Pussies, Power & Pleasure, Oh My!

I don’t like my voice. I don’t like the way I look. I don’t like the way I move. I don’t like the way I act. I mean, period. So, you know, I don’t like myself.

Elizabeth Taylor, the most beautiful woman in the world once upon a time…

Venus in furs

Ok, so I’ve started frequenting Starbucks. I don’t really like Starbucks, I’m usually a Pret patron, and then mostly only because I can’t relax enough to hang in independent cafés – oh, that and the soya lattes. Monolithic mass produced coffee houses may be High Street hussies, but they take your money and don’t ask questions when you stay long after your cup is dry, tip tapping away on your laptop – not so ethical I know.

Just tea zen

I console myself with the thought, at least the coffee’s Fairtrade, but then gobble fruit toast dowsed in butter washed down with English Breakfast tea – when in London, I say. After all it’s the toffee-ness of the warm, sticky fruits and the decadent drizzle of butter which bribed me to sign my divorce papers, before I went to work the other week. I’m harnessing the power of pleasure to have my way with the world, you see –although this may be more ‘ a spoonful of sugar’ as Mary Poppins called it.

Moaning over spilt milk...

The other week I had a day or two off and I was thinking as I read, Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts – Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way With the World, that instead of reading the pretty-in-pink book while devouring fruit toast I should be in New York taking a bite out of the Big Apple.

After all Sister Goddess Mary told me I could have ‘all my dreams and desires’. She said, she ‘believed’ in me and that if I wanted in on the Womanly Arts Mastery Program I could. But I either didn’t want it, or believe it, or something it enough. Mostly I just found it too damn hard to take that leap of faith over the pond and go with the cash flow.

You godda have faitha, faitha, faith-ahh...

Let me explain: Regina Thomashauer, aka Mama Gena, has a School of Womanly Arts in NYC. No, it’s not a finishing school…well not the sort for balancing books on yer ‘ noodle. It’s a kinda modern-day temple-cum-training-centre for nurturing the divine in every female – thus the Sister Goddess epithet.

The word ‘goddess’ has been undermined of late; oft used in conjunction with conspicuous consumption, cookery or copulation – think ‘domestic goddess’, ‘sex goddess’, or Vidal Sassoon hair appliances. Mama G on the other hand is here to tell you ‘women are the most untapped creative resource in the world’ and that being a Sister Goddess – power with a heart and soul – is the way.

“Your dreams, your desires are not too big for you. They are just the right size. And they are rapidly and readily accessible if you follow me through the doorway of pleasure.”

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted

Sounds deliciously Alice in Wonderland-ian, right? Her Mastery manifesto sees Mama G citing such luminaries, as siren of the silver screen, old wiggle hips, sofa lips, Mae West, who reckoned pleasure not pleasing was a girl’s best friend:

“I felt it was time to play. Most of my thoughts, time and energy had gone into creative effort. And this restriction of the love drive, the headshrinkers will tell you, is the greatest urge one really has. When one sublimates the sex drive into creative work it puts a person in high gear mentally. I admit it. But it is against my nature to bottle up the biological plans of pleasure for any length of time. I hope I don’t sound as if I have discovered the secret salve that soothes the universe, but I do want to add my small footnote on the subject.”

Mama calls these “biological plans of pleasure” Pussy:

“Pussy extends way beyond the crotch. In my world, Pussy is a metaphysical term that refers to the essence of female power.”

Birth of Venus

Cor, I can see the men in my life wincing in my mind’s little eye! My otherwise female-friend-ly manager is convinced any of the goddess-style, women-centric classes I rock up to are actually male-hating, sock-titted, feminist covens. And as for Mr Glittery, god’s gift to good girl pleasure, he was completely freaked over my capsule collection of what he called ‘porn’ memoirs, like The Sexual Life of Catherine M, and erotic tales by Anais Nin. Alright, they could be porn I guess, but he said it like ‘porn’ was meant to be a male preserve. And my possession of erotica seemed to arouse his suspicions and question his manhood.

Bedtime reading

Twice he compared me to paintings of Venus, goddess of love and sex. Yes, really. And yes, love is a bit blurred of vision guys. Two different paintings, in fact. Same feeling: powerlessness. He had a thing about action women. How much more passive can you get than a painting? How much more powerless can you feel than when you let a guy in your bed? That’s how I’d come to see it anyway. So when I read the words:

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

I began to cry. In Starbucks.

Shake Ya Tailfeather

My adventuressing over the last couple of years has led me to realise I’ve needed a guy partly to feel socially acceptable. But whenever I found out a chap dug me I just didn’t geddit. “The one thing I don’t like about you,” Mr Glittery observed, in bed one day, “Is you don’t like yourself.” Therein lies [sic] the problem. You wind up saying what you think people want to hear for fear of being found to be, well, you. The fear I felt trying to hold it all together – not very well I might add – manifested in myriad ways; including menstrual irregularities and ultimately an eerily silent halt to proceedings.

