the scent of water

Some things I would quite like. Please.

 

There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those. ~ Anon

My second attempt at writing this post.  It's hard, admitting desires (and even, as Ali and The Coffee Lady point out, finding them in the first place). I feel like I'm in that dream where you're standing in front of a room full of people in just your undies.

Nevertheless. Here is small list of some things I would quite like.

 

1. One full rest day off every week.

2. To attend a photographic workshop at Whitecliffe Art School.

3. A few days on solo retreat at Southern Star Abbey.

 

So, they're not big wishes, and quite do-able with a bit of organisation and fiscal restraint. But they mean something important to me, something I can't quite articulate, something to do with freedom and muses and imagination. Now I sound like stoned hippie.

How about you? What do you wish for? Name one thing in the comments below, as big or as small as you choose, as long as it gives you a frission of excitement/fear when you contemplate actually getting or doing it. I'll put every comment into the draw to win one copy of The Wishing Year (disclosure: Noelle's worldview is very Zen Buddhist and if this is going to bother you, we might want to negotiate another book...).

We'll meet back here this time next year and compare notes. 'Kay? Kay.

Word

...worrying, it seems, is the shadow side of wishing. For it begins not with the vision of something desired but of something feared, something to be repelled. And whereas desire is a powerful form of fuel for actually making something happen, fear is less so. Rather than energizing us, motivating us to take action, it tends to deplete us, to make us feel helpless, overwhelmed, lying there flat on our backs in the darkness. ~ Noelle Oxenhandler, The Wishing Year.

 "Less fear" didn't seem like strong enough talisman to see me through an entire year, though it is at the heart of what I am wishing for. Courage wasn't the right word either, or bravery, or any of those synonyms. It wasn't until I spent a couple of relaxing days re-reading The Wishing Year that I found the word I was looking for:

Desire. A longing, a craving. An expressed wish; a request. Not just a wish, but an expressed wish, an outward request, an admittance to the world at large that, yes, this is a thing I long for and please can you help me find it? I am so afraid of doing this that even sitting here writing these words I am embarrassed, physically uncomfortable, and trying to talk myself out of writing about any of it at all. It's not the desiring I have a problem with. I am, I realise, deeply ashamed to ask.

If you don't ask, you don't get. I don't think there is an entire universe out there waiting with baited breath to fulfill my every desire. I don't think that getting my every desire is even a good thing. I certainly don't think that by wishing I can keep tragedy at bay, as if it were some magical protective forcefield. I also do not think that wishing replaces one micro-ounce of the hard work and persistence it takes to make a dream come true. What I do think is that admitting to the things our hearts desire is an important way of being true to ourselves and the people around us. It opens us up to possibility. It focuses our intent.

And who knows? Maybe there is also a small scattering of fairy dust thrown in there somewhere.

Christmas

There was food. We ate it. Good presents, excited children, lots of happy things. For myself though, I like Boxing Day better. It's calmer, more relaxing. We slept in late, went to the movies, had pizza for dinner. Today we are gardening, though in my world what that really means is half-heartedly planting a couple of things in the vain hope they will grow. I am rubbish at gardening.

I haven't much been in the zone these holidays. All week I have been distracted with thoughts of 2012; I'm not sure why, 2011 isn't done with yet. To get through another graduate year, and three more after that, however, I know I need to be more intentional in what I do and how I do it than I have been. I suppose, in a kind of way, it's similar to gardening. If I don't give the values and goals that matter most to me the time and attention they need, they will likely be smothered by the metaphorical weeds.

Profound.

I like the idea of completing 2011 first, though, and there is a worksheet created for this purpose by Andrea Scher and Jen Lemen that you can download for free here. Rituals are useful. We need rituals. I am going to fill mine out today (sans the out-loud declaration. I am sure people do that and I am equally sure none of them are me), and then I am going to write down what I want out of 2012. After that, I will chop my list in half, and then half again, while lowering my expectation by two-thirds. That will probably put things into the realm of achievable. Maybe.

Hope your holidays have been good to you, and may 2012 bring you whatever it is you need the most.

The Sky is Falling

A few evenings ago I sat down with a glass of bubbly and an excellent friend. A favourite combination. We talked about all the myriad things that such friends talk about, from the sublime to the ridiculous. It took almost 5 hours to get through the list, if we even did.

One thing we agreed on? To be less afraid. Less afraid of people, of mistakes, of getting things wrong. Not fear-less, that would be pathological. Just ... less afraid. I told her I would make it a resolution for 2012, my theme for the year. When we are afraid, we hide, we live our lives under cover and in the dark, ruled by our own internal version of the bogeyman. Which isn't really living at all.

The ancient Persian poet Hafez puts it this way: Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.

Summer Snow

I went against my own unwritten rule to not use winter decorations in summer, and made a few snowflakes to hang in my kitchen. In my defence, I made them from recycled magazine paper. That makes it okay.

I got the idea from this pinterest pin. The paper in one of my favourite magazines is so thick and beautifully coloured that it always gives me the urge to make something out of it. It also smells good. It smells wholesome.

As did my carrot cake while it was cooking at some ludicrous hour last night. A thick layer of lemon buttercream icing soon dealt to that. If there is one thing I am not looking for in a cake, it's wholesome.

 

For K.T.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.  ~ Lao Tzu

The dedicated photo you asked for, though I am sure you meant one of my own. I love this picture though: we both know how big a drop there was behind that little concrete wall, and how rocky a surface underneath. That arm you have around my back protected me then, and is a source of both strength and courage now. I can never adequately explain just how much it means to have it there.

I'm a little bigger now and I hope that sometimes, even if just in a small way, I can return the favour. I feel about as capable of it as the (incredibly cute) toddler in the photo, but even if my attempts are clumsy and incompetent, I pray I can at least convey their intent.

I love you. Merry Christmas.

Not even random

 

I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it. ~ Toni Cade Bambara

Which pretty much sums it all up. I have spent the last week endlessly searching for the meaning behind the choices I faced in order to make some kind of decision, but in the end? Things just are, and meaning is imposed. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare said something like that too, only prettier. That man could sure write pretty.

A New Season

 

Iona brings inside any strawberry she sees that has any hint of red on it before the various fruit loving creatures eat them. She has sacrificed a lot of her harvest to various fruit loving creatures.

The first few grades of my last semester start to trickle through. They are better than expected and, added to my first semester grades, start to open doors I thought long closed. I meet with a neuropsychologist to discuss research into paediatric concussion, I get an invitation to interview for a clinical health psychology programme. These things, to me, are as miraculous as turning straw into gold. Or white fruit into red.

Maybe all we need is the time and space in which to ripen.

Road Trip

When you have to spend as much time in the car as we did this weekend, it helps if you get to look at views like this. This is Ruapehu, an ancient and active volcano. A woman, according to legend. A  faithless, yearning, lonely lover.

Our road trip was in honour of another woman, this one neither faithless nor lonely, but equally as beautiful.  It was our pleasure to witness her wedding.  As the priest so rightly pointed out, somedays, like that day, bearing witness is love made manifest.