Quitting

Have just lit a cigarette in a post where I'm going to give myself a pep talk about giving them up. Have you ever seen someone nicely turned out, beautifully groomed, stylish clothes and wearing tennis shoes (like Cybil Shepherd on the Oscar red carpet once - good for her!) well, that's my life. Cigarettes strike such a false note, especially as yoga is such a big part of it now. I mean, pranayama is all about The Breath. And I have smoker's cough. Who am I kidding? I read of these luscious yoga retreats that I'll never go on because I couldn't go without a fag or if I did sneak a smoke, everyone would know.

And then there's Richard. If I quit, he will, without question. He tried a few months ago but I puffed away around him. What chance did he have? We both would be so much better off, feel much better, all those obvious things, if I just quit.

I'm scared of two things, that horrible sickness of last time when I vomited like a conveyer belt of toxins. Not to get too icky about it but usually when you vomit, it's called a heave for good reason. Not pleasant, pretty disgusting, but that time it was scary. My mouth was open and it just kept on coming without surcease. But I did survive. The second thing is derived from vanity. I don't want to put on weight. I'm down to 118, perhaps less as I haven't weighed myself in a month or more. I haven't been below 120 since 1987 (from a broken heart and fear, not the ideal way to lose weight).

A de-tox juice/vegetable fast might come in handy when I quit (have 2 or 3 packs in the pantry still). Get it all over with at once - of course that means giving up coffee and wine too, perhaps too much to ask for at one time. Giving up dairy products (except for the two tablespoons of powdered milk in the homemade bread) was easy. Thought I'd miss cheese but I don't. Yes, I have chocolate too but think I can give that a miss as well.

If I become a non-smoker I'll get my breath back. I know they say it takes ten years for it to return to normal but the increased lung capacity is noticed almost immediately. My mouth will taste better. I won't reek of cigarettes and won't feel self-conscious around non-smokers, which are legion. The house will smell better. The house will sell better if it doesn't have that nicotine residue. I will have more energy, especially initially when activity substitutes for smoking, but long term as well.

But most of all I will be true to myself. I try and kid myself about my smoking. It's lying. I know it's lying and that's the worst part. Being unkind to me. Lying to me. Doing damage to me, consciously, intentionally, continuously. Why be so mean to myself?

W

Richard's gone to town. All morning to myself. Should be cleaning the bird verandah, which I will, just later. Doesn't work expand in the time available to do it or some such thing? If it does it will take me all morning and part of the afternoon to do the chores. But that's okay. Feels good to be alone and know my time is my own without interruption. Don't get me wrong. I love Richard and do not wish to live my life without him. At the same time, I believe spending time completely alone is necessary. I breathe more deeply.

I have a pastel painting going that I'm excited about. It's a departure from what I've usually done. It's gone through two metamorphoses already. I'd seen, of half seen, this painting on the wall of a room on a television program. This often happens. I see something or partly see something and it sparks off an idea. In this case I visualized a big big sky, a desert sky with pale blue shading down to a pale sand colour. In the back ground were two somewhat horizontal black slashes of colour, like beetling eyebrows and in the foreground, right near the edge of the paper, was a black sphere. But that painting didn't eventuate. The colour wasn't right to begin with and along the way the impact of that mental image vanished. Then I remembered an intriguing water stain that is on the back of an old horse head sketch. Copied it loosely onto the paper. The big black circle from the previous painting didn't fit so I wiped it out. Now I have this sinuous dreamy painting in greens, yellows and blue with some pink. It's kind of abstract but in it is a woman's anatomically incorrect body and a large face in 3/4 view. Not clearly delineated but they are there. Without intending to I've drawn inspiration from Birgit Erfurt's Karma Tarot. Perhaps in the curvy shapes and shadows but definitely there. Still, I like it. It's a far cry from the meticulously (for me) drawn pencil sketches where I lose myself in the details. This is much looser.

A few years ago I went to the Toowoomba Gallery and saw this painting, totally abstract, that was filled with light. It was almost spiritual this light. I kept returning to have aother look. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the artist. That painting has stayed with me. This last work has the merest touch of that painting. A glow, a sense of things unseen. Admittedly, it's been fun to work with colour again. Even Natalia is cooperating in not playing with the pastel sticks.

