Pink news

Today a lady with pink hair gave me some good news. Some very good news.

It's definitely why we all need to wear more colour, and feel colour and be colour.

And love the world again (Yes I know I sound like a hippy). But it's true. The simple things keep you going. For me, its cupcakes, creation (music, food, art, writing) and of course my friends and family.

This song is for today.

From now on, I want things to look up. No excuses. I'm not going to miss out on anything.

Art Exhibition: Love Is What You Want, Tracey Emin

I saw this exhibition at the most perfect time. My brain is like a black space filled with millions of colourful puzzle pieces; some fit and some don't, and that's just me.

I find art exhibitions quite interesting, more so from how they make me feel. Most of the time I can't wait to see them, but when I am there I feel desperate to get outside again. They can be quite...stuffy. Whether thats the people, or just the fact that most of the time you have to be quiet and there can be too many people around you tend to feel a bit squashed, theres a strange sense I feel when there-perhaps it was this exhibition itself.

Tracey Emin has has her heart ripped out and put back in again. It fits 97% right, but there's a slight gap and slight un-fix where her soul has been placed back in an awkward angle. I really feel for her. Perhaps there should be limits in the amount of people that can attend such exhibitions; I try to imagine myself alone, completely alone with no body around me so I can capture and inhale all that I see.

One of my faveourite moments was when I was able to enter the neon room by myself. It was more a long black corridoor lit by fantastic words of art. Some echoed in my mind, all too familiar as some I had once kept telling myself:

Of course no picture truly represents the great colour blaring in your face in person. Clearly, this woman has really suffered, she's been depressed. A blank gritty being in which is all too familiar.

Myself, a past in documentary film making-one of her documentaries I saw I really did not enjoy. 'Sometimes the dress is worth more money than the money'. Whether it is because I didn't understand it completely or, well. Who knows. In room 3 'trauma' recorded her collection of pieces representing her experience of abortion. Words echo with me when watching the film... I can't remember the name or find it yet (I hope to find it scrawling through the exhibition book I bought-will add it in!!), the words Tracey speaks describing how you feel like a failure, that ultimate guilt and failure of what you have become, in getting pregnant unexpectedly, saying 'it wasn't choosing to have an abortion it was choosing to not have a child', were very interesting. I'm glad she had her boyfriend there, though the shock that it didn't work in the first place, Tracey had to be rushed into hospital were at this point as she made her way out of the taxi, something slipped and she realised between her thighs and her hands was the dead fetus a failed abortion had left her with. I'm sure we all know what it feels like when our body gives up on us and medical procedures aren't always what they promised...

I can't remember whether I dreamt this, or if it was something I saw recently. Ok it was, it was on a modelling programme stuck on E4 for sometime recently. The phrase 'I just wanna give her a hug'. Well it's a phrase commonly said (though not for a while now) between someone I know-we both share the understanding of this desire. Clearly, when there is so much animosity in one person you know there is something else going on inside. We all have butchered attempts at trying to hide it; with anger, arrogance, sarcasm, being loud, being quiet, binge eating, drinking, substances e.t.c. though some have the ability to see past this and recognise all this person is doing is crying for help. They are trying to fix themselves in some way-there is always a difference in helping yourself in a healthy way, or a negative way.

I want to hug Tracey Emin. I love her work. Of course, it is all an expression of her-it has clearly been her release. I think when one experiences all that pain and all the puzzles we require in order to stick back our brains again we have to find healthy ways to do so, otherwise we risk going into greater danger again. We need to filter the good from our experiences:

'I think all the experiences add to make the person but I could have done well without the traumas in my life. What I've done is used my experiences to my advantage, turning the negative around to the positive. That's one of the greatest things that trauma can teach.'

We can all learn from this, its the beauty of Tracey Emin. What I also find remarkable about her is in her Blankets she quotes (often through her other pieces as well):

'So beautiful'

 Hopefully you are able to see in the top left blanket, Tracey writes. Amongst all the ugly she speaks about she quotes 'so beautiful' in how I feel she is almost laughing knowingly that there is beauty within the bleak ugly that we feel. We laugh, we smile with our experiences and learn.