Darling, Im feeling a bit flat

I guess Mama G would say Pussy was protesting.

Goodbye Damsel in Distress, Hello Princess Adventuress

The day after New Year’s day I did a boot sale with my sister. It was freeeezing. It was also a magical mystery tour into the mind of the boot sale attendee – how comes £1 for an angora beret is a steal in a charity shop, but something to be tutted at and bartered with at a boot sale? Oh, and it was a lesson in what not to buy my parents for Christmas.

Cinderella was a real bombshell...

Throughout the de-cluttering boot sale stock accumulation process we came across a few former treasures: diamonique encrusted watches which had stopped in their tracks; books we’d meant to read; and a Cinderella figurine, with her now mutilated Prince Charming, I’d bought as a souvenir from Euro Disney when I was 16.

Sis thought it made an intriguing image and snapped the pair on the window sill. Dad thought the prince’s headless, one legged and de-slipper-proffering-armed-ness was somehow symbolic.  It struck even me that I’d donned a not dissimilar Cinderella-blue gown at my wedding.

Cinderella nailed her fella…

Of course, instead of happily ever after it all turned out more like that scene from Labyrinth where Sarah, the whiny teen damsel in distress, declares David Goblin King Bowie has no power over her; and the whole magical mirrored spellbinding façade  cracks from side to side.

Unlike Jennifer Connelly I decided on the simple boob baring demo during the first dance instead.  This impromptu act – my husband’s wrist was apparently caught in my dress strap – proved beyond a doubt I was not the princess bride, but a stick-on chicken fillet sporting damsel.  I think I cried for 3 nights after that.  So what?  I hear you cry.

Damsel in a puffy dress

So, I’d been reading Caroline Myss‘ book Sacred Contracts; a book where “…Myss explains how you can identify your own spiritual energies, or archetypes, and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet.” And one of the first archetypes I’d identified as playing a prominent part in the pantomime which is my life, was the damsel, aka the princess; or the shadow side to the princess proper.

It’s not so easy, identifying your archetypes, I found it a bit like Three Men in a Boat when the narrator diagnoses himself with every disease described in a medical dictionary – except Housemaid’s Knee. In a way this isn’t surprising: Myss asserts we have 12 prominent archetypes; these all have a light and shadow side.  We’ll see influences of others too – rather like an archetypal kaleidoscope I like to think. However the damsel in distress princess archetype screamed out at me; it was obvious: I am … I was… I have been the damsel in distress all my life.

Pink peril

It’s funny what a simple revelation can do.  Suddenly I could see lengthy tressed damsels stressing their way through my (hi)story. First, there was the Perils of Penelope Pitstop where the hapless heroine was dangled over alligator infested pools by the Hooded Claw; and Nosferatu climbing the stairway to terrorise that foolish girl who doesn’t hide under the duvet. Then, when I was 8 my first male teacher, Mr Lymer, said I reminded him of Princess Diana because of my aloofness.

Let Sleeping Beauties lie...

My parents bought me Sleeping Beauty, for my 16th Birthday – somewhat ironic considering my somnambulist-esque existence. Then there were all those Pre-Raphaelite fainting fairy maids I fancied myself as at art college – someone once asked me to pose as Ophelia. Geez.  Then there were all the guys who wanted to save little ol’ me, from the big bad world in my head.  I even asked Mr Glittery to tie me to a tree and play highway man – he wrote me a story instead. Typical.

"What, what," said the Lady of Shallot

At uni John William Waterhouse’s, wilting waif, the Lady of Shallot was one of my style inspirations.  And obviously the long blonde hair said ‘princess’ to more than a few peeps, but even when I tamed and tied it into knots I’d just become a silver screen Hitchcock Heroine (aka modern-day cinematic damsel). Eeek.

He was expecting a frosty reception...

I went to see Matthew Bourne‘s Blitz-based  ballet, Cinderella, just before Christmas. There’s a copy of The Constant Princess on my desk at work. And when my work mate, Funny Girl, told me she was going to buy me a book, she said, “I thought you’d like The Princess Bride or that one about the ugly sister.”  So I’m still surrounded by distressed princesses.  But I guess like the ugly sister who’s getting the chance to put the record straight, it’s about time to step out of the forest of shadows and into the light, bright side of this archetype stuff and tell a new tale.

Maybe?

The question is: what to wear?

Diamond Mining & Divine Dung Beetles

Brandon Bays is possibly the purest looking person I have ever seen. Her serene smile and blinding blonde-ness, to me, advertised a perfection far beyond that of mere glossy glamour, but an actual, unobtainable, real deal, inner radiance. So, although I’d seen The Journey and it’s accompanying marketing material emblazoned with the blonde-one all over the proverbial mind, body and spirit shop for donkeys I’d given it a miss.

