The old grey mare ain't what she used to be...

(Ain't a 'she' no more, for a start)

Lately it has become increasingly apparent that the Zoo is getting on a bit. I can't drink ten beers in an evening and then make it to work in the morning. In fact, I would be lucky to even drink the ten beers. I can't really party three nights in a row, period. Sometimes I stuggle to do three or four different activities in a day (work, write, coffee date, art, play, whatever). The idea of afterparties exhausts me, and my perfect recovery is being in bed by dawn with a crumpet and a cup of tea. I don't do any chemicals anymore really-- never could really handle them but now they just floor me. Often I don't take as much pain as I did in days past, can't cop fifty needles or an hour-long beating with nearly the same ease as when I was first a painslut.

Sometimes, shock horror, even warmup (and in dire moments, foreplay) seem necesssary.

Much of this, I know, is to do directly with the thesis beast. It sucks a lot of energy, even when I am not working on it directly. If I write for more than four or five hours a day I pretty much don't want to do anything else afterwards. And the closer I get to the end, the more intense it becomes and the less energy I have for other things: making shows, socialising, dancing etc. The next six months is going to be HARD.

Much of this is also to do with my chronic sinus pain (8 or nine years now I reckon). This had been tenporiarily relieved by magical chinese herbs, but my therapist has left and I need to source another who can do the same thing for me cos nothing anyone else has given me has worked. Sneezing and wheezing for the first two hours of most days, and often an hour or more at the end, is quite debilitating. It makes one tired, and nauseasted, and eventually very flat and sad. Not to mention the pain, the day in day out pressure in one's face and gums and eyes and head. (Am trying to get details of an amazing chinese med dude in Marrickville pronto so I can get this all sorted. Its just foul, and has a massive impact on my everyday life.)

And some of it is just to do with getting old. Physically old, but also not WANTING to do so much anymore. Or wanting to do different, often quieter, things. Quality ovedrriding quantity. Increasing discernment, and increasing realisation that its only worth surrounding yourself with roses if you take time to smell them.

And I am comfortable with most of the shifts that are taking place in my head and even my body, I feel wiser and more happy with my place in the world and with myself generally and its all good. Mostly. Sometimes though, just sometimes, I see a young'un up on the rack with that thirst and that hunger for pain and sensation and everything and for a moment I miss it...

It's not gone entirely, of course. In fact I don't think that it has gone at all. I still want to learn things and experience as much as I can and travel and meet new people and throw myself into challenging situations and expand my boundaries and question everything but somehow the energy has shifted.

I'm not who or how I used to be, but most probably that is the point.