I need proof...

I need proof. Without it my life is snagged in a time stutter like a stuck record, constantly going over and over the same thoughts, worries and conjectures. Why is it that you are so unable to be straight with me? How easy would it be if you just showed me what I need to see, told me what I need to hear? Once that's out of the way we could go on - go forward - go anywhere at all that we wanted to.

But no - you won't keep the faith with me so I am unable to do so with you. You ask for my love, my commitment, my support, all of which I am aching to give you, but you offer nothing in return. It's like a bad pulp fiction story; so predictable and corny, yet so incomplete and unexpected. My life was not supposed to be like this - my life was supposed to be exciting, yes; radical, yes; driven by chance and fortune, not by planning and organizing. And I'm almost there - teetering on the edge of a great world of new sights and sounds, new cultures and customs, new colours and textures.

But you're stopping me - you've put a concrete block across my tracks that I can't go around however I may try. And all for the sake of one sentence; twenty words max; the opening or closing of the rest of my life.

The Lake

I went outside and wandered down to the edge of the lake. The sun was lowering now and the sky was turquoise fading into pale orange near the horizon. The lake glittered lazily.

'Maria?' I heard Beau's voice from the house behind me but pretended not to, walking instead along the edge of the bank that had been built up with sandbags and topped with a mixture of earth and sand, allowing cautious white clovers to self-seed and grow among the young grass.

A 'plane droned softly overhead and I looked up, wishing it was tomorrow and I was safe aboard the flight to St Lucia, away from this place and the memories that I was pulling along like a shadow behind me as I moved slowly round the lake.

I glanced down at the water again. The sun no longer touched it and I stopped, certain I could see through the cloudy layers. Or was it my imagination? For as long as I remember the water here had always been murky and impenetrable. But now...

I bent towards the water, looking intently; there were fronds of some sort of aquatic plant down there, a few small fish moving slowly through them. And something round and rigid. What was that? At first I thought it might be a bicycle wheel but, crouching down and slitting my eyes to focus my vision, I could see it was definitely solid. I stood up quickly, glancing over my shoulder at the house. Beau was nowhere in sight, thank God. If he'd been watching me he would have come over to see what I was looking at.

A trembling started in my legs; my throat felt dry and I was finding it difficult to swallow. 'Get a grip, Maria,' I muttered to myself, shocked at the quaver in my voice. 'You just have to get through another fourteen hours and you'll be on the 'plane, safely away from here.'

But I shouldn't have walked down here. I should have stayed in the house, finished my packing, sat down with Beau for a final drink together and just kept away instead of coming back; re-living the memory; scratching at it like a mosquito bite; tempting fate.

Watermelons and Zen Students

Watermelons and Zen students grow pretty much the same way.
Long periods of sitting till they ripen and grow all juicy inside, but when you knock them on the head to see if they're ready— sounds like nothing's going on.

Peter Levitt, from 'Essential Zen'

This quote came to me courtesy of Tricycle.com and I thought how nice it would be to post it on my blog and find a really great picture of watermelons to go with it. It's a great example of the power that both the written word and visual images have to make your mouth water.

Plenty going on in my head today though. I spent an hour taking photographs of a couple of a couple of camera lenses I wanted to sell on Ebay, another hour filling in the forms for each of them and they both sold immediately! Wow - what's going on? Did I happen upon a collector of camera lenses? Needless to say I'm a very happy bunny and I promise (honest) not to go and spend the proceeds immediately.

I'll wait til the weekend!

A Wake Up Call

I woke up this morning feeling pretty miserable. To be truthful I was feeling sorry for myself; going over all the 'why am I so useless?', 'why can I never finish anything I start?', 'why can't I be who I want to be?' thoughts that come at me in the early hours.

Quite often I wake up with a feeling of fear that's amazingly strong; I lie there, trying to find the source of this fear, yet what I'm really trying to do is ignore the fact that I know the source. It's a fear of the future; a fear of growing old and a fear of the possibility that I will look back on my life in old age and think, 'Well, what was all that about. What did I really do to make my mark on the world?'

And I remember an exercise from a life coach that I once saw. You write your own obituary and in it you detail all the wonderful things you'd really like to do and be, as if you had done and been them. This obituary was then a game plan for the rest of your life; to work towards doing and being the person in that obituary.

Now, I think a lot of the tools that life coaches are taught to use are rather over-egged these days - there are just too many of them saying the same old things. But this one stuck in my mind as a useful way of reminding myself that I only have one life and it's going by ferociously fast and that I really do have to work at becoming more than I am if I'm to live up to my imaginary obituary.

This morning, I read a post by sbass at The Inkwell about the loss of her mother to lung cancer earlier this year which, devastating though it was and still is, has brought an additional dimension to her life which is, unexpectedly, a positive dimension.

It was a bit of a wake up call for me to be honest. I was lucky enough to survive cancer some years ago so what on earth have I got to be miserable about? If I'd been fearful for the future then I might have had justification, but now...?

