moments of beauty – twenty-one words

Only [dis]connect

August 4, 2022September 2, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, Only connect!, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, staying humble, staying true, the beach, the sea, the sky, WinterTagged Jean Kyoung Frazier, Pizza Girl5 Comments

Other people’s words about … beauty

I wondered if a more complex language like [my mother’s native language] Korean had a singular word to describe the feeling of getting off a long shift of a physically demanding job and finding that, for at least half an hour after, everything, every last thing, was too beautiful to bear.

Jenny asked the question so simply — ‘Okay, what do you want to talk about?’ — and I nearly reached across the table and grabbed her hands back, whispered thanks against each of her knuckles. I was about to ask her opinion on lakes and oceans — which did she prefer, contained and musty, or vast and salty? — when she suddenly sat up straight, eyes wide. ‘So — what did you think of that meeting today? Hold nothing back.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know, it was fine.’

from Pizza Girl
by Jean Kyoung Frazier

I thought of Sally Rooney’s novel Beautiful World, Where Are You? when I read the passage above. In Beautiful World, Rooney’s characters variously mourn the loss of the sense they used to have that they were moving through a beautiful world, or they lament the ugliness of the everyday world, or they remark upon what Rooney calls a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, of a beautiful world.

Sunset, early July 2022.

I think this is what Kyuoung Frazier’s narrator is getting at. She wants to tell Jenny about the beautiful world she sees all around her — but Jenny, like everyone else in the narrator’s life, either doesn’t want to hear what she has to say or doesn’t know how to hear it.

Some years ago when I was going through a difficult patch, a friend of mine offered to exchange a daily photograph with me via text message. ‘We’ll just send each other a picture of something we see,’ she said. ‘Something we like. Something that makes us smile. We’ll share our pictures, and it’ll be a way to reach out. To say hello.’

Dune flowers, early July 2022.

We ended up exchanging daily photographs for over a year, and it was a way to say hello, but it was also so much more. What I loved most about our exchange, beyond the sense of connection it gave me with another human being, was the knowledge that we were each finding something beautiful in our day and then sharing it with someone else. Passing the beauty on.

Maybe we should all share more beauty. Maybe it doesn’t matter if beauty is fleeting and makes us feel fragile. Maybe that’s exactly why we should keep on sharing it.

Before sunset, early July 2022.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- I feel like I’m 22 again. Just absolutely and utterly lost: Carmen Maria Machado on writing, loss, depression, anxiety … and being older than twenty-two.
- James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, which was initially ridiculed as ‘New Age’ nonsense, now makes up the basis of much of climate science: Helena Horton on the life of Lovelock, who died recently at the age of 103.
- In The Last Walk, Jessica Pierce writes, ‘When we commit to owning an animal, we must commit all the way to the bitter end, as in a marriage’: Keshia Naran Badalge on seeing her beloved dog Shandi through to her death. I have to confess that ultimately I found Badalge’s piece troubling, and I would love to know what you think about it. Badalge says she thought of Shandi as her sister, but this was a ‘sister’ whom Badalge abandoned for ten years while she went off to live her own life in another country. Is that love? How much does one old dog have to forgive? What do you think?
- Part of our confusion today is tied to a belief that happiness and personal growth should organise all of our decisions about relationships, which is a relatively recent disposition in Western societies: Joshua Coleman on why the pursuit of happiness above all else is not always the best resolution when you feel you are struggling in a relationship, why our fervour for ‘happiness hacks’ (my term, not his) may be misplaced, and why Durkheim had a point.

How to go on

April 17, 2022Posted in anxiety, Autumn, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, nature, nature writing, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ..., workTagged moments of beauty2 Comments

Other people’s words about … hard work

He worked construction down on the river, where they were putting up a new footbridge. His own job involved the careful freighting of materials onto the platform where the crane rested on the water. There were times when he thought he’d get sick from the motion of the barge, the constant shifting underfoot. There were times when his hands hurt from lifting and pushing and turning, tightening the straps until they wouldn’t give, tightening them until it seemed impossible that anyone would ever be able to set them loose again. Days when his back ached and his stomach hurt and his hair was peppered with grit, when his eyes burned, and his nose burned from the stench of oil and of the river, which was dying a slow, choked death via a series of minor diversions. But then, on bright winter days, he’d look up and see the geese tracking across the sky, moving up there free as air, and he’d think that there was something beautiful left in the world. And he could go on like that, as long as there was something beautiful left in the world.
From ‘Filthy Animals‘
by Brandon Taylor

I work in a call centre, an office job, unlike Brandon Taylor’s character Hartjes in the passage above. It’s not a physically demanding job. Even so, there are days when my head aches from breathing in stale, recycled office air, when my hips ache from sitting too long, when my voice croaks from talking for hours on the phone, when my stomach hurts from choking down my emotion after a difficult phone call. In the end, just like Hartjes, I feel my job in my body.

