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Desertrose

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Blog Entries posted by Desertrose

  1. I know there are a few Aussies on this site.
    Just hoping everyone is safe wherever they are!

    My daughter has lost her house in the Blue mountains. My other daughters best friend has also lost her house (Susan Antonio who just joined this site recently) and many other friends of theirs have also lost homes or are being impacted by fires in some way or another.

    It's been the most frightening experience for our family as most of my family live right in Winmalee where over 200 houses have been destroyed and the crisis still continues with bad weather ahead.
    So many fires are still burning in different areas. It's just unbelievable that we are seeing this kind of thing so early in the season.

    My heart goes out to all those people who are now faced with having lost everything they owned, pets...oh that just upsets me so much. My daughters boyfriend braved the fire to try and get in to save their two dogs but unfortunately he was only able to save one.

    I have so much respect and gratitude for the firies who are out there facing horrific circumstances. Just true hero's.
    While so many homes have been lost, so many have also been saved, including my parents and my sisters homes.

    Just praying that what they are predicting weather wise will not be as bad as they fear.

  2. Vocals - Thoughts

    By Desertrose ,

    It's been a long time since I've scratched any thoughts here.
    I'm feeling particularly irritable due to the insanity of insomnia. 7 am was my bedtime this morning.
    Anyway.

    My daughter wants to write and sing songs so maybe I should steer her over here. I think I will.
    She's my biggest fan, bless her cotton socks.

    I just wanted to say something about vocals actually, from a non professional position obviously. Others may have much more valuable thoughts. This is just my perspective.

    I don't consider myself to be a super fantastic vocalist, far from it. I've always hated my voice, wish that I had more balls instead of sounding like I'm five years old, but I'm usually pretty good with pitch and usually ok with putting some expression/emotion into what I sing. I only do what I am capable of and that's pretty limited. I can never be one of those fancy sing fifty notes in two seconds ullulating all over the place vocalists, and I can't scream or get any gruffness or really reach any spectacularly soaring over the top high notes. (funnily enough though I can get that gruffness when I yell at the kids)
    So I just work with what I think best suits my voice.

    I think that's the first thing you have to do as a vocalist "find yourself". Be realistic...work with what you've got and make the best of it and write what suits your vocals.
    You can't sing with a tuxedo vocal to a heavy metal song. Wish I could do some screamo sometimes, just to unleash the demons but I'd end up sounding like a strangled cat.

    When recording vocals my biggest peeve is when vocalists who are still "finding themselves", perhaps not so confident with revealing their singing voices- to compensate for their lack of confidence, will smother the tracks in effects.
    Why oh why? Bangs head on laptop.
    It really doesn't work.
    That's like piling concealer on a zit from hell.
    Really.
    Don't put a condom on your voice....it's really unsatisfying for the listener.
    This is just my opinion, I know pop songs sometimes use annoying effects. In moderation yeah, maybe, but not constantly.

    Another pet peeve is doubling vocals...singing along with yourself on a song.
    Why would you do that? Either you like your voice so much that you want to hear it twice, or you have so little confidence that you can't bring yourself to sing without a friend to hold your hand.
    No. Don't do it unless for some artistic reason the song calls for a really messy vocal.
    Again, here and there....maybe? But get them lined up like pretty maids all in a row or else it will be a schizophrenic mess.

    This goes the same for recording harmonies.
    The best way to get harmonies sounding absolutely blissful is to take the time and effort (and hey, I'm guilty of NOT doing this!) to mute all the music tracks and actually sing the harmony with the main vocal so you can get it EXACTLY in line.
    Look at the tracks.... Do they line up? Have you got the exact phrasing, intonations the same?
    When you do, and the pitch of both or all the vocals are exactly synchronized it can induce goosebumps.

    Another thing is the right choice of microphone. We all have different tones and there are so many choices of mics that can best bring out the subtleties of your individual voice.
    I'm not really an expert here with mics, and I know mine probably isn't the best for my voice (so I have been told) but really, if you've bought a cheap mic, it's probably not going to do your recordings any justice.
    Pop filters are a must...but even with one your P's can still pop.
    I sing very close to the mic, just what seems to work best with my mic and my voice, but there are ways to hold your lips so every breath doesn't PONG into an explosive blast. Looser lips works better than pursed lips I find and also turning your mouth slightly at an angle to the filter so your breath doesn't hit it directly also helps.
    PPPPractise.
    And also I've found that the position of your mouth to the mic can make a huge difference to tone.
    Too far away and your voice sounds thinner and obviously more distant. (My experience anyway.)
    Close sounds more breathy, if you want that intimate vibe, but too close and you can get a muffled kind of sound.
    Singing upward, with the mic slightly above your mouth can calm some of the shrillness. The reverse for having it below your mouth. I think. I confess I have never done that.
    Experiment. A lot of people I think just turn on the mic and expect that everythings going to sound dandy.
    Listen back. Try different things. It helps to EQ the vocal track too when mixing.
    I was explaining this to my daughter tonight and she said "But isn't that cheating? Making your voice sound better than what it really is?"
    No, it's not cheating.
    It's making the most of the tools that you have to present the best possible "sound" you can.
    I think if you are going to offer up something to someones ears that you should present it as best you possibly can, for their listening pleasure.
    After all if you offer up food for someone, don't you want to present it well, make it LOOK appetizing?
    Well....I just slap it on the plate, but I don't even pretend to be interested in cooking.
    Ask someone who will tell you the truth, even if it hurts, about how your vocal sounds.
    No point in NOT getting real with yourself.

    Pick the right KEY....oh this is SO SO important.
    You shouldn't have to strain when you sing.
    If you feel in the least bit uncomfortable singing, the audience WILL hear it...no matter how many condoms or friends joining the party.
    Choose the key you feel most comfortable with.
    If some notes are still too high, or low, modify the melody...don't hang on the notes...maybe drift a little touching on the note you want, if need be.
    Remember that it's those long drawn out notes that are the most likely ones to go off pitch.
    Remember to BREATHE before one of those notes. (all the time really) Breath controls pitch.

    I think that's all I have to say before I once again face the nightmare of my bed,

  3. Blink

    By Desertrose ,

    Life is a state of permanent impermanence.
    What’s it all for – this?
    We feel joy, we feel pain, all in varying degree’s.
    We get wrapped up in the stupidity of the greed and lust for experiencing everything we can possibly experience in this oh so very impermanent state of being.
    Then, lights out…it’s gone.
    Blink.

    Sometimes even thinking about these things seems so utterly pointless.
    It takes energy to feel joy and pain, and everything inbetween.
    Numb takes none.
    Wrapped in a blanket at the bottom of that hole.

    Seems like it’s all just about how to fill that time of impermanence.
    Biding time.
    Like waiting for the lights to change.
    Blink.
    You could pick your nose, masturbate, sing along to the radio, scream profanity, stare into space….
    It’s all up to you.

    Moments.
    Relentlessly tumbling one after the other.
    Seconds, minutes, hours, years, decades….
    Blink.

    Lessons?
    What lessons?
    What for, who for, what purpose?
    God’s entertainment?
    “I wanna see that one do “pain†again. She did that well last time. Thoroughly enjoyed the show!â€

    God sets the stage and we dance.
    All of us right here right NOW, dancing.
    An impermanent dance.
    Fifteen minutes of fame.
    Then, lights out….it’s gone.
    Blink.
  4. "Which came first, the garden gnome or the old man who looks just like a garden gnome?"

    I don’t know why but that thought kept intruding into my mind very early this crisp Autumn morning as I sat inside the car observing the hustle and bustle of market stall holders loading their wares onto trolleys and steadily piling boxes onto the footpath in preparation for the Ivy market.
    Was it coincidence that the gnomey old man with his delightfully bulbous red nose was unloading pot plants?

    For some reason today, instead of being focused on selling candles, my mind kept wandering to people’s faces and seeing characters, or just seeing parts OF characters, accompanied by a stream of words that flooded my brain to describe them.
    It was even worse when I felt compelled to leave my husband to man the stall while I took a break and went for a stroll through the main part of town.

    “Busking blues man with the crazy hair and cyanotic lips!â€
    I walked past HIM several times and that sentence screamed so loud in my mind that I was almost afraid my lips would inadvertently spit it out!
    "Yeah! That's who you are, and don't you forget it!"

    “Pinnochio!†(a fleeting glance) actually made me smile.
    “Wheelchair woman with resting breasts on kneesâ€
    “Slim Jim cowboy man with emphysema’d lungs - strutting his stuff.â€
    “Independent white caned blind lady with the elephant charm pendant†(A familiar character I “knowâ€)

    It struck me that so many of these characters I am beginning to recognize.
    Of course they don’t know me from a bar of soap but I’ve seen them around and obviously made a mental note of them.
    It’s been two years of feeling like a visitor to this place – my parents “placeâ€. Somewhere we always used to come to visit, but now this realization that I am recognizing so many faces makes it feel a little more like home.
    Kind of.

    I noticed that “busker teenager sitting cross-legged playing the Casio keyboard badly.†was not around.
    Instead there was “Budding busking Asian cellist girl†suitably set up in the shade in front of the church, but I worried a little about her. She seems too young to be left out in the streets alone.
    A new one – “busking teenager in too short shorts stupidly standing in the sun belting out tired old pop tunes.†was there today.
    Saturday mornings sure are a buskers paradise in these streets.

