Wolves and Sheep

Whilst on the energy tangent, I have been contemplating how best to keep negative outside energy at bay without fighting fire with fire and thereby creating negative energy myself.

If someone is threatening to me or my family, on a physical level, then the obvious thing is to come back HARD at them. Someone takes a swing at you or your tribe, you knock them down and ask questions later -- there isn't any time to talk about.

But what if the threat is psychological, or psychic? My instinct is still the same -- you threaten the well-being of me or my crew and I will send you out cold and discuss it when you come around (in a psych* sense of course).

Fortunately, these threats are not as common as they might be, as I am relatively good at keeping the obvious baddies away from the start. But sometimes the odd wolf sneaks through in sheep's clothing, and I find myself suddenly cornered and having to summon all of my wit and my energy to push it away NOW. And its bloody exhausting, but what else to do? Where possible, that is, when the threat is not so big or so immediate, I will delay action and contemplate my moves and seek the past of least damage. Of course I will. But... I don't like having to play hard, and avoid it all I can, but when push comes to shove and extreme action must be taken, what's a Monster to do?

Farewell, Old Salt

Found out the other day that an old workmate had died. He was a crusty old salt of a bloke, a Scottish sailor who worked in the printing service and sneaked a ciggie at every opportunity. Cancer got him in the end, as well it would. I hadn't seen him for quite a while, and guess I didn't know him that well anyway, but I liked him a lot...

Somebody told me that since he was made redundant he had bought a boat with his brother, planning to sail around the world. Then he got sick, and that was that.

So I got to remembering the time I almost had my head blown off, and all the things I wouldn't have done if that bullet HAD hit me. The every day near misses too, the bus that COULD have knocked you down, the cliff you could have slipped off, the deadly snake that might have bitten your bits when you wandered into the bush to pee.

And I vowed yet again never to put off the joyous things in life.

Academic Wooze

Changed my hours at uni today to part time so that I can work on my health. It will give me another semester to get it done, and alleviate some of the pressure of having to work when I am really ill. It needed to be done, really. Taking care of Zoo is important.

Will still be working on it as full-time as I am able though, but I now have the 'luxury' of knowing that when the pain gets too foul I can lie down/head to acupuncture/get a massage/drug myself up etc and deal with it properly. Just knowing I can do that has taken a load off already...

Zoo Thousand and Ten

So, its the end of the noughties and into the... umm.. tweens? Much has been posted about making the next decade better that the last, but for me, the last was pretty grand on the whole (not in chronological order):

* Met the Monster. Several times, before we finally got ourselves sorted into the MonsterUnit.
* Came out. Repeatedly. As queer, kinky, etc etc.
* Reconfigured my gender. Bye bye 'girl/woman', hello 'monster'. Works for me.
* Got my arse to Uni, got my BA (Hons) and am currently a proto-Dr. Still have days of feeling like a pretendy academic, and paranoia from the fact that I was a high-school drop out. Silly, I know.
* Started performing. Still scary. Still do it. Still not sure why, but I need to.
* Embraced my creative side again. Participated in tons of photo shoots, films, wrote for magazines etc.
* Began to read fiction again.
* Learned to dance in public without a) freaking out that I was unco or b) need to be really drunk to avoid a).
* Got a lot of ink and metal. Shaved my head a lot. Didn't shave anything else much.
* Travelled a lot, mostly on my own. Lived in Sweden, visited NZ a few times, wandered around Europe and San Fran and NYC. Lived in Perth for a bit too, which is kind of like another country.
* Lived in zillions of sharehouses. Mostly with amazing, if mad, people.
* Had many relationships of various durations and configurations. Most of them lovely at some point, lots of them quite hideous in parts. Learned a lot from all of it-- I hope.
* Was quite a trashy tart when not having relationships. Or sometimes whilst having them.
* Became part of a fabulous community of performers, artists, writers, perverts, bears, divas and other gorgeous, generous, and joyous eccentrics.
* Stopped taking many chemicals, or thinking that I had to.
* Learned to appreciate my body in entirely different ways.
* Saw stupid amounts of fantastic art around the world, and lots of great theatre.

And ever so much more. Looking forward to the next decade of consolidating and building on all of this. Bottoms up!

