Today, has opened my mind to the possibilities, and given me clues, strategies and the confidence, which I have lacked, to move forward with my writing. The pragmatic in me, enjoyed the tips, tricks and apps needed, all great to sit down, be grounded, and bloody well, write!

The confidence to pursue this, which until recently meant, following my nose and see what happens, has worked amazingly well, to this point. Now, the game has changed, and I want, really need, to take this, far more seriously. Forget all the old fears, of not wanting, to have an agenda. Really? As a freshly minted human being, I have both the right, and the desire to make this, possible.

My greatest desire in wanting to write, is to inspire people to be, themselves. Simply that! As Catherine put it so succinctly, today, “Is it going to kill anyone?” In my case, a resounding no! I have no desire to kill anyone. A waste of time and energy, when there is a life, to be lived. When an opportunity is presented, it needs to be realised. It needs to be seized, and not discounted by the ‘shoulds and fears’ which often placate and dumb down those, who see beyond, by the smiling, shiny suits. The suits educate themselves, to be beyond the law, by playing out their fears, pain and pleasure, to control the vulnerable, simply because they can.

I passionately want to break through all that, and know, I am well on the way. Believing, if nothing is said, nothing is done. If, to sit back with a world weary view of – “It has always been that way.” Really? Bullshit! I believe anything which can be done, can be undone, with persistence, patience, experience, wisdom, discernment, and throwing in an expletive or two, such a well aimed and timed FUCK. When an awakening occurs, sleeping mountains have the capacity to effect substantial change.

Do I have your attention? Good, now to begin….

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS, a frightened, sullen little boy, dressed in men’s clothing, digging, digging, digging. He went about his business, with the calm exterior of a well organised, functioning machine. Polished and professional, charming and covertly caring, searching and destroying, devouring everything of value, which most people would hold dear. He did this, by trapping. Observation and cunning, being the tools. Anyone and anything, which took his fancy, was game, his game!

It did not matter, what form the prey took. Like any arcade or video game, the greater the value, the higher the prize, so the conquest was best, especially dealing with the attributes of someone, most people would consider decent. The prize was inconsequential, the quest for supply was paramount, beyond that, it was meaningless amusement.

Taking this on, taking this in, scheming and plotting.

EVERYDAY, without fail, another scheme hatched, more innuendos planned dispatched, and disseminated. Stealth by silence. The web growing wider, controlled by fear and silence. Closing in – trapped! Separate, divide and conquer, isolate and manipulate, intimidate the enablers through the subtle intimidation of what you could expect, should you mix in.

ONE DAY, a woman came into range, smart and vulnerable. She knew something was wrong. Truly wrong, and not understanding the depth of fear, control, or even understanding, why it should be necessary. She, eventually became silent, troubled, questioning, wondering. Not knowing that in reality, this was the single, best strategy for her survival. The smart, young smiling suits, surrounded by fellow suits could not prise her open, to destroy her, any further. She did not realise their need, to travel in tribes, supporting each other. Now, understanding, the courage it takes to be an individual.

BECAUSE OF THAT, she went down an enormous rabbit hole, so wide, deep and long, Frightening, as there were no boundaries, no rules, no perspective. Simply chaos and nonsense. She thought the world was mad, and they continued saying, it was her. Deep down, she felt her world was mad, and it was not her.

She knew one day, she would make her way out. That was all. There was no timeline, no parameters, no tools, discussion or encouragement. Just, an unshakeable belief, something here, was not Kosher. Silence became habitual, and went onto automatic pilot. Then, began to free fall, between all the cracks in the system, silently and alone. Desperately, she thought, “When will this ever end? Why is this happening?”

BECAUSE OF THAT, the problems compounded as the diagnoses mounted, the traumas unspoken, always active and unaddressed. When will this ever end? Intention and motivation was not the problem, choice and awareness certainly was. Will this ever end?

UNTIL FINALLY, with a hollow, silent scream of desperation, she plunged into a vortex of transformation, a trajectory of healing, so complete and significantly foreign. She knew, she simply had to wade in, face the lot, and deal with whatever came, her way.

Finding out, as her silences were being revealed, instinctively, she had been right, at the most basic level.  She also understood, however disadvantaged, she had been, this was her liberation. Her belief of “to everything, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Questioning again, could this be truly playing out? In retrieving the bits and pieces to create her life, craft this for herself, and return to her being, she realised, with a sickening and freeing thud – this was not her circus!

The table is honey coloured kauri, with turned wooden legs and tiny pinholes on its surface from when it was once used as an architect’s workbench. At one end there is a square bolt. A crank handle attaches onto it, and turns to lengthen or shorten the table, allowing panels to be inserted or removed. It has never been shortened. Even now, with just the two of them in the house, it stands, ready to seat ten people.

The table is at the centre of the house, literally and figuratively. It sits in the middle of the large kitchen, with The Crucifix, Mary, and the Saints on the Columban Calendar watching over it from the walls. It was present for the ordinary, the important, the mundane and the life changing. Secrets were kept or told at it, there were fights and reconciliations, truths and lies, tears, laughter, love and hate. Babies were bathed, changed, and fed on it: eight babies in all, in 1950s and 1960s Christchurch.

