Mirror, Mirror.

Dear hearts,

It has been too long, but Miss Mich has been busy. Learning how to learn. Being a good student and redefining the way I think. It has been a fabulous semester and only excites my appetite for more. But then again, that is Miss Mish….once I have the taste for something,…more please.

Now is the time for reflection. The year has all but come to its conclusion. We have the opportunity to assess our performance, take stock of our behaviour and examine the outcomes as a result.

The heart is a deep and often dark place, particularly where the truth of ourselves lies. It is here that we often seal those boxes that we designate for the top shelf of the emotional cupboard. Along with those boxes big and small, the too hard to face basket sits at the very back of said cupboard. In the dark where one can pretend it does not exist. One can close the door and even turn out the light, but it remains.

Some of you create elaborate fictions to live within that you wrap tightly around you and around those over whom you have undue influence. With a religious fervour and the determination of the zealot, you perpetuate the fiction until the cupboard could not be opened even with the key. You keep the light out and banish from the house any truth, any integrity.

But this becomes your burden. Your albatross. Your cross to bear. You are Dorian Grey, being eaten from the inside out. I don’t really care for you. It is the innocents who trust and accept that which, if truth be told, they question. Sadly such it is, to use a favourite word of yours, the toxic and twisted truth that you offer, along with bitter greens to those who should be exempt from manipulation and coercion. It is these unfortunate darlings for whom I feel sadness.

You may read this and say Miss Mich is on a bit of a tangent, a bit of a high horse. And whilst Miss Mich acknowledges that some things do happen and there is nothing you can do, what you can do, indeed what you must do, is protect those who deserve our protection. And not cross lines into places where cruelty has no business to be.

Miss Mich wears a ring with the inscription “Il aura fallu toute l’intelligence du Coeur pour distinguer le bien du mal” – Trust in the intelligence of the heart to distinguish between good and bad. It is optimistic, I admit, and in the opinion of Miss Mich’s legal eagle, a contradiction. However, whilst the heart is all emotion and the ability to distinguish may be considered a logical process, the heart still knows.

It is how we interpret what our heart truly knows. Our heart can only put that truth on the mirrored table. It is up to us to determine how we interpret what it is showing us. To examine all the angles. All the little fissures and clefts, where truth can slip into a fold and appear lost or hidden. So examine closely and pay attention.

Be brave, Dear hearts, because it is only by taking a deep breath and looking, really looking into the heart of the matter that you will find the truth. What you do after that really depends on how evolved one is. And how honestly one truly loves.

Consider.

With heartfelt love
Miss Mich

This will just take a minute...

Dear hearts,

Time has become the marker of all markers for Miss Mich. Never before has a minute or an hour taken on so much weight and import.

Quick!…we don’t have a minute to spare…

It seems I may have been marking time all this time. Until now.

I don’t know, are the planets aligning? Are all my ducks in a row? Am I juggling those balls so that now they fall into place?

Whatever it is, it seems I am coming of a certain age. And no, not the big 50. Not that I ascribe to chronological age. Just ask Miss Christine…she of the younger lover. Much younger. And he a lucky man, let me tell you. It is true he knows it..

Younger men aside. And yes the Libertine may be a little younger than Miss Mich. And sooo lovely. But I digress.

Time. Of the essence and of the moment. There is nothing like squeezing in a little 40 hours to one’s workload. Admittedly, the reduction of pen selling hours to 20 is a welcome concession, but still there remains the maintenance of one’self. The walking of the puppy. The collecting of shells and the sharing with you, Dear hearts, of all thoughts entertaining. Not to mention mothering the Bright Young Things, reading to elevate one’s consciousness, a little socialising to bring balance into a serious world and last but never least…you know what with you know who…

So far, so good. As one of Miss Mich’s best ever friends has said. It is a matter of fitness. Study fitness. At first, it hurts. To think more deeply. To understand. Truly understand. And to recall. And we haven’t even touched on creative thinking.

