Schoolies and Toolies

Last week I heard these two new words…

Last week was the end of the school year and those students finishing school have a party.. much like the disco or ball at a ‘graduation’ party. Here in Australia it seems to be mixed up with the spring break approach of the USA. All the young people gather at the beach and have a week long party. Most say it’s time to spend with friends, make new friends, drink, dance and hang out. All these are ‘schoolies’. The police are on the lookout for any disturbances. This schoolie week makes the news every day.

Now when this party gets gate crashed by those who are older and obviously not a school leaver, intent on having some fun and maybe even cause some ruckus things can be bad. These non-school leavers are called ‘toolies’. They are supposedly bent on causing problems via drugs or drink and take advantage of young folks. Police are on the lookout for toolies who can spoil the fun for the young people. The news during the week had the police chief of a Gold Coast talking about the toolies and schoolies…… Whatever next to make evening news?

When can I be Me?

I was reflecting on life while waiting for my head to stop revolving or should I say stop the earth revolving around me. I was thinking how I have always behaved well and in accordance with the people and situations I find myself in. As a child my behaviour was strictly in accordance to the rules of my parents. They were fairly strict and so there was little room to be naughty. My foray into disobedience was limited to glowering behind my mother’s back! Also I used to love to read story books (I was an avid reader of fiction and still am) especially past the bed time with a torch under the covers. I was only ‘Me’ in my imaginary world, where I could go where and when I wanted. A major transgression was not sitting down to do my homework when told to. Life was pretty simple and rules were annoying but life went on. Little did I know that this compliance to what was expected would be the lesson that was most important in keeping others happy. My real problem was keeping a handle on my temper which was short and hot and unfortunately hard to not display.

Then I learnt o hold my temper as well and became a very outwardly compliant person. Being an army cadet teaches you that no one really gives a damn about your temper or your feeling even for that matter. Again the behaviour that was acceptable to others, even pleasing them was reinforced. My needs or wants were secondary to what others perceived. While I have always believed that one should not be bothered about what others think, I was indoctrinated by the society to do what others dictated. Again I seem to have escaped into my fantasy world when I wanted to be ‘Me’. Spending time by myself, listening to music or reading were the avenues to being myself and work out coping strategies as I did not wish to displease parents, family, friends, teachers, patients, and so on and so on. To some extent this compliant behaviour also taught me patience and a much more even temper as this is extremely important in the work environment and a caring profession.

But where is the outlet to be ‘me’? When can I not have to hang on to my temper or be naughty, giggle and have fun? However this demeanour was very useful when I moved countries. Learning to live and work in a different country is generally very stressful and having learnt to use a cool head and logic helped me to cope well. I also chose to work in a very fast paced and stressful environment of operating theatres and in particular cardio thoracic surgery. There is no room for a flighty, ditzy or frivolous person in this environment. I then moved to teaching and moved even further away into being a serious individual. The fun loving and comic in me only came out to ‘play’ during holidays. I began to take on responsibility for others such as my family and feeling I had to be there for all and help them solve their problems. SO where was the ‘me’? Did I change so much?

When the social networking began on the internet I managed to find old friends from college and school and the comments they made stopped me short. They all remembered me as fun loving and jovial and cheeky girl who laughed a lot. They were surprised to see how serious I had become. The change to this person who took everything very seriously had been slow but total. During this time I had got married and got a whole new family to whom I had to adjust and were yet more people I have to work to please. Going to a new family and learning to be a part of it is also about tailoring behaviour to others. I got on famously with my father in law as I think he had a fun loving and naughty side and so encouraged me to be myself with him. My husband has always encouraged me to have fun and be myself but there is still an expectation that I will be ‘sensible’ and do the chores and say the right thing and do the right things. But if I am to be myself I am bound to occasionally lapse from this good behaviour. The only personal indulgence in the last two decades have been that of losing my temper occasionally when at home and generally only in front of my husband. Then I got ill and developed a chronic illness which only has symptomatic treatment. This has also had an impact on my emotional wellbeing. The pain and immobility along with stress from family issues led me down the depression path and I spent most days bursting into tears and being miserable. As the symptoms were slowly brought to some semblance of tolerance I started having time and energy to reflect on who I am and what does being ‘me’ mean.

