I'll Carry On Until I Can't

I have to give myself permission to have a day off.  Richard is away until sometime after lunch so have the morning to do (or not do!) whatever I want.  Have stumbled through most of the chores although still have to vacuum, especially as Natalia and Nairobi both demanded to be brushed and wisps of grey or black hair floated down the hall before I could catch them.  But I'm not in a hurry to vacuum.  I'm not in a hurry at all.  My next 'must do' is the noon crow nosh up.  Until then I can bludge.

I remember after Mom died my then husband Wayne dreamed of her.  He dreamed she was in a beautiful place where she could rest from the rigours of life.  A phrase which has been running through my head is, 'I'll carry on until I can't'.  I'm afraid if I let any one of these balls juggling in the air above me fall, then a Bad Thing will happen.  A Bad Thing would be letting Parkinsons have its way with Richard without opposition.  A Bad Thing would be for something to happen to Richard (a fall, a faint) and me not know.  A Bad Thing would be loss of mental acuity or physical ability in me.  A Bad Thing would be shame because I'd stopped trying to be this and that and whatever, that I'd just stopped trying.  A Bad Thing would be to give in to fear, to depression.  A Bad Thing would be to Surrender.  Tears form in my eyes as I write this.   I'm tired and a bit sad.  I understand why after someone dies they just get to stop and catch their breath for awhile.  Life is lovely, life is adventure, but unless you're comatose, it's exhausting too.

I think a vivid dream I had this morning is leaving an aftertaste.  In the dream I met a man.  He was articulate, intelligent, compassionate and very interested in me.  I didn't have an affair, there was no sex but I did kiss him and when I kissed him I clung to him like a drowning woman clings to a lifeboat.  In the dream Richard was away overnight.  I was so tempted to sleep with this man and I did, fully clothed, get into bed with him, but nothing happened except that I was ashamed and exhilarated at the same time. 

I love Richard.  I admire him.  I will see us through all this and do whatever it takes to try and keep him well and happy for as long as I can.  But there is a personal toll.  I'm no longer a lover and a wife.  I am a carer.  I am watchful all the time.  I am on guard all the time.  On his good days, I relax a little.  On his bad days, I man the ramparts and march.  Conversations are of the garden variety.  There are areas we do not go.  There are many areas we cannot go.  I do not talk down to him but I simplify. 

It's lonely and I feel sorry for myself which brings guilt when I have so much and most people in the world have so little.  Lonely, self-pitying, guilt-ridden and ashamed.  It's a slippery slope to climb.  I am of a cheerful nature and this state of mind does not sit well yet it is difficult to change by an act of will.

I suppose that's the crux.  I have brought my will to bear on so many things and changed them.  Energy, effort and belief.  If I want to do something badly enough I can do it.  (Think that's why I'm so fierce at the gym.  Working out Really Hard is something I can control).  But I cannot will away the Parkinsons which has robbed me of my husband.  I cannot will this house to sell sooner rather than later.  I cannot will my sadness away.

So do I surrender?  I read uplifting posts from The Tattooed Buddha and Rebelle; warrior posts about fierce priestess types who grab Life by the throat and wring it dry with their Mach II creative power, divinely inspired posts about the Divine in all of us, pragmatic posts about the life we chose and the lessons learned. 

It makes me tired.  So do I surrender?  Maybe I'll just vacuum and feed the crows.

Thoughts are Things

It is easy to be disheartened when tuned in to too much technology. I subscribe to a few *cause* newsletters having to do with the environment and animal welfare. The television is awash with stories about corporate greed, environmental apathy, loss of habitat, species extinction, etc. Although I care deeply about the environment and animals it has come to the point where I delete or another documentary on village life being destroyed by toxic runoff from some mine in PNG. Or just now on Deutsche Well TV, Asian carp taking over the Mississippi River moving in on Lake Michigan. The bad news is relentless.

I started to believe it. Started to believe we are past the point of no return. That the earth is screwed due to runaway global warming and we may as well open another bottle of champagne - and not recycle the bottle. That we have become so estranged from our mammalian ancestry that we treat ourselves, our animal cousins and the earth as though they are The Other, something to be dominated if not eradicated.

Of course this mindset had to stop. Even during the 'good thought' section of my daily yoga routine I was focussing on the negative; help this, stop that, change this. I was getting pretty depressed. Very dangerous. Thoughts are things. As I've quoted Arthur Eddington before, I don't mind doing so again. 'The stuff of the Universe is Mind Stuff'. So you think, so you are. So how does one fly in the face of all this bad news? Being blind to it all, pretending it isn't there won't make it go away. So how to help without succumbing?

