Fertilise with Only the Best

Tags

love, money, people, respect, shit, value, work

It seems to be a week with a theme. This one being the value of people.

A few things have happened this week that have really opened my eyes to see  how some people are very willing to devalue others in the interests of their own pursuits.

I can’t go into details (damn) but in general it’s all about other peoples rights and value being depressed in order to support, however shaky, the beliefs and values of others.

Weeks like this are a gift. They’re a gift because they help you clarify with razor sharpness which side of the fence you fall. For me it was fairly easy. My belief is that if you care for people, look after them and give them a safe place where they know they are respected and valued they will blossom, and I’ve never felt as strong in that as I do now with this week coming to a close.

One detail that I can go into is a Facebook post from one of my comedy friends who declared he was holding in a shit so he could claim 99% adherence at his desk for the day. I think he was half joking, but bloody hell – we’re treating people as badly as we treat battery hens – even if it’s a nice clean office cubicle they’re working from.

Everything stems from people, whether it’s love or money or anything else, why would we want to fertilise that particular ground with anything less than the best?

Mothering Your Dreams

Tags

courage, dreams, hopes, inspiration, joy, life, manifesting, Mother, Mothers Day, nurture, success, visualising

The theme of Mothers’ Day and the contemplation of what it is to be a mother, to provide nurture, led me to think about the act of giving birth when it comes to bringing our dreams to life.

There is the moment of fertilisation – that time when an idea takes hold and declares it’s possibility of life outside your heart and head, and from there it takes root. You cogitate over its potential, play with it, work out where it could go and where you would want to take it.

Slowly it grows and takes shape. It begins to have an identity of its own. You may give it a name. It gets to a point where it is so large in your mind that you have to commit to hitting the keyboard.

The first time you write its name on the screen or sheet of paper it seems oddly familiar – it has been living with you for so long that to see it stand there, separate from you, on its own legs, can be quite scary. You wonder – can it have a life?

You probably then continue to develop and grow this dream that has now morphed into a project or series of projects that you’ve devised to bring it about. You put in hours thinking about it and planning. It’s almost like having a love affair – if it really is based in  your passion you will lose  hours to it as you work away without it seeming like actual work. You will start to reference parts of your life to  it that you used to defend from any kind of work or career reference and it will become a part of who you are and what you do, whether it is named or unnamed, every day you walk the earth.

And then one day, when it and you are both ready, you’ll launch it. You’ll cast it at the feet of the world and hope they love it as much as you do, because it has become a part of you and what you’re really doing is putting that part of you out there for the judgement of the world. You’ll worry what friends and family will say if this is a part of you they haven’t seen before. You’ll worry that you will appear foolish or getting above yourself. You’ll worry that you fail.

But that won’t stop you, because it’s born of your passion and a  part of you that hasn’t previously had a voice, so relax. There is no failure, only feedback, and the only fool is one who doesn’t try to push their boundaries to see just what they can achieve.

Believe in yourself and in your dreams – they are your future. Nourish them, nurture them and whether you are man or woman, let the Mother in you birth them to the world. They are your contribution to your community, they are your legacy, and they will keep you sane when everything else seems a bit bonkers.

Stuffed Mums Strike Again!

Tags

Country Arts SA, Goolwa, Just Add Water

 

How do I describe the afternoon I’ve just experienced?

Along with my Three Stuffed Mums colleagues Kate and Kehau I spent the afternoon at Goolwa, a small town south of Adelaide at the mouth of the mighty river Murray, and had the biggest amount of fun. We were there to perform a Three Stuffed Mums show as part of ‘Just Add Water’ – the Country Arts SA Regional Centre for Culture festival that takes the arts to the regions and for a year settles in and works with the people who live locally. A main part of the festival is that projects there should leave a lasting legacy for the community.

Three Stuffed Mums project was to perform our show there and then over a period of a few weeks teach and coach local mums in standup or other ways of telling their own stories with humour. Then at the end we’ll present a showcase with the women performing their work. Today was the show and we’ll conduct the course from May to July.

