Clarity Journal Entries

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• Clarity - The Road Less Travelled
  by Kristy Lee

  Beyond the horizon, around the next turn, / The pathways are misty, terrain unclear. To left or to right? Forward or back? / No signs to…

  Beyond the horizon, around the next turn, / The pathways are misty, terrain unclear. To left or to right? Forward or back? / No signs to guide you, nobody near. All routes are suspects, their destinies hidden, / You desperately search for a hint or a clue. In quests for the answers none can be found, / The roads far ahead are sheltered from view. Summon your courage, your faith and your hope, / Persue and explore. This is your future, the rest of your life… Nothing is what it seems. ___ I just returned from a trip down the Great Ocean Road, followed by four days away with work. I’m exhausted but invigorated. So many moments of clarity along the way. In fact, a continuous ongoing enlightening seems to be happening for me right now. Life has so much to offer. It’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I can enjoy life as freely and exuberantly as I do. There have been a lot of lessons learned, to get me to the point where I can see the wonder in …well, pretty much anything. My current philosophy, basically, is - Destiny only takes care of so much. It’s up to you to make the choices, to decide which path to follow. So, I am trusting in the universe, but feeling strong enough and clear enough (thanks to some time away) to make some choices for myself too.

• More Than You Likely Ever Wanted To Know About Gordon, Emphasizing Music, Musicals, and Their Lyrics For Clarity, Part One
  by Final Form Fallen Angel

  First of all you should understand two things: Once I was old enough to have a room separate from on shared with my brother, my lullabie…

  First of all you should understand two things: Once I was old enough to have a room separate from on shared with my brother, my lullabies changed over from early 90s grunge to the Original American Cast performance of Les Miserables. From the age of 14 to 16 not a night passed without one disc or the other of the two disc set soothing me to sleep. Thanks to this, I know the entire operetta word for word, beginning to end, though Alice In Chains, Guns and Roses, Nirvana, and Metallica still make me feel the comfort of youth more securely than any other music there is. It was around 17 that I discovered the lesser known musical Pippin, my second “need to know” as from that point forward it shaped my life more than anything else musically or idealistically I have come across. I set my singular life’s goal at that point to play Pippin one day before I died, pledging that once I had assumed that honor I would never need to accomplish anything in life again… this still remains partially true. Years later, when I did get the chance to audition for Pippin, and I did get the lead role, my director told me what I had known since the first day the musical entered my life, “Gordon, you ARE Pippin.” I knew it already. Back a little to Les Miserables (which I still listen to in its entirety at least once a week), I from the get go knew exactly who I was in that drama as well… not Val Jean, the redeemed… not Marius, the love struck, but Javert, the tragically mislead. I was the man who spent his entire life, and consumed his entire being, with the dictates he believed to be the truth – the man who, once this truth had been dispelled as fantasy, had no life left to live, and had no world left to call his own. I have always had a penchant for the grand exit, and as he throws himself from the bridge, the stars dark above him, I get shivers the likes of which no other, save Pippin, musical creation can give me… Part one is not about Les Miserables, or Javert, however… it is about what is of the most dire importance for anyone to know who wishes to understand me. It is about why I am Pippin. To summarize the plot, Pippin is the son of the great Charlemagne, leader and conqueror of history, but it is not the life his son feels he is meant to live. Pippin’s first lyrical presentation to the audience sets up the remainder of his journey: “Everything has its season, everything has its time / show me a reason and I’ll soon show you a rhyme. / Cats fit on the windowsill, children fit in the snow, / Why do I feel I don’t fit in anywhere I go? / Rivers belong where they can ramble… / Eagles belong where they can fly… / I’ve got to be, where my spirit can run free… / Got to find my corner of the sky. __ So many men seem destined, to settle for something small / But I won’t rest until I know I’ve had it all, / So don’t ask where I’m going, / Just listen when I’ve gone. / And far away you’ll hear me singing softly to the dawn. / Rivers belong where they can ramble… / Eagles belong where they can fly… / I’ve got to be, where my spirit can run free… / Got to find my corner of the sky.” Pippin tries war… he tries running from his problems. He tries lust and sex, leadership and luxury… over and over he attempts new things, but none of them can satisfy him. He always wants bigger and better, and won’t allow himself the thought to ever settle on one thing alone. Then, along the way, he meets a widow and her child, and he spends a few days trying out love and family. But, in the grand tradition of never being pleased by what he has, he abandons them to continue his quest for everlasting glory. Now, options exhausted, he is tempted by the Lead Player (narrator) and entire case to kill himself – one final act of bravery to be remembered forever: “Think about the sun, Pippin. Think about her golden glance… / and how she lights the world up, well, now it’s your chance. / With the guardians of splendor inviting you to dance… / Pippin, think about the sun. Think about your life, Pippin, / Days are tame and nights the same, / Think about the beauty in one perfect flame / With the angels of the morning, calling out your name… / Pippin, think about the sun. Think about your life, Pippin, / Think about the dreams you planned / Think about that moment… it’s so close at hand / With the power and the glory, there at your command / Pippin, think about the sun.” But here, finally, reaching for the torch the Lead Player holds out for him, to light himself ablaze and go out like the sun above, Pippin sees clearly for the first time. He sees the widow and her son, and the possibility at love and simplicity, and he responds: “I’m not a river, or a giant bird, that soars to the sea… / and if I’m never tied to anything, I’ll never be free. They showed me crimson gold and lavender, a shining parade… / But there’s no color I can have on earth, that won’t finally fade, / When I wanted worlds to paint, and costumes to wear, / It never was here, I think it was there… I wanted magic shows and miracles, mirages to touch / I wanted such a little thing from life… I wanted so much… / I never came close, my love, we nearly came near (speaking to the widow), / It never was there… I think it was here.” And so Pippin drops the torch, the dream of a flaming final glory, and settles for the love of a good woman, and the adoration of a young child. This summary has glanced over a few points which I will be getting to in the next installment of this “Me” story, and I’ll also have to delve deeper into my love affair with Les Mis. I’m not sure if anyone cares to read this, and for once I cannot blame them… this, I think, is for me… I am simply offering it to all of you… Actually, I know this is for me, for in transcribing the lyrics to the songs I’ve placed herein, slowly singing them from memory as I typed, I kept breaking the tear barrier… I don’t cry on my mood-stabilizers, nor do I ever feel great joy or laugh naturally. If any one of these occurs, something important has cause them, something of dire importance… so these entries I will write regardless. I need them.

