February, 2008
The Swirly Girl
I’ve got a very special house guest this week. She’s beautiful, talented, funny and generous, and is making me laugh so much, i may not be able to let her go home to LA on Sunday. She’s been sampling life by the sea today, with the obligatory English rain and clouds, and tomorrow we’re off to London, where we’ll be wreaking havoc in Notting Hill and the West End.
Truly a sister-soul mate :-)
February, 2008
Half a dozen of the other
I was talking to someone recently about blogging and it became apparent that they just didn’t get it – they thought it was rather self-indulgent, as if to say why would anyone be interested in reading your diary on-line? Isn’t it a bit me me me? And i replied that yes, of course it is, but you’re missing the point. The blogging that I like, and the reason I still do it, is the sort that creates communities. We don’t blog in isolation – reading others’ blogs is as important as posting a few hundred words on the internet. There are some blogs I have been reading for over two years now, and it’s like reading the most fabulous never-ending book, one that you can interact with, and if you are lucky you can befriend the author too. Blogging is about sharing experiences, whether it’s culinary knowledge or interior design tips or potty-training a toddler or sharing the pain of grief. We learn from each other, and I realise that no one particularly cares about what i had for lunch today, but I hope that some of what I share here has maybe helped a soul out there, just as others have helped and inspired me too.
Don’t you find that non-bloggers can really get your back up when they try to poo-poo the whole thing? Moving along… I want to borrow a meme that Kristen posted recently.
{Go back through your archives and link to your five favorite posts.}
Link one: about la famiglia
Link two: about friends
Link three: about yourself
Link four: about something you love
Link five: your choice
February, 2008
Finding the centre
You take a step.
Your balance is off and you’re scared, but you do it anyway because the path backwards is closed off to you and there is only one way forward. You take every precaution you can because you’re full of the fear of the unknown; you don’t know if you can trust the person holding your hand to hold on tight enough, to not let go. You smile; you dance; you share the tender pieces of your heart, quietly, in the middle of the night. You worry it is too much for a mere mortal to hear, but you can’t stop the words coming out of your mouth. And they listen, and they do not run away.
Time is shared together; you try each other on for size. And just as a pair of shoes can look so perfect in the shop, sometimes you get them home and realise they don’t quite fit your wardrobe of swirling skirts. And so it is that, just as quickly as they joined you on the path, they decide it is time to go off in another direction, and you realise that perhaps you weren’t headed towards the same destination after all. And this realisation stings a little; you are shocked at how the hurts from the past come flooding back, hurts you thought you’d already healed. But as you sit with the new direction you are facing, you understand what a quantum leap you have taken, and even though the growing pains leave you aching, you know you wouldn’t have it any other way.
February, 2008
Listening in
Beannacht
(Blessing)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue, from Echoes of Memory