I have had to rebuild my confidence in dealing with everyone. This recovery started with having to confront my doctors and ask for information to make choices with regards to the treatments. Then we moved countries to start afresh in a warmer climate and slower pace of life. While I dealt with my visa issues and managed slowly de-cluttering the home for the move most of the other things that needed to be done were carried out by my husband. I had begun to get stronger and was physically more capable of doing light chores by the time we moved. Now at least the old ladies with zimmer frame did not overtake me and disappear into the horizon. I could manage to stir my cooking pot without my wrist hurting for the rest of the week. I began to talk to more people specially friends and family over the internet and re-establishing old relationship. I guess I was making peace with people I cared about and started reminiscing about the fun times and recapturing my lighter side.

I am certainly better than I was. I have starting enjoying life and revelling in what I can do rather than despairing over what I cannot. I have now stopped working and started spending time on finding myself and indulging myself in pursuits of creative activities. The need for a sense of humour is vital when one is chronically ill. Still have to work on dealing with strangers and tradespeople. I have been told I do not need to give them explanations and have to get work done with minimal discussion. I tend to have these long conversations and the innate sense of giving explanations is to be blamed for this. But then I think that is me… I do want people to understand what I am on about. I have asked my husband to let me know what is expected from me. This is was very helpful when I was recovering both my physical and emotional health. But I think what has happened over this time the readjusting to differing roles has caused some level of insecurity maybe in both of us.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel as I think I am on the mend for recently I have started saying I want to be me and I do not wish to be told what to do and how to behave. This is after a long time of seeking guidance about how to react. I want to be the ‘me’ I used to be. I know I cannot go back to the exact state but I can certainly temper my seriousness with a big injection of fun and laughter. I am well on the way as I have been called the resident comedienne of my facebook group for UCTD. From being a nurse and one who was always on the ball needed all the information and knowledge re any disease I have gone to wanting only the broad information about my own illness. I can live happily without knowing every little detail and wanting to discuss every minor symptoms and all I want to do is talk less about my health. This with the family and friends is a little hard as if you say you are ok they assume that you are healthy where as I mean I can tolerate and cope today with my issues. If I enumerate all the day’s symptoms I sound like a whingey person which I am not.

So to put it into perspective, I have moved on the illness – wellness continuum from the princess who found the pea under the 20 mattresses painful and inability to hold my own head up with muscle wasting and excruciating pain to one who can walk a mile, and cook at least once a day. The major highlight of my recovery was being able to sweep my home! Stirring the cooking pot was no longer akin to sawing your hands off. Seeing humour through the haze of pain has allowed me to cope and to bring back that childlike enthusiasm and fun for life. Slowly but surely I am allowing myself to be ‘Me’.

Shades of Green

It was a hot and muggy afternoon with hardly a hint of breeze to move the hot humid air along. Having spent the morning catching up with family on Skype and doing some gardening as well as relocating the plants along the sunny side of the house we watched a movie. However the heat felt unrelenting and even the movie could not take our minds of it. Now I am very much for the heat. It does my bones and muscles a lot of good to be warm, supple and pain free. However the humidity tends to sap the energy ever so slowly. All I need is a little breeze and am happy as a hog in the mud!

So about 5 ish in the afternoon we decided to move out on to the veranda in the front of the house overlooking the garden and the road. I had suggested many a time that we should sit out and watch the world go by as the sun moves away in the afternoon and its pleasant to sit there. This time it was suggested to me that we might sit there and I sat down quickly. We got these camping chairs when we moved into this house as we had no furniture and needed somewhere to sit. The chairs are folding canvass ones with pockets to hold your drink, book and the phone so there is no real need for getting up often. So there we sat watching cars go by and an occasionally person walking or even jogging by! Waiting for that bit of breeze to begin cooling the air slowly.

