How Not To Finish A Book, In One Easy Lesson

"Here I sit, all in caper, pants round ankles, with no paper..." - seems as good a start as any today.

By way of background (because background is everything) it is a rainy, dismal grey day.  It's the sort of day that you're thankful to be working, even when you're on your own - because if that boring daily drudgery that we call earning a living wasn't occupying one's mind, heaven only knows where one's unbridled thinking centre might suddenly richochet off to...

Like deciding instantaneously to write about why I cannot, for the life of me, finish the novel I started all those years ago, and which was motoring along at a rate of knots late last year, but now sits maybe forever unfinished.  A crying shame, with no one else to blame.

Carol Howden's great big Monument to Nothing.  Here's to Nothing, fellas.... here's to Nothing.

I should add at this point that I am freely going to partake of other writers' cliches and lines in this most unsublime piece of crap I am writing here (and also make up lots of ill conceived new words) because my mood is of such darkness today that the care factor is unmysteriously absent also.  So the first line about the lack of toilet paper came off a dunny wall somewhere when I was about six, and when I didn't even know what caper was. I'm not even sure now.  If you do, perhaps you can tell me.   And the one about a crying shame and no one else to blame is a line out of a song you probably know, or have at least heard.  And lastly, and bestly - and yes I KNOW that isn't a real word, and who cares, I'm the creator here - the line about my great big fat monument to nothing is courtesy of Eddie Wilson, a good looking sort who was also a tortured soul.  I can occasionally identify with those sorts.  Here's to you, Eddie.  Here's to you... (Eddie repeated everything twice)

Back to the aforementioned Book.

So I had started this ponderous beast sometime back in 2012, when I frightened the wits out of a very good friend by telling her what the first chapter was about, and the basic premise of the book - as far as I could see it anyhow.  Which wasn't far at all.  But it frightened her enough for her to have the most God awful nightmare that very night, wherein she ended up leaping out of bed - no I am not kidding - striding to her window, smashing her way through it and then stepping through, to escape the horrors, it seems, of Scene No.1 in my novel - and cutting herself to shreds in the process.  Those lacerations required stitches, not only to her body but perhaps also to her grip on sanity - and made me think at the time I was either one hell of a story writer, or she didn't do horror too well.  Probably the latter.

The book had a working title of The Volt - in fact, it still does.  But there wasn't much electricity going on in there, and so the book sat shelved, unloved and even unthought about for another three years or so, while I got on with the business of Life, earning enough peanuts to subsist on and thereby tread water for a bit longer.  Meanwhile that book would nudge me once in ever such a while.  I'm gonna be GOOD, it whispered.  There is nothing out there like ME, because I am coming straight out of YOUR HEAD (this is the part that scares the bejesus out of me actually) - and last but surely not least - I am gonna make you a SQUILLION.  Because not only is the world going to embrace the sheer madness of The Volt, as unprepared the world might well be, it is also going to make a hell of a Hollywood blockbuster out of it - and You, cazhow.com, will not have to work ever again.  You can sit on back to back cruise ships, sipping pina coladas (my subconscious doesn't know it's actually beer I prefer) and what's more, you can bring all your friends along as well.... if... you... can... only.. FINISH THIS SODDING BOOK!!!

I hate it when my creative brain screams angrily at me.  Especially when it's right.  Inasmuch as I hate being wrong, I wouldn't even attempt to argue with it.  Because I know the book is an outright ball tearer, original ripper of a beast, there is simply nothing else like it,  and it deserves to be written, even if it never sells a single copy.

So why aren't I writing it (instead of this self indulgent crap you're now reading) I ask myself...

There are 66,000 words already logged onto this creation which is The Volt.  That's a third of the way through.  Those words took me around six weeks, following Stephen King's disciplinary bible of On Writing.  He is a very clever man, Stephen King, and I would not have even come thus far without his guidance.  But those words were difficult to write, and some days, near impossible.  I had an outlandish situation, a frighteningly interesting array of characters - but no Cunning Plan.  Because I was trying to do what Mr King advised, which was to let the characters do whatever they wanted to do, in order to either (a) develop into somebody important to the storyline, or (b) fade away into nothingness, and meet an ignoble end on the editing floor during Draft No.2.

But my characters thought otherwise.  Headstrong, impulsive, and downright crazy and unpredictable would describe at least three-quarters of them (gee I wonder why that would be!) , and as soon as I let them loose, they were like wild brumbies galloping out of a corral, and in five different directions.  Because my guys didn't stick together in any sort of orderly posse - oh no!  They each had their own places to go, things to see, people to do - and none of it correlated with where I had vaguely surmised the story was heading.  It didn't even feel like my story anymore.  So it became more and more difficult to keep writing, to find some direction, to round up the brumbies and head them towards some sort of righteous action that would generate a Grand Conclusion, and of course, a story that people would want to read.

