Spirited! Feng Shui

If this blog were a room in a house, it would be time to redecorate.

It’s been quiet and more than just a little bit gloomy in here of late.  Apologies to any regular readers (you who have stopped by more than once) who have noticed the absence of oomph.

It’s not like I haven’t been blogging. I have.  I write the posts but somehow they don’t get finished.   I’m distracted.  Or tired.  Or I’ve spent so long just gathering my thoughts that I then need to attend to something else more pressing.

So the blog is much like many other parts of my life.  Shambling.  Disorganised.  Suboptimal.  In real terms, I’m achieving a huge amount more in each week than I was even six months ago, but it’s all too easy to compare this with my life “before”.  Before a few funky cells started their loud, chaotic party and trashed the joint.  Somewhere along the way I’ve lost more than just a breast and some brain cells.  I’m rebuilding not just my life, but whole chunks of who I am as well.  Which, rightly so, cannot be rushed. 

See, there I go again with more of the gloomy, insular talk.

In energetic terms, this represents too much Yin, not enough Yang.  In Feng Shui terms, I need to encourage more chi through the front door.  I need to move the metaphorical furniture and install a happy plant.  Splash on a fresh coat of paint, hang up some art, and scatter some funky throw cushions.    

So, redecorate I will.  Maybe not today.  But the nauseous olive green has got to go, in favour of something fresher, and… more Spirited!   Stay tuned.

Quotalicious

A pearl is a temple built by pain around a grain of sand.

~ Kahlil Gibran

In memory of JV

I tried to look up an old friend yesterday, and found out that she is dead.

I had been thinking of JV quite a lot recently.  She was older than me when we worked together 15 or so years ago, and I was always slightly in awe of her witty confidence. In her own words, she had “a big mouth” and she knew how to use it, but it was tempered with kindness and her understanding of the people around her.  She knew how to get things done by getting people to do them.  I aspired to develop a little more of her brashness, her tell-it-like-it-is-but-funnier frankness.  However, our working lives diverged, I moved states several times, and we lost touch. 

I went looking for her because I wanted to reconnect and tell her how much I have admired her all this time.  How I look in the mirror sometimes now and think I can see just a tiny bit of her staring back - and I like it. 

And now she is gone.  She died “after bravely battling cancers” ten days before my last chemo treatment.  That is all I know.

I’ve tried to console myself with a number of trite sentiments, but it hasn’t worked. Her boys have lost their mum.  She’s lost her life.  How can someone who is so vibrant and full of energy drop off the planet like this? 

This is the bit of the cancer thing that I still just can’t make sense of. 

IMG_1525 by ShellyS

JV,

I’m so sorry you have to walk that painful path.

I hope you were surrounded by love, and it brought you peace.

But wherever you are now,

I hope you haven’t stopped opening your big mouth

Because we all need more honesty and kindness and laughter.

Blancmange

I’ve spent the last few days like a normal person who’s never had cancer and doesn’t suffer from fatigue, and who does normal productive things like painting their child’s bedroom. (Kudos to me).  The colour of paint was chosen months ago (Carnation) but on the spur of the moment, I decided we should add a pale trim colour.

Imagine my delight when the selected delicious colour had an equally delectible name.  Blancmange.

Blancmange.  Roll that around your mouth in like a spoonful of dessert in your French-est accent.  Blohn-mohnge.

I have no idea what exactly Blancmange is, except that the literary playmates of my bookish childhood ate it in the nursery at tea-time.  Usually these teas followed a long day of roaming around, unfettered by parental supervision, solving a smashing mystery or having a splendid adventure.  I was enthralled by the names of unfamiliar dishes like spotted dick and roly poly, treacle pudding or the rather more humble bread and milk. (Someone please tell me that’s not stale bread dunked in milk with sugar spooned over it).  But Blancmange was the most exotic sounding of all the storybook desserts.  In my head it looked like a chocolately brown quivering jelly, with a fluffy snow-white garnish.  Distinctly mountainous.  (Maybe Mont Blanc somehow got confused with Blancmange in my mind).

However the Blancmange paint is a very pale pink, so delicate it is nearly white.  So it’s safe to assume that my childhood imaginings do not resemble the actual dessert. 

I suppose I could google it, but I’ve quite enjoyed the invented dish floating around in my head all these years.  The reality could disappoint.  I prefer the imaginary dessert, plump and glossy, flavoured with endless possibility.

Quotalicious

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else: you are the one who gets burned. ~ Gautama Buddha


Smouldering Heart of the Blues by ecstaticist

Lest we forget

This ANZAC Day, I’d like to remember not only the fallen, but also the returned, and especially those who are broken of spirit.

I want to remember all of those people who marched off to serve their country, and came home with pieces torn out of their souls.

For the horrors they witnessed.  The horrors done to them.  The horrors they committed.  The terrible things made necessary by war, and the terrible unnecessary things condoned in a world gone mad.

I want to remember those who endure the terror and trauma that never really leaves, that seeps and surrounds and informs their days, and their long dark nights.

Lest we forget.

Photograph by Dept of Defence

Knowing things before they happen

This is where it gets tricky.  Knowing things before they happen.

We were out driving in convoy on the weekend, with my parents-in-law following us in their large 4WD.  As we passed a sporting oval, the road was lined with parked cars, leaving one full and one very narrow lane.  I caught myself thinking, they are going to have an accident.  So briefly, it was nearly a physical sensation, not a thought.  Just then my husband made a comment, which distracted me just long enough to put it out of my mind.

Seconds later, we turned into the side street, and the car behind us disappeared from the rear view mirror. 

Yes they’d had the accident.  A very minor one (no one was hurt), but an accident nonetheless.

Which presents me with a quandary.  Should I have attended to the whisper of a sensation and somehow warned the in-laws?  Was that even possible?  Say I had somehow managed within a few seconds to convince my husband to fumble for his phone, to ring his parents, to say something succinct enough to create the conditions to avoid the accident – what then?  I would be a frootloop, right?  (Warning somebody about an event that subsequently does not occur - because of that warning - is not a good way to establish yourself as a credible witness).  What if I’d had the time to warn them and yet it still occurred?  Then I would just be a freak.  And not a helpful one, at that.

Not that it matters now.  There wasn’t time to do anything except note the feeling.  And politely keep my big (presentient) mouth shut after it all came to pass.