There was a moment when I discovered Tracey's abortion pieces on the wall; a iud copper coil, pregnancy tests, flowers in the name of blood aborted fetus. I don't know if it's from medical self experiences or if someone who was diving into the unknown at that experience; at first I was unsure about the set up and the room, as I said at the start I felt desperate to get out of the exhibition and whizz through (knowing in my mind I had paid to see her, it also kept me from walking out), the more I delved the more I didn't want to stay. In my 90 minutes of being there, I felt her and felt myself in a way I haven't for a long time. I don't believe its the finding someone else who has experience all of this pain, I didn't feel like finally someone else who has felt similar things. I believe most of all I felt, it was nice for someone to let it out. She's let it all out, again something of which we can all learn from.

There was also a girl who I heard mutter 'why on earth did she get herself pregnant'. I'm not sure if this girl believe in abortion or not (abortion I am totally for), perhaps she didn't understand Tracey's motives behind it. The layout for me was perfect in the 'Trauma' section because for someone like me who doesn't know her history, you piece together her emotions in a pattern, unknown to how it all happened. We also read a marvellous piece written by Tracey's madness in working out whether she was pregnant or not (this time she wasn't) though we sense she has a strange relationship with fertility. It's only then when we move onto a dark room (with the film name I am unable to remember) that she goes on to explain her fertility is 90% odd positive to not get pregnant and that the Doctors totally cocked up her chances in being put through for an abortion.

We all will roll our eyes at the NHS. All money aside, health shouldn't be messed with especially just because our treatment is free.

Tracey's self portraits of masturbation, words gashing out heartbreak and signs of penis hope. It is a bleak cold and hot pursuit of love unattainable to ones self. I've felt it myself, in a way you want to abuse yourself because you feel so ugly, so rejected and thrown, smashed to pieces in a way you clamour onto methods and ways to stretch your mind from thinking about them. And these to be released. To be performed. Discussed, let go of, and freed.

I loved Tracey Emin's documentary on being free, with dancing. Out of all the shit she has become free for her and no-one else.

I'm sure I will have more words to add to this piece.

The Clanky Pan, that is me

Hello blog. I have missed you for a good few weeks. I think I have been asleep for a very long time, months even. Things only now just seem to look light again.

There has been a series of unfortunate events, all to self. Some created by self and some which have purely happened out of my hands. In all honesty I have been too afraid to blog in the past in fear of not writing anything which may be good enough, all in aid of facing up to the real facts of my life-past and present.

Time wears us and forever will I believe in the 'bruised brain' theory. Though, with our bruised brains, perhaps they will always be bruised until we truly deal with our ways from the past and making them clearer in the present. I have always said, and will always say that one can only learn; this being from self and from others too. For me it only takes a few words or a glance of an eye to get some perspective from those I talk to. I love it so. Their adventures make mine all the more worthwhile.

One of the things I find most interesting, not only about the people I know but the generalisation we all hold to ourselves; will anybody ever escape that phase of hating ourselves for some particular reason? I wouldn't say it is guilt towards our behaviour towards others, just the matter of hating ourselves for literally being who we are. What seems most unfortunate in it all is that a huge part which creates these thoughts are not always self inflicted, some come from the words of others which build in our own mind and weigh us down. The more we hear something from someone I think it understandable in it being unavoidable to absorb-we feel worthless. Also, we have a strange bearing to overwhelm ourselves with self hate purely caused by our own personalities and thoughts. With what should seem the norm seems so much effort and motivation to even look after self, it goes out of the window.

These self stages are very scary.

My words must seem very vague. Whilst writing this piece, well of course I want to write the truth. I want to write the tales of my last two weeks, though for the mean time until my mind is set I shall linger.

I think right now, I am going through a stage of huge overwhelment. Pieces of the puzzle have come to a close, it feels like the beginning of an end and of course a new horizon to explore. One can only feel so gifted with joy all the while feeling like there is no chance one wants to let go...just in case.

