progress

You know the reconciliation dreams? I made some progress last night. We were in a house and he was ignoring me, deeply ignoring me, it was like we were already broken up but still living under the same roof. He was away somewhere and I was in the bedroom, putting laundry in the laundry basket, and thinking hard about what I was going to say to him when I broke up with him. "You and I both know it's not working..." Would that be a way to start? "I need to tell you something..." Would that be better? I sat down on the edge of the bed, and felt just awful at this thing that I had to do. I was mulling it over and over in my head, rehearsing, and feeling bad.

And that's why I haven't done it before in my dreams, I think, because leaving him is hard. But I'm working up to it. Isn't that progress?

How big is the moon tonight?

I found my keys! I swear I searched the bag they were in quite thoroughly, twice, and checked every pocket, but tonight just as I was getting ready to leave work, there they were, in a side pocket. So, the only thing I can assume is that they were on a little holiday in another dimension. But now they are back, and it's quite a relief.

I have a theory about the muffin, too. I think the young server was practicing misdirection of attention on me - I said, "can I have a muffin?" and he said, "sure!" and immediately turned his back and leaned down and did something around the area where they had a microwave and a toaster oven, so I think he planted in me the idea that he was putting my muffin in one of those to heat up. I think it was a magic trick. And when I asked, "and my muffin?" he did the reveal, "Voilá!" and pointed to my hand to show it was already there, just like a magician will reach inside someone's pocket and show that they all along had the Ace of Hearts there. I should have applauded and thrown him some coins.

Spaciness

Is is still the cold? Is it the full moon in Aquarius, the spaciest of star signs? Is it old age? Have I got too much on my mind, or too little? Here are occasions of spaciness from the last four days:

1. Lost my keys. It was a day of unusual key portage, I took two bags to work and transferred between them at the end of the day, also did two taxi trips and some mega shopping, and they could have gone astray at any point during those activities. But when I got home they were gone and they haven't turned up. It's just lucky I had my spare keys with me, because I had a friend in town visting and thought he might need them. It makes you feel scattered and incomplete, not knowing where your keys are. I asked a Magic 8 Ball online if I would find them and it said, "Outlook not positive." So.

2. Went grocery shopping for my dinner party and left one whole bag of groceries at the store - I stopped while loading them into the basket to pay for everything and then never grabbed the last one before I left. I went back to get the stuff from the missing bag and forgot something even then, but I decided to make do without it.

3. Today I was at a Gloria Jean's coffee place. I ordered a blueberry muffin and a decaf long black (very American style coffee place, Gloria Jean's is, although it's Aus-owned). I was waiting at the counter while the young server guy served someone else. They called my coffee out at the coffee-giving place and I sauntered down and picked it up. Then I sauntered back and said to the young server guy, "I'm waiting for a muffin?" He pointed at my hand. I was holding the muffin in a brown paper bag. I had been holding it the whole time.

See? Spacy.

