Me and my jazz hands

 

(Image from 'Australian Womens' Weekly', 5 July 1972. Model and photographer unknown)

How I yearn to offer some morsel of wisdom for the New Year! But I fear that task is beyond me. I am just too darn relaxed (Sickening I know. I almost want to punch me. If I knew how to throw a punch, that was). Meaninglessness suits me just fine right now.

Generally, though, I am one of those types that really cherishes the turning of each year. I relish the opportunity to sift through the flotsam of the year that has been and to hatch grandiose schemes for the year that is to come. I spend my whole year putting off what I could do today (all manner of abstinence, reading serious newspapers, taking things from the floor and placing them neatly in boxes and in drawers) on the basis that I will make some sort of new years' resolution about them. A new year's resolution which I will then in February deride as unworkable before hurling myself back into my old ways with gusto.

I have a fantasy which involves me murmuring sagely as I shuffle about in robes, spending my New Year's Eve in a state of calm, ego-less meditation. That did not happen this year. Instead, I felt compelled to get drunk as a lord and leap about like a man possessed. There is always next year, I sigh..

 

I start my new job tomorrow. I am trying to put it out of my mind, trying to not spend a foetal night cowering in dread, but, instead, to simply turn up and see what happens. I wonder when one stops feeling like an impostor in the work place, like a gauche adolescent, an ungrateful toad. A lot of senior people will smile ruefully with a gleam in their eye, shake their head and say "Never! No matter how far you get in life, you never lose that feeling". Lying hounds. They feel just fine. They just do not want to appear tacky enough to admit it.

For the past few weeks, I have been clearing out my desk, sorting through seven year's worth of pointless words-on-pages and shredding like a fiend. I thought I would feel more emotional than I do about all of this. Rather, I feel sort of blank and detached, which is not unpleasant. Perhaps the one morsel of insight I have gleaned is a reminder that my life is marked more by bathos, than pathos. Looking back on all the issues that I got into such a pickle about, all the anticipation of horror that never fruited, all the copious covering of oneself, I realise that I spent an inordinate amount of time fretting about utter nonsense. In short, so many things simply came to nothing. More whimpering than banging, I feel. I have lived long enough to know that one can never anticipate the real tragedies. Rather, as we all know,they get you from behind. The rest is often just faintly ridiculous at worst. The Rule of Bathos.

 

Now, I always assumed that the horoscopes in my local rag were dashed off by someone fairly junior, that behind every Shelly Von Strunckel or Karen Moregold lurked, Wizard of Oz-like, a Week One Work Experience Student. I must say, however, that I was quite impressed by the stars in the Adelaide Sunday Mail this morning. According to the Mystical MInx, we Aries have 'definitely set (ourselves) up for the foreseeable future. So stop making jazz hands at everyone'.

So, on that slightly stinging note, I will snatch up my hat and cane and tap my way to the couch. Where I will grit my teeth. And not think about work for the rest of the evening.

Like fun, I will.

Comments

[elizabeth]

Given that you're twelve(ish) hours ahead of me, you've been at your new job for about four hours and the worst of the newness is over but the scariness of reality is setting in! Yay! Email me whenever you have the energy and tell me more about your job.

I've spent so much of my life making Chicken-Little-like "jazz hands" about things, that it's a wonder anyone pays any attention to me at all anymore (hmmm... maybe they don't, maybe they just pretend to). But there are worse things than being an open, if overly dramatic, book. We might be silly, but we're always entertaining - one of those books you don't brag about reading but always choose to take with you on a plane or to the hospital waiting room because it's a thumping good read and is distracting and so, comforting.

Anyway, I wish Shelly Von Strunkel could be in my new flickr collection of silly names! And I hope that all went well today and continues to do so tomorrow and tomorrow.

[a thousand shades of twilight]

Oh, thanks so much, darling. I will email you about the new job soon. All I'll say for now is: so far so good. Silly me was so focussed on getting out of the last job that it came a shock this morning when I woke up and thought:"Darn. Now I have to start all over again and do something else". That's how it works, I guess...

I love your reference to Chicken Little - I can so relate! Also, here's to living our lives like a cracking good read! Yay! As much as I respect him, who wants to live like a Camus?

Shelly von S writes for our local rag - you couldn't make her up. She has hair slicked back in a bun and a mysterious visage. Formerly known as Jean Mullins, no doubt. Hmmm. Must find a way to get her on Flickr...leave it with me!
:)