Found my way to 500 sit ups today. Found myself in bed and it was raining... forgot the code to get into the house, (from my sleepout) walked around in the rain for a while until I realised the digit I'd swapped for another one.. finally found my way to the toilet, and then back to bed. Was feeling a bit cold after that adventure. Fought the desire to go back to sleep. Started doing sit ups to shift to a warmer place. The first hundred, (cause I'd already decided to aim for five) the mind started to complain..mostly about boredom more than anything. A couple of weeks ago I'd never done more than 100 at a time, (and the last time I did that was probably before you were born). But I used to do a hundred most days (when I was 15!) .....So I started with 25, then a few days later had a go at 50. It's not so hard, when you can do 50, to think you could do 100. The jump from 100 to 200 was going into new territory... but it wasn't soo new. It wasn't as hard as tramping for 12 hrs, or running a long distance race - or bringing up a kid. I could still feel the blood flowing in my belly the next morning - that was new, & I still felt warm the next day, which was cool.
But I didn't expect that mind would kick in during the first hundred, with complaints about boredom. Not - boredom I was feeling right then, but potential boredom that I MIGHT feel later on, when I got closer to 300 or 400. It wasn't "I'm not sure if I can do this??" and a slight fear of overheating and those stories about death by internal combustion... It was - "I could be catching a bus in the rain right now and you're making me hang around and do this" ?? NOTHING btw is more boring than catching a bus. Except for waiting for a bus that doesn't come, like I did last night when I tried to catch the last bus home to Waikowhai - with about 15 other people. (I rang the bus company this morning to find out what happened - no one knew - perhaps it was abducted by ALIENS???). Anyway that was the first 100 - a barrage of complaints about ridiculous things, predominately fear of boredom. (obviously my no 1 fear). Strangely the opposite was true. Somehow during the next 100 a flood of creativity was unleashed. I practically wrote a book in my head. I wish it was still there now??? By 200 something unexpected happened. To make it relatively easy for myself, I'd been doing sets of 25 and having rests in between each set. But when I got to 225, (after drifting off a little at 217 into a discourse in my head on - oooh I can nearly remember that one??) I didn't want to have my break, I just wanted to keep going, so I did, then just a 10sec break at 250 instead of 2 mins, then it was the downhill straight.
It was then that I kinda knew I'd get to the end of this, without too much trouble. When you get to 300, you realise just how much you use other muscles to do sit ups, It wasn't my stomach as much as my upper thighs, and even upper arms that were struggling. The rest was just about plodding along until it was finished, while enjoying the rich vein of creativity that was flowing through my head. Of course during the last set of 25, had to have 3 rests... Then - the complaints started again - so next week...we're going to do 1000 - that's going to take a reeaallly long time....
I'm trying to turn my life around, in big and little ways. I've never done 1000 sit ups in one day. But I know I can do it, probably more easily that most people. I'm not saying that to show off, I've just never allowed myself to match my achievements to my potential. I'm going to do it because it's just one way of saying to myself that that's going to change. Sometimes, the top of a mountain can be a lonely place. There aren't a lot of people to share the view with up there. (There are probably a lot more people at the pub in the village down at the bottom). We all have potentials that set us apart from other people. They're not always potentials that can or should be measured in dollars and cents either... we are all unique - and special. I just want to be me. I want to be who I truly am, not someone else's version of who I should be. I've held myself back a lot because I didn't want to stand out. But I don't want to be the spokesperson anymore for holding back ... from the fun that life can be.
Tuesday 7 May 2013
Monday 6 May 2013
Releasing the past - allowing wellness...
Ooh I feel a bit sick all of a sudden, queasy and dizzy - whats up?? Stuff is happening that's going to the core of my being....I met someone... I liked him, then he made it clear he liked me and.... I've been totally freaking out ever since. I feel turned inside out and upside down. I feel like running away, but I can't run far enough.... to get up from my confusion and pain. My behaviors become so strange that I think he's changed his mind about me. I've changed my mind about me..Right now I just feel sick. I can't even write....
