Ain't got no/I got life

(A sunbeam hit my Dorothy slippers and Freyja and I both sparkled. 

Sometimes it's the little things.)

I've been trying to actively pull myself out of the funk that's sprung up around this latest exacerbation. Being stuck in 4 walls for weeks on end and perpetual pain are not all that good for my mental health and I may be going a little stir crazy. I often think of those pictures in old zoos, where a tiger would be seen pacing up and down at the bars of it's cage for hours on end. That's what it feels like, although my pacing lacks the languid grace of a top feline predator. But I may take a feeble swipe at anyone stupid enough to pass close to the bars, in my directionless irritation. Which reminds me, my 'claws' seriously need a manicure and lets not even mention the abomination that are my pedicure-lacking lower claws. Shaking hands and nail art are not good bedfellows. But I digress.

One song has continued to pop into my head in the midst of all this. Nina Simone singing Ain't Got No/I Got Life.

I have been a huge Nina Simone fan for a long time. Do I Move You and I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl, are two of my all time favourite songs. But Ain't Got No/I Got Life is one of those songs that is just right at times like this. From memory it is a partially a combination of two songs from Hair. But don't quote me on that. I have never heard two versions that are the same. The one I have in my play list is slightly different to any of the live versions I have seen, and none of those are exactly the same either. Verses are added and subtracted in each. But the basic theme is the same. It starts by listing all the things missing and then takes pleasure and in turn power, in listing all the things that are still there. They are simple things. And I like simple. There is so much joy in the simple.

Got my hair, got my head

Got my brains, got my ears

Got my eyes, got my nose

Got my mouth, I got my smile

It's so easy to get caught up in all the things we don't have. So easy to remember the loss, the hurt, the lack. Stuck in bed in pain means I have been ruminating on life. And I'll admit some of those ruminations have been about the negatives. It's so easy to see the hurts. They stand out like a flashing neon signs. Or maybe those long harsh fluorescent lights, that buzzes, ticks and flickers, doing it's best to make you break. But the good things? They can be so hard to spot when everything feels like a loss. But I'm getting there slowly. Some days are better than others. Some days are best forgotten. But I keep trying. 

Seeing the positives and finding joy are a little like riding a bike. Even if you haven't done it for a while you don't really forget how. You get back on. Your feet slip off the pedals and there are some quickly aborted starts. But after a wobbly beginning and a couple of practice rides up and down the street, you are back riding once more like you never stopped. Once you retrain your eye and get in the groove, you can start finding them in the smallest of things.

I just need to remind myself that I can. I just need to remind myself that there are many things that are good in my life. Little things. Dotted throughout the day. That add up and make life shine.

As Nina sings, 

I've got life

And I'm gonna keep it

I got life

And nobody's gonna take it away.

Michelle.

Do you have a favourite Nina Simone song? Or is there a particular song that helps you refocus and start the road back to finding the happy parts of life?

Remember to head on over here to donate to my Clicking My Heels For Dysautonomia, raising money for the Greg Page Fund for Orthostatic Intolerance and Dysautonomia research, at The Baker IDI. Thanks to the generosity of many we've already raised over $2,000, keep donating and hopefully we can reach $10,000.

Fabulous 'Faux' Friday: Finding Your Muchness, Or At The Least Your Red Dress.

Short of doing a Superman and flying round the earth backwards, faster than a speeding bullet, I am going to have to accept the fact that it's Saturday here in Oz and Friday has past without any bedazzling.  Potentially, if I can get this sucker together in time, I may get it posted for it to still be Friday somewhere in the world.  But in the event that this may not occur I'm going with a Fabulous 'Faux' Friday post. 

Mind you, I do have a valid excuse in the form of two days of joyless dentistry.  Think classic torture scene from Marathon Man, and you get the idea.  I am still a tad tired but I will wrap my pink feather boa around my neck and battle through.

