2003-02-02

Well, my my. Another shuttle down. I find it frustrating at times that all our major, world defining events that are covered on the news are derived from the USA. Its as if the happenings that shape our culture come from a most dubious source, that being America. We don’t have much of a hope of avoiding becoming just like the USA when all our defining events are also their defining events.

I have been feeling very light headed lately, quite giddy. I hope this is because I’m not in full stock of all my herbs. I am missing iron tablets and my herbal mixture, though I am still taking my magnesium, horny goat weed and daily multi-vitamin. The sensation I have in my head is very hard to explain, but the best way I have come up with so far is that my brain and my eyes are about 2 feet away from eachother, with a veil in between them. I, myself, feel like I am in another room altogether, away from my eyes and brain. Very displacing and it is very hard to think or concentrate. Somehow, I still manage to do everything I have to, just fighting through it.

Its been four months since the festival, and I am still recovering from my burnout. For ages, I have physically felt like my brain is full and many thing people say do one of two things:

- bounce off my skull, unable to find a gap through which to penetrate my skill.

- Somehow make it thought, but then shake around inside my head like hundreds of little pebbles making me feel a bit scattered

When there is no one talking to me, it seems that I am not even thinking as my brain is so full it doesn’t even turn over unless it really has to. I cannot live in the moment, but am usually thinking about things yet to come, what is happening tomorrow or I’m making lists in my brain of things I have to do. This is very wrong, but I am trying to sort that by nipping in the bud any emerging thoughts of tasks or lists and then bringing myself back to the present and my current environment.

Two of the main weapons in all this are good food and exercise. Sounds a bit lame, but I’m now one of those knobbers that is always going on about organic food, yoga and breathing. But it is really helping me cope with my totally depleted mental state and complete lack of energy. I walk to work, which makes about one hour a day, which makes me feel fit and I sweat. Several times a week I do over one hour of yoga, which makes me feel chilled and strong. When I can I go for a run on the beach and then a swim. ( I tried to do this today, but the beach was packed, I couldn’t park and everyone was dringin like shit and my horm doesn’t work so I was yelling out the window at people “Why I am I in SECOND gear??!!” or “Get OFF the ROAD!!” Then I fucked it off and came home). I try to eat good food, and much more of it. Porridge every morning for breakfast, and then munch out as much as possible all day and make very effort to cook a decent meal at night. At the moment I like boiled eggs, tofu, my home made pesto, Hunter Leaven bread, passionfruit smoothies, Farmland cappucino desserts, amazing organic pineapple and peppermint tea.

But I still feel pretty shit.

I had a side thought today about how I didn’t even really kick back and enjoy my smoking excesses. Mostly, I have been busy, busy, busy in the past. Most stoners sit around and watch lots of movies, go to the pub with their friends, smoke with their friends, do weird stoner shit. I would get toasted and then whip off to work or any one of a gazillion other tasks. Stupid.

Anti-depressants are off my agenda at the moment. I decided it would not be true to myself to go on the medication, as I don’t believe I am doing all I can to make myself feel better. My situation is partly something I can control, andif that is what is making me depressed, then it follows that I should try to address the fuckedness in my life before I throw up my hands and say “Pass me my tri-cyclics!”.

Sometimes I feel very amazing and can feel tiny parts of myself returning, so that’s how I know I am healing at all. Its just really slow…

Yesterday I bough Hoodoo Gurus “Stoneage Romeos” LP on vinyl. And lately I have bought lots of Spy Vs Spy (AO Mod Vers and Harry’s Reasons) including the rare and amazing “One of a Kind” EP for $4 in wonderful condition with the cover photos that were taken just up the road, in Stockton. Whilst the band donned Driza-Bones. Yeh.

There will be some Bitchcraft Brisbane tour stuff here soon, I’ll finally write it up. And make our website.

For now, I will write about last nights Howlfest gig. During the week, I had sat down with Jlo and Jameh and I was prattling on about how we should dress up for the gig. Somehow, after awhile of the three of us pitching ideas, we came up with the idea of us making ourselves up in corpsepaint, metal style. Last night, Jamie made us all up. The facepaint felt like hell but we had it on for about two and half hours. Hopefully there will be photos, but anyhow we thought we were fuckin’ funny and cool and really, really stupid. And most probably very ugly. The most comments I really got about the face paint were along the lines of “why?”. Obviously, we did not look that good. Excellent…

We played two new tracks, one cover (Nirvana’s “Rape Me”) and our new hit/anthem “Mummy’s Little Punks”. I wrote the new one and I feel pretty proud of it. We all always go on about all those fashion punks, more hair gel than hair and all that, and they really annoy the fuck out of us. The temptation was to write a gripey, sledging song about ‘those people’. But instead I think I came up with some clever lyrics and it ends up being quite a positive song.