Mental Dust-Bunnies

Fresh garden strawberries, raspberries and native white elderberries. Meringue and fresh cream and plant-based alternatives. Elderberry cordial with ice and fresh mint leaves (pineapple sage if you prefer).

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land, and recognise their ongoing connection to land, water and community. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge that Sovereignty was never ceded.

We give thanks. We have so much to be thankful for.

We dine, tell silly stories, remove our shoes and enjoy the soil/sand/grass beneath our toes as we gaze up through the trees to the clouds and birds beyond.

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This year, Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere is at 3.19pm on Sunday, December 22nd. Much of Australia is experiencing extreme heat and bushfires. Many people and animals have lost their homes, if not their lives. While being acutely aware of this, I take this moment to recognise the incredible beauty around me. Tomorrow I will look for ways to help.

Content Warning for rudeness

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Someone showed me images of Krampus and I realised it was a fair representation of my seasonal mood. Heatwaves aside, the weather’s great this time of year in Australia, and it’s nice to see gardens tended and twinkly lights, etc, and that’s where the tra la la ends. I’m more Krampus than Santa.

And that’s ok.

Well, it’s not really. Or it is, but it doesn’t feel like it. Because Christmas is thrust down my neck like I’m at Guantanamo, and thanks to various failures of mood-regulating measures, my tolerance has worn thin. Compulsory Tinsel, like compulsory heteronormativity, gets on my wick after a while.

As a young feminist I heard a lot about how girls read books with male protagonists and do the mental gymnastics required to identify with them and enjoy the book, whereas boys tend not to read books with female protagonists. That’s how I feel about Christmas. Well, it’s not a strictly relevant example, because I was raised Christian and sought a suitably LGBTIQA+-inclusive church for many years before giving up in disgust.

Now that one parent is a member of a wacky religious sect that doesn’t recognise Christmas at all, I feel relieved. It’s enough that a family member suicided at the beginning of December many moons ago, putting paid to the sweet anticipatory build-up that I had previously enjoyed. It’s enough. Each year I try a different tactic, with mixed results, to block out the bunkum and simply enjoy my own daily sweet simplicity. But I’m still grieving, still angry. And once again I feel out of step.

This year I tried to silence myself. Grief, year after year, gets tedious. It’s not like anyone seeks me out to hear my annual Krampus rant. I tried to let this month go by without even writing here. But in the absence of other supports, because every support person is so blooming BUSY thanks to Compulsory Activities (or heatwaves), this blog seems like the least destructive outlet. You have the option to not read. And if you read, then you have the option to not respond. It sounded more consensual in my head than pigeonholing my friends and letting rip. The last thing I want to do is alienate anyone.

With my first long term partner I celebrated Summer Solstice, and we had friends with whom we could picnic and make merry in our own way. I just realised I’ve let that slip for far too long and that I need to seek out other pagan types for wholesome, frugal frivolity. I feel relieved to see a way forward.

So now that I’ve calmed the flock down, I wish you peace and whatever else floats your own boat. And if you feel so inclined, you’re free to rant in the comments about your own seasonal poppycock, or anything else you need to get off your chest. I know that some people are going through serious things right now and need support. I’m happy to listen.

Recalling the thinking noises of Winnie the Pooh and friends. There’s a lot of standing around and making decisions, complete with interesting gestures and sounds. I need the input of online friends with this decision making process of mine, please.

I’ve distilled my blog to 25 of my favourite posts. The original impulse was to scrap the lot and start afresh next year. (I may bore you with my mental process further down.) Distillation was a compromise.

Now I don’t know what to do with the scrapped ones.

Do I create a separate folder? A separate blog? Scrap them altogether? They all contain scraps of ideas that will be useful to me later, and I’ve printed them, so that’s ok. But I don’t like to discard others’ comments. It seems disrespectful.

If there’s anything I learned from my sibling’s suicide, it’s the ephemeral nature of life and the importance of appreciating people when they’re still with you. I appreciate all I’ve interacted with here, and just because I need to restructure my blog doesn’t mean that I can’t be sensitive to others’ feelings. Please, give me your thoughts!

Basically more dust bunnies, without so much dust and with more cat than bunny.

The landline now works. Only took ten days and four or five online tech assistants to activate VoIP on the modem. But it works and that’s all that matters. Nobody died in the multiple attempts.

