I never make New Years Resolutions. Can't think of one I've made so can't think of one I've kept. But I'm 59 now and suppose it's not too late to try. If nothing else making a resolution will help in mindfulness, that small itch of discomfort when I'm about to ignore it.
1. I make more of an effort and fewer excuses about meditating. It has been all too easy in the past to make no effort to meditate if that 15 minutes doesn't come immediately after completing yoga. That will no longer do. Meditation practice, even my sporadic attempts, makes a difference in ways I wouldn't have imagined. For instance; usually I am quite (but quietly) resentful about the big family xmas do. This year I just flowed with it. I didn't have to try and overcome antipathy, it just happened. I've noticed that about a few things. It's a small change, this flowing with life, but significant, like driving on a road without having to brake for self-created speed bumps.
2. I don't do seconds. Second helpings, that is. I am 5'4" and weigh 56 kg. Usually weigh 55 but it's crept up and stayed there. Have to get it under control. The banning of second helpings is one step. Portion control another. It's as though I don't feel full unless I am really FULL, which is not conducive to weight loss or even weight maintenance. It's a mind thing. If I can successfully quit smoking I can come to grips with this.
3. And finally, I will write more. Was going to say write more honestly but how can I when writing the unvarnished truth has the power to hurt others. Can't do it.
That's it. Happy New Year.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Late Night Musings and what that entails
Late at night. Almost too tired to sleep after driving 6 hours in the rain, much of it in holiday traffic. (Why do we do this to ourselves!?). Know I need to sleep but have stumbled on Pandora, something I didn't even know existed, a place where they play beautiful music or at least music of your choice. I chose 'yoga music' so have, at the moment, David Evenson and the Soundings Ensemble. What joy. And for free!
Feel like I've stumbled into a like- minded community. My friends don't live nearby so there is little to no chance for long coffee or wine fueled chats. And it gets a bit lonely here sometimes. I am in transition from wife and lover and best friend to carer. It's not a role I like but it is what it is and as I'm in this marriage for love and for better or worse, I'll take it. He is my Richard, still my Richard after all. But, sometimes it's a bit lonely as I am losing my best friend. So it's a pretty good deal to find Rabelle Society and Yoga by Candace and Pandora. Everyone needs a support group even if that group is anonymous and no more aware of me than I am of the fly on the stable wall. Just reading their thoughts, that there are people out there who think like me, that are introverts and are okay with that. Well, that's just plain marmalade!
In fact, it's all fine. As I said to someone today at the Great Annual Family Get Together, if I think about the future I get frightened and depressed but right now? I'm fine. Richard's fine. Met a neighbour on the road yesterday. He asked whether I'd had a good christmas. I'm upright and ambulatory, I replied, so I'm good.
Even Peter Greste, writing from an Egyptian prison, managed to find the good in Christmas. If he can what complaint dare I make?
None at all. And for that I am truly grateful.
Feel like I've stumbled into a like- minded community. My friends don't live nearby so there is little to no chance for long coffee or wine fueled chats. And it gets a bit lonely here sometimes. I am in transition from wife and lover and best friend to carer. It's not a role I like but it is what it is and as I'm in this marriage for love and for better or worse, I'll take it. He is my Richard, still my Richard after all. But, sometimes it's a bit lonely as I am losing my best friend. So it's a pretty good deal to find Rabelle Society and Yoga by Candace and Pandora. Everyone needs a support group even if that group is anonymous and no more aware of me than I am of the fly on the stable wall. Just reading their thoughts, that there are people out there who think like me, that are introverts and are okay with that. Well, that's just plain marmalade!
In fact, it's all fine. As I said to someone today at the Great Annual Family Get Together, if I think about the future I get frightened and depressed but right now? I'm fine. Richard's fine. Met a neighbour on the road yesterday. He asked whether I'd had a good christmas. I'm upright and ambulatory, I replied, so I'm good.
Even Peter Greste, writing from an Egyptian prison, managed to find the good in Christmas. If he can what complaint dare I make?
None at all. And for that I am truly grateful.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Three Cliches, New and Improved!
A young woman came to return some horsey items I'd lent her months ago. Without knowing the details I knew she'd split with her boyfriend of five years. Worse, they'd split three weeks after their engagement party. They'd moved away, their house was sold and except hearing through the grapevine she was still in the area I knew nothing more. So she came and we sat on the deck swishing flies and making small talk. Finally I asked if she was all right. Did she want to talk.
