Sitting here, listening to the sudden downpour of rain outside...

Sounds like the ocean is crashing up against my window.

If I was swaying a little, I could convince myself that I am at sea.

Maybe I did a little.

Sometimes, I can be quite spontaneous.

It doesn't happen often, and a lot of people don't see that side of me.

Some never do.

And when it does rear its head, I suppose it could be confused with madness, in the most conventional sense of the word.

Before I knew really what I was at, I had left the warm cocoon of my room, and grabbed a towel out of the bathroom, making my way for the back door...letting my cardigan drop off me along the way, and hopping, one footed to remove my shoes.

Then, the lock turned, and I was standing outside, underwater but not drowning. 

The sound of the water lured me out. The crashing of waves against the double paned glass. 

The constant beating and the wind.

And I stood for about 5 minutes...its 1:40 am and very cold out there...Im spontaneous, but I don't want to come down with the flu tomorrow either...I may be mad, but Im practical...

And I let the rain roll down my face, and dampen my lovely spring dress, and wet all the layers through so that the cold water chilled me to my bones, and my hair was wet. The wind sent shivers up and down me.

But it was very cleansing.

Sometimes you need to do something out of the ordinary in order to snap you back into reality.

Sometimes its very difficult to see the wood from the trees

And letting the rain wash all that away, to be you, the rain, the wind, the dark, the night.

The force of nature, so much bigger and stronger then me...then everything else...well, it puts you back into place again doesn't it?

Sort of makes you get a hold of yourself.

Its like when someone is hysterical, crying on the silver screen, and then another actor slaps them across the face. They always take it. Its just that quick, short, slightly painful !snap! that puts them back into their bodies, and makes them human again.

I haven't stood out in the cold rain, in a long time...Im always running away from it, like a little field mouse, running to the next bit of dry shelter.

Im going to start taking things back. I think it's time.

I know it is.

Excited

Tomorro Im giving a talk to the women's group in town. My aunt asked me to do if, they've been trying to get this other crowd in for ages, and they keep canceling. So...Shelly to the rescue!
I'm pretty excited. Not nervous at all. I don't really get nervous about things anymore, I just get excited, and look forward to them instead. There's really no point in getting nervous, I just turn in to a wreck when Im nervous, so screw that. Waste of energy.
They want to know how to make a quilt. I did a bit of research, the history of quilting and all that jazz. Don't get me wrong...I love quilts, in the practical sort of way. Hell, when I get around to measuring out squares that are all the same size, but all different patterns, Ill make my own one and curl up with in with a cup of coco and a book...But, it doesn't get my creative juices flowing, if you get me.
And as useless as I am doing any sort of 'practical' research online in general, Im ten times worse when Im not overly enthusiastic about what Im researching.
But its ok. Ive got the bones of it, and it should all come together. I think its a fairly informal sort of meeting anyway. Its not like they are expecting some sort of powerpoint presentation, with hand outs and the like...although that would be pretty impressive, if I was talking to them about 1930s traveling circuses in the American south west...but Im not, Im talking about quilts.

All that aside...its good to do things that take you out of your comfort zone, that get you to think in a different way, and get you in circles of people that you would not normally mix with. And of course, its another thing to add to the aul cv, which needs a good dusting off at this stage.

Yea, looking forward to tomorrow :)
And that will be one more thing scratched off the list :)

Stumble.com is a last stop for my internet surfing done on a nearly daily basis. When I have checked everything going, and don't yet feel Im full up, I travel there. Sometimes I find things that have no relevance to me, other times I'm lead in circles round sites that I have stumbled on before, but tonight, well this just made my day...

Now if only there were pictures accompanying each bullet point...that really would be something :)

DESHODA

To the end of the internet and back

Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to Cows

  

• Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
• Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
• Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
• Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
• Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
• Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
• Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
• Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
• Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
• Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
• Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
• Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
• Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
• British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
• Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
• Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
• Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
• Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
• Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
• Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
• Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

...

