The beginning or the end?

The girls at the Emirates first class check-in had been on duty since midnight. It was 6am and they were just starting to check passengers for EK 005 departing at 07:30.

They reapplied layers of pink lipstick within the sharp confines of brown lipliner. They gossiped in Arabic about a colleague suspected of moonlighting as a prostitute. They readjusted their shaylas, wrapping the veils loosely around rich black hair. And they dismissed a leering Bahraini wanting to check in—his ticket was for Manama and it was economy. All in all, it was just another autumn morning in Dubai. Each time the automatic doors opened they ushered in more of the same: expats with wrists full of gold, locals with scent so thick it followed them, and the gentle 23 degree air. Beyond the doors, the sky was wearing its perennial shade of smoky blue and the palm trees lining the forecourt were heavy with bunches of ripening caramel coloured dates.

They stopped talking and stared as two police women escorted a blonde girl in handcuffs through the doors and towards their counter.

“Please, take off now?” I nodded towards the bracelets that had accessorized every trip outside the jail walls for years.

“La. Lazum keep Habibti.”

It was no surprise. You get so used to hearing ‘La’ –no, that after a while you come to expect it. It didn’t stop the heat from rising inside me though.

We approached the check in counter and there was mum. She embraced me, but I couldn’t hug her back, not with the handcuffs.

“We were starting to wonder whether they’d changed their minds,” she said. The nervousness poured out of her. We both knew how unfunny it was, and how entirely possible it could be.

“Mum, they forgot my passport! We had to turn around half way up the Iranian Hospital Road and go back – to the men’s jail - and get it!. Of course they wouldn’t let me call you. I was about to pass out oh my god it never ends … Where’s dad?”

The police women were still standing either side but now yapping a million miles an hour with the check in girls, who were very obviously interested in exactly why I was standing in front of the first class counter in handcuffs. The words flying around in Arabic included “afraj” and  “muhadarrat”, but Sheikh Mohammed was name-checked too.

“Your father just went to call the jail again. He’s in a bit of a panic. But he shouldn’t be far away.”

So all we had to do was wait.  We’d become good at that. Now freedom was right in front of us in the form of a final stamp on my passport and a short walk up the aerobridge, but the scene had none of the euphoria it delivered in my dreams. We were all exhausted – my mum, dad and I. This wasn’t a tearful homecoming celebration, it was the last step in a painfully slow dance.

I moved closer to mum and leaned into her, bending a bit to rest my head in the crook of her shoulder. It was a comfort I snatched whenever we got a contact visit. I inhaled her Bvlgari perfume and it reminded me of home. Aromatic and secure. I had been picturing my parents going through the motions of getting ready for today. They would have been up before the sun rose. My mum wouldn’t have slept at all. They wouldn’t have spoken much, beyond Dad’s departure checklist. The airman in him was procedural, and for once mum would have welcomed the distraction because The ‘what ifs’ were almost too much to bear. What’s going to happen to her? What if Derek goes to Australia? What next?

I had wondered all the same things, yet they remained explicitly unspoken.

As we were standing there, the petite brunette and the frail blonde joined together like Siamese twins, I felt a hand cup my shoulder. It was firm and wide and by the lingering pressure I knew it was my dad. I spun to him for a kiss and he put his hands around my head, scrunching my hair as he hugged me tight. The tears were springing into my eyes now and I had to force them back.  We were so clearly father and daughter. Our Dutch bone structure, broad noses, and strong jaws were identical. His hair was more of a golden syrup colour, while mine was long strands of honey and hay. We had the same large eyes with long brown lashes, but while his were a clear blue sky, mine were stormy like the sea.

He looked at the policewomen and nodded a ‘Marhaba’. ‘Hello’. He had always had some kind of effect on the big local shotias and he was going to try his luck with these two.

“You can take these handcuffs off now? Now she is free.”

“La. No. Must keep until go through. No free yet,” the policewoman said in her best English.

I just looked at him and murmured “Because I’m really going to run now.”

The police had handed over my ticket and passport. Mum did the same then started filling in a couple of departure cards. Dad requested we be checked right through to Sydney, and yes, I would like the window seat. The boarding passes were spat out of the machine and handed to dad. We were seated in 1A and 1B. You couldn’t get any further up the front of the plane without sitting in the cockpit.

