"No spirit guide, teacher or philospher is higher than you. There is nothing higher than you." Marshall N Lever From the book 'Bag of Jewels'
My blogging is unpredictable - I'm either prolific or absent. I don't seem to do very well at the middle ground on constant. So here I am ... back in what will probably be prolific mode for a few weeks. No wonder I struggle to maintain an audience! It's OK though ... I need to rise above the expectations on put on myself ... because I am rarely person enough to live up to them (even a demi goddess would be pressed!)
When I completed the Artist Way my contract for the next 90 days included blogging every day (and taking morning walks) I never got back into the swing of walking, and my blogging is here and there. Thankfully I have kept the momentum going with my morning pages. I understand now what Julia Cameron says about them being a place to rest on the page. I find that when it's time to really search through an issue that I am having, I come to rest on the blog page. There is a strange sense of peace and ease here ... and I know that the universe will send me what I need when I put it out here.
The quote at the start of this post, is more relevant that I probably would care to admit. Thursday I had my kinesiology appointment. What came up for me was that I have blockages concerning a certain area of my life. These issues are not linked to hormones or primal drives (as I might have hoped), instead they belong to emotional and intellectual blockages. Having removed the energetic block it is now up to me to transcend my beliefs ... it's up to me to explore my archetypes and to create a life that is abundant, rather than a life that is neatly pigeon holed.
This would have seemed monumental even a few months ago ... but I feel as though I am finally ready for the challenge (after three and a half years). I know that I can look inwards and outwards, that I can be both brave and savvy to walk this new path. I feel it strongly with the Winter Solstice approaching. There is an urgent need to do away with old beliefs, old patterns, old habits - to release them and allow new energy in. It's time for me to thoroughly and honestly explore my ideas around being a mother and a lover - to allow me to be both. At the moment I seem to be only abe to be one.
So I remind myself ... that there is nothing higher than me, and I can transcends the beliefs that I have created in this world. If I fashioned the cage, then I can also fashion the key that unlocks it.
Musical Musings is a weekly music based writing meme to inspire and support writers of short fiction. Each Tuesday a prompt will be posted and you will have a week to create something (see the guidelines below). Reading others' work and commenting in a critical but constructive manner is part of the writing process and our growth as writers. All participants are encouraged to actively be a part of this each week.
This week's prompt Is California Dreamin' made famous by the Mammas and the Pappas (but has been covered innumerable times - just check out Wiki). It was released in 1965, but it took until 1966 for it to reach #4 in the US and stayed in the charts for 17 weeks. It was voted #89 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Use the song in any way you see fit to inspire your writing this week.
How to be part of the writing adventure:
1. Check each Tuesday for a new musical prompt – a link to the post will appear at the top right hand of the blog to help you navigate. 2. Write between 1000-2000 words of short fiction in any genre. 3. Editing is welcome and encouraged. 4. On Monday, post your story to your blog. 5. Return here to link your post and leave a comment. 6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.
Musical Musings is a weekly music based writing meme to inspire and support writers of short fiction. Each Tuesday a prompt will be posted and you will have a week to create something (see the guidelines below). Reading others' work and commenting in a critical but constructive manner is part of the writing process and our growth as writers. All participants are encouraged to actively be a part of this each week.
This week's prompt
Combine the elements of Voodoo and Cowboy to create your short fiction. Inspired by the Cat Empire's "Voodoo Cowboy" from their 2007 So Many Nights album.
How to be part of the writing adventure:
1. Check each Tuesday for a new musical prompt – a link to the post will appear at the top right hand of the blog to help you navigate. 2. Write between 1000-2000 words of short fiction in any genre. 3. Editing is welcome and encouraged. 4. On Monday, post your story to your blog. 5. Return here to link your post and leave a comment. 6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.
This week's prompt is to combine the elements of voodoo with cowboy - a la Cat Empire. Here's my first draft and please feel free to offer up your thoughts and criticisms (on elements other than first draft spelling mistakes, grammar and I think the odd time incongruity!)
It’s a good day to die. This is my morning mantra, as I roll my swag and kick away the ring that’s protected this small patch of earth while I slept. It is habit that compels me to cast the salt and to wear the St Christopher medal around my neck, rather than a need to cheat death. We’re all going to die - sooner rather than later now. Everyone else feels the same urgency towards death that I’ve carried with me my entire life. I’m just treading the water of time between dawn and dust, waiting for the inevitable. I don’t know what they are doing.
