refiners fire

When the flames have consumed all
and the smoke has cleared
only truth remains

Jed McKenna

A year ago today! See: the surreal shock of fire

addled anarchy

My first introduction to real live anarchists was when I lived in London.

Being a child of the South African seventies, anarchy was alive and well in my youth, only not much reported on. This was the age of riots and car-bombs and “total anarchy” was the reason we had bomb scares at school and couldn’t go to the Carlton Center to do Xmas shopping.

Anarchy was occasionally mentioned in horrified tones that implied certain un-imaginables. Our headmistress and Department of Education found such subjects unsuitable for girls with my skin colour and so anarchistic behaviour was reserved for our teenage conversations and not publicly named.

Enter punk-rock, torn clothes and safety pins. Scope magazine gave us a different face for anarchy, but still, while I pogo’ed and spiked my hair, I was not exactly Sid and Nancy! I just knew I wanted Change. The System was always wrong - even those that tried to make it right still started with the same system.

Moving to London allowed me to breathe. Wide-open head-spaces and spicy debate fed my happy self. Enter God and Alex (I kid you not, God was a tall thin, slightly stooped total hash-head and Alex was his scruffy tousle-haired companion.) They defined themselves as anarchists and made addled punk-inspired plans to blow up London and wipe out the establishment. However, after the influence of a few pints and a couple of illegal indulgences, they never got very far, so the plans were nothing more than Friday night conversations. I found them very entertaining.

Much life-experience later, it is only as I ripen into my prime :), that I accept what an anarchist I truly am. Because such an identity has been associated with extremism, and I have always found extremism spit-in-the-face ugly, I never recognised that my moderate philosophies of a brave new world quite fit the bill. I never saw how wanting to totally change the way convention operates and live in a completely differently-ordered society is actually just lots of words for saying “total anarchy”. However, it’s still just a label (and those bore me and have to be changed as soon as they’re applied.)

I dream of global willingness to own the truth that lies beneath the dramas of Today’s News. A real, authentic, truth-in-the-eyes attempt to change the dinosaur-establishment belief structures that we are socialised to apply (as if on automatic pilot!) Almost everything – both left and right, up and down and all else in between, is part of the same dis-functional old black and white movie re-run.

If we could stop jumping to conclusions, stop jumping up and down, just stop, stop, stop reacting from limited versions of how-its-always-been. Take a deep breath, look around and accept: we created this, how can we make space for our Little Frankenstein love-child? I’m sure we could come up with some stark raving, transcendental, radically creative total anarchistic solutions!

As I dream on, I wonder if God and Alex are still at that pub on the corner…

the ballad of bliss dragon

Her husband was off to work
And the kids were off to school
And there were oh so many ways for her to spend the day
She’d clean the house for hours
Rearrange the flowers…

I adored Marianne Faithful. I used to listen to this song – the Ballad of Lucy Jordan – and croon along, swept up on her gravelly voice and the desperate edge, imagining how it would be to be so old and so sad:

At the age of thirty seven
She realised she’d never ride
Through Paris in the springtime
With the warm wind in her hair

Thirty seven! Poor old Lucy Jordan. I was living it up in London and riding through Paris in the spring was a choice I could make. Marianne’s voice motivated me - I would never get to no white suburban bedroom in no white suburban town!

So here I am, Monday morning. The kids are off to school (after a few weeks of holidays) and petrol strikes have caused my meeting in the Big Smoke to be cancelled. Okay, so its neither suburban nor white around here, but my roses could do with re-arranging…

So, shall I climb onto the roof top and jump for lack of a mythical sports car, the wind in my hair and a gorgeous French man to drive it? Oh no!

I’m delighted, Lucy Jordan! (Although I'd love to be poignant, dramatic and worthy of a rock ballad!) I've got coffee, sunshine on my back, two articles to write and Space. Thirty seven is long gone and I am well satisfied, because there are oh so many ways for me to spend my day… :)

shaking it down

So this dragon felt sorry for herself in the last blog. Yawn. Yes, I cry for my comfort zones, but I move on. (Blogging for Therapy! Yay blogging!)

Anyway, it seems that my strange ways have given me skills. After years of semi-exile, I am currently back into the labyrinth of convention, hoping to light some lights, tell some stories and shake a few booties (in fact, I’m inclined to want to install a whole new power system, but let me not get ahead of myself!)

Yesterday, I facilitated two groups of feather-ruffled corporate newbies (coping skills required for learning about the challenges of inter-personal work dynamics!) One team identified with the symbol of a sports game and the others loved the idea of roles in a soap opera. Either way, we were relieved to know that life is not as serious as we thought!

The evening was spent, quite literally, shaking. Those of you who know me know that shaking is part of my modus operandi and I have recently learned a series of exercises designed to bring on deep-muscle tremors for trauma and tension release (TRE).

I led a group of facilitators through the process, made all the more comfortable by our hosts at dialogue Communications Training. If anyone deserves a plug, it’s them! Honestly, we got warmed rice bags for our necks, heated floors, exotic blankets, purple note-books and a glorious dinner thrown in – all this for skills honed from my experience of something that once proved my crazy-bliss madwoman status. What's more, I drove home in a new purple car!

Ah yes, as always, I am reminded to enjoy what I have, because it really is such fun!

home and hormones

I’m restless, looking for a warm space of comfort that feels like mine. Suddenly the adventure is cold and I want to curl up and belong.

I wander and fidget and cannot get comfortable. My bones are cold. I make soup to remember how it felt when I was me in another life.

I don’t want to wake, I don’t want to sleep. I just want to go – but I don’t know what that means. Why does my skin grow uncomfortable? Why am I so tight? I want to snap! Keep moving. Where to?

Electricity scratching under my skin; I’m numb and impatient with this world. Can’t sit down, there is no me-chair. Can’t relax, there’s too much noise. It’s all in my head. Stupid, stupid, stupid – everything seems ‘done’.

I clasp at fragrance, sunlight, leaves dancing for momentary ease. But I cannot stay eased, I am shrivelling up. Time and discomfort are etched deep as lines around my eyes. Listlessness hangs in my hair, sags; discomfort dimples my let-go skin and frazzles my ends. Moods scatter across me like weather patterns on fast forward. Who am I? (Just a moment ago, I knew.)

I blog, it soothes me like stringing beads.