Photobucket

enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wings of change

A wonderful morning! I made homemade buttermilk biscuits with raspberry jam, which is exactly as delicious as it sounds! (Of course, they would have been better with clotted cream, but I shall have to wait until England for that.) Photobucket

I woke up too early, really (at my usual work waking time, when I went to bed at 1 a.m.). Right away I bounded up and cleaned out a bit more of the stuff piled up in the spare room. Afterwards, when I took the stuff down, I was standing out by the dumpsters out back and I could hear so many birds.

One thing I've noticed about change, making space, cleaning out all of the past, is that the past starts to return with greater clarity. I was listening to the veritable cacophony of bird sounds in my neighbourhood when out by the fence, and for just a moment I felt as though I were back in Australia. The thought kind of whistled through my head, but in a good way.

The thing that I love the most about my apartment is that it's a bit like a cottage. Sure, it's three floors up, giving me my nice view, but I also have the large, enclosed verandah/balcony and the old screen door and all of the segments of my two giant bay windows open up. I can hear birds and birds and birds and I can see rooftops and tree tops. I love that I can sit back in the second living room and hear the sounds of nature seeping in.

So after the nature thing - don't worry, I'm not going to clean all day - I took out the remining recycling and I sat at my table to write. (Clean surfaces - very, very much appreciated.)

I thought of two things:

1) The quote I just read (Gloria Stein3m): "The difficult thing for people, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn."

Oui.


2) The line I read in the Artist's W@y last night as I was drifting off to sleep (paraphrasing, because I'm too lazy to grab the book): "When you risk and lose you still win. When you risk you win, either way."

It's so true. Sure I might do something that ends up a mess and feel pain as a result of it, but I never do feel worse than I feel if I do nothing. I know the Roosev3lts said it repeatedly and there's even that love adage about loving and losing and so on, but why do we forget this?? ;) Why do I forgot this? I actually enjoy failing. I mean, some of the big things that I have tried have been enormous failures. But they were fabulous! (Moving to Australia to follow an evil dude, for one thing.) Anyhow. Doesn't matter. I've learned this repeatedly in my job. It sounds couterintuitive, but the job itself and the growth I've been through there is exactly what will enable me to leave it behind forever when the time comes. Of course, one has to choose the timing for change correctly. It is ALSO very good to let oneself off the hook when it is not the right time, e.g. me with the dating thing lately. I am much, much happier now that I've given myself permission to be alone again for at least a while.

So.

I was also thinking about what that clever hungryghost said the other day. She said something about understanding the desire to totally immerse oneself in another culture.

I didn't "get" that at all on my own, but that's what Italy is. It's like the thrill that I found when I lived in Korea and found myself being silent for several months because I had no one with whom to talk. It was like entering another world completely and it provided an overwhelming feeling of peace. (I can still feel what it was like to run through the countryside and stop by rice paddies with crooked old men and women in them. It was green and I felt so free.) I was thinking about Italy as being ABOUT Italy, but it's not exactly. It was the culture that spoke to me at the moment in which I needed to leave the one that was limiting me, but it could have been another and in future may be another. I was watching Ca!ro Time on Friday night and thinking that I'd like to learn Arabic.

How wonderful that there is too much to learn in the world. I will never run out. And that's exactly the idea: abundance. There will always be enough. When I clear out the spaces of my life I find that something will always come in to fill those spaces. And each new iteration of stuff that fills the spaces is better than the last.

I can't believe that this is my 40th year. When I was a little girl, I used to always start exactly one month from my birthday and count down to my birthday with a notebook and pencil under my pillow. I might have to do that this year. I feel that this is a good year. This is a lucky year. I'm going to enjoy every moment of it. I reall believe in the miracles of the every day. I'm just sorry that I was stuck in rumination for so long and missed out on so much whilst so doing. Still, I suppose I learned from that. If only one thing, I learned something more about empathy. I also had a funny and interesting thought the other day. I'm very, very, very good at concentrating for long periods of time. I can be hyper-focused. This is what makes me good at my job, which requires relentless attention to detail. It occurred to me that learning this attention to detail through the mental pain that I've suffered with in the past might just be yielding the fruits of my current RENAISSANCE :) (idea from the article I posted a couple of weeks ago, but I think it might be accurate).

XOX

Some croci that I saw in an abandoned yard the other day. This is VERY early for us to have flowers emerging. It was kind of the winter that never was: Photobucket

|

10:49 a.m. - 2010-04-03

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next

other diaries:

stepfordtart
ohell
awittykitty
annanotbob
manfromvenus
smartypants
fifidellabon
hungryghost
hissandtell

latest entry

about me

archives

notes

DiaryLand

contact

Come al solito - 2011-04-16
unfettered spending - 2011-04-15
How does it go? - 2011-04-14
Whirlwind. - 2011-04-13
bleak that flips over to daffodil - 2011-04-08