Dream #6

from the Salem Tarot Free Three Card Reading

card 3: The Future - Ace of Wands

All that is best in the suit of Wands is embodied in the Ace: the power of Will, desire, sexuality, and vitality will be abundant in the future. Just as the leaves burst forth with such force that they are seen falling from the Wand, your energy will bring forth many fertile beginnings. This card symbolizes the healthy, positive outlook that should be held. Great things are indicated.

click here to see the image

Dream #5

I thought, yesterday I was out of the house from 7am until midnight. And then I thought, as if I was telling it to someone, "I mean, I'm just never home, I mean, yesterday I was out from 7am until midnight!" I thought this with a feeling of glamour and energy.

With a feeling of relief, I then thought to myself, "I don't have anyone at home waiting for me. There's no one at home who thinks I should be home instead of out."

But that's not a dream, that's reality!

Hooray, Astrobazza, this one I'm already living.

Dream #4

I was sitting in a pub waiting for a friend to arrive, and I noticed beside me three young people sitting together, and one of them had a lap top. Several of them had got up to get meals so I could see that on the lap top screen was a photo of a woman dressed in black lingerie, leaning all the way back in a red velvet chair, in opulent surroundings. I've seen a photo like that before - we once pitched a web project to a friend of my boss's, a very well known internet personality around town who I believe was once voted Bachelor of the Year. He was showing us his personal web site and we happened upon a bunch of personal photos, and they were of a slim, very beautiful woman sitting seductively, with her clothes sort of falling off around her, in a red velvet chair in opulent surroundings. I remember on her a white silk shirt, quite unbuttoned and sort of falling off.

Tonight I saw a similar photo, and surmised from the group that they were collaborating on some kind of project. I couldn't tell if one of the women in the group had been the woman in the photo on the computer screen. They were all quite young.

Given my homework assignment of uncensored dreaming, I wondered, "What would it be like to hang out with sleazy guys like that, who take and even like to look at that kind of photo?" Those kind of guy are usually going through their phase when they think it's really profound to worship beauty. Women embody the beauty they worship. What would it be like to be their collaborator and/or photograhpic subject? And I let myself imagine it for a minute.

Dream #3

A life with enough sleep, and not tormented by clocks.

I got caught up on the weekend, somehow. I woke up just naturally on Sunday at 9:30 in the morning. I was able to get a bunch of things done, and talk to my sister on the phone, and still get to the poetry reading on time.

Why is every day not like that? Here it is quarter to 1, I should go in early to get the boss to help me with something that's late for a testy customer who yelled at me today about things being late, and then in the evening...another thing to do. I should not be tired for any of those things. But it's already too late.

Dream # 3.a - Stay up all night, then at 6am hastily pack a suitcase, hop in a cab to the airport and skip town. Forget your phone.

Dream #2

Walking along a beach, skin warmed by the yellow sun, a filmy cotton skirt (or wrap of some sort) and sand between my toes.

This is a dream that would be easy to achieve, especially because it was like 27 degrees today.

p.s. There was also a total eclipse of the moon, between 7 and about 8:30pm (in fact it's still going, I'm ducking out during the commercial breaks in Idol to see it). When the earth is directly between the sun and the moon, and the moon is blocked out completely, the only light waves that reach it are the red ones, which bend around, and so the moon turns a blood red. Quite amazing, everyone was out looking at it. Wonder what it portends?

Dream #1

Already it begins. I was reading a book just now in which the author mentioned scrambled eggs Texas-style, with jalapenos and a pound of cheese.

And it made me remember a magnificent and over-the-top Southwestern breakfast I had once in Santa Fe, the first day of a trip, just before Christmas and cold with snow dusted around the town square but piercing bright sun because it's up so high.

And I thought, "I want -"

And then my brain went, "NO! Don't want!"

And I realise where that little shut-off valve comes from. It comes from back when I had my broken heart and all, all, all I wanted in the world was him. And my brain had to learn to not want. Every desirous thought of him had to be shut down, immediately. So that's where this shut-off comes from. I'm sure of it.

Thank you so much, Astrobarry, for giving me my dream project this week, so I can learn to want things again.

This is part of the deep recovery stuff you have to do, I guess, two years out.

"I want to be in Santa Fe, just before Christmas, looking at the mix of Southwest and Christmas decorations in red and green, and walking out in the blinding sun still low in the morning sky, and pulling my coat tight against the unfamiliar North American chill, and having an extravagent and cheese-smothered breakfast and so many green chiles that I get sick of them."

