Monday morning here in the Cape mountains, icy cold but with brilliant sunshine. Yesterday I went for a walk in the mountains and saw a young eland (buck), one of the most beautiful and sacred buck here in southern Africa, depicted over and over again in prehistoric rock art. And there were also proteas in winter flower and hawks gliding overhead. Came back feeling quite dizzy and exalted with nature’s beauty.
An ordinary Monday morning here. I’m worrying about my beloved housemate’s health, editing at full tilt to meet a deadline, meeting a friend for coffee and brioche at 11am. Checking coriander seedlings and watering the herb garden. Scolding my puppies who are digging and trying to uproot a strelitzia bush with great leaves like paddles. Reading Petina Gappah’s short stories about a modern Zimbabwe that is completely foreign to me, utterly different from the country in which I grew up. Listening to Django Reinhardt as I work, that gipsy jazz.
Lay in bed this morning thinking how the colour and fullness has come back into my life these last two years – even on quite mundane days, life feels full and rich simply because I am present in the midst of it, not trying to escape or dulling my senses.
One aspect of my life that has changed in recent months is that a certain need to feel in control, as if I were ‘managing’ my life has gone. Now I just do my bit and let the messy creative unpredictable life energies all flow around and through that. Relationships are not ever going to be perfect. Things work out, it is not all up to me. Each time there is conflict, I find out something about myself and others I didn’t know before. No dramatising, no ‘awfulising’, no going on and on about the ego.
Doing t’ai chi on the wet grass all silvered with dew this morning was like dancing. I am dreaming up another short story and I make up dialogue by talking aloud to myself in the bath and whie I am watering the garden. The dogs are used to this, the neighbours are not. My housemate is being far too brave and my heart aches for her. There are emerald-green malachite sunbirds flying between olive trees and the rose bush against the right wall has turned yellow and black as if poisoned, frost-bitten.
Life at the start of a new week, leaping and glittering and becoming. I cannot grasp it in my hands or hold it back, just stand here appreciating the zest and colour and wonder of it.
Posted by louisey 