Patience nuzzles my cheek and I smile. She never questions the erratic nature of our journey. Her quiet faith in me is buoyancy in this sea of nothingness, the endless expanse of red dirt, mirages playing deceptively on the horizon. The long black snake of the deserted highway runs along in front of us.
“Off to town,” I say out loud, in faux festivity, and I swear she nods and smiles. I haul the heavy jacket over my shoulders and push my arms down into the sleeves, pull up the heavy duty zip. The battered hat covers my bald head and shields my face. I’ve had my thick dark sunglasses on since I first opened my eyes.
The map says 10 kilometres, but I’m not really sure how far we came yesterday after the last little green road sign. As we step onto the decaying tarmac, I pull the small GPS unit from my pocket, as I’ve done every morning for the past two months. The screen is empty. I tap the LED screen and it remains blank. The phone went down first, then the GPS – all powered up but useless. This is my final dislocation from civilisation – what there was left of it when I fled the mayhem of the city. Now it’s just Patience and I out here making our way to The Farm, just as I promised Mama before the typhoid took her.
The sun is high in the sky when we arrive in town. Patience and I head for the tiny row of shops that have sprung up haphazardly on the side service road that connects the highway to the township. The shopping centres are obsolete. Electricity is too precious to waste on powering indoor climate control – even if there was anything to sell. Consumerism and instant communication have both suffered a fatal blow.
I tell Patience to wait outside, not bothering to tie her up. She’ll bite anyone who tries to steal her. Better than any car alarm.
The bar is quiet this early on in the day. There’s a couple of blokes, shift workers by their clothes, sipping beer, talking in hushed tones as they deal hand after hand of poker. I wonder if there is a wager and what they would possibly use.
“A lettuce juice,” I order, sitting down on the bar stool, trying to decide whether to take my hat off or not. “Pardon,” the young girl queries. Her hair is braided into two neat plats, coiled behind her ears and she’s far too young to be in a bar, let alone in charge of it. “You have juicer?” “Yea – somewhere out the back, I guess’em.” “You have power?” She nods “I’d like a lettuce juice then please. I can pay.”
The girl disappears and a few minutes later an older woman appears looking defensive – like I tried to touch up the girl, rather than just ask for juice. “You wantin’ lettuce juice then Joe?” she asks, her eyes piercing me. I nod, trying not to make a scene.
I lean a little over the bar and slide the dark sunglasses down my nose, just far enough so she can see my eyes. The recoil is physical – she stumbles back a few steps, stopped by the shelves of liquor behind her, which clink as she hits them. “I’d like a glass now and a bottle to take with me.”
She agrees with a sharp downwards jerk of her head. “You’ll find what you need out the back,” she mutters, crosses herself and scurries out the back.
The shift workers regard me with guarded scepticism and I can appreciate that. I’ve had that effect on people all my life. In these clothes I look like a gun for hire and that disturbs them. I imagine that not too many people put the bar owner in her place – she’s rougher than those she serves. But I come with an aura of fear now, not the freakdom of my previous life. I like it, the warped sense of respect, because no one’s ever given me that before.
There is a small lean-too out the back of the bar. I find an old and twisted star picket, a sledge hammer and a piece of rope. I quickly tie together a harness to carry the hammer and the steel dropper, so both my hands will be free. I close my eyes and begin to walk, feeling the vibrations beneath me. The energy crackles in staccato pulses as I walk, my arms held at a 45 degree angle to my body and the palms outstretched parallel to the scarred earth. I follow the pull until the staccato subsides and segues into a gentle legato. This is the spot. I hammer the star picket into the hard ground with slow and exact swings. A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to lift the hammer, let alone swing it with the preciseness I’m now proud of. The sweat pours off me, but I don’t risk removing either my hat or coat.
Back in the bar the glass of lettuce juice awaits me on the bar – there’s even a couple of ice cubes in it. I ask the young girl for a large glass of water to quench my first before I drink the lettuce. She watches me with open curiosity and I smile at her.
It has been almost a week since I’ve had the juice. My sleep has become a distorted mess of insomnia and paranoid dreams. It means I don’t think so good and I’m prone to make stupid mistakes. There is a bustle from out the back and the older woman comes through the dirty curtain that sections off the bar from the living quarters.
“So?” the older woman asks, holding an old brown tall-necked bottle full of lettuce juice in one hand. I nod and she passes me the bottle. “There’s a star picket driven into the spot. It’s deep down, perhaps 100 metres of more and a lot of rock.” She snorts and goes back out the back.
I take the bottle and leave. The lie sits like quick sand in the base of my stomach, ready to devour me from the inside out. I tell myself it was justified. It always is.