I want that. I dream of Santa Fe.

More as they happen.

Dreaming

Astrobarry posted my new weekly horoscope today. It is very interesting. This week for me is supposed to be all about dreaming. I am to truly imagine the life I dream of, even if it's a million miles from the life I'm in and currently settling for. And I am not to listen to any internal voices of reason, at all. I can evaluate and make plans next week. This week is just for the dream. He says:

Let's just assume it's all within your grasp… and before you start to say otherwise, leave it at that. Now, spend your week basking in its glow of promise. If you let it sink in and allow yourself to enjoy the feeling, you might just get used to it — and, in the process, ready yourself to find a way (any way at all!) to make it really happen.

Now, you folks know better than anyone how much my focus for the last two years has been on just surviving. The fact that I get up in the morning, still eat, have gainful employment, all these things are miracles that were quite touch and go there for a while. So the mental attitude Astrobazza recommends is feeling a bit foreign. My dream, or whatever it is I would choose to dream of, is not at all clear to me. When my life and spirit kept running even though it had gone off the side of the cliff, and hung in air with no foundation, my old dreams when too. Novelist? How about feed ourself breakfast. Rich girl in a big house? I love my little house, I realise and embrace that there's not one thing wrong with it.

But yet, of course I am unhappy. There's still a hole in my life where intimacy should be. This is still a cold, hard, alien city, despite its wonders and variety and entertainments.

But what if I could dream? Complete free-wheeling unfettered creative dream. What would it be? My poor little brain is struggling already with the homework assignment, and I only read the horoscope two hours ago.

"Maybe I want to travel."

- "No, you don't have any money or time to travel, and you have to go to the US twice next year, what are you thinking of travel for?"

"Maybe I want to hang out in bars and drink again, like I did in grad school, like I did when I was 24."

- "Don't be unseemly, you're too old to cavort like that in public, and besides, who would you go with? All the old people you know are spiritually tired, or consitutionally too focussed on living healthily, or just generally fragile, and stop after one glass of wine."

"Maybe just a string of lovers, rather than a husband?"

- "Have some respect for yourself, dear. A husband is what everyone needs. You need the whole shebang, the whole kaboodle, and anyone who fails on even one husbandly criterion is someone you won't be with - it will be a relationship failure."

Who is this person in my head throwing a damp cloth over all my ideas? I'm glad I have the instruction to shut her up, for a whole week too! It's like an old trunk, covered in dust and cobwebs, rusty hinges creaking open. This dreaming. What will I imagine, if I let my self "assume it's all within my grasp"? Assume. Without proof or tests or an action plan. I know how to do that, though, I'm a philosopher. What do you suppose I'll want to do with my life, by the time this week of dreaming is done?

too much blogging?

Last night I had a dream about blogging. I was out somewhere and had an idea that I wanted to write down, but wasn't home, so instead I opened the trunk of my car ("boot" for Australian readers) and dipped my finger in some water and starting making letters there.

Blogging with the tip of my finger and some water in the trunk of a car. Blogging in my sleep. Do you think I'm addicted?

Il Barbiere de Sevilla

Last night I went to see my first actual opera. It was an actual opera in the Opera House. The Barber of Seville, in Italian. I went with the woman who taught the opera class that I took a couple of months ago, and I'm delighted that I was able to take her along and do something nice in return for everything I got out of the class.

The opera was great, very lively and funny. I had bought the CD and worked through the first part while sitting with the libretto in both Italian and English, and I wish I could have done more homework and gone through the whole thing because it really helps you understand the lines if you've seen the Italian and the translation side by side. As it was, there were the supertitles so I could follow the rest of the story, and let's face it, the story is pretty simple. The singing isn't as loud as on a CD of course, so the lack of amplification takes a bit of getting used to, but it was so accomplished, and the singers were having so much fun doing it. Lots of lines that end on a big "Laaaaaa!" with arms outstretched, and lots of passages that are so quick that you wonder how a human can sing them. The set was just amazing, a colourful Gaudi-style wonderland. I have the program, so today I'll look into exactly who did what and who they all are.

It had just started to rain when I walked from Circular Quay, so the Opera House, as it loomed above me on approach, was blurred by mist and quite otherworldly, and when we came out the bridge looked the same, arching out of a cloud.

