I am far from okay but there isn’t a whole lot than anyone can do to make me better.

I also don’t see that anyone other than my very closest friend, asking me if I am okay are going to get a straight answer.

I will just lie and grin and say of course I am okay and then change the subject.

I am a brilliant actress.

RUOK is a wonderful concept but today it is giving me the shits.

Now before you start to get all upset with me and decide to lecture me about the ideas behing RUOK  and all that jazz.

This post is about me. Not about you.

If you are going to get upset with me, just piss off quickly and don’t give me the shits ok.

I am stabby enough as it is.

I am not okay today.

Tomorow I will be better, maybe.

The day my mother told me she had a black spot in her lung was one of those defining points in my life.

Everything now is measured in befores and afters.

The day my daughter was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome was another defining point

As was the diagnosis of her two chilfdren with EDS and their subsequent diagnosis of Aspergers and Autism.

My husband has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.

My son has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and suffers from anxiety.

These things are not okay.

These diagnosis dont bring sunshine and fucking roses into my life.

They bring despair.

Great fucking bucket loads of despair.

I am grieving.

I am grieving hard.

Lung cancer shouldnt have killed my Mother she was a non fucking smoker for fucksakes

My daughter shouldn’t have to struggle to brush her own hair.

She is 22 years old and can barely walk from one room to another.

Simply taking her children to the park exhausts her.

This sucks.

My son is 17 and is proving he is  grown up by rebelling against everthing we have taught him.

He has moved out of home.

He has dropped out of year eleven.

He was stabbed behind the ear in a brawl. The wound was superficial. My fear manifested as anger.

And I gave my son another reason to push me away.

He has unfriended me on facebook because I pulled him up privately on a thuggish racist status update.

I am desperately afraid that his anxiety will get the better of him.

I watched a police car driving up my quiet country road the other day and I was convinced it was coming here to deliver me bad news.

I started to cry with relief when it drove on by.

I know that this stage will pass but it doesnt make it any easier.

I share snippets of my life here on this blog.

Tiny slices.

I was told that I should have a professional ceramics blog and leave all the personal rubbish out of it if I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist.

But I cant be bothered starting a new blog  full of art wank and words and ideas that belong in a dusty book somewhere.

I use this blog to think out loud, to order my thoughts, my ceramics and my life are intertwined, as is the blog.

They all are a part of who I am.

Maybe RUOK has worked anyway

As I have cried and written my way through the shit that is in my head.

I am not okay today.

But I am feeling a tiny bit better, thank you for listening to me internet.

I will be okay tomorrow.

Because really what else is there to do but

Just keep swimming.

It is winter and my hands are cold.

I am sad and tired.

I miss my Mother more than I could ever have imagined and I am fighting off a bout of self pity.

I don’t ask the question

Who is going to comfort me

Because I know the answer.

I am tired

Tired of the cold.

Tired of never being asked how I am

Tired of people.

Tired of shallowness.

I am tired of being nice and tired of being polite

I think I should just go out and get smashed and run amok

And I would,

Except I don’t want the hangover and the sore head and the blackness of spirit that comes from all that negative energy.

But

At the end of the day I am truly an optimist,

And even in my bleakest moments I can go outside and see something that lifts my spirit.

A tiny abandoned nest in the raspberry canes made me smile.

The thought that small birds had been nesting so close to the house makes me inordinately happy.

Some days it is the smallest things that keep me going.

Your friends either suggest lithium or nod their heads and smile.

This is The Mountain that is the backdrop to the city of Hobart. I grew up under the shadow of The Mountain and one of the hardest things about moving inland was not being able to see the changing moods of The Mountain every day.  

I haven’t been up the mountain by myself for a long time. As a young teenager I used to ride my horse all over the mountain, from Lenah Valley to Fern tree and back again. As an older teenager we used to drive up the mountain and light cooking fires with the wood provided in the huts. We would drink cheap wine and try to count the lights of the city below, before turning our attentions to more serious teenage concerns.

I have been feeling restless lately with a wistful yearning in my soul for something. The practical side of my nature ignores the fanciful and mockingly whispers that a midlife crisis isn’t a good look. Whilst a small part of me feels like crying out, “Can you see me? Can you tell me that I am not invisible?” I push the thought of any sort of crisis away and ponder instead what it means to be 45 and overweight in a society that worships at the altar of anorexic youth.

I am teetering here on the precipice of my next great adventure and as I spread my wings ready to leap, I am filled with an unbearable sadness that my mother isn’t here to help me on my way.