The water is dead - poisoned. The town will be gone before a rig could even be found to drill her well. She’ll have the hope of water to tide her over in her last days and I will have given her that. Hallelujah. She’ll won’t ever find out I didn’t tell her the whole truth.
The Farm is another 20kms further out to the west, up into the hills and the wind corridor. I’m in no hurry to get there, so I walk beside Patience. The bitumen road has become a gravel road. It wondered if it was once sealed – if this was the way all the machinery and men came? Or maybe at it another way.
We walk until I’m exhausted. It doesn’t take much in the heat and sun, and the lettuce juice has made me sleepy. It has the effect on me – but leaves me feeling sharp and refreshed in the morning. I swig from the bottle as we make camp in a small thatch of trees by the side of the road. We’re at the foot of the hills here and marginally safe. I know that I have to sleep well, dream deeply, before I can get to The Farm. I’d go further but I’m tired and I don’t want to risk Patience in the bush just yet. She’s as ferocious as a dog if provoked.
As I lie on my swag watching the sun go down and Patience cropping at the short tough grass I long for my music. To wish I could be here, with my ear phones on and ? assaulting my delicate ear drums. “You’ll go deaf,” Mama would holler. “You’ll be drug fucked, you’ll never amount to anything you stupid shit.”
Well Mama, I’m not deaf, I’m not drug fucked and I’m going to make it to The Farm - just like you asked me to. And this goes round and around in my head as I succumb to sleep.
I’m staring down into the water … sometimes it is a river, a slow moving line of water, and other times it is a well. The water is an illusion, but I reach out and touch it. And it’s wet. It’s not an illusion. There is a woman in the water …. With long dark tendrils of hair crowning her face. Her skin is pale, like mine, but her eyes are green. I hear her in my head, calling my name, over and over – she feels my loneliness, she feeds on it. It makes her powerful and I struggle to resist her seduction. “Come ….” She reaches her hand up to mine. Her voice is hypnotic and I stretch my hand out, into the water. And she has me in her grasp… her hair travels up through the water and wraps around my wrist. Her hair is pulling me down. I scream … it is not my time. I’m not ready to die. “Oh yes you are” she screeches from the depths and I’m covered in her hair, being dragged into the water …..
I lash out and my hand strikes a rock. I bolt up right in pain, my knuckles skinned and bleeding. Patience snickers and brushes her large nose against me. “It’s OK,” I say, for my sake not hers. The sound of my voice settles her.
The sun has sunk below the horizon and the sky is aglow – violent tangerines and vivid scarlets in the polluted and overheated atmosphere. It is the same colours every night and morning – a delight at night that I’ve made it through another day, and warning in the morning that it could be my last day. It reminds me of the bush fires when I was a kid … and the sunsets that came with the smoke suffocated air. That seems like an eon ago.
Patience and I walk through the night, sometimes on the gravel road and other times, when I think I’ve heard something, a few metres in from the road through the bush. Both of us are spooked and I’m not sure what it is. I’ve faced down all matter of scum who are prowling along the highway, preying on the refugees moving from town to town. And I’ve held my own against superstitious townfolk. There’s something about this place, the ancestors are unsettled and angry here. I don’t understand?
This week's Fiction Friday prompt is: Your character becomes obsessed with someone. Who? And Why?
The alarm went off, sending agonising pulses through her head. Maia reached out to hit snooze, to take another seven minutes to decide how the day would progress from here. When had she finally fallen asleep.
Was the light been seeping in from the Venetian blinds? Or was that yesterday? The day before that?
Laying back down into the warm pillows she forced herself to move beyond the headache to survey the rest of her body. Her arms and legs ached, no better or worse than yesterday, and like every morning, her bowels felt weak. She slowly moved her hands over her swollen abdomen and examined her puffy fingers. The movement left Maia exhausted.
She took the small diary from the bedside table and lying on her side, scribbled down the symptoms. Later on in the day she knew there would be more. Erratic mood swings, unusual sweating, cold feet and more so lately, fevers and sore glands. This little book was her testament to the truth – she was not imagining her illness, she was not a hypochondriac nor was she depressed. She was critically ill and no one believed her.
The alarm went off again.
Maia turned it off and reached for the telephone, her body protesting at the effort. “Good morning Lizzie,” she greeted weakly. “I’m guessing you’re ringing in sick – again.” “I’m not feeling so good.” “Of course you’re not,” her boss’s PA said, the sarcasm cutting her deeper than the obvious lack of empathy for her situation. “You will need to ring HR about applying for holidays. You’re all out of sick leave.” “But my medical certificates.” “Take it up with HR. Some of us around here have work to do,” and the line went dead in her ear.