If the pieces of the puzzle have come together, well, why does one still have to express some fear? Perhaps hesitation would be a more appropriate word considering a person experiences something fairly traumatic, like I say, we learn from our experiences. Shouldn't one know that if someone puts all into something, it's better doing that than saying you gave half of your effort. Right now all of my efforts should be in putting things straight, building myself back up again and establishing who I was months ago. Months ago there was no fear, only courage.

That image needs to re-appear again. What can you throw at me now, but not in a negative sense. Those words now should mean, what can you throw at me now-what else is there that I can explore?

I find the following words quite interesting. I think I and others, have fallen into the trap of the said, below:

'So yeah, it's maddening, to me, to be living in a world where much of human behavior seems transparent, and you wonder why the other person isn't acknowledging things that seem pretty obvious. But when you push, it comes off like you're being superior, like you have all the answers. When of course it's pretty much the opposite, that you've seen just how few answers you actually do have.'

Though I believe the following words make sense towards the ethics behind trying to enlighten people.

'We are talking about sides of ourselves that are seeking fullness, seeking to come into being or come into fullness. Rather than focus on the "I" at the center of things, we realize that we live in a nexus of many emerging selves. For me, for instance, there is the musician and the woodsman and the solitary one, and the lover and the friend and the writer. And some of these personalities are unpleasant; they seek to dominate, to destroy, to take; they are uncivilized and animalistic. There is in me the arrogant, imperious one who seeks to know all and slay all rivals. There is the one who seeks to break all fetters, to tear out of the classroom and run free. There is the one who wants to rip up the room and expose all pretense and get everyone drunk...

We tend to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that we think are good. But the parts we think are not so good, they get irritated when neglected, and they come around too, nudging us, wanting recognition.

I do not know what this kind of therapy is called. I only know that for quite some time I would regularly sit on a rug and be asked, "What is most present right now? What is most alive?" And  this question was an invitation to these archetypes to express themselves. And as a consequence I became more friendly with parts of myself and more attuned to their requests to appear.

So it is a kind of organizing method, akin, I suppose, to the tarot: a set of archetypes.
And the beauty of it was, for me, to see myself less as the master of all around me, responsible for everything, and more as a kind of hapless dad, powerless over several vibrant and emerging lives: responsible for their needs but powerless over their ultimate shape. That is how I view myself today, as the water boy for a strange team.

So I buy instruments for my musician self. I give him lots of practice time. Etc.

Also on that strange team is, of course, the one I call "me." But the "me" is increasingly a mystery.'

Its a new dawn, its a new day...

Its a new life...and I don't want to come home!!!

Plans changed this weekend and I made a last minute trip back to Wales to see the family. I've been longing all week to come back and see my mum and everyone, sometimes you just can't put off your feelings.

More than ever before, well I haven't really ever felt like this before when leaving the family home-I just really don't want to go back to London today!! I'm really dreading the train. 3 and a half hours of, erm wishing I was just going back in the other direction.

Though, we all make journeys for a reason. Who knows what may come of it

State of Mind

When one lies back in a glorious bed, fantastic music and beautiful scenery. One realises their state of mind:

So overwhelmed one wishes to cry, but no release will come. Body chemicals raise and lower and balance and unbalance. When will the settlement come? I think I need to take a steady pace, and breath. No coma is going to cure this.

The status of Clanky Pan

I apologise for my lack of posting. I think this is probably the third apology I have claimed.

Whether I blog about the real reason things have been a little slack, well...I am not sure what step to take, for in telling the truth would only be a benefit to self. I must have, subconsciously and perhaps now consciously, been putting pressure on self to blog and therefore nothing has come from it.

Sometimes the mind spirals and is pulled in so many opposing directions, one finds it hard to centre. I think this weekend will provide tales for Clanky Pan; some are already building in my head, when an idea comes about it starts phrasing in my mind like some alter ego narration (a bit like JD from Scrubs)

Lets see what happens later... who knows what I may tell. Will it be good for audience sake? And may the consequences be?

Poo Patt

I used to jump in cow pats when I was a kid. The news states farmers are looking for pig poo to build high revenues. Words of the such bring me back to childhood memories, walking around fields in Dorset, discovering old roman roads, the smell of grass and jumping in crispy cow patts hardened from the sun. Wellies definitely came in handy!