Notes on The Art of Self Defence

* Apologies to anyone who may have been offended by that last post. Uncle Zoo is just very tired, and burnt out by the scene/community, and needs more tea and space and less folk to fix and manage.

* Please do not fret-- I am okay really. Monster is greater than ever (awww), Midsomer Murders is on tonight, the cat is purring, I'm about to have yummo vegan dinner with Monster and a mate, my thesis-writing has made grand leaps in the last week and I have a VERY hot new inkjob to perv at. Life is, overall, very very good. I just need to keep myself safe for a while, and that means devoting energy to things that bring me joy and hope and make me laugh and remind me that the world is a grand place. At this point of writing and thinking I just don't have the brainspace or time to deal with much else.

The Art of Self-Defence

The city is a dangerous place.

Went away with the Monster and some mates for the weekend, a getaway gift that was too good to refuse. Gorgeous big farmhouse, alpacas, vegie patches, wombats, rabbits, a huge bath, comfy lounges, grand beds, fireplace and PEACE AND QUIET. It was a perfect place to write, to read, to just BE and think and... I didn't want to leave, just get broadband set up and my books and papers sent there and stay for the next six months.

Back to the ghetto now. And I am panicked already-- its too noisy, too crazy, too many people wanting something from me, too much stimulation, too many people clogging up the footpaths, too many trains going past my window. I feel totally drained by this place and this community sometimes, and despite my very conscious efforts before I left here not to surround myself with mad (in a bad, messy, manipulative, destructive,not-playing-well-with-others way) folks, it seems that yet again I am collecting broken things and wondering why I am stressed every time my phone makes a text beep at me, why I jump every time the land line rings or Monster tells me she has spoken to one of our friends. Its almost always something very dramatic, and predominately negative, or so it seems, and I am frigging exhausted by it, by them, by the social worker energy I feel I am expected to maintain all of the time.

Yes, I am more than aware that I am in many ways a broken thing too. I freak and I panic and get into quite mad cycles of thinking and rant and rave. Pot, kettle, black.

All the same, this is not a healthy place for me to be in. Compassionate burnout, an attack of selfishness, whatever you call, I can't do much more of this at the moment.

So will be pulling back on more social things than I had intended-- going to far less events, having many less coffee dates with the energy vampires, staying off chat from time to time, going offline entirely for days, hibernating, doing what I need to do (writing, creating, sleeping, reading, cuddling).

Damn, I hope it works.

Ghosts

20 years I spent a semester in an adolescent psych facility (basically because I wouldn't go to school, and was pretty adament and stroppy about it). It was a strange time, sad but not entirely so, and it taught me a lot in ways that weren't in the program (smoking and cutting, for a start, but also more positive things). There were magnolia trees and an old boat shed and huge gardens and much magic in the making somehow-- the buildings were formerly a convalescent hospital. I wrote poetry there, I think, worked on my moontan, and read The Bell Jar. I met my first boyfriend there. He used to wear eyeliner, listen to Nick Cave and steal his mother's brain meds.

Last night we went to visit a young friend who is in the mental health facility right next door to the one I was in. Different institution as such, but was still a little odd to be driving down that road again. It has been a long time, and I wonder where that girl ever got to...

'I used to sometimes try to catch her, but never even caught her name'

Going Underground

'By dreaming and idleness and then by intense self-discipline does the artist live...'

--Winterson, Art Objects

And so to my thesis, my current and largest art project.

I have dreamed it, I have played with, I have slept on it, I have imagined it, I have read about it and talked about it and pondered it and now... The time has come to WRITE it. Properly. No holds barred.

Intense Self Discipline now. The winter has come and almost gone again, and the writing is starting to take shape. Maybe 40-50 000 words or so (out of 85-100 000) written up, more in draft form. Time to strap myself into the hard work of edit, rewrite, edit, rewrite, add, subtract, repeat. To this end, a note to my crew:

Please do not ask me to do any more shows until I have submitted the beast. If I get the urge to strut my stuff I'll contact you. At the moment I need to reserve most if not all of my creative juices for writing.

Please don't be offended if I don't make it out to a lot of events, or don't stay hugely long when I do. I still need the odd spot of trashiness and debauchery, but I also need plenty of shuteye and large chunks of time when I don't leave the house at all (except maybe for a wake-up walk or to fetch beer).