Brandon bright & beautiful

Then recently, through a series of fortunate events, let’s say, I decided to read The Journey and indeed undergo the Journey work.

It all began with my summer hols. Being on the impecunious side I stayed home. And being a bit cheesed with the old “career” I embarked on a tactical mission: including a plan to blanket bomb Brick Lane and its environs with my wee CV.

Fancy dung beetle, eh?

But, first, in the name of vacation celebration I bought myself an iridescent perspex winged scarab pendant, I’d had my eye on, from Spitalfield’s Sunday market. A few days later, armed with CV and adorned with said scarab I left the flat to implement said mission.

A nagging feeling gnawed at my gut. And, as the day drew on, it seemed that one thing after another went against the completion of operation “I’ve got a job I dread, get me out of here!”. The nagging feeling turned into an outright groan.

In the old days, the old me would have ignored all this groaning and put it down to too many Grapenuts. But now I take the groaning to be a message of sorts. So I returned to base, where my guts and I had it out.

“You never listen to me,” said guts.

“I do!” I protested, a little too loudly to mask the guilt – I knew they were right.

Guts grumbled something incomprehensible, but utterly unmistakable.

“Ok, ok, I’m listening!!” I said. “I know the CV thing is a bad idea. I need to go with the flow… and all that jazz. I need to go back to mind, body, spirit boot camp.”

Guts prescribed a course in Damien Senn’s People You Should Meet free audio interviews and Hay House Radio – Radio for Your Soul -all good for the down at heel as well as down of heart.

PYSM happened to have a recording of BB on Abundance. I listened. I learned. I was intrigued. BB’s personal journey began with a basket ball size tumour – wtf! Instead of following the conventional cut-it-out method, she decided to see what the tumour was trying to tell her – and it had some pretty darned interesting things to say, diminishing and finally disappearing altogether like a monster confronted in a fairytale.

Colour me beautiful

And so I was thinking about what I really wanted to do for a career. And I was pondering the question of colour. I’d been to an aura painting class last year and met a lovely lady who worked intuitively with colour. We’d been partners for the day and she claimed I’d drawn her aura almost exactly as she sensed it. She in turn had drawn a curious image of mine, which someone had remarked looked like a scarab. And it featured a winged diamond at a point she said was the third eye. I dug the picture out. And it got me thinking that I was thinking too much. I’d felt her aura, almost imperceptibly, like the beating of butterfly wings…

Then my friend T, back from her own incredible one woman journey round the world, came up to stay. I donned the scarab pendant and we hung out in London’s finest holistic and esoteric bookshops, from Watkin’s to Atlantis. But it was in the Oxfam bookshop near the British Museum that I found, yes, a copy of The Journey. Being as it was a few squids I bought it, despite Brandon’s seemingly over zealous blissful blonde-ness.

Painting by books...

The next day I went park hopping and devoured The Journey cover to cover. I even looked at doing a workshop, but bank balance said, “No”. I flicked through the worksheets at the back of the book and mentioned the book to sis, in the hope she’d read it and agree to be my partner in The Journey, but she had her own distractions.

And then in amongst all this I’d been in and out of various medical establishments assessing the state of my lady bits. I even dragged sis to a scan, to take a squiz of my ovaries over the nurse’s shoulder. Ick and yet more ick. And I am getting to thinking that this particular physical problem can be pinpointed to a particular episode in real time and that doing some of this Journey work is the way forward.

But, as per usual, I’m procrastinating. And I’m back at work. And I’m wearing the scarab pendant, which makes my eccentric boss squeal “Nefertiti, Nefertiti!” and just drew a whole lot of attention from passers by, including one comment from a guy who said, “There’s an old rock band who used that symbol on their album covers. Who was it? Uhhh… oh, yeah, Journey.”

Don't stop believin'

And so I’m thinking… what’s all this about? Is it synchronicity? AM I meant to do something with all this? And so I look ‘synchronicity’ up on the web and lo and behold up comes Carl Jung and the Golden Scarab – a story of the birth of the theory of synchronicity or “meaningful coincidences”. Jung had this to say of the symbol itself:

“The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky.”

Dream man...

And in another story, I’ve mentioned before, goes something like this:

Once upon a time was born a brand, spanking new sparkly diamond, a twinkle in her creator’s eye. Perfect for shining and reflecting light she really brightened up the place. But then shit happened. This was said, that was done, and her light began to fade.

Pretty soon she was unrecognisable as her former self, a crusty pile of poo. Convinced she was ugly and seemingly attracting more piles of poo, she went out and got herself some fast acting, bedazzling body paint, the ads had said she was worth it, perhaps she was.

And for a while she felt a million dollars, as people flocked to frolic with her, told her how great she looked since the paint job. Thing is it was only skin deep, when it chipped, the poo showed through. And she began to feel poo and attract yet more poo all over again.