Saturday Night Festival of the Bullet Point

• My latest obsession is The West Wing. I'm not even watching them in order, I just grab a random 4 off the Weekly shelf at the video shop, and watch them one after another. I am watching these shows instead of living life - instead of laundry, groceries, cooking, instead of calling anyone, reading books, going out and doing things. I lie on the floor on a mattress and watch these shows and feel deep feelings, I am moved by them and experience grand emotions, but if I'm just lying on the floor alone in my house doing that, then really I am just lying on the floor alone in my house. These emotions do not contribute anything of value to the world. Life is action. Watching tv is neither action nor life.
• I am still sick, it's been nearly 3 weeks, and before that I felt pretty bad anyway, remember, it was just before I joined the new gym? It's all due to complications from asthma. Today I started the more intense medicine. And tomorrow I should get out in the sun and move around a little bit. I'm sure I will be fine, but I was just remembering how when Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven she and most of her neighbors had been experiencing a bad flu epidemic, for several weeks. It makes you feel a bit like Sylvia Plath, having a cold.
• I had a dinner party last night (which went very well! new record number of people I cooked for), and one guest bought a bunch of tulips, saying she has had a real tulip thing recently and loves watching them. They didn't look like much yesterday, just flat green leaves with little green buds of the same colour. But today. I have been home all day and have been watching the buds turn from green to orange before my eyes. It is remarkable. I can't wait to see what they do next. I understand her tulip thing, and am very grateful.
• *(If you're wondering how I had a successful dinner party but am as sick as Sylvia Plath, I've just been taking drugs and soldiering on. Most of my sickness is feeling bad from asthma getting worse, and that's not the kind of thing you postpone stuff for, you just pretend you feel fine until they go home.)
• I am waiting, waiting, waiting. I don't know what I want.
• There's something up in the stars with Virgo and Saturn, I'm not sure exactly what (see Astrobarry for details) and it's supposed to make you kind of anal and care a lot about details and having everything in its place. And I can kind of feel the pull of that feeling, the last few days. I wanted to get all the dishes washed and put away. I de-cluttered the house for the party. I want to make lists and schedules.
• All my friends were on the radio last night. One of them had a two-hour spot from midnight as a kind of audition for a regular spot, and he rang the rest of us up to interview us. The main theme of the interviews was just things we're passionate about. I think it has potential, this theme for a radio show. It was interesting to hear what my friends had to say, in that context. It was also just really cool to have so many people I know be suddenly in the media, even though perhaps with a smallish audience.
• Have been having reconciliation dreams, as I think I mentioned before, and my theory was that I would have them any time I slept longer than eight hours, but last night there was a variation - a dream about the Lying Liar. In the dream we were just friends, but he was definitely much more open and companionable than he actually is in life - I might have been blending him with my old friend from PhD days. Anyway, it's progress, and certainly less unsettling than the ones about my ex, but I wish I could be having dreams about some appropriate man that I might actually hook up with in the future.
• Not that there is any such man on the scene at the moment.
• Speaking of which, I have heard three times in the last week, from men, that it is a fact that women can have sex any time they want, all they have to do is go get picked up in a bar. The first time I heard this I was about 27 years old (at a job interview, but that's a separate story), and I was outraged. It sounds like a completely anti-feminist thing to say, I suppose because it implies that every woman alone in a bar is asking for it. But it's also patently not true! Women have absolutely no control at all over when they have sex. They have to wait until a guy initiates something, until a guy asks them. It has always seemed to me that in fact just the opposite is true, that guys can have sex any time they want, because all they have to do is go up to someone and ask them. So, it must be the case that it's just hard to have sex for everyone, and each side thinks the other is making all the decisions but it's not true. But it has left me wondering how it would work. Could I actually go to a bar by myself and get picked up? I've always thought that it was impossible, no guy looking for someone in a bar is looking for someone like me (fat, old, plain looking, intellectual, geeky career, etc.)(psst this is the point where you break in and cry out, "But you're not old! You're not fat! You're not plain looking!"). That if I got any attention at all it would be in a Diane Brimble kind of way. And also in a Diane Brimble way, it's so risky - I have a clean bill of health STD wise, what would be worth risking that, for a lifetime of herpes sores and etc. worse things? And how can you tell if he's an axe murderer? How you tell is you go out on a few dates before you have sex, of course, but that kind of defeats the purpose of going out to the bar, and then you're on the side of, "You women, you tease and make us jump through hoops and get all hung up about commitment and love and buying you things, but all we and really all you want is just a root." I don't want to be that woman, who makes a guy take her out for three expensive dinners and talk about commitment before agreeing to do what they both knew it was all about in the first place. Manipulative, that is. Anyway, the whole thing has made me really wonder how the whole thing works. What happens in bars? How would anyone meet me, or start a conversation and see where it led? No idea. Well, some idea. But I'm not curious enough to go try it out, I don't think. No sordid GHB death for me, I don't think so.
• But above musings have been making me think, maybe I do need to get out there, in a more general way. And not sit in my house watching West Wing so much.
• It's just two years now. The anniversary was this past Thursday, which I hoped to celebrate with my rock and roll friend who was in town for one night, but he had a bad case of the cold that I gave him when I went up to Brisbane, so we had a quiet one. It does feel good to be on the other side of it. And it has been a good six months since I've had any real contact with the guy. Probably a good sign that I have no idea the date of the last time I saw him. I think it was the pizza dinner, when it was nice but I spoiled it by calling his new ho-bag "Ho-bag". But maybe that wasn't even the last time. It's nice to have no idea. It's not an anniversary I'll be marking.
• I want to spend tomorrow doing lovely, fun things. I hope I don't get caught up (like today, sort of) and it gets to be 3:30 and I'm still in my pyjamas so by the time I could get showered and into the city all the shops would be closed anyway. I need to fill the well, a bit. Having a cold makes you depressed. Having my time so very closely micro-scheduled as it has been for the last few weeks, maybe even months, makes me crazy. I want to do some fun, beautiful thing that makes me lose all track of time.
• A new romance would do that. Talking all night on the phone, lying in bed for several days running. A honeymoon period where you so delighted with each other that you lose yourself in bliss and the world goes away. Yeah, that sounds kind of fun. I could do with one of those.
• Anyway, I'm waiting.
• But the tulips are nearly all orange now. Who knows what they will do next?