Walking ways

How do you walk? With your head up straight, looking down at the curb or staring high into space?

Our posture, our presence represents how we feel. Sometimes I stride in long steps, giraffe like and fast. Sometimes the ground seems more interesting then looking at the sky. The sky can be blinding at times.

Blog development

Given that this is a blog focusing on perspective, life, happiness and making the most of self. I feel it would be wise and fun to include pictures of what goes on in my life too! How can I talk about achieving happiness and being if there are few images to reflect and demonstrate it as well!

I would like to thank the blogs I follow who inspire me daily. I think it is their attitudes expressed in sharing their worlds with us that I would like to become all the more a part of. Who knows where bigger stories may lead, into bigger adventures?!

Handling Hate

Hate, I find is such a worthless emotion. It doesn't achieve anything and it doesn't solve anything. You could say it is a mere self comfort in reassuring/convincing self that what we feel is justified; it feels like a reaction to an emotion which is essentially empty, unless we decide to do anything with the given emotion. Everything we feels steers us towards making decisions and we take action to solve our mental equation.

Essentially we do our self more damage in feeling such emotions, it's like a armour to feeling vulnerable towards something linked with what we care so much about. How dare 'insert particular annoyance' can affect your happiness. You feel sick, you feel angry, you snap, you do things unexpected of your natural self. We seek release from such an ugly emotion...However, we learn from it as well.

All the more does hate make us realise what we need to face, whether it's the fear attached to the hate, a moment of clarity in fighting against our instinctual thoughts or accepting circumstances out of your control. I see no worth in hating a person-it becomes more of an issue for you then than theirs. To hold such emotion towards a person only gets in the way of sorting things out. It would be a backwards task in achieving your own happiness. Let go and feel fresh.

Today

I am feeling very nervous and anxious today. I do not like it. It is just not me.

Controlling Our Fears

Coming across an interesting article detailing the mass of anxiety problems within the city, it hit home a little:

'Mindfulness training – which teaches you to stay in the moment and pay attention to all your mental and physical sensations without attempting to judge or fix them – is what saved me. And there's an increasing amount of scientific evidence that it's an effective way to treat both depression and anxiety, whether urban or rural...I recently sat alone in pitch darkness on the beach and realised I was perfectly OK with the immenseness of it all, the small dot of me in this enormous world. I wasn't in control, not at all, but so what? I was there, and that was enough.'

I want to say more about this but am finding it hard to put my thoughts into words. Mine lie with thoughts of, if anxiety doesn't get sorted out you may end up killing yourself-slowly or literally.

A life of long unhappiness is my ultimate fear, but in a large number of ways it is in my control whether this happens or not. There will always be factors in or out of our control which affect how happiness turns out; as said in the above quote, we have our own sensations which tell us when things become too much and we have to start listening to ourselves-as much as we keeping telling self we must go on, sometimes you need to stop and rest too.

I wonder how indestructible we can adapt ourselves to external factors which affect our levels of happy. There are so many parts to our brain and continuously do I realise my lessons have been learnt only when it is too late-it is then when things become clearer and more apparent. However I love this notion as well. I feel much more accomplishment in having moments of clarity when I take myself away from something. It feels like reward. In a way, it makes what seemed so complicated even easier to achieve-only to enhance my happiness.

Personally, I have always said you can't reach the high until you truly feel the low; of course there are several levels of low (some being quite dangerous) yet once action is taken to bring yourself back up again (using positive methods) only happiness can be achieved once more.

Refinding yourself

Words one can only admire from Carey Tennis:

My challenge to a therapist is this: "Tell me something I don't know. Surprise me." When I am led to see things that startle me, of which I had no inkling, that is priceless self-knowledge. And that can happen.

One thing you probably don't know about yourself is just how deeply you have been wounded. You cannot know this yet; in fact you have wisely prevented yourself from knowing this yet. It is as though, in a dream, we look down and see that we have been disemboweled; it is a moment of absolute terror; but we see that we have been disemboweled and yet we are fine! How can this be? How can we be so grievously wounded and yet smile peacefully and continue with our knitting or our guitar playing or whatever we are doing in our strange dream? We can do that because armed with the exquisite knowledge of the dream world we know that nothing can truly harm us, that we are spirit matter, that our consciousness is not affected by the disemboweling, and that it is only our severe waking attachment that causes us so much paralyzing fear.