Then one day, she remembered when she was a little diamond, and how bright she’d shone. And so she began to dig inward.

Diamond geezers...

BB uses this analogy in The Journey and goes on to say:

“We should never stop transforming; just come ever more fully into the awareness of ourselves as the pristine diamond, always letting go of the limiting layers that seem to obscure us from our true selves.”

This then is The Journey. A real holiday. I wonder if I’ll get me a Journey glow?

Sing-Along-a-Sacrifice – What the Pagans Can Do for Us

Tempus may fugit, temperatures may crash and burn but trees are forever – well a really, really long time… usually.  I’ve been listening to medical intuitive Caroline Myss rant – she likes to rant, by her own admission – about holy ground being well, bloody everywhere.  You don’t need to climb a mountain high, or seek a valley low to find a rendezvous for you and the divine.  The ‘subway’, Myss reckons, is as good a place as any. 

Divine destination?

But there’s something about the brief portion of my twice daily walks to and from work through Bunhill Fields Cemetery with its peridot and emerald studded arbour, like a mosaic ceilinged sanctuary, which soothes the soul.

England's green & pleasant graveyards

Feeling a tad tetchy the other morning I spent a bit of time stroking one of the bigger trees – embarrassingly I didn’t even ask its name – and experienced almost instant calm. The permanence of the tree versus the transience or impermanence of this moment in time filled me with a sense of peace and perspective.

Don’t worry, I’m not developing Dendrophilia – a real live ‘philia’ apparently – despite the fact I found myself panting under another tree in Victoria Park later that same day at a very clammy British Military Fitness session.

The Mediterranean summer means we’ve actually been enjoying the great outdoors and the simple life.  Summertime and the living is eeeaaaaaaaasy: ice cubes chink against tall glasses at tennis matches, pianos tinkle everywhere – part of the London Festival – and people stink while listening to rock bands. And a few weeks hence me and my sis sung along at Sing-Along-A-Wickerman, the pagan feel-weird movie of the summer solstice season. 

Basket case?

 Oft overlooked, or merely looked over for little other than Britt Ekland’s stand in bottom and her bewitchery wooing of Edward Woodward, The Wicker Man belts out a barrage of frolicking folk-style songs by a certain Paul Giovanni.  The luscious lyrics tell of getting down and dirty in rigs of barley and weave the circle of life with the Maypole song, which comes with it’s own actions – way before  Macarena was a twinkle in Los del Río’s collective eye.

Does my bottom look big on her?

As weird and wacky as the pagan world is made out to be in the Wicker Man the film and its unusual music evoke a time when people felt an intrinsic connection to the natural world, and were, as a result, in awe of it.  The pagans, as the film’s many musical interludes suggest, were aware of their part in the rhythm of life. 

But as the long awaited Wicker Man finally made his entrance and went  up in a blaze of gory sis said she felt funny singing-along to a sacrificial slaughtering. This was one of the many criticisms The Guardian blog commentatoratti had been expressing, although the presence of the Director Robin Hardy seemed to sanction the proceedings.  And the abomination of Christopher Lees in their crazy haired, polo-necked, tweediness seemed happy enough.

This is not my boyfriend...

Someone somewhere said the sing-along assumes the sing-alongee is siding with the pagans, when it’s the foolhardy policeman we’re supposed to support. Thing is, he hasn’t any memorable numbers… well only a hymn at the end, he’s too busy bossing everyone around and telling them they’re wrong, and he’s right, to really let rip. And, perhaps, if we want to sing-along with the oh-so-happy pagans but ultimately empathise with the bobby-with-a-bug-up-his-bottom it’s because we can see ourselves in him. 

Get down with an Owl

If you can see beyond Britt Ekland’s stunt-stripper-derriere, or musical murder scenes, then perhaps singing-along with the Wicker Man reaches parts the film, and the landlord’s daughter, otherwise may not reach.  As tempatures sky rocket, oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico,  and NASA releases images of a Greenland glacier melting a mile overnight maybe it’s time to really stop, listen and sing. This could be the last act.  Roasted nuts anyone?

Roasted nuts with that, sir?

Sermon ends.

The Sandwoman Cometh – What Do Our Dreams Mean?

Whodunnit? You dunnit...

We all like a Whodunnit – well at least my mum does – but what if you dream you dunnit? According to Psychotherapist Philippa Perry, who led the Dream Workshop at the School of Life recently, you’re the best judge of your dreams – not those one size fits all dream dictionaries.

Philippa, looking like a kind of futuristic fusion of Pierrot and Hitchcock’s fave costume designer, Edith Head, presented us with a variety of ways to interpret our nightly forays into the land of nod. With the aid of her almost saucer-sized, fluorescent framed glasses (like magic wizard specs!) she took us on a sneaky peek of our psyches; urging us to roll up our sleeves, participate in our dreams and role play.