Donkey Boy

How good is my brain? I had a reconciliation dream last night, he was in my arms, he was coming back to me, it was all ecstatic and romantic and wonderful - but how's this? My very clever brain had replaced my ex with Guy Secretan, a character on the British TV show Green Wing played by actor Stephen Mangan. Dr. Secretan is a rude, womanising cad (although with an underlying romantic charm), and has a few superficial resemblances to my ex, just enough that the brain could do that very clever brain thing and just replace the one person with the other in the dream.

Thanks, brain! Here I thought I was going to have to be brave and have a big break-up scene in one of my dreams, to get over these reconciliation dreams, but you could use your own tricks to just erase the problem and write the man out of history!

I feel great this morning.

"I'll bet you can do thirty."

Tonight, after waiting a long time for an appointment, I had my first meeting with a personal trainer, of which you get three along with a new membership at my wonderful new gym. My new trainer is wonderful, too. Tonight was just a fitness assessment. First thing is I wrote down my email address and date of birth. When I got to the year, I expected some kind of reaction (kind of oversensitive about it lately, haven't I been?), but just as I was starting to say, "This is where you say I look really good for 44,", he said, "My birthday's on June 9th! I'm a Gemini too!" And kept bringing up this common characterstic between us the whole meeting.

I loved him just for that alone, but the rest of the session made me love him more. He was one of those people like the ones you sometimes meet in the medical professional, who, no matter what state you're in or what you look like, greet you with a beaming sunny smile (in fact I think my trainer's last name is Sunny on his card, maybe he changed it to match his outlook on life), and talk to you with delight and care, and are just so excited that you're taking this step to improve your health and life! After we did height, weight and girth, I had to do some fitness stuff. First was three minutes of stepping, at the same rhythm, and then measure my heart rate after. I did quite well, but was feelin' it in one quad by the end. Then was situps, and he apologised for the style of the situp because it's not good for your back but it's what the machines require, for calibration. He held my ankles and I had to come all the way up, and back down, as many times as I could in a minute. "You're doing great," he said. "That's 10, that's great." "You're going to get to 20, no problem!" "Look at you, you're going to go past 20! 23! That's great!" He made me feel like the fittest 44 year old woman ever in the history of the world. I have no idea if 20 is lots or hardly any, but there's something about the magic of those round numbers.

The next thing was push ups. No time limits, just as many as you can do, at all. Argh. That means you really do push to your limit, and you're going to feel a bit of pain at the end, you'll feel a bit of challenge. It was the third thing, too, so I was wearing out just a teeny bit. But I did about three, to check form, and he said, "You're strong!" I said, "Thank you." "I'll bet you could do a straight push up, or two!" (I was doing girly ones on my knees.)

Again I got to 20, and felt pretty smug. But he said, "Yep, keep going, keep going." I got to about 26, and was thinking, one more, that's it, I'm in pain, I can't do any more. And just as I paused at the top and thought that, he interjected overtop of my thought patterns, "I'll bet you can do 30."

A second before then, I could not have. I was going to do 27. But the number was in front of me, and the encouraging profession of belief from my carer and minder, and I went for it! Groaning, grunting, going "Argh!", going red in the face, pushing myself, I did three more quick ones, through the pain, and I did 30!

My muscles hurt in a pushed-myself kind of way they have not for a while. And I'll bet I'm going to be bloody sore tomorrow. But I love how we can push ourselves when a loving encourager is setting the goal a little more ambitiously. I love the pursuit of round numbers for their own sake. And I am of course already wondering about booking my new sunny trainer for once a week after my free sessions are up.

i just had a small one, once, at a party...

My name is Ellen, and I'm an addict.

I'd heard about it before, and I even knew of people who were addicted themselves, planned their day around their fix, could talk about nothing else in the end. I always looked down on them, but Lord, Lord, little did I know that I would one day fall, and be as much a slave as they were.

I didn't even mean to start. It was just once. Flipping around the channels, innocently, hm, wonder what's on? There's not even a warning label at the beginning. It's against public safety, I tell you. They should have a warning label at the beginning, because if they get you at the beginning, then they've got you for good.

I can't stop watching Australian Idol.

post number one hundred and...44!

How appropriate, because my topic this evening is ageism, and being 44.

I've just spent this surfing session reading Dr Phil on being single (it has been too long, Dr Phil, I should have turned to you ages ago), and his key message is that a girl needs to identify her best qualities and fully embrace them and present them to the world. And that if you try to hide, or pretend to be whatever you think it is men want, or adopt fake characteristics, "you will look as fake as a Halloween mask and just as scary!" He says you shouldn't try to change things that can't be changed, you should embrace them. So, one thing you shouldn't do is lie about your age.

