly and insidious emotions of all.

Because I caused myself so much pain through fear and jealousy and all the rest, I came to secretly idealize the opposite of love (weirdly enough). To me, power seemed to be with the one who cared the least, who had strong armour on against the force of love. I fantasized about being the kind of woman who was truly devil-may-care and who was able to go through men without attachment and therefore without pain. I numbed my too-intense feelings with alcohol, anything to take it all away. I was in awe of women like my friend Kriss, who truly did not seem to go through the awful pain associated with love. I wanted to be like her, to make my own rules, live life my way, having men easy come, easy go. Men seemed to love that indifference, that lack of need. It did not surprise me at all when Kriss told me she never cried, and that she felt like a man in a woman’s body. She seemed to have men lined up. I saw that as true power. All I needed to do was re-program myself, shift those neural pathways which kept me enslaved to this whole stupid concept of love in the first place. I even bought a mind-programming c.d. to hypnotize my deeply grooved, recalcitrant subconscious. I would do anything to avoid my heart being broken again.

But now I stand still and listen. My heart is still beating. It hurts, but this time I will go to the source of Love to heal it, which is way beyond my ability to even conceive… I will pray for my fear, which I’ve had since I was a little girl, to be taken away.  I can’t do it myself. My way of loving  in relationships  has sent me almost insane, chasing my tail. Too dizzy. I’m sick of being angry, it’s just my ego, and it’s interfered for long enough. I’m sick of blaming other people, it’s crazy and useless and just cuts me off from the very thing I value most. I will turn my Ace of Cups upright and let it fill up.

I didn’t really want to write this post.It seems foolish to talk too much when I’m only just beginning to wake up. So much of what I thought was real is not. Even now, my mind grasps at new insights eagerly,I get excited at all that I’m discovering, I want to tell the world! But at the same time I am learning patience, and the need to just lie like a dead man in a boat and look at the sky for the truth to gently come upon me. In silence is strength.  I was having coffee with a friend this morning and he asked me why I write a blog. I write because I love writing, and before I wrote a blog I’d just write in my diary, but I got bored with myself both as author and reader. I love the idea of sharing experience and insight, of connecting with other people. Even though I fear sometimes I am scattered in my writing and go off on way too many tangents (absent inner-editor. Sorry.) at the end of the day, I just hope it helps someone out there, even if it’s just to know you are not alone in your thoughts or experience. We pay a high price for the ‘protection’ of our ego self, our carefully constructed mask of identity. It covers our fears but does not remove them. To be truly powerful is, paradoxically,  to be vulnerable and open, to keep loving even when it hurts, to forgive, to face our own shadow side, and to learn to have faith that nothing can cut us off from Love. Ever. Ultimately, we’re all in it together.

Hi – this is just the quickest little post in the world before work because things have been so crazy wonderful busy that i haven’t had time to write a proper big post and sorry about that – all the cards are up in the air at the moment and falling as they will in what I like to think of as the Fool’s shuffle…. and I love that the most! My portal is taking me to strange places of adventure… I’m off to the monkeys and mountains in Ubud, Bali, next week on an artist’s retreat – so hopefully I’ll be able to write before I go. Yay, monkeys! x

POISON: n. substance that when absorbed by a living organism kills or injures it (slow, cumulative, – fatal or injurious by repeated doses; hate like – , bitterly

I’m intrigued by poison. Or should I say, I’m intrigued by the relationship we humans have to poison. It seems to me that throughout our history, we have been seduced by many and various poisons — and that somehow, even when we know the poison is going to harm us, perhaps even kill us, we still want it, badly. Perhaps part of the allure of poison is its mysterious nature; it is, after all, a doorway to Death. The classic skull and crossbones on an old bottle perfectly captures the image of poison as our culture knows it.  It is everything (most of) our everyday lives is not – a dangerous elixir that promises to help us transcend the mundane and deliver some sort of experience that is extreme ( even if that means getting extremely sick). Poison is deliverance from duty, responsibility, being ‘sensible’ or rational, having to deal with stuff. It takes us over and turns us green. Bright lime green. Like a frog, we are transformed, in some cases even ‘taken over’ by the spirit of the poison. We do and say things that we may never normally do, and sometimes have no recollection of it the next day. In this sense, poison is (albeit temporarily) extremely liberating. Finally, we are out of our heads and feel ‘free’ to express whatever lies deep in the subconscious, for better or for worse.

Usually, it’s for worse. After all, it is the nature of poison to kill, not to bring life. So what gets dredged up from deep inside us and dances devil-may-care, is usually the darker side of our selves, our inner demons, so to speak. It is not my intention here to list all the possible manifestations of the effects of poison on our being and environment, apart from saying the obvious: we wreak havoc in many and various ways, from the obvious drunken aggression to the more subtle absence of soul, love or care for those around us. For me, I see Poison in both the Death and Devil card, with Temperance between the two almost like an angelic warning or beacon of light. In terms of the epic journey of the Major Arcana, it’s also interesting that Death comes before the Devil, not after it. Death, let’s face it, is rather intense. After the realization and sacrifices made in the Hanged Man, it is the ending required before a new beginning is possible. Transformation is another name for this card – and no matter how New-Agey and wonderful this sounds, believe me, very few people choose Death willingly. As much as we say we want to” let go” and transform and make a new beginning, when it comes down to it, most of us fight against this with every fibre of our being. We hate change, especially when it means giving up something familiar or habitual – even if we know it is poison and is slowly killing us.

