Look out for me

Not sure whether womazzle will continue.  Google seems bent on making access to it difficult.  

I will try to keep the site open, but this might just be my last post for now.   

I will be around though.  Somewhere.  

Look out for far out bits and pieces about this world and the one to come...

... IF.

PS Sunstruck

Years ago, our third child had just been born, I opened a gate to the outside world like a drowning person pushing open the door of a sinking car, and started a podcast with a friend. 

I did most of the editing at night, teaching myself Garageband and online publishing skills while frantically working away at my stories. 

I loved it – that sacred space of creativity and seemingly endless potential which I shared with my soul mate at the time, even though it meant adding to my already deadly fatigue and restlessness. 

We managed to publish four one hour-long episodes much in the format of This American Life by the irreverently funny Ira Glass.  

The domaine name has long since expired and so has the site that was hosting Sunstruck.  But the memory of the moments of crazed commitment working on a project with a friend and sharing the product with the world has stayed with me.  

What a great energy we had going!

Love you loads, Susan!!

It

Ultimately I think that men are rather one dimensional.  They get stuck with one idea, one thing that drives them, and that’s it.  If you are planning to spend a life-time together, it’s best to find out what that one thing is.  Baseball?  Trains  ?   Or possibly their job ?

With women it’s different.  They only seem truly happy, if everyone around them is happy.  “Happy” means different things for different people and what it is that makes people happy is basically impossibe to know.  Food is usually a good guess, but then, I know quite a few people, who get annoyed with that kind of nurturing over-mother thing.  End result:  Everyone is unhappy.  

Seems to me, that we really should start cracking on that third gender, that perfect balance...it would make a lot of things a whole lot easier!

Sleepless in bed...

Do you know the feeling?  You go to bed at midnight, tired and happy that you made it through another day without messing up the world too badly, only to wake up two hours later, knowing fair well, that you are toast. 

Nevertheless you go ahead and try to relax (because you know that’s your best bet): you focus on thinking soporific thoughts (does Rachel love Ross after all?), you imagine squirrels asleep in their nest, you feel your limbs seemingly getting heavier and you busily blot out anything that might make your heart rate speed up (chocolate consumption or account levels, software issues, lost stuff, and probably a large range of friends&family stuff as well) – until there is no way around accepting the fact that your bladder has slowly but surely been filling up and is now full to the rim so that you actually will have to get up. 

Lavishly cursing your lot, you get up and make your way down an underheated hallway and plop down on a chilly toilet seat with a sigh.

But sometimes, I have found, that that is actually a good thing to do.  Getting up.  It’s like a reboot.   Because when I eventually get back to bed, I actually want to be there to warm up my feet and give my wobbly circulation a break.

In fact it is much harder to go back to sleep at 5am.  But recently I didn’t have much need for that.

HEARTLESS

I usually recommend ample amounts of estrogen to be dissipated in the World’s war zones.  After almost five hundred posts it is most certainly no longer a secret that I believe that most atrocities are a result of some charging alpha male or wannabe.  

Truly it must be tricky to operate under the influence and I generally try to use every iota of empathetic ability available to me when approaching such a specimen, but I also struggle when trying to come to grips with the yang side of nature.  

That deadly need to please and to care about every little detail can be stifling.  And not only that, it can turn women into true tyrants of compliance!

And although their blows generally don’t kill on the spot, the poison injected at each strike can leave the victim sadly crippled.  

I can attest to being a healthy example of the estrogen troupe, but I have replaced most of my poison darts and bleeding heart rhetorics with a more pragmatic approach.  I have turned off my phone!  

The Chimp in Me

What helps at times is seeing the chimp in me:  Annabee, a 44 year old, alert female.  A loner of some sorts and best not be messed with.

Utopia Calling

Let us build a world where fearful men no longer make the rules and define the objectives, a world where the aggressive male has been reintegrated into a community of diverse and empathetic individuals in pursuit of their full potential.

Just Now

The children are sitting on the swing off the tall tree in the back of the garden. Their voices caress the wind and the sun light is dancing on their faces. The apple tree outside my window is clad in plump blossoms and for a moment I am inclined to forget all that needs mending. For a moment, it is just this, the moment itself. Just this one, just now.

Emotional Illiteracy

Needless to say, spending a lifetime with the same person requires a lot of readjustments. Finger pointing won’t get you very far, just as biting your tongue won’t. Part of the exercise will always consist of carefully taking an emotional inventory. That is by far the trickiest task, since emotions usually run alongside our daily all-important routines. They are shoved aside regularly, or else glossed over in photoshop albums and drowned in Shiraz and yet, as far as relationships are concerned, they are the most important factor to take into account when analyzing how successfully we relate to each other - especially over half a century. But they can be uncomfortable like tight shoes or traveling economy and so we tend to avoid facing them and hope that by avoiding them, by not even acknowledging their existence, they will go away. A common fallacy. Instead they fester and end up tormenting us like a rotten tooth. They foul up our lives, they impact our health and they usually mess up our relationships way before we end up on a couch. Understanding our emotional states and finding solutions to identified problems which will take into consideration the larger context is a real skill. In fact, it is part of what makes us human and yet, we mostly fail at it miserably.