This is one of those days when I'd be happy to be at home in bed. Anyway a trip to the loo and a big drink of water and I feel - slightly - better. I'm clinging to whatever sanity I can muster and there's not much there to cling too. I remind myself I have friends that like me. Because I'm finding it hard to like myself. I want this soo much, I want this man so much that I'm losing all the qualities that made me attractive in the first place. I have to try to come back to a place where I can like myself before I can imagine anyone else liking me at all. My ex is sending me messages online. We split up last year after he had one of his crazy spells and beat me up. A couple of weeks ago he scared some friends by coming around to their house and demanding my address, ranting and raving in a threatening way, saying that we were meant to be together and that I should never be with anyone else. He's trying to tell me he loves me but I know that he's also trying to get another woman to send him tickets to the gold coast so he can be with her. I'm trying to find my wellness, trying to find my wholeness, but mind keeps spinning round in circles to places it shouldn't go.
I feel a bit better now just because I had a huge glass of clear water... fell some clarity returning. Amazing how the physical can influence my state of mind.. It feels such a tightrope, it feels like I can get this potential beginning so wrong that I just fall off into the moat full of crocodiles and get eaten up by fear?. How can I take myself from the place of wanting, away from the place of fearing and imagining everything that could go wrong, every place in the past where it went wrong, every reason why it should go wrong again...I don't want to identify with the damaged parts of my brain, the faulty parts of my thinking..want to go to the place of growth where I can live new and better ways of being. The place of allowing good to flow in my direction. Drinking water reminded me that - even drinking water can help to shift direction to a better place. Working on my health, adjusting my lifestyle and exercise and diet can put me in the place where healthy thoughts predominate. I have to give myself a chance to be in a healthy place, whatever the past - there are new possibilities.
This is one of those days when I'd be happy to be at home in bed. Anyway a trip to the loo and a big drink of water and I feel - slightly - better. I'm clinging to whatever sanity I can muster and there's not much there to cling too. I remind myself I have friends that like me. Because I'm finding it hard to like myself. I want this soo much, I want this man so much that I'm losing all the qualities that made me attractive in the first place. I have to try to come back to a place where I can like myself before I can imagine anyone else liking me at all. My ex is sending me messages online. We split up last year after he had one of his crazy spells and beat me up. A couple of weeks ago he scared some friends by coming around to their house and demanding my address, ranting and raving in a threatening way, saying that we were meant to be together and that I should never be with anyone else. He's trying to tell me he loves me but I know that he's also trying to get another woman to send him tickets to the gold coast so he can be with her. I'm trying to find my wellness, trying to find my wholeness, but mind keeps spinning round in circles to places it shouldn't go.
I feel a bit better now just because I had a huge glass of clear water... fell some clarity returning. Amazing how the physical can influence my state of mind.. It feels such a tightrope, it feels like I can get this potential beginning so wrong that I just fall off into the moat full of crocodiles and get eaten up by fear?. How can I take myself from the place of wanting, away from the place of fearing and imagining everything that could go wrong, every place in the past where it went wrong, every reason why it should go wrong again...I don't want to identify with the damaged parts of my brain, the faulty parts of my thinking..want to go to the place of growth where I can live new and better ways of being. The place of allowing good to flow in my direction. Drinking water reminded me that - even drinking water can help to shift direction to a better place. Working on my health, adjusting my lifestyle and exercise and diet can put me in the place where healthy thoughts predominate. I have to give myself a chance to be in a healthy place, whatever the past - there are new possibilities.
Wednesday 1 May 2013
When you live with a genius - good doesn't seem that great.
When you grow up with a genius.... and my dad was a creative mathematical genius, just getting good marks at school seems like nothing. He wasn't one of those calculating genius's who can flash answers to complex questions in split seconds, he was a slow deep original thinker about maths and physics. My dad grew up on a farm in Morrinsville. A beer drinking, V8 driving town. His parents owned a dairy farm. He went to a school that offered very little encouragement, and a lot of resistance to thinking deeply about anything at all. He often ended up sitting on a chair in a corner of the classroom wearing a hat with the words "dunce" written on it - because, as the teacher liked to say to the headmaster, when he dropped by "Wxxxx;s been asking stupid questions again" . My dad didn't usually answer questions straight away. By the time he'd turned the question over thoroughly in his mind, and was pondering a suitable reply, whoever had asked the question had often decided that he was stupid, or possibly even a bit retarded. His speech was slow and deliberate, his words carefully and cautiously chosen. He wasn't in a hurry to let go of an idea once he caught hold of it. In fact he could pursue an idea for decades, savouring every possibilty that idea might present. He once wrote that it took him twenty years to gain a true understanding of gravity, and that physics students should be patient, not expecting to immediately master concepts of mathematics and physics that had taken decades to develop.
