Edgar, I am relieved to say, is without doubt getting stronger.  He  is standing more without splaying legs (I cover the bottom of the box with leafy twigs to provide traction), can eat on his own with food just dropped into his mouth rather than having a finger shove it down, and his attempts at walking are more frequent and better controlled.  He has a long way to go yet improvement is obvious and welcome.

He is starting to grow into his black fluffy stage.  Very cute.  His eyes are fully open with bright intelligence and curiosity.   

I have agreed to take Karen's three baby crows for four days while she goes to the coast.   A couple of days ago she texted me that she had them and did I want them to which I said no - too much work and smell and IF we had an inspection I doubt I could mask the crow smell successfully.  Did text back that perhaps, when they are older and nearing the time when they would fledge, they could come and live in the aviary with Edgar, form a bond so all four could be released together.  That seems the best way to introduce them into the wild.  Even wild crow babies don't always make it through their first year I read.  Forty-two percent die.  What are the chances of hand raised crows?  I don't know but will just have to try our best.  There is no other alternative.

Taking these three crows for a trial four days will be excellent for Edgar and perhaps I will find that I can manage them quite all right and can keep them until they fledge.  They will entertain each other and behave as crows should behave rather than having their personalities warped by interacting with humans.  (I find myself wanting to kiss Edgar's fuzzy black head, NOT conducive to keeping emotional distance from this wild creature). 

On the home front - not one iota of interest since dropping the property price to $399,000.  On Monday Richard, Anthony, Cameron and their families met at Laidley cemetery to affix the bronze plaque over David Anthony's grave, fully 44 years after he died.  They also dug a small hole on his grave for Glynis' ashes.  A major loose end finally tied off in a fitting manner.  Richard is kind and very family oriented.  Can't begin to imagine how David Anthony being in an unmarked grave all these years felt to him.  But now he has done what any loving father, and he is a loving father, would do. 

Now can we sell the house and move?  Crass of me I know but there you go.  I try not to want but I want nevertheless.  Try not to feel guilty about wanting and feel guilty anyway. 

Every day is a goulash of gratitude and guilt.  Was reading up on the various species of Buddhism.  My loo book is An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie about four Catholics; Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Walker Percy.  It is subtitled, The Life You Save May Be Your Own.  The book details their Catholic conversion and their struggles with themselves,  philosophy, the nature of good and evil, poverty, war, writing and much else that pertained to being alive as well as what it meant to be Catholic.  One thing is for sure, none of them really had the answer.  Even Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who lived the penultimate Catholic life of seclusion and reflection, even he was riddled with the angst which is part and parcel of being alive.

I don't think the 'isms have it.  Perhaps I just am not evolved or disciplined enough to understand what they offer yet it seems as soon as reality is filtered through the prismed opinions of someone else I am lost.  Reality is so immediate.  I sense that even if I don't know it.  It is as close as my next breath and the universe behind my eyelids.

Oh, yes, read a report on how some people have negative reactions to mindfulness meditation.  How interesting as sometimes I have felt, and I think I have written about it, this mild sense of panic, that if I don't open my eyes and move NOW.  It is irresistible.  There is a sort of external pressure which confines and frightens me.  Am glad I'm not alone.  Also glad it doesn't happen all the time.  In future, if I experience it, having read of these bad experiences, I won't fight it or berate myself for being weak-willed and undisciplined. 

The Honesty of Imperfection

So restless.  Feel like a rubberband, stretching and condensing.  House not sold.  Hot buyers have bought elsewhere so back to square one.  Panic thinking.  Contact previous prospective buyers, say we'll accept your offer?  No, they've bought elsewhere.  So we sit and wait again.  Hence my restlessness.  In my imagination we were already moved.  Difficult to remain centered and here.  I want to be exploring and there.  

Why is it so difficult to trust in the rightness of the Universe?  Rather, why is it so difficult for me to trust in the rightness of my Universe?  Feel like I'm battering at the bars of a cage.  Let me out!  Feel trapped by this house, by my marriage (how dare I admit it, when any kernel of goodness I possess compels me to stay here and be true to this loving man who needs me in the hours of his illness - how guilty I feel admitting this.  And he knows, compels me with his words of love and devotion not to leave him when he needs me now and will need me more as time passes and his illness progresses.  Trapped trapped trapped.  Self-pitying shit that I am when most of the world is glad just to have shelter and food). 

