Dimples and Dark Brown Eyes

I miss my daughter so much today.  I woke up from a dream at 05:00 this morning and I have been thinking about my little girl all morning.  I have been blessed with two beautiful children who keep me sane and grounded.  I watched my son sleep before I woke him for breakfast, and I realised what a wonderful gift it is to be a mom.  Watching him sleep flicked the gratitude switch in a big way this morning.  He is the sweetest, gentlest loving boy in the world and I adore him.

Aimee-Leigh is my first child.  It was after she had had her first feed that I discovered her dimples – she had wind and suddenly smiled…  and deep dimples appeared in both cheeks.  It was the most beautiful smile in the world.  It made me cry and I remember holding her tight and kissing her all the time.  She still has the most beautiful smile in the world – the kind of smile that lights her up from within.  She still lights up a room with her smile and I still want to hug her tight.

She is now a beautiful 16 year old girl and in her I see a world of possibilities.  There are so many things I miss about her today.  I miss the sleepy smile when she stumbles from her room in the morning with her tousled hair, the sound of her giggle, a good morning hug, listening to her squabble with her brother, the thumping music, watching her curl herself up on the couch like a lazy cat, hurrying her up to get ready for work on time, girl talk, shopping and of course her beaming dimpled smile.

I wish at times I could make her see what others see about her.  I have watched her look at herself in the mirror and I would do anything to give her the gift of loving herself as much as I do.  I would love for her to see her reflection and realise how beautiful and lucky she is to be exactly as she is.  I don't ever want her to deprive herself of food, or to twist around and ask whether her bum looks big, to lie awake at night and promise herself that tomorrow she will start a diet.  I want her to know that beauty sometimes makes you happy but happiness always makes you beautiful.

I want her to believe in herself and her dreams as I do.  I want my girl to learn to listen to her heart and know that her future is determined by the decisions and choices she makes and not necessarily by the risks she may take along the way.  I wish for her to allow mystery to have its place in her – not to be turning up every inch of her soul in rigid self-examination, but to leave a little fallow corner of her heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.  

We are all broken and wounded in this world but some of us choose to grow strong at the broken places.  As we grow up, we learn that even the one person who was never supposed to let you down, probably will.  She will have her heart broken probably more than once, and it is harder each time.  Similarly, I know she will break hearts too, when she does, I want her to remember how it feels when hers was broken.  My Aimee is strong and resilient. She has bounced back from so many heartaches and still has not lost the light in her deep brown eyes.

I wish I could make her immune to peer pressure and to negativity.  I would love to make her understand that everyone in the world may have an opinion of her but only she can decide what makes her truly happy as a person. Opinions are exactly that – just opinions. Life is often a process of negotiation.  I want her to know that the most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal – regardless of who the other party is.   She will fight with her friends and will blame a new love for things an old one did. I want her to know that things happen at the right time – not necessarily when we want them to – happy endings cannot come in the middle of a story. 

It is not always easy to be a mom – but I wouldn’t change it for anything.  I want the world for her and more than anything I want my girl to be happy.  I see so much inner beauty, flashes of strong will, brilliance and inner strength in her but more than anything, I love her spirit.

I want the world for her, but much more than that - I want her to be happy and to know that being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.  It means that you have decided to look beyond the imperfections and can find contentment regardless. A happy person is not a person in a set of certain circumstances, but rather someone with a certain set of attitudes about their particular circumstances. You don’t have to change the world to be happy – it might get your name recorded in history books but it is much more important to write your name in the lives and hearts of others.

If I had my sweet sixteen-year-old brown eyed girl with me today, I would hold her tight, smell the sunlight in her hair and tell her how beautiful she is – inside and out.  I hope that she is able to enjoy the little things in life today – to take pleasure in small and seemingly insignificant things.  I am so very proud to be her mom and of the woman she is becoming.  She is stubborn, spirited, annoying as hell at times but with beautiful heart that tempers her independent spirit and warms my heart. 

So today, on the dashboard of my life, my girl’s light burns brightly.  The gratitude switch has been flicked, along with pride and hope but more than anything, the longing fuse is blinking intermittently.  I cannot wait to have her home.  She and her brother are the centre of my world.  She is, and always will be the beautiful baby I cradled in my arms when she smiled at me the first time and I lost my heart forever.

My Mystic Bell and the Angel's Wings

This morning I opted to wear one of my favourite pieces of jewellery – my mystic bell pendant - an Indonesian mystic bell in a hinged sterling silver filigree cage. Mystic bells like mine are designed after the ancient Crotal bell form – which is considered the oldest form of bell if current archaeological records are anything to go by.  Caged crotal bells like mine have been made in Indonesia for more than two hundred years.  Apparently the King of Bali wore caged bells with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires to adorn his uniform.  Mystic Crotal bells have always had a spiritual significance to the people of the region.  Indonesians believe these bells are connected directly to the Buddhist and Hindu spiritual realm. The direct connection of bells to the spiritual realm is as old as Time itself.  

