William Makes Windmills

William knows what he wants to do. William does things with his hands, head and heart. William has plans. Watch William:

SBS Documentary: Are You My Mother

On the net tonight I watched an old episode of "Are You My Mother", produced by Screen Australia and SBS. Here's the synopsis, taken from http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/program/are-you-my-mother/about/synopsis

Inter-country adoption is now the most common form of adoption in Australia, yet few people are aware of the power of the emotional experience when adoptees begin their search for birth parents living on continents thousands of kilometers away.

In this show two young Australians, originally adopted from overseas, set off on a quest to meet their birth mothers. Not everything is as expected, and painful secrets are revealed. Each adopted child has two mothers, and their stories are the bittersweet accounts of inter-country adoption; the search for identity, of 'letting go' and the love and pain of parents from vastly different cultures and backgrounds.

Who is the real mother of these children? What fears are held by the loving adoptive parents? Why did the birth mothers relinquish their children and where do the children now belong? These are stories of love and loss, guilt and pain, but ultimately they are redemptive journeys for everyone involved.

I cried; sobbed. It was a story of torn people. Torn culturally. Torn from the past and the future. Mother torn from child, torn from mother ad infinitum. Primal pain was this documentary's protagonist.

Entertaining the questionable notion of how to mother 'right' is fraught with inevitable disappointment because there's no right way to mother (outside of regular ethical behaviour naturally), right? Yet somehow mothers judge each other and are judged by others via a system that has different rules and shape-shifting goal posts to all other relationship games. Defining what 'is mother' is as futile as finding the script for 'right mothering'. Have a look at this post. It's all about mothering even though it's brief.

When my mother took her life 3 years ago I openly criticised her for being a weak variety of mother. She left children behind (albeit adult children). I gave her a big, fat effing 'F' for mothering like a turd on a stick even though, for the greater part of my life, I'd always considered her to be "A" grade mummy material. In her death I looked down on her. She quit sans one months notice and formal resignation letter. Her life long role @ Be a Perfect Mother Central Station for the Indulged was self terminated. Just after she died, I remember thinking "Mothers are responsible for passing on the most powerful legacy, especially to their daughters and grand daughters, so it's fine that I can't be bothered with her memory because she fucked it." Another "F" grade for legacy design of a manner much like the allure of wearing a turd for a brooch. Interestingly, I didn't assassinate her as a person because I felt deeply sorry for her person. I justified my harsh judgment with an assurance that my status as new mother qualified my pointed finger. Yes. I took the moral high-ground, unrolled my picnic rug and settled into criticism as bereavement therapy - wrong yet forgivable. Common amongst women. I still trust time's capacity to reminded me that it's wrong to judge her as a Mother first. My challenge is to observe her life and death by viewing her as a Person first, Woman second and Mother third while still allowing myself to be a hurt, motherless child when the grief demands this of me.

The young Philippine-born Australian woman featured in this episode of the series has two mothers and it appears that she's as unable to define mother as the rest of us. Clearly, however, there were two traits that the two very different women shared. One was that the nurturer (adoptive Aussie mother) longed for the nature connection found only through pregnancy and child-birth, and the natural mother grieved equally as deeply for the lost years of nurture. What one had, the other wanted. Second common trait was weight. They both weighed down heavily on this emotionally young woman. She was supported and loved, but she was burdened with maternal overload. The weight. Oh the weight of he mother. What the hell is that all about???

Throughout the viewing of the program I sat with hands on 5 month pregnant-sized belly, feeling our second child roll about, feeling how deeply he's loved, as is his 5 year-old sister who sleeps in the room next door. I sobbed for the pain I will cause my children some day and the fucking wonderful wild and unchartable trip that this whole being born and giving birth circus brings.

If I prayed I would pray this:

"Please, Guy, Father who knows only of the Perfect Virgin Mother, not the Actual Imperfectly Wonderful and More Interesting Mother, please remind me to not me weigh down heavily on my children, please let me love them in a way that frees them, please remind me daily that love as it is today is inevitably altered tomorrow, please help me to remember that in loss there is life. And while you're at it please erase your virgin-whore/vision of immaculate fertility-childless madwoman myth from the cultural memory of all judeo-christian peoples, it would take a real WEIGHT off my day. In the name of The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit (are you feeling the obvious irony here ladies?). Amen."