Walking across roads

I live close to a busy corner. On one side of the street is a shopping complex which has the grocery store in it. On the other side is a pub that's open 24-hours.

The way the traffic is timed, there's a point where the traffic going east is stopped with a red light, but the traffic going west still has a green. The intent is to allow people coming from the west to be able to turn right across the traffic. (Yes, Yank readers, right across traffic, because people drive on the opposite side of the road here.)

Every time I'm at that corner as a pedestrian waiting to cross, I see people just walk out, into the road. They usually walk right out across the stopped east-going traffic, and sometimes the very cluey and coherent ones have checked to make sure there's no west-going traffic speeding up so they can continue sauntering across the whole road even though the walk sign is still red and the rest of us are still standing waiting. But often, often, I see people just walk out, across the stopped east-going traffic and then they just keep going, chest out, head forward, frowning, striding purposeful strides, right out into oncoming speeding cars.

Most they are drunk guys from the pub. Often they are junkies or brain-addled crack addicts. But sometimes they are just guys, tall guys or guys in suits with a middle-aged podge about them, or young guys who look a little wild in the eye. They walk right out.

It's such a male thing to do. They walk right out, like they are more important than the cars, like it's a complete affront to even think they might stop their stride for any obstacle. They puff their chests out, they frown, they stride determinedly, or they stumble ahead in a body-forward manner. How dare you even think they might stop for anything. They plunge right out into very busy, fast, oncoming traffic - and they must know that all the guys in the cars are doing the exact same thing, shifting lanes back and forth so they never have to put on their brakes and beeping at anyone who takes too long to pull away from a green light and dashing through yellow lights - the guys in the cars also feel like it would be a completely insult and affront if they were made to slow their pace for any man or obstacle.

But that's just stupid. Why is it more manly to stride headlong into a 2-ton vehicle (or more, sometimes they are like 30-ton semi-trailers bearing down, and I just have to look away) than to sensibly wait? Why is it more manly to plow your car into an obstacle than to have the finesse to be able to slow that car down?

Maybe the drunk guys and the junkies stride right out into the traffic because they don't have much to live for and actually aren't that fussed if they get mowed down by a car or not.

But that doesn't explain the guys in the cars.

