Comfort Vest: February 20th to 21st.

I spoke to someone from Savers during work (can't say any more; matter of State security, or confidentiality at least). Apparently Savers isn't an op-shop. Devastating: I have been doing all my op-shopping there. It's one-stop, colour co-ordinated, size-sorted—effectively it is all-the-hard-work-already-done with a splash of don't-need-to-go-anywhere-else thrown in for good measure. They buy boxes of donations from 'non-profit alliance partners' and donate money to the same when you and I drop our stuff into their stores. Then, I suppose, they add a profit onto the whatever is in the boxes and we buy it. Allegedly, and I am not really sure where I heard this, they also offer employment opportunities to people who may not be given such opportunities by other employers. So it's not opping maybe but it's still really good, and feel-good, shopping and we decided to go to one we hadn't been to before. It's in a place that ends with the word 'Park'. (I am not wanting to give it away to my audience of seven because I am really scared that an increase in demand may lead to increases in prices—see the listing of stores on the link above and I am sure you will be able, with some fine detective work, to work out which one it was.)

When you mention you are going somewhere like Eden Park, Chirnside Park, Roxborourgh Park, Albert Park, Calder Park, Mill, Bell, Gladstone, Oak, Brandon, Deer—you get my drift—Lollii just hears the park bit and so all trips to said Park suffixed places are either delayed by having to go to Gasworks Park, or dampened by the memory of a disappointed doggie face. We went for the former.

There are big differences between op-shopping with your boy and your BFF. A boy's mission is not your mission: and therein lies a complete blog all to itself, it will have been done, just google. With a boy there is a certain amount of pace-pressure. Also, the habit of finding a mirror in the furniture department—to change in front of rather than trying to negotiate the five-items-at-a-time queue at the changing rooms—becomes strange when you are on your own. (He's gone off to look at 'something', don't worry, he says, take your time; hurry up, please god, hurry up is what you hear). Alone the mirror is suspicious behaviour, with your BFF it is just subversive. These obstacles notwithstanding, I did manage to get great buys, including items to decorate knitted projects and woolen jumpers to de-knit for wool—far cheaper than at Wick or Scray suffixed locations. Whoo hoo!

This weeks project is a de-knit. B—— bought the wool for this project in the form of a jumper, she undid it (the hard part), and now it is being re-knitted into this project for her mum. It feels like wool through and through and came in a mottled grey blue for the body and navy for the trim. De-knitted wool brings it's former life to the piece. It retains, at least for now, the kink of its last knit. A new wool would not give the same effect. It's kind of nice—like seeing someone else's life or feeling someone else's heart in your new organ transplant. What, you don't think that is a nice thought? Have you properly considered organ donation then?

Question mark Park also has a potential top-ten vanilla slicery. The boy and I had a piece on this day, B—— and I had one when we made a follow up visit recently (and tried on clothes in the furniture section). Everyone wore a little; everyone ate a lot. Highly recommended.

Are you a heart person or a head person? It is probable that we mostly think we are heart. It feels nicer. But, as Osho says, if all of us who thought we were heart really were, the world would be a better place. I don't really heart the world. Maybe it is because I see my part of it from the wrong perspective; maybe it is just not heartable. We cannot be too hard on ourselves though. We are not taught to be heartie. We are taught to be reasonable and analytical and sensible. If you are more absurd than that, then maybe you are heartish. Osho asks you to reach out from your heart, with your senses, and absorb. Listen, see, feel, smell and taste with your heart, one hundred percent. Feel your lover or child, feel the earth or something growing, smell the ocean or the farm, listen to music—but don't allow your head in. He suggests getting a picture of yourself and taking away the head. Meditate on this and then feel with your heart whatever it is you would like to sense. Ultimately, don't think. If you think, this won't work for you. If you can imagine yourself without a head, or maybe even with someone elses heart or corneas, it just may. Be absurd—I think absurdity is greatly under-valued.

