Now

Anyone else turn into a monster when they are hungry?? I have learned to recognise the angry beast which rears it's ugly head whenever the munchies hit, gnashing it's teeth and howling from the hunger pit. The beast must be fed!!! 
I wish I could write more but the hungry monster has taken a chunk out of my brain.

Beauty tips

It seems that flowers have no shame, no vanity when it comes to being photographed.  And THIS I love them for.  It's probably why they are one of my favourite photographic subjects. 
People being one of my other favourites.  However, unlike the very obliging flower community, happy to pose with no inhibitions for my snippy-snaps, people are not always so keen.
People, it seems, have a much tougher job in front of the camera.  How many people do you know who really seem to hate having their photo taken?
I had a friend who used to fake a sick day or failing that, sneak out of sight at the last minute every time we had class photos.  I think he was only in one photo I had.  I have a feeling his parents had a distinct lack of photos of him too.
In my friend's case, I don't think it was shyness which caused his intense dislike of camera-focus, but a genuine suspicion of his image being kidnapped, held captive on paper and never being free to roam again.

I don't think flowers think that deeply about the whole thing.

However, for a lot of people, it's not so much about a belief in how a representation of your image may be problematic at a philisophical level, it's about plain old self-image and self-confidence.

You feel good and gorgeous - what's the liklihood that you are quite happy about the idea of a representation of this being captured and admired - and surely you want to share it with the world!! 
You feel stink and sucky - and I'm guessing it's not something you want recorded and probably don't want going out into people's lives via facebook.

Flowers appear to just wake up every morning looking gorgeous, un-worried about their appearance, secure in their identity and shamelessly showing off their brilliance to anyone who stops to look.  And what exactly, I wonder, stops us human-flowers from waking up with exactly the same confidence.

Flowers look good.  Flowers smell pretty damn good.

I'm pretty sure we would look and smell good too if we just allowed ourselves to be naturally who we are - without adding into the mix (beyond a nice healthy shower...because I'm advocating natural here, not *unclean*.  There is an important difference) a whole host of lotions and potions, concocted out of some pretty freaky sounding chemical components (do we actually KNOW what we are scrubbing into/spraying onto/massaging into/applying to our bodies?) which effectively just disguises the natural you.  And the natural you is where it's at.  THIS is enough.

It's not that I don't like all the additions.  It can be fun to dress-up and I am the first one to say *yes please* to sparkles and glittery shimmer.  But when I begin to not recognise myself without my carefully applied mask, and the morning routine has to accomodate not just getting clean and fed but also getting a professional paint-job, I start to wonder why can't I be more like a flower...

Are we afraid that what we have on the outside in its pure and natural form, is not enough?

The ability to think, reason, analyse, rationalise, imagine, dream and visualise are human qualities which flowers are not particularly known for.  Flowers, beautiful as they are, offer a beauty which is uncomplicated by the inner world - which us human-beauties have to contend with.  At one level, this makes the human beauty-thing extremely complex, as no matter how physically attractive we may be, our mental capacity for criticising, self-depreciating and comparing can be exhausting.  It can also convince us that we are not able to exist comfortable in our natural state...and beauty must be cultivated, rather than accepted as already in existence.
However, this inner world also offers a whole exciting dimension of thought, feeling, soul or spirit, which gives us the capacity to be beautiful - really beautiful - at a much deeper level.
We are not the shallow beauty which is merely skin deep and our outer skins do not define who we are.

Human-beauty may be breath-taking, even heart-stopping but it is only interesting if we accept there is much more to ourselves than external shimmer and dazzle.  The danger is that versions of beauty, immortalised in photographs, can seduce us into thinking these are THE template for perfection and this is where, frankly folks, flowers are a much better role-model. 

See what I'm saying people.  Flowers.  Forget models and magazines trying to sell you all the additives - it's all about the average bloom.  Let's get inspired to get real and find the beauty which IS each of us, by seeing it reflected in what exists all around us...and maybe, just maybe if we start to feel it, we might just start being it.

