Richard returns today after 2 days on the coast.  He's catching up with Helen and his old mentor, Heather.  Have asked him to 'inhale' the coast, to hold the image of the sea as a goal so that we stride ever closer to The Move.  Have a picture of our house from the ad in the newspaper stuck to the fridge.  Have printed across it in bold black letters SOLD as a kind of sympathetic magic or a metaphysical attempt to rearrange the vibrations to match the dream. 

The burning has already begun.  Neighbours on either side have burnt some of their hills.  But there's so much more to burn and the season is young.  I don't want to be here while they do for I can't pretend or distance myself from the destruction and death. And it gets harder each year.

Every morning around 6:30 a commercial jet flies overhead.  It's trajectory is Coolangatta.  Every morning I stop what I'm doing and watch it pass, the sun gilding the fuselage and wings.  The sun from over the ocean.  The sun which glows on Byron and Cabarita.  The sun that the Tweed Valley birds sing into being.  Our sun.  When I see it I'm there, in that ancient green caldera, in our house with a view of Mt. Warning, with the smell of the sea on the breeze and the gurgle of water from all those rivers and streams sliding along my bones. 

I do try and be patient, really I do.  The right time and all that.  I know it will be the right time but I devoutly wish that right time comes soon.  Every time I ride or walk the dogs or even go outside I see the beauty and the magic of this place.  It isn't the place that repels me but what is done to it.  Our neighbours have sold their 100+ acres to the son of our neighbour.  Much of it is bush.  I suspect the son will follow the father and slash and burn the bush to make it suitable for cattle.  I ride that country all the time.  I'm not sure if I could stand to see it destroyed. 

But you attract what you fear, whatever you hold in your head.  The more I fear the destruction and the burning the more I make it real. 

Ah, the guilt.  It seems guilt is my second skin.  Haven't been able to do yoga for 2 days because I've done something to my back.  And it's hard work not to feel guilty about it.  Really. 

But one good thing.  Am working on a coloured pencil drawing, of the back of Camus' head (again, he's already immortalized in a pencil drawing) as he gazes into a weird blue forest with a flying black cat high above.  Sounds weird and I did despair that it would work but it's starting to come together.  I really like it.  Shouldn't say that about one's own work I suppose but as I make things that I like it would be foolish not to like them. 

Am thinking about taking a drawing/colouring class starting this month.  Need to talk it over with Richard.  It's every Tuesday for 8 weeks.  Will see.