Travelling in your Twenties... and Forays into Tarot

There is an epidemic among 20-something year olds.

It seems that my friends and I feel like we have everything, and yet nothing at the same time. 

Our generation on the whole are fairly independent, well educated, have the opportunity to travel or work abroad, to chase good jobs, to get on the property ladder, to date Mr Right, have beautiful babies, to eat, drink and be merrier than an elf drinking mulled wine yet still look hot in our disco pants. The problem is- we want it all before the dreaded 3-0.

--- THIS ARTICLE in Cosmo caused many a discussion around Cairns lagoon, there are some interesting comments on the matter HERE, and in this TED talk on The Defining Decade' ---

I, like many of my travelling cohorts here in Australia, often mention starting our so-called 'real life' when we're done with travelling. We're forever brain-storming (sorry- thought-showering) 'What To Do With Our Lives' and the merits of everything from being a pilot to a pole dancer have been pondered. Do I try and do 3 months of farm work to stay another year in Australia, go home and do a Masters course, apply for jobs or internships in a place I'd love to explore further, do a ski season or a stint on a cruise ship, or move to Bali and become a masseuse?!

It's a blessing and a curse; being of the generation who have the world at their feet, but want to walk all paths, including the road less traveled, to an idyllic ideal destination too hazy yet to make out. 

I even read Po Bronson's anecdotal 'What Should I Do With My Life', which only really made me realise that people face this dilemma at all points in their life.

Turning to Tarot...

The other day while I was weighing up my options at the Cairns Night Market T-shirt stall I ran part-time, a tarot card reader I've befriended offered me a free reading. I was skeptical at first, but I came out of it feeling far better about my past choices, present situation and future decisions. Here's what happened...

My reader shuffled the cards and explained what each card in turn would mean when he pulled it from the pack. He placed 7 Osho (Indian guru) tarot cards into a V position representing the wings of a bird; the top wing being my female energies like intuitions of the heart and the bottom being male representing action. 

Cynics- beware- an open mind is required for the rest of this post too!

The first two cards are read together and reveal how I came into this life from previous ones- I thankfully got 'Moment to Moment' and 'Turning In'.  My reader told me I naturally live in the moment, listen to my heart and am very independent. Sounds about right to me- he also said that I love people but don't need them- apparently if we need others then we are dependant, but if we build on our relationship with ourselves and become our own best friend then we can't feel broken by disastrous relationships with others. 

My next feminine card was 'The Fool'. I instantly thought this was a negative thing but he almost applauded my ability to step off the proverbial cliff and just trust that everything on my journey will work out OK, which it will as long as I trust my heart and rid myself of the bugs in my male energy line' 'The Mind' and 'Politics'.

Apparently my mind is too cluttered by my own thoughts and other people's advice and I need to gain clarity through meditation and focusing on being aware instead of thoughtful. I've only dabbled in meditation in the past, for example last year in Byron Bay I instructed a yoga session for a hippy chick who was staying in my tee-pee and in return she talked through an uplifting meditation (I am aware this sounds very hippy but just go with it). 

He used the example of playing netball- when we're playing we're not thinking about what will happen, we are at a heightened state of awareness so we can act when we feel we need to. If we can have the same awareness of self in every action from feeling your heart warm when a decision is right for you to savoring each bite of an apple then life is lived more fully and yet more simply, leading eventually to happiness. Simple equation, no?

My female energy line ended in 'Schizophrenia'- he said it's trusting in myself that will give me the ability to only follow my true desires and not be influenced by other people's ideas manifesting themselves in my head, like the hopes of parents, the expectations of past teachers or the comparisons we make against peers (and, let's be honest- celebrities! Half of them are younger and less intelligent than me but will be able to retire in a few years as long as they don't form a drug or Louboutin habit!)

The last card on my masculine energy side was 'Understanding', where a picture of a bird being freed from a cage and into the universe served as a metaphor for 'Super Stacey' (his words not mine) who will live in the moment, make decisions with my heart instead of my head and have a happy and fulfilled life doing whatever makes me happy.