Neighbourhood frangipani tree, Taperoo, April 2022.

What grabs me most in the passage above is the river, in all its symbolism, dying its slow, choked death. Like Hartjes, I find myself looking up from my day, seeking the sky, seeking the air, seeking a glimpse of beauty and wonder.

That brief hint of beauty. That brief reminder of how to carry on.

Lately I’ve been reading …

He was telling me how he liked writing, but he had a real block because it never came out on the page how it felt in his mind, and he just couldn’t stand the gap between the two: Aimee Bender on writing by the seat of your pants.

If Miocene Earth had the same amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as we have currently, why aren’t we living in the same conditions? It’s a matter of time lags: there’s a delay as the climate equilibrates with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The planet will eventually catch up. A Miocene climate is coming. It’s like seeing the flash of a far-off explosion, but the shockwave hasn’t yet reached us: Mark Bullock on how the human body will experience global warming.

We can never entirely escape from human-centric narratives of nature; they have always been our primary means of interpreting and coming to terms with the landscapes in which we find ourselves: Richard Smyth on why nature writing must not descend into poetic self-absorption.

Only connect: The secrets of the universe

March 16, 2021April 23, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, on writing, Only connect!, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, rituals, solace, staying humble, staying true, summer, writing3 Comments

Other people’s words about connection

I placed my hand on the back of his neck. I pulled him toward me. And kissed him. I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And I kissed him. And he kept kissing me back.
We laughed and we talked and looked up at the stars.
‘I wished it was raining,’ he said.
‘I don’t need the rain, ‘I said. ‘I need you.’
He traced his name on my back. I traced my name on his.
All this time.

From ‘Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe’
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

I am a sucker for a love story that moves me. The older I get, the more what I mean when I talk about ‘a love story that moves me’ is ‘a love story that makes me weep’.

It’s taken me years to work out why this is. It is not because I am not loved. It is not because I do not love in return. It is because the love stories that make me weep are about a moment — or moments — of connection.

Big sky.

Oh, connection. I had planned in this post to theorise about why I — like so many other people, I suspect — feel so disconnected right now from other people and from the natural world around me. I’d planned to talk about the coronavirus pandemic. About the climate change crisis. About violence and discrimination against people who are not white or male or middle-class or heterosexual or young. And about what it feels like, as a non-married, non-childbearing, non-career-driven woman to turn fifty-one in this year, 2021.

But in the end I decided against writing about those things — partly because I’ve talked about them in previous posts over the years, and partly because most of these things are common topics of conversation right now, and I don’t think I have any new ideas to contribute.

Meeting place.

What I have decided to do instead is to start a new occasional series on this blog called — in the spirit of EM Forster, whose words in 1910 in Howard’s End seem more prescient than ever — Only connect!. In this series, I will be quoting passages that are in one way or another about those moments of connection that move me so deeply. Mostly, I suspect, that means the quotes in this series, like the passage I’ve quoted above from Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s beautiful novel for young adults about two Mexican-American boys who fall in love with each other in the 1980s, will be about love and intimacy. But there are other forms of connection that move me, too, and I will quote passages about them here, too.

Years ago, when I first wrote the blurb on my About the Words page of this blog, this is what I wrote: [This blog is] about my love for words, particularly other people’s words, and how they speak to me. Words can make us laugh, cry, think, hope, dream, rage —- but they have no meaning unless they are shared. I see now that what I was saying when I wrote that blurb was that words are a form of connection. And so I hope, in bringing this new series of posts to you that you, too, feel a moment of connection — with the words I’ve quoted, with the writer who wrote them, with me, too, perhaps.

A pot of tea and a book.

PS The photographs that dot this post come from a recent trip I took to Yorke Peninsula, where I spent the week reading, walking, eating, sleeping. I had no access to mobile phone coverage, or to emails, or to the internet. Strangely, it did not feel as though I was disconnected at all. Rather, it felt as though I was reconnecting — with the world around me, and with the natural rhythms of life. And that, perhaps, is the truest kind of connection of all.

