All posts by Princess Sparkle

Women’s Big Sleepout 2nd August 2011

Homeless Women

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NOT only does it take a village to raise a child, I’ve come to the conclusion that it also takes a village to raise an adult. We never stop growing up. We’re never finished. We’re all works in progress just trying to do our best and not always succeeding. We’re human. And that’s what humans do. Stuff up. And try again.

Just when you think you’ve got being an adult sorted, along comes big, fat, messy life and throws you a red herring, a poison chalice, a blessing in disguise or a total catastrophe just to keep you on your toes. Or on your knees. Or flat on your back and out for the rest of the season with a groin injury.

No matter how much we delude ourselves, life is never going to be a linear swim from pier to pub. We’re all just paddling, hoping the next island gets us somewhere closer. To where? We don’t know. We don’t know where we’re going. We just think we do. The only other options are treading water. Or sinking.

You can have your goals, your five-year plans and your illusion of security, but you can’t count on them. It gives you a target to run to but don’t be surprised if you find yourself detoured, disqualified or running past the finish line to find yourself off the map. In his book Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart, Gordon Livingston says: “Though a straight line seems to be the shortest distance between two points, life has a way of confounding geography. Often it is the detours that define us.” Ring a bell?

A few weeks back I wrote about everyday heroes. People suffering and battling loss, grief, hurt, pain, depression and addiction. I wrote about my huge admiration for these heroes who, despite everything, and with nothing but the smallest glimmer of hope, just keep going.

I received a big response to the piece both from people suffering and from others grateful to be reminded that there are people around us engulfed by pain. Some people we’re aware of, but others keep their pain private and hold it close to their broken hearts. People we work with, family we live with and strangers who sit next to us on the tram, serve us our coffee or write the words we read in the paper.

It happens to all of us, at times. We go to a dark place on a journey alone. Walking blindfolded through a maze, not knowing the way out, just fumbling through. Hoping that with each step, each turn and each dead end that we will find ourselves in a better place, a happier place.

As much as we would like to, we cannot go with the people we love on these journeys. But we can help. And the mere act of helping can touch another human being’s spirit. We are not just bones, skin, hair and blood. Most of who we are is not visible to the eye. Our thoughts. Our spirit. Our soul.

When my mother’s house burnt down, she said that it wasn’t the people who did the wrong things that upset her, it was the people who did nothing. Which taught me that when you don’t know what to do, do anything. Be assertive in your caring. But don’t stay long. And don’t expect anything. Chances are if you say to someone, “call me if you need anything”, they won’t. So just do something. Anything.

Cook them a meal and tell them to keep the container. Call them. And if you leave a message, let them know they don’t need to call back. Lend them your favourite movie and leave a stamped, self-addressed envelope so they can send it back to you. Take them to the library. Buy them some flowers. Walk their dog. Take them a pie for lunch. Organise a massage for them. Or buy them a pair of red socks. If they are stuck in bed, buy them a new set of sheets and change them if they’ll let you. Do their washing. Take their kids to the park and bring them back fed and tired at bedtime. And when in doubt, make soup.

Just let them know you’re there. Even if they’re not. You’ll be doing far more for them than you’ll ever know, and far more for yourself than you’d think possible. Be there holding the lamp and you may be the light at the end of someone’s long dark tunnel.

We’re all in this together. One moment you’re holding the lamp, the next you’ll find someone’s holding it for you. We’ll all have good times, bad times, happy times, sad times and times that we won’t remember. That is certain. The only thing we don’t know is what order they’ll come in.

Tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a car for the again for Women’s Car Sleepout.

Check out the column I wrote last year for THE DRUM.

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Homeless Women. Wish In A Car 2010

Homeless Women

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The bad news? I slept in my car on Wednesday night. The good news is because I’d planned to, I’d had the car cleaned for the first time since 1996. When I picked the kids up from school they thought I’d bought a new car.

I slept in my car alongside dozens of others, by choice, in an event organised by WISHIN (Women’s Information, Support and Housing In The North) to raise awareness about the escalating rise in homeless women and the shameful lack of resources. Particularly for older single women with no history of mental illness or addiction. Women who have worked hard all their lives, often raised children and owned homes. Relationship breakdown plus shortage of affordable safe housing plus financial crisis and homelessness can be one rent payment away from sleeping rough. These women do not feel safe in much of the traditional emergency accommodation nor do they fit with the homeless due to mental illness or substance abuse. So many stay with friends or sleep in their car. Some with their children. In Australia. None of them ever expected to be homeless. These homeless women in the large part are invisible.