It had become plain to us that women these days can feel isolated in bringing up children, and that they might not realise we all go through the same challenges. We had women coming to our shows the past two years and saying to us afterwards “Thanks! Now I feel normal!”

As far as stand up goes, this show today has to be one of the highlights of my ten year comedic career. The feeling of over 200 people cacking themselves with laughter at you is rather heady, and even more so that they were mostly women  and they knew exactly what I was talking about.

I had a ball and so did everyone else. And now we have the opportunity to pay so much forward with the course – can’t wait!

Have a great week!

There Must Be Better Songs to Sing than This

Tags

choice, Educating Rita, Education, fulfillment, glasgow, life, memories, progress

Yesterday I watched the movie Educating Rita.

It’s written by Willy Russell who also wrote Shirley Valentine and Blood Brothers. I love his work – it’s rare to see a man who can write so well for women.

I last saw the movie around 1984 or ‘85. I remember it because I watched it with my mum.

As the movie unfolded before us we became uncomfortable to a certain extent. While I wasn’t married like Rita in the movie, I was attempting to move from having no qualifications to speak of to studying first some O levels and Highers and then gain entry to a degree course in Communications. (I’d been taken out of school as soon as my parents could do so after I’d turned 16 in Australia to return with them to Scotland).

I’d been successful in that, despite the intake for my chosen course’s year being only 18 places and only two places in the UK offering the course – Liverpool University and my own uni, now grandly called Glasgow Caledonian University – back then it was just Glesga Tech.

So, there’s me and mum sitting and watching the movie, the irony of it all not escaping us (she had also had her ambitions thwarted as a young woman, denied the chance of study and steered towards tailoring as it would bring in money).

There’s a scene where Rita has joined her husband and family in the pub. It’s at a moment where she feels she belongs in neither world – not that of her working class roots nor that of her new world at University. Everyone in the pub is having a sing-along, including her family, about how content they are and how they have everything they need. Rita feels she can’t join in. She turns and sees her mum who also seems unhappy, and has also stopped singing.

Her mum says one line. “There must be better songs to sing than this.”

At that point both my mum and I looked at each other, and both of us were in tears.

How true that had been for both of us. We were each in our own way spending our lives looking for better songs to sing than those we’d already become familiar with. I was still in that stage of studies where it was easy to be made to feel I was getting ‘above myself’. Apart from my cousin Kathleen, no one in our family had gone to higher studies or chased academia in any way. My dad would ask why I couldn’t just be like everyone else and get a job in a factory.

I was the daughter of trades people – my dad a baker and mum a tailoress. They in turn had been the children of unskilled labourers and I’ve traced my ancestors back far enough to know that my grandparents were the first in their own families to be able to read and write. In gaining that ability they were able to begin to exert choices, and tracing that skill all the way down the generations to tertiary education it was still all about the same thing – choice and the right to exercise it.

At 17 I’d been coerced into a hairdressing apprenticeship for four years by my parents. They thought it was for the best but it was never what I really wanted to do. However in doing it I’d got mum off my back to a certain extent. It was something ‘to fall back on’ but the day my apprenticeship finished was the day my hairdressing career finished, and after a brief stint in retail and a bout of depression it was academia that saved my sanity.

Watching the movie again reminded me of that pivotal point in my life, where a seemingly mad choice (the first of many) had been the right choice, where the courage had been supplied from somewhere to take a step outside of the known into the unknown.

I have a picture in my office of Frank Zappa with his hair in bunches. There’s a quote attributed to him on the bottom that says “Without deviation from the norm progress is not possible.”

There’s a little bit of Rita in all of us who want something better than we have been dealt. When was the last time you gave her a bit of attention? Maybe it’s time to let her free and have her way.

Here’s to all of us to continue to have the courage to deviate from the norm, to discover new worlds and to continue to progress throughout our lives.

