snap up a much-wanted present for jaqi now!

I know you love these rare opportunities…

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200358539996&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:AU:1123

With thanks to my inimitable research assistant Susan

necessarily cryptic

Woh… this ride is wild

Talk about Knowledge: I did it – I got it. I was there. In my body, in the room – I could feel myself. I could see myself…

:) Hallelu Jaqi

Protected: caveat emptor, fool in love… Warning to family etc: white-hot implicit content… Password: knowledge

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

from an old diary, circa 2003

I arrived at the bus-stop and took a seat on the bench beside an elderly gent. He was immaculately dressed in an old-fashioned suit, blue-striped shirt and a gold satin paisley cravat. He turned to me with what I believe was an amiable grin, but it was hard to tell: his teeth were brown and broken, his face cracked, scabbed and warty, and the underlying muscle structure seemed to have collapsed lopsidedly. When he spoke, his tone was cultured, but he said everything at least twice.

“Dog’s colour was buff, so what did they call her? Buffy!” Some of his speech was incomprehensible, but I played along, being friendly. He chuckled wetly, or maybe it was a cough.

“Dog raisers, they were. Dog was buff, so they called her Buffy!” I touched his shoulder.

“Is that your bus?”

Jaqi by Terry Biggenden

FERNS 1 by Terry Biggenden

Originally uploaded by Illuminata

I’m just faffing around on the pooter, and one thing I was overdue to do (I think I’m overdue to do pretty much everything I do by the time I actually do it; it’s some kind of galactic time conspiracy; Douglas Adams would understand) was to update my blog address in my Flickr account details. I haven’t blogged a picture from my Flickr photo site since I moved to WordPress, and that’s far too long. So here’s a pic from my latest photo shoot.

An accomplished fine art photographer, Terry saw images of me by Peter Crowfoot on another photo-sharing site, and asked Peter to put us in touch. Terry was looking for someone to make a day trip with him to the abandoned maltworks at Mittagong, a couple of hours out of Sydney. I was up for it. We got some beautiful images that day – several different spots around the site, and enough unexplored to make another trip not out of the question. If you want to see more, the link to Flickr is in the left column, down low.

There’s a colour version of this shot too, which some viewers (howdy, James) prefer, though I like the restrained classicism of the sepia. The sunlight on the ferns does glow rather gloriously in the colour version, I have to admit. There are more images still to come from this very successful shoot, as Terry processes them. But I’ll try and ornament my blog with pictures that aren’t always of me without my clothes, if only to save my father’s feelings :)

the Original Cynics emerge (more or less) fully formed

So, it happened last night, in front of a small, eccentrically-dressed crowd, upstairs at the Friend In Hand. It was a private party, Vee Malnar’s birthday bash – an annual event on the boho calendar, at which she and all her crazy friends (yours truly included) get on the mic and/or their instruments for a few numbers. I know Vee through Justin, who plays in her band.

So we did our four numbers, and I think I can modestly say we were the buzz of the night (woohoo!), and somewhere in the middle I introduced the duo of myself and Justin as two of the Original Cynics, a loose collective of artists across many fields who together believe in, well, very little other than the importance of certain freedoms. “My name is Jaqi Loveday Pascoe and this is Mr Justin Credible…”

Thing is, I didn’t actually consult with any of my various collaborators before naming them as a collective. Hope they all still want to collaborate. Hope they like their name.

The original Cynics were a philosophical movement in ancient Greece, lasting from about the time of Socrates right into the 5th century CE and influencing the early Christians. Around 350BCE they were led by Crates of Thebes, and soon also by his wife, Hipparchia of Maroneia. (Yes, I’ve blogged about them before, when announcing the renaming of my Kombi.) These were seriously cool people, with grandly sensible beliefs. Look ‘em up in Wikipedia via the links above. And then let me know below if you are happy to consider yourself – or would like to be considered – One of Us. Bear in mind, of course, that we aren’t simply blind followers of an archaic philosophical dictum: I chose the name because a) I like the confusion of meanings around the term ‘cynic’, b) I love the pun on original sin, a primitive and dangerous doctrine that should be subverted whenever possible, and c) I share with the Cynics (and, I think, most of my friends) scepticism, honesty, a contempt for wealth and its wilful ignorances, and a good Greek respect for rational inquiry. And, it was said, “they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it…”

living and dying

I feel like unloading; take or leave with no hard feelings…

Since my mother and grandfather died within 3 weeks of each other around Christmas ‘06-January ‘07, I’ve been visiting my grandmother weekly, first at her retirement village apartment, then in her aged-care hostel room, and lately, twice weekly, in a series of public and private hospitals. It has been warming (and wearing) to be able to help, but it’s painful watching my beloved Granny, alone in a way she has never been in her life until now, endure bravely and more or less stoically, as her once-active body and lively mind fall slowly apart around her wretched, unfailing, steadfastly beating heart.