It comes down to - How dare I want more than I have?  How dare I be unhappy?  How dare I be anything but overjoyed and thankful?

Then there are days when I just breathe thank you thank you thank you for the pure joy of breathing beauty that is there for the taking.

But those days are not this day.  Maybe there is something in just being honest with myself.  That it is okay not to be perfect, to be resentful sometimes and frightened.  To admit that I do not have the strength of character to change my mood at whim, to turn fear into gratitude, like bread into toast.  I'm doughy and yeasty and easily flattened.  Today I am flat.  Tomorrow toast!

We could have sold the property, but we refused at the price offered.  I've learned much in the first skirmish.  Not to be so nice for one thing.  Not to be mean but not to try so hard.  When they made their very first ridiculously low offer, in an effort to help them achieve their dream and, of course, to sell the property, we 'met them halfway'. 

That was a mistake.  Our definition of halfway and their definition of halfway were very different.  They wanted half of a half of a half.  Which is why we refused.

Then I lay awake last night thinking that the contract we had signed (and which they refused) would be held in reserve to hold us to it even if we refused their newest offer.  Over a barrel, as it were so that we wouldn't be free to negotiate with anyone else.  I almost snatched the contract out of the realtor's hand to see what had been done to the price.  Happy Day!  They'd crossed out the $402,000 and written $379,500.  It was the original contract.  There was no new contract.  We were free!

When I said this to the realtor he looked at me like I was nuts.  This is normal he said.  And there I was thinking we'd have all kinds of trouble with these people if we did sell to them.  Dealing with them felt like trying to run through treacle.

I don't have the temperament to be a realtor or deal in the property market.  I work very hard on 'letting go' and living in the moment.  Very hard.  Am not very successful.

So now there's another possible buyer waiting in the wings, one who already has an unconditional contract on their home, who has two horse mad teenage daughters (currently attending a dressage school, lucky sods), and who thinks our house at first look was 'everything they were looking for'. 

The father is coming back Thursday, sans daughters, for another look.  The daughters will probably come later, for final approval.  A point in our favour is that the parents know the daughters are poised on the edge of leaving the nest so there is no point in getting a large house. 

I am going to the Tweed on Friday to look at two properties.  The Nobby Creek property, which has the most stunning views one could wish for but is 35 minutes away from the sea, and the Burringbar property, which is close to the sea but may need a bit of tweaking (dog fences, horse shelters, etc.).  The Nobby Creek property has everything even including a bunny pen (one can keep rabbits in NSW, not that we'll get any).  Richard is very much in favour of the NC property.  It IS very neat and tidy and any trees on the 6 acres are well away from the house.  I dislike the huge cavernous living room with kitchen in one corner.  Butt ugly.  And the green paint job is icky too but it does have all wood floors.

Oh, I could go on and describe the two properties for what good it will do.  Must see them.  I'm just glad to have a break away, maybe get a good nights sleep.  Can't remember when I've slept well.  Partly due to Richard, partly due to worry.  And, if I'm honest, partly due to a particularly large and heavy Siamese sleeping on my legs. 

Fingers Crossed

Ongoing saga of the house sale.  The realtor rang yesterday.  The potential buyers asked the realtor to make a contract for us to sign.  Unfortunately the contract had the previous price.  Told D that we're not selling for that and not to waste their time, or ours, by putting it together.  But he was adamant.  They are serious sellers.  They are selling their house and have a buyer.  It's only $7000 less (so why don't we take the money and run?).

Richard thinks they won't accept our counter, original proposal.  I think they will.  Who blinks first?

We sign the contract tomorrow and then pass it to the realtor to pass to them.  Then we wait.