    I felt myself unable to stop smiling as I walked and observed this crazy spectacle before me.
    So many colourful, charming, unusual and delightful people.
    You have to understand that it is not that I am amused in an unkind way at them. I am smiling WITH them.
    Smiling because they simply exist, in all their beautiful, individual, ways, shapes and sizes.

    It gave me pause to think for a moment.
    I wonder if other people are making mental notes too and perhaps have coined ME with a phrase, in their heads.
    I wonder who *I* am.
    If I were to take a guess I would be…..
    “Slightly crazy looking smiling woman staring too long at me - smoking the funny cigarette.â€

  5. Silly Woman.

    By Desertrose ,

    “I welcome joy and wonder back into my life.â€
    This is the thought that came into my mind at 3am as I sat out on our back deck, wrapped in my dressing gown looking up at the moon.
    Closing my eyes, taking a deep breath and exhaling fully I felt a sense of immediate relief.
    I am back.

    I wondered to myself as I sat there how many other people might there be, at this very moment sitting out on their back decks looking up at the sky and feeling something similar.
    As the thoughts wandered through my mind I could imagine how one could feel so overtaken by the moment that they could shed their clothes and in an attempt to soak up every bit of the magic of that moonlight, lay naked under that beautiful light.
    How crazy would that seem to most, but not to me.

    There is something about the moons light that is so quietly powerful that it almost IS like somebody is casting a spell upon you.
    No wonder full moons are said to invoke the lunacy in man, and beasts alike.
    I think it’s that we just don’t know what to DO with that energy – when we really still ourselves and allow it to be taken IN.
    For me, on this early morning it has filled me with joy and a certain sense of peace.

    “Moon kissed leaves gently dancing in the breezeâ€
    Seductively, almost undulating in their dance.
    Shimmering, like tiny diamonds - that light. Sprinkled in the tree tops.
    And funny too looking up at the tree’s surrounding my backyard. It’s like they are all alive – of course they are ALIVE, but alive in a “presence†sense and “with meâ€.
    I don’t ever feel alone when there are tree’s, which is why there is something extra added to the experience of sitting under a full moon when you are in a place where there ARE no tree’s.
    Like in the desert.
    Just you, the earth beneath your feet and the moon above.
    Alone with the moon.
    Now that is something special.
    Not that I mind the company of trees.

    I have missed THIS.
    Why did I ever stop? Where did it GO, that magic, that allowing IN of the magic.
    Asking for it…looking for it.
    Basking in it.

    I felt it the other day too.
    Walking down the town street and the wind was whipping up a fury, tearing the leaves from the tree’s and scattering them across the road, reminding me that yes, Autumn is here…. And that Winter (ahh bliss) is coming.
    I found myself in a midst of fluttering leaves, hair blowing crazily about and in passing a group of people I heard a woman say “Oh I hate this!†– the wind.
    To which I answered her in my head.
    “I don’t. I love it! Can’t you feel the energy in the wind? FEEL it touching you. Caressing your skin. Reminding your senses that you are alive and part of something far greater than just yourself?â€
    Silly woman…. (smiling)

    Back on my deck….I was reminded of a time a few years ago when we were camped by the ocean on the edge of a small cliff.
    So close to the beach that all night long you could hear the crashing and pounding of the waves.
    What a beautiful sound. Endless. Relentless. Never ceasing. (Doesn’t the sea get tired?)
    I remember then thinking to myself, again under the spell of magic moonlight, how insignificant “all this†was.
    Me. My world. My thoughts.
    How many other people had sat there too and just listened.
    Now gone but there I was, as will be so many more in that very same place.
    Only the endless rhythm of those pounding waves will remain.
    Lets hope anyway.

    It is a beautiful thing to just sit and be still.
    Close your eyes and just BE.
    I think I will make time for myself more often, for these moments.
    To welcome back all that has been missing for so long.
    Silly woman.
  6. I don’t want to fall asleep
    Co’s there’s a thousand dancing butterflies
    Waiting to get in.
    From a swirl inside my head
    Like a cloud descending suddenly,
    they’re dancing in my skin

    I don’t want to fall sleep
    face that familiar place of in-between
    Where things begin to break
    And it’s not that I’m afraid
    I’m just tired of all their flutterings
    Keeping me awake

    I don’t want to feel insane
    But it’s insane that sleep should wake me up!
    How can I explain?
    I just don’t want to fall asleep
    Co’s there’s a thousand dancing butterflies
    Waiting…there….again.
  7. It struck me today that I really do have a ghoulish dark side.
    My daughter is doing a year 11 art project which involves taking a household object and using it to create 20 different artworks from.
    She chose an eggplant (that’s my girl!)
    So far she has different photographs, all very artfully done (this is her “thingâ€, photography), various sketches where the eggplants take on different cutesy characters and some carved eggplants which are again – cute.
    She complained to me that her new art teacher keeps looking at what she’s done so far and smiling and saying “that’s sweetâ€.
    Today he suggested she try something other than “sweet†and I explained to her that he probably wants something more out of the box – more….. ARTY.
    So we mulled it over for a while and I came up with the idea of slitting open an eggplant, stuffing some cooked spaghetti, covered with tomato sauce inside the “woundâ€, placing it on the side of the road, near the gutter, where she could lay down and take a photo getting a perspective shot with the rough gravel like road being at the forefront of the photo.
    She could name it “Road killâ€.

    Then I told her she should take the cute toadstool she carved out of an eggplant and put it outside on the table in the sun(and rain) and photograph it in its decaying states. It will grow it’s own moss and fungi out there and the result could very well end up as being quite an art form unto itself. (Lord knows I have discovered enough of these sorts of metamorphic artistic “forms†in the bottom of my vegetable drawer over the years – Who woulda thought that a carrot could end up looking exactly like a cooked sausage!)

    I showed her a spoken “thing†I had done once called “Corpse in the cupboardâ€. For some reason it was spoken in a badly done kind of Irish/Scottish accent that somehow came over me at the time I recorded it (along with sinister musical backing)
    It was inspired by my discovery of a horribly decaying eggplant that somebody (not me!) had put in an unused “junk†cupboard in the kitchen.
    I tell you it really was a horrific find! Oozing, and sliming away in secret there.
    Though she laughed, she told me my story was “disturbingâ€.

    In fact this word came up several times in the conversation – to describe me, my mind, my thoughts. Disturbing.

    I suppose I do have some disturbing ideas at times.
    I wonder where this attraction to “the dark†and the ghoulish comes from?
    I think it comes from fear.
    It’s like when people can’t help but stop and rubber neck at a traffic accident.
    You don’t want to see…but you do want to see….
    You want to see because it terrifies you.
    By seeing, really LOOKING, maybe you’ll overcome your fear?
    I don’t know.
    Maybe, as terrible as it sounds, you just feel thankful it wasn’t you.

    I remember as a child in primary school seeing a dead dog in the ditch right near the school.
    This was in Africa, maybe we didn’t have good councils there or something but that dead dog stayed there for weeks….months even!
    I remember seeing it week after week, slowly decaying.
    The process was both disturbing, yet fascinating.
    I can still recall the repulsiveness I felt, and the fear…seeing with my own eyes what death does, and yet I had to LOOK.

    So why is this all coming to mind right now?
    (This is kind of like automatic writing at the moment – a spewing of random thoughts.)
    Because this morning my other daughter told me that on her way to the doctors she saw a dead dog, hit by a car, on the side of the road and its stomach had been ripped open and its intestines had spilled out.
    Her description shocked me because I “saw†it in my head.
    I didn’t want to see, but I did want to see.
    I’ve been seeing it all day.

    The truth of the matter is, I am terrified of death.
    My own, other peoples, my parents, dead dogs.... just death in general.

  8. So Damn Cool!

    By Desertrose ,

    I'm sitting here listening to keyboards and guitar being played next door in my daughters bedroom.
    In there are two young teenage girls exploring this fantastic, exciting world of endless inspiration that music brings.
    Just as books can enthrall and captivate, taking you to worlds in your head (and heart)so can music.
    Although I've heard the same rendition of a song for the thousandth (is that a word?) time, and I do worry a little about the neighbours, I can't help but think how lucky I am to have MY sixteen year old, at home, safe, not wandering the streets or doing drugs, NOT glued to facebook, or anything else that might be detrimental to her physical or mental well being.
    Sometimes there's just moments when it's so damn cool to be a parent and watch your kids evolve and "discover".
    I'm just glad there's no drums involved.
  9. Looking at the instruction leaflet for my new GHD hair straightener I was amused to read that it "goes into shiver mode" when its cold and makes "warbling noises".
    Funny that.
    Sounds just like my hubby in winter.
    Speaking of which....My God, what is UP with this crazy weather? Positively chilly today!
    Something like 75 % of NSW is currently flooding! That's an area as big as France, so they said on the news.
    I have never seen so much rain!
    My brother is right now filming, for the news, as they release the dam not far from here as it is almost overflowing.
    One minute we're in drought and now we need to build an ark!
    Crazy.

