Sawdust

1. I love the smell of sawdust, not because some tree suffered and lost a limb, but because there is the possibility that from it something beautiful is being created, so a bit of the tree lives on forever as a thing of beauty. If you ever murder someone you should make a necklace out of their phalanges that way a peace of their beauty will live forever, or at least until everything turns to dust, bu...

   t that would take a very long time.
   I think I must associate the smell of sawdust with a memory and that is why I love it so, perhaps it was when I saw guitars being made, or it might have been that trip to the coopers, (the barrel maker, not the ranges). Who knows, it's like the smell is trying to trigger a memory I can't quite reach. Oh well, I'll always have this beautiful wooden box I made for myself when I was a child, and it will always carry my pretty collection of bone necklaces.

Paranoia.

It is dark, so dark I can't see my hands in front of my face. I hear a crash, it has come from the garage. My garage is not isolated from my house. If there is something out there it has access to everything, to me. I stare at the door to the garage, well, I stare to where I know the door is, but I cannot see it. I don't move. I am frozen in place with fear. My mind conjuring up every terrifying possibility imaginable, but never a good one. When I do finally move, it is to grab a weapon. I have no idea how I will use it, or if I could, but it makes me feel safer. I eventually make my way to the door, turning on every single light in the house. I open the door and boxes are scattered everywhere, their contents expunged and strewn about everywhere. My eyes glared around the room, searching it for a trace of movement, a sign of something that didn't belong. Nothing. Somehow this made me even more scared. I ran out, sliding the chain across as I left, scared that whatever it was, was coming to get me.

It was not until 3 am that I finally got to sleep, even then it was a restless and fearful sleep. When the sun shone I made my way back to the garage, bayonet in hand. It was just as I left it, the boxes on the floor blocking the path between the wall and the ladder. I looked around again, it seemed safe enough. I went to take my washing out of the machine only to find the spin cycle hadn't finished. I turned it back on. The machine shook so violently that it bashed into the wall over and over.

Now I see what had caused the boxes to fall. My fear and paranoia did the rest, though I still put the chain on at night.

Sleep take hold and ease my mind
Let us leave this troubled world behind
No dreams of tests or burdens past
Lie calm and still, silent at last
And if I wake still burden bound

perchance in sleep I've answers found

...

Belief.

That word can mean many things, I won’t go into all of them, although I do believe that belief in a higher power without any proof is a remarkable thing, I won’t remark on that today. Instead I want to focus on the self. Belief in the self is the most important thing anyone can achieve. Without it we are full of doubt and confusion, with it we can reach for the stars and even catch them. It stands to reason, then that without belief in ourselves the human race would have accomplished very little. Why try for something if you believe yourself incapable of ever achieving it? Daring to dream, to imagine is what being human is all about. It doesn’t matter what the dream is, what matters is that we hold on to it and strive to make it a reality. Our beliefs guide us through life. We come to believe in others too, sometimes we are disappointed by them, but sometimes our beliefs come to fruit and we are proud to say we always believed in them. Our belief in ourselves is our confidence. Those who have lost their confidence are usually led by fear, it steps up very fast to take confidences place and we, us gullible human beings, we let it take command of us so easily. Belief in the fear that controls you will stop you from attempting anything new and you will eventually stop dreaming, stop imagining. Stop living. You will be just a shadow of your former self, moving, breathing, but not really there, just a waste of space.
I have seen this happen to many people, and I do feel that it is happening to me too. My confidence has been stripped from me and I don’t know how to get it back. I no longer have belief in myself. Well in some things I do. I have done many brave and reckless things, and I’m still stupid enough to get up on stage, however, what I don’t have belief in anymore is success. Fear tells me I am meant to fail, it tells me that because so many times other people have said it to me. I no longer need them to say it anymore. I hear it automatically. Like salivating at a bell I have allowed myself to fall into this hole of despair and now it seems so very deep that I fear I can’t climb out. I know I must do it on my own, I can’t ask for help or I would forever think that I only escaped because of others, my confidence would not be restored and that is what I want. I want to believe. I want to believe in me once more, like I know I once did before, but I don’t know how.

I love history

I love that it is my last class of the week. There is something about it that leaves me happy and makes me think creatively, I don’t get that with any other subject, everything else leaves me overwhelmed, but history makes me understand everything. I can’t really explain it. Today it even solved a problem I was having in another subject, history made everything clear and it’s interesting. I wouldn’t want to experience a lot of it, but to find out about it is intriguing.

