Taking On A Fast Food Giant

I take issue with McDonalds because their advertising is scheming and manipulative and (insert with your mind here the rest of the comments that I can’t say). 

Say what you will about the food (that’s a whole other subject) but as a massive global organisation they intentionally and systematically work their way into the minds of young children to garner for themselves lifelong pockets. The clown, the playgrounds, the salt and sugar are all designed to emotionally connect us to the Maccas experience. Childhood memories is what they want from us - neural pathways in our minds that flood our brains with a chemical reaction not too dissimilar from a high, to keep us coming back for more. As a case in point, this photo is from an actual McDonalds media campaign! 

The golden arches want in on our brains and I say NO! Haven’t we got enough shit to sort through without Ronald bouncing around in there too? Because I’ve taken it upon myself to bag the advertising industry whenever I get the chance I found a great way to circumvent their attempts at becoming my son’s new best friend.

Even when Zak was only two years old, when an ad came on the TV telling us that a golden rainbow held the promise of joy I would lurch around the lounge room shouting “yuck, oh yuck, oh that makes me feel sick, oh that’s disgusting!” What his crazy mother was doing was creating a relationship for him between their brand and the beliefs and wellbeing of the most powerful person in his life. And I did it every single time.

As he got older I devised new ways of undermining their attempts at mind control. If we were parked in a car park that was next door to a McDonalds I would explain to him that the reason they put that playground he could see in there was in order to trick him into parting with his money. I told him how as an organisation they did not care about him and didn’t mind hurting him by using every means at their disposal to lure him into their stores to swap his money for empty food. 

He is eight now and we still often talk about the lies and trickery in advertising and how we need to be careful not to get sucked in by a particular product, or the consumer industry generally. I don’t know how my retaliation campaign will work out in the end and I’ve no doubt he will likely one day give it a try. But, my plan will have worked if at least the majority of every dollar he parts with is by his own free will, his own ability to discern for himself what he wants and needs.

I'd be lovin' that!

Cheers,

Krista

The Day My Eye Socket Fought with a Lamb Roast

I've had a litany of operations in my life, but only one started with the carving of a lamb roast.

Sunday afternoon and not much was happening but for the smell of roasting flesh filling the kitchen, lounge, dining room, bedrooms, laundry, tightly woven plaits, shower stall and memories. The brown, sizzling leg was proudly laid on the kitchen bench and I innocently hovered over it with a gigantic kitchen knife.

Some may begin to think that in the not too distant future of this story my clean, youthful blood would be raining down upon our carefully prepared lunch and flowing like murderous, oozing icing on a Halloween cake - unfortunately not.

I tentatively and gently approached, setting out to glide the knife across the meat. In a fit of resistance the lamb leg flung a piece of itself at me, or so I thought, and landed right in my eye socket.

A quick dash to the bathroom was followed by useless poking around at my eyeball, trying to move it out of the way of my eye socket so as to recover the offending article. What I found was a small, firm piece of white material that I presumed was a little ball of baaaah fat. I tried to gouge it out with my fingernail but it held firm.

I staggered out to the kitchen, eyes bloodshot with distress, to declare my predicament. Once the remainder of the household had finished their own poking around it was decided that I ought to see a doctor.

A few days later, and after much more poking around, it was decided that this was a piece of the remainder of my identical twin who died a wee pea in the womb… obviously. I was startled, surgery was booked and before long I was flat on my back on a theatre table, wide awake, with a huge syringe heading for my eye socket twin. The last remaining speckle of her life was about to be wiped out.

As I lay on the table, conscious and awake, after being stabbed in the back of the eye with a needle, the surgeon began scraping around to cut it out. After one broken scalpel and almost cutting off the circulation in the attending nurse’s hand, my twin’s attempt at re-birthing was finally thwarted.

And so the theory goes that when I was conceived so was a copy of me, that she didn't have the gung ho attitude required to birth into a world where having smooth skin and a fancy car was more important than integrity and spirituality and, as a result, jumped ship. So I am told, as her body decomposed in our shared bath my body absorbed a bit of her bits and, thus, I became a host to her ambivalent quest for life.

Since then I've had two different coloured eyes so I can only imagine that her ghost lives on in me. As such, I now wish to declare that for everything I've ever done wrong…IT WAS HER!

