lessons from incapacity

So, I’ve been incapacitated for the last little while.  I fell of a ladder while at work and damaged the connective tissue in my knee. I’m fairly sure this was a message from the powers that be.  At that time in my life I was feeling very inspired, and excited, about projects I was imagining, things I could see myself doing, at some point in the dawning year. I guess I was so busy looking forward that I was not paying attention to what was happening for me right here, right now, and being the wilful and obstinate ox that I am, it took a fall from a ladder to stop me and deliver me into the present moment.

I’ve discovered I’m not very good with incapacity.  I get frustrated at my own incapability and anxious for resolution so I can get a move on with all the things I can see need doing.

I have, however, enjoyed the opportunity to minister to myself – something which I often run out of time for in a busy life.  At this time, it is perfectly okay for me to assert my needs, and seek to fulfil my own needs – it is okay for me to be self absorbed.

A friend came over with a huge tub of turmeric – probably a kilo of it.  I have been making a paste to apply to my knee joint before binding with a firm bandage.  We had fun painting up my youngest with it too, burnishing her golden as a traditional Indian bride! Tonight I added cayenne and cinnamon to the poultice and massaged and gently manipulated my knee and leg through the bandage.  This was an exercise in self belief, actually, as the poultice grew hotter and hotter against my skin and I wondered if I was burning myself. But I felt so good on those muscles which have been clenched in pain and restricted movement for four days now.  I did take the poultice off after about half an hour, but I think it was beneficial and I didn’t end up burning my skin.

I’m also taking turmeric internally, in a mix of anti inflammatory herbs and drinking litres of nettle tea.  Nettle is known for its affinity for the joints, and specifically for drawing inflammation out of the joints.  Additionally, it is a strengthening tonic and nutrient dense – just what I need at this time of recovery and recuperation.

I’m rounding out my therapeutic regime with fish oils and homeopathics – an internal remedy, as well as topical arnica once or twice per day.

My kids have really risen to the occasion. My eldest has been away, but the littlies have really come through for me. My middle girl has cooked dinner two nights in a row, and done a pretty good job with it, too. She has uncomplainingly (mostly) picked up, tidied and cleared whenever asked.

Her younger sister has done her jobs obligingly and even taken on more to help me and her sister out. She asked me to remind her, if I thought she was not taking responsibility!

And the two of them together have pottered about the house, trapped here along with me, creating various masterpieces, inventing, drawing, building cubbies and just generally entertaining themselves, together and alongside one another, with a minimum of fuss and fights.

So, despite my frustration at the thwarting of my immediate plans for physical activity and my current inability to work and move forward in so many areas in my life, I guess it’s true to say that I have enjoyed this time at home with my kids.

I have again been reminded about the goodness of my loved ones, who have variously brought me groceries, kidnapped me and taken me for coffee, driven me to the airport, sat with me at the hospital, dressed my injury and myriad more acts of kindness and generosity.

And that, my friends, is the glimmer of a gemstone, hiding amongst the dross……

fell off a ladder

let this suffice for yesterday's missive.

fell off a ladder at work. damaged my knee which is now a tightly bound and largely immobile, throbbing ball of pain.  i am hobbling about the place with crutches. no driving.....

an enforced rest perhaps.....

so, i have made a commitment to myself to write something, every day. today i felt so uninspired.....!

let me see....the things which inspired me today:

feeling the breeze under my arms at about 4.30pm after feeling sticky all afternoon
cold peppermint tea
martina topley bird

funny that it was such an uninspiring day for me....it started out so promising! i chose to not go out last night (new years eve) and stayed home alone instead. i don't think i've done that since i was a teenager.  it felt like a good thing to do. i had options, and friends at various places to meet up with, but as the day stretched into the evening, i just didn't feel like leaving my nest. i didn't want to go out and drink. i didn't want to encounter awkward conversation. i didn't want drama or angst or love interests.

