His approach feels entirely different this year. Much less Old Man Winter. While in the past decade he's felt decidedly like a palliative 87 year old, this year a younger and more virile version is presenting himself to my senses, all black eyes and smoulder.
It is true that if you can cope with Winter you can cope with anything, but it is also true that you have to have some sort of baseline of health to be able to do that in the first place. Now I have that, my Summer lovin' self is climbing on the Winter horse and sorta enjoying the feel of the saddle.
Feels kinda dirty, as if Summer is going to find out I'm off having an affair with his nemesis :) Still, that golden haired boy will make his return soon enough and when he does I will be willingly enfolded (he is my true love), but until then, let's just love the one we're with, shall we :)
This dark man Winter grown young, he's alluring me into his depths with promises this time where in years past he just sneered.
I know, I know - it's not even officially winter yet. How can I be all enamoured with romantic notions of black eyes and mist when I don't even enter the darkened doorway for another two weeks?
That's true :) Still, skipping up the approach instead of being dragged and dumped on my arse by sister Autumn is a pretty good start :)
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
I love summer, I really do. But the monster that invaded Victoria and South Australia in the last week is not summer. It's some extra new season. I think we should call it Beezlebub. Winter, spring, summer, beezlebub, autumn.
I enjoy nice dry 35 degree heat. But bump it up 10 degrees, and repeat the experience for three days in a row, and everything goes haywire, including my head.
I caught the train to work yesterday. Well, a train. My usual train wasn't running, along with the other masses of trains that were cancelled this week. The heat was so intense - three days of 43, 43 and 45 (that's 109, 109 and 113 for you Fahrenheitians) that the steel rails were buckling. My train had to stop for a couple of minutes just before Spencer Street station, and the seat I was sitting happened to be in the sun. I was already battling a bit of heatstroke, I think. Sitting in the sun for those couple of minutes, I really began to wonder if I was going to fall over on my way to the carriage door. And then the 10 minute walk to my office. I have heard of people coming to Australia from the Northern Hemisphere and getting caught out at how quickly it is to be sunburnt here. That damn ozone layer hole. The beating sun is an intense beast for us here these days. Yesterday, I'm surprised the footpath wasn't beginning to melt, the street lamps, the trams, everything. I kept to any shadows I could find and battled nausea for the rest of the day.
The trip home was even better. A signal fault at Flinders Street meant that no trains were running at all by the time I went to catch mine. And so what is usually a 40 minute tops trip for me turned into a trip that took over two hours. No trains meant a bus trip, but after four consecutive buses that sped by me, full to capacity and not taking any more passengers, I started getting desperate (mainly because I was going to wet my pants). I was also desperate to get home because my dog was inside, and there was talk of rolling power outages to start occurring across the state to try to get the grid under control. I was getting really worried that I would get home to a house so hot that my dog would have expired. It was a real worry, even though by the time I had left work the cool change had rolled in (oh, bliss. Bliss bliss bliss).
So finally I got desperate, hailed a cab, and paid 20 bucks for the privilege of getting home. At the shopping centre the power was out, the only light coming from the Coles, brightly humming along on its generator power. The refrigerated shelves, however, were empty, making me feel somewhat like I was in a Russian supermarket in the 1980s. The checkout operator informed me that the power had been out for quite a few hours. Turned out that there was an explosion in one of the electricity thingymybobs-where-explosions-occur and that this was also another reason why entire suburbs were without power. Traffic lights were out, all sorts of mayhem. On the way home in the taxi, I witnessed a car accident that had one car crumpled in on the other side of the road while the other car sat where it had landed, through the plate glass windows of a shop.
Luckily I got home, opened the door to something resembling a furnace, but my dog was okay. His poor tongue. Lester's tongue is so long he's like the Gene Simmons of the dog world. If I ever have to have him operated on, while they are there I will ask them to cut off 5 centimetres and he'll still have one that is fully operational. Lester's tongue was lolling out of his head. The house was uninhabitable, so me and Lester went and sat outside, with a blanket and a candle, and I commiserated with my cousin's husband via text message. He is a linesman for an electricity company, and has gone back to work after holidays to rotating shifts of 12 hours on 12 hours off for the foreseeable future.
My power was off for about another two hours. Whenever there is a blackout, I am always reminded anew of how monumentally reliant we are as a people on things other than ourselves and the earth. As we sat outside in the growing dark, and I admired the stars, which seemed just a little bit brighter for the blackout, I thought about how it would be if all of a sudden electricity was no longer an option for us.
And it sort of scared me a bit, how reliant I am on it. Sometimes I wonder how we as a people must appear to the centuries that have gone on before us. Such a different way of living. It would be a terrifying thing if, say, you came from the 16th century and were given a chance to witness people living now. We must be curiously out of touch in so many ways, like people who have a leprosy sort of relationship to the earth, the thing that sustains us. How fragile our existence must appear to be to them.