So gorgeous people, I say let's go hunting for the sparkle that lives in each and every one of us.  Find it and shine it up, give it some respect, learn to appreciate it and most importantly SHARE it with others.

And then I might get a photo out of you too.

Quick thought

This is the view I wake up to every morning. It's always the same and it's also ever changing.
I could look at beauty like this for hours and never get tired of it for these very reasons. It stays the same and yet it's never the same.  Far more interesting than botox. And surgery to erase your quirks. And shopping at Glassons.
Yay for great views.

Know it all

Our choice
to control our own actions
is all we have control over

DAMMIT!!

why am I always the one that has to change??

Our voice
might offer the best choice (we know it does)
in our expert opinion

do you know how experienced at life I am????  DO YOU????

Thank you for your input.

But I will be choosing that other

(inferior) way...

ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME???
Because I'm TALKING ABOUT ME AND I HAVE SOME PRETTY INTERESTING STORIES ABOUT ME
AND IF YOU KNEW WHAT WAS GOOD FOR YOU
you would be listening pretty darn hard right now because MY STORIES are a gift
and if you knew what was good for you YOU COULD BE DOING THINGS
JUST LIKE ME AND (I'm pretty sure)YOUR LIFE WOULD BE AWESOME

(because right now I am setting a pretty compelling example of awesome)

HEY HANG ON A MINUTE...COME BACK HERE...I'M NOT DONE...

DAMMIT...why am I yelling when you are not even appreciating my efforts

hey this is really exhausting,
doing all this for you
sorting your life out for you

A thank you would be nice.
I'm working pretty hard here.

Again, all we have is the choice to
control
not everyone else in the room
(no matter how much we know better)
but our response
exercising calm

BUT YOU ARE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKE
NOT FOLLOWING MY ADVICE

Of course this is true

from your point of view.

But

are we in the business of knowing what someone else is feeling?
Thinking?
Playing God is hard work

It might be easier to just
let you make your mistakes
and exercise the only control I have...
my choice to
be here
for you
when you ask
for me

On time

Being on time is not that thing I'm famous for.  It's not that I don't respect time or other people's time...I just don't find it a very easy beast to understand.  I mean, what is time, really? It's a very arbitrary, abeit necessary construct, and yet I find myself debating with time and it's invisible elusive nature on a daily basis.

  However, others may argue that spending time debating time is surely an unnecessary waste of time when you could be doing something constructive with your time.  Hmmm.  People of this persuasion may have a point.  BUT maybe I need to begin by commenting on the phrase "doing something constructive with your time."  If you can't see something happening, does this automatically mean a) nothing is happening or b) that someone is not being constructive?  Sometimes being still and silent is by far the most constructive choice of time-usage you could make. Yet how often is this given as an option, in say, the workplace? Um, Susan you seem to be needing some time-out, why don't you take as long as you need to refresh in the comfy-corner, in silence. Ha!! What madness!! And what a waste of productive time! Time is money and there aint no money being made laxing back in the comfy-corner. But hangon a minute, is it really madness?...we DO use this way of valuing time with our kids, but why is it that we stop honouring a need for slow-down-time when we grow up?  

If 'constructive' needs to be tangible it also undermines the fact that we all have an inner world of thoughts and imagination - whether we consciously acknowledge it or not - and the emphasis on a societal norm of time construction, viewed in a very concrete way does not allow for the invisible which gets sidelined by the power of producing something.  Especially in adults.  The expectation is that we no longer have a need for time to take care of this inner, imaginative, thoughtful part of ourselves. The part where we find meaning and develop our values and principles of what life is really all about.  Ha! Again, what madness.  Can you buy and sell it? No? Then there is no time for it.

