The Naked News

Confession time. I'd like to say that when I'm working on art I've got music playing, preferably Debussy, and am sitting at the easel table in creative contemplation. The reality is this. I'm sitting cross-legged on the couch with the Montmarte art board across my lap and the TV on. Therefore I am familiar, to my endless shame, with Daytime Television. In my defence, I must say I don't watch soap operas or game shows. Usually it's the midday movie and then Duestche Welle or Al Jazeera news. Occasionally there's a foreign film on SBS but as I have to watch it to read the subtitles I get little or no work done. Having said this, I did watch Entertainment Tonight recently, rather it was on and I didn't bother changing channels. Normally I don't watch it. It's kind of a scary show in that such a big deal is made of such small beans. Also, I don't know half of the people they talk about with so much glee. But it was on and I left it on. I was doing background on this latest drawing, lots of meditative filling in, when the words, 'naked news' interrupted my reverie. What? I looked up. Yup, apparently somewhere (or everywhere) in the US one can get access to the news delivered by naked women. Let me say this again, the newsreaders are naked. They are not sitting behind a desk but are standing in full view, as it were, delivering the news. What the calibre of the news is, I have no idea. Probably the viewers have no idea either.

I'm not a prude. Nakedness is not something to be ashamed of. The human body is beautiful. Some of my best friends are naked beneath their clothes. It's a personal choice. But Naked News? Are we so sated with sensation that the only way to take an interest in what is going on in the world is to have information delivered by naked women? Ah, the women. "Hi Mom, got a job in journalism. On television. Broadcasting. Front desk. I'll be naked but at least I've got a toe (or some part of my anatomy) in the door!"

I was a little young to take part in the feminist movement but I watched the news, delivered by men in suits. Lots of men in suits. Barbara Walters is the only female broadcaster I can recall (save for weather *girls*). What was it all for? Women appear to be more sexualized than ever judging by music videos, ad campaigns and the Cult of Celebrity. Watched Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts the other night (ok, I watch too much TV). It was set at Wellesley College in 1953/54 when women really were the second sex. Robert's character, an art history teacher, was trying to wake up her pupils to the possibility of their own potential. Yesterday I saw a commercial advertising one of those hand held mixers. The commercial could have come straight from 1953. The actress was wearing something that was so similar to a twin set and pearls that if it was different I can't remember how. Even her hair and makeup were straight from the 50's. And she smiled so smugly, with a tinge of sexual satiation, at her phallic shaped kitchen gadget. I nearly gagged.

Then the other side of me says step back and take a look. For every reaction there has to be a reaction. Women do have more equality than before, they have clawed their way into positions of influence, whether it's in politics, the boardroom or the 6 o'clock news. So what if they equally get as drunk and foul mouthed as their male counterparts, fight and vomit in public and have as many one night stands? For every upside there is a down side. You see, I want the best of both. I don't want to be patronised by men yet I love it when a man opens the door for me. Long gone are the days when men would rise from their chairs when a woman entered the room. I don't expect those days to return for the trade-off would be too great yet I missed those days by a whisker. I would have enjoyed tasting both worlds; a world where men, by virtue of their greater size and strength, took protective roles that didn't reflect badly on my intellect (or lack of). If a man wanted to pull my chair out for me at dinner, great. Offer his arm while we walked, marvellous. Race around to open the car door for me, not so good. Unless my arm was in a cast. But with those idyllic scenes come visions of having to seek approval and permission on how I led my life. Guess I'd rather puke in public and know that somewhere there is a sad game played between naked female newsreaders and sadder voyeurs. Who is the most pitiable, the women who get paid to bare all or the men who feel a sense of leering superiority over women they can never touch?

