Day 659: Love Majestic

Thank you, spreadsheets and forms and accountants. Thank you, sun and sky and wind and shimmering Londonlights in the distance and my Bed Called Jude - in my last weeks in you, you remind me of the benefits of homeness which I will go away from to come back and find in another location. 

Thank you, cool water, holding me gentle like a lullaby and singing me into peace. Thank you, strong and soft and solid friends, for your persistent love and nurture when mine might wane and thank you, majestic cello, for making your big sound for me. 

Thank you, whatever you are that works your strange magic across continents. Thank you, energies and entities and all forms of love made manifest or floating through the ether. Love heals all, they say. Let's love and love and love and take the test. 

Day 658: Good People

Ruuuuuuth

I am proud of myself today. I made a plan to do my tax return this weekend and so far I've stuck to it. I'm a good way through and I plan to (want to, have to) finish the first stage and send everything off to my accountant tomorrow. I still swam (beautiful) and walked the dog, thus taking in the sun and the flowers, but I got back on with it afterwards. 

Wouldn't it be incredible if this was the start of a more gentle form of discipline in work... just enjoying the satisfaction of planning to do something and doing it rather than vaguely intending to and procrastinating. What would it be like to live like that? Maybe the key is just one thing. Just that, this weekend. Not the massive breadth of things there are on offer in my mind in every moment. Perhaps that focus is the switch-flicker. And I do love a good tax return... 

Not 'my' Kath Jones, but
'a' Kath Jones

I'm grateful in reams for Kath Jones, that clear-eyed, inspiring sprite of a woman; for Ruth Blake and her gentle, persevering love; for Tiu de Haan and her vibrancy, creativity and proper passionate approach to life. Thanks too, inspired men. I take off my hat to you. Simon Veal, you are the best fun ever to play with and I'm very grateful that we get to do that. 

Tiuuuuuu

Thank you, TC Gill, for giving me your conference ticket. I'm VERY grateful for that. I wanted very much to and had cried off, money-wise. Now it seems I'm helping to organise the one this time next year. That's what happens when you go to things, that it. Maybe it will help me be bolder at organising my own stuff, given that it's all so very possible.

Thanks, pond people, for being there and totally accepting when I was all tears and snot on Wednesday, just as there and accepting as you are when I'm all joy and waterbliss. I'm blown away by the quality of the people in my life. Or by the match. It's not that me and my friends are better than anyone else, it's that we seem to suit each other well. I know so many people who inspire me, accept me and delight me and vice versa and for this I must actively rejoice. So I am. Right now. It involves a movement of the bottom and a lovely glow. Good enough to give thanks for in itself. 

Day 657: Honeysuckle Kiss

A slightly subdued bunch of gratitude today, with my tail between my legs and mange starting to show, but a knowledge that it is all for the best, whether it feels like it or not, and that I am surrounded by some wonderful sisters and brothers who love me quite despite me and who see what sometimes I don't. 

And the water holds me with the same tenderness as it always does; the air invites itself into my lungs; light falls on my skin and the earth stays solid beneath my feet. Nothing shrinks away. It all stays constant. The geese harp at each other on the pond. The ducklings live their short and hazardous lives, some of them shorter and more fatally hazardous than others. Cars pack themselves tight one behind the other and people go about their business, purposefully or not. 

The honeysuckles break open their perfectly voluptuous petals to release their sweetness into the air and the buttercups grow tall in the bottom field where streams of women sit and let the beauty nourish them. Butter-chinned or not, we are united by this place. 

Day 656: And One Gorilla

Ten (hen) cats and one gorilla

Whether I write regularly or not, I am daily so very grateful for the life I get to live. It’s been full of exciting things and big movements recently, and it is always with gratitude that I notice the huge range of options open to me.

Of course, the pond features. Yesterday, blessed by warm-enough-ness and lots of people, we had the men over to the Ladies’ Pond. It’s one of my favourite events. Not that I’m looking to change in any way that it’s a single-sex pond – I love that about it – but what a pleasure to meet some of the raft of hardy, pond-addicted men who plod their path towards their own daily ritual, and who enjoy that same cold peace as we do.

Treat yourself to One Gorilla

I do believe I was (to some extent, at least) chatted up by a man who can’t have been much more than 27. He was tall and handsome, with clear and bright blue eyes (by no means my thing as such – I much prefer green or brown eyes to gaze into, but still). Definitely an attractive boy/man/creature. Oh, if I’d been 25, he’d have had me floored! I’m always flattered, and, yes, grateful, when people find me attractive, whatever will or won’t become of it. Especially when they’re sweet with it, not brash. And they can swim.

Yesterday, I picked wildflowers along the path from Preston Park to Withdene Nature Reserve. Showy yellow ones, expansive whites, sweet violet forget-me-nots and blood-rich reds from a flowering bush. There were grasses too, all hung-headed and bathed in languorous, easy class. I love them. I am reminded of the cornucopia I enjoyed while living at Shepherd’s Hill.

No need to wait for a wedding -
get picking!

Wildflowers rock. Esalen had hundreds too - such pleasure in the gathering, and the asking. Native American culture (which is big in California, and everso Esalen Institute) says that you should ask permission of a plant before you pick it, and thank the animal whose meat you’ll eat. I like that. Don’t live so small you don’t make use of what is there on offer, but give it the gratitude it deserves.

I’m full of the glitterjoy of three days with Ruth and David in the beautiful Devon forest. It was delicious. Easy, friendly, loving, considerate, musiccy, dog-filled (oh, Om, you great leggy, lanky lurcher with your fine, dogly bottom and satisfying weight. Oh, wagging Honey, with your silk-soft beard, your massive, pleasing eyes and your determination when it comes to getting into beds). I give thanks for the mattock that I got to wield and the work we got to do. The glitter was real as well as energetic: an old hematite mine, it is, so digging chugs up dust that makes the dirt sparkle.

Nine (line) birds and one gorilla

Thanks, Amy Streeter, for letting me be a laughing part of your 18^th celebrations. I don’t think I know anyone else who’s made the trip from toddler to adult since I’ve been a grown-up. That might not be true, but it feels like it. It’s a been pleasure to know you and to watch you grow.

And thanks, J, for providing me with the next ones. I held Felix when he was six weeks old and now he’s Actual Six and full of eyelashes and rhymes (one, poo, wee, war, alive, licks, late, eleven, line, hen – and one gorilla. Such pleasure in the art of that and such simplicity of text. There are lots of versions, artwork-wise. This is the one I saw and it delighted me. It's another reminder of how art, be in words, pictures, movement or whatever else, doesn't have to be complex to be beautiful. I have a huge admiration for complexity in stories and skilful art, and a humbled adoration for simple, powerful language. And long sentences. 

Here is a list of the things I love

And Jamie, little solid-rubber brother of said Felix, massive eyes and climby, laughy energy. I love them both and I look forward to being the odd aunty at their 18^th birthdays too. I love my Friend from University very much. Thanks for sharing your family with me, and for being such a fabulous bird.