    New project tomorrow.
    I'm going to record and then film my daughter and her songwriter friend.
    Will be nice to film someone else for a change and I really want this young girl to explore her songwriter side more. I think she's got that "thing' in her that needs to come out.
    What better way than through music.

    Well, off to join my dearly beloved warbling one.....tucked up in a warm bed on yet another long rainy night.

  10. When I Grow Up...

    By Desertrose ,

    So it’s my birthday tomorrow.
    I’m not “doing’ birthdays anymore I’ve decided.
    It’s depressing seeing the numbers climb and I don’t want to think of myself in terms of a number because it confuses me.

    What should a forty four year old woman look like, act like, sound like…..
    Who should she be?
    I don’t “feel†that number, but hey, everybody says that, don’t they?
    I don’t however still feel like I am twenty -THAT person is gone.
    I remember her….I can see some of her experiences, in MY memory bank but she feels like a stranger.

    I can still see the child.
    I see her cradled in the fork of a big old tree down the end of her grandparents yard, high above the veggie garden with it’s neat rows of corn and red spotted strawberry patches.
    She’s in the tree and she’s commanding the wind to blow.
    “Blow harder now!†….. She waits until eventually the leaves of the tree begin to rustle.
    “Stop blowing!†…..and it’s quiet.
    She smiles.
    Magic.
    She had the “magicâ€.
    Lying in the grass with one hand cupped to her cheek, shading her eye looking for those silver cobwebs and sparkles that “flew off the sun†that no matter how she tried to explain to her parents, they just could not see and sternly warned her about “going blindâ€.
    The tree in her backyard that someone hung a swing from, and the ropes that cut a wound into the branch which made all the tree’s “blood†ooze out….She could heal that!
    Plastered with dozens of her mother’s band aids and a heartfelt whispered “ I’m sorryâ€.
    Solemn ceremonies where the singing of Kum ba yah was a pre requisite for the honorary send off of any and all small creatures which she happened upon in their pitiful lifeless forms.

    Yes, I remember her clearly.
    More clearly than any of the other inhabitants in my head.

    So who am I today?
    Who am I?
    Sensitive, introspective, an observer. A “seekerâ€, empathetic ,creative……bitter, untrusting, insecure…..fragile.
    Crazy.
    Sometimes crazy.
    Two people – Piscean – the two fish.
    So true.
    Opposite sides of personality. Conflict?
    Yeah, that’s me.
    Conflicted!

    I don’t want to grow old.
    It sounds so vain, to think about ones physical appearance deteriorating – withering - changing, because vain is not who I am, but I don't like the fact that every year, every five years, every ten years....well. Not only will there be there strangers on the inside but ones on the outside too.
    I just don't like the fact that all of this - getting older stuff, is completely out of my control.
    More importantly, growing older means time is running out and……
    I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
  11. How does one start the day with the plan and intention of going to a belly dance class and end up doing a 90 minute Israeli Folk dance class, in a totally different suburb as WELL, with a person you’ve only spoken to twice for about ten minutes in total?
    I have to wonder about myself sometimes.
    After belly dance class, which was once again inspiring and refreshing both mentally and physically, I was invited by this woman – a stranger really (can’t even remember her name?) to go with her, on the train to Lawson to another dance class she attends on a Thursday.
    So, naturally I said “Yes, why not!â€
    I don’t even know this woman, and usually I am not so trusting. (Wondering why all of a sudden I’m being so impulsive.) I did have a few moments on the train where I thought this is SO not what I’d tell my kids to do….just go off blindly with strangers to places you’ve never been before.
    She seems to want to befriend me. Well, ok then. We will see where it goes.
    The Folk dancing was amusing yet strangely entertaining and a bit ritualistic. All the focus is on the feet – nothing on the hips and upper body. I don’t even know how to waltz! It was tricky and a bit of a brain strain trying to memorize steps but I didn’t for one second feel “judgedâ€.
    Ok, so I felt a little scrutinized by one rather large butch dyke type of woman there. (I’m sure she’s a lesbian)
    The rest of the ladies were significantly older than me, but hey, who cares . Fun is fun and it WAS fun.

    When I got back to my suburb and bid farewell to my new (nameless – it'll come to me later) friend, I then did another impulsive thing and went to see a Naturopath.
    I’m SO over doctors! Been tested for everything under the sun for the past twelve months and every result is ‘normalâ€. Naturally they think I’m just a hysterical “womanâ€. I’m NOT. Something is out of balance and my body is virtually SCREAMING at me trying to tell me this!
    Lovely woman this naturopath. She looked at the WHOLE picture – for once, and told me what I suspected all along. It’s more than likely - hormones. Basically told me to ignore the test results as they are just a standardized test and really don’t tell you much – just as I suspected. So, we’ll try the herbal route first. What have I got to lose?
    So….another strange Thursday (is a pattern developing here?)

  12. Tangled.

    By Desertrose ,

    My head feels tangled.
    I feel tangled, strangled and frustrated.
    Its not been a good day.

    Why won’t the words come when I want to write a song?
    The things I want to say.
    Do I even have anything to say?

    It’s been a LONG, “not good day†as I woke up at 5am.
    Bloody ridiculous. One week I’m only getting to SLEEP at 5am and the next I’m waking up at that ungodly hour.
    All I know is that 5 am looks, feels and sounds different depending on whether it's the time you fall asleep or the time you wake up.

    I achieved nothing….much.
    Re recorded some vocals to an old song. Not happy with the end result though of trying to fine tune the piano.
    Shit, I’m just grumpy!

    Sometimes I feel so “separate†from my family, and it’s getting to be more and more so.
    I feel like they just look at me like I’m some floating around the house servant.
    Do any of them even wonder what I do all day?

    I’m rained in.
    It’s depressing now.

    Keira’s birthday tomorrow.
    I don’t feel like seeing people, let alone entertaining them.

    I’m too busy having a pity party of my own here.

    **********************************************************************************************

    Wow. I suddenly feel "untangled".
    I just listened to a very LONG audio "thing" (Seminar? Don't know what you would call it.) from this guy who wrote the book "Conversations with God".
    I'm NOT religious.(I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!)
    I like to think of myself as Spiritually seeking....
    I am deeply uncomfortable with being part of a group who all believe in the one thing- one God, and reject all other possibilities.
    What I just listened to made me feel equally "wowed" as it did uncomfortable, but somehow I've come away from it feeling enlightened and in a much better frame of mind than I was in earlier.
    I've got a numb bum though.

    If you are a "seeker" and happen to be reading this, and have a spare hour or so ....listen to this. It WILL make you feel "something."

    http://evolvingwisdom.com/nealedonaldwalsch/conversationswithgod/download

  14. Beautiful Things.

    By Desertrose ,

    Nature makes beautiful things.
    Remarkable, spectacular amazing things.

    We set off early for a trip up to Jenolan caves, two hours from home.
    The drive there is scenic….rolling hills, lush green country side and miles of pine forest plantations.
    We stopped for morning tea (but I forgot the tea cups, lol!) and I filmed for a while in one of the forests.
    Fairy tale white spotted red toadstools were pushing up from the ground everywhere among the fallen pine needles. Just magic!
    There were leeches too but when I want to capture the beauty I see, not even those bloody little nasties can stop me.
    Pity we didn't have more time. I could have spent hours wandering among the tree’s finding all the pretty little secrets a forest like that has to offer.

    We went on to do a cave tour - “Temple of Baalâ€.
    Fascinating and good to see it with lights this time (we went through it in the dark on the ghost tour we did of that cave recently.)
    It’s just amazing what goes on underground, in the dark totally without human intervention.
    Stunning formations!
    I kept thinking “Aladdin’s cave†- was THIS what they meant instead of a cave full of actual jewels?
    Walls full of tiny diamonds sparkling in the light.
    Sheaths of pure white silk draped from the roof…. Glistening icicles….Man, what a sight!

    On the way home the sky turned black and then with much cracking thunder and lightning opened up above us and we got caught in a terrific hailstorm.
    From inside the car it was absolutely deafening. Everyone on the road pulled over and just waited it out.
    It was a bit scary, but at the same time I loved it! (love, love, LOVE storms!)

    This is short because I’m tired.
    Tired from all that climbing about in the caves, but revived because I got out amongst nature and once again found my “churchâ€â€¦.my “God†- there.

    There is a song I found online. Yes it’s a Christian song and I don’t follow any particular religion but I absolutely LOVE this song (and can't see how anyone possibly couldn't!) so I’ll use it to sum up this day.


  15. There is something rather “exhibitionistic†about blogging.
    One wonders how far you could, or should go.
    This whole thing – the internet….billions of voices all crying out to be heard. (Imagine the energy that creates in the universe? Out there in cyberspace?)
    There's something rather pathetic about that, but then again also very human.
    You could conclude that human behavior then is – pathetic, or is it just that we’re all the same and like a dog pissing on a lamp post we all want to somehow connect, or just leave our mark?

    Saturday -the day for mundane chores like shopping.
    Why is it that it takes us ALL day to go and buy food?
    Ok, so I took hubby on a bit of a meandering journey through lots of clothes shops FIRST and surprisingly he didn’t complain “too†much.

