I don't know if blogging helps but it's still night and I'm awake and I don't know how to fill the hours till dawn. I am still reeling, still everyday in tears, still not decided if I want to live still. Maybe that seems melodramatic, overblown, crazy, but there's a significant part of me that just wants to die too. It's not a suicidal feeling, I've been there, just a not wanting to live. I have to keep pointing my face towards my children and my grandchildren to remind myself why I am here and that I have people here to whom my heart belongs. But Jon has taken a significant part with him into the land of the dead.
You might ask why I loved Jon so much, why when he was surely and often emotionally abusive. There is a reason. There is a reason why. When I was 18 I was seriously sexually violated by my then-boyfriend, the act left me damaged both physically and emotionally. Jon was the only man, the only person, to ever respond, without a pause, with kindness and care when I told him very early in our knowing each other, just weeks in. It was at that point that I gave him my heart. Always when he did me wrong I would remember that he was that action. He lit a candle in a darkness that had kept me trapped for over twenty years.
Jon and I held each other from 2007-2013. We broke up in 2012, but continued to see each other and sleep with each other until the summer of 2013 just after I graduated. When he first spoke to me of moving to Gozo he said it would be a new start for us but it wasn't to be. Whether he meant it when he said it or if it was a lie to soften the blow that he was leaving me I'll never know. He left. I was devastated and poured myself into making a go of being a working artist (what does that mean). I do not know if I have done that. I love what I do but his absence made, and makes, everything a little less, makes all my wins feel empty.
When he left we mailed a bit, me more than him, he was gone. I gather he was happy at first but started to drink again during the time we lost touch. He talked a bit about his drinking when we were together. Drinkers drink.
In 2015 we got back in touch. I was working on the piece Bigod's Way 2 which was a celebration of our early days, our two year honeymoon period. And simultaneously I was acting as a volunteer arts facilitator with a recovery group in Thetford. One day while I was in Thetford I was broken into and burgled. Oddly he was one of the first people I texted, and then later emailed. I didn't expect a response. But he got back to me with the words "I care, I read your email and I care" .. to understand the meaning of those words you need to understand that Jon was not an effusive man, he was not prone to showing his feelings, so a declaration of care was pretty momentous.
From there we began a two year email correspondence. We'd chit chat and pass songs and quotes and news-stories to each other, and books and birds and beaches, pretty much every day. Sometimes we would have a spat and lay off for a week or so but always we'd come back, growling, but later declaring our affection. I was pretty sure that people would think I shouldn't be emailing but I followed my heart and I'm glad I did. Those two years are some balm to the pain I am feeling now.
But what now. He is buried already. Nearly two weeks dead* and I am one week on from being told of his death.
I am alone with my memories. I did not know his family and our relationship was essentially him and I so I've no-one to say "do you remember?" to verify our communion, or to celebrate his life with. Maybe that is how it is. That deep and heavy, dark and painful loneliness that is the counterbalance to all the joy that life brings. No one understands any one else, people make an attempt to a greater or lesser extent but in the end we are not that other and can not know that other. Stripped to the bone now as I am by Jon's death. I am more aware than ever of my flawed being, my unimportance and irrelevance and the unimportance and irrelevance of all our lives in the grand scheme of things.
Apologies for speaking to my page. I long for witness in my sadness as the witness to my once-upon-a-time joy is dead.
Correction *nearly 3 weeks dead
Sunday, 29 October 2017
Friday, 27 October 2017
Wednesday, 25 October 2017
So. Jon. Am I allowed to grieve a man who left me ? Am I allowed to feel as wretched as I do ? What is allowance ? Jon was that one love in my life, I have loved before but what we had was extraordinary to me. I'd not known love like that before. I wouldn't be who I am today if I had not met him, had not stayed when the going got tough, I couldn't leave him when things got bad I loved him too much. Loving him didn't mean I didn't get angry with him. Didn't try to fight back when he was unkind. It didn't mean that I was a saint. He got things wrong and I got things wrong.