Which is ironic when you consider that most of us probably look at people from centuries before and wonder how the hell they managed to get through a life without refrigerators, air conditioning, heating, computers, Internet, television, movies.
I suppose they must wonder at our dearth of storytelling skills, our strange little ways we go about things, our masses and masses of distractions, the humongous amount of bloody plastic everywhere. Sometimes I think the days of living individual, in the way that we have been allowed to in the past few generations, are coming to a close. And by God that scares me, but in another way it excites me. Because it's not meant to be like this. There are so many layers of artificiality concocted around our lives, between us and each other, us and sister earth.
When the power was off, all around me in my suburb, it was so much quieter. There was less of a hum in the air. Our efficiencies and trinkets and toys are indispensable to us, but they silently hum in so many ways just behind our conscious awareness. How much of an effect do they have, all of these things? All of these waves flying through the air, messing in ways we don't even understand with the delicate electrical balance of our bodies. I spoke on my mobile last night for two hours to my cuz. I could feel the effects afterwards. There is some evidence that some instances of certain types of disorders such as autism, ADHD and the like, can be linked to urbanisation gone mad, to the lack of basic nature in children's lives. A Chicago study found such conclusive evidence that more trees and greenery around its high-rise developments lowered crime rates that they plant trees as a matter of course now.
I want this crazy monster that has built up around us dismantled. But I can only pray that it happens slowly. This frog is comfortable in her boiling water, as bizarre and as crazy as that sounds.
Current temperature: a beautiful, balmy 21 degrees (69F). I appreciate it like you wouldn't believe :)
I enjoy nice dry 35 degree heat. But bump it up 10 degrees, and repeat the experience for three days in a row, and everything goes haywire, including my head.
I caught the train to work yesterday. Well, a train. My usual train wasn't running, along with the other masses of trains that were cancelled this week. The heat was so intense - three days of 43, 43 and 45 (that's 109, 109 and 113 for you Fahrenheitians) that the steel rails were buckling. My train had to stop for a couple of minutes just before Spencer Street station, and the seat I was sitting happened to be in the sun. I was already battling a bit of heatstroke, I think. Sitting in the sun for those couple of minutes, I really began to wonder if I was going to fall over on my way to the carriage door. And then the 10 minute walk to my office. I have heard of people coming to Australia from the Northern Hemisphere and getting caught out at how quickly it is to be sunburnt here. That damn ozone layer hole. The beating sun is an intense beast for us here these days. Yesterday, I'm surprised the footpath wasn't beginning to melt, the street lamps, the trams, everything. I kept to any shadows I could find and battled nausea for the rest of the day.
The trip home was even better. A signal fault at Flinders Street meant that no trains were running at all by the time I went to catch mine. And so what is usually a 40 minute tops trip for me turned into a trip that took over two hours. No trains meant a bus trip, but after four consecutive buses that sped by me, full to capacity and not taking any more passengers, I started getting desperate (mainly because I was going to wet my pants). I was also desperate to get home because my dog was inside, and there was talk of rolling power outages to start occurring across the state to try to get the grid under control. I was getting really worried that I would get home to a house so hot that my dog would have expired. It was a real worry, even though by the time I had left work the cool change had rolled in (oh, bliss. Bliss bliss bliss).
So finally I got desperate, hailed a cab, and paid 20 bucks for the privilege of getting home. At the shopping centre the power was out, the only light coming from the Coles, brightly humming along on its generator power. The refrigerated shelves, however, were empty, making me feel somewhat like I was in a Russian supermarket in the 1980s. The checkout operator informed me that the power had been out for quite a few hours. Turned out that there was an explosion in one of the electricity thingymybobs-where-explosions-occur and that this was also another reason why entire suburbs were without power. Traffic lights were out, all sorts of mayhem. On the way home in the taxi, I witnessed a car accident that had one car crumpled in on the other side of the road while the other car sat where it had landed, through the plate glass windows of a shop.
Luckily I got home, opened the door to something resembling a furnace, but my dog was okay. His poor tongue. Lester's tongue is so long he's like the Gene Simmons of the dog world. If I ever have to have him operated on, while they are there I will ask them to cut off 5 centimetres and he'll still have one that is fully operational. Lester's tongue was lolling out of his head. The house was uninhabitable, so me and Lester went and sat outside, with a blanket and a candle, and I commiserated with my cousin's husband via text message. He is a linesman for an electricity company, and has gone back to work after holidays to rotating shifts of 12 hours on 12 hours off for the foreseeable future.