I see this almost every time I cross that street, and I just hold my breath and hope, and I am convinced sometimes there's a little angel looking after each one of those guys, getting him safely across the street, because he's sure too stupid to do it himself.

clever concoction

I've had a bad cold for just about two weeks now - started getting a stuffy nose and sore throat on about the Wednesday before I went to Brisbane, then got fully, properly sick when I got back from Brisbane, had two days off work, started antibiotics on that Wednesday, looked dreadful when I went back to work the end of that week.

All I've been wanting to eat is soup, which is understandable - given the cold and also the icy weather.

Tonight I concocted a very lovey soup meal which I might have again even when I'm not sick - I cut up some broccoli, zucchini, carrot and mushrooms and steamed them, at the same time heating up a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup. When the veggies were done and soup nearly a-boil, I dumped the veggies in and made chicken-noodle-and-fresh-veggie soup. It was fantastic! Gorgeous and colourful and also very tasty. The best thing is, you get the same calories and fat and etc. as if you just had the can of soup, which I was going to do anyway. But then it's all choc full of nutrition and fibre and vitamins, and it hardly took any effort to make, just the chopping was the only bit.

So I highly recommend that to any of you out there who are getting this cold that's going around.

three dimensions

Had the nicest, nicest day today, despite still being a bit sick. Took the ferry to Watson's Bay for lunch and philosophical discussion. It was overcast and wet from a downpour just when we arrived, but lovely.

We walked down a street that none of us had ever been down before and one of our number decided it was his new favorite street in Sydney. It had a park on one side and small, wooden houses on the other, in all colours, and nearly each one with a different kind of tree in the front yard. We walked past the houses and around, down the beach and up the walkway into the park, up to the lighthouse and then back down the same way again, and on our second pass down the favorite street we disturbed a whole huge flock of lorikeets, and several of them flew straight toward us in bursts of colours. And the one whose favorite street it was said, "That was an incredibly three-dimensional experience!" And it was, it was like a shot from a camera commercial, these green and red (and yellow and blue) birds in motion and coming directly forward from this vivid green tree in front of a blue, blue house.

Then on the way back on the ferry we saw a fiery orange sunset behind Mossman and lighting up the bridge and the clouds, and the water sprayed across the front ferry windows, and the same guy remarked that this was quite three-dimensional as well, it had been a very three-dimensional day.

I'm home now avoiding a phone call, eating the easy thing for dinner instead of what I'd planned and feeling like nurturing my cold, but I have the warm sensation of a very nice day full of exactly what I wanted.

ghost in the house

I keep having reconciliation dreams. They seem to come whenever I hit 8+ hours of sleep - maybe that's why I've been avoiding it and getting only 6 hours on a consistent basis.

They're always the same. I've written about them here before. He's just there, not really paying attention to me but just back, and they're usually sexual. He sort of deigns to pay me sexual attention, for a little while, and then gets distracted, but doesn't really pay any attention to me throughout, doesn't really look at me or ask me questions or regard me. But I always give in, succumb, swoon into his body, appreciate his gorgeousness, feel the feeling of being near him, which of course is the key thing I miss when I wake up because I don't feel that feeling of being near him at all any more. It's been so long since I had any contact, either in person or voice or anything, that when I'm awake he's kind of an abstraction, a fact about my past which doesn't conjure up any particular visuals or auditory memories or sensual memories of any kind, not when I'm awake. (I suppose that's a good thing, a good indication that time is passing and I'm getting over him.) But when I have these dreams the full set of sensations are right there - it's like what people describe when someone close to them dies, and then in their dreams they get to see them again.

But these are painful, not nice. Because when I wake up I have this sense of wanting him and missing him, and it's taken away from me and I feel that pain all over again.

Why, why, why can't I stand up for myself in my dream and say no? I try to mantra it in my waking life and visualise doing it in the dream, but I never do. I'm right there with him, doing what I want and whatever he will deign to do with me, and then he wanders off and I wake up and he's gone again.

