Movement

Sunshine and brief showers today with a warm southerly wind  that carries along with it these cloud formations that change with the passing second. This is the sort of summer weather I like. 
 
The letting go continues and a lady called Lin is coming to pick up the cat basket tomorrow afternoon. I've tried to live a well-adjusted life.  I mean love and stability and companionship and job and belonging.   Money only as a means to an end. Nothing has worked - and the higgledy piggledy pile of books and possessions that I'm sorting through demonstrate this.   Massage books (can't do massage any more, nor do I want to). How To books. Crafts that were abandoned.  Co-dependency books. Journals.  Detritus all. Being ill has given me the space to understand to that indeed nothing could have worked. Not with me being the way I was and everything and everyone else around me being the way they were.  The fit was never there.

Stripped to the core. Feeling like a newborn at 64 years old. It's a relief to be this age and not to worry about so much that used to distress me. Each thing I surrender - and I do so willingly and with relief - stokes the fire that moves me forward. 

Therapy

Just about a year ago, as Saturn approached the ascendant, the ligaments of my lower back and sacro-iliac joints gave up the ghost. The centre, literally, could no longer hold. Displacement, severe muscle spasm and weakness and flare ups of acute inflamation and pain. Since then a repeat prescription for cocodamol, a round of alternative and conventional medical treatments and far too much TV.

It's dawning on me that the job is to rebuild the centre - and what is more central than the pelvis and lower back, and what they represent? Or rather to give it space to do the rebuilding. I imagined my centre could look after itself while I led a busy life but apparently this was not the case. Maybe this was the only way to get my attention. After much inner resistance I am revisiting relaxation and meditation techniques.

Six weeks ago I ventured outside again. Ten yards and back home, fifteen the following day, then twenty. Today I reached the next street up from mine. The first goal is to reach the river. At a guess, I'm just just under halfway there. The strangest feeling, learning to walk again. Each time I go out, a mixture of pleasure mixed with terror lest there is a setback. Learning to trust this body that, seemingly, has turned against me for a season.

For the first time for a long while I hanker after the scent of essential oils. Lavender scented body lotion, orange and ginger shower gel. The physical as a source of peace and pleasure.

A desire as well to get creative. Photographs. Blogging.

About the same time as the back went, the computer hard drive died, and with it my stock of photographs. Right now I'm using a friend's PC, loaned on approval. No photography programmes so no new photos.

But thank god for Flickr. I'll be reviewing my on line stockpile and posting some of them here from time to time - at least for as long as the back stability lasts.

Therapy, you might call it.

Grow

There were moments during the seminar when the heart began to pound and the eyes welled. Just being present, sensing the rusty cogs in the brain creak and groan with effort, was moving and exciting. Blame the euphoria on our lecturer - a grey haired, affable man, dauntingly intelligent. He wove ideas and concepts into a magical whole and yet at the same time, as they say, he spoke my language. I came away without catchphrases or coherent soundbites, just three pages of scribbled notes - can't afford to forget this, must record it - some photocopies and a changed perspective.

I had wondered whether or not to go, whether I would be out of my depth. Now and again I was but it didn't matter. There's all the time in the world to reflect and ponder. Mostly I was carried along. My colleague, C, had the same reaction. A bonus to have her with me on the long journey home.

I hadn't realised how thirsty I have been for study and to be stretched by a subject that fascinates, in the company of like minded others. There's this sudden craving for learning, an urge to explore and to grow and take a few risks.

Even at nearly sixty. Especially at nearly sixty.

Time to check out some prospectuses, perhaps?

****

Oh, and Relatively Retiring may recognise the photograph .....

And Then

A farewell speech, a homemade cake, a present. Embarrassed shuffling of feet. Strange, as I will in fact be back working there for a few days towards the end of January, and periodically again after that. And I meet a former colleague for lunch next week and another at yoga class on Tuesdays. Nonetheless it is the closing of a chapter. And a stepping into a void.

I'm lucky. Small pensions kick in over the coming months which will pay just a few of the bills. I have skills, including massage - ostensibly the latter is the reason for leaving a nearly full-time desk job. Pass out cards. Offer tasters. Get a massage or two myself. Do yoga. Speak to people. Prepare the paperwork. More than anything else, trust. Listen for the nudges that indicate a way forward, even if, especially if, it is in a direction I don't expect. Be content to breathe and walk and garden until then. I can temp while I wait.

What of the waiting times? And the uncertainty? That's where life is lived, not in the illusion of plans and goals. More of a challenge when you live alone and there is no-one to chivvy you, and when you tend towards worry.

I want to cultivate both the garden and my friendships.I started working almost immediately when I moved here and have put little effort into finding and nurturing friendships, a community, a tribe. Like work, this takes work.

I need, really need to read more. Much more.

Don't know where the blog and blogging fit into all this, if at all. On verra bien..

Create. Create. Create. Anything.

****

This morning, while I typed, the sky caught fire. The frost has vanished and a west wind is blowing. Beneath the horizon, invisible, a full moon.

Create

For his cut-outs he used paper that had been hand-painted with gouache, laid down in abstract or figurative patterns: 'the paper cut-out allows me to draw in the colour... Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it... I draw straight into the colour'. The colours he used were so strong that he was advised by his doctor to wear dark glasses.

Drawing with Scissors


Decision made. The week goes on. A sense that things will work out, better perhaps than can be imagined.

The Matisse touring exhibition Drawing with Scissors is in town. Lucky us.

In the local museum the lithographs on the wall glow, vibrant and joyous. Red. Blue. Yellow. Flowers. Leaves. Women. The art of an elderly man (Matisse started working with gouaches découpés or cut-outs late in life) in a wheelchair, eventually bed-ridden, using a pair of scissors and coloured paper to create. Assistants would prepare the paper and pin the cut-outs on the wall for him. The imperative was so powerful.

Outside, the winter sky a deep, intense blue. Like one of his nudes. Evening now and the mental image remains of the old artist sitting up in bed, cutting shapes from sheets of paper.

Strong colours, bright and clear and true.