His death has made me realise what a waste of time all that anger was, both his and mine, how anger becomes a defence mechanism, how anger protects the heart but also walls it in. I loved him so much. That love is flooding back to me now. I'm remembering the way we played. How we made love, I'm not just talking sex, I'm talking about all the everyday things couples do together, the way you learn to read people that you want to be close to so that very tiny gestures become expressions of love.
I only found out yesterday evening when he died and how. Those concrete facts help in a way. The solidity of information is ballast when I am feeling far away, out of body, and not really sure what who where I am. He died on October 10th* and was found two days later I do not know who by. I dreamed of him on the morning of the 11th, woke at 3ish from a dream about him. We were in his kitchen in his home in Bungay, a home that is mapped out in my heart, a home I thought of as home too although it was not mine to call home. We were baking a cake together. He loved cake. And laughing and flirting. And the room was filled with golden light. It feels good that we were together, albeit only in a dream, that last night.
I'm blogging because I need to note down all the feelings I am going through. I am messy. Everyday is filled with tears. Sometimes my legs buckle and I have to stand still and let myself cry until the moment passes. Sometimes I want to curl into a ball. I want to hold him and tell him I love him.
Today I have been in my garden. We shared each others gardens. My garden was bigger than his, more untidy and he'd do manly jobs that I didn't have the strength or stamina to begin let alone finish. He cut a fine figure in the garden, handsome and rugged. He glowed. And my garden for a little while took on a semblance of order which is long gone now though he created a bone structure, built beds and my beloved compost heaps, laid out the gravelled courtyard space by my back door, and dug holes for ponds. It feels like a lifetime ago now. It is a lifetime ago now.
His garden was pretty in a different way. When I met him he had just moved in. We watched the tadpoles in his pond turn into tiny frogs, the solitary bees nest in the bee house. And the flowers he grew were amazing. Sunflowers and white cosmos and fennel. And all sorts of hardy perennials I'd never seen or heard of before.
We shared plants. He took forget-me-nots and jasmine from mine and gave me crocosmia and a purple plant that I had to ask him the name of every year and now I will just have to call "Jon's bee plant". These are some of my precious memories. Some of the light that is filling me, compensating for the dreadful darkness that is knowing he never will show up at my door and put his arms around me. That we will never go for another walk. I will never hold his hand. Or snuggle up on the sofa to watch his beloved rugby with him.
When we used to go walking we'd play going on a bear hunt .. say "we're going on a bear hunt, we're going to catch a big one, we're not scared, uh oh grass/mud/some-other-natural-obstacle" it goes on to "we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we've got to go through it" .. so it feels now, this awful grief, one day at a time, or more like moment by moment. I am in strange country now and I feel lost .. like I am floating .. I'm not sure what is real any more .. I know I am alive but I do not really feel alive. Is that normal ? I have never had grief like this before. Please if you read this blog feel free to comment if you have more experience with death than me.
*postscript Jan 20th 2018 .. just before christmas 2017, about two months after being told of Jon's death, his family finally gave me the address of the cemetery in which he is buried with a picture of his tombstone .. marked Jonathan Michael Tyndale Hardy (his married name) .. the tombstone gave his day of death as the 11th October 2017 .. i feel it's important to add this postscript so that factual references, days, dates etc are as accurate as i have been told or know. It means that when i had the above mentioned dream he was still alive as i was dreaming.
His death has made me realise what a waste of time all that anger was, both his and mine, how anger becomes a defence mechanism, how anger protects the heart but also walls it in. I loved him so much. That love is flooding back to me now. I'm remembering the way we played. How we made love, I'm not just talking sex, I'm talking about all the everyday things couples do together, the way you learn to read people that you want to be close to so that very tiny gestures become expressions of love.
I only found out yesterday evening when he died and how. Those concrete facts help in a way. The solidity of information is ballast when I am feeling far away, out of body, and not really sure what who where I am. He died on October 10th* and was found two days later I do not know who by. I dreamed of him on the morning of the 11th, woke at 3ish from a dream about him. We were in his kitchen in his home in Bungay, a home that is mapped out in my heart, a home I thought of as home too although it was not mine to call home. We were baking a cake together. He loved cake. And laughing and flirting. And the room was filled with golden light. It feels good that we were together, albeit only in a dream, that last night.
