Mystic Musings

I like to think I'm open minded. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but on the advice of a friend, and in the spirit of having nothing to lose, I took myself to see a fortune teller.

That was September last year, when I was really down in the dumps. Here's what she said:

General Spread:
Energy is stuck, major blocking factor is lack of trust in self and others.
Learn to reclaim your own power and voice
Emperor card. Now is the time to confront the person of power More inner peace is coming up
Strong enough to stand up and face him (person of power) directly.
Collect the fruit of everything seeded.
Next 12 Months:
1st part - challenge yourself
Next summer - overseas door opens
Moon Card - Restless and unstable in October, ground yourself
Queen of Pentacles - learn to master the mind, do physical activities and routine outside of work.
January brings a new collaborator.
- Someone new at work with a lot of energy
- New ideas. Will rock the boat for a little while
- Has an unusual energy
- Could shut down and withdraw because this guy presents a challenge
March to April
- This guy will work under me. He is smart and has vision
- I will get a fresh outlook
- My knowledge will grow during the year
May to June
- King of Cups  - represents someone who has helped in the past
- A kind of mentor
- Open up to others
- Learn to be more content with the situation
- New ideas
- Challenge and think outside the box
- It's a what-if game. Act on it.
Summary:
Don't do anything this month (September)
Radical change will come over Summer. It's very good for me and there may be a change of location
Have learned everything there is to learn in Hong Kong
Be inspired

Me and D:
My cards
Moon
- planet is effecting too much
- loosing myself in my emotions
- creative ideas directly leading and creating instability
- get back on track
Sun
- can create out of nothing
- so much potential
Garden
- can create without anyone
- Look at all my potential and find within the power and belief
- Look for someone who compliments my potential
D's cards
He's married, not available
Stuck
A lot he is not telling
Emperor King energy
Already got he best from him but he is stuck in his box and not willing to do anything to change his path. Doesn't have the guts to change.
Put a closure on this
Will never give you what you want
Move onto something else.


There are a lot of guys around
Go out with other people
Be at home and feel safe
Reconnect with yourself

D cannot give you what you want

It is a wake up call, that's all.

Careful what you wish for

Well, it's happened. I've been offered a severance and I'm thrilled and have that pinching myself feeling. I'm going to make a list of all the things I've always wanted to do but not been able to do because I had to go to work.

And more good news. Tomorrow I'm going on holiday to Fiji with a great group of people and not a wanker amongst them.

Unique

Last month I went to South Africa for work and I've been thinking about zebras ever since.

I always thought of them as black and white stripy horses, but not any more. Every zebra is unique and beautiful and a little bit melancholy.

Deco Zeb
Oil on Canvas March 2010

Here she is with her eye lashes and blonde high-lights.

No thanks

Back to Hong Kong tomorrow and this may be my last visit to Dubai. It's not somewhere I would choose for a holiday and the new guy is pretty much up and running in my old job. He's quite OK, pleasant, not stupid, and best of all, he's new. I suspect he has a skeleton or two lurking around, a touch of bipolar or the like, and I don't give a damn. He's in, I'm out and praise be to Allah for that.

All in all it's been a good visit. I've bought some new clothes, eaten very well, met some new people and paddled around the Burj Al Arab.

I've only cried once in the past few weeks and that was yesterday when I received my performance report for last year. The customs officer gave me a low rating, below average; the lowest I've ever had. I didn't go the extra mile or something. I did the job, but I didn't do anything special with it, apparently.

It's not enough these days to meet every deadline, make no errors, answer every stupid question from people who are too lazy to figure it out themselves, travel all over the globe to some less than desirable places (and some very nice ones), help others understand how to do their jobs and do it all quietly and efficiently so that he and his department look good. No, that's not enough.

Now I'm supposed to take a job I can't stand that I've been doing for way too long and make it more dynamic.

I don't believe it for a minute.