Usually the Death card will arise by circumstance rather than choice. Often, it will appear as a consequence of our own choices and behaviour, whether we see it that way or not (most of us are in deep denial about the true causes of events in our lives). We will finally get cancer or have heart problems or our liver will give up, and then we either physically die or will go through a death-like experience that will shake us out of our illusions and force us to look honestly at our lives and make a choice. Temperance, which follows Death, is a card of moderation and balance, of gentle nurturing of the body, mind and soul back into a state of peace and health. I see it also as a card of hope and kindness – a blessing that transcends our monotonous and limited ways of perceiving our lives and offers something beyond, if we have faith and actually want it enough. It is not a card of extremity, like those which precede and follow it, but rather a card of moderation, asking us to take into account both the light and dark aspects of our being. Humility is born from recognizing our own inherent weakness and fallibility and knowing that to be truly free is to  acknowledge this, not fight it. Because what comes next will always win if we think we can fight it with our own strength alone.

The Devil never comes in a guise you would expect. We are rarely captured by outside forces and held against our will. It is what is inside us that is most dangerous. We are seduced by our own desires, simple as that. Those desires become habits which in turn become addictions. Even after all the sacrifices of the Hanged Man and intensity of Death,  followed by Temperance, we are still highly susceptible to the lure of our poison once more as the Devil appears. The Devil card represents temptation, and it seems an obvious thing to say but for some reason we tend to get very confused around this point, so i will re-iterate: Temptation is dangerous because by its very nature it works on your own desire. The Devil doesn’t usually come as a hideous, ugly monster that you are repelled by, but exactly the opposite – the Devil comes in the guise of  what you desire. Think of Lestat, reclined on a velvet chaise longue, offering you a silver chalice of , well, poison, and you kind of get the [my] picture. You know he’s going to kill you but what the hell, it’s a great way to go, isn’t it! So you slowly walk over towards him, moonlight gently caressing your pale bosom as your heart beats so fast inside you, drawn to him by forces you cannot control…. SEE WHAT I MEAN! It’s that easy, dammit! Give me that poison chalice, suck my blood, take me, Lestat, I’m so yours right now!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh yes, Poison and the Devil and such. Anyone who knows me is no doubt wondering by now, “What has she done?”  A fair question, my friends. Well, I’ve had some dealings with the Devil, let’s say. I’ve played with my Poison to the nth degree and come as close to dying as I wish to before the real thing – at least as far as I can help it. My poison has always been drinking. Of course, a glittering, sparkling, golden flute of champagne doesn’t look like it’s a killer in a glass, does it. Kind of the opposite, really. Again, I refer you to temptation and it’s guises. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, I recently underwent the classic three day Death/Resurrection experience – not of my choosing, but in hindsight something I’d been unconsciously preparing for, for some time (I actually felt Lilith next to me as I was drinking, and transferred my vodka into a broken-but-mended virgin Alchemy Gothic chalice whose base is covered in skulls. No-one can say I don’t take my poison in style!). I then proceeded to break up with my boyfriend before surrendering to  severe alcohol poisoning. I went through the rigors of  48 hours alone, unable to keep down even a mouthful of water, my body racked with spasms and heaving every time I moved. My cat Nijinsky sat by my side the whole time. My overwhelming feeling (apart from just being hideously sick) was that I was so awfully  alone, cut off from others, from love, from my self – and the terror of that combined with the realization of the extent of my addiction to alcohol and the fact that i cannot control it even to the point of risking my own and other’s lives, hit me hard. I’ve been sick many times before and had more bad hangovers than I care to admit, but I realized on that third day that I’d been given another chance, and that if I chose to slip back into the poison of my own illusions again, I might quite literally die.

Look, I realize that this is kind of a heavy blog and  also that you cannot write about this sort of stuff without starting to slip into very serious tones. I could (and maybe will) write a book on what happened two weeks ago, as the cumulative experience of a lifetime, and I could also easily keep writing about the absolutely beautiful and serendipitous circumstances which have followed the event, but I guess there’s only so much I can really justify in one blog.  I’m not here to proselytize, but I’ve lived through something very real and very scary indeed, which manifest itself through my own Poison bottle.( Message in a bottle? Sorry…)I’m sure I will find many and varied ways to continue to nurture my dark side, but I’d like them this time round to be a little more imaginative and involve a little less rotting from the inside.

After two weeks of not drinking (one day at a time…), already I feel so amazing, both physically and mentally. I can almost feel the poison leaving my system (helped along by all sorts of tinctures, vitamins and mysterious potions, as well as some serious steaming sessions) and my energy returning. It feels like I’m waking up after a too-long sleep. I have so much I want to do! I am able to identify what I want, and conversely, what i don’t want. I want to write more, keep writing.  I want to paint again, all the colours of the palate, I want music, I want to dance (when did I stop dancing???), I want to love and be loved, I want energy and vitality, I want to go to San Fransisco, Mexico, New York, India, oh, just the world! (except North Korea). I want to find  Savernake forest and sit silently with the trees (then climb them. Naked of course), then go boating down the Thames, replete with parasol and an old copy of Alice . I want to visit the places where my ancestors lived in Ireland, England and wherever else they came from. I want lots more swims in the ocean. I want my family and friends, both new and old. I want it all. Again, this is not about right and wrong, good and bad, so much as it is about choice. I hated that feeling of being compelled to drink (then drink some more!) whether I really wanted to or not. Of being stuck in the same loop, poisoning myself habitually.If nothing else, to be quite honest, it became boring. To say nothing of the time, energy, money and so much more that my habitual drinking cost me. So, it is not so much a matter of wanting to give up drinking – champagne has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember – it is more to do with being sick of   the dirty feeling of a hangover, dulled down and depressed. I just don’t want it anymore. It feels like I’ve stumbled upon a portal into a new world, or more that I’m in between worlds, which is a strange place to be. But I’m not bored, and I’ve slipped my chains. So far, so good. New ride.

like. .