what i wanted was ease and contentment, which is just what i had found in the last couple of days at home, working around my place. i had found inspiration in my own patch and i liked that feeling and didn't want to put it away, even for a night.  i curled up in my bed at about 10.30pm, tired and content, and slept soundly until i woke for work this morning.

as i drove into town i mused on what my friends were up to. most of them, i knew, would be nursing hangovers, or waking up in their car somewhere, or facing a mountain of bottles and dirty dishes.  it felt so simple to have chosen otherwise, and the earth was not shattering....just another day dawning with a list of aims and aspirations to work through....

so i worked all day today in town, in my shop. custom was slow, and the crowd today were not very engaging or engaged with what i was doing - with one or two exceptions. there were no heart warming chats or connections.  i got through most of my list, served a lot of tea, and generated a bit of custom for my businesses.

i was looking forward to returning to my nest, to potter some more, as i have done this evening.

and so begins another year. the last one seems to have happened in a heartbeat.

i am excited for this year. there is change in the air and i like it. i feel full of ideas and am dreaming of plans, and futures and possibilities. i know there's big stuff coming, i can feel it. but i am not afraid, not at this moment. i feel so full of the possibilities......

i feel so inspired to write...on my way here to commit my musings, i passed a post on the blog of a friend of mine, timed 13 minutes ago - this after months, and months, of her committing nothing to this space about her life....i look forward to going back and reading about what so inspired her today...

in fact, i feel so inspired to write, that i may even be making a resolution...i hesitate to call it a 'new year's resolution', but it does appear to be coming over me at this time of year.  whatever the timing, i feel a resolve coalescing inside of me, a resolve to honour this urge to write...i feel i'm edging toward a commitment to write, every day...something....to somehow commit to the capture in words of something, some moment, of each and every day.

today i have been musing upon the nature of  appearances, a train of thought sparked off in me by a number of recent, disparate, interactions with others around me.

if i'm honest (and what would be the point of being otherwise?) pretty much the whole of my life has been fraught with issues, and learnings about how i look to others. for the most part, i have felt positively ugly, and this has coloured my interactions with those around me, as i have approached these interactions feeling immediately inadequate through the simple fact of my ugliness in a world obsessed with beauty.

my outer ugliness has always, in my mind, shown to the outside world my inner corruption, the essential toxicity of my inner, unseen self.

i guess i always held onto a belief that life would be different if i was just beautiful.

the year i turned 30 was the year in which i, for the first time, became aware of my body as something other than a window into the imperfect morass of my essential being - a vehicle which consistently disappointed me by it's flaws and limitations.

at this stage in my life, i was studying full time at uni 40 minutes from home, working an early morning cleaning job before uni three times a week, and a mid-week cafe shift as well.  at home were my two children, partner, acres and mortgage.

at some point i realised that my life was very cereberal, and i needed to somehow balance that out in the physical.  i attended a local martial arts class run by two young guys who i studied with along the way. that class fizzled out within a matter of months, but by that stage i had developed the ability to find my centre, and hold it strong, throughout my daily life.  i was amazed at my own ability to 'centre' and was the first time i had seen and appreciated a tangible linkage to the body/mind/spirit connection.

i started doing circus training with some good friends and this became valuable time out for me, when my sole focus could be me, and my strengths and weaknesses, my own abilities and limitations, allowing my own aspirations for strength, flexibility and physical control to bubble to the surface for examination, analysis and nourishment.  pretty soon i was reliant on this physical outlet as a regular part of my life.

this sort of training opened me up to kickboxing class with a bunch of mums of young kids, on a friday evening, after which we would all share a drink and a laugh at the pub - our drinking and fighting night we called it.  so this kind of physical commitment really also served a purpose of  building social networks and supports as well.

with notable breaks in routine over the last decade, i have maintained this commitment to my physical being and have always since valued having some physical outlet for my energy, lest i burn it all up in my head. sometimes, i find this outlet in dancing, also and wood chopping and yard work.