Blame me...

Supposedly when relationships are grinding to a halt it is good to take a step back and survey the tangled mess from a safe distance. Negative patterns, recurring triggers and defense mechanisms might become more discernible that way. Supposedly, this makes it easier to find solutions that help break patterns and establish early warning systems so painful gridlocks can be prevented. But what if one side thrives on negativity? What if they feel bereft of their regular doses of adrenalin once the old patterns are under revision and the ready flow of bale dwindles? There are enough people, who love strife and the platform for vitriolic diatribe it provides for their ego and let me tell you, they won’t thank you for your thoughtful recalibration....

This Reminds Me...

The eye catches only a fraction of what is going on around us. We blink, we zoom in, we zone out and during all this time stuff is happening all around us. Our other senses try to fill in some of the gaps, our ears might take note of a car approaching although we haven’t spotted it yet. Our sense of smell might tell us that our neighbor is enjoying another night of barbecue while all we have in front of us is a slice of cold pizza. But more intriguingly, behind the world of senses, there is yet another information processor at work who diligently fills in the gaps. However, that one uses information based on our memory of past experiences. Unfortunately, that data base tends to be flawed, because memories are notoriously inaccurate. However, that does not discourage our left brain from actively producing scenarios that are as close to what might have happened as possible. Because, most of all, it likes a good story. The scary part is that everyone likes a good story and so we all amble through life with a rather sketchy concept of reality. Although designed to help us avoid repeat mistakes, this over zealous story teller can actually get us into trouble by alerting us when there is no reason for concern. It might tell us, for example, that our neighbor “always” barbecues on Sundays without “any” concern for others. Instead of completing the picture, our story telling brain is adding to it. It digs into our deep coffers of trauma and pain in trying to link the current experience to one of the past even if the match is not even close. While throughout evolution this principle must have kept us out of harms way, nowadays with our tightly knitted relations we tend to be overwhelmed with messages. Putting a lid on the chatter box may at times be a good idea.

Famdamily

After yet another round of frothing and snorting, a number of heartfeld stomps topped off by a good amount of kicking the dirt, I cannot help but laugh. Family is a wild beast.

Anger Management

When faced with cruelty, I don’t weep, I get angry. I rage and I stomp. I lash out and I roar. But in the end, sadness and anger are both siblings of the same underlying emotion. That emotion is fear. Generally speaking, we are afraid whenever we feel that we are not in control of our lives. We react by airing an array of secondary emotions including anger, sadness, disgust, and hatred. Whenever I review my WOMAZZLE posts I can see sparks of fiery fury fly and this is the reason why: As a woman I often feel completely out of control because I know that if I am thought to haved stepped out of the lines of “acceptable bahaviour” there might be some testosterone drunk monkey who can, and may, pounce on me. Just as I am writing this, thousands of women around the world are being raped, beaten, and killed. I know this to be true - and so do you. Try to manage THAT anger...

Too Close for Comfort

All the talk about detachment, bounderies, letting go, lowering expectations...it’s easier said than done.

And for those of us who are not akin to yoga, meditation or vows of silence, a long weekend with the family and even with friends can be a real trial. It’s good when it works out, but it’s also good when it’s over.

The truth is we do seem to get together because we deliberately seek to renew our bond with people in our lives whom we regard as important whether these are siblings, parents, friends, significant others or our children. And without really realizing it, we go into these reunions with a clear objective in mind:

We want it to work.

And that’s where the problem begins. Because as soon as we want something, there is also the fear that we might not get it and with fear there is coping.

We may not realize it, but most of our relationships put us into a coping mode. We either try to be especially fun, helpful, reserved, pleasant, accomodating, organized or flexible to make them work. And by doing so, we become tense and we convey that tenseness, because we are acting out of fear.

Consequently, these kinds of get togethers can be quite irritating as everyone is on their ‘best behavior’ and has their radar tuned in to detect any disturbances in the air, instead of approaching the situation with an open mind.

If we could stop wanting closeness, we probably would have more of it.

Mind of Steel

Marriage is probably something best left to the more job-oriented folks with preferably the least amount of emotional entanglement. Especially if the job involves caring for third parties, i.e. children. For that, a cool mind and good negotiating powers are paramount. Any sentimental weakness can quickly escalate even the smallest issue. Tidying up now or later, one bedtime story or two, my turn or hers...all of these marginal confilicts could be easily resolved with less emotional baggage rumbling along on the conveyer belt of family life. In fact, I would suggest that children might want to be rotated from one marriage arrangement to another to spend only a minimum of time with their biological parents. This would ensure the output of more independant, well-adjusted, problem-solving oriented human beings, fit to get into a cab at 2 am to catch the early flight out to be at the meeting on time to maximise rewards for the family enterprise while the partner single-mindedly and undeterred gets the other half of the job done, weekly activity coordination, household accounting, food allocation, cognitive development charts and oil change. Truly, who needs love when they have marriage?

Virtually Anywhere!!