Happy Mother’s Day 

AUTHENTICITY

I live in an area where I can express most any version of person I would care to and no one would bat an eye. The variety of expression in the Northern Rivers is breathtaking – rednecks, rockers, surfers, Sanyassans, café society, farmers, hippies, polyamorists, healers, Rastafarians and every imaginable kind of artist from the very rich to the very poor. We are all here with our beliefs and dreams, so different from each other and drawn equally to the pulse that is distinctly Northern Rivers.

To what degree does this diversity speak of a place where we feel freer to express ourselves? I know that diversity of expression also resides in Brisbane, where I lived for fifteen years, but it seems to clump together. The West Endians would not usually be found in a Westfield shopping centre and the Ascott wealth would not often be seen walking the streets of Logan. But here, in my small community, we are all going about our lives side by side. I don’t have the opportunity to ‘blend in’ because no such thing can really be done here, which is a new experience for me.

I have often a bit of a chameleon– not unauthentic, but consciously not wanted to offend or upset. Having been emotionally punished and ridiculed for most of what came out of my mouth during my formative years I learned to censor myself. I was coerced into believing that I have the power to control other people’s feelings. I was taught that it is my responsibility to ensure that others are not upset and if they are then the crime must come to rest on my shoulders. Consequently, when I have been wholly and humanly imperfect and hurt someone’s feelings or behaved with fear and cruelty, I have carried great guilt for many years. So, I have spent most of my life using my best efforts at intuition, empathy and emotional intelligence to weave myself through my encounters so as to please or placate and thus avoid many months of self-recrimination. Sounds like a blast doesn’t it?!

The fragments of my whole self on offer at any one time are part of my authentic self, but it is a whittled down version of a woman who loves to laugh loud, shout from a soapbox, dance and sing, and who has the outlook of a child and the ability to take it all too seriously. I cannot express it all at once or my electrics would fritz. Where I feel I lose my authenticity, however, is when I show you a side of me that I think you want, instead of the one that authentically feels right for me in that moment.

I’m not talking about saying whatever comes into my head, or not taking other people’s feelings into account, or thinking my beliefs are more important than anyone else’s or having an indignant “I’ll be my whole self whether you like it or not” attitude. It’s about having love in my heart and the courage to show myself without fear of pain or rejection.

It takes time for me to trust enough to show you the breadth of my authenticity, but here in my new home, as I wave and smile at strangers with costumes so varied and different from mine, it’s becoming less about trusting others and more about trusting myself. As my environment continues to reinforce the message that there is room enough for us all then my truth and my place feels more assured.

When we mix outside our norms and leave the comfort of our tribes, it is possible to experience a wonderful feeling of freedom that comes from being seen and enjoyed by those who do not reinforce us because of our similarities, but who help to strengthen our own authenticity through our bountiful and beautiful differences.

Substance and Shadow

Today I release my latest creation - Substance and Shadow - 26 of my finest philosophical moments, each captured in a poem. Love, gardening, necrophilia and the meaning of life are all covered, one way or another.

My love of and sheer amazement with this world, and all its inner workings, fuel all my writing, poetry included. Good poetry rocks my core when it captures a specific feeling or idea whilst also maintaining the integrity of its vastness. I am blessed with the desire to take what seems big and make it small and take what seems small and make it big. Thus, I am a poet. Each poem reflects a moment in time where I have felt compelled to take what was seen in my mind’s eye and turn that image into words in a way that honours the depth of the picture.

Pollen and Powdery Sunshine

I was flush with life and that is how

I imagined things should be.

I had wanted to take myself out

of the spiralling city,

pop from the top of her cyclone

and land on my behind in a silent field

but for a light breeze.

Perhaps I will flop to the ground like the limbs of a scarecrow and

laugh hysterically at the relief and amazement from having escaped

certain ruin at the hands of exponential force.

Once the laughter dies down and I

can take a breath I

might stretch long, slowly

allowing the muscles of my body to

release their grip on my bones.

Fibre fingers will uncurl from my throat

and delicious honey

will coat my sense of being with pollen and powdery sunshine.

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Transition

I have been joyous, but today I recognise the swamp as my knees push V shapes through the woven greenery and its nutrient rich slime. Just stop. Don’t do anything yet. Don’t push.

But I am stressed; like I am pushing, a whole lot of life through the spout of a funnel. Remember Krista, you’ve got time to go through the transition. There is no rush. Deal with what you feel.

I sit far to the outside of all things; I am so much the observer that I have stopped being. I look on today, and don’t know how to approach.