It is so cold in Melbourne right now, as Winter Solstice is upon us- Happy Yule everybody ! And of course, I’m loving it. Every morning when I peek out my window, there are reassuring dark skies brooding away, cloaking the world in winter and threatening rain. I get so energized and feel almost like the world has recovered a sense of mystery. Almost. It’s a little harder to maintain that sense of beautiful melancholy once you’re on public transport, but  my lesson at the moment is to not let my environment control me, but for me to control my environment. That, of course, means I have to first be able to control my reaction to my environment. I have discovered (through long and painful experience, as seems to be my wont..) that in order to achieve any real power or strength, it is necessary first to  have a deep sense of balance within and  maintain an equilibrium no matter what is going on around you, or even within you…

It’s not easy. I am SO reactive to, well, pretty much everything in my immediate vicinity. Seeing the old house around the corner with it’s abandoned apple trees and vines growing through the windows used to bring me such a lovely sense of nostalgic story-book sweet spookiness, every time I went past it I was thankful for it’s presence. I knew it was only a matter of time before the developers moved in and this little piece of history would be gone forever. Property prices around Northcote  have soared in the last few years and so there are fewer and fewer spaces left that aren’t being built up. So I wasn’t surprised when I recently went for a walk and saw the old house had been totally demolished and where there was once a back yard and old fence with morning glory climbing over its crooked frame, now there are no less than four square apartments, squeezed onto the block in orange brick ugliness, not a square of green grass left. Modern development makes me want to start a revolution. It destroys my soul just looking at it.

See?? This is where the challenge really comes in. To look on passively like a Buddhist monk, totally non-reactive and with a half-smile of nonchalant indifference is never going to happen – however, I CAN shift my focus onto something else so as not get all knotted up inside about it and thrown off balance. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall; the nature of things is to change. The fact is, there is very little to nothing I can or could do about this (monstrosity of aesthetic abuse) and my getting all upset about it really doesn’t help anyone, least of all me. So, I remind myself of my new credo:  my environment doesn’t control me. Soon, if i keep walking, I will return home to my own little home with lots of boston ivy and cedar trees with yellow leaves. On my way I see that the council has once again poisoned the strip alongside the tram line where wild tomatoes and belladonna and even crazy pumpkins had started growing (kind of an urban miracle considering how many times they’ve poisoned this harmless bit of land) and I look down at the hurt earth and the few surviving prickly weeds and shards of broken glass, and I grit my teeth with resolution – again – I WILL NOT BE EFFECTED BY MY ENVIRONMENT, I will not let it control me….I can always look up into the sky and take another deep breath.

Temperance is a quality I wish I’d cultivated earlier, both in regards to my environment and also in terms of relationships. Just to be cool, unaffected by other people (and all the shit things other people do).As I always emphasize to my clients in Tarot readings, it is inevitable that people are at some point going to let you down, hurt you, infuriate you, and bewilder you – that is life. But it’s never too late to learn to accept this as a given, and focus instead on what it is in your power to change. THIS is an art worth pursuing.

So despite my little anecdote above (one scenario of many i face on a daily basis, believe me) I am actually feeling more balanced, one might even go so far as to say, more at peace, than I have in a long, long time (maybe ever!) and I really like it. I used to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on living a dramatic, highly emotional life, FEELING and EXPRESSING every little thing. I felt totally justified in creating a drama around my feelings, regardless of the circumstances, because as far as i was concerned, my feelings were the most important things in the world and also the most real. To hold anything back, to repress a feeling, was tantamount to self-abuse and would, as most pop psychology would have us believe, result in physical and emotional sickness.

It has taken me all my adult life to realize that this belief is a load of crap.

Sure, of course there are times when we need to express ourselves, and it is true that for some people the inability to express emotions can create many problems, but constant rocking of the boat does not a peaceful journey make. To take the metaphor further, storms happen of their own accord, without us choosing to make waves unnecessarily. (Okay, okay, I’ll stop!) All I ever got from my great emotional outbursts was chaos and pain and confusion. Did expressing my emotion help clear things up? Rarely, if ever. Did I gain clarity or a sense of control over my situation? Pretty much never. Did I feel a sense of relief? Sometimes, but usually followed by some degree of remorse, or more commonly, a recurring incident of very similar nature which in time would evolve into a degenerative pattern of behaviour that bore me down into a darkness from which I had very few tools I could use to actively help myself out.

A little Temperance would have gone a long way. Just a modicum of understanding that it wasn’t all about my feelings. Many of those feelings -though real in that i felt them – were borne from past pain or insecurity and fear anyway. Being swamped by old feelings is hardly a recipe for personal power. It is only when we can step back and remove ourselves from the immediacy of the feeling and take an objective look at the situation, inviting reason to the party, that we can truly experience anything like true power. In a nutshell, it’s about self-control. Choice – in that we choose at any given moment how we are going to respond to a situation rather than just finding ourselves at the whim of any crazy emotion that  rises within us. I always remember my tarot teacher Jo saying the Strength card was not about brute force, but gentle control. Inspired Strength, represented by the angel, or spirit, holding the mouth of the beast, our ‘animal instinct’.

If I see Strength and Temperance as two complimentary trumps in the Major Arcana, I would just like to finish with the image of the Six of Swords as the Minor Arcana counterpart. All those swords representing the painful truth, but the gentle moving through the waves to calmer waters. To me the Six of Swords emanates a sense of calm acceptance. Not without sorrow but with an element of surrender. It is a card of quiet wisdom, and the magic is in the simple movement of the little boat onwards towards a mysterious future made possible by the deep knowing that comes through experience of pain – and the will to move beyond it.

NOTE- This blog was actually written almost a year ago (August 25, 2009 to be exact) and for whatever reasons, I chose not to publish it at the time. However, due to a recent comment on an associated blog of the same time period (Love is Suicide – or Paris!), I was re-visiting some material in my  archives and found this. Although my circumstances are now quite different (thank god!) I feel the writing retains it’s honesty and integrity, and may be of interest, rather than letting it just sit and gather dust – so I’m publishing it, even if just to honour Lilith for how She helped me at that awful time. Oh, and by the way, the beautiful tarot cards i’ve used images from is the Lunatic deck.

