The Love of Noise

We love noise and hate silence. That's what Prem Rawat said during one of his talks, along with loving war and hating peace. And it's so obviously true. We have what we love. We love upheaval not serenity, we love living on the edge, dicing with death, frenetic activity, and above all else, the false security of money. We do anything for money. We shit in our nest for money. We wallow in it, we eat it and smell it and clothe ourselves in it, all for money. If we can't have the money we'll support and admire others who do. How else would we allow the obscenities of Big Business to continue other than that they have the MoneyGiven, not GodGiven, right to do so.

Sometimes I get caught up in the blame game, the fear and anger and resentment. I have to turn it off. Which brings me back to the first sentence; loving noise and hating silence. In silence there is peace. The noise is reading Care2Causes and all the wrongs done in the world. The noise is signing petitions and wringing my hands. The noise is the radio, the television as well as the computer. The noise is all distraction and playing the Maya game. I can make my pulse race by thinking of the evils of the world. Isn't this why we choose this game of life? To pretend we are mortal and vulnerable and less than perfect so that we can scare ourselves silly? Why are horror movies and thrillers perennially popular? We love being frightened. Why do we ride rollercoasters and jump from planes? If that's all it is, just an illusion we create to make scaring ourselves real there's no reason to get upset. Is there?

Perhaps not but why trash the most exquisite set, the most perfect, complicated and wondrous life *movie* location to test the theory? Couldn't we find other ways to get an adrenaline rush other than pursuing war, pestilence and environmental destruction?

It's a mystery. I don't know the answer. I have to live as though it's real. Try and leave a small carbon footprint, sign those petitions, do the things I can but also, for the sake of my sanity, I have to turn it all off and sit in silence. My silence isn't very silent. My tiny little mind is brimming with slogans, commercials, snippets of songs, images, internal conversations, memories, remorse, plans, have to lists, details and physical sensations. It isn't very quiet in my mind. But I go there anyway. Sometimes the consciousness streams dwindle to one or two or three strands instead of a dozen. Even that is a relief. Because, finally, all that Noise is a Distraction from what Is. The noise is all about what Is Not.

Dreamed a dream straight from prime time television. Vince, no better name, held fifty people including myself, hostage at gun point. I knew Vince. We were driving in the parking lot of a shopping centre. Previous events contributed to the hotage taking but I don't remember them now. What I do remember is driving a car in which we were picking up people who were trying to get away from him only we didn't know it was Vince at the time. So, he was rescued as well. Richard was in another car behind ours. We ended up in a department store. Vince was distraught. We were frightened. Then I asked him why he hadn't sought help for his problems? Didn't he have anyone to talk to? Wasn't there someone somewhere in a position to help him? He pointed the gun straight at me but I kept talking (so cliched a screenplay I am almost embarrassed to record it. Couldn't my dreaming self come up with something more original?). Eventually he dashed down a long hallway. I tried to slam and lock the door behind him but it kept bouncing open. So we all dashed out the door on the opposite side of the building, ran down the mall screaming, Man! Gun! Hostages! Police! That's all I remember.

A naked woman with no legs riding a chestnut horse with no saddle or bridle. That was my dream. Or rather part of it. She was amazing to watch. They both were. She and the horse were so linked that thought seemed to unite them. How she even stayed on was a miracle. She was like a thalidomide victim as her legs were missing from the pelvis down so she was balancing on her groin. She did lean forward to ride, supporting some of her weight with her hands on the horse's neck but even so it was quite a feat.

I was riding too, in another part of the dream. Getting on Balthazar was a non-event. Obviously I decided to dismiss the 'invitation to ride' scenario. But we managed. The dream or series of dreams was, as always, long and complicated and I don't remember most of it. I do remember a huge black roiling storm that was coming from the wrong way. Lightning and thunder assailed the eyes and eardrums without surcease. It meant big trouble especially as it was heading east, out to sea and then changed it's mind (and it did seem to have a mind) to come back.

Jamaica hurt his toe on Monday. It might be broken. We weighed up the options and decided to do nothing. Jamaica is the wimpiest dog I've ever met and getting a foot splinted and bandaged and then having to wear an elizabethan collar as well would just about do him in. Because he is such a wuss he is very careful with the foot and is keeping it immobilized himself. He is tied up most of the time and only let off to do his business. Richard does walk him to the gate and back in the morning but it's all on three legs. The swelling is starting to go down a little so hopefully we're doing the right thing. As long as he appeared bright in himself and kept eating I was willing to give this a go. This is the same toe that was broken when he was a puppy (Richard stepped on it). Whippets have such fist-like upright clenched-toe sort of paws they are more susceptible to breakage than a more flat-pawed breed.

