It's quarter to one in the morning and I can't sleep.  Again.  This menopausal insomnia is crap.  Never had trouble sleeping before unless worried about something specific or sick.  Now for no reason whatsoever sleep doesn't come.  Better to just get up rather than lie there.
 
Have done something quite freeing this morning however.  I have deactivated my facebook account.  Got on it as everyone was on it and talking about it but I don't use it.  The reason I don't use it is because it's so public.  It's all minor chitchat about nothing much in particular, illustrated with photos highlighted with a so many (pick a number) *like* this.  Makes no sense.  I realize it's a great resource or it wouldn't be so popular but it's akin to trying to talk to friends in a noisy restaurant.  Can't hear anything properly as everyone's talking at once and don't have any in depth conversations because well, I don't know why except that the forum just doesn't suit it. 

Strange, almost felt guilty for getting off it, like a slap in the face to all my facebook 'friends' but they aren't really friends, most of them.  Those that are friends email occasionally which is more like sitting down and having a chat rather than all this useless noise that passes for conversation.  I'm probably being a bit harsh but that's how I perceive it.  It came in handy during the floods as a way to broadcast information quickly but other than that it isn't for me.  Suppose I can rejoin if I want to at some future point but don't think I will.

What I have done is start a My Space account.  This account will be for photos of my artwork only - some place I can direct people to if I want to show them what I've done.  Didn't feel like doing that on FB nor do I particuarly want to do it here.  This place is just a place to have a chat with myself when I'm in the mood and nothing more.  It's not for other people to read (which is patently obvious as I haven't any followers).

There's a part of me that wants followers.  I want to be popular, to have everyone like me, to be the center of the universe.  After 55 years I still haven't outgrown that desire but at least sometimes it is less of a desire than others.

Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me; that I am perfectly content not to have friends.  (Yes, yes, I have friends but they are casual not intimate friends). Studies show that people with friends and those who are involved with the community live longer and healthier lives than those that don't.  Oh dear, I'm wrong again.   I don't really have a best friend except for Richard.  I don't work at getting and keeping friends.  I like people and I enjoy them in small doses but truthfully?  I'd just rather be left alone.  There has to be a place in the world for loners too.  There have to be those that muddle along on their own, rather like that echidna we saw yesterday afternoon.  He'd crossed the road and collided with an obstacle; the eroded bank of the hill, at least 20 feet high, that the road cut through.  He climbed one furrow, lost his footing and rolled back to the bottom.  He tried again and made it.  We watched in case he changed his mind and came back across the road.  He didn't care.  He had something he was going to do and it took all his attention.  Whether he had an audience or not was immaterial.

Sometimes that's the way I feel about my life.  I'm here doing my thing.  It's not a glamorous or popular thing.  It's not very interesting to anyone but me but it is my thing and I like doing it.  And it's kind of a solo thing.  I'm not particularly keen on sharing it nor, selfish as this sounds, am I particularly keen on getting involved with others.  I know the metaphysical aspects of life; that we are all connected, what affects one affects everything, the butterfly wing in Porta Vallarta affecting typhoons in Hong Kong but still it's all so tiresome keeping up with the bzzzzzzz of a facebook or the gossip in our small neighbourhood.  If that's the glue that keeps body and soul together to a healthy old age then count me out.  It's so avid.  Eyes gleaming, lips moist, that superior satisfaction of being able to discuss so and so who has been/is less perfect than I (at this particular point in time).  It's tedious.   I'm of the opinion that most people, with the exception of the really cruel bastards who torture and kill for the pleasure of it, are doing the best they can with what they've got to work with.  What they've got to work with is their upbringing, their spirituality, innate or overt, their intelligence and their openness to life and learning.  If they appear to be as dull as ditch water or stuck in some rut of brutish low intelligence and insensitivity well, they probably can't help it - like telling someone who's colourblind that he's a sinner because he can't tell the difference between red and green.

What if instead of trying to impose rules and regulations on people to make for a better more peaceful world they were taught how to be happy.  I know some of my present peacefulness comes with age. With age comes the ability to be happy with what I am, where I am, what I've got right now.  Perhaps this is something that can't be taught but can only be gained by experience.  I just know that without being wildly happy with that feverishness which is half fueled by hormones, I am quietly peacefully serenely happy.  That could change tomorrow with the vagaries of fate - some horrible accident or disease or catastrophe and the proof of the depth of peace would come with my ability to cope with such a thing.  Still perhaps it is something that can be acquired.

Some of this new found happiness can be attributed to where I live (and of course to the fact that I have food, shelter, a companion, pets, etc.).  I was walking the dogs the other day and just marveling at the complexity and beauty of the world I live in.  Would I get that same 'oceanic feeling' that Jung writes of if I lived in the city or the suburbs?  I don't know.  One tree, one blade of grass, a patch of sky, all of it can instill that joy if it is seen for what it is; a true miracle.

I keep returning to this theme and I imagine anyone reading this would get a little bored (unless they were experiencing the same thing and comparing my poor words with the richness of their experience).  Yet it is important.  We take this earth we live on for granted.  We aspire for things (me included) which matter not one whit.  We project our energy and ourselves out there when the richness and the mystery is within.   Right here right now all the time forever.  It is our present experience in this moment.  The very act of breathing,  the fullness of our senses, of our thought.  The difference between life and death.  Life is majesty and magnificence.  Death is null and void. 

Now, for something different.  Was thinking about my poor abandoned book last night.  It's unfinished, it's not very good but worth trying to resurrect at least to finish it.  Saved it to this extension drive from the old computer and now I can't access it.  The thing with changing computers is you can save data but you can't save software.  Makes no sense to me.  So the book is written on yWriter, which is a great little program except I can't use it.  Wonder if I could download the yWriter software onto the extension drive and then get them to meld.