Visitors are often welcome though, so if you are in the hood and fancy a cuppa in our backyard then feel free to text. Just don't be offended if I say no, or postpone, or start getting twitchy when you're there and boot you out after an hour.

Creative fits are not predictable at all for me. My whims are erratic, and I my hours rather eccentric, and so I don't quite know what I will do next really. I will endeavour to behave responsibly, and not comitting to very much is the best way to avoid disappointing folk.

Still, deadline is February or thereabouts. Six months of Intense Self Discipline, lower levels of social activity, more chocolate, less beer and increased levels of incoherence adn delirium and it should be done.

Love you all! Wish me luck.

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.

Clicking My Heels

And so I have missed Mardi Gras for the first time in a long time. The photos are slowly creeping onto Facebook-- the Femme Guild, the leather crew, the dancing queens, the hoop stars, the glitter and sparkles and costumes and hugs. The ENERGY, the smiles, the sheer utter joy and celebration of it. Marshalling time, all camera flashes and 'I LOVE YOUR OUTFIT!' and catching up with folk you haven't seen since the last Queer Christmas. Swapping eyelash glue and stick on rhinestones, last minute cable ties and beers.

Tonight in Perth I was meant to be going to Zoo club, the one night of the week when the freaks (such as there are here) come out to play. Monster is unwell, and all of my friends have piked for one reason or another. In Sydney this wouldn't matter, I'd be on a bus doing my eyeliner on the back seat, walking up Oxford Street to Phoenix or some other scene of filth and wonder. Even on a Sunday, any Sunday, the laneways and gutters are alive. Here it is GLBT, no Q. Monster has a shirt someone printed years ago. It reads Queer As F&^K, some spiky haired androgyne next to the text, a pair of interlocked + rings alongside a pair of -> rings. Two boys OR two girls, sealed same sex couples, the ultimate in West Aus queer seems to be when the dykes mix with the queens. Nothing is fluid here, not gender or sexuality or politics or passions, and I am still surprised when I smell sweat on the dancefloor. If there are queers in this city beyond my immediate circle, I don't know where they hide.

My hair is spiked and my fishnets ready, all dressed up for another night on the couch. Mostly I am used to it now, I have my routine of lesbian drinks nights and women's reading groups and hanging with my new crew to get me through.

Tonight though, I'm conjuring the smell of amyl across the Nullabor as I settle down on the couch with DVDs and the Monster. Ah, the Monster. Somehow she makes even this okay.

Constant, Craving

Words for when one just wants to sit still and have some certainty of what will happen next. But knows it isn't possible, or even desirable really:

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
~Henry Miller

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
~Ellen Glasgow

25 Things You Never Needed To Know About Me

In case some of you don't get my facebook notes:

1. My favourite smells include WD40, frangipani, leather (despite being vegetarian), diesel, amyl on a dancefloor, and the spot behind my monster's right ear. I have a friend across the country who asked me to send her my smell in a postbag.
2. Recently I made a decision to just FORGIVE everyone that had hurt me in the past. It made me feel a lot better and far less injured, but takes some willpower to keep on top of.
3. When I first got to Berlin I waited hours for a friend in OstBanhhof (?), a train station. I was so inspired by Germans, even sausage-eating coffee-drinking pensioner Germans, that I wrote my first piece of erotica. I was in love and lust with that city from the moment I smelled him.
4. I left school when I was fourteen, despite being some sort of freak-geek that came top of almost everything. Or perhaps because of that. When I left school I could do calculus and complicated algebra, and now I cannot divide a restaurant bill. I miss the science-maths side of my brain. I still suffer from bouts of intellectual insecurity, even though I am close to finishing a PhD. No, its not logical.
5. When I was 17 I became engaged, to a man. 10 years later the relationship ended, we still weren't married, and I had never shagged anyone else or done anything kinky. By the end of the same year I had four partners of assorted genders and a highly developed threshold for whips and canes. I was always a very bad sub though, and have a tendency to top even when I am on the bottom.
6. I took acid twice when I was 14 or 15, and then didn't touch chemicals again until I was 27. They still make me nervous, both when I take them and when other people do. Much of this comes from having too many drugged-out partners and watching so many people in my community just disintegrate. That said, I have had periods of alcoholic despair and disaster that have put me in very bad places. In the past year or so I have made very conscious efforts not to go there anymore if I can help it-- and have been moderately successful. Still working on it.
7. I never understood how girls were supposed to act or interact, despite considering myself one. I avoided this for years by mostly hanging around with men, but when I started shagging women there was no avoiding it really. I still cannot compete at gossip, bitchy put-downs or stealing people's partners, but can now play agony aunt, breastfeed and bake vegan chocolate cakes. Maybe that just makes me a Sensitive New Age Fag?
8. I have hung by hooks twice, but not for very long, and want to increase the time I can stay up. I have also done a few flesh pulls, which are simply delicious. I cannot be all cool about piercing or tattooing most of the time, and just giggle and swoon about and moan when being skewered or inked. This disturbs some body-hackers, strangely. What, its NOT a turn-on or freaking big adrenalin rush for everyone?
9. When I was a teenager I used to cut myself with razor blades. It was mostly for dramatic effect, or so I thought at the time. I also refused to go to school, and ended up at some sort of junior happy house for troubled teens. Living with a girl who only quacked like a duck to communicate made me realise that I had a long way to go in the eccentricity stakes.
10. Despite being a gender-bending childless fag I have lactated three times, for reasons of curiosity and art. I wish I found it more sexually entertaining, as its a lot of hard work to maintain and if it was pervy for me I would probably stick at it for longer.
11. My biological family is quite physically eccentric, and I often felt different for being 'normal'' of body- no wheels, all my limbs, pretty average sensory capacities.
12. I love my family a lot. It makes me very sad that so many of my friends didn't have the same level of care and unconditional love that I experienced as a child, and still experience. They don't quite get a lot of the queer stuff, but when I told my mum I didn't think of myself as female she said 'I didn't think you had for years' and I realised that maybe they knew me better than I ever imagined.
13. I grew up Catholic, which is a fine beginning for a pervert and an artist. I did take all of it rather seriously, planning to save myself for marriage (if you didn't count oral) and having a thing for high collars and long skirts. I led my first Communion procession and used to get to read a lot in church. Somehow I always missed out on liturgical dancing though, which made me realise I wasn't one of the pretty and graceful ones. Either that, or I was one of the few they could trust to read out loud.
14. I am half-British, giving me a UK passport and a love of BBC television shows. The Bill (early), Rumpole, To The Manor Born, The Good Life, The Famous Five, The Wombles, Basil Brush, The Goodies-- such things still make me squirm in childish delight! I almost cry when I hear that Thames music. when the picture comes up.
15. When I was young I wouldn't let people shorten my name to Cath because I thought it sounded like a lesbian name. Go figure.
16. I tried for years to convince myself that I could be kind of vegetarian whilst still eating seafood, but have given up all animal flesh now. Still can't quite convince myself to go vegan though!
17. I love Bears, and consider myself trans-species sometimes, and believe I am a 120 kilo Bear trapped in a 65 kilo Girly Body.
18. My first tattoo was a very badly worked butterfly on my back. I fainted twice, and almost threw up, even though it didn't hurt. It is tiny, and a cliche.
19. I have a huge list of things I would like to do after my thesis, including a documentary, and possibly a book based on it. I also want to work with glass, learn metal work and be brave enough to breathe fire. That is as much of a career plan as I can manage.
20. I would love to keep bees, so I had honeycomb available all the time. There is something incredibly erotic about apiary.
21. I have resigned myself to the fact that what I do-- academia, art, etc-- does not make much money but sometimes I still get jealous of people with houses and cars and expensive bespoke suits.
22. I am a tragic old alterna-goth thing at heart, listening to Cure, Smiths, Siouxsie, Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave and such. I often believe myself to be a character from a Lloyd Cole lyric, or maybe one of Elvis Costello's lost loves, and my chosen name is from a Birthday Party song. For years I wanted to be Leonard Cohen's muse. Or the animal in the Hunters and Collector's 'Dog'. I'm licking your hand all over.
23. I like being naked. A lot. Especially at bathhouses, saunas, beaches, spas.
24. Size matters, and I never pack soft.
25. My new favourite word is 'mingent'. It is an adjective, and means 'discharging urine'. It also has the word minge in it, and makes me think of damp fur. Woof.

Wandering, Wondering

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window. It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this question of removal is one which I discuss incessantly with my soul.