My power was off for about another two hours. Whenever there is a blackout, I am always reminded anew of how monumentally reliant we are as a people on things other than ourselves and the earth. As we sat outside in the growing dark, and I admired the stars, which seemed just a little bit brighter for the blackout, I thought about how it would be if all of a sudden electricity was no longer an option for us.
And it sort of scared me a bit, how reliant I am on it. Sometimes I wonder how we as a people must appear to the centuries that have gone on before us. Such a different way of living. It would be a terrifying thing if, say, you came from the 16th century and were given a chance to witness people living now. We must be curiously out of touch in so many ways, like people who have a leprosy sort of relationship to the earth, the thing that sustains us. How fragile our existence must appear to be to them.
Which is ironic when you consider that most of us probably look at people from centuries before and wonder how the hell they managed to get through a life without refrigerators, air conditioning, heating, computers, Internet, television, movies.
I suppose they must wonder at our dearth of storytelling skills, our strange little ways we go about things, our masses and masses of distractions, the humongous amount of bloody plastic everywhere. Sometimes I think the days of living individual, in the way that we have been allowed to in the past few generations, are coming to a close. And by God that scares me, but in another way it excites me. Because it's not meant to be like this. There are so many layers of artificiality concocted around our lives, between us and each other, us and sister earth.
When the power was off, all around me in my suburb, it was so much quieter. There was less of a hum in the air. Our efficiencies and trinkets and toys are indispensable to us, but they silently hum in so many ways just behind our conscious awareness. How much of an effect do they have, all of these things? All of these waves flying through the air, messing in ways we don't even understand with the delicate electrical balance of our bodies. I spoke on my mobile last night for two hours to my cuz. I could feel the effects afterwards. There is some evidence that some instances of certain types of disorders such as autism, ADHD and the like, can be linked to urbanisation gone mad, to the lack of basic nature in children's lives. A Chicago study found such conclusive evidence that more trees and greenery around its high-rise developments lowered crime rates that they plant trees as a matter of course now.
I want this crazy monster that has built up around us dismantled. But I can only pray that it happens slowly. This frog is comfortable in her boiling water, as bizarre and as crazy as that sounds.
Current temperature: a beautiful, balmy 21 degrees (69F). I appreciate it like you wouldn't believe :)
I am waiting for that first tantalising smell on the wind, that indefinable thing that is not really a smell so much as a sense, an intuition, a bonefeel that Spring is coming. It happens roughly around about now, just when everybody is getting about with hangdog faces and expanded waistlines (I have desisted from eating for 7. It was fun for a couple of weeks but my jeans are beginning to muffin-top alarmingly, so I'm cutting it back to eating for 4 :) Actually, it wasn't so much fun as an absolute compulsion when I was feeling alarmingly spiritually dark. As things have lightened again, so has my ability to refuse a ninth serve of pudding :)
Yesterday, I looked at the sunrise and sunset times and noted that in a month from now, Melbourne will have an extra hour's sunlight. That thought just curls my toes :) Yum yum anticipation.
And at least I'll know by then that my stupid bloody modem will definitely have arrived. Still no sign of it today. Another weekend for me without internet access. GoTalk - well, I would if I fucking well could, believe me.
Dear reader, I am so backed up with posts, I'm gonna break my own records next week with 7 posts a day :)
Happy weekend, dear bloggers. *Hugs bloggers* And go Hawks.
Yesterday, I looked at the sunrise and sunset times and noted that in a month from now, Melbourne will have an extra hour's sunlight. That thought just curls my toes :) Yum yum anticipation.
And at least I'll know by then that my stupid bloody modem will definitely have arrived. Still no sign of it today. Another weekend for me without internet access. GoTalk - well, I would if I fucking well could, believe me.
Dear reader, I am so backed up with posts, I'm gonna break my own records next week with 7 posts a day :)
Happy weekend, dear bloggers. *Hugs bloggers* And go Hawks.
Hats off to the month of May
With it's falling leaves and its glistening days.
Well, so you may say, Mr Fanning, but there's quite a lot that's not particularly glistening about it from where I sit (the thighs of my football team, with linament, kicking goals, notwithstanding. Mmm). The leaves are falling too in Melbourne, but so, alas, is my really ultra crappy circadian clock's ability to read the signals.
Yep, it's happening already, folks. Two days of cloudy skies and the circadian rhythms are already starting their downward decline. I can feel it. For example. It's nearly 9pm and I am just gearing up in the kitchen, cooking pumpkin soup and mushroom risotto. And here it is, the beginning of the downward slide, the thought that going to bed a little later is starting to seem appealing. So tonight, I may choose to go to bed a bit later thanusual - say, 1am. Tomorrow night, 1.30. Before you know it, I'll be up till 4am.