Up to this point I had been oblivious to the stares. I’m sure my parents were well aware—even looking out in case they saw someone they knew—but they were accustomed to ignoring the whispers and stuffing their shame into little packages that they could unwrap in private. For me, after 751 days of being inside the system, I was now acutely aware of my presence in the outside world. We tried small talk but it was just white noise.

Mum and dad moved around me protectively as I turned my back to the desk and shuffled a few feet from the red carpet, trying to keep the handcuffs out of view. But with a police escort and the escalated voices of the check in girls, we were already a spectacle for the other passengers lining up to get on our flight.

“You lucky girl huh? Afraj. First class. Your papa look after you.” The Shotia was smiling, trying to make light. I just looked at her and the handcuffs and had to stop myself slipping my wrists out and launching the metal at her. Stay calm Heidi. We’re almost there.

We started the slow march to the customs desk, the Shotias hanging back a little. It was a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed. My dad’s hand gently steered me from the small of my back. We stopped about four metres from the desk and then it was real. We all started talking at once. This little family, just the three of us, suddenly overwhelmed. My body started heaving with sobs as both their arms went around me. Dad rubbed my back. The customs guy looked worried.

“It’s over Hyde. Come on, you’ll be fine my girl. You’ll get on that plane with your mum, sit back, have a glass of champagne and it will be a new beginning.” He eyes were full of tears. Mum was already crying. And then dad looked at the Shotia with fire in his eyes and said “Enough. Take these things off her now.”

And for the first time ever, they actually did.

You were there
then you weren't there
hot
then cold
don'r think i didn't notice
in fact i've done everything to not notice
and yet i notice
again
and again
and again
who are you and why?
why now i said
why then and why now
it pains me I can't tell you everything
yet  you tell me nothing
and everything
now.

Assignment Five - Scenes

Jason strode over to the window and pulled the drapes shut, but not before he checked out the sand parking lot that bordered one side of their hotel. It looked like a typical day out there. Sun blazing in its dusty, cloudless sky, while Indians, Filipinos, and Arabs were going about their afternoon business. There were a few fairer heads too, but in this part of town, where it was all 3 star hotels and late nights souks, the former-USSR ‘business ladies’ didn’t come out until much later on.

“I don’t know how you could even tell a narc in this place.” He said to Alex.
She was sprawled diagonally across the bed on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles behind her. She looked up from the magazine and propped her chin on her hand. “Don’t they look the same everywhere? Like an ugly scum who is trying too hard to look bored?” The bit of fringe that had fallen across her eye was flicked away and she went back to the magazine.

“Alex, don’t you get it? What you did last night was amateur. Why won’t you ever bloody learn to
keep your mouth shut?”

“I kept my mouth shut for two whole shitty years in that hell hole in Delhi. And what? You think now I don’t know who is kosher and who is not? I talked to her all night. We cried together. She knows the score—and she’s connected.”

He rubbed his eyes and took a long pull on the joint. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have said anything. How do you know—no—how do I know that they’re not still watching her? Or that she’s not working for them? She told you she got out in record time—it just stinks of rat if you ask me.” As he said that he slammed his fist down into the sofa cushion beside him. “Damn Alex!”

Alex got up now and stood in front of the dressing table, her barely covered bum cheeks brown and round in front of him. She talked to his reflection in the mirror while she added more eyeliner to the fading smudges around her eyes. “You’re paranoid. And that doesn’t help,” she said, nodding at the stash on the table.

Two years of fighting for her freedom had taken its toll on Jason; they had to be more careful than ever now. He watched as she pulled an envelope of tissue paper out of the Christian Dior shopping bag and unwrapped the delicate black lace bra. She looked like a child. And acted like one most of the time. He had bought her the bra so they could get out of the shopping centre, and because he knew she would parade around the room in it and little else.

“Ok,” he said, call her.