-- Charles Baudelaire

A friend of a friend posted this as a comment in reply to a message about wanting to emigrate. It fits perfectly with my own soul-searching about my semi-nomadic lifestyle, and the imagining of who one will be if one is located somewhere else. As I prepare to return 'home' I can't help but fear that familiar places will bring about the return of my less desired elements as well as some I miss...

I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got*

I do not have a house of my own.
I do not have a husband, or wife.
I do not have any children.
I do not have any sort of real career.
I do not have any money to speak of.
I do not have any of the traditional markers of 'success'.

Maybe it is a post-birthday flip-out. Or a reaction to being refused entry to a straight club last night for no valid reason (not trashed, not trashy, not rude, not against dress code). Maybe its just what happens when I am surrounded by a lot of people with mortgages and proper jobs and weddings and baby plans- and that's just the queer folk. Maybe its just not having 'my tribe' around me but...

I could have had the Hallmark card. I had the makings of it: fiance, plans for a 'family', a job in finance. By now I could have four kids and a fifteenth wedding anniversary and a part-time job teaching and my house in the 'burbs half paid off. But I left it because I didn't want it, and still don't. But then sometimes, for whatever reason, I begin to feel insecure, wonder what I am doing with my life -- the script gets re-started and suddenly I am crying over breastfeeding and real estate agents and wanting a share portfolio.

Which is awful, and silly, because this is actually what I chose to do BECAUSE ITS WHAT I WANT. And it serves me well:

I have the gorgeous Monster.
I have an amazing family and unconditional love.
I have a spectacular set of loyal, creative, dynamic and generous mates.
I have an amazing queer community across the globe. And an artistic one too.
I have enough money to survive comfortably, for the most part.
I have the freedom to change location.
I don't have to worry about my public profile as such, or whether my workmates will see me dancing to the Spice Girls at the Court.
I don't have any obligations to children or pets.
I have a good education that enables me to access a wide variety of possibilities.
I have initiative, spunk and wit, and I will realise my plans and dreams in some way or another. I do every day.

And I do not want what I have not got.

*In the words of St Sinead.

Forgive+Forget

I'm very disappointed in you
and I don't handle disappointment well
I'd like to say I could forgive you
But I can never forgive; just forget
Now it would take me ten long years to forget,
That's 12 months of the year
four weeks of the month
and seven days a week
Well that's a very tall order, I got to say--
I don't have that much time to FORGET
That's a whole lot of hard and lonely time
When we could be together
Husband with this knife
I do you adore...

-- Diamanda Galas
'Do You Take This Man?'

All alcohol and cigarettes
There is no room for cheap regrets
-- Boys Next Door
'Shiver

As my grand gift to the world this year, and myself nonetheless, I have decided to forgive everyone who has ever done me wrong. Everyone. Without discrimination. It's not easy, and even as I type this I am listing and replaying a selection of the offenses and abuses in my head-- and it hurts. A lot.

It's time for an emotional detox, into rehab, get rid of the junk feelings and the bad habits. It's scary, REALLY scary, but even thinking about it makes me feel lighter, liberated, free. I realise that I may well need to 'fake it til I make it' in terms of not flinching when certain people enter the room, of consciously NOT recalling past injuries or reliving the darker parts of my past, or pretending to myself and everyone else that I don't want to be back there on some level. And I need a safe space to retreat to, and avoid certain more dangerous places where the temptation to dwell on earlier injuries is strong. Its like an alcoholic avoiding their local pub, or not allowing booze in the house... One day though, you just KNOW it needs to be done, for the good of all concerned, and that you can do it. So here it is. Done, or at least a work in progress.

No Sacrifice

Was talking to a new mate yesterday about their love life, as I settle in to my new role of Agony Uncle To The Queer (nice DV conversation last week, potential affairs advice this morning) and came to wondering about the sacrifices we sometimes make in order to be in a relationship. Not FOR another person as such, not the 'I'll stop smoking in the house so you don't have an asthma attack' kind of things, but the. pay offs that leave us ever so unsatisfied, and how we negotiate within ourselves what is able to be jettisoned and what we need to stay afloat. 'Can I live with no sex if I get lots of travel?' 'Can I deal with a drug habit if I get lots of kink?' 'Can I survive with no adventure if I get financial security?' I mean, can you transfer one positive value, one plus point for a minus somewhere else, can you balance it up? 'Well, I can never have another play piercing but she's a good cook?' 'He may not let me see my mates, but he takes me to the opera?' What is non-negotiable?