So - for me - looking at the astounding array of squiggles that is my fathers life work, anything I do, know or think about pales in comparison. Everything I've ever done, ever will do doesn't even come close to the level of ability that seemed to came so effortlessly to him. He spoke a secret language I couldn't understand, worked with cryptic codes that only a select few can unlock. I can't even open the door to the world that he lived in, that contained the codebreakers for the laws of the universe itself, represented by the symbolic language that is Mathematics.
Seeing first hand the devastating effects of war on his own father, may have had something to do with his decision to specialise in pure abstract physics. The maths or war was very fashionable at the time he began his career, and he quickly moved as far away from the kinds of practical applied maths that was useful in the design of missiles and bombs. Although initially he was interested in nuclear physics, he chose to pursue a more artistic side to mathematics, in love with the pure beauty of numbers for their own sake, he left the practical application of his work more and more to other more industrially minded people, and branched out into solving problems for his own personal pleasure and satisfaction.
I can't even come close to penetrating the surface, let alone the depths of his world. I felt closer to him hanging out together in the vege garden. Or watching a Polish cartoon. Then he was just the simple farm boy from a small rural town.
So - for me - looking at the astounding array of squiggles that is my fathers life work, anything I do, know or think about pales in comparison. Everything I've ever done, ever will do doesn't even come close to the level of ability that seemed to came so effortlessly to him. He spoke a secret language I couldn't understand, worked with cryptic codes that only a select few can unlock. I can't even open the door to the world that he lived in, that contained the codebreakers for the laws of the universe itself, represented by the symbolic language that is Mathematics.
Seeing first hand the devastating effects of war on his own father, may have had something to do with his decision to specialise in pure abstract physics. The maths or war was very fashionable at the time he began his career, and he quickly moved as far away from the kinds of practical applied maths that was useful in the design of missiles and bombs. Although initially he was interested in nuclear physics, he chose to pursue a more artistic side to mathematics, in love with the pure beauty of numbers for their own sake, he left the practical application of his work more and more to other more industrially minded people, and branched out into solving problems for his own personal pleasure and satisfaction.
I can't even come close to penetrating the surface, let alone the depths of his world. I felt closer to him hanging out together in the vege garden. Or watching a Polish cartoon. Then he was just the simple farm boy from a small rural town.
Rambling about Gymnastics
Too tired to even think, not allowing myself to sleep, silly girl!! and I need to sleep - all day!! Everything is driving me crazy right now. I had an awesome day - because - and maybe no one else will get this but me??, but... I started the day doing 100 sit ups. yesterday I did 50, up from 30 the day before...and when I got to 50 today - all of a sudden I knew I could do 100 quite easily...and I did. Then I did 100 of a couple of other abdominal exercises. And I went to the beach and did 3 sets of each of my scales on my violin...and I did a really good set of salutes to the sun - and I hardly did ANY busking - even though I need the money...and I felt GREAT...because - I've wanted to re-own for so long the passion for being physical that I used to have...that amazing feeling of vitality, of sheer joy in being alive. Not because I want to show off about doing x amount of anything, but because for ages I've known that my potential has been so much more than I've been allowing it to be...Because once, before anything else, before music, before art - gymnastics was my biggest passion and joy in life...and stuff happened that really screwed that up for me, associations were made with that, that tainted that part of my life for a long long time....
