Did you know it’s World Nutella Day today?
I couldn’t resist telling you in case you didn’t …
(No, I’m not advertising the stuff.
No, I’m not sponsored.
I just happen to love/hate the stuff.
Sad, but true …)
Addiction
Category: solace
My hourglass
Slowly, it started to feel as if I had clawed my way back to something resembling a life. It was such a relief to know that I hadn’t finished changing — I wasn’t an hourglass that had timed out, all the grains fallen through. I wasn’t stuck, too soon the best I could ever be.
from ‘Inbetween Days’
by Vikki Wakefield*
Have you ever wondered if you’ve already achieved the best you can?
Have you ever thought that it’s all downhill from here?
If so, perhaps — like me — you will find these words comforting.
I like to think of the grains in my hourglass still trickling through slowly …
… not quite timing out.
*Note:
Vikki is a good friend of mine and fellow writer. Check out her website for more information.
Tangled
The bush is in the throes of mid-summer right now.
It’s dry and brown.
It’s a tangle of trunks and branches —
and grasses —
and twigs and leaves.
But the mistletoe in the trees …
… is in flower:
And one or two bushes are heavy with creamy blossom.
Insects tick.
Shrike thrushes sing.
Whistlers call.
Black cockatoos swoop and shriek.
Kookaburras laugh.
Summer slumbers on.
(Wordless) gratitude
31 December 2015
09.30 am
Happy/sad
So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.
From ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘
By Stephen Chbosky
Have you read The Perks of Being a Wallflower?
I came to it a few years ago — later than most people, long after the film was released. I think I thought (cynically) that it was a kind of super-cool rewrite of The Catcher in the Rye. And I don’t like super-cool books.
But it isn’t.
I like Charlie’s voice. The narrative is simple and poignant, and gets at the heart of the loneliness of being an adolescent.
Happy/sad.
That’s not just adolescence, though, is it?
PS Happy birthday to my mother for today! ❤
Long days, hot nights, mirror seas
The longest day of the year has just passed.
One night this week, before the sun set, I wandered down to the beach.
It was the end of the fifth day in a row over 40 degrees Celsius.
It was a still, sultry evening,
the skies stormy,
but the sea shining like a mirror.
It’s a beautiful world.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Rebecca xo
Coming up roses
Since my last post on roses,
I’ve started glimpsing them wherever I go.
Outside the entrance to my office, there’s a bed of low-lying roses.
They catch my eye as I walk through the automatic glass doors on my way in to work.
So I sneak down to soak up their beauty again in my morning tea-break.
After rain, the petals and leaves hang heavy, glistening.
And it feels to me like a moment of stolen beauty.
Coming alive for the first time to the beauty of something
that has always been around you
is one of life’s greatest joys.
(Wordless) gratitude
29 October 2015
12.38 pm
Back in the vineyards
I’ve been slack with my bike-riding over the last few months,
for a number of reasons that I won’t go into here.
But in late October I finally took another ride through the vineyards.
And it was worth every puff and pant up and down those hills.
Yes, I’m hooked once more!
On running
Finally, after a summer of heartache followed by almost crippling depression, came the walking phase. After a hectic routine of lying under my coffee table weeping, I had reached a point where I had to get outside and see daylight. I wanted to feel the breath of warm air on my skin; I yearned to feel the blood circulate around my body again … Half-deranged by weeks of erratic sleeping — nights spent enervated and panicky followed by sluggish, heavy-limbed days — I decided in desperation that physically exhausting myself might make the nights seem a little more welcoming. I longed to yearn to lie down at the end of the day, legs aching from use rather than the anxious jiggling they did under my desk for hours on end.
from ‘Running like a girl‘
by Alexandra Heminsley
When I was twenty-five, I took up running to cure my own case of heartbreak. I lived by the beach (a different one then), and so I picked out my four-kilometre course, from one jetty to the next and back; and then I ran.
And the heartbreak lifted. Running brought me the simplest joy I’ve ever known, in fact — until I developed runner’s knee.
Twenty years later, I’ve started running again.
The joy’s still there …
… but so is the runner’s knee.
I won’t give up hope, though: running is the best salve I know.
Cross your fingers for me?
twenty-one words 