Is it an indelible trait of the human condition to always be longing for something other? We talk of trips away and yet we’ve only been back home a week. I want to be here in my studio working and yet I also long to be on the road, untethered to the weight of that work. The dreams are nice though, even if that is all they will remain.
Enough. When is enough enough? Enough drawing, enough to eat, enough sleep. It is hard to say, to be sure. And who decides? I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday. I wanted to attend the Slow Reading session but it does throw out my routine terribly. But it is an enriching experience and that is enough. So I do it. Can I take it easier today?
Today’s new moon has brought graphic dreams. Last night was about a little boy – maybe five or six. But it could also have been a little girl with a puddiing-basin haircut, as I used to have as a child. He was being returned. He or she had taken a long journey to be somewhere, or attend something but was being returned. On a ship. A huge ship. There were two adults who were attending him or her on their return journey. I watched this little child, who wasn’t at all distressed about being sent back, as it stopped at one of the bookshops on board to look at a display of picture books. I woke then, not wanting to. The journey, the adults had told him would take seven months.
I watched a video of him talking about his tea meditation. Take two hours over it, he said. Be present in the drinking, with the tea, otherwise, he said, you are not solid. I am not solid. I feel that. How can I make myself so?
It’s all we have. There’s no point being anxious about what is coming tomorrow or next week or the following year. This is it. This day. This moment. This breath.
He told me at breakfast that he saw the paramedics come in the night for one of our neighbours. Poor love, no doubt it was his breath that was struggling to come. I wish him well.
She told me that she is planting a wild flower meadow and I was pleased for her. Such a gift to the world. And at such a time when so many warmongers are planning on destroying it and us. How I loved her that day.
Why is it that returning home is such a tiring thing? Is it just the unpacking, the putting of everything away, or is it something more? Is about a transition from one space, or place to another and all that that involves. The escaping home is never what I hope it will be. There is always this coming back to what I left behind, the unfinished, messy stuff that is mostly unresolvable. Is that the tiredness? Or is it just journeying – passing from one grimy service station to another, trying to ground myself and failing? I am blessed, fortunate, one of the lucky ones, I know this and still I grumble. It shames me.
I saw it happening before it did. And it went everywhere – over the walls, my printer, my files and the floor. It took me a while to work out how to even begin to clear it up. I did, and, mercifully my printer is seemingly still functioning. It was a stupid thing to do. A book was being returned to my tray and it caught my tea cup. Stupid. Stupid. And such time was wasted. What did I learn? Not sure yet.
They are growing dim. The optician told me yesterday that cataracts are assailing both eyes now, with the right one becoming increasingly short-sighted. What am I choosing not to see? The bigger picture? Probably. This poor vessel of mine with its now too straight back and dimming sight. I will carry it for as long as I may and welcome the long sleep when it comes. Sooner or later.
Yesterday was a scratchy one. There was antagonism between us. He wrote a note about it last night saying that it was almost as if something had taken him over. I understand. It could’ve been the moon. Who knows? He is sorry and so am I. The calm afterwards is nice.