Role playing, for me, is the sort of thing nightmares are made of. But there were some only too willing to treat the audience to a re-enactment of the recurring riddles which haunt them in the wee hours. One woman’s nocturnal race against the clock to catch a plane, saw her play herself, the person hanging on the telephone, and the piles of paper she was stuffing willy nilly into her suitcase. Weirdly it was the piles of paper which had the most to say – notably she was taking the rubbish and leaving the good bits behind.

Lay down comic...

New perspectives are what Philippa is all about – this is where the magic glasses come in I reckon. Indeed her new book Couch Fiction – A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into one man’s sessions with his therapist. In using the medium of the graphic novel – illustrated by Junko Graat – we are also treated to a deity’s eye view of the minds of both the characters; this, along with strategically placed footnotes goes some way to de-mystifying the psychotherapeutic process.

As the wife of Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry, famed for his darkly plotted pots and Baby Jane frocks, it’s a given that Philippa would have a singular view of the world. But having witnessed a guy decipher his own body-buried-under-the-bush whodunnit it became clear we all express ourselves in weird and wonderful ways. And it seems that dreams are a way of communicating with ourselves, like personalised bedtime stories packaged by our own psyches.

“You don’t need help with interpretation now,” says Pat, the therapist in Couch Fiction, to James, the man-on-the-couch, who replies: “Ooo I do! I would never have got to vaginas without you.” And I have to say, I echo those sentiments. Philippa’s whistlestop Dream Workshop has led me to take a different view of my dreams; almost like I’ve been given my own pair of virtual magic specs – very illuminating! 

Although I’m not sure I want to find out why my dad turned up looking like George Clooney other night…

New Year & Northern Lights – A Kaleidoscope of Possibilities

I used to mark the New Year with a list: all my dreams and aspirations for the 12 months ahead written in black

Everything's crystal clear now...

 and white. Everything seemed possible. Clear as crystal. The year spread out before me ‘Like a virgin… shiny and new’. And my cup brimeth over with great expectations. Until, one year, I had ‘The Shining’ moment.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, TSM is when you realise someone, in this case me, is a total fruit loop. You know, when you take a peek at what you thought was a masterpiece of a novel only to find it’s actually: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed a terrifying number of times. This is, of course, a whole lot worse when you are both the discoverer and the discovered because it just begs the question: Who the hell am I? And possibly: Am I dangerous? And: Should I believe myself anyway?

In my nut-case, my crazy-as-a-coconut head had deemed it necessary to create a To Do list at the beginning of the year which it then tried to prevent me from completing with all it’s lame excuses. You can do it tomorrow. That guy smells funny. There might be spiders in there. What if it turns black and falls off? And so on. Until one year, having completed my deep and crisp and even NYL I turned over what I thought was a new leaf, only to find last year’s practically the same completely uncompleted list on the other side!

Yes, my name is Earl (actually it’s not… that’s a boy’s name, but I like that programme.) and I’m a list-aholic. It’s just that it wasn’t until New Year last year that I realised how grave the situation was. NYL had seeped into everyday lists… which had just sort of multiplied like germs. And as my room

and my life got out of control, in an attempt to feel just a teensy bit better I’d write another list to sort it out. Then the list’d look so darned long, that I’d get all overwhelmed and just ignore it… until I felt compelled to write another one.

So when Mr Glittery was helping me organise my stuff ‘n’ nonsense last January, he was perhaps the victim of his own TSM, when he realised I really wasn’t just a coconut in name, but also in nature. “I need a lever arch file for my lists,” had been the moment of realisation. And I think

Crazy as Coconuts

sifting through all my unfinished art, writing, customisation projects and whatnot just emphasised the fact. He opened up a scrap book full of seemingly random magazine cuttings and said, “Now I know what’s going on in your head.” I felt ashamed. I wanted to hide it away like the mad woman in the attic. I tore my semi-completed sham of a novel away from his prying eyes and threw it in the bin. We’d unearthed far more demons than I was willing to face.

Then I made him angry. I think he thought the outburst was about one thing… possibly because the words which came out of my mouth suggested so, but in fact it was all about me feeling s**t about me and thinking: he must just wish he was back with his ex Sigourney-Weaver-look-a-like-script-editor girlfriend who actually gets things finished; doesn’t live with a bunch of rowdy 30-something guys who carry on like students; and most definitely doesn’t have a lever arch file for her lists. And… as it turned out I was right.

So this year, to mark the new me, as well as the new calendar, lists are banished and I’m creating a vision board. In fact I’ve had one on the wall for about six months or so now, well actually there’s kinda two. One side is a

Mr Universe

prompt for me, the other’s for the universe – by this I mean, you kinda let the powers that be get on with it… I know some people will think this is yet another sign that I’m on the slippery slope to insanity with skis on, but let me tell you something, just as many, if not more things have gotten done

on the ‘universe’ board than the ‘me’ board. Top of the popsicles is Iceland!