Some part inside me still thinks there's only one man for everyone and has mated for life like a swan, and wants him back. I can't say it out loud when I'm awake, can't even think it out loud because I have to make it untrue, through matra'ing and repetition. But my dreams betray me.

This last one, he was in bed with someone else, some petit spunky girl called Nancy. Then I got in the bed. He wandered off, and I talked to her and she was really friendly and nice, and had had belly surgery recently and had a big patch of gauze on her stomach, and was asking about scars so I showed her my scar, but explained that I scar very badly so hers probably wouldn't be as bad, and I felt a sort of pride in how big and distinct my scar is. Then she wandered off and he came back and it was the sexy part of the dream, and then somehow he was making breakfast, bowls of cereal, but still willing to do things to me if I wanted, but I thought, we'd better stop before she sees us. So, I sort of knew she was his new girlfriend but was hoping she wasn't, she was so nice to me that she didn't seem like she was, didn't have any possessiveness of him, but then I didn't want her to see me in flagrante with him just in case.

So what does that all mean? Why does this keep happening? And what can I do to make them stop? Because all day today there's been this ghost with me - I almost forget that he won't be at home for me to give a kiss to when I get home and tell him about my day. There's a ghost of a presence of a partner around me, but it's only a ghost from the dream, and in real life he's gone, really gone.

Be gone, ghost!

No "I" in Team

This morning I was walking through Ward Park and two guys were standing on the grass with a model helicoppter, about to launch it. The younger guy asked the older guy a question that I didn't hear, and the old guy replied, laughing, "There's no 'we' in 'pilot', mate!"

Everything Is Going To Be Just Fine*

I was talking to an MBA classmate the other day and she observed that even though lots of us struggled straight out of our degree, and even though some of us took steps backward when we finally got our next position after graduation, now after three years most of us seem to be at the right level - she said, "at the level where I expected to be right after I finished."

And today I really did feel that. Like I'm finally getting where I meant to be, and my MBA was useful after all, and my future will be better than it would have been had I not done it.

Which is startling. Because after the MBA things were so bad that I had lots of apocalyptically negative feelings, and when you feel those feelings you do things like curse things and make vows and swear off and turn your back on. And my ex did, even more than I did, didn't he? Apocalyptically bad.

And it was bad. I was looking for work for more than a year (today I was doing the math and realised it wasn't 18 whole months as I've been saying it was, it was more like 15 months between full-time gigs, and only 10 or so before I started getting contracting work). I felt like I would never use my MBA knowledge ever in my life. My self-esteem got kicked around really badly by the lack of focus and constant rejection. And my finances even more so.

But today, a few days after that conversation with my classmate, I actually felt it. Things are getting better. I'm now at the level where an MBA should be - I've done the hard yards, I suffered, I took big steps back, I paid my dues, and now I've been rewarded for my patience (what else are you going to do? once I ruled suicide out as an option, patience is all you got), and now things are better, career-wise probably better than they ever have been in my whole life, and I feel better, career-wise more mature and capable and knowledgable and full of leadership qualities and expertise and potential, and I'm actually working really hard, probably also for the first time in my life, really, and am living the life of a grown-up, successful MBA woman.

So, some of my deep-seated beliefs that were implanted during the bad apocalyptic times will probably have to be overturned. My life has not peaked. I have not outlived my story (gah! imagine if it's true!). My MBA was not a completely waste of time and foolish. People do not just deteriorate after age 40. Imagine that. Imagine that these things might be true!

Today I felt it. First time in years, first time ever if this really is a great new chapter. Really felt it. So maybe it will be true. Maybe this next bit will be better than all the bits that went before.

Or maybe it's just the cold medicine.

*I saw this on a t-shirt once worn by a Japanese girl, walking near Chinatown in Sydney. It was written in giant black letters on a plain white shirt. I instantly wanted one, and also thought I should buy one for my boss.

more thoughts on geography

Still wondering about the idea of belonging to a place, and if there's a right answer to the question, "Where should I live?"