Sure, you can't do everything with your partner (in most cases). This is why I have, and maintain, a menagerie of art mates and theatre mates and dancing mates and pub mates and blood mates and all manner of people for all manner of activities-- so its not that you can't get different things from different folk. Its when having a partner stops you from getting what you need at all that concerns me.

The conversation brought back a lot of memories for me, of plays I missed seeing and clubs that disappeared before I could get there, of people I lost contact with and practices I didn't engage in and hankies I didn't flag and politics and philosophies I ignored for long periods of time. Things that MATTERED to me, that were important to my my creativity and identity and intellect and community, and that I gave up little by little to pamper the egos and insecurities and laziness, the paranoia and limitations of past partners. The sadness and stunting I engaged in to try to maintain some sort of status quo. 'You're not the same as when I met you, you're clingy and apologetic and small and flat, you're nothing like the advertising.' NO SHIT. It an awful situation to have to censor whole sections of you life, amputate or repress large portions of one's psyche!

Which is yet another reason I am so happy to have Monster. Someone to explore with, to have adventures with, to become bigger and freer with and through and alongside. Yay!

Gender Jitters

Having some strange attack of Gender Jitters, think mostly to do with float and Bear talks and whatnot, being immersed in it again. Am all the better for the exposure, but still my heart is racing and I'm beginning to sweat and I'm all a-fluster...

Damn, some days my life seems like an extreme sport. Dangerous, requiring periods of intense concentration and willpower, but ultimately wonderfully exhilarating!

Her Shadow, On The Move

Even on holiday, 4000kms or so away from most that is new and stressful in my life, that ghost is there. Not happy just to haunt me on home turf, but always present, somehow, making certain quite pointedly that I know there are places I can never occupy, places that are hers, places she is unwilling to vacate. I don't begrudge her being nostalgic and wishing for things long gone-- we all do sometimes. Letting go is an ongoing and gradual process, and never complete. But...

Four days wasn't much of a reprieve to ask for. Of course, she is not in Sydney, but that is not the point. Neither is Monster.

Product Of My Environment

in a conversation with a mate just now i realised yet again just how good it is for me to be away from a lot of the bad freaks i have been associated with over the years. as i wrote:

'i have learned that i am a product of my environment and the more moody substance-abusing crackpots with no ambition, life, passion, derring-do or vigour i surround myself with the more of a tragic depressed sadarse i become'

and its true somewhat. i am MUCH better for having a stable household environment, without having to stay locked up in my room 'cos of stompy grouchy morning people, or deal with their comedowns, or have all my food eaten, or monitor and inhibit my own joy lest they find my happiness too confronting... chilled, cooking all the time, spontaneous dinners for friends, getting more work done, able to come and go as i please. and so much more creative and happy for it!

Potted History

My high School Reunion is coming up soon. It is a Catholic girls' school. In the far and dodgy Western 'burbs of Sydney. I will not be there, but they emailed me today wanting an update on what I had been doing for the last 18 years or so. This is what I sent them:

Potted History of Insert Original Name Here*/Zoo.

Insert Original Name Here*left dear old St Blah**'s in 1990 or so, to pursue her long-held dream of deconstructing and interrogating almost everything she had ever learned in oppressive religious institutions. The next dozen years or so brought a long and fabulous engagement to a very sweet man, an exciting career trading rare and collectible records in Sydney and afar, a brief and unmemorable stint of corporate whoredom and a love affair with black liquid eyeliner and un-natural hair colourings. As Saturn returned Insert Original Name Here* found herself transformed into a Godless, feminist, leftie, wanton spinster and queer, pansexual, gender-irreverent academic. Somewhere along the way, Zoo emerged from hir armpit and took over some of Insert Original Name Here*'s responsibilities in regards to activism, performance art, body modification and general rabble rousing.

Insert Original Name Here*/Zoo is living in Perth with hir Significant Monster, writing up hir University of Sydney PhD on the cultural meanings of breast milk, engaging in freelance journalism, the occasional art installation and as much travelling as sie can hustle up time and funds for. Once hir doctorate is in completed sie intends to do more of the same. With abandon.

* Yes, I know a lot of you know it!
** Close enough