Forty Days

 

That’s no wilderness that you spy above, though because the snap was taken as the dusk began to envelop the hills with a softness and other worldliness may be the sense of space has been expanded and the edges of time pushed a little but maybe that is more about my imagination and minds eye seeing the view not the snap I took with my camera.

Forty days are often associated in many peoples minds with the biblical, especially when the phrase ‘and forty nights’ are added; nothing like underlining and going for the belt and braces approach or just stating the obvious. Actually I like the two parts together as they always read to me as ‘Forty lights and forty darks’ a balance a wholeness a meaning of reason and logic. Without light dark would be lost without dark light would not be so brilliant without the space they create no depth without the energy they create no life of reason logic and meaning.

My personal forty days have stretched in to some fifty plus years so far which has given me a great sense of there being reason logic and meaning to life, my life in particular, if only to affirm each day that all life is precious and if that is what I believe, which I do, then that has to include this life I call mine. 

Over the past two or three years that belief has been tested to breaking point and beyond when it comes to this life and the fissure is certainly part of the landscape of this life as a whole. I see clearly the heart and mind too often have undergone fracture and division leading to gap where light had difficulty in entering and dark had just as much difficulty getting out.

A personal limbo?, well, what ever I may name it, the reality has very much been about being undefined and living in an uncertain state both of which, it has to be said, are part of the normal in my life but when part becomes the whole, well lets just say the word hell comes to mind and heart.

Torture, misery, torment, agony, anguish, nightmare might all seem rather hysterical, over the top words to link to a very ordinary small life but then hell comes in many guises and whether they are physical or psychological, biological or chemical the landscape of a life becomes impossible to work out when there is so little clarity that thought of predictable outcome or result are an anathema and though there is growth there is little evidence of flowering.

Pretty bloody all in all you might think. I’d have to say yes to that BUT, ah that gloriously magical word, midst all the obviously bloody stuff, which has been and still is more tsunami thundering down than gentle lapping wave in this life I can smile at the thought of being in limbo because one of the other phrases that can be used for limbo is ‘indeterminate state’ which ‘translated’ seems to mean ‘with unknown number of solutions’.

A mathematician would say it is ‘having an infinite number of solutions’. Who couldn’t smile at the thought that their life has an infinite number of solutions. Something about transformation, evolving, blank sheets of paper, beginnings comes to mind :0)

Re-invention is quite a trendy thing to aspire to but I certainly don’t wish to re-invent, why change the wheel when it does a rather fine job if it is well maintained repaired if required and possibly refined when new understanding and skills to match come together.

However I know that this particular wheel has taken some fairly severe knocks, jolts and direct assaults on its integrity and has needed to be modified over time so there could still be logical reason for its continued use. There is not very much room for further modification but as to maintenance and general repair well even a rusty old wheel with a spoke missing has possibilities.

With infinite solutions and probably infinite foolishness in mind I have been engaged in another forty days, which is in fact going to be 365 days, as part of a process to calculate and calibrate this small life, this rusty old wheel. It began at the turn of the year in to 2010, I knew I needed to begin to get the wheel spinning again if only to see just how out of balance it is :0) My Blue Moon blog has almost run its first forty days, which brings me here to sweep the cobwebs away in preparation for some activity here soon.

Oh yes I know my soon is much more the ‘Now in a minute’ take on that concept… Wenglish ‘now in a minute’ can mean that moment, in a hour or two, next day or next year and it is not always that apparent which time span it will be either to the person who elicits this response or the responder. This time though the plan is to reach forty days over at Blue Moon Year as I see this as a good time span to gauge progress, movement, time to come etc. Forty consecutive posts at Blue Moon Year will be reached on this Tuesday coming. Only three hundred and twenty five posts to reach my goal of keeping up my own version of twitter and diary, which has already begun to feed in to other areas of production and even may be getting this rusty rackety wheel spinning again.

One of the things I have been doing during these forty days is beginning to recover from the big crash, my body not the stock market, as 2009 tumbled into 2010. Strapping, pain meds, ice packs, hot showers, gentle exercises, foot elevation plus not a small degree of exercising the anglo saxon continues. Walking without ease on the extra pain front is thought to be no nearer than the end of March at present and could be longer which I am of course thrilled about but as any kind of walking is more than a little interesting at present March seems quite soon in reality. I am walking and must keep moving and elevate the leg, which is a puzzle set by the medics that I’m still trying to solve :0)

However I am now managing to climb and come down the staircase touching the stairs with both feet so my mind has turned to the clutter of this place, the bags and boxes and piles ready to be taken upstairs and similar amounts ready to be taken down the stairs to shelves, cupboards, recycling centre and charity shops etc.

But during this forty day period numbers of all sorts have been popping in to my life which is something new as maths and I have for a long time been somewhat estranged to say the least. It started with me finding the need to explore dice and how to make twenty sided dice and other shapes – great fun with paper and scissors and challenged eyesight ensued. Then I went and watched a fab programme made by the BBC all about the history of chemistry and suddenly remembered just how much I loved chemistry once and how much of the programmes information I actually knew – don’t ask what I actually remember this moment but for that moment is was kind of thrilling and I enjoyed it.

So where is this ramble taking us dear reader, if you are still awake that is, well right into a 30 day strategy I have set myself, after I first challenged a friend and thought I might tweak the challenge I gave her for myself.

Over this period of not blogging here but daily posting on Blue Moon Year I have begun to realise why space time and energy are important for me right now and began to formulate the idea of setting another time span project to feed in to my life and living and even my blogging :0)

After I recently read these words late one night - " All clutter is a decision deferred", something just clicked and I knew it's about the here and know of me.

Clutter of things/stuff, clutter of mind, clutter of relationships, clutter of ideas/thoughts, clutter is not just the obvious boxes bags and bins but the whole of me and the way I live - space time energy are all cluttered in one way or another. With all the clutter there's little sense of being creative and by that I mean living my life creatively, the way I recognise as good for my self, positive for others and possible to contemplate continuing for another day.

So I spent some time during the first weeks of 2010 drawing up a 'programme' come daily task list of things to consider and approach. This mess has gone on too long and I know my life will always be somewhat messy and chaotic but I'm choosing to believe right at this moment that it can't carry on being quite so hellish but tis in my hands.

As I wrote over at Blue Moon Year it’s about feeling the light returning and beginning to break through the dark soil that has buried me for a very long dormant period. Dark is a gift because it offers such intensity of experience when it comes to light.

Intensity is not something I am lacking in so I am told but I know for longer than I wish to mark growing has continued but very little if any blooming has happened. I love perennials for their hardy stand against all kinds of weather and soil makeup who often bring forth growth and bloom in greater and greater profusion year after year. Oh yes perennials can take over a garden especially if cared for split and transplanted regularly as this kind of fissure is positive, a line drawn by creating space which offers energy and through time magnifies and extends their lives.

I think the 30 day period I have set myself as goal for this strange rusty rackety wheel perennial is about discovering how much transplanting needs to go on, where those transplants need to be placed and how this will colour and energise even extend this life.

If you catch glimpse of me holding a sponge in one hand and a pom-pom in the other just know I’m well into the 30 day strategy and I’m just being cheer leader and coach for my own life.