hope

beautiful interlude

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It’s extremely beautiful in the garden today.

My life in this country has been fraught with existential friction. I was going to write difficulty and then I thought of the true difficulties of others who are trying to settle in an unknown land and I felt hesitant about attributing the same word to my own feelings of struggle, fear, loss, intimidation, and weariness.

Yet mysteriously, however harsh the feeling of – for me – difficulty has been in any given season, there has been a place of extreme beauty alongside me.

For a while it was the botanical gardens, or the balcony. Now it is this beautiful tiny communal garden where I found myself literally transported while needing a home and where I knew the moment I stepped into it that I would live. Not literally, fortunately – I discovered an apartment nearby – but almost.

Today the woodchips of the smaller paths have been replaced. I am not in the group responsible for paths so it’s as if a path angel has worked overnight. And this in addition to the sheer affectionate indulgence of all my flowers growing for me, flourishing, scenting, and my tiny wild strawberries, spontaneous and delicious, and someone else’s beautiful grey cat, who runs along to greet me and occasionally be stroked as long as I demonstrate no interest whatsoever.

Without these places of beauty, as if gifts from a divine hand, I would never have been able to sustain the adventure of this existence. Yet with this wild unfathomable joy, I am able to reach places I never would have believed, to dig into substance in myself, in the world, to pose stark questions and sometimes insist that they be answered, and to stretch myself fully to the far extent of my capacity and to see what happens when I try it, to elude or conquer intimidation, fear, dread, despair, the giants always set at odds with the expression of a deep and true self.

One day, I hope, this will all have more meaning, but for now, the meaning is that I am doing something true, and when it is very very difficult, I am soaked, drenched in beauty, and become healed and able to try again, to keep going, to give.

progress

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Well, I seem to be making progress although the measurements of that progress are often contested.

How do I measure it?

It’s a certain feeling – strength – that I can see returning to me. The familiar places of physical demand are not so depleting, the balance of the equation has shifted. I’m less emotionally raw, although that may be because I have had a respite from certain circumstances.

But mostly, it’s because I am getting to things that have long been out of reach, either practically or metaphorically or both. Yesterday I started the rereading of a long-written book draft, ready to, eventually, edit the second half and Send It Out once and for all. I’m connecting with people whose requests I have long let drift, taking up the tools of places in myself that have been beyond my grasp due to demands and the sheer limitations of one person’s confinement in the human condition.

There is a giddy euphoria at the return of a recognisable self that often entails overly enthusiastic ambitions and subsequent disappointments. This may indeed recur, as it’s part of personality dynamics which my whole life I have not escaped. But I’m perhaps also a little wiser, taking more time, letting things establish themselves more fully before I gallivant everywhere for the sheer joy of feeling more true.

It’s so particular that this specific space, of writing, and in writing so discovering something, has so much power for me. I am thankful, despite the flimsiness, so it feels, of my reach.

feeding and renewing

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It continues. The discernment of wild forces was strengthening in itself. So too was the realisation that staying in position was the place of hope.

So I stayed while everyone left.

Stayed still. Not rushing hither and thither. Stayed in the small circumference of the garden, the seaside, the station and the park. Dwelling myself into home, to wholeness, to hope and to trust.

I did ordinary things. Tending the flowers, the laundry, the thoughts and the imagination.

It seemed like nothing. But the seeming was not true.

The staying still revealed the rush of everything; long days at work, long calls listening to friends, trains, planes, fretful self-displacements searching for places to hide, be found, regroup, distract.

The more the rush appeared, the more the stillness showed its value.

I’m still not there yet, not there, a somewhere that some part of me knows I am going towards but cannot speed up, or even really know where it is, just that it is. There is a somewhere and part of me knows how to get there.

The rest of me must follow, blind.

constellation

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While I have been fretting about the presence or absence of the innocent and ancient self, other things have been going on, which I somehow did not connect.

It’s been a time of furious difficulty. And in this difficulty I’ve been unusually lost.

I have chosen a life of particular exposure to the wilds of existence, and yet normally I know where I am. I have an inner stability borne of experience and love.

The last months have been like a battering. Certainly not comparable to other terrible events elsewhere, but for a self that wants to make creative work, crushing.

After every wham of difficulty I have tried to regroup, only to (sometimes) glimpse a moment of arrival before, wham, some other violence to my body, self, relationships, possessions, work…

After months of bravery, suddenly it was too much. I was distressed, tearful, lost. Plus the endless noise disturbance of the sound injury fills every moment of potential rest.

No wonder the delicate self was not keen on showing up.

Today I reflected on various ‘solutions’ that had been proffered in the last week: Get new friends, take a flight, look online, try America.

All of them, I could feel, were like trying to tack a threadbare patch over a crater and hope for the best.

A deeper part of me thanked the offerers and explained, yes, this seems like a sensible option, but it is not enough. I cannot thrash around trying to fix things.

This morning I realised what was really going on. I was being intimidated out of staying in position, by who knows what force, but the one we often concede to.

The recognition summoned a deeper ally: No.

No I will not back down.

No I will not make compromises.

No I will not fritter away truth.

No I will not choose my path based on fear, mockery and pressure.

Nothing much has changed in the circumstances.

But in the inner situation, the clarity is like a protecting force.

Maybe she will come out now that she knows she will not be betrayed.

self again

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Somehow here the self exists. What is it about writing to total strangers that allows her to skip about a bit, joyfully?

How did I find myself hemmed in with responsibilities that crush what I find so very valuable and precious?

The responsibilities are precious too.

Why am I particularly unable to feel my deepest feelings unless I have acres of time and space, and beauty? Other people seem to dwell in their feelings all the time.

The particular excavation it takes me to unearth a truly honest felt-response despite the glare of inconvenience, disapproval and doubt is so arduous.

I’ve got summer panic; the sensation that before I have had a chance to find her again I will find myself boxed up and transported to Other Things. That we will endure another forced separation. That I will spend my life in the journey between returning to retrieve her and the rushing back to fulfil my commitments. That I will be forever swimming down to the depths to discover the deep secrets only to find, on glimpsing a treasure, that it’s time to be back at the surface. That the treasures of the depths will continually elude us, because of the clamour in which our lives so continuously take place.