Who’s for a slapping?
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I almost forgot to blog this, but I remembered my outrage this morning. In the MX newspaper that they hand out at the train stations, I saw the other day that they had an entire troupe of mimes doing stupid stuff at the flinders street train station. a couple of dozen of them! MIMES! I hate mimes. Every time I see one I have a desperate almost uncontrollable urge to slap it. Clowns freak me out, but mimes just make me homicidal for some reason. Well not for “some” reason – because they’re stupid and annoying and a waste of precious oxygen.
Fortunately I managed not to see any, as they’d obviously packed it in before I caught the train home. Pack of dole bludgers most likely. Bloody mimes – what idiot came up with that idea – I have to pay more and more every few months for a service that’s getting less and less reliable, and now I have to put up with mimes as well? I’m sure that would be covered by justifiable homicide.
/rant.
Fun and Games
Went to see the muppet play aussie rules yesterday – his auskick group had a game against the murumbeena auskick group. It was great fun to watch -B scored 2 goals as well! Although if he’d been paying more attention to the game he likely would have scored a lot more hehe. There were large periods where the ball would be stuck at one end of the little space they’d designated as their oval, and a group of kids at the other end would be lounging about. One little munchkin spent about 10 minutes rolling around on the floor for some reason – quite literally just decided to lie down and roll about!
A friend’s family member was there as well – with a bulldog puppy! The pup was a beautiful little thing, 10 weeks old, named Wilbur. I had a cuddle and got to hold him the duration of the morning 
So I wrapped him up inside my jacket to keep him warm and we had a good old snuggle – he quite took to me and I got lots of licking and snuggling, and R went through 3 rolls of film taking pictures of the pup. I wanna puppy!
It was a nice, family oriented morning Mind buggeringly cold – and with this virus I’m feeling every bit of it. But it was just fun to be out there watching B do his thing and enjoy himself with his friends. Now I just have to get him into a proper football (soccer) team 
Roguishness
I play on a player versus player server mainly at the moment, called Warsong, and my undead rogue is at level 27. Soon to be 28 which has been annoying me because at 28 I get new skills and I’m hoping it’s a particular attack I’ve been hanging out for – I’m nearly there but not quite Might do the same as Big Michael and post pics of my character, Jape.
If you’re on Warsong and looking for a guild – give the Warsong Legion a yell, they’re a great bunch of people and very helpful.
Crouching Muppet, Hidden Buddha
R just told me something well cool. Apparently B was getting frustrated trying to stuff his lunchbox into his schoolbag, then he suddenly stopped and stood still. R asked if he wanted help and he said no, and that she wasn’t to interrupt because he got angry so he’s going to his garden and he can’t concentrate if she interrupts him! So she let him be, and he closed his eyes (R reminded him quietly to breathe deeply, so he did) and he stood for about 45 seconds then smiled and got on with it. I had been talking to him on sunday about how he could use the meditation we learned for times of confusion or anger or fear and he actually did it – how cool is that!
Service with a smile
Lodge this evening, and I’m to be a steward! All it really means is I help carry out dinner and drinks etc, and things of that nature in the “South” (when we have dinner) but I also have some role to perform in the Lodge meeting itself.
It’s a minor thing as far as I know – I missed the rehearsal but the director of ceremonies told me he could just run me through it before Lodge. Anyways it’s still exciting for me as it’s the first responsibility I’ve had in lodge
Mini Meditation
A cool thing happened on the weekend. I’ve been thinking about trying to teach B about meditation – partly in the hope that it will help his concentration. I raised the subject on saturday and he liked the idea – he knew what it was from seeing me do it in the past.
So Saturday evening before bed time we sat cross-legged facing each other, both on cushions to help our posture. I showed him how to sit and how to place his hands the way the guy at work has taught me, and then we did a little guided meditation.
I hadn’t originally known what to do with it – I was thinking of just practising sitting still and quietly etc, but a friend suggested guided meditations and it seemed to be the right thing. Just before we started I came up with the concept and we went through it really well. I had B imagine a door, and describe it to me in detail. I then had him open the door and step through into a garden. We went into detail about the garden and I had him flesh it out a bit, telling me about the flowers etc inside it. It actually went really really well – he described things brilliantly and I had no doubt he was genuinely seeing them in his head. When he first opened the door he told me there was something scary through there, so I simply told him that was from another dream and that it was gone now – replaced by the garden. When he sat down on the grass he told me he got a wet bottom
B really enjoyed the process – we only went for about 5 minutes I think but he did well and he loved it. Sunday he actually asked “Can we do meditation tonight please?” which thrilled me. So we did it again – the door and the garden, and just went into more detail. R tells me that as I got him to sit down in his mind under the biggest tree in the garden, he actually scooted back a little with his eyes still shut, so he was obviously sitting himself down He comes up with all sorts of things – magic birds with special powers and lots of animals like tigers and giraffes etc that come when he calls. We’re undecided yet as to whether this is something we should just let him go with as part of the general imagination or if I should get him to concentrate more on detail than dreaming things up. R suggests (and I think she’s right) that sometimes he might be trying to impress me with the things he “sees”, so we’ll just see how we go.
