Abandonment issues, I guess.

There was a phone message at work that a volunteer (Angela) took and erased (why do they do that? they could just leave it on the machine) and got wrong.
She told me;
"You had a call from Zena. She said she was sorry you were sick and hoped you'd get better soon."
And our stupid little heart leapt.
Like a foolish little frog.
And then Thea reminded us that there's no way for Zena (our childhood best friend) to know we are sick, not that she would ever call, and suggested that the message taker misheard Zil's name. Oh, Zil. Yes, that makes sense. Zil ~would~ call and wish us well. Of course. Not Zena, then.
You tell me:
Did we appreciate Zil calling or did we, at least fleetingly, hate her for not being Zena?
Be careful of us right now.
We are fickle and vindictive.
Our heart aches for what we can't have.

What does a knee mean?

Some one told me sometime, at a party, that lower back pain meant that a person felt unsupported. There's a whole alternative orthodoxy (fortunately still in chaos) about this - interpreting illness in terms of What It Really Means. I don't despise it in the least, though of course, I laugh at attempts to 'scientizzze' it. Just as I laugh at the serious photographs of homeopaths IN WHITE COATS!!

Oh please.
You may as well wear a pointy black hat.

But that's a rant all of Spinner's own, and she won't be here to respond to the consequences.
(She'll be busy at her place, with her black cat, stirring some amphibious innards and bergamot to some ghastly purpose...)

It's all superstition. That doesn't mean I'm not superstitious. I am.

And the idea that lower back pain has a connection to either feeling unsupported or; simply; being unsupported; had the unmistakable ring of truth about it for me. True for me.

spinner: that's so disgusting it just might work...

(she's talking about the bergamot)

Yama has read Louise Hayes. She knows about these ideas. I wonder what is said about knees. What do they mean?

Alan the bottom.

We all wish to be cherished, not just by our loved ones (as Alan The Bottom recently pointed out *giggle* I mean, Alain de Botton) but by 'the world'.

Quick, quick, quick.

The doctor was nice. Confusing, but nice.

The comfrey-comfort team were great. We do feel loved. It's just that - this is really hard. We can't put much weight at all on our leg, and the pain is very distressing. We can't use the stairs, We can't drive. We have a lot of difficulty getting in and out of the car. The crutches fall over a lot, and it's hard to pick them up. It's hard to get in and out of the shower. It's hard to get in and out of the bathroom. It's hard to sit on a chair. Our knee hurts a lot.

Things we're grateful for:

1. Socialised medicine.

Our hospital visit free, our painkillers and anti-inflammatories less than $10 (US $7), our physiotherapy free, our doctor's consultation free, our x-rays free. And the staff were kind and thorough and the grounds of the hospital were beautiful. We paid a $20 deposit on the crutches but the splint (a very comfortable padded waterproof wonder of velcro technology - and, purple!) is mine to keep as it's not hygenic to reuse them.

2. Bellydance.

Yes, bellydance. See, we can stand on our good leg for a long, long time. We can touch our toes, we can haul our splinted leg onto the bed and bend down easily to pick up knickers and socks and find shoes. We can twist our body around and adapt to having one leg in a splint much easier than had we not spent the last few years as slaves to the dance.

3. Gray.

Is trying his best. It's difficult for us both. I really hate to ask for help doing my laundry.

Sick, sick, sick.

Things are limping along. In more ways than one.
How I long to be free.

Zil visits. She seems to have a clearance code.

In our earthly life, here in Bugsplat, and before, on that mighty river, or on the mountain; in these places we have lived, living 'a social life' has always been work to us. The ideas that so many people express of say - visiting a friend for a cup of tea (*giggles at the absurdity* "to cheer oneself up!!") or 'talking it over with a friend' remind us of our difference.

When we are weak, we avoid people, because people require strength. Part of it is the chore of passing ourselves off as one person rather than the raucous, identity-fluid band we are. Part of it is the chore of policing our current diplomatic policies. Every person we know has a policy. We write them in seconds. They are under constant review. These policies do not recognise any perceived entitlement from the person under review. The formation of these policies is fundamentally a kind of risk algebra. Just as we do not verbalise the algebra of bellydance or kicking a can or sitting in a chair we do not verbalise the algebra of our social diplomacy. We may merely observe it and try to understand its logic. In that sense, it is 'the machine'. We notice that in large groups we may quickly hit the lowest common denominator (smile and nod) of diplomacy but the machine is not predictable.

Zil, a bellydance student of Calypso, seems to have some kind of clearance with the machine that very few people ever have. It is strange how little work it is to talk with her.

Living and dying.

"All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therefore we can't possibly exist. How strange, how worthy, how good for us! What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal."