I was never a great gymnast - I didn't discover it till quite late, and having a fear of heights didn't help either..but I LOVED the feeling of freedom, of backbends and back flips, of using every muscle...of flight, of stretching - (then later I found it again with yoga - the absolute feeling of bliss, peace and relaxation...) having a body can feel amazing. But going back even further than that, my best memories of childhood are of going swimming with my dad at Waikuku beach - no matter what the weather - even if it was raining, even in the middle of winter in the south Island - he took us swimming, (when it was really cold the water was always warmer than the air outside) and the indescribable feeling of the oneness with the water and the waves...losing all sense of time, staying out there till we were blue with cold and not caring...coming home to hot cocoa...and a warm fire.
When I was fifteen they did a fitness test over the whole of the highschool. I remember when I first started doing gym at school a few years before...struggling to do one sit up. I remember my stomach muscles still hurting the next day after I tried to do more. And my legs being so stiff... I could barely bring my hands below my knees when I tried to touch my toes. But when I was fifteen they did that fitness test & I was the fittest person in the whole school. Fitter than all the boys that played rugby, and the girls that played hockey or did athletics. Just because I loved gymnastics so much. Every night before I went to bed, I'd do hundreds of exercise, sit ups, press ups, v - sits, leg exercises... stretches. And all lunch time at school I'd be on the bars, going round and round and round, and then flying off into the air... Shit - one time at intermediate I landed on my arm. It really hurt, my teacher said I looked white..I never told anyone what happened, it hurt for weeks, I don't know why I didn't tell them? It was weird because I was sick so few times as a child, that usually the fuss and attention was great, and a visit to the doctor was so rare that it was kind of exciting. But I just kept it to myself and eventually it just got better. (later I broke it at gym class- and did the whole hospital thing, which WAS kind of exciting - and painful.) strange. I remember feeling so sick that day at school, but I didn't feel like telling anyone - so I kept it to myself. My mum was usually pretty angry about one thing or another - and injuries were one of the few ways to get her rare, nicer side for a few days - makes no sense, but I never told her. I never told her about dropping her scrambled eggs on the way up the stairs to her room, and putting it back on her plate either, or melting half of her plastic plates and cups in the dishwasher by putting it on the wrong setting. I didn't tell her about getting my friend to get my report card out of our mailbox so she wouldn't get it...but that was understandable if you knew my mum.
I won a few races at school, the cross country and the fifteen hundred metres... like most things I did well at, I just thought it was a fluke. Like when I came second in a science test in standard 3, that was a combined test with standard four, (and because I started school at age 4 instead of 5, I was a year younger than the rest of the standard 3's) - and the only one who beat me was the science nerd in standard four who went around giving everyone electric shocks - and no one else came anywhere close to the two of us - fluke. I mean I never thought I was any good at science, just felt kind of briefly lucky. I didn't know that no one else in my class was reading great expectations by Charles Dickens when I was seven, either. I just thought it was a good story. I just remember telling my teacher to "shut up!" when he read that really dumb poem I wrote - ( - and didn't read the other one that I poured my heart and soul into) and that's not the thing to do in a christian school. And I remember him punishing me for reading David Copperfield in class and not paying attention to whatever was going on???. That was school. Just a mystery that sometimes I surprised myself by doing well at.
School... was just this weird place that seemed so exciting I couldn't wait to go - at four, and it was downhill from the first day on..
I tried to ask a few questions now and then - and got soundly put in my place. Worked out it was better to just keep quiet after that. You don't ask,when you're told, (at seven- at a Christian school), that you should always do what your parents tell you...."What if your parents are bad?? What if they want you to steal or something"? Parents are never bad apparently, if they go to church) . It was the same school that the minister who was done for molesting all those kids went to.... that his creepy father taught at.
My twin sister had an electric chair in her class. Fun! Spell a word wrong- zapp! Annoy the class leader - zapp! No reason at all - Zapp!