As far as my knowledge of history is concerned, it’s like a puzzle with pieces missing. I know about some things in detail, I know about a lot of things generally and how they relate to other things but not in great detail and then there are still some things I need to learn everything about. Each little bit of new knowledge I get, adds another piece to the history puzzle in my head, when the puzzle is complete, every bit of history for the whole world will be on it and when you put all the pieces together it will be a picture of today’s world, as all history combined shows us how we got to today, that is one of the reasons history is so fascinating. Now I know I will never complete that puzzle, no one can, but still, I do love puzzles, and just getting a few more pieces helps make the picture clearer.

Today I couldn’t understand what we were doing in class, everyone else seemed to get it but I didn’t. The fact that I didn’t hear the instructions could not have helped, but still everyone with me got to work straight away and I didn’t. It made my head hurt. It took me most of the lesson to figure out that I couldn’t follow it or everyone else because I needed to look at it in a different form, so I rewrote it the way I would understand it and when I showed that to my group they all copied it down and said that they were having trouble getting it all the other way too. That made me feel better. I did know what the topic was covering though, I hadn’t actually studied it before, but had acquired a lot of knowledge on it over the years and I had done the readings. Even with the confusion for most of the lesson, I still walked away feeling happy. History makes me happy. Learning makes me happy too.

I don’t remember if history made me feel like that in school or whether it is just a modern occurrence. There is just something about history that fascinates me, I can never know enough, and unfortunately I know I will never remember everything about it that I learn, but I still love to learn it and to teach it. To fill in the pieces of my puzzle and help other start their own.

The battle

Here I sit, knife in hand.
Staring at you from across the table
Our makeshift no-mans-land
You look back equally armed
And we both know it will be amazing
If either of us walk away unharmed
I scowl at you and spit forth threats
You sneer back and literally spit
While those watching are placing bets
I weigh the odds, I have a chance
there will be no backing down
I grin and say "Let's dance."
So confident, so eager to try
So much violence and greed
Fighting over the last piece of pie.

Phone bound future

Those of you that know me will know that I had the same phone for about ten years. I got a new phone last November, top of the range one too. I like every other technology addict have enjoyed the games, the social network, the immediate access to crap I never wanted to know. I still however, detest people that pull phones out when seated at the table with you, or constantly use their phone to try to dispute every single thing you say. No one can be 100% right all the time, and just because you look it up on your phone does not make you right, The phone is right, but you're still a twat.
Phones were originally made to increase communication and socialising, how ironic it is that they now make us more antisocial than ever. No one talks to strangers anymore.
I was in a car driving recently, I was stopped at the lights and the guy in the car next to me said hello, now today's social response is to ignore him, and I nearly did, thinking him some kind of nutter, but than I stopped myself and said, 'no, this might be one of the few 'real' human beings left in todays society.' I said hello, and in those fleeting moments before the lights changed we had a brief conversation. I drove off smiling. Happy to know there are still people in Sydney like that, of course I naturally assumed he must be from out of town.
I went away recently to another country, I turned off my state of the art brand new fully equipped phone, it would have cost a fortune to run over there. I pulled out the 10 year old one, dusted it off and took that with me. I also had to take a camera with me, but I didn't mind. I prefer a real camera to a phone one any day. The batteries are made to last in cameras. Over there I only used my phone when I lost contact with the group, in a foreign country that is a necessity. My room mate used it more than I did, and she didn't use it that much either. I actually found it annoying that I had to carry the damn thing around. I would have been fine without it. Modern society binds you to your phones, makes you dependant on them, but you don't really need them, hell, before the 70's most people didn't even have land lines and they got on fine, they were tough back then and yet somehow from that we've all become phone dependant yuppie weaklings. I confess even I have an Internet gaming addiction, I am a weakling too.
When I returned to this country the first thing I did was turn my new phone back on, no it was not to use the features, it was to see if anyone cared enough to drive an injured person home. Alas no, I caught the train. As I was waiting for the train, I flicked through the phone book of my old phone one last time, looked at all those dead numbers that I never memorised, that would never ring again. I still morn the passing of the people behind those numbers, but I also think maybe they are being saved from something by not seeing how pathetic we have become and no doubt how much more pathetic we will be in the future.