satyapriya

Whew! I'm back from the wilds of Scotland, England, and Finland - well, the wilds of Scotland, the well groomed London, Glastonbury and Cornwall, and the downtown of Helsinki - and most dejetlagged.
Life does not wait for me to be ready, but marches on. So, here I am, writing up my August calendar, catching up my travel journal(nearly a month behind, I'm writing the first day of the women's tour I joined 29th of June), and putting away Mount Washmore.
I've also started my first scarf for the homeless. I used to buy wool from op shops and knit up basic scarves for the homeless each winter. I haven't done it for a few years, but I thought I'd get back into it this year. I'm knitting up a turquoise and lolly pink scarf at the moment. Not the most attractive thing in the world, but it will keep someone that little bit warmer. When I'm done knitting a scarf, I take it into the city the next time I go, with a note safety-pinned to it: "Please take this and use it if you are cold", and tie it to a telephone pole, street sign, or some such. Or I give it to the nearest homeless person. It's my wee bit of charity in the world, and I figure the reiki energy that goes into the scarves won't hurt, either.
Come the first day of August, I also start editing and rewriting all the articles I've had published over the years, with a view to creating a cohesive collection that I can offer to a publisher. Now, I realise that parenting, pregnancy, travel, new age, witchcraft, tarot, reiki, science fiction, and whatever else I wrote about for NOVA magazine is not a cohesive collection. Unless I'm super-famous and I can put whatever I like together and a publisher will lap it up.
Once I've done the rewriting and editing, it will be time for a pro editor to take a good look and see if a theme comes forth. Robert Fulghum is known for roaming wide, but always having that 'I'm a cute old guy thinking on things in an amusing way' thing going on. I don't know that 'I'm a moderately attractive middle-aged white woman thinking on things and I'm sometimes amusing, and sometimes crabby' will sell a collection.
However, that's for a couple of months' time, when I have the brickwork done. Right now, it's a case of find where I put the print out of all the articles, and set up my desk to be ready for work.
Which means clearing away the travel journal.
No, I don't like to put myself under pressure at all. Snort.
Well, I knew it would be a bit like this when I got home from the Tartan Fairy Flounce Tour 2018.
But right now, for the next 25 minutes, I'm going to go read. The old FlyLady technique of 15 minutes of work, then 25 minutes of something you like doing, then back to the 15 mins means that stuff still gets done. I've blogged, like a good little writer who happens to have a blog, and now it's off to read and loll in some sunshine.
Ciao readers. Back soon.

I had such big plans for myself in Brisbane. Not only the Novelists Bootcamp with The Resurrectionist, which were superbly worth it, and I got a lot, got mucho, got EVERYTHING from it, but I was going to plan my novel, start writing my novel, walk daily, get a spa treatment, maybe see a show, experience good food, and make new lasting friendships. I even packed a wee travel kit of witchy things to celebrate Lughnassad.
I did walk each day. I did plan, within the structure of the bootcamp. The spa was closed on Sunday. I ate at the local vegan restaurant Saturday night, and found a boiled caterpillar in amongst the noodles and greens.
The show, too much effort. Lughnassad, too tired. Friendships - well, we all have each other's email addresses, and I've made one reach out.
I'm too damned tired to do anything. A small part of me wants to plan and rewrite NIGHT THINGS. Another, larger part, just wants to stop doing everything and do nothing. I'm a blank.
And I forgive myself for it, because I had a major mental spill last week, and I'm still rocked by that. A bit scared that I'm back in dangerous headspace, even though I'm not consciously aware of being so.
I want to do nothing. I sit here in my hotel room, in the last 20 minutes before checkout, looking out the french window towards the forested hills close to Brisbane, and I think...nothing.
Dollops of images come from the weekend. Green texta squares on the whiteboard, showing how to outline scenes. The pleasure principle vs the death drive in novels. The transition points in a book. Our practice plotting of a book about Mandy the Australian lawyer, and Viggo, the Danish criminal mastermind, with his mother nicknamed Gunmetal Granny, and Sadie the cleaning lady.
I can't grasp any of it. Not today. It's a travel day, going home to the House of Plague (gastro through the family). It's a day for checking out books at the airport, and wondering where my next meal will come from.
Am I okay?
Fragile after a tiring weekend. Mind blown open. Feeling dull, and lethargic.
I see my psych later in the week, and also have a planning session with PizzaBoy about the last housekeeping stuff to do on THE COMMUNICANT AND OTHER STORIES.
My mind shies from structure, even though I desperately need it to feel secure and safe. Truly, I have to dissolve this image of the writer as wafty fairy being hit with mystical inspiration and know-how. Get out of my head, Guinevere. Why are you even in there as my image of a writer? You're a media witch who happens to write. The one time I sat in meditation and started to consider if you used magic to get where you are as a media witch and writer, that night, it was the only time in my life that I felt I'd been psychically attacked. If so, that's some mighty strong defences you have up around that idea that magic made you who you are as a writer.
And if so, why am I not doing the same thing. Magic is a tool, as well as a way of understanding the world and the Mysteries. Why am I not using this tool to do away with the destructive mind stuff?
Oh listen to my mind's response: because you'll cock it up, because you don't know enough, because you're a dabbler, because you'll become precise, and cold, and calculating, without heart.
Uh huh. What strange ideas you have, mind. Shall we do away with them? Yes, let's.

