Enchant...ment

...for Knots in the String.

(Apologies for despatching to everyone earlier than normal… this was written early this week as the end of the week is a little busy.)

I began reading Katharine May’s book, Enchantment, last night. Her evident distrait was unsettling and I closed the book and let it drop to the side of the bed. Perhaps I’m naive but I believe that wonder, enchantment - call it what you will - drifts around us, a lacy vapour. A little like a whisper – ‘Take note, look, listen, touch, smell. Marvel.’ And no matter what, I’m open to any enchantment in the offing, even though I understand that for some folk, it’s not that easy.

I tend to use my surroundings as displacement. I always have, and I wonder, is that a good thing?

To be in awe of cobwebs across a field at dawn, with dew hanging suspended, daylight catching on the sparkling facets?

Or beguiled by waves breaking on a shore – hearing the noise of their withdrawal, seeing the glitter of seafoam as bubbles burst? Or being enthralled by a bird’s nest smaller than the cup of my grandson’s hand and made of a tangle of silver birch twigs lined with moss, doghair and feathers?

Or maybe a word or a sentence, a paragraph or a poem – something that one can write in a journal and keep for evermore. It’s those offerings that build help build a wall between me and distrait.

May’s book begins with her evident depression as she moves out of Lockdown. She is looking for light, for meaning. I feel sadness for her, for anyone who had to endure vast stretches of Lockdown time. We were so lucky on our island as it closed itself off from the world for three months. There was barely a soul on our coast and our confinement became the epitome of enchantment. Nature returned to a world where previously, Incomers had driven it away.

More birds settled on the beaches, wallabies and bandicoots relaxed and reclaimed the roadside verges. Owls and bats reinhabited the nights. We could settle to watching nature with wonder. We could take our humble place, right there in amongst wild creatures that had been longing for some sort of reprieve from the human race.

I filled my days with contentment. We had a big garden, farm paddocks and we could walk without fear of likely contamination. I mostly revelled in our isolation. (I did not, however, write well. But that just might be another story.)

In any case, I was delighted with the simple opportunity that we had been given. The chance to be enchanted if I wanted…

And so to Doing:

Conscious of summer’s close, I try to swim daily. But then I’ll also try and winter swim weekly, which is why I want to swim daily now, so that as the water cools, my body will habituate with it – today the water was a degree colder but still delicious.

Conscious too that in a week or so, Daylight Saving will be over, and we shall be night-walking with headlamps. And on the rare nights when I must walk alone with the Terrier, conscious of being a woman in a nation that allows no capsicum or pepper spray (not even for a woman walking at night!).

Writing. Back in the 12^th century. Excited to receive an email from France today, about L’ile Barbe - the information contained therein is important to Brother Bruno’s journey. I’m so grateful to Benoit who has offered to help where he can.

Stitching felt Easter eggs. The above was magically for a commission from interstate…

Unsettling as I watch the farm paddocks turn paler, the pasture thinning to transparent. Watching some farmers filling their waterholes from portable tanks. Thanking the stars for irrigation water and for our fodder storage. The markets are becoming choked with stock, prices are dropping and for those farmers who can’t get their stock into the crowded markets, despair can seem very close …

Chuffed that we voted early (voting is compulsory in Australia) but not looking forward to the election results on Saturday evening because the Tasmanian electorate is constrained to the point of constipation. I say to the whingers, ‘You want things to change? Then vote the conservatives out. Have some courage and vision, people!’

Reading:

On audio, They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie and voiced by Emilia Fox. Immense enjoyment. The novel is far removed from her murder mysteries and has such a good twist. I hadn’t realised that Christie and her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, lived in Baghdad – it explains her faultless scene setting.

On Kindle, The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page. Such a clever idea, a story that moves at an easy pace and which hangs on excellent characterisation.

In print I shall persist with May’s Enchantment. I need to believe that being open to enchantment is balm for everyone in times of turmoil.

Watching:

Poirot (David Suchet). Finding episodes I missed. Love this intellectual man with his fastidious idiosyncracies.

Spooks The curious thing is that these episodes are set in 2004+ and yet the issues are as relevant now as then. We’re enjoying them and they still have us on the edge of our seats.

Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? A new Agatha Christie on Britbox, written and produced by Hugh Laurie. Good...

And so I look out the window…

It’s been a hot day and now the sky is mottled and creased like an elderly woman’s crepey arms. It’s grey, a dull shade bleeding across the firmament. Perhaps we’ll have thunder. At the very least it’d be nice to have rain. That has its own capacity to engender wonder. Which is good, because I have a timetable, you see. I’m of an age where the inevitable denouement is at the end of that tunnel there, and thus it becomes more important every day to find a little bit of enchantment and store it for future reference.

‘Whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder, whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes on life.’ Albert Einstein

Music?

This. It’s beautiful…