Yesterday the dishes piled up. Normally this would cause great consternation and a flurry of scrubbing. Instead, I went for a walk in a garden and looked for flowers.
The dishes will get washed eventually, and I have a whole portfolio of beauty for my trouble today. I must make these sort of choices more often.
Saw a radiant person on a speaking stage a few months ago and was most impressed at her ability to pull a polished performance out of a hat. On in a flash, fun and laughter, several good stories and a mild sort of plugging for her radio show, and off again. The audience had obviously tuned in to her for years as an early television presenter, so she capitalised upon this for several anecdotes. She even got a plug in for the current radio station she works at…and then was off and running to that gig.
I know another person, a model, dancer, and general intellectual who also sits at a radio microphone a number of times a week and also manages to make the thing bop along in a very amusing style. She’s a find for the local station that employs her as it also has a great deal of artistry and intellect involved in its programming. These presenters are a blessed relief on the air – they don’t shoot low and they don’t assume we’re riding Shetlands.
Neither of these ladies is rude nor crude. They lift the spirit. They might spend their holidays throwing rocks at trains but they do not let it show at all in their professional presentation – that is as clean and friendly as a whistle.
You’ll find as you go through life that you can be cruel to other people and get away with it – just pitch your meanness either too low to see or too high to criticize. Dictators and petty despots get away with this all the time.
You can also be cruel to yourself – Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, and Oscar Levant made a good living out of this – and your psychiatrist will also welcome you beating yourself up. At medical rates.
Being kind to others is also approved by the general population, as long as they are not required to join in or to contribute too much money. Do good on a small change basis and you’ll be fine.
But being kind to yourself will bring nothing but condemnation. Anything you buy yourself – any treat that you get – any happiness you find – will be looked upon as self-indulgent. Any time you grant yourself a discharge from guilt or an access to peace will be frowned upon. If you want to be nice to you, you’ll have to do it on the sly. So here are some tips:
a. Decide what you like to eat. Buy it, cook it, and eat it…in your own home.
b. Decide what you like to read. Buy the book, find the website, rent the movie. And look at it in your own home.
c. Decide for yourself what makes you comfortable. Do it in your own home.
Can you see a pattern developing here? Well the exercise of happiness at home is a good start. But consider it as a training phase. Wear yellow clothing and only fly in the daytime if need be…but prepare yourself for bigger things.
One day…go out and order yourself a meal of the things you like to eat in a restaurant. Eat them.
Then go read your book in a public park…or park in a pub and read it.
Then wear the clothing you like out on the street…and go where you find pleasure…and participate in it.
Make no mistake – someone will be angry. Someone will be disapproving. Someone will be unhappy.
But if you have done your training well….it won’t be you.
When I was a kid I worried about sex.
What was it? What was it like? What did people do? What were they supposed to do? How did they know they were doing it? What happened after they did it? What would happen if they did it wrong?
Later, when I came closer to the subject, the worries intensified. When was I going to have sex? What was I supposed to do/say/feel/remember/forget? What if I became pregnant?
Finally I got to worry about what was it all supposed to have been like. What did I do? What did I miss? Did other people do it better? Where was I when they did?
I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever other things sex might be, most of what it is – most of the time – is worry.
But am I worrying well enough…?
One day I hope to be able to brag ” I seen it.”
It? A car that has broken the Australian and World land speed record. I’ve done the first part of the work by going to the West Australian Hot Rod Show and looking at the Aussie Invader. Now I just sit and wait until Mr. McGlashan does the rest.
There is no mistaking this for your average car…even for your average racing car…actually there’s no mistaking this for your average land speed record car. It is just that different. Metal wheels with no tyres, liquid fuel rocket engine, front trim canards, rear fin, and a tiny little space in the middle for the pilot.
Pilot? Don’t you mean driver? At 1000 miles per hour and supersonic on a mud flat I mean pilot. They have astronauts in space at this sort of speed and aeronauts in the air – I think Mr. McGlashan can very fairly title himself as an autonaut.
Note the ” debut ” sticker on the cockpit of the car. I didn’t get a chance to ask whether they will tow the car away at the end of the show or let it drive out under its own power. I’ll be listening out Sunday night…
I also looked as hard as I could but did not see the blue touch paper…
Allow me to pour praise upon the WordPress organisation and the wonderful works of charity they do. They have enabled me to have the time of my life for the last six years for essentially nothing at all.
I write four separate weblog columns. I’m paid in money for one of them ( not a lot, I assure you ) and in pleasure for the other three. I’ve tallied the statistics from them and find that I’ve been able to bend people’s ears, so to speak, 5260 times, and on each occasion I have been given the floor exclusively – no one has interrupted me. I hope I have not abused the privilege.
I am a little saddened to read other weblog columns that seem to have gone nowhere – ventures that looked to be so promising, yet faded within a month. I guess there may have been good reasons, but it is still frustrating to see someone who probably has something good to say go silent. Unfortunately it leaves the Facebook parrots to meme whatever they find on the net and then think that they have made an intellectual statement of it. I have never been so glad of a snooze button in my life, and the unfollow lever is kept greased and in good working order too.
People decry weblogs as minor affairs…but they then praise other artistry that may be just as obscure – merely on the chance that it eventually will become known. Goodness sake, people – read and praise what is fresh before your eyes and recognise the talent that is out there. I’m not saying that the talent is me, but occasionally I get off a good one and it’s worth wading through the rest of the stream to be there when it happens.
The future? I will still write using the free themes until the picture storage capacity is used up – then I’ll pay WordPress for an elegant revision and combine all three columns into one. It will not be a case of cutting down on content, but it will have multiple sections each day. No-one will be deprived.
I receive prompts to ” monetize ” the columns, together with impossibly complex social networking plans and strategies. None of this interests me, as I have nothing to sell but thought. And that is generally going at very low prices anyway. Bring a paper bag and I’ll fill it up for you…
I have repressed desires. They are kept hidden for a number of reasons:
a. They are appalling and horrible. This isn’t true, actually, but I thought I’d capture your interest right at the start.
b. They are expensive. Well, this isn’t true either. I don’t have overly-expensive desires. In fact I hold those who do have them slightly in contempt – as people who can be manipulated by commerce. My most expensive desires mostly top out under $ 200 and I can generally steal enough from the poor-box at church to gratify them.
c. They are shameful. Well, some are. I would tell you what they were but I blush too easily. Suffice it to say that if they were to see the light of day a number of suburban streets would be cordoned off and Gordon Ramsay would ring up to try to soothe me with kind words.
d. They are possible. Now this might seem to be at odds with the idea of repression, but if you actually do get your repressed desires then they are not repressed any more. And that means that they lose a lot of their desirability as well. And then where are you? Sitting in front of a sink full of dirty dishes in your underwear with the stove out and nothing to drink.
e. Repressed desires are sexy – as opposed to sexy desires which can be inconvenient, embarrassing, and messy. There is no romance about plain old desire bellowing in rut through the local K-Mart parking lot. More often than not, it gets laughed at.
f. Repression is the new Freedom. It goes over very well in Arabia, South America, and Russia.
g. I once gratified a repressed desire and now it turns up at the doorstep every six months and demands money. That’ll teach me.
