by Kirsten Macdonald | Kirsten Macdonald
1987 was the year of Dirty Dancing, Lost boys and Nightmare on Elm Street. It was the year Robin Williams screamed Good Morning Vietnam and the term bunny boiler was coined from Fatal Attraction.
’87 was the year Ben Mendelsohn debuted in The Year my Voice Broke and when Scott and Charlene were married to the serenade of Angry Anderson singing Suddenly.
How I looked at Ramsay Street with unadulterated envy.
My street was nothing like that. I’m not sure that everybody needed a neighbour in our little stretch. Just a friendly wave each morning, helps to make a better day, next door is only a footstep away. Are you humming it yet?
When I was a kid, Mum gave me all of the 1 and 2 cent coins in the house in a little bag to go down and get things from the corner shop. It wasn’t far. Just at the end of my street, but it was the adventure of a lifetime every time.
Walking past the scary old guy on the corner was freaky, he would just sit there staring into nothingness, but his ability to urinate into the garden and spit meaner than a pissed off donkey was impressive. I often wondered what he was looking at, and I am not going to lie, his wiry white hair and grunting made me nervous. You just couldn’t trust a grown-up who could spit like that; it wasn’t natural.
The next stretch was the empty block with very long grass.
Now if you grew up in the Australian countryside, a block with long grass on a hot summer day could spell trouble. A small rustling sound in the dry husks could signify an early demise, for surely it was a brown snake or a red belly black ready to have a feed and snuff you out. Thankfully I was skin and bone, not much to eat. Too bony and crunchy for the likes of a Joe Blake. Even so, I could recall how quickly the adults jumped during Friday night drinks when one slithered in under the bar stools. You could understand my nervous hesitation.
Melting bitumen was the order of the day, the stuff that made your thongs tacky (melting rubber), with heat hovering over it like an invisible man hologram. Man, that was a hot potato, do you remember going to the local pool and having to hot step it with wet feet on hot concrete? Ouch.
Then there were the hoons.
Young men amped up with testosterone and P-plates, armed with their dole money chucking laps in their Toranas or Datsuns with White Snake pumping out of the cassette decks like an audio bomb. This was no Bose finesse doof doof folks. This was Uncle Mick’s old Clarion tape deck with second-hand Alpine speakers, wires gaffa taped to the carpet. Rockin soul right there.
They would yell things out, awful things I didn’t know what they meant. Later I did, and they should have had their mouths washed out. Uncouth Youth from the other side of the tracks.
The ticker of front lawns sprinklers with garden gnomes standing sentry would guard my path.
Eventually, I worked out I needed a distraction.
I found myself impersonating my idol, the mentor of my life and the keeper of my dreams and ambitions Jana Wendt. Good grief the woman was a shitstorm in a teacup. Nicknamed the perfumed steamroller by her male counterparts, I had never seen anything like her. She was so smart, she had an excellent vocabulary and got to interview lots of interesting people. Her curly questions to men were the best bits. Kids watched He-man, I watched Jana. During the Fitgerald inquiry, her ability to break down to the facts and cut through BS was dynamite. I had no idea what the Fitgerald inquiry was about, the only Fitzgerald’s I knew was Fitzy’s, the local supermarket. But she was better than scrunchies and Debra Harry, she was smart, and she got to ask cool questions.
So I would copy her mannerisms, tilt my head in a certain way, practise my voice pitch, my look of serious contemplation and oh yesses, yes of courses, and I understand and interview the world’s greatest. One time I was interviewing Muhammad Ali about the San Diego bust-up, and I would often have fascinating in-depth discussions with Michael Jackson and his opinion about Jacques Chirac’s deal to open a new Disney in France. MJ was the expert on amusement parks. I longed to meet his chimp and get the moonwalk- slight- heel turn spot on. This was the icing on the cake for a future author/ballerina/news anchor.
There was one time the year before, and my then step-father gave my cousin of awesomeness and me the task of going to the tuckshop to get supplies of some nature.
