Yesterday grey, soft and still with only the sibilant sound of raindrops sliding down foliage. Today hard, bright and loud with wind like a fist pounding trees into unnatural shapes. At least there is sunshine.

Was trying to be all lyrical and otherworldly - to see the world from a more romantic point of view and I am dropped to earth with a thud by not having the software needed to listen to Orla Wren, a collection of songs by Tui who I found on one of the blogs I follow. There is such a world of creativity out there. It gives me faith in the human species that we have the infinite capacity to create such beauty.

Which brings me to something else. For many years I've spoken of things, usually music but sometimes films or books, as being life-enhancing. You could say it's just another way of saying I like something. If I like it and feel better for having listened/read/watched it then it is nothing more than that. Yet I feel that my choice of phrase was instinctive and right. I heard on that looking at a beautiful scene (listening to Margaret Throsby's interview with ?) actually *lights up* a particular part of the brain. Ancient healing centers were often sited where the ambiance, the view was particularly beautiful. We are made more by partaking of beauty wherever we may find it. A previously dark part of the brain is illuminated by the power of beauty (is that phrase Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth really true then?).

By the same token I know, because I feel it, when something is not life-enhancing. I feel it in my gut. I feel it in an emotional biliousness, a swaying off center, a tilting toward the abyss. If I'm smart I pull back but sometimes the fascination with the forbidden leads me on. And I wish I hadn't for once imbibed, poison lingers like a dark toxin in the blood.

I want a life of beauty; to create it, to share it, to live it. It is my choice, I know. It is my choice to find the beauty in the ugly, a habit I am able to form with intent and focus. Surrounding myself with beautiful things, thinking beautiful thoughts (now that's a hard one, petty creature that I am), speaking seeing hearing thinking feeling only beauty.

Sometimes I have doubts, not comfortable within my own skin. At my age too. It has to do with sociability, rather my lack of it. I'll watch a chick flick and see the way the group of friends interact, that easy tolerance of their foibles and characters, that energy. The energy to keep up with one anothers lives as well as meeting up and connecting. I on the other hand prefer my own company. Parties are a trial, no worse, a tribulation. Before we go I dread them, once I arrive I'm plotting my escape. I wish I was otherwise. I would like that comfortable camaraderie, the light laughter and honest sharing of intimacies that only girlfriends can enjoy. Alas it is not so.

Just transferred a sick wallaby into G's car. Our neighbour found a wallaby sitting in the middle of the road with her muzzle nearly touching the blacktop. Brought her to us and I rang G as I know nothing about wallabies. She had a peculiar aroma (the wallaby, not G), was thin and had a joey in her pouch. When G saw her she asked that I ring P and get him to warm up some Hartmanns. It's babesia (tick fever). She should know as they probably have more experience and knowhow in looking after wallabies than anyone in Queensland.