I love this piece not only because it is different but because I love the soothing gentle jingle of the bell.  I was looking at it on the train while contemplating some other issues in life this morning and it struck me how prevalent bells in some shape or form are in our lives.  They are everywhere!  I was alerted to it by an annoyed cyclist who rang his bicycle bell at me furiously this morning to get me to move out of his way.

Think about it – bells announce that someone is at the front door, alarm clocks wake us with a ringing sound, mobile phones ring to tell us that there is a call waiting, you ring the bell for service in a hotel and even my microwave has a chime!  Bells are rung at funerals and weddings and to start off a new round of fighting in a boxing ring. 

Bells signify the beginning and ending of something.  Bells summon people to events or inform students that the lesson is about to start and that they have to hurry to class.  Bells are rung to summon worshippers to prayer or to warn us not to cross railroad tracks.  They also soothe – like the tinkling of chimes in the wind.  In traditional Feng Shui bells are associated with prosperity and protection.  Even belly dancers use small bell-like finger cymbals called zills to enhance the music and dance.

Then there is Christmas and the annoying “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…” which seems to be the carol of choice in shopping malls.  Even Santa’s reindeer have bells attached to let children know he’s coming.

Our Sleigh in Ramsau

A few years ago, Handsome and I went to Austria in December and spent Christmas day in a ski resort in Ramsau.  We went on a horse drawn sleigh ride around the Dachstein and one of my fondest memories of that day is the jingling of the bells on the reins and the sleigh as we raced along the snowy landscape in the crisp mountain air – sipping schnapps as we went along.  It was the most beautiful Christmas day I have ever experienced.  I recall that there was a rather eccentric Jewish man who resembled Santa Claus with his flowing white beard. The more schnapps he drank, the more jolly he got and the louder he sang Christmas carols in a rich baritone voice. The sound of my mystical bell sounds so much like the bells on that sleigh.  I would give anything to be able to go back to that day.

Perhaps our attraction to the bells stems in part from the sense of unity we experience while listening to the ringing of a bell. The tones of a bell vibrate through the clothes, skin, blood and molecules of its listeners simultaneously. It is a collective experience that subconsciously draws us together.

Think of the Liberty Bell which announced the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in the United States.  It helped unify the Colonists on a vibrational level down to their very molecules, and according to some sound/healing researchers, down to the level of creation. Creation stories from around the world include passages metaphorically describing sound or vibration as a creative force. When we create sound here on Earth, we are honouring that first creation. 

If you have ever been to Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame, Chartres or any of the major cathedrals in Europe when the bells are ringing, you will understand what I mean. You feel it ringing in your bones.  It is majestic, mystic and indescribably beautiful.   I reckon bells are symbolic of the harmony existing in society. It acts as a medium between heaven and earth, bells and especially their clappers, represent communication and suspension between humans and God.

My little mystic bell may be small and have a soft jingle but it is felt and heard.  It is not only an idiophone but also an ideophone – the sound of it is enough to take me back to the snow capped peaks of Ramsau, gluhwein, fresh mountain air and a wonderful sense of contentment I felt for the first time in many years.  My little bell is special – to me anyway.  Besides, as the adage goes – “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

I pray my angel hears my bell and spreads his wings...

God has a sense of humour

I vividly remember my first visit to Paris and the first time I stood at the Place de l’Etoile (which has been renamed Place Charles de Gaulle) - the crazy intersection surrounding the Arc de Triomphe.  There are no less than 12 straight avenues which intersect at this point – hence the historical name which translates as Square of the Star.  The apparent absence of distinct white lines to regulate the flow of traffic, with ten cars abreast seems like madness to me.   Crossing seems like definite suicide – hence the subway for pedestrians.  Today the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de l’Etoile seems to be a fitting metaphor for another very complicated crossroad in my life.

Sometimes life seems a lot like the Place de l’Etoile to me.  There is so much hustle and bustle and flow of activity around me and the disturbing thought occurs to me that unless I know where I am  going – I am sure to get lost if I take the wrong avenue.  Trust me, I know – I’ve been lost in Paris and ended up in the Pigalle district! 

And life is never simple is it? I really think God has a strange sense of humour at times.  Why not just place me at an intersection with just four intersecting avenues where the options are limited and therefore simpler:  A, B, C or D?  But no – life is more fun when it is has a buffet of complications  – a pastiche of no less than 12 intersecting and intricate issues and avenues (A to J?) which is enough confuse the hell out of a simple-minded woman like me.

I wish it were possible to disambiguate life and people as we are able to do in computational linguistics in which word sense disambiguation aims at identifying which sense of a word is used in a sentence when the word has multiple meanings.  Wouldn’t it be useful if we could use the same process to figure out what people are actually saying when their words and actions are infused with a variety of dissonant meanings?  Wouldn’t it be bloody marvellous if we could devise an algorithm to figure people out?  But I guess it would come with its own caveat – people can speak in metonymic terms which screws up the whole discourse all over again. 