More Art and a Dying Moth

Fickle creature. Am on to the next Big Thing. At least I am eternally optimistic that my next attempt at drawing will be better than the last. Finished the Parrot Looming Over Woman Dreaming in Red Armchair painting/drawing (is it a painting if paint is not used? This last is a combination of oil/chalk pastel, coloured and graphite pencil). Dropped the finished work into the somewhat bulging art folder along with all the other rejected unframed projects. Have given up on getting anything framed. Buy all these cheap frames with glass at the op shops then leap into a new drawing without measuring first to fit (in case it turns out okay). When I am at my most egotistical (and my most delirious) I have a vision that I'll be *discovered* after my death. Like a modern age Grandma Moses...yet I allow none of the grandkids to call me grandma (whole other post on this, by naming we define, by naming we make real. I will not be named Grandma. Vain, yes. Do I care? No).

So this next drawing was just an exercise to get down an idea I had for a larger piece. But I liked it so much that I've kept going. It's different enough from what I hope to do as a larger work that I won't feel I'm repeating myself. Have much admiration for artists who will do the same painting half a dozen times in an effort to get it right. Admiration that falls short of emulation. Just had a thought tho - stemming from yoga practice. I do the same routine (takes about an hour and 20 minutes) every day. Why does it not bore me? Because each time I am in the moment which is eternal and eternally different. It must follow that if I drew, for example, a brass vase every day for a year, those 365 drawings would be different because I would be different. And perhaps if I did draw that vase 365 times I would discover that it was not boring. One of those great many questions I'll never have an answer to.

There's a moth clinging to the screen in the loo. It's brown and tan, rather bland and nondescript, about the size of a 20 cent piece. I wouldn't have noticed it, as one ignores bland brown moths, except I was sitting there and it was clinging there. Then I saw its translucent wings were somewhat ratty with crenellated edges and of its six legs I could only count two. So this moth is on its way out. What goes on behind those dark unfathomable eyes? Is it aware that it's dying or does it only know great tiredness? Has it bred and therefore will live on in its descendants? Does it drink from the showy cactus flowers which bloom nightly and daily die? What adventures has it experienced under the black eternity of stars while we sit cocooned inside a wooden box mesmerized by a flickering blue glow? The wings have lost most of their *dust*. It has flown...miles? Following the pheronomes of a female or trailing scent like an insect Salome? Dodging predators, guided by what mysterious filaments of knowing that we, with our heavy corporeal intelligence, cannot even imagine. The Night is another dimension, another world. And this moth, holding with one leg to the dusty screen of a country house toilet, the day light shining through its dull brown wings, noticed by one small woman from a crowd of 7 billion, what of it. What of it, indeed?

Hadn't worked with Balthazar for two days as it was just too hot. Those two days off must have given him time to assimilate the non-mugging sessions. Played around for 20 minutes yesterday and he didn't attempt to mug once. The session wasn't a scintillating success other than the non-mugging but that's all right. He was a little distracted by the other horses, specifically Dakota who kept nickering. Fortunately or unfortunately, they have all done c/t so would like to have a play too.

Despite that there is much to work on. One of the things I am trying to instill is staying out on the circle. To do that he needs to move away from me when asked. He has to learn a cue, the cue being my upraised hands going towards him. Eventually that should be refined to a finger point. Also, he needs to learn to walk on, back up and trot. I was pleased to see him break into a trot after he'd done his usual reluctant trot which subsided into a walk. I didn't c/t so he broke into a trot again. That's the first time he's offered something. Anyway, although the session was a little lacklustre he didn't mug and that's a huge step.

I've noticed practicing yoga at home that music is starting to bother me. I've some quite lovely CD's; Eastern Meditation, harp and bird song mixed, summer storms complete with thunder and rain, all very soothing and conducive to a calm and meditative practice. I thought. At first I thought it was because I was in a 'mood' and music was just irritating. Now I think I've finally come to a point where the asanas and pranayama have to be done by themselves. The music is a distraction. Can hardly believe I have reached a point where I voluntarily jettison a distraction. I will do almost anything to avoid having to finish something. When I worked it was easy to multi-task. I could do this and this and this and on the way to completing this and this and this, do this and this as well. Very busy. Works well in the work environment when there's much to be done and little time to do it in but isn't as successful at home.

