Monday 30 May 2011

Alanis for you

Pussyfoot

Some days, I lack the patience to be diplomatic due to tiredness or stresses. Other times, it is due to the person I am speaking with.

Some people say things that show so little understanding of a topic or situation that it would take a huge amount of effort and time to spell out why and justify every reason at every corner.

That is when I get short-tempered and smack them on the nose and say "bad monkey".

I don't have them killed and this should count for something.

No regrets

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Worst

I used to think the worst thing in the world would be to disappear and no one noticed.

Now I know it is to be standing in the middle of the room and nobody notices you are there.

They will look for me


I have often wondered how I person gets up and walks out of the lives of everyone they know and love.

How do you just leave and never contact them again? How do you leave them wandering where you are and how you are? How do you cut all ties?

Now, I find it hard to see this as just black and white.

Recently, I have wanted to get up one morning and say bye as usual and then leave. Leave, never to be seen again. Go somewhere far far far far away. Somewhere that nobody knows me. No one takes a second look. Start all over again. Be nothing to anyone. Disappear. No longer be me.

Some days, I just wish it was quiet.

My Kindle's Insides


This is what the inside of my Kindle looks like. I would like to live in there.

Sunday 22 May 2011

The Best Nail Polish Remover


People keep asking me what nail polish remover I use, so as not to destroy my nails.

It's not about the remover. I use Cutex, which is cheap. You can get it anywhere.

Then I use a good nail moisturiser. Foot and hand creams are fabulous and intense.

You don't have to spend a fortune to look after your nails and keep them divine.

Saturday 21 May 2011

Tale As Old As Time




Awww... I love this song.

Not sure who I most identify with.

Sense and Sensibility

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!" — Jane Austen

you bleed just to know you're alive




And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am

Friday 20 May 2011

An Angel


My mother is that best human being I know and ever will know. There are good people on this Earth but I see her first hand and I try to learn from her.

Like the Queen of England, my mum has two birthdays. Growing up, we always thought her birthday was on the 21st of July. That is the date of the first moon walk. She was 21 when she listened to that event on the radio, in Papua New Guinea. She was at teacher's college and her classmates went over to hang with the science students and hear about Armstrong stepping out. She was 21 years old.

Today is my my mother's official birthday. That is the day that she was actually born. She knows it even though she was born in her parent's home, in a village named Tufi in PNG. Her mother wrote the date on the back of a door. This is where she kept the dates of all her children. Mum copied these dates down and carried them with her, long after that door and that house were gone. Long after her wonderful mother Damana had passed away, we now celebrate today for mum.

The moon walk birthday is a date that was given to her by the Kiaps. Kiaps were Australian government officials who journeyed in to the villages and remote areas of Papua New Guinea and in this case issued birth certicifates and guessed children's ages. With those guesses went allocated birthdays.

My mother was told she was a certain age and born in July of 1948.

Don't even get me started on the kiaps and their ways, in PNG. If you ever need to suffer some condescension then find an ex-kiap and listen to them talk of civalising the little black people. What a load of cr@p.

Anyway, my mother is officially 63 years old today. She was born in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was orphaned at a very young age. As the second of seven sisters, she brought up the younger ones. She used to babysit to earn money to pay their school fees. Her whole life has been about looking after other people.

I would like to wish her a very happy official birthday. May the year to come be about you and enjoying the life you have made. There are so many people who love and cherish you. We appreciate all that you are and all that you have done.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, brilliant and kind mother.

Thursday 19 May 2011

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Tuesday 17 May 2011

Darwinian Fashion



"Ah, Darwin. It kind of divides into rednecks, yuppies and hippies. Anything outside of that just confuses people." -- my friend Lou


So true. Lou is right, as is often the case. I'm going to stick to confusing them with my Mana-isms and make that my thang. Yes, I said thang.

Get your freak on

As I muddy the waters between depression and recovered, the insights in to what goes on in a depressed person's head abound.

Today is a great example of a day that I would have described as "fragile", before I learnt to cope with the negative thoughts. Instead, I realise my brain is hyper-sensitive to the body language of people around me. It takes a small look and interprets it in the worst way possible.

There was a moment a few years ago in Pitt St Mall when I was bumped by a gigantic handbag that a lady was carrying. She turned back and spoke a sincere sorry. There was no malice. It was an accident and no harm came from it. I walked on to work, one block away in the centre of Sydney CBD. It was a typical work day and the place was full of suits, shoppers and buskers.

Once inside the sanctuary of some huge financial institution, I sprinted for the ladies bathroom. There, I locked myself in a stall and cried like I did the day I was born. Maybe I was gulping for air. Maybe I was lost in the self-torture that convinced me that woman with the bag hated me.

Although irrational, it felt true. I was certain that life could not possibly improve and that I would never recover from her bagging me.

Years have passed since that day. Nothing feels that dire these days. Most things are quite funny and leave me in tears of silliness. They are lighter tears that carry you through a moment that could break a lesser Mana.

Today, I'm dressed in cool comic book tights and a flowing white top proclaiming in black ink and rhinestones, my love for shoes. The knee high velvet black boots complete the outfit with a nice upper cut.

In my usual Surry Hills scene, I'd fit in with all the other people who simply don't. I'd walk passed people and admire their comic book tees or purple suede boots on funky jeans, with great haircuts.

In Darwin, I'm a freak. People stare. Teenage girls mumble "oh my god". Mothers pull their children from my path.