So in contrast to the mystery that was school ...gymnastics made perfect sense because it was just - fun! It felt good, it was hard. Nothing at school was hard at primary school - so it was boring - (except for maths because I'd decided at about 5 that girls weren't meant to be good at maths - it was a boy thing, so I tried hard to fail at maths). Everything about gymnastics was hard. I'm not supple, so becoming flexible was hard work. I'm scared of heights, so the beam and the bars were even harder. And I loved it! At school it was all about reports. The usual - could have tried harder (B's) or A's. A+'s A-'s. if my report was better than my twin sister's (who had glue ear until her adenoids were removed) then I got the praise and she didn't - and it should've felt good, but when you're a twin it doesn't. It didn't feel good to be compared like that.Nothing that made her feel bad - (especially when she tried so much harder and it came so easily to me) - made me feel good - ever.
When we were learning to talk, I was ahead of her. I walked way before her. She'd say "lellow potty" & I'd be correcting her (trying to help but it only made her mad) . When she said "I aren't" I'd say "I'm not" and she'd get mad at me. When I could walk, and she couldn't, I'd take her toys and walk away with them - but - it never felt good if her report wasn't as good as mine. My mum was a teacher, my dad was a professor (but he was pretty cruisy). Mum's dad was a headmaster, and to her reports were everything. You didn't want to make mum angry - but it was pretty much impossible not to make her angry. That was mum, she was mostly always angry about something. But mum - had no opinion about gymnastics. She couldn't care less about how I was going at gymnastics. And that - was great. Ok so she did have an opinion - it wasn't worthy of her attention - but that - was still great. Anything worthy of her attention was a nightmare - playing the violin - was a nightmare, (but not at night - only first thing in the morning while she was making breakfast).
Playing the violin mostly meant getting clipped around the ear a lot first thing in the morning. But gymnastics was totally my domain. By 12 I'd managed to get kicked out by my violin teacher, and I didn't touch it again for ten years. By 13 I'd decided to let my sister get all the good reports and stopped doing any work at all at school. (except for about a month before end of year exams). I doodled & day dreamed my way through all my classes, stole some swat books from whitcoulls and studied and passed all my exams, then went back to sleep until the end of the next year. Sometime during 3rd form we went to live in England for a year. My sister and I studied music theory together. I watched the squirrels out the window -running around in the trees. She must have been listening because she got an A and I got an E. And I didn't care.
Gymnastics in England was the best. I got as far as back flips (flic flacs) and aerial walkovers but never quite made it to somersaults. (except on the trampoline), and to back walkovers & splits on the beam. Mum bought Imogen 500 pounds worth of medieval musical instruments & I got nothing, because I'd given up the violin and the piano, (and gymnastics didn't count). But I loved gymnastics anyway so it didn't matter.. Even school was cool, those quirky English teachers were full of life. The ones that weren't good got crucified but most of them were really good. I even started working again, on physics and maths. Plus mum was studying in London and disappeared on the train every morning and came home late at night, so home was finally a relaxed place to be.
It didn't last long - back in New Zealand a year later school was worse than ever. I started hanging out with the naughty girls...there were only about two of them. Hilary used to steal chocolate from the supervalue. She'd fill her schoolbag with king sized blocks of chocolate. She got soo fat! (She confided to me one day that aliens had taken over her body - but... I didn't find it as easy to believe as her best friend Leigh did). Leigh was totally into boys. . I was too scared of my mum to bring any boys home, but the 3 of us got up to a fair bit of mischief together the few times I was allowed out with them. At 15 we all went our separate ways, and all changed schools at the same time but the influence was still there - until I got caught stealing a perky nana bar at Woolworths during school time and was taken to the police station, and my dad was called in to pick me up. Mum hardly said a word when we got home. She was brilliant at making a huge fuss over something like putting the spoons the wrong way around in the dishwasher, but when big things happened like my being caught shoplifting, or my brother burning down the macrocarpa tree and the fire department having to drain the school swimming pool next door to put it out, she went all quiet.
It's 6am and I've been up all night cause I didn't feel like walking home in the rain...so this long rambling story that was meant to go somewhere - has to stop. It doesn't really explain much - it isn't what I was planning at all, but I'm too tired to write anything other than what came out ...I haven't talked about what made gymnastics go wrong, and I'm not going to...I really wanted to say something about realising potential - but I can't, the only potential I have right now is the potential to fall asleep.
