Animatedstardust

Sunday Smile 35

Sometimes in the midst of the abundance of summer I find myself full of the sense of lack and loss wondering how the dark months ahead might be even approached let alone lived through.

As I walked with RnB this morning the physical exhaustion and mental vacuum that seemed to be the sum of the parts of me written with a large minus sign boldly inked in was eased a little as I watched RnB embrace the morning with glee and the kind of energy I can only ever dream of and was glad to be given the gift by proxy of dancing in long grass and laughing with the wind that these two dogs shared with me so freely and somewhat boistrously:0)

As they raced and jumped and whooped with delight I caught sight of one of Earths gifts for days to come and tried to imagine us there in Septwmber with stained fingers and noses as we gathered the ripened fruits in evidence already as abundance.

I could not imagine it actually but it made me smile none the less and that was enough

Bliss

With a pile of bedding having been washed and dried, a pile of blankets and throws from settee washed and drying, various dog bedding and towels washed and dried. Rhys showed me the way and there is an amount of doggy yoga going on here at the moment.....

As the poem by W.H. Davies says "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare..."
or in this households case lie on ones back with legs in the air projecting bliss.

Lebanon

I recieved this yesterday and thought to share it with those who have not heard of IRIN.

"Dear subscriber

IRIN has put up a special web page covering the humanitarian impact of the Lebanon Crisis. Our team of reporters provides a comprehensive daily coverage of the situation on the ground and how it is affecting civilians. This page is updated daily.

You can access it by directly clicking on the following link: http://www.irinnews.org/lebanon-crisis.asp

Thank you for your continued trust in the humanitarian information service IRIN provides."

I am as you may gather a subscriber to this news service. This means I get emails direct about areas of the world I have connection or particular interest in. I have found the service to be honest and reliable plus interestingly enough where large news organisations definitely pick up on 'news' days after I have heard about that 'news'. Getting to hear voices of people on the ground, in the actual situation rather than a vast array of experts and pundits does widen the view and also give more sense that these are my neighbours and possible friends

If the 'situation' in Lebanon concerns you do go to this web page as you may hear voices there not heard in mainstream news agencies.

Here are two voices that may not be heard anywhere else but on this web page -
Hady Ali Yassine (8)
“Dad put me and my sister Ithraa in the car last night, and told us we had to get away from the bombs near the airport. He didn’t wake me up, because I wasn’t sleeping anyway. Ithraa was scared and shouting, and mum was crying. I didn’t change so was wearing pyjamas, and didn’t have time to wear my shoes. That’s why I can’t run here with the other kids.

We went to several schools before coming to this one in Beirut. I don’t like Beirut. Ithraa is sick, she has a fever. I think she doesn’t like living in this school. All we eat is bread and tuna fish in cans, and the water is dirty. When the war is over, I will buy mosquito repellent.”

Mehdi Jaber (6)
“My name is Mehdi, and I’m six years old. We left our home near the airport when the Israelis started bombing us. Bayyeh (dad) took us to school here in Beirut, and left our fan and air-conditioning back home. I don’t like the school here, it’s summer and we’re not supposed to sleep in the classroom.

Here, mosquitoes bite us all night and the toilets smell. It’s very hot, and I can’t sleep. My sister and I share the same mattress; it’s low and she kicks me all night. I asked Bayyeh to take me home, so we can have air-conditioning again. But he said that the war should stop first. Do you know when the bombs will stop?”

Yes

Death came to our world this morning. As I watered plants in pots and disinfected and washed down the yard there was a loud bang behind me and as I swung round I saw or felt the falling of a life.

Small young bird not experienced enough to realise the light it heads towards is reflected in solid imovable object by such a small body and delicate neck.

I bent and picked the lifeless body up gently whilst inquistive eyes watched my movements and asked for explanation.

This is death boys, the end of wagging tails and friendly wrestling, the end of biscuits at dawn and hugs at dusk, the end of warmth on noses and wet muddy paw prints on kitchen floor, the end of finding safety nourishment and love in the eyes of another and sharing moments of being. This is death boys, the beginning of things unknown but famiilar as breathing, the beginning of Earths embrace in transformation the beginning of life.

We gently laid the body of the bird in freshy dug hole and I placed large stone on top as RnB would almost certainly have wanted to check if I had the diagnosis absolutely correct not long after if I had not.