What is it to be 44? Or, more, what is good about it? I've been struggling with it. I think I do have some self-defeating beliefs about being too old, about not being breeding stock any more so who would want me, about my ageing skin and ageing boobs, and about the fact that any man over 40 and still single probably has something really badly wrong with him, so what are my prospects?

Does age even matter in relationships? Not in acquaintences or friendships, not at all, but in an exclusive relationship partnership, probably. What is the biggest thing about it? Seems to be what music you were listening to at what point in your life? Is that such a big thing? I keep meeting people who were born after I left college (after I left college, not even when I was in it), and then I hear songs and am very conscious that those songs were out before they were even born. What would it be like to have REM be a band that was out before you were born? As opposed to Elvis and Buddy Holly? Agh, I find it shudderingly weird - but then probably everyone goes through this at age 40-something, when people can be peers who were born when you were already fully an adult. I also have friends who are more than 60, so the same thing applies - I was born when they were already fully an adult. So I should probably just get used to this.

Here are beliefs I should try to mantra about.

• No one could be attracted to a woman over 40. I'm not "a woman over 40", I'm me. It's possibly someone someday might be attracted to me.
• Even though I could probably pass as less than 40, I should just own and embrace my age and be proud of it.
• The baby thing. If the whole baby thing was crucially important, medical science could probably provide a way to try, and if it didn't happen, well, younger women are dealing with that every day. It's not the end of the world. (Just the end of the genetic line, but not the end of the world.)
• If someone were the right guy but the wrong age, but it was really real, even his mother who was only 10 years older than me would accept it and be supportive. People respond positively to really real things.

I was just thinking I should spend a day wearing a button that says "I am 44". Just have it out there. Which would be making too big a deal of it, of course, but then it made me think of how many things on television send the message that you should hide it. The Olay "Fight the 7 signs of aging ads" (just as well I've changed moisturizers lately), with the woman who smiles cheekily at us and says, "I'm 48." Like it's a shocking revelation. The whole vile Mark Phillipousis show, where the ad shows the woman saying, "I'm 48," and him reacting with job-dropped shock. The show Life Begins, where the woman says, "I'm 40!" but looks heaps older, portly and frumpy and just-don't-care-any-more, and in that scene where she's scaring off the teenaged boy from dating her daughter she talks about how irrational woman can get during the menopause. Menopause! At 40! No, you don't have menopause at 40, you have it at 50, plus or minus. Come on people.

Big button, "I am 44." Psychically. Karmically. Proudly. It means nothing, really. My life is just my life, I am just me. I have never lived a normal life doing things everyone expects when everyone else does them - not ever, ever, ever. So the fact that there's no extant script for how the fuck you're supposed to do this, my life, now, makes no difference.

More work on my positive qualities soon. And I might pick up that Dr Phil book.

why bored?

Based on the previous drunken blog, I received a comment by email from a loved one: "Why are you bored? From the outside your life seems really full and busy." And it's not the first time I've heard this. So why am I bored?

Had a bit of a think about it this morning, but it may require a trip to Ettalong to truly sort out. But first hypothesis is, yeah, I do lots of things, but I don't have a project, I'm not doing anything creative. It's all passive, entertainment-based, or so it seems at the moment. And more than that - I miss having a creative project and someone to care about it.

Which is probably why I love school so much - you have to do assignments all the time, and someone does care about it - the teacher has to assess you, has to read or observe whatever you've done.

Then I thought, maybe I miss having a creative collaboration with somebody.

That's probably more true - is exactly what I craved from the Lying Liar, and it's also what my relationship was with S, a constant creative collaboration because we bounced off each other so much. I probably should have written down more stuff because we were just epically funny, riffing off each other, all the time. It's also a metaphor for having a baby together, the ultimate creative collaboration.

But, but, but - if you need a creative project, you can just start one, and if you really need someone to assess it you can just enrol in another (another!) degree, but if you want a creative collaboration, well, that, that you have to just wait and see if fate happens to throw a willing collaborator in your way.

Rats. So I'm probably doomed to be bored for the rest of my life.

shout out

I just found myself mentioned in a friend's blog - it's the first time I've ever been mentioned in anyone's blog, at least as far as I know.

Last time I saw him he let slip a tiny little comment that could have been taken to suggest that he has found my blog too.

So, shout out to my friend AT! You have now been mentioned in someone else's blog too.

sober reflections/post-game analysis

I think the shoe thing was because I just bought the DVD of the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I've watched it about three times now and have watched all the special features and listened to the commentary. What I liked about it the very first time I saw it in a cinema was something they talked about in the "making of" featurette, so I know I wasn't just projecting - this movie is, and was intended to be, primarily a story of a young woman's coming of age, and she does it through work. At work.