But my horses wouldn't round up, and the story kept diversifying each time I sat down and wrote my further daily 2000 words, and at around 64,000 words, I was in total despair, flinging my hands up at the disarray I had created, and just about ready to give up and go back to my day job.

So I went back to my day job.  And about two weeks later, I wrote a further 2000 words.  And that 2000 words, my friend, suddenly found a direction for where all this was going.  A big sigh of relief, you might say.  Wrong.

Knowing where the story was going - well, sort of anyway - gave me enough breathing space that I closed the document, comfortable in the knowledge that next time I picked it up, I could move my troops forward in a much more orderly fashion, and therefore the challenge was conquered.  Whew.

I haven't written a word since, and that was five months ago.

In the meantime, I can hardly remember the story, or even the epiphany that caused me to believe I could stop for a while.  I'm just scared out of my wits of the whole thing.  Every time I turn on the computer, I can feel the brumbies in there, their hooves thundering around my hard drive, stamping, snorting, colluding with aliens, trying to find their way out of my computer, out of my head, and out into the world.  And I'm scared.  Scared of the mental effort, of the discipline required to finish this monstrously onerous task (Stephen King said that writing a novel is like crossing the Atlantic in a bathtub, and I can tell you, I know exactly what the man means!)

And on this perpetually rainy grey misery guts of a day, I can't even find my gratitude, just a big fat case of fedupedness (ooh now that's a word) with why I can't get on with it and TCB (take care of business - like the King - Elvis this time)

I have seriously run out of excuses, my hands are running out of time, and I think my memory expired quite a while ago.  It's either now or never.

My creative muse has left the building in disgust.  It is time to coax her back, or give her up as lost, burn the book, and get the heck outta Dodge.  (I love getting out of Dodge - you might have noticed)

To be continued..... (hopefully tomorrow).....

I think this is the first prehistoric scratchings of how the book cover might look - which means I did in fact work on the book today, however minutely... :-)

Like my writing? (probably not) - Read more at www.cazhow.com !
 

This one's for Daniel....

It's amazing when you are able to tune into the Higher Power through yourself, trust in it and feel it working for the collective good, and with the belief that whatever comes your way is meant to be.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes amazing, sometimes incredibly painful, and yet it's always making us grow, grow, grow...

I had such a cosmic thump earlier this year, when I had the sudden and very inexplicable compulsion to contact an ex-partner I hadn't spoken to in eight years, which had remained that way for the simple reason that our five year relationship had ended very acrimoniously and I had never had any desire whatsoever to revisit that chapter of my life.  Done and dusted, over, finished.  I did wonder at the time why he was even in my consciousness; but because I listen to myself these days, I rather fearfully dialed his number (great memory for numbers, sometimes handy, sometimes toxic!) of course after blocking my own number to avoid any repercussions.  He didn't answer.  I'd done my bit.  Whew, no harm done, and he'd never know it's me, nor would he ever have any inkling it could ever have been me.

But.. the Universe thought otherwise.

I've always read and believe that you will keep getting the same lessons over and over until you learn what you need to learn.  So of course when I had that second slap a few weeks later, a bit fiercer and way more urgent, I realised I hadn't yet done what needed doing.  I'd considered that trying to contact him was enough; clearly I was going to have to make contact, willing or not.  And no peace till I did!

So I sent him a text via Messenger (because of course I didn't want him to have my phone number, which is unlisted), asking him how life is in Waknuk these days.... (you'd need to have read the John Wyndham book The Chrysalids to understand the reference here) but we'd always jokingly referred to the little country hamlet that he had grown up in as Waknuk.  You know, they have a parade of 8 because the whole town turned out so they could star in it.  That kind of funky little place.

The answer I received devastated me.  Not so good.  Why, I ask.   Because his 26 year old son Daniel had taken his own life some weeks earlier.  Likely around the time when I'd received my first prompt to contact my deep and distant past.  Eerie?  No.  Not when you believe in just about everything, as I do..  It's no stretch at all for me to believe that Daniel was behind it, first gently, and then more insistently, because his dad so needed the only person he believed might go a little way towards being able to help him through such an unspeakably sad horror that no parent would ever wish on another.
My ex-partner's parents had also passed away around this same period, but I guess if there is ever an event that can dull the loss of your dear parents, it's the loss of your beloved child.  There is no grief like that one; incomprehensible to those of us lucky enough not to have experienced it.  We all say goodbye to our parents at some point, hopefully later rather than sooner.  Mourning our own children is shattering in its own sense of disbelief.