A flask of tea and some sweeties

Tags

bus, Easter, enjoyment, Highlands, memories, pleasure, public transport

 

Easter Monday. The words have been in the back of my mind all day like a reminder

Ben Lomond Winter Sunset - across the loch from the south

that wasn’t quite working. What did they mean? Or to be more exact what did they used to mean? I pushed it to the back of my mind and got on with a pretty busy and productive day (I love days at home) but still it eluded me.

I’ve just lain down on our bed for a few minutes of doing nothing and it all came flooding back.

For a few years between 1978 and 1983 Easter Monday was a tradition held by my mum and I. Normally dad would be working (he was a bread baker and had to get the stocks ready for the hungry hordes the following day, already deprived of three days of bread shopping!).

Back than I couldn’t drive so Mum and I would book a day trip – a bus run – for Easter Monday. Our favourite destination was Oban, a coastal town further north on the West Coast of Scotland.

Leaving Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow between 8 and 9am the bus would take the road north and west that remains to this day one of my favourite road trips.

Heading out of Glasgow and along the northern banks of the Clyde we’d pass through the affluent west end then Coatbridge and Dumbarton before veering north just past Ballantines Distillery with it’s security geese in the grounds. A curious coincidence is that this is the favourite whisky of my husband who I only met a few years ago!

As we came close to Loch Lomond the countryside became much more lush. That was one of the things I loved about Glasgow – within half an hour you could be up at Loch Lomond and be in an entirely different world to the great city. Lomondside, if you’ve never been there, should be on your bucket list. It’s possibly one of the most beautiful areas in the world. There is more remote eastern side that’s much harder to access, and then the easily accessible western side with its stops like the Village of Luss for sheer picturesque beauty, Cameron House hotel, Duck Bay Marina and towards the top of the loch the fantastic and ancient Drovers Inn at Inverarnan where all the male bar staff wear kilts ;o).

By this time we’d be well and truly in the Highlands and I’d marvel at the mountains -ancient monoliths, often still capped with snow at that time of year – and then the bus would turn west and take the high Rest and Be Thankful pass  before going through the pretty town of Inverary and heading north again, then west and landing in Oban about three or four hours after departure.

There would be time enough there for lunch and a wander along the harbour before returning to the bus and setting off homewards.

One thing about Oban was that it would always rain. Even if it wasn’t raining anywhere else, you could come over the top of the hill and descend into the town only for raindrops to greet you. I remember heading off there for a weekend with a bunch of pals. We were dressed for summer as there had been a heatwave in Glasgow and there hadn’t been rain for about six weeks – unheard of! Nevertheless, the bus got to the top of the hill, started to go down towards the town and on came the rain! I can confidently predict that Oban sells more umbrellas than any other town in the UK – I know we always had to buy one.

My mum loved the country versions of the city chain stores and the tourist souvenir stores. We always had to take a tacky present back for dad and the obligatory stick of rock that had ‘Oban’ written through it. There was some bloke who was an artist who had a shop that sold all sorts as well as his art. The shop always had stuff about ‘the bridge over the Atlantic‘, which was actually a bridge to the island of Seil, if my memory serves me right, which wasn’t that far off the mainland, and not as exciting as it seemed. The shop would always have some right ‘heedrum hodrum’ tourist Scottish music playing too.  The town had also gained some fame in the early 80s as well as it became known that Princess Diana’s mother lived close by and so all the royal paraphenelia also started to infiltrate the shops.

After a lunch of fish and chips we’d be quite happy to get back on the bus, tired from all the fresh air (as we told ourselves) and head back home. It wasn’t the most exciting time on earth, but I’m glad we had that time together, me and mum.

These days I live on the other side of the world. My mum passed away in 1995. My son is practically grown and we celebrate Easter Australian style with my Aussie husband and my family.  I’m a million miles away in time and distance from the Easter Monday bus runs. And then a nudging in the back of my mind makes me sit down and Google our routes and sends memories back to me of how I learned to love the Highlands. Just me and my wee mammy sitting on the bus with a flask of tea and some sweeties for the trip. Good times.