At dinnertime, Grace was said at ever increasing speeds by the father, Dan, until he finally swallowed the entire prayer in one mouthful that took him less than 3 seconds to say: “BlessusOhLordandthesethygiftswhichofthybountyweareabouttoreceivethroughchristourlordamen”. Grace was the calm before the storm and the signal for the feeding frenzy to begin. Food that was liked was inhaled and unwanted food was passed covertly between siblings: Brussels sprouts in exchange for carrots, peas for corn, corned beef for cabbage. They guarded their flanks – there was always a danger of some bugger stealing your last roast potato (and once, an oyster) off your plate. That particular incident achieved legendary status in family lore. Even those who had not been born or were not old enough to remember, know every detail; of the overwhelming temptation of that oyster (an unheard of luxury) and the uproar its theft unleashed. In the 1970s a dog circled the table at mealtimes. His paws clicked against the linoleum like a metronome, waiting for any morsel to accidentally, or purposefully, drop.

Mountains of food were prepared and served on the table. Baking was cooled on it, meat was minced or breadcrumbs made with the hand mincer, which would be screwed onto one end. Every summer there was a production line of food preservation. They came home from school to the smell of tomatoes being made into sauce or relish, raspberry jam simmering or peaches and apricots being bottled. They were well acquainted with the paraphernalia and process of the production line, and they knew not to touch the pristine bottling jars or the lid seals sterilised with boiling water. Filled jars of jams and preserves were lined up on the table like soldiers on parade. Food was bought, grown, sorted, prepared and made in bulk. Trays holding three dozen eggs each were stacked into towers. Twelve pints of milk were left each morning by the milkman, and a side of hogget was devoured each week. Bread for the morning school lunch preparation covered every flat surface in the kitchen. Endless pots of tea were made: oceans of tea.

Margaret was a dressmaker who made clothes for herself and the eight children. It was out of pure financial necessity in the early days. Having grown up during the depression and war, Margaret was a product of the school of hard work and no nonsense practicality, enforced by a particularly unpleasant step-mother. She felt the loss of her mother, who had died when Margaret was nine months old, profoundly her whole life. She was a devout Catholic and Dan had become a Catholic in order to marry her. Some in his dry, Methodist family were less than impressed when he married an Irish Catholic publican’s daughter in 1953.

The sewing machine would be set up at one end of the table and Margaret would sew late into the night. Mary couldn’t get to sleep without the familiar low hum of the sewing machine. Later on, when there was a little more money, Margaret still sewed but more out of being practical and even out of a little pride. Patterns were trimmed on the table then arranged on fabric to be cut out. They stood on the table while hems were pinned and trousers were taken up.

Never ending laundry was sorted on the table, into piles like a city skyline. The skyline would be dismantled and put away only to return the following day. It expanded over the years into an urban sprawl of singlets, socks, shirts and undies. Once a week nine pairs of sheets would billow on the washing lines like an armada of ships under full sail.

They grew up around the table, reading stories, drawing pictures, playing games and learning spelling and long division then graduating on to algebra, essays, and verb conjugations. Checkers and Monopoly became Chess and Five Hundred. Friends, boyfriends and girlfriends arrived on motorbikes and in cars with beer and cigarettes for parties, or more often, to take the teenagers out of the house away from the watchful eye of the parents –and of Mary and all the saints.

As the production line of food and laundry slowed down it gave way to more time for Margaret. She had time to sit at the table and actually read the newspaper and solve the crossword or read a book; luxuries she had given up for years in order to do everything else. Dan retired and found himself at the table too. It took a while for them to realise there was room enough for both of them.

Margaret sat down on Sunday nights to write letters, a boarding school habit, to her children as they left home and moved further away. Most of them didn’t have the letter-writing discipline she did and many of her letters started with “Dear Paul/Jane/Frances/Mary/Patrick/Neil/Gerard/Kathleen, “It’s been such a long time since we have heard from you….” Cue guilt. Her letters were full of details of the house, the baking, who was doing what, whether Daphne or Freesias from the garden were in the vase on the table, who she had seen at Mass. The recipients had mixed feelings on receiving these letters at different times in their lives: the angry 20 year old who couldn’t get far enough away, the homesick 30 year old half way across the world, the new parent desperately trying to remember “what did mum do?” for a baby with colic. As time went on the words, “Do you remember ‘such and such’? Well, they died last week”, became more common. News of weddings and baptisms were replaced with details of wakes and funerals.

The four of them sitting at the table that Tuesday lunchtime as the earthquake struck, thought they were going to die, as they clung on to it like a lifeboat and the earth heaved up and flung them around like rag dolls. But they, and it, survived. Family and friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives have come and gone. A young couple became an old couple and eight babies became eight adults. The table sits, constant in the kitchen.