Communication now opened, there followed a flurry of messages, photos, video footage of the tall, heart-flutteringly handsome strapping young man Daniel had grown into since I'd last seen him, which was around 8 years ago.  Back then he had been just growing into manhood, a tall boy still evolving into his mature glory, with the most beautifully sunny nature, and a smile that could light up a room with its presence.  The heart-breakingly gorgeous smiling man I was looking at now in his adult photos and videos was a different creature indeed, a powerfully built young man, heavily inked, as is the fashion these days, with a killer smile, and attitude to spare.  Curiously, I watched him dancing around on my screen.  He was singing, strong body flexing such fluid movements as he pranced about, endlessly flashing that perfectly cheeky grin, as he sang about how everything was gonna be "all right..."  Oh, the irony.  The sheer loss.  And the shatter for those who loved him, who are left behind to try and pick up the trillions of heart shaped pieces that are left in the wake of an inexplicable event such as this.

My next thoughts were of his younger brother, who had idolised the ground his big brother walked on, and the unbearable grief stricken black hole that his world would have suddenly become.  I had memories of those two boys, and my own small daughter at the time, only three years old, and how she'd idolised those big boys, and how they had secretly doted on her, this cute little munchkin who invaded their space in the lounge room and insisted on lying between them on the carpet beside the heater, on her little foldout Elmo couch, watching the Simpsons together, and giggling whenever they did.  Meanwhile we'd be on the big couch, laughing at the three of them lying there all in a row...

The news of Daniel's death hadn't really hit me yet, simply because I couldn't believe in such a senseless event.  No amount of photos, footage of the funeral, listening to his dad erupt into wild sobbing on the phone, and then a few weeks later in person, with my arms wrapped firmly around his enormous ones, trying to comfort and soothe him in the only way I knew how, could ground me with any real tangible sense of reality of  such a shocking and life changing event.  I simply could not believe it, even when all the details were revealed to me, such details I can never ever think of without horror and misery, and yet which lurk in my consciousness all too often.. perhaps as a message, a warning, an elevated sense of knowing now that every person has their own personal breaking point, and that such a point has no polarity with where your own might be or might not be.

One of the first ripples of what I'll call the Daniel effect is that I cancelled my overseas holiday (at the airport customs departure lounge actually, so strongly was I fighting my own truth all the way to the departure gate!) and made an abrupt change of plan to drive two states away to spend time with my teenage daughter who in her father's care was feeling very fragile, and had given me such clear signs that she needed me in every way possible at that time.  Daniel ensured I was never going to be able to get on that aeroplane and spend a few weeks abroad; not then,  not when I knew that someone as strong and beautiful and good as he was could feel that he had no other options than to end his life.  So instead, I heard my daughter's cries for help with a new consciousness, listened to what I heard and felt and knew, and when I hit that fork in the road, I barely slowed up as I steered the Scooby van down to good old Victoria instead.

Thank you, Daniel, this is your magic, rippling ever outwards.

I called in to visit Daniel's dad on the way of course; here was another miracle unfolding.  I wanted to see him.  I wanted to hold him.  I wanted to console him, in whatever hopelessly inadequate way I could.  I wanted to help him as badly as I'd wanted to never seen him again in the years prior.  Such are the amazing happenings that can occur around life's curve balls of sheer tragedy, if we but only can feel them and respond to them, even when sometimes they cannot make any sense to us on a thinking level, and they especially don't make sense to those around us.

The weeks that followed have been incredible in their sheer simplicity.  We talk, we laugh, we cry.  And last night it was finally my turn to really howl at the moon over the loss of that most beautiful young man, Daniel.  Buckets of tears ensued; and I finally got to howl out all my grief and feel the pain, pain that was hellish in its intensity and which left me bereft and shaking with the aftershocks of it all.  He touched my life, and also my daughter's life, in more ways than we will ever know.  And he's gone way way too soon, on to a different plane,  a higher purpose, so the rest of us here are only left with an appreciation and heartfelt ache, of the short time we had him in our lives, that brightest of bright stars, and who now is creating magic and miracles nonetheless for those he left behind. 
Where there is sadness, there is joy.  Where there is loss, there is gain.  We might not see Daniel again in our world as we knew him, but I personally plan on sharing a few Teddies with him (collectively our favorite beer apparently!) sometime in the future when we all meet up again for that party amongst the stars...
The beers will be icy cold, the music and dancing contagious, and big smiles and love will be around all of us...

Here's to you, gorgeous young Dan.. this is your song Xxxx

"Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

They say Spain is pretty, though I've never been
Well Daniel says it's the best place that he's ever seen
Oh and he should know, he's been there enough
Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died, but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky

Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes"     - Elton John

Robin Williams - RIP warm wonderful funny man...

The media is flooded with the dreadful and unbelievable news that that most loveable and funniest of all souls, Mr Robin Williams, aka Mork From Ork, Mrs Doubtfire, Patch Adams - pick any number of your favorite characters he so unforgettably portrayed over his long career - has taken his own life, at age 63.