Two days since writing the above. Worked with Balthazar yesterday. Because I've been unsure about whether to use pressure, ie a cue, and then build upon that or just wait for him to do something I've been a bit stuck. Yesterday I decided to just let him be, give no cues and try and shape any forward movement. It wasn't very successful. He gazed at the cattle on the ridge, he gazed at the horses over the road, he gazed at everything but me. When he did take a step I'd c/t but it was a long time between drinks. I couldn't heavily reinforce forward movement because there wasn't even a weight shift.

I realise there is a break in the chain of communication. He looks to me for orders and so hasn't learned to offer anything yet. Despite the treats, it's not a game for two yet. To try something different I decided to take the halter off to see what he did. That was more successful. He'd start to walk away toward the yards where the other horses were then decide that treats lay in the other direction, with me. He circled (using the word loosely, it was more a trapezoid) around me and was c/t'd like mad. Unfortunately he did try and mug a bit. Thought we were past that but guess not. Anyway, we played around with the circling, him choosing the direction and shape of the *circle* and I rewarded everything. When he walked away, seeming to lose interest (although he was on the point of changing his mind and coming back) I quit. It will be interesting to see what eventuates. For us to proceed Balthazar has to recognise that he is a free agent who can choose to play and offer behaviours.

Incubi, Butterflies and a Snake

Another wake-me-up nightmare. Snakes this time. Particularly a very large determined snake which followed me from room to room. It was about 20 feet long with a small head and a body as thick as a fat man's thigh. Somehow it could squeeze through the smallest of spaces. It never hurried yet it was relentless. At first I was worried about the animals but it ignored them. I was the goal. I woke when I looked up and saw a dozen pale snakes watching me from the ceiling.

Nightmares used to be a feature of childhood. Always had the same one where I was smothered in the corner of a room by an amorphous grey blob. That nightmare accounts for my tendency to dislike small spaces. As far as I can remember the nightmare never varied. Perhaps my memory is faulty but I don't think I had nightmares, or if I did very few, once I reached adulthood. I used to get the odd incubus laughing manically in my ear while I lay in frozen fear unable to even wiggle a toe, which incidentally was supposed to be the way to throw off an incubus, wiggle a toe and the body would follow. That was the worst feature of an incubus dream, the inability to move even though I felt as though I was fully awake. No matter how much I strained I remained frozen, like I'd been given some drug which incapcitated me physically while leaving my mind untouched.

Incubi visited mostly in the daylight hours, during naps. I suspect my weakened state, due to a dissipated lifestyle, accounted for their frequent visits. I was morally porous. How else would I succumb (is the word succumb related to succubus, the female version of an incubus?) so easily. At any rate, I haven't been *visited* for many years of which I am thankful. Instead I have these new, always different, nightmares. Rational thinking soon soothes my fluttering heart yet I find it odd that I am experiencing so many. I don't always write of them and perhaps I should just to keep track.

The air is alive with monarch butterflies. At least I think they are monarchs. If they aren't they look very similar. Occasionally a monarch will flutter past with another monarch attached to its abdomen in an amorous embrace. I wonder about the butterfly hanging upside down. It's wings are tightly closed, pointing like a guillotine towards the earth. Does it get vertigo? Does it get dizzy as it bounces through the air and have to fight the urge to flutter? Does it pray that it and its partner don't become prey for a passing bird?

I don't remove native cotton weeds because the monarch caterpillars feed on them. When we first moved here 20 years ago the land next door was thick with native cotton. We noticed hundreds of butterflies visiting the plants and when we walked the SE corner of our property, where the creek meanders through, we saw thousands of butterflies. They were resting in the trees. If we clapped our hands, the trees seemed to explode in orange shards of fire as thousands of butterflies erupted into the air. Sadly, the owner returned, stocked the property with dozens of donkeys and the butterfly colony disappeared.

Cushings Disease and Drawing Disasters

There are four horses outside the window. Occasionally one, usually Drifter, looks at the house. They know I'm up so why have I not come out to let them through to breakfast. The peach paddock has become the Jenny Craig paddock. They are all too fat but locking them into the yards, although denying them food for the night, is just a bit tough. Its hard ground isn't conducive to a good night's sleep and although horses sleep standing up, for a really good sleep, they like to lie down.