    There’s something odd about those fitting rooms and I’m beginning to believe that there’s a conspiracy of sorts going on.
    Some form of consumer trickery.
    I mean, it’s bad enough that the lighting and mirrors in them make you look ten times bigger (and who looks at themselves THAT close up?) but why is it that when you try on jeans that in the fitting room they actually FIT, but when you get home they feel too big?
    Is it all that walking around looking for jeans that makes you lose weight by the time you get home or is there some kind of magic going on inside the fitting room that just makes them “fit†– there.
    It’s a ruse see.
    They impregnate the denim with some kind of chemical than makes them expand while you're driving home and then you either have to take them back – and wait in those damned frustrating refund/exchange queues, OR you just put up with the slightly too big jeans….until a few months down the track (when you've lost the receipt) you get sick of them sagging and just go back and buy a new pair!
    Or maybe its just the warped perception of myself (so I am told) that refuses to believe that I am a size smaller than what I think I am?

    I finally bought “the card†today.
    I’ve been meaning to, really I have. It’s just taken me a while.
    My Uncle, (who’s not really an Uncle, but back in the day when etiquette was different we called close family friends “Uncle†or “Auntieâ€) has been diagnosed with lung cancer.
    He lives in another state, but still he is a big part of my world in that he is the only person here in Australia from my way distant past where I grew up in Africa.

    I was so saddened to hear the news, and I think of him all the time.
    Yeah, he WAS a smoker but gave up many years ago. I guess it still got him though. So bloody unfair!

    So I want to send him a card, just to say I’m thinking of him as he undergoes all this chemo and radiation treatment. I know he’s putting on a brave face and is determined to “beat this!â€
    I have the card….I’m still searching for the words.

    I just love people watching.
    (See, I am an exhibitionist AND a voyeur.)
    I could sit for hours and just watch people …imagining what their lives are like. What their thoughts are like.
    Do other people think the weird stuff that I think?
    Or even weirder?
    That’s a scary thought.
    It’s easy to pick the people who are not comfortable in their own skins….and those that are.
    Those that think of themselves as being “invisible†and those that think that the whole world was put here solely to rotate on its axis around THEM.
    Funny to think about all those “thoughts†buzzing around in people’s heads as they are walking around the malls.
    The internal dialogues going on inside them like a constant stream of mind pollution.
    It’s a bit like all the bloggers on the internet.
    Imagine the energy of all those thoughts going on in every single MIND on this planet!
    Is this what is causing global warming? The atmosphere heating up by the frenzy of thoughts being radiated from every frazzled, over stimulated human mind on the planet?

    Why can’t we SLOW DOWN and just be still?
    Just ….be…quiet….

    Me too.
    I want to learn how to find that still-ness inside my head.
    That inner sanctuary of peace.
    I don’t know how though. Is it even possible, really?

    I’m supposed to be working on the balance between the mind/heart/body and soul.
    The four “houses†or something.
    I think I pretty much covered the first three today. (Clothes shopping is "exercise"...isn't it?)

    Now, for my soul -I want to TRY to “ just be quiet’.

    Tomorrow I will be venturing into deep dark caves – literally.

  16. Coming Back.

    By Desertrose ,

    I started a new belly dance course today called Unveil which focuses on “empowering the feminineâ€.
    Not that I have any problem in the feminine department because it seems I am 100% living in the feminine realm – which in itself can be a problem. (Its always about balance)
    I’ve been living, for so long now completely in the “heartâ€â€¦.too much emotion stuff going on.
    Too much being still and “feeling†rather than actually getting off my arse and DOING.
    There have been many years of slowly but surely shutting myself off from the world to the point where I’ve almost become agoraphobic again. Not good.

    Ok, so I’ve never learned how to drive, but in the past that was never a real problem (except for other people – those that do drive, who can never understand it)
    I used to meet so many different and interesting fellow travelers, mostly on trains and a journey would never fail to bring at least one interesting conversation.
    Lives touching lives, and all that. I enjoyed that!
    So why did I stop?

    My world shrunk so small – when we moved to Perth.
    New place, no friends, no family, except immediate family, and no desire to set down “roots†there because I knew it was just temporary. A three year sentence to be exact.( I hated every minute we were there!)
    The black dog found me again (depression) and there I was, entirely suffocated down that familiar deep dark hole.
    Then we moved back to NSW again…except to an entirely different location and suddenly there I was again, friendless and alone….except for family.

    God, I have been SO lonely, and alone.
    There I have said it.
    Oh the shame, to actually admit having no real close TRUE friends. At least not ones you see on a regular basis – not like how it used to be years ago when somehow the idea of friendships was not even an issue. They were just always “thereâ€.
    I seemed like a totally different person back then. Can’t even remember who she was?
    Confident… Yeah, she was so much more of THAT back then.

    Being alone- and lonely, robs you of your confidence.
    Makes you question (even more!) who you are and WHY you are.
    And then you start getting older…start noticing the wrinkles and the things that sag and bulge - start picking yourself to pieces bit by bit (even MORE than ever before)…the kids start getting more independent and don’t ‘need†you quite as much (hence more free time for “pickingâ€)and suddenly one day it’s like you’ve just plucked and picked yourself completely clean.
    Disappeared.
    That’s what I did.
    *I* disappeared.

    Today, while I was out – yes, I forced myself to catch a train- I focused on “breath and posture†(SO important in belly dance, and this weeks “homeworkâ€.)
    I envisioned, as taught, a string pulling me up from my core – up through my chest, neck and head.
    Opened up my diaphragm.
    I stood tall (well, as tall as my 5.4 frame will hold me) smiled from within (reminds me of "Eat pray love" - "smile from your liver!"), held my head up and looked people square in the eye.
    An amazing thing happened.
    Total strangers began talking to me….everywhere!
    In the supermarket whilst buying hair dye, at the bus stops, on the train station…on the train.

    It was the weirdest thing.
    And people kept LOOKING at me – to the point that I had to check myself in the mirror in the restroom , just to make sure that a bird hadn’t crapped on my head, or that I didn’t have a big black smudge of mascara down my cheek or something.
    But no…everything was as it should be.

    I spoke at length with a woman on the train. Even gave her my phone number (she saw me using my electronic cigarette and we struck up a conversation that lasted the entire trip)
    Another woman from the new belly dance class asked me if I would like to go bushwalking with her -next week.

    It was just strange.
    A strange feeling suddenly no longer being invisible.

    I think there’s something in the whole concept of "what you project into the universe is what you get back from it."
    There must be.

    I’m coming back. Slowly.
    It will take some time I know.
    I have to stick my feathers back on, one by one, just as carefully as I picked and plucked them all out.

    And.....I WILL find the blue bird of happiness and kick the chicken of despair fair up the stuffing end!

  17. Do Nothing Days.

    By Desertrose ,

    I'm supposed to be writing in a journal, every day for the next eight weeks of this Unveil class. Self discovery and all that....
    So, towards the within I go.
    I'm kind of cheating by writing here, but I've lost track of all my other failed blogs that were started with good intention and I just don't "do" paper and pen anymore.

    It was one of those days where you just don't achieve much.
    Laundry - my God, for the third day in a row there was blue sky! I'd forgotten what that looked like.
    So yeah, how exciting. I did laundry.

    My second eldest daughter came home from hospital after her foot surgery. (bunions at 21 - that just sucks.) Hobbling around on crutches she is.
    She's always been the family hypochondriac though so finally she really has something wrong with her.
    Ugly feet.
    I'm sorry but there's no other way to put it.
    It's not just the bunions, she has really ugly feet!
    She gets them from her father.
    He has these freakishly long toes that curl over.
    Says it's from when he was a teenager and took diving lessons and his toes curled over the edge of the diving board.
    Pfffttt!
    What a load of bollocks! (This is the guy that says he took figure skating lessons!)
    He just got the ugly feet gene and now he's passed it onto our daughter.
    I told her she's actually very lucky. If ever she has the misfortune to lose fingers in an accident (don't worry, I knocked on wood) that she would have no problem having her (freakishly) long toes attached to use as new fingers.

    Ahh, but this journaling thing is supposed to be about "me" isn't it?
    Towards the within?

    I have nice toes actually.
    Except for the fact that they're aging waaay faster than the rest of me.
    In fact my toes were the first place I ever got wrinkles. Too much sun. I'm always barefoot.
    Growing old feet first.
    But, I have nice shaped toes, and feet. Slender and...kind of elegant. I think.

    I don't think I'm supposed to be talking about my toes though.

    God!

    What did I REALLY feel today?

    My other (eldest ) daughter thrust her cigarette in my hand as she rushed back upstairs to get something before her lift arrived.
    Weirdest feeling.
    I haven't smoked a cigarette in six months.
    Ok, so I'm still addicted to nicotine with my electronic cigarette - my hookah doodle - peace pipe - quit smoking vaporising device. Call it what you like but it's NOT a smoke!
    Oh for that dirty high.
    But no....not really. The thought of fouling my mouth and lungs with smoke was NOT a temptation.
    Quite a moment really.

    I feel like I'm trying too hard to write something here.
    It really was just one of those "do nothing days".
    I usually hate those, and feel guilty about those.
    Feels like a waste and makes me panic - "I'm wasting my life!"
    But really it's OK.
    I tell myself this now.
    It's ok to sometimes just do nothing, feel very little....just be.
    Besides, people in this house are running out of socks and undies!