• Got my Framed Prints!
  by Natalie Mason

  I’ll put a piccie up later. Unfortunautely, the frames of two of them are a little damaged, but good old RB are sending out replacem…

  I’ll put a piccie up later. Unfortunautely, the frames of two of them are a little damaged, but good old RB are sending out replacements, how’s that for service! / Esp when it was most probably the couriers fault, not RB’s. Apart from the damage, what can I say? FLIPPIN FANTASTIC QUALITY! Beautiful clarity in the images, and the frames are superb quality. I like that the title and artist’s name are on the back too :) They even come ready with plates and hanging wire, so they can just be, well, hung! No work needed. THANKS RB…..YOU ARE SIMPLY THE BEST!!

• Dream
  by Steph Granshaw

  I love it when i dream of flying. I always wake up happy, enthusiastic and with a certain feeling of release. I’ve let stuff go, i’ve don…

  I love it when i dream of flying. I always wake up happy, enthusiastic and with a certain feeling of release. I’ve let stuff go, i’ve done some sort of d.i.y on my emotions in the night. I am clear and sparkling ready for a brand new day. Big Cat stretch, rub my eyes, kiss and snuggle my man, feet on the ground and off we go….

• Clarity in writing portfolio
  by KMorral

  Ok, so once again procrastinating, but I have organised my writing folio so that my Changing storm entries are now in order…and hopeful…

  Ok, so once again procrastinating, but I have organised my writing folio so that my Changing storm entries are now in order…and hopefully easier to navigate between them as I have included links in the descriptions. I hope this helps anyone who decides to venture into the strange imaginary worlds in my head! lol K

• Do you remember the clarity?
  by Ben Farrell

  Do you remember the clarity of childhood? Out in the playground you would sit observant and care free. Do you remember the smell of the f…

