Overcast and cool.  A male fig bird, pale and insipid without his scarlet  breeding season eye patch, plucks green caterpillars from the poinciana tree outside the window.  The fig birds are working hard.   Newly fledged youngsters shimmy shake and squawk for food.  Continuously.  Must be hard to be a bird parent. 

Richard returns today.  Have missed him but have also enjoyed the solitude.  Do know that I sleep better alone.  He snores and talks and often crowds onto my side of the bed.  It seems I am always asking him to turn or move over.  Loving couples should be loving couples in bed too but I am beginning to understand, even desire, the restful oasis of twin beds.  But I'll never ask him.  Some things you just have to put up with and interrupted sleep is one of them.

Another thing which erupts here without Richard is singing and dancing.  Just leapt up to Placido Domingo's Granada and earlier swayed around the living room to The Girl from Impanema.   Have always sung, always danced as an expression of irrepressible joy not because I'm any good at either of them.  But for that degree of freedom of expression to flow, no audience allowed.  Or even the prospect of a surprise audience.

Have been scratching away at a drawing but am not inspired.  If it works it will be a miracle.  No plan at all, just a line here a bit of shading there.  Love how graphite builds mass.  Without the distraction of colour, graphite defines form in a way that I find very satisfying.  It has bulk, it has mood, it has a dark energy that is independent of the illusionary life created by the vibrancy of colour.  Graphite is meaty.  And this from a vegan.

breathing back and gratitude

Read a couple of days ago, or rather reread, about the importance of gratitude.  I am grateful and express it every day but suspect REAL gratitude arises on each and every breath during every waking moment.  For when you think about it, that's just it, isn't it?  As I read somewhere else recently, "Thank you Universe for another ordinary day."  But if one actually Sees each moment, there is nothing ordinary about it.  Each moment is a miracle; grass growing, coffee steaming, breathing, cats sleeping, air against skin, thoughts, senses, breathing breathing breathing.

So with this sense of the world being softly supported in its orbit and all things on it as they should be (despite appearances), Richard and Helen found a candidate for our new home yesterday at Burringbar.  Even Richard was pleased and that's saying something.  If Helen likes it I'm sure I will too.  Have always liked the photos although it wasn't one of my favourite saves.  Beyond that I have a lame horse (Pagan, offside hind, no obvious sign of injury) and I've done my back again - this time by the strenous activity of sweeping up broken bits of soapstone from Kwan Yin's halo. 

I spent fifteen minutes on the couch wondering how I was going to get up.  What started as a little tweak morphed into a major spasm so painful I couldn't take a deep breath.  Thought about calling Richard to come home but of course, if I could make it to the phone then I could make it.  Worst episode yet.  Don't know why I get these things.  It's not spine it's muscle.  Today it's much better although I'm moving very carefully and with forethought.  No sudden moves.  Will try yoga but a modified version. 

Looking at art work on line, especially the quite creepy Laurie Lipton.  Quite creepy but quite brilliant.  Started doodling a bit yesterday but don't really have any idea of what I'll do.  Just want to DO something.  An itch that needs to be scratched.  Practice drawing, while valuable, doesn't satisfy nearly as much - rather like drinking decaffeinated when looking for that caffeine hit.  I want to be absorbed into the work. 

Life and Death Decisions

Trying to learn to do 8 angle pose, probably the hardest pose I've tried.   First have to wrap one leg behind my head and 'rock it into place like adjusting a backpack strap' as one instruction site said.  Easier said than done.  Anyway, not there yet by a long shot but know it's doable.  Unlike some of the asanas I attempt.  Don't like age preventing me from doing things but there are some poses that are just beyond me, usually having to do with extreme crunching of the spine.  I can do The Wheel and The Mermaid but I can't do Dancers pose when one foot is captured by both hands.  Maybe next lifetime.

I've become a killer over the past few days.  It's not something I like doing but it's necessary to prevent suffering.  Each day while walking the dogs I find large gravid praying mantis, equally large grasshoppers and dragonflies which have been the victims of cars.  They are still alive but dying, sand and gravel adhering to their burst abdomens.  Dying slowly is one thing but being devoured alive by black ants is quite another.  So I step on them, grinding them into the road so that they are unrecognizable.  This may seem a bit of ... overkill but after stepping firmly on the first praying mantis it was still waving it's legs around when I removed my shoe.  Now I don't take any chances.  Slam and slide.