Place

There’s that music again. I know I’m drifting in and out of consciousness but it seems like every time I start to come back, I hear that same mournful organ music. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Hours? Days? All I know is this music is like a soundtrack to my pain. I crack open my eyes and start to find some focus. I’m lying on my side, looking through the bars at the wall straight ahead. It’s pale grey. A nothing shade of grey. Its only feature is a slice of windows high up, with more bars. I can see it’s dark outside. The wall stretches to the left and right of a corridor lit by a single dull fluorescent tube. I push myself up on the bunk and my arms shake. I have to squeeze my eyes shut to stop the dizzying galaxy of stars that fill my head. After a few breaths I try again, this time making it down the ladder to place my feet shakily on the concrete floor. I see that there is no one on the bottom bunk. It’s little wonder, I’ve probably been moaning and writhing around on that top bunk since I arrived. But I can’t be sure of anything because I feel removed from myself now, just a shell. I turn left towards the huge iron door at the end of the corridor and as I walk, a sea of faces seem to float past me, behind those rows and rows of bars.

Characters part 1 - Sasha

Alexandra strides over to the iron door and bangs on it with the full force of each hand. There is a brief lull before she starts banging again. “Eh! Ehhh! Someone come!” She looks down at her red hands and sinks a little into her skin. “Piz deet!” The Russian curse slips out of her mouth, quieter now, and in one liquid movement she turns and slides down the door until she connects in defeat with the concrete floor. The other girls in the room look up from their card game, and when they realize her eyes are closed, a couple of them stare. It is a rare opportunity to study her. To avoid the eye contact that could set her off again. She is young. Way too young to be in this place

Watching

Under the sea foam

twirling shadows find their feet

Aqua blasts them deep

The image is one of Andrew McIlroy's beautiful paintings. 

heidihaiku

My Romance

Stretching it out
Gently goes the summer leaf
Crumbs in my fingers

That Knight

Lemon dressed bed
a summer scene, serene
Fitful tossing dream

The Game

Too much to bear
or else I bare my heart
Stand up and stay cool

Watching

Under the sea foam
twirling shadows find their feet
Aqua blasts them deep

Writing Exercises - Senses

Smell
You could almost see the stink lingering in puddles outside the main dorm in RAK.
The khaki bubbles popped and spread like craters on cooking pancakes as they released their eye watering fumes of pee. "I guess they didn't unlock for the toilet again last night..."

Taste
The taste of your tattoo against my tongue on that long summer morning, not so long ago

Sound
Metal against metal; the sound of the iron skeleton key rapping against the aluminium table with speed and force. Thwak thwak thwak thwak thwak!

Touch
The feel of the prison issue blanket against my skin. It was heavy with the grease of hundreds of bodies that had used it before me. I itched. After a week I could feel the irritation growing under the skin of my back. After two weeks my back had exploded in a mess of angry red pus filled spots. A Sri Lankan girl squeezed and bathed it for me.

Sight
The vision of Derek standing calm, almost nonchalant in the visiting courtyard, while to each side of him it was chaos. His stance almost an inversion of all those around him. They shouted, waved, gesticulated, jostled to be seen and heard by their visitors on the other side of the bars, many of whom were wilting and crying in the afternoon heat. He just stood still and stared into my eyes, searching out my heart, as I wilted and cried too.

Taste
The tiny salty black bubbles popped between my teeth and I looked over at mum with eyes that didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. The caviar was first class. I sipped from my glass of Dom and started to notice long forgotten senses waking up. The Champagne bubbles tickled my mouth and nose and washed the salty eggs down in one exquisite swallow. I had eaten prison food for two years. The only alcohol I'd drunk was a couple of capfuls of baby cologne. This was my very first taste of freedom.

Writing Exercises - Emotions

Love
There’s a lightness that comes with love. People talk about butterflies tickling their skin from the inside out, but doesn’t it all start in the head? It’s the brain that suddenly bursts with these long dormant hormones. It’s the neurones firing off with pleasure that create space where once there was longing. For me, the lightness means I can relax when he meets me at Schiphol Airport. Relaxing means a feverish afternoon of lovemaking in the tiny White House hotel in Amsterdam. The feverish afternoon becomes an affair born in security, surety and complete physical surrender. I had melted into my man and he into me. He said I love you Hyde. And I finally said I love you back.

Fear
It’s like a game of tetris. The ball of fire is suspended around my heart and drops down into my flaming belly pit. The moment it drops another forms, and drops, then another and another... There’s a tightness that runs from deep inside my brain and fingers its way through my body. It hurts. It’s like my soul is trying to tear through - to get away. But I need it here. I need to be alert, I’m straining to pick up a hint in their fast flowing Arabic, a hint that I’ll be ok, that it will all be over soon. But deeper down in the pit of fire is an emptiness that tells me it’s useless. A knowing that tells me the only place I'm going is back to jail.

