Runnin' naked through the snow ... etc, etc

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For some reason this morning I got thinking about what I would want to do if I only had three months to live ... and you know what? I started panicking that I haven't yet written my third novel. The novel I have been waiting to write my whole life. That is the FIRST thing I thought about.

Would I really spend that last three months trying to get it finished? Am I really that obsessed? Wouldn't I want to grab my significant other and drag him to Australia to meet my whole family? Maybe take him on a trip through the Aussie outback and wear hats with dangling corks and blow into didgeridoos and fight crocodiles?

Wouldn't I want to see the Mesoamerican pyramids up close and personal? Fly a helicopter over the Amazon? Run naked through the snow? Fill a bath with glass seed beeds and sit in it? (with knickers on, of course, wouldn't want them getting stuck anywhere, right?) Wouldn't that just feel so weird and amazing on your skin? Ever since I was a kid I wanted to do that ... Okay ... I'm a bit eccentric, but we all knew that, yes? Ha!

Look, I know it's not a very nice thought, only having three months to live (knock on wood), but tell me, how would you want to spend your time?

WHY I am like this?

I had a conversation with someone yesterday about being in outsider, and we have two things in common. One, we are both artistic, and two, it all began when we were very young.

When I was a kid, nobody liked me. It wasn't until I was about 16, in high school, that I started to make 'real' friends. I'd had friends before, but they always abandoned me when someone 'better' came along. I'd spend my recess and lunch times alone in the playground, eating my vegemite sandwiches and apples and if I was lucky, my crackers and cheese dip, leaning against a red brick wall, more often than not crying. I'd be led on by 'popular girls' by them saying that they wanted to be my friend and to come and play, then they'd take me to some 'out of bounds' area of the school and run off, leaving me there, without much clue of how to get back, then I'd be late back to the classroom and scolded. To teachers I think I was the kid that 'wasn't quite right'.

I would fake being sick on Wednesdays. I remember that well. We'd had Math on Wednesdays. Teachers told my parents that I didn't like doing anything in groups. Funny, I'm still a little like that today when it comes to 'work'. I like being alone, able to think at my own pace without someone looking over my shoulder. Is that some sort of insecurity?

I am an only child (I have a half brother and sister that are younger than me but we didn't live together), so I guess I was selfish with my belongings. I was also shy, so I guess I seemed snobby and stand-offish and unapproachable. I don't know why I was like that, especially considering my mother was quite nuts when I was a very young girl - and I mean nuts in an eccentric kind of way, not mentally ill, so I always had very lively and outgoing people around me.

What exactly turned me into such an intorvert? And although I have friends now (very FEW close friends actually, I have more aquaintences than real friends), I still prefer to be alone where it's safe to let my mind tick tick tick over and over and over without trying to concentrate on being social. And I wonder, I really do wonder WHY I am like this. Am I afraid of something? Do I have some sort of mild agoraphobia? I really don't know. But I do know this: Every time I have plans to go out, I sift through excuse after excuse to cancel, but there's a second voice that says, no don't be ridiculous, go and have some fun, for goodness sake. And I do, and when I'm out, I usually wonder what the hell I was worried about and really enjoy myself.

So what is that? Can anyone shed any light? Is there anyone else out there that has experienced any of what I have written here? Do you think these 'feelings' have anything to do with being artistic?

Where's my home? I've lost it!

Living in a foreign country poses some difficulties sometimes, especially regarding the 'language' factor that I've spoken about before. If you don't know what I'm referring to, check out THIS POST.

Anyway, despite the obvious fear of losing touch with natural-sounding English and it threatening the quality of my writing, and the idiosyncrasies of the Greek culture mixed in with my Australian in-your-face-ness, there is one more thing in my life that is a little odd. And I kinda miss it. I never ever come home and think, 'ahh ... home sweet home'.

You know why?

Because I have too many homes. No, I do not own houses here there and everywhere, what I'm talking about is the 'feeling' associated with a home. I've lived in Melbourne, (a multicultural city in Australia that has every single thing you could possibly dream of available to you, and a community of easy-going, creative, and artsy types at my disposal), Athens, (a Greek chaotic, polluted city that seems to have a unique charm that not many learn to appreciate until you spend a lot of time there), and Ithaca (a picturesque little island in the Ionian Sea where a small community of gossipers live, which I have learned to love and cherish for some odd, eccentric and irrational reason).

Anyway, what's my point?

My point is, which one is my 'home sweet home'??? I want my 'home sweet home', but I'll never ever get it again, because although I live in Athens permanently, I do visit Melbourne every couple of years or so for a couple months, and I do visit Ithaca at least once a year to see my parents. And every time I arrive, I have that 'almost home sweet home' feeling, but never completely. I feel like I'm missing out on that simple life pleasure of returning home after a long trip. Am I missing out? Or am I whiny for no reason? It may seem stupid being whiny about such a thing, but I can't help it. I want to feel that 'Ahhhhh...." when I step foot inside my front door again. What I have is a 'house'. But I want a 'home'.

How about you? Do you live in a house or a home? And how do you feel about it?

After 30 years of lies, trust sounds like a hiss and a spit.

Say it over and over again and it doesn't sound so secure. It sounds like a hiss and then a spit. A hiss to scare the wits out of you, and then a spit because it doesn't actually taste as good as you thought. It sounds and tastes like a caution "taste me in small doses, because I can be deceiving."

Why, when we love someone, do we trust so easily?

