February 9, 2010
Am I looking foward to the next faze of my life or what! Thats the chapter where I officially work at CSO three days per week. My new life in which I’ll dedicate two whole days per week to my real work – honing my skills as a writer and whilst doing so, completing my first book. Coincedentally, I’ll be creating more connectors in my brain, developing the loose muscle of my mind, getting in touch with my inner and outer realities, and fantasies, opening up – seeing myself, my place in the world, and developing a more astute comprehension of this – my world. Thrilling, the prospect of being in this space – alive in this way.
Creating space also to look after my mind and body – nourish it with everything it needs: breathing time, focused movement and the right amount of challenge to keep in shape, deep relaxation, play time, and the food it wants and needs to keep itself light and thinking and beautiful.
Realistically it’ll be another six months on the job though. Another six month stint of feeling buggered at days end and using weekends as recouperation from the marathon of the week. I can do it. Blaaaarh However, I will endeavour to complete this tenure more successfully than that! And who knows, maybe I’ll end up doing it in more style than I have to date. Wouldn’t it be funny if actually, after all, I manage to discover a more agreeable balance in the full-time work and rest-of-life routine. Stupid and naive thought.
No matter what, it would only ever amount to a measure of compromise. Always too much life taken up with money work, and a dirth of space (time + energy) to write, exercise, play, relax, rest and sleep.
…not soon enough.
But what else an I do? If I knew, I’d do it!
February 7, 2010
When I arrived home from my seven week sojourn in Bali, it appeared that nothing to speak of had changed. Not even the weather!
However, a few mornings ago as I walked down Brooklyn Hill to work, it dawned on me that in many respects, the whole world has changed. And with this thought came the realisation that no matter whether the life event is miniscule or gigantic, unusual or mundane, life in any number of ways is transformed forever.
I thought about a few events that had occured in my small circle and realised that life is not as it was before I left.
Two elated friends birthed a first child each. They’re responsible now for the well-being and growth of two new baby boys on planet earth – men to be in the world. Two other friends had noticeably expanded girths – a second child well on the way for both.
As well, my twelve year old niece got her first period. So happy she is that her childhood will soon be lost forever and that now she has commenced her journey into womanhood. Woman – a title which she appears to relish.
And not long after my arrival back in New Zealand, David died, left his physical life on earth behind. The memory of it may no longer be with him, but even so, is with everyone he shared his life experience with. Especially my mother.
So, my mother became a Widow. We joked about this, not that she had lost her husband, but at the titles we earn and the boxes we can are put into. Mum: Baby Girl to Girl to Woman to Married Woman/Wife to Mother to Divorced Woman/Divorcee to Married Woman again to Grandmother to Widow. And for sure there are more.
And my life? Consumed with the challenge of it I remain. But too, it has morphed. And in time, the fruit of this change will be borne.
Deborah loves Don deeper.
February 7, 2010
Living life is my greatest goal and challenge.
I am concerned neither with birth nor death.
Birth is as it is.
Living looks after death.
February 6, 2010
Already three weeks here in New Zealand and nothing done. That is; barely any exercise, no writing, hardly a blog entry, photos from the Bali trip not downloaded, gifts not sorted, nothing paid towards my newly aquired debts. Et cetera.
And now, this week, with Bali being so done and dusted, you/one/I would think the status quo of my daily routine really should be reestablished. This should-be-fact is far from the reality. The pathetic truth is that I’ve felt too exhausted after work (and before!) to make even one blog entry.
And okay. I heard what I said. I know it’s not the truth that’s pathetic. The truth cannot be judged. It is neither good nor bad, beautiful nor ugly. The truth is simple and pure. Bare-faced. As it is. Which is precisely what I cherish about the it. The truth is the truth.
This I am pathetic qualifier is a negative judgement that I should not make. Seemingly inconsequential perhaps, but it is in fact, a claustrophobic little jail cell I lock myself into. What a beautiful thing awareness is. It bestows us with choice. I have options!
Just like the infinitely blameless truth, I am slowly learning not to judge myself. I am as I am. Purely me. Whats more, unlike the truth which simply remains the truth, I am able and free to grow. This realisation makes me extremely happy.
So. I’ll leave the pathetic qualifier in it’s place within this blog as a reminder about who I am today and in what area I am free to expand.
Conscious evolution.
A promise. From now on, I won’t judge my performance in life – that is, my expectations of it – or at least, will be aware of every instance of it. Instead, I’ll do what I can. And the stuff I can’t do, I simply won’t do it. However, I will endeavour to rearrange time commitments so that I am able to live my life how it wants to be lived – do what wants to be done.
Life.
And so it goes on.
I go on.
Yahoo.
January 28, 2010
David departed on Sunday night not long before midnight. Finally freed from the prison that was his broken down body. The body which served him so well throughout most of his life, but which failed him far too soon, was cremated on Tuesday. Which we recognised as David no longer exists. Wierd thought. Imponderable actually.