It's an incongruous age to end it all, was my first thought, after that initial and incredible sense of shock when it came through on the breaking news yesterday morning.  63.  Not young.  After all, plenty of souls don't make it to that age anyway, leaving this complex building called Life in all manner of ways by that time.  But 63 is not terribly ancient either.  Depression is the reason reported, and hanging and asphyxiation his chosen method, but still worded carefully by the media, because in this litigious age we live in, you've got to "cover your arse" when saying ANYTHING, even when reporting something so obvious and tragic as a suicide by hanging.

He was old enough to know better, yet clearly powerless to escape his demons.  Were they mental ones or physical ones - or both?  We won't know.  He touched our lives, but as my fellow scribe Janette B so aptly says, we didn't get to touch his. Do some souls just burn too bright, and therefore burn out earlier? 

The outpouring of grief, of love, the reaching out in agonies of despair and sadness worldwide at the passing of this amazing man, had me thinking that had he have truly known how much he was valued and loved and adored and revered while he was alive, would he have chosen to step out, aged 63, and quite alone?  I'm only hoping his spirit is smiling now in the understanding of how much he meant to so many, and maybe it's bittersweet for him because he didn't realise this in time to prevent this tragedy.... and much more so for those close to him, and even those who knew him not at all.... but enjoyed him enormously nonetheless.

We are very good at appreciating what's gone, and not so good at it while we are getting on with the sometimes challenging business of living.  The message I am personally taking from this momentous outpouring of love-too-late is I don't want anyone in my world not knowing I love them, and I intend to reach out in positivity to you all each and every day of my life, as long as you'll allow me to!

Rest In Peace, Robin Williams.  The whole word laughed with you, and now there's tears of another kind...
Not forgotten, gone too soon, but your gifts will be enjoyed forevermore....just a bit more solemnly, and with an ocean of regret for what else the world might have enjoyed.

May your spirit soar in love and laughter! Xxxxxx

Sins of the Past

It's a somewhat somber blog tonight, and it's to do with dysfunctional parenting and its effects on children...

Having a great childhood guarantees you nothing really except a good clean start to life.  You travel through childhood, with all your baby angst, your fun kiddie times, your teen perils, to arrive into adulthood, hopefully with a fully formed character without too many major flaws, and ready and able to tackle what life will invariably throw your way as you venture forth.  The good, the not so good, and the downright awful.

Having an unspeakably dreadful childhood, or one filled with the miseries of alcoholism, molestation, drug use, absentee parents, narcissism and the like, not only doesn't guarantee you a good clean start in life, but what it does promise you is a lot of work later on, if you are ever going to overcome those rocky beginnings. It's been on my mind somewhat lately, and this afternoon, watching Shawshank Redemption again with my daughter, a few sentences always seem to stick out to me.  One is "Get busy living or get busy dying." The other is when Andy DuFresne crawled through a river of shit to come out clean on the other side.

Some will never enter that stinking sewer to attempt to find that redemption; they will simply quietly get busy dying, and drink or drug themselves to death.  They will never really feel the pain and decide to address it, or die trying.  But it is worth fighting the good fight, because the rewards can be enormous.

Narcissistic parents have a lot to answer for, although they never will do that, simply because these types are "wired wrong," and therefore will never know - or care - of the scars they inflict on everybody around them, including and especially on their own flesh and blood.  Those who get to experience the fallout from being raised by a narcissist suffer lifelong from the experience, and sadly those who don't educate themselves about what this condition means, will wait forever for a redemption that never comes. At some stage, you have to put defective parenting firmly into the past, if you have experienced it, or it will slowly but surely kill your very being.

Adult children of narcissists and addicts and abusive parents never really feel whole.  They guess at what normal is, not having grown up with it.  They do not trust easily.  They can be hard judges and jury, given that when raising their own children under normal conditions, they cannot relate to normal childhood angst and behaviour, because they tend to benchmark it against their own demented upbringings and find their own children's problems trite and insignificant by comparison.  But our children are our NOW, and we need to always remember that.

So, the good news.  Provided these adult children are not infected with the same narcissistic gene, as can certainly run in families, they can in fact turn out to be the most wonderfully caring parents, who although still frequently getting it wrong due to their own faulty radars, are driven to growth and learning and insight in a way that perhaps the more grounded simply don't need to.

There are a couple of wonderful things about growing up in those highly dysfunctional home settings, however, and these aren't often talked about.  Certainly it's not the childhood trauma itself.  It's the flip side of the legacy those adult children are left with; the huge resilience, the empathy, the determination to be so much better than what they had themselves.  I mean, you can either look at it positively or negatively, like everything in life.  The negative - and those who have suffered such a start find it very, very easy to go down this path - are the "Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?  Life isn't fair."  These are all fair statements, coming from a child from that kind of unspeakably awful beginnings.  Why indeed?  Who knows?  It is what it is, or more accurately, it WAS what it WAS.