Goodness me! So much to do and so little time.

But things are slowly falling into place. I was, and in many ways, still am, overwhelmed by how much I am yet to learn. We are speaking of rules and principles and philosophies and methodologies. I won’t bore you to death. Suffice to say that these fundamentals are embedding. Miss Mich is absorbing and looking forward, so much, to applying her own, very special, creative interpretation to a world that on the surface, may appear to be stuffy and without flexibility, but upon Miss Mich’s own, tentative interaction with, has the potential for much debate, interpretation and good.

Enough!

Time to study, to reflect and to learn, learn, learn!


Enjoy Tuesday.

With love
Miss Mich

What would Henry Higgins think?

Dear hearts,

I love a good word. We all know that. But have I told you how much I love a good accent?

Oh, I do. I do.

Just ask the Bright Young Things. As you know, we lived in London. Central London. Eaton Place actually. Yes. SW1.Talk about a covetable postcode. Talk about covetable neighbours. Google Earth if you don’t believe me. Joan Collins lived down the road and Maggie Thatcher in the next square. We used to buy our sausages together at the Chatsworth Farm Store in Elizabeth St. That is of course, once you excused yourself past those big bodyguards who stood on point at the front door (to make sure noone got away with Dennis’ pork porkers).
I would chuckle to myself as she rifled through her purse for change. The biggest Queen like sparkly brooch on her suit, her hair like a helmet and absolute determination in her eyes to get the last of those porcine packages.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the sausage…well…

Charles Saatchi and Nigella lived at the back of us in Eaton Square. I used to wonder if they slept in that unmade bed of Tracy Emin’s. But I doubt it. Nigella would not stand for the smell of another woman I’m sure. The cup cake sweetness of her bits would demand a set of fresh sheets every day.

Which reminds me of the story I read about Jacquie Onassis. According to this snippet, Jacquie was partial to a little nap in the afternoon. Aren’t we all Dear hearts. One of my favourite things to do when I am left with a little time, is to hop under the covers, have a Baby o and drift off for a half an hour or so.

But I digress. Back to Jacq. In her bedroom on Park Avenue, she had the absolute luxury of fresh linen on the bed for her afternoon snooze and then fresh linen again at night. That my friends, is when you know you are rich.

What I love about Nigella and Maggie and Jacquie is of course their accents. Nigella with her lovely creamy sweet uppercrust nuance. Maggie with her imperious, I have transitioned from the Grocer’s daughter and don’t you challenge me haughtiness. I think I preferred the Kennedy accent to the Bouvier accent, although both had a laconic sense of entitlement to them.

Which brings me to my own. I suppose I should explain its rather circuitous journey. It started on the north shore. Mosman don’t you know. My Mother and Father good lower north shore kids, but when we moved to the western suburbs my poor mother had to change her accent just to fit in. Just to survive. She had to pack away her little boucle suits and sparkly brooch’s and wear Bermuda shorts and keds. I was a little confused as you can imagine. My Grandfather with his orator’s voice, my Grandmother with her penchant for opera and my Dad with his musical ear.

I ran away from the western suburbs just as fast as I could. In the opposite direction, straight to the eastern suburbs. All those thick and rolling Eastern European accents, the Jewish shrug in a grunt and those Vaucluse lilts made for a cacophony of internation, annunciation and cadence.

And then Dear hearts, we moved to London. My goodness. After nearly three years I had quite the phony English accent, as the Bright Young Things like to call it. Noone can do an upper class English lope like me. Think Eddie and Pats with a touch of Jonathan Ross. Throw in a little Kristen Scott-Thomas and some Keith Richards and I think you might have me. Not too try hard (like Maggie T God love her), not too starchy. I’m quite proud of it and will not be bowed.

Of course now we are in the far far north and I am sure it has evolved again. A little bend and perhaps a touch of twang. All quite charming, obvi. And all quite me.

