Cloth

 I cannot hold up anything but this —-

Come Alive

Warning: graphic depiction of violence, magic and power ~~~

Success!

It’s been a while.  I’ve had plenty of blog ideas and even scrawled a few of them down on random scraps of paper, but have had some difficulty converting them to coherence, because the other areas of my life have been clamouring for priority.

It’s been a fruitful time.  3 subjects of study completed, with varying degrees of excruciation and reward.  OK, possibly a little more of the former than the latter – there were a few moments when I had to dig deep - but P’s still make degrees and so does the occasional credit.  I delivered a work project successfully, and publicly so.  I got out and about socially to a few poet-y events.  I ticked a few things off a very long standing “to do“ list.

On a more personal level, there are other signs of progress.  The addition of regular high-potency fish oil capsules to my life seems to have reduced my dependency on caffeine for concentration.  Or maybe it’s the extra sleep that I’ve been careful to claim.  I got through a week of walking around town and concentrating through study visits without a fatigue crash. The day or so of active resting afterwards was a great excuse to power through a couple of novels.  Not bad when I consider how tired I was walking and how slow I was reading only a year ago.  My clarity and fitness is nowhere near complete, but it does feel like it’s returning in an incremental whisper. 

And that’s just it.  The secret to success is feeling successful.  I’m sure during these weeks there have been many not-as-good-as-I-used-to-be moments.  In my darkest hour, I stared at the blank page and inch-thick pile of articles that I needed to decode and my confidence very nearly deserted me.  But I chose instead to focus on the memory and sensation of times when I have done what I wanted to, and well.  I chose to actively pursue the state of mind that success creates, because it creates the interior state that drives further success.  There’s a certain magic to it.

It works.  Possibly not with the same ease as in the past, but it is so much sweeter now because of the adversity which I’ve overcome along the way.

Talking bird

I was sitting in the lounge room trying to make a decision, when I heard the unmistakable chatter of a tame bird, just outside the back door.  There were other birds calling too, one sounding like a magpie out in the big gum near the back fence, but this sound was quite distinct, with whistles and very human sounding words mixed in.

So I crept over to the door, expecting to see an escape pet bird parading around.  Instead, there was a single magpie, standing not 2 metres away, looking boldly at me through the screen and twittering and chatting in the most conversational way. 

Despite their many and often pretty calls, I have never heard a magpie talking like that.  Ever.  So I tiptoed away to get the video camera.  But the bird saw that camera, stopped its talking, and then flew off.

If only I could’ve understood what it was saying.  It might’ve been some good advice…

Unfurling

I’ll admit to being somewhat blogged-out at the end of my Ultimate Adventure, and needed to retreat a little and allow both my keyboard and my fevered imagination to cool somewhat.  However, now the New Year has begun, and with it a wave of experiences both exquisite and excruciating in their intensity.

Queensland flooded and I suffered a sympathetic inundation of my upper respiratory tract.  And so I camped in front of the rolling televised coverage, streaming my way blearily through a box or two of triple-ply tissues.  The boiling wall of destruction that swept through the Lockyer Valley is still unfathomable to me, despite my best efforts to comprehend it.  In stark comparison, the slow, well-planned water creeping and seeping into Brisbane under a flawlessly sunny sky was a contrast so enormous it seems nearly absurd.  Of course it is only the luxury of a safe distance that allows me to think this, not so for all the thousands of misplaced people, grieving the loss of loved ones or homes, or both. 

Despite all this I still live and breathe in a magical world, and I await the unfurling of the tendrils of this year with a sense of positive anticipation.



Cucumber tendril by whiteoakart