I was in Brisbane on the weekend, where I used to live. I hadn't been back for about three years (and first time since the Broken Heart), and while there I passed by some places I hadn't even thought about since I left, so more like 11 years.

I was there for a very special, monumental and celebratory event in a dear friend's life, about which maybe more later, so there were rivers of emotion flowing through the weekend the whole time anyway.

Also, both days were very nice, sunny and much warmer than Sydney's been, so even if I'd never been there before I would have thought it was pretty, and the air was so fresh and clean.

But wafting down the river on the Jet Cat, passing the park in West End where I used to walk, and once had a big picnic before going overseas on vacation, and used to walk a friend's dog sometimes, and a few times had Aikido class, seeing this place where I lived and significant things happened to me but I hadn't even thought about for years, I thought to myself: If I never come back here again in my life, I wouldn't mind that much. Because, on my current trajectory, I will never get back to Omaha again in my life, but that's where I spent the most time of anywhere in my life, 12 consecutive years, and they were the years between ages 2-14 so they made a bigger imprint on me that any other place probably would have. So, if I haven't been sad at all about that, why would I be sad if I never got back to Brisbane?

On the Sunday I had coffee with a friend of a friend, actually I knew him too because he was my editor during my very brief career as a rock journalist. He recently moved back to Australia after spending 8 years in Scotland, and is now thinking of moving back to Brisbane from Melbourne where he is now. So we were talking about geography, and he (in his fully Aussie voice, after spending the whole afternoon reminiscing about gigs he'd been to during the whole history of rock music in Queensland) said, "Well, my family moved here when I was 9, so I've never thought of myself as particularly Australian."

And I said in reply, there's probably a whole population of us out there of hybrids who don't feel at home anywhere.

How do you tell where you belong? How can you answer the question, "Where should I live?"

Or do you just float and go along and shit happens and you end up weird places that you never would have expected, and it doesn't matter one bit whether you "belong" there or not, you are just you, wherever you go, and your job is to get to know the place and love the people there, whoever they are. No matter how much fried food they eat.

I will let you know what I work out.

a question

What does it mean to love a place?

I love my new gym

After my poor health last weekend, Monday was the day I decided I needed to turn things around. I bought my own food, ate vegetables, walked to work, tried to be cheerful, and joined a new gym.

I actually was a member of another gym, in fact probably still am because they haven't confirmed receipt of my resignation yet. It was my first gym, and I actually did go regularly when I was unemployed and during MBA school. The ex joined first and talked me into it, and we used to go together in the morning or evening, and it was something we did together.

After our split it was cool if we ran into each other there, but then I started to kind of dread it. And also, working full-time and being over-committed to after-work activities as I am, I couldn't find the right time of day to go. I tried getting up at 6, but with a habit of staying up until 2, and now that it's winter and so dark and cold at 6, that totally has not been working. I was paying an average of about $100 per visit, given the frequency that I'd actually make it there, so I suspended my membership for a few months to think it over.

My suspension lapsed last month and I paid a whole month's membership to a building I hardly even walked by. So obviously I wasn't motivated to go. And I think it was partly, well, maybe largely, because of him. I haven't seen him for six months. Two emails, one on each birthday, and otherwise no contact at all. So the more he becomes a figure of my distant past, the more I am loathe to run into him while going about my life doing something else. And then, of course, there was no telling that he might be there with her, she might be in town - who would warn me? - and they might be there together, and then I'd have to claw her eyes out in my own gym, rather than out on the street or somewhere as I'd always planned, and I'd be barred anyway. (Kidding! Censors. Kidding, not a genuine threat, I promise!)

So Monday I decided to just walk up and inquire at the new Fitness First that's opened around the corner from work. I was just going to look, and inquire, and see what their rates were. But you know how gym sales guys are. "So, having had a look around, does this look like someplace that you would come to regularly? Does it seem to meet all of your needs?" and then jump quickly to, "If you sign up today I can waive 85% of the joining fee," and before I knew it I was signing on a dotted line and getting a membership card.