So the talk of colours started from my husband’s comment that there are more white, silver or grey cars on the roads here. I guess that in hot sunny weather light colours like white, grey, silver, metallic beige etc. would reflect sunlight and stop the car getter hotter than if it was a dark colour car where heat would be absorbed by the car. Thus for the next few minutes we counted the light coloured cars and sure enough the numbers were more than double that of dark cars which were red, maroon, black and blue. My eyes were drawn to the neighbour’s garden and their beautiful tree with purple flowers. I had not seen this tree before and neither the beautiful bright purple flowers that actually can cover up the lighter green leaves.

We had seen two very big trees just on Circular Quay a couple of weeks ago and this week all these trees around my home have got beautiful purple cover. It is the Jacaranda tree and the website tells me there are 3 different coloured flowers. I started looking at the tree and thinking how would one paint this tree in water colour. I have been learning the art of drawing and painting with water colours by trial and error. I think the use of colour pencils is not within my skill mix. I just find that it is difficult to blend colours and shade colours in the way I would like. The water colours I have finally decided are more for a patient painter. You need to build up the layers and this is what will help to darken the colours where you want without it all becoming homogenous due to bleeding if the picture is still wet. I find that having to wait and build the picture is frustrating. While I do not have to finish the complete painting in one go I still like to see parts that I work on come alive.

Thus for this tree one would have to start with the background of blue sky and leave the bottom quarter white. This white would have to be filled with green trees that form the boundary of the garden across the road. I do would not go for the white railing of the garden. Then, to draw the trunk and branches of the tree. The shape reminds me a little of the broccoli head. The truck and braches form a sort of a triangle and the canopy of the leaves and flowers seem to form a triangle on top.. so we get a loosely constructed shape of diamond. The layers of brown would have to be built up to show the lighter shades and darker patches to bring out the texture of the bark and the places light falls on them. The one would have to dab in the leaves and finally the huge bunches of purple flowers.

The other strand of our conversation also lead us to this thinking about colours and painting. We had been talking randomly about the various museums we had visited and the paintings we had seen just reminiscing, that art appreciation should be counted as a meaningful conversation and I laughed that maybe I did not qualify to critique after all I only go with what I like and not any academic / artistic criteria.

So we talked about how much easier it was to blend and make up colours that were accurate to the shades we see in nature. The trees in front of us had many different shades of green. The trees in our garden (and I have yet to check out the common names) have two kinds of green. The one which has very dark brown cones, well almost black, with big flat seeds had got real dark green (hunter green) but the new leaves are a lot lighter green almost yellowish (green yellow). Believe me I am not making up the names of the shades as you can check it out on the weblink I have provided. The other tree has think long leaves and had bright red bunches of thin long flowers. Now that the flowers have died out and the seeds are all brown the green (India green)of the leaves tends to get overshadowed by the brown of the seeds.

The tree across the road has even lighter green leaves. Now we had to start comparing the depth of the greens as of course I did not have this chart of the shades of green handy! Next to it was another tree which had dark green leaves but with tinges of yellow on the margins. This made it seem like the green was covered with a thin layer of bright yellow. The effect in sunlight is that of real dark patches of green (office green) and large areas of yellowish green (lime). Now you can see there is a difference been the two shades of green I have described – lime and green-yellow. The tree behind is a pine with branches coming out from the dark brown trunk. The leaves are very dark green (Phthalo green). This from a distance at dusk looks almost black. There is another tree which has olive green leaves but also has paler look almost silvery in certain lights.

This meandering through the shades of green took us to night fall and the road lights came on. So we left the shades of brown on the trunks and branches for another day. Nature is wonderful with all the different colours and their varying shades and trying to replicate them in paintings is so difficult for a novice like me but what pleasure in trying!

Where has the creativity gone?

Can one force oneself to be creative? I have not written anything for a few days. Why is that? Am I having a writer’s block? Or is it just I have nothing to say at present? Or is it that I am under the weather right now and so my head is having a break? Well it could be a bit of everything I guess as well as a little laziness. 