I found the movie completely inspiring the first time I saw it (completely ignored everything after she throws her phone in the fountain and read it as praise of pursuing the high-powered but perhaps emotionally empty lifestyle of her job), and felt like it mirrored my own experience quite a bit, including that my boss has his Miranda Priestly moments from time to time. So, watching again now I think the process of identifying with Andy and wanting to emulate her journey makes me think I need to wear much better shoes. Part of her coming of age includes getting rid of her clunky, sensible shoes - that are just like mine - for Manolo Blahnik slingbacks. But I can't find that kind of shoe for myself because I wear a 6 1/2 Double Wide, and they don't make stilettos for us. Not that I've found, anyway.

And it's not the shoes, really, anyway, right? Coming of age is an inner journey. It's the character arch in the movie that grabbed me, and not just the wardrobe. Right?

drunken blogging

Okay, poppets, you get to hear my just cry out to the universe. I need to cry out, and it doesn't matter actually that much who's listening. God bless whoever was the inventor of blogs. GOD BLESS THEM!

My live makes no sense. I used to be an academic, in the hallowed sandstone halls, with wood dark-stained lintels and door jambs, and chalk boards on pulleys that pulled up and down. With all the sad, competitive, weird people who end up there. With an endless series of 18 year olds who needed to be taught basic things like if and then, but then who also tended to write lesbian separatist graffiti in the toilets.

Now I do not work in academia, I work out in the fast-paced world of the internet. And I wish that I could wear stillettos and walk all the way to work in them, and I just invested too much in expensive make-up. The person I want to be dressed very, very well, is tall and svelte, needs no more than 4 hours of sleep a night but is always sharp and full of strategic innovative ideas. The person I am sleeps about 5-6 hours a night but spends all day in her blunt dopey shoes at work thinking, "Oh my god, I only had 5-6 hours sleep! I should have had 10-12! How will I survive!" Meanwhile wearing dopey shoes and lipstick wearing off and answering the phone with a croak because I still have a bit of a cough from my long cold. How can the person inside my brain be so different from the dopey actual person on the outside?

But then, the lesson from last night is, seeking reciprocal admiration feeds into dangerous egosim and should be abhorred. Or, more simply - you shouldn't worry about what other people think.

Have experiences, he said. The meaning of life is to have good experiences. I have fucking weird experiences. How could both of those men have been at the same talk, one sitting right in front of me, one right behind? How could both of those universes have collided so closely?

Who am I? Who the fuck am I? How do I make sense of the things I've done, which I brush up against every now and again (if I had stayed, I would be living in those creepy sandstone rooms with the wood and the blackboards, still, for all this time!). How do I make sense when whole huge chunks of my life are characterised by places and textures - and people - that I so rarely even run across? My life seems very shallow. My current live is only 2 years old. But then I'm already bored with it! I hate this boring life! The prospect that I might not get an opportunity for radical, and I mean truly radical, like, stick a knitting needle through the world on a globe and start here and where the point comes out, THERE - that's what I want and the idea that I might not get it and have to make do with here, this, now. Agony! Boredom! What does that mean? How can that give meaning, with no continuity of life and the prospect of ghosts from another dimension suddenly being at a philosophy talk after 12 years and saying that they lived like two blocks from where you, YOU, ME, right now, this me, where I live now. I've had two birthday parties in this house. Two post-newly-single-Ellen-Part-2 birthday parties, with all those new people. Who am I? I used to live somewhere else. I once had a set-up date in Ocean Beach with someone who's still in the field, his best friend visiting from out of town, and because I was so bored I just drank and drank, and of course we ended up back at the place talking theoretically about sex, and of course it became practical not theoretical, and then in fact I ended up with Mono but he denied it could have been from him. The same girl who spent time in the sandstone buildings with the blackboards on pulleys sat in Ocean Beach, of all tacky places, and got drunk enough to get laid. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Who do I think I am? How can you make sense of all this?

The curse of the expat, the curse of someone who moves around a lot.

"Geminis are great employees, but the CAN'T get bored. You can't let them get bored." - lady with whom I handed out how-to-vote cards.

There will be a federal election here, and I might not be here. Or I might. How do I make sense of any of this? What sense is there to make of it?

I just have no idea. I am drunk on a school night. I did not kick on to the Marlborough all by myself and run away from home, I came home and am here talking to you. And it's not that late. Is it. But hm. huh. My life makes no sense.