"I'll cry if I talk about it," she said. But it seemed she wanted to talk for without going into details, she told me. I didn't need to know the details, the result was sitting in front of me crying, hating herself for what she'd done, grieving and angry and forlorn all at the same time.
"Come on in away from these damned flies," I said. I got her a tissue and a glass of water for it was hot and muggy and she needed something to do with her hands. Got myself one too as well as a washcloth to mop sweat. Thank you Menopause for the wisdom of years and hot flushes!
Wisdom. I don't know for sure if I helped her. She has to decide to be helped but I gave it my best shot. For there is much to be thankful for in my crone age, as opposed to the maiden and mother ages, which I've left behind long ago. Experience. The Long Eye. The ability to see the Big Picture. And Gratitude that it is not me enduring what she is enduring now. It was once. Oh, the details were different but the Grief and the Drama and the Emotional Rollercoaster were the same. And from such experience cliches are born. But as ever, one tries to imbue the old and timeworn truths with newer shiny words in the, perhaps vain, hope that they won't be seen as cliches.
Cliche #1. This too shall pass. She is very young. Her grief and pain are so great, it seems as though they are all that ever was, all that ever shall be. But the worst despair is worn thin by constant use. And finally it fades to a bearable level. It is never forgotten but eventually it only bruises, not cuts in the remembering.
Cliche #2. Chalk it up to Experience. She made a big mistake, a whopper of a mistake. And she's paying big time. However, this mistake is an experience, an experiment she'll never have to try again. She'll make other mistakes, just as I do. But I usually don't make the same mistakes twice, and if it's a Biggie, never. Nor shall she. This one has made such an indelible mark on her soul and her sense of self (shame is a great teacher). One understands the lesson immediately and never ever forgets it.
Cliche #3. It isn't the End of the World. She is consumed with guilt, grief and pain and it amazes her that the world continues to continue. She has lost her soul mate (although, because they are still in almost daily contact, I suspect, given time, they will find a way to reunite). Why does the world not implode? Why does it not turn black and die? Because it is the stage in which we play out our lives. The stage is our construct, it is the infrastructure about which we play and live and love and lose. It is all of a piece. We made it. We Are It.
Cliche #4. Forgive and Love Yourself. Do that first and everything else will follow. Asked her if she thought he would find her tear swollen, snot slick face attractive. He'd always been proud of her strength, her beauty, her enthusiasm and 'Can Do' attitude. Now she was weak and needy. She thinks she is not worthy of his love and is so ashamed of herself that she cannot love and forgive herself. We spent a lot of time on that.
How well I know the insidious logic of self-loathing. How dare we love ourselves? It is vainglorious to even like ourselves. Humility and suffering is the western-christian ethic we absorb by osmosis if not by direct teaching. Especially if you are a woman. We define ourselves through the prism of others opinions. I thought perhaps her generation of women had shattered those particular spectacles but it seems not. She was worthless because he, his friends and family said she was.
She hugged me as she left. Asked if I was superstitious because she'd dreamed that I'd died. Told her, after swiftly double checking that I wasn't superstitious, was I? that dreams are all about us so that if she dreamed I'd died it was because something in me reminded her of something in her, that the funeral was the death of an aspect of her. Which makes sense. I hope.
I hope too that she heals sooner rather than later. That she will heal I have no doubt. We're made of tough stuff. We have to be to survive the things we put ourselves through. For in the end, it is our story. Every single second. And ain't it grand?
"I'll cry if I talk about it," she said. But it seemed she wanted to talk for without going into details, she told me. I didn't need to know the details, the result was sitting in front of me crying, hating herself for what she'd done, grieving and angry and forlorn all at the same time.
"Come on in away from these damned flies," I said. I got her a tissue and a glass of water for it was hot and muggy and she needed something to do with her hands. Got myself one too as well as a washcloth to mop sweat. Thank you Menopause for the wisdom of years and hot flushes!
Wisdom. I don't know for sure if I helped her. She has to decide to be helped but I gave it my best shot. For there is much to be thankful for in my crone age, as opposed to the maiden and mother ages, which I've left behind long ago. Experience. The Long Eye. The ability to see the Big Picture. And Gratitude that it is not me enduring what she is enduring now. It was once. Oh, the details were different but the Grief and the Drama and the Emotional Rollercoaster were the same. And from such experience cliches are born. But as ever, one tries to imbue the old and timeworn truths with newer shiny words in the, perhaps vain, hope that they won't be seen as cliches.