“I wish the good Lord would take me now!” she has said to me, leaning forward on her walker with subdued but defiant fierceness – and other words to similar effect on several other occasions… and here is where I go into a good solid ptooey of a dummy-spit about the health system and the, ahem, ‘medical industry’.

Granny, who as a war widow (Grandad was TPI) has all her medical costs paid by the DVA, has entered the age and condition in which one is constantly monitored and assisted through the day’s basic functions – there being little else you can manage, and you manage basic functions by no means well either – while your pain levels, though constant, are minimised and your general health is kept at its medicated best. The little declines common at this age – which if left to accelerate might lead to merciful release – become an administrative issue: when the patient slips from Level X care needs to Level Y care needs – from, say, being able to go to the toilet without assistance, to needing help – she must be moved from the hostel to the nursing home. You can’t flip back and forth over that line, even if medical policy actually contributes to your seesawing health. Besides, already you’re a mere husk, wretchedly disabled, eating without relish, shitting without control, decaying without privacy. No-one wants to end up bedridden as well, condemned to total dependence on overworked staff who (though many of them are absolute saints) cannot really respect you for what you used to be – but cannot help you towards death either. So you must be maintained at Level X as long as possible, until eventually you slip from their loving pharmaceutical clutch. It’s hardly surprising you’ll likely start to go batty in the process.

There is no way out of the extended wait, for her or me. She is soon to have a hip replacement – at 90 – because although at first she said no, I’m too old, it’s a waste of resources, a surgeon convinced her it will lower her pain levels – though he couldn’t guarantee it would enable her to walk and so stay semi-independent. She tells me she’s hoping the anaesthetic will kill her, though the doctor has assured her that doesn’t happen any more. A modest but staunch old-style Protestant, she lacks the courage of her more nihilistic convictions – in the face of her lifelong upright obedience – and probably didn’t make her wish clear to the doctor. Sadly, even if she did, that was the wrong doctor. She needs to tell her GP, not the surgeon, but such refinements are beyond her understanding these days. And I, of course, can do nothing but ease her daily (or rather bi-weekly) way until time wins or desperation gives her courage to tell every medico she sees.

But how long, forgodsake, how long? This vapid, industrial catering to the basest instinct – shared by the lowest of animate organisms – demeans us all. And not just when we reach decrepitude: frankly, I can think of about a million better things to do with my forties than spending them caring like the family spinster for someone who, to tell the godshonest truth, would rather not be here any more anyway. Poor Granny – Mum was so much better made for this task than I; she would’ve buoyed Granny in her faith, and she wouldn’t have been oppressed by the stupid, purposeless, bureaucratically perverse pointlessness of it all – and the gloomy awareness that one sterling reason Granny is still alive is that people, industries and corporations are making good money out of her misery.

The rabid right claim euthanasia – by definition a ‘good death’ – is a crime. How ironic. I think the lack of a clean, simple, properly counselled, supervised and legislated option to end your life is a crime.

for christ’s sake

I’ve been out tonight watching Geoffrey Robertson (bless him to his inspirational boots) give an excellent lecture on the need for an Australian Bill of Rights – more on this as I read the book. But at supper with my father and sister afterwards – the conversation lurching characteristically from dietary matters to clergy abuse to marijuana, the stolen generation, and the link between sugar and vision impairment, and back around to the immediate menu – Clare happened to mention this:

Washing machine more liberating than Pill, says pope

which brought forth such a guffaw from me that I nearly sprayed my nachos. Clare and I agreed that he was right, up to a point – but only with regard to women who are not allowed to use the Pill.