  Do you remember the clarity of childhood? Out in the playground you would sit observant and care free. Do you remember the smell of the freshly cut woodchips underneath the monkey bars? Everything was so crisp, so fresh and so new. You remember the smell of the damp soil as you dig in the garden. The change in sunlight as the summer’s day turned to a cool afternoon doused in shade. You really did live in the moment. It’s funny how when you recall childhood memories you really do remember the small details. You remember the smells, the tastes, the texture and the emotion. I remember the colours of my plastic trike, every single part and the sound it used to make when the plastic wheels ground over the asphalt below as the vibrations shook my small happy body. I remember the faded and paint chipped blue bubblers that stood looking sad outside my primary school classroom window and the way the cool water would spurt in different directions, as I would sip during lunchtime of a summer’s afternoon. I can see the weaving and faded patterns of different coloured handball courts that wove through the playground. I remember the colour, feel and smell of my rug for ‘sleep time’ at preschool. Yet why is it that memories of late seem less vivid? They appear as faded VHS recorded moments with poor colour saturation and void of the associated smells, texture and emotion of the moment itself. Why is it that something I recall from five years ago may have less impact and detail as a memory from childhood? It is as if we go from directly experiencing the world to then experiencing it through a veil of modern day stress and mental noise. As we get older we give things labels. Likes and dislikes, wants and needs, pleasant and unpleasant and once we do this we no longer really every ‘see’ these now labelled things but experience them through a clouded lens of pre determined judgment that changes our entire view of the world. Never again do you experience things just as they are. Nothing is new anymore, everything has been done. We go from no longer seeing the beach but instead we see a place on dangerous rips, sharks and bluebottles. We no longer see the beautiful sun drenched day, but we see another day of exhausting heat, sunstroke and skin cancer. We don’t see the beautiful view as we gaze from the peak of a mountain but we see a dangerous height where one could fall and bush below where people get lost and die. It’s as if we go from the playground to inside the house where we dwell in what we are so sure we already know. At first we sit in a clean freshly painted white room with big clear windows through which we still interact with the world, but it’s different. We may still get a waft of spring wattle on the coming summer breeze that floats in through, but we won’t often venture outside to experience it directly. We stare out confused with that look of distracted interest you remember so well witnessing on your parents faces as they watched you play and you craved for attention in the yard outside. As time goes on the window gets a little dusty and the view through the dirty glass is a little more obscured. The clean new white room has changed and begins to fill with a few objects that grab your attention and distract you slightly from the outside world. Things of worry, concern or dismay fill the room and you begin to focus more on these things than the window now. Time moves on and again the window gets cloudier and the room fills with more objects that demand your attention as dust fills the corners and your own kids can be viewed outside the now even cloudier window as they glance back to see if you’re looking. But it’s hard, it’s really hard to be present and live in this moment. It’s hard to step outside this room and into the yard when there are so many issues. We live more and more in our own head than we do the actual world. Every now and then we fling open the windows and experience the world again. We are present for a tiny moment as we sit, smell the air and bath in the beauty of the garden but before long our mind takes over and we’re back indoors. In this modern age we are very rarely present. We don’t notice the details of everyday life as much as we should. We turn to art and media to tell us about the world and we sit in our air-conditioned comfort on our Ikea lounge suite and watch ‘the world’ brought to our living room. Or we may go to a gallery, theatre and other medium in which to qualify ourselves as ‘worldly’. However even the artist whose job it is to reflect our own world back to us reflects a fragmented version of his own preconceived idea of our world. Every now and then a masterpiece will be created. This usually happens when an artist is present long enough to notice the beauty and detail in an everyday object or place and is able to capture it free of pre conceived judgement and ideas and can reflect that experience back to us. When this happens it is astonishing because it communicates with our inner child linking directly back to a time of freedom, clarity, and happiness. It takes us to a time when we really did experience the world. This is the ultimate triumph for the artist. So how do we go back to experiencing the world as new? How do we get out of our minds because if we don’t you will be stuck in that room and it will get worse. / You will start to draw the curtains over the only window for fear the sun may fade the furniture and the room will fill with clutter that you begin to cling to. You associate yourself with these inanimate objects more than you do the real world. The dust builds, the cobwebs grow and you’re stuck in a cluttered room of material possessions that represent faded memories of a time when you used to live in the real world so you cling on to them harder. What’s the answer? Be present. Learn to tame your mind to stop its incessant noise and commentary. Try to simply view the world without judging. Enjoy the little things, bath in the detail, the sights, the smells, the texture the feeling. / Get out of the room and step into the garden, even if just to sit there. Otherwise the window will grow smaller and the world will change without you. Be present and observant like a child swinging on the cool smooth steel monkey bars smelling the fresh woodchips and thinking nothing else but that.