Wow – what a way to end Winter! It’s practically a monsoon out there, more freezing than i have felt it in a long time. The other morning we even got hail. It’s very cool, I have to say. I love it. Very appropriate to my emotional condition right now.To me it feels like Lilith is here, raging her storm, a reflection of my soul – wild and free and unpredictable. Believe me, be careful if you call on this Goddess, she doesn’t fool around! She will give you Truth in a way that almost makes you wish for illusion again, because as we all know, the Truth can hurt real bad sometimes. Ha. Reminds me of something he used to say, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.

I called on Her recently under a dark moon eclipse in a coven meeting. Sick of feeling frustrated in my relationship, and finding it impossible to communicate with my boyfriend, not getting what I felt I wanted but not knowing how to make it better, I called on Lilith to reveal the truth so things would move forward and I would feel alive again. Well, I got what I asked for! Within a couple of weeks I could no longer contain my energy or repress it any longer. Pushed to the brink of insanity by what felt like a constant effort to explain things and being met with – well, nothing actually – I finally decided that all I could do, if i were to retain any sense of self-respect, was to walk away. So I did. It was so hard, but the only alternative I could see was to stay and allow things to sink further and further into decay.

In retrospect, I should have listened to a mutual friend’s advice the last time we broke up and run as fast as I could away from him then. I only went back with him because he told me how much he loved me and that this time he wouldn’t waste my time; he would do what he needed to to make us work. He promised not to waste my time. All I can say is beware of those three little words: ” I love you” – they can provide a false sense of security or depth simply because they mean different things to different people. You need to work out what they mean to you and what they mean to the person who tells you them. Never presume anything.

I wrote a blog recently about first love and the pain of loss – the bad news is that it never gets any easier. But at least I now have a sense of the bigger picture and a few more methods of dealing with it. Still, can it be over already – please!

I think the hardest part is not being able to understand what the hell was going on inside him. To have to deal with somebody who doesn’t know how to process or understand their own emotions let alone be able to express it to their lover, is really very very very…. hard. It is truly like speaking another language. But the worst bit of all is not that he couldn’t do it, but that he didn’t even try. It’s one thing not to be able to do something, but quite another to refuse to learn and just turn away. In so many ways I learned new skills from him, even in areas that i had no confidence at all and felt truly stupid. Learning to use a computer, for god’s sake. I was totally useless. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t expect him to lose patience with me and rage at me for not being good at something – but just to help me step by step and encourage me- which he did. My frustration and eventually anger, came from not being given the chance to help him with something in return, to teach him about what it means to have a deep and emotionally satisfying relationship. He would say he was trying – but his efforts remained in only those areas he was already confident and capable in, he would not cross over into unknown territory or areas that made him feel vulnerable. It was like hitting a brick wall, over and over again. After a while you end up pretty bruised. Exhausted and hurt.

I can’t help but wonder, as I reflect on all of this, whether there are just different kinds of people – some of us for whom love is the most important thing in the world and worth every little bit of energy we have to keep it growing and deepening and enriching our lives – and others, to whom love is just one piece of a big pie. Romantics and Pragmatists? I think sometimes we Romantics presume that love is just as important to everyone else as it is to us, and is worthy of all the sacrifice and pain and chaos, because ultimately it is all that matters. We think that deep down everyone must know this, because it is so clearly true. What is all the riches in the world or successes or whatever, without love? NOthing! But maybe there are just those people who don’t feel that way. (I have no doubt they are also the ones driving our world into oblivion right now. ) Those who don’t feel very much at all. Robots. Perhaps there has been a default in the system or something.. who knows?

All I know is that I feel dishonoured. In the Age of Chivalry romance and honour were an integral part of life for everyone. A knight was judged according to his integrity, bravery and honour in relationships. He would be knighted and rewarded as he grew in character and proved himself. Unfortunately today there are no cultural signposts or rituals for men to follow so they grow and mark their advancement in such ways. A boy will largely depend on his father’s input and guidance to learn how to become a man – but if he hasn’t had this, then he never learns what it means to mature.

Indeed, I doubt whether some men even know when they become men. They are even proud that they are still “one of the boys” or have maintained their boyish ways well into their thirties. It is tragic – both for them and for their partners once the initial stage of “love” is over. They do not honour love and the courage it requires to meet the challenges a real relationship demands. Their words mean nothing if they are not backed by action. To boys like this, (and don’t judge a boy by his age, remember) life remains something that revolves around them and in which the responsibility of love to others is at their whim, transient and fleeting. They are what T.S.Eliot described as “The hollow men, the stuffed men.”

Beware! Lilith’s power is great and She works with Truth. She strips back the layers and rips off the masks and reveals who is underneath so you know what you are dealing with. The disappointment can be devastating, when you see the person for what they really are. The illusion shatters. I literally had two mirrors shatter on my altar within a week after calling for the truth. What you are left with is fragments, shards of memories and pieces that are sharp and dangerous. You don’t necessarily get what you hope for or want. What I hoped for was resolution, deeper connection and loving understanding. What I got was..well, all of the above. From him, not a word. Nothing. A reflection of the Truth, I guess.

Working in a shop like Spellbox (www.SpellBox.com.au) is interesting, to say the least. There are so many different people who come in, of all ages, nationalities and religious backgrounds. Some are drawn in by the frankincense and sandalwood wafting out into Royal Arcade (I am notorious for my tendency to burn copious amounts of resin and powder) and some are regulars, coming for their supply of candles and incense. There are those who take a bemused look and tentatively move forward, and there are those who seem immediately transported back to church (its the frankincense), not knowing whether they like it or hate it, and there are the ones who stop at the door, look in, and bolt. (I like to think this has something to do with me, but I can’t be certain). Lunchtime is crazy busy, with many office and bank workers needing their ‘fix’ of the witchy ambience to counter the unfortunate grey of most workplaces (boo for grey boxes – what the hell are they trying to do to people out there???)

