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?

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…

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

Laundry Clouds & Silver Linings

Every pile of laundry has a silver lining. That’s my new saying anyway. This blog began with the premise that my wardrobe may be the external representation of my internal state. Since then the wardrobe situation has metamorphosed from a group of disparate piles into one giant pile of dirty laundry interspersed with some out-of-season attire vacuum-packed into a few suitcases. And yes, my life looks pretty much the same way…

On the other hand despite the disarray I can see that with a lot of TLC and a new wardrobe to put it in, my so-called-life will be in full working order again! 

My glittery-green-eyed guy has gone awol once more. And I can only look in the mirror and say, “I told you so!” Lesson: two wrong-headed people do not make a right relationship.  Maybe it was the enticing aroma of his Body Shop Bilberry Detangler – it does it to me every time! But no more, the Eau d’ Angst his lack of direction and my lack of confidence emitted has left an overpowering odour in the air.

One of the many things I loved about him was how he appreciated my style. This meant a lot to me because, as he said, the way I dress is an expression of my creativity and he always, always made me feel I was perfect the way I wore…

Only for the past few months I’ve been expressing something more akin to Catweazle than creativity, wearing whatever I could cram in my bag. I’ve been thinking about all that Law of Attraction stuff – you know, where you get what you focus on – and I am wondering whether my tramp-like tendencies – my tweed coat has a huge hole in it and my red coat looks as if I’ve had a near miss with the Hooded Claw – have attracted my current rootless, bag lady state.

The thing is I feel pants – I mean in myself, not other people’s… well, it depends.  I still haven’t completed that Be Gorgeous course…I haven’t ‘trusted my vibes’, meditated, Relax [ed] and Attract [ed]… or got my hair cut in over a year… or done any of the things I knew I should to feel better.  And worst of all I have really let myself  down by believing I needed Mr Glittery’s validation.

A breath of fresh laundry...

As I lay awake the other night listening to the World Service, I heard this woman talking about loving yourself. She said people make the mistake of thinking their relationship is a base on which to build their life, when in fact your life should be self-contained contentment and your relationship the cherry on top. So that told me! No cherries till you’ve got your pastry baked or your tart goes all floppy – no-one likes a floppy tart. Or in other words all that glitters and smells like Bilberry Leave-in Detangler is not gold; and behind the smell of air-dried, hand-pressed laundry lies a lot of washing and ironing.

Life Laundry:
Clean up your act with the help of a Life Coach…
Rachel Bamber
Fiona Harrold
Jackee Holder

Eco-Laundry:
Green & clean products straight to your door …
Abel & Cole
Spirit of Nature
Nigel’s Eco Store

 

Stuff ‘n Nonsense – The Woolworth Heiress & the Cathedral of Commerce

 I was walking past the soon to be defunct Brixton branch of Woolies last month watching people snap themselves in front of the shop shutters, shutting for the last time and I got to thinking about stuff.

Inside the shelves were as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, save for a few things you’d have to pay people to buy and I thought of the stuff infesting my pre-purged room. Stuff waiting to be adapted, adorned and updated, mostly with other stuff I’d buy from Woolworths on the way home from work. Stuff which I enjoy mending and making into more stuff I will enjoy wearing, but which I suspect may actually be the stuff of procrastination.

Oh, the path of procrastination, how familiar is its meandering terrain…  I used to procrastinate by way of creating the perfect capsule wardrobe. Now I am creating an ethically sound and spiritually up-lifting wardrobe and I have to stop and ask myself, is this more stuff ‘n’ nonsense? Am I seeking a material solution to my immaterial desires?

Because if there was ever a cautionary tale concerning the trappings of excess – or stuff – then it is that of Barbara Hutton. Babs and I first met on the cover of Tatler. Well, actually, it was a modern-day zebra-striped, fur-clad, jewel-dripping, forties-style faux Babs; perched neatly in the white tuxedo-ed arms of a Gillette-the-best-a-man-can-get guy in wayfarers; their perfect smiles glinting against the painted desert backdrop. The strap line read ‘Too Rich to Walk’.

Barbara was the granddaughter of Frank Woolworth, founder of the Woolworth discount stores, known more familiarly as Woolies in the UK. And she was the Woolworth Heiress  life-couldn’t-get-better-than-this American dream princess.

Cathedral of commerce

When Barbara was a little girl she found her mother dead, like a discarded doll, on the bathroom floor – broken spirited, broken hearted. Her daddy deserted her. Her aunts passed her around like a mis-addressed parcel. While her grandfather, Frank, was ever busy with business and building his ‘Cathedral of Commerce’ – a Neo-Gothic tower of Babel, the tallest building to grace the golden streets of the Big Apple, the tallest building in the world, poking up through the clouds, like a finger held up at heaven.  Only to be trumped, in a New York Minute, by the futuristic, crystalline Cathedral of Cars, the Chrysler building.

Eventually over-shadowed by the World Trade Center the Woolworth Tower was relegated to making cameo appearances in feature films like Cloverfield, where it played itself crushed under foot by the Godzilla-gargoyle-esque creature as if in some sort of hubristic retribution only mildly worse than the American-based stores becoming Foot Locker.

More recently the building has found its acting niche, playing the headquarters of Mode magazine in the US TV series Ugly Betty. What with frivolous fashion being shorthand for crass consumerism the building seems fated for such a role. And I cannot help but imagine the tormented ghost of the Marie-Antoinette-esque Millionaire Heiress haunting its [s]hallowed halls.

Dubbed the Poor Little Rich Girl by the mock sympathetic press, Babs sought solace in upmarket candy stores Cartier, Asprey and Van Cleef buying the love she’d been deprived of as a child, marrying numerous husbands including silver screen Prince Charming Cary Grant, who said:

‘Barbara surrounded herself with a consortium of fawning parasites – European titles, broken-down Hollywood types, a maharajah or two, a sheikh, the military, several English peers and a few tennis bums. If one more phoney earl had entered the house, I’d have suffocated.’

Being an American Dream Princess is not enough when you feel worthless.

And so Babs did not live happily after, dying pretty much penniless. Her Regent’s Park pad, in some curious homage to the American Dream, becoming the U.S. Ambassador’s London residence.

I guess the stuff of dreams, the immaterial, best-things-in-life-are-free stuff we truly yearn for, is often mistakenly believed to be the material stuff we convince ourselves our [American] dreams are made of – a bit like the rubbish dump the short-sighted mole has mistaken for a fairytale castle in an animation I saw some years ago. Stuff in itself isn’t bad, but it can be a glaring distraction that can tempt you to over-look the wardrobe for the clothes.

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