Cliche #1. This too shall pass. She is very young. Her grief and pain are so great, it seems as though they are all that ever was, all that ever shall be. But the worst despair is worn thin by constant use. And finally it fades to a bearable level. It is never forgotten but eventually it only bruises, not cuts in the remembering.
Cliche #2. Chalk it up to Experience. She made a big mistake, a whopper of a mistake. And she's paying big time. However, this mistake is an experience, an experiment she'll never have to try again. She'll make other mistakes, just as I do. But I usually don't make the same mistakes twice, and if it's a Biggie, never. Nor shall she. This one has made such an indelible mark on her soul and her sense of self (shame is a great teacher). One understands the lesson immediately and never ever forgets it.
Cliche #3. It isn't the End of the World. She is consumed with guilt, grief and pain and it amazes her that the world continues to continue. She has lost her soul mate (although, because they are still in almost daily contact, I suspect, given time, they will find a way to reunite). Why does the world not implode? Why does it not turn black and die? Because it is the stage in which we play out our lives. The stage is our construct, it is the infrastructure about which we play and live and love and lose. It is all of a piece. We made it. We Are It.
Cliche #4. Forgive and Love Yourself. Do that first and everything else will follow. Asked her if she thought he would find her tear swollen, snot slick face attractive. He'd always been proud of her strength, her beauty, her enthusiasm and 'Can Do' attitude. Now she was weak and needy. She thinks she is not worthy of his love and is so ashamed of herself that she cannot love and forgive herself. We spent a lot of time on that.
How well I know the insidious logic of self-loathing. How dare we love ourselves? It is vainglorious to even like ourselves. Humility and suffering is the western-christian ethic we absorb by osmosis if not by direct teaching. Especially if you are a woman. We define ourselves through the prism of others opinions. I thought perhaps her generation of women had shattered those particular spectacles but it seems not. She was worthless because he, his friends and family said she was.
She hugged me as she left. Asked if I was superstitious because she'd dreamed that I'd died. Told her, after swiftly double checking that I wasn't superstitious, was I? that dreams are all about us so that if she dreamed I'd died it was because something in me reminded her of something in her, that the funeral was the death of an aspect of her. Which makes sense. I hope.
I hope too that she heals sooner rather than later. That she will heal I have no doubt. We're made of tough stuff. We have to be to survive the things we put ourselves through. For in the end, it is our story. Every single second. And ain't it grand?
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Still Here
There's a tightening in my core, like I'm pulling in and concentrating my energy. We're going to get out of here. Have almost convinced Richard to drastically drop the price on the house, in total taking $76,000 off so we can sell up and move. In 7 months we've had exactly one inspection. One. Obviously we're not meeting the market. Dropped it $26,000 and still no joy - but that's by the buy (a typofreudian slip - so want someone to BUY this place).
Haven't written in ages - computer dramas of dire proportions (lost most everything). Still not 100%. Have been far more disciplined after getting sloppy, gluttonous and feeling the effects of less energy, less self esteem. Only put on a couple of kilos but always felt bloated. I have the willpower to quit smoking but have trouble controlling portion size. No problem in eating good, nay excellent food, just eat too much of it. Or did. Not too many slips now and the result is little short of amazing. No, not in suddenly being a size 6 but in how I feel. Much more energy. Think when one is bloated it's because food is lounging around in the gut taking energy for digestion that could go into living. Not advocating anorexia just common sense. My enthusiasm for everything sometimes goes awry and since I've learned to cook (still can't believe that I love to cook after a lifetime of believing it a most vile activity) I love what I create. And eat it too!
Still. Some other factors. Much more consistent with yoga. More like 7 days a week rather than 5. Went to Woodford to visit Gabi and attended a couple of yoga classes. Learned and practiced the 5 Tibetan Rites (http://www.lifeevents.org/5-tibetans-energy-rejuvenation-exercises.htm) at one of the classes and have incorporated them into my practice, more to encourage Richard who is also doing them, then because I need to add on another 10 minutes into a practice that already takes an hour. There are, however, two of the exercises, No. 2 and 4, which illustrate how weak I am in those areas.