MAC

Today I went out, mostly shopping. I checked out an area with a bunch of art galleries that's not far from where I live, and I had lunch, but I was still feeling pretty off my game from having been sick, plus I had tried my hair curly which was a bad mistake (awkward haircut last week that I'm still coming to terms with - too high on top, too flat on the sides). It was good to check out the neighborhood, but mainly it was full of pretentious wankers, the lunch wasn't that good and was really expensive, and all in all I think if you wanted that kind of experience Woolahra would be a better bet.

Then I went into town - walked to Central and then took the train. I meant to get off at St James, but was reading a book and the first station I was in any way aware of was Circular Quay. I'm not sure how I missed two entire stops, except maybe it was the cute but too young guy who got on the train all in a fluster and was sighing a lot - perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation but because I was having a bad hair day I just buried myself in my book. I got off at Circular Quay anyway and thought, must be some reason I was brought here. But I still haven't worked out what it was.

I used the loo, went over to see where you can buy opera tickets because I thought they might have cd's, but no, walked past a crowd watching some African musicians and thought how Ok Go was just so much more into their music and so much more powerful than these guys were, even though rock and roll drumming originates in African drumming. It was loud, and all, but the drummer guy was letting the machine do all the work for him, he looked completely slackened and was grinning boredly and lazily. Did not rock. Then I hopped a bus up the hill and actually got to where I was going.

My mission was to buy a Barber of Seville highlights CD and a full black skirt for wearing to work. No success. My main supplier HMV was having a closing down sale, of all things! And Fish records down by Martin Place had just, just closed when I got to the door, so I'll have to try tomorrow. The black skirt mission - looked through a whole entire floor of clothing at Myer but apparently we ladies are not allowed to wear full black skirts this season, only incredibly idiotic looking grey smocks with black leggings. I saw old, old women wearing this outfit, and one girl whose body filled out the loose grey smock - honey, we can tell! So I started just meandering aimlessly, thought of how I could use a new lipstick colour and thought of hitting the Revlon section at the Soul Pattinson chemist at the end of Pitt St Mall (probably not a Soul Pattinson - Sydney trainspotters, include all corrections in the comments below).

But ended up in David Jones. Went by the Clinique counter thinking I would get some Clinique stuff, but they wouldn't help me, three of them were clustered around a table talking, and another was gripping two lip pencil boxes for dear life and saying to a customer, "I'm SO sorry, I'm really sorry." Don't know what that was about but it looked like the start of a bad scene. So I just drifted off. To see if someone else cared about my custom, and would serve me and take some interest. Guess what? One did.

At the Mac counter, a handsome man with an apron full of brushes smiled at me immediately upon my walking up, and then directed a saleswoman my way. She was just gorgeous, one of those small, dark-haired, big-eyed pixie women who usually have some Lebanese ancestry in their background. And very business-like and nice. I explained that I had been buying grocery-store make-up, but was ready to upgrade, and was after some powder but with more coverage than my current one has.

Turns out powder was not really what I needed. Since we were going to experiment, she sat me down in a chair and started bringing things over to try. This was exactly the right thing for her to do, because I was in a mood to seriously reward whoever paid me a bit of attention and gave me good service. She had such patience that we not only tried two different lipsticks with two different lip liners, we went back and tried the first one a second time because she liked it but I wasn't convinced.

Under her expert hand, while I was staring into her very blue beautiful eyes (I was sitting so close to her that it looked like she had five or six blue beautiful eyes), my black circles went away. My wrinkles around my eyes became non-accentuated. The redness at the end of my nose and above my lip, remnants from the cold and blowing my nose so much, simply disappeared and became a landscape of contoured glimmeringness. She even powerdered on some blush to finish the look so I could continue shopping and not have to duck into a ladies' room to make repairs. I bought everything. Even the moisturiser with which she began. Not the blush, actually, but everything else, including the lippy that she didn't think was the right colour but I still liked, maybe for evening.

Department-store make-up is one of those things that only comes into my life when I have money. I have been both rich and poor, and I know from the ups and downs that I always buy books, no matter what; I buy CDs when I start to feel comfortable; and I buy department-store expensive make-up and skin care products when I feel very rich indeed. I know it's all the same as the grocery-store stuff, I know a moisturiser is a moisturiser, I know you don't need two different foundation products (one for skin, one for eyes), I know all this very well because I used to work in the industry having once developed a web site for Amway's cosmetic line. I don't care. Being sat in a chair for 45 minutes experimenting with lip colour is wonderful. Feeling confident about my skin and my face is wonderful. Being treated like I had as much right to beauty products as Cate Blanchet (face staring at me throughout from a poster for SKII) is wonderful, and very uplifting.