Homeless people are homeless for different reasons and have different needs and vulnerabilities. The current Government has put a huge injection of funds into homelessness. But it’s catch up money. And only a small portion of it. The Government needs to commit to ongoing funding so the people can do what they do and not have to spend all their time chasing money.

We gathered together people from welfare groups and compassionate others in the hall of an inner-city Melbourne church and spent the night eating pizza, drinking tea from paper cups and singing. We all wore hoodies that read EVERY WOMAN NEEDS A SAFE HOME EVERY NIGHT. The local MP Kelvin Thompson rocked up. He understood that? Homelessness arises from a cycle of disadvantage. There was a bit of a talkfest and eventually we all bedded down in our cars or the hall.

I tweeted the night. Call it micro-reporting. With the hashtag #wishinacar. Thousands of people on Twitter followed the night. Because if you don’t know what to do, do anything. And if you want to do something advocate, participate or donate.

It’s not rocket science. All it takes is homes to end homelessness.

READ MORE AT THE DRUM

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Unhappy? Because we are not spending? Bullshit.

COLUMNS

You’ll see them in shopping centres every weekend seeking sedation: people trying to buy their next high.

REDUCE greed. There’s your answer. Thank you and good night.

Nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing even slightly original. Here’s a tip to increase your happiness. Just stop trying to fill that gaping hole inside yourself with more stuff. Or shelving for the stuff. Or a bigger house for the shelving. It doesn’t work. It just makes the hole bigger. Everything won’t be fine if you just get new light fittings, replace the curtains or buy a new mobile phone. No one needs 12 doona covers. Everything will be fine if you take a big breath and stop buying crap you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like.

Does anyone else want to slap half the people around you and say “You’d have more peace if you just spent less money”? People complain about how hard they work, how little money they have and how their relationship is at breaking point. And then what do they do? Exercise? Meditate? Work less? Nope. They buy themselves a cappuccino machine they’ll only use twice, an exercise bike that will be the most expensive clothes hanger they have ever owned, shoes they’ll never wear and then sign up for cable TV. And then put their hand up for more overtime.

Next time you find yourself itching for some retail therapy, think about what would really turn off that desire button inside you, not just put it on snooze. Take a look at your wardrobe overflowing with clothes you don’t wear, your shed chockers with tools you don’t use or that entertainment unit groaning under the weight of the hundreds of dollars of DVDs and CDs that you’ve never played. Remember how excited you were and how you truly believed, deep down in the soul of your being, that each purchase would bring you happiness. How it would soothe those wounds of feeling unloved, unappreciated and unhappy. How you had to have it. The thrill of the purchase,

the excitement of the homecoming and then the punch in the stomach when your credit card bill arrived.

Middle-class whingers complaining about how hard they are struggling need a good slap. They are offensive to true battlers out there who stock up on their brand of margarine when it’s on special and don’t buy new socks but mend the ones they have.

Someone handed me $300 cash the other day. It felt like a million dollars. It felt like far more money than 10 times as much sitting in my bank account. Because I could see it, feel it, smell it. These days money is invisible. People don’t actually know how much things cost them. If people had to slave away and earn the cash before they could acquire the things they wanted, given the choice and knowing how much sweat it’d taken, they’d go for the cash. The invisible money culture is not only ravaging the environment, it’s corroding lives and destroying happiness. Putting it on the credit card or taking money out of the mortgage? It’s all invisible money.

I call it the Veruca Salt syndrome. I want it and I want it NOW. People have to have the big house, the new car, the new kitchen, the new clothes NOW. Once upon a time people saved, they waited, they went without. Same happy. Some say more happy.The symptoms of affluenza, luxury fever and conspicuous consumption can all be alleviated by the simple mantra “I have enough”. The worried-well need less, not more. The stressed-out full-timers who live on Mortgagee Mountain, between Default District and Foreclosure Falls, dig themselves in deeper as they attempt to find peace in the purchase of plasma TVs so each member of the family can watch Big Brother in their own room of the McMansion.

People are in debt up to their eyebrows and they tell me it’s good for the economy. But it’s destroying our spiritual economy. Is this the spiritual recession we had to have? Kids want to lie on the grass watching the clouds roll by with chilled-out parents. Not be dragged through shopping centres by harassed mums and dads trying to anaesthetise their existential pain by purchasing more stuff to plug in and more stuff to store.