All he could find was a one-dollar note. This cousin of mine was the Joan of Arc to my Jana. Fearless and mighty she could give sass to a grown-up at 200 paces. Now kids, back in those days a one-dollar note was 100 of those 1 cent coins, and a 1 cent coin could buy a lolly. We entered with the clang of the shop bell, the sugary hot chip and newspaper scent greeting us. A slight glint of the sun outside illuminated the glass case to our right. Heaven descended upon us, a case filled with treasures of musk sticks, bananas, caramel drops and sherbert bombs, milky bottles and Big Boss cigars.
Three things happened simultaneously so fast it was breathtaking. My cousin reminded me of our secret cousin nod, that we possessed the ability at that moment to purchase ONE HUNDRED OF THEM, the shopkeeper asked “ What do you kids want?” like a Scooby-Doo classic, and my mouth watered. It was a trinity of circumstance out of my control.
All thoughts for fulfilling our quest for my step-father’s goodies evaporated quicker than you could say chocolate freckle. We bought a paper bag so large we could barely hold it. I cannot remember if I ever got into trouble, the memories must have been overcome with Jube Hallucinations. The rebellious joy of it was almost too much to handle.
On many my interview walks by myself, carrying the big heavy bag of treasure, bypassing hoons and snake-infested paddocks, I would cross the last path of fear. Jumping the cracks in the footpath and ignoring the Magpies as they sharpened their beaks on the branches like Samurais sharpening lethal swords. There was a house with The DOG. A big brown fence was the only thing keeping me away from a Rottweiler the size of Kong. He didn’t care that I was an 11-year-old bag of bones, he wanted to eat me. You could literally hear his foamy spit. Have you heard spit before? Between old mate over the road and the Rottweiller, it was a freakin spit parade. So I would pretend he was Joh Bjelke Petterson and I would give him a Jana -what for’ as I ran a stick across the fence.
At the shop, the lady looked at me and smile with an “oh poor love” look. She must have recognized my frustration at being a Pulitzer prize winner in an 11-year old’s body stuck in the Bronx.
Flash-forward 30 years later, and childhood is a vast haze a whole dimension away from conscious thought. A family created. A move to the big smoke. Some brain surgery, many near-death moments, a few strokes, some blindness, 160 staples, a few bolts and plates, some recovery, a scattering of seizures, a dash of epilepsy thrown in with narcolepsy and the survival resilience of a cockroach…
Then it happened.
I was sitting in my office and doing a phone interview with Prof. Fiona Wood. I was interviewing this terrifically skilled human who not only saves lives but is the Marie Curie of scar technology in the world. The world! Gosh moment I can tell you.
About ¾ of the way through, Fiona told me something incredibly witty and funny, and it must have been the tilt of my head with an aha-combo and a ‘yes I see” response that caused it. I am not entirely sure. Still, suddenly I was transported back into the moment of crack-jumping, snake avoiding, Jana interviewing Thug Life. My apprenticeship worked, it happened. I realized that at that moment, I held in my hands a dream realized, and it was bloody amazing.
Jana Wendt if you are out there somewhere: you are my hero and rescuer from White Snake ballads and $2.50 worth of hot chips in 1 cent pieces.
Welcome to Ponderings
by Kirsten Macdonald | Kirsten Macdonald
Last week I took a deep breath and I remembered a story about a bear. It gave me the idea for a series of blogs I shall call:
10 steps to feeling chipper when possible impending doom is breathing down your neck– or Chronicles of an ‘Over-Sharer’? I will let you decide
Step One: Give Up Your Day Job…or Not.
When one decides to Give up Their Day Job; they must be absolutely certain that none of their ego and identity pleaser is attached to the afore-mentioned day job, they cannot have any personal identity attached to the said career and must relinquish it immediately in order to survive; regardless of bills or financial concern…said no one ever.
What sort of deluded self respecting over achiever does this? We all dream and fantasize sometimes about not working…but me? I am a worker bee with a mission to succeed baby. I am a power source of success, eponymous with entrepreneurial flare and know how. This team of pizazz has taken sales of three zeros and turned em into 6’s. The old adage Hard work = Success. You can’t take the elevator to success you have to take the stairs… Ok I am talking smack. But I am a hard worker and this hard work has apparently paid off handsomely in every aspect of my life.
Doing what you love makes hard work even easier. So you fall in love with your work, your art and a relationship of attachment is formed. Its pretty simple. I made mine so accessible my studio is on our property, my children have had full access to me throughout this 11 year career, I’ve completely molded it around our family, so its not caused any hassles nor complaints. It has been the perfect love; giving and giving so much.