This morning’s exciting discovery was a much younger, non-binary transmasculine writer called Oliver Reeson, in The Lifted Brow. I read Oliver’s speech and then some articles and signed up for Tiny Letters (great idea!) and have waffled in my journal on many things they prodded in my noggin. Then I looked up the Trans Mental Health Study to which I believe they were referring (I could be wrong). It was all absorbing, helpful.

I’m more of a solitary bee than a hive-dweller. My local trans community is small, friendly and multi-generational, and I’m happy here. So even as I envy the big city dwellers their events and resources, I’d prefer to read about them than attend. I appreciate skilled, thoughtful writers. As a new fan, it was sad to read Oliver’s concerns about their future in Australia as a writer. I guess it was a prod to my conscience – support those you value. Buy local, support local artists. I’ll start with The Lifted Brow. ❤

Writing every day is my own choice. Nobody is forcing me to sit and await inspiration-strikes or dig for previously unexplored relics. I can’t even blame NaNoWriMo because nobody made me sign up. I thought it would be fun. I wanted to be surprised.

I’m surprised all right. I’m surprised by how wrung out I am by twenty-two consecutive days of writing. It’s not as though my whole day is spent here, but it’s a commitment. It’s one that does not come naturally to me. I had relied on the irrepressible urges to write – if I don’t write I talk to myself, and I know which one is more socially embarrassing. A flare erupts up top and I sit on the cat, or scooch her away, and a flurry of activity results, almost effortlessly. Then I sit back, astonished that my day has been thus interrupted.

But NaNo. No. No flares, lately. Flares have departed. Flurries diminished. I feel underfed, wrung out like a toothpaste tube. It’s not pretty. I’m… well, I was going to say I’m pustular. Nobody needs that mental image. But I feel like a leftover Halloween prop that a horse sat on. At the end of the month, I’m counting on my body’s healing instinct to restore my pre-NaNo dimensions and patina.

Fingers crossed. Too stubborn to stop now. There have to be more words left in the old fart.

PS: I don’t really sit on the cat. That was a lie for dramatic effect, in case you worried. She’s spoiled rotten and I didn’t want to admit that part. If she steals my desk chair, I use the exercise ball. And the top photo was taken at a public garden, where I like to walk my old camera.

Because they make me snort with laughter.

They surprise me with each click.

They intrigue me, and I want to watch the unfurling.

Because of the warmth in my heart as I read.

Because I admire the way they think.

Because I respect the work involved in each post.

Because they seem like someone I’d enjoy hanging out with, if I/we were sociable.

Because their world is vastly different from mine.

Because I can learn from them.

Because

So many blogs, so little time. I have to narrow the field of daily reading options somehow.

Thank you all. May your weekend be nourishing. 🙂

Watched a repeat of Hannah Gadsby interviewed by Charlie Pickering on ABC TV (Australia) and fell in love with her all over again. Speaking truth to power and making it funny? Genius! Using words like ‘dickbiscuit’ in the process? Icing on the cake. I love her.

Yesterday I finally made it to an art exhibition. It’s the final week of the gallery’s Acquisitive Print Awards exhibition and my favourite type of art. No dickbiscuits in sight. A few of the featured artists are familiar to me. I enjoy the ongoing development of their ideas and techniques.

One of those is Kyoko Imazu, a Melbourne printmaker I first encountered on Etsy, years ago. In the earlier images of water rats, possums and other Australian native wildlife, she worked from specimens held at the Melbourne Museum. Another is Dianne Fogwell, whose book was in the gallery gift shop. Both artists produce work that grabs me by the heart and urges me to pursue my own artistic dreams.

Hannah is right – there are thousands of artists deserving of acclaim.

What Hannah said about the Australian same sex marriage (aka Marriage Equality) ‘debate’ and plebiscite was also spot on. The distress experienced by the outpouring of vintage-era homophobia and transphobia was unnecessary and preventable. The leaders were there to lead, not foster division with no regard for collateral damage. They were derelict, to put it politely.

During that time I withdrew from mainstream news broadcasts and was increasingly discerning about my social media consumption, as slimy bigots infiltrated my newsfeed. I took better care of my queer friends, checking in and showering them with appreciation and affection. We all did this for each other, knowing how much we’d already been through with families, so-called religious organisations, schools and other mainstream institutions. “Haven’t we suffered enough?” became my tagline, then a flamboyant routine that I still trot out for my own amusement.