On any perfect 25-degree windless Sunday you will find Chadstone, Northland, DFO and all those soul-destroying cathedrals of emptiness chockers with people attempting to sedate. Take two transactions and call me in the morning. They’d be better off spending a few hours sitting in a church. And that’s coming from an atheist. Greed and consumption addict people and they spend weekends trawling shopping centres chasing the next hit.

Happy is the man who is content with what he has. And the woman who needs only one pair of good shoes and a library card. Maybe I should follow the advice of the graffiti I read last week: SHUT UP AND SHOP.

 

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Logies Twitter Ban

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This morning I was woken at 7am by a call from ABC radio. What did I think about the banning of mobile phones to stop the Twitter feed at the 2011 Logies.

At 7am I don’t give a rats about much. Did I want to talk? Sure! I’m mid-comedy festival season with my show God Is Bullshit so I slipped my slut nightie off and whacked my media whore hat on and at 7.08am it was business as usual. Thanks be to God.

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Slutwalk

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I’ll be at Slutwalk with my three sons aged eight, nine and 13. They’ll be wearing tee shirts that read ‘YOU‘RE NOT ALLOWED TO RAPE SLUTS EITHER’.

Sure, I could go vintage with ‘FAT CHICKS SHIT ME’, rocking the retro with ‘ALL YOU VIRGINS THANKS FOR NOTHING’ or getting my postmodern on with ‘NO ROOT NO RIDE’ but they just don’t cut it. ‘You’re not allowed to rape sluts either’ is the message we need to get across. The medieval caveat on slut rape has expired. Sluts are people too, I don’t know much about sluts but I know what I like, I’m a slut and I vote…and so forth.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DRUM AND READ MORE

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The Weekly Cycle. Deveny on bikes

Media

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I recently had the pleasure of having a good chat with Melbourne writer, comedian and social commentator, Catherine Deveny. She is an avid commuter cyclist, what she terms “walking with wheels”, and those familiar with her will not be surprised that she has some strong views on various topics related to bikes.

So without further ado, I present to you one opinionated, informed and ready-to-talk Catherine Deveny.

CLICK TO READ MORE

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Chartbusting 80s. The jewel in Channel 31s crown. Thanks to Queen Josie

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GROWING UP IN THE ’80s knee-deep in Punky Brewster, Diff’rent  Strokes and Choose Life T-shirts, I vividly remember being mortified at  the musical cries for help that were the soundtrack of my youth. As I crimped my hair wearing khaki cord knickerbockers with metallic copper  piping, the adults around me reminisced about being a teenager to the  sounds of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell and  Elvis. It then dawned on me that one day I would have to own up to being  16 and listening to Spandau Ballet, the Thompson Twins, Culture Club,  Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper. I was so deeply embarrassed that these were  my coming-of-age anthems, I clearly remember thinking, “There is no way  that the ’80s are ever going to be fashionable again.”

How wrong was I?  I enjoy ’80s music now far more now than I ever did during the  ’80s.

Which may explain why I love watching Chartbusting ’80s. It’s an  ’80s music video show with a live band, some old clips and a few  ’80s-inspired games. Sure, sounds unremarkable on paper but this show has been running for six years and is the highest rating show on Channel 31.  It’s clearly more than simply a good house in a bad street when you  consider that it attracts about 100,000 viewers twice a week and the show  has its third DVD coming out in October.

So what’s its secret? A female  host with the body of Sophia Loren, the mouth of a wharfie and more front  than Myer. Josie Parelli hosts this show with Jeff Jenkins. Well she  doesn’t really host it, she takes over and mercilessly torments Jeff, or  BR as she prefers to call him which stands for Bald Rodent. All between  bad dancing, appalling singing and taunts such as, “You couldn’t get a  root with a fist full of 50s.”

If I had three words to describe Josie I  would use Bogan Wog Goddess. She prowls around the audience threatening to  humiliate anyone who dares take her on in her ’80s clothes and disco hair.  And they love it.

The Age’s Jim Schembri, a longtime supporter of the  show, had a go at her boogying during film clips and she retaliated by  giving him a good spray on air saying that he was so low he would turn up  at an Italian wedding with a gift of $20 sheets. She then introduced the  Jim Schembri Dancers. That’s chutzpah personified.

Tune in for the  season’s finale: two bands, two hours and two people who were married in  the ’80s who will renew their vows after sending in their  what-was-I-thinking wedding photos.