so, i have pursued a physical regime as a harmoniser for my mental well being.  i have used physical training as a means to the mental and emotional strength to which i aspire. lessons learnt whilst chopping firewood, moving into a yoga pose, straining for a chin up, whirling like a dervish, or battling lantana, have, for me served a deeper purpose as i strive to understand the strengths and boundaries of my mental and emotional self.

as i have actively pursued embodiment, i have strengthened the connections between myself and those beings around me - my friends and family, my workmates, the trees in my forest, the frangipani in bloom, my community and the broader environment and society beyond.  it is through emobodiment which i understand connectivity, the complexity of the weaving which holds this all together, and each and every one of us at the centre of a vast multi dimensional network, the depth and breadth of which is beyond our understanding.

i have noticed and enjoyed the outward changes occurring within my physical self.  somewhere along the way there i must have become attractive to observers, because people do make comments to me about my physicality.  and when that happens i find myself scoffing, feeling a bit annoyed, because i know that what i look like to you tells you nothing about the important bits of my self.  if i happen to fill out a particular dress or pair of pants nicely, is so beside the point.

what i am valuing about myself in this body is not how it looks, but how it holds me all together and allows me to interact with my space through the medium of my physical senses as well as the psychic ones....i am valuing the unique capacity i have for moving through this world of sights, sounds, smells and caresses, in this physical vehicle of mine. what it looks like to others is ultimately immaterial.....


the fundamental problem at the core of the beauty myth is this. beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.  beauty resides in the heart of the beholder. beauty is a feeling, not a visual which we perceive with our eyes. so while we all strive to achieve the body beautiful and sculpt, wax and groom ourselves for the eyes of others, it is all pointless.  beauty is as beauty does and it is our actions which reveal our inner selves to the world. it is our responses to the people and environment in which we work and play which reveal our worth.

moments of moment

I’m looking for the moments…I’m seeking the space within the space – the space where change happens. I’m searching out the minutiae, examining it and deciding whether to keep it, or remodel it or throw it away entirely.

An example:

Tonight as I washed my face clean of the day,  I began to feel anxious and wasteful at letting the water run whilst I waited for it to warm up. My inner voices chided me for the power consumption from running the pump, and the precious water just running down the drain. I considered putting a plug in for the washing up, but reasoned that I didn’t want to wash up in my dirty face water.

In that small moment of angst I glimpsed an option.  I glimpsed an opportunity to enjoy abundance. It has rained for about  10 out of the last 14 days. Additionally, the rain came each day in the late afternoon, after the spring sunshine had juiced up the batteries and we had an excess of power. So, as so rarely happens, I had plenty of power, plenty of water and plenty of gas (as I had just gotten a full tank).

What better time than now to enjoy abundance?

So I gave myself over to the waste.

I was wanton in that water. I allowed it to sluice deliciously over my hand on its journey to warmth, and run on down that drain taking the crumbs from the sink with it.  As I splashed my face in the hot water, feeling its warmth on my hands and face, I was so grateful.

Later on, I wanted to go outside for a cigarette. I listened for a moment to the chorus of voices in my head demanding to know whether this action would serve my greater good before conceding that no, it would not serve me.  Rather than go anyway, conscious of the fact that I was actively doing myself a disservice, listening to those voices and feeling crap about myself, I figured that maybe, whilst doing so, it was also possible to do something which would serve my greater good.

I walked out into the night, felt the chill of a clear night on my bare skin. I listened for a while to the frogs calling to each other. I began to discern the different frogs, their voices coming from different locations. I started to differentiate the different calls, their frequency and the answering calls from across the creek.

Looking into the sky I noticed the beautiful balance of a clear and high sky studded with stars, and the wisps of cloud streaking across it.  the silhouette of trees and mountain against an inky sky, the first blushes of moonlight in the sky above Blue Knob, and the frogs calling through the crisp and bracing air – what a wonderful antidote to the soul destroying habit of inhaling tobacco…..