 

In fact, people are far too much like their words – infinitely variable and very context sensitive.  Just like words, people do not easily divide up into distinct or discrete sub-meanings.  I find myself empathising with the bleary eyed lexicographer in the dungeons of a library, who frequently discovers in corpora loose and overlapping word meanings; discovers their standard or conventional meanings extended, modulated and exploited in a bewildering variety of ways.  The same applies to people… I have come to the conclusion that some people are simply impossible to pin down and figure out.  Even when you think you know them better than anyone on the planet – trust me, you haven’t scratched the surface to the Pandora’s Box within. 

Which begs the question – can you ever truly know someone – who they are, deep down - there where the Disprin dissolves? 

I am beginning to think that it is not entirely possible.  We are all palimpsests – ancient scrolls of parchment which have been written upon twice, the first writing having been erased to make place for the second.  The first writing is our usually tormented and twisted childhoods, past experiences, memories, defeats, victories, history.  The second – seems to be like the etch-and-scratch magic slates we used to play with as children – with what seems to be written on the surface so easily removed by sleight of hand.  And the text keeps changing, the discourse is discordant, fluid and at times meaningless.  And unfortunately, in many instances the first layer of writing is etched too deeply to be erased entirely.  It still rises to the surface in the most annoying and inconvenient ways and no matter how hard you try to erase it, it permeates the second layer and any other one after that.

I have found myself with the same sense of bewilderment and exasperated confusion as the lexicographer in the dungeons of the library.  Unpredictability, instability and chaos seems to be the order of the day these days.  Nothing seems to fit the way it should and as soon as I think I have the corpora down pat, I find another layer of meaning to this tear inducing mascara haemorrhaging onion of life!  Lately, my favourite three letters of the alphabet are W.. T…F. With good reason.  Even the calendar agrees after Tuesdays…

Lately, I tend to feel like the confused tourist at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe all too often.  I look around me at the bewildering ever metamorphosing life I have and sometimes I wonder  which of the twelve traffic lanes I should jump into first. The challenge these days is merely crossing the street – without getting hit by a bus or worse.  Perhaps I should try to Forrest Gump my way to the other side.

It seems like such a fitting image for me today – at the centre of the chaos is the Arc de Triomphe which stands as a spectacular monument in honour of those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.  The names of the French victories and French generals are inscribed on the inner and outer surfaces of this spectacular monument.  

Aren’t we all a similar monument to our own victories and casualties as we struggle through life?  I am a monument to what I have survived and conquered but like the Arc de Triomphe, the names of the casualties are inscribed on the inner walls and the apparent emphasis on Victory belies the sadness of loss and death entombed within.  Underneath its spectacular vault, lies the forlorn Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with the flame that is kept burning day and night.  I too have a Tomb for my Unknown Soldier and he too is unaware of the devastation he has left in his wake.  Like the fallen hero beneath the Arc de Triomphe, he is blissfully unaware of the loving care that is taken to tend to the lantern – to keep the flame burning.

I recall watching the crazy maelstrom of traffic at this bizarre intersection for a while and I have come to realise that there are two options here:  step defiantly and confidently into the lane of oncoming traffic (in the face of disaster defiance is often the only recourse) or find the subway – it is there – you only need to read the signs to find it.  Then again, my French has always been just enough to get me into trouble.  Perhaps that explains it.  So, for now, I’m scouring the landscape for signposts which will lead me to the magical subway to get me from my point A the elusive point D or was it E, or F or…. Dammit!

Can you feel your toes?

I generally hate Mondays – the relaxed state of the weekend usually hasn’t shifted sufficiently overnight to compensate for the chaos of a new week and I inevitably find myself feeling a bit “jet-lagged” on a Monday morning.  This has been expounded recently by the move to daylight savings’ time and my body clock is still having some difficulty adjusting to getting up an hour earlier.  As Mondays go, today was an eventful one.

I had a CT scan today and as I lay there in the very draughty fashionable hospital robe  with my arms raised above my head in a very small confined space, I tried to focus on everything but the fact that I felt like a pilchard in a tin “….breathe…. One….two…..three…. breathe….four…. breathe….let me out of here…. Five…. Breathe….@#$% …. Six…. Breathe… #$@!... Seven…. Take me out of here…. Eight…. Breathe… @#$%!!!

Isn’t the human mind amazing?  We filter out so much of what our senses take in and it isn’t until you focus on something like how the very fashionable Chanel hospital robe feels on your skin, that you become aware of it.  So I lay there in this horrible tube trying not to panic – yes, I am claustrophobic.  I thought about everything else but what was happening to me in that moment.  Focus on your breathing, focus on whether you can feel your toes, how your hair feels in the nape of your neck, whether or not the bow at the back of the gown had somehow worked its way loose and someone had got a glimpse of your butt, the glow of the red light on the awful humming machine which I prayed was not an incinerator or that I would hear "Beam her up, Scotty!"… and eventually I tried to just breathe.

