I Spied With My Little Eye ...

This morning is not one of the more pleasurable things I've seen over this long weekend.  But it's not so much what I'm seeing, as how it's feeling.  Granted, what I'm seeing ain't so pretty - there are giant boxes and bags of stuff all over my new abode, product of two households slowly comingling.  Keanu* the couch and Chair the chair are still upended in the dining area, along with my work table and art table, which stand in pieces and sideways respectively.  But that's all okay.  It will all get done.  Nothing is overwhelming me, the morning after a five-day weekend.

And it's sure purdy outside.  Pure autumnal weather.  The windows fogged up, the temperature gauge outside still in single figures.  I can better feel the land breathing up in these hills.  In it goes, and the temperature slowly and steadily climbs, peaking mid-afternoon before out it breathes once more and the temperature wends back down to warming dinners, ugg boots and heaters.  The days lately have been pure sunlight doing its dappling thang, shooting off the leaves.

So no, there's nothing actually wrong with anything that is here this morning.  It just looks like Monday, that's all.

But even that's not so bad.  Because it's actually Wednesday.  But ooh, easing back into the working week does take some doing.  It took a depressing ride home from Richmond to Belgrave after my football team lost (again) to the team it beat to win the Grand Final three years ago and has not been able to beat since.  A football loss, and a trainload of people who all seemed as one to realise as the dark set in around our carriage that the holiday was over.

Oh, well.  A holiday must always end, but it usually takes several hours of internal tantrums for me to loosen my grip on it first.

The tree outside the front door is loosening its grip on its leaves, and they spill onto the path.  While away for the weekend in the High Country, I spied many beautiful maples revealing their true colours of red, orange, yellow.  The colours too of the lower chakras.  I forget and then remember each year how grounding autumn is to me, and it has been nice doing such grounding things as meditation, of not-much-on, of some walking in alpine air up Mount Stirling to feel the earth under my feet.

On the way home, we passed the areas that burned in the Black Saturday fires of two years ago.  The fire burning through the ground has stimulated so much new growth.  This land is made for burning.  The seeds of the eucalypt are thrown into action by the process.  Some areas of ground were rich with eucalypt saplings.  Many tall trees, their trunks still charred, were covered in a fine layer of fuzzy protective moss, or new green leaves.

Closer to home, the vines around Dixon Creek are beginning to turn yellow, in preparation for the stark and beautiful rows and rows of vineyards whose stalks stand out black and underground productive, in the fogs of winter.

How about you?  What have you seen over this Easter holiday?

____

* My partner doesn't like Keanu.  But that's okay.  I don't much like his couch either.  Looks like we're buying new couches at some point.  My partner thinks Keanu looks like he was manufactured in 1989.  And I suppose he has a point.  But I still love Keanu anyway, and now I get to lie on him all by myself :)

Barley Festival

It's taken me three weeks of having my house back to myself to get my equilibrium back. That peaceful soft centre has returned (strawberry).

Speaking of chocolates. Doesn't matter how good you are at Christmas, there's still always bloody chocolates falling out the sky that people push on you like legitimate drug dealers. Should have seen my Mum on Christmas Night as I was leaving. "Take some pavlova," (I did, don't need to be asked twice, not for pavlova. I had it for breakfast the next day). "Take these chocolates." Shoves them in my bag so I see them when I get home and eat a few at 3am. And I wonder why I have gained 4 kilos in the past few months. Then my friend gives me chocolates yesterday. My landlord gave me a box of truffles the other day. Which is all very well except that then I eat them, you know? Like I am now. There is more than one chocolate wrapper on my desk, and now I am polishing off the last of the liqueur-filled truffles. This is the second day out of three that I have had chocolate for breakfast.

But that's okay, 'cause I'm on holidays. So they don't count :) When you're on holidays you can do whatever you want and none of the normal rules apply. My holiday is akin to one of those festivals they used to have in the Dark Ages where all the standard rules did not apply for the duration of the festival (today I imagine we would call it the office Christmas party). As people celebrated and danced and feasted and hung out together, I'm sure many pregnancies occurred that would not have otherwise occurred, and many horrid things came out into the light that normally would have been hidden (make way for the healing further on down the track). It was kinda like a giant scapegoating festival for the senses. We have one of those, it's called Easter. We eat 47 tons of chocolate each and miss the point :)

I want to live in a Catholic country. I'm tired of how goddamn boring Protestantism is. We are a bunch of bloody killjoys, and we're not even a Protestant country anymore. Worshipping the economy is even more boring than worshipping a God that sends everyone to hell. I think maybe the whole purgatory element is like a safety switch for all of those Catholics. Richard Rohr was telling me yesterday in a book that at one stage, two thirds of the days of the year in Italy were feast days. Now, that's the flipside of the Protestant work ethic coin, but one I'd like to sit on for a while. I've wanted to go to Italy and France forever. I want to loll about in a country that doesn't know how to stop partying. I imagine Italy and France have probably largely forgotten now also. Too much worshipping of the Beast.

I think that's why people drink in our culture. We need to be taken out of ourselves to behave in all the silly ways we are yearning to but can't because we are boring. We want to be rescued out of the tiny confines we have built ourselves into. Life in Western civilisatiion these days is so monumentally boring. When was the last time you saw someone cutting loose? Laughing too loud in a public place? Wearing purple hats? Saying something vaguely controversial? This is the space the Church should occupy in the culture. Once she gets the hang of the fact of how free she is, maybe she will. I think the second follows the first without even trying. Actually, I reckon if the Church, in Protestant countries, was to be a Church that had no more fear of a very small God sitting there waiting for people to mess up so he could throw them in hell forever, if we could have that stupid notion dispelled out of our hearts, then we would be the most amazing countries on the earth, countries full of free people. Just dreaming out loud :)

I remember when we played chasey at school, there would be a place called "barley". This was like Switzerland. It was neutral. If the person who was "it" came and found you, but you were in the barley place, they couldn't get you. Well, my holiday is like barley. No one can get me unless I allow them to. I am not doing anything except things I want to do. It's why my brother called me the other night and it went to messagebank and he asked me to call him back and I just haven't. Because I don't want to deal with anyone else's shit except the shit that I allow on board, or the shit that is contained within the pages of the latest book Im reading.

How nice it is to tell the world to just back off and bugger off for a couple of weeks :) Very nice indeed :)

I wish for my holidays the neutrality of barleyed Switzerland, the military defensiveness of the US, and the festivity of old time Italy. I think I can feel a creativity return forthwith. Not a moment too soon :)

Later: Okay. I am pretty sure this is not a cop-out retreat back into old known patterns. I am pretty sure this is instead a demonstration of my newfound boundaries. I hope. In my freedom I have just spoken to my brother on the phone. He is heading out to South Australia (hopefully) on Tuesday and needs a place to stay tomorrow night on his way through. He will be at my house tomorrow dropping off some stuff that I have suggested he could store in my garage instead of paying for self-storage. He will be here anyway. It makes sense if he stays here. For one night only. He is out in a state forest past Bacchus Marsh, camping with his dog. He is making good plans, I think, ones that will propel him forward rather than keep him stuck in the same old crap he's been stuck in for years. In my great grandiosity I said yes he can stay here for one night because, surely, my equilibrium will not be buffetted by one night. Because those are the rules in my newfound boundary zone. One night only, no more. I am happy to help him out, but not at the expense of my equilibrium. Not for nobody :) This feels good, I tell you what. This feels like some sort of balance where I don't lose mine.