Staghorn Cable Wrist Warmers: March 7th to 8th.

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I have been training in a new role at work (eek) and it has been taking away all my knitting and writing time. The sooner someone can start paying me to do these things instead, the better. Sugar Daddies can apply in remarks section—only serious, non-perverted offers accepted.

Fore warned: Turns out I am going to rave and rant in this post too/two posts in a row. This isn't planned for your discomfort, it just turned out that way.

Arm-twisted by the desire to spread the good news that I was blogging and needed an audience, I joined up on Facebook. My password betrays my reluctance—it is something along the lines of 'icantbelieveihavegotsodesperate113'. I fully expected to see pictures of my friends' children, cats, drunken exploits and holiday antics. But I didn't expect to be scrolling through the everyday only to be confronted with a skeletal picture of a dog. Graphic, disturbing. I can't remember the exact circumstances except to say that the poor thing had ended up in a rubbish skip or similar for a very long time, unable, possibly through to injury, to get out, and that when found it was still alive but in this horrible condition. I was shocked and very saddened. And this is where the raving begins. Because thousands of people, in a show of solidarity against, and abhorrence toward, the perpetrator of this horrible act had 'Liked' the post. 'Like' in the Facebook world loses its normal meaning, but I still have trouble accepting the liking of bad or distressful news. It emphasises, to me, a removed and superficial emotional attatchment to what happens in the world around us, to what happens to our fellow man and beast. But what irks me most of all, is that it gives the 'liker' the impression that in making a 'like' protest, they are doing something meaningful. I'll say 'to me' again because maybe I am getting it all wrong, but to me it seems that 'liking' atrocities becomes a substitute for taking meaningful action, as a society, against the wrong that befalls it. It has, to me, the equivalent value of carbon offsetting—it justifies changing nothing in your behaviour while at the same time alleviating your guilt!

Slavoj Zizek [the Slovenian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic; you know the one—he starred in a great series, put all together for a Melbourne Film Festival movie one year, which was a marxo-psychoanalytical take on the Hitchcock oeuvre, yeah, him, the one with the lisp] puts it succinctly:

The threat today is not passivity, but psuedo-activity, the urge to 'be active', to 'participate', to mask the nothingness of what goes on.*

I am being harsh. There are lots and lots of people who go out of their way to make their convictions real. And, as I sat and looked at this awful picture that I didn't want to see, I couldn't even begin to say what it was I needed to actually do to have a meaningful reaction, and consequent action, to what had happened. It reminded me of how helpless we feel against what happens to us. Or others. The sad thing is that, properly directed, that people power, those thousands of 'likes', could change things. We forget that governments work for us, not the other way around. We have allowed our ability to personally act to be taken away from us: we don't have to be responsible for anything. We throw money at things. There is always someone we will pay to do what needs to be done—fixing our cars, looking after our children, building our Ikea furniture, stopping world hunger, fixing the hole in the ozone layer. And we have gotten so small in our communities—possibly even so that each community in the modern first-world numbers exactly one inhabitant—that we have forgotten what we can do as a group. What we can do meaningfully, not just as a token thumbs-up on a social network.

But here I falter again. What should we do? What stops that poor dog ending up dumped in a skip? How do we stop a person from regarding life, any life, as so worthless that an action like that is justifiable to them? Maybe it gets down to not accepting it, any of it. If all you want to do is click a button, then do it on something that will make a difference—like Change.org. Start your very own petition even—My Petition. If you can be bothered getting off the couch, go down to your local elected members office and talk to them about what it is you need changed and how to go about it. Volunteer. Sometimes I feel like the only thing I could positively do is get into politics itself and change things that way. But then I look at politicians and wonder if they started by thinking like that and ended up how we see them now. Maybe all you can do is introduce yourself to your neighbour. And then the one on the other side. Take an interest in what matters to them and help and support them in those things. Already that's a community of three. But will the only people who'll do that be people who want to make a difference? Are we already too late because in the bigger scheme of things so many people just don't care enough to care. How very sad.

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!