I have not done any book reviews recently as I have been revisiting Enid Blyton books from my childhood. Now there is not much to say as I perceive the stories from an adult view. The life of young children in UK a few decades back seems to be idyllic. All kids went to boarding school and went home for holidays. There were loads of picnics and various meat sandwiches, cakes and ginger beer / lemonade to drink. Going swimming / sailing and camping / caravanning seem to be usual activities for the kids and of course they were smarter than the adults and solved major mysteries involving espionage or robbery or fraud every holiday. No wonder when I arrived in UK I was shocked to find none of this was really true. Well while I knew these were stories I thought some things maybe based on reality. For one the weather in summer is mostly wet and so I never went for any picnic and I did not know anyone who sent their kids to boarding school. As for ginger beer, well I first tasted it when I came to Australia after 25 years in UK! Lemonade was so full of sugar and fizz that I could not develop a liking for it. So revisiting these books allows me to reflect about how as a child I was influenced by these stories to develop an idyllic but strange view of the world. Was it so bad that it was not realistic? It allowed me to develop my imagination. Some of the views, I can now see, are not even politically correct in the books. However the life shown in the books was radically different form that of my childhood in India. I did manage to be good at English language even though some of the expressions were never heard of in real life. Did anyone ever speak like the Famous Five, or the kids in the Adventure series or the Five Find-Outers and a Dog? I guess not.

I have not spent time watching any movies either during the last couple of weeks. Then a few days ago I had a dizzy spell and decided to just sit quiet and relax. I thought I needed cheering up to forget the stress of a new symptom. So I looked up an old film ‘Dulhe Raja’. It has my favourite funny guys Govinda and Kader Khan. The movie is crazy and occasionally farfetched but hey I had a real laugh. The convoluted plot also kept me grinning though out. Now that stopped me from thinking about being dizzy and I thought the spell had passed. I occasionally get short bursts of dizziness which have been side effect of some of my drugs and so a little rest gets rid of them. 

However, next morning I woke up as I was severely dizzy in my sleep. Never happened to me before and nor have I heard it happening to anyone. Lying flat on my back without even moving my eyeballs made me so dizzy that I felt I was falling. The stomach clenched with sever nausea and I got worried as to how would I get to the sink if I really did need to throw up. After a bit I struggled and sat up so that I could fix my eyes on the tree and the flowers on it outside. Almost like when you are on a boat and seasick you focus on the distant horizon to stop the movement affecting you. After a couple of hours the level of dizziness reduced and I managed to doze for a few hours so exhausted was I from the experience. Afternoon visit to the GP threw up a possible diagnosis of viral infection though not sure where I got it from! So have spent the last 3 days with more drugs… paracetamol and Prochlorperazine…. Wonderful as if I was not already rattling with other 15 pills in the day!!

But does all this take away your creativity? Your thinking ability? Maybe it does as the drugs form a potent cocktail. Also I find that the urge to write comes on sometimes and then fades away. This morning the urge returned and I lay there in bed thinking what can I write on? How can I get my creative juices flowing? Should I write about why I cannot write? Or should I write about what all I could write? Does my perspective of the world becomes different when the earth trembles and moves all around me? Can creativity be forced on oneself? Can I tell myself that I will be creative about such and such? Writing seems to ebb and flow and I still need to find that same ebb and flow with drawing and painting. Maybe then the two can ebb and flow in turns and I can continually be productive. I also need to find my poetic muse which has been missing for a few months. Now what else has gone missing recently?

The green thumb of gardening fortunately has not deserted me. The plants are growing happily and so are the caterpillars on the broccoli leaves. Have to keep evicting those fat worms of my plants and hoping that the broccoli will still grow well. The flowers are very delicate in the strawberries and the petals drop fairly fast. The chillies have been re potted into several different pots and am sure eventually I shall get a huge crop. Now what happens to the potatoes? The leaves get droopy and ready to die off and then suddenly they all perk back up! Now how can I harvest the potatoes if the leaves do not die back? So you see while things are moving along in the veggie patch there is not that much to write at the moment except that all the tomato plants have got a large number of tomatoes.

So I have spent some time looking for my creativity and feel pleased that I seem to have found some of it. If any of you out there know any tips to forcing your creativity out of hiding please let me know……