It took a while for her to realise that the sound Maia could hear was her own weeping. More and more she was detaching herself from her bodily experience to cope. The doctor’s had ordered a plethora of tests which had all came back negative. She didn’t have the Epstein Bar virus so she wasn’t suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – which seemed to her the most obvious diagnosis given her symptoms. She wasn’t suffering from an auto immune disease or an obscure virus. According to all the tests she was a healthy young woman – who just happened to be chronically and painfully wasting away before everyone’s eyes.
Wont they just LISTEN to ME.
The latest diagnosis was depression and she’d been forced to see a psychiatrist. The collective agreement had been that her illness was psychosomatic – she was willing herself into illness.
Maia looked at the bottle of Zoloft. She’d taken one – felt intensely ill and left it at that. The Doctors swept away the skin irritations and the mysterious swelling as side effects of the Zoloft. Maia had never admitted that she was not taking the medication. She wasn’t depressed, what she felt was a consuming frustration with a medical system that was taking the moral high ground with her health, to her detriment. She was the one trapped inside a failing body and no one was listening to her.
There was no reason for Maia to want to make herself sick. Three months ago she had been in the prime of her life – she’d been partying, drinking and playing the field, celebrating being single again - which brought her thoughts back to Andrew as they often did now.
Over the past month Maia had been thinking a lot about her ex-boyfriend, reviewing their relationship and her decision to end it. It was inevitable she guessed, stuck in bed with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. She could still hear his parting remark, as he’d left her apartment emotionally wounded by her decision to dump him.
“Nice guys always come last.” And party girls get sick and no one cares.
Maia wished now that she had not been so harsh with Andrew – throwing it in his face that he bored her to death, that his chivalry and good manners were out of date. She’d been a bitch and had loved every minute of it – enjoying reducing Andrew down to a snivelling emotional mess. He’d been too good for her, too kind and considerate. She'd half expected him to be creepy about being dumped - it was always the quiet ones you had to be careful of, experience had taught her that. But Andrew had surprised her, taken it like a man. In hindsight she liked him for that.
She had a penchant for bad guys, who treated her like dirt, but now she wished Andrew was here. Circumstances had changed. Andrew would have changed her bedding so she had clean sheets to lie on, he would have juiced the box of organic fruit and veggies that her mother had arranged for her twice a week so she could regain her strength. She was too weak to use the expensive looking machine her mother had bought online from her new home in Hong Kong so it just sat there on the bench. It was her mother's contribution to getting her well again. Andrew would have moved the TV into her bedroom so she could watch it in bed, cleaned the diahorrea spattered toilet. Andrew really would have taken care of her and never complained about it.
I’m really was losing the plot.
Maia's mobile beeped – a reminder that she had a midday appointment with Dr Slovosky. Maia had three hours to get out of bed and on the train, into the city. It would be easier to cancel the appointment, but that would only incur the wrath of the good Doctor who would lecture her on partnerships in health and wellness. The irony of this was never lost on Maia – partnership implying that two parties were working together with equal power sharing towards a common goal. He took her money and left her feeling undermined. No one allowed her to be expert on this illness – after all she was the one suffering in a dysfunctional body – not them.
I’m the victim in all of this – can’t any of these medical and mental hypocrites see it?
It was the point of no return Maia realised. If she did not get up and leave the apartment, walk to the station and get on the train to the good Doctor’s office she would waste away. If she didn’t get up today and fight, then she was literally laying down to die. Would anyone care? Would anyone come looking for her? How bad would the smell of her decomposing body be before the neighbours called the real estate, or the police?
On weak, aching legs Maia got out of bed and went to the kitchen. She took out the box of wheatgrass that had arrived the day before and persevered to put it through the new juicer until she had a shot glass full of the dark green juice.
Down the hatch – thadda girl!
By 10:30am Maia had showered and dressed. She had made more juice and forced it down, and sealed some whole-wheat biscuits into a snap lock bag to eat on the train. The sky looked like rain which gave her an excuse to take an umbrella – it would double as a walking stick.
Slowly and carefully Maia locked her apartment door, crossed the small ground floor foyer and went out through the security door of the building. Did she go to work yesterday? She took the diary out of her bag – no, she’d been in bed sick all day yesterday as well. Her memory was shot … if she didn’t write it down it disappeared forever and she’d never be sure if it were fact or fiction.
“Hello love.”
