Old Yellow Moon has waned, ie. been archived

Thank you everyone who may have enjoyed visiting my blog periodically, and gotten something out of it. I certainly enjoyed making it, however it was born out of a sad and difficult time in my life.

 

Now, however, it is time to start afresh completely and change everything. 

 

When I looked at it all, who I was and who I'd become... I knew deep in my soul where the truest things lurk, that this is a thing I couldn't not do, and keep my heart and head intact. 

 

Some time now down this path I have chosen, I'm now happily going full throttle and sloughing off all that is sad and bad behind.

 

I am happy now and in a much better place, though of course there will always be challenges... I'm redefining myself and finally listening to that little voice inside we so often ignore, and I quote: 

"They too have lain under their beds, knowing that they can't be who they are any more, and that they need to build a bigger boat. They are all in the furious, messy, white-light act of self creation, trying to invent a future they can be in."

(by Caitlin Moran in "How to Build a Girl").

Come and see me at Instagram (a bit quicker to put stuff up, and I am a very busy girl...) https://www.instagram.com/fooflofit/

There would never be enough butter for me in my mother's house...

I had to find it elsewhere in the world.

I’ll never be someone who had a mother who didn’t fuck with her. I’ll always be a person who had to escape from a crap pile to make her whole amazing self up. There’s a lot of sorrow and ugliness in that. But there’s a lot of beauty too.

But we can’t erase our lives. We can’t change what our mothers or fathers or step parents were like or what demons or gods ruled them or when they died or how. We can only change who we are in relation to them. We can revise how we narrate those stories of our lives.

Source: http://therumpus.net/2012/05/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-98-monsters-and-ghosts/

Gaps

Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. 

I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the gaps." The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the cliffs in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. 

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a maple - a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

by Annie Dillard

© Jennifer Phillips

Second chances

Dear Sugar,

I am thankful for second chances. Deserved or undeserved, but truly given without reservation. Given to me and to others, but most importantly, the one I gave to myself.

JC

Source: http://therumpus.net/2011/11/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-90-94-ways-of-saying-thank-you/

The environment

© Michael Leunig

I've never been to me

Hey lady, you, lady, cursin' at your life

You're a discontented mother and a regimented wife

I've no doubt you dream about the things you never do

But I wish someone had a talk to me like I wanna talk to you

Ooh I've been to Georgia and California, and, anywhere I could run

Took the hand of a preacherman and we made love in the sun

But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free

I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

Please lady, please, lady, don't just walk away

'Cause I have this need to tell you why I'm all alone today

I can see so much of me still living in your eyes

Won't you share a part of a weary heart that has lived a million lies

Oh I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece

Where I sipped champagne on a yacht

I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got

I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things

That a woman ain't s'posed to see

I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie

A fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be

But you know what truth is?

It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with this morning

The same one you're going to make love with tonight. That's truth, that's love

Sometimes I've been to cryin' for unborn children

That might have made me complete

But I, I took the sweet life and never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet

I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that cost too much to be free

Hey lady, I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me

I've been to paradise - never been to me

(I've been to Georgia and California, and anywhere I could run)

I've been to paradise - never been to me

(I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece

While I sipped champagne on a yacht)

I've been to paradise - never been to me

(I've been to cryin' for unborn children )

(Fade)

by Ron Miller and Kenneth Hirsch

String theory

Everyone else is a cardboard cut-out - 

their intimidatory iterations now fail.

An invisible draw-string gathers

our heart-strings ever closer.

In my innermost places you fit - 

distances most intimate.

Infinite intimate iterations - 

my-into-mate, mate-into-me. Ha!

Our intimacy in its infancy, yet - 

our heart-strings entwine intimately,

through intermittent iterations - 

strung forth into infinite horizons.

© Jennifer Phillips

Inspired by a quote from Charlotte Brontë in "Jane Eyre":

“Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"

I could risk no sort of answer by this time; my heart was full.

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near to me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”

And of course, String Theory itself:

In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. 

More, see Wikipedia.

Happiness is a warm guinea pig

Happiness is a warm guinea pig © Jennifer Phillips

Hope

© Michael Leunig

Letting go of "stuff"

• Visualise what you want your house to look like.
• Sort by category, not by room.
• Tidy clothes first, then books, papers, miscellany, and lastly, mementoes.
• Designate a place for each thing.
• Don't keep things "just in case".
• Only put things away once you have finished discarding.
• Keep only the things that speak to your heart.

- Adapted from Marie Kondo

You don't need a reason to leave

"You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you are incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart."

- Cheryl Strayed: "Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar"

Mother's Day #1

"The hug" by my 11 year old daughter © Jennifer Phillips

Mother's Day #2

"Boat & giant squid" by my 10 year old son © Jennifer Phillips

Let's go crazy

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here to tell you
There's something else
The after world

A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night

So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one, Dr. Everything'll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the after world
In this life
You're on your own

And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy, punch a higher floor4

If you don't like the world you're living in
Take a look around you
At least you got friends

You see I called my old lady
For a friendly word
She picked up the phone
Dropped it on the floor
(Ah, ah) is all I heard

Are we gonna let the elevator
Bring us down
Oh, no let's go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Let's look for the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

We're all excited
But we don't know why
Maybe it's 'cause
We're all gonna die

And when we do (When we do)
What's it all for (What's it all for)
You better live now
Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door

Tell me, are we gonna let the elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Look for the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

C'mon baby
Let's get nuts
Yeah
Crazy

Let's go crazy

Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!
Go crazy

I said let's go crazy (Go crazy)
Let's go, let's go
Go
Let's go

Dr. Everything'll be alright
Will make everything go wrong
Pills and thrills and daffodils will kill
Hang tough children

He's coming
He's coming
Coming

Take me away!

by Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) RIP

Spice drawer

I know this is a bit daggy but I cleaned out the diverse set of jars and bags that used to hold all the spices. It is so nice to have them all organised in their little containers now. Previously I could never find what I wanted. © Jennifer Phillips

Snow princess

My daughter channeling her snow princess! © Jennifer Phillips

Loneliness

"I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives - those fountains of inconvenient feeling - and towards the frantic enticements of what our friends in the Greed Business call the Free Market. We're hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we're falling away from our families and our neighbours and ourselves. We ego-surf and update our status and brush up on which celebrities are ruining themselves, and how. But the cure won't stick."

- Steve Almond

Small wins

"The whole process of becoming an astronaut helped me understand that what really matters is not the value someone else assigns to a task but how I personally feel while performing it. That's why, during the 11 years I was grounded, I loved my life. Of course I wanted to go back to space - who wouldn't? - but I got real fulfilment and pleasure from small victories, like doing something well in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab or figuring out how to fix a problem with my car. If I'd defined success very narrowly, limiting it to peak, high visibility experiences, I would have felt very unsuccessful and unhappy during those years. Life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so."

 - Chris Hadfield in "An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: Life Lessons from Space"

Religion?

© Michael Leunig, The "Age" Saturday 30 April 2016

War

© Michael Leunig, Saturday "Age" April 23, 2016