But then why not start another book?  Have just finished reading Philip Pullman's Dark Matter trilogy.  What an amazing writer.  Perhaps he's considered light writing, like Rimsky Korsakov compared to Mahler but I found his writing extraordinary.  The characters are alive.  They are human and foible but glow with the humanity of their being, the essential goodness which glows as an inner spark in each of us.  Some writers are uncomfortable to read.  I can see them toiling behind the scenes, grinding out plot, character, scenes to some recipe they've picked up somewhere which they take for gospel rather than writing from their hearts.  When I get the sense of that writer behind the curtain, like Oz in the Wizard of Oz, I can't read it.  It's just too cumbersome.  I feel I have to carry the weight of my failed suspension of belief.  Formula writing, that's what it is.  Others, like J.K. Rawling and Pullman and the best of Holly Lisle or what was her name, Sara Douglass, they get it right sometimes.  Found these writers, read a book each and was delighted.  Found other books by them and was disappointed.  Anyway, so I was thinking about Pullman's books.  There are other books, many books written into the trilogy.  Whole worlds to explore from a few casual observations.  But that is his territory and his treasure.  Still, it started me thinking about another book. 

I've just found my book, in MS Word format, on the extension drive.  I can't see any way of turning it back into yWriter format.  It seems I can't download yWriter onto the extension drive.  Perhaps I can download it onto the hard drive and then transfer each chapter onto it.  Guess I'll give it a go.

In the meantime the drawing is nearing completion.  There is a show open to local artists in November.  I'm going to get the information and enter at least one, perhaps two drawings to see if they'll be accepted. 

A Metaphysical Occurrence?

Last night something happened which was a little odd.  I would dismiss it out of hand except Matisse, the Siamese, heard it too.  I'd gone to bed at 10 but couldn't sleep.  There is that phase between waking and sleeping called hypnagogic sleep when you've got a foot in both camps so to speak but haven't quite submitted to either.  I was thinking about black holes after a documentary we'd watched last night in which Dr. Stephen Hawking postulated that information was lost once it is taken past the event horizon in a black hole.  This goes against physics in that information while capable of being rearranged, can never be lost.  In theory, it says if you have all the information about something, even if it has been atomized, it can be resurrected.  Dr. Hawking said it could not.  So I was lying there thinking about black holes.  One thing (among many) that I discovered in this documentary, is that black holes can and do 'die'.   Dr. Susskind spent the next 10 years trying to dispute Hawking's claim and succeeded in doing so.  But Hawking wasn't finished.  He said he'd been wrong for 30 years.  That the information stretched along the event horizon didn't disappear but was 'cancelled' out by other universes where black holes didn't exist. 

My theory went something like this.   For one thing it seemed to me that if universes existed where there weren't black holes and universes that had them either they had nothing to do with one another in their effects of having them or the universes just cancelled each other out and nothing existed.  Or, what makes more sense in the nonsensical world of metaphysics, what if the black hole in this universe reached a saturation point and 'popped' through to another universe?  So energy from this universe bleeds into another and while that energy is being sucked through to the other the black hole dies in this one.  Are there 'white' holes in this universe, places where energy spews out creating galaxies and the like?  I don't know but that was what I was thinking about when the strange event took place.

I heard a voice, an electrified voice, rather like Dr. Hawking's, which said 'isness".  Matisse heard it at the same time as I.  He was sleeping against my legs and I felt him start and although I couldn't see him in the dark I knew he was looking into the living room.  There was nothing else, only that strange phrase.  I thought it was the latter half of 'business' but the more I thought about it it didn't make sense.  Why say business?  Now I think what I heard was correct.  It wasn't the second half of business but 'Is-ness'.  That's a word fraught with metaphysical meaning if ever there was one.  I can't take it any further than the obvious Is-ness of 'what IS IS'. 

The Alone

Sitting, standing, lying beside every person is their Alone.  It is the impenetrable part of them.  It is not engaged.  It is not busy.  It is not talking, sleeping, eating, having sex.  It is alone.  It watches everything, hears everything, knows everything yet remains unmoved.  It is the dispassionate Observer.  It is the closest ally and, in a sense, the worst enemy because no matter how you try, you cannot not be Alone with You're Alone.  No manner or amount of distraction distracts the Alone from being Alone.  It is as close as your breath and as distant as the Sun.  There's no running away yet you can't embrace it either. 

But if you could.  Perhaps that's what we do when we die.  We embrace and become one with our Alone.  Last week we caught a sick juvenile galah.  He had a hatchet thin keel bone and I thought it was probably a lost cause to try and save it.  But I had a go.  I tried different medication.  It made no difference.  It didn't eat and in two days it died.  We were sitting on the couch and I heard it scream.  When I went in it was already dead. 

It screamed as it died.  What does that mean?  Death isn't always the friend.  Animals are supposed to be better off because they don't have a sense of their own mortality.  What happened with that baby galah?  These wasting diseases that claim them every year, while fatal do not seem to be painful so why this screech of pain at the end?

Years ago a galah sat high in the silky oak tree down near the horse yards.  It screamed and died and plummeted to earth at our feet.   Is it the shock of not being alone?  Do they have an alone like we have an alone?  Perhaps not.  They are closer to themselves and do not erect the barriers between  themselves and reality.  I suppose that's how it is.  I have no idea really.  Like my Alone, sitting with me here at the computer as I type, watching, waiting for that day when my Alone and I are no longer alone.