I was never a great gymnast - I didn't discover it till quite late, and having a fear of heights didn't help either..but I LOVED the feeling of freedom, of backbends and back flips, of using every muscle...of flight, of stretching - (then later I found it again with yoga - the absolute feeling of bliss, peace and relaxation...) having a body can feel amazing. But going back even further than that, my best memories of childhood are of going swimming with my dad at Waikuku beach - no matter what the weather - even if it was raining, even in the middle of winter in the south Island - he took us swimming, (when it was really cold the water was always warmer than the air outside) and the indescribable feeling of the oneness with the water and the waves...losing all sense of time, staying out there till we were blue with cold and not caring...coming home to hot cocoa...and a warm fire.
When I was fifteen they did a fitness test over the whole of the highschool. I remember when I first started doing gym at school a few years before...struggling to do one sit up. I remember my stomach muscles still hurting the next day after I tried to do more. And my legs being so stiff... I could barely bring my hands below my knees when I tried to touch my toes. But when I was fifteen they did that fitness test & I was the fittest person in the whole school. Fitter than all the boys that played rugby, and the girls that played hockey or did athletics. Just because I loved gymnastics so much. Every night before I went to bed, I'd do hundreds of exercise, sit ups, press ups, v - sits, leg exercises... stretches. And all lunch time at school I'd be on the bars, going round and round and round, and then flying off into the air... Shit - one time at intermediate I landed on my arm. It really hurt, my teacher said I looked white..I never told anyone what happened, it hurt for weeks, I don't know why I didn't tell them? It was weird because I was sick so few times as a child, that usually the fuss and attention was great, and a visit to the doctor was so rare that it was kind of exciting. But I just kept it to myself and eventually it just got better. (later I broke it at gym class- and did the whole hospital thing, which WAS kind of exciting - and painful.) strange. I remember feeling so sick that day at school, but I didn't feel like telling anyone - so I kept it to myself. My mum was usually pretty angry about one thing or another - and injuries were one of the few ways to get her rare, nicer side for a few days - makes no sense, but I never told her. I never told her about dropping her scrambled eggs on the way up the stairs to her room, and putting it back on her plate either, or melting half of her plastic plates and cups in the dishwasher by putting it on the wrong setting. I didn't tell her about getting my friend to get my report card out of our mailbox so she wouldn't get it...but that was understandable if you knew my mum.
I won a few races at school, the cross country and the fifteen hundred metres... like most things I did well at, I just thought it was a fluke. Like when I came second in a science test in standard 3, that was a combined test with standard four, (and because I started school at age 4 instead of 5, I was a year younger than the rest of the standard 3's) - and the only one who beat me was the science nerd in standard four who went around giving everyone electric shocks - and no one else came anywhere close to the two of us - fluke. I mean I never thought I was any good at science, just felt kind of briefly lucky. I didn't know that no one else in my class was reading great expectations by Charles Dickens when I was seven, either. I just thought it was a good story. I just remember telling my teacher to "shut up!" when he read that really dumb poem I wrote - ( - and didn't read the other one that I poured my heart and soul into) and that's not the thing to do in a christian school. And I remember him punishing me for reading David Copperfield in class and not paying attention to whatever was going on???. That was school. Just a mystery that sometimes I surprised myself by doing well at.
School... was just this weird place that seemed so exciting I couldn't wait to go - at four, and it was downhill from the first day on..
I tried to ask a few questions now and then - and got soundly put in my place. Worked out it was better to just keep quiet after that. You don't ask,when you're told, (at seven- at a Christian school), that you should always do what your parents tell you...."What if your parents are bad?? What if they want you to steal or something"? Parents are never bad apparently, if they go to church) . It was the same school that the minister who was done for molesting all those kids went to.... that his creepy father taught at.
My twin sister had an electric chair in her class. Fun! Spell a word wrong- zapp! Annoy the class leader - zapp! No reason at all - Zapp!