Well, for me, whether it's the standard flavour of the day or not, if I am honest with myself, I know I need this time. Hell, I demand this time.  Society may not encourage it but I believe it' absolutely necessary.  Because of this, time just doesn't go at my speed. I move slow, and when forced to rush I feel pressure that just doesn't make sense.  What's the hurry we are all in? What is so in need of doing that I must ignore all the fabulous people, conversations, moments, views, sparkly things that catch my eye in order to be constructive...whatever that really might be. Slow as I may appear to be, I am constructing a whole fabulous dimension to me which counter to what we may be led to believe, has an important impact on the outer world we live in.

Time, can be viewed as either a gift we all have the choice to be generous with and share with others or it's a buy and sell commodity, scrooged away, measured by money and controlled by the clock...

Time and space are some of the ways - important ways - of measuring where we are and when things are happening...but our obsession with controlling it may leave us empty and alone.

Make time wait sometimes. Put time on hold sometimes.  Forget about time sometimes.  Enjoy time...with the knowledge that nothing you do is a waste of time.

Dreaming Reality

Ah, yes.  The night time musings of a narcoleptic.
Probably wise to take with a good dose of salt...salt, not sugar because sugar almost always tips this girl into sleep before she can finish that last piece of dairy milk.  Must...finish...last...piece...*zzzz*

And maybe, just maybe this is my best work...these thoughts...the stuff on the edge of sleep...this might really be the smartest stuff I've ever tried to concoct. But I'm not sure I'm the best gauge of brilliance when my head's nodding and bobbing towards any surface willing to bed me down.

Sleep.  Weird stuff.  But absolutely vital.  It's also something that I imagine is not given a lot of thought, unless there is a problem with the mechanics of actually doing it.
Being someone who has plenty of the stuff - in fact, really more than I need - I have had to adapt to the idea that sleep can take place anywhere, anytime.  Before I became this person, I took for granted that sleep was predominantly a night time activity done in the privacy of your own home, in the privacy of your own bed.  Other than your parents, who may have watched you fall asleep as a wee cute kiddie (totally cool and normal) or a very intense love interest who you would wake up to staring into your eyes *I just love watching you sleeeeeeep* (totally weird and stalker-ish)  Ewww.  Come on, that's not just me thinking weird is it.  That's some weird stuff right there.
Point being, other than the exceptions...the rule is that you get to do your sleep thing in private.

So when sleep approaches like a freight train and crashes into you standing in line in the supermarket, or mid-conversation with friend who is finally opening up about that really personal and serious thing that they have mustered up the courage to share with you, or eating Christmas dinner...every year.  If sleep jumps on you during the day, during normal opening hours, the thing is, YOU are the only one asleep.  You have temporarily stepped out of conscious-land.  However, as noted, everyone else has not joined you for an 11.32am siesta on the St Clair bus into town.  Although that would be cool.  I would make sure I caught that bus everyday.  But no, it's just you...the lone sleeper...asleep at the wrong time and in the wrong place...and what is a very private act for almost everyone else, becomes a public spectacle.

Being asleep in public renders you completely vulnerable in a lot of ways.  You have to give up on the idea of what you might look like as you twitch and flex and relax your way into sleep.  You have to accept the fact that you miss out on conversation, the final episode of a favourite TV show, saying goodbye to people who might leave, the scenery between Balclutha and Papatowai...and you have to surrender your control over situations you can't guarantee you will be completely present for.
But it does mean I get to dream during waking hours.  How amazing is that???!!  As I slip in and out of sleep, the conversations which go on around me are woven into my dreams and that line between sleep and not sleep is very firmly blurred.

I don't trust my memory anymore because half the time I dreamed it up.  This can be frustrating.  But it also adds a whole layer of richness to my life - where my imagination and my reality become very much entangled - and well, I don't always think that's a bad thing!  It enables me to continue to look at the world with wonder and surprise and marvel at things.  It teaches me that there is much MORE to life than just the tangible - what you can see, know, hold in your hand.  There are layers to our understanding of what reality is, and life is all the greater for being able to see things in this way.
I ramble.  I rave.  I really need to sleep.
Narcoleptic saying over and out.