I wasn't able to actually go over there until tonight after work. Fridays are always uncrowded in gyms, so I knew it would be nice. But it was extra nice! Fantastic! Wonderful! I love my new gym! It is fantastically well-appointed, with brand new restrooms like you'd have in a very fancy restaurant, and hair dryers and an iron and ironing board, and paper towels on the walls everywhere for mopping sweat from the machines, and a sauna and new carpet and huge banks of TVs. They have about 500 of every kind of machine, so not only did I find a treadmill but I had two on either side of me free. And there are so many members that you have complete and utter anonymity. There are tons and tons of beautiful people there, but everyone is just doing their thing, there's no attitude and people pay no attention to each other. I did find one person older and one person much fatter, which I always try to do (but no one worse dressed - I must get some snazzy new exer-clothes). I didn't find a woman who was older and fatter, but that was because there were hardly any women there at all, I suppose not surprising since the gym is about ten steps off of Oxford Street, and a block from where the Mardi Gras parade starts. But it was so comfortable! And the stretching area, which is acres wide so you don't get in anyone's way, looks out at big glass windows, and outside you can see Centre Point Tower. How cool is that? A Sydney landmark, right outside the window of the stretching area?

My persuasive sales guy had told me that people who belong to a gym near home tend to go an average of 1.3 times a week, whereas people who belong to a gym near work tend to go 2.9 times a week (or some figures like that). I believe him! It's heaps, heaps easier to go the gym directly from work, and not from the cozy comfort and distractingness of home. You're already out in the world doing out in the world kind of stuff. Gym is just one more.

Also, my boss has offered to pay for my membership. So it's all good!

I love my new gym. I think I might actually go more than once a month, to this one! And the best thing is, there is no way my ex would ever run into me there, because he would never, ever dream that I would join up to a huge, glitzy, anonymous place like that. Hooray!

two migraines

So, I've had two migraines in the past three days. One was at aforementioned End of Financial Year party, right at the beginning before I got any wine in me, and one was today, just after a client meeting. I haven't so many and such big ones in such a short period of time since the very end of the first year of MBA school, right before Christmas break. I wasn't kidding when I said it had been like Finals Week at work lately.

When I get migraines my vision goes funny. The first thing is always some patches of white, and sometimes that's all I get, or sometimes my visual field goes a bit swimmy. But if they get worse the whole middle bit of my visual field goes away, and then when they get worse than that I get these cool things that are officially called "fortification spectra" in the medical literature, because they are jagged lines shaped like the top of a castle wall. They're rainbow coloured and shimmery, like if you put a water droplet on an LCD monitor while it's on, and they float in about the middle distance. I'm very lucky because I usually get vision problems but no pain, and that's how it was both times. Also, I worked out in MBA school that although I don't have visual awareness of certain things, I am getting visual information in and can act on it. I know this because I couldn't see at all one time in class but kept taking notes, and afterwards they were all perfectly straight on the lines and in perfect handwriting. I might even be able to drive, but I've never tried it.

At the party it started soon after I got there and was in full flower for about 30 minutes, while I was meeting people and getting to know them. Including one interesting young man who has since emailed me the link to his personal blog (however, it reveals that he's 30 years old and recently went to the footy all cuddled up to some very, very blonde person called "Jen"...). I wonder if any of those people knew I couldn't see the middles of their faces, and I was having florid hallucinations the whole time? "Florid" was the word that came to mind at the time. But I've learned from experience that I can power through and usually disguise what's happening. I had sort of a headache by the time I got home, but that was hours later. No major harm done.