The other thing is running. Thanks to yoga my nearly 60 year old joints can cope with the concussion without aching so much they keep me awake at night. Have attempted to take up running half a dozen (or more) times in the past 20 years and have always been defeated by the pain. There is still pain (I'm so unfit!) but it's a good pain which will lessen with time. Somewhat embarrassing however. I've got the two whippets, Jamaica and Radar, with me while I *run*. When I'm *running* up a steep hill, Jamaica keeps trotting but Radar gives a big sigh and walks. It's a fast walk but even so!
I ran for years and gave up because of a) the smoking finally taking its toll and b) the pain in my hips. So far so good and I'm so chuffed. I love the way running makes me feel and I want that fitness again. Now that I don't smoke (will be 3 years in May) I feel that I've earned the right to those running induced endorphins.
More consistent with the meditation attempts. After how many years? I should be an 'experienced meditator'. Ha. Still a flibbertygibbett but had a tiny experience which had me googling scary meditation (nothing really, a flush of energy through my body which was hard to contain).
There's another reason for this get fit regime. It's Richard. Things are good health wise. He's eating well, taking the Parkinson's medication, walking, and as mentioned, doing the Tibetan 5 Rites 4 or 5 times a week. But his mind isn't as it should be. Sometimes it's scary. We had to buy a television as the old one crapped itself. Took measurements for the cabinet so that the new tv would fit. He saw that televisions are measured diagonally so that a 32" is a diagonal measurement across the screen. He panicked, certain that our cabinet measurements, width and height, wouldn't work. He forgot how to put batteries in the remote, well not forgot but put them in wrong, something he never would have done before. I had to draw a diagram in the dirt yesterday to show him which yard gates would be open and which closed to let Balthazar out overnight but keep the other two in. He's been yarding and unyarding the horses for 20 years. He forgets names and places and it scares him. He is more loving than ever and although I know he loves me, part of it I think is needing reassurance. It must be frightening to know that things are not as they were. I can't save him from it but I can be there for him. At the same time, sometimes it is a little claustrophobic and the space allowed by yoga and walking is necessary for my peace of mind.
But it's all good. We are still blessed. Healthy and loved and loving, the animals good save for the untimely loss of Tony to an intruding brown tree snake (found the hold, bandicoot made and sealed it). So can't complain - except that we have no house buyers!
Haven't written in ages - computer dramas of dire proportions (lost most everything). Still not 100%. Have been far more disciplined after getting sloppy, gluttonous and feeling the effects of less energy, less self esteem. Only put on a couple of kilos but always felt bloated. I have the willpower to quit smoking but have trouble controlling portion size. No problem in eating good, nay excellent food, just eat too much of it. Or did. Not too many slips now and the result is little short of amazing. No, not in suddenly being a size 6 but in how I feel. Much more energy. Think when one is bloated it's because food is lounging around in the gut taking energy for digestion that could go into living. Not advocating anorexia just common sense. My enthusiasm for everything sometimes goes awry and since I've learned to cook (still can't believe that I love to cook after a lifetime of believing it a most vile activity) I love what I create. And eat it too!
Still. Some other factors. Much more consistent with yoga. More like 7 days a week rather than 5. Went to Woodford to visit Gabi and attended a couple of yoga classes. Learned and practiced the 5 Tibetan Rites (http://www.lifeevents.org/5-tibetans-energy-rejuvenation-exercises.htm) at one of the classes and have incorporated them into my practice, more to encourage Richard who is also doing them, then because I need to add on another 10 minutes into a practice that already takes an hour. There are, however, two of the exercises, No. 2 and 4, which illustrate how weak I am in those areas.
The other thing is running. Thanks to yoga my nearly 60 year old joints can cope with the concussion without aching so much they keep me awake at night. Have attempted to take up running half a dozen (or more) times in the past 20 years and have always been defeated by the pain. There is still pain (I'm so unfit!) but it's a good pain which will lessen with time. Somewhat embarrassing however. I've got the two whippets, Jamaica and Radar, with me while I *run*. When I'm *running* up a steep hill, Jamaica keeps trotting but Radar gives a big sigh and walks. It's a fast walk but even so!
I ran for years and gave up because of a) the smoking finally taking its toll and b) the pain in my hips. So far so good and I'm so chuffed. I love the way running makes me feel and I want that fitness again. Now that I don't smoke (will be 3 years in May) I feel that I've earned the right to those running induced endorphins.
More consistent with the meditation attempts. After how many years? I should be an 'experienced meditator'. Ha. Still a flibbertygibbett but had a tiny experience which had me googling scary meditation (nothing really, a flush of energy through my body which was hard to contain).