I should tell you I am currently reading a book set in the South. The gracious and not so gracious southern states of the USA. You know I am reading aloud in my head and you know it’s Blanche who’s narrating. Too too enjoyable.

It will be interesting to see how that little sojourn affects this accent that has meandered around the world.

Enjoy mon ami.

Amore
Madame Mich x

I have become accustomed to your face

Dear Hearts,

I have a secret. To be honest, it’s not really a secret. I think you know me well enough to probably have figured it out by now.

It’s a part of who I am and a part of where I have come from. I could blame those who made me, but why? I have learnt to live with it and in many ways, am comforted by it…the consistency of it. The constancy of it.

Once I recognised it, it became not my burden, my albatross, but my friend.

One word Dear hearts,

Binge
Lots of
Multiples
Plenty
Too much
Never too much

Ok that may be more than one word, but you see my point nest pas?

I’m sitting here hoovering my way through an entire small bucket of semi dried tomatoes, at their peak may I say. A generous block of Australian full cream fetta cheese and a somewhat cheeky Sav Blanc courtesy of a certain training institution who thanked me for my attention.

This has been a constant dining companion to me for the better part of I can’t remember how many years. And I don’t care to. Because it is the perfect light dinner partner. Tasty, salty and fruity. With a trio like that who needs a fourth?

Which brings me to my attention. If you have it, you seriously have it. 110%. Maybe 200010% (is that like a gazillion %??) If I’m into you, then I’m in to you. Speak and you have me. Completely. Nothing else exists.

If I like it, I like it. I can never leave Cairns now, unless the Mungalli Biodynamic Dairy comes with me. I would have to pack up those sweet Jersey cows, pack their not so little udders in my suitcase and hit the road. But then I would have to make room for those super sweet Mareeba tomato vines. Drape their heavy, fruit laden branches around said Jersey necks to make sure I had the best, freshest tomatoes this side of anywhere.

And would there be room for that secret beach in my suitcase? It must be 3kms long. Where would I fit the shells and the sticks and that brown and white dog that likes noone but us?

Hmmm, I haven’t mentioned the moon and the far far north sky yet have I? That’s going to take some packing. I would need to squeeze moon trails from full moons over Ellis Beach and the Southern Cross could not be folded I imagine. Not without a crease…

I haven’t mentioned a certain banana bread and coffee from a certain near Esplanade café? Well, Kelly may be little but that suitcase is getting full. Could I fit David’s mother in as well so that the banana bread was never ending?

I may need to abandon the little brown cardboard suitcase I had as a five year old. It was full of treasures as special as these mentioned here. My favourite matchbox cars, wax ballerina candles from my 5th birthday. The one where my mother sang to me in a tent in Lightening Ridge. Those very same and very beautiful candles stuck in a store bought loaf cake, sadly so beneath them. My mother singing through her tears because my father didn’t come home to celebrate my blowing out of those most beautiful candles. I jiggled on my bottom, just wanting my mother to stop singing, not stop crying, because I wanted to save those lovely ballerina heads from melting away. I wanted to keep them perfect, intact. So I could have them forever. And ever. I carried those stumps around in my little brown suitcase for years, the wax tutu's chipping away, some of the heads lopped off.(do you see where it comes from?)

I sat on the verandah of my grandparents enormous Victorian house on the hill overlooking Balmoral Beach and the harbour, ignoring the pretty little boats, too absorbed in sorting methodically, precisely, over and over again, the buttons my seamstress grandmother collected as a result of her impeccable needlework. It was all I ever wanted to do. Perhaps the shells I am compelled to collect now are the bright little buttons of then.

And I haven’t even mentioned you know who. Perhaps I shouldn’t. I had become accustomed to his face on my pillow. And elsewhere. My suitcase is only so big. And my will only so great.

But to be honest, Dear hearts, as much as we would like to squeeze and squash these things into our suitcase, the suitcase of the mind is more than capacious. More than accommodating.