“I can’t believe how stupid some people can be and that I let them make me lose confidence in myself – pass the M&Ms.”  – Noelle

“He just presented my training plan to the committee as his own work, but he stuffed up the theory and called it the 70:30:10 model – he wrote it on the slide and everything – AND NO ONE NOTICED…”  – Eliza

“We’ve just sat in a strategy meeting with five IT professionals for over an hour.  No agenda, no actions, just an ego-fest of technical jargon one-upmanship.  One of them actually said to solve the problem we’d have to “eat the elephant, one bite at a time.”  Every time we tried to ask a question or get back on track we were talked down.” – Noelle

 “At the end of the hour the blokes had “squeezed the lemon dry” and were high-fiving themselves over how well they were taking carriage of the situation on the way to the coffee shop.  Everything relevant to the purpose of the meeting had been taken off-line and parked in the car park before needing to be added to the swim lane on the PMO wall by the overworked project co-ordinator.” Eliza

This has been a standard day for Noelle and Eliza – EVERY DAY FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS.   Their collegial friendship is made invincible by daily venting and the number of  “Oh Fuck Off’s” they have incredulously shared.

Together their work is spectacular.  Creative, detailed, and awesome. But has anyone actually noticed? Can they survive another restructure and a manager who bans talking in the workplace?  Why can’t they leave?

Solutioning.  A TV comedy. Such diabolical bad behaviour in the workplace, it’s laughable.

 

I don’t write because I want to write. I write because I need to write. Writing is how I collect my own thoughts, how I frame my own ideas, how I work through my own shit. If I stop writing then I don’t know how else to process my own thoughts. Whether it’s writing a diary, or blog post, or even just lengthy Facebook status. It helps me think, focus, and make some sense of the mess and noise that goes on inside my head most of the time.

But writing it purely for myself – for no one else to ever read – isn’t enough, because tossing my own ideas back and forth between myself feels a little bit pointless.

Sometimes after I’ve written something and I read it back to myself I wish I’d written it sooner – so I could have read it sooner. And I think my own ideas could be helpful to someone else, or more importantly be something that someone else can relate with or connect to.

Because if I can achieve absolutely nothing else with my writing all I would want is to connect with people and have someone read something I’ve written and say “Me too”.

Check out Rachel’s fabulous blog Parenting Central here.

Hagrid danced as best he could – he would live to throb another day.

Viv understood why she got into trouble. They made sure they spelled it out. They had also made sure that she would never forget. She had run back to her room and crawled under the covers. There she silently howled. It wasn’t long before she returned to the kitchen. She swiped some stale biscuits, stuffed them into her rucksack, and then headed outside. It always helped her feel better being out in the open and away from the house where the walls squeezed her in so hard she felt her chest compress into stone, making her insides heavy and black. Outside was the remedy, even though lately events out here were starting to worry her as much as the stuff going on inside the house.

Stomping to the rhythm of her pounding heart, she crossed the park down the street. She didn’t expect to see him there.

“Why didn’t you come to see me?” he asked.

“I was held up. They found out.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Down the track they came across the sign they had been looking for. The animal had been dead a short while. Picked apart by something and now all manner of insects had started to swarm. The sight made Viv want to vomit.

“Don’t touch it, Ben. That’s foul.” But Ben already had a stick and was poking it in its guts.

                         “I just want to make sure,” he whispered. Looking up sharply he pointed to something in the distance. “I think we should head there.” Following his lead, Viv stayed close to Ben’s heels as they cut across into the wooded section of park. It was late afternoon and the light here dissipated into bottomless shadows. Viv couldn’t deny that this place creeped her out. She would never have come here alone. Ben pretended to be the brave one, but a look of worry darkened his eyes. Now that the others knew, their time was up. No more guesses, no more theories. They just had to bite the bullet and chase. That was the only way to find out the truth.

The deeper in they went the more curious Viv felt. It was like now that she was in the thick of it, a different person was appearing. As Ben began to fade into a hapless ghost, Viv stepped forward to lead the charge. There was no turning back now. Back at the house she would lose everything, all privileges gone. This will be her last chance and she wasn’t going to back down no matter how terrifying the prospect of facing this creature was. It was time to get to the bottom of this thing and find out what exactly was doing the killing. Squinting her eyes she paused and held her breath.

Viv sensed the movement first and ducked to the right. It whooshed past her left ear and hit Ben’s shoulder full force and threw him to the ground. There was no way he could see it coming as he hid behind his friend. Viv lost her footing and precious seconds as she stumbled to catch herself. By this time Ben was up and they both set for the chase. As it weaved through the tall trees the creature seemed like a shadow in the fading light. It was fast, too. And soon enough it was out of sight. It all happened so fast, neither had the chance to fully grasp what they had seen. They both knew, however, that it was not something that they had ever seen before. Not in real life.

“Was that for real?” wheezed Ben. His breathing started to shut down in the cold air and after all that running.

“I have no idea, ” said Viv. Her breath condensed in front of her as she spoke. “No matter what they say back at the house, we have got to work this out.”