There's another reason for this get fit regime. It's Richard. Things are good health wise. He's eating well, taking the Parkinson's medication, walking, and as mentioned, doing the Tibetan 5 Rites 4 or 5 times a week. But his mind isn't as it should be. Sometimes it's scary. We had to buy a television as the old one crapped itself. Took measurements for the cabinet so that the new tv would fit. He saw that televisions are measured diagonally so that a 32" is a diagonal measurement across the screen. He panicked, certain that our cabinet measurements, width and height, wouldn't work. He forgot how to put batteries in the remote, well not forgot but put them in wrong, something he never would have done before. I had to draw a diagram in the dirt yesterday to show him which yard gates would be open and which closed to let Balthazar out overnight but keep the other two in. He's been yarding and unyarding the horses for 20 years. He forgets names and places and it scares him. He is more loving than ever and although I know he loves me, part of it I think is needing reassurance. It must be frightening to know that things are not as they were. I can't save him from it but I can be there for him. At the same time, sometimes it is a little claustrophobic and the space allowed by yoga and walking is necessary for my peace of mind.
But it's all good. We are still blessed. Healthy and loved and loving, the animals good save for the untimely loss of Tony to an intruding brown tree snake (found the hold, bandicoot made and sealed it). So can't complain - except that we have no house buyers!
Friday, October 31, 2014
What is Good and Evil
Watching storms appear and disappear on the radar. Driest October on record. Hottest too. When will we wake up and do something serious about climate change?
Don't know how people cope with stress. I'm retired, living the dream, our bills are paid, my husband loves me, I enjoy perfect health yet there is anxiety. Sometimes, when I'm walking the dogs, I feel if I could just walk fast enough, I'd outrun it. I'd run except I pay in aches and pains and sleepless nights. So I walk; faster and faster and faster, like I'm trying to break the sound barrier, or disappear into a wormhole to arrive in another place, another dimension. Fantastical yes, but it feels like that. Outstriding stress.
Then I take a series of deep breaths, get centered, accept that I can't save everything, that pain and suffering and death are as much a part of life as joy and peace and birth.
It's still the great unanswered conundrum that I've never read an acceptable answer to. Pain and suffering and death. If we have the concept of goodness and joy and happiness and it seems to be bred into us to seek it, to celebrate it when we find it, and to castigate ourselves when we are the cause of the loss of it to another being, then why is the world so monstrous?
I love praying mantis'. When I find one of the inch long brown ones in the house I carry it outside so the cats won't find it. But that mantis will catch a bug and eat it alive, starting at the head. Do we accept and celebrate the cruel as well as the kind? Is it all, in the end, one and the same? Do we make a choice, coming down on the side of the Fred Wests, ISIS jihadists and Gacys, finding our happiness, our valid happiness there? Do we not see the big picture and that's why we get mired in morals and ethics and depression?
It's not theoretical science to say we are just a collection of oscillating waves and fragments of space that disappear as soon as an attempt is made to quantify them. So if it's all a dream, do I just embrace the dream, mine and everyone else's as having equal value? Is there really no good or evil except that I have an opinion of it?
Can't accept that. Almost a physical sensation of revulsion.
So guess I must accept the stress of knowing how much pain and suffering and death there is in the world. And, selfishly, try not to think of it too much. To keep on taking those deep centering breaths and paint pretty pictures.
Don't know how people cope with stress. I'm retired, living the dream, our bills are paid, my husband loves me, I enjoy perfect health yet there is anxiety. Sometimes, when I'm walking the dogs, I feel if I could just walk fast enough, I'd outrun it. I'd run except I pay in aches and pains and sleepless nights. So I walk; faster and faster and faster, like I'm trying to break the sound barrier, or disappear into a wormhole to arrive in another place, another dimension. Fantastical yes, but it feels like that. Outstriding stress.
Then I take a series of deep breaths, get centered, accept that I can't save everything, that pain and suffering and death are as much a part of life as joy and peace and birth.
It's still the great unanswered conundrum that I've never read an acceptable answer to. Pain and suffering and death. If we have the concept of goodness and joy and happiness and it seems to be bred into us to seek it, to celebrate it when we find it, and to castigate ourselves when we are the cause of the loss of it to another being, then why is the world so monstrous?