It happens every day, the same. Wake up in the morning, back in first gear again. Thinking, ggggooootttt tttooo gggeeettt mmmooovvviinnngg. Feel slightly haggard all day, everything a bit of an effort. Come the evening - how delicious Winter evenings are, all cosy and closed in and raunchy - and then, oooh, how interesting everything suddenly appears and off I go, playing and cooking and loving the feel of the closed-in Winter night, all quiet, most normal people all cosy and snug under their doonas. Yum.
Every year without fail you can set your clock on the fact that my circadian clock can't.
But is there anything wrong with that? Why do I feel this nervous kind of anxiety about what they will think about my strange hour keepings? I have a job this year which allows me start at lunchtime - even, if I really want to, even later than that. I have no children to get me up at 6am. I can keep these hours and nobody is going to yell at me.
Surely my hours are the more civilised than the 6am wakeups or the bizarre habits people like Kent keep, getting up at 5.30. Or my friend Bettina who gets up and walks her dog first thing in the morning in the dark before work (I'm jealous really. I can't think of anything better than that). My days are just different, that's all. I'm circadianally challenged. Like, you know how morning people start off guns blazing and then end the day generally sitting down quiet and slowly gearing down until they stop and sleep? Well, I just do it in reverse. Spend the first - oh, I dunno, seven or eight hours sitting around trying to crank it up. Doing stuff, and even sounding quite chirpy and stuff, but still, you know. I'm pretending to be excited. I was still getting about in my dressing gown this afternoon at 3pm. Had a shower at 5. It's now almost 9pm and suddenly it's bright eyed and bushy tailed and, you know, wanting to write poetry and play music loud and get into it.
Nothing wrong with that, right? Right?
(It's a bit of a bummer, though, 'cause every time I get up in the morning I have this strange idea that things are gonna be different for me today, and so I try and do stuff - like, physical stuff like vacuuming. When really, everyone knows that vacuuming happens at 10pm).
Embrace your eccentricities, Suzie. Embrace. How dull if everyone was exactly the same, right?
With it's falling leaves and its glistening days.
Well, so you may say, Mr Fanning, but there's quite a lot that's not particularly glistening about it from where I sit (the thighs of my football team, with linament, kicking goals, notwithstanding. Mmm). The leaves are falling too in Melbourne, but so, alas, is my really ultra crappy circadian clock's ability to read the signals.
Yep, it's happening already, folks. Two days of cloudy skies and the circadian rhythms are already starting their downward decline. I can feel it. For example. It's nearly 9pm and I am just gearing up in the kitchen, cooking pumpkin soup and mushroom risotto. And here it is, the beginning of the downward slide, the thought that going to bed a little later is starting to seem appealing. So tonight, I may choose to go to bed a bit later thanusual - say, 1am. Tomorrow night, 1.30. Before you know it, I'll be up till 4am.
It happens every day, the same. Wake up in the morning, back in first gear again. Thinking, ggggooootttt tttooo gggeeettt mmmooovvviinnngg. Feel slightly haggard all day, everything a bit of an effort. Come the evening - how delicious Winter evenings are, all cosy and closed in and raunchy - and then, oooh, how interesting everything suddenly appears and off I go, playing and cooking and loving the feel of the closed-in Winter night, all quiet, most normal people all cosy and snug under their doonas. Yum.
Every year without fail you can set your clock on the fact that my circadian clock can't.
But is there anything wrong with that? Why do I feel this nervous kind of anxiety about what they will think about my strange hour keepings? I have a job this year which allows me start at lunchtime - even, if I really want to, even later than that. I have no children to get me up at 6am. I can keep these hours and nobody is going to yell at me.
Surely my hours are the more civilised than the 6am wakeups or the bizarre habits people like Kent keep, getting up at 5.30. Or my friend Bettina who gets up and walks her dog first thing in the morning in the dark before work (I'm jealous really. I can't think of anything better than that). My days are just different, that's all. I'm circadianally challenged. Like, you know how morning people start off guns blazing and then end the day generally sitting down quiet and slowly gearing down until they stop and sleep? Well, I just do it in reverse. Spend the first - oh, I dunno, seven or eight hours sitting around trying to crank it up. Doing stuff, and even sounding quite chirpy and stuff, but still, you know. I'm pretending to be excited. I was still getting about in my dressing gown this afternoon at 3pm. Had a shower at 5. It's now almost 9pm and suddenly it's bright eyed and bushy tailed and, you know, wanting to write poetry and play music loud and get into it.
Nothing wrong with that, right? Right?
(It's a bit of a bummer, though, 'cause every time I get up in the morning I have this strange idea that things are gonna be different for me today, and so I try and do stuff - like, physical stuff like vacuuming. When really, everyone knows that vacuuming happens at 10pm).