You can't say I fit in here. It's not great to be looked at constantly but I must honour who I am and what I want to express. To blend in to Darwin, like all the others would be like a silent death... a drowning.

Does it hurt when people see me this way? Does it make me angry? Do I withdraw and cry?

Nope. I keep on keeping on.

I plan for the next time when I'll get my freak on.

Katherine Airport

There are some things that are so Territorian that you have to laugh so that you don't cry.

This morning, I heard about the Katherine airport and it's problems with kangaroos. Apparently, they get in the way of planes landing there and cause accidents. Skippy the terrorist.

The Northern Territory is not a state of a Australia so responsibility for it lies in the joint hands of the Commonwealth government and the Northern Territory government. Both like to blame the other for all the things gone wrong in governing and otherwise take the credit for all successes.

All the Katherine Airport needed was to be fenced. Kanagroos are quite easily defeated by fences.

The Australian Federal Government did just that. They had the place fenced.

The thing is that they fenced in a mob of kangaroos that were living there and like the proverbial rabbit, they have gone forth and multiplied. Now there is a huge number of plane endargering marsupial terrorists contained inside the land around the airstrip.

Whose fault is this? Who will fix it?

It's the other government's fault, of course!

Yesterday

Workwise, yesterday was a great day. I was so productive that I've almost completely cleared my To Do list.

Otherwise, it was so hard that I'm not sure how I survived it.

So, I hold my breath and try to stop myself from making bad choices and exploding.



I've been pushed around so much lately that I'm angry about it.

Since nothing I do is good enough, I choose to do what is in my heart.

I don't want to hear it, if it isn't nice.

Sunday 15 May 2011

Are we brain washed from birth?

Coming Home


I used to write with such passion and conviction.

Things made me angry. Things made me happy. Things made me feel feelings.

Of late, that has petered out. Somehow lost in a Prozac haze and over-shadowed by real life and responsibilities and... stuff.

It's not that I miss the roller-coaster of emotions that came with depression. Hell no! It just got far too mellow and numb to be on the anti-depressants.

As I emerge from the mist of depression and the auto-tune of being medicated (which did help massively), the passion for life is returning. It's not a hypo-manic ride of good and bad. It is more of an absence of numbness. Being alive again.

Do you know that point when you've eaten a yummy dinner and you feel perfectly full and content? That is how it feels.

Damana is coming home.

Fail

I don't know about the rest of you but I am reminded at least once a week that I am failing as an adult.

There are explicit criticisms about the way I spend my spare time. There are implicit judgements about that fact that I don't have a house or a car or any solid plan for life. Then I'm told that I share too much online. I also don't tell people enough about what I'm trying to achieve in life.

It's starting to get old.

I have done the responsible adult thing. The conformist thing with the marriage and house and husband and friends to have dinner parties with. You all saw how that worked out.

So now, I just want to find stability and happiness in the different parts of my life. Get my savings re-established after 2 years of crippling depression and inconsistent income. Make my brain chemistry function properly on it own, using only the life tools that therapy has taught me and not big pharma solutions. Find a way to trust people again after so much betrayal.

And it comes down to this... whoever wants to judge me can. They can find me lacking. They can disapprove of the way my life is run. They can gather their thoughts and keep them to themselves because I'm frankly sick of it.

Unless you've lived an unblemished life then you have no right to tell me how to live mine. Even then, I'll probably do whatever I damn please anyway.

Saturday 14 May 2011

Black Milk Leggings


A guy on twitter heard me talking about leggings and tights. He's a fan of such things... used by others and observed by him. You come across a lot of them on the Internet. This one was harmless and useful because he put me on to Black Milk Clothing.

This is an amazing trend-setting Australian company, that until recently was running out of it's creators garage.

I considered not telling everyone about these tights so that I'd be the only one I knew with them but I can't hold back. The quality is excellent. The fabric used on the leggings, lace tights and velvet tights I bought is very good. Colours are stunning. Designs are funky. The fit is great and I actually think they could get away with charging a lot more and I'd still buy them. Don't tell them I said that though.

There are more photos in my flickr photostream.

Go buy and try. Trust me, you will not regret it.

Monday 9 May 2011

Walk a day in my shoes


People - both men and women- keep asking me how I walk in high heeled shoes.

I do my best not to look at them like they are really dumb and asking me how humans evolved to walk and thus free their hands for tool making and fondling each other.

There is one answer... I put my feet in and walk.

There are several tips...
  1. When you walk, put weight on to (not in to) the heel as you would with a normal step. Tip toeing is going to kill your foot in a few minutes, unless you are a trained ballerina. If you are a trained ballerina then wear these instead;
  2. Start short and get taller. A two inch heel is entry level but I expect you to be settling in to three within a month. Never go higher than 4.5" if you want to walk more than 100m. Your calves will die. Higher heels are for parties where you are driven there and back and will eventuate in some handsome man carrying you through a doorway;
  3. Wear the heel with pants or jeans first. Often looking at the height of the heel will result in you thinking it is higher and more difficult than it actually is. Cover the shoe with cool pants or jeans and you won't think about it too much. Do not let the pants be longer than the shoe or you will fall and break something. Once you are confident in the height, wear it with skirts or dresses;
  4. Never walk cautiously in heels you are afraid of. It looks pathetic. Be comfortable in a shorter shoe and look confident instead.
Go. Wear beautiful high shoes and be gorgeous.

Muwah!