Throughout the day, and particularly before and after the make-over, I was reflecting on how very much I think about my physical appearance. Pretty much all, all the time. This is very sick and damaging, and a sad reflection on what it is to be a middle-aged woman in the modern world today, and I'm sure is still left over from the blow to self-esteem that was my breakup. But still. I'm always measuring - hair, face, overall thinness, outfit, type of shoes - always, every day, in comparison with every woman I see everywhere. I think this is typical - I wish guys did it too, but clearly they must not or they wouldn't let themselves go like so many of them do. But still, I'm sure I could use all that mental energy for better purpose. So, having X hundred dollars worth of Mac stuff makes me feel better about my face, and its beauty, and its level of acceptability for someone who wants to walk around the world and maybe even strike up conversations with sighing handsome young men on trains.

Now if I could only sort out my hair...

my favorite newspaper headline of today

Passenger smuggles monkey onto plane under hat

imaginary conversation with a dentist

me: I have a sore tooth, this one up here, see how the gum has receded a bit? It used to be just sensitive to cold, but now it's sensitive to both hot and cold.

dentist: Do you floss every day?

me: I floss a lot...

dentist: You need to floss every single day, and make sure you use a soft brush and use strokes down, like this, not back and forth. And use a toothpaste for sensitive teeth, only, like this one, this one's good.

me: (thinks - I hate that sensitive teeth toothpaste. No way I'm ever using that.)

dentist: You need to do all these things, every single day, or else.

me: I know. My body is completely fucked, and I'm going to live a life of continuous pain, from now until I, finally, thankfully, die. I know. It's all fucked. I'm completely fucked because I didn't floss, and because I used to brush my teeth side to side. (and then I grin)

what I talked to the philosophers about today

The Philorum talk had been about collective responsibility. The speaker defined "guilt" as being causally responsible for a harm. So today we talked about it more. The question was, can you obviate guilt by performing other good acts in the future? The speaker thought you could - that if you learned from what you did and avoided doing that harm in the future, or acted to cause good, that would take away the badness of the previous act - it would absolve your guilt, gradually, over time.

I disagreed. If guilt is causing a harm, then once it's caused it's caused. It's a fact, it's in the past and it can't be changed. Any future harm not done is just harm not done now, it goes in the ledger under the present moment, it doesn't change the balance sheet of past actions. Guilt might also be just the psychological feeling, and that might correspond with having caused a harm or not, so maybe that could fade over time through various methods. But that's not the same.

So we got to talking about how people square up balance sheets for past wrongs, and in particular talked about John Howard's (Australian Prime Minister) refusal to say "Sorry" to the stolen generation of aboriginal children, children that were seized from their homes by the government and raised in religious missions, torn from their mothers and families and culture and land. Everyone now agrees it was a horrible thing to do, some people say the people back then were just doing what they truly believed was best for these children, but the controversy is about Australia, this current Australia now, apologising to these people for what they went through (and there are plenty of these people around, they're not that old, it didn't happen that long ago).

John Howard's argument for not saying sorry is that he didn't personally do these things. Someone else made the decisions, so what point is there for him apologising? (We now suspect he refused to apologise because he plans to do the same thing all over again, but that's another bit of news from today's headlines, which I'll leave you to research on your own...)

My argument is that John Howard should apologise in his capacity as Prime Minister. It's not the man who was responsible for the wrong, it's the role, and whoever's in the role has responsibility for the acts of all his predecessors.

However, today it was asked of me - how does this square with my view that current good acts can't obviate guilt for past acts? In other words, what good does saying sorry do?

It put me in mind of a conversation I once had with a Sikh friend. She had been in an arranged marriage which didn't work, only lasted a year and she left it, but now, twenty years later, she went to her temple (or whatever their building is called, I will look it up), and people would say, "So, how is your husband?" and she would say, "Oh, just a bit busy so he couldn't make it." They all knew her story, she knew they knew, but it was crucial for the smooth functioning of the community that everyone lie about it. And I remember her saying, "You know, all you Anglo people, you're so hung up on confessing the truth and being forgiven for it." She didn't feel that way at all.