One of the most delightful creatures commonly seen on these summer afternoon walks are mountain katydids.  Their humped dusky black bodies, long spiky legs and mushy rabbit like profiles are unusual enough but the real prize is when they are gently stroked and they pop up their wing covers like mickey mouse ears to reveal an electric blue bordered by black bordered by deep red striped abdomen. The females are flightless and so at risk of being skittled by traffic.  I always pick them up by one of their *ears* and remove them to the verge. 

Some of them I can save.  Many things I can't.  There is a ditch which collects rainwater after a good storm.  Season after season frogs lay eggs in this ephemeral pond.  If it continues to rain it might hold water for weeks but in the end it always dries up before the tadpoles have a chance to turn into frogs.  Past seasons we've gone down with buckets and scoops and rescued the tadpoles.  Tadpole Rescue, almost as successful as our homegrown Gecko Rescue.  Not sure whether we've rescued frogs or cane toads, we take them to our dam (also ephemeral but usually lasting through a season) and release them.  This year we haven't done tadpole rescue.  Our dam isn't full and putting the tadpoles in the creek is risky.  The first lot would've drowned in the creek run we had after Cyclone Marcia dribbled her way past.  The second lot, this lot, won't survive the drying dying of the creek.  Nevertheless, on the way home yesterday I reached down and scooped as many as I could get from the mud and carried them to the creek.  I think there were five.  They were mottled like cane toads once the mud had washed off them.  So they have a chance.  The others will be dead by now.

As I walked home feeling guilty rather than exhilarated, my actions reminded me a little of the book, The Bridge Over San Luis Rey.  In it a bridge collapses and the people on the bridge died.  The whole premise of the book is why did those people die?  What about the ones about to cross the bridge and the ones who had just crossed?   Why not them?  So from the tadpoles point of view, a gigantic hand comes down and scoops up a handful of clay mud.  Tadpoles one through five survive, the others are doomed.  Tadpole philosophy.  Has no more answers than human philosophy. 

Post Parting Regression

It would take at least a week of solitude to fall into myself again.  But I only have until Monday.  Today is Saturday. 

When did I lose the ability to think, to follow a thought thread to a conclusion or at least an opinion?  I think in thought bytes.  Nothing more substantial than a quick acknowledgement of 'Oh, that might be important!' before moving on to the next ephemera.  I'm one of those multi-taskers that multi-task themselves right out of the ability to stop and think.  I equate busyness with meaning when busyness is keeping idle hands and idle minds occupied so I don't have to confront the emptiness and fear and shame which knocks at my idle mind. 

And I'm so damned hard on myself.  I'm going on 60 and I'm still flogging myself daily for not having a perfect body.  Isn't that nuts?  When will I let all that crap go?  I exercise 2 hours a day (1 hour yoga, 1 hour walking) and enjoy the benefits of health and flexibility yet what I really want is physical perfection. 

It is breathtakingly sad.

Yesterday I dug out my huge art book in which I've stored all my loose drawings, paintings and sketches that aren't framed and hanging on the walls (the grandkids counted 51 pictures on the wall, most of which is my stuff).   Anyway, I was surprised and pleased by the amount and variety and yes, talent displayed in these works.  Not all were good, some were, many more weren't, but they were mine, they were individual and creative.  And numerous!  I have a serious body of work developing.  Won't matter one whit after I'm gone.  I'm no Grandma Moses, discovered and made famous in her dotage.  (But I'm vain enough to want to be).  The importance is in the doing.  I've always said that.  But do I believe it?

Or is my real worth to be measured in my ability to be unselfish and care for Richard?  I blame him for part of my inability to settle.  I listen now.  Since he fainted all those months ago and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance, I listen.  Part of me has become a sentinel, watching for the Enemy.  Of course it's not his fault and he doesn't know that part of me is always at attention. 

So while he is away for a few days I try and discover myself again.  Try and quit flicking between windows (just read about Clementine Hunter, a poor cotton picking black woman from Louisiana who taught herself to paint), try and be a bit more forgiving of myself for my imperfections. 

And try and start another painting before he gets home.  Drawing is more calming than meditation.  I find like repetitive detail, something to lose myself in.  Something to fall into while I'm alone.
 

Cyclone Marcia passed us by today.  As a categoary 5 she whipped Yepoon and Rockhampton until buildings shattered and trees threw themselves to the ground.  By the time she reached us she was barely a tropical low.   And now she is trailing her grey gossamer skirts out to sea.

Does there come a point where Cyclone Marcia is reduced to one white cloud of vapor rapidly evaporating over the hot blue of the Coral Sea?  Is the reverse true?  Did she start with a collection of water droplets which became a cloud, which became a rain cloud, which became a thunderstorm?