Self loathing
You can tell the girls who actually have some legitimate reason for being in prison. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what have I dones’ hang unspoken, like a weight slung across their shoulders as they move through the hours of each and every day. This ghostly appendage to the soul balances two buckets - one on either side - overflowing with regret and sadness. When you’re carrying the buckets, it usually means you’re going to be here a while. You’ll watch girls come, some with buckets, some just in transit; and you’ll watch girls go. That’s when your own buckets get heavier. How can you go? How can you even just make it ok? Sorry, I screwed up is not a currency accepted here. You are powerless to change events. In the end, you can only change yourself.

Joy
I look at the new text message and can’t help but smile. It felt like the roof opened up to the sun right there in Sexy Nails salon. A burst of pink spread across my cheeks then leaked all the way to my fingers and toes. I looked up, not looking anywhere because my eyes were glazed, just recalling his hands gently laying me back onto the bed. I see the sun tattooed on his solar plexis. Maybe that’s where the warmth is coming from. I want to reply but know now it’s ok. I don’t have to rush. He’s still there. And I’m still smiling.

So I craft my response while the Vietnamese lady paints hot pink wax between my legs.

The Passport

The sun was peeping over the dunes behind us, its low glow making dazzling halos on the sea grass dotted on the horizon.

There was laughter from somewhere up the beach and I watched as a trail of pixels caught up with the direction of my stare. The acid had settled in nicely; much like our cavorting posse of partygoers.

Thanks to the Fender Passport system the sand was bumping. Bass vibration shimmied up my legs and raised the hairs on my arms. It felt like every pore opened a little wider to take the music in - straight to the nerve endings. The perfect outdoor audio kit, the Passport comprised two speakers and an amp that clip together into one solid 20 kilo suitcase. All you need is your music source and a generator and you’ve got yourself a party. We had the speakers on tripod stands facing in towards the barasti hut. The psychedelic fabric fastened to two sides of the bamboo frame gave us walls of fractals within which to dance, while Ganesha made a dexterous salute to the sea from behind the DJ desk.

The boys were just wrapping up a two hour back to back set, mixing and mashing minidisc, DAT and vinyl into a journey through the darker corridors of psy-trance. Most of the tunes were fresh from India and Germany, heavy with layers of complicated beats and vocal samples over the traditional pounding four-four bassline. It was stomping music. It was twirling and contorting make-your-body-elastic music. It was not for the faint hearted music.

Evidently, because only the hard core remained. The rest of the party goers had come and gone in the night. Half the excitement is actually finding the party, negotiating sand dunes in the wilderness of a 10km stretch of beach. If you don’t have a four wheel drive, you better have a pre-arranged pick up plan. Quite often there was no phone signal, and even if there was, no one at the party is going to hear your call. There was lots of driving through the dunes with the windows down and constantly cutting the engine to listen out for the thud thud thud thud of the bass. >>>>

The laughter that had stirred me came from Aslam and Emil. A moment ago you could only see their outlines on the horizon, then it lifted its veil and illuminated their faces. They were speaking in Hindi, the sing-song timbre exaggerated by the twilight.

I don’t think I’d actually spoken a word for the last couple of hours.

Chained to my dreams

Dear Catherine,

I keep having this dream. The dream is always different, but the outcome is freakishly the same. I’m back there and I’m clean. Squeaky. No way I’m going to screw up this time. Derek is close by, but still out of reach. We’re in the same country at least. I’m going to a party. I’m not going to take drugs. But other people are. It’s absolutely not ok for me to have anything in my system. We all know that. One more strike and I’m out...

I never remember the detail of exactly how it happens, just the earth shattering moment when I’m stopped by the police and realise that they’ve got me again. As they’re taking me back to the station for a urine test I’m ready to tear my own heart out. My free life disappears before my eyes. How could I have slipped? I can’t tell my family. Better they think I’m dead. There are no more get out of jail cards left. The worse part is, I don’t even know whether I’m guilty or not. I feel guilty. I know they’re going to get a positive test out of me. But I don’t think I actually took anything. Or was it just one teeny tiny taste? That’s enough of course.

