Woo hoo Friday...

Thanks to whichever God was on duty today for bringing Friday to a swift conclusion....

Funny…

I said on yesterday’s blog, about blogs, something along the lines of ‘who do you want to tell to shut up on a blog?’ I also indicated you could tell me to ‘shut up.’ I had the best email from let’s call her...er, Pam. She emailed me on my Amarinda mail – amarinda_jones@yahoo.com.au and said “Sometimes I wish you would just concentrate on one subject on your blog. So yeah, I would like you to shut up occasionally.” Only ‘occasionally’? Well, no can do Pam – but hell, I enjoyed the honest feedback. I emailed Pam back and thanked her for the comments and for reading the blog. People rarely tell me to shut up so I enjoyed that – no, not in a sado-masochist way –“Oh yeah baby tell me again how much I annoy you. Tell me to shut up…please I really need to hear it. Please…ooh yeah baby.” In reality its Buckley’s chance that I am going to stick to one subject on every blog. I am one of those people who tend to jump from subject to subject without drawing breath. That’s who I am and I like that about me. But I loved the email. Thanks mate.

*Buckley’s chance - Aussie for 'no chance'. Who was Buckley? Who really knows? But he has a place in the Aussie language.

Penned Again….

Quite a few people have commented on the Penned Again cover – no, not just because it’s a good cover – more that they find the woman on the cover ‘unnatural’ and that ‘real women’ do not look that way. Well yeah, duh. Let’s be bloody honest here, the models on covers are stunning people to start off with – not that you and I aren’t – we’re just stunning in a more ‘lived in’ goddess-like way. And as we all know, covers are air brushed and heightened to make them look appealing so you and I will be attracted by them. Anyway, the main comments from friends are they loved the red polka dot dress but ‘there is no way that woman’s arms can look that good.’ The source of irritation is that she has no armpit hair and her under arms are ‘too firm.’ Okay, I went and had a look at the arm issue. Correct, no armpit hair. What can I say? She obviously knew she would be sticking her arm up in the air and defoliated appropriately. But don’t we all do that if we are going to wear something sleeveless? And no, I do not have upper arms like that. While I do have muscle, like a lot of women who do not pump iron, I have what we would call in Australia ‘tuckshop lady’s arms.’ The flesh does wobble there if pushed. My care factor on this? Negative 12. Will wobbly underarms ruin my life? Hmmm…I don’t believe so. If that’s the worst thing in my life then I’m doing okay.

*tuckshop – school canteen – and by the way tuckshop ladies are usually volunteers and they are bloody hard workers.

Last change of subject….

Our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is in the US at the moment. Kev’s there to see George. Problem is he is not a kiss arse like our previous PM who agreed with everything George said. It should be interesting. Kev got elected on things like promises to sign the Kyoto Protocol – which he did - and to bring our troops back home from Iraq. Of course George is a bit pissed about this. Now, don’t get me wrong – I totally support all troops and law enforcement people who are away from home on either peace making or peace keeping missions…but frigging hell… enough is enough George.

Vision of Darkness – Judith Rochelle out now through www.thelotuscircle.com. Click and buy, click and buy – you know you want to...