By community. I realized that while I am thinking good thoughts, sending out thoughts of loving kindness, there are tens of thousands of people doing the same thing. I may not be very good at it but the intention is clear. I can add my good thoughts to the stream of prayer being created all over the world all the time. I did this and immediately felt better, felt part of a powerful merging of minds to save ourselves and the world. For all the bad news, there is much good news. And good people, people who are doing their bit. I don't have controlling shares in Rio Tinto but I can grow my own veggies, recycle almost everything, live in an eco and animal friendly way and, to save power turn off the darn TV.

Haven't written in over a month. Nothing to say which comes, I think, from an extremely mild form of depression. Not clinical but a sort of self-disgust stemming from doing nothing much constructive...then of course I don't do anything which makes me feel worse so I don't do anything which makes me feel worse, ad nauseum. Have started keeping a record of c/t sessions with Balthazar on another blog which is something. Too much time playing games, the usual solitaire, free cell, spider solitaire and mah jong. They are a way to do something while keeping my mind numb.

Then I read this morning a quote by Marianne Williamson, a 'spiritual activist' and author who I had never heard of until now. She wrote, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." It is the fear that once I begin something I must keep on with it. I cannot just languish in the middling ground of existence. I must make my existence count for something. I don't mean earthly success or at least the success measured in money or fame or power but the success of exceeding my own expectations, no matter how little they are. So I pass time (how sad a phrase is that?) playing mindless games rather than raise the bar of my own life. (I suspect others camouflage this urge with alcohol, drugs, food, parties, sex, noise, anything to silence that 'still small voice within' even if it's only for the duration of the game or until the last donought is eaten).

But it is the new year, albeit over a week old. The old games don't satisfy and the guilt and sadness become too burdensome so something must change. Thought a good start would be to blog something other than clicker training sessions.

It's very hot, no clouds and in the thirties. Think I could/should do a quick session with Balthazar (want to start doing more than one session daily) but the thought of standing in the sun defeats me. Even with a hat, the rays cut and burn. Walking the dogs between 3:30 and 4:45 is hot; dogs are hot, sweat runs down my scalp and drips onto my neck, socks are soaked within my shoes. Direct sunlight is not something to be sought out in the midst of a subtropical queensland summer.

Found an old dream notebook full of tiny cramped writing where I've recorded dreams while barely awake. The first one is written on December 4 but I don't know what year. It's not more than twenty years old though because I remember keeping this notebook by the bed in this house.

It reads: "I've been travelling and brought paintings with me to where I stop. It's like East and West Berlin before the wall dropped. I've made it to the free side from the unfree side. My paintings are hung at a friend's. An old man,, a critic, and his young female assistant come to view the paintings. They're in pastel. They're good enough to put in an amateur show they say. But look at this one and this one! Along with my work is work by another artist - in oils and she's very good. One painting is very vivid, a yellow face in the clouds, perspective-wise near, emerging from the roiling grey clouds. In the lower part of the picture are 3 lights, 3 UFO lights. The signature is 3 tiny figures, stylized bare-breasted women. It was painting by a woman. I think to myself how brilliant (I"m really disappointed they only think my work mediocre) and why couldn't I have painted that, then realize I've dreamed it and I certainly can use that one or any of 'her' paintings. I did not go on to a lucid dream from this. At this same place I can trade in books and pay my way. They (Jimmy Barnes) don't want me to pay what I owe in book rental and petrol."

This is like the dream of a stranger. Am immediately struck by going to the free from the unfree, by the superiority of the unknown female artist's work, by the realization that she and I are the same as I have created her oils as well as my pastels and finally by the three UFO lights and the three sylized female figures as a signature. Of course I cannot now recall what that yellow face in the grey clouds looked like but I do remember a few years ago seeing an abstract painting in the background on some tv show and being struck by the absolute beauty of sunshine yellow against steel grey - and how I unsuccessfully tried to recreate that explosive colour statement in a painting.

Yesterday was not a good day. No dogs still and then to make matters worse, I read the expert reports about the proposed quarry. I am an optimist and I do think thoughts are things but I also think we're stuffed. The judge, who has never been here and who is the same judge, if memory serves, who approved it the first time, will approve it. Hell, after reading the mediation reports, I'd approve it.

What they plan to do is use an "Offset Property" to replace the area destroyed by the quarry. The land they have in mind is a little bit similar. It's in the same shire. It has a little bit of remnant vegetation not, to quote them, with the high richness in flora and fauna, and oh, the rv is far younger with no mature trees but hey, it's going to be the same in perhaps 60 years with ongoing management to protect it from cattle, fire and intrusive weeds. And just to further enhance the similarity, this OP is on flat land.

I could cry.

