novel #2 excerpt

HOME SWEET HOME
I know I can’t really blame anyone or anything. But it’s the most intense memories we remember isn’t it? Our brains, our entire nervous system, doesn’t give us a choice. Memory is instinctive and emotional. Like how a duckling remembers to follow whose ever feet walk in front of it. Or how a puppy remembers to not do things after it’s been scolded. We remember what has been there, what has made us feel.
What has shaped us with its reverberations, and caused us to follow in its wake.
What has swept us up and left us shaking.
Our bodies still shiver from emotional ripples created years ago.

Massive emotional pain or massive pleasure = remember.

A single memory can be retrieved several times when the proper stimulus is presented.
Retrieved and relived, over and over.
Emotions like waves roll in. Washing over me.
I’m no big wave surfer though you think I would have worked out some technique by now.

I crash into the waters.

The hippocampus is named after the sea horse. Because it’s shaped like one. In mammals, from hedgehogs to humans, the hippocampus has a similar appearance. However a bigger body however does not mean a bigger hippocampus and we see this expressed over and over. Quite simply, the hippocampus however takes up a much larger volume of the brain in rodents than in primates. What does this tell me? That a rat has a better memory than a monkey? And if Darwin was right, where does that leave us humans?
What could be contained in that rat’s brain leaves us humans relatively stupid!
Who’s to say?
I was born the year of the Rat. Perhaps a redeeming feature, I’m not yet sure.

And the seahorse? Why, the male fertilises the eggs and gives ‘birth’. My human-skull-encased hippocampus, my sea horse brain. Mixed up and turned upside down. What a glorious state of affairs.
In my sea horse brain are my memories. I watch them now, my memories, scurrying around in my aquatic equine brain. My brain cells like bunches of floating balloons that cluster together and whisper to me their stories. Formed in the shape of a sea horse they speak to me. Billows of colour merge and open up to form these filmic moments in time.
They are as real now as then.

The brain can’t differentiate between real lived experience and invented. Ask any hypnostist.
Ask your sea horse brain.
What really happened then? What really happened?
Really?
Really?

Sea horses daily speak to each other, engaging in a long courtship. A strong bond between the parents aids the survival of their young.
My memories that link one to another, one to another, something happens in this life and links me back to my past my previous times. This ensures my survival. This forgetting and remembering. One thought links to another thought links to another. One to another. One to another. Linked. Endless links in a chain of memory.
Some of these are full large and bright, others hide behind closed doors, only opened at very specific times. Some are so small they require searching. Then once found reveal a tiny shiny jewel, and sometimes a sharp hurt.

It was Julius Cesaer Aranzi named the hippocampus after the sea horse. Not because it’s anything aquatic, well no less than we are mostly made up of water. But because it’s shaped like one. A banana more like it, I think. Hippocampus is just a romantic name for a banana shaped part of the brain.
Darwin was right. We are monkey brains indeed. As I swing from memory to memory. Not much control over what happens next.
But naming things gives us power and brings them to life.
This I know.

My memory is contained in a sea horse.
And I know this.
My memories do not exist in straight chronological lines rationally moving from one to the other. Stopping at ‘now’. But they come to me in swirls and spirals, on tides of emotion, one jumping to the next. It is this I am trying to make sense of.
One jumping to another and back again. Filling each other in, taking from each other, borrowing from each other. And next time I go there, it may have changed.
I ask myself did this really happen?
Did it?
It doesn’t matter.

It is these things I remember.

Filed under: Uncategorized

an open letter to eric dando, whose tv i broke 8 years ago when i was living with him and i never really apologised properly