Mum would tell me that it is normal to feel like this at 45. That it is normal to have quiet moments where you feel old and ugly, withered and useless. That the drumming I hear in my ears is my biological clock banging away erratically and that I need to get my shit together and just ride it out and to remember that I am only invisible if I choose to be.

My grief has settled into a cycle, in tune with my own lunar cycle. The grumpy irritability of PMS has been mostly replaced by a week of tears and longing and introspection,which is annoying as I would much rather slam a door in anger and be done with the shitty mood, than reach for a box of tissues and cry like a child for my mother.

On a whim I drove up the mountain and had a good talk with the stones. I let their ancient energy wash over me and I opened my mind to who I am and what I do.

The stones told me that it is okay to feel old as long as I don’t act old. To remember who I am and where I come from and to not lose sight of where I am going. To remember the ley lines and to feel the power of the earth through my bare toes. I think that is half the problem, I have been wearing shoes for too much of this year and I am losing touch with that energy that only comes from walking barefoot in the garden.

I bought a small stone down from the mountain with me and I think it will make nice marks in the clay. I met a twitter friend the other day who gave me some bones to use as tools, in return I am going to make her a ceramic altar to hold her offerings from the sea.

This feels good.

When I just do what I am supposed to do without thinking too deeply, when I let the clay guide me and I rest in that sweet spot, that silent intuitive space, the work just flows and I feel complete.

As a visual artist I do my thinking in public. I am comfortable with that. A nest of ceramic eggs in a public space is the realisation of a series of thoughts as well as an invitation to you the public to join in the discourse, to participate in the public thought processes with me.

This blog is where I start the public thinking process.

A conversation that starts here on the blog as nothing more than a wisp of an idea often coalesces into something much more tangible than an abstract concept.

The simple processes of examination of my ideas and feedback from you is an invaluable tool.

I use this blog to de-clutter my mind, I take ideas out and examine them publicly and see what happens.

I also use this blog to poke at old wounds and see if they still hurt.

My father does not hurt me anymore.

The spiritual wounds received through the loss of my mother though are still incredibly painful and raw and will be for a long time.

In my life there is no one to comfort me in the same way that I was comforted by my mother. I feel as vulnerable and as lost as a child and by writing out these words on the blog I am seeking comfort.

I am also writing the words to lessen their hurt.

To publicly examine that loss and to acknowledge to myself that I am not alone.

I think I need to make something large, something to help me  work through these feelings of loss and loneliness.

I think I need to make an angel.

This week has been hard, with the lead up to my Mum’s birthday and Isaac’s diagnosis of autism combining to make me maudlin and teary.

My research project for my drawing class is causing me some angst as well. Not much. But enough to contribute to this weeks tears.

I am researching myself. As a visual artist ultimately all my work comes from within myself. I chose myself as my subject because I wanted to examine why I do the things that I do. Why I am drawn to certain things and most importantly why I am happy to just skim over the surface and not really delve too deeply into anything that might require a bit of emotional effort.

Part of the research project is to collect historical data on the subject. Some of my historical data is in a suitcase that I can not bring myself to open.

During the lead up to my mothers funeral, my brother had all our child hood photos in his possession. They were in a blue suitcase that mum had kept in her wardrobe. After the funeral my brother returned the suitcase to mum’s house. I did not see or speak to my brother. All the photos of my father were gone,all the decent photos were missing, there were pages ripped out of albums, and the remaining jumble was  just thrown back into the case. It was heart breaking.

I have been staring at this case for a fortnight now trying to bring myself to open it again but I don’t think I can.

I have been skimming over the surface of who I am, and what influences contributed to make me the person I am today. I examined my relationship with the nuns and my early childhood memories of going to church and being thwacked with a cane every time I fainted and I have discarded those influences as not that important.

I have been trying to pry apart my own mythology and to see where the lines of myth and truth blur and every single thing leads me back to my father.

My father was an alcoholic who passed his love of a drink on to me. I do not drink. I have finished drinking.

My father liked to promise us the world and then on the day of the promise we would sit for hours in the car outside the pub.

My father lit his cigarettes with a match and would ask me if I had ever seen a match burn twice and put the still hot match onto the soft flesh of my arm.

My father tried to teach me to swim by carrying me, screaming in terror, out into the waves and throwing me into the water.