Suspect Drifter has Cushing's disease. Peter is going to give me some Chaste Berry which has helped horses with Cushings. Anecdotally at least. A study was done that says it made no difference while lay people have used it with success. Want to give it a try before going to drugs which can have side effects (especially to the liver). Should've known last year that Drifter had Cushings. He grew enough hair to pass for a buffalo and shed it in the same way, in great strips. This winter he again grew a long hairy coat and although most of it has come away, not all. Another sign was the sweating. In winter. But I passed it off as a result of the extra long coat. Plus he's been dull and rather lack lustre in his bearing. This sign was particularly difficult to notice as Drifter has always been an extremely laid back, shall I say, bone lazy, horse. But now, even without the drug tests, I am willing to wager he has it. He's the right age (21) and Cushings usually manifests around age 20.

Cushings is a disease which results from a benignn tumour growing on the pituitary gland. It prevents the pituitary gland from releasing cortisol (if I remember correctly). There is no cure. So again, we have a horse that we know is doomed and will one day have to make that difficult decision. Until then we can find something, whether it's chaste berry or traditional medicine, to help him spend his last years in comfort.

Strange how the animals one shares one's life with are like family. I know it's trite to say so as people talk about their furred or feathered family but when I think I've known Drifter for 19 years, that's a bloody long time. We've been through a lot together. He's taught me more about humility than anyone else. Because he forgave me. Always, all my mistakes, my pique, my temper, impatience, dumb arse ideas and misplaced enthusiams, were borne with equine equanimity. He is a wise old soul in a rough red coat.

I haven't written about the latest painting because it's a disaster! Most of it I like; like the concept, the look, the atmosphere, even the workmanship but the blasted woman sitting in the chair has been reworked and reworked and reworked to the point of possibly no return. The paper has held up well but there are just so many times that colour and material (pencil, chalk pastel) can be removed before it is no longer workable. The drawing is okay but it's the darned colour. Does she pick up the colour of the big red chair and if she does, how much? Is she in deep shadow (in dim light and with eyes half closed, it suits the mood of the painting best. Unfortunately, I have been unable to duplicate that look in bright light with eyes wide open). I'm gettingn to the point of putting it away and starting on something else. Perhaps a solution will come when it isn't before me every day. And I need to be working on something and this is just reworking with no reward.

The previous painting is a write-off too. Thought I could cut up portions of it to keep but with a second look it isn't worth saving. Thankfully, it will make good fire starter for next winter.

Mugging, Clicker Training and Licorice

I don't think I've written before about Balthazar, licorice and mugging, but if I have and am experiencing another menopaual moment, of which there seem to be many, than that's too bad. I have been building up to riding again with ground work. Peter, with an innocent air, told me how much horses like licorice. We've done well with carrot pieces but always on the lookout for some other way to ingratiate myself with Balthazar (and the others) thought I'd purchase some and give it a try. Incidentally, despite my weakness for licorice I've been steadfast in not nicking their share. Anyway, with the exception of Drifter, the horses adore it. Balthazar, who always got erections with clicker training, behaved in a way that was quite scary - and totally inappropriate. Our platonic relationship was in danger of becoming something much more intimate. Seriously. When doing ground work the idea is to move the horse around while maintaining ones position. With clicker training it is much less about pressure and dominance (in my opinion) than indicating what is required and rewarding the horse for, if not actually doing it, trying. The try is built upon until the horse is keen to offer behaviours that might elicit a reward. Balthazar's offered behaviour was mugging. Mugging while nickering sweet nothings in my ear, mugging while licking the treat pouch (and me), mugging while drooling, mugging while kicking at his erection. Mugging until I was saturated and he was prancing on the spot in anticipation, of what I hate to imagine.