dear eric,

it’s been a long LONG time i know. and yes, you were there when i broke the knob on your tv. which was old and on it’s way out, and didn’t even have a remote, but you did love watching it, a lot. a lot more than i was comfortable with. a lot more that i was comfortable with given your amazing creative talent.
and it was a stupid fight.
i told you to go outside. it was sunny and you were lying on the couch as always, it seemed, watching tv.
i was acting all mum-sy and i know it was rude of me. but i was fed up.
i hate tv see. so i just walked over and turned it off and you got angry. i hit the tv. i must have been really really angry! it seems quite alien to me now but yes, the channel turning knob broke off onto the floor. a broken section of it, a broken large section of it that rendered the dial unusable.
why i was THAT angry still baffles me. and i felt really bad immediately afterwards. but i didnt let you know that.
and i was always impressed by your artistic talent. and no, i never let you know that either.
but i want you to know a couple of things. years later as it is. 8 i think if my memory serves me well. which it often doesn’t.
and that is this: i think you are a great writer.
i found your latest book in a second hand bookstore and i quickly snapped it up not because i wanted it, because i had already forked out full price for it at Borders. but because i didnt want anyone else seeing it so soon after being released in bookstores, to be available ’secondhand’ .
i didnt want a potential book buyer in that shop, thinking, oh it’s already in the secondhand bookstore, must be crap.
i wanted more people to buy your book. honestly, i have been barracking silently for you.
well before and well after the aforementioned unpleasant and somewhat unexplainable tv breaking incident.
but regarding the secondhand bookstore – i know in my heart that the reason it was in the secondhand bookstore was for reasons OTHER than the book being crap. maybe some stupid junkie had stolen it off their bookish and maybe not a junkie housemate and pawned it because it was SO BRAND NEW. (the spine was unbroken the pages uncreased. it was essentially not even secondhand.)
i bet a junkie pawned it, i bet that’s what happened. really im willing to bet on it.

and most of all, eric, want to congratulate you. on writing novel #2.
i know now how hard and lonely and well, it’s hard to avoid the cliches of what a writer’s life is. but as i now know, it’s also quiet and calm and extremely tranquil at times too.
and i must have really really disturbed that with my television knob breaking outburst.
im really terribly sorry.
at best perhaps you can turn it into a short story.
or at the worst, i want you to forget it ever happened.
i extend my hand in friendship and i would like to quickly remind you of something you told me which i will never forget.
you said, if you dress like a gardener you can get away with all sorts of things.
while you were not explicit about that these ‘all sorts of thing’s’ are, just between you and me, i have found this to be true.
so, thank you.
again.

i hope you have a new tv. or it broke on a channel that you like watching a LOT.

in friendship,
mazzie starr.

Filed under: Uncategorized

another snuggie blanket parody + more uses of ‘blankets’?

oh and btw, i heard that ‘they’ (read – people who are spectator sport inclined) are wearing snuggie’s at the football. why am i not surprised?

and if you havent had a laugh yet, at craftastrophe.net – now is the time.
i have one question. what’s wrong with this picture? what?
note: this is not a parody of snuggie.
>

and i hate you, yes i hate you whoever made this, for destroying forever my love of sock monkeys.

<img src="http://amandabransgrove.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/mrjohnson.jpg" alt="mrjohnson" title="mrjohnson" width="261" height="400" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-151

Filed under: Uncategorized

panis et circenses (bread and circuses)

yes apologies, there appears to be a good 6 months between november and my previous blog and well, i have no excuse.

i am attempting to reconcile all my blogs into ONE blog.

is this possible? only time will tell.

today it rained. a lot. for once. hence my cat stayed inside my room. and did everything he could do get my attention…

he stood on the keyboard..eg.. (actual cat typing..) 0222222222222258888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888488==][[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[

and…my desktop…

so i felt like it was necessary to include a photo of my desk? why? because i am concerned.. i am concerned that i am a stereotype. it just screams geek, bookish, sci fi,  child of the 80’s.

i refer to :

1. star wars comic book in a paper book version (30c from an op shop mind you!) it’s pages are genuinely aged yellow and it misses the first ten pages – they have been ripped out, but its a bona-fide marvel comics version.

then we have the 2. darth vadar figurine. bought about a year ago from a service station. so NOT original figurine.

3. a boom-box mousepad. gimicky from a gimicky shop. but at $8 and needing a mouse pad, it exists. (my bruce lee mouse pad was ’stolen’ by a previous house mate)