Rewind a few minutes prior to that – a rather unfriendly nurse poked and prodded me for a vein while I tried very hard to think of… well anything but the large needle that was searching for the vein… after three attempts we were in business and my mascara was on my chin.  I’m such a baby when it comes to needles.  Yes, I bawled. Then the IV was opened and an ice cold stream of saline solution coursed up my arm… until  the dye was injected.  Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about whether I still had toes or not – it felt like hot lava coursing through my body and like I had been sucking on some screws and bolts – an awful metallic taste in the mouth…. Very nice… especially since I had been fasting for 5 hours prior to the scan.  Note to self, suck a Lindt ball before you go in next time.

So while I was being wheeled backwards and forwards into this tunnel, I became very aware of my breathing… How it sounds, how it feels and how I my inner child was protesting against being put in a small space.  She was pounding on the walls wailing to be let out.  Isn’t it incredible that dye injected into your vein can illuminate every important organ in your body and highlight causes for concern or problems? 

Wouldn’t it be useful if we had something similar for matters of the heart and mind?  Wouldn’t it be useful if we could inject a magic dye to diagnose exactly what is wrong, exactly which part of your heart is broken and then just cut out the offensive bits like you remove a mole? Life would be so much simpler if we could “set a broken heart” like you “set a broken arm”, take a couple of aspirin and tomorrow you will be fine…” Keep it still in the sling, and you should be able to function.”

Then it dawned on me -  the solution to all this confusion, stress and tension – is perhaps to focus on the things I have filtered out.  Like we suddenly become aware of the shirt on our backs when someone asks how it feels, perhaps that is what is required.  A period of stillness – of taking time out – breathe,  feel, breathe, feel all the little things,  and be grateful that you can feel your toes even if they are red hot.

Today, also brought its share of blessings.  One of the biggest blessings came in the form of a wonderful friend who offered to come with me to the hospital today, not because I needed someone to hold my hand (except for the assistant whose hand I bruised while I was being prodded with a needle) but because she didn’t want me to be alone.  How does one begin to place a value on that?  A friend who is there to just sit with you and share your fear and just be with you because you don’t want to be alone is a true friend and this one is a keeper.  The second was that there is no sign of tumour or anything significant – that is if my powers of deduction and translation of medicalese is anything to go by.  The pictures are rather odd and after one glance, I figured I prefer the outside to the inside.  It is disturbing to know what you look like on the inside. 

I wonder what it would be like if we could scan someone’s soul – the inner person -  as we do the body? Wouldn’t that be bloody marvellous??  Imagine subjecting any new potential partner to a soul scan to see if you should keep them or throw them back!  It would be great if we could X-ray people to see how broken they really are inside and whether or not you should even attempt to get involved.  It would certainly save a lot of heartache.

It was also a humbling experience.  We all look equally frail in our designer hospital robes and all feel vulnerable and exposed.  Today I realised again what a gift health is and how important it is to take care of this body – it’s the only one I have.  Lying there with my arms above my head in the tunnel, I felt really vulnerable and afraid.  Suddenly, I realised that I’m not as invincible as I imagined, that a change in my  health, could radically change my entire life.  So perhaps it is time to focus on the important life functions like breathing and then the rest will follow.  As long as I have a breath and I can hold it in and breathe it out again, I can cope, even if my toes are on fire, my mouth tastes like I’m sucking on nails and I’m clinging desperately to my sense of dignity in an awful hospital robe.  So I lay there like a pilchard and remembered the song my daughter used to love as a  toddler… “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes ….” 

Switches flicked?  Gratitude, inner peace, silence and all the faith buttons I could find.  I closed my eyes and I heard my daughter sing, I felt my toes, I felt the robe, I felt my breathing and I felt alive.  

That is enough for now.

The Full Moon and the Erotic Synapse

What an eventful week or three this has been.  I saw a spectacular moon close to the equinox, learnt about Macaque monkeys and mirror neurons, explored various options in night-and-day flu medication, and relished sizzling boerewors on the coals in Garigal Reserve with 70 fellow South Africans. Each of these elements relate to healing and recovery on some level which I will relate in the next few days.

I was unfortunate enough to develop the usual flu symptoms and fever which coincided with the equinox and glorious full moon.  For some reason I always notice the full moon. In my feverish state, I spent many hours staring at the glowing moon outside my window. If you are into astrology, you will say it is because I am a Cancerian and my ruling planet is the Moon.  But in truth, I love watching a full moon in the night sky.  There is something very tranquil and comforting about the full moon.  As a child I always believed that the moon was God’s way of keeping an eye on us – as if it was some magical lens that he opened from time to time to see what we are up to.  The bigger the moon – the more he had opened the lens to have a good look at what we are doing here.  So today, I still look up at the full moon each time and I wonder what He sees if indeed He is looking back at me. And the child in me feels safer during a full moon because he is keeping watch.