Kicking Off

The way I express myself best is usually in the talk zone.  However, before I even get to the talk zone, I am formulating a thousand ideas at any one time in the think zone.  My thoughts are like little ants made mad by the heat running back and forward in the sun.  Occasionally though, these thoughts get themselves in order and form a very uniform regiment, marching in a very straight line, towards a very specific destination.  But this is unusual. 
The talking which starts as thinking kicks off in my brain...usually as soon as I get up. 

OOh, sunny day, wow gorgeous view...oooh, why is the world beneath my feet a bit crusty...should vaccum...will do that later...hmm and why did my partner not put away his shoes...shoes...SHOES, I love shoes.  Ah, *sigh* those gorgeous shoes in the Meridian mall that I keep walking past and wanting to stroke, occasionally have stroked, oops.  So sparkly who could resist being lured in and then, of course, stroking.

At this point I might pause, temporarily, and realise I've made it into the hallway...but why am I here?  What was the purpose of all this getting out of bed stuff again?  Temporary blank, but towel which has made it into the mix, casually thrown over shoulder just so (after years of repeating this action over and over again, it is now a given, whether my thoughts are straight line or not). 

Shower.  Must be the point of all this.  Must get in the shower.  Catch a glimpse - oh ok, not so much a glimpse, more a very interested investigative stare - of myself and as usual I look just like I always do.  How is it that this fact still never ceases to surprise me.  For some unknown reason - and one that I don't think I have ever really given much thought to until just now - I am actually disappointed and then just as quickly, relieved every day I look in the mirror.  Disappointed because there I am, exactly as I always am.  Relieved because there I am, exactly as I always am. 

And then it starts all over again.  The thoughts.  The ideas.  The inner conversation that is my way of making sense of the world.
I think we all have this dialogue inside us.  Some of us enjoy the conversations we strike up with ourselves.  But some of us don't like the think zone.  My theory on this is that think zones are like rooms you can go to check in on ideas, air out concerns and bat around a few fresh thoughts if you feel so inclined.  If you are someone who is pretty much at home with themselves then I'm guessing your think zone is one that you walk into and feel instantly at home.  These think spots have the welcome mat out and are pretty great places to hang out in.  And having pondered this all long and hard for hours and hours as the hot water runs down the drain...to where...and ooooooh, what happens to all that shampoo-residoo...and does it really kill dolphins...*sudden guilty feeling about using shampoo* and how long have I actually been in here letting the water run over me like a virtual cloak keeping the day - so far so good - at bay...
I digress (of course - the thoughts keep coming...) so forcing a straight line on this...the pondering has resulted in this quite sensible and unremarkable insight.  Basically if you are not really a big fan of you, then I imagine going visiting you is not a very pleasant experience, and like many unpleasant things, it's one of those things we would rather put off...indefinitely...preferably forever...than take a deep breath, take the plunge, and knock on the door of a place which, let's be honest here, is just not that nice to be.

But a bit like a really messy room, we might talk ourselves into the idea that it's not that bad - hey, I KNOW where everything is in here - and justify our position in our comfy, slightly stinky and desperately disorganised room - really, it's not so bad - however, when we clean it up, we feel better. Not just about the room, but about life in general.
Fresh sheets.  Come on, hands up on fresh sheets.  Don't know if there is anything much more FABULOUS when you are ready to crash and you turn back the blankies to the smell of clean, and the feel of fresh.  It brings a smile to my face just THINKING about it! 

Well, I would liken these things to the inner you.  If there are parts of you that have been in the dark for a while and need the windows flung open...I say, take the time to do this and you will feel better.  The think zone will be just that little more welcoming the next time, and the little voice inside that wants to talk sounds just that little more friendly.  Start talking to you and listening to what you have to say...and then, you might be surprised by how this brings good stuff to the talking you do with others. 

From think zone to talk zone...it's all about having a good relationship with the voices in your head.