Here and now, the nowness

This is the rainiest winter in years: I fall asleep to the sound of rain falling and wake up to solid walls of rain outside. Not ideal weather for housetraining a new dog. Satchi is all teeth, drool,  sawdust and velvet and this morning I smacked him for chewing  electrical wires (live! connected!) under my desk. He licked my hand  enthusiastically, then bounced up and down, pleased to have a new game and not in the least perturbed.

So we are all confined indoors, three dogs and a faltering writer. There are dog biscuits, mugs of Horlicks, some Schubert playing, beany wonderful soup tickled with rosemary and black pepper  simmering on the stove, soft toys, floors that smell of Dettol and hasty scrubbing with soap and hot water, wodges of paper towelling in odd places. Sponges, mops, rubber balls, dog blankets, refilled dog drinking bowls. The rain beating against the windowpanes, lamps lit, chewed pillows, bickering dogs, intermittent Internet, workmen  clearing stormwater drains in the road. Dog mother trying to write sentences that somebody might pay to read.

Every writer has a memoir, a neverending fiction, an encyclopedia buried within. From the Imagist poet and  writer of long epics on Helen in Egypt, HD:

we pause to give
thanks that we rise again from death and live

And with the winter solstice we have turned towards seasonal resurrection, green spears of watsonia in cold clay, the knobs and stubs of new leaf on gnarled branches, red aloes blazing in the dark veld. Early this morning, I lay in the bath and watched through a small window the rain and wind shake the brittle branches of an old elder tree. The sky behind the elder tree purple and ribboned with storm. We don’t need to search for mystery in life, it is all there, waiting.

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