All the kids in the neighbourhood were frightened of my father as he liked to dispense summary justice with his boots and his fists and all the local hoons drove quietly past our house.

My father was killed in a car accident when I was fourteen and I battled with his ghost for a very long time.

When his ghost is strong, I still think that I am stupid and useless and really what is the point of anything anyway?

But my spirit is stronger. My spirit was always stronger. My father couldn’t break me.

I would not give in. I refused to let him win.

As a grown woman, I will not be told what to do. I will ask no mans permission to do anything or be anyone I damn well like.

Maybe pressing publish here will be the first step in really picking some emotional scabs and going down some paths I don’t want to travel.

Either that, or I will just take photographs of churches and pretend it was the nun’s fault.

Now onto the feedback.

I would like to thank my daughter Veronica from SleeplessNights who re did my blog for me. I am pleased with how the blog looks. The reason Veronica had to do a whole new blog design was because I wanted to be able to reply to people directly in the comments section and with my previous template that just wasn’t possible.

Previously I had been replying by email, though not to every comment every time, and I was starting to feel a bit guilty if I didn’t reply personally.

I am after some feedback, how do you think the new comment system is working?

Do you actually get the email notification when I reply to your comment?

Do you like it this way or would you prefer a private reply via email?

Or do you simply not care?

Some days I miss my mother so much that even writing down the words make my eyes prickle and fill with tears.

There is a heap of stuff I am trying to deal with. On their own, these things don’t have much weight but tie them all together and it feels like I am swimming through mud.

My grand son was officially diagnosed with Autism yesterday. Systems will be put into place for Isaac, autistic specific playgroups will be found and the experts will step in and try to help as best they can.

This is good. This also breaks my heart.

I am trying to write an email to a physiotherapist to tell him that “The Spouse doesn’t want to continue with his appointment because it is obvious the Physio knows nothing about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and in The Spouse’s words is “completely fucking useless”  How do I say that? How do I say “Listen son, you need to bloody well do a bit of research on EDS before we go any further”.

I worry that he will break my husband or my daughter with inappropriate exercises designed for non-bendy people and I also wonder if I can be bothered dealing with his air of professional superiority because he is a trained medical professional you know. ( insert sarcasm font)

I worry that my grand daughter who has an unofficial diagnosis of Aspergers as well as EDS will fall through the cracks. I worry that the paediatrician in charge of her care is another one who knows absolutely nothing about EDS and is more than happy to think about his golf handicap instead of my grand daughters care.

My son is living in town with his friend and I worry that he will decide to sleep all day, rather than go to his classes. My mantra when the children were growing up was, “your choices, your consequences”.

It is hard not to want to live their lives for them.

I want to shake my son and say look, look at all the mistakes I made, don’t do it, don’t make my mistakes. All I can do now is watch and hope and wish that mum was here to gently laugh at me.

I am watching a very clever liar, weave a complicated web of deceit and I am in two minds whether to call them out and wear the fall out or just wait and see what happens.

I went to Mona yesterday and once again I was drawn to this fabulous sculpture PXIII by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere

This sculpture makes my soul sing. The artist says this work is about loneliness and I can relate to that.

I think that I am becoming invisible, the older that I get.

I interacted with Australian artist Greg Taylor’s art work titled  My Beautiful Chair, featuring a couch, a lamp, a rug and Philip Nitschke’s suicide machine. As I watched the prompts on the computer I thought about my Mum and how peaceful her death was. I remembered what it felt like to stroke my mother’s dead hands and the beautiful ivory colour of her skin.

It was a very introspective three minutes.

I think the radio interview went well, I was incredibly nervous but I didn’t swear or say “um” a lot so that has to count as a positive doesn’t it? The radio people are going to email Veronica an mp3 file of our talk and once I work out how to upload it I will, then you can judge for yourselves.

A retiring potter, Monika, has given me the contents of her studio. I filled the back of my station wagon up with boxes of oxides, glaze materials, throwing tools, scales and the assorted paraphenalia of a working potter.

Coming only two days after the theft of the ceramic eggs this was a very emotional gift for me to receive and when Monika gave me her gas kiln as well, I started to cry a bit. Monika gave me a hug and she told me that she could see I was passionate about my work and that she was so happy her tools were going to such a good home.

These wooden throwing tools are such a personal gift from one potter to another and I can feel the positive energy radiating from them. They fit my hands well and I am itching to get my wheel set up.

I am starting to tame the chaos that is my studio space and “The Spouse” has been flat stick these past few weeks building me benches and work tables.