No. I’m tired. That’s all that’s wrong.
Mia Fleming put aside the art book lying open on her desk, closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She’d just been staring at the photo of the Da Vinci painting too long, that was all. As art historian and assistant curator at the DeWitt Museum, she was immersed in research for the private collection due to arrive at the museum next month. Part of her job was to gather information for the brochures that were printed and the press kits they distributed. And as usual, she’d been overdoing it.
Shoving her long brown hair, the color of rich chocolate, back behind her ears, she pulled the book forward and began to study the page again. And there it was. Just as before. Shimmering in the center of the photo of the Da Vinci painting. An ugly rock that looked like a misshapen lump of clay, bumping along, wobbling back and forth, with a pair of hands reaching for it. Then nothing except the original picture, undisturbed.
God, not again. Please, please, please. Choose someone else, okay?
Why did she have to be the one these things happened to? Why did she have to have what her grandmother called a “special gift”? More like a curse than a blessing, she often said.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the book. The image on the page kept shifting, first the photo of the painting, now that stupid little rock with its jerky movements. Finally, the shadow hands reaching for it. Like a broken record, the vision continued to repeat itself over and over again, taunting her to find its hidden meaning.
Mia slammed the book shut and shoved it away from herself. It was just like always. How on earth was she supposed to figure out what the vision meant? A rock was a rock, right? Still, she’d learned to be extra cautious over the years. The images that came to her without warning and at the strangest times were not always easy to interpret. She’d been wrong more times than she’d been right because she’d misinterpreted what she’d seen. Or because the visions had come to her after the fact. She had no training in deciphering these things and certainly no place to go to find any.
When she was younger there was a desperation in her determination to find answers. Getting people to listen to her was a battle itself. Her parents had always considered her a strange child—aloof, shy but apparently making up weird stories to capture attention. They never believed her stories about “visions”.
“Don’t keep telling people those crazy stories,” her mother said too often to count. “They’ll think you’re crazy. They’ll think we’re all crazy.”
“The neighbors are all talking,” her father admonished her. “I don’t want them pointing fingers at our family.”
They even sent her to a psychiatrist who was supposed to “deprogram” her. What a lot of fun that had been.
But still the visions continued to plague her. Too often the images had been too vague or misleading and now she’d almost become a pariah. When she did get someone to listen and she had success, the media called it a fluke. The frustration of not being able to make people understand the things she saw and the rejection because of her “oddness” had finally caused her to isolate herself from everyone else.
When she finally escaped to the University of Michigan, she convinced her father to pay the extra money for a single dorm room, then she eventually moved into an studio apartment. She chose art history as her major, because she could lose herself in the richness of the creations of the artists and sculptors, the potters and temple rubbers. The orderliness of delineating art history gave her a personal discipline that allowed her to exert some measure of control over her existence.
The visions, for whatever reason, came less frequently while she was at school, all the way through her postgraduate studies. When they came, they were so fractured she made herself ignore them, even if the effort sometimes made her physically ill.
But finally she was finished with her studies, sporting her brand new PhD, and the visions came roaring back. Not knowing how or when they’d appear, she isolated herself more and more except at work. She lived alone in her house, surrounded by the books and music she loved. It wasn’t that she was antisocial or weak, just self-protective. It took strength to deal with the impact of her visions and the primarily negative responses she’d learned to live with.
Her life, for the most part, focused on her career with the museum. Her job suited her perfectly, since it allowed her to work alone the majority of the time. She was always on edge that a vision would explode from nowhere and being isolated allowed her to deal with them without distraction or embarrassment. During those instances when she had to meet with the museum curator, she found herself praying that she would not be disrupted by one of her visions. They came without warning and she didn’t think Mr. Hunter would be too impressed by them. For someone who appreciated art, he was definitively black and white in his outlook.
Today, thank God, he was away on a trip and unlikely to wander into her office unannounced. Her newest vision had disrupted her work half a dozen times already this week. Just seconds each time. That was all. A brief flash. But it wouldn’t go away and she had no idea what message she was supposed to read into it.
She’d almost begun to believe that whatever was causing this to happen to her had disappeared. She hadn’t had one of what she’d taken to calling her “episodes” in months now and had almost begun to relax, thinking they’d gone away for good. Not so. Her stomach was doing the jitterbug as it always did at the beginning of one of her incidents and an aspirin-proof headache was already beginning to build behind her eyes.
She stacked everything in neat piles on her desk and put away her pen and magnifying glass. Okay, time to go home. She could only hope the vision would go away, or else somehow a sharper image, more defined with a clearer message, would be given to her. One she could interpret.

Anny and Kelly have some interesting stuff on their blogs – go check 'em out and be amused.

www.freewebs.com/amarindajones/
Go ahead: Live with abandon. Be outrageous at any age. What are you saving your best self for?