Humans seem to be driven by the need for an explanation for everything. This makes us curious about how things work and also leads us to pat answers. Sometimes any explanation appears to satisfy some people.
I’ve written elsewhere (as have others) that it is useless to have answers to the wrong questions. It’s worse than useless, because if the answers seem satisfactory, we stop asking. (more…)
I am who I say I am because I say so. I am a writer because I declare it. I was a lawyer; I was a social worker; I was a therapist; I was a CEO; all because I said so.
It’s easy to have what we do and who we are be the result of chance, mishap, happenstance or fate. If we take that path, we believe we have no control over our lives. If we allow any of these to be the excuse for our current identity or work (or lack of either) then we are denying that we actually made a choice, or a string of choices. To allow what happens, to dictate what we do and who we are, we make a choice to allow it.
Why do I write?
Why do you read?
Presumably I have something to say and you want to know what that is. But I don’t write specifically for you and may not even know who you are; and if I do know you and write specifically for you, guessing what you want to read, am I writing for you alone?
I was given this body and I take it for granted that it will carry me wherever my mind needs to go. However, some infinitesimal bug and a few million of its relatives have decided to take over and I have all but ground to a halt.
I was fine yesterday, doing what I wanted and needed to do, when I wanted and where I wanted. I came home and we had dinner – a lovely turkey mince with grated vegetable fry-up. Then I felt unusually tired and slunk off to bed. No, I wasn’t tired, I was exhausted, wrung out, totally pooped. I tried to read for a while until even that was too much effort.
Circulation; a word I don’t think about much, most of the time. It’s on account of my cold nose and toes and fingers that it comes to mind. Because of the lack of it, the impairment of it.
I have just come back into the warmth of the kitchen. The dog and I have been exploring the local ‘community forest’, a leash-free area. Leash-free allows me to wander at will, without the dog restricting me. I can go where I want to go. I can stop and take macro close-ups of tiny mushrooms and mosses and sniff the dampness they grow in.
The dog suddenly gets up from his spot next to the heater and races to the window. With his paws on the sill, he starts barking at something outside. I listen carefully. Between barks I can just hear what sounds like the warbling of a bird. I’ve never heard that before. I get up and join the dog.
On the path through the reserve which skirts our property, two teenagers are using their cupped hands to create a whistle, blowing across their thumbs. They seem to be competing with each other. With me next to him, the dog has fallen silent, his ears alert and his head cocked at an angle (his ‘what’s going on?’ look). The whistling is sonorous and surprisingly loud. The girl seems better at it than the boy, but both are obviously enjoying themselves.
It’s winter, according to the Australian calendar. In many parts of the world, however, winter starts on the 21st – the time of the equinox, a reminder of the way people used to mark the turning of important cycles.
We have lost much of our connection with the cosmic and global ebbs and flows which marked the lives of our ancestors. We now respond to more mundane markers: commercial cycles, the ‘founding’ of a nation (though most people do not know what we are actually celebrating), the birthday of a monarch (though not on her birthday), the birth and death of a prophet upon whose life a religion has been based (though, again, not on the true days).
Despite the season, it’s warm enough for me to take my jumper off – the low afternoon sun streams in through the large kitchen window. “If you can’t stand the heat …”
At this time of the day, I prefer this corner of the house – the large, scarred pine table; the clean benches, not yet covered with the litter of the evening meal; the dog lying half on my feet, his idea of a cuddle; the quiet before the children stream along the footpath outside, on their way home from school. (more…)