(One) Cent Postage

If I were a poised vessel that held a small number of coloured marbles, then I'd have to say that about one month ago I finally tipped over (or was I laid gently on my side?) and those coloured marbles were finally freed and on they continue to roll, following easy and strong and interesting paths.

If this virtual space were a vessel sat upon my kitchen bench, it would be a large, chipped earthernware bowl in which I have, over time, placed a variety of ingredients in all number of combinations; savoury, sweet. Successful, weird. The use-by dates of these ingredients surprise me. 2006? Four years. One hundred posts. And 'posts' is a poignant word in this context; an unexpectedly personal context, for these entries are like letters, or notes really, posted more to oneself than anyone else in the end.

Allemande in the living room

I was thinking about slow dancing last night, and how, in the past, as an observer and sometime participant, it never made sense to me. The moving cuddle. A bit awkward. But then I met someone and we would slow dance in our living room and with that, the moving cuddle then made all the sense in the world. So it occurred to me how rare it is: to find someone with whom you make slow dancing make sense.

Turning Corners

Other signs of a new direction:

sliver's of a heart filling happiness - thinking acupuncture needles - tiny insertion points - larger dispersions of energy - sitting side by side on a slab of old wood, drinking tea, sun pressing our faces - my cat sipping water from the old tuna can - the animals lounging on the freshly mown grass - whisking home tended eggs into light and fragrant cake - being slipped two free organic bananas - clouds tossing and turning on the heat of a closer sun - from what I can tell, these tiny insertion points of happiness suggest a greater willingness to be happy. By which I mean, or I understand, happyness to be an alert contentment.

And I think the really significant moments of such a place are when you laugh alone, when you roll your eyes, alone. When you are in a gestural dialogue with your alone self. Enjoying your own company. Which is interesting because it is a very different alone space to the hours long, days long, aloneness of hermiting. I think one can become so retreated in such a space that you are not even in your own company.

(And of turning corners, does that actually suggest treading in circles?)

Stepping onto the Mat

A few days ago I crossed the water, returning to a city that, when I think of it, I cup my hands as if I were holding a moth or a butterfly. I don't want to damage those dusty wings as I transport it from the house to the garden.

I was born in that city yet never lived in it until last year. And whilst there, for nearly nine months, I think some little parts of me died and some other parts seeded.

This trip had quiet intentions. The outward expression was a three day yoga workshop. Some thoughts on yoga: how private and individual and bizarre one's relationship is to yoga practice. How my own practice of this moving meditation is an undulating passage. I now understand it as a creative practice that will frequently shift over my lifetime like cello practice, writing practice and walking my dog practice. Like all of those, it will dip and snare and run amok and yet, regardless of absence, will always be present. For, what I learn and re-learn, is that it doesn't matter. More often than not, persisting with doing what you will with some kind of intention, when you can and will and desire, causes something to happen. More often than not, the something is intangible. And yet, with enough frequency to keep you interested, whilst you're walking from one room to the next, from a glass of water to the shower, rolling up your mat, wondering whether to eat bread with peanut butter and banana or a lone apple, your brain slips along a smooth patch of thought - you reflect. Something is different. You thought your practice-head was all full of clutter and weird ordinary thoughts and yet, now that you have finished, and you are off the mat, you realise, shit, I was actually in whilst on the mat, more than I ever knew.

At the moment I am thinking of sitting meditation as a step into the core of one's mind, whilst yoga is the stepping back into one's body, head and brain included.

So, there I stepped, back onto the mat, back into my body, my brain shut up for awhile, and amongst other things, I ate salted soya beans and drank green tea on Smith Street, peeled prawns with my pal Scott, drank unfolding tea with Richard in Little Collins, and sat alone and happy in busy restaurant on a Friday night, reading whilst I stuffed my face with brown rice and tamari.

Two Tears Tip

I had an effortless swimming/flying dream this morning and then woke with an incredibly sore spine which I am pressing against a column heater. I decided to meditate in this position and curiously, in the middle of the meditation, one of the ridges of the heater located a block in the middle of the pain. When I massaged the muscle against this ridge, kind of exploring the sensation, I was startled by a kind of gaseous ball of emotion coming out of the muscle. Two tears tipped out.

Sabbath

Further transference. I have returned, in part, to an aspect of my childhood. Back then, a regular drive for our family was two hours on the highway to the capital. We would spend the weekend visiting family and friends. Visit about a hundred galleries. We often stayed with a particular couple. Friends of my parents forever.

Memories, mostly food and scent: B&H's smoked inside the house. Massive jars full of roasted cashews. She is Sri Lankan. Curries. Rice with cashews and sultanas and spices. A large bowl brimming with nuts and a nutcracker. Hazelnuts. Brazil nuts. Almonds. Walnuts. My nut-love suddenly explained.

So, twenty years later I have returned. I am staying with her again and am startled to find these icons of memory remain, although these days, she sits on her tiny back porch amongst the potted herbs to smoke her B&H in the sun. The door open so she can continue our conversations. The smoke drifts in. The nuts. A pantry with armageddon-preparation quantities of food. She has an elaborate collection of chocolate. She is also a diabetic. And conversation. Strange overlaps of experience. She advises. Philosophises. Observes.

The sabbatical continues. And I am so grateful for where it is taking me.

Flying and Landing

Something a bit momentous happened to me whilst I was dismantling my parent's garden. It crept up on me how bizarre it actually was; I was initially more interested in the emotional/psychological metaphors inherent in gardening but anyway. The old mirror bush project. I had a certain grip on the bush/tree and was pulling on it. It had been partly dismembered and I was hoping that a good tug would pop it over the threshold. That was the idea. Instead, comedy and parrallell universe transference. The twiggery I held broke and because I had my whole body weight hanging off this twiggery and there was a bit of momentum going on, I did not land flat on my back. This would have meant landing on grass. No. Rather, I did a combination of running and falling backwards and there was the flash through me: 'fuck - pain - shit'. Just so you know, there were many obstacles behind me. A concrete step, a concrete path. Pot plants. Other weird debris of my parents. So, expecting pain, big pain was fairly logical of me, even at the speed I was travelling. However, next thing I know ('fuck - pain - shit'), I was sitting in a canvas director's chair. Which sounds as if I slipped dimensions. And actually, it was probably was something not far off that. I was safely sitting in a canvas director's chair, high as a kite on shock and pissing myself laughing.