Never before has the use of time been as much in our control as in this day and age. With the absence of wars and famines and the arrival of more and more time-saving contraptions over the last two centuries, people in industrialized nations are finally in the enviable position to be able to decide what to do with a good chunk of their time every day.

But choice has never come easy. What is the best way to spend the time, for instance, saved by shopping online instead of pushing one’s own cart through the ailes? Let’s say it amounts to about an hour a week that can be “gained” that way.

Suddenly, everything seems possible: a thirty-minute pilates workout, singing, yoga or maybe cranking out some home-made bread...

However, usually we simply end up doing more of what we’re doing already. In this case, we are most likely going to use that time to bounce around the virtual world a bit longer. We might check our mailbox, pay a quick visit to e-bay, or see what’s new at itunes. Or we may want to stop for a hand of poker, read the Financial Times, or watch a replay of last night’s game.

After all, it’s right there and most likely it won’t require a shower once we are finished with it. Virtual is quicker, cleaner and can be quite gratifying. That one hour has suddenly grown exponentially in it’s output. Instead of making one phone call to tell my friend that I am doing my groceries online now, I can post it on facebook and tell the whole world.

But just as the car brought everyone mobility and thereby the option to live farther away from work and extended family, what is happening today with every hour that we invest in a virtual environment, we are removed from the actual place that we inhabit.

We can be virtually anywhere and it’s up to us to make the best choice.

I am a believer!!!

Last week I thought it was all over. Some joint in my hip other than the hip joint (do I care to investigate further??) got stuck and so did I. It hurt like Rush Limbo and I had very clear visions of life in hell. In my utter agony, I sought advise from a witch doctor in the village, also known as cranial osteopath because she was the only one who could see me that day. The promise of someone acknowledging the years of abuse to my skeletal frame through pumping out children, hauling them around on one hip and installing them in car seats at all kinds of odd angles, seemed good enough to me to at least try this option.

Well, forty GBP and a few swift strokes above my mysterious energy lines later, I am healed. And amazingly enough, relieved not only of the obvious pains that brought me into her lemon grass imbued practice on a gusty October morning, but also of an incessant fatigue that had plagued me for months. Therefore, I can only encourage you that if you ever were to consider holding a gun to your head as a benign way out of your misery, you may want to consider looking up a cranial osteopath first...

Painfully Plain Pleasures

Theorists disagree about the number and quality of our basic emotions. Some list as many as eleven (Arnold), while others reduce their number to only four or five.

One study (Parrot 2001) lists six primary emotions, including love, joy, surprise, anger sadness, and fear which lead on to a longer list of secondary emotions such as longing, pride and exasperation, which again connect to an even larger list of tertiary emotions (for a complete listing go to changingminds.com).

I like to keep with Marrow' approach who limited the list to two basic emotions, pain and pleasure. However, I would like to qualify this by adding that both pleasure and pain often are merely anticipated. Whatever secondary or tertiary emotions may be connected to them, more often than not they are not based on the actual experience but rather on an perceived or anticipated experience.

Pain or the anticipation of pain is, of course, directly linked to our feeling of security and how we estimate our chances of survival.

Belonging to a group, being accepted and valued by its members, for instance, plays a very important role in our human evolution. This is true especially for women, who due to their vulnerability as physically generally weaker and reproductively more involved sex, have been (and in many environments still are) very dependent on protection through others.

According to this approach, anticipated pain, this underlying feeling of insecurity, can bring on all kinds of emotions, including those usually not linked to pain as for instance in the Stockholm Syndrom (love for an abductor). And, by the same token, it can help explain why in abusive relationships there often is much talk about love.

As to my own feeling this morning, they are definitely leaning more towards the side of pain. And yet, a vague but nevertheless powerful feeling of loneliness earlier today has been somewhat eleviated by a brisk morning walk across the fields with a few friendly faces along the way.

A funny thing happened...

Susan, my dear friend back in Costa Rica, is quite attached to the word “funny” - especially when it relates to the many unforseen events that life keeps shoving her way, you know, all that stuff that happens while one is busy making other plans...

It seems that having kids exponentially contributes to the amount of “stuff” that can happen any given moment. From little things like scraped knees and barfing pets to bigger stuff such as broken hearts and teeth all the way to the really big crap such as messed up relationships and empty coffres and then, of course, the general horror scenarios of sickness and inevitable death.

And while we usually keep a tight lid on the last category, it tends to linger quite effectively in the back of our minds to make us just a that bit more pathetic when dealing with the lesser upsets.

In fact, having kids and being responsible for them 24/7 is one big lesson in mind control.

So, when dealing with Addy’s Downs Syndrome and a non-supportive con ex, “funny” is probably a healthy way of putting it.

I love you, woman. Hang in there!

He Shall Wipe Away All Tears

Without a construct of eternity or rebirth of some kind, of power beyond our limited means, without a benign entity welcoming us and our loved ones into its bottomless pool of love and forgiveness, death is the end of all and the source of all fear.

That is unless we seek to accept our existence on earth with humility and understand our deaths as mere molecular events in a greater picture that we will never grasp.