Two days after Dad died, my van broke down in the middle of rush hour in the centre lane. The blessing was that I wasn't in it - I probably would have had a meltdown. I feel like life lately has been dancing on a singing piano wire, the high pitched wail of my insides resounding throughout my cells, to the tips of my zinging fingers. There's the underlying worry the money won't last til we find work again, Jamie's incessant movement as he shifts from screwing boards into the back deck to ordering van parts to ripping up the fenceline posts we didn't need to pulling the engine apart on the van. It's all I can do to stop him doing more than two things at once. I want to scream at him to just stop, for fuck's sake. Ant there's this dull ache in my bones that insists there's little point in it all if we're just going to get sick and die anyway, but I push that to one side. That's grief talking. Thing is, you keep pushing it into the corner and the corner needs some seriously sweeping.
I can't help but think all this incessant doing isn't as important as the things that most people would say are traditionally not-doing. Lying on the back deck listening to raga with the pelicans flying over head and the clouds like a giant rib cage with the wind-breath cold between the white bones. Watching the sky to the west darken and shouting silently to the sky and have it shout back at you with lightning. In this, I find my father. He's transmuted now. He's the shimmering air.
Yesterday we decided to have a moliday. A moliday is a mini-holiday, a day stolen amongst the busy days. We packed the Defender and headed to the beach. It's our favourite spot when there's no surf - we can back the car in so the back looks out to sea, and make a picnic and read books and go swimming if we like, though it's too cold at the moment to brave that without a wetsuit.
I'd picked up a book at the library - a proper science fiction book unlike anything I've read for a long time. It took me a while to get into it - my head was abuzz. Like most of us, my attention span is not what it was. You sometimes have to try really hard, knowing you'll slip into that stream of words eventually and be mesmerized. Two chapters later and I was millenia in the future on a made planet caretaken by rangers who work for a company called Verdante who plan on selling chunks of it to investors, and intrigued by the world forming there. In the background, seagulls in the real world.
I make us sandwiches for lunch - rolls with fetta and pickled onion and lettuce and tomato. We munch on cashews, drink coffee. I beachcombed for a bit - not too far, as my hips can't handle it yet. We make the bed in the back of the van and we fall asleep for a while, listening to the sea.
When I wake the wind has changed. The storm threatens - we pack up and head home to sit on the front deck and watch for lightening, the thunder shaking our bones.
This is living. Stripped back to the best things - each others company, the sound of waves and cockatoos screeching, the scent of eucalypts in the air. One day I'll be the electricity in the air, the breeze licking the pollen from the banksia, the wind-breath through the rib-clouds of the sky. Everything else is nonsense.
This post responds to The Minimalist's weekly theme, asking us how we keep calm, relax and find peace in a chaotic, loud, hectic environment.
With Love,
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That's the whole point, I think :) If we were gonna be around till the end of time, then there'd be little point. But you know all that already.
Sometimes you need a moliday, but also a do-nothing day. Pushing things in dark corners only helps them grow sometimes. Sit with it (as I'm sure you are), but don't forget that your life is a beautiful gift. And I mean that. Every time I read you, I'm hit by a "these people are doing it right" vibe.
Every word of this is just beautiful. I love reading you. And I want sandwiches now. And ideally a nearby ocean. I'll go check Lidl, they might have some left. :)
Definitely not mutually exclusive! Molidays are us going nothing for a minute. It's a hard thing for us air signs to do!
I had this distinct, sharp feeling on the edge of the ocean yesterday that I'd see Dad again, or more be with him, but I had to stay here and finish this living first, like all the other livings that have been left gasping for air when their loved ones got around to their dying. I mean I knew that already, damn it, but it had to come to me like poetry first for me to let it in.
You are dead right, scus the pun - we are finite here, so may as well enjoy it.
Try the centre aisle - but I do hear they sell out fast.
There might be room for both approaches. From this distance, I now know that if I hadn't had so much on my plate when my husband died, I would have just sat and done nothing, never made goals. I think being forced to be busy got me through the worst of it, and essentially, I was starting out as I intended to go on. That's always been a mantra of mine: Start out as you intend to go on.
So now when I find myself just sitting, due to the Seasonal Affective Disorder, I have the intention of not doing that and I find something to make me move. No shortage of that here.
And maybe that's how Jamie copes...
Oh yes but Jamie's always like that. I can usually keep up (it's part of our dynamic) but I have been finding being busy too much.
Mums certainly got a clean house 🤣 and moving on to garden. But her nervous system is far steadier than mine!
I really needed to just drift and BE for a bit. Too much going on on top of grief. I am feeling a LOT better today actually after the moliday.
@minimalistliving @millycf @honeydue the tip just made my day xxx 🙏💕💕💕
@minimalistliving @millycf1976 @honeydue the tip just made my day xxx 🙏💕💕💕
Sending love (which comes a bit easier to me than before).
It's all about finding the balance between doing and not doing ✨♥️💚
When you are loved, the sparkles go everywhere...
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