The phases of the moon are not unlike the phases of life – it changes from a small slice of magic moonlight to a glowing orb to the blackness of new moon.  In the phases of the moon I discovered a metaphor for life and healing.  There are lean times, times of darkness but it will be followed by a bright glowing full moon which illuminates the sky with its silver irredescence.  I guess it depends how you look at it and what you are looking at.   

I watched a beautiful curly haired toddler at the shopping mall today – a gorgeous little boy who was keen to explore the world around him and discover the hidden wonders of the coffee shop but he kept looking back to see if he could see his mom.  He needed security to go out into the world and needed a safe base to return to.  I thought about how this manifests in adults – perhaps periods of boldness and risk taking punctuated by periods of seeking grounding, safety and consolidation.  Like the phases of the moon – alternating phases of growth and equilibrium.

Like the bright eyed toddler looking back to see his mom, we all seek a steady reliable anchor in our partner but crave to pursue what is exciting, inspiring and mysterious.  Call me an idealist but I believe love and desire are not mutually exclusive.  I just think that they don’t necessarily take place at the same time.  Isn’t it perhaps that security and passion are two separate fundamental human needs that spring from different motives and end up pulling us in different directions?

Rationally, I expect men, when they see a younger woman walking down the street in a short skirt, bustier and come-and-get-me boots, to get turned on but I wonder how many of them are able to distintuish between erotic desire and real love.  We always hope that they are mature enough to distinguish between the two – but sadly many don’t. This is where many men get lost in the abyss of a male midlife crisis. I have come to realize that the excitement of such attractions lies in the absence of psychological complexity.

This tension between security and adventure is a paradox to manage not a problem to solve.  It’s like a puzzle – we need each at different times but you can’t have both simultaneously.  I have come to the conclusion that love and desire are an ebb and flow – two clashing forces in a permanent state of flux always in search of the critical balance point. This is where commitment becomes an issue.  

When we become a monogamous couple we immediately set boundaries and delineate zones and this is when people start experimenting with how far they can push the boundaries before trip-wiring sensitivities.  We define zones of togetherness and zones of privacy and the mother of all boundaries is fidelity and the sacred cow of the pasture is monogamy.  That more than anything confirms our specialness to each other – conversely when you no longer feel special – the tingle starts and your eyes wander.  

That is why affairs are in essence a search for validation – a quest for someone to confirm our significance or desirability. (I use the term loosely here – the same applies to ridiculous flings which men have with women young enough to be their children in fulcrum of a midlife crisis.)  Such relationships by their very nature lend themselves to passion – they are risky, exciting, dangerous and secluded from the disapproving eyes of the world.  This means they are also luxuriously free of the realities and mundane practicalities of everyday life and the domesticity of a committed relationship.  It may represent the missing piece of the puzzle but sadly many people realize too late that it is just one miserable piece and the rest of the puzzle – the big picture – lies with the “more boring” spouse/partner.

This shadow of the other person is lurking at the boundary of all relationships.  She can be the sexy young Brazilian who flirts with you on a cruise, a waitress, an attractive cashier in the supermarket, the smiling stranger on the bus.  She is the forbidden fruit  - the manifestation of men’s desire for what lies beyond the boundary.  This is the strange corollary of a relationship – a couple implies resistance to this third party – but in order for the relationship to survive – it must have enemies. 

Isn’t it odd that when we believe someone to be incapable of infidelity, when the realization dawns that they are capable – even if only in fantasy – we feel betrayed.  What can be more unnerving than your partner’s freedom –which could include the freedom not to love you or to become a different person from the one who pledged undying love for you?  Such fantasies are embodiments of their freedom and separateness and it is scary.  So what do we do?  We set boundaries and rules and hope to keep our partners faithful – does it not then become enforced monogamy? 

I am beginning to wonder if we have not become so conditioned about the traditional notions of relationships that we have preconceived ideas and rules about what constitutes intimacy and too few for autonomy.  Are we perhaps too focused on establishing closeness that we have forgotten how to sustain individuality? Our ideology of love often leaves us uncomfortable and unsettled in the face of pursuing autonomy.

I have come to the conclusion that while we crave closeness it is often the space between us – the distance – that creates the seemingly elusive erotic synapse.  Perhaps that is what erotic intelligence is – creating distance and then knowing how to bring that space to life.  The analogy of the cat and the piece of string comes to mind again.  I think therefore that love rests on two pillars – surrender and autonomy.  Like the toddler in the shop, the need for separateness is inextricably linked to the need for closeness. 

Perhaps our greatest mistake is that we expect our relationships to act as a buttress against the arrows and slings of life but isn’t it ironic that love by its very nature is unstable?  We try to shore it up, batten down the hatches and attempt to create a sense of predictability to foster a sense of security.  But I am beginning to think that these very mechanisms we use to protect ourselves, place us at even greater risk and set us up for more heartache. (And no,  I am not condoning infidelity or proposing the debased immoral notion of the so-called “open” relationship – quite the contrary.)