Happy Easter!

Still Standing

Tags

enjoyment, life, manifesting, pleasure

It would seem that once again life is showing me that it conspires to provide everything needed for progress – whatever you define that progress to be.

Since my last post around about the middle of February ( I think) I’ve undergone some pretty massive changes in my life. We had the Three Stuffed Mums season at the Adelaide Fringe that went until mid-March. At the same time, at the beginning of March I left my job at a place I felt very much at home and in an occupation that I’ve been undertaking for the past 24 or so years and took up a new post in a new organisation. It has been a challenging move and yet one that I’m amazed that I feel so comfortable with. I’m learning loads about myself, about my passions and about the job. In short, I’m having fun!

The show’s season went well and part of the reason that I haven’t been blogging here is because, with our marketing budget of zero I decided to try to get the word out about the show by blogging almost daily on the Talkfringe website. While I’d love to give you a rundown of the season, maybe its best if I just repost my final blog there that sums up everything the season meant to us. So, here it is below:

GOODNIGHT AND GOODBYE

The Three Stuffed Mums – myself, Kate Burr and Kehau Jackson -took our traditional last night of the Fringe off and repaired to the excellent dining facilities of The Maid for a lovely dinner with Candace, our sound person, Mike Pitman, our musical director and our partners Steven and Glynn. Unfortunately Jeff, Kate’s husband, was home with a poorly toddler Lily (get well soon little Lil!).
It was a fitting end to an arduous season. Along with all the other Fringe acts we coped with boiling temperatures, flooding rains, the whine of the V8s and the competition from the Festival, Womad, Clipsal and the extra 180 or so shows who were all competing for the punters’ money.
But we did it, we got here. 17 shows over four weeks, dodgy reviews, good reviews, audiences who were quiet, raucous, drunk, sober – you name it. We were refining our standup from the first performance to the last, we were punching the air when we came in on time and professing to do better on the odd occasion we over ran by a few minutes. We saw the birth of a new comedy duo – Ajit Daliwahl and Amy Manuel as Ajitating Amy – and celebrated the legacy of now-passed but forever with us comedy legend Dave Grant.
This Fringe helped us to live life to the full for four glorious weeks, to put ourselves and our skills on the line, to spread laughs and for a short while to help others forget their worries. I can’t think of any higher calling than that of the jester, the comic, the (hopefully) wise fool. We hold a mirror to our selves and to our world, and in laughing at the hard stuff, the bad stuff, we remove its power over us.
Goodnight and goodbye Adelaide Fringe 2012. Seeya next time.
Maggie x

 

The Meaning of Life

Tags

do no harm, meaning of life, Three Stuffed Mums, uplift others

It’s been a while since my last post, life seems to have sped up.

Work is busy as always, plus getting a new job that I start in a few weeks time. Add to that preparation for the Adelaide Fringe including production and publicity work as well as actually writing and rehearsing with my Three Stuffed Mums buddies Kate and Kehau, it seems my time has flown.

In between it all was a sojourn to Sydney to see no.1 son off on his travels once again with the Navy. It was great to spend time with him and very sad to wave him off. The up part being that it will be only six months and he will be home again.

And in between all of this action trying to observe, to stay true to myself and my path, to learn about what’s transpiring and to simply enjoy life.

Because when it all comes down to it, I think that’s the crux, the meaning of all of this life stuff; living it and creating joy, however you find the expression of that to be.

Some people write, some perform, others love to cook, or make things, or ice cakes or climb mountains or talk to people or any other of a million things. And if they express and engender joy through that activity, if it results in you and others feeling uplifted by it and benefitting from it, there isn’t that much more to aim for, is there?

We Three Stuffed Mums have been talking a lot this week about what our comedy means for us, about what we’re trying to do with it, and we all agree that it’s about the following:

-Do no harm

-Uplift ourselves and others

-Have people leave the show feeling better than when they came in

Sounds good to me!