My electric kiln was delivered on Thursday and I am busting to get it sorted and wired in so I can really get to work. It weighs about 500 kilos and is top heavy. The kiln needs to be lifted off these pallets and then put back down. A mate around the road has a tripod thingy used for removing car engines and The Spouse has some endless chain. So hopefully the kiln will be in its spot ready for the electrician sooner rather than later. It will still be a tricky job though and I wont be up there watching the boys do it in case I jinx them and the kiln falls over. Yes I am superstitious.

It has been so bittersweet finally getting the studio organised and strangely enough as my bank balance is rapidly approaching the zero funds mark I am feeling happier. Every time I accessed the studio money I was reminded that I was spending my mother’s life. Every cent that I have spent was the culmination of my mother’s working life, everything Mum had worked for was taken away by her premature death from a cancer that she should never have had and as I spend the ashes of my mothers life, I would give it all back in an instant to just be able to speak to my Mum again.

Yesterday morning was cold, so cold in fact that I decided to light the fire. The newpaper that I grabbed to start the fire was dated  June 10th 2009.

I looked at the date and it took me a second or two while I stared at the date to realize that Mum was still alive on the 10th of June 2009.

I sat in front of the fire and skimmed through the newspaper, reading articles that Mum and I had shared. Old news of the world that gave me a tenuous link back to my mother.

I have some of Mums perfume here and I sprayed some scent on the back of my hand trying to capture the smell of my mother  it was the wrong perfume though and instead of comforting me it gave me a headache.

Later on in the morning I was clearing a space in my super cluttered bedroom so that the electrician can change the meter box on Friday, ready for the power hook up to my studio.I found a small bag containing Mum’s wig, The wig in waiting we called it The smell of my mother was strong in this bag and after burying my face in the rough hair of the wig for a few moments I got on with the job at hand. As I was moving boxes of Mum’s things out of the way and idly wondering how long her stuff would remain in boxes, wondering whether I could get the Spouse to make a storage space in the roof of my studio. The thought of Mum’s things sitting in boxes covered in dust brought me undone again.

This morning as I am sitting here writing about my small woes the news of the Queensland floods just keeps on getting grimmer and grimmer.

8 dead 72 missing in Toowoomba

So my thoughts are with everyone in the midst of this National disaster and if anyone wants to help they can go here to find the relevant authorities.

Has had me feeling like crap. I don’t have a tree up, the decorations are still stuffed in a cupboard somewhere and I haven’t even started to look for my Santa hat.

I am a mixture of pissed off and really really sad.

I have bloggers block because everything I write sounds like a bunch of self piteous crap. Oh Woe Oh Woedy Woe Woe.

I have an “Ehlers Danlos and Denial” post brewing and that is taking a lot of energy to write.

Artistically I am having a mud month, I was told by someone I respect that I am aggressively over confident and made to feel that my work is crap.

When I was growing up my father repeatedly told me that I was stupid. That I was lazy, worthless, fat , stupid, stupid, stupid.

I would argue with him every step of the way and cop a hiding for my trouble.

From my father I learned to never stay down and to never shut up because you will still cop a flogging if you are silent and feet hurt more than fists, so you may as well make the hiding worth while.

Somedays the echo of his accusations of stupid stupid stupid are  loud in my ears even though he has been dead for thirty years.

See, I told you I was full of woe this week. Gah!

Louisa at everything is edible is organising Christmas gifts for the over one hundred and fifty children that are incarcerated at Christmas Island. The fact that there are over 150 children in just one detention centre makes me feel sick and very,very fucking ashamed that I have let my government get away with this shoddy treatment of refugees. Arseholes.

In the words of Richard Flanagan

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question. Not that Australia has a refugee problem. Last year just 5,500 people sought asylum – less than 2% of the migrant intake. Yet Australia does have a dismal public life largely bereft of courage or humanity, and it has created a national myth that now poisons all sides of politics. The myth is that of the boat people. It is the idea that hordes of refugees will overrun Australia unless harsh policies of dissuasion and internment are employed.

Louisa has a paypal button on her sidebar and overnight has raised $480 towards her goal of $930 to pay for the courier fees to Christmas Island.I think that is a spectacular effort and it is the Louisas of this world that make me feel less sad.

Louisa’s Christmas Island Appeal click here to help.

The article has been removed because of copyright issues.

Bugger.

You can still read it here on the Tasmanian Times website. or here at the The Guardian.