From the tortured recesses of my mind.

It shouldn't have to be this agonising. For fucks sake Hayley, you’re a writer. Just write.
I’ve been rattled. This is the swirling sentiment that led to the cyber publication of the utter undergraduate shit you’re about to skim. sincerest apologies.

The MAMA exhibition was called ‘The Unsettling’ - and yes, the art pinned or hung or sideways spun on the great,wide,white walls of the Gallery was undoubtedly ‘unsettling’.

However, inwardly as I wandered the exhibition I noted that I was having trouble connecting with most of the art - Of course, I realise that this is all part of a bigger problem. I’ve been having trouble connecting with most of myself. except the angry, juvenile, sarcastic part you’re about to become acquainted with.

I (that is to say, the egoic self-identity that my consciousness stealthily inhabits) claims to revel in all that is considered ‘unsettling’.
If I was one to give gravitas to certain parental opinions I might be persuaded to agree that
I share an inexplicable kinship with ‘wrongness’ and all that is considered to embody traits of the ‘irksome’.

I have lived ‘The Unsettling’. My whole, entire, miserable-fucking- existence has been ‘unsettling’.

If anything, The exhibition evoked some of the more pleasant memories of my childhood. How fucked up is that? when the image of a violent father-figure gives you the warm-and-fuzzies you know that it’s time to check yourself.

I heard the quadrant of my mind that arrests my consciousness at the most poignant of moments and whispers my mother’s truths in her agreeable silken voice loudly and dramatically sigh before  a less evolved segment of my mind exclaimed mock-sarcastically ‘in-ter-ven-tion!’. Instinctually I made myself scarce, hiding in plain sight from eyes that eternally judge and voices that insistently, incessantly question.
Standing, invisibly, in the scrum of a dozen or more art-hounds with lips zipped, breath silently held and butt cheeks unconsciously clenched, in a near-failed attempt to contain the spillage of the metaphorical emotional diarrhoea that I imagined was visibly leaking out of my every pore;
Hoping desperately that nobody would observe my forced composure or ask me how i felt about the art. Luckily, I barely had to endure an expectant glance and busied myself in a conversation about an assumedly Russian artist’s motivation for depicting such a “narratively ambiguous” scene, there was talk of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Nabakov, Chekov ….lots of the ‘kov’s’ and my over-utilised social small-talk muscle ached with wanting. This was ‘big talk’ usually I love ‘big talk’ . Not today. Today I want to retire to an early evolutionary cave and fling poo at my contemporaries.  (Oh look at me, I’m on the art scene now, baby. *clinks artisan wine glass and laughs at an unfunny remark obnoxiously*) Clearly, if I plan to stick around above mortal ground for any measurable period of time I have a vast quantity of therapy sessions to pay for before I can begin to rid myself of my terribly unattractive, over-reactive characteristically dystopian world-view. Oh, Mother forgive me.

Contentment was and had always been a near-foreign concept for me. It’s what happens to people when they stop wanting. When they read a buddhist theory hardback and undergo their own period of enlightenment. ‘Remove desire and eliminate suffering’ the mantra touted by content buddhist converts the world over.

If only I could truly find this elusive ‘inner-peace’
Perhaps it might provide the missing piece.

 Today I am deeply defeated, yet another malady not easily treated.

(*enter the world’s smallest violin*)