I'm at Melbourne Airport, waiting for my flight to Brisbane. Tonight, the Novelist's Bootcamp begins, at the Queensland Writers Centre, The Resurrectionist as tutor. I very much like Resurrectionist's fantasy novels and short stories, and hope to learn much. I admire her work ethic, and her ability to come up with the plot and plan for a new novel every couple of years.
This is what I want to learn - planning. Whenever I've tried it before, I've felt like I've already told the story by the end of the plan, and I lose interest. I can scrape over the finish line for NaNoWriMo with a 50,000 word pantsed novel, but going back to read the book later, oh my, what a load of old pantsed cobblers.

I'm putting a good face on myself, so that I can be in the world today. Necessary for travel, and bootcamping tonight. Necessary to check into the airport, to order food, to be on the plane with others.
But inside, I'm still dragging. Oh, I'm doing all the right things to hold myself together. I went to belly dance class last night, walked the dog in sunshine yesterday morning, ate well during the day. I pre-packed to save panic, and I rattle with vitamins, minerals, and potions.
I keep pausing to ground myself, imagining a giant egg of light cracking open and pouring over and through me, then flowing out the soles of my feet into the earth. I try to make sure I'm not flustered.
I thought I'd take time here to talk to myself, as a sort of cocoon in the food court of terminal 4. I can disappear into words here.

Today, I hope, PizzaBoy will send off the billions of dollars required to our solicitor, so she can hire a barrister, to apply to the Supreme Court so that we can make a living will for TwentiesPerson. Because TP is under a VCAT guardianship order, they come under an obscure piece of legislation in regards to wills. We have to prove, with documentation that they are incapable of making a will for themselves. Happy days.
But, forward movement is forward, and I hope this will be out of the way by the end of March. Another thing off the list.
My next thing to source is an educational poster of the human body, the organs, so that we can start educating TP about their own insides, and how it uses food as fuel. That will have to wait until Tuesday, when I'm home again. Unless the State Library of Queensland, or the Writers Centre have said posters lying about for the taking.

On two other notes:

My body hurts after my first Tribal and Tribal Fusion belly dance class last night. Whose good idea was the lifted posture, the lifted arms, and those wrist floreos. Holy Jamilla, things creaked and cracked last night!

Haigh's Chocolates announced that they are opening their 7th Melbourne store. How about some regionalisation, Haigh's. Chadstone? Eastland? Knox? How about some service for Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart?
I also the refute of some dickhead's comment on the Haigh's facebook page that Melburnians don't know quality when they taste it. You, sir, can fuck off. Haigh's Lime Creams, and their chocolate bullets reign supreme.

Current Mood: blank

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Entries tagged with travel

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