Some are brand new novices who come in with a list of essential tools and I help them find their first athame, cauldron, chalice, wand, book of shadows… it’s fun, and it takes me back to the excitement I felt many years ago when I first decided witchcraft was where it was at and felt like ‘home’. Others are tourists who come in and look around with wide eyes and say how it’s just like finding Diagon Alley. What can i say, I still love working in this shop after years – how many people can say that about retail? Ha!

Some of my favorite encounters are with people who seem most unlikely to be drawn into this specialized world of magic. It is just so interesting to listen to the questions they ask and how curious they are about it all, but are held back by something – usually their own mind and the way they are programmed to piece together ‘reality’ and their place in it. I remember when I first discovered the Esoteric Bookshop, which back then was down a dark alley in Hawthorn. I was so drawn to this curious, dim little shop stacked with books on the Occult and bags of herbs like Mugwort and Oakmoss (all-time favorite. YUM!) and St John the Conqueror root. I was hiding in the shadows checking out some Goddess or other when David (notorious in the Melbourne Pagan scene for his flirtatious – ahem – manner of interacting with female customers) called out to me “YOU’RE A WITCH!” – and I was kind of thrilled even though at that point all I knew about witchcraft was that it was something only weirdos did and that i’d blow any slim chance I had of getting into heaven if I agreed with him.

The rest is kind of history.

But I digress. Back to last week, in Spellbox, with me now on the other side of the counter and attending to one of the aforementioned customers, who happened to be a middle aged man with a distinctive air of professionalism and confidence about him – who also was obviously looking for something, didn’t know what, and was quite urgently in need of finding it. I, being the incredibly attentive assistant of sales and spells that I am, asked him the rather unoriginal question “Can I help you?” and was immediately met with an outpouring of his dilemmas, confusions, and rather dire need for some guidance at this juncture in his life. Now, unlike say, a shoe store, working in this industry requires a developed level of aptitude in delicately balancing your role as sales assistant and personal counsellor. When you are in a shop alone with other customers to serve, phone calls to answer and Tarot readings to organize, you don’t really have the time to go into any depth with people who may really need it. So I listened to him and suggested that perhaps he would benefit from a Tarot reading. He told me he was a psychologist. Uh huh. So, a reading then? Well, he wasn’t used to dealing with issues in that way and would think about it, but in the meantime… I interrupted him (politely, of course) and went to Plan B, waving my hand at our wonderful Wheel of Stars, and said have a spin! Yessssirrrreee, step right up and spin your fortune on our lovely wheel! We have the lovely number two just waiting for you, the High Priestess herself, taking you to a whole new level of mystery you’ve only dreamt about! Or what about the voluptuous Empress, get out of your head and into your body with this sensuous lady!

He looked at the Wheel suspiciously and said, “What is it?” Well, it’s an Oracle wheel, I said, continuing to dust silver pentacles and growing just a teensy bit impatient with his reluctance to just try something new. Just spin it, I said. Sometimes professionals are the hardest to deal with, they are just so reluctant to step outside of their carefully constructed egos and risk shifting the mask. They think they need constant attention but what they really need is discipline. So I practically pushed him to the wheel and told him all he needed to do was take a few nice deep breaths, focus on a question and spin. Whatever number came up on top was his answer, and his message would be in one of the wooden pigeon holes below waiting for him. Then, and this is my favorite bit, he turns to me and asks “How accurate is it?”

Now, is that GOLD, or is that gold!

I was tempted to say, “How accurate do you want it to be?” but I thought better of it because that probably would have turned him on and god knows I hate stalkers. Anyway, he did end up spinning the wheel and let’s hope he was able to find something in it to help him through (he got number 18, The Moon, by the way, which for any of you out there who don’t know, is pretty much about as close as you can get to screaming Your Fears Surround You, Surrender!), but the point being this is not an uncommon approach people take when they are trying to find answers and it is so clearly one that is never, ever going to work for them. In fact, it is probably the underlying reason for their unhappiness in the first place. In a nutshell, it is when the rational, logical mind has completely overtaken the being and the little child is totally neglected, ignored, punished or just totally denied an existence. Put it this way, as a kid, you see a magical wheel, and there is a high probability that given the chance, you will step right up and spin that sucker for all it’s worth – especially if there’s the added bonus that you get your own special number and message at the end. AND a little spell at the bottom to help you manifest whatever it is you wish for or need right now. Wow, you get to burn seven silver candles and carry a moonstone in your pocket to help you understand your dreams! Or maybe to fly in your dreams, even better! Bring that on, for sure.

But hey, maybe the Wheel of Stars is just not how some people roll – and that’s fine too (a little bit sad but fine, it’s not my inner child crying here), but the thing is with this guy was that he’d come into Spellbox and wanted so much to find an answer, or to somehow break through the serious boundaries he’d placed around himself, but just struggled so hard against letting go of his usual way of dealing with stuff. He couldn’t open his mind up to the possibilities inherent in chance and, to take it a step further, in chaos. Mystery. This whole aspect of life he at some point had closed off to and now he had found himself stuck in the land where there’s only the Sun every day. Deny the Moon, don’t face your fears and don’t allow your deep unconscious to dream and play and find strange guidance, and life becomes very dull indeed. Who wants day without night? Oh, the horror….

