so many adventures....

tis been a week of many outings and oppertunities for silliness.

thur. night - my original plan to Jam in my Band with jane (hehehehehe. this is funny as i have a violin, i love my violin, but i can barely make a melodic sound out of my violin..... jane claims her musical ability is similar to mine. and lachlan wants in, because it is a dream of his to play accordian in a band with two girls with glasses....)

rather, the plan changed to seeing a talk by michael zavros. his artwork is intoxicating. my mind spun on seeing the projected image of a small painting, of something large, projected huge. wonderful. he made me want to paint again. paint and draw. so i drew a fish on friday night. and i am reclaiming my paint (primarily about 6 different shades of white oil paint, and scungy old oils in other, random hues) off lachlan - they have lived at his house for some time now. i am going to paint my squares in small, painfully realistic detail. i feel like i am gathering a little more self back again...

my bowling pin is also finished. this is a special, alibi room exhibition of random things mutilated by random people. this exhibition is on bowling pins. we all got a bowling pin, with which to do whatever we pleased.... i crocheted it a white cover. and then some. it's hard to describe. but it's white. unsurprisingly. this is because white is my friend. well, obviously, it's far more than that. the interaction between the space and the object is facinating, white allowed for a deeper exploration of the media present.... it's disembodied... i could go on, but don't really feel in the mood.

then, sunday night, for some really appallingly stupid reason, i went out after work. why is that silly, you may wonder. well, that is silly because i started work at 8.30 am that morning, and finished at 10pm that night. going out after that is very stupid. this time, i wonder if my -no-more-drinking- declarations are going to stick. i feel less compelled to drink again then i ever have. not because i was overly hung over, or because it was a bad night. i mean, i didn't even feel sick. i wasn't that drunk, just enough to dance like an idiot. but the whole night left a foul taste in my mouth. and it wasn't just the cigarettes. though that was high up there. ick. it was partly the fact everyone i was with had taken drugs. i felt wierd and distanced. it was partly, no, mostly because i am sick of being masochistic. i am sick of trying to destroy myself as a way of eleviating guilt and anxiety.

i enjoy other things. i love my life, god, i love it. i had this moment of... clarity when walking to portside past the river earlier on sunday. there was a rich sea smell in the air, and i could see the pelicans gathered by the side of the river. the wind was so intense i could hear it though the earphones. i listened to under byen. thunderously. it was such a beautiful moment.
and this morning, walking through the park at 8ish, the dew gathering in the creases of my boots. i lent over to smell the roses, and i wanted to touch the petals because they looked so soft, but i realised that it was enough just to look at them.

these things are enough. they are so much more than enough. i am so deeply, deeply fortunate. i feel utterly overwhelmed at times at how blessed i am. god, how so many of us are. it's not a guilt thing, just a profound understanding of how beautiful and great my life is, and how this position of privilege needs to be used well, and not squandered away in scotch and beer and empty regrets. there is so much more than that to feeling alive.

this morning i went to meditation in the powerhouse. i can easily say the powerhouse is my favourite venue in brisbane. it's one of my favourite places in brisbane. the architecture is so dingy and beautiful and half decayed half epic. lachlan and i started going there when we first got together. we went to 'what is music' in 2004 - we saw keji heno, and tujiko noriko; we've seen theatre, and dance performances, like that great oedipus play; we saw tujiko noriko there again in ... 05? or was it early this year? all the faboulous fabrique performances by room40, well, not all, just as many as one of us remembers is on - now we have industrially organised elizabeth i have a diary-bible where i put in dates and times of things i want to see. but yes. i love the powerhouse. it's a wonderful part of brisbane. i only wish we could have seen OOIOO in the last 'what is music' - the tickets were prohibitivily expensive. we are seeing a dance production tomorrow night - underneath - which has batik - a japanese dance company influenced heavily by butoh. butoh is one of lachlan and mine's mutual loves. his love of it does sort of overtake mine, but i still adore it. i dream of seeing an actual butoh performance one day.

on friday is the 'big happiness concert' - this is a big, wonderful explosion of tibetan music, with throat singing and traditional instruments and lots of great things.
all this week, there is morning meditation with the monks, followed by the creation of a medicine buddha sand mandala. i'm making all the ones i can.

it's all a little overstimulating, really.