I'm blogging because I need to note down all the feelings I am going through. I am messy. Everyday is filled with tears. Sometimes my legs buckle and I have to stand still and let myself cry until the moment passes. Sometimes I want to curl into a ball. I want to hold him and tell him I love him.
Today I have been in my garden. We shared each others gardens. My garden was bigger than his, more untidy and he'd do manly jobs that I didn't have the strength or stamina to begin let alone finish. He cut a fine figure in the garden, handsome and rugged. He glowed. And my garden for a little while took on a semblance of order which is long gone now though he created a bone structure, built beds and my beloved compost heaps, laid out the gravelled courtyard space by my back door, and dug holes for ponds. It feels like a lifetime ago now. It is a lifetime ago now.
His garden was pretty in a different way. When I met him he had just moved in. We watched the tadpoles in his pond turn into tiny frogs, the solitary bees nest in the bee house. And the flowers he grew were amazing. Sunflowers and white cosmos and fennel. And all sorts of hardy perennials I'd never seen or heard of before.
We shared plants. He took forget-me-nots and jasmine from mine and gave me crocosmia and a purple plant that I had to ask him the name of every year and now I will just have to call "Jon's bee plant". These are some of my precious memories. Some of the light that is filling me, compensating for the dreadful darkness that is knowing he never will show up at my door and put his arms around me. That we will never go for another walk. I will never hold his hand. Or snuggle up on the sofa to watch his beloved rugby with him.
When we used to go walking we'd play going on a bear hunt .. say "we're going on a bear hunt, we're going to catch a big one, we're not scared, uh oh grass/mud/some-other-natural-obstacle" it goes on to "we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we've got to go through it" .. so it feels now, this awful grief, one day at a time, or more like moment by moment. I am in strange country now and I feel lost .. like I am floating .. I'm not sure what is real any more .. I know I am alive but I do not really feel alive. Is that normal ? I have never had grief like this before. Please if you read this blog feel free to comment if you have more experience with death than me.
*postscript Jan 20th 2018 .. just before christmas 2017, about two months after being told of Jon's death, his family finally gave me the address of the cemetery in which he is buried with a picture of his tombstone .. marked Jonathan Michael Tyndale Hardy (his married name) .. the tombstone gave his day of death as the 11th October 2017 .. i feel it's important to add this postscript so that factual references, days, dates etc are as accurate as i have been told or know. It means that when i had the above mentioned dream he was still alive as i was dreaming.
Tuesday, 24 October 2017
This post is dedicated to Jon .. who died some time a week or so back .. I arrived home from Dublin on Sunday evening to an email informing me of his death. He wasn't perfect, in fact he could be a bastard, but I loved him and I love him still.
RIP Jonny my love .. thank you for all that you taught me .. thank you for being the you that you were, the you that pushed me up against my edges and forced me to meet the parts of me that were sleeping or disabled, the you that made me feel like I was worthy of love .. love always darling .. fly happy
RIP Jonny my love .. thank you for all that you taught me .. thank you for being the you that you were, the you that pushed me up against my edges and forced me to meet the parts of me that were sleeping or disabled, the you that made me feel like I was worthy of love .. love always darling .. fly happy
Tuesday, 17 October 2017
Ok, I'm going to have another crack at identity. I am still in whirl of thoughts, i feel like I'm caught in a spin of wind and leaves but here goes because sometimes putting words to page helps me to make sense of the clatter and rattle, the whisper and whirl.
Identity has been a summer long point of contemplative focus and one of the things I've been thinking about is identity and social media and the internet. The internet is a bizarre phenomenon, being half way through a century my history spans back to a time when it was unimagined in everyday minds. My children and more so my grandchildren surely could not conceive of a life without it.
And what has the internet become ? It arrived as a blank space in my life about fifteen/twenty years ago. And probably common to many middle-aged users I have left a heavy trail over those years. I didn't know when I chose my email address that I'd still be using it twenty years on, or any of the user names I have on various social media platforms. Now when I'm asked for my email address i apologise because it feels pretentious and silly but it's the name I gave myself then and I don't care enough to change it.