The biggest hurdle of course is to not let that kind of pain and fear affect your NOW.  The past, as horrible as it was, is in the past.  It need not have any say in what you are going forward, except you can take all the strength, the courage and the compassion and love into your life going forward, to come out clean and joyful at the other end...

On this Anzac long weekend, I've reflected on the brave men who marched into certain death such a long, long time ago to protect our homeland for the future generations - we - who get to enjoy it every day.  I am also two weeks into fighting an enormous battle, assisting an amazing group of women two states away, against a most unconscionable narcissistic adversary who needs to be removed from hurting more and more vulnerable people in the way he thinks its his God given right to do.  That one is still a battle in progress, and that's not surprising because those always are, as they have no insight, no empathy, and therefore no ability to change.  Textbook narcissism at its most grandiose.  Sigh.

But I've also enjoyed the company of some truly marvelous human beings, one being my teen daughter, whose teen angst I need to keep treating as a whole new ball game, not a poor second to what I had to deal with at that age.  Then I've had news of the death of a most awful man who was part of destroying my childhood, although he played second fiddle to those who should have protected me.  And I've cried a few bucketloads of tears and been held and soothed by a magical human being who instinctively "knew" me, even before I myself knew where my intense sadness was coming from, or why. Miracles happen, and all the time.

Sometimes we just need to howl at the moon.  And the Universe in all its wisdom, invariably sends us what we need to cope, to grow, and to move further into the light.  And to love life, and to love again.

Yours in love and light, Carol Xxxxooo

Lest We Forget.

Negativity is a Health Hazard

It's one of those occasions where I feel the Universe is sending me lots of small but determined nudges to write this post, ever more insistent are these nudges, and the last one (about half an hour ago) was like a sharp rabbit kick in the ribs.  Ouch, that hurt.  Hurts even more to know people I care about are hurting as much as they are, but can't seem to find their way into the light.  This one's for you...

It has been an interesting and extremely busy but joyful couple of days.  Communing with nature, people, friends, babies, a shark, a huge python, and then the past knocking on my consciousness today, not once but twice... but with nothing positive to say.  That's why they say when the past comes knocking, don't answer - it has nothing new to say.

I was surrounded by babies yesterday morning.  Four, to be exact - all cute as buttons, gorgeous uncaring little blank slates, lying wriggling on their colourful little blankies, playing with their mobiles, cooing, dribbling like a leaky tap as the odd first tooth tries to make its determined way through those tiny pink baby gums, A room with lots of bubbies, their gorgeous young mums, and the room smelt divine, of hope, talc, and the joy of new beginnings.  I revelled in it, in fact spent a fair portion of the morning down amongst the infants, fascinated by their ease with their world, enjoying their moments, with no thoughts of an hour ago or an hour forward, until the time would arrive when hunger would strike, they would insist, and be rapidly appeased, only to sink back into contented slumber and blissful little half smiles on their pure baby lips.

My gorgeous 14 year old daughter sits beside me, playing too, and it wasn't so long ago that she was one of these tiny unfettered miracles who know how to just be, and by instinct.  Too soon, they will take on board the world around them, and develop their own little worries and insecurities.  But for now, they are perfectly perfect.  Complete with scant hair, wobbly chins, chubby legs and toothless smiles, they know they're adorable and so do we.  A smile sends we adults into raptures, a careless giggle - what could be better?  I'm grinning from ear to ear, and when I leave two hours later, my smile muscles ache.

An afternoon kayak with a lovely friend follows, and we paddle peacefully among lots of happy humanity, out enjoying their day, whether they're barbecuing, singing, dancing, boating, fishing, swimming... they are embracing all that's good in the world, and so are we, both singularly, together, and collectively, just feeling the gratitude for the happiness state we get to enjoy so very, very much.  It's raining when we start out, and that matters not as we'll get wet anyway.  After a while, we get some sunshine and then it goes again.. then we swim, and sit, and talk, and contemplate, just enjoying our now, which is the best spot to hang out.  It's time to head home, and we then decide to take the dog for a run to end the afternoon.  Big doggy smiles all round at that one!  Then an amazingly delicious Thai dinner follows, where I get to try lots of different and unusual tastes - for a kid that used to subsist solely on pizza and coke and a hell of a lot of sadness and pain and total loneliness, I've come a damn long way, with still far to go... and man I'm loving this journey!

