26 February 2015

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.   [Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth]

There are many sorts of Quiet. I’m making a study of this. It requires a lot of listening to really know The Quiet. I’m remarkably good at this I’ve discovered.

Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.    [Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth]

I’ve wondered at this business, Time, and having Enough of it. I think I’ve learnt there’s always been and always is and always will BE Enough. I canNOT sort it out to adequately explain HOW it works, but I know it does and has and will.

Life is curiously imperfect and BEautimous, y’know?!  It really is.

I love you, Currie

24 February 2015

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.   [Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life]

I feel awkward writing. I feel like someone moved the keys around and it’s always a risk to hit one or another and discover they are NOT what I’d expected.

So, I have been “reading” more. NOT books, but stories told in movies or even television series. My eyes are still wonky from chemo, so this form of “reading” works for me.

I am spending this Time wisely, I think. I am BEing gentle and even a bit indulgent. I am letting myself off the hook of Expectation.

I am recharging my Spirit.

I love you, Currie

23 February 2015

That’s what happens in our hearts. The holes do not disappear, but scar tissue grows and becomes part of who we are. The same takes place in nature. As the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi observed, 'There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.' The most stable structures in nature— like trees or spiderwebs— have angular and curved lines. As our hearts grow larger, and we learn that scar tissue is not so ugly after all, we accommodate what we had thought would be unendurable. And we realize that the wisdom we have gained would not have been possible without the losses we have known, even those that seemed impossible to bear.   [Daniel Gottlieb, The Wisdom We're Born with: Restoring Our Faith in Ourselves]

Just the other day it dawned on me that I’d NOT found my word for 2015. I suppose this is largely due to NOT having looked ahead; my usual reflective Time in December and January were taken up with BEing in each moment caring for Mum.

I don’t think of Time the same way Now. Still, somewhere deeper inside of me I was considering and BEing thoughty.

Resilience came knocking the other day. I recognised it straightaway as my point, my purpose, mayBE even my intent for 2015.

I am listening. Deeply.

I love you, Currie

18 February 2015

It’s odd, isn’t it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it’s a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you’re not alone.   [Kristina McMorris, Letters From Home]

I’ve NOT written in awhile. Yet it seems like no time has passed at all. I’ve sometimes liked that aspect of Life. MayBE I like it even Now, but certainty is a luxury I canNOT afford.

I’m only Now realising how large my mum’s Life really was, how amazing and remarkable a person she was, and how lucky I was to have her, even when she took up all the air in the room, leaving me to scuttle away into a corner, out of sight, BEyond reach.

I’m still reeling and yet amazingly calm and really rather sensible. I am well aware of the state of my own health, making every effort I can to maximise or simply keep it on an even keel.

Writing this may BE overdue. Yet mayBE it’s still too soon. It’s awkward telling people that Mum passed. It’s hard to BE inside the grief process of others, especially people I don’t know well.

I’ve tried to BE Prepared. But I’m falling short.

I love you, Currie

3 February 2015

...the Master and the boy followed each other as if drawn along the wires of some mechanism, until soon it could no longer be discerned which was coming and which going, which following and which leading, the old or the young man. Now it seemed to be the young man who showed honour and obedience to the old man, to authority and dignity; now again it was apparently the old man who was required to follow, serve, worship the figure of youth, of beginning, of mirth. And as he watched this at once senseless and significant dream circle, the dreamer felt alternately identical with the old man and the boy, now revering and now revered, now leading, now obeying; and in the course of these pendulum shifts there came a moment in which he was both, was simultaneously Master and small pupil; or rather he stood above both, was the instigator, conceiver, operator, and onlooker of the cycle, this futile spinning race between age and youth.   [Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game]

A time out of Time, this resembles what’s happened Here, in my little World. And what is happening still. What an honour it is to witness such a bright Light dimming little by slowly.

Life is a Wonder. All by itself. I’m deLIGHTed I know that…

I love you, Currie

1 February 2015

The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.   [Lisa Kleypas, Love in the Afternoon]

Lots of ways to look at this for me. I am in this wild wide open space where I have been left in charge. That’s one that usually makes me smile BEcause I think, wasn’t it just last week when they let me bring Timmy home from the hospital?!

I think I know what to say about it, but then the words dodge and duck and dive away. Listening. BEing Present. This is all I feel capable of Right Now.

“There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.”  [Mary Balogh, Simply Magic]

I’ve had memories from times in my Life I am NOT sure WERE my Life. I’m experiencing something I’ve only ever imagined, and while I canNOT say for sure if it’s pretend, imagination gone wild absolutely fits.

BEing Present I recognise that NOTHING is ever really and truly “lost” BEcause I am making space for it in me.

I love you, Currie