Way back before facebook became a thing people used friends re-united and my space to link to their yesterdays and to display themselves to a fairly exclusive world. I don't even know if those two platforms/ethereal places exist anymore, I imagine my space might be quite interesting for fans of retro and vintage. I never used either, in fact I scorned them, like round robin emails they turned me off. Odd really because facebook is a bit like all those things rolled into one, perhaps that's the secret of it's success.
Because facebook, beast that it is, is huge. Being half a hundred or perhaps too dreamy I can't keep pace with the whole thing. I think I got lost at drop-box and haven't found my way to Instagram, linked-in is awful and Tumblr conjures up images that maybe I don't want to see, Pinterest too but Pinterest is very browsable. I am active on facebook, am a bit hooked on facebook if I'm honest, which means that intermittentantly I have to withdraw just to come back to my self. Here is where I connect to identity and some of the thinking I've been doing of late, and over the years.
I think I have touched on how our identities are often given to us by others from pre-birth onwards - lord, who knows, maybe it goes back even further, I may pick that up later - and is perpetuated by those who surround us and later who we surround ourselves by.
But this brand new blank space that opened up way back at the end of the last century, offered each one of us a chance to recreate our being and our sense of self. I know, for me, writing my blog has given me a voice, has allowed me to expose elements of myself that in conversation might easily create a very uneasy atmosphere, conflict, disapproval, disavowel. But in a blog, which is my notebook, my journal, to hell with it, lets lay social niceties to one side be as open and bare as possible, lets lay by the fear of being socially ostracised and say this, this is me, this is my story, my story, refute it if you will, but I claim this as my country, my land.
Is identity a country ? Is that where nationalism stems from ? When I speak of country I speak of country as spiritual matter more than physical terrain but maybe those states of being are one thing that each of us relates to according to our temperament.
How does that connect to identity ? Hmm.
On facebook my identity shifts, I am friends with some 300 people in theory, and whilst not denigrating any of those people or friendships the reality is that most of those people I don't know or barely know, or knew years ago. Facebook is a very, very peculiar place. It's a superstore, a Walmart, fluorescent lighting and musak, it has everything and nothing. I use it to scrapbook, often posting just to myself so it acts like a catalogue of ideas. But my face to the outside varies and has changed over time. Sometimes I am shout-y, fed up with politics, begging, or berating, the world to engage, please engage, use less plastic, vote Labour, sign this. Sometimes I post personal stuff, family pictures, or photos of places I've been to, or I might make public some of the things that have come to me from the internet, music, images, articles, and often I'll share my blogs to my page so that friends or those interested will know I've been scribbling or posted a picture of something. All those aspects of me are me and yet something about my facebook identity feels unwholesome. The unwhole-iness is perhaps the centre of the conundrum. How can I be whole in that sphere which is so very unphysical and in many ways unyielding and enclosed ? The air on facebook is often stale, breathed and filtered and breathed again and again and again.
I think I mention this because it's hard to pick up nuance and intention on facebook, it's designed for pedestrian encounters, the surface self, when it goes deeper darker aspects of our selves can emerge unchallenged by the restraints of face to face, or day to day, contact. If I know you as a person rather than a string of mostly quite carefully edited images and ideas I will know you differently to if I spend time with you, drink tea, eat cake, hoot with laughter, maybe dance, maybe cry, walk, talk, practice yoga ... Of my three hundred and whatever friends, some I know from other times and I love to see pictures of them happy and smiling, sharing the delights of their lives and I am sad when they post their sorrows, but lots I have never met, I have linked to them through a mutual interests, art or words or maybe politics, we share a world but our concrete realities are separate. But then there are my specials (I'm guessing we all have those) the people we really cherish, our best-best friends, our families, our comforters.