Embrace your eccentricities, Suzie. Embrace. How dull if everyone was exactly the same, right?
5 comments
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
It's cold here this morning. My throat is threatening greater soreness, even though I've been plying it with 3 Beroccas in 12 hours, the juice of 2 lemons, 2 doses of olive leaf extract. There is a daunting heaviness on my lungs that hopefully I have staved off with all of those things. I think I will take my tea steeper and my packet of Neem tea to work and drink that in the afternoon, as well. Not another cold for me. I say nay.
I see, looking at the weather observations, that Mount Dandenong is currently 5.5 degrees. Still, even though it's much colder up there, I would still seriously seriously contemplate moving up there, even for six months or a year. (But central heating would be nice). If it's gonna be cold, you may as well have misty shrouded trees to romanticise the whole experience.
It was so cold last night I wore pyjamas and socks to bed, and on top of my thick doona, my dressing gown.
May always deceives me. I think, "Oh, come on. This isn't so bad!" I am feeling that way right now :) There is a heavy sensuality about Winter. The Winterish things are newly unwrapped for the year and interesting in their novelty. I made soup yesterday (flunked it, can you believe it?), a risotto the night before, comfort food (a tip: if the recipe calls for dry white wine and all you have is champagne, go right ahead. Rocks on).
My art therapist is a winter person. Follows the celtic traditions. Gave me a giant leaf she'd picked, after our last session. Suggested that a good thing to do, coming up to the winter solstice, traditionally the new year in the Celtic calendar, is to dry out the leaf, and then write on it all of the things in my life that I am discarding, whether good or bad, that have outlived their purpose or their time has come to an end. After writing on the leaf, burn it.
Maggie's love of Winter also appeals to me. She loves the inwardness, the closed-offedness, the cosiness. It is a fruitful creative time for her. Hopefully with my creativity more intact than last year, my insanity levels receded (somewhat), and a return to the benefits of light therapy, this Winter can be the same sort of time for me.
There is something to be said for the limiting of choices. Too much choice can create distraction, anxiety. Sometimes being forced to go downtime, makes you realise how tired you are. Revving too hard up in the noise and chaos can remove us from ourselves, send us buzzing around in the cross-winds.
Still. I am missing going barefoot already :)
But all of the seasons have their place. Even the ones that prod me with a bit of trepidation beforehand.
I see, looking at the weather observations, that Mount Dandenong is currently 5.5 degrees. Still, even though it's much colder up there, I would still seriously seriously contemplate moving up there, even for six months or a year. (But central heating would be nice). If it's gonna be cold, you may as well have misty shrouded trees to romanticise the whole experience.
It was so cold last night I wore pyjamas and socks to bed, and on top of my thick doona, my dressing gown.
May always deceives me. I think, "Oh, come on. This isn't so bad!" I am feeling that way right now :) There is a heavy sensuality about Winter. The Winterish things are newly unwrapped for the year and interesting in their novelty. I made soup yesterday (flunked it, can you believe it?), a risotto the night before, comfort food (a tip: if the recipe calls for dry white wine and all you have is champagne, go right ahead. Rocks on).
My art therapist is a winter person. Follows the celtic traditions. Gave me a giant leaf she'd picked, after our last session. Suggested that a good thing to do, coming up to the winter solstice, traditionally the new year in the Celtic calendar, is to dry out the leaf, and then write on it all of the things in my life that I am discarding, whether good or bad, that have outlived their purpose or their time has come to an end. After writing on the leaf, burn it.
Maggie's love of Winter also appeals to me. She loves the inwardness, the closed-offedness, the cosiness. It is a fruitful creative time for her. Hopefully with my creativity more intact than last year, my insanity levels receded (somewhat), and a return to the benefits of light therapy, this Winter can be the same sort of time for me.
There is something to be said for the limiting of choices. Too much choice can create distraction, anxiety. Sometimes being forced to go downtime, makes you realise how tired you are. Revving too hard up in the noise and chaos can remove us from ourselves, send us buzzing around in the cross-winds.
Still. I am missing going barefoot already :)
But all of the seasons have their place. Even the ones that prod me with a bit of trepidation beforehand.
Suddenly it's winter here ... well, just about. Well, not Winter Winter with snow and minus temperatures. People go on about how cold Melbourne is but really, compared to Siberia our Winters are a piece of urine. Still. Last night I wore pyjamas and socks to bed. The heater has been fired up. I am hopefully going to make a batch of veggie soup tonight if I can muster up the energy after a day of workish boredom. It's time for umbrellas (it's raining again) and coats and all of that stuff is nice and cosy (and a football team that is sitting on top of the ladder after round 1 and looks like some kind of amazing oiled machine), but I know it won't be long before I begin to pine for barefoot weather and dry heat. But in its time. It will swing back again.