Hoodie and Leggings: February 13th to 19th.

'We don't do Valentine's Day, do we.' A statement, not a question from my boy. I'm okay with that. It would be, otherwise, a case of buying and giving and also receiving things that neither of us would really want. It's a day that doesn't justify a useful present. It is usually something frivolous, fluffy and piano-worthy (my version of the pool room). So we went to dinner and had a huge banquet instead. Three entrees, three mains and coffee. I feel ill reminiscing. We did My Kitchen Rules meets Masterchef. No French accents or shovelling of food into our mouths from three millimeters above the plate, no cravats. Numbers were the only real link. The Wanton soup got seven for wantons and four for the soup itself (stock and lettuce); the cuffy puffs were sevens but the salt-and-calamari was nine-worthy (I think V—— may have rated it a ten!). Mains were lemongrass chicken, beef and cashew nuts and garlic prawns. Me: eight and a half; seven, eight. V——: seven, eight, nine. The best bit, for an inveterate sweet-tooth, is the Vietnamese coffee. I say Vietnamese because we most often get it at this restaurant but I first had it in Borneo. There the equipment far outsized the cup: a huge conical sieve filled with coffee was held over the cup; a large scoop of water from a bureau sized bain-marie was poured into the sieve. Then from high on a shelf came an industrial sized can of condensed milk which the server inverted for several minutes over my cup. It was decadently sweet and the best coffee ever. For the record, my best tea ever was from a greasy-spoon near Heathrow. Although I didn't see the creation of this gem, the result was the same: sweet, milky heavenness in a mug.

With coffee: a donut. I wish. Sugar-free diet and all. But, actually, I am a donut; we are all donuts according to Osho. We are outsides with no middles. What Osho would like us to know is that we are in fact more like a jam donut, or, because I don't like jam donuts, maybe a custard donut (take your pick). We have centers; we are just not aware of them. One great way, he says, to realise your centre is to block off all access to the outside world—by closing up all the holes in your head. Ears, mouth, nose, eyes. Aside: he doesn't ever get to tell you how long to do this for, so if you are to try this at home, please do stop before you turn blue. The author takes no responsibility for anything that may happen to you if you fail to use common sense in all things you do. If you close up all these holes then, bang, your consciousness smacks against the inside of your skull, you realise that the world is within you, you are a universe, you are the donut hole. Consciousness gathers at the point on the inside of your skull that is the third eye (remember we cross-eyedly talked about this before:Chevron Cowl). The point is that what is inside is what is important. The outside, the donut, is superficial and empty. To make the most of your life, of your potential (again, not in a superficial way, not with money and things, but with intense living and intense loving), you must know this centre. Everything is contained there.

Something about hoodies and leggings before I go—I always forget the little detail of why I am here. The garment is the middle size: for an eighteen month old. It does appear to be the eighteen month old of giants but I am not really all caught up with the size of children so I may be mistaken. The wool is Bella Baby's Bashful (alliterates like my other blog:Le Jog). I chose cheating colours of cream and baby blue—not hundred percent neutral. It's a fairly simple knit which had quite a few days dedicated to it because the pattern takes a lot of pages to write down. This is the only factor that affectes the timing given to each project—a pattern that takes one page to write but a year to make will still only be allocated two or three days. The yarn is intriguing (too much time spent looking at it). It is wrapped in a fine, shiny filament. How do they do all these weird things with wool? I will leave you to ponder that. And your donut hole of course.

Zigzag Lace Hand Coverings: February 10th to 12th.