Today it kicked it immediately upon getting into the elevator after a client meeting on the other side of the bridge. I didn't sleep well last night, and felt very strange and vague this morning when I got to work, but made it through the meeting with a certain amount of authority, and the boss did all the hard work anyway. But right at the end the white lights started up again, and this time I mentioned to my boss what was happening. He was curious about what it was like and what caused it, but otherwise on the way home we just talked about work, and I think I managed to be lucid and even a bit funny but I might have to check with him later to confirm. By the time we were going up in our own elevator my visual experience was quite psychedelic - the boss was fractured into about 16 pieces and the little flashy spectra were going like mad. So I wasn't sure what I would do. I had some water, and some coffee because that constricts the blood vessels in the brain and might reverse the process. I read my email. I was going quite vague. I wasn't sure if I should go home or not, and I wasn't keen to talk to any customers in that state but I did manage it.

The next thing that happened was that I lost my free will. A friend has described this experience as happening to him during an acid trip. He could perceive the world before him quite clearly, he said, but he was absolutely unable to make any distinctions or decisions, and was paralysed with an inability to act. I felt just that way. I decided to make a list of the absolute drop-dead emergency tasks for that afternoon, just in case I needed to go. And I had lunch, and just read the New Yorker online (David Sedaris, is that good for while tripping?) and took it easy. In fact, I got to a very peaceful and relaxed state, because I was resting, and only doing the absolutely necessary things.

Fortunately, after about an hour, I got my will back. There is something different about it, sitting there as a person with a will reading email, as opposed to some freaked out trippy sick girl reading email in a peaceful and helpless state, even if they look the same from the outside and the same amount got done. I would have been incapable of dealing with a problem, in my state. I would have been unable to entreat a fellow employee into action to deal with something and make it a high priority. By the end of the afternoon I could. But in my tripped out state I could not.

I still feel a little wobbly, but also kind of focussed and clean in my mind. Side-effect. And I'm off to bed. If this keeps up, I will definitely need a few days of sick leave to sort myself out. But in the meantime, I get to observe my brain's activities, which is kind of cool for a philosopher, and I am certainly saving on drugs! If I did in fact have very close to an acid trip over lunch, who needs hallucinogens? And also, who would ever on earth do them for fun?

what made you interested in that?

I went to two parties on the weekend. The first was a work thing, I and didn't mingle very much so I didn't really meet anyone new, although I heard later that by 2:30am they were dancing on the tables, so perhaps I should have stayed a bit longer.

The next day was an End of the Financial Year BBQ, which was also a MeetUp group meeting. If any of you out there haven't checked out MeetUp.com for your town, and you feel lonely and like it's impossible to meet people, I highly recommend it. You get the most interesting and ecclectic bunch, and everyone has some core thing in common which acts as a wonderful filter.

I had a great number of interesting coversations with people, most of them actually about what people do for a living which disabuses the view that you shouldn't ask about that and it objectifies people. I was just asking the usual batch of questions and got the most interesting stories out of everyone.

One in particular really moved me. I was talking to a young woman who works in a preschool and also manages it. And she's studying primary education and early childhood development, so she's really, really busy. I asked her, "What made you interested in that kind of work?" And she told me this very affecting story. She said she knew she wanted to work with children from a very early age. As a kid, she used to line up her teddies and make worksheets for them all (!). But she always thought that wasn't something you could really want to do. You should want to do something bigger, or more serious. Until one day, out of the blue, when she was about 15, her mother turned to her and said, "You know, you'd make a really good kindie teacher." And she said that was the crucial moment. It was like she finally had permission. Her mother had made it okay to want that. And so here she is, managing a long-term day care and preschool facility, being a scholar about how to teach kids more effectively, taking herself and her career seriously. I felt so moved!

So, everyone out there in the sisterhood, listen up. Working with kids is a legitimate career ambition. There's no reason someone can't pursue it to the highest levels. If your daughter wants to do it (or your son!), encourage them. No one should feel inferior for choosing that as a career. Especially not the lovely young woman I met at the party!