Space as Food

This weekend Rita and I went to Melbourne; one hour by plane north. I used to live there 9 years ago. As we flew over and looked down at the sprawl and sky scrapers, I felt no nostalgia for that place once called home. Breakfast in a caf on Rathdown Street inverted remnants of absent nostalgia. A well sized and brilliantly priced meal left me feeling perfect and wondering how Tasmanian producer of wonderful produce and eatery owners have not yet offered our plates (as culinary cultural habit) the same class and healthy price tagged consumer-combination of happiness ~ eating out here is so dull. Sorry Island Patriots ... I scratch my head when craving to eat out for yum-yum that's near nix. Don't you too?

Space. Space. Space. Seeing Rita walking up Smith Street was like watching a cat on a mat wwith sticky tape on its back. She was all without sense of space and straight walking lines. Made me giggle. She has no traffic awareness either. Made me worry.

While in Melbs we went to a beautiful wedding reception. Behind our seats was an open door with a weathered old fig tree outside, some shrubs and lots of well warn lawn baring patches of dry dirt. Every time I turned my head I would find her gone. I didn't have to look far. Outside was she, shoes off, sitting in the dirt, drawing with sticks, contemplating fig climb, hiding alone amongst shrubs. Inside the reception all the other children's dresses were still clean and dancing in circles was their food for the day's entertainment. Needless to say, Rita and I left early even though the event was beautiful and perfect.

Tasmania may not have a great series of eat-out options but our freedom of space is worth more than gold. Our children are fit and bright and their capacity to make wonder of open, green, space is as healthy for us parents as it is for them; box us and we wither.

To conclude, this clip makes me tingle with a very strong nostalgia. This was one of my favourite clips from when I was about 4y-old. "Laaaaaa-Mmm000000000"

A Note to Working Self

I've had a few days at home alone in the studio. Ordinarily J (hubby) and I work together. I like him; he's tha man - professionally and personally. Two days in the office da sola have worked wonders for my old grey matter. Space, I tell ya. S_P_A_C_E!

Room to think, room to move, room to wonder, room to wa'eva.

Daily I pump and grind away at out wee multimedia work. We've commercialised ourselves in order to work within our fields for descent dosh. Commercialisation of any art, by definition, is barely a hop skip and jump from one's field. It's eons away from the source. But that's ok because a purpose is being served. I'm sure J would still love to be sitting in a corner doodling mad shite on paper and I would most certainly love to still be working in theatre and scribbling paragraphs of poo that feel good and no-one will ever read. Why? Because it feels gooooooD!

Two days alone moved me away from the pumping of regular office activities. Instead I found myself pushing my love-jobs along: good for the soul. I came up with an entire summer's worth of movement classes and workshops to produce. This kind of work comes so easily. It isn't even work, doesn't feel like work, though it carries the same variety of tasks as my 'other work' and it brings in the bacon.

So lesson for the week. "D. work with what works for you. Regularly pull away from the pump and head for the flow, because it feels good, and it is right. Love-jobs are legit ... make a note to remember this."

Toodle Pip Creativity

I really enjoy this blog: the rachael papers . Her book 'The Divided Heart' has its heart in all the right places. Both her blog and latest book observe the process of living and behaving creatively as a near or clear professional creative. She tells tales of the struggle betwixt art and mothering. This blog post tells the opposite story.

Y'know. There is so much to gain from having children, more than I could either articulate or roughly list. Y'know, but for this little black duck, creativity is the first thing to go from my mix when child enters the zone. My very personal zone swells with child lickety-split and there seems to be little space left for much else.

I have a 5.5 year old and it's taken years to get close to being creative again. Now I'm 18 weeks pregnant and at my LEAST creative ever. I'm imagining that the same creative absence will happen this time round as last. Making children is creative, sure, quintessentially creative ... and here I find myself so empty of creativity, the paradox is nearly amusing, if it weren't so sadly true. I's ok. Sad for a sec. Then not.

Oh well. It'll come back if it is true. I wonder though if said creativity might send me post cards while on long service leave so that our love stays remembered, for later on when I'm less swollen.

***

A few moments after writing the above wee passage, then after a few moments thought, maybe I've found out why creativity leaves when I'm in child-land.