Have a great week!

M

Trusting the Tao

Tags

adelaide fringe, comedy, enjoyment, guy ropes, leeway, life, manifesting, parenting style, pleasure, process, spirituality, stand up comedy, steven mitchell, Tai Chi, Tao Te Ching, writing, Wu Wei

73

The Tao is always at ease.
It overcomes without competing,
answers without speaking a word,
arrives without being summoned,
accomplishes without a plan.

Its net covers the whole universe.
And though its meshes are wide,
it doesn’t let a thing slip through.

From Steven Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching

The words above have been a very real, very practical lesson for me recently.

We’re getting ready for another great Adelaide Fringe, and I’m writing a new show with my Three Stuffed Mums colleagues called Still Stuffed. Its a brand new show, with all new stand up comedy and songs, following on from the great success we had last year.

The songs are fine, they’re all written and being arranged right now. All new stand up – that’s another story. I don’t know how other writers operate but I cannot just sit at a computer and write funny – especially when the funny is for spoken delivery.

For me, that means it has to come from spoken origins. And its not a linear process either. Ideas, or phrases or sentences pop up, that generate further ideas that progress out from that original trigger like the ripples on a pond. The most important thing then is the idea, and the next important things are the words that convey that idea. The words can be swapped around like the idea trying on different outfits, but as long as the idea is intact and still inhabits my mind in its original form, there’s that leeway to play with. And then after a few days of musing (or weeks) it gets commited to screen via the keyboard. The words, if you’re not careful, have a way of pegging the idea down like the guy ropes of a flyaway tent. Done properly they neatly package and deliver the idea concisely, precisely and with punch. Done badly they bog it down and kill it. So you can see where I’m starting from.

So, all of this is to say that you cannot force the process. At the same time you have a deadline called ‘opening night’ looming ahead that tends to focus the mind and has the capacity to instill panic. So, what to do?

Me, I have learned to pick up my copy of the Tao Te Ching to remind myself to chill out and that all will be fine. That calms me enough to trust again that what I need will be delivered as long as I do my part in the process. And when I do, its a kind of self fulfilling prophecy, the ideas flow more freely, the mind is more open to receiving new ideas, not tense with panic, and things start to shake up in good time. And I have to say, things are coming together very nicely re the stand up, much better than I anticipated, actually. Adelaide Fringe 2012, I cannot wait for opening night!

If you’re in the vicinity you should pop down and see our show at The Maid, which also has some great comedy shows not featuring us. Our senior Stuffed Mum, Kehau, runs the venue with an aim to helping new comics put on their first Fringe shows without going into bankruptcy to do it. She and her husband Glynn work their butts off to make sure this happens so they deserve support for that alone, I reckon.

Whatever you do, and wherever you are please support your local artists, take part in your local culture and entertainment, and most of all, have fun!

Have a great week!

Maggie

NB: When looking for the correct stanzas to illustrate my point about trusting the flow in the writing process, I went to the internet version of the translation and blindly clicked on a chapter number. It turned out to be precisely the best chapter to describe what I was trying to say. Bravo Tao!

A Pleasant and Scenic Ride

Tags

adrenalin, Arran, Brodick, control, good fortunes, mild panic, mind and body, panic, panic sets, soldier, sugar rush, tao, Wu Wei

I know that when I’m at one with my Tao, or engaged in the flow, or however you’d like to put it, that things feel easier. I know that right there in the pit of my stomach that it feels good and right. Its a deep and sure and steady feeling of just knowing.

Wu Wei - Image sourced from http://www.koanic.com/tao6.htm

At times, when there is action about and I feel like this, like the wind is at my back and all good fortunes are with me, then it is very easy to be carried by the motion, to surf along on the wave. It’s exciting. The metaphorical – or even metaphysical – wind is in my hair, I know I’m on the right track and whoosh, the old adrenalin’s up and I know I’m headed for something good.

But as there are times of action, so there are also times of non action, times when it is not the right thing to make a move, or a decision. And I know these signs just the same as those that indicate action.