Musing, listening, smoking, I watch as the first brushstrokes of the rising moon are painted above the mountain. The light of the still hidden moon is reflected back from the bottom of the clouds sitting in the sky above it, painting them golden, reflective.  As I watch it seems the mountains and trees below get darker in comparison to the lightness which is seeping into the sky, from a focal point somewhere behind the mountain which sits front and centre from my vantage point on my verandah.

It feels as though I am pulling the moon, cajoling it, willing it to rise.  I can’t help the smile playing about my lips as I feel her coming. She’s cheeky when she does arrive, showing herself first as a torchlight or a flare, suddenly illuminating the space between 2 trees at the very top of the ridge. This could just be a house light, or oncoming beams of headlights, but that there is no house, no road up there.

Before my eyes the moon ascends the far side of the mountain and drags herself into the waiting sky before announcing herself – luminescent, glowing, so smugly self assured and so damned perfect.

I smile, and I feel the night smiling back at me.

red wine and heartache

there have been a handful of times in my life where i have been confronted with the fact that i have inflicted unspeakable pain upon someone i love and that i have done so completely unknowingly.....today was one of those times.

i am sitting in the cozy surrounds of my loungeroom, as a fierce wind blows outside - i hear it in the treetops and it brushes my skin through the windows - drinking red wine and running an endless loop in my head, alternating between anger and self justification and just a deep and profound grief.

i'm confronted - again - that sometimes it is all we can do to love from afar.

it pains me that love transmutes into something nasty and putrid and painful.

today marked a fundamental shift in my relationship with my oldest and perhaps dearest friend, and i am grasping onto a hope that she is not lost to me forever. let this just be a bend in the road, not an
irretrievable loss.

but i have to wonder why this is. this has happened to me before - when a dear loved one has angrily cut me loose due to an entrenched feeling of subjugation.  i'm forced to ponder - do i really misuse my power to such a degree as to mortally wound those i hold dear????? what is it in my character, what can i do differently to avoid coming to this place again????

and it makes me feel wary of close relationship. if i am so fundamentally flawed (i mean, it really is a fundamental problem if i can't even see where i am going wrong) then i know i will only ultimately hurt those to whom i feel close, somehow.....in a way i don't quite understand....

god....i'm going round and round in circles on this....

....from the mouths of babes....

discussing feelings with my 7 year old.
talking about anger, sadness, tiredness, frustration - trying to tease out one from the other; attempting to identify what we are actually feeling at any given time.
she's a child of quite startling depth. faced with the theory that we can sit in many different emotions at any given moment, she struggled through genuine tears of grief to tell me that she has a part of her which is very, very sad, and which will always be there, always be a part of her.  'we share that sadness, you and me' she said.

talking about redemption with my 7 year old.
talking about choosing our own identity, working with the idea that we all of us have challenges, a drive to self improvement. identifying times when we each have felt truly happy, and seeing how feeling happy is tied up in also feeling generous, giving, loving, compassionate, empathetic....

together, we are accepting the notion that we can choose our own perception, from moment to moment - that each moment is a gift, to be evaluated and explored, choices made about how we respond, and how our responses will shape the next moment, and the next.

these children of mine truly drive me - sometimes, they drive me to distraction, others they drive me up the wall, often they drive me crazy and a few times even to the very edge of the abyss.....then there are the times where the place they drive me to is exactly the place i need to be, if only i had seen it for myself.

it used to really irk me that i was living a cliche - parenting the inner child whilst parenting my children; seeing in my child's eyes my younger self, crying out for guidance, acceptance, nurturing, unconditional love. i see it now as a symbiosis - as i teach them i learn, as they learn they teach me, we learn together as we teach each other.

and, in this moment, i am grateful. grateful that a bedtime conversation takes me out of my own feelings of tension and resentment, and that through my child's struggles we both learn to be gentle, on ourselves, and on each other.