The success of the application to quarry the mountain made for a couple of crappy days. It was as though someone had died. I grieved at the same time as I was angry. Rather than pretend I wasn't feeling those things, as useless as they were, I just let them through. I was mad and sad and that was that. Luckily the feelings passed and I'm my usual cheerful self again. In fact, in the past two days there's been this subtle but pervasive feeling of joy. Perhaps because it is finally over. When living under a shadow for such a long time, one forgets what real sunlight feels like. There's a long hard road ahead. We have to make the house saleable which means painting four rooms and, once the house is ready, cleaning the outside of dust and cobwebs and then keeping it that way. I ceased to worry about the thousands of black house spiders which make their homes under the eaves. There are so many and they are so tenacious that almost as soon as they are removed they return. Richard has to clean out the shed, a mammoth, nay Herculean task. He's been collecting 'stuff' for twenty years in case something might come in handy. There is some concreting to do and some gardening but otherwise just maintenance stuff. I'll have to clean the feed and tack rooms and keep them dust and web free as well.

Then comes the balancing act of putting the house on the market at the same time as we start looking for a place of our own. I've searched for real estate from Tenterfield to Nambour, from Byron Bay to Nanango. I am confident we'll find the right place - then comes the move. Thirteen birds plus two others that must be caught to take with us. Felicity won't survive without supplementary feeding and as Suki is her mate he needs to come too. Moving aviaries and birds will be the most logistically difficult - but not impossible. But first things first and the first thing is to clean the ruddy bird verandah!

quarry

Richard has gone to the first day of the court hearing of Lockyer Quarries and Lockyer Valley Council. The judge came out yesterday to view the site. Shanahan was also present. There were other people in the Land Rover but don't know who they were. So now the judge has seen the site and the hearing starts in earnest. I have tried to keep a serene attitude. What will be will be. We've done what we can and now it is out of our hands (see Tarot card reading in previous post). Still, I know that I am having trouble letting it go. I haven't given up surrounding that hill with protective light, that's a given, but letting my imagination run away with me, that's harder to control. If we lose, then we lose and it begins a new phase in our life. But in a way, it's not even about us anymore. It's about protecting one small pocked of remnant vegetation from the bulldozers. It's not a big pocket in the scale of things but it is rare, dry vine scrub, and getting rarer. We've got to stop chipping away at what wildness is left. I hope the judge sees that. The only bone of contention is the noise. Everyone else mediated their little tails off so that there is nothing left to contest.

I am bewildered because in the first sentence of the appeal it says that Lockyer Quarry wants to quarry the mountain and the Council is refusing permission - and then they go straight to mediation. Once council's solicitors set (and said) "conditions", Game Over. No mediation should ever have been entered into, it should've been no quarry period. But that's done and dusted and it only depresses me to write the above.


Later same day. We lost.

What is it with numbers? Especially number 11 and 22, the numbers I've always thought of as *my* magical numbers. There was even a time many years ago when I thought of changing my name so that it would add up to 11 or 22. I didn't. That I thought seriously of doing so and went through all the permutations and variations to find something similar speaks of how seriously I took numerology. I still take note of dates equalling 11 or 22, license plates and clocks. It's the clocks that speak the most. Almost every day and every night I wake up at a time that equals 11 or 22. This morning, 5:33, last night when I had to get up to go to the loo, 12:08. I realise that numbers may appear to appear more regularly because I take note of them. I would notice a 9:49 more than I would a 9:50 but that can't be said for those times when I open my eyes and the first thing seen is an eleven or twenty-two. It's still synchronicity playing a part in my life.

I miss those days when Everything Spoke to Me. I studied Wicca and Tarot and Numerology and Crystals and read read read, everything from Joseph Campbell to Aleister Crowley. I was firmly convinced of the efficacy of magic and sometimes saw through the Veil of Maya. Now I am older and pragmatic and have lowered the veil of habit and illusion between what appears to be reality and reality itself. Of course I smoked alot of dope back then, not that smoking dope demeans the truth of what I knew. On the contrary I suspect an altered state can serve as an introduction to an different but not necessarily false, reality. We put too much store in facts; in what we can count, see, touch, hear, smell or taste. Although seeing and counting what we've seen appear to have become our primary senses. At any rate, smoking marijuana showed me that there was more to what was there then I had known. Of course I fell into the trap of smoking dope just to smoke dope. Like so many others. But mind altering substances have been used for aeons to explore behind the Veil. The difference is they were used as an adjunct to religious practices while western society just wants to get stoned.