Central aspects to my existence have fallen away and I am in disconnection. My world appears shrunken. Limbs and skin buckle and crumble and bones heave against the weight of new beginnings.

From what was to what will be with a full vessel of cans and maybes and should-bees to guide my hand shakes with fear and potentiality screeches and screams within the tin. You would do well to get comfortable with the mess. This could take a while.

Transition made inside nightmares. The body breaks down, the soul wide, the mind having nowhere left to hide, and eyes of shattered glass feels surely like seven years bad luck.

Momentarily blind I can no longer see in the same way what was behind, but I return time and time again to find comfort in the familiarity that is really no longer there, and I choose to ignore the shards and cracks that come and go with the sweeping of my lashes. How can you stand in the past expecting a present?

Now I must choose whether to persevere in this dangerous safety or whether to be willing to go a new kind of blind - the one made from new light; the one made from unfamiliar sunrises; the one made from the forging of precious things; the one made by and old star dying and a new one being born.

Krista
Rune Ink 

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

I will never forget the day I met an openly gay man for the first time. We became friends in five minutes flat. It was instant, the way he turned my head. He stomped and shimmied up the back steps of my house, landed at the kitchen table and with a penetrating laugh and a long, soaking look in my direction, made himself right at home. We spent a lot of time sitting around that table telling our stories and getting a feel for each other’s contours and shadows. He delivered the often outrageous and camp stereotypes and tantrums together with wonderful masculinity, competence and humour. He could bake a cake and drive a forklift. I was impressed.

I didn’t realise or understand the long-term occupation and dominance of my heterosexual consciousness until I noticed its fading, and eventual passing, within this profound relationship. Watching him embody and express his own sexual identity slapped my mind about, blurred my vision. My preconceptions stood stunned and slack-jawed as they received this almighty shaking. Not because I had previously been homophobic—I have never cared for prejudice or discrimination—but because every minute spent with him showed me, taught me, that I too could take charge of and own my sexual identity. It had never before occurred to me that I had that right.

Until I was given the chance to absorb the depth and spaciousness of my new friend’s sexual identity, mine was based upon a body that believed it was an object, a heart that was drowning in shame and a mind that was programmed to operate under the stereotype of feminine weakness. His refusal to adhere to social dogma and childhood programming meant that he did not attribute much at all to my sex or gender. Of course there were slight variations with my fallopian tubes and the like, but as far as he was concerned my weaknesses were personal flaws in character (of which, I assure you, there are few), and my strengths were attributes of my skill and talent (of which there are, of course, a great many!). His self-definition as a gay man and his openness to see me through the filter of person instead of woman showed me that there were possibilities for myself far beyond what I had ever imagined. I was much broader than I had realised myself to be.

An extract from "The Outsider's Inn - Saving Lives with Conscious Living" - Chapter 3 - Sexual Identity.

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The Shortest Song

Why are the best songs always the shortest? I know some are in fact the longest - Pink Floyd comes to mind. So often, though, I feel that I have only just begun to understand the rhythm, that I have only just begun to understand the words, and then suddenly it's all over. So I go back to the beginning of the track hoping to find some unforeseen error within my iPod, some glitch unknown to me that will rectify itself so long as I turn it off, throw it against the wall, yell at it, stomp away, shout at it with suitable annoyance and an indignant attitude. When I return to the vessel that holds all of my emotive musical memories I find, yet again, that the best song is always the shortest.

Makes me think of time: all the time I have lost; all the time I have gained and not respected; all the time I have wasted; all the time I have not understood; all of the time within which things have happened, the nature of which I barely come to recognise; and all of the time within which things have seemingly not happened, the nature of which I often understand all too well.

Time itself is a mystery to me. It appears to carry my life within its palm. It appears that I am my own time's breath. It appears that within it I exist, without it I am timeless and, therefore, outside of it I am conscious of all that is within and without.

And so, looking to reignite the relationship, I again press play. The song begins another time from the beginning and I am witness, within my own mind, to the same tune, this time with time passed. I do not hear it in the same way that I did before because too much has changed. I have a preconception, a primary belief, about the lyrics, the melody and the beat. I have a timeline with this song, and yet I wish for it to to play out anew. I want it to be longer. I want it to give me more than it already has, to reveal more to me that it did the first time.

I am a hungry beast for time and yet I still show little appreciation for its Majesty because I am forever  wanting more, forever searching for that perfect moment in time, instead of learning how to love her just the way she is.