Perhaps the real voyage of discovery is not about finding new landscapes but in seeing the landscape with new eyes.  A perceptual shift – and my recent circumstances have been a catalyst for a few shifts.  Perhaps we need to hurt ourselves into this paradigm shift.  Perhaps we need a sense of the unknown in a familiar space and perhaps we need to recognize  inherent mystery and separateness in each other.  Do we subconsciously neutralize each other’s complexity and see only the image of our partner which conforms with a creation based on our own set of needs?  Do we select partners whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities?

From all of  this, which switches have been flicked?  I have learnt that I don’t need to abdicate my person to merit love and that your need for freedom does not necessarily constitute a rejection of me a person.  The autonomy pilot light is spluttering to life next to the shattered dial of security.  Note to self – get a new glass for the  dial – armour plated and shatterproof.  Switched off the insecurity switch and pressed the letting-go button.  Still hoping the fear-of-the-unknown light will blow out soon and that the doubt fuse will go soon.  It needs to be replaced with a brighter one – perhaps optimism or faith would help.  Cranked up the stillness and acceptance to maximum capacity and pushed the strength lever as far as it could go. 

Now, we need to look up from the dashboard and see where we are going.  Time to look at the landscape with new eyes.  Perhaps the dark lines are not dongas but rivers which the moonlight hasn’t caught up with yet.  Perhaps it will look different in the glow of the full moon in a month or so.  Time will tell.  

Will the real YOU please stand up?

A few weeks ago, I was accosted by one of those annoying promotion agents in a shopping mall. This is usually the case when I am in a hurry and don’t really have time to hang around and listen to the significant beneficial effects Dead Sea Salts can have on your skin.  This particular person was very persistent and I simply could not evade her – tried to avoid eye-contact, raised my hand in protest, tried to side-step her but to no avail.  So, I sighed and listened to the whole promotional spiel for a new photographic studio.  In the end I filled in a little form about what I thought about the new studio and some of the photographs on the walls and finally I was free.  

At last!

Then a few days ago, I got a phone call from the same studio – we had won a free one hour photo shoot and a voucher for some of their products.  My first thought was to feel a bit guilty because I had been so dismissive of the girl who desperately tried to promote the studio while I was in a hurry to get from A to B.   So, we set up an appointment for the photo shoot this Sunday (yesterday that is).  Then came the clincher – the photographer told me to “bring something along that defines YOU.  If you have a dog, bring him too.”    

That shut me up for a couple of seconds and to be honest has been sitting there in the back of my mind for a few days since.  It made me wonder – what makes you YOU?  What defines who you are?  Is it your appearance, talents, relationships, career,  possessions, bank balance, interests  or your personality – What is the “it” that makes you YOU?

Yes, one can go into a long discussion about the ego, ID, etc, etc. etc but that does not answer the question, does it?  If you had to summarise the essence of who you are in 200 words, could you really do it?  That got me thinking and I did a bit of “research”.  I looked at a few local Internet dating sites and I was fascinated by what people write about who they really are and it convinced me that if that is the scope of what is “on the market” out there, then I will definitely remain single.  But I stray from the topic.

What is it that sets you apart as an individual from the person next to you?  If you had to isolate something and take it along to a photo shoot  to define who you are, what would it be?  I tried to think of what I would say if I had to summarise who I am really in 200 words… is it possible to condense the facets of your identity in one paragraph?  Are we really that easy to delineate and classify?  I personally do not like the idea of fitting into a box or category.

  

Something in me riles up and objects to being “classified” or cast into a particular category.

 I wonder if we all operate on basic stereotypes when we meet people – do we have some general “boxes” that we try to fit people into or do we adapt our boxes to fit the people we meet?  Does that determine how we behave towards them and what we think about them? 

Case in point, a few days ago, I was quietly sitting in a café sipping my cappuccino and reading the latest vitriolic nonsense about the Australian election and occasionally looking up and staring into space – at nothing or no-one in particular.  A husband and wife had taken their seats a table or two away from me and were happily chatting away.  I was not paying much attention to them at all – just staring into space shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the Australian political battles which resemble schoolyard tiffs – when the woman got up and walked past me to collect their cappuccino or latte or whatever they had ordered from the counter. 

Here’s the shocker – as she walked past me, she pulled a very unflattering face and gestured at her wedding ring.  I choked on my cappuccino.  Well, that flicked the pissed-off-o-meter into the red.  I was aghast.   What in heavens name was that all about?  Did she think I was staring at her middle aged, balding husband with a paunch and tobacco-stained teeth?  Eeeeww…  I wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole.  