    .......And here comes the rain again.....
  18. There was a time in my life when the thought of leaving my own house filled me with terror.
    In even darker times I even began believing that an evil force had taken possession of my mind.

    If there is a precipice between sanity and insanity I was balanced on the very edge of it and peered briefly down into “madness”.

    It all began when I was around fifteen and began dabbling with drugs.
    Nothing too heavy, a little bit of pot here and there, alcohol, and pain pills.
    I had been suffering terrible migraines too, so was put on all kinds of anti migraine medications which possibly could have contributed to the depression I found myself in.

    I was looking for a way to numb myself from all that was going on around me in my life, and mostly, what was inside of me.

    One night while at a friends place, I smoked some marijuana that affected me physically in a way that it had never done before.
    The effect hit me instantly like a tonne of bricks.
    My vision became extremely disturbed, I was unable to focus properly -things were jumping instead of remaining still, and instead of a "happy" buzz it turned into one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

    My friend, unaware of what was happening to me, as a joke leaped out from behind a wall to scare me, and this was when I felt it.... felt myself slip from that precipice.

    A physical splitting of my mind occurred in that instant.
    It's the only way I can describe it.
    I became two people in that moment.
    Along with that split came the physical sensations....
    You know the feeling when you lose your stomach in fright or those “butterfly” like sensations you get on a roller coaster ride?

    Well imagine it never ending.

    Losing your stomach but that feeling just keeps going and going….rising and rising and intensifying all the while.

    My heart began palpitating as though it would explode in my chest - I could hear the blood pounding in my ears.
    I was hyperventilating, pains were shooting through my chest, I felt dizzy, out of breath, my hands were as cold as ice and I felt as though I was going to die at any second!

    Two voices were speaking to me inside my mind.
    I could hear them as clearly as though they were people in the room talking to me.
    One was saying…. "Just calm down....take deep breaths...it's going to be ok, just calm down!"
    The other was screaming with spiteful glee….
    "You're going to die...your heart can't beat this fast without exploding...Any minute it's going to stop beating and you're going to die!"

    It sounded like true evil speaking to me.

    I felt truly as though I had lost my mind.
    The voices fought inside me, screaming at me, as my friends (who were terrified of their parents finding out that we'd been smoking pot) rushed me from the house down to a neighbours where eventually an ambulance was called.

    In the hospital I was treated with great distain by the nursing staff.
    Nobody explained to me what had happened.
    They gave me a little white pill and hooked me up to a heart monitor, (which scared the crap out of me because I kept waiting for the blips to STOP ), and left me alone.

    I never did understand what had caused such a violent physical reaction, nor what had occurred inside my mind that night.

    I never EVER smoked Marijuana again.

    The results however, from that experience I believe affected me for many years to follow, and maybe even still to this day.

    I began experiencing panic attacks shortly after this experience.
    At first it was just the occasional burst of palpitations, which although quite disturbing and uncomfortable, were nothing like what I experienced one day whilst standing at a train platform.

    Completely out of the blue,with no warning, no feelings of impending anxiety, not even any conscious unsettling thoughts and all of a sudden I was back to feeling EXACTLY as I had done that night.
    It utterly terrified me and what was worse was that it happened whilst I was out in a public place!
    I hid in the toilet on the platform for some time...
    I don't remember how I got home.

    From that day on I became afraid of going outside in public and eventually, for a period of time, couldn't.

    I became a prisoner in my own skin ,completely trapped by the physical sensations that my body would throw at me.
    So infinitely tuned into every single sensation, every heart beat, every breath, and always with a deep sense of dread that IT would happen again.

    IT- that could paralyze me with fear...more than fear - terror!

    It controlled my every waking thought, and even, eventually, IT sabotaged the safety I thought I could find in sleep....waking me at night, breathless, as once again my heart raced out of control.

    I began having nightmares.
    Vividly REAL and disturbing dreams of death and dying....
    Of dead children standing on the Amityville horror house front porch beckoning to me, telling me they would "see me soon".

    I even had an out of body experience during this time where I floated up to the ceiling only to lose control even OUT of my physical self, in a frenzied swirl of rainbow colours that eventually crashed into my “body” on the bed, triggering yet another nocturnal panic attack.

    Every day was a struggle, but night time was always the worst.
    I had moved out of home at that point and my boyfriend (Richard) worked nightshift.
    To be alone at night filled me with even more anxiety.

    All I longed for was to just feel "normal"...just for a few minutes even!
    To not feel the clutching fingers of anxiety squeezing in the pit of my stomach.
    It exhausted me mentally and emotionally to try and control my breathing... to "breathe OUT" those feelings of anxiety.
    But how could I when the fear bubbled inside me, ever present, and I was always on guard anticipating that IT would strike again, out of the blue.

    Always....out of the blue...when I least expected it.
    For no REASON. No thoughts, not conscious ones anyway.
    These panic attacks were sly...always lying in wait to strike at any given moment.

    "Attack", really is the right word, because I felt as though I was in a battlefield...at war with my own mind, and it was constant....every waking moment I lived in fear.

    When the first thoughts of spiritual possession began to intrude...thinking that something out of my own control had taken over my body, I knew instinctively that I was in a dangerous place mentally.
    I was SO close at that point in time, to completely slipping over the edge.
    My first waking thoughts were of how I was going to get through the day, and how I just wanted to give up and not have to face those hours ahead.

    I had gone to counselors, even a psychiatrist...my own doctor had prescribed medication to control the palpitations, but none of it worked.
    I spent many hours on the phone to lifeline counselors during the worst of the attacks...too ashamed to speak to my family, my boyfriend, or my friends of exactly how I was feeling.

    I didn't want any of them to know the true madness of my thoughts.



    There came a defining moment when I just KNEW I had to do something.
    I had a choice.
    Either to beat this, or have THIS be the reality of my life.

    I couldn't go out, or if I did I had to make sure that I knew where the hospitals were or doctors..."just in case".
    That voice, the one that screamed at me that first night was always there telling me that I was going to die.

    I decided that the only person that could help me WAS me.

    Logically, intelligently, I knew what was happening.
    The “fright, fight flight syndrome”...my body’s reactions, the physical sensations were ones that I read about, and understood.

    It was all about fear…..Fear OF fear.

    Time and time again I read that these attacks were self limiting, that even if one were to pass out from hyperventilating that the body would correct the situation.

    That the body has it's own safety valve....that people do NOT die from panic attacks!

    My heart was fine, God knows I'd had it checked that many times!
    All I had to do was get through them....grit my teeth and deal with all the horrible sensations.

    I began to do that....and each time I told myself "Well....now that was pretty bad, BUT, hey I'm alive!
    I had to do that many MANY times...

    I began to force myself to go out, to face situations where I would be alone and in public.
    It was frightening, but I kept telling myself that if I didn't do this my world would just keep shrinking smaller and smaller and I didn't want my life to BE like that!

    I don't even know how long it took – years really, but eventually, slowly, each panic attack became less and less terrifying.
    Unpleasant, and always physically uncomfortable, but there seemed to be less fear involved each time.
    The attacks themselves became less frequent.
    It got to the point where I was able to get through them without the panic, in fact with the aid of some tricks I head learned, I was almost able to stop, or at least minimize the length of the palpitations.

    I took my life back.

    I told that voice to shut the f*ck up!

    I still have the occasional bouts of palpitations but I am so used to them that I could be sitting in front of you and you might never know.
    (Unless it's a bad one and I have to bend over and let all the blood rush to my head. Don't know why that "clicks" my heart back into rhythm but it does.)

    There have been periods in my life where I've had all kinds of physical sensations that stem from anxiety.
    A tense jaw, nerves twitching, ectopic heart beats, headaches, strange buzzing sensations under my skin, geographic tongue....weird stuff.

    On more than one occasion I have found myself worn out and exhausted thinking "I hate being in my own skin!"

    But....it's just how it is.
    Who I am...part of what makes me ME, and whatever else pops up I know I can deal with it.

    I have come from a place where the confines of my mind have been a terrifying place to be in.
    From a place of being agoraphobic, scared to even walk out of my front door… to the person I am today who frequently travels to the most remote places in Australia where there ARE no hospitals or doctors or people at the other end of the telephone that can console me and tell me "You're going to be ok"

    *I* tell me I am going to be ok!

    I sometimes wonder if I'd never smoked marijuana and had that experience...would this have still happened?

  19. The Homeless Man

    By Desertrose ,

    I went into the city today...took the kids to Macdonalds for lunch.
    It was really busy, dead on the lunch hour rush so we ended up sitting at the seats that line the windows overlooking the busy shoppers walkway.
    As I went to take a bite out of my burger I looked out at the view of a homeless man lying on the bench outside, asleep.

    He was slumped on his side, one arm outstretched with a grubby dangling hand almost touching the ground.
    His fly was unzipped revealing filthy boxer shorts, his pants and jacket dusty and stained, head roughly shaven and yet he sported a huge bushy beard that buried half his face.

    "Is he even alive?" asked my seventeen year old, after we watched the motionless figure for a few minutes.
    "His belly's moving" said my eleven year old.
    "How do people GET homeless?" she asked

    As I ate I thought about how to answer this.
    "Well, the majority of people who are homeless often have some kind of mental illness" I said
    "Sometimes it's drugs that lands them up on the streets, or alcohol abuse, or sometimes just terribly tragic events that they can't cope with...."
    It was all too hard to try and explain, because I don't really know. I can only guess, and imagine...