So while he is familiar with the Sun, and has achieved success in the world (he made a point of telling me he was off to give a lecture and didn’t have much more time to waste) in terms of attaining an impressive career, making a lot of money and actively creating and maintaining an identity for himself that would get him through most dinner parties with strangers, he has no key to opening that door into the mystical, magical realm of his deeper self.. and he’s a psychologist. He has all the masculine qualilties associated with the Sun – confidence, creative manifestation on the material level, ability to connect with others, communicate and maintain social structures successfully – but very few of the feminine Moon qualities. He almost scoffed when I suggested taking a silver candle and doing a little spell that night, as it was serendipitously full for him. “But will it work?” he asked, (rather predictably by this stage). I couldn’t help but wonder if as a little boy he’d not bothered to blow his birthday candles out because there was no written guarantee that his wish would come true.

As a Tarot reader, we come across this way of thinking/being a fair bit. People want to know if you are good, how accurate you are and whether you can channel their great Aunt Mavis for them. In one way, this is totally understandable, we all want to get value for our money, and it’s nice to have some assurance before we commit to something. I guess what many people don’t understand though, is that they are participating in the reading and effecting it according to their own energy, whether they are conscious of it or not. Every single client brings into the room their own experience and expectations, and their attitude will definitely influence how deep the reading can go, what is accessable to the reader, and how much information they assimilate. On a very basic level, it is generally true that people hear what they want to hear, and either block or refuse information which they are not ready for or don’t want to hear.That’s fine, we are only human, but I just wish people would understand that it is ultimately not the reader who has the power here, but themselves. Information is just material to work with; it is up to you what you do with it. If you don’t like what you hear in a reading, DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE IT! Activate your will, your power, and shift the gears, drive that baby, coz if you don’t someone else will – and it doesn’t take a psychic to know that much. Life and chance happen to us all, and that’s kind of the fun of it, don’t you think?

So, my birthday is over for another year (phew!) – and I have to say it was actually kind of fun.It was all Nine of Cups, total indulgence of every kind and sharing it all with the people I love the most. Unlike the last few years, where I was feeling the angst of time passing and not particularly enjoying getting older, I found myself in a different place without really trying. All I really wanted was to enjoy the moment with my friends and family and simply feel the love. Yup. I learned sometime ago that it is far better to  have no expectations whatsoever and then if anything good happens it’s kind of a sweet little surprise. I always remember my Nanna giving me the sage advice: “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.” At the time I thought wow, that’s a bit negative Nan. Like, is life really that crap that life (read: other people) is pretty much always gonna leave you flat. Then, as i lived a little and cried a lot (in abject misery at all the disappointments I found myself enduring, especially when it came to love. Dear god!) I gradually realized she was right. The higher your ideals and expectations, the further you have to fall. So, learn to love falling. Simple. Then, without pushing the analogy  too much, you sometimes find you haven’t crashed at all but are actually flying, and all your friends are there flying too!

So finally I find myself able to let go of expectation and just see what happens. Believe me, it doesn’t come naturally, but I’m way better at it than what I used to be. I sat on a gold velvet couch in the lovely Rococo-inspired Polly (see pic above) for an hour, all dressed up and hoping at least one friend would show up, sipping a cocktail I chose for it’s name (“The Mistress” ) while my boyfriend relentlessly (and drunkenly) teased me that I had no friends, telling myself that it didn’t matter either way, and I’d be happy just celebrating by myself if that what’s it came down to – and letting go of any expectations – until they all started turning up, bringing me presents, cards and an endless stream of cocktails. It was a freezing cold Friday night in Melbourne, and still they came. To see ME! I started to feel a little bit like a princess, I gotta tell ya. Princess of Cups!  And I LIKED IT!!!

What I also liked was the awesome retro stereo my sound-man got me, especially because – now wait for this- it has a turn-table on top, and I can play records again! Now I’m not going to wax lyrical about how amazing vinyl is because let’s face it, we all know this already, and yes don’t we all love the crackle crackle of how real it all is – but I do just have to say that I am just so happy  to re-enter this world again. It is like a magic door into a place where all the cool people are and all the best feelings are, and you can only understand this if you do it. The first record in my old collection I played was the soundtrack from “Betty Blue”. This music always makes me feel timeless, and French, and wistful and sexy all at once. Beautiful, crazy Betty full of passion and with no ability whatsoever to be sensible or proper. I am much more proper now than what i used to be, and i do miss it… take me back, Betty…

Then, for the first time in about 20 years, I went out and bought a new album! I sifted through the stacks of old vinyl, exclaiming to Imogen, “Oh- come, look at this! I remember this- wow! Wow! Oh, wow!” She waited patiently while I accrued an armful of 60′s rock’n'roll (Lesley Gore “It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to”) and then had to put it all back again when i realized how much it would cost, then agonized over making an actual decision. Just ONE record, when there is a plethora of delights to be  had here??? How do I possibly choose? My decision was not made easier by the fact that underlying it all was the little voice in my head saying that whatever i chose would inevitably reflect where I’m at now and who I am and what I value… aaaaarrrrgggghhhh! The symbolism was killing me. It didn’t help that I had a musically informed pain in the ass record nerd girl in high waisted jeans next to me going on about the latest Lou Reed album she’d bought and making me feel like i suddenly needed Lou Reed to be cool. I even picked it up, and considered how impressive it would look in my rather lame collection of old compilations. What the hell! Vinyl ego tripping!

I chose “Let It Bleed”, partly, I admit, for the cover. I just love that cake. I want that cake. I’d bought that same album when i was seventeen, and lost it along the way somewhere. So it seemed kind of appropriate to get it back again, come full circle and spin it, so to  speak…

And i had my moment: lying on my bed, listening to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Not wanting anything else at all in the world right then. Isn’t that as close to bliss/peace/satisfaction as you can come?