I am feeling so much better. I have walked around for the past few days feeling content with feeling low-level crap because compared to Monday I feel great. Last night on the train home I stared out the window at the sunset and caught my reflection in the window, a goofy smile on my face.
After a few days of low-level crap, though, I'll start getting discontented with that and want more. The memory of Monday will fade and I'll be left with the memory of the day before. But really, when I look at all the bad health I've had over the past 10 years, the way I'm feeling at the moment is pretty easy to deal with. There's no doubt I'm on the upward trajectory; I just need to keep reminding myself of that 'cause every time I slip back my perspective buggers off.
I was thinking yesterday, if in some future age we shall be living in a time of golden light but no bad stuff - no death, no sickness, no causes of tears - then how shall the momentum be kept up? How shall we go on enjoying everything without getting bored? What would happen if constant joy became tedious?
Then I thought ... we have no idea what it's going to be like. Presumably we would be experiencing life in more dimensions than we do right now. And God, also (or maybe they're the same things). Those two things in themselves ... what do we have to compare them to? How do you envisage dimensions that you don't know what they are, and elements of God you haven't experienced? (Well, maybe the second is easier than the first, in some ways, if you compare the minutest touchings of God in this life, the whispers so subtle you can wonder whether they are you or God, the things that s/he has made, that gentle voice ... bring more on, whenever you like, Starfield God Dude).
A future of more God and more dimensions, a future of learning and continual growth (not the unimaginative sitting around on clouds in heaven crap but someplace amazing, someplace that takes all the best elements of learning and growth here and amplifies them out beyond belief. Someplace that makes the best music we have hear sound like a baby beating a plastic xylophone). It's a tantalising prospect to envisage ... and knowing that I'm nowhere near the mark is tantalising in itself. Like trying to work out what the amazingly wrapped Christmas present is that I'm not allowed to open yet. It adds rock-on edges to boring moments. The thought of how we could be ongoingly happy with no dark to define the light makes me think that the light is going to be very amazing indeed.
I am feeling so much better. I have walked around for the past few days feeling content with feeling low-level crap because compared to Monday I feel great. Last night on the train home I stared out the window at the sunset and caught my reflection in the window, a goofy smile on my face.
After a few days of low-level crap, though, I'll start getting discontented with that and want more. The memory of Monday will fade and I'll be left with the memory of the day before. But really, when I look at all the bad health I've had over the past 10 years, the way I'm feeling at the moment is pretty easy to deal with. There's no doubt I'm on the upward trajectory; I just need to keep reminding myself of that 'cause every time I slip back my perspective buggers off.
I was thinking yesterday, if in some future age we shall be living in a time of golden light but no bad stuff - no death, no sickness, no causes of tears - then how shall the momentum be kept up? How shall we go on enjoying everything without getting bored? What would happen if constant joy became tedious?
Then I thought ... we have no idea what it's going to be like. Presumably we would be experiencing life in more dimensions than we do right now. And God, also (or maybe they're the same things). Those two things in themselves ... what do we have to compare them to? How do you envisage dimensions that you don't know what they are, and elements of God you haven't experienced? (Well, maybe the second is easier than the first, in some ways, if you compare the minutest touchings of God in this life, the whispers so subtle you can wonder whether they are you or God, the things that s/he has made, that gentle voice ... bring more on, whenever you like, Starfield God Dude).
A future of more God and more dimensions, a future of learning and continual growth (not the unimaginative sitting around on clouds in heaven crap but someplace amazing, someplace that takes all the best elements of learning and growth here and amplifies them out beyond belief. Someplace that makes the best music we have hear sound like a baby beating a plastic xylophone). It's a tantalising prospect to envisage ... and knowing that I'm nowhere near the mark is tantalising in itself. Like trying to work out what the amazingly wrapped Christmas present is that I'm not allowed to open yet. It adds rock-on edges to boring moments. The thought of how we could be ongoingly happy with no dark to define the light makes me think that the light is going to be very amazing indeed.
Last night, Lester stood barking out the open door, into the dark at nothing, seemingly. So I told him off. Turns out he was saying his piece to the great sky monster before it came too close. Then it came closer, rushing through the city in a great swathe that stretched from the north all the way down to the Bay (I checked. I love the Bureau of Meteorology website ;)The great bucketfuls were so loud on my flat roof that I couldn't hear the radio playing and couldn't walk anywhere without a shivering dog at my feet. As the rain fell, the intense pressure I'd been feeling in my body began to ease. It was like an outward manifestation of the inward relaxation that had happened when I had sat down earlier at my computer to write I knew not what, and the words came, and they relaxed me, and I felt his pleasure. And I swapped, for the 388 millionth time, expectations for expectancy and relaxed into the moment to find God there. Again. Enough.