Almost two weeks since a cigarette and can definitely feel a difference. Have calmed down a little which is good although nervous energy does get chores done. No smokers cough in the morning and only cough when doing certain lung opening postures during yoga and even then very seldom. The right lung, which has had something going on with it for a long time, a *catch* and *itch*, feels more normal. I am still seeking that elusive fully satisfying inhale that I remember but it will come. I give thanks every day for my Breath and I am so happy that I have given this gift to myself. I can beat myself up in other ways if I wish but I don't have to commit slow suicide anymore.

I notice that Richard is not taking afternoon naps anymore either. I think he's had two in two weeks. He went to the doctor about his hip. The doctor suspects arthritis. Richard now admits that it was sore before he fell on it. He fell a month ago and has had problems with it since. Doctor says he can resume walking. Richard has a bit of a palsy now. It is especially noticeable in the morning. It's only slight but it's something that wasn't there before. It breaks my heart. I try not to be scared of old age. I'm not scared of mine, in some odd way I seem to be getting younger, perhaps only an illusion but an illusion that serves me well. But seeing Richard age is hard. Not the brown hair turning grey turning white. But the palsy and the shuffling his feet rather than picking them up and walking (I bite my tongue. I want to shout at him, WALK! DON'T SHUFFLE!), the sitting slouched over with rounded shoulders gazing at the floor looking like a little old man in an aged care home. Stand tall, I think to myself. Look up and Live to paraphrase an energy company safety commercial. When we walk he looks at the bitumen, I look at the world around me. Of course walking is great for mulling things over. I will look at the road when I am thinking but I am always brought back to the present by the presence of Nature. Not so, Richard. He will walk 6km staring at the three feet in front of him. I bite my tongue again. Usually. If I do say something he tells me not to pick on him. And what right do I have to tell him how to live his life? Except that I love him and I KNOW that it is better for him to stand tall rather than slouch, not only physically but mentally/emotionally/spiritually. There is a dulling of the mind that comes with a perspective that is so foreshortened.

So now I've had my complaint and voiced my fears. Richard will never use the yoga lessons I bought him. At least since his doctor's appointment he is starting to lengthen his walking distance. He's meeting me on the other side of the Pedersens now. I trust that gradually he will build back up to the entire distance. The other day a friend came down who is enduring the heartwrenching reality of a breakup. Because of that he brought champagne. So I drank it with him. When he left I was feeling distinctly buzzy. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. Took Radar for his walk and under the alcoholic influence I ran up every hill and along every flat bit of land. Felt great and I was entirely sober and alcohol free by the time I returned home an hour later. That night I could hardly sit. Not muscle or joint soreness but sciatic in the groin. Bummer. Felt great to jog again and if I could get away with it I'd start running again. But I can't so there.

In the meantime I'll work on my asana, Bird of Paradise, or, as I wrote to Jen my yoga teacher, the Fractured Turkey. That's why I feel younger. Rather than giving up things because I'm getting older, I'm learning something new. Not French or calculus or Cordon Bleu cooking but yoga postures. When Jen first introduced us to Bird of Paradise at the workshop I couldn't even attempt it. At home it would take me 5 or 6 steps to get my feet parallel. As for standing upright on one leg, forget it. I could barely get my other foot off the ground. But perseverance pays off. I can stand up now. Slowly, with great effort, but stand I do. And I love it. There are many many postures that I cannot do nor will I ever be able to do. I can graciously admit to the impossibility of some things but there are many that I cannot do now that I could do in the future with practice. I like that. I want to add on to my life, not subtract.