So, it occurred to me today, in my culture, the way you obviate your guilt - expurgate your guilt - is that you tell the truth about the wrong you did, and then you can be forgiven, and the slate is clear again and the ledger balances. You can't be forgiven if you don't confess, you don't get a blanket free pass to commit however many wrongs you can manage to fit in before you die with blanket forgiveness, you have to tell the truth. Odd, sort of isn't it?

The speaker told the contrasting story of aboriginal communities where if a wrong was done to a member of one tribe by another tribe, the second tribe had to offer someone up to be punished. It was nice if it was the person who had actually done the wrong in the first place, but it didn't have to be, if they couldn't be found or identified, anyone would do. If someone in a tribe was hurt, someone in the other tribe had to be offered up to be speared, any person from that other tribe, but once it was done, it was done, the slate was clear and the balance was restored.

I said, to me that sounds barbaric, but maybe that's just because I was raised with this other practice of truth-telling and forgiveness. When you think about it, truth-telling seems completely irrelevant to setting scores and restoring social balance after a wrong. But then, to me it works, and I'd prefer to live in that society than a vengeful society. All Shakespeare tragedies have the lesson that revenge and retribution are an endless and foolish cycle. But why would we have come up with this other way of restoring balance, and why does it seem more compelling? My Sikh friend's comment was the first time I ever noticed this part of my culture, and realised it was part of my culture.

Haven't reached any conclusions, but it's what I was thinking about today.

OK GO

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that my favorite band is Ok Go, "the guys who did the treadmill video". Tonight they played their first ever show in Sydney. And I was there.

I took a friend, with whom the gig had just come up in conversation, but it turns out she's a veteran music-goer from way back and even worked in the industry for a while, so she was completely comfortable and an excellent companion. And she also has exquisite taste in bars and food - we had a really nice drink and dinner beforehand as well.

The gig was...how to describe?

Well, first, a pause for some bloggy reflective thoughts. I have been into various bands in my life, and of some I've been a big big fan, so tonight I had the fan's delight at being in the physical presense of my heroes. But there was more. This is the first band I've had this kind of relationship with in the internet age, the web 2.0 interactive post-YouTube era. So, of this band, I've seen tons and tons of footage, including lots of footage of their live act, recorded on people's phones while held up over other people's heads at gigs all over the world. So the whole set-up and look of it had a familiarity that I haven't had with other bands - you see videos and stuff, sure, but not so many, and of such different things. I've also seen all this footage on my computer, mostly in the middle of the night, so it's quite personal. But then also, seeing images captured in a little screen gives it a 2-dimensionality, a remoteness. And so, seeing them actually live, actually right there in the same room as me breathing the same air, it was even more exciting than usual.

And how was the gig? The gig was amazing. The songs were amazing, they all sounded incredibly strong and artful, and they've developed and expanded things on the road. They play together so well, and the guitar player has a virtuosity (albeit a grunge virtuosity) that suprised and impressed me. And Damian, he's so charismatic, and personable, and gracious. I was worried, because I know Australian audiences can seem quite reticent and hard to please to American performers. But people were screaming and putting their hands in the air from the very beginning, so I think they felt well-received.

There were some surprises. I won't tell you what they were, because you should go seem them yourself and find out, but you could tell the band has a kind of performance-art bent (like you couldn't tell that already from them doing a video on eight treadmills). And they did two covers. They let us vote at first, did we want an ELO song or a Violent Femmes song - we picked the Violent Femmes and it was "Prove My Love".

But then, first song of the encore, they said they felt sorry for the people who had voted for ELO and did this absolutely scorching version of "Don't Bring Me Down". Damian just screamed out the vocals at the beginning. Like a vintage Paul McCartney "I'm Down" kind of scream, but more. I had chills. I hope they cut a version of it, because it was history-making, the best cover I'm sure anyone's done of that song.

I was transported. I was impressed, and entertained. I was feeling bad, beforehand - partly because of bad day at work, actually walked out early because I was so angry, and partly because I have a sinus infection and only just started the antibiotics today so I'm still feeling pretty bad. I was worried I might have to sit down, or leave early, but you don't miss something like this. And I'm so glad I didn't. I was transported. Everyone in the room was grinning wide happy grins (how often does that happen?). And the music moved me with its power. And I was dancing around and letting my body get taken over by the experience, especially toward the end when there wasn't much more to go ("Do What You Want"). And it was great to go with my friend, and she really enjoyed it too, and we found out we have another shared interest so we might do this more often in the future. And she didn't want to kick on, which is fine with me because I'm sick and need to sleep.

But I will dream dreams of paisley and rock and roll.