So in contrast to the mystery that was school ...gymnastics made perfect sense because it was just - fun! It felt good, it was hard. Nothing at school was hard at primary school - so it was boring - (except for maths because I'd decided at about 5 that girls weren't meant to be good at maths - it was a boy thing, so I tried hard to fail at maths). Everything about gymnastics was hard. I'm not supple, so becoming flexible was hard work. I'm scared of heights, so the beam and the bars were even harder. And I loved it! At school it was all about reports. The usual - could have tried harder (B's) or A's. A+'s A-'s. if my report was better than my twin sister's (who had glue ear until her adenoids were removed) then I got the praise and she didn't - and it should've felt good, but when you're a twin it doesn't. It didn't feel good to be compared like that.Nothing that made her feel bad - (especially when she tried so much harder and it came so easily to me) - made me feel good - ever.
When we were learning to talk, I was ahead of her. I walked way before her. She'd say "lellow potty" & I'd be correcting her (trying to help but it only made her mad) . When she said "I aren't" I'd say "I'm not" and she'd get mad at me. When I could walk, and she couldn't, I'd take her toys and walk away with them - but - it never felt good if her report wasn't as good as mine. My mum was a teacher, my dad was a professor (but he was pretty cruisy). Mum's dad was a headmaster, and to her reports were everything. You didn't want to make mum angry - but it was pretty much impossible not to make her angry. That was mum, she was mostly always angry about something. But mum - had no opinion about gymnastics. She couldn't care less about how I was going at gymnastics. And that - was great. Ok so she did have an opinion - it wasn't worthy of her attention - but that - was still great. Anything worthy of her attention was a nightmare - playing the violin - was a nightmare, (but not at night - only first thing in the morning while she was making breakfast).
Playing the violin mostly meant getting clipped around the ear a lot first thing in the morning. But gymnastics was totally my domain. By 12 I'd managed to get kicked out by my violin teacher, and I didn't touch it again for ten years. By 13 I'd decided to let my sister get all the good reports and stopped doing any work at all at school. (except for about a month before end of year exams). I doodled & day dreamed my way through all my classes, stole some swat books from whitcoulls and studied and passed all my exams, then went back to sleep until the end of the next year. Sometime during 3rd form we went to live in England for a year. My sister and I studied music theory together. I watched the squirrels out the window -running around in the trees. She must have been listening because she got an A and I got an E. And I didn't care.
Gymnastics in England was the best. I got as far as back flips (flic flacs) and aerial walkovers but never quite made it to somersaults. (except on the trampoline), and to back walkovers & splits on the beam. Mum bought Imogen 500 pounds worth of medieval musical instruments & I got nothing, because I'd given up the violin and the piano, (and gymnastics didn't count). But I loved gymnastics anyway so it didn't matter.. Even school was cool, those quirky English teachers were full of life. The ones that weren't good got crucified but most of them were really good. I even started working again, on physics and maths. Plus mum was studying in London and disappeared on the train every morning and came home late at night, so home was finally a relaxed place to be.
It didn't last long - back in New Zealand a year later school was worse than ever. I started hanging out with the naughty girls...there were only about two of them. Hilary used to steal chocolate from the supervalue. She'd fill her schoolbag with king sized blocks of chocolate. She got soo fat! (She confided to me one day that aliens had taken over her body - but... I didn't find it as easy to believe as her best friend Leigh did). Leigh was totally into boys. . I was too scared of my mum to bring any boys home, but the 3 of us got up to a fair bit of mischief together the few times I was allowed out with them. At 15 we all went our separate ways, and all changed schools at the same time but the influence was still there - until I got caught stealing a perky nana bar at Woolworths during school time and was taken to the police station, and my dad was called in to pick me up. Mum hardly said a word when we got home. She was brilliant at making a huge fuss over something like putting the spoons the wrong way around in the dishwasher, but when big things happened like my being caught shoplifting, or my brother burning down the macrocarpa tree and the fire department having to drain the school swimming pool next door to put it out, she went all quiet.
It's 6am and I've been up all night cause I didn't feel like walking home in the rain...so this long rambling story that was meant to go somewhere - has to stop. It doesn't really explain much - it isn't what I was planning at all, but I'm too tired to write anything other than what came out ...I haven't talked about what made gymnastics go wrong, and I'm not going to...I really wanted to say something about realising potential - but I can't, the only potential I have right now is the potential to fall asleep.
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