This wouldn't do. I gave up and wrote to the clickryder group on Yahoo detailing my problem in a way that would not earn an X rating for the young readers. The responses and advice received were fantastic. The first writer wrote that I should carry a dressage whip and swish it through the air to get him off me and let him know what was an acceptable distance to be maintained. Yes, I thought, I could do that but I had written that I wanted Balthazar to voluntarily choose not to mug and to keep a distance. What is he learning except what he's always known, that a whip is an implied threat of pain. Sure, he'd stay away but it wasn't quite what was required. Still, if worse came to worse, and in the interest of safety, I could use a swishing whip. The second writer was gold. She suggested that Balthazar choosing not to mug so that he could get a treat was only part of the solution. He also had to learn to stay away. As he saw it, she said and it was proved true in his behaviour, he mugged, backed up or swung his head away, he got a treat, so he mugged, moved away, got a treat, etc. If I wanted to break that cycle he had to learn that treats came thick and fast for keeping his head away from me. Well, duh! Of course she was right. The third writer said, safety first, put a barrier between Balthazar and I until he got the idea. Well, duh!

So last night I cut up so many carrots the treat bag was bulging, left the licorice in the fridge, put Balthazar in the stall with me on the outside and began. Balthazar was frustrated by the railings from getting to me and the treat bag. That meant he had time to draw breath and actually think of what was happening. What was happening was this: when he moved away, I c/t and then c/t 5 or 6 times while his head was pointed elsewhere. This is great, he thought. I'm doing nothing yet getting lots and lots of treats. It went so well that I braved opening the stall door and letting him out. Ah Ha! I could almost hear him. The treat bag! He mugged. I waited, withholding a treat until he backed up and then c/t'd like a mad thing. Stopped. Waited. He mugged. No reward. He backed up. I c/t'd like a woman possessed. The light started to come on. I think he mugged once or twice more but without conviction. It just wasn't getting the response he'd had previously.

So we had success while I stood on his off side. As trainers always say do things from both sides as horses almost seem to have two brains, thought I'd better work from the near side too. He mugged. But again, it didn't take long before he got the idea and kept his distance. We were doing so well and I should've quit then but I had a few carrots left in the bag. Wouldn't you know at the second to last carrot piece he mugged? Only half heartedly, just swung his nose into my torso yet I'd rather the session had ended on a completely positive note. Still, I am very happy with how things progressed and feel confident that we can start serious work very soon. Once he's completely fore-sworn mugging, I'll reintroduce licorice as the Jackpot of Jackpots. And thank Peter for the tip.

Wellness as a State of Mind

Richard is fine. Couldn't stop touching him the first day, tangible reassurance he was home. How green the grass looked, how blue the sky, how quickly can it change from vivid to bleak. And back again. I can look at death objectively. I know it is the fate of everything. I don't think, in my fine health and middle age, that I am frightened of it (of pain, yes), but when the shadow looms, however faint, on the horizon for someone close to me, I am not so sanguine. I have not lost someone close to me since Mom. I was 24. Her death was not a surprise. It took me six months before I really grieved. I suppose because I believed then, as I do now, that she had only gone somewhere else it wasn't so difficult to cope. Like she'd moved to another continent without phone or mail or carrier pigeon.

Richard is 65. His span of years is inevitably shorter than it was. We work hard at staving off the effects of old age. We walk 5km almost every day, we eat well. He's stopped smoking. There is no reason why death cannot come at the end of a healthy life rather than as the release from a long debilitating sickness. That is why this heart thing, which seems to only have been a reaction to the anaesthetic, was at first so frightening. I saw the long white corridors of hospitals, those sterile death traps of infinite boredom accented by black doors of fear and pain. And me, unable to effect an escape for my beloved. Against science and doctors and beige machines that beep I would be using a pea shooter. Against the edifice of corporate Medicine I would, with my good thoughts and thoughts are things philosophy, be as effectual as a window trapped blow fly. Yet we have won ourselves home and freedom.

It seems to be the mindset of many that reaching a certain age inevitably entails ill health and pill taking and regular doctor visits so that one can find one's place on the medical treadmill the destination of which is a foregone conclusion. I don't believe this has to be true. I know we are thrown fast balls which come out of left field and then we must choose the safest most beneficial route back to wellness but Medicine is such a lucrative field that it profits them for us to be sick and to be made to believe that sickness if inevitable. For instance, there used to be a commercial on television which advertised a cold/flue product for 'the cold you *will* get this winter'. As if because of a change of season it was inevitable that we catch a cold. Thoughts are things. How dare they air a commercial which asserts, from their unassailable position of medical expertise, that we will be sick.

