A walk down memory lane

I was browsing through some of my old blogs and stumbled across a poem I wrote back in Feb `05. I must admit that I was impressed with what my 23 year old brain came up with!

Deep within

Enlightenment descends
And lightly touches my thoughts
Subtle yet powerful its manner
Quietly waiting for exploration

Time is of no consequence
It smiles in its infinite wisdom
No taunting or precipitance
Quietly waiting for exploration

No ego to bruise, jealousy foreign
Taking a back seat to triviality knowing
A sweet victory for me is certain
Quietly waiting for exploration

Ready and in need the price is paid
Attentive and willing I command it to rise
I explore to the depths of my being
Grateful for its kind patience

- me

Milky Way Dreaming

I bought my first piece of art! The piece is "Milky Way Dreaming" by Janet Forrester Nangala.



The mythologies, Dreamtime stories and language of the Central Desert Aboriginal people change from region to region. There are several different versions of the one story depending on the area and the family group concerned.

A good example is the ancient story of the Milky Way and Seven Sisters Dreaming.

All over Australia, it is believed that the stars and planets were once men, women and animals in the Creation times. The Milky Way is considered a sacred residence for totemic beings. Such beings are represented in this painting.

Seven sisters walked the earth in creation times. They were being chased tirelessly by an enormous ancestor spirit and their only hope of escaping him was to throw themselves into the sky where they became the soft glowing stars of the Milky Way constellation. However, one sister was caught by the old spirit, and after he took her back to his cave, she encouraged him to eat enough food to make him fall asleep. It was then that she made her escape and rejoined her sisters in the sky.

The Seven sisters are totemic for Janet and she has the right and responsibility to paint this story for future generations. Her mother taught her to paint, and although Janet uses acrylic paint on canvas as opposed to the traditional sand mosaics, she is sure to keep the story intact in its original context and therefore retain the spirit and essence of this important dreaming.

Janet paints the dreamings inherited from her mother and grandmother. Her family connections are in Alice Springs, Maryvale and the Ernabella community. The Australian National Gallery has acquired her Milky Way Dreaming for its permanent collection, and her Bush Banana Dreaming painted on John Farnham’s jeans was auctioned at Sotheby’s to raise money for the medical research institute – Jeans for Genes (1995). Her painting career began in the early 1980s with the IAL and Tjukurrpa artists. Janet’s circular background design represents the never-ending story of life, creation, birth and death.

Moms aren't perfect and that makes me sad

I used to be very close to my mom. I would tell her everything, constantly seek her approval, look up to her (even when it was through teary eyes as she threatened to slap me across the face with her slipper). It all changed over the stupidest thing – grades! Not to brag or anything, but A’s were fairly easy to get in high school. I had some struggle here and there bus usually managed to pull through. It became slightly harder in university – I actually had to try. Because A’s were harder to come by, it made me more excited about earning one. So I would proudly show her whenever I did. But then she started asking about every single thing I was studying for or working on – things I didn’t want to show her because I got poorer grades—so I decided to show her nothing.

Now that was a superficial change in our relationship – but it was the beginning of a giant snowball soon to follow. Now that I wasn’t showing her my grades, I didn’t really talk about school either. How can you talk about your tests and assignments if you don’t want questions asking how they went? Since school was pretty much the ONLY thing I did during undergrad, there wasn’t much else to talk about. The next thing I knew, I gained a whole whack of life experience over the next handful of years, and started to see my mom has a regular person – an imperfect person.
It was weird. I found that my mom was wrong more and more often and that I totally disagreed with a lot of her personal beliefs and logic. How can this strong intelligent woman think and do such silly things? I think I was fairly angry and impatient about it. I know I should be more accepting and loving, but it’s just not in my nature. I expect little from people in general, but expect perfection from those closest to me. As the veneer cracked, each imperfection would anger me and push me to look for more cracks, until the whole surface crumbled and everyone stood a loser.

When you’re a parent, it must be nice to have your kids look up to you. I imagine it`d be heartbreaking if that ever stops. See truly happy relationships between parents and their children fills my heart with joy. We don’t have an unhappy one – I just wouldn’t call it happy. It must be terrible for her to deal with someone as stubborn and unforgiving as me. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make it easy for me either. She does ridiculous things to get my attention (I think), as her way to get closer to me. But the ridiculousness of what she’s doing makes me so upset with her that I push her away. The further I push her away, the more she wants to get closer and the more ridiculous her antics become. It’s just the way she does it that makes it so hard. I think they only way out is for me to be the bigger person and play nice – but this requires my acceptance that she is imperfect and unable to live up to my standard. I wonder if accepting that and playing nice is better than hoping she’ll be perfect once again but being harsh in the meantime. Probably.

I hope I won’t have this wacky relationship with my children. I’m banking on the fact that they’re nicer to their mother than I am.