-- Jack Kerouac, "The Dharma Bums"

Arrival

It's been a tumultuous few weeks here in Bugsplat. And I'm finally feeling a sense of perspective, of arrival to the present moment, having the ability to look back. I'm scared of my self, and my life, and my heart.

Thea wept.

What the fuck has happenned to me?
Did I fail to notice something inexorable?

Snapshot.

It's a bit too teeensy weeensy to see but in the screen snapshot below; taken from journal of the lovely lysergians at a quarter past five, Friday the 9th of May, Bugsplat Timezone; the Google Ad's generated, presumably by content, say:

Meet Polly LaBarre - at InnoTown Innovation Conference, Norway, 29-31 May, 2006
(aw, shucks, we missed it!)
And apparently there is a huge selection and great deals on everything Pocket Polly.

What the shining kettle is a "pocket polly"???

*giggles*

Pocket polly?

When Viola was a revolutionary.

What was it Viola said all those years ago, when she was a revolutionary?
She had many political slogans.
"No cause, no cure, no......"
It's lost to me.
Perhaps she will re-member herself and re-mind me.

just jo & thea

just jo: okay, I just read about it - so, how are you?
thea: not too good
just jo: you are happy ~for~ them, I know
thea: oh I am, I really am, it's just that i don't have that. I don't think I ever will have that. I wish I could hope for it, but it's you I always end up with.
just jo: well i finally love you
thea: and I thank you, but your kind of love is not what I want
just jo: you want what you had with Cherry?
thea: yes. And with, you know.
just jo: yes
thea: but I am happy for them, I really am, so happy. I just feel so alone and so pathetic and such a romantic failure and so ...
just jo: useless? hopeless? ridiculous? pitiful? pathetic? impotent?
thea: stop making me giggle, I'm trying to feel sorry for myself!

Thank you, from me to you.

Spiraling away, as I tend to do, me, shell, like flaking sliced onions into petals, losing all sense of myself - 'who am I?' I find myself saying, and it's a little clue - "shell" - it's always me who asks that question that particular way and I've been told by my sister/brother selves so many times now (hey did anyone else notice the inclusion of 'brother' there? ) that even I finally get it... and yes, I find it hard to complete thoughts. Everything is a question. I'm a question - I'm the question "who am I exactly?". I'm that very particular confusion. It's not deep or existential: it's a muddle! I'm the muddle headed wombat who wonders who she is, and then remembers her name - "shell". My last name I took from history, and because of the novel they wrote with the name "Shell Sinclair" as the heroine. Thea whispers in my ear: 'don't forget to point out that the novel was written in 1997 '. I wonder, half-heartedly, if she has a point to make, and then... I return to my natural state. Ambivalence. A lack of capacity for surprise. I'm always handy in a terrible situation perhaps because I have no confidence at all in reality and I'm never at all surprised when things Go Horribly Wrong.
:)
There, see, I can attempt humour too.
I find so much about myself when I write here freely.
Which is what this is all about.
And brings me to the beginning again.

From me to you, thank you.
I learnt so much about myself when I wrote to you.
Here it is:

Dear Shandra,

The "one ring to rule them all" journal is "Had a dolly"
It's at sickskettle.blogspot.com

We're trying to find different places for different arrangements of polly.
More and more we/me (I'm shell, francesca and just jo right now) all seem to need room for our collective smoooshing (technical term) selves to write as we are - that reflects our mental processes which are so dissociative.

Sometimes we feel extremely alien - that the desired peer group I sought in dp is not really there and we're still so damn DIFFERENT, but I do realise that most of us feel that way - that our individual expressions of multiplicity are so diverse it's foolish to try to look for much common ground beyond - lots of people, one body, and even that's a bit tricky sometimes!

Wheras Trouble finds kinship online very easily - not that she talks much but she sees role models for herself there and when she fronts she does it in much the same manner/expression as you do when you're Shandra or Terra when Terra, or Sassy when Sassy - there's a confidence in identity that people like us (shell, francesca, hannah, just jo, other diplomat type people) lack. You know, writing to you is really helping me.
I think I'll post this in one of our journals.
So others in my system can read it.
It had better be had a dolly, I guess.

I think we're rambling a bit, sorry.
So.. thank you for your journal which all of us appreciate and which is the favourite of many here (and the first they check!) and definitely a favourite of mine although I do tend towards the angsty reflective style of polly generally, at least lately.
Thank you.
Shell Sinclair.

Truth (control v) telling.

It's easy to be sincere. But it's hard to know the truth.

We've been working with inks at our Wednesday night art classes. The Chinese brush strokes. An artist must be confident. There's no possibility of painting over it or concealing mistakes. An artist must be able to accept the truth of the ink as it has recorded its life on the page.

I like it.
I like this quote. I took it from an old email that Wes sent me.

"When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with."
November, 1933 from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934

This is Calypso here.