It’s fun to watch the aggravation of those offended by Hannah Gadsby. They’re a certain type of person. Same with those who get irritated by trans people – a different subset perhaps, but a type, nonetheless. They’re horrified by our very existence, let alone our utterances. Who knew there was more than one way to live a life, to look at the world? As I watched Hannah today, I imagined telling those people to put their hand back on it and go back to sleep.

The Prue/Trude character behind the counter at the gallery gift shop said there was no catalogue for the printmakers exhibition. She told me to look it up on the internet, then wandered off, disinterested in my desire to purchase the book. So I’ve asked the public library to buy it for me (us). Yay libraries!

As Hannah said, the Tasmanian lawmakers didn’t recognise lesbian sex, so didn’t bother to outlaw it. Therefore lesbians such as Hannah experienced an odd mix of invisibility and discrimination, and stigma. Hannah describes the shame she experienced in ways I could never emulate. But so much of Nanette touched me. Any time Hannah appears on my telly I smile in anticipation of gems. She’s a little ripper and a national treasure.

NANO UPDATE: yeah, nah, good. It’s hot today and I’d rather avoid the cat and any vibrating, heat-producing, machine type thingamy than sit here on my exercise ball and type. But it’s also blowing a blooming gale out there, so gardening or even birdwatching are off the table. Blown down the street, in fact. So type it is, with the cat on the chair beside me. Almost 32,000 words into the 50,000 goal. Yep.

A cuckoo raised by finches in urban Australia.

Two siblings; one deceased. Plethora of furred and feathered friends.

Generation: X

Gender : M

Pronouns: he/him or they/them

Height: average

Hair: not much, grey

Skin: yes, pale

Favourite colour: green

Favourite word: poppycock

Hobbies: reading, writing, organic gardening, random acts of kindness, and overthinking. Black belts in catastrophising and appreciation.

Greatest achievement: survival

Favourite family quotes: “You have a way of making the simplest thing look difficult,” (stepchild) and “You always found the hard things easy,” (mother). An ex-partner is sometimes fondly referred to as A One-Woman Ministry of Aggravation.

Favourite humans: friends (naturally), support workers, and anyone I encounter who displays kindness, generosity, compassion, honesty and the ability to refrain from using the word ‘moist’.

During an online reading binge, one blog post led to another and suddenly I was here, feeling exhilarated about a single entry on Goodreads. The Art of Slow Writing: reflections on time, craft and creativity, by Louise DeSalvo, sounds like my kind of writing manual.

My whole life is slow. I wake slowly, move slowly, and everything passes in a dream. No, really, I could pass as a hipster, living slowly and locally by default. I backfire and stall when I try to rush. Sometimes it’s comical. I also fight, fly or freeze when too far from home; and when I say too far, I mean beyond about a hundred metres. That’s not fun, just frustrating. It hasn’t always been like this, but it’s my current situation. When I reframe my disability as a hipster affectation it seems cool, or uncool in a modern sort of way.

I can write fast. It’s a train wreck yet it’s possible. I can comment with gay abandon on social media as fast as anyone, or rabbit on in emails or elsewhere. Whether I’ll respect myself in the morning is anyone’s guess. It’s not that I’m drunk commenting, but caffeine and sugar have noticeable effects on my affect (mood) and while it feels great in the moment, well, you know how it goes. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you could be teaching me a thing or two about responsible commenting. Let’s just say that writing slowly, for me, is more responsible.

So, NaNoWriMo. It’s started, and although I promised myself that I wouldn’t be sucked into the vortex of word counts and hype, I’ve already felt stressed by my lack of oomph. The heat sucked the oomph right out of me. I could barely think, let alone write coherently. And yet I managed to add to my existing documents as well as my blog posts. I made a start and can build on that, day by day, in a slow, organic fashion.

I’ve resolved to view mistakes as learning experiences instead of mortifying incidents that haunt me. When I resort to incoherent typing for the sake of word count, I can consider that to be ‘pre-writing’. Even my smart aleck warm-up writing exercises can be reinterpreted as me finally accepting my imperfection. Everything can be reframed as a positive.

The final sentence in the online book review is the one I return to:

DeSalvo skillfully and gently guides writers to not only start their work, but immerse themselves fully in the process and create texts they will treasure. 

This is what I intend to do, this month. I’ll sink slowly into the ooze, then craft, ferment and eventually savour the depth and complexity of the slow-roasted result. How’s that for mixing metaphors and high expectations? I may end up with compost instead. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Yet that too could be reframed as a win – a growing medium for the next batch of slow-growing words.