Up well before dawn and watered the garden against the heat to come. My elderly neighbour helped mend my sprinkler system, a crude business of a thick patched hose and smaller tubes, but it runs along the front of the house and may keep some of my little grey bushes of santolina, helichrysum and the climbing aloes and heliotrope alive. Sun just breaking over the mountain peaks as I finish weeding and mulching. Turtledoves chuckling overhead in the loquat trees. I like to stand bare-legged in the low spray, deadheading and with no fierce sun on my back yet. Life returned to sweet blessed ordinariness.
Fennel, bronze and a wild lemony green, racing to seed in the back garden, yellowy pollened umbels and the seeds I can collect in a little brown paper bag and dry. Plaited shallots and garlic drying in the kitchen. In the hedge there is the ‘Black Knight’ dark purple panicles of the buddleia, swarming with bees and butterflies.
The poet Zbigniew Herbert on the Greek landscape, so many parallels here:
“Whoever comes here with the palette of an Italian landscape painter will have to abandon all sweet colors. The earth is burnt by the sun, parched from drought, it has the color of bright ash, sometimes of gray violet or violent red.”
Today I must make preserves or jams from all the fresh peaches and plums in the kitchen. Not looking forward to standing over simmering pots and pans of syrup and boiling fruit, sterilising jars and finding reliable rubber rings. I don’t have an aptitude for this kind of culinary skill — but the fruit cannot go to waste, the jams and clear amber or crimson jellied preserves will be needed in winter. And it is my turn to make soups for the valley soup kitchen, more than enough vegetables and homemade chicken stock for the 10-litre pots. Some left-over panettone the housemate turned into a delectable trifle.
On the whole nobody ate too much — probably due to the heat — and we all went for long walks and swam, a healthy enough festive time. We talked and talked. The usual human tensions and squiffy dynamics at moments, what else?
A note I made in a journal late last night: The fear of abandonment so deep in each of us. So I never plant a herb or plan for a meal without some presentiment of loss or failure, a small darkness nudging at my elbow. And when it comes to expectations, the sentimental is the enemy. As it is with writing.
The learning curve that is life in sobriety.
IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST TO
“EXPLAIN THE SECRET OF TEACHING”If I explained aloud, then it wouldn’t be a true explanation,
And if I transmitted it on paper, then where would be the secret?
At a western window on a rainy autumn night
White hair in the guttering lamplight, asleep facing the bed.
—Gido Shushin, translated by David Pollack
Amen on the fear of abandonment. It has been the largest fear all of my life. And as more and more people that I love have died or are nearing death, I find that I am able to keep moving and not be bogged down in loss. I am starting to see that the fear doesn’t have to consume me.
So many of those I care for have died violently — that is part of the fear for me Syd, being unable to protect those whom I love, knowing there is no safe place. But you’re right that the fear doesn’t have to consume us.
I love to make peach jam, but it is a hard day of work. Wish I could come over and peel and slice peaches with you.
That would be such a help and I would learn how to do it right! It is hard work.
Oh yes the big fella abandonment ready to posture when I am feeling a little down.
I can spin with him and loose all perspective on my other feelings. The Holidays bring up old memories there is a jumble and I go down…. I attach and want things to be different forcing my will. This is where I work the steps and trust all else will follow.
Going for a walk on the beach it is a beautiful day today.
Dee, there are these “don’t Go There’ places we should sidestep at times — the beach is perfect for that!
Reading the good doctor Mate, he feels abandonment is at the heart of alcoholism/addiction. He makes valid points, but I don’t think it is that simple. Perhaps the reasons for our fears are impossible to explain, thus no “true explanation” has been found.
I like Mate but you’re right Lou, it isn’t simple at all — one thing often not considered is the etiology of loss or abandonment, the history of what has shaped us and given rise to fears. I sit with Rwandan women who are certain their surviving children will be killed and they are unable to imagine a normal world in which such violence is not part of the given. Fear is conditioned, circumstantial and also innate.
Remember when my Mama would have to make fig perserves all day because they were falling off the tree? I miss writing posts about my mama. You “sound” much calmer in your spirit than last week.
I think about your mama sometimes Pam, I loved to read about her. I am calmer this week, December throws me off balance and I note many others are finding steadier ground too.