Im doing a submission for doodlers' anon and I scanned in the rough drawing to my computer so I could 'easily' add the background colours in photoshop...
WHY did I even bother...It's gone from being a quick doodle, to a full blown, technicolour masterpiece...
I should have just done it by hand in the first place...but its just so...second nature? to put everything through the photoshop paces...I have to get out of the habit...before its too late and my right hand evolves in order to fit my magic mouse more snuggly ...
Also, Ive been at it for at lest 4 hours...how do I know that? Because Ive listened to all of Tegan and Sara's music...

sigh




I spent some of the small hours looking at street art...brightening up streets, cityscapes, and alleyways in a town near you...
Well, not so near...but one can dream.

because Im lazy

This made me laugh so much when I came across it on a blog that I follow nearly religiously, for no other reason then everything on it makes me crack up.

My darling friends will be offended by this...actually, they wont because they know me...but Twilight does not count as good reading...I wouldn't even call it a book...and what you do with it is not reading, it is slowing and painfully killing every single one of your braincells until nothing is left inside your girly skull except a pool of grey goo.

After the guts of a year of my deerlings trying to convince me that the books were actually 'really good' and that I should 'give them a chance'...I did, for no other reason then to keep them quiet for 5 minutes.

Oh for Jesus sake.

I know that Im not a big reader. In fact, its a rarity to find me curled up with anything thats not glossy and full to the brim with pictures, but I did plough though the first 3, and then 3/4's the way though the 4th one before I actually asked to be put on life support, fearing that the liquid dripping from my head was not still wet hair from a shower two weeks ago, and instead, the entire contents of my liquidized brain.

How, I ask you, how did Stephenie Meyer ever convince herself, never mind an editor AND a publisher and then a writer and a director and actors to take that pile of regurgitated crap seriously?? I just don't understand. If I ever have to read the word 'smolder' on the pages of a paperback again, I think I will actually throw chunks.

I suppose there was a piece of me that thought, "hey, maybe Im wrong about this whole Twilight phenomenon?? Maybe the books are better then the movies (which I was also dragged to kicking and screaming by my darling friends). But...

No.

I was definitely right.

The books are absolutely terrible, and there is nothing that anyone, living or dead, can say that would change my mind to that BLINDING fact.

All of that aside, a certain percentage of the profits miss Meyer receives go directly to the Mormon church, which ran a massive campaign against prop 8, and are generally out with pitchforks and flaming torches to smoke and burn the gays out of every village from Utah to Uzbekistan.

Of course I would burn the 4 'novels' I have, but I don't want to pollute the world further with her tripe...

I was thinking of sending them back to her, but Id be afraid she would just resell them, and make a quick buck off them...

If anyone has any suggestions what I could do with the damned things, let me know...Im sick of looking at them.

oh dear

It appears that I have fallen in to the habit of not sleeping again.
I don't know what it is, but ever since the clocks changed, my sleeping pattern has been knocked totally off.
Its 3, and any sane person would be sleeping right now.
I don't know what it is. I don't even think Im tired.
This used to happen a lot when I used to write, a lot...a lot more then I write now.
I would stay up and just write, write until I was sleep writing, wake up, write some more and then eventually give in to the heavy eyelids that were preventing me from seeing, and finally fall into bed.
Maybe its that I work in my bedroom. So there is no distinction between being finished work, and it being time for bed?
I worked out a design tonight, rough, but still, something solid that Im starting to be happy with.
And Ive been thinking a lot, and finding lots of nice inspiring images.
But I don't feel tired yet.
Buts its a very unsociable hour to be awake at, and if I want to get anything done tomorrow, I should really call it a night, or an early morning...whichever.

Maybe if this was just a bit smaller.
That, a bit bigger.
If I could will myself to erase all those words,
Instead of storing them for some project that wont happen.
A place for everything
And everything in it.
It is.
A backlog of images, visions and scribbles.
Lines and sentences, that no longer hold meaning,
But once were dripping with it.
The man who made time, made plenty of it.
Well it doesn't feel like that, right now.
Long sleepless nights
Days that speed through to darkness, again.
Waking at the end of day, to catch the stars,
Some sight that glowing orange slice of moon,
Maybe the only perk of being woken so late,
When finally asleep.
I would welcome that empty feeling back now with open arms,
Ive been so filled with the trappings of people and different places,
I wish I could just unhinge for a moment and let all of their everything come tumbling out,
Spilling like a loaded wave of sea; fish, clams, crabs, shells, and the particles of stones and
Rocky cliffs long eroded by the salty water.
Only to close up again, shut tight, with only myself in myself.
What a relief that would be.