The rain stopped and the great sky monster brought out his party tricks, throwing his beautiful bolts through the sky, lighting up into the black that wonderful sensuous blue. Sending his great shards of crackling sound through the air. Releasing further the pressure in my body that had threatened to pop it earlier in the afternoon. It's something to do with barometric pressure. Ever since I have been sick, it's been really bad. Some days it can send me to the couch in a raging frenzy of anxiety and tension, sending all my internal dials buzzing backwards and forwards. When I'm already unwell, it's just too much. And so the relief when the storm hit was palpable. With the change in the air, the balloon deflated back down to garden variety crappy, feelings I was able to put aside in such rarified air that can only come with a storm, the sun, a waterfall, or standing on the side of a mountain.
Poor Lester didn't fare so well. I got up with renewed energy and began cooking myself dinner at 9.30 pm. Lester, however, cowed by the overhead shenanigans of the great sky monster, cowered at my feet, all 40 kilos of him, trying to stuff himself into the open cupboard in some kind of frantic effort to get away from it all.
I mourned with him for a while. Poor darling, he does have such a hard time of it. But selfishly, I hope that when the next great storm hits he is at his Dad's place so that I can rejoice with myself rejoicing, instead of mourning with a dog who just doesn't understand that the great sky monster is just having a bit of fun and ain't gonna do him no wrong.
The storm passed, as they always do. I felt cosy, all of a sudden, cooking myself up some good nosh, feeling the exhilaration of feeling slightly unwell. In comparison to how I felt earlier, it felt like magic. Always our moments are defined by the ones that have gone before. Light and dark mixed together, redeeming each other.
The radio was able to be heard once again after the sky monster moved on. Phillip Adams got talking on Late Night Live about his usual interesting subjects and I felt that cosy, comforting, inside feeling of the cooler months. Phillip discussed melancholia, and the place of sadness in our lives, and whether we are too quick to medicalise melancholia, that there is a place in the world for all sorts, that go-getting extroversion might be the only way to be in a culture that expects 24/7 productivity, but that we are much, much more than our small, small culture.
Nothing like a bit of philosophical pondering to redeem a day that was totally shot to hell several hours earlier. Yesterday ran the gamut of emotions, more than usual. I may be a positive melancholic, I have decided, after listening to LNL. I don't know if there is such a thing. I do know that there is certainly a place for it in our world, the world that God inhabits, in dark and alien places. Sometimes, when I ponder that, I get so Zen and calm I couldn't reach out and touch the edges of the moment even if I tried.
The lessons are coming thick and fast these days, but then so are the soft landings. Indeed, they seem to be everywhere I look now. God's reminder that he is my soft landing. Friends, certain colours, a tree, the golden light at 8pm as the sun is winding down its act. The rain softly falling this morning and the air cooler, after several days dry and hot weather - my favourite sort.I love rainy overcast days in the middle of summer. The smell the earth yields up. We must come from dust - that smell is something kinda orgiastic to me. Earth. Reminds me of myself. I could eat it ... but it tastes so bad :)
I love rainy days in the middle of summer ... except it's not the middle of summer. It's screaming towards the end. The local football team has started up its training in the oval a street over from me. Their yells for the ball reach me in my yard. My own football team has started up their preseason, a scrappy win in a game not even a fan could love. There is no sign of any yellow or orange leaves - we still have Indian summer to go yet - but Autumn is coming. It's on the wind. I feel whispers of it, memories from years past, in the coolness of the day. My Northern American and European friends begin hopefully whispering desires for Spring.
I love Autumn. Melbourne in Autumn is a sensory delight, especially for an arboreal delighter. Colour explosions. Warmth and coolness. A return to jeans, boots. Autumn in and of itself is a delicious season.
But Autumn means Winter is next. And I dread it. I can't help it. I know that the march towards June equals disrupted days. As the light shortens, my nights lengthen. Every year the same. My summer habit of waking at 8am or 8.30am becomes something I have to strive for, accomplishable only by light therapy for an hour every day. Oh, for a correctly functioning body clock :)
But dreading the onset of Winter in February is sad even by my SAD standards. If that is the measuring stick, then why not dread bad times snap bang in the middle of euphoria? Where does it end? And what a waste that is, dreading the inevitable. I'm sitting out too high on the minutes of the day. Immersed in them, forgetful of myself, I don't think about what is coming tomorrow. Today has enough joys of its own. Worrying about tomorrow's sufferings, I miss today's joys.