I love praying mantis'. When I find one of the inch long brown ones in the house I carry it outside so the cats won't find it. But that mantis will catch a bug and eat it alive, starting at the head. Do we accept and celebrate the cruel as well as the kind? Is it all, in the end, one and the same? Do we make a choice, coming down on the side of the Fred Wests, ISIS jihadists and Gacys, finding our happiness, our valid happiness there? Do we not see the big picture and that's why we get mired in morals and ethics and depression?
It's not theoretical science to say we are just a collection of oscillating waves and fragments of space that disappear as soon as an attempt is made to quantify them. So if it's all a dream, do I just embrace the dream, mine and everyone else's as having equal value? Is there really no good or evil except that I have an opinion of it?
Can't accept that. Almost a physical sensation of revulsion.
So guess I must accept the stress of knowing how much pain and suffering and death there is in the world. And, selfishly, try not to think of it too much. To keep on taking those deep centering breaths and paint pretty pictures.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Non Smoking Zone
Sometimes it just hits me. How insanely fortunate I am. Food, shelter, love, companionship, satisfying pursuits, sanity, health, (just noticed I put food first. Typical). There's a dull patina of guilt associated with the above list. What did I ever do to deserve them? Must come from a past life as I've certainly not led an unselfish, unsullied life this time around. Nevertheless, there they are. Blessing beyond measure.
Since quitting smoking 2 1/2 years ago, even my breath has been the source of a healthy dose of gratitude. When I think of it, breathing, I have to take a deep chest full with unbearably gratifying breath. How good is that? I could be dead (no breath), hooked up to a respirator or suffering from asthma or emphysema or some such thing where breathing is an ongoing fight. Instead, despite over 40 years of smoking, I've been given a second chance and boy, don't I know it! When I am mindful (read - when I am here and not lost in some storytelling popcorn eating haze of daydreaming) I gulp big lungfuls of air just for sheer delight. It's so delicious. Perhaps people who have never abused themselves with cigarettes can't understand but when you smoke your lungs lose elasticity. You can't take a deep breath. Impossible. You inhale so far and it's as though you've hit a wall. Here and no further so there is no satisfying stretch, like stretching cramped too-long-sitting-muscles. It is quite awful. I used to almost get there by opening my mouth and trying to stretch using chest muscles in a poor and ultimately frustrating facsimile. Now I don't have to. Sure, there's a long way to go. Forty years of smoking damage isn't undone in two but the difference even now is profound.
And I feel so sorry for the people I know who smoke. Can't help them, can't even say anything because I know what it's like when you smoke. You're addicted and mentally turn off anything that damages the fragile reasons you've made to give yourself permission to smoke. I did it so well, so thoroughly for so long. Nothing anyone could have said would have made me change my mind. So they smoke and they cough and they smell and they have to budget for their smokes as it's unbelievably expensive now and I am sorry.
I am free and oh, isn't that breath SWEET?
Since quitting smoking 2 1/2 years ago, even my breath has been the source of a healthy dose of gratitude. When I think of it, breathing, I have to take a deep chest full with unbearably gratifying breath. How good is that? I could be dead (no breath), hooked up to a respirator or suffering from asthma or emphysema or some such thing where breathing is an ongoing fight. Instead, despite over 40 years of smoking, I've been given a second chance and boy, don't I know it! When I am mindful (read - when I am here and not lost in some storytelling popcorn eating haze of daydreaming) I gulp big lungfuls of air just for sheer delight. It's so delicious. Perhaps people who have never abused themselves with cigarettes can't understand but when you smoke your lungs lose elasticity. You can't take a deep breath. Impossible. You inhale so far and it's as though you've hit a wall. Here and no further so there is no satisfying stretch, like stretching cramped too-long-sitting-muscles. It is quite awful. I used to almost get there by opening my mouth and trying to stretch using chest muscles in a poor and ultimately frustrating facsimile. Now I don't have to. Sure, there's a long way to go. Forty years of smoking damage isn't undone in two but the difference even now is profound.
And I feel so sorry for the people I know who smoke. Can't help them, can't even say anything because I know what it's like when you smoke. You're addicted and mentally turn off anything that damages the fragile reasons you've made to give yourself permission to smoke. I did it so well, so thoroughly for so long. Nothing anyone could have said would have made me change my mind. So they smoke and they cough and they smell and they have to budget for their smokes as it's unbelievably expensive now and I am sorry.
I am free and oh, isn't that breath SWEET?
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
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.
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.
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