To make my grand entrance into 2010 in style I’ve attempted to purge myself of some of them aforementioned demons by having a bit of ‘spiritual detox’. I had my chakras balanced, cards read and a bit of sound healing – drum and all! People say, “Do you believe

Winter of discontent

all that stuff?” But I hardly believe myself most the time… Not to mention the fact that at our first reading she said – without prompt – “Oooh, it’s a bit crazy in there, isn’t it?” Meaning my head. “It’s full of magazine cuttings!” Sounds like my head to me.

And I’m leaving this year, this decade, behind feeling like I’m really starting to excavate the diamond from underneath all that rough stuff. I’ve gone back to basics: my roots. I’ve dug out my childhood dreams and put them in motion– honestly I knew far more then than the older me! My love of colour, need for creative expression, and enduring fascination with fairytales, I’ve realised, are far more than mere whimsy; they are necessary to my wellbeing – food for the soul if you will.

Northern lights at the end of the tunnel...

I’ve been experiencing my own Narnian netherworld (always winter, never Christmas), a kinda dark night of the soul, in recent years and although it’s been a bit of a bleak trek, I think that in being forced to retreat, to take a back seat, I have at last been able to see the always present light in that all encompassing darkness.  Like the Northern Lights the future is a bright, iridescent, kaleidoscope of possibilities in the midnight sky.

Email from the Future You – Ooh, scary…

Cosmic ordering – I’ll have no. 36, 67 and a coke please…

Being Green [with Envy] – Monsters, Dare Devils & J Alfred Prufrock (Who he?)

“To thine own self be true.” (Above the stage at Conway Hall)

 

Lady Gaga happy in the faux frog skin she's in

Green may be the new black, but what happens when green goes bad? I don’t mean when you go all OTT with the emerald velvet and wind up looking like Kermit the Frog. I mean green as a way of being, as in green-fingered, as in balanced and harmonious; the flipside of green as in pleasant, green as in good. I’m talking green as in envy. This was the question the School of Life was posing the other wild, wet and windy Sunday. 

I was having a go at killing 2 birds with one stone, not literally of course. All sounds rather messy if you ask me, you’d need a big stone, for starters, the kind Wiley Coyote used to drop off cliffs to flatten Road Runner – speaking of which, there’s a lesson to be learned here: only stone a bird while it’s standing still and if you’re going for two, then maybe opt for something that’s not gonna move suddenly – think dodo.  

So… anyway, the birds: The School of Life Sunday Sermon and My Cultural Life. The stone: Me turning up. Two different outfits I’d been meaning to tag along to in the same place at the same time – it just had to be done!

Satan's happy in the satin-lycra skin he's in...

Finding and meeting the My Cultural Life crew was easy enough; us early birds… escaped the elements and shivered with the rest of the philosophically curious flock in the foyer; under the all-seeing gaze of an improbably tall, improbably thin chap in a scarlet satin-lycra catsuit. Apparently this almost mythical man was no less than the legendary Johnny Satan, the Sunday Sermon’s minister-cum-compere.

Mr satin-clad Satan led us in a sing-a-long kinda hymn thing of that depressing Donnie Darko ditty Mad World, before introducing guest speaker, Oliver James, of Affluenza fame. Basically, OJ said envy = jealousy with claws on (aka the green-eyed monster). Well, he didn’t, I said that, but you get the idea…

"Surprise, surprise, Scylla!"

And if you don’t, then good old (ancient, in fact) Ovid gave us a damn fine demo of the destructive force of envy-in-action in his tale of Scylla, the water nymph – not the red ‘aired Liverpudlian songstress and host of Surprise Surprise, in case you were wondering. Glaucus, a minor sea god, had gone all Lady Gaga over sexy Scylla, but got seriously browned off when he failed to bag his babe. So who you gonna call? Well, not Circe the Sorceress, if this is anything to go by; cos, taking a shine to Glaucus herself, she decided to turn Scylla’s watering hole into a toxic hell hole, and poor Scylla into swamp thing. Eek!

The point is, envy is bad, not just for the envious, or the envied, but for everyone and everything. OJ laid the blame squarely at the door of capitalism and that crazy carousel ride consumerism. Keeping up with the Joneses and indeed coveting the Joneses stuff is basically the root of the fleurs du mal we call envy. The solution? The Scandinavian approach for one, apparently… And looking a bit closer to home – (1) feeling good in your own skin and (2) getting into your flow (ie, stuff you loved to do as child) as often as possible. Perhaps Circe should have tried fuzzy felts before resorting to poison?

