moonvoice (ravenari)

I just watched the latest House episode.

( spoilers about some content of the episode, and possible triggers for those who have experienced child sexual abuse within. )

As per the ability to now cross-post your comments whether they are on screened, filtered, friends-locked or public settings of other people's posts:

"If I find out that ANYONE is reposting things from my journal to their Facebook or Twitter, even if it's their own comments, YOU ARE UNCONDITIONALLY AND WHOLLY BANNED FROM MY JOURNALS AND ANY COMMUNITIES I CREATED AND MAINTAIN. There will be no second chances on this. My journals and my Facebook do not mix. Fuck that shit." (- ganked from ariestess)

You might as well unfriend me now, if you think this is going to be a problem. I am dead serious. Fuck Livejournal, for their growing FB style issues with privacy, that I even have to be making this warning in the first place.

I guess I won't ever be visiting Queensland now...

People who swear in public face on-the-spot $100 fines in Queensland, after new controversial legislation was passed.

In this world, at this time, you can - if you have been genetically gifted - wear scraps of fabric artfully on your body for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you can learn how to walk right, be a good spokesperson, and find yourself on one of the Next Top Models, you could maybe make more.

In this world, if you are willing to drive a big truck on a mine in Western Australia, you can make $100k plus as your starting wage. If you are a cleaner on a mine, you make around $70k. An engineer? Well... let's not tease.

In this world, if you want to work retail in Perth as a casual, you make around $18.00 an hour. If you want to work at a television station cutting advertisements together, you are lucky to make $12.00 an hour.

In this world, if you work 7 days a week, bleeding your soul out onto paper and canvas, sharing your visions with others in this world... you are lucky to scrape enough money to pay the bills, and for the most part cannot afford such a career without a supportive partner.

In this world, if you want to be a fiction writer... don't quit your day job, or make sure that someone loves you enough to support you through the rejection letters, as you realise that it is becoming harder and harder to publish with the big companies, which is one of the only chances you may get to become self-sufficient if you're not willing to sell out and spend 40 hours a week editing other people's work just to make enough money to spend a handful of hours writing your passion.

There are exceptions to all of these rules. I plan to be an exception to the art one.

But when I am being encouraged to go and clean in the mines, I become extraordinarily indignant.
It is not my fault that the general attitude of the capitalistic world is to devalue it's writers, artists, film-makers, and god forbid if you want to be a professional poet.
Gone are the days when you will be as celebratedly famous as the bitter Byron.

ART is my calling. I happen to be SKILLED at it. The only reason I am not making more
money from it, is because a great bulk of our society values supermodels and truck-drivers more.

No, I will NOT become a graphic designer, no, I will NOT teach art instead.
I am a competent artist, I am a professional artist, yes I'm constantly broke. I haven't been able to afford some of my own medical bills for some time now.

But I'm not going to succumb to the will of capitalism just because I'm scared of not becoming an exception to the 'poor artist' rule. I don't plan on being a poor artist, and like a couple of others on my Friendslist who know how hard it is, they don't plan on it either. But the fact is - we ARE at this stage of networking, making contacts, supporting each other, and working harder than many other people we know until our hands hurt and shake, until our eyes blur, until we hate our own passion, our own skill, our own products and need to just walk away and take a deep breath and go right back to it.

In any other non-artistic career, if you put this much work into an endeavour, you would be making a great deal more money. Fuck, if you were a cleaner - at this point - you would be making more money.

I find this unfair, but moreso I find this a sad representation of how much the greater world has lost sight of its artists and creators. How much you are valued if you can blow up the ground, vs. how much you are valued if you can inspire someone or move them with something visionary.

I am commercialising to a degree, I am finding that road of compromise, but I will not stand down and become a cleaner just because I'll make more money. If I don't sacrifice this dream for dishpan hands, I believe I will make enough money to one day be financially independent, sufficient, comfortable.

But fuck I have my doubts,
when the wider world doesn't seem to care either way,
just wants another labourer to tear the iron ore out of the ground
just wants another person to spill bleach onto concrete
just wants another skeleton to show off the fabric.

Someone on a forum stated that the 'catch-all' rule for the Otherworlds, is to realise that everything has a meaning - from the colours to the rocks on the ground to you know, everything.

If it was a dream. Sure. A visualisation? Totally. But the Otherworlds? I dunno.

If I walk down the street and see a magpie, I don't think 'oooo, it has meaning, oh and it's a MALE, it has more meaning! Look at the colours that woman chose to wear today, that has total impact on my life! She chose blue to teach me communication! Clearly!' Right? Do people do this? Because I don't.

Things exist in and of themselves, separately to me. We are all connected in one sense, but that doesn't mean that everything else around me has a specific meaning intended for me. So if I see a green tree in the otherworlds, it is not green for me, usually it is green because that's just the way it's been for centuries and that's what'll keep on happening once I'm dead and gone. A bird is not put on this earth for me, though it may come into my life to teach me something in a moment. Likewise my spirit helpers will not die when I die, they will continue on. Likewise the colour of the bench in front of me doesn't have some over-arching meaning unless I project and choose for it to have a meaning.

I wouldn't say that the Otherworlds is that concerned with us that everything we saw while there had a great meaning for us; I wouldn't say it about the real world either, and to me both feel as genuine. (The Otherworlds moreso in some cases). So I wouldn't say that finding meaning in everything is a 'catch-all' rule of the otherworlds, far more important than say...respecting yourself and the spirits around you.

But hey, who knows? Maybe I'm missing a whole world of meaning by choosing not to interpret the colours of the grain of sand on my feet. Or maybe I'm not. Why is it that people think that visualisation and the Otherworlds are the same thing?! Blah.

Anyway, I'm going to bed.

I just saw this on a website;

l33t w1cc4 sk1ll5

doesn't it make you want to cry?