Maybe it's because creative 'life', though very rewarding and fulfilling, has historically been quite stressful. I don't want any stress when I have children to take care of. With spare time I exercise and meditate and garden, because these activities feed my wellbeing, and being creative has historically sapped me, though I've loved it.

My father used to say that 'the mother is the heart of the family, how she 'is', is how the entire family is'. I take this passed-on belief very seriously. Stressless is what they need me to be. I'm softer and more reasonable and more patient and more present and more fun when without stress. I'm happier now than I've ever been. Perhaps I'm less interested in stuff that comes from and is going on Out There. What's happening In There is far more interesting at this stage of life.

Maybe with wisdom and older children I'll be able to handle the anxiety that comes from delving deep within ... only time will tell. Ideally one day I'll be able to be creative sans anxiety. I'm sure to give it a go, but not tomorrow.

Worth a thought.

Ours

She's 5.5 and the apple of our eyes.

Company

October is both birthday and spring month. Birthday numero 39 was fabby and spring has been sunblock-worthy and BBQ welcoming. Friends are coming and going in thick waves ... winter can be so secluded. I'm supposed to be preparing for a work phone call with a potential client right now, so shall keep this post brief and just mention that our company of late has been high-end: let the summer roll on!! xxD

All' Alba

Tonight I'm scooting and scrolling about the net. Our fresh 14 week old fetus has abducted my fingers, toes, nose and tongue in order to make its own. My heart is fuller than ever and my arse concurs in fullness. A friend commented on my full 'rack' 2 days ago. I'm all full heart, arse and rack these days. Comical and true. I think the all day morning sickness has given me the day off today.

Having little R has shown me that we become our children as much as they become like us. I've inherited more from her than she has me. I wonder if new baby's weightless watery and flexible bubble feels like how I've been feeling. Am I mirroring baby's sense of space with this odd groundless sensation? Time has stopped, front, back, up and sideways have been too hard to differentiate. One small movement causes perpetual motion of my waters. My vestibular works are all cocked up. In short: I've been infiltrated by a fake sea sickness laced with a fake chronic hang over that makes me feel like I don't know where I am any more.

Pregnancy strips quietly, not just physically. Actually one way I can put up with this 1st trimester oddness is due to how bloody liberating pregnancy is, emotionally. The pay-off isn't just the potential of a new family member. It's self-altering, kind of how the death works. It forces you to give up the trite shite and let the big stuff wash over. It smacks you in the gob while shouting "Get the fuck over yourself, will ya!!!". Nature can be a real snippy bitch sometimes.

Today while sitting quietly I felt another wave of letting go. There's still lots more to come but today a newer and surer sense of letting nature take its pathway came; I threw my internal arms up in the air and said "Fucking hell, how could anyone think having children is burdensome! It takes away the delusion of control. Come on nature, let it happen ~ I'm at your mercy!". My job here it to let it happen, no matter the outcome. Nature likes it when she doesn't have to beat you into the truth. She prefers you to work it out for yourself, like all good mothers, friends and sisters do.

I had that bitch-slapped feeling when mum died. I remember someone asking me how I felt just a few days after she died and I remember it feeling really similar to the few days following childbirth; euphoric and frightening and like I'd reduced to a thing that's less than the size of a pin prick. Birth and death are to big to battle or sway with logic. Battle money issues, sway your therapist through your mine/mind fields. Death and life won't have it. They demand we relinquish our hold. Love does this too, don't you think?

What am I?

* flatulence is never far
* my fingernails are uncharacteristically flaky
* I cry at beauty
* 11 am every day I get a hangover without having boozed last night
* my temper has softened
* my house is extremely messy
* I piss like a bitch
* none of my clothes fit
* I can't stop drinking long cold glasses of milk, at lightening speed
* garlic makes me feel sick
* bending over makes me feel sick
* I have a husband who is uncontrollably redecorating our house
* my relationship with the couch is close and dependable
* I can't read
* I can't jog
* I can't sauna
* I have finally accepted that I have no control over my life at all, for now yet I feel blessed beyond words

What am I?

Amnesis # 2

I love the extra-net. I do. I just posted my latest post about a dance film I found and liked. The director found my blog post and told me that a newer version had been posted at vimeo.: shweeeet. I get to see it and the internet gets extra internetty.