We moved on in to our morning and the bird moved on towards but I was left with a sense that such a small scene, so insignificant to all but this small world was big beyond dimension or time like so many moments to hearts and minds across the world.

My mind could easily turn to the horrors that we heap upon each other for something called justice but rarely it seems named peace; retribution, revenge, ravage seem more like the words I hear echoing around me.

Big, important decisions to my mind always involve a loss of some kind even sometimes it seems the losses are much greater than the gains and that's when I can become rooted to a spot unable to move backwards or forwards because all the different arguments for both sides push and shove for room in an ever more noisy and chaotic mind putting forward agument and counter argument which amount in total not to noise or chaos but to stone cold indecision.

I read a poem this morning as my morning beverage slipped refreshingly down an overnight parched throat and as I buried the wee bird I found myself smiling in the awareness of how amazingly a sun rise can prepare me for the day but for for my life within that day moment by moment and though my perception and understanding of the links and line drawn for me to follow and hold onto is often blurred at best and lost more usually there are sparks that help the next foot step feel more possible and stable.

I'm Through

I cannot celebrate the fact that I have access and charge of a garden enough. That the sights and sounds of the life that goes on in that space are a joy to watch and often a challenge set is means for thoughts beyond my immediate circumstances and offers me often window on places within myself that I have lost, never acknowledged or have not been ready till a given moment to discover.

Living with chronic ill health is not sexy, not even mildly interesting in that oh what pill are you trying this week way it is chronic in every sense of the word, day in day out similarities and differences add up to something less and something more which translates in to putting one foot in front of the other and watching the snail speed past:0)

There is pain there is puke there are particularly high times of distress and despair but as a whole it is a life, a life with possibility still writ large enough for even eyes that battle with light, skeleton that folds up quicker than a deckchair and mind that is assailed and assaulted by voice and vision that have little to do with hope and everything to do with damning.

Message

This morning I found myself sitting down in Elsewhere at around 4am, barring the odd vehicle passing along the road below the garden the noises were of two dogs and one woman breathing and the valley beginning to stretch and smile its greeting to the sunrise.

The air was balmy with hint of sultry so sitting in light cotton clothes a gift not a grumble because of the unusual hot weather of late.

The garden still explodes with greenery of every shade and below the surface there is moisture and abundant life so the natural damp state of this country is managing to cope with this unusually long spell of hot and dry weather, well its been almost a week now:0)

Closing the circle

After a number of trips from top to bottom of the garden with wheelbarrow carrying 25kg bags of 20mm grey bog standard chippings and 25kg bags of a mixture of flint and stone usually used as rendering, in all 250kgs. I cleared up and made ready Mr Bryn's circle so that this morning at 5am Rhys Banon and I made our way as quietly as they could manage to the pile of bags and I began the slit and tip operation first the grey chippings to form a base which I tampped into place much to RnB's delight then the waves of rendering into the five sections of the circle.

I wanted the circle to echo the fluidity of the water and the rest of the garden so that was why I chose the rendering also as Rnb career through it swishes like a wave on the shore also being as small as it is does not get picked up in mouths just a little dislodged to leave imprint in its depth which can be raked back into place easily if I need that.

With the very bright days we have been experiencing here recently I am unable to be in the garden as my eyes and light just don't mix so well and even with a large brimmed hat and my prescription glasses it has sadly been too much for me but being out in the garden working before real light has come is great and I was accompanied by some of the wild birds who kept beckoning me to their tables.

We all breakfasted in the garden this morning as I watered plants in pots and wondered around with glass brick in my hand again. So much work to do that I am aware I cannot even begin yet but small steps fuel huge dreams and offer daily small outcmes which lift my heart and spirit even if the skeleton whines a little and the flesh takes on various green, blue, red and purple blotches from my 'need' to greet the Earth in diving diva style:0)

Sunday Smile 34

One plus one multiplied by one hundred and fifty equals delight.

It also equals a fair amount of huffing and puffing, disregard of certain ‘voices’ raised in protest but that’s the norm so ignored and coped with in almost equal measure:0)

The sum at the top, easy. One woman checks the postings on her local Freecycle group and spies glinting possibility. She is told someone else is ahead of her in the asking but if that doesn’t go through she’ll be contacted. Ah well it was a nice thought but fine no landfill will get filled anyway. Forgets about it only to find three days later an email asking if she is interested still, can she come collect etc.