It's my punishment for daring to say 'no thanks' when they told me I was moving to Dubai. There's that inability to buckle under thing. Men who should be in uniform really don't like it.

Tell me what you want

My boss's boss, is a man of whom I'm not particularly fond. He makes good use of his Irish charm and is most definitely a company man. If he was an actor, not an accountant, he would be cast as a policeman or moustached customs officer. He needs a uniform. He is very well liked and respected by all but me.

He is the Corporate Controller. Control is something he does very well, as is face slapping. I dread being called into his office, or him popping into mine..."for a chat". There's always a less than subtle thwack to go with the chat. Metaphoric of course, although I'm sure he's the type. I wonder what it says about him that he feels the need to cut me down time after time.


Last week he called me in, sat me down and insisted I tell him what I want. He's looking after my future and doesn't know how to help me because he doesn't know what I want. What I want? What does anyone want? I want to be happy, healthy, love and be loved. And if I can't have that, then I want enough money to pay the mortgage, go on holidays, paint and be left in peace.

He wants me to show "passion and enthusiasm" for my job.

In my standard passive aggressive calm irritating manner reserved for dealing with people from the office, I mouthed:

"I'm enthusiastic. I'm looking forward to doing this project work. I know I'm fortunate (couldn't bring myself to say blessed) to be given time to work out the next stage of my career."

"But where's the passion Polly?"

Did he wanted me to jump up and down and wave my arms?

"Passion? We are talking about accounting."

Oh dear. Back up. Too late. I realised, as the words left my mouth.

I know that what I am supposed to want is what he wants...me to do for him.

He's decided not to give me a sabbatical because, although the VP of Human Resources had told me it was an option, it's "only offered 'with respect' to people who are considered to have potential to make an impact". Slap. Take that.

What do I want? I want him to give me a termination payout and let me go. I don't want to resign because that would make it too easy.

I want him to stop feigning he has my best interests at heart and give me one huge and final slap of cash as I walk out the door.

There, that's what I want.

Things to Come

Who would have thought I would get such a kick out of writing? I was really lousy at English at school, just scraping through HSC with 52%.

I was pretty hopeless at maths too. My grade 6 teacher told my mother I would never make it to high school mathematics.

Well I did make it through tertiary, on to university and topped it all off with an MBA. Hello Mr Budgen. Are you still out there?

That's not to say it was easy for me. I always knew I wasn't stupid, but I found the knuckling down and buckling under the toughest part of learning and, now that I think about it, the toughest part of working.

Thankyou. Bye Bye.

It's not that I'm in any hurry to get back to Hong Kong as such, but I'm really missing painting. I've got a zebra inside of me just chomping to get out.

I've been thinking about which colours will read as black and white; probably dark purple and light blue over an undercoat of burnt sienna. Oh I can't wait to meet that zebra and to finish the kang.

As for Hong Kong, I think we're through.

Thankyou. Bye Bye.

Rumination II

Six months on, and although Channel D is still on loop, the volume is much lower. It's background noise now.

His exile has been to my advantage. But now he's starting to show his face, too arrogant, or is it ashamed, to acknowledge me as more than a passing acquaintance.

If he was the man I thought he was it could have been wonderful. But I was wrong, he isn't and it can't.

Dubai

As I lie here in the sun, with a bowl of exotic nuts and a gin and tonic by my side, I'm staring up at the tallest building in the world and I fancy myself as a rather fortunate woman. I kicked up quite a fuss at being sent to Dubai, just a week after my last business trip to South Africa, but it has turned out to be rather wonderful. Just the get away I needed.

This morning I went paddling with a friend of a friend in the salty torquise sea around the Burj Al Arab. We paddled past a couple of luxury yachts, got shoo'd away from the hotel beach by Pakistani "life savers" and continued on our way towards The Pearl Of Dubai - The Palm.

The weather is glorious at this time of year, still and fragrant.