The next part of the dream could be anywhere. But I’m inside. Locked up. Sometimes some of the faces are the same. Sometimes I’m in a completely foreign prison, drawing only, I can imagine, on pictures in my mind from Sasha’s stories of Delhi prison, or the numerous books written by people like us. The despair is indescribable. Yet I never, ever see my parents in these dreams. Maybe it’s my mind’s way of protecting itself? Do you think my sub-conscious knows that’s territory too painful for even a dream?

I’m too ashamed to even call my lawyers.

The dreamscape chaos is mixed with a sense of déjà vu. It’s like that scene from Midnight Express when they’re walking circles chained to the wheel, sinking deeper into the maddening rut walked by their own feet. I know I’ve been here before. It’s all the same but different. I know it’s hopeless. I keep dreaming. I go to court. I stand clutching the bars watching bus loads of women released to carry on with their lives, knowing that will never be me, on that bus. I can actually feel the despondency gnawing away at my soul. It’s a sad, sad place I’m in and I’m slipping off the edge. Giving up...

Then there’s a sharp turn. It’s like a knife slices through the middle of the dream and changes its course from a point back in some premonitory corner of my mind. It’s as sudden and shocking as finding out I didn’t actually do it. Of course I didn’t do it. Who could be so crazy? And I’m walking out of the jail, heart beating faster as it settles back into my conscious body.

I know I’m awake and I cry.

Ramble

I know I want to end the book with the journey home - the beginning of a new, young life - but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. There was something in Fiona's idea - telling the story from multiple perspectives...

There are the Emirates staff at the first class check in watching me approach in handcuffs. There were the fellow prisoners saying goodbye. It would be amazing if you cold focus up close on their faces and hear their internal monologues as each encountered this shell of a girl. Woman. Was I a girl or a woman at twenty six? Wow, there's a question all of its own.

I can see the shotias - Fowzia in particular watching me leave, and Major Sabah 'Will she be back? Third time's a charm.' That's where the nightmares come from, always that third time lurking, waiting to happen.

So this shell of a girl, she's empty, dry of tears, a grey, vaporous shadow of her former self, while all around, every pinpoint along the way, there are faces looming close, watching and passing judgement. What's it like to enter the world with this flag hanging over your head? Forever. There's a passport with an international drug peddling charge attached to it. A profile on interpol, a world wide web where a search of your name returns a digest of your personal history, etched into the screens of the future.

And there are the friends who've been let down. The family who will never look at you the same way, the secrets that exist to protect grandparents, the fear that prospective employers, clients, boyfriends and colleagues will one day ask the question...

What's it like to go back into the world? Where do you start?

Three beginnings - a writing exercise

Beginning One:

The key jerked us out of sleep. Rap rap rap rap rap. Then deeper. Thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack. “Yalla. Goomee. Eat.” Quickly. Get up. Breakfast. The beginning was no different to any other day. But we all knew the end would be.

Peeling my eyes open, my body started to register what day it was. The dread bubbled in my belly and quickly rose, pushing a little "Oh" from my lips as it fizzed and burned around my heart like poison. If it wasn't for the poison I'd be empty inside.

I looked over at Sasha, she was sitting, knees up, arms draped over the front of them with her head hanging between her legs. It’s the position you sit in when you think you’re going to be sick. I know how she feels.

Kate is right next to me, close enough to touch. I glance over my shoulder and she is laying straight as a plank, eyes focused on the fluorescent light above our heads. It looks like a black light – one of those dark UV tubes that make your teeth glow at a trance club in Amsterdam – but it’s actually a standard old white tube. Covered in flies. They’re still, settled, but before long, as we start to move and a little air circulates in the room, they’ll become active. There must be hundreds of them. Enough to completely cover a metre long tube. When they start buzzing around the room for the day, you can see that the tube is covered in fly shit.

Kate isn’t a morning person; she’s still laying here next to me, staring straight up. I’d go beyond saying Anna isn’t a morning person. She’s actually frightening in the morning. I’ve seen her bare her teeth, wolf like, and that’s just because Sasha told her she missed a patch when she was cleaning the floor.



Beginning Two:

The black fabric was the softest thing about today. I just held it for a while. It was cool too. A little sea of cool in the thick humidity of a middle eastern summer morning.