But really, shouldn’t there be some sort of law preventing dimwit reactionary religious leaders from, er, pontificating about the emancipation of women? I know, darling Geoffrey wouldn’t approve – robust democracy, free speech etc etc. Well, perhaps just a little charter then…

you are what you eat

Almost three months have slipped by since I last blogged – so quickly – ah, so quick. But as always in my silences, a tumult of life has been crashing on through, and I’ve been scrambling up the avalanche as best I can without time to sit around composing and broadcasting my thoughts.

But then a point is reached…

Three weeks ago I was doing my damnedest not to admit to myself that I was, yet again, alarmingly near the point of collapse. My much-envied eternal youth was threatening to shatter like a dry snail shell, hollowed out from the inside by the incidental death of its poor inhabitant. In near-constant and crippling pain from arthritis, chronic muscular fatigue and assorted obscure toxicities, my digestive system inflamed and semi-functional, my belly swollen, my skin erupting randomly, my mind increasingly woolly and my moods mostly wretched, all I really thought tangible enough to seek help for was the coloured phlegm I’d been coughing for months. It didn’t seem to be clearing up, and for a singer that’s not good.

I tried to write a blog entry at the time, but it was incoherent, painful and quite unpublishable. The only sentence worth saving was this one:

Run ragged with no-brainer work, low pay, needy family and some fairly hard play, I stumble as Time drop-tackles me from behind.

Barrel of laughs. But my singing teacher gave me the number of a doctor whom she recommended in the strongest terms as a skilled diagnostician trained in Eastern as well as Western modalities. I went to see this woman, who has a clinic in the CBD once a week and does not bulk-bill. She was small, compact, wise and sweet, frightfully expensive and worth every cent. My first consultation ran for an hour, during which she collected all sorts of data from how many cigarettes I’d ever smoked in my life to what cleaning products we use in the house and who prescribed my reflux medication. Her advice was as follows: stop eating wheat, dairy products, fungi, nightshades (tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant), and sugar including fruit and alcohol for a while, and see what happens. She took a blood sample to do allergy tests and told me to come back in a couple of weeks.

Wheat, dairy, sugar. I’ve been eating these things daily since before I had teeth. All these years boasting of a cast-iron stomach… but by this time I was so sick, weak and weary that any concrete advice was a relief. The change wasn’t so much a chore as a revolution.

And a revelation. Within 48 hours I could feel a difference in my stomach, although that was probably mostly the nightly probiotics and slippery elm she’d put me on. But within a week I was startled to notice that the base note of grief that has been part of my psyche for… how long? several years, certainly – was gone. Just like that.

That was more than startling – it was shocking. These last few years I’ve had plenty to grieve over, from acute personal losses to the parlous state of the planet, from the debacle of my career to the scandals of global politics, from individual slights and stupidities to the cosmic irredeemability of humankind. I’ve been on and off antidepressants; I’ve done what I could to work through the build-up of anger and bitterness; I’ve drawn comfort from what I can do and been praised for my ability to soldier on. But even with new cycles and perspectives, even with new hope on the world stage and new opportunities for my own development, I couldn’t seem to shake the underlying persistent unhappiness, stress and anxiety.

Eventually defeat becomes self-perpetuating, as with each failure to beat the demon you watch yourself falling back exhausted into the same weaknesses, all temporary panaceas encouraging apathy and subduing even the spur of desperation. In the end, despite the modest achievements of survival, there is only more of the same to endure, and I was staring down absolute failure. I was spent. I was like dying. I had had way more than a gutful.

Only it was so simply literal, that gutful. I’ve passed the last couple of weeks in a kind of dumbfounded joy as each day, at random moments, I check for the familiar veils of darkness and find only light, probe for the pain, and touch a placid new understanding. My body is restoring itself to health (the blood tests showed I have intolerances rather that actual allergies, and apparently the constitution of a horse). To my inexpressible relief and delight, my waist has returned to its proper slenderness, which is no mere vanity but the overthrow of a significant personal and professional disadvantage. I feel like I’ve shrugged off a scarred and scabby old layer and emerged lithe and ready, still somewhat surprised.

My friends, I stand before you a new woman. Though I guess I look a lot like the old one – just slimmer and more energetic, and in a much better mood.

northern animation

Quote of the week, from Shiara, who is moving out of home and into a nice new flat with her boyfriend:

“I don’t need a TV; I’ve got Jason.”

Too true; he is a one man comedy channel. But they do have a TV.