And that’s when it can get kinda difficult. Sure, I get still in mind and body, and I’m ok with that, kinda. I’m sure its the right thing to do, to be still and do nothing, but action is a little addictive. It also gives me an illusion of control over external events, like I’m directing the wave rather than just riding on it. So, when it comes for time to be still and that feeling of control is debunked, a mild panic sets in.

What to do? I still the mind (again).

Then I become aware of the activity around me. People scurrying about seeking the same results that I want to achieve. From the outside, they seem to be in control, they seem to be taking strides towards their goals, they seem to be achieving what they’re setting out to achieve, and here am I sitting still, doing nothing.

Two things can happen at this moment; the first is that I can act out of panic. Inevitably whatever I do in this situation gives immediate satisfaction, like a sugar rush that spikes but then plunges me back down into a trough of self recrimination for not staying true to my path. The results of the action rarely bear fruit that’s  more than a momentary distraction.

The second thing I can do, if I’m calm and together enough, is to observe the people scurrying about in a detatched, yet compassionate manner. I am not them and they are not me. I have no way of knowing how connected or otherwise their activity is to their inner compass. In most ways its none of my business. My business is to be about my own business which is my path and my deportment in the world, in a manner as true to my own compass as possible.

This is what I try to do. I don’t always succeed, but when I do, and I keep my mind clear and ready to see the signs for action, expecting them, expecting only the best and trusting the Tao to provide them, things tend to go swingingly better. Patience (not my best trait) wins the day.

To finish, I was told this story by a man who was a soldier just after WWII, and I’ve often used it as a metaphor for myself and how to engage in Wu Wei:

“We were on manoeuvres on the Island of Arran. Arran has mainly two roads – one that goes around the perimeter of the island, and another, the string road, that cuts through a Glen  in the middle of the island and connects the eastern and western coasts.

I was dropped with the other soldiers in my squad on Brodick Beach, on the Eastern side. Our mission was to get to the other side of the island and meet there later that day. I really didn’t feel like it, I’d been out drinking the night before and I watched my mates all run up the beach in front of me with their ‘AAARRRGGHHs’  and war cries as they fought the sand, jumped up onto the esplanade, crossed the road and disappeared into the Glen that carried the String Road.

I managed to get  up the beach, climb the seawall and get up onto the footpath. I watched my colleagues disappear into the greenery – I was the last person there and I really doubted that I had the energy, never mind the will, to tackle the trek.

All of a sudden my vision of the Glen was obscured by a vehicle that pulled up in front of me. Turned out I had been standing at a bus stop and the door opened and the driver asked me where I wanted to go. I told him Dougrie and he said ‘jump on.’

In full uniform I didn’t have to pay a fare and I was at our muster point two hours before my mates after a very pleasant and scenic ride!”

 

The Liebster Blog Award

Tags

liebster blog award

 

I was severely chuffed today to receive this award today from YogaLeigh of Bluegrassnotes. Thank you Leigh and a big yay to you for also being a recipient.

The Liebster Blog Award is given to upcoming bloggers who have less than 200 followers.  Liebster is German (n.) and means: sweetheart, beloved person, darling.

And, as a recipient I also get to nominate my five favourite blogs that bring kindness to the blogosphere. If you’re one of the recipients, here’s what you should do:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to his or her blog

2. Copy and paste the “Liebster Blog Award” icon into your post

3. Pass the award on to 5 of your fellow bloggers and let them know you did so

Based on its name, the Liebster Blog award is a way to show a fellow blogger you appreciate the kindness they bring to the blogosphere.

And, where to start when passing on the award with so many great blogs about? Here are my favourites:

1. http://clairemcevoytravels.blogspot.com/ -
2. http://seeingwithstars.blogspot.com/
3. http://complexmuse.wordpress.com
4.  http://beyondtheouterrim.wordpress.com/
5. http://killermousemml.wordpress.com

Support your fellow bloggers!