Z is for Zombie

An extra layer of pain in my neck, present when I woke this morning, tipped me over my usual management threshold, such that the standard concoction of oblong and round tablets that I take every day and puts the pain away for the day and lets me get on with things was not going to be sufficient.

When this happens the first thing I need to do is turn to the big guns: literally a giant white disc of a tablet that renders me not quite out of pain, but reasonably disconnected from it so that I'm not grumpy and miserable.  

The downside is that functionally my reflexes are slowed, and my brain works a bit backwards.  And I walk with my feet about three millimetres off the ground - no chance of tripping!  My mouth is a little dry, so I quite enjoy a hot drink.  I stay away from sharp things.

I forget stuff, so I have to make sure I'm not tempted to rush, and my train of thought is very likely to drift off on a tangent, so conversations can be quite meandering, that is, if I find myself talking to anyone, which I tend to avoid doing when I've taken one of the big white tablets.

So yes.  Z is for Zombie.  Because that is what I am today.

Thank you, by the way,

if you've been following my blog during the course of this A-Z Challenge.

It's been an unexpected joy to be a part of, 

and really lovely to know that folk have dropped by.

It's been great to share.

xS

Y is for Yes.

I was woken at about three this morning by a dream in which my boy had thrown a stick, very hard, which had hit his grandmother, knocking her backwards over the neighbour's fence, leaving her buried in the earth, dazed and injured.  I made myself wake up before I could dig mum out (in the dream) because the whole thing was upsetting and very, very stressful.  

Before bed I'd been watching a long documentary casting doubt on the official explanation of events surrounding September 11, 2001. Like many others I have also been very concerned about the squillions of people affected by the earthquake in Nepal, not to mention the most unjust execution by firing squad (carried out last night) of two reformed drug smugglers, in Indonesia, as well as the continuing horrors of our own country's needlessly inhuman asylum seeker policy. 

I'd tried to offset the darkness by doing some fun art play, but clearly the balance hadn't been quite right... Clearly.

Anyway.  The point is, there is a lot of darkness.

When John Lennon first encountered Yoko Ono it was at her exhibition of avant-garde works, "Unfinished Paintings" at the Indica Gallery in London in 1966. He was going through a cynical, anti-Beatle phase.  Tired of the constraints of fame and fans, of the war in Vietnam, of the taxation system, of contractual demands...

Yoko, a renowned artist, didn't know who John was when he turned up on the night before the opening, but he knew the gallery owners so she humoured him as he examined her works, and this is what he had to say about it later...

"But there was another piece that really decided me for-or-against the artist: a ladder which led to a painting which was hung on the ceiling. It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it. This was near the door when you went in. I climbed the ladder, you look through the spyglass and in tiny little letters it says 'yes'. So it was positive. I felt relieved. It's a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn't say 'no' or 'fuck you' or something, it said 'yes'."

Today, as I look out the window at a bright blue sky, dotted with cotton candy clouds, and my ears are assaulted with the cockatoos screeching mayhem overhead, I realise it's the universe delivering her message: "yes".  And I am relieved.

Yes.

Blackbird by The Beatles
Artwork by soph&son

X is for X (the Roman Numeral for ten)

Milo doesn't really like reading fiction.  He enjoys listening to ME read him fiction, particularly when I do all the voices, but if I ask him to choose a book to read to me, he'll always select something from the bottom shelf.  That is, non-fiction.  

Let's face it, the kid has a lot of books, a reflection of my inability to enter a book or second hand shop and leave empty-handed, from which he has been the happy beneficiary.  There's picture books, paperbacks, classics, novelty books, reference books, series...more books than there are shelves.  Precisely the way it should be.

Amongst his non-fiction collection is a series called "Horrible Histories" (Terry Deary), one of which he decided to begin to read to me last night:  "Terrifying Tudors".

Horrible Histories by Terry Deary

And amongst the talk of the Terrifying Tudors was Milo's first exposure to Roman numerals:  Henry VIII and X as ten.  

And then the inevitable why?

I didn't know why, so I dodged the question by whipping out a pencil and showed him how it worked.  He caught on mighty quickly and then drew a clock face.  All the numbers perfectly formed ... but all squished into the upper right quadrant of the circle.  

So near... but getting there!

W is for Words

I sat for a heck of a long time trying to come up with a W to write about today. And in the end, when I couldn't come up with anything, I decided to turn to the interweb, typing into my search engine, for inspiration.  And there it was.

Words.

Probably one of the most important things, ever in the world, that I love, and use, and rely upon, and cherish, and choose, and polish, and turn over, and over-think...

Words.