(Again, if you want to watch this flick, you might need to pause my playlist that lives in just to the right.)

Dance on screen thrills me. I adore it. It's little known, appreciated and loved~ I heart all 3.
I hope you enjoy this too. Some dance films get all dancey-shmancy on my arse, which is ok yet testing. This flick is easy: a little bit of clear narrative, little bit of abstract notion, very pretty, teenie bit confronting, fractionally uncomfortable, beautiful, dancey not shmancy. I also like that the dancer smiles and that his character taught me a little something about men that I hadn't known before. I want to know who wrote it, if written? I love that dance film may or may not take a traditional film process. I was left with questions that don't have answers and I'm happy for my imagination to fill in the gaps that the film made. Nice.

From Simon Ellis, Director / Choreographer: "All our will, our wishes, our hope cannot stop this."

"Anamnesis visits the volatility of memory within the mind of an elderly woman. It considers aging and loss, and the ways in which dancing or movement is remembered and forgotten. How is it that humans might carry relationships through time?"

In the film, the artists—Cormac Lally (videography), David Corbet (sound), Bagryana Popov (dramaturgy) and Simon Ellis (direction/choreography)—seek to represent the biographical confusion and uncertainty of the woman (performed by Liz Jones) as the arc of the film becomes increasingly lucid.

Anamnesis from dc on Vimeo.

Thanks Simon!

Anamnesis, dance film by Simon Ellis ~ I like it.

Found this dance film a few months ago and watched it again today. I like it, a lot. To view it you might need to turn off my music playlist to the right: press pause.

From the director's blog: "Anamnesis is a screendance (dance film) project by Cormac Lally (videography/editing), David Corbet (sound), Bagryana Popov (choreography, dramaturgy) and Simon Ellis (direction, performance). The film visits the volatility of memory within the mind of an elderly woman."

anamnesis - latest draft from ske on Vimeo.

Miotto Love Jobs

Just about to start teaching a new round of classes. Yum. I love it. It's my love-job. My dad used to build BBQs and chimneys as his love-job. Hopefully one day I'll be as good as teaching yoga as he was at building fire holders. He used to say that he was so good at building brilliant burning chimneys and BBQs that if your wife were to stand too close to them, they would rip her pants off on account of the drawing up of air in the structure; undie suckers! What a guy, old Luigi Mose Miotto! Couldn't read or write but could whip off a ladies dacks at a BBQ without putting down his beer. Perfectly Italian.

Hilbarn: boxes of local grown veg!! Yipee!

Sitting here, feeling very yuzzy. Got a thrill! Came from Loz and Dinny. Cheers G!!
Here is is. A beaut. Made the yuzzies fuzz away for a moment. Hilbarn, Sharing the Love of Tasmanian Produce ~ bless 'em.
I'm going to pee myself when my box arrives. I am.

Our New Website

We just finished this, our new website: Brownbread and Butter Studio. I like it. I like it. We've been like the carpenter's family who have no kitchen cupboards. It's silly to think how long we've gone without a site and we build the buggers.

There's a storm brewing outside and Finley Quaye is playing loud in the lounge. Shweet wet Thursday eve. Finley and storm match.

Blue

From time to time I write about my mum's death here, and less often I write in a Word document on my desktop. In case you're reading here for the first time (context matters, right?): mum died very close to three years ago from an intentional morphine overdose. Needless. With needles.

The journey, for her (by her I mean her enduring memory, her legacy etc) and for us has been a torrid affair of the heart and soul. I know little about the Hows and Whys of her death, and her life, come to think of it. I used to thing that I understood it all, to a fine point. Not now. Of late, her death, her life, my life with her has become a whole catalogue of details that amount to only one reasonable item that I'd be prepared to put my money on. Less is more. The more I know, the less I know. The little I know is enough. I've stopped trying to understand.

I had a 'mum moment' on the bus a few weeks ago. J and R and I were leaving Tokyo after a bloody top rate holiday and I was sitting alone watching the road descend from the present to the immediate past; I love watching the road roll. I glanced up to see myself in the driver's rear vision mirror and I looked alive and happy.