It’s very cool doing this with him, and it makes me feel good because I know how useful a tool meditation can be, and I feel that if I aid him in holding onto his powers of imagination and visualization, plus give him early practise in concentration then he will grow up without some of the blocks I have that currently make some of the same things difficult for me. Improved concentration can’t hurt at any rate
Then we read Harry Potter afterward – which he loves, and he works hard to try and get more out of me when I tell him it’s time for bed! Makes for a fun evening though, and I’m looking forward to going through the rest of the books.
Wakeup
I had a painful but necessary wakeup call this morning. I’m currently ill with some virus (again!) and sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. I’ve also been indulging rather too much in an online multiplayer game named World of Warcraft.
Used to be that I spent all my time playing online things – building stuff in Active Worlds etc, to the exclusion of all else – and this is something I promised I wouldn’t do with WoW. I’ve been reasonably careful about dropping it whenever something needs my attention, but I’ve been going back to it a little more often than I should. The thing is, I’ve realised this morning that WoW isn’t the problem in itself – it’s a symptom.
See, I have this extreme capacity for focus, but most of the time it comes into play in the wrong way. For example I’m astoundingly good at avoidance and escapism – which WoW is a form of. Sometimes I’ll read novel after novel after novel and justify it to myself as reading so it can’t be bad – but I do it constantly and am doing nothing else. The signs of this behaviour are usually the same – little things around the house not being paid attention to, that sort of thing. I’m not entirely sure yet what’s triggered it this time but I am realising that it’s all symptomatic of something major I’m trying to avoid or trying to forget about. Whenever something major in my life comes up that I have difficulty facing I tend to do this.
I suspect it’s to do with change at the moment – a lot is changing in my life and I think deep down I’m a bit scared of it. I got ill for a while, and used that as an excuse to almost stop attending the gym completely – where I was on a very good wicket and making progress. Similarly with other things – for example I’ve found myself watching more television again. All these things come down to the simple expedient of being able to suspend my day to day life so as to avoid thinking about something, and it results in a lot of procrastination.
As usual, R helps me to see the truth, and now I’m left with some soul searching to do. I keep attempting to cure the symptoms without always realising the cause – which I’m guessing is why I always seem to slip back. With the new directions my life has been taking over the last year fixing all this should be a part of it, but I think it’s all the new stuff that’s causing it
So what to do? The symptoms aren’t the root of the problem but they are a big problem in themselves – and I can’t expect R and B to put up with them for example, nor should I be allowing myself to wallow like that. Part of the cycle though is a tacit acknowledgement of this, followed by avoidance of the symptoms because I know “that’s not the real problem”. So this time I’m realising I have to do things differently. Rather than focusing narrowly on particular symptoms, or ignoring all symptomatic problems as a whole, i must attack them immediately, and also dig deeper at the same time to find the root of this problem – and weed it out.
As I said I suspect it lies in the change that’s happening – I kid myself thinking I’m all about change and “moving on up” at the moment, but inside I’m as scared as anyone else might be about the new directions in my life. Some things that have been with me since my early childhood have been shaken and in some cases removed, and I haven’t really addressed the stress that has caused. So I have this virus to get over, but I can see a number of ways to work on symptoms right now without overtaxing myself physically. In the meantime, I need to think carefully about the deeper problems and what I can do about them.
Transformation can be a powerful and scary thing. Don’t pretend to yourself that just because you’re going through some stage of grand rebirth that there’s not some part of you that’s hesitant about the changes – it’s a natural part of human life. When it’s not addressed, the big (and good) changes fall on their face because you undermine yourself. I’m not going to allow this to happen now though – not when I’m so close to everything I’ve dreamed of.
P.S. as a concrete example – have a look at my blogging patterns over the last month or two You can see where things really start to become obvious – because I avoid blogging about it all!
Episode III
Ohhhhhhhh yeaaahhhhhhh. Now THAT was what I was looking for. R and I just offloaded the muppet and went to see Episode III after a nice dinner in ackland st St Kilda. The film absolutely unequivocally rocks. In terms of storyline it ties everything up beautifully – including finally answering the question of what really happened to Obi Wan when Vader stuck him down. The film was awesome – very dark, much action and a pure fantastical star wars feel. The portrayal of Anakin’s descent was magnificent, and Hayden Christopher himself proved to be a very good choice – he was stellar in the role.
And of course the ultimate moment, when Darth Vader’s mask was lowered into place, the helmet sealed and his breathing began – it was perfectly done. You have to imagine that they spent a looooooooooooong time getting that few seconds exactly right
All in all I am a huge fan – it’s restored my faith utterly in the star wars mythos and I’m desperately looking forward to the next three (which apparently are coming but won’t be directed by George Lucas). In fact if I had it on DVD I would be watching it again right now. Or if there had been another showing I would have convinced R to come watch it again immediately…