I still have those ballerina candles. I swear I do. Sadly I also still have my mothers tears, but I make sure they stay locked in the little brown suitcase at the top of the emotional cupboard, you know the one, where my sentimentality lies.

For everything else, I am here now. Enjoying all these things now. With a light touch, just like Miss Christine says…hold them lightly and they will always be yours.

Enjoy your treasures.

With love
Miss Mich

The Perfect Diorama

Dear hearts,

Miss Mich is enamoured of the natural world. It is true. Give me nature over artifice any day. Over the built, the contrived, the imposed.

I am a girl of simple things. Well, sort of. As long as they are beautiful, then I am in. Simple and ugly does not an aesthete make. I’m not being mean, just well, selective. Or asesthetic. Or maybe just Libran. Actually, I sound like a first class wanker. Albeit a discerning wanker.

Alright. Enough of the tosser. Let’s get down to what I am trying to share.

The Natural World.

Charles Darwin had it. Joseph Banks had it. The Victorians had it. Dr Tim Flannery has it. Gomez Adams has it in spades…

The groove of the Natural World. I am going to keep giving it capital letters. You know it deserves it.

There is nothing better (except maybe you know what), than being out in the natural world. I mean IN IT. Not innit..yeh…or innuit…although I do love snow sports.

The Libertine and I spend most weekends “Beachcombing”. He doesn’t like me giving it a title. Given his current circumstance, he is not into titles at all. And I can understand. We take that beautiful mauve puppy to a special stretch of beach that shall remain a secret and walk and search for treasure. Such treasure! Seashells in the pinkest of seashell pink. Driftwood that is twisted and turned smooth by the wind and the tides. Stones that are tumbled and yet somehow homes to happy crustaceans. Carapaces of crabs and lobsters and all manner of examples of the exoskeleton. Coral that is surrendered by the reef and left to be discovered by me…

I collect these things. I cannot help it. I am compelled to. I search and I sift and I cull and end up with trinkets of the sea and shore. The Cottage is becoming somewhat overrun by the detritus given up. I assemble these bits into arrangements that amuse me. I carefully put together bits of things that once were real and yet are now still vivid despite the fact that in some cases they are mere fragments of their former selves.

A bit like the Victorian diorama. One of my favourite things ever. A folly in a box. A world in a box.

According to John Kean, Dioramas are enigmatic artefacts hovering enticingly between reality and illusion. The surreal stillness of the recreated natural environment paradoxically shrouds the very chaos of nature that the diorama purported to represent, and which today renders them rather archaic interpretive strategies. The 'frozen moment' is now seen to be a profoundly limited take on nature.

Whilst that may be so on the one hand, I like to think of the diorama as a keyhole view into what may have been. In a perfect world. The dollhouse view if you like. All of us as children played games where we made our own reality. Made our characters behave in a certain way to achieve a certain outcome. The diorama is no different really.

My bedroom and The Libertine are the perfect diorama. The world that exists there is a perfect world. One of completeness. One of perfection. Step outside and sadly it’s a bit like a snow dome. It starts to shake and the snow obscures the view. And the truth.

But enough of that.

I was walking that beautiful mauve puppy along the beach at Trinity just this morning and the natural world was at its heartbreakingly best. The sky was colouring pink and orange and red. A portent of rain. The light was making the surface of the water liquid and then the fish started jumping. Summertime…..and the living is easy…I couldn’t help myself. I promise you, the fish were jumping for joy. It was extraordinary. I have seen dolphins, and even a beached dugong, God love it. But these simple little fish were so sweet and so full of joie de vivre that to be honest, they eclipsed the flashier creatures by their simple joy. The puppy and I stood and watched as they flipped and skipped across the surface of the sea. Maybe they were being chased by something bigger, something more sinister that lurked beneath the surface. But maybe it was a Diorama moment and in that perfect world they were just having a really good time.

I prefer to ignore the sinister undercurrent. Even though I am pursued by my own. I will not capitulate to coercion. And I will continue to live in my own diorama. Call me Pollyanna. Call me foolish. I don’t care.