Standing with the abaya held to my body and feeling the slippery waves of rayon move and settle around me has a calming effect. My eyes are open, but by all appearances, nobody is home. On court day, the further you can get away from the truth, the safer you are. It’s like your own personal defence team steps in to fight the system. Suppress the nervous synapses that threaten to derail an already shaky defence built by a very expensive lawyer. We all deal with another day in the Shariah court differently, but there’s one emotion that’s as strong as the handcuffs that link us like a chain gang for the journey – it’s the sheer terror at what new evidence will unfold.



Beginning Three:

The girls at the Emirates first class check in counter had been on duty since midnight. It was 6am and they had two hours left in their shift and would soon start seeing passengers for EK 005 departing at 7:30am. Checking in the east bound Singapore flights was usually a breeze – mostly Western expats going home to Australia, and often, Emirates pilots and their families. They reapplied layers of pink lipstick within the sharp confines of red lipliner, they gossiped in Arabic about a colleague they suspected of moonlighting as a prostitute, they readjusted their shaylas, wrapping the black veils loosely around rich black hair, and they dismissed a lecherous Bahraini wanting to check in. His ticket was for Riyadh and it was economy. All in all, it was just another winter’s day in Dubai and the temperature was a gorgeous 21 degrees Celsius at 6am. The sky was wearing its perennial shade of smoky blue. And the palm trees lining the forecourt just outside the automatic doors were heavy with bunches of ripening caramel coloured dates.

Then two police women escorted a blonde girl in handcuffs through the automatic doors.

Lost in RAK

In September something happened to change the dynamic of our group. I was laying on the gravel outside, alone, daydreaming as always about D. About the future.

It was more a meditation than a daydream. Every single day for close to 2 years I did it – visualise the moment when I would walk out and walk right into his atmosphere. It was bright, buoyant; otherworldly. Almost heaven like. But that’s how things happened here - in my mind. In the scene we would fall into each other like our first time together and we would spend hours exploring the pain; the whys and hows, whos and whats we were never able to discuss in letters because they were always moderated by authorities. The same authorities who were building a prosecution case against us.

I did the meditation lying down, the precursor to sleep, either in the morning after counting, or in the evening, after counting. As soon as I and every other girl in the place had stood up and been accounted for. "Australi? Heidi?"
"Na'am."‘Yes, I’m here, not escaped. Yes, I tally with your tally.’ Then I would roll myself back into the dreamscape. Time to DreamEscape. Who would have thought that Reiki study as a young, green, confused expat brat, would find such a profoundly perfect outlet. Let’s levitate out of this one shall we?

Reiki is focus and feeling. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise. It’s also connection to the subject. That subject may be you, or it may be the person you are healing. Sometimes you and the person you are healing are the same, sometimes you are oceans apart. For me it was an act of visualisation, and it invariably invoked the same cast – me, D, my mum and dad. Whatever it was, it was my only way out. Different to the escape dreams, because they always required dhows and passports and beatings. And they ended where they started, waking up in this place. Reiki was the perfect escape. The resolution. But unlike the dreams, it would only come with intense and entirely conscious focus.

I would start with the orb of white light; a slow burner that sparked in my toes and made its way up my body like a probing masseuse. ‘Have I hit the spot? Are we connected? Should I go on or do we need to work harder here?’ Toes to legs to thighs to root chakra, taking it slower and deeper at the hungriest cells, dragging the warming healing buzz on invisible strings linking mind and body. My stomach and head needed the most work – the solar plexus and pituitary chakras – both were twisted, sluggish and tormented. On and up through the chest, throat, lips, nose, eyes and up to the crown of my skull, back down my neck and shoulders, then charging down my arms and out through my fingertips. The same routine every day, always leading to the same outcome. It was here, when the energy had explored every molecule, that I would allow the visualisation to occur. The reward. The reunion. It might have been fantasy, but it was well imagined: a coming together fitted out with location, wardrobe, words and people. The most important people. My parents, and D.

We had passed around a book called The Power of Positive Thinking; about people who had won lottery, cured cancer, or beat the impossible through visualisation, affirmations, and thinking ‘positive’. Unfortunately no one in the book could tell us exactly how long it would take to think your way out of jail.