So now I'm sober (save for red wine), don't read Tarot or Crowley any more. I haven't given the books away, I occasionally get the Tarot deck out to admire the art work (Karma Tarot by Birgit Boline Erfurt), the crystals catch the light in the kitchen window and the clocks remind me that there's more life than can be found in any philosophy. If I could read Tarot for myself I probably would. I could read for other people and was sometimes uncannily accurate (predicting a pregnancy and illness for two friends, the first had no intention or desire to get pregnant but did anyway, the second had no idea anything was wrong with her). So that was simultaneously satisfying and a little scary. But read for myself? I couldn't do it. I read but nothing I read made any sense or came true.

While I'm writing this, rather than do a reading for myself I am trying one of those free online Tarot spots. This is what I got: The Lovers for how I feel about myself now. At least I know I'm ultimately on my side. Death, for what I most want at the moment (cataclysmic change). The Tower represents my fears, my world falling apart (the quarry and having to move), Temperance for what I've got going for me, a "way of handling difficult circumstances with calm confidence." The Hanged man for what is going against me, being hung up while others (the lawyers and the Courts) decide my future, and for my personal card, The Fool...nothing more need be said.

Sulawesi Breath

I often listen to a CD of birdsong from Sulawesi while doing yoga. On the last track there is a recording of a bird singing near dusk or night as there is a frog chorus in the background. I suppose you couldn't really call is singing, more of a calling, in a breathy descending minor key, of two and then three notes. It is the loneliest sound I have ever heard. There is no answer to that yearning hello. Just this waiting for a reply that never comes. The bird finally stops, the frogs chirp on but the silence and the infinity of the night is deafening.

I don't know what kind of bird this is and knowing it's name would not make it any dearer to me. It's all tied in with 'if a sparow or a leaf falls, would God know'? This bird symbolizes, for me at leat, all that we've lost, all that we could lose, if we don't clean up our act. What sound did a Dodo make? A Carolina parakeet. It's wretched that we will never know, that those sounds are lost forever. And this bird sings in the wilderness for a mate that never replies. Is that how it feels to know yourself to be finally and forever alone?

While I was meditating today and concentrating on my breath I could hear Tony the budgie talking to himself on the verandah (I love you, The Regurgitator, pretty pretty PRETTY bird). In the poinciana outside this room Felicity was lamenting her (to my mind at least) on off again relationship with Suki. Her calls didn't sound like contact calls but more of a lament. Suki came home yesterday but is gone again today. As I hovered in the indescribably state which may be a percursor to mditating it occurred to me that the breath which was the focus of my concentration and which was starting to define that oceanic feeling I sometimes get while meditating, was the very same breath Tony and Felicity were using. We were united by breath. In and out, no matter the rate, the air flows from one through another.

Listening to Words of Peace the other day, Prem Rawat spoke of how this planet, this Earth, is as far as anybody knows the only place with life on it for millions and billions of miles. He spoke of the miracle of meeting another who is alive and breathing This Day, and how we should greet each other with that shared miracle in mind. No one from 150 years ago is alive. No one today will be alive 150 years hence (barring medical miracles). And this Earth? A teeming, violent, buzzing, symphonic, fragile, resilient, chaotic yet ultimately precious place is the only place like it anywhere. This tiny tiny little light, this soft soft little sound in an infinity of empty space yet we live as though there are billions of Earths just a footstep away.

Have finished a coloured pencil drawing inspired by looking up through the poinciana tree at a hazy sun filtered through green leaves and grey branches. I was lying on the chaise lounge beside the greenies aviary, looked up and was bewitched. Of course I didn't/couldn't capture what I saw. I didn't try and draw the leaves. My hazy sun and blue sky were poor representations yet despite my inability to record what was there, the drawing does have a certain something and it pleases me to look at it. I am a weekend artist, a tyro, an amateur, a doodler and have no illusions (although grandiose yet silly dreams) about my talent - yet I bet I feel the same frustration (and the same satisfaction) that an O'Keefe or Vermeer or Blake felt when they viewed their efforts. It is a funny mixture. Complete duds I throw away or paint over. It hurts to look at them, light years from what I was trying to say. But others, like the one previously described, have something in them despite their obvious faults.