Believing the wound is too deep to be seen, you have clouded your own sight from it. But you don't need to. There is someone who can guide you to the cliff edge from which that wound can be viewed at a safe distance, and you can see that it is just a wound to your spirit self, not your actual belly, and you can relax.

Drawing lines in our mind

When something difficult is going on in your life, there can be so many distractions and also positive things to focus on instead. I have always had an obsession perhaps you could say in sorting out the good in my life, to the parts which you could say are doing more damage. I have never had patience towards any given 'thing' which doesn't always feel like it's doing me any good.

As previously posted, when you think of the alternative from what you know-there are moments you think about which seem certain to lead towards unhappiness. How could we carry on without? More and more do I think that when recurrent thoughts come back to mind about situations we imagine putting our self in; surely that is saying more to us to go for it than to keep holding back?

Sometimes the decision is starting us in the face, whether it means a change for a short while or for permanent. We won't know whether the decision is right until we go for it. May be we all need to grab a pair of balls and swallow our pride in making such scary decisions. I've always hated to wonder and think it's about time I must stop kidding myself too. 

Parts of our lives exist for a reason; I will never stop believing that we will always learn. We always experience and always take so much from those moments. I draw a line over some in my mind and call it quits. It just feels right this time.

Perspective Shots

Here are a few photographs taken from journalists in risky war situations. I think they put into perspective the value of life when we are willing put ourself in danger too.

Giving Blood

In reading about giving blood, I find this article from the BBC really doesn't exactly push the idea and importance in blood donations-they more so focus on the free drinks, biscuits and pain of the event.

Perhaps when writing about blood donations, they should emphasise statistical importance and the comparison of pain which flashes for 3 seconds-to the reward in knowing that your blood can save a life! I think descriptions detailing the feeling of blood giving is mentioned three times, I don't feel the article is supportive enough to justify listing these explanations!

Black and white emphasis needs to be made, if you can take the time out to give blood, feel a slight pain yourself (which is gone within seconds) compared to loosing a life-perhaps some would understand the selfishness in not giving our time as to those loosing their entire existance.

Wiggle your big toe

Sat on your arse thinking, I should do this, I have that to be getting on with...but you feel too tired to do it. That voice in your head spinning around saying, come on now, get on with it, you know you have too...

It's times like these I always think of Kill Bill Volume One, when Uma Thurman is sitting in the 'Pussy Wagon' trying to get her comatosed legs to come back to life. Sometimes I feel like that about myself when my motivation starts to fizzle. It can be a very frustrating feeling as I am one to just get things sorted. I think when one does become slightly sluggish towards the usual norms, clearly there is something else going on in the background! Sort it out, sort it out, sort it out!

A state of static is caused. One cannot move in all the uncertainty in trying to work it out, where does this feeling come from? We go round and round punishing ourselves, until we get answers. I still believe that what makes us most sick are ourselves.

A simply dangerous set up

Don't we really like it when thing's seem to go a lot easier than we initially thought? A part of us seems to expect the worse, though isn't this kind of attitude a danger in itself? We end up setting ourselves up with the wrong face on our shoulders and perhaps cause more tension then needs be.

Why not anticipate the unknown and say to yourself, I wonder how this may turn out. If thoughts of doubt linger over our head then they will affect our treatment towards a subject we may not feel 100% about. I think sometimes we don't give ourself enough credit in the power we have individually to change something around. In a way, what only makes something a little bit uncertain are the vibes we create with our mind. Our attitudes and levels of confidence represent to others as much as ourselves our capabilities, something only exists in truth if we all agree and believe it too. We can't always assume the worst.

Pride and Ego Aside

When one tries to slow self down it's like everything around you becomes a little clearer. Sometimes when we slow down it means accepting the help of others: medication, advice or someone taking the extra little chores off your mind. In accepting help, it means putting all pride and egos aside. Let others in to help you, the only one you battle with otherwise is yourself.