Today I woke up to the past stalking me overnight again via Facebook.. a semi regular occurrence, even after eight years of blocking, deleting, not reacting, hoping this thorn in my side will go away someday.  It's not a sharp one anymore, more like an occasional prick (no pun intended!) just reminding me that perhaps there's still something that needs to happen there, before that particular wound will be allowed to heal forever.  I ponder it, finger paused on the Block button that I've hit fruitlessly so many times before.  And because these days I think and act so differently, my mind turned to a positive way of dealing with something so negative.. and I sent a positive message.  And then hit the Block button.  Time of course will tell if this was the action that needed to happen to end it forever, but as they say, there's madness in doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  I'm positively hopeful, and meanwhile there's a good life to lead...

We then caught up with some old, old friends, and it struck me the stark contrast between two of the three present.  Two positive, seeing the good, feeling hopeful, smiling and enjoying the now.. one negative, looking for more negatives to feed it, and satisfaction in finding what they were looking for.  Because the world is a truly cruddy place when your mind and actions are set in the negative, and never in the Now.  Regret over what's happened to you, anger about why things never go right for you, as you struggle endlessly in the trenches at the whim of the world which keeps kicking you in the teeth over and over again, and ever harder.  The Universe wants you to pick yourself up, learn the lesson, so it can move on to the next one. The Universe is a patient teacher, but it gets a bit tired of waiting for us to get it.  If you spend too long on it, the pain becomes horrendous and the doom and gloom self perpetuating.  And I don't know how you can get off that particular treadmill.  Nobody could help me get off mine either; but anyway I always had plenty of company on there so it was a safe miserable place to hide... until I had to take the great leap of faith when life became just so painful that I couldn't go on in the way I was living.  I'm hoping those I care for will get there also, and can't wait to welcome then when they do!

A phone call tonight (my second past comin' a-knockin') and this one from about a quarter of a century ago (gosh, am I that old!) and I immediately felt the angst down that phone line; it fairly vibrated with it!  Kind words, positive encouragement, and I'm trying to share the joy, light the way forward, even just a flicker might be enough... sometimes it's all one needs, to start finding their way out of the darkness, but only if they're open to it at that particular time.. The door slamming shut firmly, not once but a few times, any positivity rejected cleanly and completely; they are not ready yet for such an alien concept when one's life situation is so dreadful in its complete hopelessness.  All that anger, kept under lock and key, and some of it almost escaped, but was then quickly forced back into its Pandora's box and the lid nailed shut.. until next time.  I'm sad for them, and yet it's their journey and their choice to make, whether they believe me or not.  And they don't.

As I munch my last jam drop biscuit, freshly baked by the lovely apprentice baker in the family this afternoon, I'm happy to finish this post, not to spread the negativity around, but to give you hope and a bit of insight, so far as I'm able to in my limited and very amateur way because I'm still a Johnny Come Lately in this happy game I now call Life... but oh I'm learning so fast...

It's just as easy to be positive as it is to be negative.
It's as easy to smile as to frown.
It's as easy to be grateful for what you have, instead of what you don't have.
It's as easy to be proud of yourself, as to beat yourself up.
It's as easy to spread the joy and love as it is to keep your sadness and disappointment locked away.
It's as easy to grow as it is to stand still.
And it's as easy to enjoy life and whatever it offers, as it is to not embrace it.

If I could have learnt this years ago, I might be a wise old owl today.  Better late than never I say, and that goes for everyone else.  It's never too late to become the positive and amazing human you were born to be.  It just involves letting go the past, embracing the Now.. and the future will take care of itself.

It's that perfectly and beautifully simple.

Smile, and the whole world smiles with you.  Frown, and you walk alone, sister.

Yours in positivity....Xxxoox

I can almost see it.

That dream I'm dreaming, but

There's a voice inside my head saying

You'll never reach it

Every step I'm takin'

Every move I make

Feels lost with no direction,

My faith is shakin'

But I, I gotta keep tryin'

Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side

It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing

The chances I'm taking

Sometimes might knock me down, but

No I'm not breaking

I may not know it, but

These are the moments that

I'm gonna remember most, yeah

Just gotta keep goin',

And I, I gotta be strong

Just keep pushing on, 'cause

There's always gonna be another mountain

I'm always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there

Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side

It's the climb

Yeah

                       ...Miley Cyrus, The Climb

My Turn!

There are falls, and then there are falls.  You can go over the falls, or you can simply fall, or fall over.  You can fall in things, like love, dogshit, a mineshaft or a heap. And you can fall out, fall in, or just fall.

I'm unsure how many posts a blog titled Over The Falls is going to attract.  When I aptly named this blog in honor of the gutsy Jade, who had survived a most horrendous car accident only to find that her falls were seriously only beginning, I couldn't foresee there would be too many more posts to add here.

But what a difference a week makes.