Laying back in the steaming sun, watching a different reality in my mind, I passed hundreds of days. On the day of the eleventh of September, I was wearing my favourite kandora. It was soft white cotton with heavy embroidery around the sleeves, neck line and straight down the centre. A going away gift from a Sri Lankan girl, the dress was well worn, probably from her days as a housemaid. I was literally swimming in its Arabian proportions but it felt airy when I walked and there was something pure in the way it brushed against my skin. You could say it was spring floral that smattering of orange, yellow and pink flowers. And even though I constantly felt sweaty and dirty in this place, the smell of the freshly washed kandora as it slipped over my head had the power to change that.

The Bengali girl interrupted right near the end, D was lifting the hair off my shoulders with both hands, kissing my neck as he let go and it fell in a mess around our faces. “I love to see the sunlight in your hair...”
I was grabbed on the arm and pulled. “Yalla, yalla come. Quickly! Amerika! Amerika! Quickly come!” I had never seen her before. What does she want with me? There was something so spectacularly urgent in her voice that I moved in the direction she was pulling. To the television. There was an Indian girl sitting there alone. There was a building on fire. There was a plane. Oh fuck. There was a plane in the side of a building. There was an Indian girl, a Bengali girl, and an Australian girl.

I ran to get the others...

Which way is up?

There is a fairly basic school of thought here. Look where your feet are, look directly ahead of them, let your eyes follow a line across the floor and up any perpendicular object in your path, then keep following your eyes skyward until you establish the position of up.

It all works fine unless you are a) under water, struggling to find the surface amid a choking whitewash of bubbles, or b) in the middle of a philosophic maelstrom, struggling to make sense of your ‘direction’.

I guess the reason Eckhart Tolle was so successful with The Power of Now, was his concept empowered people to not actually think about their direction. “Sshh, just be” he said. “The direction will naturally follow.” Guess that’s also why the Dalai Lama is so popular; what with all that Buddism jazz. And while Eckhart gets first billing here, it in no way reflects my personal preference. The latter is Great for spreading his much deeper philosophy about being; the former is probably his number one plagiarist who lucked onto a marketing machine.

But how does this all help in the current conundrum? Don’t think about it, just be – while immaculate in theory because you have to do diddly squat – is not entirely realistic. I mean, I work in marketing. If I trained myself to not think ahead, I’d be out of a job. “Heidi, where’s that media plan?” “Oh, I figured it’s best not to think about it, if we just be the client will approve this ridiculously inflated budget and the media will book itself.” Yes I have days like that, but it’s never going to become standard operating procedure. Is it? So what about the alternative? The ‘putting it out to the universe’ theory?

Has anyone in the room tried to live by Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking? Hands up all of you who have chanted positive affirmations every waking day of a particularly needy period? What about chanting those good old affirmations internally, for 700 days straight, driven by the god-awful fear of failing at what seems life’s simplest and most successful wishing game? Failure here is just preposterous. I mean, all those testimonials shouted success. And so easy! Just spend five minutes every day visualising winning the lottery, and get five bucks on the tenth scratchie. Half an hour mixed with a round of chemotherapy and you can beat cancer. Look in the mirror and tell it you deserve more, and, fuck me, the award wage goes up in your state. Who wouldn’t believe it? But let me tell you, this pathway to health, wealth and happiness is not without its horror stories. What happens when you miss a day? Not through any fault of your own, but your designated ‘positive’ time has been usurped. Like you get dragged to court unexpectedly. Or you can hear the girls in the next room being flogged senseless. You can’t very well continue can you? What about when there is simply not enough space to think because 12 Russian prostitutes, one prostitute’s son, and all their dramas and dilemmas have been dumped in your cell – a cell that once housed only you and your co-accused? Maybe if Norman had taught you about contingencies you would have made it. But throw any of these interruptions into the mix when you haven’t yet mastered the art of pause and resume on your supercharged, bound to succeed, reiki-slash-power-of­-positive-thinking combo routine, and I tell you, there is going to be some internal horror. Like ‘Shit, will this hiccup run interference with the broader plan? Will my departure from Positive Thinking impact the Grand Scheme of Things?’

Ok, I digress. But you’re seeing the psychological bridge right?

So if not thinking is out. And thinking is out. How else are you supposed to work out which way is up? Just do it, I suppose...Is that what you were going to say? Awesome.