    "You must never forget that once upon a time that man was someones gorgeous baby boy" I told them
    "Someone once cared about him."

    We sat there for a while finishing up our meals watching as dozens of passers by stared at the homeless man as they hurried on back to their workplaces, or homes....
    Once a couple of young kids, about six or seven years old, waiting for their parents in the Macdonald queue that had now drifted out the doors, began a game of "lets see how close we can get to the scary man!"
    They laughed as they stepped closer and closer to the sleeping figure, daring him to open his eyes.
    The man stayed silent and still, oblivious to their game.

    About this time, I had an unpleasant vision, as I sometimes do, of the man shifting in his sleep, and falling OFF the bench.
    I hoped we would be gone if and when this happened.

    I also began to have the urge to "do something" for this man.
    The indignity of such an intimate thing as ones sleep, ones dreams (or nightmares?) being under the scrutiny of so many strangers as they walked past and stared openly...
    It just felt so wrong.

    I thought about ordering a meal and leaving it next to him on the bench.
    Save him perhaps from salvaging someones leftovers from the bin...
    His outstretched hand, now ON the ground begged for a ten dollar note.
    Ahh...but....yeah, I know where it would go.

    Two security guards walked past and paid the sleeping figure not so much as a glance.
    A couple sat on the next bench and ate their lunch......a group of teenage boys, all sporting the same ridiculous "I just got out of bed and forgot to brush my hair" look, sat near the man and smirked to each other.
    So many people walked past and probably didn't spare a thought.

    "Once upon a time that was somebody's gorgeous baby boy" I kept thinking.

    And then....it happened.
    Just as it was in my vision.... except I closed my eyes at the last moment!
    The man began a slow motion roll....he rolled his shoulders to the left....his belly followed, and he rolled and.......... I heard the smack as his forehead hit the concrete.
    I heard it.
    The kids were making dismayed sounds next to me and when I dared to open my eyes again I saw the blood trickling down his face.
    His arms moved slowly above his head, trying to find the source of the pain, but as though he was underwater, the effort was just too great.
    He collapsed back into the escape of his fog and stayed where he had fallen in a puddle of rain.

    People continued to walk around him...past him.
    Continued to give him a distasteful glance.
    Nobody moved to help him.

    Reading my mind my teenage daughter said.
    "No mum! He might be dangerous."
    "I'm not strong enough anyway"....I said. but my eyes scanned the passers by, looking for a face that might be feeling what I was feeling. One that might want to help...
    I saw none.
    "You know....he's not that much older than your father...."

    Five minutes went by and the man stayed where he had fallen.
    "We have a mobile phone? We could call an ambulance" said my younger daughter.
    I have done this before....Should I ? Should I ? With such a crappy health service.....long waiting times at the emergency room?
    This was just a graze really....Not a lot of blood, like the other man.
    I could go and get a security person from the train station next door ...perhaps?
    And just as I was deciding what the best thing to do would be, suddenly the man awoke from his stupour.

    We held our breath as he slowly raised himself from the wet ground.
    I got a good look at him for the first time.
    Yeah, probably in his late forties? He looked a bit like an old bikie with that shaved head.
    His eyes, glazed and dazed....
    I wondered at the things those eyes had seen?
    His lips dry and cracked from the cold....
    I wondered what stories those lips could tell...?
    His hands, grey with dirt, fingers stained with nicotine....
    Who had those hands held?

    Finally, standing on swaying legs for a few moments he fixed his eyes on a woman standing a little way up the path.
    We watched him walk over to her, ask for a smoke, and she reluctantly handed over the one she had just lit.

    The homeless man disappeared into the crowd, leaving behind an empty bottle of wine , a forgotten cigarette secreted away underneath the bench... and my echoing thought....

    ""Once upon a time that was somebody's gorgeous baby boy"
  20. It was the darndest thing.......
    I went into a public toilet in a shopping complex the other day, lots of cubicles...nice and clean...
    ONE door had been painted a pretty shade of purple in complete contrast to the others, and in big white letters - not graffiti - properly painted commercially on the outer side of the door, it said...

    "You are or you aren't."

    Somebody else quickly stepped in front of me and went INTO that cubicle and it got me wondering....."were they or weren't they?"

    Perplexing really.
    What COULD it mean?

    I hate mysteries like that.
  21. I’ll tell you my analogy for a good song

    A song is like a really good attentive, interesting lover!

    It MUST have the initial attraction – which happens in the first 20 seconds or so, (maybe even less), of the song, so obviously that includes the intro….. and very importantly the opening lyrical lines!
    Imagine a bad pick up line- turns a person RIGHT off from the word go .
    Weak opening lines in my opinion are things like “I woke up this morning........”. (Just one loose example anyway.)
    I suppose it depends what follows co's it COULD get interesting, but if
    "and I was feeling blue........
    I was so down because I was missin' you!" comes next then it's probably just like a bad pick up line.

    Think of how the opening lines in books draw you in.
    There must be SOME sort of interest in that first couple of sentences that makes you WANT to read on!

    Then it MUST have gentle foreplay which is how the first verse is set up musically and how the lyric progresses over the course of the first- and second, (if there is one), verse.
    It can’t repeat itself lyrically - no repeating unnecessary words or imagery – the interest has to grow with each line, and the melody should grow, or at least fluctuate a little with it.
    It's like the man who kneads your boobs like they are scone dough.
    It's annoying after a while.
    It's like someone telling a story - badly....you don't want to be standing there with your eyes glazed over thinking "Will you get to the POINT already!"
    You want to feel "drawn in" by it.....engaged....attentive... hungry for more!
    Anticipating
    So there it builds – perhaps into a prechorus - you can feel the music is "heading somewhere"……. musically, melodically and lyrically, all of it in unison, building, building building.... until finally it bursts into the chorus which is the payoff you've been waiting for!
    A precipice!
    That moment when it all makes sense!
    That chorus MUST make sense of all that has come before.
    It can't be weak or else the listener will be disappointed!
    (Is that all?) they might say.
    "I went through all of that anticipation for..........THAT?
    "I climbed that mountain and now all I am is out of breath?"
    You don't want that.
    It HAS to be worth the wait and must make you WANT to wait for it to happen again!

    So there you've reached the FIRST climax.
    The chorus!
    The title and MEANING of the song!
    I strongly believe in the title/hook being in the chorus of the song...or at LEAST somewhere in the song and preferably repeated!
    If you DON'T have it anywhere in the song at ALL its kinda like picking up a book titled "The day my penis fell off in the cabbage patch." only to find that there are NO penises or cabbages mentioned at all!
    A bit of a disappointment really....misleading.
    I always feel ripped off if the title of the song is not the FOCUS of the song.

    Depending on the song, after this first climax/chorus the flow could ebb back down into another "gentler" place.....a resting place....but not nodding off place!
    Back to the vibe of the first verse but subtly different...
    A recognition of the earlier "phase".....
    Familiarity but not monotonously repetitive.
    Variations to the melody.....a continuation and EXPANSION of the theme of the song lyrically AND musically.
    THIS is the place where things can go awry.
    You don't want to repeat yourself here and waffle on without bringing MORE meaning and more dimension to the whole core idea of the song.
    You can so easily lose your lover..../.....audience here!
    The thing is at this point they instinctively know what lies ahead.....and if you've made the FIRST build - foreplay exciting/interesting enough then they SHOULD want to do it all over again.
    OR....after the first chorus things could pick up a bit.....Be faster paced....
    Heightened.
    Not frantic!
    Still with room to build but just a little more intensified.
    Then of course ultimately the chorus AGAIN.
    Wonderful!
    Better than the first because you now know where you are.....kinda what to expect and you relish the familiarity which you enjoyed so much the first time!

    But where from here?
    A resting phase?
    A lead break?
    A bridge?
    Something "different".
    Something that makes you catch your breath and think "Oh...where are we going now?"
    To go back to the vibe of the first verse might be too repetitive?
    This is where I ALWAYS get stuck.
    I suck at bridges AND lead breaks.
    But I think it's what's needed?

    A brief but interesting respite.
    Something that diverts the attention, but doesn't mislead you ....it must still tie in with the rest of the song.
    Not necessarily build....perhaps reinforce in a different way lyrically and give the ear something to pique it's interest?

    And then - ultimately this must lead/build........back to the chorus.......building back up.....and this is where everything can get carried away and just let loose!
    Repeating that climax and making it the ULTIMATE climax.
    The abandoning!
    The ultimate resolution.
    The conclusion.

    And then someone says...

    "I feel like cheese on toast....don't you?"

  22. The Penis Enlarger.

    By Desertrose ,

    One of my daughters came home from school and told me that her teacher had a penis enlarger in his storeroom.
    Actually, her and her little friend BOTH told me this with big wide solemn eyes that only nine year olds possess when they're trying to tell you something VERY important.

    My first stunned question was "How do you KNOW it was a penis enlarger?"
    And with eyes growing wider by the second they explained,
    "Because it had it WRITTEN on it....Pee-NIS En LARGE- ER"

    Well, that did it for me....How the heck would a nine year old know of such a thing? It HAD to be true...didn't it ?
    Though what on earth a teacher would be DOING with one AT school I couldn't fathom...except to imagine something rather sinister.