We had an artist's day 10 days ago. I had nothing to work on as the tree/sky drawing was finished (it was the project for the previous week). I doodled a fat face and a fat body and now I've got a fat Buddha type figure with his fat harem trousered legs and fat sandled feet sitting on air with an equally fat cat sitting beside him. But he has lovely long fingered hands draped over his fat knees. Have no idea what he should sit on. Have less idea of what to do with the background. I look at the drawing, which I like so far, and it seems as though it would fit as an illustration in a children's book. So not art but an illustration? Maxfield Parrish was an illustrator as was Norman Rockwell. I'd say their art far surpasses much of what is labeled art today. But that's an old argument that I won't go into again. I suppose it's because this fellow looks like a character in some story. Perhaps I need to make up a story about him so that I'll know what to put in the background. I haven't touched it in a couple of days because I'm stuck.

Hot today. Supposed to be 36C. Saps the energy. I've got a fan sitting on a chair otherwise I couldn't be in here. The room is small and the computer generates heat (which makes this room nice in winter). I feel sorry for the horses. Balthazar sweats more than any horse I've ever met. In the afternoon his red coat is streaked with white salt crystals down the back, rump and along the neck. Despite this and being sun bleached, his coat is irridescent in places so I know the Natural Horse diet agrees with him. Pagan rarely sweats. He's also on the diet (Natural Horse Care by Pat Coleby) and it agrees with him. He's dappled everywhere and has stopped rubbing his tail. But he is lame. Seedy toe. Again. Dakota was very lame but he's on the mend. Treating both of them with salt water and hydrogen peroxide syringed into the holes in their hooves. Both lame on the offside front.

The Great Romance between Felicity and Suki is over. If I believed in any great love affair, it was theirs. I never saw so devoted a couple. Alas, Suki started flirting with a shy and slim little girl, even bringing her to meet Felicity. Felicity wasn't impressed. One day I watched as the new couple flew off leaving Felicity behind. She waited a few minutes then took off after them. She hadn't a hope of catching them if they didn't want to be caught. She's not that strong a flier. He stayed away for a few days then came back by himself. He was hungry and knew that food would be out in the afternoon. She didn't attack him or try and drive him away but she wasn't happy to see him either. Or maybe she was and was just too heartbroken to show it. She's eating well but I think it would be naive to assume her feelings aren't hurt. Scaly breasted lorikeets are flock birds. They are social and very tactile in their relationships. They play hard and love hard. I used to watch, smiling, as Suki and Felicity pressed into one another like they were trying to become one large green bird. Impatient and doting in turns. Both heads in the coop cup slurping up mix and one would feel the other was taking too much space so would give a nip. The next moment one would be regurgitating food for the other - the highest token of love and affection. In the bird world. I wouldn't like it if Richard regurgitated for me no matter how much he said it proved his undying love!

Since the breakup Felicity is not tolerated on the greenie aviary. Byron and Augusta attack her feet through the mesh. I feed her on Marvin's aviary now. Big change there too. Terry, a juvenile galah, is in care for coccidiosis and anorexia. Noticed him hanging around by himself, saw his poopy bottom and managed to herd him into the galah aviary where we caught him. Had him in a cocky cage but he wasn't happy. Eating well, yes, but making such a mess and turning himself inside out climbing up and around everything. He even got his wing caught through the bars with his contortions. This morning I moved him into Marvin's aviary and put Marvin in the cocky cage. Marvin isn't impressed but he'll cope. It's only temporary. I've tried to make it worth his while by getting him out more often. Even brought him inside for awhile which he enjoyed.

Walking the whippets yesterday and saw the death scene of the tadpoles in the ditch down the road. The ditch suckers the local frogs into laying their eggs. It looks like it would be permanent. The water is somewhat deep, it covers 20 feet or so, it's protected from direct sunlight. Why wouldn't it make a good nursery for little frogs? But it's an illusion. Unless it keeps raining the water dries up. The water lasts long enough for tadpoles to grow but not to turn into froglets. We crested the hill and saw half a dozen magpies and crows standing at the ditch. They flew off as we approached but by the muddy water and the remaining tadpoles crowded into small pockets of water it was obvious they were being picked off by the birds. A kindness really. They would die quickly rather than slowly and painfully. I rescued all those tadpoles from the swale in the peach paddock and took them to the dam. Whether they survived or became food for predators I don't know. Nature is a tough mother.

