Stage Four Lockdown: Day One of Five
Mood: Good
I don't want to write about the lockdown, so I'm going to write along with Dev today. Then go for a nice ling walk with my two hour allocation of exercise time, stopping in at the supermarket and chemist on the way home. That sounds like a plan.
So here we go.
What do you do when you let your hair down? (Five minutes)
Oh, me letting my hair down is a bit disastrous as I am known as the friend who is mad, bad and dangerous to know. When I really let my hair down, you probably wouldn't recognise me, as I'm up for anything, and I laugh a lot and I get up to lots of mischief becuase that is in my nature. Against the odds, I love to dance. I look like a fridge when I dance, but I love this. I also like to drink, but this has to be done with an accomplice, as drinking alone is never a fun thing. Especially if I drink beer, and go to the footy - that is fun. But to really let my hair down I have to go on adventures and take myself out of my comfort zone - like going to Greece for a few months, or plonking myself in Ubud, Bali and ingratiating myself with the locals and thinking I could live there. Letting my hair down is often a portal into something far better - I just have to let myself do it and get on with it.
Let's just say I can be a force of nature when I let go. It's fun, but a little scary.
Conversation Menus:
Tell your dinner companion a big secret about yourself.
Well, let me see I'm not sure I have any big secrets. I have a current loathing that I can't clear this nail fungus found on my fingernail, despite whatever I throw at it. It's driving me up the wall and making me feel like a complete failure. Which is strange, as it is just fungus.
List three things about a person which annoy you about a friend.
I won't mention the friend, as this is an amalgam of friends.
1) Being rude to wait staff - I have one friend who is over the top objectional to service staff and god it gives me the irrits. I call this person on this all the time - but there is no reason to be rude.
2) Indecisiveness - just make up your fucking mind and deal with the consequences.
3) Overly observed right-wing thoughts and QAnon imbibers. Have a few of those on my facebook page. Blah. too scary for words.
Which of your flaws would you want to be forgiven
Please forgive me for always being ten minutes late. I do try to be on time, but some times I can't be bothered and I know this is a bad thing. I turn up on time when it is critical, but most people know I will be 10-15 minutes late on weekends, just because. Most of the time I'm trying to get over my social anxiety which makes me late - and I do have bad social anxiety - just a lot of the time I don't give myself enough time to get through it and leave.
Art Oracles (3 minutes)
Michelangelo
I would love to go back to the Sistine Chapel. I would love to go back to the Sistine Chapel and have the place to myself and just gawp and what Michelangelo did way back when. I would love to lie on the floor of the Sistine Chapel and take it all in slowly, in silence, or maybe with a string quartet sitting in the corner playing Albinoni's Adagio or something similar. And I want the place to myself. I like taking things in by myself - like Vermeer's The Girl with the Pearl Earring, or Edward the Confessor's tomb. I want to see this for what it really is, without the people.
Cards Against Humanity (3 mins)
I learned the hard way you can't cheer up a grieving friend with...
I learned the hard way you can't cheer up a grieving friend with talking. Well you can't cheer them up with your talking. You can let them talk, if they can talk, or want to talk, but there is no such thing as cheering anybody up when they are the midst of grief. You might be able to make them a bit more comfortable, or maybe make them smile for 10 seconds (I found cat and dog videos sent to my sister as my niece was dying was a decent thing to do) but whatever you say won't cheer them up. All you can do is stand with a grieving friend. Let them know you're there. Cook them dinner. Do the ironing. Bring the cat over. Go for a walk. But you talking, won't do the trick. It's a matter of being there and working with them through the grief. It's hard. The sooner you
Write about space (6 minutes with prompts - six minutes)
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, explore the solar system, get out of the earth and find out what is out beyond the atmosphere, be that astronaut who discovered who knows what. I was always fascinated by the stars and planets. Learned all about them. Where some kids wanted to get to know dinosaurs, I was into space. Used to watch every NASA launch until the Challenger disaster. Wanted to find out what was on Mars, that red planet which is one of our closest neighbours. Strangely, I can find Mars in the sky without too many problems most nights. I'd dream of blasting off from earth in my pod. But this was all before the advent of the space station and where we are now with space. Hell, I remember when Skylab ditched in the Western Australian desert. I've always wanted to own a telescope - take it out into the country and just look at things. Who am I kidding, I still would love to go into outer space. Maybe in time there will be vehicles which can roam the moon - but manned ones - with running water and air conditioning. Who am I kidding, I'm far to chicken to go into space.
Don't break the silence (10 minutes - for the novel)
We sit in the circle, waiting for somebody to talk. Nobody wants to break the silence, for that could be seen as a sign of weakness, or acceptance, something we can't be done doing - am I right?
Silence is not the right word for it, as we sit in the draft hall. Outside, the tennis players are thwacking their balls about in the twilight. Somebody will moan to the groundsman to turn the light on soon. The urn is bubbling in the corner, giving a low rumble every now and then, before settling. The woman who looks like a racoon is shuffling her feet and picking at her nails. The flicking sounds are getting on my nerves. In his chair, Draenog is looking expectantly from face to face, trying to catch an eye to encourage them to talk. It's not like Fight Club. Just because it's your first meeting doesn't mean you have to fight, but you allegedly get more out of this support group if you do talk, and if you do make mention of your personal circumstances and try to work out just what you are going to do and where the hell you came from.
Everybody has a story. Draenog brings his out every session. Killed by the market. A victim of market fluctation and a dodgy financial adviser. Fiona, racoon woman, gave birth to five kids. The last one was stillborn, dragging her into a fifteen year depression which took away her livelihood, and her life. And of course there's the divorcees, the gambling addicts and the sloth-ridden loners who never bothered to improving themselves. One guy, he's gone now, was a perennial academic, going from course to course, never finishing - until the debts got too high and he was thrown out of every institution in the country - with nothing to show for it.
It takes all types in this group.
Fiona clears her throat.
Today's Song:
No comments:
Post a Comment