Thursday 5 December, which just happened to be the anniversary of my mother's birthday and also the date of her demise seven years ago, was just a week shy of my own falls looming.  OK, mine was a fall.  One worthy of a mention, but not the Big Kahuna that started off this whole blog.  That one belongs to Jade.

Fast forward one week to Thursday 12 December, and it's a typical early morning at the dog beach with our beloved newly acquired pooch, aptly named Boof.  Boof-Head, Lethal Weapon, Bone Cruncher, pick your pejorative.  This time I'm there with my daughter, who had enjoyed hearing about Boof's race with his arch enemy, The Whippet, on previous occasions.  Nicolle really wanted to see The Whippet, and I wanted to show her how gutsy our dog is, in trying to catch the lightning fast little sod.

Just by way of background, Boof on a previous outing had been mooted as being "out of shape" by The Whippet's rather smug owner, a grey haired lady.  Scrap that; she was just grey.  Sort of colourless, older, shapeless.. the sort of woman who just blends into the background, no matter where she be.  I can't even visualize her now, beyond the stringy grey hair hanging down in hanks on either side of her pallid face.  Personality to match.  But she does have a damn fast dog, I'll give her that.

Boof is a four year old Australian cattle dog x german shepherd, so I think that makes him a purebred Handsome Heeler.

So Nicolle wanted to see this Speedy Gonzales of the doggy world, and also its owner who dared to slang off on our Magnificent Mutt.  So there we were, and not a whippet in sight.

We walked the length of the beach, and then returned, and were almost back at the point where we'd make the trek up the hill and head off home.  And then came one of those sliding door moments.  You know the ones, they almost make an audible clunk in time; a careless decision, a fleeting moment of waver, perhaps a small debate over what to do.  And you pick one path, when afterwards with the beauty of my old mate Hindsight who waits smirking in the wings, you damn well wish you'd chosen the other option, which was to leave at that point....

The Whippet arrived on the beach.  It came prancing down the hill, did Charlie (The Whippet), ready to lead all and sundry a merry chase.  Boof spied his speedy mate straight away, and of course went bounding over to him, and with a flick of those long, long legs, The Whippet started the game.  In no time at all, there were three or four hopefuls giving chase.  I'm laughing, shrieking for joy that the show was on once more, and that Nicolle would get to see this wonder dog that no earthly creature could catch.  The Winged Dog in full flight, and hotly pursued.

Mrs Grey wandered over, along with her partner (who wasn't grey, in fact seemed very colourful indeed) and remarked on how her wonder dog wasn't even trying, just playing with our lesser hounds, and that they were wasting their time because no creature would ever catch it.  And I'm willing Boof to pull out something extra, whether it be tucking his head in that bit more, fold back the ears, son, or make a sneaky cut corner, whatever it took, to land the rabbit.  Boof was determined.. and clever.  He'd wait till The Whippet would run in a big arc, then he'd wait and cut straight across the field, and come close enough to comb its leg hairs with his teeth.  To no avail.  The next thing The Whippet did was steal another dog's tennis ball, barely slowing to do so, and then leading the others in a merry chase, taunting them with the ball in its mouth.  Nasty little critter.  Mrs Grey of course remarking that nothing would slow her prize down, he could do ANYTHING.

The Whippet ran past me like a white streak, and Boof was in hot pursuit.  But at the last moment, Boof feinted to the right to go around me on the other side.  Unfortunately there was a serious lack of judgment there, mine in thinking he'd make it around me, and his in misjudging how much room I actually took up.

The next thing that happened was he of the 29.5 kilos (because he could stand to lose a few apparently) collided with the side of my bent right knee.  He didn't exactly send it into orbit, but there was a most massive explosion of pain, the leg collapsed with its kneecap somewhere in the ether, and I landed in a pile on the sand, shrieking different words this time.  Boof of course never slowed, and it would have been at least some consolation if he had have landed the prize.  But he didn't.  He came back to apologise a few moments later, as I lay on the sand, clutching what was left of my leg.

The knee had sort of found its way back into its usual spot, as it has been wont to do on its previous outings, so after I'd stopped shaking from shock, I tried to stand up.  Nope, the knee was having none of that.  In the end, Mr Grey hauled me to my feet, whilst I could feel Mrs Grey eyeing me somewhat disapprovingly.  Mr Grey pointed out his own knee brace to me; I'm thinking that little rat on nitrous has a lot to answer for!  And having got to my feet, I managed to stand there for a bit, then after some conversation about how bad it had looked - and was - I started to hobble back to the car.  I was determined to be able to do that, and if nothing else, it looked damn gutsy on my part!  But oh, it did hurt.  Nicolle was quite horrified, as she'd seen the knee go sideways, and asked if I needed her to prop me up.  Nope, I'm bullheaded enough to manage that one on my own.  But I did rather wish that we'd gone home, oh, about five minutes earlier after all.

