Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Post One Hundred and Twenty Six: Perspective - The Ball Breaker.



I'm having a hard time. Being honest with yourself is a real b*stard of an experience really isn't it?.

This last week in particular has been challenging. I'm heartbroken. I'm miserable. I feel like crawling away into a cavern for a few months, letting my underarm hairs dread and my tear ducts open and stream continuously until my body is a withered empty and indecipherable membrane. A hairy one at that. Do we have caverns in Brisbane? Surely.

And then I stop and look at what is happening around me, in my hands and at my side. I'm not dead. My friends on my table most certainly are. They've had car accidents, heart attacks, cancers and strokes and all I have is a bruised and tender ego. Woe is NOT me.

The perspective I get as a mortician is a unique and precious job perk. I guess police and emergency service people would understand it too. Even when I'm sad, other people are much much sadder with due reason. I am not as lost as I feel.

Peace and love (and a promise for something uplifting next time),
S.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Post One Hundred and Twenty Five: Three Hundred and Sixty Five.



A year of death and a year of thoughts and reflections as a chain reaction. You like?

Today is this here blogs birthday. Hip hip hoorah!

I've matured just a little bit this year because of the blog. I think. Weird huh.

I have a more responsive emotional acknowledgment of death. I still don't get it though. As such I have comprehended this much: We live, and then we die, and we generally have at least one person that cares about the fact that we do. I will review this lesson in another 365 days.

Anyway, I've shared more about my thoughts and feelings to a wider audience than I ever thought possible. My CEO recently told me that he reads my entries (Hi Boss, thanks for being open minded enough to give me the green light to write what I do, gracias!).

Good times. I've travelled, I've met great people, I've cried alot, and I've opened my heart.

I'm going to celebrate feeling so exposed. It's a very beneficial thing. Come party with me tonight, 7PM at the Beetle Bar in Brisbane. It's also my friends birthday so it'll be fun times all round. Bands, beer and probably a few sets of boobs.

Peace and love until it does indeed kill me,
S.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Post One Hundred and Twenty Four: I Went There.



I think I was kicked in the back by a ghost. Seriously. Kicked or pushed. Either way, I was moved forward with unexplainable force. It's serious X-Files shit.

I stacked it in the fridge pretty badly really. It makes no sense, but I'm sure that the full house of 20 odd corpses were laughing in their not yet buried bones. It would've been a sight to behold, (if ghosts continue to possess that ability). Knees cracking to the cold concrete, arms flailing, I had my first official 'fall' as a sober adult and feel very much like an idiot. Story checks out that you can be shamed by the dead.

The next few weeks are going to be a challenge with a smashed knee, messed up hip and gammy arm. I'm a hodgepodge of pain. It's not like I have to move dead weight around constantly, right? Or, at least I'm not actually dead.

Still, FAIL.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Post One Hundred and Twenty-Three: The Act of Giving and Receiving.



I want to believe that we had a ghost in the mortuary today.

I'm usually skeptical, but I like to imagine that he held a voice of reason. The stereo in the embalming room kept dropping out of signal and the volume jumping wildly. Interestingly, we had a young guy in our care and I think he just wanted to mess around with the tunes and show off his casper skills.

As I worked around him, I wondered if he could give me any advice. I'm peculiar. I'd never ask a stranger that was alive for tips on my personal quandaries. I questioned, in his short life what did he learn about love? What did he share with his closest companies?

What does it mean to connect with someone? And does it necessarily mean anything if we do?

I realised something pretty lousy about my own experience. I don't understand love. I don't understand the sustainability of intimacy in one relationship if culture promotes living in truth and freedom. One in every three marriages end in divorce, so why do so many people do it? Is it stability? Is it comfort? Is it settlement? Is it fantasy? Is it real?

I want to believe in love. I'm usually skeptical.

S.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Post One Hundred and Twenty-Two: Dear S.



I'm in a mind pickle. As kids are seemingly growing up quicker these days, is the 'mid-life crisis' phenomena coming earlier by a couple of decades? Or, in a fatalist approach, is my lifespan destined to be short, thus drawing my particular freak out nearer than usual? I'm at a crossroads. A pickle crossroads.

Perhaps my anxieties of late are born from a cumulation of pressures from my job. That's what my reasonable mind suggests. It sucks, but I am feeling a little down lately about, well, about grief. I'm grieving about grief. The mind of a mortician seems to be a murky place.

On the weekend I attended the Brisbane excursion for the Melbourne-based Women of Letters event. I don't know why I hadn't heard of it sooner, as I've been known to fancy the odd pen pal correspondence in the not too distant past. That, and I fancy the co-curator Marieke Hardy. What self-honest individual (male or female) doesn't.

Anyway, the event brings together writers, comedians, musicians, pollies and generally awesome women to share happy/funny/sad/inspiring stories and celebrate writing. It's a fucking brilliant idea, and one that makes me happy that I have a brain and a heartbeat. Story telling in a relaxed, supportive and creative network. Check out the link anyway, the more people who attend and love it will balance out the dicks in the country (Dicks of the personality type, not the sexual organ. Men are cordially invited to be in the audience too).

http://womenofletters.com.au/

Event details aside, I've been inspired to write myself a short letter. Forgive me for the self indulgence. To myself, whose heart and mind seem to be having trouble communicating with each other:

Dear Sarah,

Wassup! Really, what is up?

As yourself, to yourself, you really need to take some McCain advertising advice and look after yourself. Eat more fruit, you love it but you're lazy and just because it perishes it doesn't excuse you from not eating it more regularly. Quit the whining about register lines in the supermarket too. You're being a troll. Quit that and the road rage. You drive slower than most people anyway so you're a laughable contradiction.

As such, chill the f*ck out. I am proud of what you do for others, you are proud of you, but don't take on more than you need to. You understand what death is, and just because you touch cancer and illness and injury, it doesn't mean that you are on the table or suffer from these things right now. It will happen, in some way, but not now and probably not soon. Do not live in fear. You can, but you don't need to and things will be much more fun if you understand this. Also, you might make them look alive, but you can't bring them back. Don't say sorry to them. You are an observer and you offer a ridiculously odd customer service. As always, observe your feelings but don't let them rule you without reason.

To prevent an early demise of yourself, stop wasting your money on gin and goon. If you want travel and it's associated lessons, you can't have an open pocket for beer either. It's that simple. Also, you do make an idiot of yourself when you pass out at parties now. You are getting older and you look less attractive munted. Trust yourself.

Go to London, study freedom and excess. Go to America and study even more excess. Then go and help more people. Anywhere. I think this is what you want to do and, like science, it is the best tentative plan.

Forgive those that didn't give you a good chance early on, and appreciate those who give you a chance now. Also, eat more cheese. And learn the piano. Together, at once.

You are your own, in a group of others. Find diversity.

Peace and love,
S.

(I feel much better, thank you).