52 Pick Up

What words can I think of

that haven't been said,

that haven't been written,

that haven't been read?

What can I invent?

An idea no one's thought

that hasn't been packaged,

not yet sold or bought.

I can't yell the loudest,

so what does it matter

to be one little voice,

amid white noise and chatter?

But if I shuffle some cards,

a 52 pack,

and I put them together

neatly placed in a stack,

there's a mathematical chance,

almost certain, for sure,

that the order I deal in's

never been dealt before.

The cards are the same.

The king, queen and jack.

All of the numbers.

All red or black.

But just by moving a couple,

or reshuffling them all

I create something new

through the way that they fall.

Spooky Season

I used to live in a little house with big back yard in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Mum swears it was haunted. I swear it had faulty wiring. The only time I thought there might generally something evil about that house was when I was home alone one night in my late teens, reading a book in bed. My best explanation is that I had an unprovoked, completely random panic attack. Here's a crap little poem I wrote about it for the spooky season. (Excluding the part where I called my best friend in tears and told her if I tried to cross the living room I would die). The brain is a funny thing. So was that house. 

Panic

It was sometime in the Winter,

alone in urban hinterland

I felt my focus splinter

from the book upon my lap.

 

My lamp the only light stay,

fear crept through me where I lay

looking out towards my doorway

and stared into pitch dark black.

 

Though no sound I had heard creaking,

and no light I had seen peeking,

and no wind I had felt leaking

through a wall or window crack,

 

I had a sudden terror fill me.

Head to toe I felt it chill me

Had my novel merely thrilled me?

Or was there something looking back?

 

Edging out of safety’s bed,

I tried my best to clear my head

and reassure myself instead

that it was sanity I lacked.

 

Beyond my room was dark and dead,

the silence fueling inner dread.

So unnatural the quiet fed

my notion of some evil tack.

 

I reached out to flip the light switch

to illuminate a path which

to escape my fever fear pitch

but nothing flickered in the black.

 

In darkness there I stood

and in my mind I knew I would

perish if I stayed, but could

I make it out the back?

 

In tears, I could not breathe

as something un-perceived

wielding power not conceived

held me steadfast in my tracks.

 

It felt like hours there I stayed

and I shook but never strayed.

My back flat to wall I laid

as I screamed, and my voice cracked.

 

But no one heard me crying,

or perhaps they thought me lying

That some evil force was vying

for my soul in some attack

 

I could started there to drown,

dread had weighed my body down

but if I crossed the darkened ground

there would be no coming back.

 

Panic finally overtook me.

No longer paralyzed, it shook me

back to life, a second took me

and I sprinted through the black.

 

As I burst outside my mind surmised

I had escaped my own demise.

I stood watching ‘til the sunrise,

and the house did watch me back.

Notes on life, worrying, and sucking at it

Life really fucking sucks sometimes. Sometimes the banality of your day to day life seems inescapable. Even when from the outside everything is coming up Milhouse for you, inside it feels like there is no right answer regardless of what you may choose.

Usually when this happens to me, I remind myself that nothing matters. Life has no meaning. You are a infinitesimally small spec of dust floating on a rock through infinity and your existence is not even a blip in the grand scheme of the universe. That might sound horrible to some people, but for me it’s calming. Nothing you do matters, so if you fuck up this thing you’re trying to do, who the hell cares? Obviously I do not apply this rhetoric to being a shitty person or murderer or whatever. Those things matter because you’re more than likely affecting someone else’s freedom to do things that don’t matter. Ya feel me?

Another option is to re-read my favourite Bill Bryson passage about how unlikely it is we exist. To paraphrase – “Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, killed or otherwise dissuaded from performing it’s life’s journey to deliver a tiny genetic parcel at exactly the right moment to exactly the right partner to result in the only combination of genetics that would eventually, amazingly and all to briefly result in you.”

So not only do these things not matter, but odds were against you that you may ever exist to experience these things at all.

The combination of those two things usually blow my tiny mind enough to decide that worrying is a waste of precious time and I might as well suck it up and do whatever thing it was I was worried about doing.

There are times, however, when this method doesn’t do it for me. When my brain is so filled up with problems ranging from “I ran out of toilet paper” to “I don’t know whether to leave the country” that melt down is eventually inevitable. In my case, that meant waking up my mother at 6am on the opposite side of the world to listen to me sob into a glass of wine about how “They’re even charging me for ‘freeview’ TV over here”.