    I phoned a few close friends, talked to my stepmother...rang my husband of course and they all agreed it sounded very odd indeed.
    But, the dilemma of course was...was it REALLY what they thought it was ? I mean, maybe it was some other kind of enlarger?
    Pencil enlarger?
    Who knows...Could there be a brand name that they mistook for the word "penis" ?

    I mulled the options over in my mind.
    See, if I were to ring the headmaster (which my friends had advised) to discuss this little matter I really had to be sure of my facts first because no one wants to go making unsubstantiated accusations do they, not of THIS nature.
    This was serious stuff !
    The teacher could be dismissed, charges layed against him if it indeed turned out to be the case.

    Now, penis enlargers DO actually exist, if you aren't already aware of this fact.
    For medical reasons they are commonly used for men with erectile difficulties.
    Diabetics for example, who suffer from lack of circulation in those areas sometimes use them, and this particular teacher happened to BE a Diabetic...
    But still, I could fathom no reason for a teacher keeping one in the storeroom.
    So... I did what any concerned mother would do and rang an adult sex shop.

    "Hello, Starlight Sex toys, how may I help you?" asked the male voice on the other end of the line.
    "Do you sell penis enlargers?" I asked
    "Yes we do." he replied brightly
    "What kind were you after?"
    "There's different kinds?" I asked , momentarily taken aback, then recovering myself I asked boldly.
    "Can you describe what one looks like?"
    He did...and to my dismay it sounded much like the children had described.
    A thought occurred to me, so I asked...
    "Does it actually have the words PENIS ENLARGER written on it?
    "On the box?" he asked, sounding a little curious now.
    "No, no....on the actual...thing, the device?"
    "Um, why"
    There was a distinctive pause, and then he ventured in an almost breathy, semi excited tone.
    "Would you LIKE it to?"
    I hung up, flustered.

    So it seemed that this situation really warranted a call to the headmaster, after all, I had grilled the girls to death and they did not waver in their story, except they were beginning to look positively worried, without the earlier giggling as they'd discussed the story.
    I decided to sleep on it and call him in the morning.

    "Hello, my daughter is a student at your school and I have a very unusual, and delicate issue to discuss with you."
    "Yeeeesssss" said the man sounding rather bored.
    I guessed he was sitting at his desk doodling idely on a piece of paper, after all he must be used to receiving calls from concerned parents.
    I had rehearsed this dozens of times and decided the best approach was total candidness.
    "My daughter said she saw a device in Mr XXX's storeroom with the words "PENIS ENLARGER" on it!" I blurted.
    There ! I had said it.
    There was a heavy silence for a few seconds.
    I imagined his head snapping up , the pen dropping from his fingers mid doodle....
    "Oh!"
    After about fifteen minutes of discussion with me vowing that these children, MY child especially, were honest kids, not trouble makers, and asking, how on earth nine year olds could concoct such a story, he finally, sounding as concerned as I, promised to look into the matter immediately.

    The next morning I received a phone call from the school.
    It seemed there WAS a device similar to the girls description in the teachers storeroom....HOWEVER, it was some mathematical device used for measuring the volume of liquids, or something of that nature.
    Nowhere on it were the words "Penis Enlarger".

    That afternoon I received another phone call .
    Both girls were in the headmasters office, in tears, the accused teacher had left the school, himself in tears apparently, and my wonderful HONEST little girl, who had never in her life told a lie (not a serious one anyway) had confessed that her and her friend had watched an Austin Powers movie,(at the friends house) a week beforehand, where a "Penis Enlarger" was apparently featured in this film, and after seeing the "thing" in the storeroom they had decided to play a little joke and make up this story about their teacher.

    Mortified does not describe how I felt.
    Wanting to wring their scrawny little necks till their big solemn eyes popped out of their sockets- yes!
    How does one apologize for such a thing?
    The poor teacher.!
    He was CRYING for Gods sake...All the kids in the class KNEW about the story apparantly.

    The girls were lectured severely by the headmaster and of course by us, their parents...
    They were put on detention for quite some time, however, they KNEW...Oh boy did they ever, that what they had done was a terrible cruel thing and VERY serious.
    They had not only jeapordised a teachers career, but they had humiliated him also.
    If anything came out of it, for them, was this lesson.

    And for me, a lesson too...
    People and their sex toys can be really kinky!


    This unfortunately, is a true story.
    My daughter is now seventeen.
    It's taken me a long time to see the funny side of it.

  23. The "castle"

    By Desertrose ,

    According to the description the real estate site gave on the net we now live in a "medieval-like castle" built in 1919.
    Of course, it's not REALLY a castle.
    Doesn't look a bit like a castle from the outside - most of it is covered in ivy so you can't see much, but all the interior walls are made out of rough stone that's been limewashed and there are enough arches to drive a person crazy!
    The owner wanted to rent it furnished and he did have a lot of really chunky dark wood medieval type furniture in it, including swords on the walls etc, but we really needed an unfurnished house.
    As it turned out this was ok and the owner put all his stuff into storage.

    It's the most bizarre house we have ever lived in, which is of course why we decided to rent it.
    Why not?
    Some of the kids were not too happy at first (the spooky aspect for the younger ones and the "Mum this is too weird" aspect from the teenagers) but they have now all adjusted.
    All the other rentals were tiny boxes squeezed into new estates. NOT for us!

    I'd love to know the history of the place and WHY it was built this way.
    It's certainly not the norm for the period in which it was built.
    It's all done by hand.....there's not a "standard" door or window in the place!
    Some doorways are very low. Like the ensuite, and poor hubby who is very tall, keeps knocking his head on it. Some doors are very narrow. Some door ways only came with half a door, lol!
    The floors are all old timber floors or slate and the main area of the house is simply red concrete!
    GREAT for me because with dogs, cats and kids I don't have to worry about pristine carpets.
    I am NOT a domestic goddess you see. The less housework I have to do the better!
    It still has some of the original glass in some of the windows and you can tell because it's like looking through water....Glass shifts over time through gravity giving a weird "fun house" mirror type distorting effect.

    Apparently one of the previous owners died whilst fighting a bush fire in the local area.
    It is said that his body was laid out for the viewing in the main area of the house.
    Spooky!
    To be honest though not much "spiritual energy" has been experienced yet...not by me anyway, and Richard, my husband could trip over a "ghost" and still not see it!
    Well, I tell a lie.
    Two things have happened so far.
    Once, while in the kitchen I heard footsteps....IN THE ROOF!
    Like someone walking barefoot across the ceiling.
    Nobody was home at the time so it wasn't coming from anyone IN the house.
    The resident possum maybe? A big footed one.
    Another time I caught a glimpse of "somebody" walking through the glass front door.
    Just a fraction of a second glimpse though.
    Whoever it was they were in a hurry.
    I mostly just saw the top of a dark headed TALL person.
    No...it wasn't my husband. He HAS no hair and as far as I know he can't walk through glass doors.
    Maybe I'd had a few too many wines.
    Ok, but what about my bedroom.
    I can't quite explain this but there is a "wrong" energy in there.
    Like the feng shui is just not right.
    Not that I believe in feng shui, but .....well.......something is just not right in that room.
    It seems to be mostly in one area of the room...in a corner where the bed faces.
    I bought this clock...one that sits inside a glass dome and a brass "thingy" on the bottom swings around when the clock is going.
    When I put it in that corner it would NOT work.
    Just stopped ticking.
    When I would move it elsewhere it works fine. Not a problem.
    The weirdest thing was....when daylight savings started here a few weeks ago the clock MIRACULOUSLY put itself forward an hour.
    I swear to GOD it did just this!
    Nobody touched it.
    The thick layer of dust on top of the glass dome is testimony to that, lol!
    But there it sat...on my bedside table somehow mysteriously having changed the time.
    How can a clock that has wind around hands do that?
    Anyway....I have since discovered a trap door in my bedroom...Some planks of wood can be removed and there is a cellar type room underneath.
    At first I was excited and wanted to explore it.
    Take my metal detector down there even, but the other day a program on the radio talking about asbestos has now got me all paranoid...
    I keep looking at the house wondering.....
    They used to wrap plumbing and stuff with asbestos and our bedroom is right next to the ensuite.
    I wouldn't want to disturb asbestos...or otherwise.
    But, eventually curiosity will get the better of me.

    Anyway.....I love it here. It's certainly not everyones cup of tea.
    It's draughty ( like a castle!) and the rocky walls are dusty!
    Very "rustic" best sums it up.
    We even have an outside loo.....like the old days ( though there are two more toilets inside) and an old fuel stove in the kitchen.
    There are five fireplaces in all ( no wonder there are draughts)
    We have kangaroo's grazing in the front yard, possums who clamber on the roof, rabbits apparently too.....one fell in the pool and drowned and a multitude of BIG lizards who live in the garden.
    Snakes also visit I am told. I'm not too happy about that but what can you do.