So I'm taking an inventory of the things I want to do and then I'm going to go about doing them. The first one is to WRITE. I don't know whether I want to write short stories, a novel, fact or fiction, poetry or just a journal - all I know is that I've wanted to WRITE for years now but all I've actually done is to turn prevarication into a fine art. I've had the pens and pencils lined up on the desk, the special ink bottle ready, the absolutely nicest journal I can find ready to write in and what have I done? Nada; zilch; sweet sod all!

And what am I going to do about it? I'm going to sign up for the Open University course in Creative Writing that starts in October. I will then have to start WRITING. This time there'll be no escape - if I don't produce WRITING, I'll flunk it. If I don't WRITE my fellow students will know me for the quitter I am. Or rather for the quitter I was!

John Lowrie Morrison

Today I bought my first JoLoMo painting - 'Croft and Boat North Uist'. Actually it's a limited edition giclée print, but nonetheless beautiful. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford an original.

It's small, about a foot square, in a large white frame and it was just made for the white wall in my hallway.

JoLoMo is a Scot who paints wonderful, highly coloured images of Scottish land and seascapes which just lift the spirit when you see them. I've loved them for years, ever since I first saw an exhibition of originals in a nearby town. Hopefully this is just the first of a collection. I'm already planning to paint more of my rooms white to show off this imaginary gallery of wildly colourful art. And that's saying something because I hate decorating.

Trying to Write

I'm looking out of my study window, through the two wolfhound sculptures that sit on the window sill, and out into the garden. The view from my seated position is of trees and shrubs and the colours I see are almost entirely shades of green, backed by a pale blue sky.
The rhododendron is still only in bud but will shortly break out into vivid pink flowers. For some reason the rhododendrons in my garden are always behind those of everyone else. This may sound paranoid, but my poor old backward shrubs are weeks behind everyone else's and are in flower long after all the others have died. I'm living in a rhododendron challenged space - a parallel world.
There's a slight wind creating movement in the foliage. An occasional pigeon visits the ivy that has been winding itself round one of the pine trees since long before we moved here so that its trunk is almost as thick as that of the tree itself.
The sun has just come out, completely changing the colours and accentuating the difference between the different leaves. Some are golden, some silvery; the pine needles are the same dull, blueish green as they are all year round. The pines stand like sentinels in the garden, watching the other trees change from pale green to deep green to yellow, then red, and finally brown, but barely changing colour themselves.
It won't be long now before the roses are out. There are three rose bushes just behind the wooden table and bench, the tops of which I can just see from my position. When the roses come out I'll move my chair a little to the right and put the wolfhounds on another window sill so I can watch them while I'm trying to write.
In the background is the hum of traffic on the road outside, reminding me of how near to the busy main road my house stands. But I've got used to it over the years, and though I'd dearly love to live somewhere quieter I also dearly love living in this house, surrounded by its beautiful garden. So I switch off the sound of the traffic and try to write.

The Best of Days and the Worst of Days

It's been the best of days and the worst of days!

At work this morning things were really getting on top of me. It's all so complicated now - there are so many things to think about and to remember and I'm really worried that my memory isn't up to it anymore. But if the adverts are to be believed, using it is the antidote to losing it, so you'd think my memory would be brilliant!

But this afternoon... now that's another matter entirely. It was absolutely lovely - the sky blue but with a cooling wind. I walked Misty at Gullidge and we both got pretty hot - although at the top of the field, alongside the paved track, the wind was quite fresh, at the bottom it disappeared completely so Misty was panting a bit.
After I brought her home I walked down to the lake with my camera and a bag of stale bread. I went out onto one of the fishermen's platforms and threw some to the ducks and that started the stampede! I had crowds of ducks all around; every time I threw some bread in they all rushed towards it - how the manage not to collide and hurt themselves I have no idea. The swans started across at a more leisurely pace, line astern, following Mum. Dad brought up the rear looking rather above it all. I fed the cygnets by hand - their beaks didn't hurt me although they snatched at the bread. I offered some to Mum but she didn't take it and nor did she eat it when I threw it in the lake in front of her. I think she was happy to let her kids have it but just wanted to make sure I was nice to them. Dad stood off a way and watched - he didn't deign to eat anything when I threw it for him either. I took loads of photos of the ducks and the swans and cygnets:

Then I walked into the bottom of the field opposite the lake where the wild flowers are and took some photos of those too. It was very windy though so I played around with camera settings to see what worked best. I guessed a high ISO and about .1500 sec exposure. I'll download them and have a look.

Requiem for a Horse

A horse was killed just down the road from my house today.

I came home from work and the traffic was backed up. When I got near I saw what I first thought was a large white dog lying beside the road, but as I got up to it I saw that it was a white horse. Next to it stood a man sobbing his heart out; I don't know if he was the owner of the horse or the driver whose vehicle had hit it. The horse had no saddle on so maybe it got loose and ran out into the busy road.

I don't know any of the detail - I just know that a beautiful creature was lying by the road, possibly dead, certainly with very little time left to live.

I do know that I was grief stricken for the poor animal and that it made the sun go in on my day. I also know that my grief was probably more for this animal than it would have been had a person been lying there. Why is this? I think most people would consider it to be wrong, but it is certainly the truth. I believe it's to do with the innocence of animals.