Ah, the beauty of working friday and saturday nights. These little beauties were time doomed from the start. I realise that a working day shouldn't be scrutinised and negatively critisised for its inability to provide time for me to knit, but ... you know, that's human nature isn't it? I decided that a dual advantage would be gained if I only slept for two hours after my second night shift and went down to the coast with the boy. Tri actually: I could knit on the way; I could be tired in the evening, sleep, wake up early and knit some more; and; I could see the boy's folks. Only the third item was successful. In the rush to get home for two hours sleep, I left my knitting bible at work. I had only just been thinking about the fact that it is becoming too much of a crutch—everything is in it, and hard copy can't be backed up! So I couldn't knit in the car. I had other items I could have completed or continued but because I had only had, in the end, one-and-three-quarter hours sleep, I was an emotional wreck and so, instead, I cried, stared out of the window, sulked, and tried to stop stabbing myself in the eye with a double-pointed needle for the whole trip—useful, useful utilisation of my time! It is good to see that all this philosophy I am espousing is making a difference to my state of mind. (Did I ever say I was practising my preaching?). I ended up trying to catch up on the knitting in the evening—bible retrieved—and so went to bed late and didn't get up at a timely time. Theory busted!

The gloves are made with a painfully thin wool on double-pointed needles. You should see them completed sometime in the next millenium. The wool is a four ply Patons one called 'Big Baby', sixty per cent acrylic and forty nylon, lovely and soft and a dark grey verging on navy. The pattern suggestes a modification for symmetry sticklers. Am I one? Various haircuts I have had suggest not. A couple of readings of the suggestion suggests to me that I will probably talk myself into not being one. We'll see if we ever get through the first glove eh?

I believe Osho has just justified Gold Class to me. This is what I love about interpreting text. He intersperses his techniques with explanations and answers to questions about the proceeding methods and tantra in general. In an interspersal I have just been reading he is speaking about accepting your nature to get rid of your ego. The ego is a result of nonacceptance of your 'suchness', which I am taking to mean your essential you-ness. For example, if you are an angry person but you try to make it look like you are a nice person that gets angry sometimes and then is sorry about it, you are denying something that is essentially you and it gives you an ego. An ego is made of the person you want to be, not the person you are. The Gold Class comes in for the persons who are essentially greedy and who displace this greed on eternal pleasures when they realise, like we all do on at least some level, that 'you can't take it with you'. These are usually the pleasures associated with giving your money to a church and getting lots of things in Heaven instaed. Osho asks, why not go for the momentary pleasures? This is again about living in the now. I ask, why keep the extra twelve or so dollars in your pocket for when you're lying in the grave, why delay pleasure for a future that may never happen, why put up with people who don't realise that the cinema isn't the ideal place for a telephone conversation, to check your facebook status 'likes' or to infinitely prolong the opening of a choc-top in cellophane. Just get the Gold Class Tickets!

The actual technique this week—now that I have the interspersal over with—is to feel your spine in your body, and in your spine to feel the tiny sliver of light and energy that is your spinal cord. And not just feel it, see it. The yogis of old were aware of the inner workings of the body before man thought to start cutting them up for anatomical research. This is because they could see inside the body. Or more accurately perhaps, see from inside the body. I like it. It's like Crossing Jordan—do you remember? It had the best soundtrack from a Crime Series (as voted in my own personal Crime Show Awards—C.S.A. Port Melbourne) and the gorriest, but most nonchalantly treated, autopsy victims, ever! That, I imagine would be what it would look like to look outward from your inwards. Seriously though, for the person who feels bodily, who is body-orientated (is he sexist to say this is good for women), this is a technique that centres (the ultimate aim). And best of all, if you are able to get this one right, you get an aura. Cool. I wonder what colour mine would be.

For the sensitive, or relatives, please look away now. You're done reading. See you soon, Bye.

Okay, for the rest of you, a good time to do this is in the throws of loving and caring intimate relations with another human being. This is tantra, in case I forgot to tell you. One night stands don't count. In the 'deep sex act' (loving, slow, silent, unmoving insideness with the other person) energy is in the vicinity of the spine anyway. Concentrate here and you can fill the room with your combined auras. You can possibly, with your energy, even make things move. Close your eyes and feel for the shining light of your spinal cord, and you will be transformed!