Why I am beginning to remember dreams, I don't know. Didn't remember anything when I woke up but a neighbour stopped by to deliver eggs from his overly productive chickens (we have three dozen plus now and I know we aren't the only egg recipients. Told John if we die of cholesterol related heart failure the blame would be laid directly in front of his coop). He described how he had to hotwire his yard to prevent his dogs from going bush. The bitch, he said, never tried to jump the fence but one of the others did. Then I remembered the dream. In the SW corner of the front paddock was a tall red and white horse truck. It was almost as tall as a double decker. On top of the truck was tied a bay mare. She'd been sold or given to me by another neighbour. I was talking to him when I heard a commotion from the truck and turned around in time to see her leap over the side to the ground. It shattered her feet. The injury couldn't be seen but was there nevertheless. Overheard the neighbour tell someone else it didn't matter as she was already stuffed from racing and he was just getting her off his hands. I was angry and ashamed. Angry that he had such a callous attitude to a living creature and ashamed of myself for not tying her in more securely. I don't remember anything more.

Part of the dream might stem from one of those country tragedies experienced a few times a year. Two days ago noticed another sick galah. They are so easy to pick out now; they fly slowly, heavily, are slightly fluffed and eat the grain with careful consideration. Had a good look at him with binoculars although he would let us fairly close before flying off. His beak was longer and straighter than normal. Beak and feather. The warty pink skin around his black eyes was sunken. The heartbreaking thing is that birds look you right in the eye, even tiny Tony the tiny budgie. This small sick galah looked me right in the eye as I looked at him, knowing he would have to be put down as he was dying and while he was dying he was spreading disease. Richard saw him yesterday morning in the yards, too weak to fly away. He flew to ground instead. Richard came back and got the gun to shoot him. It depresses everyone even though it is the right thing to do. Richard said he was 'skinny as a rake handle'. Birds can fake their health for a long time. When the galah finally showed signs of illness it was too late to help him.

All the birds, wild and domestic, knew something horrible had happened. Even Dimitri squawked repeatedly from the verandah. The gun, rifle? isn't a loud one. Richard uses rat shot. The gun makes a small pop not a loud boom. Nevertheless every animal on the place knew that pop meant death. The wild birds stayed away from an hour or more. Death casts a pall over everything, even on the clearest brightest winter day when the colours are so vivid they almost make me squint.

Finished reading Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd last night. How different a book it was than what I expected. It was just a love story. Somehow I had the idea it was some sociopolitical treatise. How wrong I was! When I say just a love story, it was a love story written with a deep understanding and love of the principal characters. But what I loved about his writing was the descriptions of the weather, the countryside, the feel, smell, look and Life of Nature. It was the chief and most memorable character in the book. His description of the coming storm when he is trying to cover the ricks - I am there. I can see it. I can smell it. I feel the hairs rise on my arms at the raw power which comes, which makes the problems of Bathsheba and Gabriel and Boldwood trivial in comparison.

I don't think Hardy and his ilk are popular now. In the local library I find very few classics. I find them in op shops and garage sales. A pity. Just as a university education today is an education in science, technology, or business. What use is it to learn Latin or Greek or read the classics or understand history (because history unknown is history repeated?). I think we lose much by concentrating on the 'hard' subjects, educating ourselves to look for, understand and create more 'hard' facts. What about educating the creative spirit. Who reads poetry anymore? I keep a book of poems in the car. To read in small doses. I didn't know Walt Whitman except as a name. The only poet I was truly familiar with was John Donne. But Whitman! What a muscular take on life! He throbs and throttles and sighs and caresses. I don't understand most of what I read. I only get the sense of it. Yet what an introduction. Poetry is a muscular medium even in the hands of someone like E. Browning. She might be writing of the drone of a housebound fly while someone dies with the lightest most economical touch but she's punching me solidly in the solar plexus at the same time.

Finished and 'framed' the pastel painting yesterday. Keep forgetting to take a photo before sticking a finished work in a frame. But what's the point. I set up a MySpace account to promote my work and have done nothing with it. Promotion, self-promotion, it sounds faintly bilious, feels faintly bilious. I'd rather paint. I didn't start the new painting because I spent yesterday finishing off (finally) the pastel. We are going to Toowoomba on Wednesday to pick up interior paint (zinc blue). While there we are going to look at sofas, have a coffee (or lunch), find out where I go for the yoga workshop so I'm not wasting time looking for it on Saturday and, most fun of all, we're going to Murray's Art Supplies. I've drawn up a list of supplies. This is the kind of shopping I adore, unlike clothes shopping which I abhor! On the list is paper for drawing, sanded for pastel work and pads, pencils lots of *B-types', pastel pencils (new toy, they are great! found some cheap Montmartes to play with but want MORE!) and masking liquid (necessary for this next drawing). Interestingly, the yoga workshop venue and Murrays are probably right across the street from one another. Murrays is open until 1pm on Saturdays so even if I don't go on Wednesday, I can go on Saturday which might be better for browsing as Richard won't be with me. Hmmmm.