Oh what does that have to do with identity ? Recently I went to a short workshop with Hayley Matthews who is currently working on a dance piece called Home-Solo to be performed at the end of November https://norwichartscentre.co.uk/events/home-solo/?spektrix_bounce=true. This is a point within a work in progress that she began four years ago. I have watching with interest the evolution of her ideas and was really happy to be able to learn more through participating in this workshop which took the form of a guided conversation, physical and spoken. Sharing ideas about home in a sensitive held environment with thoughtful, interesting and interested others was a real gift. I mention this workshop because, amongst other things thought, it got me thinking about how much identity is wrapped up in the place we call home. The discussion that happened in the workshop was open ended, there was no right thought or wrong thought, no definite because in each of us, perhaps, resides our home and that which makes us feel at home, and no other can really prescribe that home to another, it is a belonging that belongs to the belonger.
Oh, belonging, that is whole new blog so I will rest here with that. But surely belonging is wrapped up in identity and comfort and integrity within one's being or identity.
I have diverged in this blog from my initial intent it is often and commonly the way but maybe I will find my way back to an intersecting pathway and be able pick up threads I have put down but still care about as I continue my journey. My search is still active.
Identity has been a summer long point of contemplative focus and one of the things I've been thinking about is identity and social media and the internet. The internet is a bizarre phenomenon, being half way through a century my history spans back to a time when it was unimagined in everyday minds. My children and more so my grandchildren surely could not conceive of a life without it.
And what has the internet become ? It arrived as a blank space in my life about fifteen/twenty years ago. And probably common to many middle-aged users I have left a heavy trail over those years. I didn't know when I chose my email address that I'd still be using it twenty years on, or any of the user names I have on various social media platforms. Now when I'm asked for my email address i apologise because it feels pretentious and silly but it's the name I gave myself then and I don't care enough to change it.
Way back before facebook became a thing people used friends re-united and my space to link to their yesterdays and to display themselves to a fairly exclusive world. I don't even know if those two platforms/ethereal places exist anymore, I imagine my space might be quite interesting for fans of retro and vintage. I never used either, in fact I scorned them, like round robin emails they turned me off. Odd really because facebook is a bit like all those things rolled into one, perhaps that's the secret of it's success.
Because facebook, beast that it is, is huge. Being half a hundred or perhaps too dreamy I can't keep pace with the whole thing. I think I got lost at drop-box and haven't found my way to Instagram, linked-in is awful and Tumblr conjures up images that maybe I don't want to see, Pinterest too but Pinterest is very browsable. I am active on facebook, am a bit hooked on facebook if I'm honest, which means that intermittentantly I have to withdraw just to come back to my self. Here is where I connect to identity and some of the thinking I've been doing of late, and over the years.
I think I have touched on how our identities are often given to us by others from pre-birth onwards - lord, who knows, maybe it goes back even further, I may pick that up later - and is perpetuated by those who surround us and later who we surround ourselves by.
But this brand new blank space that opened up way back at the end of the last century, offered each one of us a chance to recreate our being and our sense of self. I know, for me, writing my blog has given me a voice, has allowed me to expose elements of myself that in conversation might easily create a very uneasy atmosphere, conflict, disapproval, disavowel. But in a blog, which is my notebook, my journal, to hell with it, lets lay social niceties to one side be as open and bare as possible, lets lay by the fear of being socially ostracised and say this, this is me, this is my story, my story, refute it if you will, but I claim this as my country, my land.
Is identity a country ? Is that where nationalism stems from ? When I speak of country I speak of country as spiritual matter more than physical terrain but maybe those states of being are one thing that each of us relates to according to our temperament.
How does that connect to identity ? Hmm.
On facebook my identity shifts, I am friends with some 300 people in theory, and whilst not denigrating any of those people or friendships the reality is that most of those people I don't know or barely know, or knew years ago. Facebook is a very, very peculiar place. It's a superstore, a Walmart, fluorescent lighting and musak, it has everything and nothing. I use it to scrapbook, often posting just to myself so it acts like a catalogue of ideas. But my face to the outside varies and has changed over time. Sometimes I am shout-y, fed up with politics, begging, or berating, the world to engage, please engage, use less plastic, vote Labour, sign this. Sometimes I post personal stuff, family pictures, or photos of places I've been to, or I might make public some of the things that have come to me from the internet, music, images, articles, and often I'll share my blogs to my page so that friends or those interested will know I've been scribbling or posted a picture of something. All those aspects of me are me and yet something about my facebook identity feels unwholesome. The unwhole-iness is perhaps the centre of the conundrum. How can I be whole in that sphere which is so very unphysical and in many ways unyielding and enclosed ? The air on facebook is often stale, breathed and filtered and breathed again and again and again.