Now, I am just going to Give it up.
All of it.
The financial income, the personal fulfilment, the being in charge, leaving Return-on-relationship -investments hanging off a cliff with one finger, business conferences of mind blowing excitement left in a dusty corner, a design portfolio stack most would dream of hanging by its ankles on the clothesline fading in the sun…and I am going to Give it All Up.
More disposable income from excellent business practices
Give it up
Holiday to Noosa…give it up…
Cool business networking groups…
Give it up…
Means of $ philanthropy to others less fortunate…Give it Up (the worst one)
Then when you give it up, be prepared for others to say
“You can’t give it up! You’ve taken so long to build this, this is you !”
Total and utter attachment to the endth degree.
So what deluded numbskull would give this up indefinitely? Me. And it hurt.
Why did it hurt? Because I was as ATTACHED to this love of my life as a Kardashian to a selfie stick.
Attachment is a funny word isn’t it? But what does it mean?
According to the Oxford Dic- it’s a Noun- always a good start and it means; an extra part or extension that is or may be attached to something to perform a particular function. A bond, closeness, devotion, loyalty.
Yup. I know that word well.
I was loyal to my business, dedicated to it, devoted to it, bonded to it and it became an extension of me. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when one surmises that if they don’t do some serious healing they are going to be non existent on this earthly plane it calls for priority making and heavy decisions. My need for rest and concentration on wellness has to take the first priority due to the whole impending doom gig, so unless I wanted to dive headfirst into depression caused by this loving attachment I had to learn how to rest properly and effectively and dis-attach myself from work.
The only time in my adult life that I have rested fully was in rehabilitation after a Craniotomy in 2012. For those that don’t know that part of my story, I was left blind after an epic 9 hour surgery with 106 skull drill holes to heal, a brain chopped through the middle with hundreds of stitches, concrete pieces, titanium, acrylic and pins holding it together like a Mary Shelley- Frankenstein daydream and a need to learn to walk again.
This took quite a few months of hospitalization. You kind of have to rest with that going on, its not much of an option. But yours truly on imposed rest just squeezed all that energy through another door. Like Brain fluid; I still leak a bit of that at times. Women talk about bladder control, mine’s cerebral control. I tried crossing my eyes but it didn’t turn out so good… (my bad)
Within a few weeks of “rehab rest” I was brainstorming on steroids, literally. I came up with new business ideas, a new candle range, new designs, 4 patents, talked my husband into buying a new business, planned holidays. I was like a fart in a bottle.
Then the restless part crept in, and I started coming up with ideas of fun. This was tricky due the being blind part.
An example of this side tracked energy is one particular escapade; one morning in rehab I was craving a coffee and I really wanted to eat a Yoyo biscuit. I have a thing for these little morsels of delight. I was getting really annoyed with my lack of independence, needing to be showered, walked everywhere, I was reliant on others for every little thing. I had just got to the stage whereby walking had progressed to a graceful zombie shuffle with the assistance of my trusted steed- the walking frame.
So I got dressed in plain clothes (I still wonder to this day if they were in the right way) grabbed my trusty wonder of wheels and skiddadled – or zombie shuffled quickly- around the corner of my ward to the hospital coffee shop. I honed in my auditory skills following the sound of coffee machines and sweet scent of cake. I ordered my goodies, waited for them to be made, anxiously waiting for someone to notice the escape artistry, then carefully placed them on the seat of my walking frame and crept back to my room with a grin that would dazzle New York. I was like creepin Jesus. I couldn’t stop laughing to myself and thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. Bragging rights resulted in being told off by worried staff and family.
Quick side story- With one exception I have this gorgeous cousin who has been my partner in crime since birth. We once played hide and seek with my Nanna without telling her. Police got involved. It was fun at the time. She was the ultimate disruptor at age 11 and I was her Robin. She is my eternal ratbag- in- arms, my sœur effrontée, so imagine my delight when the coffee shop manager popped his head into my hospital room and asked if I was Kirsten; because he had a Gift from “Cuz”; a $50 coffee voucher with a message to Keep up the Escape Work and Don’t let the Team down; the joy this gave was MISCHIEF FUN x 10. I never get sick of telling this story. Note; Don’t ever underestimate the healing power of humor when recovering from brain trauma.