Mum says David is all around her. And that she is having difficulty feeling as sad as everybody else because of the profound relief that he is finally released from the prison cell in which he so long languished. We all know in this family that David couldn’t even bare to see a bird in a cage.
January 21, 2010
(Journal)
Restless the last three nights. When I should be sleeping.
Night One.
Three naked female bodies impaled, vertical starfish, dead or dying. A murderer, or murderers. Hunting. For victims.
Night Two.
David. Naked. Stretched flesh over bone. Ribcage sticking out, skin taut over every individual rib. Arms bent at the elbows 90degs, fingers curled into the palms of his hands like claws. Everything petrified. Like 1000 year-old wood from Patagonia.
Night Three. (Last Night)
People everywhere. Some strangers, retail workers, auto drivers, push-bike riders. Others known – in a house I am trying to get to. To be safe. My legs though, no matter how hard I will them to, scarcely move. Like walking deep under water head-long into a strong current. I push and I push, but my efforts bare only the slowest of motion.
This morning.
I wake. Muscles stiff. Aching. Throbbing tonsils. Painful to swallow. Swollen glands.
January 19, 2010
At reception they make sure you have a towel to lay on top of your yoga mat. Things get pretty sweaty in there. And sure enough, I sweated like a trooper. Amazingly though, practicing yoga at a humid 40degsC, with a whole bunch of other profusely sweating, expirating bodies, wasn’t uncomfortable in the slightest. Although, the Yin class – probably Hatha, but as a novice, I’m not completely sure about that – is layback – focused on breathing, stretching and holding positions, rather than the more energetic forms of yoga, such as Iyengar.
The class wasn’t on par with the classes I took in Ubud at the Yoga Barn. Firstly, I didn’t realise either that the 4.30pm class is 1 hour duration, so when we finished, I felt as if the class was unfinished – that I was unfinished with it.
As well, the instructor left the class before Yoga Nidra saying, we could spend as long as we liked doing this. A bit wierd – here too, I felt it was unresolved. Neither did I feel the same result – that beautiful free-flow oxygen moving throughout my body – nor the tall sensation of space created within my joints and muscles.
Perhaps this is just me today.
Interesting. I’ll go a few more times and see what I think.
January 18, 2010
As far as first days back at work after a luxuriously long break in a tropical climate go, it was okay. Many Wellingtonians are still away on holidays, so I wasn’t forced to work at break-neck speed. Thank God! I’m so over the exhaustion grind. Over it forever.
So. Solving this dilemma.
I am an ostrich. Scared. Preferring to bury my head in the ever quickening sand of financial ignorance, rather than checking my credit card balance(s) – because then I’ll trully know the damage of the last few weeks of freedom, and thus how much more of my precious life time must be sunk in the quest for dollars which I have already spent. Only then can I estimate how long it will take to pay for the life I have just lived so that I can can free two days of my week up and assume my real life. As a writer.
Should check the damage now. Then I’ll live in ignorance no longer. The truth of the moment will take over. No judgement made about how it – the truth – is. Made will be a plan.
And then I’ll be a big girl. Knowing. Focused. Able to develop ever further.
Evolutionizing.
A real person.
January 17, 2010
Home. Transported from seven weeks of 30 degs C, sun, sea, and evenings of pleasantly violent storms and tropical downpour….to 12 degs C, and diagonal rain driven by a howling bloody Southerly – in this part of the world – the worst kind. A pack full of dirty washing washed, and nowhere to dry it except in the house – which now looks like a Chinese Laundry instead of the lovely Art Deco Apartment it is. Summer in Wellington.
David, mum’s very much loved and cherished husband of fifteen years, and known to me since I was three, is in the final stages of dying. He has neither eaten nor taken fluid in more than three days – morphine and anti-spasmodic medication (one can only imagine what that is for) his only intake. He’s unconscious, and I really hope that he hasn’t a clue about what is going on. Poor David. It wont be long now. Catherine and the kids are with her. I’ll be there when David leaves us for good.
Meanwhile, work begins tomorrow. Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to it. However, I am looking forward to catching up with the motley (in the best way!) crew at CSO. Anyhow, the full-time stint will only be that – a temporary stint in order to pay at least some of my newly aquired debt. Then, it’ll be new beginnings. I’ll be free enough to implement my new life – the life which is dedicated to writing, and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and finally completing my first novel. The life also, in which yoga will become an integral part of.
In this life, David will have moved on. And mum, who already has spent years greiving for her sick and dying husband, will, in her own time, be free to move forward to her next faze of living.
Accept. Go with the flow. This is living. This is life. This is dying. This is death.
The light is in the new beginnings.
No need to sink and get lost in the great universal abyss of depression.