Why, when we love someone, do we just expect it in return?

Why, when we love someone, do we believe that what we see is what we get?

Why, when we love someone, do we want to trust them more than anything?

Why, when we love someone, do we allow trust to be broken over and over again?

Why, when we love someone, and that trust is broken, do we lie to ourselves and say we will overcome it, and then pretend to trust them?

Why, when we love someone, and trust someone with all our hearts, do we lose trust in ourselves?

What would you do, if the only person you have loved and been devoted to for the last 30 years, breaks your trust? Not only breaks your trust, but makes you realise, that everything you thought was true over the last 30 years, is not, and you have actually been devoting yourself to a compulsive liar, and believing everything, simply because you love them, and trust them?

You feel a fool. You want to run. But you can't. Because you're haunted by the love, the history between you, what you thought was real, and you think you are going to get it back, but deep down, you know you won't, because trust is now a caution. It's a hiss and a spit. It's telling you to get out - to get out before is hisses and spits again - and again - and again - until you are so heartbroken that you don't know how to live any more.

(this is not about me, folks - so please don't be alarmed)

Do Do Do, Don't Wait

I believe that for some, writing is like wanting to be a mother. You’ve spent your entire young adult years dying to have a baby (write), but wondering when would be the right time. Your maternal (writing) instincts are strong, perhaps stronger than average. The urge to be a mother (a writer) is all you keep thinking about, but you keep delaying it in the hope that you can fulfill all your other dreams first, and gain some experience - fulfil the dreams that aren’t quite as important, but nevertheless things that you’d like to achieve in your lifetime before you dedicate the majority of your time to being a mother (writer). Then you reach an age where you feel you’ve done everything that you’ve wanted to do and all that’s left to do is to have a baby (write your first novel). The path you chose to take, however, you now realize, has led you to an empty space. It’s only now that you realize you should have had a baby (written) first, while you did all the other things, because now you can't conceive (remember all your ideas). So, if you want to be a writer (or a mother), don't wait any longer. Start procreating NOW!

What do we women wish for?

Sometimes I wish I was brought up living on a little farm and all I knew how to do was milk the cows and collect eggs. I wish all I ever knew about the outside world was what I read in the out-of-date secondhand school books I had as a child because that’s all my parents were able to afford. If I lived on a little farm, I would grow up to be so loyal to my family that I would take over the farm when they died simply to keep it in the family. I would then teach my kids how to milk the cows and collect eggs and when it would be time for me to die, I would die content and satisfied with my achievements, because I would have achieved what I had set out to achieve. My kids would then take over the farm to keep it in the family too and it would continue like this for generations. My great great grandchildren would look at photographs of me on the farm and say, ‘Wow, can you imagine being alive then?’ That’s what I do when I look at old photographs of my grandparents. I look at the captured moment of happiness and that’s what lives on forever.

Has it ever occurred to you that the less one has and knows, the happier they are? The more one knows about the world, the more one wants to explore, and the more torn one feels. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it’s exactly like me, and it's called ambition, but I do wonder sometimes, would my emotions fluctuate so much, if I didn’t have all these ambitions that I can’t possibility do, all at the same time, and which make me feel like I’m not achieving my goals because there is too much that I want to achieve? If I had a simple life on a farm for instance, and never knew any better, would I be happier?

Do you think you would be more content if you wanted less?

Master Maturity Mustn't Matter

Someone once told me that you know you have fully matured when you can comfortably act childish. Well, I’ve never stopped acting childish from the word go, so does that mean I was mature as a child? Or does that mean I’ll never be mature because I never made the transition from child to adult in order to become child again?

I’m 29 years old and I still feel as though I have the mind of a budding teenager. But for some reason, lately, I've ceased to let the public see that side of me. I must appear a woman who’s really got it together to people who don’t know me very well. Actually, now that I think about it, does anyone really know me inside out?

My problem is, I never let my vulnerability see the light of day anymore. When did it become wrong to show one's flaws or idiosyncrasies? And what made me feel I had to? Is it just me who thinks and feels like this? Or do other people assume a front exuding with responsibility and rationality as well? If it is just me, then when and how does the mature, rational and responsible metamorphoses occur? Is there something I'm supposed to buy? A pill? A psychologist? A cough syrup?

But, you know what? Today I've decided that I'm going to take pride in being childish. It's time to let down my hair! (Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, Flow it, show it, Long as God can grow it, My hair ...)

Don't you think life is too short to worry about how others perceive you? I certainly do. How about you?

Living in Limbo?

Ever wondered if we are actaully dead, and that the world we are living in is something like limbo?

Imagine if, Earth as we know it, is the middle world, and that the real world is something like Hell, and the afterlife is something like Heaven.

It just occured to me that people on Earth live with so many regrets that they keep trying to make up for. So wouldn't it be logical, for Hell to be the place where we make all the mistakes, Earth to be the place where we learn from our mistakes, and Heaven to be the place where we no longer make mistakes? Makes sense to me.

So I guess, if this were true, we'd have three lives. Gives a whole new perspective on the phrase "third time lucky" doesn't it? It also makes that phrases make more rational sense, don't you think?

Hmm, I reluctantly write this, because I know there are a lot of people who are very religious, but I just thought it would make an interesting topic of conversation. Despite me not believing in any religion in particular, I'm very spiritual. I believe there is SOMETHING out there, but not sure what.

So what do you think? Have you ever thought about alternative scenarios like this?