Josie told me that the more profile  she gets the more people suggest she lose weight, be submissive to Jeff  and be less confronting if she wants to break into commercial TV. Fat chance. I was stunned when she told me that commercial TV had not approached her until I remembered that famous quote, “Women live in fear  of men killing them and men live in fear of women laughing at them.” Keep  laughing Josie.

 

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Chlorine Dreams. Elizabeth Shield

Guest Post

I like to swim. I enjoy the sensation of weightlessness, cutting through the water with my arms pulling each stroke, my legs beating behind me as I disappear in a swathe of bubbly white foam. When the sun is shining, it sparkles in the blue water creating diamonds of light, filling me with inexplicable joy.

I used to do competitive swimming when I was young. I don’t remember how it started, if my parents asked me and my sister if we wanted to be athletes, or if it was their idea. I imagine it may have been to give them some respite as we went to training three or four nights a week after school.  Perhaps one or both of my parents had unfulfilled  dreams of being competitive sportspeople and they were pursuing this thwarted ambition their children. Whatever the reason, my younger sister Helen and I joined the throng of adolescents at the Jamboree Heights State School swimming pool each evening for “training” which we may have referred to as “squad” as we were grouped into squadrons according to our pool prowess. My sister was a stronger swimmer than me, and certainly for her age group, so she and I were often in the same squad despite our age difference. Although truthfully,  neither of us were particularly athletic people. We would do training for an hour or so with things like 4x 100 metres freestyle or medly to warm up. I remember feeling hot and sweaty and exhausted, even in the water. I thought some of my coaches were sadistic. Once, to inspire us to swim competitively, one coach instructed us to get into pairs, and one had to start swimming a lap and the other had to start soon after and try to catch the first person. The person in my pair was a boy called Simon I had a crush on, and I swam like a torpedo to avoid his hand catching hold of my feet. He was later my first kiss, orchestrated by my friend; swimming buddy and part time model Vicki . At 12, Vicki was a year younger than me; she went to my church and swimming club and had bigger boobs. She was the envy of many girls for her looks, fashionable clothes, winning ways with boys and having her own stereo and a Ken Done doona cover and sheet set. 

On Saturday mornings we had Swimming Club which was a swimming meet where we swam in different events and were timed, and the idea was you were competing with others in your race but also against yourself to improve your time. Parents were the volunteer time keepers, and I remember my dad walking along the side of the pool as I swam yelling “Go! Go!” as he clutched a stop watch in his hand. One day during swimming club Vicki told me she had asked Simon if he liked me and he had apparently agreed to kiss me, so we three conspirators snuck to a suitable location in the school ( between a concrete pylon and a bush) and puckered up. As both he and I had braces at the time I was terrified of the urban myth of them locking together so I barely opened my mouth, but I still remember the rush of adrenalin to my head and heat though my body. 

Another memorable thing about the pool was that it was next to a sewage treatment plant, and was sometimes rather smelly depending on which way the wind was blowing. There were these brown ducks that swam in the sewage pond and then came and swam in the school pool which the parents agreed was rather unhygienic. Additionally, they deposited soft brown poos which dissolved in the water or bobbed around at the sides of the pool. Eventually, the school constructed a large net which covered the pool and the surrounding grassy area, change rooms and caravan canteen where I bought violet crumbles and sausage rolls after squad sessions.  It was quite a surreal effect, almost like an indoor pool, this semi-transparent dome like being under a giant mosquito net. 

These are my memories associated with chlorine. As I swim sometimes now, I sense my arms forming the strokes as we were taught in squad for stroke correction, repeated so many times over so many years. I am amazed at what my body remembers. Swimming and the smell of chlorine for me is the memories of my best friend, my first kiss, training with my sister and my dad shouting encouragement from the sidelines. Sometimes when the water pounds in my ears and I am pushing myself to complete another lap, I think I can hear my dad’s voice and people cheering and the sun is shining and I am in Jamboree Heights, I am young and full of potential and promise. The finish line is within my sight, I am striving for the goal and I stretch out my arms, and I swim. .

Elizabeth Shield is a bicycle riding vegan baking frisbee throwing tambourine shaking zine creating peace seeking optimist. She has had some work published in an anthology – Sappho’s dreams and delights: Australian lesbian writing, as well as the Journal of Australian Social Work because she is a queer tree hugging do-gooder as well. Elizabeth has self-published a number of zines including “Not another Zine”, “Aftershock” and “The End”. She aims to have more time for writing and more sex, and start writing about sex. 

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