4. an umberto eco book of essays – travels in hyper-reality. a bit dated now but still a good easily digestible social theory book of essays.like baudrillard’s essays on simulcra and simulcrum, eco pulls apart this ‘age of simulation’ and hyperreality, this world of the ‘Absolute Fake’where imitations don’t merely reproduce reality but try to improve upon it as he travels across America. From Disneyland and Las Vegas to Superman the movie, and spectator sport (namely the World Cup). Most timely that i read the essay tonight about spectator sport as Nick and i vehemently critiqued the Herald-Sun newspaper today – as we are oft to do – for it’s saturation with ‘human interest’ stories (the aussie battler and/ or aussie hero – with large almost full page color photo) and of course, the aussie (read white and yes, of course, male) sportsman and their games. argh. spectator sport. even Roman emporers, as Eco notes, observed the usefulness of circenses. ie. useful as shrewd devices to maintain a dictatorship. so, back to the herald sun. we have ron barassi (with an obligatory head shot – for the Herald Sun can never have enough imagery!) offering social commentary on anything and everything as though his opinion, as a retired australian footballer and coach means more than a head of sociology at an Australian University/ a commissioner of police/ ANYONE really relevant to the situation. why should ron barassi’s opinion on social issues like carrying of knives be relevant? why??? melbournians what has happened to you all???? i hang my head in shame. the bane of an educated mind.
argh. journalism and media today!
bread and circuses indeed.

Filed under: Uncategorized

mc sweeneys – open letters

just to have an hilarious sunday night.. i was found reading

“AN OPEN LETTER

TO JONELLE, WHO

SENT A THREE-SONG

DEDICATION TO HER

BOYFRIEND, ROB.”

laughed? sure did.

my open letter would be to my house mate who insists on smoking outside and dragging cigarette smoke inside with her and then watches over 10 hours of commercial television a day.

maybe i will begin it now.

dear housemate,

not that i would call you dear, more likely, deranged or demented and i probably should let you know straight up, my friends and i refer to you as ‘the yeti’.

so, let us begin,

deranged yeti,

i have decided it is time now for me to take more serious action. yelling cajoling asking politely and writing you kind letters have all failed. pushing you outside and locking the door did have some effect however the neighbours would probably eventually call the police if i did that every time what with you yelling you f’ing b&#@tch through the glass while i looked on fascinated at your the way your face contorted even more horrendously than what it normally looks like.

yes, you arent exactly pleasing on the eye and hey, after cancer treatment for lung cancer and only just surviving, i cant exactly expect you to be an angelina, BUT that brings me to perhaps my greatest point. why the f#%! are you smoking when you have only recently recovered from cancer anyway????

a drain on society???

it makes me wonder, do you think that all taxpayers just there to support your ignorant and lazy stinking wasteful life?

you are an embarrassment and an abomination.

the abominable yeti.

in disgust, amazement,

your housemate.

Filed under: Uncategorized , mc sweeneys

november

writing. wishing for a black president. writing. creating. building a new website. writing. 

here is some work i have done recently..

HOME SWEET HOME

I know I can’t really blame anyone or anything. But it’s the most intense memories we remember isn’t it? Our brains, our entire nervous system, doesn’t give us a choice. Memory is instinctive and emotional. Like how a duckling remembers to follow whose ever feet walk in front of it. Or how a puppy remembers to not do things after it’s been scolded. We remember what has been there, what has made us feel.

What has shaped us with its reverberations, and caused us to follow in its wake.

What has swept us up and left us shaking.

Our bodies still shiver from emotional ripples created years ago.

 

Massive emotional pain or massive pleasure = remember.

 

A single memory can be retrieved several times when the proper stimulus is presented.

Retrieved and relived, over and over.

Emotions like waves roll in. Washing over me.

I’m no big wave surfer though you think I would have worked out some technique by now.

 

I crash into the waters.

 

The hippocampus is named after the sea horse. Because it’s shaped like one.  In mammals, from hedgehogs to humans, the hippocampus has a similar appearance. However a bigger body however does not mean a bigger hippocampus and we see this expressed over and over. Quite simply, the hippocampus however takes up a much larger volume of the brain in rodents than in primates. What does this tell me? That a rat has a better memory than a monkey? And if Darwin was right, where does that leave us humans?

What could be contained in that rat’s brain leaves us humans relatively stupid!

Who’s to say?

I was born the year of the Rat. Perhaps a redeeming feature, I’m not yet sure.

 

And the seahorse? Why, the male fertilises the eggs and gives ‘birth’. My human-skull-encased hippocampus, my sea horse brain. Mixed up and turned upside down. What a glorious state of affairs.

In my sea horse brain are my memories. I watch them now, my memories, scurrying around in my aquatic equine brain. My brain cells like bunches of floating balloons that cluster together and whisper to me their stories. Formed in the shape of a sea horse they speak to me. Billows of colour merge and open up to form these filmic moments in time.

They are as real now as then.