I'm looking forward to seeing where listening to my heart will take me, and instead of waiting for my 'real life' to begin, I'm going to enjoy every moment of this wonderful one I'm already in. If that means I don't have it all by 30, then I only have more to look forward to on the run up to 40 :)

If I joined Pinterest or Instagram I'd waste half my life finding more inspirational quotes than I have time to ponder :p

As for now- I've decided to do the 3 months of farm work to qualify for my second year visa- you can expect an update on my farming life once I travel miles into the nearest town for wifi! 

Maybe all that time spend in the fields will enable me to meditate, or maybe nursing newborn lambs and driving tractors, planting veggies and learning new things will help me realise that this IS my 'Real Life'- and I love every minute of it.

Any excuse for an Oscar Wilde epigram

Quote of the Day...

"To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life."

Walter Pater, in his conclusion to his canonical The Renaissance encourages aesthetes and decadents alike to grasp fleeting moments with passion and intensity, to capture and preserve the richness of time in flux, and to take pleasure from those tiny perfect moments that are all to easily lost in everyday life.

Book Review... The Shaking Woman

The Shaking Woman or a History of My Nerves by Siri Hustvedt (2010)

Looking at the colourful child-like cover of this book; the first on my reading list for my Literature, Sexuality and the Body module, I was looking forward to a nice, easy pick-me-up-between-train-stops read.

On reading The Shaking Woman, I found that it was largely easy to read, but the frame of reference the book deals with (neurology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis) was a little out of my comfort zone.

After suffering a mysterious seizure while giving a speech at her dead Father's memorial service, Siri takes the reader on an informative and intriguing but rather disjointed tour on her quest to find the reason, via many strange experiences and well researched thoughts.

I found myself actually interested in the authors quest once I knew my hysteria from my neuroses and my psychobiological systems from my neurological ones (because I'm one of those people that use these terms every day, ahem). The sheer number of abnormal experiences she documents made me increasingly think of her as a little cuckoo; including shakes, migraines, divine lifting feelings, synesthesia, powerful dreams, seeing sparks, black holes and hallucinations, hearing voices and out-of-body experiences. However, her book is incredibly well written and refreshingly more detached and analytical than your average memoir.

Siri finally accepts that her unruly Other, The Shaking Woman that is subdued but not eradicated by the use of beta-blockers, is a very real part of herself, not the imposing illness or hijacking psyche she first felt.

I think we all have that mysterious Other within us; that voice that tells you to squish things that are just TOO cute, tempts you to jump from great heights and pull the legs of jinny-spinners. Well, maybe mine is just a little sick and twisted rather than hysterical. Each to their own ey.

Too many books, too little time...

The Exam Period is upon us.

As a student studying English Literature (amongst other things), and having been revising for four whole days now.
I feel as though I have only just started climbing a never-ending staircase of knowledge, only to find that it is in fact an escalator and those stairs just keep on coming.

The more I try to get my head around plot, characters, setting, themes and just trying to 'get the gist' of a book or a poem, I am finding myself having to explore allegories, pragmatics, criticism, social historical contexts, author biographies and everything else that makes one piece of literature become a cavernous world of extraneous pieces of information that refuse to stay in my head.

Sure finding out about how an author's sexuality affected the reception of his story is interesting, and questioning why the texts I've been asked to study have been canonised into 'English Literature At It's Best' actually reveals a lot about the power of dominant ideologies and groups (it's always the white, middle-class men that get to decide if it's keeper or not).

My problem arises when I think about the sheer amount of things I am trying to remember on the off-chance that a question in one of my exams might require a sentence or two's reflection on something I've read, once, weeks ago.

I must try to remember that knowledge isn't all about being able to regurgitate facts, dates and names when prompted by a crisp sheet of white A4. I came to University to expand my knowledge; true, but it's the effect of this knowledge that I'm really looking for; wisdom, awareness and acuity.

It just so happens that the means to this end involves climbing many more steps for many more years, never hoping to reach the top, just enjoying the excercise along the way.