Maia recognised the voice of her upstairs neighbour Mrs Smith, grey, shrivelled and adamant that she was not moving into a retirement home like her children wanted. “Hi Mrs Smith.” “My goodness young lady, you look terrible.” “I’m just on the way to the doctor now.” “Well it’s a good thing you’ve got that nice boyfriend of yours to take care of you.” “Pardon?” “That nice boyfriend of yours. I see him coming and going all the time. You’re lucky to have someone taking good care of you. My family are too busy to care what happens to me. Just want to bundle me up in one of those horrid retirement homes so they can forget about me ……”
Maia didn’t hear the rest. Andrew had been here. “Excuse me Mrs Smith. I need to go back inside.”
The key shook in Maia’s hand as she tried to unlock the security door. Inside, by the telephone, she found another diary - her business diary. Flicking back three months she found the date that she’d given Andrew his marching orders. The following weekend she’d gone out dancing and drinking – picked up the tall blonde with the celtic tattoo down in the Valley somewhere. She’d woken up alone and sick on the Sunday morning – a hangover. But the hangover had lasted well into the week. She’d been briefly well the following week and the rest was written in the other diary in her bag.
She willed her body to pace across the lounge room, her thoughts tumbling incoherently over each other like psychotic puppies. Andrew had been here? Andrew had done something to her?
Andrew’s poisoning me.
The medical centre was on speed dial. “I need an appointment today. It’s a matter of urgency. I’m being poisoned.” “There’s no appointments for the next three days.” “I could be dead before then.”
The sweating was beginning again.
“That’s a little melodramatic. What name is the appointment for.” “Maia Reynolds.”
There was a perceivable sigh from the receptionist. “Miss Reynolds …””I’m not crazy. Please make me an appointment.” “You’ll need a referral back from Dr Slovosky – that’s the interim arrangement.” “Thanks for fucking nothing!”
Maia knew she could not ring the good Doctor. She could imagine his slow and deliberate hand writing as she told him Andrew was poisoning her. Paranoid and delusional. Maia needed proof first. She was afraid they would commit her.
“Abby, it’s Maia.” “Oh hello. How’ve you been?” Abby replied lukewarm. “Sick – really sick.” “What do you want?” “I wondered if you could help me out. I need to get some food analysed.” “Really.” “I’m not crazy. Do you have a friend at uni whose doing molecular science or something like that - could get them to analyse some food for me – I’m being poisoned.” “Look Maia I’ll be straight with you. The only time you ever ring me is when you want something.” “No, it’s not. Look Abby I really need your help this time – I’m desperate” “Sure you are Abby – it’s always an emergency when you call me, like the other hundred times you rang for something. My answer is NO. You need to get over yourself Maia.”
Was that why no one had called to see how she was, where she was? Was she so obsessed with herself that she had alienated any one who might possibly care about her. Tears stung her eyes. She was all alone. Her clothes clung to, absorbing the sweat that was seeping uncontrollably through her skin.
There was Andrew …
“I’m sorry Mr van Dooen is away on vacation in Europe until the 15th of next month,” the receptionist told her.
Maia struggled up the two flights of stairs to Mrs Smith’s door, sweat pouring off her thin, clammy skin. “Hello again love. You do look dreadful.” “Mrs Smith you said you’d seen my boyfriend.” Exhaustion was threatening to consume her. “Yes that lovely young man who brings you your box of veggies every week. Such a lovely young man.” “That’s not my boyfriend Mrs Smith, he’s the delivery guy,” Maia snarled in disgust and walked away, fighting her body’s will to collapse on her.
Bed beckoned her, back to the ease and embrace of the doona, to crawl in and away from a horrible nasty world she was realising she’d created. She'd sleep this time - she was exhausted.
Maybe I have made myself ill – brought this all onto myself and I probably deserve it. I could apologise to Andrew .....
Maia lowered her pounding head onto the pillow. It smelt of stale sweat and something else. Metallic? She remembered Andrew bringing back a pillow saying she’d left it at his place. Did she? She couldn’t remember taking a pillow to his place? When did he bring it back?
Dave arrived home from the Northern Territory yesterday afternoon after two weeks there for work. Our kitchen is regularly a place for fun and frivolity and last night, I couldn't help but grab a very scratchy video of Dave and Dylan dancing together to The Gorillaz. Go boys go ....
I Resolve to Follow the New Write Anything!
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2011 is fast slipping away, and 2012 is almost upon us. Do you have a New
Year’s Resolution yet? No? Then how about resolving to update your
bookmarks, upd...