This is the second day in a row I've woken up at the 6.30am mark. I think the rain woke me up. It's still sultry, thundery, rainy weather. Stormy weather.I am thinking I will probably go back to bed at some point, but for now I'm content to sit here online, drinking tea, feeling cosy, contemplating my book on my bedside table (a bit of T Austin-Sparks; has been a long time since I've read any theological stuff and I found it good and necessary to have a long break. Even so, a little goes a long way, these days.
My house has a flat roof, and I think the rain sounds louder than it really is outside. But that's okay. If you're gonna have rain, you may as well have it belting. Just like if you're gonna have music, you may as well have it loud.
It shows how little it rains here in Melbourne when it becomes a defining characteristic of my day. I forget how cosy it feels to be inside while it's pelting outside (and I remind myself that those five foot high weeds growing monstrously around the side of the house shall be much easier to pull out now the earth is wet). I feel pleased that my day is being defined for me by external forces like the weather. It gives me a childlike feeling somehow, a security feeling (is this just me?). Today I am content to stay home, to do some writing (and some weeding, if the rain stops). I am most pleased because I was going to wash Craig today but the rain has done it instead (I still have Craig; Mocca's plaster is off but he's not able to drive for another couple of weeks, so me and the sexy black beast have a bit more time together before Olive the Skanky Mitsubishi returns to my life with her rust, her McDonald's wrappers, her skankiness, to remind me that I don't really care anyway about material items :).
I am enjoying the rain this morning in a way only the seasonally affectively disordered can, knowing that it's not winter and that it shall not discombobulate me because today's forecast is for 31 degrees celcius. Tomorrow is going to be 37, which is just ludicrous for this time of year.
I did some more centering prayer yesterday afternoon and it never ceases to amaze me how it turns me from a bumbling occasional stresshead (it's in the genes, unfortunately) to a calm Zenlike creature full of contentment and Mona Lisa smiles. Really. It's amazing. And my lifeline. It makes me feel the way that writing and God do ... and all three of those things of course are tied up in each other. How beautiful you are, o Mysterious One.
I am now the proud owner of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and The Writer's Life by Annie Dillard (both being prepared to head my way from the good ol' US of A on Monday). Has anyone here read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Dillard? Oh to be able write about nature the way she does, with such immediacy. It really was wonderful and deserving of its popularity. The image of that exploding frog is impinged on my mind forever (in a horrible way unfortunately). But the way she unflinchingly recounted it just captured all of the angst of living in a fallen world. And made me think that it's only when you a have a vision of another world that you can face this one unflinchingly in all its ugliness.
So this is the third post for the day, and that when I have gone back to bed and got up at 11, and it's just hit 1pm. I guess that makes me a junkie today. I've decided I may as well mainline a couple of hits at a time just 'cause it feels so good, baby ;) What happens when you overdose on the internet? Does your computer blow up? Do you get RSI in your fingers? Does your head explode? I actually feel like I've written something of substance on here this morning (regardless of whether anyone agrees with the content), so I have that nice feeling of accomplishing something.
I was thinking before about how I have this propensity to think that because I have blogged once about an idea that I (a) can't blog about it again and (b) can't write about it anywhere else. But I also know of writers who have blogs who use them as measuring sticks for audience reaction. So there's an idea.
(The concept of making money from writing is still a very foreign one to me. I don't think I shal quite believe it until it happens to me, until someone pays me 100 bucks for something I've slaved over for hours).
It's very sultry here today. I find it no coincidence that sultry applies to the weather and also to passion. Sometimes, sultry weather just ... does it for me, know what I mean? :) Sometimes it sends me to the couch. It's difficult to say what reaction I'm going to get. (And yes, I'm going to refrain myself from talking about randiness levels this time. I don't find other bloggers needing to discuss theirs so I figure I can exercise the same discretion. Or maybe as Christians we just don't talk about all "that stuff" as much as we should. We hide it all, make something shameful out of it, and then wonder why porn use skyrockets in hotels where Christian conventions are being held ;).
There is a threat of a thunderstorm. My dog has moved closer, so I know this without needing to look out the window. I feel it anyway. It's very pregnant and exciting. It feels like I might be able to get a bit done today without striving. Just being. Because I don't feel like I really care in that striving way if I get much done, I will therefore probably get more done effortlessly than those many myriad times when I am stressing about getting stuff done. I wish I would learn my lesson and just go and lie on the couch and chill out whenever I'm stressing like that. I may as well, for all that I accomplish then. How paradoxical and strange this life is. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes it makes me want to smash plates. Sometimes it makes me want to scream and vomit. Sometimes it makes me want to hide. Today, it makes me smile. Happy Saturday, everyone (and happy Friday night for you laggers ;)
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