The sermon concluded with tea and a slice of green-iced cake. Mr Satan urged the flock to have a chin-wag with a stranger over cha, but I felt that I was doing my bit by meeting up with the hitherto unknown My Cultural Life groupies. Honest. Actually, I harboured a desire to say something ground breaking to the marvellous Monsieur de Botton, who I’d seen swanning about the entrance hall. This was, oooh, the fourth time I’ve been a stone’s throw from my fave philosopher, but what to say? “I’m your number one fan?” No.  So I said, nothing, again.

Speaking of procrastination and major lack of self esteem I was most intrigued by OJ’s brief reference to TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  He reckoned it was a portrait of life half-lived and Prufrock, like all those scared of their own shadows, was likely to be struck by the green-eyed monster:

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered – Hitchcock & Halloween Style…

Keats said autumn is a time of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’, but it seems to me it’s more masquerades and fruity madness.  From Halloween to Christmas it’s the done thing to don a disguise, over do it and carve faces into your cucurbita pepo.  With the long dark evenings providing ample time for reflection and getting some Hitchcock action I got to thinking about the masks we wear day to day. 

Vertigo:  Kim Novak plays a woman (Judy), playing another woman (Madeleine), who falls in love with the guy (James (Scottie) Stewart) she’s stringing along.  Unfortunately he’s developed an infatuation with the faux Madeleine, portrayed by Judy as an elegantly disturbed, icy blonde with a penchant for staring wistfully into whirlpools; and twisting her hair into knots tighter than the tangled web of lies Judy has conspired to create with the genuine Madeleine’s wife-murdering husband.  Pant pant. Phew. Anyone feeling dizzy yet?

Anyway… the real Judy is actually a brash brunette with a line in big brassy earrings and even bigger eyebrows; and however relieved we might feel that scatty Scottie has taken it upon himself to give his girl a Gok over, when Judy-as-Madeleine-part-deux steps out of the bathroom, bathed in a ghostly green glow, it’s obvious this weird menage a trois is a menage gone mad… 

Scatty Scottie is driving both himself and Judy crazy by insisting Judy agree to be Mad-eleine (again).  And more to the point, what the hell is Judy thinking, if she is ‘thinking’ at all?! Even if Kim-Judy-Madeleine-Novak hadn’t unwittingly given the game away and pushed James (Scottie) Stewart even further to the brink of insanity, by waving that necklace around, you just know that either Madeleine-Judy will be forever reminded that her real brash brunette self is not good enough for James (Scottie) Stewart, or eventually he won’t believe in the make-believe-Madeleine any more.

Vertigo is always a film conoisseur’s fave, and I wonder partly whether it’s because we’ve probably all played one or other of the characters ourselves in real life.  We are often bewitched, bothered and bewildered by beloveds who are Frankenstein-phantasms we’ve fashioned from fairy tales.  Or, perhaps worse still, we try to squeeze our proverbial foot into the glass slipper of a guy’s imagination, and are destined to forever feel like the ugly sister. Compromising some je-ne-sais-quois-ish intangible part of us we thought we could live without can only ever end badly because two’s company but bringing along your masked alter ego for comfort ends up being a bit of a crowd.

Just a thought…

Life is Just a Bowl of Jelly Belly Dancing

What is it with those demo-whatsits on laptops? Having tripped over and broken yet another lead my parents lent me

Do my rolls look big in this?

their ‘puter for the evening. All fine and dandy, until I looked up and saw what looked like a scene from Seven: all tumbling rolls of flab in chiaroscuro. What the hell?! Mildly sickened and somewhat confused I wondered how this abomination had appeared. Had I googled ‘Jabba the Hutt Porn’? Then I remembered it was my parents’ laptop after all… eeewww. But no.

Then I noticed something. As I moved Jabba moved. I waved a hand. Jabba waved. I stood up. Jabba stood up. I am now considering suing Acer, or whoever it is who put these damned things on their machines, for exposing an impressionable mind to her own exposed body.  I mean, I’ve been experiencing what I’ve self diagnosed as IBS and often look 6 month’s pregnant.

If I’d wanted to be exposed on screen I’d ‘ve been Paris Hilton, as it is I prefer to keep my body to myself and possibly a carefully vetted other.  Although I was psycho-bullied into flashing my boobs in the communal showers at the swimming pool the other day. Everyone gets their kit off and eyes your cozzie-clad torso warily. What lies beneath that layer of lycra, they seem to ask. A third nipple? A sticky-out-navel? Alright!  Alright! So I gave in and went … topless.

First, I felt like a fish outta water. Second, I later learned a work colleague had also frequented the pool that very evening. Perhaps that’s why she was unusually quiet the following morning, rushing past me, head bowed, mumbling something about needing the toilet…

Anyway all this had got me thinking (again). If the key to happiness is to be self-contained contentment then the

Lizzie Miller - revealing her roll

container needs a bit more lovin’ – or else all that contentment is gonna seep out. Plus how can you get content if your body is a huge bone of contention?