Such a small thing on the scale of the really big things in the world.  But in our world it is a big thing.  Moving.  Moving close to the sea.  Going for a coffee on the beach.  Taking the dogs for a walk on the beach.  Humidity.  Mangoes and bananas.  Yoga classes.  Art.  Tree hugging environmentalists.  Dreadlocks and surfing.  Sunglasses and sarongs.   Views across the treetops.  Views.  Mount Warning and the sea.  Breathing.   Taking deep breaths and letting go the past.

I walk the dogs in the afternoon and see the cows and horses that in a few months will be thin and rough-coated.  A few months after that they'll be RSPCA ready.  And the phone call to say what the cows and horses can't say for themselves and then the watching to see if anything is done. Oh, they visit, the RSPCA, but how much good does it do?  I think they are so short-staffed that follow up visits are only a pipe dream.  Not sure about that but haven't heard anything to the contrary

And then, following the skeletal animals comes the fires.  Every spring the fires.  And the birds and skinks and snakes and lizards and anything that can't get out of the way.  They die.  Burnt to death.  Adult birds fly.  Babies sizzle.

So I hope, oh how I hope we sell the house, that the people sign the contract and that we can begin the shift to a new locale and a new outlook - one where fires are the outrageous rarity and not the norm.  And the animals are better looked after.  And where we can drive a few minutes to the beach to have that coffee and watch the sun come up.

Here's hoping.              

rain and reality and the illusion of it all

Five inches of rain.  In less than 24 hours.  In our neighbourhood we had the least amount of rain.  A klik and a half down the road they had 8 inches.  The guy on the hill, half a klik away as the cockatoo flies, had 7.  Don't understand why there is such a huge difference.  Not that it matters because...we're saved.  A huge weight has lifted.  Don't realise how depressed you are about the drought until it breaks.  Grass is already poking through the dead remains of summer past.  What a miracle.  The creek is running, the dust is gone.  Everything shines.

Couldn't ride today.  Too wet and wouldn't get very far as the creek is too deep and swift but by tomorrow it should be dry enough.  Not to climb the hills, too slippery but at least go up the road. 

No calls on the house yet, although, as of yesterday, 20 people looked at it online. 

Reading The Curse of the Kings by Victoria Holt.  Used to love her.  Must have loved her during my adolescent gothic phase (not as in Goth gothic, but the heroine-in-the-creepy-gothic-house-with-the-mysterious-tall-dark-handsome-and-faintly-menacing-man phase).  I'll finish it but it's work.  Saw her name while trolling through the book laden tables at the Blue Nurse biannual book sale and snatched it up as a find.  Now I'm not so sure.  Also found an Elizabeth George.   A sample of my more 'mature' taste.  And she is a find!

Really need to tackle Ken Wilber's The Spectrum of Consciousness again.  Made my brain hurt (and I found he wrote it at 23!) but it was revelatory.  Didn't finish it and I need to.  Almost must be read one sentence at a time on an hourly or daily basis.  It's that difficult (for me at least) and I'd need to thoroughly digest that one sentence before adding another to the first.  

Years ago I read a book while stoned.  Don't remember the name of the book or the author(s) - feel it was a collaboration.  And perhaps the experience which occurred after reading the penultimate conclusion reached by the authors was a result of cannabis but I suspect it was because sometimes, through logic, and extrapolation of logical thinking along one line, a tear can be made in the veil of illusion and reality bleeds through.  Their premise was that the rate of knowledge was increasing along exponential lines; new discoveries lead to even more discoveries, somewhat like the branches of a tree, and based on their mathematical models the true nature of reality would be revealed to everyone on the planet on such and such a date.  This of course not only includes advances in technology but the merging of science, metaphysics and the wisdom of ancient religions.

I read that sentence and something in my brain erupted into or bled into the reality behind the reality.  Didn't sleep that night.  Actually scared myself by glimpsing the power and the scope, nay the infinity, of What Is. 

Suspect Wilber's book, if I can understand it and that's a big If, might do the same.  Then again, perhaps my brain has calcified with age. 

The only other time I've experienced this tear in reality was while discussing metaphysics with my mother.  There was a subtle yet electrifying shift in reality which we both experienced at the same time.  We were following some philosophical/metaphysical path down to some logical conclusion when it happened.  Only for a second but what a powerful second.