Out of the blue I saw my mum's eyes in my mind. Just her eyes. They weren't still. They gazed at me but they were animated with her nature. Alive she had really strong black eyebrows and the bluest of blues. She had child eyes. You know the ones, those rare gems? That particular variety of eye is a beauty that everyone can see; child, adult, animal. Shape, size and colour don't matter; ideals of beauty don't count with the eyes. Hers were beautiful in shape and colour but most defining though was the child-likeness in them. I sat on the bus, rolling road, family to my left and watched her eyes. I was cautious at first.

When my caution burst, so did my own eyes. I sobbed. Sobbed. Painless sob. Relief.
The best thing about this vision of mum's blues is that even now, I only have to offer myself to see them some more, and there they are. I'm without conflict about these peepers. They are the real McCoy. In fact, I can see them now.

Without pain, without confusion, without suffering I've found my mother's blues and they're without pain confusion, suffering and most importantly judgment.

I don't know what this story means. I only know that I worry less for her and I feel a little freer.

Slip of Quill

Tonight I drew a slice of cake and it looked like a rodent dressed in a box. This wasn't an unhappy moment. Luckily I don't intend to become an artist ~ else I'd be fucked.

Sometimes I Stop

Just like that, sometimes I stop. Then I go again, inevitably, but when I'm stopped I can't imagine how it might feel to go again.

What stops? My mind and my actions; they stop.

What was I saying?
Yawn.
Stop.
(See what I mean?).

Japan MIx

Translation, Transgression & Transformation

Before having Rita I traveled lots, maybe too much for my mental health. Loads of travel kept me slippery and pointless in the present moment. I never really committed to anywhere, anyone or anything because I always had the undercurrent of travel threatening to move me. As I type I can read that I've giving the travel bug a bad slant in this post. Perhaps that's because still I feel that undercurrent's presence. Somehow I expected it to leave me. I haven't yet translated it. Does its presence mean that I will always travel or that I will never have a home or that ... maybe I should buy a van? Oh, no need. Jimmy has one. Perhaps it means nothing at all. I know not what it is, I only know how travel makes me feel. It's like dancing. It's perfect, even when it hurts.

We've just come home from 3 weeks abroad and I feel renewed. I feel like myself. That's a huge call because I've been winging for yonks that I don't feel located in me.

Being a mum is bloody incredibly. I love how it forces you to transform what you knew (pre-baby) into something more, a new renovated version of what you had and held as knowledge and habit. I often wonder if women redecorate and renovate their environments with a certain vigour when they have children because internally they are in a constant challenging state of spiritual and mental redecoration and renovation of the self. I feel that way anyway. Becoming a mother has slowly changed me completely. Renovation and home decoration can become a pathology, perhaps.

A good and easy example the forced change that comes to me with motherhood is travel. How I travelled before being a mum is extremely un-okay for child travel companions. I never knew what I was doing. I would go wherever with whomever and land somehow on my feet after a significant free-fall through what seemed reasonable at that time, in that space. Transgressions came and went. I was safe and happy. I love how travel creates its own punctuation marks in the narrative of your life. No forcing, moments just happen and cease. You go on a journey. And then it ends. It changes you. A full stop becomes an exclamation mark without any effort. I love that. Regular life chapters feels much more laboured and difficult to scribe.

Now, though, I'm a traveller again. But this time in a wee team: hubby and child and me.

I'm learning all over again how to do this thing that I'd pretty much moulded into my own shape. It took me years of experience to make my journeys mine. Now they're ours.It's still going to take some time till I adjust to group travel mode. Last OS trip I was in constant struggle. There were some pretty huge question marks flying at us on that trip, but they became full stops and eventually new chapters ... but they were struggle and then they became peace.

Best of all, while in Tokyo, came a moment when I looked at James and Rita and felt that this was my best journey ever. I remember many times in the past while travelling that I wished that I was with a partner and our child. Lone travel is lone. It's a ball and it's wild and fun, but it's lone.

So, now I'm learning how to travel boldly again, but small steps this time, there's a child on board. Japan wasn't especially adventurous; in ways it was. It was extremely good fun. It was transforming. We did good. It was celebratory.

I love tripping (and falling).

Tokyo Hoop

Babe teaching herself the wonders of La Hoop in Tokyo.
Beautie!