My whole adult life -just about every micro energy unit goes into my family and my business with a little bit of time spent on study and getting better so no one worries about me, and then subconsciously filling in the gaps with endevours.
So given that since energy is inversely proportional to wavelength from the equation:
E= hv=( hc / l ) X TimeforSelf =Jack + Shit.
More than a decade learning mindfulness, meditation, yoga, theology, philosophy and yet here I was consumed by everything other than healing my Self. These practices were foundational and without even realizing it they had been a trickling investment for stability and resilience. A tool chest for overcoming obstacles if you like but on a bigger scale again. With an impending possible doomsday brain explosion though; there’s no time like the present to change things up a bit.
The action of un-attaching gently from the running of the day to day of my business, handing the reigns over to my manager (otherwise known as brother) including unravelling layers I didn’t actually realize were hiding. It has been harder than I ever imagined it to be. There was a word mentioned- Control. What else was I attached to? It appears the attachment to Earning One’s Happiness layer popped up, otherwise known as Entitlement Issue #482.
See the thing is, I thought I had earned my stripes already. The whole learning to walk again, re-firing the neurons again thing, using your feet again thing, walking laps for months, painful exercises, a year of retraining and 3 years of hard work to finally reach a place of contented happiness was a stripes earning feat. I ran a marathon to raise money for Vision Australia as a milestone event for my kids to witness my return to the living and to give thanks for all that joy. I earned my right to be joyful, to be excited by life, to be happy. You see what I did? I worked hard. I worked really hard and I gained good things from working that hard. I learned so much along that road, don’t we all? How could I not have? But this hard work deep seated belief sat close to my heart in a non-obvious way. I was the biggest advocate in the world for working smarter not harder and yet at my core was this Hard Work ethic.
Hard work pays off. In life and business. And this not-this-AGAIN situation, well its just…well this isn’t karma. This is cruel. Are you ready for it readers, here is comes… WHY ME? This is NOT FAIR. Why did it happen? I don’t deserve this…
Well just cos. It just did. Now watchya gonna do about it?
This punched in the sternum feeling, breath strangling moment was either going to break me into a million little pieces or create another opportunity for wisdom and expression or.. in the words of CS Lewis-
“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched, cracked or go bad.”
It was time to get hatched and do so promptly. Humpty Dumpty style. The Kings horses and Neuro-team cannot put me back together again, so its DIY time.
I was going to have to work hard again. Or was I?
The moment I escaped, became completely still within a natural environment, breathed in deeply and mindfully it became crystal clear that I had forgotten my Self.
sɛlf/noun
- 1.a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.”our alienation from our true selves”
What if I were to tell you that it isn’t hard work that gets us to Self. How did I forget? A busy mind forgets. This is the truth. Every single thing you ever need to know that you need resides within you and your Upstairs-deep inside Self, your instinctive Barometer, your Reminder-of-what-you-need Manual. I am not talking about what you Want. But as a human being, what you need is answered clearly from within your own Answer Box deep within that is connected.
Because being instinctive isn’t hard work, you just have to create the space to activate it. It isn’t brain science is it?
We are a species with mass social amnesia. I think we forget the species bit at times, the human race has a habit of placing itself above and beyond natural order; with an idealogy of success stomping on an all too tolerant earth. Many are the all powerful beings at the top of the food chain, holding dominion over the planet. But we are a species with instincts, love, skillful intelligence and wisdom at our core. The faculty of natural connection is getting lost in translation.
Being still enough, quiet enough within and mindful helps to restore this connection. The healthy non toxic environment you have grown your mind and soul in just amplifies the connection to everything living and energised. Do the opposite and watch the chaos unfold. We really can overcome just about anything with peace if we are tapped in.
The disconnection happens in an often hypnotic and powerful modern world and remembering our species is difficult. Chaos, madness, noise, have-to’s, numbers, language, technology, bills, bank accounts, rent, mortgages, pay-rises, healthcare, employment… being manipulated and consumed with the pretend glories of the world and the powerlessness of being an everyday ordinary person? What does that even mean?