Suffice to say, I’m still thinking. I’ll let you know when I get my bearings.

Stick to this advice

This image was the source of endless amusement in the Silly Season of Christmas 2009 so I thought it was time to resurrect it.

It may look like a crude MS Paint cartoon drafted by a jaded, whiskey soaked old journalist, but for me it is both beautiful and brilliant in its simplicity.

We could do well to learn a few tricks out of Stickman 2's book. Cut the bullshit and tell it like it really is once in a while. Here's an example:

Suitor: I'd like to sign up to be your German teacher. How about we catch up for a schnitzel next Thursday.
Heidi: How does 'Not in a million fucking years' sound?

In theory it's oh so easy. But I pulled out with the excuse that I had a rip snorting hangover. Pussy. It only delayed the inevitable.

So let's make a pact, you and I, to pull out the big truth guns every now and then.
Isn't that what all this new age sensitivity is supposed to be about?

February Fast - do you feel it

Went to dinner at a friend's house last night. An initimate group of some of my favourite people in the world. Took a couple of bottles of low alcohol wine because it seemed like a good idea. (yes, you read correctly.) When I arrived my friends were lolling on the lounge, there were hors deuvres on the table, and wine glasses scattered about. On stuff. Not in hands. I took a closer look. The wine glasses didn't have wine in them. This was big. What exactly did I walk in to here?
"Are you guys drinking water out of wine glasses?"
"Hmmmm." was the reply. Kinda like 'i acknowledge your question but I plead the fifth'.

I set about pouring myself a glass of wine. (Clearly I had not yet been lobotomised by this weird abstaining sect.) Like she had just disapparated from the lounge to my shadow, Fiona was right there behind me, reading the label over my shoulder "Is that that low alcohol stuff heidipants? Are you trying to be good or do you actually like it?"
"Hmmmm." was my response. I too, was afraid of the truth.

Dinner with sparkling mineral water revealed the chasm that truly exists between a lubricated saturday night dinner party and a monday night family detox dinner. We ate heathily. We sipped our drinks (me low alcohol wine, they ludicrously expensive mini bottles of italian fizzy water.) We shared the misery of sobriety.

We also rode the wave of possible failure. "Should I cave?" Steve posed, but we knew it was a rhetorical question. Withouth even so much as a 'hmmmmm' he picked himself up and worked through it. With another sip of water, a coffee, and a lemon lime and bitters. And then some herbal ecstasy.

Yes fuck. Can you believe it?
I had given up the fight for the night by then. Sod this drinking shit. Let's watch a movie and drink water. Then he pulls out a fucking herbal high. "as good on the dancefloor as it is on the couch" was the description on the back. I was now as confused as the herbal scientist who made the shit.

Well, I don't know what kind of party is in that brew, i was thinking, but he better be hoping for couch goodness because he's got more chance of harry potter popping in than he does of me getting my happy feet on right about now. Sober and all.

We watched a disney/pixar g rated animated feel good family number, then I pulled the plug. "How's that love drug going kids?"
"Hmmmm."
Oh, right I get it.

They did their little floaty thing back down the hallway as I walked to my car toting the left over wine and wondering why I had such a pounding headache. Why my friends have turned into mormons. And what is it with February? Let's hope this month gets old fast.

There's more than one way to skin a blog

As I watch my treasured feline slurping and gnawing the dreaded but dying fleabiters (aka bodyscooters) out of his fur, I realise it's time. No no, not flea assassination time - we just did that. It's a whole other time: It's BLOG time!

This blogging business has gone on far too long without me. I can no longer continue to lurk around the blogs of friends and strangers, marvelling at their dedication to the medium while I ignore my startling lack of the same. I will no longer steal the scene at late night booze benders with tales of crime and passion only to refer to the gaping hole in my story as 'the unfinished ending'. And I must not ever, ever, ever again start drinking wine at 4pm on a saturday with the excuse it's raining and cold and i'm bored. Bored? WTF? That whole concept is b-o-r-i-n-g.

So it is time. Axel my big black pussy-cat-face-man is used to me talking to him, to the plants and to myself, so it came as no shock, in fact he didn't even twitch (the fleas really are responding well to the treatment), when I turned on myself, gave me a short sharp finger poke in the chest, and said "Listen here you, there's more than one way to write a book. So what are you waiting for?"