Today's post has been inspired by a recent post by Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess.  I love The Bloggess.  She is the good kind of crazy, with a side of sass, and a healthy dose of irreverence, that just appeals to my sense of humour.  She's the kind of woman who is proud to put her crazy out there, thus making the rest of us feel kinda normal (well it does for me, but then again the inside of my head resembles the rec room from One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest).

If you haven't read The Bloggess, you may want to start with the Zombie Apocalypse incident on Twitter, although you could start with pretty much any post.  I love this one as it's a kind of international, multi-player, version of folie a deux, and that just tickles my, previous life as a psych, funny bone.  This is what Twitter was created for.  Not for tweets that let me know that you just had a shower or put a new roll of loo paper on the holder, cause I really don't care you attention seeking freaks.  And yes I know, I've gone to the dark side and now have a Twitter account.  I feel dirty.  But I promise I will not alert anyone to the boring as batshit, minutia of my daily life, well no more than I do on here anyway.

This week The Bloggess put up a a great post.  In it she writes:

"I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies.  I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be.  And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”."

So she did.  She decided she was worth it, and challenged her readers to accept that they too were worth it and to find their own personal red dress.

I love the whole concept.   It's something I have struggled with since I was a kid.  I was brought up to believe that you do for others and ignore your own needs.  That you need to be level headed, and practical at all times.  Swallow those pesky irrational feelings, never step on the cracks, wear sensible shoes, never ever wear blue and green without a colour in between, and always wear matching underwear just in case I happened to cross paths with the proverbial bus.  Judgement and scorn were the only things that came from unpuckering that sphincter (try being diferent in a conservativesmall country town).  I've been told so many times that I'm 'quirky', 'too independent', or that I like 'weird' stuff, that it all starts to stick.  I wonder if I cae across the Mad Hatter would he say to me as he did to Alice, "You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness".

The last few years I've had to do a light speed re-imagining of my life thanks to "he who shall not be named" on a Fabulous Friday.  Part of that re-imagining has involved relocating and giving myself permission to embrace the parts of me I've shed over the years to be practical, to fit into the cookie cutter world of acceptability.  Well damn it, I want to find my muchness once more.

As any regular readers know I can't exactly swim with sharks (although I'd love to and if I can ever persuade my body to get with the program I will) thanks to the fact that my body has been put together by one of those dodgy tradesman they are so fond of exposing on A Current Affair.  So I've had to be creative with my red dress dreaming and actualising.   I periodically do things just cause I want to, naysayers be damned.  Sometimes it's the little things as much as the big that mean so much. 

One of the things I do everyday is wear Chanel No 5.  I know that doesn't sound like much of a red dress moment, but when you are pretty much stuck in your house 24/7 you need to do something.  So regardless of if I'm stuck in bed, or getting milk at the supermarket, I wear my Chanel.  I may not have brushed my hair in a week, my underarms may look like a wookie's rear end, and my teeth may feel like they are clothed in felt, but I still squirt on my Chanel.  If I wait for a special occasion to wear it I will be waiting for ever, (or at least until the actual zombie apocalypse arrives, and I do intend to smell pretty whilst I take out the un-dead beating down my door).  So each day I pamper myself with expensive perfume, just cause I can.

(Yep, that's my feather boa in the background)

Even we sickies can pamper ourselves.  I drink my 4 litres of water from a cranberry coloured cut glass carafe and matching glass.  I keep my chocolate stash in a beautiful green depression glass butter dish.  I brought sparkly zebra ballet slippers with red bows, and I have a pair of black silk pjs I had made in Singapore, which cost way to much but which make me feel pampered each time I put them on.

(So pretty)

We all need to find our own red dress.  Sometimes it's running barefoot in a graveyard in a beautiful red ball gown, sometimes it's about making even the most practical thing something special just cause you can.  We are all worth it we just need to believe. 

I'm going to embrace me.  I'm worth the effort.  I'm going to find my red dress and my muchness.  Will you?

Cheers
The feather boa wearing Michelle :)

Feeling Good, Nina Simone (1965), my favourite play it loud 'kick some arse' song.