I think I mention this because it's hard to pick up nuance and intention on facebook, it's designed for pedestrian encounters, the surface self, when it goes deeper darker aspects of our selves can emerge unchallenged by the restraints of face to face, or day to day, contact. If I know you as a person rather than a string of mostly quite carefully edited images and ideas I will know you differently to if I spend time with you, drink tea, eat cake, hoot with laughter, maybe dance, maybe cry, walk, talk, practice yoga ... Of my three hundred and whatever friends, some I know from other times and I love to see pictures of them happy and smiling, sharing the delights of their lives and I am sad when they post their sorrows, but lots I have never met, I have linked to them through a mutual interests, art or words or maybe politics, we share a world but our concrete realities are separate. But then there are my specials (I'm guessing we all have those) the people we really cherish, our best-best friends, our families, our comforters.
Oh what does that have to do with identity ? Recently I went to a short workshop with Hayley Matthews who is currently working on a dance piece called Home-Solo to be performed at the end of November https://norwichartscentre.co.uk/events/home-solo/?spektrix_bounce=true. This is a point within a work in progress that she began four years ago. I have watching with interest the evolution of her ideas and was really happy to be able to learn more through participating in this workshop which took the form of a guided conversation, physical and spoken. Sharing ideas about home in a sensitive held environment with thoughtful, interesting and interested others was a real gift. I mention this workshop because, amongst other things thought, it got me thinking about how much identity is wrapped up in the place we call home. The discussion that happened in the workshop was open ended, there was no right thought or wrong thought, no definite because in each of us, perhaps, resides our home and that which makes us feel at home, and no other can really prescribe that home to another, it is a belonging that belongs to the belonger.
Oh, belonging, that is whole new blog so I will rest here with that. But surely belonging is wrapped up in identity and comfort and integrity within one's being or identity.
I have diverged in this blog from my initial intent it is often and commonly the way but maybe I will find my way back to an intersecting pathway and be able pick up threads I have put down but still care about as I continue my journey. My search is still active.
Wednesday, 4 October 2017
Sunday, 1 October 2017
It's Autumn. It's still warm and the sun still shines tho' night begins to close in earlier each day today it's 6.45, not dark but darkening, and in the morning there is damp in the air and at about 6.45 it is also half light. I know this because I've just re-started the morning yoga class that I love to go to and I leave my house at 6.20ish and it wasn't quite day when the class began at 6.45 this week.
I feel like I am assimilating the summer and even the stuff that went on before summer tho' that feels like a long time ago. It's been busy and challenging, in good ways mainly. Lots of walking, lots of weather, and lots of thinking.
I am still thinking about identity which I blogged about a month or so back, but the question that keeps popping into my mind at the moment is "if" .. is that a question ? Not really, but it comes to me like a question and I think it is suggesting new directions in my life. Possibilities. But the nature of those possibilities is unclear there is only "if", it goes no further.
Maybe this is a good thing. I am tired after the summer. I'm aware that I seem to have much lower stamina than most of my friends and family, I am quickly exhausted and have to pace myself. I burn out quickly. I wish I was stronger but I'm not so I have to go with what I've got. So although I was hoping to teach a few workshops over September, October, November, the reality is that whilst I have begun drawing them up I am nowhere close to being prepared and my home needs a little tic before I feel comfortable inviting strangers into it as a place to learn.
My garden is a crazy mess too so I have begun the roughly bi-annual turn of my compost heaps which is a homely, grounding thing to do, a nice way to settle in to the end of the year. I have three bins, the green bin, the halfway bin, and the scrumptious last bin. The end product compost is sweet smelling and, after sifting, soft and crumbly. This is going on the beds in my front garden at the moment. Then there is the clinker, small bits of half-rotted wood mostly, this is going around the base of a small yew tree, and some ferns and hydrangeas. And lastly there are twigs that are still hard and unbreakable these I will use for kindling when they are dry.