Lately I’ve been reading …

Part of being alive in this world is becoming aware of a specific kind of sadness: Devin Kelly, an injured runner, in an astonishing essay about sadness and pain and survival and surrender.
Even if we want to pay attention, can we? Can we stand to live a life of attention when that means having to recognize the painful world we live in?: Jessica Hines on the discomfort and difficulty of paying attention.
Your passion is you, and that’s what readers want: Courtney Maum on social media and why writers should stop worrying about the number of followers they have.
No, daddylonglegs are NOT the most poisonous spider on earth: Helen Sullivan on childhood myths and the surprising truth about daddy longlegs.

Thankful

January 28, 2021April 23, 2022Posted in anxiety, books, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, Other people's words about ..., out & about, Paths, reading, resilience, Running, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, summer, What I talk about when I talk about runningTagged climate change, coronavirus, moments of beauty, pandemic3 Comments

Other people’s words about … love

And the way I felt, seeing him for the first time in four years, was the way I felt every time I saw him in public all the years we were together. If I arrived somewhere and saw him already waiting for me, or walking in my direction, if he was talking to someone on the other side of a room — it wasn’t a thrill, a rush of affection, or pleasure. Then, in the church, I didn’t know what it was and spent all of the service trying to diagnose it. At the end of the service, Patrick smiled at me once more as I moved back … and I felt it again, so much from my core that it was difficult to keep going, to follow Ingrid and Hamish out, Patrick further and further behind me …

Thank God is how I felt when I saw Patrick that day. Not a thrill or affection or pleasure. Visceral relief.

From ‘Sorrow and Bliss’
by Meg Mason

I’ve read many eloquent and moving (and arousing, even) descriptions of romantic love in fiction over the years, but I think Meg Mason’s words in the passage I’ve quoted above are some of the best. It takes a certain kind of grim, black humour to describe the other part of loving someone, that part which is more a kind of fatalistic recognition of how much two people can become physically a part of each other, how much they can need and love each other, and yet how little it seems to have with that word we so often overuse — ‘love’.

Sorrow and bliss, indeed.

Study in blue.

I’m writing today in the last week of January 2021, a month in which 100 million cases of coronavirus have been recorded in the last year or so, along with about 2 million deaths, since the first case was reported to the World Health Organization in Wuhan around the same time last year. In Australia, the virus has so far remained relatively under control — possibly due to sheer luck of timing and distance, I think, rather than to any kind of incredible management as far as leadership goes — and so we remain, for now at least, protected. Instead, Australians watch the tragedy unfolding from afar, and we mourn and hold our breaths at the same time, hoping the same thing won’t come to us.

Lizzie the garden cat, inching closer.

To me, this time, early 2021, feels like a time for a collective holding of the breath, across the globe. Who knows what 2021 holds? There is plenty of news bringing whiffs of hope — a vaccine, a new president in the US, a growing political will to respond to global warming and climate change. But it’s too early to know, yet, whether these whiffs of hope will be realised, or whether this time is just a lull in a gathering storm.

I hope, I hope, I hope.

And meanwhile, on a personal scale, I am grateful for the small but beautiful things in the world around me and in my life, a small sample of which I’ve captured in the photographs accompanying this post. It’s trite, perhaps, to fall back on the quotidian details, on appreciating and acknowledging the humdrum rhythms of everyday, but that doesn’t make the process any less meaningful or important.

And meanwhile there are wonderful books to read, like Meg Mason’s. I hope you, like Mason’s Martha, have found your own Thank God.

Tree hug.

Lately I’ve been reading …

… This kind of story shape is inherently conflict-based, perhaps also inherently male (as author Jane Alison puts it: “Something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no?”): Matthew Salesses, with a fascinating perspective on the inherent biases in writer’s craft as it is taught in writer’s workshops across the Western world.
… [My houseplants] did not feel like replacements for children, or pets. They felt like a replacement for nature itself: Millennial writer Madeleine Watts grieves the environmental crisis.
… Donald Trump is a man, and he has gone to great lengths to prove it: Megan Garber, in an article that’s a little outdated, but no less relevant for all that, on Donald Trump’s legacy.

Unlovely

May 29, 2020April 23, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, Australian bush, Autumn, birds, blogging, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, native coastal vegetation, nature, Other people's words about ..., out & about, Paths, reading, resilience, Running, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the beach, workTagged coronavirus, pandemic2 Comments

Other people’s words about … the view from the kitchen window

The kitchen window [of the railroad flat] looked into the gray courtyard where, on better days, there would be lines of clothes baking in the sun, although the floor of the deep courtyard, even in the prettiest weather, was a junkyard and a jungle. There were rats and bedsprings and broken crates. A tangle of city-bred vegetation: a sickly tree, black vines, a long-abandoned attempt at a garden.

From ‘The Ninth Hour’
by Alice McDermott

The world can seem very unlovely sometimes, can’t it? Sometimes the unloveliness is of the kind described in the passage above, which comes from poverty and dereliction and is visible from your kitchen window. And sometimes it comes from a more spiritual kind of unloveliness: a human lack of grace.

Shafts of sunlight

There are times when I fret and rail at the unloveliness, times when it is all I can see. And there are other times — for the space of a breath, or a second, or a minute, or an hour — when I am overwhelmed by the loveliness that surrounds me, both within people and without.

Oystercatchers on the reef

I had a week of annual leave from work last week, which I spent by the beach. The weather was dank and damp and (yes) somewhat unlovely, and, at least partly in response, my mood veered up and down erratically.

Autumn in the vineyards

But then, over the week, because I’m on a pause in my running at the moment, I found myself seeking out my bike again, taking myself for long, hypnotic rides along the coast, through hills and paddocks and vineyards. And all around me, amidst the dampness and dankness, there were moments of loveliness, some of which you can see pictured in today’s post.

Rainclouds over the hills

Sometimes, I think, you just have to take moments of loveliness like this and carry them with you, through the unloveliness. Sometimes it’s all you can do.

Lately I’ve been reading …

… [F]or those steeped in the belief that great calamity should not, cannot, be our lot —- or that, if we work hard enough or try hard enough or hope hard enough or are good or inventive enough, we might be able to outfox it — it can be a relief to admit our folly and rejoin the species, which is defined, as are all forms of life, by a terrible and precious precarity, to which some bodies need no reintroduction: Maggie Nelson, on finding moments of calm during a pandemic.

… It felt almost like we had travelled back to a pre-pandemic past — except that version is a fantasy that no longer exists: Isabella Kwai on Australia’s ‘escape’ from the pandemic and what living in the post-pandemic world really means.

… If I’ve realized anything, it’s that everyone has an extremely specific experience of this time of coronavirus: Stacy Ladenburger, offering her response to the post-pandemic world (and a delicious-looking herby pea soup recipe as well!).

The life ahead of you

April 12, 2020April 23, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, Autumn, blogging, books, coronavirus, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, nature, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the sky, writingTagged coronavirus, COVID-192 Comments

Other people’s words about … distance

They raised their glasses. The room smelt of wine and bread and gravy, and the light was rich and dim.

Geraint didn’t answer.

‘I thought a change of scene … ‘ said Basil. ‘A long voyage on an ocean liner [to India]. Full of hopeful beautiful women,’ he added, daring.

Geraint read Kipling. He thought of the mystery of India, the jungle, the light, the colours, the creatures. The complexities of the silver dealings. The distance. He was, he saw, in need of distance. And his imagination touched on the beautiful young women sailing across dark starlit oceans in search of husbands. A journey like that made you free, made you a different man.

From ‘The Children’s Book’
by AS Byatt

Just a few weeks ago, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world we’re living in now would have seemed like something straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel. But then life changed — abruptly, shockingly — and here we are now, living out our strange, new lives. Trying to make sense of our days.

Having no words, myself, for any of this, I have spent my Easter seeking solace in other people’s words. There is no better novel I can think of that describes the kind of vast, sudden change we are experiencing right now than The Children’s Book. In it, AS Byatt chronicles the lives of the members of a family living in Edwardian England as they move, unknowingly, towards 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War … and the end of the world as they knew it.

‘I should like that, sir,’ [Geraint] said. ‘You have been very kind to me.’

Basil said, ‘It was a fortunate day for me when you came into the Bank. You are too young to be fixed by one setback. You have all your life in front of you. The world in front of you.’

Geraint set his [broken heart] against the pull of the oceans and the strange continent. He could feel his own energy stirring.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You are right. Thank you.’

To say anything more about how Geraint’s life changes shortly after this conversation, or about how wrong Basil’s pronouncements turn out to be, would be to give away the whole, shocking point of this novel. All I will say is this: sometimes we are wrong about the world we live in, and about the lives that we believe lie ahead of us.

Sometimes, as Byatt describes, we are terribly, terribly wrong.

At the end of this post, I’ve listed a few of the pieces I’ve read online recently, during this strange, uneasy Easter weekend. I’ve listed them here in case you, like me, find yourself speechless right now: in case you, like me, find yourself seeking solace in other people’s words.

But there’s one other thing I want to leave you with today. This morning, I wandered into my garden — my small, messy, rambling suburban garden, which is more of a yard with some trees I planted in it, really, than a garden — and glanced up through the leaves at the sky. And there, above me, was the sun shining through, distant but warm.

I captured that moment in the photo that accompanies this post. It shows another kind of distance from the one Geraint believes he is entitled to reach out towards. It shows, I want to say, another kind of solace.

The light shining through

Lately I’ve been reading …

… But if [this pandemic] really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?: Arundhati Roy on the spread of COVID-19 across India.

… Maybe life could keep going on, I thought. It would be okay. The headlines were worse than reality. Of course, I was naïve. It only took a few days for everything to change: Gabrielle Bellot on her experience of COVID-19, and how we turn to stories about plague for both horror and comfort.

… We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Remember handshakes?: Lauren Markham on writing, grief, isolation, sickness and fear … and travelling on trains.

… I’m doing my best. That’s all I can do, and all I can keep doing, for myself, my family, my community, our world. I’m trying, every day, to do my best. I promise to keep doing just that: Ali Feller, long-time blogger, runner, writer, New York resident, mother, wife and sufferer of Crohn’s disease, writing with her loveable, inimitable honesty about living through the pandemic one day at a time.

That place

March 22, 2020Posted in a thought, anxiety, Autumn, birds, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, life, moments of beauty, native coastal vegetation, nature, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, sea quotes, solace, South Australia, staying humble, staying true, the beach, the seaTagged bushfires, coronavirus, COVID-193 Comments

Other people’s words about … slowing down

He opened the window and let in the ocean, gulped in that grey air as though oxygen was enough to save him from the people in the house, watched the waves, noted the dark rip forming at the southern end of the beach. He ignored the sound of Charlie’s voice in the lounge, hilarious, oblivious, the sounds of the girl in the bathroom behind him, scrubbing insistently; called to mind the tentacles of the cloud from earlier, saw the colours he’d mix [if he were to paint it], the strokes, the shapes. After a few moments, his breathing slowed and he began to enter the place where no one else could come.

From‘Bluebottle‘
By Belinda Castles

It’s hard to know what to say, let alone what to write about, in times like this. Surely I am not alone in beginning to think of 2020 as the year of disasters — first, here in Australia, the bushfires; then, globally, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Low ebb

About the coronavirus, I have nothing useful to say. It is only just beginning to hit here in Australia, and — despite the chance that Australians had, over the last few weeks, to learn from people’s experiences of it in the northern hemisphere — it appears that we have done very little to protect ourselves. Though we are not yet in lockdown, I suspect we will be soon.

Birds of a feather

Before the coronavirus situation began to escalate here, I was lucky enough to have the chance to slip away for a few days to Kangaroo Island. The photos in this post are from those few days.

Half of the island — yes, half — was destroyed by the bushfires earlier this year. Even without the pandemic, it is a time of great sadness on the Island.

Exposed

But I have nothing to say about that sadness, either. Instead, my photographs here celebrate, I hope, the beauty of the unburned half of the Island. In times of sadness, we have to find things to celebrate, yes?

Enter that place

Also, to borrow Belinda Castles’s words from the quote above and to use them in a different context, we have to slow down, despite our panic; we have to breathe in fresh air. We have to turn inward, finding and enter[ing] that place where no one else [can] come.

In the end, we have to find a way, within ourselves, to survive.

Chasing clouds

November 30, 2019December 1, 2019Posted in a thought, anxiety, birds, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, life, moments of beauty, Other people's words about ..., out & about, Paths, reading, resilience, rituals, Running, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, What I talk about when I talk about runningTagged Catriona Menzies-Pike, gratitude3 Comments

Other people’s words about … running

Some athletes love to talk about what a simple sport running is. They say that all you need is a pair of sneakers. That’s not true. What you need is some freedom of movement and the ability to see a clear path ahead of you. It took me years to see that path and to find my pace. When I finally got moving, I hoped I might be able to run forever.

From ‘The Long Run’
by Catriona Menzies-Pike

After I wrote my last post here, in which I mentioned that I’d been too tired to run very much recently, I caught a cold and stopped running altogether for almost three weeks. It was probably the longest period I’ve gone without running since I took the habit up again, back in 2015, at the age of forty-five.