Significant smallness

Waking to bright clear morning is always a gift and to watch that morning begin is even bigger gift; so much is offered in those moments of sunrise that I’m glad it is copyrighted by the Earth so no amount of corporate greed or ingenuity will ever be able to lay hands upon it as far as I can imagine.

But here is me, firmly rooted to a small world of garden and cottage finding myself free to stretch out my hands to touch the waking morning and open up my mind and heart to its promise and feel it translate as possibility that is conscious in me. That my hands might not move as I might hope and my mind be confused and my heart sore is the wonder of the sunrise for in the moment of its ‘waking’ in the geography of this valley so too does it wake in me and all thoughts of lack are replaced by lustre and living beyond imagining, possible in the being.

I have no solutions to a world filled with mans expression of disdain and contempt for Earth and man, no recipe for perfect harmony and lasting peace of country continent or heart, no chart map or plan to show the path to tread, the road to build or the journey to make.

My life and living feel indescribably small, insignificant and of little worth in face of the turmoil and tantrums writ large on other lives and in other places but each morning I find a link beyond reason, beyond capability, beyond the unmanageable and overwhelming, a link that lifts, supports and propels this small life to a greatness that makes my heart beat faster and my breath come up short for I find reflected in a sunrise not just possibility in some abstract way but the realisation that every moment of every day the sun is rising somewhere greeted by other hearts and minds opened to possibility and propelled towards love and it is in that moment when beginning brings forth being, when beauty so obvious and so intangible encourages all life to stretch towards the light that solution, recipe, chart map and plan are simple, plain and understandable.

It is the carrying of the new, the clean, the promise of a sunrise in to day to day living that seems to be the answer for me. It offers hope so huge that each day it needs to be refreshed not because it loses power over each preceding day but because mind and heart loses the memory, the understanding, the truth of dawn and sees only the night.

Dawn, daybreak, sunrise is key to many doors, numbered without ceasing I suspect but it is only through each beginning that I discover I have been leaning against one or had my foot trapped in its hastily slammed façade. Is that true for all these so called conscious fellow travellers I wonder and maybe that is why there is so much sleepwalking and nightmare abroad in the Earth.

Even a cloud filled, wind swept, rain lashed sunrise offers beginning, renewal and promise if heart and mind are there to hear and see.

It feels for me that sunrise is more than another day beginning, a tick on a time clock of days in a life, it is self writ large and shown to be so small as to make laughter and love the only possible reality to live moment by moment in the being.

Noting

1. One toilet, basin and flooring of said room mopped, disinfected and then done all over again … three times.
2. One double bed stripped of all bedding, mattress cover disinfected and dried, mattress turned, new bedding applied to bed… twice.
3. One woman stripped of night clothes, washed and disinfected, clean night attire draped… twice and thrice respectively.
4. One cat cuddled and conversed with, fed and watered…. constantly and twice respectively.
5. Two dogs settled in their ‘bedroom’, given water and their two night time biscuits each wished gentle night and ‘curtains’ drawn.
6. Two dogs assured sleep was a good idea for them as it would be nice if someone asleep in this home.
7. One cat requested not to go and wake two dogs to tell them she was going out so could they keep watch.
8. One box of this medication, one box of that medication, one box of another medication all opened and thankfully used.
9. One woman wishing contents of boxes were more magical or at least would kick in with some affect soon.
10. One sunrise through grey cloud waking sense of life and promise midst the grey clouds within.
11. Two dogs joyful at reunion after these many hours:0) insisting that kisses would be the best medicine, now what was the problem.
12. Numerous wild birds sing good morning as they queue for their place at the table and watch one woman set the spread.
13. One woman sits and washes herself, brushes her teeth and looks longingly at the bathtub touches the bruising on her too recently flying body and knows basin flannel and loo seat are place to be for getting up swaying woman.
14. Two dogs thrilled to be racing around in the garden, one woman thrilled to just be in the garden.
15. Two dogs, one cat, numerous wild birds greet the morning in their own separate ways joined by life and encouraged by living.
16. One load of washing sets off on its journey to cleanliness, one load waits patiently for its turn, one load from yesterdays no drying day hangs proudly on the line.
17. One woman two dogs and numerous wild birds go about their morning in the garden.

So another night has passed and the morning has been embarked upon. Decisions and choices abound and possibility beckons me forward.