As an eager and sometimes anxious (Mediterranean) communicator, words (with hand accompaniments) have been my constant tool.  I started using them in earnest a little later than most, but I could never be reasonably accused of neglecting them, not once I started, anyway.

And now, as a person who no longer works in conventional places or in the company of others, words are also a most welcome companion whilst I wile away the hours making art.  Sometimes even art out of words.

The Sphere of Good Things
by soph&son

Words.

I am addicted to alliteration.

Words.

I used to use more than my fair share, but age and experience have taught me to pull in, pare back and embrace the wisdom that less is more. (It's kinder too.)

Words.

If I'm ever stranded on a desert island, can someone please arrange for a Roget's Thesaurus and a complete Oxford English Dictionary?

I think that's all.

V is for Very Tired.

I've been Very Tired for a long time.  It's a thing people are nowadays, I know, so I don't expect anyone to feel particularly sympathetic or anything about the fact that I'm Very Tired.  But today is "V" day and I could be writing about all the Volkswagens I've ever owned or Vaseline (and how handy it is when you're dying your hair) or Vegemite or even, as Milo suggested on the way to Aikido this morning (that wasn't even on because of ANZAC Day), that I might like to write about words starting and ending with V (?!)... but I'm not.  

Instead, I'm just going to tell you how tired I am. Or for the sake of the exercise, how Very Tired.

Pluto manifesting the canine equivalent of Very Tired, that is Daarg Taard.

This bout of Very Tired started in March 2006 when due to a lack of foresight and planning – the way I've embarked on quite a few major ventures in my life – I found myself pregnant while addicted to (the medical profession says "dependent on") some rather heavy duty opiates and using other prescribed pharmaceuticals to manage a chronic medical condition.

The combination of growing a baby and taking drugs isn't really a sustainable practice so I was immediately pretty "strongly incentivised" to begin a program of withdrawal.  Cold turkey was dangerous and therefore out of the question, but because of the high doses of meds I was taking, the schedule was somewhat more severe than usually recommended, and steeper than a Disneyland rollercoaster.  

Anyway off I went…

The combination of morning sickness (stupidly misnamed) and drug withdrawal was Very Tiring.  I can't remember which bit I most resented: if it was the vomiting, the restless leg syndrome, the flu symptoms, the non-stop migraines.  Perhaps it was the anxiety, the insomnia or the blood curdling chills.  Not sure.  Whatever. By the time I was clean, which was well into my third trimester, I hadn't had more than a couple of hours consecutive sleep for a good 30 weeks, and I was Very Tired.  

The baby, bless him, had also not stopped kicking since he gave his leg its first mighty swing at about week 22 or thereabouts, so that had added another welcome element into the mix.  Come to think on it, by the time he was born at 37 weeks, he was probably quite tired too.

The birth didn't go well and we had ten days in hospital.  Tiring.  Milo couldn't feed, or sleep and I couldn't hold him properly because my neurosurgeon mismanaged the chronic medical condition and there were lots of complications.  You know, I'm too tired to go into details now.  Suffice to say, we were so happy to go home.  Happy and tired.

Happy to come home.  Happy and tired. Ten days old.

Because we had trouble feeding I had to express and bottle feed so there wasn't a lot of resting.  We did this for 12 weeks until I finally managed to get Milo to feed naturally.  That was very tiring.  And it drove me bonkers that the Child & Maternal Health Nurses would come 'round and talk about how babies feed and play for a bit and then sleep for hours...  

You see, unless he was being held, Milo NEVER SLEPT.  And it's not as if I didn't try every strategy under the sun to get him to sleep, because I did.  It's just that not a damn thing worked.  Nothing.

My sweet, sunny, lovely, bright, happy, shiny boy just WOULD NOT SLEEP. And the rigours of trying, and meeting with the disapproval of all the professionals ... that especially made me Very Tired.

For the next five years, until Milo went to school, he didn't sleep very well or very much.  And when he did he had the most awful, graphic night terrors.  Have you ever seen a small child in a waking sleep, hurling themselves about, fighting off invisible assailants, shouting and crying in the worst kind of unimaginable distress?  It leaves such an awful impression. Unforgettable.  

The next morning, though, he had no recollection, which is a terrific boon.  A licence, in fact, for me as a parent to let it go too. But the truth was I was so damned tired from the trauma of watching that it was hard to wipe the memory away… 

And when it wasn't the night terrors, Milo had croup.  Endless, endless coughing, hacking, choking, going blue in the middle of the night, croup.  Why oh why is it always worse in the middle of the night?  

He'd always eventually bounce through like it never happened…  He did.  And I'd see him off to kinder or school full of beans and vigour, and I'd collapse in a heap on the floor, shaking and shuddering at what felt like such a close shave.  