For every morning I watch the natural world wake and wake with it, it is worth the risk.

Enjoy am.

With love
Miss Mich

Dazed and Confused...

Dear hearts,

It seems this little blog has ruffled a few feathers.

Hmmm…what to do. What to do?

Miss Mich is quite careful about naming names. Miss Mich is not even sure who is real and who is a just a lovely fiction. Who is but a dream within a dream, a fancy to while away the monsoon hours here in the far far north. It’s all about possibilities Dear hearts. About potential. About what could be.

Miss Mich loves to entertain you, engage you and sometimes arouse you. I should think I never offend you, because as we all know…it’s all about the love.

Well mostly. Sometimes there is a dark side that needs to air its dark heart. But only to educate and elucidate. How I love alliteration.

Sadly, this brings us to the thorns in Miss Mich’s side. Miss Mich is lucky to have only three unlike you know who; who suffered five. I would like to think we both have God on our side, but as we know there are times when one is compelled to say…why have you forsaken me? Alright, I’m coming over all Catholic and melodramatic and in fact, probably offending a whole bunch of people by alluding to me and you know who in the same par.

Which brings me to the point of this rather unnecessary and somewhat rudderless tete et tete. Referencing two players in the one par. It seems the Sperm Donor is concerned that you Dear hearts are so simple that you may confuse said Donor with that of the Last Charm….

I know. But what can you do? Some people are never going to get it. It hurts me that he underestimates you. And merely confirms my opinion of him.

It is interesting though. I honestly thought that the last Charm was different to the aforementioned Sperm Donor. He was fun, liked to play and made Miss Mich feel 16 again. And then it all went down hill. As we know.

Whilst the Sperm Donor did not assault me or slash my clothes like the last Charm, he did threaten to take me to court (just today in fact) and was as threatening over text message, facebook and email. All of which my very good Solicitor has logged copies of. Just in case.

So it is interesting and has been an exceedingly pointed lesson for Miss Mich to have to learn.

Not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

I implore you Dear hearts, to be on the lookout for the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I suspect the Sperm Donor is going to be up in arms again over the mixing of Charm and Donor in this little entry.

What can you do? Dissapointment is as Dissapointment does. I’m channelling the dear Forrest Gump obvi.

Call me Robin Wright Penn ( I love her so please do call me Robin Wright Penn), there was a time when threats, bullying and coercion would have had me shaking in my boots. Would have made me want to run, Forrest, run.

But not anymore.

To the Sperm Donor I say this. You are not the Last Charm.

OK?

Miss Mich

The First Amendment.

Dear hearts,

Censorship. According to the Concise Oxford it is the suppression of whole or parts of books, plays, films, letters, news etc on the grounds of obscenity, seditiousness etc.

Hmmm…. If that which I write about here in this little tete et tete with you Dear hearts gets you thinking and talking, then my work is done. Whether you deem the content obscene or seditious, it really is a matter of your opinion. And you are most welcome to it.

The Internet is a wonderful open forum that allows freedom of speech without censorship. You can say what you like. Fact, fiction, it’s all here and it’s all ok.

We are big boys and girls and have the freedom to pick and choose from the vast volume of material that which we need, or like, or just simply wish to view.

Or not.

So much to see, so little download time.

Take this little blog. I have 12 followers and I thank each and every one of you. To those who have not pledged their allegiance on line and yet still dip in and out from time to time, I thank you as well.

Miss Mich is a girl after everyone’s heart. There is a little Miss Mich in us all. Even the boys. She has always described herself as a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Just ask Sha ron Morrie…

She is a chameleon and so very proud of it. She can be whatever you want her to be. Sometimes you would be surprised. Really..

What she will never be Dear hearts, is censored. She will continue to tell you the stories that come to mind to entertain you, educate you, inspire and delight you.

All with love. Obvi.

Enjoy the first amendment.

With a twinkle in her eye
Miss Mich