 

The brain can’t differentiate between real lived experience and invented. Ask any hypnostist.

Ask your sea horse brain.

What really happened then? What really happened?

Really?

Really?

 

Sea horses daily speak to each other, engaging in a long courtship. A strong bond between the parents aids the survival of their young.

My memories that link one to another, one to another, something happens in this life and links me back to my past my previous times. This ensures my survival. This forgetting and remembering. One thought links to another thought links to another. One to another. One to another. Linked. Endless links in a chain of memory.

Some of these are full large and bright, others hide behind closed doors, only opened at very specific times. Some are so small they require searching. Then once found reveal a tiny shiny jewel, and sometimes a sharp hurt.

 

It was Julius Cesaer Aranzi named the hippocampus after the sea horse. Not because it’s anything aquatic, well no less than we are mostly made up of water. But because it’s shaped like one.  A banana more like it, I think. Hippocampus is just a romantic name for a banana shaped part of the brain.

Darwin was right. We are monkey brains indeed. As I swing from memory to memory. Not much control over what happens next.

But naming things gives us power and brings them to life.

This I know.

 

My memory is contained in a sea horse.

And I know this.

My memories do not exist in straight chronological lines rationally moving from one to the other. Stopping at ‘now’. But they come to me in swirls and spirals, on tides of emotion, one jumping to the next. It is this I am trying to make sense of.

One jumping to another and back again. Filling each other in, taking from each other, borrowing from each other. And next time I go there, it may have changed.

I ask myself did this really happen?

Did it?

It doesn’t matter.

It is these things I remember.

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized

rachmaninoff and bob proctor

ive been on a mission this past few months.. purifying my mind with thoughts books and audio tapes… 
oh and listening to lots of rachmaninoff… who apparently engaged in autosuggestive therapy in 1900 and this helped him to overcome his writers block. 
The “result of these sessions was the composition of Piano Concerto No. 2 (Op. 18, 1900–01), dedicated to Dr. Dahl. The piece was very well received at its premiere, at which Rachmaninoff was soloist, and remains one of his most popular compositions.” (wikipedia) 

just as another thought.. AUTO SUGGESTION WORKS

try it

Filed under: Uncategorized

kelly jones is quite crazy but she makes good art…

here is the flyer for her exhibition she had recently at ‘i like you’ clothing in Fitzroy in Melbourne.  youtube her.. its a mind expander..she talks about the wonders of the universe and is a big fan of the very controversial David Icke… but what can i say? she is doing it and spreading the power in her way. pretty out there, i admit it… but i do love Kelly’s empowering ideology – that we are all gods.. we are all powerful. we must be responsible for ourselves, our thoughts and feelings.. and reclaim our god like power …and spread more love…regardless, mind bombing people like this isnt my thing.. but each to their own.. 

ohh and check out this 18 year old south african girl who channels spirits… right on…

another of the thousand of reasons why i love the internet… 

Filed under: Uncategorized

juicy pens and thirsty paper

ohhhh SARK’s NEW BOOK is SOO  inspiring. once again i am filled with wonder and joy and creative juice and just want to be with my notebook writing.. her new book came out and so i have been totally inspired ever since..

its available on her website here…

another glorious day and i am having coffee with scottie and we found this hilarious poster on a electricity pole near one of my old fave coffee shops in balaclava.. this poster was up there a4 and laminated and right under my old missing cat – Henry posters.. what a hilarious cat. i almost felt like ringing the number and saying oh your cat just wants you to play with her/him… bringing home toys to play with … i love it.. i have all these little mice for henry – he is in heaven – $1.20 worth of hours of fun for him..

Filed under: cats , funny signs

things i have learnt from my cat.. part 2

hmmm well since my kitty has gone missing.. and tears have been shed and much frustration and sadness over missing him and wondering about his whereabouts… i suppose my next lesson is FAITH. i refuse to believe he is dead (and my instincts tell my otherwise) and actually have faith he will return. i send him love. and light. and hold him in my heart. dear henry i miss you so. and love you dearly.. come home soon… i hope you are safe. i have been envisioning him returning safely. and tomorrow i talk to animal instincts woman Leah Anderson. (www.animalinstincts.com.au) and im sure she will give me some more advice. i was referred to her by a good friend…thanks kelly…. fingers crossed and much much faith… thanks henry…

Filed under: Uncategorized