What a crisp autumn day it is indeed. My fingers are numb as i sit here, scarf wrapped around my neck and stockings under my painting pants. It’s the day before my birthday and I feel… like i want to get to the core and check out what’s going on. Straight away the onion and the apple come to mind. I remember years ago whilst studying philosophy, questioning the whole concept of self and trying to define what “I” actually is. What, or who, are we? Am I? The onion says once you’ve peeled back all the layers (of personality, ego, mind, etc.) there is nothing left – that we ARE the layers, that’s it. This always bothered me intensely – probably because of the intensity of my feeling that I have a core, a gut, a deepest soul place – and hence, the metaphor of the apple appealed a lot more. Seeds of new growth, transformation, a tree of life, an essence of being…

This all started happening when I tried to paint this morning. I knew I was in for some shit, as I have been for so long now. Every time I try and paint I end up with a murky, muddy mess. Shit, basically. Is it artist’s block? Have I lost the ability to sink into my art and enter that other realm forever? Has my Muse left the building? I don’t know. All I know is that most of the time I don’t even attempt to bring out the brushes, and then when i do, I have to deal with this hideous numbness, lack of inspiration, and anger. How did I do it before, when I’d just paint for hours on end, lose myself in a world without time, only emerging when it got too dark to paint anymore. I am so envious of that artist, where did she go? And who am I now?

Yep, it’s an existential crisis alright. I sat up the back this morning where the ivy has grown thick over everything including my easel, and squeezed out the hardened paint along with a few bitter tears. Mixed it all up and covered my hands in it and smeared it over and over the cheap canvas. I hate  the cheap canvas from the Asian bargain shop, it feels fake. Too light with no feeling, no love in the making. I close my eyes and rub dirt into the mix too.

I burn sage, frankincense and benzoin. I smoke a cigarette. I listen to the insects. My hands wrinkle with paint and dirt, I must look like a madwoman. I know I don’t care if I do look mad. The only way to truth is to let go of the layers, the masks, the levels of normality and conformity. I know I can only paint when i feel this truth, which is the same as peace, which is the space you get to through art and music, but even as i start to define it, it slips away. Words are a trap and mostly just lead to more illusion and confusion. We need them, but they are tricky and are very rarely a path to that place of Truth.

All of this comes swirling around in my head as I rub my hands over the canvas. I let it go, and attempt to just sink into the blackness and see what emerges. I need more of this silent descent, more time without boundaries, commitments or daily duties. How do you ever balance the two? It has definitely been since I’ve taken on more responsibility in my life that I have lost my artistic edge. It is a high price to pay, but something I had to do. Now, how do i get a balance happening? The wild child within me doesn’t want balance, doesn’t want it all to be nice and sorted. She wants to get to the darkness, the black core of soul where whatever is found is free. I realize as my hands keep moving that art is in the movement, the motion. That it is not actually about the end result (at this point anyway) – in fact to focus on an end result will always kill the inspiration for me. I let go of caring what anyone else might think about the painting or the process. To be concerned about others opinions is a death warrant for art. For me, anyway.

I realize that all the built-up emotions and thoughts and STUFF has to come out first before anything worthwhile has a chance at emerging. It’s like clearing out a drain or something. Unblocking a sewage pipe. It has to get ugly, yucky, filthy (which might go somewhat towards explaining the desire to mix dirt in with the paint..) before I can get anywhere near purity, truth, art, whatever words I use to describe it.

Words. Again, I realize the severe limitation of words and how we fill so many gaps with words when what really needs to happen is for there to be silence and space. This is the wisdom of the Hermit. I read an article just this morning on how we now live in a “world without hermits”, how no-one has the luxury of silence and time alone (except, wrote the author, when we are in bed and stay in bed). All this rushing to and fro, all this talk talk talk and busyness which preoccupies most of our lives from dawn til dusk, it’s utter rubbish. Junk. Clutter. Money makes us do it. Money makes us slaves to stupidity. One of the coolest guys I met on my travels was a 40-something year old man with a smile in his eyes, sitting in an Indian cafe in Siem Reap. I noticed him when Depeche Mode started playing (a rare treat to hear some decent music in Asia, I’m telling you! And this is a massive understatement!) and I looked around to see where the speakers were and who might have made this magic happen. He looked over knowingly and just nodded and said “Depeche Mode.” Great. I didn’t really talk to him much, it was just as we were leaving that amongst other things, he said how he hated money. He was a genuinely happy, cool guy, half Swedish and half Iranian, with a bit of Indian thrown in, and he loved living in Siem Reap, the “best city in the world” he said. Also one of the poorest places in Cambodia. With the most beautiful, happy, lovely people I have met on my travels. Hmmm…..money makes madness.

Art. Money. How to be true to yourself, which is to be true to your art, and still be able to pay the bills. How to have integrity, to express your deep self honestly in your creativity and not sell out. I thought about my work as a Tarot Reader, in relation to all this stuff that was coming up. Imagine a silent reading, in which you sat with someone in full presence and with full attention, allowing whatever to come through, without any expectation or preconceived notion of what your money is worth. Most people equate the amount of information (ie.words) you give them with the value of the reading, of their money. We live in a culture which says more is better. Active is better than passive. There is little value placed on listening, but a lot placed on talking. The irony of course, is that most people hear very little of what you actually are saying, and very few indeed will put into practice any advice you give. To go deep into the silent spaces and find out who we really are is a challenge very very few of us will ever take up. We don’t understand it and it is way too confronting, often terrifying, to find we are faced with a void, to realize that there might not be answers to all our questions, that we have been living a life filled with meaningless stuff and that underneath it all we have no clue who we are or what is truly important to us. It’s just another onion peel after onion peel, layer after layer.

My hands stink of oil paint and turps. The lovely manicure I got in Saigon just before I left (sparkly red like Dorothy’s slippers) is totally annihilated. Tomorrow’s my birthday and I go back to work. I have a very shitty painting out the back and expensive brushes soaking in turps which I really should go and wash properly. I am glad I didn’t have to talk to anyone today or go out into the world and be this and that and all the rest.Happy just to sink into myself and stay in my shell, my little home, in silence. In silence I see so much more. In silence shall be your strength.