Moment of Vanity

Have just written in Balthazar's blog about his first friendly overture. After we'd finished our clicker training session, when I was hanging out with him, he in the paddock, me on the other side of the gate. It was about intention. When we 'train' I am in training or teacher mode. When we hang out we're...hanging out, no pressure on him to perform, even if the performance earns him multiple carrot treats. The friendliness was a revelation. And a *treat* for me. Marked by his head hanging over my back and his neck pressed into my body. Yes, I want more of that. Yes, I want to be friends. Yes, I have to change my intention. Yes, I have to change my attitude. It all comes back to what we put out we get back. If I want a friendly horse who seeks out my company than I must be a friendly person who seeks out his. I am friendly to him. I like being with him but it's similar in a way to meditation. There is a filter or a gauze curtain of my own making between the object (meditating or Balthazar) and me, one of my own construction. I'm not sure how to explain it. When I'm meditating or attempting to and I approach that state where I am nearly there (my *there* being only focussed and present and deeply silent) I often get in my own way. It's the monkey mind chatter, yes, but it's also something more, a reticence and holding back despite my desire to be in that place. My will is to be in that meditative space yet something in me also constructs this cheesecloth barrier that I maintain beautifully and effortlessly *in spite of myself*. So it is with Balthazar although I think that barrier might be easier to dissipate as I only have to really *see* him as Balthazar, the lovely chestnut thoroughbred person, to feel that friendly affection that I have for him in all interactions that don't involve clicker training.

Vanity, thy name is mine. Went to a friend's house yesterday for an art day. Two friends, two bird lovers and bird carers who love art and creating as much as I do. It was a great day. We all worked on projects and chatted. Had to use the loo and saw a set of bathroom scales. Got on and squinted. 53kg. 116 pounds. I haven't been below 120 since weighing 47kg while depressed after a bad breakup (actually the worst breakup, the one and only time I'd been beaten by a man but that's another story and one I don't want to revisit). That was in 1987. Once I recovered I quickly regained weight. This time I am not depressed. Quite the opposite. It is solely due to yoga and being practically vegan, specifically giving up dairy (except that found in Fair Trade chocolate and the two tablespoons of milk powder I put into the homemade bread). I eat like a horse. I eat huge portions of salad or rice or whatever's going. Yet, without effort I continue to lose weight. I'm 56 and gravity has taken its toll yet I weigh 116 pounds! I know, I know. Vain and silly and so against the precepts of Buddhism or any -ism yet I am so proud. I feel good. I feel strong! I have muscles where I've never had muscles even when I was lifting weights and working out at the gym. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from proslytizing about the benefits of yoga. If I'd only known 30 years ago! But I know now and timing is everything. Perhaps I wouldn't have appreciated it 30 years ago. I didn't appreciate it 10 or 15 years ago when I attended a class in town with a couple of friends. I am so grateful to Gabi and Pete for inviting me to a class. And that teacher, who has since moved, for being a good teacher. I have a different teacher now but she's brilliant and although I do over an hour of yoga 5 or 6 days a week I still come home sore and wrung out after her class.

I've been thinking about blogging for a few days now. Things I wanted to write about - not grandiose things but things like how I like Natalia, our little bladder kitten who is a kitten no longer, a little chubby. Obesity in pets is verboten. I know that from all the surgeries I've witnessed on overweight animals. Yet, because she is short and stocky with stumpy legs and a cobby build, she looks so endearing and somehow *right* being a little overweight. I call her The Scamp. She has the personality of a scamp. She is at once endearing and maddening. She'll pick on the furniture while watching me in full knowledge that she'll get a sharp NO and a stamp of the foot. She does it for attention as much as to sharpen her claws. When I take the food in the afternoon to the verandah birds, she races from the chair across the mantel, jumps to the top of the TV cabinet to leer, pupils dilated, at Tony who jumps onto the top seed dish.

But that's enough for today. The big thing was Balthazar and my Moment of Vanity.