Day 4 of 92

3:18.  So much easier not to have to come up with a title. 

The car seat dog cover arrived today.  Installed it and thought, getting a dog will be somewhat like having a baby (not that I'D know!), our lives will never be the same.  We've bought a car to accommodate The Dog.  We've yet to ditch the truck and buy something which will have room for the dog and hay that won't be exposed to rain.  I'm barracking for a VW Caddy - a small delivery van with commodious storage for horse feed and dog.  Not there yet in convincing R.  Think he needs a few more weeks of wrapping tarps around horse feed and removing same, leaden and awkward with rain - or, better yet, the arrival of the greyhound who watches us with sad brown eyes while we drive off to feed the horses. 

Sat on the deck the other night watching the rain and mist transform the rainforest into something mysterious and otherworldly.  Even the sound of the rain, like a delicate chorus of whispers, made it more exotic and foreign feeling.  I didn't pinch myself.  I just took another sip of wine and smiled.

3:27pm

The Power of Cranky Prayer

Raining. 

I give thanks a lot.  It is not so much a thought but more a sort of visceral breath which emanates gratitude.  I say this to contrast it with the exasperated prayer of yesterday.  My prayer was, 'Just make it effing rain, right?' 

 For days, nay weeks, I have watched the radar as  storms brew up to the west, march toward us in a wall of blue and yellow and orange only to split and pass to the north and south, reform on the other side and carry on to the coast.  I try, I really do try, to remain composed and indifferent to the vagaries of the weather, I try to remain aloof and non-judgmental when neighbours burn the living crap out of their land year after weary smoke filled year.  I try to welcome all that is as It Is What It Is and I'm damn grateful to be here experiencing another 'ordinary day'.  But sometimes, just sometimes, I get fed up, shake my fist at the sky and in bad grace invoke grace.

And it worked.  Despite a totally different forecast, I woke to the sound of rain and although at 2:30pm, it is just about finished, it has drizzled all day. 

Wonder if I can invoke, 'just let us win the damn lotto,' would have the same outcome.  Or 'sell the damn house!' 

Sometimes I coast along quite happily here (especially after it's rained) and don't mind that we are not on the coast but other times it's a hunger.

Coincidentally, a program on the community TV about an eco-village in Currumbin Valley.  Wouldn't suit us as we've all the animals but I could feel the coastal vibe.

Bring it on!  Right?

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.