This sifting and sorting game connects me to the earth and the season is earth-y too, fruit is now ripe or over-ripe and mushrooms are popping up everywhere so the air smells of juice and fungus. I think letting myself pause and drop down, mentally, physically and emotionally may be just what I need to do before choosing an if, a way, to go with.
My if definitely feels like a crossroads. I've come a long way from my past, have built up a length of past that supersedes that which went before and it is unclear to me which way I want to go. So pausing and holding still may be my best option at the moment. Mostly I tend to have too many ideas bouncing around, I do now, but I have a deep longing for rest and play at the moment. Or maybe what I mean is that my focus is rest, and that my hope is that in resting I will re-find my play, re-find my capacity to yield, to soften, to release, to allow, to trust. And that as I do that my choice of path will become clearer or else I will have built up enough strength physically, mentally, emotionally, to make a decision and choose one way and see what comes of making that choice.
It is possible to double back on a wrong decision but the reality is that often one is so far down the road that it isn't worth doubling back and one way just leads to another and another, and even if you found your way back to the starting point you'd be a changed person anyway. And the starting point too might have shifted.
So damn me I may have just written another blog about nothing much. Reader if you have come across me by accident or do not love or care for me, please excuse me.
I feel like I am assimilating the summer and even the stuff that went on before summer tho' that feels like a long time ago. It's been busy and challenging, in good ways mainly. Lots of walking, lots of weather, and lots of thinking.
I am still thinking about identity which I blogged about a month or so back, but the question that keeps popping into my mind at the moment is "if" .. is that a question ? Not really, but it comes to me like a question and I think it is suggesting new directions in my life. Possibilities. But the nature of those possibilities is unclear there is only "if", it goes no further.
Maybe this is a good thing. I am tired after the summer. I'm aware that I seem to have much lower stamina than most of my friends and family, I am quickly exhausted and have to pace myself. I burn out quickly. I wish I was stronger but I'm not so I have to go with what I've got. So although I was hoping to teach a few workshops over September, October, November, the reality is that whilst I have begun drawing them up I am nowhere close to being prepared and my home needs a little tic before I feel comfortable inviting strangers into it as a place to learn.
My garden is a crazy mess too so I have begun the roughly bi-annual turn of my compost heaps which is a homely, grounding thing to do, a nice way to settle in to the end of the year. I have three bins, the green bin, the halfway bin, and the scrumptious last bin. The end product compost is sweet smelling and, after sifting, soft and crumbly. This is going on the beds in my front garden at the moment. Then there is the clinker, small bits of half-rotted wood mostly, this is going around the base of a small yew tree, and some ferns and hydrangeas. And lastly there are twigs that are still hard and unbreakable these I will use for kindling when they are dry.
This sifting and sorting game connects me to the earth and the season is earth-y too, fruit is now ripe or over-ripe and mushrooms are popping up everywhere so the air smells of juice and fungus. I think letting myself pause and drop down, mentally, physically and emotionally may be just what I need to do before choosing an if, a way, to go with.
My if definitely feels like a crossroads. I've come a long way from my past, have built up a length of past that supersedes that which went before and it is unclear to me which way I want to go. So pausing and holding still may be my best option at the moment. Mostly I tend to have too many ideas bouncing around, I do now, but I have a deep longing for rest and play at the moment. Or maybe what I mean is that my focus is rest, and that my hope is that in resting I will re-find my play, re-find my capacity to yield, to soften, to release, to allow, to trust. And that as I do that my choice of path will become clearer or else I will have built up enough strength physically, mentally, emotionally, to make a decision and choose one way and see what comes of making that choice.
It is possible to double back on a wrong decision but the reality is that often one is so far down the road that it isn't worth doubling back and one way just leads to another and another, and even if you found your way back to the starting point you'd be a changed person anyway. And the starting point too might have shifted.
So damn me I may have just written another blog about nothing much. Reader if you have come across me by accident or do not love or care for me, please excuse me.
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