Suddenly, I realised, I had been stereotyped – a  40-something single woman sitting alone automatically spells trouble for some women.  Does the fact that I am a single 40 something woman mean that I am going to hunt any man that comes along?  Hardly.  Initially I was annoyed at the assumption and the presumptuousness of the situation but eventually, I started laughing.  Uncontrollably.  I had been stereotyped as a predator (or a cougar!  Heaven forbid!!)  – which at this point in time is furthest from my mind!

It made me wonder how people see who you are and what defines your true self.  For a few days, I couldn’t think of something which would define who I am for a particular image.  A frozen image  - a metaphor for the real me…?  I couldn’t think of something which would fit and got distracted in the mayhem and chaos of everyday life until yesterday morning dawned.  I realised, I still hadn’t come up with something.  Aside from having my son, who is one of the two biggest reasons for getting up in the morning, I was a bit stumped.

At the last minute, I told my son to grab my guitar from the bedroom and put it in the car which was met with a look of confusion and consternation.  “Why are you taking a guitar to the mall, mom??”  Good question.  I didn’t know yet.  But looking back on it now, I think it is the most apt thing I could have done.

When I hold my guitar, I can feel the music resound in my body and it convinces me that we humans are capable on transmuting emotion into music. When you actively pluck the strings, you feel the effect of it in your gut – that is what life should be.  It’s passionate, alive and vibrant.

 

Unfortunately, most of us go to our graves with our music still inside of us.  I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music and creativity is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. 

Music, painting and writing are such powerful vehicles of expression.  At times when I am at the point where I am trying to force something, and it just doesn’t happen, I start writing.  It the words don't flow, I can pick up the brushes and start painting.  When the painting doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, I reach for my guitar and sing whatever the day feels like.  That is what comes out of my mouth and my guitar.  My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is the harmonic structure. You will find the real me in my music, my writing and my art.  That is the purest distilled form of who I really am. That happens every time I get behind a guitar, regardless of what I'm saying, because music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.  As with life, you can adjust your pitch and tone by turning the appropriate keys, there is a beautiful cause and effect in playing a guitar which is not too different from life.  The effect you get depends purely on which string you choose to pluck and which key you choose to play.  I guess we can choose to be discordant or not.


Life must be felt, like the reverberations of the strumming as you hold your guitar in a lover’s embrace.  It is a way of opening your soul to allow others to see glimpses of who you really are in all your nakedness and vulnerability. There is so much more to us than meets the eye - if only we would stop putting people into little boxes and classifying them according to our perceptions.  I think you will find that the real person is very different from the one you have in your mind.  I think that is who I really am – I prefer to compose life by ear, feeling and instinct rather than by rule.

The Fairy Godmother of Serendipity?

Serendipity?

So, it’s Saturday which generally means I get to sleep a bit longer and am able to get back into bed after making early morning coffee.  However, this morning I woke early to the annoying squawk of a cockatoo on the Honeysuckle shrub outside my bedroom window. 

My first instinct was to select a few choice words from my vocabulary to chase it from its perch so that I could go back to my peaceful slumber.  But instead I was silent and I lay there looking at it and it seemed to be watching me too.  In the few minutes that the cockatoo and I were looking at each other, I came to the conclusion that perhaps this is exactly where I should be right now – alone in bed in Australia looking at a cockatoo through my bedroom window.  Perhaps I need to be still and listen and become aware of life that is happening all around me every moment in the NOW.

  

I’m not referring to pre-destination – I don’t buy that since that seems to render morality and freedom of choice redundant – but a phrase from Coehlo’s book The Alchemist came to mind.  I remember reading the book when Handsome was in Mozambique – not too long after we had met a few years ago. There was one line in the book that jumped out at me at the time – “The whole universe conspired for me to meet you.”  I am beginning to think that there is a lot to be said for serendipity in life.

I know that you don’t reach serendipity by plotting a course for it – usually you set out in good faith for an entirely different destination and lose your way – serendipitously.  Come to think of it, serendipity has played a large part in some of the biggest decisions I have made in my life.  I stumbled into a bursary for my tertiary studies – I was just at the right place at the right time; I met my ex-husband by sheer chance in rather interesting circumstances; I got a sought after position at the University by absolute fluke; met Handsome by sheer luck and how I managed to get the job here in Sydney is nothing short of a miracle.  So many things in my life have happened as a result of coincidence. So, I think there is definitely something to be said about serendipity.

While I was watching the cockatoo this morning, a friend from South Africa called checking up on me to see if I am ok. He had stayed up late so that he could call me at a civilized hour due to the 8 hour time difference.  How sweet is that?  Perhaps that is another safety pin blessing – a small miracle – friends.

I still cannot help believing that there is a synchronicity and inter-connectedness to everything in life.  I was flattered to see that Mont Blanc had drafted a blog in response to this one – and in it s/he refers to a fairy godmother as the catalyst for the change and the magic.  I think the fairy godmother’s name must be Serendipity. (I will post a response to Mont Blanc on his/her blog directly.)