But I didn't. Instead I moped around all day doing very little. Yoga made me feel better but also brought me near to tears. I worked on the oil pastel a bit and did the housework but otherwise I just moped. Not good. In the afternoon went for a walk with R and did the animal chores and immediately felt better. A truth I forgot, that depression feeds on inactivity. Do something, anything physical, preferably outside and your spirits will rally.

So, today is another day. Woke at 5 and thought don't lie in bed, get up and start the day. Had a bad dream of a giant crocodile barely visible with its jaws agape beneath a bridge. It was waiting for me. The water was murky yet it knew I was there. I rescued some rats but they weren't the morsel it was hunting. Assume that crocodile is the quarry. It goes to court next month (postponed from March, May and August). Got on the computer last night and looked at properties in Montville, an area I hadn't considered before. Have been there once and remembered it as lush and arty and small with cafes clinging to the side of the, for want of the real name, Maleny ridge. Maleny is far too expensive but there are some affordable properties in Montville - and it's only half an hour from the coast.

Someone else is missing from our family. Algernon. We haven't seen him for over a month. We hope it's because he is looking for or has found a companion. The galahs are nest building. Pablo and Yasi, the rainbows, have been billing and cooing. Felicity is in such a flap about her absent Suki, who comes and goes, that she hunts Byron who has had to be removed to a cage and live with us on the deck. So it's that time of the year when bird's thoughts turn to love. Selfishly I'd just like to sight Algernon to know he's okay. At what point, however, do you cut the ties and really let released birds go? Algernon has been living free for several years now and has shown he can survive in the wild. He doesn't owe us anything, least of all 'checking in'.

too ...just too to think of a title

Raining, cold silver darts striking the earth with little explosions of water. First time since we've lived here that there has been green grass in August. But enough of the weather. I'm just glad I"m inside with a fire going and a warm cat on my lap.

Speaking of cats. Natalia's xrays were clear. No crystals in her bladder, kidney's fine. The only thing shown was that she would soon do a very large poo. Which she did. Vaccinated her with an F5 and hope that she doesn't have the herpes strain of cat flu. She was very quiet that night. I think the vaccination affected her but now, two days later, she's back to being a mega kitten.

I do suspect she is part Burmese. She has the look of a Burmese and also the aroma. Loki Chien, the only Burmese we've ever had, always smelled delightful. Well, all cats smell good unless they're unwell but his scent was especially sweet. Natalia has that sweet scent too. It was so noticeable I thought at first it was perfume but it wasn't my perfume - it was hers. She also behaves somewhat like a Burmese. Wherever I am, she is. Follows me around a lot and if I'm sitting she's on my lap. She's not afraid of R but she doesn't sit near or on him.

On other fronts. No dreams. Wake up, remember that I had a dream and in the remembering forget it. That searching, soul searching or searching for my soul. It's as closeasthis and as far away as the Horsehead Nebula. Why did that partially drug and alcohol induced spirituality of my twenties disappear. Then again, as Prem Rawat (is that his name?) said yesterday, that which searches is IT. Fulfillment won't come from being with R or the animals or painting pictures, it comes from within. That oceanic feeling described by Jung. More I think it's a remembering. 'Become as little children'. Children are agog in the world, full of fun and mystery and free from the boredom of having seen it all before and therefore taking it for granted.

some hours later: You know there are those times when you are just sick of yourself? When you know you can do better but don't? And why don't you do better? It's like pushing the accelerator at the same time as holding the clutch so that you effectively just spin your wheels, burn rubber and make an unpleasant burnt rubber smell. Well, that's been my day. THANK GOD FOR THE DICE! Finally, when I was just just absolutely up to here with procrastinating, with looking at shit web sites and watching shit television or playing shit games and doing nothing beyond the usual must do chores, I rolled the dice in desperation. Very simple choices: yoga, walk the dogs, blog, clean the bathroom with sugar soap prior to painting, work with Jack and paint. Came up bathroom so I got off my lazy ass and sugar soaped the bathroom. Then it said paint so I signed my name to that last picture and proceeded to tidy up loose ends. By that time it was time to feed up and do afternoon chores which I've done. R has gone to Brisbane for M's 40th birthday party. As per usual, I begged off.

Are other people nuts like this. Do they drive themselves nuts like this? Everyone else appears sane, like they've got it together and sail through life doing what they do without a second thought or second guessing. Do other people struggle with this brake and accelerator thing like I do. Is anyone else just plain buck lazy like I am?

You know what it boils down to. Self-loathing. Why do I saddle myself with this? (And what boring self-absorbed, negative, crappy writing this is). So end it. Go finish the painting which is nearly nearly there and does please me. Go allow Natalia who, for some unknown reason, seems to adore me, to sit in my lap and purr and assure me all is well with the world, go eat something for dinner and think about maybe doing some positive affirmations so that I don't fall apart and just wallow.