Loving the lady in the mirror is a simple concept but about as easy as a bowling ball to digest. We live in a society which throws a wobbly over the beautiful Lizzie Miller showing, what by most people’s estimation, must be a small roll of flesh around her abdomen, calling it ‘ground breaking’. And however many times Gok tries to get us to look-good-naked and love-the-skin-we’re-in, what if it looks more like the loathsome-orange-peel than smooth-as-a-hot-dog-sausage? It can be pretty hard to keep this stuff in proportion.

At the beginning of August I attended a Heal the Self, Heal the Earth event. New Age hogwash some might say, but I’m getting the feeling that the way you feel about you, or the way I feel about me matters and not just on a personal level. Think The Fisher King. Think Hamlet. Think outta the box and self-contained-despondency. Do as Judy Garland sang – not as she did – and ‘Get Happy’, cos it might just cost us more than our collective Duvet Days costs the economy (more on this soon).

So as I watched one of the Heal the Earth attendees, a lovely, lithe, slip-of-a-thing – who happens to be a Nutritional Therapist – belly dance in a purple haze, pure joie de vivre emanating from her whole being, I thought, I’m gonna get me some of that.  Not sure why I felt compelled to do something which involves getting my tummy out in public; or which contains the word ‘belly’ – one of my least favourite words. But I signed up to a 12 week course with the Mia Serra school anyhow.

Turkish Delight? It's low fat...

Moving one’s bottom cheeks independently takes a lot of concentration, which makes me look quite angry. And doing anything verging on shimmery-shaky-Shakira style just makes me look like I’m about to foam at the mouth. Fortunately participating in the end of term show is not compulsory and probably ill-advised, if the first lesson was anything to go by! But so far I have enjoyed the celebratory, very feminine feel of it all and I’m thinking it will be a fun, fabulous and undoubtedly frustrating way to learn to love-the-skin-I’m-in! 

And maybe have just the one roll…

Inspiring Health – Eat less rolls have less rolls
Mia Serra Belly Dance – Rippling rolls
Light Workers Unite – Roll up and spread the love

Mean Reds & the Seven Chakras – The Rainbow Resolution

Hey! It's Meeee!!

Red is not only the new black economically speaking, but for me, wardrobe-wise too.  The thing is, sliding Back to Black, both on a mental and material – although rarely on a financial – level, seems too easy. And after years suffering from, the emotionally numbing Beige Zombosis I’ve taken to operating on Code Amber.  Anxiety has become my emotional set point  interspersed by not infrequent forays into full blown Mean Reds.  As Holly Golightly said in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

You know those days when you get the mean reds?

 The mean reds. You mean like the blues?

No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

I have to say, yes Holly I do! I got Beige because I was too yellow to face my fears.  As a result I’ve been off kilter, out of whack, off key, off colour for as long as I care to remember.  The world looks pretty jaded through this particular looking glass, thus I’m keen to try on some of them fabled rose-tinted spectacles and get me a different perspective on things. So I’ve decided to try balancing my Chakras.

What the bejesus are chakras I hear you cry!  Well, like dwarves they come in sevens – for starters anyhow.  Each represents an energy centre in the body, which receives, transforms and distributes that energy. Sanskrit for ‘wheel’, chakras are believed to rotate in a spiral vibration with graduating degrees of frequency.  They are also identified by certain key characteristics –  notably a clear and vibrant colour.

So this week I’ve been working on the root chakra, or Muladhara. Located at the base of the spine, this is supposed to be our bedrock, energy speaking. Physically Muladhara governs sexuality and sensuality, mentally it governs stability, and spiritually it governs a sense of security.  It is thought to vibrate at the densest frequency and is represented by the colour red. 

To get your root chakra ship-shape you can get physical – getting down and dirty in the garden is good, apparently – get some sleep, or paint the town red … no, not so much going out, as wearing and consuming anything ruddy or rosy. You can even imagine opening the Muladhara to improve the energy flow and visualise it being flooded with a ruby hue.

Always trust your vibes...

Not only have I become a scarlet woman, but I’ve also been making good use of the red iPod Shuffle Mr Glittery got me for Christmas.  He had it engraved with the phrase ‘Always trust your vibes’, which seems kinda ironic, but hey ho, I’m finally doin’ that, I guess.  And I’m not sure if it’s the chakra balancing or what, but I am feeling calmer.  I met a friend for lunch yesterday who noted my red ensemble on arrival and on departure said she reckoned I seemed the happiest she’d seen me in ages.

So something’s working.  Is this prose too purple by the way?

Shape up your chakras:
Chakra Energy – Ancient philosophy, now a hot new trend
Journey Through the Chakras – A guided meditation
Aveda – Balancing body mists

Colour Fix:
Chakra Jewellery – Get your rocks on…
Inner Light Art – Prints to ponder
Serpent Mandalas – Pretty as a picture these are…

Part 2: Svadisthana – The Sacral Chakra