So today my thoughts centered around friends and serendipity and the curious interplay between events in life. Switches flicked today:  appreciation, patience, faith and I definitely turned the knob on the perspective dial.   

Friends are such a blessing.   I think sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing.  There is a time for silence, a time for distance and a time to let go and allow people to hurt themselves into their own destiny.  And of course, a time to be there to help them pick up the pieces when it is all over.

Isn’t it bizarre that the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties?  Perhaps hopelessness  is the soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.  Perhaps this is what this time is all about – I will not appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if I did not have to wait in darkness for a while.  

I'm beginning to think that small miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.  Or perhaps Buddha has a point – am I the miracle?

The Safety Pin Blessing

This morning while I was watching the scenery flit by on the train, I wondered if complete and lasting happiness was truly possible.  We all want to be happy but what does that mean exactly and how do you find it?  Is it as Nathaniel Hawthorne described it to be the elusive butterfly that stays just beyond your grasp when you chase it but if you sit still in the grass it may alight upon you?  I wondered today whether we pursue it so arduously that we become so absorbed in the chase that we never really find it – like the eternal bachelor who searches for the elusive perfect girl and never seems to find her and therefore remains the eternal bachelor.

So I resolved to actively refrain from trying to be happy – I decided that I would not actively look for reasons to be happy and wanted to see whether the butterfly of small blessings would visit me today.

 A few hours later a friendly student poked his head around my office door to say goodbye before going back to his home country and gave me a traditional Turkish talisman and said it was a to be a “bereket” or “blessing”.  It was one of those totally random moments but it made me sit up and take note – like my son pricks up his ears when he hears the ice-cream cart three streets down while the neighborhood dogs are still none the wiser.

 It was something really small but given with so much gratitude and kindness for not doing too much at all.  It is a small safety pin (no pun intended) with a glass Mal-de-Ojo and a small bunch of grapes attached to it.  What moved me was the wish that accompanied it – it was a blessing for abundance (hence the grapes – as an image of plenty) and the Mal-de-Ojo (Evil Eye) is intended to ward off harm and danger.  It came from the heart and was given with so much sincerity and I was really touched.

Perhaps there is something there – perhaps we are so focused on being able to proclaim as boldly as Martin Luther King – “I have a dream” that we forget to live in the now.  Perhaps that is what causes the sense of panic and desolation when all the pilot lights on the dashboard suddenly go out and your coach turns into a pumpkin.  We are left wondering – where to now??  What about my dream? 

Perhaps we have to let go of the life we had planned so that we are able to accept the one that is waiting for us.  It’s almost like standing in a corridor where all the doors have slammed shut and you are alone and in the dark.  Which door will open – where do I go next when it is almost impossible to live in the present, feels ridiculous to live in the future (because your dream has just died), and impossible to live in the past.   Nothing is as far away as one minute ago. 

I have come to the conclusion that I am one of many who crucifies myself between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.  Fear can be your best friend or your worst enemy.  If we are able to control it, it can serve you and make you more alert like a deer emerging from the forest.  If not, it will cripple you and destroy you.  In situations like this – I guess it is fear of the unknown, fear of loneliness, fear of failure and just basic uncertainty.  Just feeling lost.

This afternoon I came to the conclusion that everything in life is connected somehow.  You may have to dig a little to find it, but it is there.  There is a synchronicity and an inter-relatedness in the tapestry of life that defies explanation at times.  Everything is the same even though it is different.  Somehow everything connects back with your life and experience.  The faces in some situations may be different but the situations are the same. 

Irony is a hidden factor that lives around us, making its presence felt only after it has left the scene.  If I think back – the situation is slightly different but everything in it still in some way cognate.  In some wonderous way everything is interconnected to form the balance of life and create some divine structure.

I guess change is and always will be constant and inevitable.  That is the only certainty as contradictory as it seems.  But everything is relative and perhaps the moments and times in our lives will come back again but the next time round, we may find ourselves on the other side of the coin. Things are always changing as fast as everything stays the same.

Time is the only fluid dynamic which seems to be the balm for broken hearts and the solution to all the immediate concerns.  We may not know the answers now but in TIME we may.  Time is such a relative notion.  Isn’t it strange how time can fly when you are really happy and having heaps of fun but it can drag when you are unhappy.  Think of children waiting for Christmas morning – time seems to be interminably long.  When we are children we can’t wait for the holidays, our next birthday, summer, growing up.  Perhaps the reason for that is that a child surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.  Do you – or are you torn between the thieves of regret and fear?

Maybe we shouldn’t aspire to proclaim – “I have a dream” but rather “I have a plan”.  Perhaps we will get further with plans than we do with dreams.  We can plan to find a way to conquer our fear and find courage – since courage is actually only fear that has said its prayers.  So perhaps being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.  Perhaps it just means looking beyond the imperfections and seeing the blessing in the safety pin given with an open heart and a beaming smile.