Rode the bike to Peterson Road yesterday. There is a hill (Peterson's Hill) that is so steep I cannot ride up it but must get off and walk. It is worth the extra effort and time for it is the fastest and scariest return trip! I am truly frightened flying down that hill. I don't know how fast I am going but it feels like 100mph. Then I must brake hard so that I don't come screaming out onto the highway and into the path of oncoming traffic. It is amazing that I find the bike riding so easy. Before I had to build up endurance to ride the 14km (round trip) from here to the Ma Ma Creek Shop. The only problem now is that my hands get sore and my back aches from the unnatural position one takes to ride these modern bikes. Must look for some kind of compromise set of handlebars so that I can sit up straight and take the weight off my hands.

Pyewackett returned from the Other Side to visit in a dream last night. A strange (aren't all dreams strange), convulated, and so so Busy dream. Seemed to go on and on with no progress. So here goes. I was in the American West somewhere. I was with a couple. They were newly married, on their honeymoon in fact but I had a history with the man, a David Schwimmer type (looks, not personality ie Friends personality). Richard was somewhere else. I missed him and wanted to be with him but was stuck *finishing* things with this man. She was blonde and had little to do with the dream story. We were at a motel in the middle of nowhere. This motel had a parking lot as large as a small country. Finding a parking spot within sight of the motel was a distinct advantage. It always seemed to be nighttime in the parking lot. I had a room to myself (hard to write, Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun on which distracts with it's perennial beauty). To eat one had to talk into one of those drive through intercoms. The food on offer was all junk; meaty, fried and horrid. There was nothing that I could eat. Thought perhaps I'd take my car-cum-motorcycle into the distant town and find something. A man accosted me while I was astride my bike, said it, a GB, was a very bad brand. He was officious, insulting and nosy. What I drove was none of his business. Told him I didn't eat meat or dairy either. Did he have something to say about that? (Know what character that dream person was based upon. Riding my bike a few days ago down the middle of DGR. Didn't hear approaching traffic because of the wind through the webbing of the bike helmet. This male person lay on his horn and stayed there. A polite bip bip would've been appropriate. I was so startled I pulled over to the right. No vehicle. I pulled onto the verge, not a great idea when on racing tyres. Still no vehicle. Finally a man pulled up beside me, said I should be on the left. True, of course but then logical thinking disappears when a loud noise erupts right behind one. Anyway, he pulled off. I stayed on the right just so if he looked in the rear view he'd see me. Petty, I know. Yesterday, while walking the dogs with Richard, he drove past and beeped the horn, long lazy beeps, not friendly taps. So that's why there was a short grey-haired man insulting my choice of vehicle in a dream parking lot).

Then there is Pyewackett in the snow. Sitting there, refusing to move, even though I have flattened a track for her. I think she's been lost and I'm very glad to find her again. Bring her into my room. I have a large shopping bag, with handles. Put towels inside and place Pyewackett on them. Ah, she thinks a toilet and proceeds to urinate. I'm not quick enough and some of it leaks onto the floor covering. So have to wash it before the landlady finds out. There is a small machine in the room. Wash them but find they still smell of urine so decide to do them in the machine on my bike (where the petrol tank would be).

Meanwhile I so want to finish the business with this dark-haired man. I kiss him. He pulls back. Is it the cigarettes, I ask. Yes. I've been smoking again and will quit when I return to Richard. Open my mouth (or his mouth) and see yellow-orange mucous clogging up the back of the throat.

And that's it. The dream remains vivid. Why I don't know. Sometimes I wake up knowing I've had a significant dream and can recall nothing. I'm only recording this dream, dull as it is, because it insisted on being remembered.

Got the heater going in here. Love old Queenslanders but they are not built for cold weather. Too many gaps, no insulation and, in this house, no curtains. Three degrees this morning. Bitter. Fingers just starting to thaw.

