mirror, mirror
[Contains traces of navel gazing, consider yourself warned x]
If there’s one thing you inevitably learn if you decide to (gently or savagely) spoon out parts of your insides for public consumption, it’s that you can’t give it all away. You’ll be left empty in a way that pretends to fill you.
I’m in a season of peeling away protective layers of internal armour — some flimsy, others rusty metal. I now have more reservation about what to divulge, more caution around what to freely give to any set of eyes who fancy looking. Real introspection and repair, for me, happens mostly in silence. It’s taken me long enough to learn that the first draft isn’t for everyone.
Sorting through your past and changing your approach is a transformation of sorts. We have the ability to repair ourselves, when the right keys and the right locks meet. When the right tools are available, the complex and mysterious brain can do what it needs to. It works if you do, and that in and of itself is miraculous.
This provides you with the opportunity to see the dimensions of yourself. Old survival blueprints blindly stumbled into can’t be stopped if all you can see is the dust in your eyes. Wash your face and see it all clearly: what you’ve done to get where you are, your role in your own suffering. How those out of date blueprints hurt you and those around you. Understanding is one thing, but addressing what doesn’t work is the vital action.
I used to think that once the most threatening things a person can experience have happened, an invisible dye was cast. You could scrub it out from inside your cavities, hit the bleach time and time again, but the trace would always be there. I’m now learning it’s the bleach — not the stain — that will poison you. Put down the bottle.
It turns out the inspirational post favourite “you are not what’s been done to you” can actually feel true in your guts. It can become something beyond a wellness platitude, if you’re willing to face what those things are and process them. Then, the best part, they stop eating you alive and the burden lifts. File under: significant reset in progress.
interesting bits that you may like
The St Kilda Film Festival’s on. The opening night showed 12 short films, covering as broad a range of themes as you can think of. Mine was The Meaningless Daydreams of Augie and Celeste. A humourous 7 minute peek into the weird worlds of childhood imagination (directed by Pernell Marsden). Special mention to Last Man Standing, a documentary about 90 year old silent film theatre organist Ron West.
Festival runs til the 15th, find out about it here.
Significant news for for Southern Gothic and/or nostalgia enthusiasts — Ethel Cain’s got a fresh album coming. Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You arrives in August. She’s kindly dropped lead single Nettles, where creator Hayden Anhedonia uncharacteristically decided to “slough off the macabre and… simply let love be”. There are a numerous unreleased demos hypothesised to be on the album on youtube, if that’s your thing.
Listen to Nettles here.
Filipino Australian photographer, writer and filmmaker James J Robinson (AKA jamespdf on the gram) became a tabloid delight when he broke into his alma mater St Kevin’s College and set his blazer alight as a protest against homophobia in Catholic schools (Burn the Blazer). He’s about to release another film. First Light, set in the Philippines, follows an elderly nun confront the ethics of religious institution in the wake of the death of a young construction worker. The stills the man has dropped are delicious, eagerly awaiting August screening at MIFF.
Find out more here.
I’ve been reading mystery novels c/o the library, with Louise Penny’s series set in Québec is clever enough to keep you entertained, without losing track of who the characters are. The setting is faithfully depicted with all charm intact.
Books on my radar are: Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser, I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena and Rytual by (my high school colleague) Chloe Elisabeth Wilson.
ETHEL CAIN MENTIONED
❤️❤️❤️