September 7th
Tuesday are always good because The Girls come over to play marimbas in the morning. (Yes I’ve become one of those more-than-middle-aged women who refer to their women friends as The Girls. Funny that in our serious-feminist twenties we insisted on being called women. Or even wimmin for goodness sake).
Marimba-playing is one of my few sure-fire remedies for depression, and much more fun than dragging myself off to the gym to get the endorphins going. Until a coupla months ago I was up with the kookaburras every morning, putting on my trainers, off to sweat & pump iron. That person has gone, at least for now. And been replaced by a slightly plumper reading-in-bed and eating-chocolate sort of a person, who sometimes feels a diffuse sense of dread first thing in the morning before getting up.
Whereas when I’m in the gym bunny phase of the cycle I’m out of bed and busy before I have a chance to fall into existential angst.
Cycles, interesting to observe. Since starting this blog I’ve watched my moods move up, down and all around. I think that is just what they do, all the time. All I need to do is remember the mantra, ‘Everything Changes’. Like the weather.
Now the marimba girls have gone and I’m writing here partly to avoid the tedious tasks awaiting me, tasks to do with bits of paper on my desk, and the accountant requesting I send my 09/10 tax stuff soon. I suppose I’ll do what I usually do, which is put it off and off and off till I feel sick thinking about it. At which point I’ll sit down, deal with it all, and feel better.
Although there IS often a very grumpy moment in the middle of it all, when I can’t find what a certain cheque was for etc. And I get into a rage about the whole horrible greedy hypocritical system. Even though I am essentially one of the winners in that horrible greedy system. Aaargh, the unresolveable moral squirminess about all of that is another reason to procrastinate.
The three guys are still out there, mixing cement, moving rocks. Earning an honest living. The flagstones look pretty good. One of the Marimba Girls, as I was waving them off, recognised one of the gardening guys. Turned out they lived next door to eachother years ago out in the hills near Nimbin. We all stood there in the spring sunshine chatting by a pile of jasmine prunings.
When he’s not pulling weeds and mulching gardens, the ex-neighbour of J’s is an astrologer. He tells us he has "a particular interest in Chiron". And that he runs “experiential workshops, Mars and Venus stuff. Which is you know, lots of fun”
‘‘Oh...’’ I say. I’m wondering vaguely if there’s a connection between the Mars and Venus experience and the boss’s sex therapist wife.
And I do just have to mention that the other gardening guy ( the hard-working, less chatty one) spent the weekend as fire-keeper at a women’s sweat lodge. I love it!
Later I was out in the garden talking about payment and online deposits etc with The Boss (after he’d talked me into cutting back the purple bougainvillaea). I was ranting on about all the new online bank security measures where you have to get a secret code number sent to your mobile every time you want to access your account, or else have a special e-tag thing. Spooky.
The Boss is more paranoid than I am: He wants me to remove his account details after final payment because he reckons there are ‘gangs of hackers’ who come from Russia and somewhere else, especially to hack into low-security online Aussie bank accounts.
The world really is completely mad, isn’t it?
Anyway, he doesn’t do any online banking himself, “But my wife does all that sort of stuff on the computer, because she’s got a shop”
” A shop?..Oh, I thought she was a...I mean, whereabouts, what sort of shop?”
“Well”, he says, “She’s Sex therapist, so ...you know (wink wink) it’s an online sex shop” I say “Oh...” again and then go inside, now revising my image of The Sex Therapist Wife to include naughty lingerie and dildoes and dirty magazines. I think I’m secretly scared she’ll come around and ask me about my sex life.
I’d been imagining her more along lines of sacred tantra, chakras & tapping into the Divine Feminine etc., the sort of stuff that’s popular round these parts. Usually offered by someone called ‘Ocean’ or ‘Shakti’
Still, as we all agree over morning tea ( the Marimba Girls) we’d much prefer to live among colourful hippy crackpots, than among the real estate agents and stockbrokers of Noosa or the Gold Coast.
I got a thing from Get Up about what’s happening in the north of Western Australia, how the Big Business Bullies (Shell, BP etc) want to build a gas pipeline across Aboriginal land and aren’t prepared to wait for a proper indigenous consultation. Bastards! The Aboriginal land has been earmarked by the W.A govt for ‘compulsory acquisition’ This enrages me.
Interestingly, I hear a farmer on the radio thismorning who is up in arms about land clearing legislation enacted few years back. He says it is tantamount to ‘compulsory acquisition’ by the government, of agricultural land and he should be compensated. He sounded well-educated and articulate and he’s managed to get the case to court.
sigh...endless squabbles...
L. tells about an Aboriginal man she used to know out in that beautiful wild region of W.A. Jimmy Pike, the artist. She said he grew up in the desert, and the first sign of whitefellas he ever saw was their footprints. Or rather, their shoe-prints. He thought we had no toes.
Well last night, I finally hit the email send button to tell people I’ve got a blog. Today, nice emails from friends. My little cave out here in cyber-world is warmed by the knowledge that others have visited.
A big fragrant vase of yellow lilies from the market, a bunch of intense blue irises in a black vase; and a lovely big messy bunch of home-grown roses from J - My house is full of spring flowers.
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