What do you do then? What do you do when faced with choices that scare you and that being an insignificant dot doesn’t solve? Generally speaking, I go screaming and crying and terrified into whatever the scary thing is head on. Change isn’t always good, but it’s different. And if where you are now isn’t doing it for you, then it’s time for something different. Whether or not it’s better or worse than before is irrelevant at that point because things don’t progress by staying the same.

Or you forget all of the above in a blind panic and decide that you are trapped in your current situation forever because earth is just one big prison for all the humans which no one but Richard Branson and Elon Musk can escape.

Homesickness, jealousy, loneliness, fear and loathing in Las Vegas, all play a toll on what might otherwise be exciting changes in my life….except that last one actually - I’ve never seen that movie.

As much as I try to beat those suckers down they always come back to surprise me when I need them the least. “Oh you’ve got a lot going on right now? How about we also make you inexplicably jealous of things you can’t change and that have absolutely no bearing on your existence or ability to be happy? Cool.”

“Oh you’re homesick? How about we remember that you’re also terrible at making friends and it’s only going to get harder as you get older so you might as well give up now and buy a turtle.”

“You’ve decided to take on a new challenge I see. Let’s ensure you have impostor syndrome so you are constantly in fear that someone will find out you have no idea what you’re doing, no matter how much you excel.”

Thanks brain, you prick.

When I can figure out how to get around that one, I’ll write a self help book. It’ll only sell one copy. To myself. But I’ll sign it for me and write a little note that says ‘Keep on keepin’ on’ or something equally benign on the inside cover, so it’ll be pretty special.

My point is I don’t have a point. I don’t have a solution, I don’t have a conclusion. (Although I now think I’d make a hell of a rapper).

It’s ok not to have all the answers right now. Chances are they’ll come later, or maybe not at all because the questions will no longer be relevant.

I guess sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff and hope you aimed well enough to hit the water. If not you’ll have some pretty cool scars to tell stories about.   

Special Edition Fat Superhero Friday

Today is a special edition of Fat Superhero Friday, which you can probably tell from the quality of the illustration and the lack of overweight-ness was not drawn by me.

This was actually my birthday card from Fireman Will, and both due to my desire to show it off and my own inherent laziness I'm posting it in pride of place!

Thank you Willy.

Fat Superhero Friday

Hello. I have returned. Absence makes the heart grow fonder right? ....or makes for forgetfulness several Fridays in a row.

This one's kind of a hero. He's definitely Steve's hero. Plus I did draw it for his birthday card, which was sent via airmail, so he FLEW like a superhero.

It counts.

Also I know I can't write straight. I think my head might be slightly tilted to one side. It's why I could never pursue my dream of becoming a tightrope walker.

Fat Superhero Friday

I haven't posted in a while...because SHUT UP, THAT'S WHY!

It has been 80% laziness, 10% having international house guests to entertain, 5% your face, and another 5% drawing things which are neither fat nor superheros and therefore un-bloggable.

But now, this:

I watched Pitch Perfect 2 the other day and Rebel Wilson suspended from the ceiling by silks is still at the forefront of my mind.

Fat Superhero Friday

I missed last week because of no reason. So this week I have drawn an enormous cartoon Patrick Warburton to make it up to you.

Apparently 'The Tick' is being rebooted, and was rumoured to star 51 year old Patrick Warburton. However I have done some Googleing this evening to discover that he will NOT be playing the titular character in the live action reboot, and also that Patrick Warburton has looked pretty much the same since....always. I mean he looks older now but he looks older in the suave, sophisticated Clooney way. Where as I am fairly certain I, being a female who is not Christie Brinkley, will age more in the fashion of that apple you forgot about at the bottom of the fruit bowl for the whole of summer. It's fine....until it isn't.

Anyway, my prediction is, as it has been 15 years since The (original) Tick live action series was made, in another 15 years they will bring back Warburton to reprise his best ever role* (*Matter of opinion, David Puddy is a close second) and by then surely he will have gained some weight....maybe. Probably not wrinkles though which is why I didn't include them.* (*That is a lie, I just cannot draw wrinkles)

Here he is now:

And here's David Puddy as The Tick in 2031: