spring – Page 2 – twenty-one words

Loss

October 6, 2023Posted in a thought, anxiety, blogging, books, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, on writing, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, solace, South Australia, spring, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ..., writingTagged Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans1 Comment

Other people’s words about … doing what we love

It was a lie that Timo had not loved [playing] piano enough. He had loved it very much, but in a way that was difficult to describe. It was apophatic — he could only describe it through its negation. He only understood how much he loved the piano after he had given it up. Even that decision in hindsight seemed arbitrary, a whim. An act of petulance. But he had loved it, and he still did. Every day, he felt like a struck tuning fork, vibrating all the time. Except that it wasn’t pitch he was tuned to but something else, some horrible frequency cutting through the universe. Loss, he thought. It was loss.

from ‘The Late Americans‘
by Brandon Taylor

In the passage above, Taylor’s character Timo is a graduate student in Iowa who used to study music but then gave up. Sometimes, when he is on his own in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, Fyodor, who works at a meat-packing plant, he sits listening to classical music recordings, losing himself in the music he so loves. But when Fyodor comes home, Timo switches the music off immediately, mid-piece, refusing to talk to Fyodor about this thing he so loves — refusing, also, to allow Fyodor to share in a part of him that in many ways still feels like the truest part of himself.

The Washpool, September 2023.

When I read the words I’ve quoted above, I thought about the times that I’ve given up writing over the years. Though I’m not beginning to claim that I am as talented a writer as Timo is a musician, nonetheless, writing for me has always been a channel of creativity, a tool that helps me make sense of and navigate the world. I don’t know why, honestly. I do know that I have a longing to make something beautiful (though this is another impulse I don’t really understand), and that writing is the only way I know how to (try to) do this. Maybe that’s why, every time I’ve ‘given up’ writing ‘for good’, I’ve returned to the practice later.

I’ve written before about how I’ve learned over the years to value my writing practice for the practice itself rather than for any measurable outcome. That’s partly what I’m saying again here, in response to the words I’ve quoted today. But it’s more than that, too. What Taylor expresses so beautifully is the same sense of loss I always feel when I stop writing. His image of a tuning fork vibrating to the wrong frequency describes this feeling beautifully. At the same time, I’d also describe the feeling another way, as a feeling of being muted. Silenced. When I don’t write, I feel as though I have lost my voice: I feel as though no-one hears me.

I understand, as a writer who is published very infrequently, that few people hear me, anyway. But writing is my way of speaking to the world, and not writing is the opposite of that. Not writing feels like grief.

The Washpool, September 2023.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back soon with another post about writing, and with a little piece of news, the news I’ve been hinting at for months now. Watch this space! ❤

Lately I’ve been reading …

- I could list everything that pissed me off about this tweet: Rebecca Jennings from Vox, on discourse bait and why and how we should ignore it.
- There is a fairly tedious assumption that if you love wildlife you must hate cats, and visa versa. And nothing will turn cat people off faster than encountering a person who hates cats: More on cats! In this essay, Celia Haddon sets aside the environmental arguments for keeping cats indoors to point out the benefits it has for cats themselves.
- We strongly believe that humanity must take the simplest, most cost-effective, most common-sense upstream steps to lower the risk of another pandemic. Fixing humanity’s broken relationship with nature —- and bats in particular — would diminish the interface where dangerous viruses can move from their normal hosts into people and other animals: When did we stop talking about the pandemic? Here, Steve Osofsky and Susan Lieberman explore why leaving bats alone is the best way to prevent another one.
- Another bloke came in. A big fat bloke. I don’t like fat blokes. I ordered another beer. He had a stud in one ear and another in the side of his nose. I don’t like studs in the ear and in the nose: A short story by Barry Revill, which is by turns blunt, tender and hilarious.
- But good writers recognize that grammatical rules are dictated by problematic power structures and are not independent measures of correctness. Good writers assess the rhetorical context for their writing and make deliberate decisions about where to conform and where to stray: Laura Hartenberger discusses AI, ChatGPT and more. This is a fascinating article, long but worth reading.

This is me happy

September 14, 2023Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, writingTagged Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans7 Comments

Other people’s words about … happiness

Ivan closed his eyes. He tried to remember what it was like when [he and Goran] were good and together and all right. He tried to imagine what it was like the first time they met on the app and made plans to see each other outside the auditorium at night. They’d stood on the bridge and looked at the lights of the auditorium, gold and tiered like a delicate rock formation. Then they’d walked around the river path and talked all night about music, about ballet, about where they spent their afternoons, best place for coffee, how to dodge the undergrads.
That night had been so good, like something out of a dream. And they were so far from it now.
‘I can’t make you happy,’ Ivan said.
‘You do make me happy. This is me happy. I am happy.’
‘This can’t be happiness. If this is you happy, then I don’t think I understand what happiness is for.’
‘Sometimes happiness is just letting people feel how they fucking feel,’ Goran said.
He looked the furthest thing from happy. He looked pissed off. He looked annoyed. He looked like he was going to cry. His eyes welled. He bit at the inside of his jaw, then sat down sharply at the kitchen table, trying to catch his breath. Ivan sat down next to him, reached for his hand, and for the first time in a very long time, Goran let him.

from ‘The Late Americans‘
by Brandon Taylor

I’ve been fighting a battle with fleas for the last couple of weeks. This might seem like a random thing to write about after quoting Brandon Taylor’s words about happiness (and love … and life), but somehow it feels directly related.

Lizzie, my rescue cat, the cat who went from living in the garden and not letting me touch her to jumping up on my lap every night and curling up on top of me to go to sleep, started scratching ferociously a few weeks ago. Because I’ve never had a cat before; because I didn’t have any bites or itches myself (and still don’t); because, in all the years I had dogs,they never once got fleas; because, before I moved house a couple of years ago, Lizzie herself had never had fleas; because I thought (wrongly, as it turns out) that, since my house has bare wooden floorboards throughout instead of carpet, it was flea-proof — because of all these things, it took me a while to figure out that the cause of her scratching was fleas.

Semaphore Jetty, August 2023.

She’s far more domesticated than she was when she arrived in the garden of my old house three years ago, but still, a rescue cat is a rescue cat, and there are times when she likes to be touched and times when she doesn’t, times when you can pick her up and times when you can’t. So it took me several days to get her to take the medication, and several days more to get her to allow me to start combing her with a fine-toothed flea-comb. I flea-bombed the main room about two weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been vacuuming every day — every day, God, every day — and slowly, slowly I am getting on top of them.

What has this got to do with the passage I’ve quoted today from Taylor’s wonderful third book, The Late Americans? In part, it has to do with something I mentioned here a while back, some good news I had earlier this year. Astute readers might have guessed when I mentioned it that my news is writing-related, which it is, although I still can’t tell you the details yet because they’re still embargoed. It’s a small thing, a very small thing — a very, very small thing — and yet it’s made me feel part of the publishing world again in a way that I haven’t for over a decade. In this sense, though in a very small way, it’s something that I’ve dreamed of and longed for for a long time.

Spring flowers in the Scrub, September 2023.

And yet. Has my year been any happier because of this news? In a big-picture way, yes. But in a small-picture way, in my everyday life — no. (No, no, no.) Happiness still eludes me. I am not unique in this, I realise. Still, in these past few weeks, as I vacuumed the house and combed my cat and put on load after load of laundry, I found myself returning to Taylor’s words over and over. This is me happy. And: If this is [me] happy, then I don’t understand what happiness is for.

Why do we search for happiness in this way? Why do we expect it, even? I don’t know. I can’t tell you. And still Taylor’s words ring in my ears.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- For many practitioners, ECT is still seen as worth the risk: Astrid Landon on whether ECT works or not, and what its dangers are.
- That was the moment where I accepted that I have the kind of brain that loves to prepare for bad news and thus is wholly unprepared for good news or, in fact, great, incredible news: I read Sarah Thankum Mathews’s novel All This Could Be Different a few months ago and loved it. Here she is, in interview with Emily Gould, on writing the wrong novel for seven years before throwing it out, on why this novel might be a once-in-a-life writing experience for her, and on why the two things that stand in the way of her writing are self-doubt and rent.
- Swimming isn’t something you can be taught just by following the rules. You have to figure out how to move intuitively and you have to want it. Middle age isn’t something you can prepare for adequately. You have to figure out how to move through it intuitively and you have to endure it: Diane Mehta on swimming to ease her pain, on growing older, on Henry James, on Whitman … and on life.
- I used to love exercise, weight training specifically. Every few months I would train my way up to trying to beat my personal best deadlift. If and when I achieved it, I would clench my fist and say ‘yes Derek!’ And that was that. Working hard and achieving the goal was enough — there was no need for external recognition. Not so with books, it seems: In another exercise-related piece, Derek Owusu speaks about writers and their need for external validation … or not.
- Like Tennessee Williams’s Blanche Dubois, I want magic. It might be found in the enchantments of a novel’s style, the elegance of a scholar’s mind or simply the excitement of learning something new. So I try a few pages of this book and that, restlessly hoping to start one that finally keeps me spellbound: Michael Dirda on how to read. While I’d quibble with his preference for hardcover books over paperback and am outraged at his dislike of the plastic covers that librarians use to protect their books and his insistence in pencilling in notes in the margins, we have many habits in common as booklovers.

A question

October 29, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying trueTagged All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews2 Comments

Other people’s words about … therapy

My scores and answers [on the psychology questionnaires] indicated, among other things, [the therapist] had said, a lack of excitement about the future. Sleeping a great deal or sleeping very little. An ongoing melancholy.
My laughter burbled up again, helpless, irrepressible. It was the first time I had been this disrespectful to a grown-up.
If you ‘cured me’ of all of these, I told her, I don’t even know who I would be. It would be like getting lobotomised. I would not recognise myself.
Setting the clipboard down, I thanked her, still chuckling lightly. Walked out.
What the questionnaires had not asked that might have been useful to me:
Do you wake up each day for yourself or for someone else?
Do you believe your life to be your own?

from ‘All This Could Be Different‘
by Sarah Thankam Mathews

I’ve written before about how, many years ago now, I quit therapy. I’d been seeing a therapist for many years, but I’d come to the conclusion I couldn’t see him anymore. That therapist — I still remember him with great respect and affection, and I still remember my last session with him with great rage. I think my rage had been growing for some time, and I think, if I am honest with myself, that it was as much about what I felt my life might look like post-therapy than it was about the therapist himself, or about any failure I accused him of that day. Nonetheless, I did accuse him.

I told my therapist that day that I left each session with him feeling sadder than I did when I arrived. I told him that I was tired of the words ‘recovery’ and ‘cure’ when they were used in reference to my sadness. I told him, repeatedly, that this language we used in our sessions, which was the language of illness, made no sense in the context of my sadness. I told him that I didn’t want to speak this language anymore. And I left.

In my time I have filled out many questionnaires like the ones that the therapist in All This Could Be Different asks the narrator, Sneha, to fill out. And like Sneha, I’ve been given labels to use about myself as a result of the findings from those questionnaires. Ultimately, though, it’s the stuff I feel that isn’t diagnosable that is the hardest to sort through. To live with.

What would therapy be like if the first questions our therapists asked us — the questions our therapists repeated to us at every session — were Sneha’s two questions? What would life be like if those were the two questions we asked the people we love when we were worried about them? I don’t know. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been trying to have that kind of therapy, that kind of conversation, all my life.

Tell me, do you wake up each day for yourself or for someone else? Do you believe your life to be your own? And what does it mean if your answer to both of those questions was ‘no’?

Lately I’ve been reading …

- In part two of Little Women, Jo observes that there is a ‘strange, transparent look about [Beth’s face], as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty’: Like many girls, I read Little Women and mourned Beth’s death and thought of her as the perfect woman. In this article, Carmen Maria Machado explores Lizzie Alcott, the real Alcott on whom Louisa May Alcott based the character Beth — and mourns the loss of her to moralising Victorian fiction.
- Capitalism has taught us that we can seemingly have whatever we want and so we use plants like paint, as a cheap and easy splash of decoration, while ignoring their actual needs and growing them in places they aren’t suited: Alys Fowler on the recent drought in the northern hemisphere, and on how to garden to protect our trees.
- I thought I’d blown it. I thought I’d done something wrong, that I was wrong, in some permanent and irreparable way: Michael Bourne on failing as a writer — again and again — and why that’s just a part of the process. Bourne’s words don’t just apply to writing, though. They apply to life.
- Today, pygmy seahorses still aren’t as well known as their larger seahorse cousins: Richard Smith on the fascinating lives of pygmy seahorses, who range in size from 1 to just over 2 cm.

Replenish

October 18, 2022Posted in ageing, anxiety, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, Other people's words about ..., reading, resilience, rituals, solace, South Australia, spring, staying humble, staying true, walking, What I love about ...Tagged Cold Enough for Snow, Jessica Au1 Comment

Other people’s words about … being alone

As the train left the station, I felt a sense of relief. I wanted to walk in the woods and among the trees. I wanted not to speak to anyone, only to see and hear, to feel lonely.

from ‘Cold Enough for Snow‘
by Jessica Au

I’ve been thinking a lot this year about solitude and loneliness, about participating socially and withdrawing. Though popular scientists and the mainstream media continue to exhort us to maintain our social connections as we age, both for the health of our brain and for our psychological wellbeing, I have come to believe that it’s just as important to be comfortable in your own skin as it is to be comfortable in a social context.

Garden pickings (1), October 2022.

Some years ago a friend said to me that what she admired most in me was that I am a person who has a rich inner life. I have often thought about her words and what they might mean. I tend to think of myself as introverted and shy, a social choker, and I often find myself wanting because of this. But the truth is that when I let go of my expectations of myself as a social creature, I am happy wandering the avenues of my mind.

I think that’s why I find such accord with Jessica Au’s words in the passage I’ve quoted above. What if loneliness wasn’t just a negative version of solitude? Why not embrace it for itself? In fact, why not seek replenishment from it?

Truly: why not?

Garden pickings (2), October 2022.

Lately I’ve been reading …

- [There is a] difference between love that makes me feel happy and love that makes me feel possible: Carrie Jenkins, in a fascinating piece on romantic love, polyamoury and internet trolling. I’m not sure which part of this piece I found more moving, Jenkins’s exploration of what she now calls ‘sad love’ or her mention, almost in passing, of how the commentary on social media can eviscerate someone. Food for thought.
- It has long been held that humans are social creatures, and mental health experts are quick to warn against the debilitating effects of loneliness. But weighted against this are numerous stories of those who have discovered great solace in the solitary life: Talking of loneliness, here’s Chris Wheatley, with a reading list about people leading solitary lifestyles.
- What I thought of, reading this, was the friend I no longer have. I’m not attempting to claim Pedersen’s and Hsu’s grief as my own; my friend didn’t die, and I don’t mourn him. But our friendship did, and I mourn that: Dan Kois on platonic friendship between men, with some words about friendship that ring true for me, too, as a woman.

Wordless

January 28, 2022May 31, 2022Posted in a thought, anxiety, Australian bush, blogging, books, coronavirus, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, native coastal vegetation, native flowers, on writing, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, summerTagged coronavirus, the writing life5 Comments

Other people’s words about … the things we say

All that talking, years of reading: There was a time I thought that all language might contain something of value, but most of life is flat and boring and the things we say are too. Or maybe it’s that most of life is so much stranger than language is able to make room for, so we say the same dead things and hope maybe the who and how of what is said can make it into what we mean.
From ‘Want‘
by Lynn Steger Strong

I’ve been posting less and frequently on my blog over the last few months, I know. And it’s not, as you might think, because I have become more active on other (more instant) social media, though I can see the appeal of posting photographs (excluding selfies) on Instagram.

Spring flowers, Aldinga Scrub, 2021.

In fact my quietness on this blog is more to do with the fact that most of life is so much stranger than language is able to make room for, as Lynn Steger Strong puts it so wonderfully in the passage I’ve quoted above. The Covid-19 pandemic, now entering its third year globally, has left me feeling, in the truest part of me, wordless. I am surviving, for which I am grateful. I am getting on with my life. But I don’t know how to put that into words very well, or at least not in the form of a blog post. I enjoy blogging, and I like my space in the blogosphere, so I hope that this phase will pass. But in the meantime … here I am, not finding the language I need to say what I want to say.

Pathway, Aldinga Scrub, 2022.

Another reason for my quietness on this blog is that I’ve been doing a different kind of writing in my spare time recently, which is to say I’ve started writing fiction again. As I mentioned in my previous post, last year I submitted the manuscript of a middle-grade novel to my agent, who is currently trying to find a publisher for it. (No luck yet.) And now, somehow, I find myself writing a novel for adults. I don’t know whether any of the fiction I’ve written since the beginning of the pandemic will ultimately be publishable, but somehow, entirely unexpectedly, it seems that I’ve found the courage to try again, and because of that very unexpectedness, I’m allowing myself to honour my courage for now and see what happens.

Life continues, albeit quietly and unexpectedly, I suppose is what I’m saying. Sometimes I have the words for it and can compose a blog post about it and sometimes I don’t. But I will keep trying. That’s a promise.

Wordless, 2022.

Lately I’ve been reading …

I try to be patient, perpetually astonished, forever open to surprise: Emily Alexander interviews seven writers about their day jobs.
I had a really frightening loneliness that felt fundamental to who I was, like it had maybe been in my body for as long as I’d been alive: Danielle Tcholakian on getting sober and learning to live with yourself.
The freedom to be happy … restricts human freedom if you are not free to be not happy: Heather Lanier on rearing a child with a disability and the American narrative of happiness that she strives not to employ.

Still here

November 27, 2021April 23, 2022Posted in blogging, books, favourite quotes, hope, life, native coastal vegetation, nature, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, Running, spring, staying humble, staying true, What I talk about when I talk about running, writingTagged coronavirus, running3 Comments

Other people’s words about … the safety of books

I walk from the museum to the train and take it downtown where I get off and go to a coffee shop I used to go to before I worked full time. I was in grad school for six years — English literature, mid- to late-twentieth century, British and American, forgotten or actively discarded female writers: Penelope Fitzgerald, Anita Brookner, Jean Rhys, Nella Larsen, Lucia Berlin. There was a time when I thought giving books to other people — showing them their richness, their quiet, secret, temporary safety — could be a useful way to spend one’s life. I spent another five years as a part-time adjunct, waitress, admin assistant. Once, for six months, I wrote quizzes to accompany the bad books put out by an education corporation, but I was fired because I couldn’t keep my sentences short enough.
From ‘Want‘
by Lynn Steger Strong

It’s been a while since I posted here, for which I apologise. In the last few months I’ve moved house, lost my car in a car crash and sprained my ankle. In addition (and somewhat unexpectedly), the house I bought and moved into had no running water beyond a garden tap, and the sale of the house I moved out of fell through three days before settlement.

In the garden (1).

But I’m still here in the new house, still alive, still breathing. And Lizzie, the little cat who appeared in my garden at the old house two years ago, is with me, too. Though she still won’t allow human touch, she has managed the move quite splendidly so far. On the advice of the cat rescue organisation who helped me trap her and move her into the new house, I’m keeping her indoors for several weeks before attempting to allow her back outside. I hope that when I do open the door for her into the garden she’ll choose to stay with me.

I hope, I hope, I hope.

In the garden (2).

When I moved into my old house, there were no trees and the garden was a bare patch of ground covered with a pervasive weed called caltrop (three-corner jacks). I pulled out all the caltrop and then planted trees and watched them grow. When Lizzie arrived years later, she sat beneath the trees or wandered down the path beneath them from one end of the garden to the other. In the end, though I often think of myself as an indoor person, as someone who lives more richly in my inner world than the outer world, I found it far harder to leave those trees, that garden, than I did to leave the house itself.

My new house is bigger than the last one, and still within walking distance of the beach, but once again there are no trees. So I’m back to planting trees again, back to watching them grow.

Still within walking distance.

In the midst of it all, as the pandemic continues, as South Australia finally opens its borders to the rest of the world, I’ve also submitted a manuscript to my literary agent and written the first draft of another one. The manuscript I submitted to my agent is doing the rounds and has so far been rejected by six publishers, and I don’t know if it will ever be published. And the other manuscript, the first draft of which I’ve just completed — well, it’s still very much a first draft. It has a long, long way to go, many more drafts, before it will tell the story I want it to tell.

But both as a reader and as a writer, I still believe, like Lynn Steger Strong’s narrator in the passage I’ve quoted above, that giving books to other people — showing them their richness, their quiet, secret, temporary safety — [can] be a useful way to spend one’s life. After all this time, all these years, reading and writing still enrich my days and fill my life with purpose.

I’m still here. I hope you are, too.

Plunge

October 5, 2020April 23, 2022Posted in anxiety, books, coronavirus, favourite quotes, gratitude, Lately I've been reading about, life, nature, Other people's words about ..., resilience, Running, spring, staying humble, staying true, the sky, walkingTagged coronavirus, COVID-192 Comments

Other people’s words about … taking the leap

I cannot be the only woman who fantasises, sometimes, about spinning the wheel, driving her car off a cliff. It seems impossible to do, and therefore I long to do it. If only to make a hole in the preordained. If only to do something other than follow along, bumper to bumper, a dutiful mirror, for once in my life. If only to destroy something, even if it is myself.

I say this, but I can’t even take a leap into the goddamn ocean.

From ‘The Lightness’
by Emily Temple

I like the words by Emily Temple in the passage above, not because I often think about taking a suicidal plunge (I don’t), but because they are fearless. Because they acknowledge the violence inside us. Because they confess to a longing for the impossible, no matter how destructive the longing is.

I’ve spent the weeks (months, in fact) since I last wrote in here going about my life quietly, methodically, following each day, as Temple might have it, bumper to bumper.

Like everybody else in the world, I would call this a strange year, a troubling year. If I had to describe this year in a few, broad brushstrokes, I would say: there has been fire (in both hemispheres now); there has been a plague; there has been an insane king, bent on destroying his kingdom, while his subjects watch on, appalled.

There have been fires; there has been a plague.

In my own little world, on a more personal scale, I’ve turned fifty; I’ve mourned the loss of running in my life, due to an injury that I have yet to overcome; and I’ve farewelled my old dog. Life this year feels entirely strange and yet at the same time preordained, a statement I confess I can provide no explanation for.

I want to finish by adding something wise, something pithy, here, but nothing comes to mind. Sometimes, you just have to keep moving, keep avoiding those cliffs, until you are ready to leap into the goddamn ocean.

Lately I’ve been reading …

… “My concern is that Kenya will become a dumping ground for plastics,” said Dorothy Otieno of the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development. “And not just for Kenya, but all of Africa”: On the global plastics industry, and why Scientific American is endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in 175 years.
… The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science: Another reason why you might want to vote for Joe Biden if you are an American.

Metronome

December 15, 2019Posted in a thought, anxiety, birds, books, depression, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, life, nature, 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 running3 Comments

Other people’s words about … feeling wrong

I walked out of the class then, back into the hallway, thinking that this was another thing I didn’t understand: how you can work so hard on a report, you can even earn an A, but you still walk away feeling like you’ve done something wrong.

Like you, yourself, are terribly wrong.

From ‘The Thing about Jellyfish’
by Ali Benjamin

I mentioned in previous posts that I’ve been tired recently, too tired to run very far. And honestly? I still feel that way. I’m still tired, and though, having had a couple of weeks off running altogether when I was sick with a cold, I’ve come back to it, I’m still lacking energy and verve, still lacking that feeling of rightness that I usually associate with running.

At the moment, in fact, I’m running more because I remember the sense of rightness and joy that running gives me than because I actually feel it in the present.

View on the run (1)
Pathway to the horizon

In a funny way, the quote in today’s post encapsulates not only the way I’ve felt all my life — the feeling that I’m wrong; that I get things wrong; that I’ll never, ever get them right — but also the particular feeling that I have right now, when I’m out on the path, running (and stopping, mid-run, to take photographs like the ones in today’s post). The truth is, I feel wrong, right now, when I run. But I keep running, anyway.

View on the run (2)
Three little ducks

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting back to reading novels for younger people again over the last few months, these months of tiredness, after a long time away from them — novels written for young adults, for middle-grade readers, for kids. And I’ve loved every minute of my reading. I’ve been reminded, reading these books, of all the things I used to love about them: the poignancy of the voices of protagonists like thirteen-year-old Suzy in The Thing about Jellyfish, the freshness, the truth. Her words ring true across the generations, at least for me.

I’d turned away from reading books for younger people over the last few years, because I thought that I couldn’t write for that audience anymore, and because I thought I was the wrong reader, the wrong writer.

View on the run (3)
Baby almonds

But maybe that’s the thing: maybe, sometimes, you have to do things, anyway, regardless of how wrong you feel doing it. Maybe the rightness comes from doing it anyway — despite, or because.

View on the run (4)
Two’s company

So I’m out there running these days, both despite and because. And whether the joy is there, whether the feeling of rightness is there, I’ll keep running like this until something stops me, or until the joy and the rightness return.

Because there’s a rhythm to these things, I think: a rhythm to the pounding of my feet on the footpath, a metronome ticking away, the same way that life ticks away.

And that rhythm, that ticking, is the only true, right thing I know.

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.

Paradise

November 21, 2019Posted in anxiety, birds, blogging, books, favourite quotes, gratitude, health, hope, Lately I've been reading about, life, nature, Other people's words about ..., Paths, reading, resilience, Running, sea quotes, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, the freelance life, the sea, workTagged running3 Comments

Other people’s words about … the ocean at night

They [drive] across the train tracks where they see a sign proclaiming PARADISE JUST 7 KMS AHEAD.

Paradise is a caravan park. Her father kills the engine and sits still, gripping the wheel. Rose can hear the ocean; the sudden intake of its breath, as though it has remembered something, something terrible, but finding there is nothing it can do, it breathes out again. The night is dark and starless.

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ he finally says.

From ‘The Midnight Dress’
by Karen Foxlee

Usually, when I quote passages describing the sea on this blog, I accompany them with whatever latest shots I have taken of the sea. So it seems more than a little ironic to me that I don’t have any recent shots of the ocean at all to accompany the beautiful quote in today’s post. I live by the sea! I love the sea! How can I not have any new photos of it?

But it’s been a hot, windy spring in South Australia, creating conditions that are less than photogenic, particularly here where I live, by the coast. And in addition, I’ve been busy and tired for the last few weeks, settling into my new job, working new hours, stepping back into life after a period of withdrawal.

Still, I’m quoting this description of the sea today anyway, because I love the metaphor in it: the idea that you can hear the sea breathing.

Hot, blue, windy sky

Besides, like all good metaphorical words, Karen Foxlee’s words, which I’ve quoted above, aren’t really (or aren’t only) about the sea. Have Rose and her father really arrived at a paradisiacal destination? Is any destination, at any stage in our lives, paradisiacal?

No. Of course not.

Seagull surviving the heat by the Port River

And so back to me, and to the real reason for my lack of sea-themed photographs. One of my favourite times for taking photos of the sea is when I’m running right alongside it: either on the foreshore path, or on the shore itself, by the water’s edge. But I’ve been so tired over the last few weeks — exhausted, actually, to the point of illness — that I haven’t had the energy to run much, if at all.

I am grateful for my new job, which, in comparison to my previous work situation seems virtually paradisiacal. All the same, I’ve been trudging through my days, and the sea has been, at best, a distant companion.

And yet. The place I am now, this place I have arrived at in my life — a little by design, mostly by chance — is, as Rose’s father says, as good a place as any.

I’ll settle for this life I’m living, paradise or no.

Scenes from my life over the last few weeks

Lately I’ve been reading about …

… why there are good reasons for not being rigid about your diet, even if you are an animal-lover
… and, still on the theme of flexibility, how to approach living with a chronic illness so that it feels manageable rather than torturous.