Day 690: Autumn

There is no more beautiful time to be driving around the country than this. On my trip from Somerset to London yesterday, I made not one but repeated, involuntary moans of beauty appreciation pleasure as I drove along. The words are overused because they're true. Honey yellows and burnished, bronzy golds. Heartfelt browns and sudden, surprising reds. One tree, just minding its own business, busy being golden yellow with a splash of red like a beating heart expanding from its chest. 

Colours sitting alongside each other like some kind of beauty prank. I almost feel their glee. It's the proms. It's carnival time. I bow my head and dance.

Welcoming Brunhilde Concepción Cheese

And my car. This is the first time I can speak those words. I have a car. Brunhilde Concepción, a little haven on wheels. She's a shiny silver Toyota Yaris, compact, with thighs of steel and patience like you couldn't believe. When I crunch her gears or stall her, she just breathes through it and takes me safely onwards. I like her very much. 

We've been a long way already, for my first full week or so of driving. From London to Totnes, then Dartmoor, Bristol, Bath, Stroud, Frome, Glastonbury, Wells and back to London, with a few backs and forths and labyrinthine weavings in the mix. That's big stuff, for me, having passed my test in 1992 and hardly driven since. I've reversed backwards, badly, up a hill with no more than a body's width on either side. I had to get the gentleman in the other car to help - I kept pooching into the hedgerow wall and stalling. That was only day two, though, so I forgive myself. Parking has got easier, and stalling rarer. We know each other better, Brunhilde and I, and we're finding our stride. I am very grateful.

And liberated. I had no idea how freeing it is to have a car. I've never owned one, so any driving (which I've always kind of loved) has been with permission, and limited in scope. Now I have my car. I can get in it and go somewhere, change my mind without changing a ticket, take turnings for the sake of it and visit people just like that. I'm stunned. A whole world has opened up. I think I'll drive to Hungary soon. Why not?

I am in the arms of humility at the moment, in a 'bow down now' way. I've been out of sorts within myself, unable to ground, unable to take the moment by moment appreciation of the wonders in my world. I am appreciating, but from a long arm's length of removal. And yet I see the incredible people in my life, their gentleness and giving, the fact that even though the loneliness sets in and stories tell me I am not loved, not held, not wanted, the forest floor of this rich autumn is scattered with gifts... homes that open themselves to me with the hearts of those who live there, generous acts of love from so many different sources and in so may forms.

I see that, as always, it's not a problem with what is, but with how it is perceived... the filter's been set to dark, but the light has kept on shining. Thank you, so many people, to many, here, to name. From friends to dogs and cats, to random strangers inviting me into their homes.

I have to tell you about Margot... a woman I did not know who found me, god knows how, and pursued me on the phone and through the web to ask me to come and live in her attic, just for a while. She had a strong feeling, she said, that this would be just right, so I must come and eat a chicken with her, see the room and sleep in it. This at a time when my every cell was trembling for want of a base, a safe space, a haven. 

I arrived with stress tugging at my neck and shoulders, my mind all tangled and my jaw tight like a deadblolt lock. I left suffused with love, well rested, dog-spoilt (a 5-month old chestnut collie with doleful eyes), familied to the nines and welcomed, nourished in every way. I may just take her up on her offer of short term stay while I find my actual home. I thank you, Margot, and your inexplicable insistence that this particular lost stranger belongs, for now at least, at the top of your house, looking out at the sky.