So we reached the car, and while Nicolle loaded our dog into the rear of the wagon, I somehow managed to fold myself and my shattered leg into the driver's seat, hoping I could at least get us home.  So far, so good. We arrived home, and then I sort of managed to hop inside... and collapse.

The knee swelled up like a balloon within the space of about an hour, and when I went to stand on it not longer after I'd sat down, it simply wasn't going to cooperate.  Bolts of pain straight up through the leg at the slightest hint of weight going on to it.  My friend Denise who luckily is a nurse and always seems to know what to do, was my first port of call, and she turned up not long afterwards with crutches.  The leg was that swollen, it didn't even feel sore anymore as I sat there, only when I attempted to use it in any way did it sing out Ave Maria Leave Me Be.  There was a big water balloon around the joint, which no amount of ice was going to deflate anytime soon.

It's Sunday today, and again what a difference a few days make.  Thursday and Friday were a total write-off, of sitting, icing, painkillers, watching back to back movies, and being a total couch potato.  Nicolle of course went out in sympathy; I think my lack of movement made her feel extremely active by comparison!  I'm normally the Eveready Bunny who can't sit still; now I still can't sit still, but some joker has taped up my cymbals for a while. Doh.

After two days of this hell, I visited the doc who confirmed what I already knew.  It was no simple dislocation (because if it were, like previous occasions I'd be up and about straight away, wearing  a knee brace, wincing a bit at the pain, but getting on with business).  This had actually caused me to take two days off work - in the sedentary work at home role that I do, I have to be almost dead to need to do that.  Apparently I'd torn the medial ligament, as yet unconfirmed, but the MRI and Xrays next week will confirm the extent of it, and the treatment.

The treatment?  The good doc says that it comes down to age, and activity.  Being 49 and active, I should have a total rebuild now, because if I don't, my knees will fall apart in 15 years time when nobody will operate on them because of my age.  This brought home to me the depressing state of affairs that in 15 years time, my need to be active will play second banana to my age and the perceived pointlessness of restoring my physical health at that time.  Apparently when you're 65, you no longer have need of such things like knees that work.  So long as your crochet hook claw hold is intact, and your reading glasses firmly on your nose...

Stuff that.

So yesterday I started walking instead, briefly with crutches, and then totally without.  I strapped up my knee with two lots of bracing, and then cooked myself a risotto.  And did the washing.  My knee wobbled, whinged, wavered.. and I went to bed exhausted at 8pm on a Saturday night.

Today I walked to Aldi and did some shopping, under the watchful eye of Denise, and carried my own bag of goodies home.  I rewarded myself with strawberry cheesecake for not falling over on the way back.  And now I'm writing about the whole sorry tale.  And tomorrow I'm teaching Boof to read it so he never does it again. Bad Dog.

You never know when life is going to take you over the falls, just ask Jade.  And you make of it what you have to, suffer the pain, the frustration, pick yourself up, and go forward as fast as you can.... My fall is not going to be more than a blip on my radar, cos as the song says, "I ain't got time fo' dis."  Way too much living to do!

Appreciation to the treasured friends who stepped up and offered assistance, and of course to my wonderful daughter who was the best ice girl ever, as well as making chocolate brownies for us to enjoy, and keeping me company through some really long long movies.  To Boof, the million dollar Gumtree dog (who's now cost me $350 in vet bills last week and two days lost pay and a broken knee this week) all is forgiven of course, but get your bloody eyes checked, would ya!  To Noosa, thank you for raining continuously for the first 24 hours so I could feel seriously great about putting my feet up, resting and eating bad things.. you came to the party as always! I'll be dancing around town again real soon, look out  xxxxx

Sail on, Silver Girl...

Dami's rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Waters on XFactor last night made me cry, and has had me remaining solemn for much of today.

"When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind"

-Simon & Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water

In the Alfred Hospital tonight, there lies someone very dear to me, and to many.  She's only 16, full of cheeky life, adventure and the sheer unadultered beauty that is youth.  She's a fellow writer, like me, so we share the joy of imagination and words.  So Jadey, these words tonight are just for you.

We've been following your brave battle over the last week, with agony and with hope.  With prayers, even for those of us who aren't religious, because let's leave no stone unturned here.  There's a battle ahead.  And we have faith. In your courage, your dogged determination, and your sheer guts, and the glory that must hopefully follow that, because that's your right.

Your story has just begun, and those of us who have been privileged enough to share it, heartfelt thanks for that.  But we want more, and your time in the sun will come again, and soonest....

Sleep, baby, sleep.  Tomorrow is a brand new day, the road is long and winding but the path is there for you to make yours.  And we're all waiting for you.....

Buckets of love, hugs, hope and tears..... Xoooxxxooo