Couldn't sleep last night. Fell into bed exhausted at 8:30. Nights of insominia outnumber good nights especially since quitting smokes. Woke up at 1am. Too cold to get up and read a book so tossed and turned until 4, the last time I looked at the clock before 6. Then, when the most delicious sleep is possible, it is time to get up and feed everyone. I can hear Mallory playing with his bell in the next room. Tachimedes begins to do his vocal warm up exercises. Dimitri shuffles from one end of the verandah to the other and the outside galahs have quiet conversations with the wild ones. So I can't lay there and pretend I don't know everyone is hungry and waiting for breakfast, that the lorikeets will appreciate the warm nectar mix on a cold morning. That the wild galahs, perched on the overhead wires, don't really begin their day until they've had their morning wake up muffin at Glen Ellen.

One excellent result of the insomnia was the flash of a drawing I could try. Spent much of yesterday in abortive attempts to come up with an idea for the next work. Sketches on typing paper which came to nothing and met their fate in the compost bin. Funny how the idea came. I was in that hypnagogic state between sleeping and waking (have you ever tried to follow your thought processes back when in that realm? For me, impossible, as though an invisible curtain is drawn between the logical mind of sun and the fog-wreathed world of imagination, where I suspect the mind roams truly free, unfettered by physical rules and laws and regulations). Anyway, this image came to mind fully formed with such a jolt it snapped me out of that dreamy state. A good thing too for I didn't want to doze off and forget it or to remember later that I thought of *something* and not be able to remember what it was I conjured up.

Almost a week without a cigarette. No more morning coughing fits. No stink of cigarettes on me or in me, not in the house, in the furnishings, clothes or cats (yes, they stunk too - not to mention the years of second hand smoke - poor things, animal cruelty really). Trying very hard not to overeat. Not a problem during the day, have even reduced portion size, but at night, much more difficult. Eating fruit and munching pistachios, almonds and peanuts in shell.

Beating myself up for doing this, not doing that, mind like a hamster wheel spinning off dirty streamers of negativity. Walking the dogs yesterday I said to myself just Stop It! Stop It! Big sigh of relief. God, we're hard on ourselves. I'm hard on myself. I know I'm not perfect, far from it. I don't use my time well. I'm lazy and selfish and vain and all thos other labels I slap so freely onto my wrinkled forehead but I'm also quite okay. The animals are looked after and loved, my husband is looked after and loved, the house ditto, I turn out quite alot of art work, I still have an open mind and want to learn how to be with Balthazar in a way which is easy and comfortable for both of us. I give thanks daily for the good things in my life. I'm not sure I deserve them but I do appreciate them. I try and not think bad thoughts about people or things. I try and be mindful. I try and watch my tongue so that I don't score cheap shots by being 'right'. I generally try and be a better person than I was the day before.

I wouldn't let anyone else speak to me as I speak to myself. That book I never read, 'How to be Your Own Best Friend' is aptly titled. We aren't very good at it.

Haven't written about Dimitry in a very long time. Something has changed in that little feathered head. He (or I suspect She) is still timid and wary and easily frightened but she is also bolder, calmer and braver than before. I've put a cocky cage on the floor and feed her seed inside it. It was there for a month or so than I took it out to keep Marvin in while Terry lived in Marvin's aviary. When I put it back Dimitri was less cautious about me being nearby. Previously she'd leave the cage when I was 4 or 5 feet away. Now I am close enough to close the door if I wish. I leave when she goes inside to eat. If I move and she comes out I tell her to go back in and then leave when she does so. Want to gradually accustom her to having the door closed and then opened again while she's inside but if need be I can just close the door and move her - which is the whole idea. I want to get her off the verandah and into an aviary.

So she was a bit more confident when the cocky cage was returned to the verandah. The confidence also shows in the way she takes food from my fingers. She used to snatch and run even if the running was only two or three feet away. Now she takes the treat gently and slowly. I sit on the floor and feed her millet. After the first couple of times she hardly moves away at all but stands just in front while she eats. Get the feeling that one day she'll lower her head for a scratch. That would be an achievement, a break out the champagne moment.

I reread this post and think it's not written well enough for anyone else to read. I mean look at that first sentence or two. How boring. Why would anyone continue reading. Maybe I should delete them and go straight to what meat there is but then I realize, no this post is for me. When I wrote in journals I didn't write for an audience, I wrote for me. I wrote because I had to and it didn't matter whether it was worthy of some invisible reader. The reader was me. Writing a journal on a blog changes things, like a physicist changes the results of his experiments by observing them. Or, perhaps, reality tv shows have nothing to do with reality because the participants are always aware at some level they are being filmed. So, in an endeavour to be true to myself I'll leave the boring bits.