Sat down outside under an olive tree and thought about this last year and the year to come. Outwardly composed and busy, plans for work, new friendships, the deepening of older friendships, more meditation, more curiosity, more patience. To take more risks. Risk more. Risk everything.
Outwardly, that all sounds fine. Inwardly stumbling over obstacles in the darkness, missing the light switch, wishing I could get some therapy, dismayed by dreams of disoriented floundering, the swampy places of the psyche. And it’s all good. the stumbling and tripping over my own feet, the plunging into swampland, the fertile ooze of a muddled, tangled-up, complicated, amazing life.
So perhaps this year might be about playing with mud pies. Rejoice in the messiness and keep on squelching about in mystery and ooze.
The spiky little Christthorn given to me by my friend Trish who died on 20 September last year is blooming like a tiny primrose, pale yellow flowers everywhere.
‘What should I do about all this horrible painful stuff?’ I ask Trish vaguely. ‘Is it necessary to stay with it or just push it back into the tin trunk under the bed in that Strange Lumber Room of the Far-From Spotless Mind?’
She appears for a moment on the concrete step, shielding her eyes against the hot sun, her hair wispy and soft as dandelion fluff, her face and throat still swollen from steroids, her little hands still trembling, fluttering like little birds.
‘Nothing is wasted, nothing goes lost and unredeemed,’ she says. ‘Where did we read that? Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.’
‘I miss you so much my darling,’ I say, and she fades in an embarrassed tearful blink. Another of my dearly beloved ghosts.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time – It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
