Murmuration

by Veronica Foale on April 29, 2012

in Life

I was outside with my camera, watching the weather come in. The wind was quick and bitter and the sun was just disappearing behind the clouds. Winter is on its way, as the plants die back and the grass returns to green.

In a last ditch effort to reproduce, helped along by a few days of rain, the grubs have come out, and with them, the birds. Flying fast in a group overhead, turning together, there is beauty in their movement.

Murmuration

Murmuration

Look at them, flying together. Not one bird flying backwards, or attempting to move in a different direction. One group, one mind. I expect the birds that fly out of sync have been ostracised long ago, to die a lonely death.

Animals don’t like differences.

{ 4 comments }

On being ostracised for speaking my mind

by Veronica Foale on March 23, 2012

in On Blogging

On the Internet, every day, thousands of anonymous comments are left. Trolls and pseudonyms, all mixed up in a giant stew of anonymity, hiding behind a false name and a false face.

Sometimes, one of those comments is left on a blog of mine and oooof, goes the wind out of my sails, because accusatory comments are unpleasant, at best. Usually, anons cover their tracks well enough, but sometimes, an IP address is left unblocked and there is a virtual paper trail left to follow.

This is what happened to me a little while ago. I followed a virtual paper trail and found my anonymous commenter in a place where they really weren’t anonymous at all. I screenshotted the evidence and spent three days, riding the high of “I worked out who you are” before crashing back down to earth because, “I worked out who you are”.

It’s never nice discovering who dislikes you enough to say unpleasant things, hiding behind an assumed name and a veil of pseudo-anonymity.

**

I’m a nice person. I’m kind to animals, I smile at strangers. I offer to help people when they drop the contents of their purse on the supermarket floor and I will willingly give support to someone who needs it.

I genuinely like people. I like hearing your stories and listening to your experiences.

I am a good person.

I also tell the truth, stand up for myself when I think things are unfair and refuse to stay silent if I think something is a problem.

Being kind and being strong, these are not mutually exclusive things – however, being truthful on the Internet, being strong and standing up and saying there is a problem – this is not what people want you to do.

No, it seems that people want happy happy joy joy and silently whispered conversations. They don’t want to know what I truly think.

Taylor Mali said: I implore you. I entreat you. I challenge you. To speak with conviction. To say what you believe in, in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it.

[vimeo source]

Those words have stuck with me. I have the courage to own my own convictions. To stand behind my words and to say what I feel, when I feel it.

And I would like to not be ostracised for daring to have an opinion.

Because from where I stand, that’s what it feels like.

{ 35 comments }

Downloading words from my brain

by Veronica Foale on March 22, 2012

in Children,Life

It’s not that I want my children to be sicker – no, I don’t. I just want them to be silent, for a little while. The elder one is on day three of an ear infection (but there is no vomiting today so far) and the younger one is on large amounts of prescribed laxatives. Just enough to make them both grumpy and screechy and for my nerves to be, ultimately, shattered.

And so I hide from them, stealing all the good jelly beans and locking myself into the bedroom. I hide and even though I’m not alone, being bothered instead by a kicking uterine resident, a peeping duckling and a smooching tomcat, no one is actively whining at me and that improves things, rather a lot.

Some days are easier than others, but then, some days do not contain fluffy ducklings and jelly beans. So even if today is not the easiest of the lot of them, I am practising being thankful, just as I practise being unavailable right now.

Sorry, your mother is taking a mental health break. Leave a message at the door and she’ll get back to you, just as soon as she finishes downloading the words from her brain and eating this chocolate bar. BEEEEEP

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What is their story? What is yours?

by Veronica Foale on March 9, 2012

in Life

I smiled at a mother as I walked into the school grounds the other day. She looked me up and down, before looking away pointedly. I smiled more and continued walking. Maybe a smile is too hard for you to share, but mine is not and you are welcome to it.

The school yard contains sour faced women with lips pursed like they’ve been eating lemons. I wonder if this is the only time they get to themselves and how long has it been since they had an orgasm that made them gasp and curled their toes, blackening their vision at the edges. Too long, I suspect, they look like they need one.

I wander through, smiling, noticing who smiles back, who looks uncomfortable and who avoids eye contact. I don’t judge them. Everyone has a story and I don’t know theirs – even though I’d like to.

Give me your broken, your dark, your deep. I want to collect your stories and collate them, turning them into a work of art.

Who are you?

What makes you smile secretly to yourself?

Tell me these things and I will keep them safe, right here with me.

As I leave the school, having collected my small skipping daughter, we chat to each other and she complains loudly that home is where we’re headed. I cite things to do, but really, it’s the urge to write pretty words and the exhaustion from the shopping centres that sends us straight home at the end of the day.

We leave, passing the groups of women, huddled in corners, all with their own stories to tell.

I wonder if they consider themselves cliquey and then realise that you can’t see the clique once you’re inside it.

Mirrored glass walls protect you from the smiles of strangers and I am left wondering:

What is their story?

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On inspiration, grit and grime

by Veronica Foale on February 27, 2012

in Life

The blogosphere is all persnickety snark and nobody loves me and I’m tired of it. It’s all did you see what she’s doing and why didn’t I get chosen and why is she popular anyway. We’re all spending so much time trying to work out why everyone else is doing well that no one is paying attention anymore.

We’re all exactly the same.

We’ve ended up cookie cuttered into lovehearts and kittens.

Not the real kind of kitten that shits behind the couch and scratches your toddler for no reason either.

No, we’ve gotten basket kittens with cute expressions and no yowling at 3am.

Basket kittens are boring. Clean is boring.

There is nothing amazing happening here and the same conversation just keeps happening in a never ending circle.

—-

No one becomes amazing by being the same as everyone else. Every brilliant mind has a stroke of insanity in there, a little bit of fuck what everyone else is doing and why can’t I do it my way.

I don’t get inspired by a clean house, or decorated cookies, halloween costumes and bento box lunchboxes.

Cough. Spit.

My inspiration comes from grit and grime, from the blood that boils under the surface and the ways that the puzzle pieces refuse to sit together. I’m inspired by pieces of crazy, by The Bloggess aiming at being furiously happy and Amanda Palmer being exactly who she is. I admire women who do exactly what the fuck they want and damn society and its boxes.

I don’t want to be that person who has no imagination left. I want to write words and drown in them, to tell untruthful stories and have them read.

I don’t want a perfect house, or tidy silent children.

I want brilliance.

—-

What is your inspiration? What makes you feel like you’re achieving something? Is it dark and gritty, or is it shiny and pretty?

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