    Anyway, if you're interested here are some ( a lot, lol) of pictures.
    The first pics are of my conversion of the "outside room" into my bellydance room.

    http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Des...0/The%20castle/
  24. I was standing in front of the stove cooking dinner when my eleven year old daughter, reading a form that needed to be filled in for school, asked...
    "What do I write for mums occupation?"
    "Nothing....mum doesn't do anything." said my sixteen year old.
    Whirling around with a wooden spoon in my hand I snapped....
    "That's right, I sit on my backside on the couch all day eating bon bons watching days of our lives! Yup, that's me - she who doesn't do ANYTHING."
    "I didn't mean THAT mum!" said the sixteen year old rolling her eyes.

    It made me angry and depressed all the same.
    What has my life become?
    Who AM I?
    Why am I here?
    Questions I find myself asking time and time again as I stir yet another pan of gravy and think about the fact that I am now nearing my fortieth birthday.
    My boobs are determined to greet my knees, my belly is now rounded, my ass is melting down the backs of my thighs and I have completely lost touch with "me" - the person in my other life.... 20 years BC. (before children.)

    The other day I found a sweet potato that was growing "vines" in my kitchen.
    I looked at it sitting there among the onions in a bowl on top of the microwave and thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in a long time.
    The colours.....lime green awash with subtle shades of dusky pink on the foliage, reaching up the wall.....(yes the thing is growing leaves)
    To think that left on it's own accord, with no water or earth or even much sunlight, it was beginning a new transformation, a new "life" there among the onions, seemed amazing to me!
    (Certainly a lot prettier than the time I discovered the corpse of an aubergine under the kitchen sink.)

    "Why are you taking photo's of a sweet potato?" my children asked as they caught me arranging the vines against a brightly painted wall.

    And in that moment.....I knew.
    I have lost the plot.
    I really have become the person I feared I would become.
    A dreary housewife who gets excited over "past their used by date" vegetables.

    What becomes of us?
    Those that choose to stay home and raise their children, to forgo a career where they can interact on a daily basis with their peers, get paid for their work, feel as though they have a true purpose in life as a contributing member of society, and have something to TALK about in a gathering of other intellectual adults?
    Do we wither away, our brains atrophying in the mundane repetition of daily household chores?
    Every day the same dishes sit in the sink waiting for me to wash them up, the same dirt on the floor walked in by the dogs and the kids waits to be swept up, the same tinkle drops on the toilet seat wait for me to inadvertantly sit in them, the same fluff gathers on the carpet, the same bench tops needing wiping, table that needs clearing, garbage needs taking out, washing needs folded, the same kids come home everyday with the same gripes, the same arguments, the same shoes and school bags left for me to trip over them in the hall.....
    At night the same complaints meet me at the dinner table, the same protests of "but it's not my turn to wash up tonight!", the same painful grade three reading books I have to sit and listen to as my mind turns to mush...and in bed at night....the same penis pokes me from behind.
    The same, the same the SAME!

    I am not the same.
    I am changing.
    I only have to look in the mirror to see that.
    Oh gravity!
    The same age I remember my parents and their friends were as I approached puberty, and thought they were SO old....past it.....their lives OVER!
    And here *I* am - "there" where they were and how quickly I have travelled here.

    I remember the first dawn I spent as a new mother lying in the hospital bed staring at my brand new infant feeling this incredible sense of overwhelming joy.
    *I* had made this perfect creature. ME!
    What I felt was as close to bliss as I have ever experienced and I knew I would love her with all of my soul and I did and I still do... all four of them.
    I know I have the most valuable (though undervalued) job on earth, being a parent and I would not change this whole journey even if I could, but there comes a time, in every womans life where a sweet potato brings you back to reality!

    I am an intelligent, creative thinking, feeling PERSON.
    I am NOT "she who sits among bon bon wrappers on the sofa".
    I DO have a life - one that needs tending.
    My soul that has outgrown the comfortable cloak of motherhood screams for high heels and a loud red dress!

    I look at that sweet potato....
    Neglected and ignored it has sat in that bowl on top of my microwave.
    Soft and wrinkly it has become.
    I could have thrown it out, but I'm glad I didn't, because it has given me such inspiration in the lesson that it teaches...

    Even things that are past their use by date can, all on their own, become beautiful amazing things.

  25. Guardian Angel?

    By Desertrose ,

    Over the years I seem to meet more and more people who believe in "angels".
    Now the sceptical side of me completely pooh poohs the whole idea as to me it conjures up a far too fluffy image of etherial, half naked cherubs playing fiddles in the sky and since I don't believe in heaven or God then it's only natural that these kinds of "angels" don't really fit into my realm of thinking either.
    But....... I have to say that at least ONCE in my lifetime thus far, I have had an experience that I cannot put down to any other explanation, except to say that some kind of "guardian angel" was watching over me.

    I was nineteen years old and three months pregnant with my first child when it happened.
    I had just begun my nurses training which entailed a long commute (2 hours by trains and buses) from Bondi beach to the Western suburbs of Sydney.
    Feeling the strain of having to travel so far each day I had put in for a room at the hospitals nurses quarters I was currently working at but there was a waiting list, so it was organised for me to stay at a different hospital a few suburbs down the train line.

    It was the first night that I was to travel to the other nurses quarters to stay overnight.
    I got off the train at around 11 pm and proceded to walk to my accomodation carrying a large overnight bag on my back.
    Now back then, at nineteen though I "thought" I was pretty sensible , really I was like many other young people who just never expect that anything "bad" will happen to them.
    I think for much of your younger years you simply feel invincible!
    I did anyway.
    It honestly never crossed my mind that walking alone at that time of night was a stupid thing to be doing.
    I had been doing it for some months already and besides that particular night I was dead tired and simply wanted to find my bed for the night, fall in it and get some sleep before the following morning shift.

    So, I began walking along this long road which had another major public hospital on one side (but set a fair way away from the actual street with lawns and bushland between it and where I was), and on the OTHER side of the road there was a school which was in complete darkness.
    I was just trudging along, thinking about my day and the day ahead, when suddenly a voice that seemed to come from nowhere, spoke into my EAR and said in a rather urgent tone...

    "If you scream, no one will hear you!"

    I'm not sure whether it was the the voice itself or what it SAID that scared me more, but there in that moment I suddenly became completely aware of all that was around me and to my fright, looking around I realised that whoever, or WHATEVER it was that had spoken those words was exactly right!
    I was in a place where IF something were to happen....yeah, screaming would not do a damn bit of good because there WERE no houses....just that hospital and an empty schoolyard and that LONG road ahead.

    And then I saw the man step out from the darkness of the school buildings.

    I cannot begin to explain the terror I felt but before he even walked out of the gates I KNEW that I was in trouble.

    I did all I could think to do, which was to cross the road and begin walking under the street lights thinking if I were more visable.......well....it was a thought anyway.
    Who on earth would see me at that time of night on such a deserted street?

    The man crossed the road behind me and followed.
    Now I was really panicking and those words were echoing in my head...."If you scream no one will hear you!"

    I couldn't tell how much further away the hospital was but I knew I couldn't out run him, not with my heavy nurses shoes and the bag on my back, but I began walking faster anyway.
    So did the man.

    Funny how time seems to slow down in these situations.
    It's like those dreams you have when you try to run but your legs won't move.
    My legs felt like they had turned to jelly.
    I couldn't have out run him even if I tried.
    Complete panic was overtaking my senses and I felt SHOCKED at my own body for betraying me!
    How dare it do this to me!
    I felt in that moment the most vulnerable I have EVER felt in all my life.
    Completely at the mercy at whatever this man wanted to do to me.

    I kept turning my head and he was still there....closer, but as though it was a game he knew he still had time to make his move.
    It was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced.
    Finally panic won....I lost it and tried to run.......I heard him running behind me and at that VERY moment a car pulled up beside me - traveling from the direction I was running towards...
    The passenger door was thrown open and I heard a mans voice say...
    "Quick, get in!"

    I didn't even THINK....couldn't think. I did as he said and jumped into the car.
    It was all complete confusion at that point.
    As we sped away I burst into tears, so relieved to be "rescued", not even for a moment considering that this person could be an accomplice of the man chasing after me!

    He wasn't.
    By some uncanny coincidence this man - a nurse, had left for work earlier than usual that night.
    I hadn't seen him but apparently he had driven past and happened to notice me and had felt something was just not "right" with this situation even though the man was a fair distance behind me at that point.
    When he got to the hospital he said he felt compelled to turn around and drive back just to "make sure".

    Now perhaps it was all just coincidence...."luck" or whatever you want to call it, and to be honest if it weren't for that strange voice that I heard prior to everything then I might be inclined to put it down to sheer good luck as well.
    But that voice.......?
    It was like suddenly someone (something? A guardian angel perhaps?) saw the situation BEFORE it unfolded and tried to to warn me.
    I have the feeling that IT was responsible for intervening somehow.
    After all, had I have NOT been given that warning I may have remained lost in my tired thoughts, might NOT have noticed the man come out from where he had been hidden in the darkness, and probably would have stayed walking on the other side of the road where there were no streetlights and therefore may not have been seen by the man driving by.

    The man who had been following me bolted as soon as I jumped in the car and although we drove around trying to find him, and rang the police...well, who knows where he went or WHAT his true intentions had been that night.

    Deep in my gut, I feel that if it weren't for the kindness of a stranger...or guardian angels..... I might not be here today.
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