This past Thursday, I went for my first run since catching that cold, feeling fragile and wobbly and exhausted. I was so tired that I ran half the distance that I usually run, and I stopped at the midway point — partly to rest, partly just to soak up the wonder of being out under the sky again, with my feet thudding against the ground.

I sat on a rock looking out over the sailboats anchored in the cove, and I thanked whatever grace it is that allows me to continue to run. There are so many people who would like to run but can’t, whether because of disability or illness, injury or lack of opportunity. I remembered that I am one of the lucky ones: that it is my great good fortune and privilege to be able to run, however slow my pace, however short my distance.

I took the photographs in today’s post as I was sitting on those rocks, midway through that run. It was a short, tiring, exhausting, feeble run, and it left me feeling both humbled and blessed.

And that is what I love most about this privileged pursuit of mine: the gratitude it feels me with. The joy that it brings.

Savour it

November 1, 2019Posted in anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, life, moments of beauty, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sky, workTagged depression, meditation, mindfulness3 Comments

Other people’s words about … moments of beauty

Her head nested in spindly weeds [as she lay down in the grass]; the sky glowed preternaturally blue through the slats. As her breathing slowed, she noted a bee crawling along a blade of grass above her head. She counted its stripes, amazed to see them juxtaposed with the stripes of sky. The bee’s were a warning, the sky’s a promise she could not yet fathom, and for a moment everything seemed connected, aching beauty and imminent danger, the fragility of the bee and the scalded roof of her mouth, the transcendent savour of [the stolen loaf of freshly baked] bread and the fact that she was literally lying in a ditch.

From ‘Tess of the Road’
by Rachel Hartman

I love this passage, in which the protagonist of Rachel Hartman’s novel, Tess, feels utterly present in a single moment of her life: feels herself watching the moment as it unfolds. Tess’s experience of this moment, her sense of being present in it, is what a meditation teacher might call an experience of mindfulness. And yet the description is beautiful rather than didactic, descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Stripes in the sky (1)

Hartman’s words are, I think, a description of the practice of mindfulness at its best. Mindfulness, to me, is not about mantras or breathing or (heaven forbid!) colouring-in books. Instead, and far more simply, it is about slowing down, about looking around, about noticing the world around you. It is, most of all, about seeing.

Because the practice of mindfulness — this kind of mindfulness, anyway, which to me is the only kind that makes any practical or spiritual sense at all — is about stepping outside, into the living, breathing world, the one that exists beyond walls and ceilings and computers and cars. It’s about looking and seeing. And about being grateful for what you see.

Stripes in the sky (2)

This year has been a strange, uneasy year for me: a year of trying to make a living from freelancing, and then trying to readjust to a salaried living, working regular hours, meeting KPIs and targets. I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned throughout the year, and grateful most of all that I was able to seek out other opportunities when freelancing alone wasn’t enough to sustain me.

Still, at times this year, when things got hard, I felt myself becoming frighteningly disconnected from the things that usually matter most to me: those still, small moments like the one Hartman describes, those moments when you stop and breathe the world in, exactly as it. Call it fear that stole those moments away from me; call it loss; call it depression; call it change. Whatever it was, it shocked me. I felt that I had stepped away from the world, and I didn’t know how to step back in.

And yet here I am now, months down the track, and I’m still here, still breathing. I’m stepping back in.

Take note

August 18, 2019April 23, 2022Posted in anxiety, Australian bush, blogging, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, moments of beauty, native coastal vegetation, native flowers, nature, out & about, Paths, reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sky, walking, What I love about ..., Winter, workTagged resilience2 Comments

Other people’s words about … gratitude

I am so glad to still be here. Every day, I do my best to see the colours. I take note. I breathe them in.

From ‘How it Feels to Float’
by Helena Fox

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, I know. I want you all to know that I have been thinking of you, and I have been thinking of posting. There just hasn’t been room inside my head to get to it.

The first groundsel flowers of the season
(Spring is coming)

But when I read Helena Fox’s words in the Acknowledgments section at the back of her wonderful novel for young adults, How it Feels to Float, I wanted to pass them on. Because no matter how crammed my head — my brain, my mind — feels at the moment, I, too, do my best to see the colours, to breathe them in.

Blue winter sky

The photographs in today’s post come from a walk I took a few weeks back. I hadn’t walked that path for a while, and I haven’t walked it since, but those moments were precious. I am still breathing them in.

Last rays