God I was glad to see the back of croup when he was sixish.  Gosh it left me tired. Very tired.

So now Milo's eight and at school. He gets bronchitis instead of croup but he actually sleeps quite well. He's an early riser:  five, five-thirty, six?  I don't think he's ever slept past seven.  Never.  He says he doesn't want to miss anything.  I mean, after all, there's a cat and fish: there might be juggling or chess while the humans are sleeping…  

Besides this, Milo's a sharer.  And a carer.  And certainly not a loner.  It would never occur to him for one solitary moment not to come and share every waking moment or passing thought, no matter how trivial (because none of them are trivial), with me.  So if he's awake at 5.30, then Lord give me strength, so am I awake.  This makes me very tired, because unlike him, I do not go to bed at 8.30pm.

And now of course we have a puppy who sleeps through the night but needs to "use the restroom" first thing in the morning.  So I'm out in the backyard, at 5.30am in a cardie and woolly hat, rain, hail or shine (well, in the dark), keeping the puppy company while he does his business and making sure he doesn't terrorise the cat…

See Pluto v Bongo: An Explanation

(Sorry Pluto, payback for all the times you scared Bongo.)

So I'm tired, ok?  Very Tired.  Have been since 2006.

U is for Ugly

As a little girl I always thought of myself as extremely ugly.  Not in a quirky, interesting, goth kind of way, but in an Elephant Man, bag over the head, Cousin It, "If-you-put-on-make-up-people-will-laugh-at-you-for-trying" sort of way.

Looking back, I obviously wasn't terrible at all but I can remember being horribly embarrassed and awkward and uneasy about myself.  And it was always made worse when anyone EVER commented on how I looked. (It took me well into my thirties to learn to accept a compliment gracefully.)

I especially struggled with the facial dissection that occurs in families, when one's features are assigned to various family members of bygone generations.  I apparently have the chin of my aunt, the earlobes of my grandmother, the forehead and hairline of a distant cousin, oh! and Dad announced (with all love) at a dinner with Hec's best friend's family, that I have cow eyes.  COW EYES!  Thanks Dad!  Because I needed that spotlight in front of Colin and his brothers.

The funny thing is that as I have grown older I have developed a great fondness and affection for things less than perfect and although I could easily spend  a week or five without ever looking at my image, I have grown to tolerate the features of my face in a way I never thought I could.  What a relief.  It's so much more relaxing not loathing oneself every time one passes a looking glass.

from Tim Burton's Frankenweenie

My father and I have an ongoing disagreement which is best characterised by my adoration of Tim Burton's aesthetic and Dad's lack of understanding of it.  Dad sees the characters as ugly and deformed, while I perceive them as interesting and exquisite in their imperfection.  I think there is a generational and cultural gap at play in our differing viewpoints.

Whatever it is, I'm glad I can love "ugly" characters because it makes infinitely more things in the world so much easier to appreciate – not the least of which might be me.

T is for Truth

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters

cannot be trusted in large ones either.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

As our country unfurls its (offshore manufactured) flags and prepares to commemorate the centenary of a myth – no doubt, based in facts – but made popular and so much more palatable by an iconic cinematic masterpiece, Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981), I am struck by an adage: that you'd not want to let the truth get in the way of a good story. 

This dictum has taken our nation quite a way from the core of itself, when the core was actually just fine, had there been the awareness, maturity and the fortitude to seek out the truth rather than just be seduced by a film, throw in some timely nationalistic spin, and call it fact.

And on this very same day the internet is throbbing with outrage because a young woman who built a successful life and business on the back of her astounding recovery from terminal brain cancer, has been exposed as never having had cancer at all.  Misdiagnosis, she suggests. But also, she says, possibly she was confused.  And she definitely had a difficult childhood.  And since she's come out publicly and told the truth about it all, she believes she deserves forgiveness and understanding for the deceit and deception.  She can't seem to see that "the truth" she's told isn't quite credible and nothing really makes any sense in light of what's gone before.  

People are really angry at this woman.  I have read calls for her to be put in jail for life.  I get it.  We don't like being made fools of, and people don't like fraudsters. And lord forbid anyone who really did/does have cancer stopped taking their medication and followed her lead and got more sick.  There's a betrayal here and the public response is vast and visceral.

I was raised to believe that the only thing a person should be loyal to is the truth. I'm interested that as a society we only apply this where it suits us. 

As individuals we can only be responsible for our own stories and our own truth.  It no doubt changes as we grow, reflect, review and gain new insights.  I hope as a community we can grow up and do that too.  I think we will all be so much better for it.