For all the medical advances, the technology, the specialists, the billions of dollars spent on the health of a nation, are we really healthier than before? We eat badly, don't exercise, rely on pills and powders rather than our own common sense and native mammalian intelligence. Then we crawl to the nearest GP confident of the silver fix it pill. It must be frustrating for the GPs treating people with health issues that are soley related to lifestyle. What else can they do but prescribe tablets and place the patient's feet on that damned treadmill?

Hospital

Richard is in hospital. He went in for a routine inguinal hernia operation and is now in CCU for observation. All went well beforehand. At the pre-sx med check his blood pressure was brilliant, his ECG normal. He was a little apprehensive as one would expect but good. I left him at 1pm as the animals needed doing. He was going in for surgery at 5:00. I was to call at 6:30 when he should have been back in his room. At 6:20 Cameron rang. His sx was delayed, he'd just gone in. I was to ring his room at 8:30 instead. At 8 I got a call from Richard's sister. He was in CCU, something about his heart playing up during surgery. Rang the hospital, couldn't get anyone who really knew the details except he was okay and was only being monitored. Cameron rang, he'd managed to speak to a doctor. Richard would be monitored all night, perhaps sent home with a halter heart monitor, if that showed up any anomalies, it was possible he'd have to be fitted with a pacemaker. Rang the hospital again, got Peter on the CCU ward. Yes, he confirmed all that Cameron said plus telling me that Richard's heart had not beat fully for ONE or TWO MINUTES during surgery. It was half beating but the ventricle was not closing - if I've understood correctly. Perhaps it was only a side effect of the surgery and the drugs but if not....

I'm going down this morning, very soon in fact. Having coffee now which I need as I've slept like crap. Talk about a runaway mind. Two a.m. and I'm still running the same loop through my head. Richard is my everything. I've been thinking the past week about how to write about him, how I feel about him, some of the worries I've had, not related to his health, but hadn't because I wasn't ready. I'm not ready now except to say he must be well. He is strong and good and full of love. He does not need this. Besides his good qualities he does have one that is not so good. He is a worrier. Like his mother. Like his eldest son. He is like a terrier with a bone when he worries. He obsesses. During and after the floods in January I was concerned about it. Before it was just one of those idiosyncrasies that he had that could be passed of as nothing serious but his behaviour post-flood was worrisome. Weight melted off him, partly because we were walking more but more because he worried, lost sleep, didn't eat as much. The next big worry was the termites and just when he was getting to accept that would be all right too this has happened and worry will only aggravate his condition. If he has a condition. Please God, let there be no condition.

I try and discipline my mind to think good thoughts, not to make nightmare scenarios but those gloomy goblins creep in regardless. If something happened to him, I would survive. Of course I would but life without him would be bleak. He is my everything. After 30 years of strangers I met my best friend and lover. I've only had him for 25 years. Not nearly long enough.

There are some good aspects about this (and I know I'm anticipating as the whole story is not known). If he does have a *condition* , than it is best to find out now. Steps can be taken to manage or rectify it. Also, this episode might impress upon Richard the fact that time is not indefinite. He is always going to do something fun later, when he has some time. Fishing, exploring, I don't think he would hunt any more, activities that he's talked of are always in the future, 'when I have time'. He makes time for everyone else. If they need something, especially his sons, he drops everything and goes. As he should. But that same care and attention should be lavished on himself. Perhaps having a scare like this, although he was unaware of it at the time, will cause him to reassess his life. Perhaps to my detriment if he insists we move to the suburbs. I don't know. I don't know what the future holds but as long as he's in it physically and mentally healthy I won't complain.

Just got off the phone to him. He's fine. His heart was fine all night. It's still possible they may keep him in hospital another night. Hope not. Still, we'll do what is required.