It’s so good to be home! After travelling through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for the last three weeks, coming back to my own bed was dreamy. Not that I minded the hard hotel beds – in fact i find sleeping in different beds gives a much needed shift to the unconscious, often resulting in new dreams and dream-abilities(in one favourite dream I was able to jump metres high into the air as though i was bouncing on a trampoline, and this was completely normal- so much fun!) – but just to sink into my own cosy bed in my own room by candlelight again was so lovely. Just to look around and see all my books and plants and pictures, to burn frankincense and sandalwood, all the simple little daily things are so appreciated when you’ve been away from them for a while. Even washing the dishes was satisfying. But perhaps the best thing of all is being able to choose from a wardrobe of clothes when you’ve been living out of a suitcase and forced to wear the same things over and over again way past the point when you can stand the sight of them.

It doesn’t help that i’m the world’s worst packer. I’m talking seriously bad here. And no matter how many times I go away, I never learn from past mistakes. This time I took a massive suitcase and at the last minute threw in what my deranged mind thought would be some good options for hot weather. Even though 99% of my clothing is black, I do have one white skirt, an old white peasant blouse, and a recently acquired white lacy kind of dress from an op-shop which i bought because of the sweet little line of buttons rather than for the fact that it fitted me properly. White items that i would never wear here and which i did not wear once there either. The skirt made me look three sizes bigger than i am (one definitely does not need reminding of one’s comparatively  enormous size when surrounded by tiny Vietnamese girls, I can assure you- or from cyclo riders that call you ‘big girl’ as you sit in the carriage like a big white whale as their skinny little legs push you around the streets. Once i even had a bottle of beer in my hand whilst being cycled around, how’s that for a good look!), the peasant blouse was so ridiculously short that I can’t even remember in what context I used to wear it, and the op-shop number I couldn’t even do up around the chest, despite the fact that I think it is actually a maternity dress. Nice. Then I had another faded lilac multi-layered thing that also did not fit, a pair of high heels (great for traversing the jungles of Laos), a couple of tops that were way too low-cut for the discreet visiting of temples and made me feel like a total hussy, and a tight black skirt which made me sweat so much that my thighs would stick together and rub so that I ended up with a massive heat rash which looked like some kind of tropical disease. Attractive. Then there was the much-needed(NOT!) hair straightener which was a last-minute inspiration.  Oh, and I forgot to pack underwear (try finding anything over there which isn’t size double zero minus made for stick-figures or bras that would fit my dolls) – which made for some interesting cyclo experiences.. ahem. 

All in all, a total disaster on the clothing front. I did manage to find a long red cotton skirt at a great night market in Siem Reap for about $3, and wore it happily for the next week with my red singlet, red nailpolish and red lipstick, until I read that in Chinese and many other Asian cultures it is considered highly improper to wear red except on celebrations such as New Years – at other times only sluttish girls who want attention wear red! I looked in dismay at my recently taken photos from the ancient and most divinely spiritual ruins of Angkor Wat, in which i was smiling and posing from top to toe in my bright red harlot’s costume, oblivious to the underlying cultural boundaries I was transgressing. I looked around and realized that I saw no girls in red. Lots of white and yellow, floral and pink and green, but no red and very little black (I have never seen one Asian Goth on my travels btw.) Way to feel like a witch!  

Coming home is more than just a place thing, it’s very much a personal thing too. Coming home to your self, the clothes which make you feel you’ve got your mojo on. For me, returning to the cold wintry weather of Melbourne was an utter relief. To be able to layer up and whack my boots back on, to let my hair down rather than have to hoist it up for heat-survival, and to be able to wear makeup again without having it melt down my face in the first thirty seconds, is bliss. When I was away, I took very little jewellery, just one black velvet choker. Of course, I wore it only once before realizing how highly inappropriate chokers are in the heat, especially velvet ones. It’s already hard enough to breathe without having any added pressure around the throat area. As soon as i got home, I rifled through a drawer and found a metre of black ribbon and wound it around my neck and tied it tight. Ahhhh, home.

So here I sit with a million stories of my adventures overseas in my head, and all I write about is my clothing fiasco. I took my tarot cards with me and didn’t look at them once. To be honest, all i wanted to do was be in a totally different place and leave everything behind for a while, so even the books I read were bought over there and related to the places I visited. I didn’t see any tarot cards along the way, nor fortune tellers of any kind, and most of the people we met had insufficient English to be able to ask about this sort of thing. The only time I came across anything even vaguely relating to tarot was in the Genocide Museum at Phnom Penh, where I discovered a poem about everything the Khmer Rouge banned when in power (which, by the way, was pretty much everything that makes life worth living), and the first three lines went something like, “No Religion”, “No worshipping of any Gods” and “No Fortune Telling”. I thought it was interesting that fortune telling came right up there with religion and Gods, obviously in the bracket of the spiritual and seen as having the most potential power for people to rebel against the new regime. A little bit further came the ban on colourful clothing, interestingly enough. Colours were seen to denote status and individuality, both things the new Communist government wanted to wipe out. All citizens were forced to wear the same black pyjama outfit and have their hair cut in identical fashion. Looking at all the victim’s photos in the museum and seeing that same severe bob cut on every face made me realize once again just how important hair and clothing is in regards to our expression of self, and the way others perceive us. To take away the right to choose these things is the first step in killing the spirit of joy in our own unique being. 

Yes, so a tarot-free holiday. Stepping outside the wheel for a while. Being out-of-costume, so to speak, in a different world where I was the minority, I was the one who couldn’t speak the language and didn’t know all the cultural implications of what i was wearing, saying and doing. The Fool, stumbling along and discovering things in the world which mirror things about yourself and in the end having a laugh about it all – leaving things behind and bringing new things home, not just material objects, but fresh perspectives and knowledge… adding it all to the mix and letting it bubble and brew to make something new.