It goes on and on and on and then on some more. The great and amazing procrastination to connection is the logistics of the modern world. This world we live in now has so many wonderful advantages but we can become enslaved to it, with its weight pushing down heavily on our shoulders. This can be so affective that we don’t even always notice it; the connection fades so quietly that we forget we had it in the first place.
It is so effective that it often silently hermetically seals us into a systems of economy and “SHOULDWORLD” an hypnotic trance, the stuff that makes you wake up one day and ask is this all there is? Why do I still feel empty? Existential angst at its finest.
There is a story of a Bear I want to share with you. He was no ordinary Bear, you see he was a dancing Bear. His tribe of Bears were the most marvelous dancers and would bask in the joy of their forest dancing, bringing happiness to the world around them and each other. The Bear realized his own cleverness born from the necessity of tool making and ingenuity of skills. As his skills and tool making grew he thought more about cleverness and newness than he did about dancing. His intelligence knew no bounds and with it his children and grandchildren built a Church of Cleverness to worship in. Eventually hundreds of years later; his great-grandchildren lived in a world of haste, of excellence and tools, problem making and solving and cleverness in plenitude. But it was a very sad story, because they had forgotten how to be Bears. They had forgotten their Dance; one thing that made them so special, unique and joyful.
I have come to believe and know to be true that it is crucial, it is NECESSARY to make space in your life to just be or to dance. You must remember your connection.
One step at a time, one day at a time, it isn’t new and it will never get old.
Just Be.
You have instincts within, so get to them.
Start to trust your Self. Your inner. The best bit? It costs nothing at all and its completely contagious. We have full access at all times to a live connection that knows how to lick our own wounds, to know what to do and how to go about doing it. We have built-in resources. How often do you get advice from people or hear experts telling you things and you think “Oh, I somehow already knew that, that makes sense?” Because chances are you do already know it. You just didn’t know to trust your own instincts, thoughts and information. How often do you get a hunch to go to a doctor or action something but you ignore it, or even follow it to realize how important that call was? Again, good old instincts and intuition. The more we be still and listen to it, the louder and clearer it gets. It is not something you need to pay for, or take. It is there for you to access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, your birthright. Your humanness. It’s the good stuff.
As we re-create the connection to ourselves and begin to live in a more natural state, the pent-up difficult emotions and attachments we hang onto start to organically release and vanish. Even ones we didn’t even know existed; buried deep down escape their prison. The chords pull free and we begin to feel lighter, happier. The things we need to do for ourselves become obvious.
It might start at 10 minutes a day. It might involve taking a tent and going camping surrounded with nothing but nature. It might be turning off all electrical devices in the house of an evening and practice sitting still. My favorite is to go to the beach, close my eyes and listen to the ocean, letting thoughts roll in and roll out with the waves, not focusing on any more than the sounds. Being still or meditating can be as simple as being in a natural environment and un-focusing your thoughts like you un-focus your eyes.
Start with a little bit each day and watch what happens. Its your own unique journey and very powerful. You might even want to journal it and watch your story unfold. You don’t have to give up your day job, just…
Know thyself.
In between stories of dancing bears and writing, mothering, distant business mentoring, relationship building and other stuff I do; I now have a sense of mindful contemplation like nothing I have experienced before. It has created a mental and physical space that allows me to be more observant, proactive than before. My sleep has improved, my calm and sense of clarity, focus and peace is more than I have ever felt in my whole life. Given the current situation; that’s a pretty extraordinary result from a little bit of nature with a little bit of me.
Call me an idealist; but our interpreting minds are better seasoned in a natural environment. It’s time to shift the gears into neutral for moments of reflection and stillness so that the muted story within can spring forth.
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Next Blog: – The Sometimes Mind of an Angry Pacifist with Skinny Legs
Note- thanks to you John M, my friend for the new title xx
A tin of hard-boiled lollies warm to the touch was empty when he wasn’t watching she opened the lid. The small popping noise of the lid made her smile; she would lick her finger and dip into the little crystally shards of leftover pieces sitting in the powdery sugar. Like sweet little pieces of glass, they would sit on her tongue, and she would feel them dissolve and time how long it took them to disappear. She did this all with very quiet joy. She was already learning; she had to be careful not to upset him. Princesses were only princesses when they were quiet.