I'm treating this as a kind of holiday, staying at a first class hotel, lapping it up and all thanks to my employer. I'm here to hand-over the reins of the job that's been sucking me dry for the past five years.

More about the job and the new guy later. For now I'm just going to soak it all up and (don't you hate this expression)....Enjoy!

A manly place, and quite all right, if you like
sipping cocktails on the 62nd floor.
And Russian whores with skinny legs
and bed sores
rubbed raw against the cataflaque
that clads the Burj Khalifa.

Fancy a cuppa?

Never judge a book by its cover. That's all very well, but I judge everyone by their reaction to my Dibbern. I've just bought some, as a birthday present to self.

From Beclau Homewares website.

Giant Red

I'm a woman possessed and can't stop painting. I just have to.

I'll let him dry and work in some eyebrows and a furrowed brow...and maybe some barbed comments for a bit of drama.

Macropus Rufus March 2010
Oil on Sketch Paper

Here is is with his eyebrows.

Strange animals

Today on the phone:

Mum: You're worse than J (her friend and animal activist). You seem to have a thing for animals. Why don't you paint people?
Me: What people, like who..whom? Why should I paint people? I paint animals.

I bet she wants me to paint her portrait but won't ask.

Stoke of Luck

Rather than being suckered into being chauffeured around Cape Town by a friend of the crooked concierge "that's the only way for seeing the city madam", I decided to let chance be my guide and set out on foot . I had no sooner turned the corner when a big top-less bus  pulled up beside me. For a tenth of the price of the shifty chauffer I was carried through the streets of Cape Town, and surrounds, with the sun on my face, wind in my hair and stereophonic commentary in my ears. The day's entertainment taken care of and no requirement to make small talk. Christ, what luck!

I hopped off at the Kirstenbosch Gardens for lunch and ambled into an exhibition by local artists. Quite a lot of crap, of course. There always is. Yet down low, on a stand on the ground, I spotted an unframed silk "rock painting" of cows or buffalo or some such bush bovine. I liked it, I bought it. It wasn't expensive and I was still ahead.

The artist, a single mother, supports herself by providing healing through art. Healing through art. You know, for people who have had strokes, or some such, and need to regain confidence and motor skills.

The bean planted and now bubbling and brewing. It's so close I can smell it. A gallery coffee shop artists' drop-in joint. Hip and bohem.

I can do that.

Blog it Out

C says blog it out
Better out than in
She's right, damn you
Out. Get out.

Things to Come

My earliest memory is of standing by the front window of our flat in Middle Park forlornly watching my father walking away. He wasn't going far, but I loved walking hand in hand with him along the Esplanade.  I suppose I had been naughty and had to stay at home as punishment. I don't remember what I had done, I just remember that I felt distraught and, if a three year old is capable of such a sentiment, I felt aggrieved.

That same year we moved to Williamstown on the other side of the bay. We put the old red Mercedes onto the cable ferry to cross the Yarra Yarra river. I remember the clunking of the cable as it rolled off the wheel into the muddy water below. Overhead the chasm of the collapsed Westgate bridge yawned and gaped and we passed underneath it. I terrified myself with gruesome images of the ghostly workers who had fallen to their death and lay beneath the mud and chains below.

Our new house on the strand offered a good view of the bridge and its missing chunk. On clear days I would look all the way across Hobsen's Bay, beyond the city buildings, to the violet Dandenong ranges. In winter I convinced myself they were dusted in snow. I was desperate to see snow and begged my mum and dad to take me to see it. They didn't. I took myself many years later.

I was asthmatic. My mum refused to put me on puffers and steroids and had me do deep breathing and relaxation instead. I don't know how she resisted the scorn of lofty doctors and omniscient parents, but I'm so glad she did. She took me swimming at the YWCA on Saturday mornings. Ahead of her time, quite headstrong and really brave.

I was a shy and withdrawn child. Some things haven't really changed all that much.